It’s not a happy atmosphere in the car. They were genuinely overwhelmed to see each other, and each cried a little, but they barely touched, a squeeze of the hand, a quick brush of the cheek, and what words they did exchange were stuttered and stammered like they had barely met before. They can’t seem to bring themselves to talk, maybe because there is so much to talk about, and so few ways they can find to get started, so the journey has been conducted mostly in uncomfortable silence. Claire is driving. Danny offered to drive, but Claire said no, it was fine, and then wished she had said yes, because she feels she has rebuffed him, whereas she just thought it would be easier if she drove since she had gotten used to the car on the way down. It was a little thing, but it was about so much more than who should drive the fucking car.
It was like they were a couple who had gone on vacation to solve their problems, and instead their problems overwhelmed them, because of course their problem was themselves. Each of them thought separately, in those first few silent miles through the industrial outskirts of Chicago: if this is all that’s left of us, then for God’s sake, let it die. Each maddened by resentment and rage, and then as quickly exhausted, enervated by it all.
Claire doesn’t want to get into the whole thing with Paul Casey in Chicago, because she doesn’t know which lie she should tell. She can barely believe Danny came to Chicago in the first place. Where was he? What did he see? What could he have seen? He wasn’t in the room. And there was nothing to see anyway. Although there was a lot more than she wanted to own up to. And maybe she might have gone much further. Thank God she hadn’t. She had been bored and lonely and wanted some attention, and she had had a lucky escape. Tell a white lie or two, and then get down on her knees and apologize.
Also, Claire doesn’t really want to tell Danny that, if anyone sinister is behind this, it’s more likely to be Dave Ricks than Gene Peterson, because then she’ll have to explain that she nearly slept with Dave years ago in Chicago, only he was pretending to be Gene, and obviously she wants to steer clear of the entire Claire-sleeping-with-guys-in-Chicago thing as she feels it’s not going to endear her to her husband, and if she knows anything at this stage, it’s that she desperately wants to keep her marriage together. Maybe even to the extent of actually getting married. In order to do that, she’ll have to go through the whole process of finding out who her birth parents were, and by extension, who she is, or was. She’s not sure she wants to, but clearly she’s been cast in some kind of mid-life drama, and looking at her birth certificate is probably a more grown-up way to act than fumbling about with old flames in hotel rooms.
Danny doesn’t want to talk about the Bradberry fire, because if he does, he’s going to get into Claire’s parentage and the part he played in that fire, even if it’s nothing like what he had thought. In fact, he thinks, maybe he should bring it up, confess to her that he has been haunted by a guilt he should never have borne. But it’s not up to him, is it? It’s not his place to reveal to Claire a truth she’d prefer to live without. Of course, if he doesn’t, how is he going to come clean about all the money they’ve lost? By admitting he was a greedy fool, that’s how. The blackmail was one thing, but nobody made him borrow all that extra money to invest with Jonathan Glatt.
He knows that they’re going to have to tell each other everything, even if, in the end, it means they’re finished. He doesn’t want that, despite what happened in Chicago, which might well be nothing, and even if it wasn’t, fair enough, everyone’s human, there’ve been a couple of late nights in Brogans where, if he didn’t step entirely over the line, he put his foot right on it, and wanted to keep going. But what about Claire’s Facebook page, and those messages to Paul Casey? That was a little more than stepping over the line. That was forward planning, calculation, intention.
He thinks suddenly about Gene sending Danny an email telling him to get out of Jonathan Glatt’s fund – and somebody had responded, pretending to be Danny.
‘Claire, did you have anything happen with your computer?’
‘How do you mean?’ Oh please, don’t let Danny have read those Facebook messages
‘I don’t know. Someone hacking into it, or setting up accounts you didn’t know about?’
‘I … I think something like that did happen. Did you have the same?’
Tell her. Not everything. Never tell a woman everything. But you have to say something.
