NO SAFE PLACE Read online

  “It’s as I said,” he finally answered. “Do the right thing, and things tend to come out right in the end. That applies to Michael too.”

  * * *

  The night James Kilcannon won election to the New Jersey State Senate, he barely acknowledged either parent. It was in keeping with how he had gotten there—going away to Princeton; becoming a leader of anti-Vietnam demonstrations; casting his lot with the reform wing of the party. To his supporters he was attractive, articulate, and the antithesis of machine politics. They did not know or care about his family.

  Nonetheless, Michael and Mary Kilcannon drove to attend Jamie’s victory celebration. Jamie was plainly uncomfortable at this; his most extended mention of family was of Kerry. Remarking on his brother’s age, the victorious candidate grinned and said, “You’re next, Kerry—if you can get your grades up a little.” The clip was notable enough to show on TV: the handsome new state senator was himself only twenty-four.

  Watching Jamie on television, Kerry scowled; it had been weeks since Jamie had spoken to him, and he saw himself as a prop. Kerry was much more concerned with the race between Gibson and Addonizio for mayor of Newark, on which Liam Dunn’s future rested.

  * * *

  The night of the election, Liam’s house was guarded by police. The week before, someone had lit a brick doused in gasoline and thrown it through a window.

  Liam had been reluctant to have Kerry stay with them, let alone go out with him that night. But Kerry insisted. “You say this is history. I want to see it.” So he went with Liam in the back of a squad car driven by a tight-lipped policeman to the victory celebration for Kenneth Gibson.

  The exultant crowd—some white, mostly black—was filled with a sense of unleashed energy; though black voters were now the majority in Newark, no black man had ever been elected mayor. Watching with Liam as Gibson declared victory, Kerry felt an answering sympathy that surprised him; the powerlessness of these people had been taken for granted, and now they would have their day. The streets near City Hall were filled with celebrants.

  “You’ll never again see a white mayor of Newark,” Liam murmured on their way home. When they arrived, Liam’s house was quite safe; Vailsburg was quiet as a tomb. Liam said hardly a word.

  The next month, with the mayor-elect’s support, Councilman Liam Dunn became chairman of the Essex County Democratic Party. Liam’s adversary, Paul Slattery, never ran for anything.

  THREE

  At sixteen, Kerry Kilcannon fought in the Golden Gloves.

  Jack Burns had held him back as long as he was able. But Kerry had grown to one hundred forty-five pounds stretched over five feet ten inches; he had fought in exhibitions, trained tirelessly. This was the only way he could know how good he was.

  His father and mother came to Kerry’s first match, part of a crowd numbering a few hundred—Michael somewhat contemptuous of his slender son’s chances, Kerry’s mother unsure if she could watch. Perhaps, Kerry thought bleakly, it reminded her too much of home.

  His first opponent was an Italian boy, Joey Giusti. Shorter and barrel-chested, Joey tried to push Kerry against the ropes and batter him; through the earholes in his head protector, Kerry heard the cheers of Italians as Joey threw punch after punch. Kerry simply burrowed into a crouch and took them—on the arms, the shoulders, the top of his head, everywhere but the chin—as Joey’s partisans roared and Kerry’s father shouted, “Fight, dammit, fight.”

  At the end of round one, Kerry had thrown three punches.

  Sitting on his bench, Kerry made himself ignore his father’s disgust and the puzzlement of the crowd. “Okay,” Jack said. “I think he’s punched himself out now, and he’s taking you lightly. This is your round.”

  The bell rang, and Joey almost ran across the ring. Kerry could read the contempt in his eyes, the eagerness of a bully.

  As Joey uncorked his first left hook, Kerry ducked. The left hand, a little slower now, sailed over his head, then Kerry hit the Italian boy with a left jab to the nose.

  Whack.

  Joey blinked, stunned, and Kerry hit him with three more. Blood began dribbling from Joey’s nose.

  Whack, whack, whack.

  When Joey covered his face with his gloves, Kerry started on his ribs.

  Left, right, left. Sweat flew off Kerry’s face as he drove punch after punch into Joey’s midsection. The boy gulped, swallowing hard, and his weary arms came lower.

