All the Things You Are (19 page)

‘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 from 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.'

‘You knew the truth?'

‘Claire had an envelope with her details in it, adoption forms and so on. The Taylors had given it to her, so any time she felt ready, she could find out who her parents were. She kept it among her things. And one night when she had gone out with Dee St Clair, I found it, didn't even have to steam it open, there was a ribbon like on a notarized document, but no wax seal or anything. So I opened it, and there it was, a copy of her birth certificate, Claire Mary Bradberry, born January eighteenth, 1973, to William and Agnes Bradberry, Schofield Street, Madison, Wisconsin.'

‘Oh,
man.
'

‘And it was, like, one thing on top of another, you know: I couldn't let Claire know I'd had a hand in the fire that killed her family, I couldn't let Claire find out who her real family was from this malicious asshole, and I couldn't let the cops know about my involvement in the Bradberry fire. Over the years, I thought of hiring, like, a private investigator to look into it, only, I don't know, if I were a PI and I located the guy who started the Bradberry fire, I'd consider that a higher value scalp, I'd turn me in. I didn't trust anyone not to spill the beans.'

‘And what about the guys? Surely you figured it must have been one of them?'

‘Logically, that's how it looked. But here's the thing: it wasn't Dave Ricks, no way, Dave and me were the tightest. And Ralph is just such a solid guy, not an ounce of bad in him. And Gene, well, Gene, up until the Jonathan Glatt thing, I'd've thought it impossible, the very idea of anonymous letters, of blackmail, if Gene Peterson was going to do anything, he'd come round your house and shout through your window, you know, straight as an arrow, Gene. Or so I would have said. I mentioned it to each of them, obliquely, mind you, not the blackmail, just, if they thought anyone else knew about it. Each of them swore he'd never told a soul. And I didn't want them to know the truth about Claire, so I didn't take it further.'

‘And the bank have foreclosed on the house? Jesus, Danny, the family home? Didn't your grandfather build it?'

Tears brim in Danny's eyes, booze the forcing agent but the emotion no less heartfelt for that.

‘It's terrible. And hiding it has been worse: it's three months now since the court ordered it. Technically there's one month to go before the auction, one month to turn it around. But maybe … maybe I don't want to … maybe living there all this time hasn't been a good idea either. Maybe not everything in the garden is what it should be. But it's not as if I had a lot of time to make up my mind, it seemed to happen so fast. The return from the investment with Glatt was servicing the mortgage, and then the money from Glatt was gone, and suddenly I had a mortgage I couldn't pay because I was hemorrhaging five grand a month to this blackmailing motherfucker who was trying to destroy my life and succeeding. And … and I both did it, intentionally, and let it happen, unconsciously, because … because my wife is not … because not everything in the garden is …'

‘Rosy. Something about Chicago, and faithless wives, and Facebook, and an ex-boyfriend were all parts of your highway rant. And the clearing out of the house and the bolting with the kids is part of that? Along with all the financial shenanigans? To punish Claire? Or to protect her? Or some fucked-up combination of both?'

Danny grimaces, then laughs, a dark, self-loathing laugh.

‘Some fucked-up combination of both is about right. But also, to find out who's behind this. When it comes down to it, it can only be Ralph, or Dave, or Gene. And here's the thing. Last Sunday, the night of the barbecue—'

Danny stops talking because Jeff has held up his hand and pointed to the TV screen to their right, one of several dotted around the restaurant. Danny looks up at the screen. The sound is down, but the images tell their own story: helicopter and angle shots of his own backyard on Arboretum Avenue, secured as a crime scene with police tape and a white paper tent and figures in protective clothing pacing about. There are uniformed officers and police cruisers and a shot of the Madison Police Department Western District station house on McKenna Boulevard. There are shots of a body being wheeled past on a gurney and loaded into a Dane County Medical Examiner's vehicle.

There's a photograph of Ralph Cowley taken in high school, or it could be Dave Ricks, those guys had always looked alike, but it's got to be Ralph, since it was Ralph who came to the house. Ralph, the Angel of Death, with his novel, his book of revelations. There's a photograph of Mr Smith, and a photograph of Danny, the one where he was in a tuxedo dancing with Claire in
The Way of the World
. Before Danny can process it all, the question flashes through his mind: why is a murderer on the run nine times out of ten photographed in a tuxedo? Do murderers on the run take care never to be photographed after their prom night?

‘Time to go, Dan,' Jeff says.

Jeff throws a couple of fifties on the restaurant table and nods his head in the direction of the parking lot.

‘I think we need to hit the road, round up what's left of your old friends and ask them a few questions.'

‘T
here's no way you can just leave the kids behind,' Angelique says, wiping her lips and cheeks with a tissue and reaching for the flask of iced camomile tea she has brought and letting it sluice around inside her mouth before she swallows it. She perches on the car seat beside Charlie T and gives him the perky Angelique smile that brooks no argument and retrieves her gum from the clasp of her purse and, with the aid of a hand mirror, starts to repair the make-up she's smeared.

