Truth Like the Sun (11 page)

Roger rephrases Teddy’s concern that gambling headlines could cost the city its wholesome reputation at the worst possible time. The senator studies him, having no doubt heard every direct and obtuse pitch and plea a thousand times by now. He tilts his glass until ice
clanks against his teeth, then mutters something about blue laws creating more problems than they solve.

“Maybe there’s someone in that office who could at least keep me posted,” Roger ventures, his voice tightening. “Just until the fair closes.”

The senator’s head bobs so slightly it could be an affirmation or just the jostling of his pulse before they’re interrupted by the tipsy governor.

Roger accepts another whiskey and watches these successful men interact woodenly, as if they’re still developing skills he himself never had to learn. And with this revelation comes the notion that perhaps running for mayor is thinking too small. Sidestepping away now, he finds the fair’s arts director blocking his path with a hand on her hip.

“Tuesday nights, at six,” she says, “right after closing, you could get some quiet time with the mods.” There’s nothing in Meredith Stein’s voice or face beyond a collegial friendliness, but in Roger’s mind it’s provocative nonetheless, especially with his fiancée cackling nearby. Meredith arches her neck, causing her breasts to lift beneath the satin. She’s just stretching, but she might as well have been pressing up against him.

“I’ll definitely keep that in mind,” he says.

“I bet you will,” she says. He blinks first.

“Go easy,” Teddy whispers as he and Judith interrupt to say good night. “Pace yourself.”

Roger nods, his nose deep in Judith’s hair with her long, lovely arms around his neck. “As always,” he whispers for her amusement.

He walks Linda to the curb half an hour later, her anger with his growing evasiveness still mercifully suspended. Obviously tired, she resembles her mother around the eyes, which always makes him uneasy. But it’s not her looks that concern him, rather a lack of curiosity or insight that he fears might also be genetic. He has to stay to the bitter end, he explains, but promises he’ll get to her apartment as soon as he can. He kisses her once on the forehead, once on the lips, and lights her cigarette. They wait patiently, small-talking like strangers until a cab rolls up and he opens the door.

He watches closely, trying to imagine living with her forever, as she carefully sits on the seat and swings her heels in high enough over the door frame that she won’t risk ruining her stockings.

An hour later he’s loping down James Street into Pioneer Square with a roll of twenties in his front pocket. It’s busier than ever, with the buzz and stink of a carnival, people of all stripes spilling in and out of honky-tonks—sober, drunk, shouting, sulking, laughing. He bounces in and out of three card rooms—the Turf, the Occidental and Bob’s Chili Parlor—sticking around in each just long enough to blow a twenty and ask the gamblers and managers, as casually as possible, if anyone knew where to find Charlie McDaniel or Robert Dawkins these days, getting little in return but conversation-killing glances.

It’s hard to pinpoint when these outings veered from curiosity to investigation. Maybe right from the beginning. Yet that’s part of what intrigues him, not knowing, for once, exactly what he’s up to. He’d spent the past decade climbing ladders, working seventy-hour weeks, right through holidays and weekends. He tells himself he’s making up for lost time. At least his nights are his own now.

One card room offers strippers behind a side door, coin-operated nudie reels near the bathroom, and, by the sound of it, prostitution upstairs. He settles into another game of five-card stud while on the far side of the room people are pouring dimes into boisterous pinball machines.

“Can you believe this?” he finally asks the clear-eyed, sunburned man next to him who just won a hand. “We’ve got cards, pinball and porno in here, and some cop out in the street’s joking with the hookers.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” the man says without looking at him. “The city’s wide open, but nobody knows it.”

He wins enough, loses enough and hangs around long enough to ask where he might find some older high-dollar gamblers. When that subject dead-ends, he takes a chance. “Know how you were saying everything’s wide open?”

The man carefully stacks his chips.

“That interests me,” Roger tells him.

“Whaddaya mean?” the man asks, restacking the same chips while the others sneak looks at him.

“Well, I teach sociology at the U.”

A gambler slides his chair back and leaves the table.

“I just like to understand the way things work, you know?” Another player departs.

“I’d like to talk to people like that tavern owner who claimed the cops were shaking him down.”

