No Safe Place (19 page)

Even through his mother’s coat, the closet floor felt hard. Sean shifted, body aching, unable to sleep, afraid that he might suffocate. His bladder hurt. Finally, in agony, he wet himself, careful not to wet his mother’s coat. When at last she opened the door, his father was gone, and it was morning; soiled and shamed, the boy stumbled from the closet, blinking in the light.

Now, sitting against the bed, Sean gazed blankly at the television.

“After a dramatic cross-country trip to Boston,”
the anchorman said,
“Vice President Richard Mason spoke in front of the Boston Women’s Clinic, responding to yesterday’s tragic murders.”

Mason appeared on the screen.
“In the name of those who died here,”
he proclaimed,
“I say to the purveyors of terror and violence … not one more woman deprived of her legal rights.”

Suddenly Sean felt a rush of pride, mingled with contempt for Mason. To Sean, the Vice President’s anger did not seem authentic—not like Sean’s own. The wonder was that this man spoke at the site of Sean’s act. Mason was words; yesterday Sean had become much more.

Mason’s voice rose.
“We will devote every resource of our government to find this cowardly murderer and make him face the nature of his crime.”

Reflexively, Sean looked around him. The door was latched, the chain in place; the curtains were drawn. In one day, or two, they might start looking for Sean Burke. There was not much time.

A woman appeared on the television. Though her surname was Irish, Sean had always thought her exotic, almost Latin.
“Speaking in Los Angeles,”
she began,
“Kerry Kilcannon capped a day devoted to issues targeting female voters … But his appearance outside a women’s shelter was interrupted by pro-choice militants, demanding that he clarify his recent statement that a fetus is a ‘life.’ His response was to suggest that abortion is a public right but—at least for some women—a private trauma.”

On film, Kerry Kilcannon appeared slight, embattled. But Sean could feel his directness through the screen.

“The words we use to avoid that truth—like ‘procedure’ and ‘choice’—beg the difficult questions each woman must face alone.”
Kilcannon’s voice softened.
“Any parent who has ever seen a sonogram, or listened to the heartbeat of an unborn baby, or thanked God for the doctor who saved their premature child, knows that.”

Sean stiffened with rage. You
know that,
he thought.
You’re Roman Catholic, and you’ve abandoned your roots and everything you know is right to become what Paul Terris called you—“abortion with a human face …”

Sean stood and began pacing. He had a sudden, visceral memory—his father’s eyes, the last time Sean had seen him.

“Lara Costello,”
the woman finished,
“with the Kilcannon campaign in Los Angeles.”

Kerry Kilcannon splashed water on his face.

Exhausted, he had fallen asleep thinking of Lara and then awakened from his dream of Jamie. The dream ended just as Jamie had—in a funeral home in Newark as his younger brother, the next United States senator from New Jersey, gazed into his waxen face.

The face Kerry saw in the bathroom mirror looked haggard; he saw little resemblance—as if there ever had been—to the youthful savior some had imagined.

Kerry Kilcannon, the hero who had saved a small boy’s life. That was what the newscasts had said. In the mirror, Kerry studied the scar on his shoulder as if, like the heroism, it belonged to someone else.

At tonight’s reception in Beverly Hills—in the glass-and-
light
showplace of a wealthy art dealer—Kerry had spoken of minorities and the poor. Gazing at the affluent crowd in front of him—celebrities; lawyers; well-fed dealmakers who watched each other like mirrors of themselves—Kerry found that his sense of irony made him more pointed and impassioned. The last irony was that they liked him for it.

Afterward, a young actress-of-the-moment, doe-eyed and flirtatious and intelligent enough that this was flattering, had hinted that she might sleep with him. What Kerry replied was not “no,” only “not now”; he knew that she wanted to sleep with a President, not a man.

For Kerry, his own face vanished.

In its place was Lara. And then, a long time later, other faces—Meg; Liam Dunn; a small, dark-haired boy who had worshiped him; and, as always, Jamie.

“I see my life go drifting like a river,” Yeats had written, “from change to change …” But to Kerry, his life felt like a series of wrenching accidents, sudden and incalculable, of which Lara was the last. “Life plans are foolish,” he had told her once. “It’s all so contingent …”

At twenty-six, he had not known how true that was.

Though he could not have known this, Kerry had foreordained the Musso case, a woman’s murder, and his own near death at the moment he told Vincent J. Flavio to go to hell.

