Friday's Harbor (20 page)

“Yeah, but he’s a wild animal who got caught. And now you’re telling him he can’t go back there. No wonder the poor guy’s slamming into windows.”

“Let’s get you out there,” said Truman. “So you can see just how unsuicidal he is.”

“Cool bananas!” Martin grabbed up all his camera gear, notebook, and recorder.

“Let me just call ahead so they know we’re coming,” Truman said, picking up the phone. “Why don’t you say hello to Brenda? I’ll only be a minute.”

“Hey, man, no prob—I can get there by myself,” Martin said. “It’s not like I don’t know where it is.”

“I’d prefer to go with you.”

Why was the guy so determined to handle him?
Martin wondered. Even ol’ Harriet Saul would have let him walk over alone, and she’d been a controlling harridan. “Hey,” he said to Brenda dutifully out in the reception area.

“Hey,” she said without even looking away from her computer screen, cracking a tiny piece of gum. He used to think she was kind of cute in a ratted-hair-and-twenty-pounds-overweight kind of way, but now he could see he was above that kind of girl.

“Okay,” said Truman, closing his office door behind him. “All set.”

T
RUMAN HAD NO
sooner gotten to the whale pool than the security radio at his hip crackled. “Brenda for Truman. Truman, do you copy?”

“Go for Truman,” he said.

“A guy just called from KIRO in Seattle. They heard the whale died. Over.”

“I’m on my way,” he said. He’d have to hand Martin off to Gabriel with only the brief heads-up Truman had given him over the phone, but Gabriel was a pro. Hell, he’d probably have handled this whole mess much better than Truman had.

As soon as he got back, Brenda held her hand over the phone receiver and said, “This is KOIN in Portland. They heard the whale died, too. They’re sending a satellite truck up. So’s another of the Seattle stations I can’t remember the letters of right now. You want to talk to this guy?”

He had Brenda put the call through to his office.

“Hey there,” said a man who identified himself as one of the producers for the station’s evening news. “We got a bunch of folks saying the pool down there’s closed because the whale committed suicide by swimming into the walls. We’re sending a satellite truck up there for the six o’clock news.”

“No, no, no,” Truman begged. “Don’t waste your time. Friday is not only very much alive, he’s in excellent health and his spirits couldn’t be better.”

“So how come you closed the pool to visitors?”

“We had some construction projects to finish that we weren’t able to get to before Friday arrived.”

“We were told he wasn’t even in the pool anymore.”

Truman marveled for a few seconds and then said, “Just out of curiosity, where else could he be?”

“I don’t know. I don’t make up the news, bud, I just report it. So you’re saying he’s not dead?”

“He’s definitely not dead. He’s alive and he’s here.”

“So why’d you have a vet flown up?”

Truman’s heart sank: clearly his effort to confine the story had backfired. “How did you hear about that, if I may ask?”

“Come on, don’t you know we hear about everything? It’s just a matter of how quickly.”

Truman thought that was a bit arch, but he was in no position to pick fights. He put on his most lawyerly persona, took a big breath, and began. “A marine mammal veterinary specialist was here today, yes. His name is Monty Jergensen, and he’s seen Friday in the past in Bogotá. We asked him to come review the whale’s blood work and look him over. This was strictly a wellness call.”

“Yeah? And did he find anything?”

“As a matter of fact, he confirmed that Friday is in excellent shape, much better shape than he’d expected so soon. He did, however, find a broken tooth, which he extracted.”

“A busted tooth?”

“That’s right.”

“Jeez, I’d hate to see the drill,” said the producer, cracking himself up. Truman wondered if Martin Choi had family members in Seattle who were also in the news business. “Pretty handy, having the guy right there.”

Truman sighed—and then he realized that he’d said nothing about the tooth to Martin. Monty or Gabriel probably would. If they did, it would make Truman look even shiftier. If they didn’t, Martin would see the spot on TV and assume they’d treated him differently than they treated the big-city TV stations. Either way, Truman was screwed, and another chip would be added to the already tall stack Martin Choi carried on his shoulder.

The TV producer was talking in his ear. “I’m sorry?” said Truman.

“Let me see if I got this right, because it sounds like you guys had a busy day. There was construction stuff going on, and because of that the whale was off-exhibit, which worked out okay because it
just so happened
that a whale vet was up there and he found a busted tooth you didn’t know about, but that he extracted. Am I right so far?”

