Truth Like the Sun by Jim Lynch Read Free Book Online Page B

probably helped, though almost everybody she’d met came from somewhere else, which made this the perfect city, she thought, for fugitives like herself.
    “This guy lives alone on the backside of Queen Anne in a little dump
filled
with papers,” Omar continued, patting the air next to his chair to help her visualize the stacks. “It’s not that he’s insane, you know. Just a pack rat. Well, maybe he is nuts, but he keeps meticulous files on
everyone
he doesn’t like.”
    Helen had always been able to sense when somebody was about to say something that might give a story life. The catch was, you had to be the sort of person they wanted to tell it to, and everyone’s different. Some need to be shoved. With others you just hunkered down and waited quietly, like birds do when they feel the air thinning before a storm.
    Her phone went off again. It was Shrontz now. She turned off the ringer and looked back to Omar. “Yes?”
    “He doesn’t forget or forgive anything.”
    “Okay.”
    “He’s known Morgan since before the fair. Claims he’s got a file he’s been compiling since back then just in case he was ever dumb enough
—his words
—to run for anything.”
    Helen sipped water to hide her excitement. The streets had gone strangely quiet, as if all the cars had picked another route and someone had paid the violinist to shut up.
    “Know what he calls Morgan?” Omar asked.
    She shook her head, unable to block her smile.
    “The False Prince.”
    ROGER CHECKED his voice messages, half of them from reporters requesting interviews. “Wake up, Teddy.”
    “Huh?”
    “We’re almost at your place.” He turned to face him. “What do you know about that young
P-I
woman who showed up at the party?”
    Teddy smacked his lips. “The new girl?”
    “Yeah. She wants an interview. What do we know about her?”
    “Well, she’s got an amazing head of hair, that’s for sure.”
    “Thanks, pal. That’s a big help. Can you call your favorite columnist over there and find out about her?”
    Teddy groaned himself upright. “She looks like she stepped right out of a shampoo commercial.”

Chapter Five
MAY 1962
    R OGER TRIES to keep it to two whiskeys, but a third slides down and it’s all he can do to stop himself from hugging everyone as Club 21 overflows with suited men and perfumed women waiting to pay homage, to get a picture or have a word with him, or more likely to request a favor now that the fair’s such a hit—in the words of
Life
magazine, “an exposition of soaring beauty and unique impact.” He tries to say yes to everything. Yes to tickets to the Ice Follies, San Francisco Ballet and Count Basie Orchestra. Yes to arranging meetings with the chamber, the mayor and, perhaps, the governor. Yes to more passes into this VIP lounge. Yes, yes, yes! He’ll do what he can, and usually does while simultaneously squeezing as much as he can into his days, running on reminders in a pocket notebook and three hours of sleep. Even his dreams don’t give him a break anymore. He’s always at the fair.
    Mostly local notables in here tonight—the city attorney, the public-works gang, the rumpled mayor, the nearly blind city planner chatting with the nearly bald Malcolm Turner. Roger waits for an opening to speak with the manic little developer while absorbing praise.
Good God, you must be tickled to death!
Nimbly bouncing from person to person; he recalls his father working crowds like this, rolling up his sleeves and pointing at you, his thumb cocked, as if toasting or shooting you, engaging everyone without committing to anyone. Teddy, as usual, takes the opposite tack, cornering key people in deep conversations while occasionally swapping eyebrow-shrugging status reports with Roger, who finds Count Basie himself in a back booth with friends. He hopes like hell he hasn’t alreadymissed all of Basie’s shows. He doesn’t want to
miss
anything. The more he sees, the more he needs to see.
    A portly man with a