Truth Like the Sun (6 page)

Omar Duran was the executive director of Small Footprint, a one-man nonprofit advocating tiny cars and houses, less trash and fewer possessions. When Helen called for a quote on a global-warming story, she’d found him so entertaining that she profiled him a week later. The photos alone were worth it—six-foot-three Omar crammed inside his Smart Car, and another of him standing next to his tiny houseboat.

“I’m no fan of the mayor, but at least we know what he’ll do.” He leaned across the table so only she could hear. “He’s into
appearing
green, not
being
green.” His eyes scanned hers for comprehension. “Makes pledges he has no intention of fulfilling. There’s no real commitment to anything beyond stroking his own carrot.”

“Charming endorsement,” Helen said, increasingly impatient,
though her tone remained gentle. “But I’m not writing about the mayor.”

Having learned long ago not to socialize with radicals, she’d ducked Omar’s prior attempts to coax her out for coffee, yet here she was with this uncompromising enviro-madman on the edge of Pioneer Square sitting outside Café Bengodi in brilliant rush-hour daylight, a pint of Guinness on his side of the table, an ice water on hers, all because he’d hinted that he might have something on Roger Morgan.

The sudden screech of a violin somewhere in the square launched a flock of pigeons into the sky behind him, followed by a messy two-octave scale in A minor and another piercingly high G sharp. Helen chided herself that this was how bad she’d sound if she didn’t practice more. Glancing back down, she caught Omar staring at the scar that ran like a pink bead of caulk across the base of her neck and resisted offering her standard explanation that the noose broke.

“Look, I’m not an environmental reporter, and I’m not even covering this race, okay? I wrote a quickie daily because Morgan announced when I happened to be there. I’m writing about the fair, not …” She glanced at her ringing phone, saw her mother’s number flashing on the screen. “My editor,” she said. “I’ve gotta run, but please tell me what you’ve heard.”

“Can I tell you something else first?”

Checking her watch, she felt the mounting pressure to go pick up her son before she got trapped in traffic. Eight joggers grunted past, followed by the whoosh of three bicyclists in skin-tight neon. “No,” she said softly, “you can’t. And I’m sorry, but I doubt you’ve got anything really useful anyway.”

He laughed and finished his beer. “O ye of no faith.”

She grabbed her satchel, slid her chair back without any intention of leaving and listened to the deranged outdoor violinist make the opening to Bach’s Sonata no. 1 in G Minor sound like a wounded cat.

“There’s an old gadfly I’ve known ever since I moved here,” he said. “Used to make a career out of suing the city for this and that. Probably in his mid-seventies by now. Not an altogether appealing guy, to be honest, but his shit checks out.”

She held her bag across her chest, as if she was still about to flee.

“He challenged the cruise ships coming in here. Lots of people were pissed, though he’s the only one to give ’em hell at every turn. But he does everything behind the scenes. Practically nobody’s heard of him.”

There was no obvious reason to find Omar appealing, especially if you broke him into parts—gap-toothed smile, boxer’s nose, sunken eyes and a receding hairline yanked back into a short ponytail he obsessively retightened. Maybe it was his irreverence, how he left price tags on his Value Village shirts so you could see how little he paid for them. Or perhaps his boyish enthusiasm reminded her of Elias. His Midwest roots also probably helped, though almost everybody she’d met came from somewhere else, which made this the perfect city, she thought, for fugitives like herself.

“This guy lives alone on the backside of Queen Anne in a little dump
filled
with papers,” Omar continued, patting the air next to his chair to help her visualize the stacks. “It’s not that he’s insane, you know. Just a pack rat. Well, maybe he is nuts, but he keeps meticulous files on
everyone
he doesn’t like.”

Helen had always been able to sense when somebody was about to say something that might give a story life. The catch was, you had to be the sort of person they wanted to tell it to, and everyone’s different. Some need to be shoved. With others you just hunkered down and waited quietly, like birds do when they feel the air thinning before a storm.

Her phone went off again. It was Shrontz now. She turned off the ringer and looked back to Omar. “Yes?”

“He doesn’t forget or forgive anything.”

“Okay.”

“He’s known Morgan since before the fair. Claims he’s got a file he’s been compiling since back then just in case he was ever dumb enough
—his words
—to run for anything.”

