“Such as?”
Nate felt his temples throb. “You’ve got forty-eight hours, Kit. Me and the senator, alone.”
Kit stared at him, then nodded. “I’ll get back to you,” she said, and walked away.
* * *
As a young state rep was about to slip into the car with him, Kerry saw Kit Pace place her hand on the man’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, “but I need to talk to Kerry.”
Briefly, Kerry apologized. Even before Kit sat beside him, uncharacteristically subdued, he knew what this was about.
Kit glanced at Joe Morton and Dan Biasi, sitting in the front seat, seemingly oblivious. “Cutler’s in the pool today,” she said. “This won’t wait.”
It was a moment that Kerry had hoped would never come. He tried to imagine what Kit thought of him, how she might interpret what she knew. But there was no way to ask, or to explain.
Once more, Kit’s eyes flickered toward the two agents. “Nate’s spelled out his area of inquiry,” she told him. “Unless you give him an interview in forty-eight hours, he says your refusal is a story in itself.”
Kerry turned away, staring out the window as the Berkeley campus slipped behind them. “Will Cutler accept you as an intermediary?”
“No.” Kit’s tone was candid, unflinching. “You can see the problem here.”
Turning, Kerry managed a slight smile. “I used to be a prosecutor, Kit. If you can’t prove the underlying charge, trap your target in a lie.”
Kit nodded. “Whether she went to your place. Whether you went to hers. Anything they think they can prove that looks damning.”
Kerry looked down. “It really is Hobson’s choice, isn’t it? If I say no, maybe I’m a liar. If I say yes, she came to my place, it’s ‘Why? What hours? When did she leave?’ It never ends.”
He heard Kit exhale. “I don’t want to know anything about this, Kerry, and I don’t care. We bought a day, and nowNewsworld ’s spelled this out, just as I demanded. So I need an answer for Cutler.”
“Cutler,”he said disgustedly. “Can we stretch this out any more, I wonder?”
Kit frowned. “I don’t know,” she answered. “But that forty-eight hours isn’t an arbitrary deadline. It’s the last dayNewsworld can get a story into print for next Tuesday’s edition. After leaking the story on Monday, so everyone will read it.”
Even as he nodded, Kerry struggled with his disbelief that loving Lara had come to this. That two years of grueling effort, spent on the brink of exhaustion, could now mean nothing. That his hopes of becoming President could rest on what he told Nate Cutler.
“I keep thinking of something I read once, Kit: ‘Character is who you are in the dark.’ ” His tone was musing. “It’s why I try hard not to lie. In this business, you have to have some idea of who you are, or you’re lost. That’s always been Dick Mason’s problem.”
Kit’s voice was firm. “That’s why it’s better you be President than Mason, Kerry. No matter what you say to Cutler.”
For a long time, Kerry gazed out the window as they crossed the Bay Bridge, watching the skyline of San Francisco move closer. “Tell Cutler I’ll see him on Sunday,” he said.
THREE
By the time the motorcade reached the Mission District, Dolores Park was bright with sun, its line of palm trees a vivid green against a flawless blue sky.
Lara and Lee McAlpine trundled off the press bus with the others, heading for the bleachers at the far side of the crowd. The speakers’ platform was flanked by blocks of houses whose windows faced the park. It was a Secret Service headache, Lara knew—too many lines of fire. But the crowd was large and festive, primarily Latin, men and women in jeans and cotton shirts or dresses chatting in English or Spanish. Here and there were groups of kids let out of school, waving colorful banners. Spotting a cluster of nuns, Lara smiled to herself, knowing that Kerry would like seeing them.
“Did you see the Field Poll this morning?” Lee asked. “Forty-two to forty-one in favor of Mason, with seventeen percent undecided. They say it could be the closest primary ever.”
“Depends on turnout,” Lara answered. “Kilcannon’s got to get minorities to the polls. Latinos in particular.”
Lee scanned the crowd, swelling to cover the sweep of grass. “At least three thousand, I’d guess. Not bad.”
