Truth Like the Sun

by Jim Lynch

  Birnbaum summoned Bill Steele into the morning meeting, seeing how the city’s past and present were colliding on multiple fronts. According to Steele’s improvised history lesson, the city council passed a “tolerance” law in 1954 to allow some small-time gaming downtown—despite state laws forbidding gambling—and started licensing card rooms in exchange for a small tax and an adherence to strict rules such as no bets over a dollar. This supposedly was just common sense, but it essentially sanctioned shakedowns. Card rooms had to accept far higher bids to turn a profit, so the cops decided which ones could break the rules based on who was willing to pay monthly bribes. This went on for years, and by the early ’60s, dozens of card rooms—and thousands of pinball machines rigged to pay out like slots—were crammed into bars and restaurants throughout downtown. “Many cops doubled their salaries with these payoffs,” Steele explained. “And there were sheriffs and jailers, liquor regulators and councilmen pocketing the money too. And good old Vitullo not only was bribing cops but working as their bagman for the bingo parlors. Everything peaked during the fair,” he said, “when the city had seventy-five licensed card rooms and more documented gambling than any city outside Nevada.” He then summarized the subsequent mutiny within the police department and the grand-jury probe that blew it all wide open.

  What everyone wanted to know, of course, was what the former governor was doing with Vitullo the other night.

  “That’s easy.” Steele smiled. “They’re old pals.”

  AGAINST TEDDY’S ADVICE, Roger agreed to talk to Helen Gulanos again. There was something about her gentle tenacity that he couldn’t resist. She’d flinched when his voice rose during their testy interchange at the university, but she’d kept doing her job as she saw it and had the prudence not to write anything his mother had said, at least not yet. Plus, he was feeling bulletproof. His campaign had begun to look like a movement, with his volunteer army doubling weekly now. On his drive home today, just about every rush-hour corner had been commandeered with seniors holding Time for Roger signs and a smattering of youngsters waving Vote for the Old Guy! placards. Even the New York Times had taken notice, calling Roger “a new old voice on the Northwest political landscape.”

  And here she was, big-haired, wide-eyed and pointing at the small photo of him and Elvis framed on the living room wall of his apartment. “So what was he like?” she asked. “Full of himself?”

  “Quite the contrary.” He couldn’t hide his irritation. “He was an engaging and considerate young man when I was with him. A gentleman.”

  Her photographer, a bearded gum chewer who kept saying Gotcha or Cool whenever Roger told him anything, snapped a close-up of the picture, then asked if he could take it off the wall—Cool?—and took more point-blank shots.

  They scanned the room like anthropologists, as if his possessions were so archaic that everything needed to be inventoried so future generations could understand how he lived. She held up a hunk of concrete the size of her fist. “What’s this?”

  “Part of the Kingdome.”

  “What about all these tiny spoons?”

  “I bring one back from every big city I visit.”

  She fingered through the bowl. Caracas. Cairo. Istanbul. Jakarta. “Where’s next?”

  “Buenos Aires, I hope.”

  She pointed at another photo. “Who’s this?”

  “My gramps.”

  “Morgan?”

  He nodded. “Shortly before he died.”

  “Pretty young, huh? How’d he go?”

  He remeasured her. “Already told you.”

  “Sorry. Aneurysm.”

  He wished he could rewind and insist they meet somewhere else or decline this interrogation altogether. He’d vacuumed the rug, stuffed laundry in a closet and boxed the toys, but he hadn’t wiped the counters or emptied the trash. Books, he noticed now, were stacked precariously on every surface that wasn’t destabilized by magazines and newspapers.