When Liam Dunn had gotten him the job, defying the Essex County prosecutor had been the furthest thing from Kerry’s mind. He was simply grateful—to Liam for helping him through college and law school at Seton Hall; for the discovery that, in addition to a surprising gift for poetry, he had a decent head for law; for the softness in his mother’s eyes at his private swearing in, administered, at Liam’s request, by the venerable Judge Thomas Riordan in his spacious oak-paneled chambers.

Two years before, Mary Kilcannon had found her husband, Michael, slumped in his living room chair, dead from a massive heart attack. Though the neighborhood was changing, Mary remained in the house where she had raised her sons. Kerry watched over her; Jamie was now a distant figure, seldom seen in Vailsburg yet a subject of great pride—the handsome senator whose cool intellect and gift of eloquence, more Ivy League than Irish, might take him to the presidency at a younger age than Kennedy.

But Kerry had little interest in Jamie or his world. His ambitions were much simpler: to prosecute criminals and warrant his mother’s pride. Except for one college trip to Florida, he had seldom been more than a hundred miles from Newark. He had no thought of leaving.

Just as Newark had become a place of contrasts—modern glass towers next to abandoned buildings and shops, the glorious city hall that housed a nearly bankrupt government—so was the Essex County Courthouse. The
first time Kerry
climbed its steps as a lawyer, he stopped at the foot of the massive pillared structure, gazing up at the words “Law,” “Justice,” and “Peace” chiseled above the doors, then at the quasi-Greek statuary atop the portico. But the interior, though vast and awe-inspiring in design, had fallen into dinginess and disrepair. Like other assistant prosecutors, Kerry shared a ten-by-ten cubicle along a dim hallway with offices on both sides; crammed within were a filing cabinet, two metal desks with laminate wood tops and rickety wooden chairs that, in the phrase of Kerry’s red-haired officemate, Tommy Corcoran, were cursed by the ghosts of prosecutors past.

Their office faced the inside corridor and sweltered during the summer. For privacy, Kerry and Tommy covered its only window with movie posters, so that the witnesses they interviewed did not grow more paranoid than they already were. But even the lawyers were a little paranoid. Though Newark was a violent city, neither the courtroom nor the prosecutor’s office had security or even a metal detector; like a number of the other prosecutors, Tommy kept a gun in his desk.

Kerry himself had no feeling about guns. But he could not imagine getting shot for prosecuting the endless run of misdemeanors that were a rookie’s lot—traffic offenses, petty vandalism, minor breaches of the peace. And the incumbent county prosecutor, Vincent J. Flavio, was not looking to inflame passions.

“Flavio’s a time-server,” Liam had told him. “The one thing to never forget is how long he’s wanted to be prosecutor and how hell-bent he is to keep it. Threaten
that
, and he’s as mean as a snake. Worse, the man knows enough secrets to persuade the last two governors—a Democrat
and
a Republican—to reappoint him. The only way we’ll be rid of him now is to indict him. Unless we make him a judge.”

This last was said with a touch of humor, Liam’s wry acknowledgment of the world’s imperfections. Then his face turned serious. “Vincent’s no admirer of your brother—sometimes I think God created Jamie just to make politicians like Flavio feel resentful. ‘When did he pay his dues?’ they wonder. So make sure you pay yours, Kerry.

“
We
know you’re there to learn your trade. But to Flavio, just the name Kilcannon makes you someone to watch out for,
maybe with enough influence to take his job. Treat him with respect, and let him know about whatever seems important. And should some reporter take an interest in anything you do, remember that every mistake is your own, every triumph a reflection of Vincent J. Flavio’s leadership and wisdom.”

Kerry did not think this unreasonable. Better than Vincent Flavio could know, Kerry understood how Jamie could make someone feel inadequate. In many ways, Kerry thought, he had more in common with Flavio than with his brother: education at Seton Hall, the “contact” school which bred Newark’s lawyers, politicians, and judges; deep roots in the community; a sense of his own limits. Like Flavio, all that Kerry wanted was respect.

On his first day, Flavio’s chief assistant, Carl Nunzio—a bald man with a face as creased and hard as a walnut—escorted Kerry to the prosecutor’s office and shut the door behind them. Vincent Flavio sat at his desk. He was a big man, built like Kerry’s father, but there the resemblance ended. His shoes shone, his curly graying hair had a whiff of the barbershop, and his gold cuff links and monogrammed tie tainted his attempted air of gravitas—steepled fingers, raised head—with a touch of vanity.

