Truth Like the Sun (26 page)

Helen tried to go blank-faced and pretend he was telling her stuff she already knew, but her glittering eyes gave her away to Elias, who looked concerned. “Mom?”

“Shhh,” she said.

“First deal we did with Mal was a downtown parking garage, then an apartment building. This was way back near the beginning of his run, see?”

Helen kept nodding but felt like some organ was about to rupture inside her, so she was committing key points to memory, not risking taking notes. “Did Morgan and Turner receive
bonuses
too?” she asked casually. “Mr. Yates said Morgan was ‘taking bribes’ during the fair.”

Carmichael paused, his eyes clenched in recall. “The way I understood it, he was Mal’s inside guy. So, like with that apartment project near the Roanoke on-ramp, Mal told all those homeowners, ‘Look, I’m gambling here. Nobody knows where the freeway’s going, and if your place gets condemned you won’t get half what I’m offering.’ But it wasn’t a gamble. He knew exactly where it was going because Roger was on that state panel. See what I’m saying? And by the time the freeway opened, Mal Turner had the most convenient new apartments around.”

“How’d you come to know all this?” Helen asked, still too anxious to pull out a notebook, not wanting him to focus on the fact that this wasn’t just a conversation until she found out what was in these envelopes.

“He bragged about Roger. It was all part of his pitch to get us to put up the cash. Wanted us to know he was in with the guy running the fair.”

Helen leaned back and exhaled. “That’s all very interesting, but you realize it’s also just talk, sir, and forty-year-old talk.”

He patted the envelopes.

Helen hid her skepticism. Documents so rarely tell a story. What most people considered proof was usually thirdhand hearsay and piles of meaningless paper. “So why’re you telling me this? Did Morgan ever do anything to you?”

“Not a damn thing. Fact is, I hope he becomes mayor. I just owe lots of people lots of things, and as you can tell I don’t have a whole lot left to give.”

He looked at Helen like he was about to cry, then at Elias. He skipped over three envelopes and held one up. “Give this to your mother.”

She pulled out the paper and gingerly unfolded it. On faded stationery beneath a masthead reading
New Metropolitan Properties, Malcolm Turner, Director
, and dated February 7, 1962, she sees the following typed on a manual typewriter:

“What’s Borgata?” she asked, so she wouldn’t have to keep staring at Morgan’s name and the number next to it.

“The original name of the Roanoke Apartments.”

“So Morgan invested in a building,” she said casually. “No law against that. And if the money was dirty, why would anybody put anything on paper?”

“I think to Mal it was always just money.” He watched her. “Don’t recognize those names, do you?”

“I grew up in Ohio. Roger knew about all this?”

He shrugged. “Had to, didn’t he?”

“Why?”

“Smart guy. Everyone said so.”

“Maybe he thought he was just investing in real estate. Who’s to say he—”

“Maybe.” He stared at her.

Several minutes of halting conversation later, Helen mustered the courage to ask, “Can I make a quick copy of this?”

“Sooo,” the old man drawled, “it
is
worth something.”

“I think we’ve already discussed that, sir. Can I get a copy?”

His face drooped into a weary frown.

“Get Mr. Carmichael some more water, Elias. I’ll be right back.”

The desk nurse set the phone down reluctantly and looked up at Helen, who was acting as pleasantly as she could with all her adrenals firing. “Could I ask you to make a copy of this for me?”

“Staff only.”

“I’m happy to pay.”

The lady glared at her. “Good for you.”

“
Please
. A dollar?”

“Didn’t I just tell you?”

“Five dollars?”

The nurse glanced at the list of names, then back at Helen as if she was nuts. “For one copy?”

“And fax it too, please, to this number.”

The woman looked at the number. “Fax and copy?”

“Yes. Will ten dollars cover that, ma’am?”

Afterward, Helen slipped outside and called Bill Steele to alert him to the fax and to let him know that Malcolm Turner was suddenly cropping up in her research as well.

As the excitement built in his voice, she felt herself losing control of her story, which shortened her breath and made it hard to listen when he read back the names like a strung-out cop discussing suspects.