“Pretty much,” said Truman.

“Okay, and so you’re saying the whale didn’t commit suicide or fail to commit suicide, even though a bunch of folks down there yesterday saw him slamming into windows off and on all day, which no one knows why he’d do something like that when it must have hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. It seems like that’s a whole lot of stuff to have happening all at the same time.”

“Tell me about it,” said Truman.

“So if he wasn’t trying to commit suicide, why was he slamming into the windows and freaking out a bunch of folks with their kids?”

“The best answer we have is that he was seeing his reflection in the windows, assuming it was another killer whale, and exerting territoriality.”

“Huh,” said the producer. “Don’t whales get those parasites that make them lose their sense of direction or spatial orientation or something and swim up onto beaches or whatever?”

“I think I’m over my head,” Truman said. “I’m going to get off the phone and get one of our keepers to call you right back.”

“That’s okay—I’ve got what I need.” The phone went dead in Truman’s hand.

Truman stared at the handset for a moment. What could the producer possibly have to make a story from but wild conjectures, rumors, and conflicting facts?

Before he could decide whether he should do something—call the TV station back, tell him god knows what—Brenda stuck an ominous stack of pink While You Were Out messages in front of him. “Some of them said they heard the whale was dead, and the rest say he’s on suicide watch.” She cracked her gum and walked out. “Good luck, boss.”

Truman flipped quickly through the packet of messages and found three more TV stations, AP and Reuters, Sky News, and NPR. Behind those were the
Seattle Times,
the
Oregonian,
and a handful of California newspapers. The evening news was being written at that very moment, based on crazy conclusions invented by people lacking even an iota of factual information, and there was no time to set them all straight.

Spin or be spun.

L
IBERTINE STOOD OUTSIDE
Havenside for a good ten minutes before she could summon her resolve. When she got upstairs, she thought Truman looked like hell, pasty-faced and wilted. He gestured for her to come in and sit down. She took one of his visitors’ chairs and said, “I wonder if I can offer a suggestion? It might help.”

“That would be nice,” he said—somewhat wistfully, she thought.

She took a deep breath and began. “Here’s the thing: no one except a handful of us knows Friday has chosen not to communicate with me anymore. And I’m seeing what everyone else should: a robust, active, chipper whale. I’d gladly call anyone on your media roster who’s running with the wrong story and give them the same update you have, only as though he’s told me, especially, how good life has become. I can say he’s slamming into the windows because even though we know it’s his own reflection, he’s seeing another killer whale in the window and asserting dominance. Gabriel still feels that’s the most likely explanation, and it is a sign of good health—he wouldn’t have had the energy to do it until recently. Anyway, let me talk at least to Martin Choi on my own. He might buy it. At least it might stop the rumor about Friday being suicidal.”

Truman thought.

“You, Gabriel, Ivy, or Neva are welcome to listen in, if you’re worried about my being a loose cannon,” Libertine said. “And I won’t even affiliate myself with the zoo—that’ll have better credibility anyway.”

Truman smiled at her, a nice little smile, though with sad undertones.

“You’ve all done so much for me—let me give something back.”

Truman gave her the go-ahead to talk not only to Martin Choi, but also to any of the media speeding toward Bladenham. He sent a message back with her to Gabriel: let any media who descended upon them see the whale. And if at all possible, keep him busy enough not to slam into the windows.

T
RUMAN LEFT THE
zoo after the early evening news was over. The coverage was horrible, horrible, horrible, and God alone knew what would run in the newspapers tomorrow morning. He went directly to his parents’ house.

It had been a long time since he’d sought out Matthew for solace. But his father’s even temper, dry sense of humor, and incisive mind were exactly what he needed—that and something alcoholic. He accepted Lavinia’s proffered glass of crisp chardonnay and took it into the sunroom, where Matthew was sitting with the
New York Times,
a newspaper he’d been reading daily, cover to cover, for as long as Truman could remember.

Now, seeing Truman, Matthew meticulously folded the paper, made a pass over the crease so it would lie perfectly flat, and placed it in front of him on the white wicker coffee table. The room was brilliant, saturated with light even on a winter evening, refracting off-white furniture, white window casements, white drapes, white lamps, white rug. Lavinia had chosen vivid floral upholstery and well-placed plants around the room to soften it. Ordinarily it was one of Truman’s favorite places, but tonight it just felt overilluminated and jarring.

