Truth Like the Sun

by Jim Lynch

  Yet this hubbub wasn’t enough to alter Bill Steele’s morning ritual. When he finally got to her article, she watched him slide his glasses lower on his nose to assess the visual placement of the story. Then he slowly read the lede and his eyes widened. When he smirked a few beats later, she knew exactly which sentence he was on. Once he finished, he carefully recreased the section, set it in his tidy stack, unlocked his Rolodex, dialed a number and said “Hey.” Then: “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh …”

  By 10 a.m., circulation reported that street sales were ridiculously high, and Steele finally shuffled up to her desk. “Solid story,” he said, glancing at the crowded fishbowl. “But I hope they’re not stupid enough to think this is as good as we can get on this guy.”

  She nodded, fending off deflation. An electronic message from Marguerite flashed onto her screen. “YOU ABSOLUTELY ROCK!!!!!!”

  Steele leaned closer, squinting over his glasses. “Hmmm. Six exclamation points. In Marguerite-speak that means ‘not bad.’ She sent me a note once without a single exclamation point. I almost offed myself. Talk to Morgan’s mother yet?”

  “He won’t give me her number,” she said. “Practically begged me not to bother her.”

  “Good for him.” He tore a page from his notebook. “Personally, I’d much rather beg for forgiveness than ask him for anything. Here’s her address.”

  ROGER READ the obits every morning though was rarely surprised. With most of his friends a decade older, he spent more time discussing lung, brain, liver, breast, thyroid and prostate cancer than most doctors. If not the big C, it was the big D or all the mental slippage associated with the A word. What could he offer beyond sympathy? Though today everything hurt, but that still wasn’t something to bring up with dying friends. I tell ya, Vern, this doorbellin’s a son of a bitch.

  Most of his funeralgoing cohorts exuded grim obligation. They signed the book and rehearsed the clichés—You have my condolences—though by the time they got through the grieving line they often broke down or became inappropriately chatty. How the hell are you? Afterward, they exited ASAP, hunkered, spent, apocalyptic. Roger came early, stayed late. Often asked to speak, he knew how to exaggerate the right amount, to sum up complicated lives and to resuscitate poignant stories that left audiences teary, chuckling and wondering if he’d made them up.

  Yet when Patricia Lange’s son asked him to speak today, he graciously declined. He didn’t want to come off as a politician in front of all these artsy big shots, and he knew her husband, Jonas, probably wanted him to keep his mouth shut. He felt awkward afterward when more people lined up to talk to him than to Jonas, but they were clamoring to hear what he thought of the P-I article. Some called it marvelous publicity—don’t you think?—and others considered it proof that the paper was in the tank for Rooney. “They’re obviously doing everything possible to make you look bad, Rog, even the picture. ”

  He grinned through it and didn’t let on that Teddy missed the funeral so he could scare the piss out of the boys and girls who ran the P-I. “Could’ve been worse,” Roger told them. “They didn’t call me a pedophile.”

  “Why in God’s name did you tell ’em you like to gamble?”

  “They asked.”

  “I know, Rog, but …”

  He missed whatever came next because he was scrambling to put a name to a large, familiar woman in her seventies barreling toward him. Her mischievous smirk gave her away. He hadn’t seen Meredith Stein since the thirtieth anniversary of the fair, but it was definitely her, flabby-necked, breathing heavily and stuffed into a black dress.

  “Finally,” she said, after casually displacing his questioners. “You’re actually running.”

  “Great to see you, Meredith.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Sorry about your husband,” he said. “Would’ve gone, but it didn’t seem appropriate.”

  She grinned. “Seeing how he hated you?”

  “How ’bout your brother-in-law,” he asked, “the honest cop? How’s he making it?”

  “Could’ve thrown his retirement party in a phone booth. The stubborn bastard moved to the peninsula and refuses to take chemo.”

  Their heads swiveled toward the baritone thump of Mayor Douglas H. Rooney’s voice.

  “I hope you kill that jackass,” she muttered.

  “Thank you, Meredith. You look fantastic.”

