No Safe Place (49 page)

At the edge of his consciousness, Kerry heard the wail of more sirens meet above the grid of treeless streets he had passed through in his limousine: rows of small stucco houses with barred windows; oil-stained asphalt lots; burned-out buildings; seedy strip malls; men loitering with boom boxes. But here and there were neighborhoods with well-kept lawns and no graffiti, where neighbors organized community-based day care and health centers. It was this that gave him hope.

“I’m here to answer your questions,” he finished. “But I want to promise you this much—that I will always speak out for this community. And for hope, not fear.”

The crowd applauded, a sound fainter than Kerry was used to, dissipating in the void: bare concrete, debris, abandoned storefronts, and, Kerry thought to himself, years of rhetoric that had left no trace. Looking into their faces—hopeful, wary, reserved—Kerry said, “Now tell me what’s on your minds.”

In the pool, Nate Cutler glanced at his watch.

It was three-thirty; he wanted to call Jane Booth, check on whether they had found anything new about Kilcannon and Lara Costello. But working the pool meant dogging the candidate, the absence of time or privacy.

The wail of sirens grew louder, more insistent. The Secret Service agents guarding Kerry seemed to tense.

What was it? Nate wondered. The air in South Central still crackled with volatility—too much crime, hopelessness, distrust or outright hatred between blacks and Asians and Latinos. Kilcannon could say what he wanted, even mean it, but the motorcade would move on.

Near them, a young black man in denim, with gold-rimmed glasses and the intense air of activism, demanded of Kilcannon, “What does affirmative action do for
us
?”

“For this community?” Kilcannon asked. “For many of you, damned little.” Kilcannon unknotted his tie. “You obviously know that, or you wouldn’t have asked the question. So let me ask
you
a question: How would
you
give people in
this
community choices and chances? And how can people in this community take better advantage of the opportunities they have?”

The man shook his head. “What about you, Senator? Have you thought about it? Or do you think ripping off Martin Luther King’s enough?”

Kilcannon’s eyes seemed to flash. “Better Martin Luther King,” he retorted, “than Louis Farrakhan. But your first question’s worth answering.”

Watch it,
Nate thought. His interest suddenly intensified; there was about Kilcannon, most reporters believed, a whiff of buried anger which could hurt him. Whereas if Dick Mason had a temper, almost no one claimed to have seen it.

“Government can’t transform South Central,” Kerry said more evenly. “Or truckloads of cash. If they could, the war on poverty would be over, and this would be a garden spot.”

There was a small ripple of cynical laughter. “One thing South Central needs,” Kerry went on, “is more and better jobs. Private jobs, not make-work, based on training which encourages employers to come here, and stay here for the next generation.

“A lot’s been written about what’s wrong with black families, and a lot of it’s unfair. Families—black or white—often break up because there’s no hope, no jobs, no future. But churches like this one show how local institutions can help change things for the better. Especially if Washington cares to listen, and to learn.” Stopping, Kerry looked around him, his demeanor transformed into sudden mocking innocence. “Where’s Dick Mason, by the way? Does he ever call? Does he ever write? Did we only imagine him, like the Wizard of Oz?”

The crowd laughed more openly; they had begun to enjoy Kilcannon’s edginess, Nate thought, his willingness to engage. “Well,” he said to his interrogator, “for the moment you’re stuck with me. And I believe we’re both responsible for the future of South Central. So let me tell you what I think we can do together …”

The sirens were louder now, Nate realized. And then, abruptly, they were silent.

It was the silence that told Lara there was trouble. She could see that Wills sensed it too; standing still, he seemed to cock his head, listening for something he could not hear.

As Kerry finished, she saw a squad car pull up. A cop got out—by the look of his gold braid, a senior officer—and hurried toward Carl Wills.

The officer was heavyset, with brick-red skin, a seamed, alert face, pale-blue eyes. Cop’s eyes, Kerry thought.

Wills seemed to know him. As the crowd watched, anxiously speaking among themselves, the cop placed a hand on the reverend’s shoulder and began talking in a low voice.

“Damn,”
Wills said under his breath.
“Damn.”

“What is it?” Kerry asked. He felt the Secret Service surround them.