Lara nodded. “You know what’s sad, though? What’s happened to this neighborhood. This park’s a microcosm—drug dealing, gang murders at night, people afraid to come here. It’s been like this since I was in high school, slowly getting worse.”
On the speakers’ platform, Kerry appeared in shirtsleeves.
Lara experienced the now-familiar ache; the sense of loss; the jarring fear for his safety. The strange complicity between two people who could no longer speak, yet knew the truth of a relationship that could, in a moment, end his chances. Then a Latina county supervisor began Kerry’s introduction, her amplified voice cutting through the hum of the crowd, and Lara saw three middle-aged women raise a banner. “Senator,” it asked, “if an unborn child is a ‘life,’ why commit murder?”
For an instant, Lara was still. Turning again to Kerry, she tried to screen out everything but her job.
* * *
Twenty feet away, Nate watched Kilcannon’s face, trying to gauge whether he seemed dispirited.
“This,” Kilcannon began, “is a community under siege.
“There is a certain class of politician, in this state and in this country, who try to win elections by finding a minority group to run against. For some, that target has been Latino immigrants—whether legal or illegal.” Stopping, Kilcannon surveyed the crowd. “Because politicians looking for a scapegoat don’t want to make distinctions, or admit the facts.”
This speech would be aimed at galvanizing Latinos, Nate knew, but what was more notable was that Kilcannon was not afraid to polarize. This was the great secret of American politics, Nate believed. True leaders make choices; the moral difference is which ones. It was something Kilcannon seemed to understand, and Mason did not.
“But the facts,” Kilcannon went on, “are appalling.
“We’ve cut off the elderly and frail from government services for the sin of immigrating legally.
“We deny the children of illegal immigrants—those exploited in the dirtiest jobs—any chance to rise above where they started.
“We force adults not to be immunized.
“We force mothers not to seek prenatal care.”
The crowd was silent; Kilcannon’s face had a passion so visceral that Nate could feel it. “But for every person,” he said clearly, “to whom we deny basic health care, we double the threat of public contagion and the cost of emergency treatment. For every child we deny an education because we think it the son or daughter of illegals, we add to the population of gang members, criminals, the illiterate and the hopeless. For every adult we scare away, we will pay the price in dollars and in human misery—not just among immigrants but in the population at large.”
Nate watched the crowd again. Kilcannon had them, Nate thought; most seemed to listen intently, almost hungrily, eyes fixed on the candidate.
“Ask any cop,” he told them, “any doctor, any teacher. Ask anyone who deals with the consequences of these blindly punitive policies.” Pausing, Kilcannon added softly, “Ask yourselves.
“Ask yourselves, and then ask yourselfthis question: Isn’t it time to take matters into your own hands?
“I want you to support me, that’s true. But no leader can help a community unless it takes enough pride in its own people and its own streets to fight for itself, vote by vote and block by block.
“Tell your state and city government what you need and are willing to do to improve your own lives. And, if that doesn’t work, tellme . . .”
Nate started at the hand on his shoulder.
Turning, he saw Kit Pace, her face an amiable mask for those around them. “He’ll see you on Sunday,” she murmured. �
��When I know his schedule, I’ll give you a time.”
* * *
At the corner of his vision, Kerry saw Kit with Cutler. Hastily, he faced the crowd again as a yellow banner rose above it, demanding to know how he could murder the unborn.
He stopped speaking, just for a moment, and then blocked it out of his mind.
“Please,” he implored, “don’t let apathy and despair be as real for your children as it may seem to you.”
Pausing, Kerry found his coda, a link between his own life and theirs. “You, like my immigrant parents, and all the children of immigrants I knew when I was young, have helped to make this a stronger, better country. Now help each other, help your families, help yourselves.”
* * *
As Lara listened, Lee McAlpine said, “When he’s like this, Kilcannon seems like a real person.”
Lara gave her a small smile. “Compared to what?”
“Compared to Mason. Who seems like a real politician. All the time.”
It was true, Lara thought. But what she could not tell Lee was thatthis was closest to who Kerry was; that it was the politician in Kerry who seemed to her more invented.
