Truth Like the Sun (20 page)

She waited for the moment to pass, but he hadn’t budged, still close enough to slap her.

Five minutes later, he was on the phone with Teddy, his voice shaking slightly. “She talked to my mother!… What?… Yes! What?… Yes, it was on the record.… Uh-huh. She had a tape recorder going.… Calm down!”

INSTEAD OF HEADING
back to the newsroom, Helen stayed on campus and dropped down into the special-collections reading room in the bomb-shelter-like basement of the Allen Library. She remembered Bill Steele telling her about this fussy place as she relinquished her jacket, purse, book bag and cell phone before being admitted through a locked door with nothing more than a pencil and a yellow pad.

She requested boxes of various World’s Fair files, then watched a silent eight-millimeter home movie shot by some Texan whose wife kept popping her big head into the frame. It started, camera jostling, with her buying tickets for the monorail, then showed them gliding toward the burnt-orange Space Needle. Everything looked amazingly new and clean, the bone-white arches of the Science Pavilion, the gold-and-silver roof of the arena, the yellow elevators climbing like ladybugs up the Needle’s white stem. Out on the fairgrounds, every woman was wearing a dress, nylons and heels. Even most of the kids were formally dressed, with short hair and thick, black eyeglasses.

The movie skipped abruptly to the stadium, where water-skiers flew off jumps. It must have been opening day, and Helen felt oddly exhilarated. Suddenly, the wife was on top of the Space Needle staring south over the city, and the Smith Tower was the only building Helen recognized. Everything else looked small and plain. A blimp floated nearby, and that must have been a novelty given all the footage of it. Now it was getting dark, the fountains shooting orange, gold and purple geysers, the girlie shows beckoning with neon, the amusement rides lighting up the sky in the distance. The wife leaned her head into the camera with a tired smile and a thumbs-up before the movie abruptly ended.

One of the whispering librarians rolled up a cartload of boxes, and Helen instantly felt embarrassed that she’d taken this long to mine these archives. She spent an hour reading schedules, itineraries and testimonials, then found an envelope stuffed with photos of Morgan and Severson—usually with drinks in their hands—alongside other happy men in suits. She asked for paper copies of every photo that included Morgan, then found a recording of an interview with him at the beginning of the fair. He sounded like himself—but so young! It struck her that he was just about exactly her age at the time. She was almost excited for him, to hear him explain how the fair came about and what it took to build the Needle so quickly. “It was a desperate race against time, and none of us were sure we could get it done.” He chuckled. Helen smiled. “Guess you could say,” he added, “it was a day when the dreamers prevailed.”

T
HE CROWDS
should dwindle once school starts, but the spectacle snowballs and the city continues to light up and cash out like a friendly slot machine. Frederick & Nelson, I. Magnin and the Bon Marché are all smashing monthly sales records. A luxury liner docked along the waterfront to offer more lodging options also sells out. And beyond Seattle, the entire region overflows with travelers discovering the Great Northwest as capacity crowds tour the sandstone capitol building and visit the Olympia brewery, which triples its staff to slake the thirst, and weekend traffic jams stretch from Oregon to Canada as fairground admissions exceed 100,000 people a day.

At some juncture that Roger can’t pinpoint, his expo has turned into a pilgrimage. A shaggy eighty-year-old calling himself Old Iron Legs walks there all the way from San Francisco. A sixteen-year-old pedals from Kansas without telling his parents. Newlyweds paddle down from Alaska in kayaks. Dozens of deaf and blind kids arrive from Great Falls, and hundreds of beret-wearing members of the Caravan Club park their trailers on the outskirts of town. Thousands more arrive by jet, including Koreans, Brits, Germans, Scandinavians and Japanese, who can’t stop exclaiming that the green landscape reminds them of home. It occurs to Roger that the more dangerous the world feels—
A U.S. senator has just claimed there is ample evidence of Soviet missile installations in Cuba
—the more popular the fair becomes.

