Someone To Believe In (12 page)

“Eric, don’t put—”

“Excuse me.” Clay’s deep voice raised goose
flesh on her still sensitized skin. “I was wondering if I might
speak to you, Ms. O’Neil.” He nodded to Eric. “Lawson.” Bailey
noticed his address was even cooler than usual. She wondered if he
knew about Jon showing up for Eric’s get-together.

“I’m trying to have a word with her myself.”
Eric’s blue eyes gleamed as he regarded Clay. “By the way, Senator,
did Bailey tell you how much she enjoyed meeting your son at my
campaign organizational session?”

CLAY PUNCHED IN the number of her cell. After
two rings, she answered in that husky voice of hers, that tonight,
ran along his nerve endings. “Bailey O’Neil.”

“It’s me, Clay.”

A long intake of breath. “Hi.” Her tone was
conciliatory. She didn’t bite his head off, as he half expected.
“How did you get this number?” When he didn’t respond, she said,
“Like you get addresses? And emails?”

“The governor. I told him we’d forgotten to
exchange numbers for our subcommittee. He obviously felt it was
safe to give it to me.”

“Goes to show how much he knows.”

He chuckled.

“I’m glad you called. You left so quickly
after Eric dropped that bomb.”

“Yeah, well, my son and my greatest enemy
working in collusion on an opponent’s campaign made me speechless.”
And hurt, but he didn’t voice that.

“It wasn’t a campaign meeting. It was just a
pre-session to see how much support Eric might have.” Clay didn’t
respond. “Still, I’m sorry about what Jon did. And we weren’t in
collusion. I thought it was very wrong of him to be there. If it’s
any consolation, I told him so that night.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Did you talk to him about it?”

“Yes, and it ended in another yelling
match.”

“For what it’s worth, he seemed really
uncomfortable with what he’d done. And chagrined when I said
something about it.”

“Well, that helps. I’m stunned by his
actions.” He waited. “And I hate the fact that you were there, that
you’re going to work for Lawson. “ A pause. “Especially after
today.”

More silence.

“Where are you?” he finally asked.

“Home, I just put Rory to bed.”

“Enjoy this part of your life with him.”

“You’ll work it out with Jon, Clay.”

He didn’t want to think about that, so he let
himself wonder what she was wearing. He remembered the peek he’d
gotten at some scraps of blue lace when her blouse pulled apart.
By his teeth.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“At my town house here in the city. Congress
is on recess a few more weeks so I spend a lot of time in New
York.”

“Ah.”

Ohhh, ahhh, Jesus...

Hurt?

No. God, no.

“I’d like to see you. We need to talk.” Even
he could hear the intimate pitch of his voice.

“That’s not a good idea. I think we should
stay away from each other.”

“We have a meeting next week.”

“On neutral ground. With a lot of people
around.”

“Have dinner with me afterwards.”

“No.”

Silence. He saw in his mind Lawson escort her
out of the governor’s conference room, close, holding her elbow.
“Did you go out with Lawson tonight?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It was about five hours ago when you wrapped
yourself around me in that elevator.”

“Oh, God. I don’t know what happened there.
We don’t even like each other.”

“You don’t like me just a little bit?”

Nothing.

“You’re smiling.”

“How can you tell?”

“I just can. Come on, the world won’t tilt
off its axis if you see me. “

“It did today.”

“What? Tilt off its axis?” He guessed she
didn’t mean to say that. “For me too, honey.”

A huge intake of breath. “Don’t call me
that.”

“Sorry. What was I thinking?”

“I have to hang up.”

He rose and began to pace. “Are we ever going
to talk about it, Bailey?”

“No. We’re going to forget it happened.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Well, try”

“Listen, I—”

“Good night, Senator. Don’t call me
again.”

“You can call me. You’ve got my cell number
in your phone now. On incoming calls.” He paused, smiling. “And my
email and IM addresses’“

“I’ll erase everything as soon as we’re
done.”

“Wait. You might need me.”

“I won’t need you.”