“Fuggin’ A,” he said several times.

“I’ll call you,” she finally said, “once we’re outta here.”

“We?”

“Elias.”

“Who?”

“My son.”

“Right.
Lordy
.”

That he was out of her sight and unattended gave her a panicky quiver, and she started running down the hall before hanging up.

HE HEARD THE BELL
, then the door swinging open and Teddy shouting, “Roger?”

“In the bathroom!”

“Please tell me Annie misunderstood what happened this afternoon,” Teddy yelled after clomping across the living room.

“You get me a beer?”

“What did you do?”

“You getting me a beer or not?”

“What the hell? You in the tub?”

“Yup.”

Teddy shuffled into the bathroom across the moist tiles, set a can of Rainier on the tub, averted his eyes, snapped one open for himself, then lowered the toilet lid and sat down with a groan. “You trying to sabotage your own campaign?” he asked calmly. “Is that our new strategy?”

Roger raised his beer toward Teddy, who still wouldn’t look at him. “Actually, just trying to soak my ankle and hip a bit here, old man.”

“Jesus,” Teddy said. “I’m raising Cain at the
P-I
while you’re out committing misdemeanors.”

“The son of a bitch has been bragging so much about how he’s gonna knock me out that even Clint Rohrbacher heard about it. You remember Yates, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Well, he’s a miserable old attorney who’s telling any reporter who’ll listen that I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to this city.”

“Think a misdemeanor’s gonna look pretty good right now?” Teddy asked after a long swallow. “Think that’ll give you a boost?”

“If it goes public, we’ll laugh and call it the silliest accusation we’ve heard to date. Right?”

“Sully put the fear of God in them today. You should’ve seen their faces when he started listing her libel suits.”

“What exactly are we so worried about anyway? What are we hiding?”

“You’d know better than me.”

“What does that mean?”

“What you see as just
life
might not play that well outside your peer group.”

“That I drink too much? That I’ve chased women, had kids out of wedlock or gambled too much? That I’m a dumb investor? That I have lunch with Republicans on occasion?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah to what?”

“All of it.”

“Have you noticed how well we’re doing, my friend?”

“Yeah and it’s not because of your irreverence, your comic timing or the
full life
you’ve supposedly lived.”

“Then why?”

“Because you’re the goddamn father of the fair, because you’re
Mr. Seattle
.”

“I see, the nostalgia candidate.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re killing me. Tell me, how is it that you’ve turned into the world’s most timid campaign adviser?”

Teddy wiped his face. “Hanging around you is hard on the nerves.”

Roger set the beer in the soap rack and sank lower in the tub. “Maybe so.”

“Just win, and then you can do whatever the hell you want. But
win
first.” He tilted the can and guzzled, his Adam’s apple jumping. Then he sheepishly raised his chin and glanced into the mirror. “I used to be over six-two, Rog. A less honest man would have called himself six-three. Now I’m barely five-eleven. I weigh what I did when I was in high school. I avoid mirrors these days and shave in the shower,” he mumbled, rubbing sections of whiskers he’d missed, “which has its downsides, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Actually,” Roger said, “you’re still the best-looking man I know.”

“That’s not what I want to hear from a naked man in a bathtub.” Teddy pulled out a cigarette, then said, “You mind?” and lit it before Roger could respond, cupping his hand over the flame as if to protect it from wind. He exhaled. “So, was it fun?”

“The windows?”

“Yeah.”

“To be honest, it felt terrific while I was doing it and ridiculous afterwards.”

Teddy grunted. “I need something stiffer,” he said, before rattling one last sip out of the can, rising with a groan and starting for the kitchen. “You want anything?”

“Nah, I’m perfect.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Teddy stubbed his left foot on the tub, or if the tiles were too slick for him to get traction. Twisting as he fell, he groped futilely for the towel rack before landing on his left hip with a yelp. Then Roger slipped when standing up, banging his funny bone so hard on the porcelain he couldn’t feel his left arm.

DENNY CARMICHAEL’S
eyelids were at half-mast, his voice turning groggy, the envelopes still in his lap.

