Truth Like the Sun

by Jim Lynch

“What do you care?”

  A man with an eye patch steps closer. “Spare another quarter?”

  “No, but I’ve got a buck for the best story of why you ended up here.”

  They joke among themselves as if he’s not there. One coughs uncontrollably. Roger watches a cop stroll past and nods at him. “What do they actually do down here?”

  “Besides harass us for money?”

  “C’mon.”

  “Pay to stay. That’s their slogan,” says the tall one. “I’ll go first.”

  “Your little Spokane story?” one of them whines.

  “You’ll get your chance.” Roger lights himself a cigarette, savoring the woody flavor. “Fleeing Spokane for Seattle. From the top, take one. Let’s hear it.”

  Several hours later, he feels strangely clearheaded, even clairvoyant, his ambitions and curiosities and temptations all seemingly merging, as if it’s entirely possible that he might actually understand the city and life itself before sunrise, though he notices the first glimmers in the eastern tree line while climbing out of a cab on Capitol Hill near Harrison and Broadway.

  He springs up cobblestone steps to the stately Victorian he’d assumed had been converted into a duplex, not a brothel. On the top step, he teeters and sways, regaining his balance as nearby robins greet the new day. When the door opens, he glides into the perfumed entryway on a red carpet so plush his steps make no sound, and all his senses rise up. He feels capable of so much more.

  Chapter Eight

  MAY 2001

  HER DESK was buried in 1962; a brittle, sun-yellowed souvenir edition of the Seattle Times on the eve of the fair, musty Argus weeklies from April through October, the official guide and entertainment calendar, two cheerful books celebrating the expo, a panoramic map with a hokey introduction explaining that Paul Bunyan built Mount Rainier with his bare hands. Pinned above her desk was a photo of a shirtless Elias, flexing muscles he didn’t yet have, and five of Roger Morgan—two taken in ’62, one at the Market in 1972, another when he addressed the city council in 1981, the last in the rain outside the MLK Center nine days ago.

  Her original assignment had merged completely with the paper’s coverage of his candidacy. Lundberg was looking into his political consulting while city hall and statehouse reporters were gauging his influence in Seattle and Olympia through the years. Helen was concentrating on the fair, as everyone now agreed that it warranted more than another standard rehash. The jolt of teamwork sent a unifying current through a newsroom unnerved by the layoff of three young reporters and the closing of two bureaus that week. Along with this temporary setback, as Birnbaum spun it, was the announcement of smaller news holes—keep stories tighter!—and rumors of stingy buyout offers for old-timers. So what better diversion from all these harbingers of a shrinking—or dying—business than scrambling to stay ahead of the Times on a humdinger story like this?

  Marguerite strode over and squatted next to Helen’s desk and said, nearly nose-to-nose with her, “Let’s rock this joint!” Helen had no idea what she meant but her scalp tingled.

  She’d made the mistake of telling her about the False Prince comment. So it was no longer a secret—those two words were on everyone’s lips—though Omar still hadn’t produced his gadfly. She procrastinated, clearing her head, flipping through junk mail, redlining on espresso, reorganizing her final round of questions, waiting for Morgan’s call, trying not to dwell on the fact that she needed to file a draft by tomorrow and cover the debate this afternoon.

  Vague and anonymous tips continued to pour in. He’s a womanizer, a boozer, a serial home wrecker with at least a half dozen kids out of wedlock and, worst of all in Seattle, a Republican. And he isn’t as healthy as he looks. Ask him about his hip replacements! Just ask. And, of course, the clichéd tip she’d received everywhere she’d ever worked: Follow the money. As one caller put it: “Ask Mr. Storyteller how he got so rich.”

  She kept all this to herself, so the editors wouldn’t panic about Times reporters getting the same leads—as they no doubt were—and try to rush her. The paper also was receiving bundles of handwritten letters from people who were thrilled and grateful that the Great Roger Morgan—a phrase several actually used—was willing to sacrifice his privacy and retirement to rescue their city.

