One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)
Danny is eating steak and French fries in a Ruby Tuesday’s at the Clock Tower Square in Rockford, Illinois, or rather, he is nursing a Bloody Mary and chewing the occasional fry and thinking he should send his steak back because it is overcooked, but not wanting to cause a fuss, preferring to sit and sulk instead, about the steak, and other things.
Danny insisted on driving because he thought it would stop him thinking, not to mention freaking out, but neither the driving nor the comfort afforded by the knowledge that the girls were all right stopped him doing either of these things, or speeding, or shouting out random strings of obscenities, Tourette’s style, about Glatt and his money and Gene Peterson, and his wife, Claire, and what she may or may not have got up to in Chicago with her ex-boyfriend and God alone knows what else.
When they crossed the state line into Illinois at 120 miles an hour, Jeff quietly but firmly told him they needed to take a break, and Danny, grateful despite his protests, because he knew Jeff wanted him to explain everything, and for all that Danny didn’t want to explain (in the irrational hope that not putting it into words would somehow prevent it from being real), deep down he was of course desperate to tell all, to confess, as much for the relief of letting it out as for the urgent need to make sense of it and plan his next move. But he felt he was being crowded into it nonetheless, and by Jeff, whose role in Danny’s life does not extend to bossing him around or making demands. Hence the sulking.
Jeff has finished his salad. He drinks his green tea and wipes his mouth with his napkin and looks at Danny with clear-eyed concern, and when Danny meets his eye and looks away quickly for about the ninth time since they sat down, Jeff speaks.
‘Have you called Claire? Maybe it would be a good idea to let her know you’re OK? And more to the point, that the kids are?’
‘I can’t call her.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if I do, they can track my cell phone.’
‘Who can?’
‘Whoever’s behind all this.’
‘Where’d you hear that?’
‘I saw it on TV. One of those cop shows?’
‘What about a throwaway phone?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You mustn’t have watched that show to the end. A throwaway phone is where you buy a cell that’s preloaded with credit. You don’t need an account, so you can’t be traced. And who’s liable to be tracing you anyway, Danny? Cops? Bad guys?’
Danny shakes his head, unwilling to begin, unsure where to begin.
‘What’s going on? Is it something to do with the fire? The Bradberry fire?’
Danny’s stomach lurches, like he’s going to heave, and sweat seeps through his hair and down his brow. Instead of replying (because how the fuck does Jeff know about his part in the Bradberry fire?) he shakes his head and waves toward the window with the celery stick from his cocktail at the Clock Tower Square Resort, with its Best Western Hotel and Conference Center and its leisure facilities and so on.
‘Places like this,’ Danny says, knowing he sounds like a parody of an angry middle-aged man but unable to resist. ‘Is it any wonder we’re demoralized, as a nation, sitting in horrible chain restaurants like this in horrible parking lots like that, within earshot of the Interstate’s roar, eating horrible food and gazing out at horrible red-brick buildings, and this is a resort? This is where we come to enjoy ourselves?’
Danny wants to add to this, or thinks he does, but he can feel his voice beginning to yelp, to creak, and in any case, the emotion roiling within him is too great and particular to be contained by a rant about the Best Western Hotel chain’s lack of architectural distinction. Jeff pats Danny on the arm and catches the waiter’s eye and asks for a second green tea and another Bloody Mary, and they sit in silence until the drinks come, and Jeff takes the tea and passes the cocktail to Danny and nods at him and smiles, as if everything is going to be OK.
‘I’m the driver, no discussion. Drink.’
Danny takes a hit of the drink, which he augments with extra Tabasco before taking another and nodding to himself, the fiery burn of the vodka and spices granting him a blessed release from his burden and fostering briefly in him the unlikely notion that everything is going to be OK. Finally, it’s time to talk. Not about the fire, not to begin with. Not about Claire. Claire Bradberry, Jesus, did Jonathan Glatt actually say that? Claire and her Facebook account, when she affects ‘not to understand’ technology. Claire sending sex messages via Facebook to her ex-boyfriend. Claire and Paul Casey in Chicago. Claire, the wife he knows all about and doesn’t know at all. Not Claire, not yet. No, the money. Start with the money.
