Truth Like the Sun (28 page)

She’d crossed into the realm of Secret Agent Bill Steele and all the idiosyncrasies and precautions that came with it. The files and briefcases he’d always keep locked, the distrust of cell phones and editors, the mumbled bluffs, demands and showdowns—real or imaginary—outwardly appearing to be working on something no more momentous than a bland weather story, the only thing blowing his cover being the color of his face. The bigger the story, the more sunburned he looked.

“They all want a piece of Morgan,” Steele muttered, talking faster, racing to get to whatever he really needed to tell her. “The
Times
’s I-team was told to drop everything until after the election. Everybody’s working on him.”

She doubted even Steele knew for certain what the competition was up to. More likely, this was part of his gambit to use competitive hysteria to get his bankruptcy opus into the paper. “Birnbaum says we should work through the night if we can,” he said abruptly, which sounded doubly suspect: that Birnbaum would say it and that Steele would give a shit. “I took the liberty of showing him your faxes.” Before she could digest that, he told her state Democrats were sending out another anti-Morgan mass mailing, with the LEGO photo captioned:
Do you really want this man playing with your city
?

After unlocking his briefcases, he laid out the clippings and personal information that the research staff had dug up on the nine alleged investors in Turner’s 1962 apartment-building project. “Reads like a who’s who of Seattle corruption,” he whispered, then saw her expression and switched to a normal voice. “Six of these guys were indicted in ’sixty-two or ’sixty-three for conspiracy involving illegal gambling and police payoffs. Just listen to who they were: Clive Buchanan, county prosecutor, Winston Edgell, deputy county prosecutor. Stephen Long, city council president. Ross O’Banion, county licensing director. Jonathan Reitan, county undersheriff.”

“What about Dave Beck?” she asked, looking at the list.

Steele raised his eyebrows. “He was the Teamsters boss who ran the Northwest for decades until he was nailed for tax evasion before this all shook out.”

“And Eddie Mills?” she asked.

“State liquor control board, no charges.” Steele shrugged. “The prosecutor probably gave him immunity for ratting out the others. And your Spokane pal, Sergeant Dennis P. Carmichael? He was indicted, yes, but for
perjury
. So, unfortunately, your golden source here, Helen,
is
a convicted liar.”

She covered her face with her hands.

“Hold on,” Steele said. “All that matters, of course, is whether what he told you is true. And this looks real, doesn’t it? I mean, we won’t find it in public records anywhere, but nobody’s required to file these things.”

She explained Carmichael’s theory that Turner didn’t necessarily know or care where the money came from.

“Bullshit. Mal Turner’s never done anything by accident. He might’ve just thought there was nothing to be afraid of. That’s the upside to doing crime with cops, right?”

“When’s the last time,” Helen asked, “you or anyone else wrote about any of this?”

“Ha! Never. Every time I pitched it, they demanded some magical peg. I’d say, How about this: ‘Not that long ago, this
good-government
city was run on bribes!’ ”

“So how’d it finally get busted up?”

“A few honest cops and an ambitious U.S. attorney. The whole thing dragged on for years. Ultimately,” he added, riffling through the clippings, “only a handful did real time.”

“So where does Morgan fit in?”

“Be pretty strange if he wasn’t in on it at some point. Looks to me like you’ve found his role,” he whispered. “He and his buddy Mal did the laundry.”

“Mom, who’s he?”

Helen turned to see Elias in the doorway. “You okay, buddy?” She walked over and squatted beside him. “This is Bill. He’s a friend from work.”

“My belly hurts,” he whined.

“That’s just the medicine. Remember the last time?” She put her
hand on his forehead, then steered him into her bedroom, signaling to Steele that she’d be back in a minute.

She coaxed Elias into bed and rubbed his tiny back, but he continued fidgeting. “Want me to tell you a story?”

“No.”

“Would you like me to play for you?”

“Uh-huh.”

She turned out the light and strummed Brahms’s lullaby in the dark. It worried her that apparently Steele had already convinced the editors that the list of investors was credible. She needed to think this through, but to do that she needed sleep. She played the lullaby a fourth time, heard her son’s heavy breathing, then tilted her head back until she caught herself snoring.

“I didn’t know you played the violin,” Steele said when she returned. “You’re good.”