He chuckled. “You seemed to in the elevator
today, babe.”

“Don’t keep
talking
about that.”

“I’ll stop. For now. Sweet dreams, Street
Angel.”

“You too, Senator:’

“Hmm.” He could guess what
those
would be. “Good
night.”

SEVEN

WITH A POWER Point clicker in her hand,
Bailey stood before fifty teachers from Carson City High School
who’d signed up for a special in-service course called Teens at
Risk. She’d just been introduced. “Good afternoon. Thanks for
asking me here.” She nodded to Nick Michaels, the School Resource
Officer who’d set up this presentation. “Nick speaks very highly of
all of you.” She nodded to the screen, said, “Let’s get started,”
and clicked into the computer.

“When you’re a Jet...” The opening to
one of the most famous scenes of
West Side
Story
came on. The Sharks and the Jets danced down the
street, pretending to punch each other and spar with knives. If
only...

When the film clip ended, Bailey faced the
teachers. “Real gang life’s not like this. It’s brutal.” She then
clicked into actual footage one of the local stations had taken.
Emergency vehicles swarmed to a scene, sirens screeching, red
lights blinding; gunshots rang out. People screamed. A person was
filmed running—and suddenly he took a bullet in his back. The
camera shifted to a young boy, on the ground, his life blood
spilling into the street. The segment ended with a shot of a boy
named Marcos, taken in his Face-to-Face, his own features obscured,
talking about the gang. “I was ten when I joined...my sister
trained in...I sold drugs to five-year-olds...”

A hush pervaded the room when this portion of
the presentation ended. Bailey paused for effect, then said,
“That’s real gang life. And your school district needs to take
precautions so that it doesn’t happen here.”

She called up her first slide. “All right,
this is a test.” She smiled engagingly. “Teachers like tests, don’t
they?”

“Except for correcting them,” someone called
out.

“Nick’s passing out the paper version. See
what you know.”

The test was a series of fifteen questions,
which would highlight risk factors to determine if a school or
community was in danger of gang activity. Usually, there was
spirited debate among educators on whether or not gang
encroachment was happening in their area.

This nice little school outside of the city
was no different. After giving them several minutes to take the
test, she initiated a discussion. To the first question, Do you
have graffiti on or near your school?, most agreed that graffiti
was there, but felt that it wasn’t necessarily gang related. For
number two, Was the graffiti crossed out?, they agreed it was.
Bailey told them this signified rival gangs. The low rumble of
voices indicated the teachers were surprised at this fact.

“Are there drugs, weapons, and physical
violence here?” she asked, pointing to number five of the
questions.

“Yes,” answered a counselor. “But all schools
have those. This doesn’t mean they’re related to gangs.”

“Right. But it could mean that. We’re looking
for risk factors here. If you have a lot of them, you need to
know.”

More murmurs.

“Here’s an important point. Do students wear
distinctive jewelry, clothes, and flash hand signals?” She knew
they did. It was one of the reasons Nick had called her.

Louder rumblings went through the crowd. To
bring the point home—teachers were a tough crowd to convince, yet
her favorite to work with—she demonstrated several hand signals
adult gangs used, and youth gangs often imitated. She heard some
comments: “I’ve seen those...Oh, dear, I recognize that one...I
caught a kid...”

The questions on beepers, pagers, and cell
phones set off a whole round of discussion. Obviously, the use of
that technology in their school was a hot button, and the faculty
debated whether or not it could be gang related.

“The last one is very significant, and I’ll
confess, I know this is happening here. Nick has told me.” She
referred to the question asking if there was an increase in the
presence of informal social groups with unusual names. “I
understand there are two groups. You’ve reported tattoos, drawings
on notebooks and clothing, graffiti in the bathrooms, and the
wearing of certain colors associated with the gangs we know as the
Beasts and the Cannibals.” She nodded again to the resource
officer. “And Nick tells me there’s a preponderance of tilted caps,
suggestive earrings, and belt buckles being worn.” She panned the
audience. “I’ m sorry to tell you that your school has the earmarks
of youth gang activity.”

