NO SAFE PLACE

by Richard North Patterson

  “Roughly forty. About one every five years. Hardly an epidemic.” Kilcannon shrugged, as if to himself. “They trot this out as a distraction. It’s so much easier than feeding kids, or giving them proper medical care. Cheaper, too. And when you’ve been caught out shilling for the tobacco companies, as several of the sponsors have, it’s good to become a patriot.”

  Surprised by his candor, Lara took out her notepad and began scribbling. “Does that mean you’re against?” she asked dryly.

  Kilcannon did not smile. “A million or so people,” he answered, “have died for this flag, not because they liked its colors but because it stood for something. Like the right to express yourself, even in ways that are ill-advised or outright stupid.” Pausing, he added with a trace of humor, “As I’ll exemplify tomorrow, when I speak in opposition.”

  So his reluctance had been feigned, Lara thought, an extension of the joke. “Do you think you’ll win?” she asked.

  “Sure. The proponents need a two-thirds vote, and most of my colleagues think it’s a bad idea. The only problem is selecting the lucky ones who get to say so.” His smile flashed. “As you can imagine, the competition’s pretty intense.”

  The car shuddered to a stop. Again, Kilcannon moved to the elevator with a purposeful stride, Lara following. “Then why take a leadership role?” Lara asked.

  “Oh,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to be the ACLU’s poster boy. Willing to die for principle.” He tilted his head again, this time in inquiry. “Off the record?”

  Lara hesitated. “All right.”

  “Because I can provide some of my colleagues cover, at little cost to me.” When the elevator arrived, he held the door open for Lara and they stepped inside, leaning against the wall. “The people of New Jersey aren’t going to chuck me overthis . That’s not necessarily true for, say, the junior senator from Idaho. And if the Republicans say I’ve gone Communist—well, they never liked me anyway.” Pausing, he gave her a considering look. “But then I’m telling you what you already know. Again.”

  Of course she knew, Lara thought; she was already calculating the advantage to Kilcannon of having grateful colleagues, especially if—as was widely whispered—he meant to run for President someday. But it was not politic to say so. “It sounds familiar,” she answered. “Of course, Sacramento’s the capital of political courage.”

  The elevator door rumbled open, and they stepped onto the marble floors of the Russell Building. “You’re from California?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” Lara kept walking toward the front door; she had her quotes now and needed to file. “Born, bred, and educated.”

  “And ‘Costello’ is Irish, the last time I noticed.”

  “So am I, on my father’s side. My mother’s Mexican.”

  They stopped in the doorway. “Then youcan’t be a Republican,” Kilcannon said in a tone of mock challenge.

  Lara smiled slightly. “I’m totally objective—no beliefs, feelings, or opinions. Like all reporters.” She held out her hand. “Thanks for your time, Senator. It really was a help.”

  “De nada,”he answered. Turning, he gazed out at the street, the sunlight, the trees and swatches of green. It gave Lara a chance to study him more closely. There was a scar near his left eye, and his face was bony yet fine-featured. He was not conventionally handsome, she decided; the aura of a potential President made his looks seem more arresting than they were. That, and the eyes—the sense of deep intuition, of secrets withheld. A slight breeze ruffled his hair, red-tinted in the light.

  “Not too bad a day,” Kilcannon observed. “And here I’ve been trapped in the Senate, listening tothat . An hour closer to being dead, and for what?”

  Lara did not quite know how to respond, or if she was expected to. He faced her again. “You may not need this. But if you want to spend a half day with me sometime, watching how this place works, give my AA a call.” He smiled. “For orientation, not publication. That way I get to say what I want.”

  Once more, Lara was surprised. “I’d like that.”

  Kilcannon nodded briskly. “Then I’ll be seeing you,” he said, and was gone.

  * * *

  “Take him up on it,” Nate Cutler said to Lara. “If you can get some kind of relationship going, it can only help.”

  Lara pulled up a chair next to Nate’s desk, jammed in a corner of a rabbit warren filled with other desks. She barely knew him; at first meeting, she had thought he had the intense, almost ascetic look of a Jesuit or a bomb thrower. But Nate was experienced and, Lara was learning, endowed with balance and good sense. “Like the golden days,” she replied, “that all the old white guys reminisce about. Where some famous senator pours them drinks in his office and tells them a lot of stuff on background. Male bonding in the seat of power.”