‘The money we lost … with Jonathan Glatt? Well, Gene Peterson … Gene sent me an email, he sent all the guys an email, warning us to get out, to get our money out. I mean, it was pretty short notice, but everyone else managed it. Because everyone else got the message.’
‘And what, you didn’t? He didn’t send you one?’
‘No, I told you, he did. He showed me it today, it’s in the Sent folder in his email program.’
‘But you never got it? Did he not follow up to make sure?’
‘He didn’t need to follow up. He got a reply.’
‘He got a reply? What do you mean?’
‘I mean someone sent an email from my address, claiming to be me, saying that’s great and I’d withdraw the cash immediately, thank you very much.’
Claire feels a sudden rush, an excruciating combination of fear and excitement. She can tell Danny something.
‘That’s so weird. Because you know … well, I don’t know what you know, and there might have been a bit of stupidity, but it Wasn’t. Actually. Anything. You know?’
‘Uh huh?’
‘In Chicago, I mean. With … with Paul Casey?’
‘I’m listening …’
‘How it might have happened was, and I only found this out today, right, I have a Facebook account—’
‘You never told me that.’
‘No.’
‘You were always like, “Oh, Facebook, Twitter, that stuff is for idiots.”’
‘I know. But Dee signed me up. You know Dee, she won’t take no for an answer. When she did that website for me, which I hardly ever go to either, by the way, she said I had to be on Facebook too, and post on both, to increase the traffic. I didn’t care, since I wasn’t going to use it in the first place. But then I went back to Chicago today, um …’
‘Yeah, I was wondering, what were you doing there?’
She’s going to throw up. ‘I had to … to ask Paul something.’
‘You had to ask Paul something. You gonna tell me what that was?’
‘Probably. I’ll get to it. It was nothing that affects us.’
‘Meaning …’
‘Meaning stop fucking hounding me, OK? I love you, Danny. I’m trying to talk to you. Stop treating me like a naughty child.’
She’s right. He nods, and waits.
‘So Paul said, blah blah blah “those messages you sent on Facebook.”’
‘To him?’
‘Yeah. And I said I never sent any messages. And blah blah blah, and then I went on Facebook and saw my messages, and it turned out there were three, an entire exchange between me and my ex-boyfriend. Explicit messages, inviting him to be both more and less than my current boyfriend. Messages I never wrote.’
Danny nods. He doesn’t want to admit he saw the messages, never wants to think about them again.
‘And Chicago?’ he says.
‘Nothing,’ Claire says. ‘In fact, better than nothing. If I had some kind of stupid wistful notion that I had unfinished business in that town … or in my past … well, I don’t feel that way any more. And I never will again.’
Danny nods again. He believes her. Maybe not without a certain amount of doubt, but that will pass. And even if it doesn’t, well, that’s where trust comes in. If there was no doubt, there’d be no trust. And no love.
They flash by the exit for Rockford, and Danny winces, barely able to believe that was only – what, four or five hours ago? Jeff shot in the head by a fucking sniper. Cops chasing him through the streets of Chicago. He puts his head in his hands and breathes in quickly and deeply through h
is mouth. He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, becomes conscious of a steadying hand on his thigh. He feels close to tears, but no tears come. When he lifts his head and turns around, he sees Claire’s face crumbling, and it’s her turn to cry.
‘Danny, they killed Mr Smith,’ she says.
‘Oh, no,’ Danny says.
‘They cut his throat. They cut his little body up, they slaughtered him like a pig.’
On ‘pig’ she turns shrill, and wails, and sobs, and God forgive him, so does he; the dam breaks and all the fears they hold, for their marriage, for their kids, for their future, all collide in grief over the death of their dog.
‘How will we tell the girls?’ Claire says, when she has recovered somewhat. Danny shakes his head. They drive in silence. And then something occurs to him.
‘Claire, how did you know I was in Gene’s office?’
‘Did I?’
‘You called me, and you knew I was there.’
‘That’s right. Dee told me.’
‘Dee told you? How did Dee know?’