‘I lost two hundred and fifty grand to Jonathan Glatt.’
Jeff’s eyes widen.
‘You said fifty. You told me fifty.’
‘I told Claire fifty. I told everyone fifty. Sometimes I manage to convince myself it was only fifty.’
‘And where did you … just have it sitting around?’
‘Are you kidding me? Brogan’s is a bar and grill, not a casino. No, I … I remortgaged the house.’
‘For two fifty?’
‘No, I had the fifty. So I could say, we lost that. But I borrowed an extra two hundred. Two hundred and five, actually. I … I don’t know. I got greedy, I suppose. I could blame it all on Gene. I mean, he got me into it, and from what Glatt told me, he got out before the whole thing fell apart. Whether that means he knew what was coming and didn’t warn me, I don’t know. Or worse, he knew the whole thing was a fraud. But you know, no one made me borrow the extra funds. I … I felt like I deserved it.’
‘And what does that mean? You couldn’t keep up the payments? Is that why you cleared the house out, the bank foreclosed?’
The word is acrid in the air between them, like smoke from charcoal flames: foreclosed. Danny winces, then raises his eyebrows and nods.
‘I don’t get it,’ Jeff says. ‘Two hundred grand, depending on the term, that’s what, twelve hundred a month? Brogan’s is never empty, not even on Tuesday nights in February when no one in their right mind goes out, not even when the city is snowed in. What gives? How could you slip so far behind?’
‘How do you know about the Bradberry fire?’ Danny says, not so much dodging as deferring the question.
‘What? Because you told me. Years ago. When you helped me stay out of jail, and out of the hands of those guys from Milwaukee, and I was grateful, and told you how unlikely it was that I’d be able to pay you back, and how ashamed I felt, I guess you wanted to make me feel like everyone had, I don’t know, a secret shame, something they weren’t proud of.’
‘And … because I’m afraid I don’t remember …’
‘We were very, very drunk. And then stoned. It’s just, that makes no difference to me. I remember everything.’
‘Well then. What exactly did I tell you? What do you know?’
Danny’s voice is louder now, alcohol removing his inhibitions. Some people at the adjoining tables look over, and he stares at them until they look away again. He sees Jeff watching him, as if he is a volatile compound that’s going to bubble over at any moment, and gives him a smile that’s intended to be reassuring, although he doesn’t really see how it can be. Slow down, drop your voice, don’t over-enunciate, keep it together.
‘You told me you were bullied by the Bradberry kid …’
‘Jackie. Why do you ask this now, exactly?’
‘Because when you were venting your spleen out there on the highway, free-associating and motherfucking and damning everyone to hell and beyond, Jackie Bradberry was one of the prominent names on your shit list. Along with his brothers, Eric and, and …’
‘Brian. OK. Go on. So back then.’
‘So back then you told me you were bullied over a period of six to nine months, first by Jackie, and then, when you stood up to him, by his brothers, who were the threat behind Jackie. That you had to let him kick the shi
t out of you or they’d more than kick the shit out of you, they’d kick it back into you again. And you were a nervous wreck. And none of your friends would step in ’cause they were all scared shitless of the Bradberry brothers too—’
‘Gene Peterson stepped in. Actually. And they broke his arm. So after that …’
‘Whatever. The fact remains, it was like you had nobody to turn to, and no way out. Your father was a nasty old drunk, or a charming but ineffectual old drunk, or a creepy, sleazy old drunk – anyway, he was a drunk, and no use to a boy in trouble, he had no advice to give you. And you felt like you couldn’t take much more. So you decided you had to kill Jackie Bradberry—’
‘I decided he had to die. I never … it wasn’t like there was a masterplan, like it was a hit, and I was an eleven-year-old assasin …’
‘OK. So you told me about it, that you feel … or at least, you felt, that you were responsible. A Halloween prank got out of hand, and thirteen people died, and it was your fault.’