  “Yeah, right. You should see me naked.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  She gently grabbed one of his shoulders and pulled him to her so she could kiss his cheek nice and slow, then exited with the calculated lift of a penciled eyebrow.

  Seconds later, Rooney thundered past in his too-tight suit, signed the book, gave Jonas and his sons his deepest condolences, then—after a blizzard of handshakes that excluded Roger—forcefully departed.

  As the crowd thinned, he quietly answered questions about his views on various neighborhood issues until it was just he and Jonas, who was single-handedly draining a liter of Spanish red that his wife loved. Everyone knew Patricia. If Jonas had croaked first, there’d still be a mob here to comfort the generous arts benefactor. But who knew Jonas Lange? Roger had squeezed just enough conversation out of him over the decades to admire his loyalty to his wife and his disdain for his own class. Despite being a pricey lawyer who specialized in avoiding capital gains taxes, he clearly despised the elites.

  “You don’t have to hang around out of guilt for sleeping with my wife,” Jonas said.

  “I’m not,” Roger replied, after recovering. “You were separated at the time, and you know it.”

  “Still …” He took a breath to say more, but didn’t.

  “Yeah, I know,” Roger conceded. “But that has nothing to do with me being here now.” He grabbed a second long-necked Budweiser out of the ice and rolled it over his cheek and forehead until he noticed Jonas staring at him. “Guess I’ve never quite got over the thrill of a midday beer.” He missed the widower’s rare grin while gesturing to his kid volunteers to relax. His university visit would have to wait.

  He helped Jonas carry framed photos of his wife out to her white Jaguar with its OPERA vanity plate. “Can’t wait to sell this piece of shit,” Jonas muttered.

  Roger laughed. “You know when I enjoyed Patricia the most?”

  Jonas stopped organizing the boxes to listen.

  “When she got all ticked off and cussed people out,” he said. “She was a force to behold when she was pissed. Know what I’m saying? She was all of five feet and a hundred pounds but she could scare the hell out of me when she’d go off.”

  “Me too,” Jonas warbled. “Me too.”

  “One hell of a woman,” Roger added, looking away to signal one more minute to the college kids.

  SHRONTZ STORMED OUT of the fishbowl toward Helen’s desk, where she was on the phone instructing Omar Duran to tell his coy gadfly to quit playing games and talk.

  “Hold on.” She palmed the mouthpiece.

  “We’ve got problems,” Shrontz said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Morgan’s demanding corrections.” He pointed at the phone, then slashed the same finger across his neck. “Conference room now.”

  She cleared her throat, told Omar she’d call him back, then followed her editor like a prisoner toward the fishbowl.

  “What?” she ventured. “What’re they saying?”

  “That they’ll sue if we don’t correct things.”

  “Correct what?”

  He turned and glared without slowing down. “Don’t take an attitude.”

  Conversation halted as they entered. The same editors who’d praised her an hour ago now wouldn’t look at her—including Marguerite, who was sliding a finger along the edge of a homicidally long silver letter opener.

  “What’s the problem?” Helen asked meekly.

  “Please sit down,” Birnbaum told her, though there wasn’t an empty chair. So she leaned against the glass wall, folding her a
rms before realizing how defensive this looked. “Morgan’s campaign says we got some things wrong,” he said. We. Ever the diplomat.

  She wondered why all these editors—even two reporters, Lundberg and Steele—needed to hear this. At least Steele faced her, counseling her with his slow blinks to stay calm, which wasn’t easy, given this felt like the prelude to an execution.

  “They say he never in any way personally profited from the Space Needle restaurant, as the story implies,” Birnbaum said, lacing his fingers across the Stanford mug. “They also say he never was paid to advise any Republicans, and that while he does enjoy cards he never said he enjoyed gambling. His attorney—Sullivan, or whatever his name is—is demanding front-page corrections, or he’s basically threatening to sue.”

  Helen exhaled, but the palpitations continued. “I wouldn’t know what to correct.”

  Webster groaned, and others rolled their eyes.

