Free No Safe Place by Richard North Patterson

sports—all the ways we know each other and have things in common. No one will ever starve; widows will have the slack taken up and their kids’ way paid. It all has little to do with me or anything in government. People are
glad
to help, because they know if their turn comes round they’ll be taken care of.” They stopped in front of Kerry’s white frame house. “Of course, it helps that we’re all Irish. Or Italian.”
    Kerry nodded. Something in Liam’s tone reminded him of his comment about the Italians: that their day would be short.
    “So,” Liam asked abruptly, “you’ve been with me all these months. What are people most worried about?”
    Suddenly Kerry saw it—the problem people muttered about after their third beer, the way his father spewed hatred at the foot of Kerry’s bed—and knew that Liam believed everything would change.
    “Black people,” Kerry said.
    Liam nodded. “Blacks. And it’s a fool who thinks there’s anything for it. Or should be.”
    Kerry was quiet. “Da hates them,” he said at last.
    For a time, Liam said nothing. Then he asked, “Would you like to stay the night with us? Mrs. Dunn would be glad of your company.”
    Kerry’s heart rose. He looked at Liam’s ruddy face with a kind of love. Then he thought of his mother, alone in the darkened house, waiting for his father to come home. He could not leave her there; his father seemed worse each month.
    Kerry did not know how to say this. He stared at a crack in the sidewalk.
    He felt Liam watch him, then touch his shoulder. “Sure,” Liam said. “Things to do.” He did not ask again.
    Michael Kilcannon emitted a breath so deep and shuddering that Kerry could smell the whiskey even as he felt the hatred—as clearly as he knew that, even more than usual, something was terribly wrong.
    “Niggers,” Michael repeated. “They came near to ruining this city in the riots, and now one of the fooking monkeys wants to be
mayor.
So they’ll burn the city again, use it to do bar-be-cue. And then they’ll barbecue
me.
”
    Kerry did not understand what his father meant about himself. But he could remember the riots, by smell and sound. He had been nine. The riots began with an incident between police and blacks in the West Ward: through the open screen of his bedroom window, Kerry could smell the smoke, hear the sirens. An older boy, nearer South Orange Avenue, swore to Kerry the next day that he had seen flames dance against the night sky and thought the city would burn to the ground.
    For the next five nights, Kerry listened in his bed to the wail of sirens, the repeated popping that was surely gunshots. Though untouched, Vailsburg felt eerie, besieged: the bars were closed; the doors were locked; and the patrol cars were everywhere, packed with three or four cops, their shotguns sticking out open rear windows, reminding Kerry of an aircraft carrier. And then one morning all was silent again, and Newark was never the same.
    A few days later, his father took Kerry for a ride in his squad car. There were still groups of blacks loitering near looted, burned-out shops. The majestic city hall—its steps flanked by fierce gold eagles, its airy mass topped by a glistening gold dome—was a focus of city history and civic pride, the prize contended for by warring factions of ethnic whites. Kerry was shocked to see some lots around it reduced to charred shells.
    “This is what these animals do,” Michael said. “And they’ll do it again unless we stop them.”
    Kerry could see, clear enough. It made him angry.
    “But you
will
stop them?” he asked his father.
    Michael Kilcannon’s face had been a grim line …
    “You see,” he told Kerry now, “two nights ago, I shot one—robbing a store. Nineteen years old, and a blessing he died before killing someone worthwhile. The friends of this Gibson man, the nigger who would be king—it’s not enough they want their own to skip over whites and make sergeant before they