She began looking for her cameraman, to file her report.
* * *
It was as if, for this moment, the applause was not for Jamie, but for him.
Grinning, Kerry turned to Supervisor Susan Estevez, a community activist whose hair had gone from black to gray in the years between his brother’s death and now. Together, they stepped off the platform and into the crowd, the police and Secret Service agents scrambling after them.
There were outstretched hands in front of him, children thrust out to hold. Kerry touched everyone he could reach, looking into faces, saying “Thank you,” over and over, hugging a small girl he had noticed. Next to him, Susan Estevez said, “They love you.” Nodding, Kerry murmured, “I feel that.”
Slowly, they worked through the crowd to the edge of the park, Susan greeting her constituents in rapid-fire Spanish. “I’m hungry,” Kerry told her. “Aren’t you?”
Susan smiled. “There’s ataquería on Guerrero Street. No fancy restaurants, remember?”
Laughing, Kerry answered, “Let’s go.”
Moving down Seventeenth Street, Kerry felt the press of bodies around him—the Secret Service, the pool of reporters, the crowd that followed. He touched more hands; he had time, Kerry decided, and he was sick of life in the bubble, of worrying aboutNewsworld and a past he could not change.
At the corner of Guerrero and Seventeenth, he followed Susan inside thetaquería .
It was small and dark and smelled of pork and cooked vegetables and seasonings. Kerry sat at the counter with Susan. The proprietor, a mustached man with gray-brown hair and a smile that crinkled his eyes, held out his hand.
“Senator,” he said, “I’m Frank Linares. For you, the lunch is free. As it was for your brother.”
Behind the counter, Kerry saw a picture of Jamie and Linares. In his surprise, Kerry was quiet. His brother smiled back at him. “How long ago?” Kerry asked.
Linares’s eyes turned serious. “Twelve years.”
Just before he died,Linares did not add. But Kerry could see it; in death, Kerry had noticed the crow’s-feet at the corners of Jamie’s eyes, the new streaks of silver at his temples. As he saw them now, in Jamie’s picture.
Belatedly, Kerry noticed the press pool crowding in the doorway, Nate Cutler among them.
When Kerry turned again, Linares had placed an empty beer glass on the bar.
“Too early for me,” Kerry said with a smile. “Drink a beer, and I’ll fall asleep.”
Linares gave him a shy look. “Your brother drank from that glass. I’ve kept it.”
Kerry gazed into the man’s brown eyes, and saw what this meant to him. “What did Jamie have?” he asked.
“Dos Equis.”
Kerry nodded. “Share one with me.”
Next to him, Susan Estevez smiled. Frank Linares poured Kerry a few inches of beer, then some for himself, and touched his glass to Kerry’s. “To you, sir. May you become President.”
As your brother never did,Linares left unsaid. Within the toast was a prayer, a benediction.
“Thank you,” Kerry said softly, and sipped his beer. After a moment, he turned to Susan Estevez. “This has been a good day,” he told her. “Before we leave, I’d like to visit headquarters.”
* * *
Sean Burke hung up the telephone and, for a moment, was in Boston.
It was the last call from Paul Terris, the local leader of Operation Life; the time was close to ten at night, and Sean was in his room.
“Sean,” Terris said simply, “please don’t come to meetings anymore.”
Sean’s fingers clasped the telephone. Answering, he found that his chest was tight.“Why?”
“You know why. We may agree about goals, but we’re far apart on means.”
Sean stood. The sparely furnished room—a bed, a desk, some drawers, the crucifix on the wall—felt shabby and too small. “Because we’re cowards,” Sean said angrily. “We’re like witnesses to the Holocaust. We stand outside these chambers of death while they keep on killing babies.”
“So what is ‘militant action’? Acts of violence?” Terris’s voice was so quiet and patient that Sean felt he was being treated like a child. “If we believe abortion is murder, how can we advocate murder?”
He had never told Paul exactly what he meant, Sean realized. But now it was clear to him. “Because these murderers choose to violate God’s law,” he answered. “America executes murderers all the time. Except for the abortionists.”
