Truth Like the Sun

by Jim Lynch

  HELEN FELT at an awkward disadvantage. Morgan seemed so comfortable in this preposterous building that he’d imagined and built above his fairgrounds and his city, which from up here looked more like the blinking motherboard of some massive computer than a breathing metropolis of more than one million residents. As he pointed out various skyline relics—such as the red Roosevelt Hotel sign—Steele was obviously fascinated and starstruck. Why wouldn’t he be? He’d waged his entire career in a place where Morgan was a living legend, regardless of his merits or deceits. She checked her watch just as the first deadline passed and wondered with a panicky flicker exactly what the Times would have tomorrow. They hadn’t run anything in days, and the longer their stories held, the bigger they loomed in her mind. Her skin and throat were both itchy. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours a night for nearly a week and felt oddly volatile, as if she might weep before the questions began. It occurred to her again that tonight’s babysitter was far too young. Did she even warn her about peanuts? What was her name again? Teresa? No, Tara! She exhaled. “Mr. Morgan,” she interrupted gently, “We need to—”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Do you recall,” she said, going straight at him, “investing in an apartment building with Malcolm Turner in ’sixty-two on Roanoke near Broadway?”

  His grin startled her, as if he welcomed the topic.

  “I do! In fact,” he said, leaning back toward the window, “in just a minute or so it should swing into view. Right, Teddy? One of Mal’s earlier buildings, I believe.” They all scanned the northeastern skyline, craning to see which illuminated box he was pointing at. “There,” he said, “isn’t that it?”

  Teddy swiveled his neck and grumbled, “Beats me.”

  Somehow it had never occurred to her that the tower might still be standing. Its plainness made her feel disoriented and slightly queasy.

  “Even the Mal Turners of the world start small,” Roger explained, as if she’d been thinking aloud.

  “New Metropolitan Properties,” Steele interjected, as if he were simply there to jog memories. “That was his company at the time.”

  Roger hesitated and then glanced at Teddy, who was fixing Steele with a drowsy scowl. “Oh, yeah?”

  Helen shuffled papers and turned one sheet around so Roger and Teddy could see it in the candlelight. “Here’s the list of original investors in that building.”

  “God almighty,” Teddy groused.

  The maître d’ set a bourbon on ice next to his elbow. “Anybody want anything else?” she asked pleasantly. “Music all right, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Perfect.”

  HE WATCHED HELEN jot music, hostess, perfect and Miles Davis? as he pulled reading glasses from an inside pocket, fixed them low on his nose and slid the sheet closer to the candle. The table quieted to tinkling ice as Teddy swirled his drink and Roger slowly read the nine names and the dollar figures next to them. It was hard not to audibly groan. He needed to stick a knife in this day. He’d been irritable in the debate and rushed his gratitude with the donors. He never should have agreed to this interview.

  “Do you know,” she asked in a quavering voice, “what all those people on that list besides you, Eddie Mills and Dave Beck have in common?”

  Roger took a swig of water and refocused on the names.

  “Recognize anyone?” Steele said.

  “Certainly, Mr. Steele. Anyone my age in this city—”

  “They were all implicated,” Helen said, “in the gambling and graft investigation that began during the fair.”

  “So what?” Teddy growled.

  Roger was simultaneously fascinated and alarmed. What was he being accused of? He knew Dave Beck had invested in the apartments, but he threw money all over town. Then, for the first time in decades, he recalled that kid reporter asking him a similar question at the end of the fair. But nothing came of that, right? And that insufferable stiff from the U.S. attorney’s office—Gant?—had also asked him about Mal’s projects, but again that was the last of it.

  “Ms. Gulanos,” he finally said, “it’s been a very long day. So what is your point, beyond insinuating that I should be embarrassed to show up on a forty-year-old list of names I’ve never seen before that might well be fraudulent?”

  “We’re really just trying to understand things here,” Steele blurted.

  “We’ve been told,” Helen said slowly, “that New Metropolitan Properties served as an investment arm for a network of city cops, officials and businessmen who profited from graft.”

  “Yeah?” Roger said, his cheeks burning. “And who told you that?”

  “Several sources, sir,” Steele answered.

  Helen glanced at her colleague. “Denny Carmichael’s on the record,” she said, turning back to Morgan. “He was a police sergeant back then.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Teddy snarled.

  Roger smiled tightly. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight: some senile liar told you I was involved in something forty years ago that I wasn’t involved in, and now you want me to comment?”

  “Forget who said what,” Helen instructed him. “You served on the state’s right-of-way committee for the freeway project, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Did you or did you not,” she continued, “tell Mr. Turner where the freeway was going so that he could buy land at a discount and put up an apartment building?”

  “Let Sully handle this,” Teddy barked. “Don’t say another goddamn word.”

  “Mr. Severson,” Steele said gently, “we’re just reporters doing our jobs.”

  “You’re goddamn jackals is what you are!” Teddy snapped. “Put that in your paper! Write that down! You don’t have the … Don’t you have any decency?” He gripped the arms of his chair and struggled upright.