  EVERYTHING ABOUT his apartment startled her. She’d heard he lived in a condo, but expected a swanky Belltown penthouse with a possessive view of the city, not a bland two-bedroom unit in a two-story lower-Queen Anne complex with what cheery realtors might call a “peekaboo” view of the Space Needle, the top of which could be glimpsed from the kitchen window through the tangle of power lines. The furniture was dated and far from regal—a scarred table, a worn leather recliner, a musty avocado-green sofa that would be hard to give away in this century. It astounded her that a man who was delighting large crowds everywhere he went—whether pushing for cheaper housing and monorail expansions or simply talking about the city—lived in a dump the same size as hers.

  There was a nineteen-inch Zenith from the ’80s, a large abstract painting and a naked ceramic woman performing a cartwheel, but mostly there were books in floor-to-ceiling cases and freestanding stacks. Old, new, hardcovers, paperbacks, coffee-table books and countless titles about cities. She spotted a small framed photo of JFK, looking young, thoughtful and very single, wind playing in his hair. Returning to the shot of Elvis, his left elbow resting on Morgan’s shoulder, she wanted to ask more about him but knew she’d already shut that door.

  He backpedaled as she turned toward him. “Feel free to snoop around,” he said, “while I brew some coffee here.”

  She nodded and blushed, realizing how nosey she must seem.

  “Cool,” the photographer said.

  Morgan’s bedroom smelled sour and looked humble with its double bed, leather rocker and stacks of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the latest copies of The Atlantic, The Economist, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, Cities and Municipalities, National Geographic and others. An old turntable sat on top of a small bookcase with large speakers in the corners. Opening the armoire, she found albums instead of clothes, and she had no idea Coltrane, Monk, Davis and Mingus had put out so many records. A painting of a slender, tanned woman about Helen’s age hung above the bed. “That’s got to be his mother,” she whispered to the cameraman.

  “Gotcha,” he said and fired away. As he’d explained on the drive over, he was a “volume shooter” who tried to capture as many images as possible for fear he’d miss the one that later proved most relevant.

  The bathroom was tidy, if not clean, with a standup shower the size of a phone booth and a medicine cabinet that doubled as a time capsule. Milk of Magnesia, Vitalis, Vicks VapoRub, Castile soap. His small office was dominated by a stately oak desk too cluttered to use, and nothing on its walls advertised who he was or what he’d done. Yet she jotted it all down. Everything about Morgan was of interest since last Friday’s poll showed him leading Rooney by two points and Norheim by four—despite being outspent ten-to-one by both of them.

  Rooney had tried to shout his way back into front-runner status at his weekly briefing, and Norheim doubled her TV ad buys and bristled on camera after a council meeting when asked to explain Morgan’s popularity. “I think it’s high time he comes out of the closet and admits that he’s a Republican.” Morgan had strolled amiably into the TV studio later that evening. “I see myself as an independent who loves good ideas no matter where they come from, which seems appropriate for a nonpartisan job like being the mayor of this city. But please tell Ms. Norheim that if I had to pick a party, which I don’t, I’d be a Democrat who believes Republicans shouldn’t be treated like lepers.”

  Helen listed more book titles and noticed a phone line attached to the back of an old computer. Unbelievably, Morgan didn’t even have cable Internet. She took one last look around and saw two neatly folded obituary pages with six names circled in blue pen, at which the photographer started blasting as if his Nikon were an automatic weapon.

  “Unfortunately, I’ll need to leave somewhat soon,” Roger explained when she came back into the living room. “Got another funeral to get to.”

  “I saw you had quite a few obits circled in there.” She tried not to panic about time and reassured herself that he was just creating an early-
exit excuse in case he needed one.

  “My voters,” he said and sighed, “are dying much faster than my opponents’ voters.”

  Helen pulled out a small recording device. “Mind?” She pressed a button, “Have you always subscribed to so many magazines and newspapers?”

  He chuckled while watching her scribble down his flip quote about dying supporters. “Had to downsize, actually.”

  “Excuse me,” the shooter said, emerging from the office with a large multicolored plastic structure, which Helen slowly realized was made out of LEGOs. Helen wanted to intervene and mute him, but it was too late. “This what I think it is?” he asked.