  She’d had only two brief phone calls with him since her ride-along. Yet, during those chats, he rattled off so many facts and impressions she’d already collected that it felt as if he’d written the history of the fair himself and that the city simply nodded along as he told it.

  She’d already finished a draft of “Roger at the Fair.” There was more sweep and bullshit than she’d like, but given how hard it was to dredge up any fresh material, it felt oddly illuminating, or at least not fawning. It conceded the consensus view that the fair transformed stodgy postwar Seattle, though she pointed out that the so-called Father of the Fair actually came late to the party, three years after the idea hatched, and that his salary of $30,000 was controversially high in 1962—the equivalent of about $250,000 today. She also noted that the Seattle expo wasn’t as popular as the ones in Brussels and New York preceding and following it, and its profitability claims were exaggerated by federal subsidies. And that there was no way of knowing how many of the ten million visitors were local repeats who just couldn’t get enough. Leafing through old articles, she even found nuggets of criticism lost in the avalanche of accolades. Still, it was less a reporting job than a writing exercise, largely a matter of tone, finesse and pace. Glancing at her editor, she felt herself bracing for battles over words.

  TWO HOURS BEFORE the debate, Roger was trying to raise his act to high theater, his British accent in all its versatile splendor producing voices for Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore and the rest. He’d reminded himself that he was performing the book, not just reading it. And his audience of one was right there with him, upright and big-eyed in bed, listening intently to every word. When he described the arrival of Harry’s mail-delivering owl, his mother’s face brightened with delight. “Oh, I adore Hedwig,” she said.

  Roger slowed his pace as he neared the end of the chapter. “ ‘There was a long pause, during which Dumbledore stared at the slip in his hands, and everyone in the room stared at Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore cleared his throat and read out—“Harry Potter.” ’ ”

  “Oh, how wonderful,” she whispered before visibly winding down from the strain of listening so intensely. “Dumbledore is such a great man,” she said, her eyelids drooping. “Though I do worry that he can’t protect my Harry. Don’t you, Roger? Harry is still far too young to be pitted against He Who Cannot Be Named.”

  HE CALLED HER a half an hour before the debate, while they were both driving toward the club. She pulled over in a bus zone to take notes.

  “What were you really doing during the fair?” she asked, scrambling now to find her list of questions. “I mean, besides running it? What did it mean to you? What were you getting out of it?”

  Roger chuckled. “I was trying to figure things out, how the world worked, little things like that.” He sounded at once fatigued and nostalgic. “I was asking lots of questions and watching everything really closely. There was this odd sense of profundity to that fair that’s hard to explain. Part of it was that I was very young for my role. And everything’s more profound when you’re young, isn’t it?” She waited through a long pause. “But see, I was trying to put my finger on something.… Hold on, I gotta take a left here.… All right, I’m back. Still there?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It was an odd time in my life, and in this city and the world, is what I guess I’m trying to say.”

  “What was so weird about it?”

  “Oh my God, everything. We were on the brink of nuclear war, the city was flatlining and then suddenly we’re the center of the universe. Least that’s how it felt. It was just a fair, but … Well, I was meeting every big shot and learning how Seattle worked at the same time, both over and under the table.
You know what it feels like to try to understand everything at once?” He laughs. “And yes, I was in charge, sure, but things were out of control.”

  THE NARROW LAWN in front of the Rainier Club was an exotic green flash in the city’s darkest canyon of steel and glass, Helen noticed, as she followed an elderly stampede through a canopied entryway into this brick, five-story timepiece. The club hadn’t admitted women until 1978, she’d read, and remained a vaunted, if waning, symbol of Seattle’s good-old-boy royalty.

  So many of the overdressed elderly and the underdressed media had pressed into the Heritage Room that dozens of irked old-timers were routed into a nearby room and would have to listen to the debate through loudspeakers. Finally, the moderator and the three candidates settled in front of the darkly paneled wall beneath chandeliers with fake candles.