The man restacks his chips again. Cards get shuffled. The manager sends two new players to the table.

A couple hands later, the chip stacker says, “Tried the J&M?”

“What?” Roger says.

“Might find Charlie there.”

An hour later, he’s staring at himself through a pyramid of liquor bottles stacked against the mirror behind the bar at the J&M Café while the short, bearded bartender paces like a penned dog, acting as if he didn’t hear or doesn’t care. When Roger starts to introduce himself again, the man says, “Got a card, Professor?”

“In fact, I do.” Roger pulls out the one given to him in Club 21, crosses out the office phone, writes his home number below it and hands it over. Then he roams the square.

A man asks him for a dime, and after giving him a quarter, Roger tails him back to a pack of men who look like they’ve been camping in doorways. He offers them Lucky Strikes. They light their cigarettes and study him, waiting for the catch.

“How long you guys been here?”

“You a cop?”

“No, are you?”

They love that.

“Been here three weeks,” says the tall one. “Beats the hell out of Spokane.”

“Why’s that?”

“What do you care?”

A man with an eye patch steps closer. “Spare another quarter?”

“No, but I’ve got a buck for the best story of why you ended up here.”

They joke among themselves as if he’s not there. One coughs uncontrollably. Roger watches a cop stroll past and nods at him. “What do they actually
do
down here?”

“Besides harass us for money?”

“C’mon.”

“Pay
to stay
. That’s their slogan,” says the tall one. “I’ll go first.”

“Your little Spokane story?” one of them whines.

“You’ll get your chance.” Roger lights himself a cigarette, savoring the woody flavor. “Fleeing Spokane for Seattle. From the top, take one. Let’s hear it.”

Several hours later, he feels strangely clearheaded, even clairvoyant, his ambitions and curiosities and temptations all seemingly merging, as if it’s entirely possible that he might actually understand the city and life itself before sunrise, though he notices the first glimmers in the eastern tree line while climbing out of a cab on Capitol Hill near Harrison and Broadway.

He springs up cobblestone steps to the stately Victorian he’d assumed had been converted into a duplex, not a brothel. On the top step, he teeters and sways, regaining his balance as nearby robins greet the new day. When the door opens, he glides into the perfumed entryway on a red carpet so plush his steps make no sound, and all his senses rise up. He feels capable of so much
more
.

H
ER DESK
was buried in 1962; a brittle, sun-yellowed souvenir edition of the
Seattle Times
on the eve of the fair, musty
Argus
weeklies from April through October, the official guide and entertainment calendar, two cheerful books celebrating the expo, a panoramic map with a hokey introduction explaining that Paul Bunyan built Mount Rainier with his bare hands. Pinned above her desk was a photo of a shirtless Elias, flexing muscles he didn’t yet have, and five of Roger Morgan—two taken in ’62, one at the Market in 1972, another when he addressed the city council in 1981, the last in the rain outside the MLK Center nine days ago.

Her original assignment had merged completely with the paper’s coverage of his candidacy. Lundberg was looking into his political consulting while city hall and statehouse reporters were gauging his influence in Seattle and Olympia through the years. Helen was concentrating on the fair, as everyone now agreed that it warranted more than another standard rehash. The jolt of teamwork sent a unifying current through a newsroom unnerved by the layoff of three young reporters and the closing of two bureaus that week. Along with this temporary setback, as Birnbaum spun it, was the announcement of smaller news holes—
keep stories tighter!
—and rumors of stingy buyout offers for old-timers. So what better diversion from all these harbingers of a shrinking—or dying—business than scrambling to stay ahead of the
Times
on a humdinger story like this?

Marguerite strode over and squatted next to Helen’s desk and said, nearly nose-to-nose with her, “Let’s rock this joint!” Helen had no idea what she meant but her scalp tingled.

She’d made the mistake of telling her about the False Prince comment. So it was no longer a secret—those two words were on everyone’s lips—though Omar still hadn’t produced his gadfly. She procrastinated, clearing her head, flipping through junk mail, redlining on espresso, reorganizing her final round of questions, waiting for Morgan’s call, trying not to dwell on the fact that she needed to file a draft by tomorrow and cover the debate this afternoon.