He watches the workers get high on this crescendo, catching their second, fourth or eighth wind amid the mounting sensation that there’s something unforgettable, perhaps even
honorable
, in play
here, that through alchemy, timing or luck this fair is transcending its predecessors, and if not actually saving the world, at the very least distracting it. At night after closing, workers from a dozen countries form conga lines and dance through the grounds. The fair never truly sleeps anymore. And beyond its gates, downtown is more awake than ever too. The grander the fair the bigger the vice. Card rooms, pinball halls and bordellos bubble into the streets as if the whole city were pulling an all-nighter, careening toward nirvana or a crash, whichever comes first, everything about it exhilarating and unsustainable, like accelerating your car until the steering wheel vibrates, then flooring it.

Roger and Teddy are increasingly mentioned as potential favorites for Congress or the governor’s mansion. Columnists speculate that Teddy would run as a Republican, while Roger’s politics remain a mystery. His perceived lack of bias, as well as his burgeoning reputation as a PR-savant, has turned him into an oracle. Chamber boys, port commissioners, city councilmen, zoning officials, labor bosses, gadflies and monkey-wrenchers line up to run ideas past him. His asides, quips and advice, he notices, increasingly pop up in ads and campaigns and speeches. Aware of his growing public image, he tries to limit his late-night forays to drive-bys and walk-throughs and fielding phone calls in the small hours from Charlie McDaniel.

“They want me to name cops,” Charlie tells him. “I’m thinking about testifying, but for the right amount I’d go away. Made that plenty clear too.”

“To who?”

“Not gonna put a bigger target on my back. Know what I’m saying? I sleep with two guns these days. Know what else?”

“What’s that, Charlie?”

“I know who you are.”

He doesn’t know how to reply other than to say, “Sorry ’bout that. Didn’t think you’d talk to me otherwise.”

“So what exactly is Mr. World’s Fair doing with our conversations?”

“Educating myself. I want to know everything there is to know about this city.”

McDaniel snorts. “In case you want to run for mayor or something.”

“Maybe something like that.”

McDaniel laughs but keeps talking, as if this disclosure means little to him, though he never calls again.

The next morning Roger is jittery and dragging through yet another cool blue dawn, strung out anew on wedding dread and a mounting sense of pressure, when the fair hand-delivers Elvis Presley to him on its 144th day.

Governor Lopresti is beyond giddy, blurting cheerful fragments and laughing at nothing in particular while dragging his hands through his thinning hair during an increasingly awkward photo op. Elvis is handing him a Tennessee ham, and for the money shot their arms are bowed with effort as if it were made of lead. While the cameras fire away, the governor gleefully rocks back and forth over what he apparently considers the most hilarious gift on earth. Elvis can’t hold his smile any longer, and the disconnect between the agitated super celebrity and the thrilled politician grows until some young woman in the rapidly swelling crowd recognizes Presley and shrieks as if someone were swinging a machete at her neck.

Once her awkward scream passes, Elvis looks relaxed again, moving with the athletic grace of a boxer in the best-fitting suit and whitest shirt around, his shiny, slicked-back hair and twinkling eyes flashing in the sunlight, his skin so smooth it looks polished, his gold cufflinks twinkling on his wrists. Yet, amazingly, when Roger introduces himself, he not only looks him in the eye but also gives him a
rescue-me
eye roll, as if they already knew each other well enough to share exasperation. But then the governor drags them all off toward the Science Pavilion, clinging to his plan to personally guide Elvis everywhere even though it’s obvious to Roger that the rubberneckers will make that impossible.

MGM was considerate enough to delay filming until the kids returned to school, but hundreds apparently skipped class today to climb fences and stand on garbage cans for a glimpse of the man who’d just spun away to buy a sno-cone with extra cherry syrup.

Roger spots an empty flatbed rolling behind the booths, flags
it down and a few minutes later is loading the pouting governor, Elvis and his four bodyguards into the back for an abbreviated tour, the growing mob of fans jogging to keep up. Roger never considered himself an Elvis man. Yes, he’d wasted almost an hour in the privacy of his living room trying to dance like him, but the so-called King didn’t play jazz and he came across as shallow and cocky on television. But now that he’s sitting right next to him in this truck, Roger feels like an adoring teen and starts spouting fairground facts and even mentions that the city has sixteen FM stations, as if this might coax Elvis into moving here.

“So this is your show, then?” Elvis asks, surprising Roger that he’s actually been listening. “Can’t be easy.”

“Compared to what you do it is.”

