Truth Like the Sun (21 page)

Roger chuckles, but his pulse is rising. “I don’t work for you, Counselor.”

The way Gance’s Adam’s apple moves reminds Roger of a snake swallowing a mouse. Then his words pop out fast and hushed. “The only reason I’m here is the senator asked. Period. Actually, he had his aide ask me, but it amounts to the same thing. Said he’d
greatly appreciate
it if I spoke with you, which I’m willing to do strictly under the conditions of my choosing, which definitely don’t include a one-way relationship. Regardless, I fully expect you to tell the senator what a huge help I’ve been. Understand?”

Roger takes a long drink from the second beer and tries to smile. “Are you always this much fun to be around?”

Gance stares at him, flat-eyed. “Names.”

“The deputy county prosecutor,” Roger says quietly. “Winston Edgell. He was there.”

“Can you swear to that?”

“Swear?”

“Yes, potentially. And the others, the ones you recognized. Their names.”

THE SHOOTING SCHEDULE
is kept confidential, but by midweek the fans have figured out when and where to find Elvis Presley. His eyes are puffy slits now as he strides over to Roger near the close of the fourth day and asks if there’s someplace they might grab a drink.

Roger tries not to look too thrilled. He’s already handpicked the Club 21 waitress—
no fawning!
—to serve them cocktails if this opportunity ever arose, and he’s double-checked to make sure there’s an extra bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the cabinet.

After giving Elvis’s security boss a tour of the sealed-off lounge, they finally sit down. “How’s the film coming?” Roger asks, instantly regretting his question.

“Like the others, I guess.” Elvis looks into his drink, clutching it with both hands. “Got people all the time saying, ‘Why don’t you do an artistic picture?’ I’d like to do that, sure, but if I can entertain people in the meanwhile, well, I’d be a fool to tamper with that, wouldn’t I? You don’t get many chances in this racket, but this one really does feel like the worst one yet.” He chuckles. “I fly into town in a crop duster then hitchhike to the fair in the back of this Oriental fella’s truck, and then he asks me to take care of his little niece. So I get stuck with her at the fair, and use her to try to score, of course. Cornball stuff. Rather not think about it.”

Roger can’t imagine what to say next, and he’s second-guessing his decision to put Sinatra on the hi-fi, though he doesn’t want to change the music now and draw even more attention to how hard he’s trying. He waits for Elvis to break the silence.

“You get older,” he finally says, “you see people differently.”

Roger smiles and mumbles back, “You’re all of twenty-seven.”

“That’s as old as I’ve ever been.” He grins. “I’ve experienced a lot, actually—wealth and the lonely side of life. And I’ve had a little tragedy.” He pauses again, then looks up. “Just trying to be a better human being.”

“Me too,” Roger says, stunned to be sharing this odd moment of candor with a young man who’s sold seventy-five million records. Then, as if the two subjects are linked: “I’m engaged.”

“Well, well.” His teeth are big and bright. “Congratulations.”

Roger exhales. “Yeah?”

“Sure,” Elvis says. “Who’d want to be alone forever?”

Roger laughs. “You could have any wife you want. As many as you want.”

“Takes me a while to trust somebody, to find someone who understands me,” he mumbles. “Gotta surround yourself with people who bring you a little happiness, though, don’t you? Only go through life once, Jack. Can’t come back for an encore.”

Roger notes every last detail about him so he won’t forget. His mumbled Tennessee accent, his slow, expressive hands, his wide-set eyes, tapered eyebrows, plump lips and bouffant of hair. He’d expected him to come off as an arrogant buffoon up close, not as this thoughtful and respectful young man. They talk football and politics until Roger shares his plan for the evening, which sounds ridiculous, even reckless, when he says it aloud. Elvis chuckles and slaps the table gently. “Why not?”

He picks him up near sunset at the back of the New Washington Hotel to avoid the horde of girls rioting out front after they got ousted from the lobby for trying to storm the stairs. Elvis sinks low in the front seat, looking larger cooped up like this, smiling across at him, his dimples and everything about him absurdly recognizable despite the large blue sweatshirt and worn-out Cubs cap. Roger pulls off into the night, coasting down Madison toward the water. He usually drives with the radio on but is too self-conscious to turn it on now, especially after bragging about the city’s stations. He resists delivering his recruitment pitch when their view opens up to the sun
sliding behind the Olympics and the mirrored water reflecting pink clouds.