“You look wrung out. Tough day?” Matthew asked mildly. “Have you had dinner?”

“Not yet. Neva’s working this evening, so I told Winslow I’d pick up something on my way home. I can’t stay long.”

“My dear,” Matthew called into the kitchen, “do we have enough dinner to feed a growing boy?”

“I’m sure we do,” Lavinia called back. “Elena cooked a roast this morning.” Elena was the housekeeper who’d been with the Levy family for nearly thirty-five years. “And Ivy’s gone home for a few days.”

“Tell Winslow to ride his bike over,” Matthew suggested. Truman lived just four blocks away. Truman got Winslow on the phone and told him to be very, very careful on the ride over, despite the fact that he’d be on residential streets with very little traffic, and to use his headlamp.

“So,” Matthew said with the faintest twinkle in his eye once Truman was off the phone. “Anything you want to talk about?”

Truman rubbed his eyes, then his face, then his scalp, harder and harder until his hair stood in lively little spikes all over his head. In his most lawyerly voice he attempted a cogent summary of the day for Matthew, sticking to the facts. When he was finished, what it all amounted to was this: Martin Choi, dim though he was, had brought Truman to his knees.

“My boy, there’s lying and then there’s what I like to call creative truth-telling,” Matthew said after listening very carefully. “From what you’ve told me, you weren’t so much lying as you were disorganized and tentative. The cardinal rule when working with the press is to keep the story so simple that even the very stupid can’t get it wrong. Identify a simple message, make sure you have facts to support it—and mind you, you can get creative in your presentation—and once you’ve decided you have a story that can be summarized in one simple sentence, blow every hole in it you can think of and see if it sinks or floats. If it sinks, keep working on it, even if the phone is ringing off the hook. If it floats, stick to it
no matter what
. And don’t lie. Never lie. In work as in life, it rarely helps. And it’ll destroy your credibility forever.”

Winslow came into the room with Lavinia, who kissed Truman on the top of the head, a rare demonstrative act. She handed around flatware and napkins, to be laid on TV trays rather than the dining room table.

Then she turned on the last of the evening news.

I
VY FIRST HEARD
that Friday had died, an apparent suicide, as she drove home from the market in Friday Harbor. She nearly drove into a tree, and Julio Iglesias was pitched right out of his booster seat onto the floor, where he fixed her with a long and baleful look before turning his back on her and curling into a sullen ball on the floorboards.

“What the hell!” she said when she connected with Truman. “When were you planning on letting me know?
Suicide?
I leave for two days and this happens?”

“Wait,” said Truman. “Wait, wait, wait. Friday is alive. He’s well. It’s all been a huge mistake.”

“Well?” said Ivy. “Who botched it?”

“I did,” he said, and proceeded to give her a quick recap.

“Whew,” said Ivy. “I’m pouring myself a good stiff drink. I’m even giving Julio Iglesias a small one.”

“Then bottoms up,” said Truman. “And by the way, if you TiVoed the news, I’d recommend you not watch.”

“Oh?”

“Yep,” Truman said. “Just don’t.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Truman waited until he’d gotten to his office to open the
News-Tribune.
The lead headline read K
ILLER
W
HALE
W
ANTS
O
UT
. Despite what Truman knew were Libertine’s best efforts, the story was a remarkable work of fiction, claiming that Friday was trying to break the glass in the zoo’s visitors’ gallery as a tactic to demand his return to the wild. Apparently bowing to the fact that a suicide attempt wasn’t likely, Martin had instead seized on the fact that Friday once swam free in the North Atlantic, “at one with his podmates and limitless environment.” Based on the fact of Friday’s wild birth—and Truman granted that at least Martin got that part right—he went on to quote Libertine: “He’s a remarkably adaptive animal. His new surroundings and life are a huge, huge improvement. Imagine if you’d been living in a cardboard box for eighteen years, and suddenly you’re given the presidential suite at the Hilton. That’s what this feels like to him. And he’s the opposite of suicidal; he’s on a round-the-clock high. His new life here at the zoo is phenomenal.”