Truth Like the Sun (7 page)

Roger shakes hands and matches names to faces as cameras flash—who’s photographing him now?—and the muttering men praise the fair, the lounge, the weather, everything. When he can’t take it anymore, he points at Malcolm. “Talk to you for a minute?”

“Certainly! Honored to get an audience. ’Scuse me, fellas.”

The crowd noise forces Roger to speak louder. “Would appreciate it if you’d return my calls.”

Malcolm looks dumbfounded. “If anybody understands what it’s like to be
ridiculously busy
, I’d have thought it’d be you.”

Roger bends closer. “Why are you building already?”

“The apartments? Prep work,” he says slowly, as if to a child. “These things don’t pop up overnight, Roger. Gotta clear the land and lay the foundation while the weather holds.”

“You bought, cleared
and
started faster than you said you would. Nobody else is building.”

Malcolm starts to laugh, closes his mouth, smacks his lips and leans in. “Everybody’s snapping up properties, okay? Everything’s fine. More investors hopping on board all the time.” He snickers. “Never had someone gripe that I’m building too fast before.
C’mon
, Roger. You’re running the greatest show on earth here, and you’re worrying about what little old me is doing in my sandbox?”

Roger senses people just beyond his peripheral vision. “I just like it,” he says softly, “when people do what they say they’re going to.”

Malcolm nods sympathetically, as if the real issue is Roger’s temperament.

“Hilton Hotels,” Roger mumbles, “wants an acre between Forty-fifth
and Fiftieth just west of the freeway. If you can piece together a proposal they like within ninety days, they’ll pay well over appraisal.” He fishes a card from an interior pocket. “President’s name is Sizemore.” He glances up in time to see Teddy waving him over.

“Thanks,” Malcolm says, beaming once again. “Trust me, if I even take a leak on that Roanoke site, you’ll be the first to know.”

Teddy leans into him when he arrives. “Looked like you needed to be rescued from that weasel. Walk me out?”

Free at last, they stroll beneath muted stars. “These people all want a piece of you, Rog. You know that, right? You’re not stupid enough to think they
like
you. I mean, where were they even a year ago? Now they’re already asking, what’s next? If Roger can pull this off, what’s next? Did you have to glad-hand Vitullo?”

Roger squints. “The tavern owner?”

“Yeah, right. He runs strip clubs. The Firelight’s his cash cow. And he wants to open more.”

“How’d he get in here?”

“You tell me.”

“What’d the mayor have to say?”

“ ‘What a great fair!’ He’s a cheerleader now like the rest of ’em. And he, of course,
desperately
wants to meet Elvis if he shows up. Blah, blah, blah. Says this new U.S. attorney’s got his dick in a knot over what that bar owner said about the police. Guess he’s astonished,” Teddy whispers, “that in a state where gambling is illegal—surprise, surprise—there’s still a little wagering going on.”

“Ed Sullivan told me this place reminds him of Nevada.”

“Right. And I’m Marlon Brando’s twin brother. He was pulling your leg.”

“He’s not a joker.”

Teddy relights a cigarette he’d forgotten about.

“Weren’t you surprised to see Beck in there?” Roger asks.

“As good a place as any for people to kiss his ring.”

“He actually seems pretty harmless.”

Teddy laughs. “Be sure to mention that when you visit him in the clink.”

“He’ll get off, won’t he?”

“Not even Dave Beck gets off this time.”

“Bob Hope said he might swing by later.”

Teddy snorts. “Not a fan. Linda waiting up for you?”

“Yeah, I’ll get there eventually.”

Teddy grins. “You’ll hit the wall one of these days is what you’re gonna do.” He steps back, spins gracefully and starts off, flicking his Chesterfield ahead of him and squishing it under his heel without breaking stride.

“Who can sleep,” Roger half-shouts, revived and exuberant all over again, “when there’s only one hundred and fifty-one days left of this damn thing?”

Teddy raises a thumb up high without looking back.

Charging back inside, Roger notices six tables cluttered with dirty glasses and overflowing ashtrays. He doesn’t want to complain, so he grabs a tub and busses them himself, his swift efficiency clearing his head.

Afterward, he finds the governor off by himself, his eyes grazing on three young women at a nearby table, his smoldering cigarette confirming that he’s well into his second scotch. “Like to meet Count Basie?” Roger asks.

Big Ed’s eyes widen. “He’s here?”