Elvis clenches and unclenches fists, studies them, twirls a ring, then looks up. “This place is something else.”

Now off his leash, Roger admits how the city dazzles him, how he can’t resist reading its history again and again, how sometimes he sees the whole city—past, present and future—all at once and how this almost overwhelms him. He rattles on about the dreamers who leveled hills, filled tidal flats and brought in electricity and railroads, Elvis’s head bobbing along to his words.

“I feel the same way about Memphis,” he says when Roger finally stops. “Came home from the army, and they ask me what I missed about it. ‘Everything,’ I said. ‘I missed everything.’ ”

Now they’re filling a booth at the Turf, staring across at each other through blue smoke, heads low, sipping cocktails, dozens of voices bouncing off the low ceiling. Elvis can’t stop smiling and has his face cocked to the side, but even semi-disguised he’s attracting the attention of people in booths all around the room. Roger glares at the gawkers until they finally notice him, then raises a finger to his lips. They nod hypnotically and, amazingly, stay put.

“I don’t have a plan,” Elvis volunteers. “I just have a feel. Trying to get a better understanding of myself. The mistakes I make always come back around. Truth is like the sun, isn’t it? You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.”

Roger nods emphatically with no idea of what he’s talking about. He has a sudden giddy impulse to ask him to sing the opening lines of “Jailhouse Rock,” about the warden throwing a party in that county jail. Once they finish their second drink, he leads him into the back room, where they join a table of five players. Cards disperse, Elvis checks his hand, fiddles with his chips, can’t stop smiling.

Two hands later, Roger notices a pack of gawkers growing near the back. So does the card-room manager, who hobbles grumpily over and shoos them out, meeting Roger’s glance before resting his eyes on Elvis and nodding reassuringly.

Deep into the next hand, a stocky, clear-eyed man sidles up to Roger’s left shoulder, squats down and whispers, “Mr. Morgan,
Seattle PD. I suggest you and your friend get out of here within the next five minutes.”

Roger tells Elvis to fold, and they push their chips into the center and take the nearest exit into the alley.

“People don’t understand what a nuisance I am to bring along,” Elvis apologizes once they’re outside.

“Has nothing to do with you,” Roger says.

“But goddamn was that fun!” Elvis says, hooting lightly.

Film him
now
, Roger thinks, in this alley with all the colorful graffiti on these brick walls. Cast him as a handsome young man elated after a little poker, whiskey and conversation, a man hoping to improve himself.

Elvis gives him a long look when he drops him off, as if he doesn’t want to get out of the car. Finally, though, he grins and says good night without a handshake, as if they’ll meet again the next evening.

Once he gets home, Roger calls the six numbers he’d copied out of the Las Vegas phone directory he found in the library. The first three sound too old or too young. The fourth and fifth don’t answer at all. The sixth—“Hello?”—sounds possible.

“Robert?” Roger asks, careful to keep his voice low enough to not wake his mother down the hall.

“Who’s this?”

“Dad?”

The unfamiliar laugh rules this one out.
Click
.

He falls asleep in front of the television, wakes up to the national-anthem sign-off, then turns off the buzzing static and trudges to bed.

A
FUNNY THING
happened during the run-up to the primary. Alongside updates on the volatile race was a puzzler in the
Times
, a photograph with a long caption on the front of the local section that captured, in gangster-movie twilight, the stripper king himself, Michael Vitullo, standing outside his club Fluffers next to a gangly, suited man who happened to be Edward “Big Ed” Lopresti, the ninety-two-year-old former governor. In the caption, Vitullo characterized the parking lot chat as “two old acquaintances shooting the breeze,” and it also noted that he’d served twenty-six months on racketeering charges during Lopresti’s reign as governor (1960–64). Sure, it was just a photo, but it rattled the fishbowl. Why was the
Times
shadowing either of these men, and what did this hint that they were working on? Apparently the photo had been deemed too provocative to hold any longer.