  “We didn’t say he profited from the restaurant,” she said slowly. “We said the company he’d been working for did.”

  “Hold on.” Birnbaum hunted for the exact paragraph, then shrugged and nodded for her to continue.

  “When I told him that people say he’s been paid to advise both Ds and Rs, he didn’t object or clarify,” Helen said. “I named three Republicans, and he nodded. As for his gambling, he did say, ‘I enjoy a good game of cards.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m told your game of choice is poker.’ He didn’t deny or clarify. I mean, what do I have to—”

  “I’m afraid,” Birnbaum interrupted, “the story lacked precision, that it needlessly overreached based on nods and nondenials and vague language. And I feel uncomfortable about that.” His eyes swung over to Shrontz.

  “I tried to peel it back to what felt solid,” Shrontz said ruefully. “Probably should’ve cut deeper.”

  A glum Marguerite spoke up. “What I’m wondering is why we felt we had to rush this into the paper in the first place.”

  Heads bobbed, and Birnbaum turned to Shrontz. “Why did it have to run today?”

  “Helen said it was ready to go on Monday,” he mumbled. “I suggested she take another day or two to tighten things up, which she indicated she had.”

  Helen stared holes into the side of his head as Birnbaum passed her a flyer. “This, no doubt, set ’em off.”

  She looked at it blindly, her vision pulsing. “Don’t have my contacts in,” she said desperately.

  “The State Dems are sending this out to sixty-six thousand households today,” Webster explained, then read from it: “ ‘Roger Morgan’s mysterious past includes getting paid to advise Republican candidates and a gambling habit, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Don’t gamble on Morgan. Re-elect Mayor Rooney.’ ”

  Birnbaum turned to Helen. “There are facts and there are instincts. In this case, I think your instincts should’ve told you this was too much too soon. Sometimes”—he dragged this word out—“you go with instincts over facts.”

  Helen nodded, willing to swallow any medicine to get through this.

  “Personally,” Steele interjected, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Helen’s story.”

  Webster, Lundberg and others mumbled inaudibly.

  “His people are freaking out,” Steele continued, “because the state party twisted our story into a Rooney mailing. So what? We just gave Morgan the sort of exposure most politicians would pay for if we’d let them. We told everyone he’s Mr. Seattle. And now we’re wringing our hands because it wasn’t quite the blow job he’d hoped for? I mean, what’re we gonna do when we get something truly damaging on this guy?”

  “Well,” Webster countered, holding up a stack of paper, “we’re hearing from a lot of people who think we’re in Rooney’s pocket already.”

  “I see,” Steele said. “So we should run corrections because his friends are upset.”

  “For once,” Webster asked, “could we try to be something other than defensive?”

  “Try reporting sometime, Webbie. Maybe you’ll get what it means to defend your story.”

  “We’ll tell ’em,” Birnbaum intervened, “that we are standing by the story, for now, and continuing to report. And if we conclude that any correction or clarification is warranted, we’ll do so in a prompt and prominent manner. Otherwise, any nuances that may have been misunderstood by readers will be more thoroughly explained in subsequent coverage. We’ll call their bluff without saying as much. Okay?”

  Strolling out, pulse settling, Helen thanked Steele.

  He vibrated his lips. “Instincts over facts. Fuck me. Birnbaum has the instincts of a lemming.”

  ROGER WAS SHOUTING at more than a hundred students eating lunch on the brick steps of Red Square while his young volunteers passed out Vote for the Old Guy! pamphlets.

  “Seattle’s a big city now, but it’s still ridiculously young, if you think about it,” he said, reheating one of his grandfather’s minilectures. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s been around about a week. Seven days ago it was a few thousand Indians and fir trees growing right down to the tidal flats. Six days ago, a persuasive alcoholic doctor coaxed people into trekking out here from the East. Five days ago, downtown burned and had to be rebuilt. Four days ago, we threw a big fair on this campus to exploit the gold rush in the Yukon. Three days ago, we became the airplane manufacturing capital of the world. Two days ago, we built the Needle and threw another audacious fair. Yesterday, we built too many skyscrapers and became a hip high-tech hub. Today, we’re an overcrowded city that has the second-worst traffic in the country and a housing market that’s too expensive for normal people.”

