Truth Like the Sun (24 page)

Shrontz, Marguerite and Birnbaum took turns fiddling with the fifty-nine-inch story. When it finally came out—with a larger LEGO photo—the case was made that Mr. Seattle’s finances mirrored the city’s own economic roller coaster over the past forty years. He rode the modest postfair boom through the ’60s, crashed with Boeing in the early ’70s, rose up again with the high-rise binge of the mid-’80s and participated in the dot-com ups and downs of the late ’90s. As recently as five years ago, he’d owned a Queen Anne bungalow as well as getaways at Crystal Mountain and Hood Canal. Yet after a spate of dubious investments and his mother’s move into a nursing home, he now lived in a nearly viewless $1,250-a-month apartment and got around—when not walking or busing—in a 1994 Nissan worth about $5,000. And while Morgan remained a regular at the Rainier and Broadmoor clubs, it was as an honorary, not a dues-paying, member. All of which would help explain why, according to his most recent filings, he hadn’t spent a dollar of his own money
on his campaign. The article concluded with his claim that he didn’t feel any meaningful difference in his life whether he was wealthy or broke.

Birnbaum told Helen the story showed great instincts and precision, while Marguerite called it groundbreaking journalism. “This is the most humanic financial story I’ve ever read,” she gushed. Bill Steele waddled up afterward. “
Humanic
is not a word. Look it up. You won’t find it.”

The street response was more nuanced. Some claimed it proved just how inappropriate Morgan was for the job. His fans saw it as further evidence of his authenticity and honesty, though many of them called it yet another cheap shot. A subsequent
Times
poll showed Morgan still slightly ahead of Rooney and Norheim, which provoked Omar’s gadfly to finally agree to this rendezvous.

He was already deep into his curry and halfway down a twenty-ounce Singha by the time Helen and Omar showed up at the Ying Thai Kitchen. Donald Yates—whose name Omar finally relinquished—didn’t rise or offer his hand, just kept chewing while instructing them not to consider ordering anything but yellow chicken curry, “and go at least four stars.” His comments were directed at Omar, as if she wasn’t there.

He was tall, fit and long-faced with pocked cheeks, baggy eyes and ears sprouting wiry bushels of gray hair. His charcoal suit and thin black tie made him look like an elderly extra in a black-and-white movie. When the airy-voiced waitress floated by, Helen asked for a pot of tea. “Eat!” Yates insisted, ordering another Singha. “Gimme a couple more egg rolls,” he said, without looking up, then resumed gorging. “So you’re the one,” he added, almost as an aside, sliding in and out of a grin, “who’s written all those puff pieces on Roger Morgan.”

“Puff?” Her temperature spiked. “I just wrote that he’s been so foolish with his money that he’s practically broke.”

“Yes, but with such a sympathetic tone,” he said with a full mouth, “as if it just makes him all the more of a
giver
.” He winked at her and grinned at Omar, then returned to his dish.

“Morgan’s people,” she told him as calmly as she could, “are complaining day and night.”

“C’mon, now.” He winked again. “People I talk to assume you’re sleeping with him.”

“Well,” she said, “you’ve got some sick friends.” She stood up. “Enjoy your lunch.”

“Oh, sit down.”

Omar made helpless soothing noises while Yates snickered. “What a theatrical reaction,” he said. “Is that how Birnbaum teaches you to treat sources?” He smothered a belch. “You’re not leaving yet anyway, little lady. Haven’t paid for my lunch yet. Sit down.” He winked yet again. “Relax.”

“Mr. Yates,” she said, shaking Omar’s hand off her forearm, “let’s see if we can have a conversation without you insulting me every other sentence or giving me any more condescending winks.”

“Touchy, touchy.” He looked at Omar for confirmation. “It’s obvious to anyone with opposable thumbs that your paper wants Morgan to win.” He licked his lips. “That’s not your fault. One reporter can only do so much to puncture the fairy tale perpetuated about him for decades now. That’s why I’m offering my help, to save you further embarrassment. Please, sit down.”

She glared at Omar and then Yates, whose eyes leisurely panned the walls of what looked more like a residence than a restaurant. “If you have something to tell me,” she said, reluctantly lowering herself back into the booth, “you should get to it pretty soon.”

“Patience,” he said, then spooned sauce straight into his mouth. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”

Helen reluctantly took notes to spare herself from watching him eat.