She scrambled to recall what Bill Steele and the
Times
had said about the graft heydays. “Were you ever subpoenaed?”

His laugh ground toward a throat-clearing. “By the time they called me in, there’d been so much snitching I didn’t stand a chance. And it was gonna get a whole lot worse if Costello talked, see. You don’t know him either? Lord, you people. Rudy Costello, the pinball man.”

“So he talked?”

“No, he drowned.”

“Accident?”

It was hard to watch him shake his head. “Well, he drowned the day before he was supposed to testify, so what do you think?”

“A coincidence?”

“I was there.” He waited for her response, then repeated himself. “I was there when this young lieutenant slugged him, dropped him in the shallows and put a foot on his back to keep him down.” He looked past her now. “And I was there when they threw that tavern owner off the Bremerton ferry too.”

Helen was pretty sure she’d just heard a confession of sorts to two very old murders. “And who was that?” she asked.

“I’m no good with names. Here, son, give your mother this one,” he says, handing Elias an unsealed envelope.

Inside, she found a penciled list of barely legible names she didn’t recognize.

She shrugged. “I’m sorry, but—”

“Roger Morgan’s name came up during the hearings,” he said.

She looked down at the names again. “And what does that have to do with this?”

“Someone testified that he was part of the network, that he worked with Mal Turner to hide the money.”

“Okay, but—”

“You won’t find it in the transcripts, but that’s the list of the nineteen jurors who heard the evidence.”

She swallowed, her eyes bouncing over the quaint old names—Harold, Louise, Edna. “Then why wasn’t he subpoenaed or indicted?”

“Think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The U.S. attorney was getting ready to run for Congress.”

“So it was politics? You’re saying Morgan was protected?”

Leaning back into his pillow, he closed his eyes.

“And what about Malcolm Turner?” she asked. “Same thing?”

He cleared his throat. “They were both golden boys.”

She exhaled. “Can I make a—”

“
Take
it,” he said. “I don’t know why I’ve held on to this stuff. I don’t … I really don’t.” He started sniffling. “It all seems so damn long ago now.” He waved a hand helplessly. “Please, go.”

To her amazement, Elias moved closer to the bed and set his little hand on Carmichael’s hairy arm. He’s an
old soul
, she told herself when he did things like that, a thought often accompanied by the guilty notion that he was missing out on a normal childhood. He looked so much like his father that she rarely saw herself in him. Yet the way he read people, and how gently he tried to comfort this old man, she realized, was all her.

After a prolonged silence, during which she reconsidered every significant thing Carmichael had told her, she said, “I appreciate what you’ve shared with us, and I will handle it very carefully, but I don’t want to bother you again. So let’s do this just once, okay? Are you holding on to anything else here that I should know about? What’s in the other envelopes, sir?”

“Just stuff that doesn’t matter anymore,” he said irritably, then added, “Nothing to do with Morgan.”

“Anything else about the network?”

He fumbled around until he found and pressed a button hanging near his head.

“One more time, sir, if you don’t mind. Mr. Yates said that Morgan was taking bribes during the fair. And you said you were in charge of distributing payoff money back then, so was he getting a cut or not?”

He stared at her vacantly as if he didn’t recognize her anymore.

“How about the names of the cops,” she pressed gently, “who told the grand jury about Morgan’s involvement?”

Unresponsive again, his eyes landed on her son. She reached over and placed her business card on his bedside table. “Okay, Mr. Carmichael. Elias and I are very grateful for your time. Someone from the
Seattle Times
might be coming here or calling. His name’s Trevor Stiles, and you don’t have to talk to him or anybody else. Understand? I don’t want you to have to go through this again. You’ve made your peace.”

There was no hint that he’d heard a word she’d said as a tall nurse sauntered in with a tray of hot food. Helen signaled to Elias to hold on.

The old man took his time examining the sliced beef and boiled peas. “It wasn’t a cop who snitched on Morgan,” he said before raising his fork. “From what I heard it was some guy on the liquor board, but who knows.” He turned to Elias. “So long, son.”