  “Depends,” Roger said, with one of his mixed-message smiles, “on what you think it is.”

  The shooter pointed toward downtown. “The skyline?”

  “Good,” Roger said. “So there is some resemblance. It’s mostly just boxes, you know, so how tough can that be? I’m told LEGO is coming out with a Space Needle, which would certainly help matters.”

  “Did you do this?” the photographer asks, setting the model on the table. “Or do you have a—”

  “Grandson,” Roger said. “Miguel.”

  Helen was about to interrupt when she saw photos of a small Hispanic boy on the refrigerator door.

  He followed her eyes. “One of my daughters adopted him.”

  “And he did this?” the shooter asked.

  “You could say we did it together.”

  “Gotcha.” He was behind the lens now, snapping shots of Roger’s face directly behind and above the LEGOs. “Still working on it, huh?”

  Roger sighed. “I don’t particularly want a picture of me playing with LEGOs in the newspaper.”

  “Gotcha.” Snap-snap-snap. He then unfolded and extended what looked like a translucent umbrella behind Roger’s head.

  “So what other properties do you own, Mr. Morgan?” she asked, bringing the conversation back on track while the camera kept clicking. “You still have a house on Queen Anne, right?”

  “Sold it in ’ninety-seven.”

  The photographer switched to a wide angle lens and moved back, shooting from the kitchen doorway.

  “What about your beach house on Hoods Canal?”

  “Hood—no s.” Morgan set the LEGO structure on the floor behind him. “Sold it two years ago.”

  “Rentals in Ballard? You’re a landlord, right?”

  “No, never.” He laughed and looked around. “Is this that big of a letdown?”

  “It’s just that people seem to think, you know, that you’re wealthy. And maybe you are, of course, but I think they’d assume that you could afford a lot more than …”

  He waited, letting her flail.

  “Many people figure you’re financing your own campaign, or at least that you could if you wanted to,” she said, finally taking a breath, “but you’re not, are you, not unless you’ve dumped something into it since the last filing. Meanwhile, Norheim’s spending forty grand a month on campaign staff alone, and Rooney’s forking out even more. You have only one person on salary, at about four thousand a month, right?”

  “Annie gets paid that no matter what. And now that she’s doing mostly campaign work, it comes out of that pot.”

  “And the rest are volunteers?”

  He nodded.

  “If you did have more savings, would you be running this differently?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, why aren’t you soliciting more contributions?”

  “Because I’m not selling anything, and I don’t like asking people for money, which is amusing given how many candidates I’ve urged to get over that. But I’ve never understood why people are so interested in other people’s money anyway.” He stood up. “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been broke.” He grabbed three mugs and the coffeepot before adding, “I’ve never felt much different either way.”

  “Your critics might say that sounds like more crowd-pleasing bullshit,” she said gently. “Money doesn’t have any effect on how you feel?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why do you drive a Lexus SUV?”

  “Teddy leased it for the campaign. Ask him.”

  “And your mother’s in that … impressive home, which I assume costs a bundle.”

  “She deserves it.”

  “And you recently lost at least eighty grand in groceriesnow.com, right?”

  His smile was lopsided, showing teeth just on her side. “Must be dreadfully boring wasting so much energy looking into stuff like that. What do you do on your days off, Ms. Gulanos?”

  “Play with my son,” she lied. She now was investigating Morgan on weekends too. “Sorry to keep reminding you, sir, but you are the one who’s—”

  “Running for mayor. Yes, yes. But what are you running from?” he asked. “Your son’s father? Or is it Youngstown itself?”

  She was so blindsided that it took her a beat to muster a response. “What could you possibly know about—”

  “I know it’s a pit stop for presidential candidates trying to gain credibility with laid-off workers. Bet you were the first in your family to go to college.”

  She hesitated, overwhelmed.

  He flipped his palms up. “Like I said, I’ve got this funeral, so how ’bout I save us some time by offering you my brief, dull financial history.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Please.”