“Not anymore.”

Before she could make the case for sleep, the phone rang on the coffee table in front of him, and he answered it as if he lived here. “Yes. Uh-huh,” he said, nodding. “Uh-huh …”

Helen reached over and pressed the speaker-phone button.

“Unfortunately,” a woman’s voice said, “they’re dead.”

“How recently?” Steele asked, turning down the speaker volume.

“One of ’em died three months ago. The other two in the eighties.”

“All natural?”

“They were old, Bill. Grand juries back then were retired folks and housewives. So they’ll either be ancient or dead. I’ll give it another scan, and keep looking for those missing bar owners.”

“There’s just one,” he said, turning to Helen. “Do we have a name?”

She shook her head.

“No name yet, Elaine.”

Helen gave him a tired smile after he hung up. “Look, I need sleep.”

He nodded slowly. “Go ahead. I’ll wait up to see if Elaine gets anywhere.”

“No. Tell her to call you at
your
home, Bill.”

Dropping his eyes, he clucked his tongue and slowly started gathering his files. By the time she brushed her teeth, he was finally heaving himself up off the couch.

When the phone rang again, he stared at her.

“Put her on the speaker,” Helen reluctantly said.

Elaine told them she’d found two possible matches on surviving jurors in Wenatchee and Ballard. “The ages are plausible, though the Ballard address doesn’t make any sense. Puts her on Forty-sixth, which isn’t residential.” She rattled off names and numbers and addresses, then waited for Steele’s permission to go home.

He was dialing the Wenatchee man before Helen could suggest he wait till morning.

“No!” a man said and hung up.

Steele raised his eyebrows, redialed. “Take me off your damn list!” the man snapped, then slammed his phone down.

Steele grinned. “Everybody hates solicitors.”

They stared at the Ballard woman’s name—Lilliana Strovich. Helen glanced at the microwave clock. “It’s almost eleven.”

“Yeah, but she’s only ten minutes from here, right? I’d go, but an old lady sees a guy my size at her door at this hour and she’ll call the cops.”

Helen closed her eyes and exhaled. “You want me to drive over there now.”

“Or just wait for the
Times
to interview her. I raised a couple boys without screwing them up too badly, Helen. I can stay here with your son till you’re back.”

She gathered up her things, weariness hanging on her like a lead dress.

“I know you already know this,” Steele began with the same fatherly tone she’d heard him use on kid reporters, “but you want her to think you’re just trying to understand things, okay? ‘Just trying to make sure that if we do put something in the paper, ma’am, we get it as accurate as possible.’ And whatever you do, don’t let her think it’s a big deal. She’s just a tiny piece of a huge puzzle we’re working
on, right? ‘Lots of people are talking to us. Oh boy, lots. But thanks so much for your help.’ Might want to pull your hair back or something. Lookin’ a bit … revolutionary.”

“Bill.”

“Sorry.”

“This isn’t my first barbecue.”

“I know. Hell, you think I don’t know that? And it’s a damn good look if you weren’t interviewing someone born in 1917.”

“I need fashion tips from a guy who can’t keep his fly zipped?”

He pointed at her neck while raising his zipper. “Can I ask about that?”

“No.”

“Sorry.”

“The blade on the guillotine,” she said flatly, heading for the door, “was dull.”

THE ADDRESS
had to be a mistake, since this stretch of Forty-sixth was highly industrial. But after passing a marine salvage yard, a transmission shop and a pesticide plant, she spotted a cottage with fake brick siding wedged between two massive concrete buildings, roses and rhododendrons flanking the front door. The motion-detecting porch light came on as she approached, and there was little delay between her knock and the rejoinder from inside.

“Still not for sale!”

“I’m not a realtor, Mrs. Strovich,” she replied loudly. “I’m a reporter with the
P-I
, and I’m sorry to call on you so late, ma’am.” The curtains shook. “But I really do need to talk with you tonight.”

“Well, good for you, but I
don’t
need to talk to you or anybody else. Said all I’m gonna say.”

Helen counted to five and knocked again.

The door cracked open. “What is it?” demanded the large silhouette.

“I apologize again, but did you serve on a grand jury here in ’sixty-two or ’sixty-three?”

“Lower your voice.”