  Kerry shot a left jab to the nose again. The shock ran through Kerry’s arm. There was a fresh spurt of blood, and suddenly the referee was between them.

  In the next three fights, Kerry never had to use his right hand to the jaw.

  He and Jack were saving that. The lesson Kerry had begun learning was that training counted, discipline mattered, and strategy paid off—he must last however long a fight had to last. It occurred to Kerry how different he was from the twelve-year-old brawler, not just in skills but in attitude. The pride he felt was new, and he carried it quietly.

  Not so his father. “You’re finally good for something,” Michael said with heavy-handed jocularity.

  When it turned out that Kerry’s opponent in the finals was a black boy, Marcus Lytton, Michael was full of interest and advice. “I’ve been watching this kid,” he told Kerry. “Flashy, with no guts. Hit him hard, and he’ll fold up like a cardboard box.” For encouragement, Michael Kilcannon put two hundred dollars on his younger son and made sure that Kerry knew it.

  When Kerry entered the ring that night, the gym was filled with blacks and Irish.

  A small fight broke out, and the cops dragged away two drunken adults, one white and one black. Kerry could feel the city’s tension simmering in the ring. He told himself to concentrate on Marcus Lytton.

  Kerry was as prepared as he could be. When Lytton threw his right, Jack had advised, he left himself open for a split second—enough time for Kerry’s own right to do real damage. But the main thing was to keep the left jab working, keep Marcus off him, pick up points.

  When they introduced Kerry, the Irish began cheering.

  For a moment, everything stopped. Kerry could feel himself and Marcus in the ring, spotlighted in the darkness, the focal point of passions far bigger than they. Then the excitement became part of him: his heart pounded, blood sounded in his temples, his slender frame filled with an energy that waited to be used. He stared at Marcus’s smooth body, close-cropped hair, serene, almost sweet face, black impenetrable eyes. The bell rang.

  Before Kerry reached the center of the ring, Marcus hit him with a three-punch combination.

  Kerry’s head snapped back. He had never seen hands this fast, had no time to think. Marcus was all over him now—left to the head, right to the stomach, a quick sideways step, then a right to the jaw. Each punch was stiff and had a purpose: Marcus Lytton was not going to punch himself out.

  The Irish had stopped cheering.

  Marcus hit Kerry in the stomach and followed with a punch to his left eye.

  Reeling backward, Kerry knew at once that the eye would close. Marcus came forward.

  Kerry ducked a left hook and shot a jab to Lytton’s mouthpiece, and the round ended.

  He walked back to his corner, the cheers resounding for Marcus, and sat on the bench. Jack squirted water on his head. “You’re going to have to get off first,” Jack said. “Jabs in his face, then look for the right. You can’t lose another round.”

  As soon as the bell rang, Kerry was across the ring. He jabbed Marcus once, then twice more. Marcus looked startled, and then Kerry staggered him with a right to the forehead; lower, Kerry realized, and the black boy might have gone down. Then they were at each other—punch after punch, ducking, punching again, blocking, Marcus clipping Kerry’s face, Kerry banging the other boy’s ribs. The round ended with the blacks and the Irish on their feet, fists raised in the air.

  Kerry had never felt so tired; it was as if they had fought the last thirty seconds underwater. The pummeling to his forearms, used t
o block punches, was making them stiff and heavy. His ribs ached.

  “Good job,” Jack said soothingly. “You took that round, so this is the clincher. Keep him off you, and look for the right.”

  When Kerry stood, the Irish stood with him and began chanting.

  “Kerry, Kerry, Kerry . . .”

  “Kill him.”Suddenly Kerry felt the hopes, the hatred, the frustration of a city and an era his neighbors thought was dying. There was a sourness in his stomach.

  Marcus hit him with a short right hand.

  Kerry stepped back, to the elated screams of Newark blacks, righted himself, and hit Marcus coming in. As Marcus’s head snapped, Kerry felt the Irish stand again.

  “Kill him,”the voice yelled once again, and Kerry recognized it as his father’s. Kerry’s lip was bleeding, his left eye almost shut. Blind will kept him going.

  Marcus bore in with a murderous glare and hit Kerry with a three-punch combination. It had become personal: somewhere in the next terrible minute and a half, weathering a rain of punches with his head ringing and his legs unsteady, Kerry learned who was better.

