Truth Like the Sun

by Jim Lynch

  “They want me to name cops,” Charlie tells him. “I’m thinking about testifying, but for the right amount I’d go away. Made that plenty clear too.”

  “To who?”

  “Not gonna put a bigger target on my back. Know what I’m saying? I sleep with two guns these days. Know what else?”

  “What’s that, Charlie?”

  “I know who you are.”

  He doesn’t know how to reply other than to say, “Sorry ’bout that. Didn’t think you’d talk to me otherwise.”

  “So what exactly is Mr. World’s Fair doing with our conversations?”

  “Educating myself. I want to know everything there is to know about this city.”

  McDaniel snorts. “In case you want to run for mayor or something.”

  “Maybe something like that.”

  McDaniel laughs but keeps talking, as if this disclosure means little to him, though he never calls again.

  The next morning Roger is jittery and dragging through yet another cool blue dawn, strung out anew on wedding dread and a mounting sense of pressure, when the fair hand-delivers Elvis Presley to him on its 144th day.

  Governor Lopresti is beyond giddy, blurting cheerful fragments and laughing at nothing in particular while dragging his hands through his thinning hair during an increasingly awkward photo op. Elvis is handing him a Tennessee ham, and for the money shot their arms are bowed with effort as if it were made of lead. While the cameras fire away, the governor gleefully rocks back and forth over what he apparently considers the most hilarious gift on earth. Elvis can’t hold his smile any longer, and the disconnect between the agitated super celebrity and the thrilled politician grows until some young woman in the rapidly swelling crowd recognizes Presley and shrieks as if someone were swinging a machete at her neck.

  Once her awkward scream passes, Elvis looks relaxed again, moving with the athletic grace of a boxer in the best-fitting suit and whitest shirt around, his shiny, slicked-back hair and twinkling eyes flashing in the sunlight, his skin so smooth it looks polished, his gold cufflinks twinkling on his wrists. Yet, amazingly, when Roger introduces himself, he not only looks him in the eye but also gives him a rescue-me eye roll, as if they already knew each other well enough to share exasperation. But then the governor drags them all off toward the Science Pavilion, clinging to his plan to personally guide Elvis everywhere even though it’s obvious to Roger that the rubberneckers will make that impossible.

  MGM was considerate enough to delay filming until the kids returned to school, but hundreds apparently skipped class today to climb fences and stand on garbage cans for a glimpse of the man who’d just spun away to buy a sno-cone with extra cherry syrup.

  Roger spots an empty flatbed rolling behind the booths, flags it down and a few minutes later is loading the pouting governor, Elvis and his four bodyguards into the back for an abbreviated tour, the growing mob of fans jogging to keep up. Roger never considered himself an Elvis man. Yes, he’d wasted almost an hour in the privacy of his living room trying to dance like him, but the so-called King didn’t play jazz and he came across as shallow and cocky on television. But now that he’s sitting right next to him in this truck, Roger feels like an adoring teen and starts spouting fairground facts and even mentions that the city has sixteen FM stations, as if this might coax Elvis into moving here.

  “So this is your show, then?” Elvis asks, surprising Roger that he’s actually been listening. “Can’t be easy.”

  “Compared to what you do it is.”

  “You mean this?” he asks, pointing absently at the trailing crowd. “Once you get involved in this racket your life’s public,” he says, in a Southern mumble. “People are gonna wanna know what you eat. It’s natural. I try to remember that, but of course there are times I’d really like to just walk into a crummy bar for a little Jack Daniel’s and some cards.”

  Roger’s eyes widen. “You need a break while you’re here, just ask for me.”

  When the truck slows near a corner, Elvis flings his sno-cone wrapper into a trash can, and three squealing girls sprint over to the can.

