Truth Like the Sun by Jim Lynch

bowling ball head and milky blue eyes blocks his path and offers his hand without extending it, forcing Roger to step closer. “Mr. Morgan,” he says. “Dave Beck.”
    “Of course,” Roger says, recognizing the Teamsters boss once he gets over being startled.
    Beck pulls him closer. “I’m told you run one heck of a fair,” he says in a boyish whisper.
    The compliment feels suspect, seeing how everyone says Beck runs everything and had all the fair workers signed up with one of his unions. “Thank you, sir,” Roger says, matching Beck’s sustained grip and wondering when he’ll get his hand back.
    He glimpses Malcolm Turner talking the ear off another bureaucrat, and also notices Meredith Stein in animated conversation, her large glass of red suggesting she occasionally slips out of character as the fair’s imposing arts director. He’d dropped into her galleries again this afternoon, striding past the classics to the mods, where half an hour blew by in what felt like a few minutes. The man she’s talking to pivots enough for Roger to see it’s Sid Chambliss. Almost three years had passed since he’d told the feisty attorney that the fair needed the Freemasons’ Nile Temple at Third and Thomas. He’d played a similar unpopular role with the state board picking the freeway route, his name burbling through subsequent lawsuits claiming unlawful condemnation, as if he alone decided which buildings lived and died.
    “Let me know if you need
anything
,” Beck says, finally releasing his hand, narrowing his eyes. “You hear?”
    “Same goes for you, Mr. Beck.” Part of looking comfortably in charge, Roger has learned, requires offering help, not requesting it. “You let
me
know.”
    He intercepts Chambliss by cutting in front of a business columnist for the
Times
.
    “Sid!” Roger says festively, grabbing his shoulder. “Glad you made it!”
    Chambliss looks aghast. “I suggest,” he says, leaning in with hisbourbon breath, “that you don’t misread things. Business, not pleasure, brings me here.”
    “Never understood that distinction,” Roger mock-whispers back.
    Chambliss hesitates and leans closer, his freckles looking like some tropical disease running into his hairline. “We’re going ahead with the suit. You know that, right?”
    Roger rocks backward and laughs, noticing Teddy watching, feeling the
Times
man listening. “You’re very welcome,” he half-shouts. “Enjoy yourself!” He turns and starts for Malcolm Turner but is waylaid by women demanding photos with him, their intoxication and the lighting making them all look far chummier than they actually are. When he turns to look past the shapely woman next to him, her bright smile blocks his view, and his left hand, he realizes, is lingering on the small of her back. If he makes eye contact and doesn’t keep moving, he knows he might wake up with her. He excuses himself and feels overheated now, wishing he hadn’t provoked Chambliss. He signs three fair programs and grants more pleas for passes, tickets and appearances. Sure, he’ll try to make it. Yes,
of course
!
    The governor lumbers inside now and draws an immediate posse. Jovial and inarticulate, Big Ed Lopresti often shows up at the club and, to Roger’s surprise, occasionally closes the place.
    Several more men crowd Malcolm Turner, hinged at their hips, hanging on the little man’s words. Roger’s view gets blocked, and again a large hand is dangled in front of him.
    “Mr. Morgan, just wanted to reintroduce myself. Clive Buchanan.”
    “Of course.” Roger shakes enthusiastically, staring up into the county prosecutor’s nostrils.
    “Congrats,” Buchanan says coolly, then picks his words without releasing his grip. “Seems you know what you’re doing.”
    “Glad it appears that way.”
    “I didn’t realize you and Malcolm were friends.” Buchanan’s chin twitches toward the developer. “That’s terrific.”
    “Why’s that?” he asks, but the prosecutor