‘I think she was worried? The cops came and questioned her at the salon, and then she’s at home, watching bulletins on TV, she’s all worked up about it.’
‘But how did she know? I mean, the only one who knew I was coming to see Gene was Dave Ricks.’
‘Maybe she guessed. Because of the Jonathan Glatt thing. Does it matter? It meant I was able to get you out of there.’
‘This is true. It’s just … her name is coming up a lot, don’t you think? Dee set up your Facebook page. All of a sudden, it has bogus messages on it. And … didn’t she do, like, tech maintenance for you?’
‘She would make sure I downloaded software and … yeah, she was always trying to interest me in the latest bells and whistles. I mean, she made me get an iPhone.’
‘And what about my laptop? Did she do anything with it?’
Claire shakes her head.
‘Not that I remember. No, wait. When something was always crashing on you?’
‘Safari.’
‘I mentioned it, and she looked at it. It was some conflict between, I don’t know, something you’d installed and something else. I told you, she fixed it. And you were, yeah, whatever. What is it with you and Dee? You’ve never really liked her.’
‘You don’t see anything suspicious about all of this? Dee sets up your Facebook page, suddenly you’re sending Paul Casey sex messages. Dee fixes my computer, I reply to emails I didn’t receive. Dee calls you up and tells you I’m in Gene Peterson’s office. Dee Dee Dee. Is all I’m saying.’
‘My friend. You think my friend is behind this? Killing two of your old friends, slaughtering our dog? Are you kidding me?’
‘I don’t see who else has it can be. I mean, I thought it was Gene. Who else is there, Dave? Dave was my best friend. Do you think Dave is going to kill Ralph Cowley?’
Claire goes numb, stares ahead. Farmhouses and trees out there, in the great state of Wisconsin. Land stretching away, far away, rich land, good for grazing. The dairy state. Christ, she needs a rest. There’s a lay-by up here and she abruptly pulls into it.
‘You drive,’ she says, and gets out of the car. They swap seats and Danny pulls out and puts his foot down. Claire tries to form a few words, finds she can’t, fumbles with the radio, punches past the classic rock and the crazy talk stations until she finds one she likes. Billie Holiday is singing ‘No Regrets,’ and if that isn’t the secret of good comedy, she doesn’t know what is.
‘When I was in Chicago, when we were broken up, I had a thing, not even a thing, a fumble, with a guy who told me his name was Gene Peterson. Nice enough guy, good looking, told me he was at school with you. Anyway, he got pretty weird, and I had to get out of the situation, and between one thing and another, he ended up getting the shit kicked out of him by this Latino gang.’
‘As you do.’
‘And when I saw the dead body in our backyard, I thought it was an older, gone to seed version of this guy.’
‘Gene Peterson looks nothing like Ralph Cowley, never did.’
‘Yes, but the guy I met in Chicago wasn’t Gene Peterson. I thought he was, I thought, oh, he hates me because I got him beaten up, which was kind of an accident anyway, and he must hate you because he got us to invest with Jonathan Glatt and we lost all our money. So I came up here to ask Paul Casey about that night, because he was the one who rescued me, and then I looked all this up online. Do you know they have high-school yearbooks online now? Well, there’s one of your year. No shots of you, or Gene Peterson, but that wasn’t a problem, I know what you look like and Gene Peterson is all over the net on account of his business. But they had shots of Ralph and Dave.’
‘And they look a bit alike, so the guy who told you he was Gene, you thought it was Ralph, but in fact it was Dave?’
‘Sorry, am I boring you?’
‘What are you suggesting, that Dave Ricks is responsible for this? He was my best friend.’
‘Was.’
‘We never fell out or anything, we just kind of … I don’t know, drifted apart.’
