Truth Like the Sun (12 page)

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 campaigning 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.”

Morgan bunched his lips, nodding earnestly. “A stuffy answer, but I concur. And your original question actually was a reasonable one. I’ve been around a long while, but most people don’t really know who I am. Or if they’ve heard of me, I’m just a name, or I’m the
father
of the fair, which actually had many parents. So who am I? Hopefully this campaign will answer that. But to have a chance I’ll need the help of the people I’ve helped in the past, which includes you now, doesn’t it?”

The moderator smiled. “You sure look like you’re enjoying this, Mr. Morgan.”

“Every morning I wake up in a state of uncluttered joy.” He shook his head in amazement. “For the life of me, I don’t know why I waited until now.”

A deep-voiced woman started chanting “Ro-ger! Ro-ger!” and a few others joined in before Morgan silenced it with a casual wave.

After filing her story, Helen escaped the newsroom and strolled around Seattle Center. She’d visited once before, but not since she began researching the fair. Despite some name changes and several new buildings and sculptures, it was essentially the same fairgrounds with the Coliseum, Science Pavilion, Opera House, and International Fountain right where Roger Morgan had left them. The grounds looked exhausted yet intact, as if this were a time capsule that nobody dared to mess with.

She studied the Space Needle with new appreciation, having read how hastily it was built on deadline—its legendary continuous pour involving 467 truckloads of concrete, its frantic dash to haul 65-foot-long steel beams from Chicago, its innovative use of turntable technology and a 1.5-horsepower engine to rotate the restaurant. She walked around it twice, jotting down her own impressions. It’s a martini glass. A big-headed woman sucking in her gut. Or it’s
comic relief, a jester on a pogo stick. No, it’s
him
. It’s Roger Morgan! A provocateur turned establishment, and now a historic landmark!

And just as no fair lives up to its hype, no rookie mayoral candidate is as crafty and spontaneous as Morgan
seemed
today. A man this capable of casting spells and creating mythology couldn’t have resisted politics all these years if he was clean. And if Seattle has its dark sides—such as the country’s highest Prozac consumption rate—this False Prince no doubt has more than one skeleton in his closet, probably storage lockers full of them.

Juggling thoughts on how best to sharpen the opening graphs of “Roger at the Fair,” she broke into a fast jog back to the newsroom.

T
HE FAIR
is so widely praised and celebrated by the daily throngs that Roger feels blindsided when critics begin trying to knock it down as they always do whenever anything takes hold. “ ‘The Show of Tomorrow’ was put together by a team of amateurs,” snipes the
New York Post
. “The needle is a monstrosity,” cries the
Saturday Review;
“this pretentious and vulgar structure, sad when compared to the Eiffel Tower, does irreparable damage to the grandeur of Seattle’s natural setting.” And Alistair Cooke, the premier British interpreter of all things American, likens the fair to a cheap Coney Island attraction and dismisses this “drab, courteous city that labors between promotion and truth.” Local grouches happily join in. The monorail is way slower than advertised. The Needle looks better the farther away you get from it. Yet tens of thousands of visitors keep coming every day. Still, Roger takes the criticism so personally, he can barely stop himself from hunting down the detractors and trying to change their minds.

He tries now to relax himself with the morning paper, but the news is anything but soothing. Linus Pauling—one of the smartest guys alive, right?—estimates there’s a 40 percent chance that mankind will annihilate itself in the next four years, a prediction that’s still haunting him later this same hazy morning when he finds himself alone with Edward R. Murrow.

The former TV icon keeps a cigarette lit through lunch, letting it burn down to his fingers, ash falling onto the table, his plate, his lap, his shirt and the floor, lighting fresh ones from the stubs. He looks older than Roger expected, his eyebrows not as dark or thick, his jaw
not as angular, his weary, burdened face seemingly incapable of joy. Yet his distinctive voice is as authoritative as ever, full of articulate bursts and emphatic rhythms.