“Follow me.”

Basie’s table is packed with new drunks, the lone holdover from his earlier entourage being the woman beside him, her luminous skin reflecting the light.

Before making introductions, Roger asks the governor what Teddy has been wanting him to ask for months now. “You hear anything to make you think the city or the fair could be a target?”

The governor squints to get a better look at Basie’s woman. “How do you mean?”

“Well, we’re putting in all these shelters and silos, right, and this is where the bombers are made,” Roger says reasonably. “And the Soviets didn’t want an exhibit, didn’t want to be here, period. So is there anything LBJ or anybody else told you beyond what the papers say?”

“Hard to know,” Big Ed says sheepishly. “I don’t read the papers.”

After the governor finishes flattering Basie and ogling his date, he meanders off. Then Roger grabs another whiskey and plops down across from the bandleader.

“What makes a city great, Mr. Basie?”

“To tell the truth,” he says in a deep voice, “yours is a bit white for me.” His ice-sucking woman joins him in a smile.

“That’s changing,” Roger says. “What do you look for in a city?”

“The right amount of sin, I guess. Not too much, not too little. Excitement without corruption. Though they’re all corrupt, right?—least the ones worth living in. You can get anything you want here in ten minutes, so I’m told.”

“So I’m told,”
his woman mimics, then laughs an ice cube right out of her delighted mouth that skates across the table and spins in front of Roger, who pops it in his mouth before she can apologize—her ringed fingers suspended in midair astonishment—and realizes as the laughter rises and he swallows the ice that he’d better not have another drink.

The lounge fills with yet another wave of boozy VIPs and favor seekers. Surprisingly, the fair’s arts director is still around, smoking while waiting in line for the restroom. He ambles over and asks her how the moderns are faring versus the classics.

“You mean the
pompous trivia
?” she says.

It wasn’t just the deep tone of Meredith Stein’s voice that stood out, but its swagger.

“That
Times
critic is an idiot,” he says. “The mods are marvelous.”

She smiles warily. “I agree, of course, but most don’t.” He watches her slow exhale. Beamy and full-cheeked, she’s straddling the line between chubby and voluptuous with the devil-may-care confidence that alcohol gives some people, one spiked heel toppled to the side so her left foot can rub the wall behind her like a cat clawing a couch. She switches the black cigarette holder to her right hand and swings a diamond into view as if she was reading his mind.

“I’d love to spend some time with those paintings when nobody else is around,” Roger hears himself saying, noticing the perfect print of her lips along the rim of her half-empty glass.

Laughter crests behind him, but her eyes don’t let go. A thick
eyebrow rises, her puffy lips loosen around the long cigarette. Out comes more smoke. “It’s your fair.”

“Well no, it sure isn’t, but I’d like to just the same. I think, by the way,” he says, gently but positively, “that one of your Pollocks is upside-down.”

On the way out, he watches the strip-club guy cornering Governor Lopresti. He feels he ought to protect Big Ed, but he seems to be enjoying himself, so Roger strolls by them and through the closed fairgrounds and waves down a taxi.

“Just visiting?” the cabbie asks before he can spit out Linda’s address.

He pictures her waiting for him, her hair in curlers, puffing a cigarette, flipping through fashion magazines. “Yeah,” he says now. “Here for the fair and whatever else I can find.”

“What you lookin’ for?”

“Whaddaya got?”

The cabbie laughs, pulling away from the curb. “Had this fat guy climb in here a week ago and ask me where the flagellants are. That’s right,
flagellants
. I couldn’t help him, but I can probably get you what you need. Something for your head? That’s easy. If it’s girls, let me know if you want young or old. It gets pricier the higher you go up the hill. The best of the eight houses I know of is near Broadway and Harrison. Actually got red carpet in there—New Orleans–style. Business is great all over, though. And no discounts during the fair. No, sir. Boys? Men? Cards? Small stakes, high stakes, punchboards, pinball, bingo—we’ve got a dozen parlors. Porno, slots?”

“Cards,” Roger says, feeling an exhilarating loss of control. “The biggest card game that’s close by.”

“Well, take your pick. They’re all close, and I’m not sure which is the biggest. The New Caledonia, the Turf, the J&M, the Seaport …”

“Seaport.”