Danny takes a long hit of his drink and stares into it, through the cracked ice and the pepper flecks, sees the green of the celery, the crimson of the juice, blood among the leaves, the garden ablaze.
‘But it wasn’t clear to me why. I mean, there was so much confusion, you were concussed—’
Danny nods impatiently and holds up a hand to cut Jeff off.
‘You know she grew up here? I mean, in Rockford, not in this so-called resort,’ Danny says.
‘Who?’
‘Claire. My wife. She was adopted at the age of three, and grew up in Rockford. Her parents, that is to say, her adoptive parents, ran a flower store, more than that, a garden center, seeds and plants and cuttings and so on, attached in some way to the arboretum. Rockford has a small arboretum, it’s almost the dump’s saving grace. Anyway, when we met, and Claire saw my house, how it was embedded in the UW Arboretum, I think she took it as a sign, that we were meant to be.’
‘I’m sorry, Danny. Does that have something to do with the Bradberry fire?’
The Bradberry fire. The central event in his life. It has never gone away, and it never will. Danny looks at the red and green in his glass and again sees blood, sees flames. That’s how he remembers it back then, and that’s how he sees it now, as if the world is a dark wood, dimly visible through a glistening, pulsing caul of crimson fire. How could he ever escape it? Ralph Cowley had written a book about it, or at least, a manuscript. Seventy or eighty pages of closely spaced typescript, thrust into his hands last week at Danny’s garden gate, Ralph in his Death cowl, shaking with excitement and fear. And the thing about it was he had written it all from Danny’s point of view.
Danny finishes his drink, which he had thought was keeping him clear-eyed and vivid and fresh, but which he now realizes, stupidly, of course, was making him drunk.
‘We never meant it to happen!’ he says abruptly, too loud, and again the diners in Ruby Tuesday’s turn to gaze at this man, a little too bright and shrill for lunchtime.
‘We made sure to keep the gas away from the house, ten or twelve feet away, we made a point of it,’ Danny says, quieter now, as if, even at this late stage, what happened could be undone. Jeff nods his reassurance, and holds the back of his hand up to their impromptu audience: show’s over, folks.
Danny winces at the memory, tries to turn it into a nod of assent, succeeds only in looking like a man trying to shake a bug out of his ear.
‘There was one Bradberry child that survived, remember? A little girl, three years old. She had got up in darkness, between the time the last of the family returned home and before the fire started, and had wandered about downstairs, and let herself into the old porch, which is where she liked to play during the daytime, she had a toy farm there, buildings and animals and so on, and after a while she fell asleep. And this porch had the only door and windows that didn’t have vinyl frames, and the fire fighters arrived before the flames reached her, and it was still drafty enough that the fumes hadn’t overwhelmed her, and she survived.’
Danny pauses as their waitress passes by. Drunk or not, he needs a bump to get through the rest of this.
‘How’re you guys doin’ here?’ she says.
‘Another of these, and another green tea,’ says Danny, flourishing his empty glass. Jeff shakes his head.
‘Black coffee. There’s only so much green tea a man can drink.’
The waitress departs.
‘The little girl survived. Her name was Claire. Her adoptive parents were called Taylor. They lived outside Milwaukee, ran some kind of gardening business, but when Claire was about five, I think there was some stuff in the local paper, some rumor-mongering about who she really was, so the Taylors upped sticks and moved to Rockford. That’s pretty much all I know about them. I never met them, they died pretty quickly, one after another, when Claire was in Chicago.’
‘Your Claire … Claire Taylor … was Claire Bradberry?’ Jeff says, his mouth slack with wonder.
‘And I didn’t know, I didn’t know when I met her first, I found out … just after we got back together, I … was told.’
‘And does she know?’
‘For a long time, she didn’t. She had no interest in finding out, she said. All she wanted to know was if she had any hereditary medical conditions. The Taylors told her there was nothing serious, apparently – and she’s never been much of a drinker, so that gene appears to have been skipped.’
