"Is this a bad time?"
"There's a state dinner at seven with the Prime Minister of Canada. Tell me when this happened."
"Last night."
"He's threatening you, Joanie. Did you call the D.A.?"
Kerry heard her draw a breath. "There's more . . ."
* * *
Standing alone near the wooden play structure, Marie Bowden saw her father.
Her heart stopped. He stood at the edge of the playground, gazing at her. Her mother had said he shouldn't be here. But he looked so sad.
Almost timidly, he approached her. "Marie . . ."
She took two steps toward him. Then he knelt, holding out his arms.
Marie ran to him.
He held her tight, kissing her hair and neck. When he released her, taking both her hands, his eyes were bright and strange.
"It's okay," he reassured her. "I just needed to see you, one last time. Before I go away."
Marie held his hands tighter. "Where?"
"Far away." Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead, and then gazed into her eyes. "I wish I could take you with me, sweet pea."
Fear and sadness pierced her heart. Quickly glancing over his shoulder, her father cradled her chin in his half-closed hand. Then, without another word, he stood and walked away. At the fence, he turned to gaze at her.
Suddenly, her teacher was kneeling in front of her. When Marie looked up again, her father was gone.
Miss Suarez's eyes seemed as worried as her father's had been sad. "What did he say to you, Marie?"
Marie told her. Gently, Miss Suarez said, "I'll have to call your mommy," and Marie began to cry.
* * *
The bedroom door opened. As Kerry listened, Lara slipped into the room, wearing a simple black gown. Silently, she mouthed, "Five minutes."
Telephone to his ear, Kerry nodded. When Lara approached, he cupped the receiver and whispered, "Joan . . ."
Lara became quite still. To Joan, Kerry said, "We have to call the D.A. For Marie's sake, and yours."
"But he'll only get more angry."
To stem her panic, Kerry kept his own voice patient. "If we don't, he'll only be more emboldened. What if, next time, John decides to take her?"
"God . . ." Her voice broke in anguish. "I wish I could be sure . . ."
"Trust me," Kerry implored her. "Please."
There was silence. As Kerry listened, he saw Lara's eyes fill with doubt and worry. "All right," Joan murmured. "I guess you know . . ."
To Kerry, this sounded more like exhaustion than assent. As she said goodbye, her voice was faint.
"What is it?" Lara asked.
Troubled, Kerry shook his head. "Help me with this tie, and I'll tell you."
Lara worked on the knot. As she finished, so did Kerry. "His pattern worries me," he told her. "Depression; hopelessness; anger about losing Joan and being cut off from his child; this 'life is no longer worth it' monologue, with threats of suicide and worse. And then bringing Marie into his psychodrama.
"He's panicking, becoming desperate. It's classic, and it's dangerous." Turning, Kerry plucked his tuxedo jacket off the canopied bed, shrugging into it. "Our job is to help protect them until he can get help, or at least accepts that Joan is gone for good."
"I agree," Lara said. "But the issue is how. I think Joan needs security, however we can manage it. I also worry you're getting drawn in too deeply—that it will boomerang somehow. Maybe we should find Joanie her own lawyer, and work through him."
Kerry reflected. "After tomorrow," he said, "we'll try to do all that. But we need to get the D.A. on this right away."
Pensive, Lara considered this. "All right," she answered. "But the sooner we find her help in San Francisco, the better. This isn't feeling right to me."
Together, they left the bedroom, Kerry trying to anticipate how Bowden might react to his arrest. At the top of the stairs, he paused to refocus on the dinner to come, hands resting on Lara's shoulders.
"Canada," he said. "It's north of here, I think."
* * *
Shortly after eleven, Kerry unknotted his tie, picked up the telephone in the office of his living quarters, and called Marcia Harding at her home in San Francisco. Lara stood beside him.
The Assistant District Attorney listened without interrupting. "It's not enough to bust this guy," Kerry finished. "Somehow we need to reach him."
"We'll pick him up tonight," Harding promised. "His trial's two weeks away, Mr. President. But when we bring him up tomorrow for violating the stay-away order, we'll ask the judge to put him in a batterers' program right away." She paused, her voice filled with concern. "We take these kinds of threats seriously. In over half our domestic violence murders last year, the murderer killed himself."
Kerry glanced up at Lara. "How many involved guns?" he asked.
"Again, well over half." Harding paused. "Don't worry, Mr. President. As soon as they arrest him, they'll do another search."
* * *
The black cop cuffed him; the red-haired cop began searching his efficiency apartment, going through the rental furniture and pressedwood desk and end tables. Filled with impotent rage, John Bowden watched her.
There was nothing for her to find, barely anything his own. Men should be self-sufficient and resourceful; never weak or confused. But now he was in a strange room as sterile as a doctor's office, handcuffed, struggling not to scream or cry.
THIRTEEN
The next morning, before meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister, Kerry had Senator Chad Palmer of Ohio to the White House for breakfast.