The cop turned, grim-faced. “We have a shooting incident, Senator, involving a Korean grocer and a black kid. In the last year, the grocer’s been held up twice, he says, by black men with Saturday night specials. So he bought himself a shotgun.”

He spoke now to both Wills and Kerry. “Today two black kids came into his store after school, one thirteen, the other ten.
The thirteen-year-old pulls out a plastic toy gun—as a joke, he
says now—and asks Young for a box of Snicker bars. Next thing the kid knows, he’s looking at the barrel of a gun.

“He drops the toy and begins running. On the way out the door, he hears a shotgun blast. Since then, nobody’s seen the ten-year-old. He may be dead, wounded, or a hostage. We just don’t know.” The cop faced Wills again. “The grocer’s locked up the store and pulled down the metal screens behind the doors and windows. Now there’s a crowd, and the boy’s mother’s there, screaming at us to get him out. We may want your help.”

Wills nodded. “We need calm here. All of us.”

Kerry remembered Newark—the fortitude of Liam Dunn, the shells of buildings, the residue of hatred. “I’d like to go with you, Carl.”

“Senator—” Dan Biasi began to protest, and then the cop cut in. “I’m sorry, Senator. The Secret Service doesn’t want it, and we don’t, either. We’ve got all we can handle, and we can’t guarantee your safety.”

So that’s it,
Kerry thought.
I just run away.
“There are no guarantees,” he told the cop and Dan. “And I don’t expect any.” He turned to Wills again. “Maybe I can make a difference by coming. I can’t tell people I care about what happens here, then drive off in a limousine.”

Wills glanced at the policeman, and then the cop’s face turned hard. “There are people in the crowd with guns, Senator, and some of them have been drinking. There aren’t enough forms in the world to get rid of the liability. And I wouldn’t put you in that crowd if you signed them all.”

Nodding, Wills turned to Kerry. “Something happens to you, and this neighborhood, maybe race relations, get set back a long ways.”

Kerry did not answer. Perhaps, he told himself, he had expected this before he asked to help.

As Wills rushed off, the Service closed around Kerry, hurrying him to his car.

When Sean Burke reached the Tenderloin, it was twenty minutes until four, and the street punk was nowhere in sight.

Sean felt wasted, shamed, pathetic in his self-hatred. He had run from his moment; now Kilcannon was in another city,
safe in his cocoon of security, and Sean had become the walking dead.

For two hours, he had sat at a table in elegant Union Square, the sun beating down on him, the sweat on his face like a fever. A delirium overcame him; he was barely conscious of the people who stopped, of what he said. The Asian woman who took his place seemed more a dream than a person.

A death, a kind of death.

A lifetime ago, some other man had walked into an abortion clinic with a gun. Now all that was surreal fragments—a woman with a red hole in her forehead, the abortionist falling into a file cabinet, the supine body of a nurse. What felt real was flinching as he looked into Kilcannon’s eyes.

Sean was already dead—putting a bullet through his brain would be no different than withdrawing life support from wasting flesh. Across the street, the prostitute with sores on her face and eyes like burn holes loitered on the sidewalk, a figure from hell; that she seemed to look right through him was no surprise.

A dead man.

Sean felt hard fingers on his shoulder.

Turning, he saw the black street punk. His eyes were like marbles—glassy, opaque. “I got your piece,” he whispered.

The words jolted Sean. The black man touched the pocket of his pea coat. “In here,” he said, “but I ain’t gonna sell it to you on the street.”

Yesterday, in another life, there was no way Sean could have trusted this man.

“Come on,” the punk said.

Following him, trancelike, Sean stayed close.

Between the liquor store and a tenement hotel they found an alley lined with garbage cans, its pavement smelling of urine and rotten scraps of food. The man slowed, walking next to Sean, then a little behind, prodding Sean deeper into the alley. The dank sunlessness seemed to change the chemistry in Sean’s brain, sending a current to his nerve ends.

The man was at his back now. “Turn around,” he said.

Even before he complied, Sean could feel the gun against his stomach.

The soulless eyes stared at him. “Your wallet, man.”

Dead,
Sean thought. Though his fingers trembled, his mind felt calm, almost peaceful.

“It’s not in your back pocket,” the punk hissed. “I seen that. So you just tell me where it is.”

Slowly, Sean reached for the inside pocket of his army jacket. As he found the handle of the knife, he watched the man’s eyes. Their faces were so close that the smell of whiskey filled Sean’s nostrils.