Birnbaum summoned Bill Steele into the morning meeting, seeing how the city’s past and present were colliding on multiple fronts. According to Steele’s improvised history lesson, the city council passed a “tolerance” law in 1954 to allow some small-time gaming downtown—despite state laws forbidding gambling—and started licensing card rooms in exchange for a small tax and an adherence to strict rules such as no bets over a dollar. This supposedly was just common sense, but it essentially sanctioned shakedowns. Card rooms had to accept far higher bids to turn a profit, so the cops decided which ones could break the rules based on who was willing to pay monthly bribes. This went on for years, and by the early ’60s,
dozens of card rooms—and thousands of pinball machines rigged to pay out like slots—were crammed into bars and restaurants throughout downtown. “Many cops doubled their salaries with these payoffs,” Steele explained. “And there were sheriffs and jailers, liquor regulators and councilmen pocketing the money too. And good old Vitullo not only was bribing cops but working as their bagman for the bingo parlors. Everything peaked during the fair,” he said, “when the city had seventy-five licensed card rooms and more documented gambling than any city outside Nevada.” He then summarized the subsequent mutiny within the police department and the grand-jury probe that blew it all wide open.

What everyone wanted to know, of course, was what the former governor was doing with Vitullo the other night.

“That’s easy.” Steele smiled. “They’re old pals.”

AGAINST TEDDY’S ADVICE
, Roger agreed to talk to Helen Gulanos again. There was something about her gentle tenacity that he couldn’t resist. She’d flinched when his voice rose during their testy interchange at the university, but she’d kept doing her job as she saw it and had the prudence not to write anything his mother had said, at least not yet. Plus, he was feeling bulletproof. His campaign had begun to look like a movement, with his volunteer army doubling weekly now. On his drive home today, just about every rush-hour corner had been commandeered with seniors holding
Time for Roger
signs and a smattering of youngsters waving
Vote for the Old Guy!
placards. Even the
New York Times
had taken notice, calling Roger “a new old voice on the Northwest political landscape.”

And here she was, big-haired, wide-eyed and pointing at the small photo of him and Elvis framed on the living room wall of his apartment. “So what was he like?” she asked. “Full of himself?”

“Quite the contrary.” He couldn’t hide his irritation. “He was an engaging and considerate young man when I was with him. A gentleman.”

Her photographer, a bearded gum chewer who kept saying
Gotcha
or
Cool
whenever Roger told him anything, snapped a close-up of the picture, then asked if he could take it off the wall—
Cool?—
and took more point-blank shots.

They scanned the room like anthropologists, as if his possessions were so archaic that everything needed to be inventoried so future generations could understand how he lived. She held up a hunk of concrete the size of her fist. “What’s this?”

“Part of the Kingdome.”

“What about all these tiny spoons?”

“I bring one back from every big city I visit.”

She fingered through the bowl.
Caracas. Cairo. Istanbul. Jakarta
. “Where’s next?”

“Buenos Aires, I hope.”

She pointed at another photo. “Who’s this?”

“My gramps.”

“Morgan?”

He nodded. “Shortly before he died.”

“Pretty young, huh? How’d he go?”

He remeasured her. “Already told you.”

“Sorry. Aneurysm.”

He wished he could rewind and insist they meet somewhere else or decline this interrogation altogether. He’d vacuumed the rug, stuffed laundry in a closet and boxed the toys, but he hadn’t wiped the counters or emptied the trash. Books, he noticed now, were stacked precariously on every surface that wasn’t destabilized by magazines and newspapers.

EVERYTHING ABOUT
his apartment startled her. She’d heard he lived in a condo, but expected a swanky Belltown penthouse with a possessive view of the city, not a bland two-bedroom unit in a two-story lower-Queen Anne complex with what cheery realtors might call a “peekaboo” view of the Space Needle, the top of which could be glimpsed from the kitchen window through the tangle of power lines. The furniture was dated and far from regal—a scarred table, a worn leather recliner, a musty avocado-green sofa that would be hard
to give away in this century. It astounded her that a man who was delighting large crowds everywhere he went—whether pushing for cheaper housing and monorail expansions or simply talking about the city—lived in a dump the same size as hers.

There was a nineteen-inch Zenith from the ’80s, a large abstract painting and a naked ceramic woman performing a cartwheel, but mostly there were books in floor-to-ceiling cases and freestanding stacks. Old, new, hardcovers, paperbacks, coffee-table books and countless titles about cities. She spotted a small framed photo of JFK, looking young, thoughtful and very single, wind playing in his hair. Returning to the shot of Elvis, his left elbow resting on Morgan’s shoulder, she wanted to ask more about him but knew she’d already shut that door.