As Flavio rose to greet him, Kerry sensed that the vanity, far from being droll, marked the most dangerous thing about him. Vincent Flavio’s handshake was firm, his smile so broad that it crinkled the corners of his eyes. But the eyes themselves bored into Kerry’s with an invasive intensity. It was as if, Kerry thought, Flavio had trained his mouth and eyes each to serve different functions. Kerry felt small, uncomfortable.

Flavio sat down again, framed by his own face smiling from the wall behind him, pictures taken with a governor, two senators, and, to Kerry’s surprise, Luciano Pavarotti. “So,” the prosecutor said, “you’re here to become a trial lawyer.”

Kerry nodded. Reticent, he searched for phrases of gratitude and reassurance. “Maybe someday I’ll open my own practice. But this is the only place to learn. I’m lucky to be here.”

Flavio’s smile appeared again, a display of white teeth. “No luck involved, Kerry. Liam Dunn thinks well of you.” Kerry caught the silent message beneath the words; Kerry was here not through his own deserts but on Vincent Flavio’s sufferance, as a favor to Liam. Kerry imagined the long list of supporters
whose kids or cousins or nephews had lost this slot to Kerry, and, as Flavio no doubt wanted, he felt defensive.

“I’ll do the best I can,” Kerry said, and disliked himself for it.

As if warmed by Kerry’s discomfiture, Flavio’s voice grew hearty. “I’m sure you will, Kerry. I’m sure you will.” But what Kerry heard was
however good that is
.

Awkwardly, Kerry stood. “Thanks for giving me a chance, Mr. Flavio.”

Flavio did not stand. “‘Vincent,’ Kerry. As long as you’re here, the door is always open. Keep me informed, all right? Or Carl.”

Leaving, Kerry realized that the prosecutor had never mentioned Jamie. The message was clear enough: Kerry had entered the world of Vincent J. Flavio, where James Kilcannon held no sway.

That was fine, Kerry thought with fresh determination. All he cared about was trying cases.

For the next year, he labored doggedly. There would always be smarter lawyers in the office, he decided, with quicker minds and better instincts. But no one would outwork him. Petty crime by petty crime, Kerry learned to make cops trust him, to deal with the polyglot array of witnesses afflicted by the accidents of urban life, to weather judges so rude and bored and cynical that their courtrooms were a lawyer’s purgatory. Tommy Corcoran marveled at Kerry’s hours, and even Vincent Flavio took notice; by the time the year was over, Kerry had tried more misdemeanors than anyone else. He might not be a brilliant lawyer, Kerry thought, but he was becoming a decent mechanic.

Then Carl Nunzio came to his office and handed Kerry an empty envelope. “It’s for the flower fund,” he said.

Kerry gazed up at Nunzio, fighting back dismay. He was not Liam’s pupil for nothing; when he returned the envelope, it would not be empty. With feigned innocence, he asked, “What’s the flower fund?”

Nunzio’s eyes, narrowing slightly, signaled his annoyance. “To help Vincent with office expenses,” he said at last. “I’m asking his lawyers to water the flowers, so to speak.”

Kerry was trapped, he realized. Liam lacked the means to get
rid of Flavio by himself; in the tacit division of spoils that held
the party together, the prosecutor’s office was Italian, and those with the power to get rid of Flavio feared him instead. Kerry wondered whether his money would go toward Flavio’s clothes or to his condominium in Florida, and what part spilled over to Nunzio.

“How much?” Kerry asked bluntly.

Nunzio tilted his head, as though appraising Kerry for something he had missed. “Ten percent of gross pay.”

Silent, Kerry added two hundred fifty dollars a month to the four hundred he already sent to his mother, and realized that he might have to find a cheaper apartment. Nunzio’s tone was deceptively gentle.

“It’s voluntary, of course. But we’re hoping for one hundred percent participation.”

Cornered, Kerry filled with anger at his powerlessness. Liam’s friendship and his brother’s name would only save him from being fired; his choice was to go along or face professional death—certain transfer to some office backwater, shuffling paper. Kerry’s training as a trial lawyer would end.

Kerry nodded slowly.

To his surprise, Nunzio took Tommy Corcoran’s chair and sat across from Kerry. “There’s something else.”