Passion's Promise Read online

  “Someone what?” She held his face with both her hands and slowly he looked up at her again. It had not yet registered in her face.

  “Someone tried to kill me, I guess, Kezia. Or scare the piss out of me. Either way, but everything’s cool. I’m just a little punchy, that’s all.”

  She thought instantly of Morrissey now, and knew Lucas had too. “My God … Lucas … who did it?” She was sitting next to him, trembling, and her stomach felt as though it were riding a wave.

  “I don’t know who. Hard to tell.” He shrugged and suddenly looked very tired.

  “Come on, man, let’s get you to bed.” Alejandro helped him slowly to his feet, and he wasn’t sure if he should be supporting Lucas or Kezia. She looked almost worse. “Can you make it, Luke?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not hurt, man. I’m gassed.” He chuckled proudly for a moment, as he walked into the bedroom. Alejandro shook his head with a worried frown on his face, as Kezia settled Luke against the pillows. “For chrissake, Kezia, I’m not dying. Don’t overdo it. And get me another drink, will you?”

  “Should you?”

  He laughed at the question and crossed both eyes with a grin. “Oh Mama, should I!” The smile she returned to him was her first in ten minutes, but she could feel her knees shaking as she sank onto the edge of the bed.

  “My God, Lucas, how did it happen?”

  “I don’t know. I went up to talk to some guys in Spanish Harlem today, and we were walking down the street after the meeting and whap, someone almost winged me. The motherfucker must have been aiming for my heart, but he took lousy aim.”

  Kezia sat staring at him in shocked disbelief. It could have been like Morrissey. He could have been dead. There were chills on her spine as she thought of it.

  “Anyone else knew about the meeting?” Alejandro looked frightened as he continued to stand there and look at his friend.

  “A few people.”

  “How few?”

  “Not few enough.”

  “Oh God, Lucas … who did it?” Suddenly Kezia’s head was bowed and she was sobbing as she sat there. Luke leaned forward and circled her with his right arm, pulling her toward him.

  “Come on, baby, take it easy. It could have been anyone. Just some crazy kid out for a laugh. Or maybe someone who knew me. Could have been some heavyweight right-winger up there who doesn’t dig prison reform. Could have been some pissed off left-winger who doesn’t think I’m enough a ‘brother.’ What the hell difference does it make? They tried. They didn’t get me. I’m okay. You’re okay. I love you. So … no big deal, please. Okay?” He sank back on the pillows then with a dazzling smile. But neither Kezia nor Alejandro was swayed by the bravado.

  “I’ll get you another drink.” Alejandro left the room, and had a drink of his own in the kitchen. Shit. It was coming to that now. And with Kezia in the picture. Terrific. He heaved a long sigh as he walked back to the bedroom with a tall glass of straight bourbon for Luke. Kezia was crying again when he walked in, but this time softly. The two men exchanged a long look over her head and Luke nodded slowly. It had been quite a day. And they were both wondering if it was going to be like this all the way till the hearing. It could have been a cop for all they knew, and they both realized it, even though they didn’t tell that to Kezia. But the reality was that Lucas was popular only with those he worked with on the outside or the men in prison all over the country who benefited directly from all he did. Not many others really understood. And as loved as he was, he was equally hated.

  “I’m going to hire you a bodyguard.” She looked up with a sniff, as Luke took a long sip of his bourbon and Alejandro sat down in a chair near the bed. She was still sitting near Luke.

  “No, you’re not, pretty lady. No bodyguard, no bullshit. This happened once. It won’t happen again.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Baby … don’t push me. Let me run this show. All I want from you is your beautiful smile and your love.” He patted her hand and took a long sip of bourbon Alejandro had handed him. “All I want from you is what you already give me.”

  “Yeah, and not my advice.” She said it sadly, her shoulders sagging. “Why won’t you let me hire a bodyguard?”

  “Because I already have one.”

  “You hired someone?” Why didn’t he tell her anything anymore?

  “Not exactly. But I’ve been followed by the cops for a while now.”

  “By the cops? Why by them?”