  Nate shrugged. “Access isn’t so bad: you can learn things that way, as long as you remember who you are. And whohe is.”

  Lara tilted her head. “I’m sure it’s an illusion, but there’s this sense of contempt for consequences. Like he couldn’t be bothered trying to mislead me.”

  Nate smiled. “Well put,” he answered. “What I’ve never been able to figure is whether it’s principle, or ego.”

  “How did he get to be such a force here? The name?”

  “That’s how hegot here. When he first arrived, Kilcannon seemed almost tongue-tied, and everyone took him for the underequipped kid brother, out of his depth. Later I decided he’d just been watching—the man doesn’t seem to miss much, and I realized he’d figured out how the Senate operates. He’s got a pretty good political sense, wherever it comes from. Plus, he’s always worked like a dog, and people respect that.”

  Pausing, Nate reflected. “There’s another thing that helps him—passion. When he finally did start speaking out, it was for people he seemed to view as powerless: kids, or minorities, or workers left behind by new technology. He was surprisingly eloquent, and when something engages him there’s a relentless quality. But I don’t know where it comes from.” Nate gave her a curious look. “What didyou make of him? Personally, I mean.”

  “God knows.” For a moment, Lara tried to gather her impressions. “Sometimes I wasn’t sure whether I was talking to a politician or a character in a novel. You can’t tell what he’s thinking, and you start to wonder. It’s distracting.”

  Nate smiled. “He’ll slip away on you, just go off somewhere. There’s this directness, plus a sense of whimsy—the dark and light of the Irish. You think you almost know him, and then you realize you don’t at all.” Nate removed his wire-rim glasses, inspecting them for smudges. “My current thinking is that he’s really not a complex man at all. Just four or five simple ones.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Two examples. Last year I went to hear Kilcannon speak at Georgetown. He’s going along great, about job training, and suddenly he’s off his text and onto the plight of Native Americans—lack of education, fetal alcohol syndrome, years of white neglect and broken promises, then describing a sick baby he’d seen. And the memory is so strong that he seems absolutely devastated—he’sthere , not here.” Nate slid his glasses on again. “Indians. Where are the votes in that?

  “Then there’s Kerry the ruthless. We usually don’t get to meethim . But every now and then there’ll be a sighting.” Interrupting himself, Nate checked his watch; he was so wired, Lara had begun to notice, that he seemed to time his own conversations. “Do you remember that story last week—where Newark’s ex-prosecutor got sent to jail?”

  Lara smiled. “Jail for a Newark politician? Thatis news.”

  “You know who gotthis particular politician? Kilcannon.”

  “Why? And how?”

  “Before his brother got shot, Kilcannon worked for him—Vincent Flavio. Somehow Flavio pissed him off.” Eyes brightening, Nate warmed to his story. “Kilcannon waits four years, until there’s a Democrat in the White House, and then gets a friend of his appointed U.S. attorney—a black guy who ran Ki
lcannon’s Senate campaign. Supposedly their deal was that if Kilcannon gets his pal Slade the job, he goes after Flavio like hell wouldn’t have it.

  “He did, for three years. The first jury hung. So they try it again, and Flavio and his bagman get ten years. When I asked Kilcannon about them, all he said was ‘EvenNewark can do better.’ ”

  Lara smiled at this. “So was Flavio a crook?” she asked.

  “Probably. But some Democrats find that story a little dark—the revenge of Kerry Kilcannon. And Kilcannon won’t talk about the rumors. Let alone give reasons.”

  Pensive, Lara found herself fiddling with an earring. Take someone as elusive as Kerry Kilcannon seemed to be, she reflected, and people begin inventing their own truth.

  “Well,” she said to Nate, “maybe someday I’ll ask him.”

  TWO

  At nine in the morning roughly two weeks later, Lara introduced herself to Kerry Kilcannon’s receptionist and settled into a plush leather couch. “The senator will be out shortly,” the young woman told her.