  Some of what he said jibed with her research, but he volunteered more that she could double-check later and surprised her with such asides as admitting that he no longer had an office in the Smith Tower. “Only a mailbox now. Guess I don’t want to give up that address. If that’s a vanity, so be it.” His office phone bounced to Annie’s cell, and she ran his schedule from wherever she was, he explained.

  After he finished, she brought him back to groceriesnow.com. “Doesn’t your investment there make you a participant in the same dot-com craze that strikes you as so foolish?”

  “Yes.”

  “But isn’t it hypocritical to mock something you tried to profit from?”

  “No, it’s being human. ‘I’m like you’ is what that says. ‘I can be a sucker too.’ ” He laughed.

  “People vote for suckers?”

  He studied her. “I’m sorry to put so much pressure on you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “To write something terrific, preferably damning, about me. It must be exhausting.”

  “I’m not. I’m just trying … to do what I can to explain you as well as I can. That’s why I’m here.”

  He smiled again, just with his eyes. “C’mon. What’re the chances anyone can boil me down into a newspaper story and get it right?”

  Ignoring the question, she asked him to recount his history with alimony and children out of wedlock, then pretended not to notice how closely he was scrutinizing her.

  “Even Mother Teresa had some off days,” he said in a detached whisper. “You understand that, right? Why can’t you accept contradictions instead of warping what you find to fit some naïve thesis? You take half facts and coincidences and attribute some pattern to them, or you take a flip comment and shake it up with current events and create someone else altogether. Now that I’m reading all about myself, I’m rethinking sixty years of reading newspapers, and there’s a vague distrust settling over all that. Know what I’m saying? All those people—and I should’ve known this—probably weren’t as rotten and corrupt or as pure and virtuous as they were made out to be.”

  “What do you make,” Helen asked, “of that photo in the Times of the strip-club guy and the former governor?”

  “I’d guess, and it’s purely a guess, that they share an interest in watching naked women dance.”

  The photographer laughed.

  Helen shrugged. “How well do you know them?”

  He hesitated, watching her jot down naked women dance. “The governor and I did the fair together. I go to his birthday parties. Never met Vitullo.”
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  “Really?” She reached into her bag and handed him a paper copy of a photo. “What do you make of this?”

  He turned on a light, grabbed his reading glasses and horse-laughed, his face brightening. “That’s Vitullo? This is very—”

  “You can see how it raises—”

  “Any idea,” he asks, cutting her off, “how many hands I shook at that fair?”

  “Well, that’s why—”

  “No, let me show you what this feels like. Here’s my profile-in-progress of you. Ready?”

  “Mr. Mor—”

  “Helen Gulanos is a tenacious young woman born in the shadows of Ohio’s dormant steel mills,” he said in his best Cronkite. “She surprised her family by not only going to college but also discovering a gift for writing and subsequently lunged into journalism like a bat out of hell with a desire to scalp all the high rollers and big shots her parents and relatives had been griping about since she began understanding human speech.”

  “Mr. Morgan, this is so inappropriate.”

  He raised a palm. “After sharpening her reporting knives covering politics in the nation’s capital,” he continued, “she landed a job out West in an export city she knew nothing about. And when she’s suddenly asked to write about a maverick mayoral candidate about whom she also knows nothing, well, it sure gets exciting. She gets a visceral thrill from unleashing somewhat true stories about him without once imagining what it would feel like to be stalked by herself.”

  “Please!” she snapped. “You said—”

  “Hold on. I haven’t even gotten personal yet.” He cleared his throat. “She’s a single mom, which helps make the sizable chip on her shoulder almost as big as her defiant mane of hair. She’s raising her boy herself because a woman who can bend reality with her bare hands can do anything she sets her mind to. The boy’s father simply didn’t meet her high standards. Few people do. Yet just like her hometown, she’s capable of great things and should never be underestimated.”