Vague and anonymous tips continued to pour in. He’s a womanizer, a boozer, a serial home wrecker with at least a half dozen kids out of wedlock and, worst of all in Seattle, a
Republican
. And he isn’t as healthy as he looks. Ask him about his hip replacements! Just ask. And, of course, the clichéd tip she’d received everywhere she’d ever worked: Follow the money. As one caller put it: “Ask Mr. Storyteller how he got so rich.”

She kept all this to herself, so the editors wouldn’t panic about
Times
reporters getting the same leads—as they no doubt were—and try to rush her. The paper also was receiving bundles of handwritten letters from people who were thrilled and grateful that
the Great Roger Morgan
—a phrase several actually used—was willing to sacrifice his privacy and retirement to rescue their city.

She’d had only two brief phone calls with him since her ride-along. Yet, during those chats, he rattled off so many facts and impressions she’d already collected that it felt as if he’d written the history of the fair himself and that the city simply nodded along as he told it.

She’d already finished a draft of “Roger at the Fair.” There was more sweep and bullshit than she’d like, but given how hard it was to dredge up any fresh material, it felt oddly illuminating, or at least not fawning. It conceded the consensus view that the fair transformed stodgy postwar Seattle, though she pointed out that the so-called Father of the Fair actually came late to the party, three years after the idea hatched, and that his salary of $30,000 was controversially high in 1962—the equivalent of about $250,000 today. She also noted that the Seattle expo wasn’t as popular as the ones in Brussels and New York preceding and following it, and its profitability claims were exaggerated by federal subsidies. And that there was no way of knowing how many of the ten million visitors were local repeats
who just couldn’t get enough. Leafing through old articles, she even found nuggets of criticism lost in the avalanche of accolades. Still, it was less a reporting job than a writing exercise, largely a matter of tone, finesse and pace. Glancing at her editor, she felt herself bracing for battles over words.

TWO HOURS BEFORE
the debate, Roger was trying to raise his act to high theater, his British accent in all its versatile splendor producing voices for Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore and the rest. He’d reminded himself that he was
performing
the book, not just reading it. And his audience of one was right there with him, upright and big-eyed in bed, listening intently to every word. When he described the arrival of Harry’s mail-delivering owl, his mother’s face brightened with delight. “Oh, I adore Hedwig,” she said.

Roger slowed his pace as he neared the end of the chapter. “ ‘There was a long pause, during which Dumbledore stared at the slip in his hands, and everyone in the room stared at Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out—“Harry Potter.” ’ ”

“Oh, how wonderful,” she whispered before visibly winding down from the strain of listening so intensely. “Dumbledore is such a great man,” she said, her eyelids drooping. “Though I do worry that he can’t protect my Harry. Don’t you, Roger? Harry is still far too young to be pitted against He Who Cannot Be Named.”

HE CALLED HER
a half an hour before the debate, while they were both driving toward the club. She pulled over in a bus zone to take notes.

“What were you really doing during the fair?” she asked, scrambling now to find her list of questions. “I mean, besides running it? What did it mean to you? What were you getting out of it?”

Roger chuckled. “I was trying to figure things out, how the world worked, little things like that.” He sounded at once fatigued and nostalgic. “I was asking lots of questions and watching everything really closely. There was this odd sense of profundity to that fair that’s
hard to explain. Part of it was that I was very young for my role. And everything’s more profound when you’re young, isn’t it?” She waited through a long pause. “But see, I was trying to put my finger on something.… Hold on, I gotta take a left here.… All right, I’m back. Still there?”

“Go ahead.”

“It was an odd time in my life, and in this city and the world, is what I guess I’m trying to say.”

“What was so weird about it?”

“Oh my God,
everything
. We were on the brink of nuclear war, the city was flatlining and then suddenly we’re the center of the universe. Least that’s how it felt. It was just a fair, but … Well, I was meeting every big shot and learning how Seattle worked at the same time, both over and under the table. You know what it feels like to try to understand everything at once?” He laughs. “And yes, I was in charge, sure, but things were out of control.”