  Waiting, Lara studied her surroundings. The reception area was elegant—high ceilings, a gilt-edged mirror, two crystal chandeliers. But there were none of the vanity photographs typical of public men, no pictures of a wife or parents or children, nor any of James Kilcannon. From the evidence, Kerry Kilcannon could have been an orphan.

  Turning to the entrance, Lara saw a pale young man hesitate in the doorway.

  His dark gaze was darting and indirect, as though he could not look at other people without making them, and himself, uneasy. His face was damp, and the gray sport coat, too short for him, appeared borrowed. In a tremulous voice, he told the receptionist, “I came to see Senator Kilcannon.”

  The woman seemed to stiffen. Cautiously, she asked, “Do you have an appointment?”

  The man shook his head. He could not be over twenty, Lara thought; his hair was lank, badly cut, and his shirt and pants were ill-fitting and drab. Watching, Lara noticed that his hands shook.

  The receptionist frowned. “The senator has a full schedule today. If you’ll just leave your name—”

  “No.”The man spoke through clenched teeth now, his voice pleading, a near whisper. “I need tosee him.Please. ”

  The receptionist’s olive skin looked suddenly clammy. As she reached for her phone, Lara felt the woman’s instinctive fear, the shadow cast by James Kilcannon’s murder.

  Next to her, Lara heard a door open.

  Turning, she saw Kerry Kilcannon, his shirtsleeves rolled up, come to retrieve her.

  He took in his assistant’s apprehension, then its object. The man froze, staring at Kilcannon with such a seeming hunger for recognition that Lara guessed he must live within his imagination, fixating on a public figure. Kilcannon stepped forward, standing between the man and his receptionist.

  “How can we help you?” he asked.

  The young man blinked, swallowing. Speechless, he reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat.

  Lara tensed, watching his hand. The receptionist half stood. Only Kilcannon remained still.

  Slowly, the man withdrew a pamphlet.

  Lara could see its cover—a hideous portrayal of a partial-birth abortion, the crushed skull of a fetus. As the man pressed it on Kilcannon, tears came to his eyes.

  “How can you abandon children?” he asked simply.

  Looking from the pamphlet into the young man’s stricken gaze, Kilcannon’s own eyes narrowed. The silence grew, the pale young man and the senator studying each other.

  Two uniformed officers arrived, shattering the frieze. As if awakened from a dream, Kilcannon seemed to start. “It’s all right,” he told them. “This man just wanted to give me something.”

  An officer took the young man’s arm. To Lara, he looked pitiful now. His mouth opened, but he could form no words.

  As they led the man away, Kilcannon stared after him.

  Abruptly, he remembered Lara. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said with a show of humor. “But the fun never stops.”

  Thanking his receptionist, he led Lara through a suite of offices, occupied by assistants, to his own.

  “Hedid seem a little off,” Lara said as they walked. “Don’t you ever worry about security?”

  He gave her a quick ironic glance. “Youcame through the metal detector, I hope.”

  “Yes.”

  “So would he have. Unless someone slips up.” He put the pamphlet on his desk, motioning Lara to a chair. “We get used to drop-ins here, and some have a certain charm. My current favorite is the eighty-five-year-old World War Two veteran who wanted a hundred percent disability. For impotence.” Kilcannon’s tone became wry. “His particular war wound had occurred in Italy, in 1944, when he was hit in the groin by a soccer ball. But when I asked when he’d become impotent, guess what he told me. Two years ago.”

  “A gradual case, I suppose.”

  “Very. And it was a very delicate task suggesting it was because he was eighty-three, and not because he’d been nailed with a soccer ball forty-two years and six kids ago. But what’s a senator for, if not to make tough calls?”

  Lara returned his smile. Part of his persona, she was learning, was an appreciation of the human comedy and a perspective on his own place in its cast of characters. But his humor also defused subjects that might become more personal. Glancing around his office, Lara saw only three photographs: a white-haired woman who resembled James Kilcannon; a blunt-faced man with shrewd eyes and red-tinged gray hair; then a black family of five—a stocky father and a slender mother, merry-looking twin girls in their early teens, a sweet-faced boy who could not be over four. “Your parents?” Lara asked.