  Two hours later, Roger is doodling on napkins and sipping a beer in the Blue Moon on Forty-fifth, sizing up each man who enters. Most of them look like afternoon drunks, so when Assistant U.S. Attorney Ned Gance finally looms in the doorway in patched jeans and a new green-and-white plaid shirt, he might as well have been wearing his three-piece with the gold chain looping out of his vest pocket. Yet it isn’t his clothes so much as his albino complexion—he clearly isn’t accustomed to natural light—that blows his cover. Even more revealing are his too-alert eyes, which take all of three seconds to find Morgan sitting in a booth with two foamy pints, one of which he slides toward the other side of the graffiti-engraved table as Gance approaches.

  “I don’t drink,” the attorney says dismissively, then pulls out a handkerchief, wipes off the bench and sits down.

  “We’ll make a great team.” Roger smiles, pulling the beer back to his side. “I don’t eat.” When he sticks out his hand, Gance frowns and offers a moist, reluctant shake. “Thanks for coming,” Roger says, squeezing the man’s bony fingers.

  “Please understand,” Gance says quietly, his close-set eyes boring into Roger, “that I’m here strictly as a favor to the senator and against my own better judgment.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The senator’s initial inquiry, which I assume you prompted, essentially backfired, at least from your perspective.”

  “How so?” Roger asks hesitantly.

  Gance stares even harder, as if gauging whether Roger’s bright enough to understand this answer. “It only made Stockton go harder.” He smacks his bloodless lips. “And I’m telling you this in confidence, and only because the senator made a personal request. Cops are on the take all over the city, not just in the square and along First. The Chinese, Japs, Negroes and Filipinos got their games too. Stockton’s moving as fast as he can to convene. Understand?”

  “How soon’ll that happen?”

  “Next week, next month, next year? Who knows? Whenever it comes together. If I had to guess, I’d say next month.”

  “We’ve got lots of balls in the air right now with corporate relocations and all,” Roger says, sounding more nervous than he’d like. “It’d just be a lot easier on everyone if we could finish the fair before this sideshow gets under way.”

  Gance glares at him like he’s a blathering child. “Are you asking me to slow down an investigation?”

  Roger hesitates. “I’m telling you what concerns people.”

  “And I,” Gance says, “am telling you what I know, which is all I was asked to do. I’m not concerned with your PR problems.”

  Roger gulps down half his beer. “So is it true that Stockton’s rushing because he wants the spotlight that the fair gives him?”

  “Keep your voice down.” Gance scowls. “Look, he wants to be a congressman. What do you think?”

  Roger suddenly thinks he knows more than he should, which is that the U.S. attorney and a few honest cops are in a race to see who can expose this city first.

  When he’d seen Meredith Stein for the third time this week, she’d told him that her brother-in-law’s coup was coming soon. “His what?” Roger had pressed. “You heard me,” she’d said. “His revolt, his insurrection. The word he used was coup, and I’m not speaking French just to arouse you. He wants to police his own before anyone else does.”

  “Are you guys,” Roger asks Gance now, “just going after card-room owners and crooked cops?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Roger tells him what he’d heard about the breakfast gatherings at the Dog House.

  “Who told you that?”

  Roger hesitates. “I don’t know that I can say.”

  Gance strokes his chin. “Because you don’t know or you won’t share?”

  Roger feels something fundamental shift, as if he’s fallen from the senator’s pal to potential
suspect in Gance’s eyes.

  “Who’d you see there?” he presses.

  Roger finishes his beer and slides it aside, weighing his options. “Look, I don’t know anything for sure.”

  Gance pops out a tiny black leather notebook. A slender pen materializes in the other hand, and he writes something in such small letters that Roger can’t read them. “Who? Names.”

  Roger chuckles, but his pulse is rising. “I don’t work for you, Counselor.”

  The way Gance’s Adam’s apple moves reminds Roger of a snake swallowing a mouse. Then his words pop out fast and hushed. “The only reason I’m here is the senator asked. Period. Actually, he had his aide ask me, but it amounts to the same thing. Said he’d greatly appreciate it if I spoke with you, which I’m willing to do strictly under the conditions of my choosing, which definitely don’t include a one-way relationship. Regardless, I fully expect you to tell the senator what a huge help I’ve been. Understand?”