“He helped kill mass transit initiatives in the sixties and helped Republicans get elected. Fought the clean-air initiative in the seventies and helped Republicans get elected. Advised companies on how to get around new wetlands regs in the eighties and helped more Republicans get elected. He’s always had this gift, you see, for knowing exactly how to buffalo the public. And he’ll share that gift with anybody who pays him for it, which I guess defines him as a whore, doesn’t it?” He mopped his face with a napkin and set it on the table between them. “Then, of course, he fattened himself up building skyscrapers,
leaving us with these totems to our excess. How you figure Malcolm Turner got that height exemption on his towers, huh?”

The recounting of Morgan’s alleged abominations continued right up to his public comment last year that Nader supporters had thrown their votes away. “How dare he?” Yates demanded. What Morgan had done right over the years, he told her—sneering at his efforts to save the Market and clean up the lakes—was only for his own glorification. “He’s a false prince, okay? That’s all he’s ever been.”

She’d dealt with so many unforgiving activists in D.C. that it surprised her how much she’d let Yates agitate her. “So, that’s it?” She cracked her tiny purse and pulled out her credit card. “He’s an enemy of the environment and a two-faced whore. Any last insights before I go?” She caught the waitress’s eye and mimed her signature.

“Oh, yeah.” His grin dilated in and out again before he took a bite of the remaining egg roll. “Did I fail to mention that he was taking bribes during the fair?”

Helen set her card down under her palm, watching him chew.

“Oh, so you like that?” He winked at Omar this time. “Listening to me now, isn’t she?”

He then told her how Morgan had forced Seattle’s Freemasons out of their building, and how one of them, a furious attorney named Sid Chambliss, vowed revenge. Before dying, he’d passed along to Yates the name of a retired Seattle cop who’d speak up if the opportunity arose. After Yates rattled off his name and that of his Spokane nursing home, and even his room number, Helen dialed 4-1-1 and got connected to the Sunset Rehabilitation Center.

“Is Denny Carmichael still in 106?… Yes, that’s all.… No, no thank you.”

She signed the bill, stewing on the vagueness, difficulty and vindictive nature of this lead.

“Oh, and you might ask the prince himself where he went once the fair finally ended.” Yates straightened his tie. “This guy makes Clinton look like a prude. His whole past’s like that, doing whatever he wants. Omar here speaks highly of you. That’s why I’m giving you a head start. But if you can’t get it in the paper, I’m sure Trevor Stiles can.”

Helen’s eyes flashed. “What’re you saying?”

Even Omar was on red alert. “You promised,” he said, then more forcefully, “an exclusive.”

“If she can’t get it in, I’m sure the
Times
will,” Yates told him without looking up. “Wouldn’t be fair if I played favorites, would it?”

She glanced at Omar, then gave Yates a murderous stare. “I don’t think you have any idea what the word
fair
means,” she said before storming outside, under the first overcast sky in weeks.

“The guy’s an ass,” Omar said once he caught up. “I’m sorry,” he added, “but you got the tip, at least. Helen,
please
.”

She sped up, trying to distance herself from him, her boot heels beating the sidewalk along Queen Anne Avenue.

“Go on, let me have it,” he pleaded, catching up again. “Just
say
something. I didn’t know he’d be this manipulative. I really didn’t. Please, Helen.” They walked side by side toward her car. “Just say something, please.”

Without looking at him, she stuck her arm through his, pinning it tight to her elbow, and they strode in silence to the flashing
Don’t Walk
sign on the corner where three men rolled past on bicycles, drafting behind one another like migrating birds, followed by two minivans, a woman jogger and a bus with Roger Morgan’s billboard-sized face stretched over its side. His self-effacing smile seemed to say,
I can’t believe I’m on this bus either
. The only words on the poster:
Vote for Roger
.

She released Omar’s arm and started laughing so softly that it sounded like she was crying.

WITH SPOKANE’S AIRPORT
fogged in for the last two days, the editors agreed they couldn’t wait for the weather to lift. So Helen pulled Elias out of preschool and raced east out of the city before rush hour, up and over Snoqualmie Pass into what looked like cowboy country. Grateful to be out of cell range, she stepped on it, hurtling through tumbleweeds toward the Columbia. Elias woke from a nap and wanted to eat and hear stories and play games. Helen ran more questions
and interviewing ploys through her head while playing guessing games with him until he said, “The speedometer says one hundred, Mommy.”

“It’s broken,” she told him. “We’re not going that fast.”

“Tell me a story?”