Danny considers this for a moment. After Dave went to school in Chicago, he would come home for weekends, hook up with Danny. At first it was OK, even though Dave had always been pretty intense, the kind of guy, if you were in his company, he didn’t want to share you, didn’t want anyone else around but the inner circle, the old firm, the Four Horsemen. And then that side of him got to be, frankly, a pain in the ass. He became like some possessive girlfriend who rang you up twenty times a day to check you weren’t cheating on her until all you wanted to do was cheat on her so you could dump her. And Danny had more or less dumped Dave: not returning his calls, pretending he wasn’t home if he came to the house, switching the places he drank, avoiding weekend shifts at Brogan’s, or alternatively making sure he was slated to work non-stop Friday through Sunday. And Dave got the message. It had been a bit cruel, but it was cruel to be kind: he still liked the guy, he just didn’t want to spend his entire life with him. After that though, he barely saw him, but then that was the usual pattern if you went to a school too close to your hometown: initially, instead of making new friends, you retreated back under the shelter of the old ones. And then, if you had any gumption, you cut loose and made a fresh start.
Sinatra is singing ‘Ill Wind’ as Claire begins to speak.
‘Oh, I love this song. All I’m saying … all right, I don’t know the guy, but when I met him, he was kind of, every second thing he said was about you. Danny … likes Frank Sinatra, Danny knows his cocktails, Danny loves his old black-and-white movies, like that? He knew we had been together, and that we had broken up, I mean, did you tell him? I assumed you did.’
‘I don’t know that I did. We didn’t have a lot of contact. But he could have found out from, I don’t know, I might have bumped into Ralph or someone. Many beers, many late nights, many years ago.’
‘Well, anyway. So, we kind of made out a bit. And in the middle of it, he would say, does Danny do it like that? Does Danny like it like that?’
‘Fuck me.’
‘Well yes. Or, in my case, absolutely do not fuck me. He was kind of obsessed with you, Dan.’
Danny lets this settle. He has no notion of what to do with it. He tries to run his mind back though school to examine the record for any corresponding behavior, but keeps jamming up against the Bradberry fire. Nothing was the same afterwards, but that was because he was like a man whose house is beside the railroad tracks: he spent so long pretending he couldn’t hear the noise he began to believe there wasn’t any.
Besides, Ralph saw Gene throw the fire bottle.
Danny considers telling Claire about the Bradberry fire. He doesn’t have to tell her he knows she is Claire Bradberry (and there’s another strike against Dave, bringing someone called Claire Bradberry into the Jonathan Glatt fund, if Gene is telling the truth), but it’s a way of edging closer to the truth. Maybe he’s on the point of telling her,
when his phone rings. He’s no longer worried if the cops can trace him. Part of him is hoping they do.
‘Danny Brogan.’
‘Danny, it’s Gene.’
‘Hey, Gene. That was exciting.’
‘I … I guess I owe you an apology.’
‘But you don’t know for sure. According to what you read in the papers, I’m a dangerous fugitive.’
‘I panicked. You looked a little wild, Danny.’
‘So much for the Four Horsemen.’
‘Yeah. Well, I don’t know what you’ve done, or not done, so we’ll see how it comes out in the wash. But something about that Halloween night, big guy. You can talk?’
‘I can listen.’
‘OK. So you said Ralph was sure I threw the fire bottle, the one that hit the Bradberry house, threw it deliberately. And Ralph knew because he was Pestilence and I was Plague, or the other way round, whichever – I was a P and so was he?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And how he knew was, he made sure if I was P, he was going to be too, seeing as how he was my loyal lieutenant and so forth?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah. Well, the thing of it is, I noticed, when he was choosing his costume, how he checked to see what I was wearing first. And Dave Ricks noticed too, saw me choosing P and Ralph plumping for it also. And Dave gave me this look, you know, kind of satirical, “Ralph your little nodding dog” type of thing. I mean, it had already started to get on my nerves anyway, Ralph running around after me all the time, “Yes Gene, no Gene, six bags full Gene.” There’s loyalty and there’s sucking ass. So – very simply – after Ralph had chosen his costume, Dave and I switched.’
‘What, and Ralph didn’t notice? We were waiting around for hours beforehand.’
All the Things You Are Page 26