  “Why the hell do you think, Mama? Because they think I’m a threat.” It put an aspect on things that she didn’t like. And it suddenly brought home to her that in a sense Luke was considered an outlaw, and that in living with him, she was on that same ill-favored side of the law. She somehow hadn’t totally absorbed her position in all this before. “And don’t kid yourself, sweetheart, it could just as well have been a cop who tried to get a piece of me today.”

  “Are you serious?” Her face grew even paler. “Would they do that to you, Luke?”

  “Damn right. If they thought they could get away with it, they’d do it in a hot second. And enjoy it.”

  “Oh God.” The police taking potshots at Luke? They were supposed to give decent citizens protection. But that was the whole point. And Kezia finally knew it. To the cops, Lucas wasn’t “decent.” He was only that in her eyes, and Al’s, and his friends’, not in the eyes of the rednecks, and the Adult Authority, and the law.

  Luke exchanged a rapid look with Alejandro, who slowly and unhappily shook his head. Bad things were coming. He could feel it. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Kezia. I don’t want any bullshit from you. You do exactly what I tell you from now on. No visits to Al up in Harlem, no traipsing through the park alone, no disappearing into the subway. Nothing except what I tell you you can do. Is that clear?” He was wearing the face of a general again as he said it. “Is it?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “No!” He was roaring now. “Just listen to me for once in your life, damn you! Because if you don’t, you goddamn stupid naive asshole … because if you don’t,” his voice began to tremble and Kezia was shocked to see tears in his eyes, “maybe they’ll get you instead of me. And if they did …” His voice began to crack and grow soft as he lowered his eyes, “if they did … I couldn’t … take it….” She went to him with tears on her own cheeks as she put her arms around him and let him rest his head on her chest. They stayed like that for what seemed like hours, with Luke crying in her arms, and what she did not know was that he was torturing himself for what he was doing to her. Oh God … how could he have done this to a woman he loved … Kezia…. At last he fell asleep in her arms as they sat there, and when Kezia slid him down onto the pillow and turned off the light, she suddenly remembered Alejandro sitting in the chair. She turned to find him, but he was long since gone, with heartaches of his own, and no Kezia whose arms he could cry in. And like Luke, the tears that he cried were for her.

  Chapter 23

  Lucas put down the phone with a look of dismay, and Kezia instantly knew.

  “Who was it?” But she didn’t need to ask. She knew, whatever the name, whatever the city, it didn’t really matter. He always wore that face, and sounded the way he had, for calls about prisons. But now, when Christmas was so close….

  “It was one of my crazy friends out in Chino.”

  “And?” She wasn’t letting him off the hook.

  “And …” He ran a hand through his hair and bit the end of a cigar that had been lying on the desk. It was almost midnight and he had been strolling the house in his shorts, barefoot and bare-chested. And … they want me to come out. Think you can handle that, Mama?”

  “You mean come out with you?” It was the first time he had asked her.

  “No, I mean stay here. I’ll be back by Christmas. But … it looks like they need me. Or at least they think they do.” There was something gruffer in his voice, pure macho, all man. And a vibrant chord of excitement that ran through his word
s, no matter how careful he was to conceal it. He loved what he did. The meetings, the men, the riots, the cause. He loved getting back at the “pigs,” and helping his brothers. It was what he lived for. And there was no room for Kezia in that world. It was a world of men who had lived without women for long enough to know that they could do without them, if they had to. They had a hard time learning to include them again. And this was one place where Luke wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t have considered taking her with him, not for a moment. Not when there was danger involved. Not after last time in San Francisco. Not after he’d almost been shot. She knew she had been crazy to hope that he was inviting her this time. He wasn’t.

  “Yes, I can handle it, Luke. But I’ll miss you.” She tried to keep the sadness from her voice, and the terror, but he knew. She looked at him and shrugged. “So it goes. You’re sure you’ll be home by Christmas?”