  “One more minute,” Jack called to him. “Knock him out.”

  Kerry ducked a punch, pivoted, and hit Marcus in the stomach with everything he had.

  Marcus’s eyes widened in astonishment and pain, and then the mouthpiece flew from his gaping mouth.

  The whites screamed with frenzy. For a brief moment, Kerry saw the punch he had to throw—the right, directly to the black boy’s exposed mouth. The fight could end there . . .

  “Bring the right,”his father bellowed.

  Kerry’s right hand froze. The punch, when it came, was a moment late, bouncing off Marcus’s upraised forearm.

  The crowd moaned.

  For Kerry, the rest was slow motion. Marcus pedaling backward with wounded eyes. Kerry pursuing with leaden arms and legs, an instant too slow, as if the messages from his brain were taking detours. The final bell. The referee raising Marcus’s hand in victory. Blacks standing. Whites quiet in their seats.

  The ride home was quiet too—a few words of consolation from his mother, relief that it was over. From his disgusted father came one weary question: “Why are you so afraid to bring the right?”

  Kerry said nothing.

  He never fought in the ring again. But for several weeks, Kerry went to the gym and punished the heavy bag until his arms gave out.

  FOUR

  At seventeen, Kerry was as big as he would ever get: five feet ten, one hundred fifty-five pounds. He was a full three inches shorter than his handsome brother, the state senator, that much shorter and sixty pounds lighter than his father, the policeman. Beyond boxing there were not many sports for a boy who was neither big nor fast of foot nor a natural leader, let alone one who still lost his temper in frustration at his own lack of talent.

  Finally, Kerry made himself a serviceable soccer goalie. “Serviceable” captured Kerry’s senior-year Bs and Cs, no honors won, a slot the next year at Seton Hall University, a few blocks from his home. For the longer range, Michael suggested that Kerry go into the police department. “It’s enough for a lot of us,” he said, “and no point worrying about why you’re not your brother. After all, who is?”

  Kerry did not respond. His father’s failure was etched in the deepening creases of his face, the bleary eyes, and the only relief he found beyond drink was abusing his wife and belittling his son. Kerry’s mother seemed almost broken. Perhaps, Kerry thought, his father’s women had been the final degradation.

  Michael still sat at the foot of Kerry’s bed, but often now he talked of the women he met in bars or on the job, so much younger, so much more admiring. Quietly disgusted, inexperienced himself, Kerry simply hoped that this diversion would help Mary Kilcannon. But the beatings Michael gave her grew worse, especially after his second citation for police brutality: the time Michael had beaten a black man into a concussive state for trying to “escape.” It brought him a reprimand, a month’s suspension, and a dangerous self-hatred; the night after this happened, Mary Kilcannon needed two stitches on her upper lip.

  Kerry drove her to the hospital, despair and hatred warring in his heart. When she came out of the emergency room and into the night, Kerry simply held her, cradling her face against his shoulder.

  “Leave him, Mom,” he murmured. “Please. It can’t be God’s will that you should stay.”

  “It’s only the drink.” Mary closed her eyes. “Divorce is a sin, Kerry. And what would I do?”

  The look in her once-pretty face, now so pale and thin, pierced him. When they came home, Michael Kilcannon lay passed out on his bed. Kerry wondered how it would feel to kill his father in his sleep.

  Mary watched her son’s face. “I’ll call the priest,” she said. “I’ll call Father Joe.”

  Far better to call Liam, Kerry thought. Surely there were policemen who cared nothing for his father, prosecutors who owed Liam Dunn a favor. But the priest was his mother’s wish.

  “Yes,” Kerry said. “Call Father Joe.”

  The next Saturday, the slender, balding priest came to the Kilcannons’ home and spoke quietly to Kerry’s father. His mother stayed in her room. For several hours, his father sat still and silent, and then, before dinner, he left.

  He returned after midnight.

  Kerry heard his feet on the stairs—heavy, decisive—then the ponderous breathing as Michael reached the top. He did not stop at Kerry’s room.

  Kerry’s mouth was dry. He lay on his bed, dressed only in boxer shorts, listening for sounds.