“I’m really distracted right now.”

“No story?”

“Sorry, Eli. Not now.”

“Why don’t I have a father?”

The dry moonscape suddenly blurred on her. “What,” she said slowly, “makes you ask that?”

“Everybody else has one. Michael Ruskofsky’s dad doesn’t live with him, but he sees him on Saturday.”

She could feel his eyes on the side of her head. “Some boys have ’em, some don’t.”

“Where’s mine?”

“I don’t exactly know.”

“Should we try to find him?”

“I don’t think so, Elias.”

The boy pondered that. “Would he like me?”

“Oh, Eli.”

“What’s wrong? Why are you—”

“Of course. Of course.”

“YOU KNOW
all this how?” Roger asked the older man across the table.

“Huh?”

“Ah Jesus, Clint, work with me here.”

“How’s that?”

“At least
lip-read
a little, will ya?”

Clint squinted, tilting his unsteady head.

“Where did you hear this?” Roger shouted, drawing stares, propping his chin on a palm and leaning closer.

After another palsied shimmy, Clint said, “Yates is friends with Halsey, who plays bridge with Rosemary.”

So this was how bad news got delivered these days, by a Parkinsonian, liver-spotted, half-deaf Clint Rohrbacher over a bowl of chili at Lowell’s. He used to relish their grueling hikes together, but now it was hard to even catch up on their lives. What he did know was that Clint and his wife preferred birds to humans, a bias that made them allies of the Halseys and grudge-holding doomsayers like Donald Yates.

A waiter hovered over them, glancing at the two canes leaning against a chair on the far side of the table. “Can I get you young men anything else?”

“I’ll be damned,” Roger muttered, Clint’s words still coursing through him.

“S’cuse me?” The waiter leaned closer.

“Two whiskeys.”

Clint cocked an eyebrow. “It’s not even three o’clock.”

“Right. I forgot.” Roger glanced at the waiter. “Doubles.”

“What kind, sir?”

“Maker’s Mark should do the trick.”

Even in his physical free fall, Clint’s grin was mischievous and the neurological wobble of his head made him look like he was moving to jazz nobody else could hear. They’d hiked in the Olympics a dozen times during the ’70s, though Clint always relied on Roger’s camera and his memory for the particulars. Their last peak was a steep scramble near the southern end of the range. They weren’t fit enough to enjoy the ascent, but the tiny summit was unforgettable considering they wound up sharing it and their lunch with two beautiful young Australians.

Roger pulled out a photo and laid it flat on the table. It took Clint a few beats to recognize himself twenty-five years younger, laughing between the two festive women, then a few more to recall the moment and the setting.

“Come on.” Roger looked away. “If I’d known you were gonna go sappy on me …”

He realized Clint didn’t hear him and gave him another moment with the photo, then loudly said, “Yates still live in that shit box on Warren?”

Clint looked up, wincing. “Not planning anything rash, are you?”

Roger smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m only violent when I drink.”

Lip-reading, Clint snorted a laugh.

They watched massive port cranes off-loading three freighters while stout tugs shuttled in and out of the Duwamish and two enormous Asian ships, bobbing well above their waterlines, awaited fresh loads. The more he mulled over what Clint told him, the more sense it made. The Freemasons had dropped their suit after the fair, but Sid Chambliss warned him never to run for anything. And Yates and Chambliss, of course, were a natural humorless duo. Roger felt foolish for being caught off-guard like this. The routine bustling of the waterfront usually relaxed him, but not today, not with Clint’s message and the lingering anxiety created by the oddly intrusive
P-I
article with the LEGO photo that had put Teddy back on the warpath.

Once the drinks arrived, Roger clinked his glass against Clint’s and smiled, but his teeth were grinding. “To old friends,” he said, “and new enemies.”

Clint tilted his head, as if to hear some distant message. “Nothing rash, Roger. Nothing rash.”

HELEN’S PULSE
was fluttering as they rolled into the gravel lot in front of a large wooden building in sun-scorched fields near a languid curl of the Spokane River. They hadn’t stopped for food—other than Fritos—and Elias was starting to whine. She crouched next to him beside her bug-splattered Civic, the baked land still giving off heat at nearly seven o’clock. “I’m very, very sorry it hasn’t been much fun today, but Mommy has to do her job here, okay?” Her lips were so dry they stung. “And you know what? I need your help, Elias. If you’re a good boy in here, I’ll get you the best burger in the world after we’re done, okay?”