“I’m talking to surviving jurors and would very much like a chance to ask you some of the same questions I’m asking the others.” She was afraid the door would close if she stopped talking. “Of course you can decline to comment, but I’m running out of time, which is why I’m here so late. Again, I’m sorry about that, but I’d greatly appreciate it if you could at least hear me out for a couple minutes.”

The door opened wider and the robed woman stepped forward.
“Surviving jurors,”
she mimicked. “Even if I could remember anything, I’m not allowed to discuss it. You know that. Good night.”

“Actually,” Helen bluffed, “the court lifted all those restrictions seventeen years ago. And besides, if you always did what people told you, I’m guessing you wouldn’t still be living here.”

The woman snickered, left the door ajar and retreated. “Awake now anyway,” she bellowed over her shoulder. “You can help me with this pie. My sister won’t stop bringing ’em over. I keep telling her, ‘Hey, it’s just me here now,’ but she never listens, ’specially when it comes to food or men.”

Helen stepped inside a room that smelled of chamomile, mildewed books and cats. Uncertain whether removing her shoes would seem polite or presumptuous, she kept them on and took in the room. A half-full coffee mug sat on a homemade doily, a half-finished crossword puzzle on a clipboard next to the rocker, two fir bookcases crammed with embossed spines. Wall pictures of her daughter or, probably, herself, standing next to an equally robust man, their heads swiveling toward the camera in synchronized delight. She glanced at the furniture for signs of cat claws, her nose already starting to itch.

The woman carried on in the kitchen as if chatting with someone else. “What’re you gonna do?” she concluded vaguely. Helen smiled agreeably, and got her first good look at the woman. Big-boned and pushing six feet, Lilliana Strovich was a sturdy eighty-four-year-old with a mole high on her left cheek and an underbite that accentuated her defiant demeanor.

“How about a cup of tea?” she asked, cutting the piecrust with a triangular spatula.

Helen hated tea. “Don’t want you to go to any—”

“What trouble?” She opened the microwave. “That’s the point of these things.”

“You have chamomile?” Helen asked.

“You’re in luck.”

As if expecting more visitors, Mrs. Strovich stared out the window while the water heated, then caught Helen eyeing the pile of realtor cards in the tureen. “That’s just last month. Could paper this house with ’em.” She cut a wide slice of pie and slid it onto a ceramic plate. “Dig in.”

Helen sat down and felt herself plunging with fatigue as she bit into the best pie she’d had since childhood. Mrs. Strovich put a steaming mug next to her plate and took the chair across the table, her eyes lingering on Helen’s face before dropping to her neck scar.

“Can’t get it through their heads that I don’t have a price,” she said. “They think it’s proof I’m crazy.” She grinned. “They figured there’s no way an old hag would stick it out through all this construction.”

“Isn’t the noise unbearable?”

“Not if I play Benny Goodman loud enough.”

“I don’t blame you. There’s nothing more annoying than moving.”

“Why should I? I don’t
have
to. They look at me like I’m talking Greek.”

“Good for you. I
am
Greek.”

The lady smiled her way back into her seventies.

Helen stopped midbite. “Must’ve been quite an experience being on that jury back then,” she said, then finished chewing. “Hard to believe all that happened in Seattle, isn’t it?”

“Oh, believe it, young lady. Offer people money, they’re gonna take it. ’Specially men.”

The pie soothed the itchy roof of her mouth. “Do you have a cat, Mrs. Strovich?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just thought,” Helen hesitated, “that I sensed one in here, but I don’t see …”

The woman’s eyes reddened around the rims. “Put Zoe down three weeks ago.”

Helen stopped chewing. “I know how it feels to lose a cat,” she lied, and didn’t blink, letting her itchy eyes water.

“I forget she’s not here at least twenty times a day. Keep seeing her in all the places she used to be, you know, just out of the corner of my eye. You could take out all the furniture and books and photos, and this house wouldn’t feel any emptier.”

Helen nodded solemnly and laid down her fork. “My sister married a bereavement counselor,” she said, another lie, “and I remember him saying that losing a longtime pet can be as hard to get over as losing a two-legged family member.”

Mrs. Strovich snorted. “Harder in my case, but you’d have to know my family to appreciate that. I spoiled her so much she got up to nineteen pounds.”