The two men ate alone in the family dining room. For Kerry, the breakfast was both a pleasure and one of the harder things he had done. A Republican and a military hero, Chad had been Kerry's closest friend in the Senate despite their differences in philosophy and a clash of ambitions. Chad, too, had been considered a prospective President, and Kerry admired Chad's candor and independence, enjoyed his iconoclastic wit. Among politicians, Chad Palmer had always cut a dashing figure: his aura of unquestioned courage was accentuated by blond good looks so distinctive that his enemies on the Republican right had satirically dubbed him "Robert Redford." But the Palmer who sat across the table was far sadder and more subdued, his face newly etched with suffering.
That this in part had been Kerry's doing, however unintended, made this morning's task more difficult. When Kerry had nominated Caroline Masters, Palmer, then Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had helped Kerry conceal from her opponents a private matter which they both felt should remain so. For both men, principle was commingled with complex calculations of political advantage; for Palmer, the decision had led to tragedy. Masters's secret was discovered, Chad's role in protecting her exposed. In reprisal, Palmer's right-wing enemies within his party had leaked a secret of his own—that his only child, Kyle, had become pregnant as a teenager and, despite Palmer's public opposition to abortion, had terminated her pregnancy. Humiliated by her exposure, Kyle had become intoxicated and driven off Rock Creek Parkway to her death.
Filled with anger and remorse, Chad had played a decisive role in helping Caroline Masters win her narrow confirmation. Then, with his wife Allie, he had retreated into a reclusive, silent mourning. That this was Chad's first visit since the fateful dinner in which he had agreed to protect Judge Masters was, Kerry felt certain, no more lost on Chad than it was on him. And so, after observing the amenities, Kerry asked directly, "How are you, Chad?"
Palmer gazed at the white tablecloth, the silver service set in front of them. "It's been four and a half months," he said at last. "Some days I can forget it for an hour, mostly when I'm doing the job that killed her. Then, in an instant, Kyle's with me again—in a quiet moment, or maybe because some Senate page, a young girl, evokes her in the smallest way. And the ache is as deep, almost debilitating, as it was the day we buried her. I don't think that ever gets better."
The painful honesty of his words left the President without an adequate
response. He recalled his mother, staring at the face of her murdered son before they closed the casket. "And Allie?" Kerry asked.
Chad looked up at him. "I have work. But Kyle was Allie's life. Now all she has is me."
To Kerry, this last quiet phrase conveyed far more than Chad's feelings of inadequacy. For Allie Palmer, it would always be Chad's world which had consumed their daughter, Chad himself who would remind her of all she loathed about public life. "What does she do now?" Kerry asked.
"Very little." Palmer toyed with his napkin ring. "She's too unselfish to ask me to retire—she knows the work she's come to hate at least serves to distract me. But we rarely go out. Some nights I find her staring at old photo albums."
Once more, Kerry wondered at the propriety of his request. "I wish," he said at length, "that there were anything I could do or say." He paused, choosing his words with care. "For me, it's complicated by the knowledge that—whether you want to or not—you'll always associate our friendship with Kyle's death."
There was a moment's silence, and then Chad looked at Kerry directly. "I've thought about our dinner a thousand times. So, yes, what you say is true. Because now I know what happened, and wish I'd never come.
"But you didn't know Kyle's secret. I did. You simply did what presidents do—play to win."
For an instant, Kerry thought of his and Lara's secret, their wish to believe that they somehow could avoid the humiliation, and worse, which had happened to so many others. No doubt the man across from him had once believed the same.
"It's far too high a price," Kerry said, "for winning."
Chad's smile was faint and bitter. "And yet we come here, knowing the rules: that our enemies don't simply want to beat us, but destroy us. That anyone close to us is fair game for a media which has no limits. We know that, and still we enter politics." Chad shook his head in wonderment and, it seemed to Kerry, self-disgust. "Some even want to be President. So what does that say about us, Mr. President?"
Kerry shrugged. "A lot of things, I expect. None of which justifies a culture which sees us not as fallible humans, doing our best in a complex world, but as targets of opportunity, accountable for every private mistake we ever made. Or which saw Kyle not as a lovely young woman, but as a pawn to use against you."
"Maggots." Chad's voice was quiet with contempt. "All that breastbeating in the media. We'll see how much this town has learned from Kyle's death. If anything." He paused, seeming to redirect his thoughts through a sheer act of will, and then summoned a smile, which, while brief, appeared genuine. "Anyhow, I wish you and Lara all the happiness you deserve. Or, at least, can steal."
Kerry considered Chad across the table. "We have our hopes," he said at length. "Which brings me to what I wanted to ask.
"This comes with a lot of caveats. I know my timing's lousy. I know that being my friend makes you no friends among those who already think you're soft on liberals. But Lara and I hope that you and Allie will come to our wedding."
Chad looked honestly amused. "Attend a President's wedding? Is that what passes for courage these days?"
"Perhaps not in itself. But being in our wedding may." Though Kerry smiled, his eyes were serious. "Before Kyle's death, I'd have asked you without thinking. And there's no reason, on my part, to feel any differently."