  He bowed as hesitant applause broke out. “Our current mayor treats this university as if it were its own sovereign nation, a place to be feared and ignored. I see it as the future.” He also saw that he was losing them, some walking away, others talking among themselves or flipping open cell phones. “Ten or twenty years from now, some of you will be running this city,” he continued desperately. “Problem is, the city needs your help now. It needs your imagination and your idealism and your common sense—even if you haven’t cornered the market on that yet.”

  SHE ENTERED an elegantly furnished room with an adjustable twin bed that looked like a double because the old woman was so thin. Her tiny triangular face was mostly eyes, and she was oddly dressed up for being prone, with rouge and pearls and a handsome sweater buttoned to the neck.

  The stout nurse at Helen’s side said, “Mrs. Morgan? This newspaper woman is here to speak with you about your son. Do you want to talk to her?”

  The old woman pressed a button. A motor whined and her head rose. She studied Helen with her big eyes until her face broke into a warm smile. “Why, of course.”

  Left alone with her, Helen pulled up a chair and listened to her prattle on for ten minutes about how the chaplain came into her room and gave her communion right here. “A fine young man, don’t you see.” The more she talked, the more British she sounded. She told Helen that she tried to open that window months ago and cracked a vertebra, then described all the people she cherished in the home, including several delightful women who come from good families, and how terrific the help is, including Sara, “whom you just met, and of course Mrs. Truman, who comes by every Wednesday afternoon to discuss world affairs. A delightful conversationalist, don’t you know.”

  Helen was convinced Morgan had to be blowing ten grand a month to keep his mother here.

  Without transition, Eleanor Morgan suddenly started in on the Duke of Edinburgh. “What a raconteur, that man. You’ve never met a better talker. Invited me to come stay with him. The prince himself. He certainly did.”

  “Did you ever go?”

  “Where?”

  “To England.”

  “Not yet, but an offer like that doesn’t expire, now does it?” She smiled and blinked slowly, as if agreeing with herself. “But, truth be told, you know who I’d rather visit?”

  “Who’s that?”

>   “Albus Dumbledore.” Her teeth were false, but her smile was genuine. “He is an absolute marvel. So clever, so wise, so warm, don’t you see.”

  Helen smiled along, uncertain whether the woman was being playful or delusional. How could she have known that Helen would know who Dumbledore even is? “What do you think of your son getting into politics?” she asked

  “The unexamined life,” Mrs. Morgan responded, “is not worth living.”

  “Socrates?” Helen asked, flustered.

  “Excuse me, dear?”

  “Are you happy Roger is getting into politics, ma’am?”

  She blinked rapidly. “He could have been a senator,” she whispered. “Should have been. Nobody believes it, but he started out so awkwardly. Couldn’t tell what he was saying till he was five. The words came out too quickly, don’t you see. It didn’t fall into place until he started acting.”

  Helen tried to smile. “What do you think,” she asked loudly and succinctly, “of Roger running for mayor?”

  Her forehead clenched. “Oh, no. Not that it’s beneath him, but we know who we are.”

  Helen nodded along, waiting for more, then took a shot. “What ever happened to Roger’s father?”

  “Oh, Robert passed away long ago, of course. Soon after he got out.”

  Helen hesitated. “What was his full name again?”

  “Robert Ignatius Dawkins.”

  She studied her. “You mean, Robert Ignatius Morgan?”

  “No, dear. Morgans are my side. Robert was most definitely a Dawkins.”

  “But Roger—”

  “Took my maiden name, of course. Changed it, don’t you know, when he turned eighteen.”

  Helen bobbed her chin, as if she’d simply forgotten. “You said Robert died after he got out—of what?”

  “Why the penitentiary, of course.”

  “That’s right.” Helen hated herself for playing this game, but couldn’t stop now. “Why was he there again?”

  “Oh, any number of things. He was never a man of in-teg-rity. What did you say your name was?”