The taxi coasts down Denny to First, then descends into Pioneer Square. Drop a bag of marbles almost anywhere in Seattle and they’ll end up down here. It’s been years since Roger has seen this part of town after midnight, and back then it’d been just a smattering of honky-tonks and hobos. But there’s a rich mix of people now, in
rags and suits, even some dresses. He feels as if he’s dropped into a different city altogether or slipped through the wall from West into East Berlin.

He tips the cabbie and steps out into curb trash—an empty pint, a crushed Rainier can, a soiled T-shirt. Up the street, a uniformed cop jokes with a leggy, booted blonde while Roger ducks into a dimly lit, windowless bar shuddering with the crash, rattle and bells of too many games. The far-right wall, he slowly realizes, is covered with pinball machines and the men lined up to use them. Following the cabbie’s advice on what to mumble to the bartender, and how generously to tip her, he’s directed into the card room.

Surprisingly, it’s bigger and smellier than the bar out front, reeking of cigars, armpits and something vaguely tidal, with eleven octagonal felt tables, each surrounded by as many as seven silent men. The card-room manager signals him over.

“Three or five?” he asks without looking up, as the cabbie said he would.

“Let’s start with five,” Roger mumbles.

The manager takes the money, hands him the chips and points to an empty seat at a game with bids up to five dollars.

Half the men at his table look like they’ve been sleeping outside. The others are clean-shaven, two of them wearing suits. He wishes he had a hat and avoids everyone’s eyes until he notices they’re already ducking his. It’s five-card stud, and they take turns dealing. He orders another drink, mimics the prevailing slouch and watches his chips get raked away, not minding the loss, feeling only a flickering thrill.

When he finally stands up, his head spinning slightly, he veers toward the manager. “Know a man named Robert Dawkins?” he asks, and something flashes in the man’s bored eyes. “I’m his nephew,” Roger lies. “Might not’ve been around for quite a while. Played lots of cards, though.”

The manager looks past him to the tables, shaking his bearded head.

“What about Charlie McDaniel, that bar owner who complained about the police when he shut down? Know where I’d find him?”

“You a cop or a snitch?”

Roger laughs. “Neither, sir.”

“Then why you askin’?”

“So you do know them.”

“
Beat
it.”

To the left of the exit, there’s a filthy aquarium. He gets close enough to see a dozen giant goldfish floating on the surface, with another dozen desperately sucking the air above the foul water. He wants to tell someone the fish are suffocating, but it’s all he can do to wobble into the reviving air of the cooling night.

He passes a crowd of men in suits he doesn’t recognize and relishes the anonymity, feeling like a double agent, a drunken one, yes, but a man fully capable of indulging multiple lives. He lifts his head and strides up First Avenue, half-expecting his father to step out from an awning and say, in an uplifting tone, “Helluva fair you’re runnin’ here, sport.”

“W
HAT DO WE
really know about him? Is he a serious candidate? Isn’t he too old?” The managing editor, Charles Birnbaum, paced in front of the packed conference room cradling his Stanford mug with both hands while Helen Gulanos and a dozen editors and columnists waited for his questions to end. “Is this a pipe dream or a stunt? What do we truly know except that he’s a seventy-year-old legend who ran our World’s Fair?”

The morning meeting was hijacked by the
Times
article, which didn’t actually break new ground, but its then-and-now photos of Morgan in the exact same pose, pointing with his left forefinger as if shooting the photographer, were provocative enough to spread consternation that, God forbid, they were getting beat here.

Birnbaum stared at Lundberg, a multichinned walrus who’d been ruminating over city and state politics both in and out of his column for twenty-three years now. “So, who is this guy,
really
?”

Lundberg didn’t burn a calorie summoning a reply before Webster, a blue-blazered editorial writer who’d been here even longer, blurted, “He was the most important guy to have on your side if you wanted to get any civic project off the ground for two or three decades after the fair. Led the defense of the Market, helped turn Gas Works into a park, played a role in saving farmlands and got the Kingdome built, among other things. Then, I guess, he helped establish height limits on skyscrapers in the mid-eighties and … I don’t know what else.” Webster scanned the room, palms up. “Guess you’d have to call him a political consultant, too, though he’s never publicly endorsed anyone I know of.” He glanced at Lundberg, who
was preoccupied with balancing a loafer on his toes. “Also been told he’s advised all sorts of companies,” Webster added, less confidently now, “on how to deal with the city, state and feds, though I don’t know that he’s ever registered as a lobbyist. Lundy?”