“Sean,” Terris said coldly, “if any of us says that aloud, decent people will turn their backs. And if one of us acts on it, Operation Life may cease to exist.”
Sean felt the dark fear of rejection, of isolation, of scorn. And then, in his pain, he saw the truth of his solitude—alone Sean Burke was free to act. He would show this club for pacifists the courage they lacked.
“What difference wouldthat make,” Sean asked with bitter scorn, “to all the children you watch die?”
Hands trembling, he put down the telephone, severing his connection to the man who, for four years now, had given his life its meaning and its mission.
Deep in the night, an image came to him.
It was the man who had murdered Rabin, that traitor tohis cause. Stepping from the crowd, the executioner had aimed his gun at the traitor’s back, and by this lone act had changed the history of a region and the spirit of a people . . .
“John,” Rick Ginsberg said now. “He’s coming.”
“Who?”Sean asked, then flushed at Ginsberg’s smile.
“The senator. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
Sean swallowed. No gun, he thought. Only a knife, with Secret Service agents between them.
“Dammit,” Kate Feeney said behind him. “I have to go.”
How long would it take, Sean wondered, to pull the knife from inside his jacket and plunge it into Kilcannon’s heart? He clenched his jaw, imagining his hand falling short, the bullet entering his brain. “Are you all right?” Ginsberg asked him.
He wasafraid , far more so than when he executed the abortionist. Afraid of the look on Kerry Kilcannon’s face. Afraid for himself, dying at Kilcannon’s feet.
Panicky, he turned to Kate. “You stay here,” he said in a trembling voice. “I’ll go.”
Her eyes widened, surprise and hope struggling on her face with the wish not to be selfish. “Are you sure?”
Sean nodded curtly.
She hesitated another moment, as if trying to read his face. “Do you know which bus to take? You just go on Geary to Powell.”
Fifteen minutes, perhaps less. Sean stood to leave. “I’ll find it.”
Heading for the door, he heard Rick call out behind him. “Wait, John. Let me tell you what to do.”
The trace of impatience in Ginsberg’s voice made Sean more anx
ious. He stood there, unable to leave, glancing over his shoulder at the showroom windows facing the street. “There’ll be pamphlets on the table,” Rick told him, “a sign-up sheet for volunteers, and a list for people who want us to get them to the polls. Make sure you ask everyone if they want to help us, or how we can help them.”
Sean felt the fear of being trapped here, and then the dread of meeting people in person, torn from the anonymity of the telephone. All he could do was nod.
Rick placed a hand on his shoulder, freezing him. “It’s nice you’re doing this for Kate. I know how much meeting the senator means to you. If there’s some way I can make it up, I will.”
Sean found he could not answer. Ginsberg’s brow furrowed, as if sensing his words were inadequate. “There are three more days, John . . .”
As Rick patted him on the shoulder, Sean turned toward the door. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous room.
Through the glass, he saw people clustered on the sidewalk—the receptionist, other volunteers, men in sunglasses who looked like Secret Service agents. Then, as if in a silent film, a black limousine glided to a stop in front of them.
Three feet from the doorway, Sean froze.
A second car pulled up, filled with men who looked like Secret Service agents. They spilled from the car, surrounding Kilcannon’s limousine. As an agent opened its door, Sean’s heart raced.
Slowly, Kerry Kilcannon got out.
Utterly still, Sean watched him through the glass.
Kilcannon waved briefly to the crowd, his grin curiously shy, as if their applause surprised him. They moved toward him as one.
As though caught in their vortex, Sean went out the door, eyes locked on Kilcannon’s face.
Next to Kerry, the agents in sunglasses watched the crowd. Sean stood behind the cluster surrounding Kilcannon, watching Kerry greet the mahogany-skinned receptionist. He could get to him, Sean suddenly thought, thrust the knife toward Kilcannon’s throat before the agents shot him.
If only he could see their eyes.
Reaching out toward Kate Feeney, Kilcannon saw him. He seemed to hesitate . . .
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