‘“For a long time she didn’t.” Do you mean, she does now?’
‘Jonathan Glatt told me there were four other investors in his Ponzi scheme known to me: Gene Peterson, who got us in, Dave Ricks and Ralph Cowley, all present at the Bradberry house, Halloween, 1975. And somebody who was there also. Somebody called Claire Bradberry.’
The waitress brings Danny’s drink and Jeff’s coffee. Jeff looks like he’s preparing to speak but can’t work out what to say. Danny, relieved to have unburdened himself of his terrible secret, and feeling ever so slightly dreamy and associative and insightful, because he’s relieved, and because he’s drunk, takes a hefty swig of vodka and spiced tomato juice and looks around the room. The lunch crowd has dwindled; if they’re not the last people here, there’s no one else Danny can see. Two staff members in chef’s duds have emerged from the kitchen and are leaning at the bar, shooting it with the bartenders. Danny likes this time in Brogan’s, the slow set in the frenzied rhythm of the restaurant day. There’s a sudden, unbuttoned intimacy between the workers, a playful ease. If you want to know who’s sleeping with who, or who’s about to start, this is when you spot the signs. He tried to explain it to Claire once, and she said it sounded like when the curtain has come down in the theater, and the cast reveal their true faces to each other once more, only there’s still a trace, a remnant, a shadow of the part they had played on the stage: they’ve more than one face, and that doubleness is kind of sexy, the sense of there being something mysterious or elusive about a person. Danny thinks that’s right, and wonders if that is why actors’ marriages don’t seem to last, because they are more afflicted by duality than most, and then decides maybe everyone has a second face, a face you can glimpse but never truly know. And then he thinks, almost laughing, Jesus, the stuff that slides through your brain when you start drinking at lunchtime.
‘So,’ Jeff begins. ‘So look, for the purposes of what the fuck do we do now, I’m going to skip the part where I ask you how you feel and doesn’t Claire have a right to know and all of that and cut straight to this: were you being, like, blackmailed or something? Because even if you’d lost two hundred grand, the income from Brogan’s would have covered it, right? Unless …’
Danny nods.
‘Unless I was already up against it for other reasons, that’s right. I had gotten used to it.’
‘How long?’
‘Fifteen years. It started just after Claire came back from Chicago and we got married. A couple of weeks later, I got this letter, the way they do it in the movies, all letters fr
om magazines pasted on to a sheet of paper, the address typewritten. It read: Laugh at me an you are dead. That was the first note Jackie Bradberry sent me. And then a week later came the second: You are dead meat. Killer.
‘All the others followed, one a week, calling me out to the death ground, telling me I was dead. Even the spelling was right: See what a fare fight is like, bitch boy, with “fair” spelled f-a-r-e. Then nothing for a few weeks. I was reeling at this stage, obviously. And then the coup de grace.
‘Maybe it would be best for you if you let your wife know that you burnt her family to death and took your chances. Do not take for granted the patience and discretion of your so-called friends. They are not the only ones who know Claire Taylor is the Bradberry girl who alone escaped on Halloween 1976.’
‘Oh, man. And did you know?’
‘How would I have known?’
‘So it came as a bit of a shock.’
‘That’s about right. And all I wanted was, for it not to be true.’
‘And you said, she didn’t want to know.’
‘That’s right. But I needed to know. If not after the first letters, certainly when that one came along. The next communication was a little more direct. It had a PO box number I should send a check to every month. At first it wasn’t for very much, three hundred bucks. I say not very much, it rose eventually to five grand, still, three hundred felt like a lot back in ’ninety-five, just married and so on. But I paid it.’
‘Five grand a month? You didn’t go to the police?’
‘Then I’d’ve had to explain about the Bradberry fire, what I was doing there. Implicate the guys, hey, maybe end up in jail on manslaughter, even murder charges. Are you kidding me? The blackmailer spelled it out: Claire would be told first, the cops second. Besides. I knew the truth at that stage.’
All the Things You Are Page 14