  Roger takes a long drink from the second beer and tries to smile. “Are you always this much fun to be around?”

  Gance stares at him, flat-eyed. “Names.”

  “The deputy county prosecutor,” Roger says quietly. “Winston Edgell. He was there.”

  “Can you swear to that?”

  “Swear?”

  “Yes, potentially. And the others, the ones you recognized. Their names.”

  THE SHOOTING SCHEDULE is kept confidential, but by midweek the fans have figured out when and where to find Elvis Presley. His eyes are puffy slits now as he strides over to Roger near the close of the fourth day and asks if there’s someplace they might grab a drink.

  Roger tries not to look too thrilled. He’s already handpicked the Club 21 waitress—no fawning!—to serve them cocktails if this opportunity ever arose, and he’s double-checked to make sure there’s an extra bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the cabinet.

  After giving Elvis’s security boss a tour of the sealed-off lounge, they finally sit down. “How’s the film coming?” Roger asks, instantly regretting his question.

  “Like the others, I guess.” Elvis looks into his drink, clutching it with both hands. “Got people all the time saying, ‘Why don’t you do an artistic picture?’ I’d like to do that, sure, but if I can entertain people in the meanwhile, well, I’d be a fool to tamper with that, wouldn’t I? You don’t get many chances in this racket, but this one really does feel like the worst one yet.” He chuckles. “I fly into town in a crop duster then hitchhike to the fair in the back of this Oriental fella’s truck, and then he asks me to take care of his little niece. So I get stuck with her at the fair, and use her to try to score, of course. Cornball stuff. Rather not think about it.”

  Roger can’t imagine what to say next, and he’s second-guessing his decision to put Sinatra on the hi-fi, though he doesn’t want to change the music now and draw even more attention to how hard he’s trying. He waits for Elvis to break the silence.

  “You get older,” he finally says, “you see people differently.”

  Roger smiles and mumbles back, “You’re all of twenty-seven.”

  “That’s as old as I’ve ever been.” He grins. “I’ve experienced a lot, actually—wealth and the lonely side of life. And I’ve had a little tragedy.” He pauses again, then looks up. “Just trying to be a better human being.”

  “Me too,” Roger says, stunned to be sharing this odd moment of candor with a young man who’s sold seventy-five million records. Then, as if the two subjects are linked: “I’m engaged.”

  “Well, well.” His teeth are big and bright. “Congratulations.”

  Roger exhales. “Yeah?”

  “Sure,” Elvis says. “Who’d want to be alone forever?”

  Roger laughs. “You could have any wife you want. As many as you want.”

  “Takes me a while to trust somebody, to find someone who understands me,” he mumbles. “Gotta surround yourself with people who bring you a little happiness, though, don’t you? Only go through life once, Jack. Can’t come back for an encore.”

  Roger notes every last detail about him so he won’t forget. His mumbled Tennessee accent, his slow, expressive hands, his wide-set eyes, tapered eyebrows, plump lips and bouffant of hair. He’d expected him to come off as an arrogant buffoon up close, not as this thoughtful and respectful young man. They talk football and politics until Roger shares his plan for the evening, which sounds ridiculous, even reckless, when he says it aloud. Elvis chuckles and slaps the table gently. “Why not?”

  He picks him up near sunset at the back of the New Washington Hotel to avoid the horde of girls rioting out front after they got ousted from the lobby for trying to storm the stairs. Elvis sinks low in the front seat, looking larger cooped up like this, smiling across at him, his dimples and everything about him absurdly recognizable despite the large blue sweatshirt and worn-out Cubs cap. Roger pulls off into the night, coasting down Madison toward the water. He usually drives with the radio on but is too self-conscious to turn it on now, especially after bragging about the city’s stations. He resists delivering his recruitment pitch when their view opens up to the sun sliding behind the Olympics and the mirrored water reflecting pink clouds.