  “As sure as I can be. They’re afraid riots might start. But I think we’ll probably get everything straightened out before that happens.” Maybe. If. She wondered if he really wanted to, or if he’d rather play with the fireworks. But she knew that wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  “Me too, but I’ll be okay.” She walked over to him and slid her arms around his neck. She kissed him gently on the back of the head and smelled the fresh richness of the cigar. He was going to “war.” Again. “Lucas …” She hesitated about saying it, but she had to.

  “What, babe?”

  “You’re crazy to do this now. With the hearing pending. And …” She was afraid to voice all her fears, but he knew them. He had the same ones.

  “Oh Christ, Kezia, don’t start that.” He pulled away from her and stood up to walk across the room, half naked and puffing on his cigar, with a ferocious look on his face. “You just be sure you take care of yourself. And what fucking difference does it make what I do now, with the backlog of bullshit they’re going to throw at me at the hearing anyway? I’ve been doing this kind of thing since I got out of the joint. You think one more time will make a difference?”

  “Maybe.” She stood very still and kept her eyes on his. “Maybe this one time could make the difference between revocation and freedom. Or between living and dying.”

  “Bullshit. And anyway … I have to, that’s all.” He slammed the door to the bedroom and she wondered how close she was to the truth. He had no right to do this to her, jeopardize his own life and hers with it. If this trip cost him his freedom, or his life, what did he think it would do to her, or didn’t he think? The bastard….

  Kezia followed him into the bedroom and stood looking at him as he pulled a suitcase out of his closet. She watched him with fire in her eyes, and a lead weight on her heart.

  “Lucas … “He didn’t answer. He knew. “Don’t go … please, Luke … not for me. For you.” He turned to look at her then, and without exchanging another word with him, she knew she had lost.

  It was the twenty-third before Kezia got the call she had feared. He would not be home for Christmas. He’d be gone for at least another week. Four men had already died in the Chino strike, and the last thing on his mind was Christmas, or home. For one brief moment Kezia found herself wanting to tell him what a bastard he was, but she couldn’t He wasn’t. He was simply Luke.

  She didn’t want to admit to Edward that she was going to spend Christmas alone. It was such a lonely admission, an admission of defeat He would have tried to be sweet to her, and insisted she spend it with him in Palm Beach, which she would have hated. She wanted to spend the holiday with Luke, not with Edward or Hilary. She had toyed with the idea of flying out to California to surprise him, but she knew she wouldn’t have been welcome. When he was involved in his work, that was it. He wouldn’t have been amused or pleased by the gesture, and he probably wouldn’t have been able to spend any time with her anyway.

  So she was alone. With a stack of engraved invitations, and red and green inked notes suggesting she stop by for a drink, or drop in on the city’s “best” holiday parties, the sort of invitations people would have given right arms and eyeteeth for. Eggnog, punch, champagne, caviar, pâté, amusing little stocking gifts from Bendel’s or Cardin. The cotillions were in full swing, if she wanted to check out the season’s debs, which she didn’t There was a rash of charity balls, a white tie party at the Opera, and a skating fete at Rockefeller Center to celebrate the alliance of Halpern Medley and Marina Walters. The El Morocco would be alive with the holiday spirit. Or there was always Gstaad or Chamonix … Courchevelles or Klosters … Athens … Rome … Palm Beach. But none of it appealed. None of it.

  After mulling it all over in cursory fashion, Kezia decided it would be less lonely to be alone, than to be lost in the midst of empty hilarity. She was not feeling very festive. She thought briefly about inviting some friend over to help her spend Christmas day, but she never got up enough steam to ask anyone in particular, and could think of no one she really wanted to ask … only Lucas. And the others would be busy with whatever they had planned, just as right now they were busy at Bergdorf’s and Saks buying shocking pink slippers and parrot green robes, or drinking rum in the Oak Room, or helping their mothers “get ready” in Philadelphia or Boston or Bronxville or Greenwich. Everyone was bound to be somewhere, and she was actually alone. She and an army of doormen and maintenance men, each of whom had received his Christmas dues. The superintendent discreetly left a mimeographed sheet in the mail around the fifteenth of December. Twenty-two names, all waiting for bribes. Merry Christmas.