  Mayor Rooney’s bulging neck had already jettisoned his collar button, which made him look scruffy in this crowd. Councilwoman Christine Norheim, the only woman besides Helen wearing pants, came off as a tomboy with her short frosted hair and muted jewelry. Roger Morgan, however, appeared to have stepped right out a decades-old Brooks Brothers catalogue in his three-piece and polished wingtips. And Norheim’s tepid opening remarks about her desire to serve the city, and her sense that despite the mayor’s best efforts it’s time for a change, were followed by a completely different opener from Morgan.

  “Many people move here as an act of hope,” he began. “Or they happen upon it on a glorious day and can’t resist the idea of living here. Still others come here on the run from someplace else, chased by something they probably can’t describe. They pile up along our waterfront like birds tempted to follow the sun farther west, and they want more from life, which is the good side of ambition, right? Yet so many of these people who feel like they’ve personally discovered this city are getting priced right out of it. If only the wealthy are welcome here, we’re doomed because we’ll lose the mix that has always made this place original and enjoyable. We need to continue to be a destination where all kinds of people can start over. As much as we consider this place ours, it’s a city of newcomers. Always has been, always should be.”

  The moderator hesitated, waiting to see if any more was coming, as did the journalists, who were uncertain if anything he’d said constituted news. Helen jotted down every last word—always should be—and was looking around the room, smiling. In this lair of old money, he was advocating for dreamers who washed up here but couldn’t afford a house, once again demonstrating his willingness—no, his desire—to gamble and provoke. Yet most of the audience seemed charmed, not offended, savoring the rhythm of his words.

  And the moderator was grinning as he said, “Mr. Mayor, you have thirty seconds to respond.”

  “I enjoyed listening to him like everybody else,” Douglas Rooney said over the laughter. “I don’t know if anything he just said has anything to do with overseeing ten thousand employees, but I sure did enjoy it.” The mayor then explained it was essential that he be granted one more term to finish all the important work now under way. “Have we been perfect? No, we certainly have not.” He then rattled off his recent accomplishments, as if an admission of imperfection provided more than enough humility, and finished in a flurry of optimism that concluded with his sincere hope that his challengers would join him in vowing to run campaigns free of innuendo.

  “Are you thinking of something one of your opponents has said in particular?” the moderator asked.

  “Well, I have heard Mr. Morgan make what I consider an inaccurate characterization of our police department,” Rooney said gently. “I think he unfairly exploited a recent incident involving a tragic shooting to cast our officers in a very negative light. He also, according to reports, questioned the integrity of our building inspectors. Let me just say that these comments do not sound like the fair analysis of anyone with a prudent temperament.”

  Morgan smiled. “May I please respond?”

  The moderator nodded. “Thirty seconds.”

  “It’s pretty clear that Douglas can out-innuendo me any day of the week. By questioning my temperament, I believe he just innuendoed that I’m crazy, which I’d like to think would be hard to prove.” He stopped the laughter with an open palm. “Truth is, we’re probably as crooked as most big cities and have been for decades. Don’t think so? Go ask people who’ve challenged city hall or crossed this mayor.” He plowed on as Rooney shook his big head and raised a finger to speak. “Ask them,” Morgan said, his voice climbing, “if they’ve had any problems getting driveway or building permits. Or, better yet, take on city hall yourself, and see if maybe you don’t have troubles with your garbage pickup or getting your power turned back on or your roads plowed. My point is, the mayor shouldn’t be so quick to brag about running such a fabulously clean city.”

  Rooney’s eyes bulged. “Where are the facts, Mr. Morgan? Where are the specifics?”

  “Mr. Mayor,” the moderator interrupted, “we need to stick to the format here because—”

  “Can I get in on this?” Norheim blurted, then conceded she, too, found some of Mr. Morgan’s comments inflammatory, yet considered some of the mayor’s claims misleading as well, the audience fidgeting as she described the interactive and responsive city hall she intended to lead.