The teachers looked a little stunned. There
was absolute quiet in the room until a pretty blond woman raised
her hand. “Susan Smith, health teacher. Why would this happen
here?” she asked. “We’re small. We love our kids. Most of them come
from good homes. I agree there’s a problem, but I don’t get
why.”

Bailey was prepared for this. She put up
another slide. “Here are some reasons kids join gangs. You tell me
which might be applicable here.”

The list included: looking for a sense of
respect and power; gangs become family, when kids have real or
imagined problems at home; encroachment from a larger city nearby,
sometimes engendered by transfer students; for self-protection
from other gangs; to make money, have nice things.

“Though I’d like to debunk some myths, if I
may. Gang activities, especially youth gangs, don’t always make
the kids a lot of money. By the time they pay off the gang, there
isn’t much left. However, I do understand your community has
experienced some downsizing lately. Parents have lost their jobs,
giving kids a need for employment, which they can’t get either.
That could make their homes dysfunctional so they turn elsewhere
for support.”

Once the issue of gang encroachment was
accepted by the faculty, Bailey turned off her computer. “It’s a
big step to admit you have a problem. From here, we’ll look at what
you can do about it.” She smiled. “I’ll be back in the fall to do
some in-service training for every member of the staff at meetings
like this. Our experience at ESCAPE can help you to take steps so
that your school and community are not run by gangs.”

When she finished, she felt energized, as she
always did after working at schools. Educational institutions were
the places to start eradicating gang activity because they had so
much influence over kids. Her work with them was tangible proof
that she was doing some good. As she received a standing ovation,
and teachers gathered around her asking more questions, she wished
Senator Wainwright could have been here to see this.

CLAYTON LOUNGED BACK in a comfortable chair
as Chuck Stewart called the meeting to order. The subcommittee,
appointed by the Health, Education, and Welfare Committee and the
Appropriations Committee, had been charged with doling out the
money from the Youth Gang Bill by November first. Though Congress
itself was not in session, and most senators were in their home
states dealing with local business, Stewart had asked the members
of this subcommittee to fly in for this special meeting to give the
reports on their own states, and the others they had reporting to
them.

“All right, let’s see what we have going
here. I want to know what’s happening in each of the states so
far.” He smiled. “Clay, since you worked so closely with me on
getting that bill passed, you go first.”

Clay leaned forward. He liked the
mild-mannered senator, who was rumored to be a front-runner, along
with Clay himself, for the next vice presidential candidate.
Stewart would make a damn good one, as would Clay. “New York’s
Youth Gang Task Force has met and gotten organized. We’ve just
split into subcommittees.”

“How’s it going?”

He thought of being with Bailey in the
elevator. “Not as expected.”

“I assume your worst critic is on it,” Tom
Carter asked.

Clay struggled not to squirm at the irony of
Jane’s father inquiring about Bailey. “Yes, she is, Tom.”

“Were there fireworks?”

You don’t know the half of
it
. He recalled vividly how her skin had burned under
his hands. “Yes. But I did finagle a tour of ESCAPE.”

Another senator, who leaned toward social
programs to stop gang violence asked, “That soften you toward her
activities, Clay? You know I like that organization.”

“I can see why, Carol. They’re good people,
hard-working. They just take too many risks and walk a fine line as
far as obeying the law.”

“In your opinion,” Carol said.

“Mine, too,” Tom put in.

Others joined in. A discussion ensued.

When it began to wind down, Stewart called
the meeting back to the question and polled the other
representatives for how other states were spending the money.
Several were considering programs like Bailey already had in
place. Her model seemed popular. It made Clay uncomfortable as hell
at the prospect of ESCAPE being a national prototype.

After the meeting broke up, Tom approached
him. “I understand you’re coming to dinner tonight with Jane.”

Holy hell, he’d forgotten. Jane had gotten
back this afternoon from a cruise with her mother. Truth be told,
he hadn’t thought much about her since that day in the elevator
with Bailey. “Yes, I am. How was the trip home?”