  Roger grabbed his shoulder and settled him back down, reeling from the realization that he’d rationalized his little insider tip so long ago that he’d forgotten the twinge of guilt that had accompanied it at the time. Worse yet, he’d deluded himself into thinking it would never rise up again, much less so shamefully in the blazing light of the present. “Easy, my friend,” he said, stalling. “Easy.”

  “Easy, hell!” Teddy’s bloodshot eyes flashed insanely in the candlelight.

  “Please,” Steele offered, “we’re making a genuine effort here to give you an opportunity to respond. We’re doing everything we can to be fair.”

  Teddy dropped lower into his chair, snorted and set a twitchy hand on the table, then retracted it.

  “Yes,” Roger finally said, as calmly as he could. “I was on the right-of-way committee, and I did tell Mal where I thought the freeway was going.”

  “Roger!”

  “Teddy, relax.” Then to Helen, his eyes brightening: “There wasn’t any mystery where the damn thing was going to anyone who was paying the slightest attention. The meetings were very public.”

  “But what did you think you were doing?” Helen asked, holding up a hand to stop Steele, “when you gave him the tip and then invested in the building?”

  Roger’s eyes bulged. “I was doing everything I could to help this city grow!”

  Helen waited a beat, then said softly, “And you did well on that and the subsequent projects you were involved in with Mr. Turner, didn’t you?”

  “So success is now a crime,” Teddy muttered.

  “I’m not ashamed of working with Mal,” Roger said, “if that’s what you want to know. I parted ways when I thought he went too far and was building too much, but without people like him this downtown never would’ve happened. Everybody wants to kick him now that he’s down, but when Mal owned these buildings, he answered the door when you had a problem. Who owns them now? New York investment trusts and stockholders who couldn’t care less about this place.”

  Teddy tried to tap a cigarette out of a pack, but his hand was too jittery. “Why tell ’em anything?” He pointed the pack upside-down and finally shook a Pall Mall out. Tw
o more fell on the floor.

  “Did you ever receive any money directly from that so-called graft network?” Helen asked Roger slowly.

  “Of course not.” He picked up the cigarettes and resurfaced. “Never. The question itself is highly insulting.”

  Teddy pulled the candle toward him and lit up with some whistling inhales.

  “C’mon,” Roger said. “You can’t smoke in this section.”

  Teddy inhaled defiantly, then exhaled over Helen’s head.

  She leaned toward him beneath the smoke. “You don’t have a concealed-weapon permit for that gun of yours, do you, Mr. Severson?”

  He blinked at her and said in a low rumble, “If there were permits for fairness and decency, yours would’ve been pulled long ago. So arrest me,” he added, “or fuck off.”

  Roger grinned. “See why I love this guy?”

  “Yet you knowingly pooled your money,” Helen said, as if there’d been no interruption, “with money you knew was dirty.”

  “No, I certainly did not, Ms. Gulanos. And you’ve presented absolutely no proof that it was.”

  “I spoke to a woman,” Helen said, “who served on that grand jury in ’sixty-two and says that at least one witness claimed you and Malcolm Turner provided investment opportunities for members of that graft network. And she’s no enemy of yours, sir. In fact she intends to vote for you.”

  He forced a laugh. “People will say anything.”

  “So you’ve never heard that before?”

  “No, I sure haven’t. Who’d she say said that?”

  “A Dan Bottenfield, who was on the liquor board at the time.”

  Roger shook his head and chuckled. “Another Mason.”

  “What’re you saying?” Helen asked.

  “I was the one who had to break it to the Freemasons that we needed to occupy their building for the fair, okay? Their attorney vowed to screw me some day, and maybe that day’s finally come. He was pals with Donald Yates—you might be familiar with him—who also was a Mason, as was Bottenfield. Hell, your lying cop in Spokane was probably one too. Do you understand what’s going on here? You’re a tool in a misguided vendetta that’s older than you are.” He laughed. “So, keep all that in mind while I tell you a little story.”

  “Sir,” Helen began.

  “It wasn’t a request.”

  He relaxed himself by slowly explaining how he became aware of the bribery investigation during the fair. “I was afraid it might make the city look bad at just the wrong time.” He plucked the cigarette from Teddy’s fingers and dropped it into his water glass. “But the more I saw and heard, the more it seemed like a kind of rot. At first, you think it’s just the outer rim of your porch, right? Then you realize it’s in the siding too, and—Christ almighty—actually it’s in the posts and beams. I don’t know that we had a bigger gambling problem than other cities our size, but graft is a sickness. And we had it bad. I was appalled—but certainly not involved, no matter what anyone told you.”

  “Did you know Rudy Costello?” Helen asked. “Or a bar owner named Charlie McDaniel?”

  His mouth opened, but he didn’t speak.

  “Denny Carmichael says he was there when both men were murdered, before they could talk to the grand jury.”

  Roger stiffened and began to say something but then stopped.

  “So you got to know Malcolm Turner,” Helen abruptly said, “when you were trying to build the Space Needle.”

  He settled his gaze on her, still picturing Charlie McDaniel so vividly in his mind, then said, “About then, I believe.”