  Morgan finally got another chance to speak. “In the mayor’s defense, his job’s a bit ridiculous these days. It’s not only harder to buy city hall, it’s getting harder to steer it. But as for Douglas’s indignation over my lack of specifics, I thought I’d mention one little thing I’ve noticed, which is that he recently received the maximum campaign contribution allowed from Michael Vitullo, a five-time felon and the owner of several strip clubs in our fair city.”

  It’s not just his words, Helen told herself. It’s his posture, his fingers laced casually behind his head. She’d never seen anyone push the truth-telling-candidate routine quite this far, and it thrilled every bone in her reporter’s body. If she were writing about a bank robber, she’d want him to be the next Jesse James. A bootlegger? The next Capone. She wanted the best.

  The moderator allotted the mayor several minutes to lecture on campaign finance rules. “Anyone can contribute up to six hundred and fifty dollars,” he repeated for the hard-of-hearing. “What I can tell you, unequivocally, is that I’ve never done anyone any favors based on their support for any one of my campaigns.”

  Morgan snickered. “I’m sorry,” he said, but couldn’t stop grinning.

  Rooney raised the innuendo flag again, more forcefully this time, before the moderator granted Councilwoman Norheim a chance to detail her vision of a transparent online government that encouraged input and scrutiny.

  Asked to assess the recent dot-com implosion, Norheim and the mayor dropped the names of companies that were still hiring and discussed fruitful cross-training programs available to laid-off techies.

  Then Morgan offered his take: “I know a lot of people got hurt, but we can only build so high on hype. Many of these companies were just paper tigers whose products and services, if they had any, weren’t needed. The sad part is, more wealth was generated per capita in this city during the latter half of the nineties than perhaps any city ever, yet we have little to show for it other than the mayor’s happy talk about us leading the new world economy.”

  Rooney spluttered, “The legendary booster is giving me grief for trying to make this a world-class city?” The crowd seemed equally amused by this, which emboldened him to add, “We don’t even know how you make a living, Mr. Morgan.”

  After the moderator finished stammering, Morgan calmly said, “I’m a civic handyman who helps people with their campaigns and their conflicts and their ideas. Some people pay for the advice. Others get it for free, as I believe you did, Douglas. And don’t get me wrong. You’re not a bad mayor. You just lack original thoughts.”

  Rooney tried to smile, but then barked, “This is outrageous. I would’ve expected more from you than insults and the sort of campai
gning voters hate.” Buoyed by mild applause, he began listing his accomplishments again, then interrupted himself to say, “Please answer one simple question: What exactly have you done? What record are you running on? Congrats on the fair, but is there anything you’ve done in recent history that we should be aware of?”

  The moderator raised his hands in mock surrender when Norheim jumped in to straddle the fence. When she was done, Morgan said, “What have I done recently? I’ve been alive. I kayaked down part of the Amazon. I rode a glider into the Grand Canyon. I went spelunking in Spain and sailed around Vancouver Island. I bungee-jumped at Wild Waves with my grandson a year ago. I wrote a lot of bad poetry and essays. And what I’ve kept coming back to is a desire to try, in my own way, to help this city live up to its potential. But, Douglas, does it really matter what we did or didn’t do twenty-five or thirty years ago? Is any of that relevant to voters today?”

  Rooney hesitated, like a trout that just spotted a fly too sumptuous to be real. “Well, yes, I believe so,” he said. “More importantly, I think voters do too.”

  “Well, then I guess they’ll want to know,” Morgan said slowly, “that you were briefly jailed for assaulting a baseball umpire twenty-seven years ago in Petoskey, Michigan. Do I have that right, or is this just innuendo?” He was talking too fast for the mayor to have a chance to interrupt. “For you voters who care about such things, Douglas was a high-school catcher who apparently disagreed with an umpire’s call. So he kicked him. Enlarged his spleen, I believe, isn’t that right? I don’t find it all that relevant, but according to Douglas, you might.”

  Delighted and startled murmurs and grumbles rolled through the crowd. Rooney curled his fingers in and out of fists before saying haltingly, “I think we can all agree that a much-regretted incident in the heat of athletics in our youth is not as germane to voters as our activities as adults on behalf of this citizenry.”