“You mean
this
?” he asks, pointing absently at the trailing crowd. “Once you get involved in this racket your life’s public,” he says, in a Southern mumble. “People are gonna wanna know what you eat. It’s natural. I try to remember that, but of course there are times I’d really like to just walk into a crummy bar for a little Jack Daniel’s and some cards.”

Roger’s eyes widen. “You need a break while you’re here, just ask for me.”

When the truck slows near a corner, Elvis flings his sno-cone wrapper into a trash can, and three squealing girls sprint over to the can.

Two hours later, Roger is doodling on napkins and sipping a beer in the Blue Moon on Forty-fifth, sizing up each man who enters. Most of them look like afternoon drunks, so when Assistant U.S. Attorney Ned Gance finally looms in the doorway in patched jeans and a new green-and-white plaid shirt, he might as well have been wearing his three-piece with the gold chain looping out of his vest pocket. Yet it isn’t his clothes so much as his albino complexion—he clearly isn’t accustomed to natural light—that blows his cover. Even more revealing are his too-alert eyes, which take all of three seconds to find Morgan sitting in a booth with two foamy pints, one of which he slides toward the other side of the graffiti-engraved table as Gance approaches.

“I don’t drink,” the attorney says dismissively, then pulls out a handkerchief, wipes off the bench and sits down.

“We’ll make a great team.” Roger smiles, pulling the beer back to his side. “I don’t eat.” When he sticks out his hand, Gance frowns and offers a moist, reluctant shake. “Thanks for coming,” Roger says, squeezing the man’s bony fingers.

“Please understand,” Gance says quietly, his close-set eyes boring into Roger, “that I’m here strictly as a favor to the senator and against my own better judgment.”

“Why’s that?”

“The senator’s initial inquiry, which I assume you prompted, essentially backfired, at least from your perspective.”

“How so?” Roger asks hesitantly.

Gance stares even harder, as if gauging whether Roger’s bright enough to understand this answer. “It only made Stockton go harder.” He smacks his bloodless lips. “And I’m telling you this in confidence, and only because the senator made a personal request. Cops are on the take all over the city, not just in the square and along First. The Chinese, Japs, Negroes and Filipinos got their games too. Stockton’s moving as fast as he can to convene. Understand?”

“How soon’ll that happen?”

“Next week, next month, next year? Who knows? Whenever it comes together. If I had to guess, I’d say next month.”

“We’ve got lots of balls in the air right now with corporate relocations and all,” Roger says, sounding more nervous than he’d like. “It’d just be a lot easier on everyone if we could finish the fair before this sideshow gets under way.”

Gance glares at him like he’s a blathering child. “Are you asking me to slow down an investigation?”

Roger hesitates. “I’m telling you what concerns people.”

“And I,” Gance says, “am telling you what I know, which is all I was asked to do. I’m not concerned with your PR problems.”

Roger gulps down half his beer. “So is it true that Stockton’s rushing because he wants the spotlight that the fair gives him?”

“Keep your voice down.” Gance scowls. “Look, he wants to be a congressman. What do you think?”

Roger suddenly thinks he knows more than he should, which is that the U.S. attorney and a few honest cops are in a race to see who can expose this city first.

When he’d seen Meredith Stein for the third time this week, she’d told him that her brother-in-law’s coup was coming soon. “His
what
?” Roger had pressed. “You heard me,” she’d said. “His revolt, his insurrection. The word he used was
coup
, and I’m not speaking French just to arouse you. He wants to police his own before anyone else does.”

“Are you guys,” Roger asks Gance now, “just going after card-room owners and crooked cops?”

“What do you mean by that?”

Roger tells him what he’d heard about the breakfast gatherings at the Dog House.

“Who told you that?”

Roger hesitates. “I don’t know that I can say.”

Gance strokes his chin. “Because you don’t know or you won’t share?”

Roger feels something fundamental shift, as if he’s fallen from the senator’s pal to potential suspect in Gance’s eyes.

“Who’d you see there?” he presses.

Roger finishes his beer and slides it aside, weighing his options. “Look, I don’t know anything for sure.”

Gance pops out a tiny black leather notebook. A slender pen materializes in the other hand, and he writes something in such small letters that Roger can’t read them. “Who? Names.”