Chad looked away, his thoughts unfathomable. Then, reaching across the table, he rested one hand on the sleeve of Kerry's suit coat. "We've been friends for thirteen years, twelve before you had this job. For most of that time you were stuck in an unhappy marriage—you never said that, I just knew. But now you've found this terrific woman. No matter what's happened, I'm happy for you. I wouldn't miss your wedding for the world."
For that moment, Kerry felt the shackles of the Presidency fall away, and he and Chad were young senators again, trusted friends amidst the tangle of ego and ambition which was the Senate. He could barely bring himself to speak.
Blessedly, he did not have to. As they had planned, Lara appeared at the entry to the dining room, looking from Chad to her fiancé.
"Am I interrupting?" she asked.
At once Chad smiled, and stood. "You are," he answered, "just in time."
Lara crossed the room, taking his hand. "For me, too," she told him. "I just finished a meeting with Connie Coulter and Francesca Thibault. Connie had some numbers on which of the networks promises the biggest ratings for a prewedding interview; Francesca is picking an undisclosed location for us to audition wedding gowns in secrecy. I feel utterly ridiculous."
"You aren't," Chad assured her. "Just everyone else."
"Including Chad," Kerry interrupted with a smile. "He's agreed to take a leading role in this extravaganza."
As Kerry watched, Lara embraced Chad Palmer and then, on tiptoes, kissed him on the cheek. "You don't know what this means to Kerry. And to me."
Smiling, Chad gazed down at her. "Me, too," he answered.
* * *
Convoyed through sun-baked streets by the Secret Service and police on motorcycles, Kerry's limousine approached the White House, returning from a mid-morning visit to See Forever, a pioneer charter school for at-risk teens. On a secure telephone, he talked with Marcia Harding.
"We're looking at a bail motion," Harding told him. "Bowden's got a public defender. We'll bring additional charges, of course, and he'll get a lecture from the Court. But usually the judge will kick him loose."
"What if you oppose bail?"
"We could, but that would be unusual. Another problem's Bowden's lawyer. He knows Joan is Lara Costello's sister—if we come down on his client, he's likely to complain of prejudicial treatment, and splash this all over the papers. Bottom line we probably lose, and Joan's tomorrow's headline."
"What if Bowden does this again?"
"Then it's jail, I'm pretty sure."
Kerry felt his frustration boil over. "Assuming it's not too late. This guy could kidnap Marie, or do far worse to Joan."
There was silence, as though Harding felt stymied by her lack of ready options. "Hopefully," she ventured, "Bowden's night in jail has cooled him off. And his trial for battery is coming up—unless he agrees to a program, he'll likely get some jail time. Until then, the police will come as soon as anyone calls."
As the motorcade slipped inside the East Entrance, the guard waved at Kerry's limousine. The iron gate closed behind him. "Assuming they can call," Kerry said.
* * *
At a little past seven p.m., Clayton and the President sat on the balcony of Kerry's private quarters, reviewing the status of budget negotiations as evening shadows spread slowly across the South Lawn. Both were in shirtsleeves; Clayton drank bourbon, Kerry two shots of Bushmills on ice.
At length they turned to Joan. "The counsel's office checked this out," Clayton told Kerry. "By law, you can't use the Secret Service to protect Lara's family—you'd have to go to Congress for permission."
"And make it a cause célèbre."
"Exactly. You could call the mayor, request twenty-four-hour police protection. But then what happens when some ordinary woman in the Mission District gets shot by her deranged ex-husband after five or six calls to the police? The San Francisco Chronicle charges you and the Mayor with favoritism and misuse of public resources." Finishing his drink, Clayton put it down. "You're in this one too deep already. I understand why, but your position's like no one else's."
Silent, Kerry let the peaty burn of whiskey slide slowly down his throat. "I can't tell you," he remarked, "what a heady thrill it is to wind up another workday as the most powerful man on earth."
Clayton smiled. "That's why the Founding Fathers created the federal system, and then gave us a free press. To tax your ingenuity."
But Kerry did not answer, or even return his smile. By now his thoughts were far away; Joan Bowden's home was more vivid than the majestic scene around them. "I'll talk to Lara," he said at length. "There must be something we can do."
FOURTEEN
"What I don't understa
nd," Kerry told George Callister, "is why CEOs of gun companies take orders from the SSA."
Three Sundays after their initial meeting, the two men had returned in secret to Camp David, and now sat at the table on Kerry's patio. Callister allowed himself a thin smile. "Is that a challenge to my manhood, Mr. President? Or a genuine question?"
"Both," Kerry answered bluntly. "One day Martin Bresler comes with you to the White House. The next day he's a leper, and none of you will touch him."
Callister took a swallow of coffee, eyeing Kerry over the rim of his mug. "Running a gun company," he said at length, "is like running a gauntlet between five competing forces. If you worry too much about one, another one will take your head off.
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