Take your time,
Sean told himself.
You’re already dead.

Beneath his jacket, he pulled the knife up to his collar, still hidden.

“Careful, man. Don’t make me waste you.”

With a flick of his wrist, Sean turned the point of the knife to the street punk’s throat.

“We’re both dead,” Sean whispered.

The punk blinked; through the blade of the knife, Sean could feel his throat twitch. Split-second calculation darted through the black man’s eyes: if he pulled the trigger, Sean’s knife might cut his throat. If he didn’t …

Sean’s fingers tightened on the knife.

“Man …, ”
the punk mumbled.

Sean jammed the knife into his throat.

Pain shot through his wrist, metal hitting teeth. Sean’s eyes shut against the bullet that would rip his stomach apart; he felt the punk’s whiskey breath in his face, expelling a terrible squeal of agony.

The gun clattered on the sidewalk.

Slowly, Sean opened his eyes.

Impaled on the knife, the punk stared at him, eyes stricken, a foam of blood and saliva on his parted lips. The knife was stuck in his palate; all his power of movement seemed to have gone to his knees, buckling and twitching as blood seeped from his throat.

Placing a hand beneath the man’s chin, Sean wrenched the blade out in one convulsive motion.

The man crumpled, falling on his side.

Repelled, Sean stepped back, staring. The punk’s eyes were still open. His mouth made small gurgling sounds, and his breathing was shallow; Sean thought of a fish his father had thrown on a wooden dock, to die there.

Dropping the knife, he glanced toward the mouth of the alley.

No one there. A car drove by, so quickly that it was gone before Sean flinched.

He was alive.

Sweating, he picked up the punk—twitching, still alive—and awkwardly dumped him facefirst in a half-empty garbage can. The can teetered as skull struck metal.

Sean turned away.

Lying in a patch of oil was the knife and, near that, the gun.

Sean wiped the knife on the sole of his boot and put it in his pocket. As he reached for the gun, he saw the blood spatters on the sleeve of his coat.

The gun was oily, cheap-looking. But when Sean curled his fingers around the trigger, he saw the moment again, but somehow transformed: Kerry Kilcannon, eyes widening in fear as Sean aimed his weapon.

A faint cry came from the garbage can.

Sean looked up. The man’s legs made spastic kicking movements, like those of a drowning child. But Sean felt no pity; the man had meant to rob him, perhaps kill him, and his death had brought Sean back to life.

In his other life, as John Kelly, people waited for him.

He was frightened, confused. All he knew for certain was that to run again was living death.

Slipping the gun in his pocket, Sean left the alley behind.

In his hotel room, Nate Cutler watched a film clip taken from a helicopter—a police car, the Korean grocer inside, moving without resistance through a restive crowd. “Have you seen
this?” he said into the telephone. “It’s on CNN. I was in the pool today and heard Kilcannon ask to go.”

“That’s been reported,” Jane Booth answered. “Sheer grandstanding, and so irresponsible. What happens if he gets hurt?”

Nate watched the screen. “What’s happened so far,” he pointed out, “is that no one else got hurt. Because Wills was prepared to go there.”

“And Kilcannon,” Jane said grudgingly, “gets credit for
wanting
to go. Maybe now he gets elected, so he can try to perform these wonders every month or so, taming the unruly. That’s what we have Presidents for, after all.” Her voice became caustic. “And Vice Presidents, in case things don’t work out.”

Nate gave a mirthless laugh. “Then maybe we’re saving Kil-cannon from himself,” he said. “Does Sheila have anything more for me? It’s less than two days before I interview him.”

“One thing,” Jane reported crisply. “But it’s good—from a woman who lived on Lara’s floor. She only saw Kilcannon once, she told Sheila. But he was banging on Costello’s door, obviously upset, the woman says. This went on for several minutes, Kilcannon not caring who saw or heard him.” Once more, Jane’s tone became acid. “No wonder she moved—her boyfriend had no judgment. As he proved again today.”

In her supercilious mood, Nate found, Jane was getting on his nerves. “When was this?” he asked.

“About the time Costello spilled it all to the counselor, Sheila thinks. Just before, the neighbor remembers, Costello took the job with NBC and left the country.”