Helen sipped water to hide her excitement. The streets had gone strangely quiet, as if all the cars had picked another route and someone had paid the violinist to shut up.

“Know what he calls Morgan?” Omar asked.

She shook her head, unable to block her smile.

“The False Prince.”

ROGER CHECKED
his voice messages, half of them from reporters requesting interviews. “Wake up, Teddy.”

“Huh?”

“We’re almost at your place.” He turned to face him. “What do you know about that young
P-I
woman who showed up at the party?”

Teddy smacked his lips. “The new girl?”

“Yeah. She wants an interview. What do we know about her?”

“Well, she’s got an amazing head of hair, that’s for sure.”

“Thanks, pal. That’s a big help. Can you call your favorite columnist over there and find out about her?”

Teddy groaned himself upright. “She looks like she stepped right out of a shampoo commercial.”

R
OGER TRIES
to keep it to two whiskeys, but a third slides down and it’s all he can do to stop himself from hugging everyone as Club 21 overflows with suited men and perfumed women waiting to pay homage, to get a picture or have a word with him, or more likely to request a favor now that the fair’s such a hit—in the words of
Life
magazine, “an exposition of soaring beauty and unique impact.” He tries to say yes to everything. Yes to tickets to the Ice Follies, San Francisco Ballet and Count Basie Orchestra. Yes to arranging meetings with the chamber, the mayor and, perhaps, the governor. Yes to more passes into this VIP lounge. Yes, yes, yes! He’ll do what he can, and usually does while simultaneously squeezing as much as he can into his days, running on reminders in a pocket notebook and three hours of sleep. Even his dreams don’t give him a break anymore. He’s always at the fair.

Mostly local notables in here tonight—the city attorney, the public-works gang, the rumpled mayor, the nearly blind city planner chatting with the nearly bald Malcolm Turner. Roger waits for an opening to speak with the manic little developer while absorbing praise.
Good God, you must be tickled to death!
Nimbly bouncing from person to person; he recalls his father working crowds like this, rolling up his sleeves and pointing at you, his thumb cocked, as if toasting or shooting you, engaging everyone without committing to anyone. Teddy, as usual, takes the opposite tack, cornering key people in deep conversations while occasionally swapping eyebrow-shrugging status reports with Roger, who finds Count Basie himself in a back booth with friends. He hopes like hell he hasn’t already
missed all of Basie’s shows. He doesn’t want to
miss
anything. The more he sees, the more he needs to see.

A portly man with a bowling ball head and milky blue eyes blocks his path and offers his hand without extending it, forcing Roger to step closer. “Mr. Morgan,” he says. “Dave Beck.”

“Of course,” Roger says, recognizing the Teamsters boss once he gets over being startled.

Beck pulls him closer. “I’m told you run one heck of a fair,” he says in a boyish whisper.

The compliment feels suspect, seeing how everyone says Beck runs everything and had all the fair workers signed up with one of his unions. “Thank you, sir,” Roger says, matching Beck’s sustained grip and wondering when he’ll get his hand back.

He glimpses Malcolm Turner talking the ear off another bureaucrat, and also notices Meredith Stein in animated conversation, her large glass of red suggesting she occasionally slips out of character as the fair’s imposing arts director. He’d dropped into her galleries again this afternoon, striding past the classics to the mods, where half an hour blew by in what felt like a few minutes. The man she’s talking to pivots enough for Roger to see it’s Sid Chambliss. Almost three years had passed since he’d told the feisty attorney that the fair needed the Freemasons’ Nile Temple at Third and Thomas. He’d played a similar unpopular role with the state board picking the freeway route, his name burbling through subsequent lawsuits claiming unlawful condemnation, as if he alone decided which buildings lived and died.

“Let me know if you need
anything
,” Beck says, finally releasing his hand, narrowing his eyes. “You hear?”

“Same goes for you, Mr. Beck.” Part of looking comfortably in charge, Roger has learned, requires offering help, not requesting it. “You let
me
know.”

He intercepts Chambliss by cutting in front of a business columnist for the
Times
.

“Sid!” Roger says festively, grabbing his shoulder. “Glad you made it!”

Chambliss looks aghast. “I suggest,” he says, leaning in with his
bourbon breath, “that you don’t misread things. Business, not pleasure, brings me here.”