  “My mother.” Kilcannon’s voice was soft. “The man’s my godfather, Liam Dunn. Much of what I learned about politics, or anything else, came from him.”

  Still no pictures of dad, Lara thought, or brother. Or, for that matter, Meg Kilcannon. “And the family?”

  “Friends of mine. Clayton’s the U.S. attorney in Newark.”

  Lara turned to him, hesitant, and then decided to take a chance. “The one who indicted Vincent Flavio.”

  Though his eyes turned cool, Kilcannon’s face held no surprise. “Not just indicted,” he answered. “Jailed.”

  That was not a matter, Kilcannon’s tone made clear, which was open for discussion. Almost idly, he picked up the pamphlet on abortion, studying it in silence and, from his expression, deepening reflection. It was as Nate Cutler said, Lara thought; Kilcannon was there, and then something made him slip away.

  He stood, suddenly restless. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll explain our schedule on the way.”

  * * *

  For the next nine hours, Kerry Kilcannon was constantly in motion—subcommittee meetings; huddling with aides to make quick decisions on various bills and amendments; granting a CBS interview in his office to discuss the administration’s exit strategy in Bosnia; a visit from the foreign minister of Vietnam, in which Kilcannon showed great tact, listening far more than he spoke; a press conference on the lawn in support of school lunch programs; a private visit to the Senate office of the Vice President—with whom Kilcannon was known to have differences of temperament and policy—to discuss, Lara guessed, Kilcannon’s role at the upcoming convention; lunch in the Senate dining room with a group of parochial school boys from New Jersey, which Kilcannon seemed to enjoy, even though the main topic was why the New Jersey Nets were so lousy.

  Kilcannon was far quieter in private, Lara noticed, than in public. But his sense of humor remained keen, his attention to each person unflagging; his staffers called him Kerry—unusual in the Senate—and their own energy and dedication seemed as high as his. As hours passed, Lara found herself impressed: Kilcannon showed an excellent memory, an ability to switch subjects without effort, to ask the right questions and make decisions on the spot. “It’s a defense mechanism,” Kilcannon told her. “Otherwise I’d have to think.”

  To her surprise, he made h
er day not just interesting but enjoyable. At each new stop, he introduced her graciously. Often he would seem preoccupied and then, as they hurried around the Hill with a series of legislative aides, would surprise her by anticipating those points about which she was most curious. Lara was smart, his manner suggested—little comment was required of him. “After all,” he said with a smile, “you’ve been covering Willie Brown.” And then he was off again, at six in the evening, leaving her with his office manager as he rushed to the Senate floor.

  Two hours later, Lara found herself chatting with his owlish AA as they watched Kilcannon on C-SPAN, criticizing human rights abuses in China. “Why is it,” Kilcannon demanded, “that the less business we do in a particular country, the more vehement our denunciation of its human rights offenses? Or have we started measuring freedom of speech in earnings per share?”

  The pointed question, Lara thought, was bound to make the current administration—Dick Mason included—unhappy. Intrigued, she began wondering what Kilcannon was up to, when he entered his office alone, suit jacket slung over his shoulder.

  He stopped, gazing down at her in astonishment. “You’restill here?” he asked. “I’d have thought you’d tire of this.”

  Lara smiled. “You were right, Senator. The fun never stops.”

  Smiling quizzically, he glanced at his watch, then seemed to come to a decision. “For me,” he answered, “it stops when I’m hungry. The least I can do is buy you dinner.”

  * * *

  Kilcannon’s car was an aging Ford Taurus, ennobled by the USS 1 plates issued to New Jersey’s senior senator. When he turned the ignition, a grinding sound, not unlike a pencil sharpener, made him wince in mock dismay. “Istill meet people,” he observed, “who think we’re in it for the money. When you consider the hours, and throw in the loss of privacy, we don’t drive a very hard bargain.”

  Kilcannon began steering them toward Pennsylvania Avenue. It was twilight; the dome of the Capitol glowed behind them, a tourist’s dream. “Then why,” Lara asked, “do you fight to stay?”