  Elvis clenches and unclenches fists, studies them, twirls a ring, then looks up. “This place is something else.”

  Now off his leash, Roger admits how the city dazzles him, how he can’t resist reading its history again and again, how sometimes he sees the whole city—past, present and future—all at once and how this almost overwhelms him. He rattles on about the dreamers who leveled hills, filled tidal flats and brought in electricity and railroads, Elvis’s head bobbing along to his words.

  “I feel the same way about Memphis,” he says when Roger finally stops. “Came home from the army, and they ask me what I missed about it. ‘Everything,’ I said. ‘I missed everything.’ ”

  Now they’re filling a booth at the Turf, staring across at each other through blue smoke, heads low, sipping cocktails, dozens of voices bouncing off the low ceiling. Elvis can’t stop smiling and has his face cocked to the side, but even semi-disguised he’s attracting the attention of people in booths all around the room. Roger glares at the gawkers until they finally notice him, then raises a finger to his lips. They nod hypnotically and, amazingly, stay put.

  “I don’t have a plan,” Elvis volunteers. “I just have a feel. Trying to get a better understanding of myself. The mistakes I make always come back around. Truth is like the sun, isn’t it? You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.”

  Roger nods emphatically with no idea of what he’s talking about. He has a sudden giddy impulse to ask him to sing the opening lines of “Jailhouse Rock,” about the warden throwing a party in that county jail. Once they finish their second drink, he leads him into the back room, where they join a table of five players. Cards disperse, Elvis checks his hand, fiddles with his chips, can’t stop smiling.

  Two hands later, Roger notices a pack of gawkers growing near the back. So does the card-room manager, who hobbles grumpily over and shoos them out, meeting Roger’s glance before resting his eyes on Elvis and nodding reassuringly.

  Deep into the next hand, a stocky, clear-eyed man sidles up to Roger’s left shoulder, squats down and whispers, “Mr. Morgan, Seattle PD. I suggest you and your friend get out of here within the next five minutes.”

  Roger tells Elvis to fold, and they push their chips into the center and take the nearest exit into the alley.

  “People don’t understand what a nuisance I am to bring along,” Elvis apologizes once they’re outside.

  “Has nothing to do with you,” Roger says.

  “But goddamn was that fun!” Elvis says, hooting lightly.

  Film him now, Roger thinks, in this alley with all the colorful graffiti on these brick walls. Cast him as a handsome young man elated after a little poker, whiskey and conversation, a man hoping to improve himself.

  Elvis gives him a long look when he drops
him off, as if he doesn’t want to get out of the car. Finally, though, he grins and says good night without a handshake, as if they’ll meet again the next evening.

  Once he gets home, Roger calls the six numbers he’d copied out of the Las Vegas phone directory he found in the library. The first three sound too old or too young. The fourth and fifth don’t answer at all. The sixth—“Hello?”—sounds possible.

  “Robert?” Roger asks, careful to keep his voice low enough to not wake his mother down the hall.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Dad?”

  The unfamiliar laugh rules this one out. Click.

  He falls asleep in front of the television, wakes up to the national-anthem sign-off, then turns off the buzzing static and trudges to bed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  JULY 2001

  A FUNNY THING happened during the run-up to the primary. Alongside updates on the volatile race was a puzzler in the Times, a photograph with a long caption on the front of the local section that captured, in gangster-movie twilight, the stripper king himself, Michael Vitullo, standing outside his club Fluffers next to a gangly, suited man who happened to be Edward “Big Ed” Lopresti, the ninety-two-year-old former governor. In the caption, Vitullo characterized the parking lot chat as “two old acquaintances shooting the breeze,” and it also noted that he’d served twenty-six months on racketeering charges during Lopresti’s reign as governor (1960–64). Sure, it was just a photo, but it rattled the fishbowl. Why was the Times shadowing either of these men, and what did this hint that they were working on? Apparently the photo had been deemed too provocative to hold any longer.