“Never understood that distinction,” Roger mock-whispers back.

Chambliss hesitates and leans closer, his freckles looking like some tropical disease running into his hairline. “We’re going ahead with the suit. You know that, right?”

Roger rocks backward and laughs, noticing Teddy watching, feeling the
Times
man listening. “You’re very welcome,” he half-shouts. “Enjoy yourself!” He turns and starts for Malcolm Turner but is waylaid by women demanding photos with him, their intoxication and the lighting making them all look far chummier than they actually are. When he turns to look past the shapely woman next to him, her bright smile blocks his view, and his left hand, he realizes, is lingering on the small of her back. If he makes eye contact and doesn’t keep moving, he knows he might wake up with her. He excuses himself and feels overheated now, wishing he hadn’t provoked Chambliss. He signs three fair programs and grants more pleas for passes, tickets and appearances. Sure, he’ll try to make it. Yes,
of course
!

The governor lumbers inside now and draws an immediate posse. Jovial and inarticulate, Big Ed Lopresti often shows up at the club and, to Roger’s surprise, occasionally closes the place.

Several more men crowd Malcolm Turner, hinged at their hips, hanging on the little man’s words. Roger’s view gets blocked, and again a large hand is dangled in front of him.

“Mr. Morgan, just wanted to reintroduce myself. Clive Buchanan.”

“Of course.” Roger shakes enthusiastically, staring up into the county prosecutor’s nostrils.

“Congrats,” Buchanan says coolly, then picks his words without releasing his grip. “Seems you know what you’re doing.”

“Glad it appears that way.”

“I didn’t realize you and Malcolm were friends.” Buchanan’s chin twitches toward the developer. “That’s terrific.”

“Why’s that?” he asks, but the prosecutor has nothing to add and finally yields to a sweaty-palmed council candidate angling for Roger’s
support, followed by a mass-transit advocate pushing for a September levy, an auto lobbyist soliciting advice on how to kill the same measure, and a sociology professor who, at Roger’s convenience, of course, would like to discuss the fair’s impact on the city. Then a man who doesn’t bother to introduce himself informs him that the French exhibit, particularly its movie, is
an absolute travesty
! Roger’s face remains wide-eyed and curious long after he quits listening. He finally excuses himself, spots Teddy entertaining the mayor—waving both hands the way he does whenever he’s telling stories—and peels off toward Malcolm, moving too briskly for anything beyond smiles and nods, pretending not to hear his name being called, bottling his mounting irritations—all these doubters and doomsayers sucking at his trough. The self-righteousness of Sid Chambliss flickers inside him like a severed power line. And now, watching Malcolm Turner in action, he senses something reckless and loose-lipped about him that he’d mistaken for enlightenment.

Perhaps he’d placed too much stock in their similar ages and backgrounds. Both dropped out of the U and rose rapidly, Roger in restaurants, Malcolm in real estate. Yet the differences were more telling. Malcolm was married, had four children, drove a new Cadillac and owned a suburban mansion. Roger had a fiancée, no kids, a dented Impala and a Queen Anne bungalow he shared with his mother. Still, they were both good at dreaming aloud. Mal flipped downtown properties the way other developers bought and sold suburban houses—demolishing, rebuilding, reselling and leapfrogging into bigger buildings. And listening to him babble at times, Roger could imagine the entire skyline filling in. It was Mal’s relentless pestering that persuaded him to invest in a project near the incoming freeway. What else was he going to do with the money that was piling up for the first time in his life? Mal had a fancy name for his future apartment complex—
The Borgata: A Villa by the Sea
—even before he’d figured out where it would be built, which was where Roger kicked in. Unfurling a battered map, Mal had circled four intersections with a red pen and asked which would ultimately become the most convenient location. All Roger did was point a trembling
pinky at the circle a block away from the future Roanoke Street on-ramp.

By the time Roger gets to him now, Malcolm is doubled over, glassy-eyed with mirth, raising his hands in mock surrender. “The man of the hour! You know everybody, right?”

Roger surveys the unfamiliar smirkers as Malcolm rattles off names and titles: “Jon Reitan, undersheriff, Rudy Costello, Northwest Games, and Michael Vitullo, tavern owner and notorious rascal.”