  It was the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, and Kezia had nothing to do. She walked the length of the apartment in her cream satin robe, and smiled to herself. There was a mist of snow on the ground outside.

  “Merry Christmas, my love.” The whispered words were for Lucas. He had kept his word and called every day, and she knew he’d call again later. Christmas by telephone. It was better than nothing. But not much. The silver-wrapped boxes on her desk were for him—a tie, a belt, a bottle of cologne, a briefcase, and two pairs of shoes. A collection of mundane gifts, except that she knew they would all make him laugh. She had explained all the “in” symbols to him when they first met, like translating the language of the country she lived in. Status-ese. The Dior ties, the Gucci shoes, the Vuitton luggage, and its ugly LV’s plastered all over the mustard and mud colored surface. It had made him laugh when she told him. “You mean those guys all wear the same shoes?” She had laughed back, nodding, and explained that the women wore them too. One style for the women, and one for the men. Varied styles would have created insecurity, so there was just one. One had a choice of colors, of course. It was all terribly, terribly original, wasn’t it? But it had become a standard joke with them, and neither of them could keep a straight face anymore as they passed a pair of Guccis on the street, or a Pucci dress on a woman. The Pucci-Gucci Set. It was something else they shared from their private vantage point. So that’s what she had bought him for Christmas. A Pucci tie, a Gucci belt, Monsieur Rochas cologne (which she actually decided she liked quite a lot), a Vuitton briefcase, and the indomitable Gucci shoes in black leather, standard model, and of course, a duplicate pair in brown suede. She smiled to think of him opening them all, and the look on his face.

  But her smile deepened as she thought of the real presents she had bought him, the ones hidden in the pocket of the Vuitton case. Those were the ones that mattered to her, and would undoubtedly matter to him. The signet ring with the dark blue stone carved with his initials, and her initials and the date engraved in tiny letters on the inside of the setting. Carefully wrapped in tissue paper was a leather-bound book of poems that had been her father’s, and had occupied a place of honor on his desk for as long as Kezia could remember. It made her happy to know that now it would be Luke’s. It meant a great deal to her. It was a tradition.

  She drank a cup of hot chocolate as she stood looking out at the snow. It was cold out, very cold, the way only New York and a few other cities can be. The kind of chill that
makes you feel as though you’ve been slapped when you walk out the door. The freezing winds swept your legs and brushed your cheeks like steel wool, and the ice on the windowsill was frozen in patterns of lace.

  The phone rang as she stood alone in the silent room. It could be Luke. She dared not ignore it.

  “Hello?”

  “Kezia?” It wasn’t Luke’s voice, and she wasn’t quite sure whose it was. There was the merest hint of an accent “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, Alejandro!”

  “Who were you expecting? Santa Claus?”

  “In a way. I thought it might be Luke.”

  He smiled at the comparison. Only she could come up with that. “I had a suspicion you’d be here. I saw the papers, and have an idea of what it must be like in Chino. I figured he wouldn’t want you out there. So what are you up to? Ten thousand parties?”

  “No. Nary a one. And you’re right He didn’t want me out there. He’s too busy.”

  “That, and it’s not a cool scene.” Alejandro was grave.

  “No. But it isn’t a cool scene for him either. He’s a fool to get sucked into that now. It’ll just add more fuel to their fires at the hearing. But Luke never listens.”

  “So what else is new? What are you doing for Christmas?”

  “Oh, I think I’ll hang my stocking up on the fireplace and put out cookies and a glass of milk for Santa, and …”

  “Milk? Qué horror!”

  “And what would you suggest?”

  “Tequila, of course! Jesus, if that poor sonofabitch has to drink milk all over the world, it’s a wonder he bothers with the trip.”

  She laughed at him and switched on some lights. She had been standing in the early darkness of the winter dusk.

  “Do you suppose it’s too late to pick up some tequila?”

  “Baby, it’s never too late for that!”

  She laughed again at the earnest sound of his voice. “And what are you up to for Christmas? More work at the center?”