  “So he helped finance it,” she speculated excitedly. “He helped pay the mortgage on this thing, right?”

  “Well, no.” Roger felt completely off-balance now, his eyes drifting to the pleasingly familiar jumble of buildings below. “We had a hell of a time getting financing,” he said, resorting to storytelling again. “People forget that. There was no public money for it, and the banks wouldn’t consider it without a big private stake. The four principals lined up pretty quick.”

  “But Turner, or perhaps his New Metropolitan Properties, were secondary investors through Jack Vierling’s company, correct?”

  “Well,” Roger began cautiously, “I don’t remember that level of detail … or see how it matters.”

  “None of this matters!” Teddy snarled.

  “Mr. Severson,” Helen said, swiveling toward him, “your name came up during the hearings too.”

  He demolished an ice cube with his molars.

  “The grand jury was informed,” she continued, “that you owned part of a tavern and card room called the Nite Cap that was bribing cops.”

  Roger’s eyes widened in amazement, and he waited with the others for Teddy to quit chewing ice and respond.

  “You people are unbelievable,” he finally said, glancing at Roger. “This interview’s over.”

  He saw the truth of this charge in Teddy’s eyes before he scooted his chair back toward his walker. Is that why he’d dropped out of the governor’s race after such a promising start in ’64? Roger felt queasy. How deep had it all run? Was everybody—even his best friend—using him back then?

  “Where did you go immediately after the fair, Mr. Morgan?” Helen asked.

  He hesitated, then said, “Nevada.”

  “To see your father?”

  “The goddamn interview is over!” Teddy snapped.

  “Where’d you find him?” Helen pressed.

  Roger stood up to give Teddy more room. “You obviously know.”

  “So you visited him. What was that like?”

  Roger put both hands on the table and leaned over her. “Stop this.”

  “We just tonight received the criminal records and newspaper articles,” she said softly.

  “Do you really think you can tell me anything about him that I don’t already know? Why would you—”

  “Because they’re jackals!” Teddy barked, halting conversations on the other side of the restaurant. “Have you people no judgment? This is a great … Roger’s a great man!”

  “Teddy”—Roger held up a hand—“please.”

  “No! They’re just exploiting your honesty.” He bared his teeth and pointed at Roger. “I don’t even like his politics, but he’s the best man this city could hope for!” His voice warbled. “Can’t you see that?”

  “Excuse us a minute,” Roger said, and guided him toward the elevator.

  They were both writing frantically in their notebooks when he returned. “Sorry about all that,” he said. “We’re through here anyway, right?”

  “Mr. Morgan,” Helen said, “we both greatly appreciate you answering all these questions at the end of a long day, but we have a couple more.”

  He didn’t object, but remained standing and stared past them at a retreating ferry that looked like a bright skyscraper knocked on its side and sliding west. “I’ll agree with Teddy on one point,” he said. “You people don’t reward the truth. So let’s leave it there and hope that in the morning light you’ll realize your reporting’s full of misconceptions and speculations and that none of this is of interest or value to readers or voters.” He pushed through a hip twinge and stepped away from the table.

  “Mr. Morgan,” Steele asked sheepishly, “did you vote for Barry Goldwater in ’sixty-four?”

  He shook his head. “I voted against Johnson.”

  “And Reagan?”

  “My voting record is my own business, but I did vote for him once and regretted the hell out of it.”

  Steele nodded. “Any other regrets?”

  “Thousands. They’re just not the ones you want me to have. Now, good night. I’m gonna help my friend here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Helen persisted, his back to them now, “but when you headed to Nevada after the fair, were you alone?”

  He walked ahead several strides, his back stiffening, then spun on his heel like a much younger man. “Don’t ask questions to which you obviously know the
answers. It’s just asinine.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  OCTOBER 1962

  HE’S SEEING HOW FAST his new Impala will go, driving through Nevada toward the California line, pushing the pedal until the needle crosses 120 and the horizon gets hard to pinpoint, everything at once blurring and seemingly standing still as he reaches for the bottle of warm champagne between her bare thighs. The news broke this morning. Khrushchev had blinked and the standoff is over! He howls now with a complicated joy that includes more than the thrill that the earth will continue spinning. He takes a swallow and then passes the bottle back, smiling at her now, her face half-obscured by wind-whipped hair.

  They’d bought a cheap room at the Stardust and spent a week indulging long nights and late mornings. They gambled, won plenty, lost more. And during some woozy moments, it almost felt like the fair was continuing down here in the desert, though a drearier version, with some of the same acts playing to listless crowds and with none of the solidarity or panache. Just the opposite, actually. Yet it filled the void—didn’t it?—and offered an escape.

  Her husband thought she was flying to Palm Springs to comfort her high-strung sister. He’d figure it out but ultimately forgive her, she’d told Roger just before he approached the fifth of seven Las Vegas addresses for Robert or Bob or R or B Dawkins and was relieved yet again not to find anyone resembling his father. Once he checked with the police, though, it got easier. They directed him to the local jail, which gave him the phone number for the state prison, which was exactly where his bogeyman awaited him in a pungently sanitized visiting room.