  His mother screamed with pain too deep for Kerry to bear.

  For a moment, Kerry’s eyes shut. Then he stood without thinking and went to his parents’ room.

  His mother lay in a corner, dressing gown ripped. Blood came from her broken nose. Her husband stood over her, staring down as if stunned, for once, by what he had done.

  Kerry stood behind him. He felt so much hatred that he barely registered his mother’s fear as she saw him.

  The look on her face made Michael turn, startled.“You,” he said in surprise.

  Kerry hit him with a left jab.

  Blood spurted from his father’s nose. “You littlefuck ,” his father cried out.

  Kerry hit him three more times, and Michael’s nose was as broken as his wife’s. All that Kerry wanted was to kill him; what his father might do to him no longer mattered.

  Kerry moved forward. . . .

  “No,”his mother screamed, and Michael Kilcannon threw a savage punch.

  It crashed into Kerry’s shoulder; he winced with pain as Michael lunged forward to grab him.

  Kerry ducked beneath his father’s grip and hit him in the midsection.

  The soft flesh quivered. Michael grunted in pain but kept coming, eyes focused with implacable anger. Arms blocking Kerry’s next punch, he enveloped him in a murderous bear hug.

  Helpless, Kerry felt his ribs ache, his lungs empty. His father’s whiskey-maddened face was obscured by black spots, then flashes of light. Kerry sensed himself losing consciousness. With a last spasmodic effort, he jammed his knee up into Michael’s groin.

  Kerry felt his father stiffen. His eyes were great with surprise. Panting for air, Kerry lowered his head and butted his father’s chin.

  Michael’s grip loosened. Kerry writhed free, almost vomiting, then stumbled to his right and sent a flailing left hook to his father’s groin.

  His father let out a moan of agony, his eyes glazing over. His mother stood, coming between them. “No,Kerry,no .”

  Still breathing hard, Kerry took her in his arms and pushed her to the bed with fearful gentleness. “Stay,” he commanded. “Letme finish this.”

  She did not move again.

  In the dim bedroom, Kerry turned to his father.

  Michael struggled to raise his fists. Kerry moved forward.

  Whack, whack, whack.

  His father’s eyes were bleeding at the corners. Kerry hit him in the stom
ach.

  His father reeled back, mouth open. Suddenly Kerry thought of Marcus Lytton.

  Just as Michael once had ordered, Kerry brought the right.

  It smashed into his father’s mouth. Kerry felt teeth break, slashing his own hand. His father fell in a heap.

  Kerry stood over him, sucking air in ragged breaths, sick with rage and shock and astonishment. His eyes half shut, Michael spat tooth fragments from his bloody mouth.

  Kerry knelt in front of him. “Touch her again, Da, and I’ll kill you. Unless you kill me in my sleep.” He paused for breath, then finished: “I wouldn’t count on doing that. I’m too used to waiting up for you.”

  After that night, Michael Kilcannon never hit his wife again. His younger son never hit anyone.

  The next year, at the age of thirty, Kerry’s brother James was elected a United States senator.

  The Campaign

  Day One

  ONE

  When the telephone rang, Kerry let Clayton Slade answer.

  He continued gazing at San Diego Harbor, faintly aware of Clayton’s voice, oblivious to the morning sunlight spreading on the water.

  Sometime today, he would see her again.

  “Kerry?”

  Turning, Kerry sensed that his friend had been waiting for some moments; Clayton had the unflinching look that went with reading Kerry’s thoughts.

  “What is it?” Kerry asked.

  “Mason.” Pausing, Clayton seemed to watch for his reaction. “He’s canceled his campaign appearances.”

  Kerry felt surprise pull him back into the present. “He can’t be withdrawing.”

  “No way.”

  Kerry looked at his watch. It was six-thirty. He had a half hour before the strategy meeting, then sixteen hours of speeches, interviews, shaking hands.

  “Then he’s trying something new,” Kerry said, and headed for the shower.

  * * *

  Sitting alone on the patio of the Meridian, Nate Cutler took in the palm trees, the soft ocean breeze, and the curious subtropic light he associated with California when seeking out a metaphor: a dream state; perhaps a film set; or maybe a used-car lot in pastels.