‘I mean, you have to think this through. It stands to you that you won't kill children, or physically harm them. But what about the psychological consequences of leaving them with the body of their dead aunt in the house? Know what I mean?'

Charlie T closes his eyes so she can't see him roll them in despair. How had this happened? They had always had an understanding that his work was not up for discussion. She knew she was the only woman he had ever told about it, and had respected a) the necessary secrecy, and b) the facts of what he actually did. Or so he thought. But as soon as she got wind of the fact that there were kids involved in this job, she was like a dog with a bone. He reaches for his Miraculous Medal –
O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee –
then remembers he has lost it. Hopes that's not a bad omen, he's never killed anyone without it.

The Angelique thing was his own fault. First of all, he had brought her along on yet another job. Not that he thought there was going to be any work done today, just a reconnaissance trip to Cambridge, Wisconsin, but then the call had come through and he had to stop off for
this
job. And he'd tried to get her to go on home,
insisted
, but to no avail. He didn't know what it was, this girl, she could always get her way. And fair play, she had dealt with the dog beyond in Madison, so it was hard to argue her down.

In any case, he had talked himself up, the big man who wouldn't take any shit from the boss, the hardened killer with principles, how a man should know where to draw the line and how he drew the line at harming kids.

He should have known better. ‘Kids' was like a trigger word for Angelique. Professionally, she may have dealt with geriatrics, and not always in a way that was medically approved, but on her own time, kids were the answer. In whatever context it came up, on TV or whatever, trafficked kids, kids in daycare, gifted kids, kids kids kids: Angelique knew all there was to know. Her hunger for a child was fierce and unabashed, and it sometimes seems as if she believed the more expertise she amassed on the topic the greater the likelihood of her acquiring one of her own would be.

The car was parked in the woods on the Rockford side of the Clock Tower Square Resort, concealed from the scrub road by a stand of shabby old pines by a deserted caravan park. It was the perfect vantage point: he could see all the cars, including the target's red Mustang, and the exits from the Best Western, Ruby Tuesday's and the water resort, although he doubted very much if the mark had popped in for a swim or a ride on the water chute. Charlie T had his Barrett M82A1 along, as he always did. When Mr Wilson had asked him, starting out, what kind of SASR (semi-automatic scoped rifle) he'd feel comfortable with, he didn't have to give it too much thought. He'd never shot anyone in Ireland with the M82, but he'd practiced with it many's the time: it was the IRA sniper's rifle of choice, and as such, it would do Charlie T nicely. He'd assembled it and chambered the .50 mm Browning MG cartridge, and was watching and waiting and wishing a) he hadn't brought Angelique along, and b) that, at least occasionally, she would stop talking, or rather, telling him what to do.

When b) finally occurred, he nearly wished it hadn't, because he needed to keep his wits about him, but fuck it, he'd be a long time dead, and last time he'd checked, there was nothing said about blow-jobs in heaven, although you'd have to wonder about the meaning of the word ‘heaven' if the best things in life weren't available. Quite aside from the fact that, as the entrance requirements were currently constituted, Charlie T wasn't headed heavenwards any time soon, so get it here, and get it now.

Angelique starts in about the kids mere seconds afterwards. His heart rate has barely slowed, and here she goes again.

‘I don't think we can inflict that on them, Charlie.'

‘Sorry, but where did this “we” come from, exactly? I agreed that you could come on the trip because it was your day off and you wanted to see the craft shops and galleries in Cambridge. I drop you off, I go to work, I pick you up: that was the deal.'

‘The
deal
. The deal has already changed, hasn't it, now that we're sitting in a car with a sub-machine gun—'

‘It's not a sub-machine gun, it's a semi-automatic—'

‘Yeah, whatever. Don't talk to me like
I'm
the child. You brought up the ethical dimension. You told your boss where you draw the line. Don't set yourself up and fail to deliver.
That
,' she says, baring her teeth in a cheerfully lewd grin, ‘is not the Charlie T we know and love.'

Charlie grins back in spite of himself, at her flashing green eyes and her red hair in an up-do and her white pancake face – like a real Irish girl, she is, only you never see Irish girls like that in Ireland. You only see them in America, the same way Charlie always feels Irish-Americans are actually more Irish than Irish people are, or at least a lot of the regulars at the Dark Rosaleen are, with their diddley-eye music and their ‘did you miss mass?' Although maybe the clientele at an Irish pub in Chicago are a whatdoyoucallit, a self-selecting sample. Anyway, Angelique McCarthy is the one, isn't she? He can't seem to resist her. He'll be up the aisle before he knows it, or on the steps of City Hall at any rate. He buttons his pants and reaches for the M82, just so he knows it's there. Angelique, you're a darling. If only you wouldn't talk quite so much. Say something before she starts up again.

‘You know the trip to Cambridge is a recce as much as anything else, we don't even have an address for the woman. And if it happens that we get it, there's scoping out the location, the neighbors and so on, it's extremely unlikely anything will happen today. So the whole thing is a bit hypothetical.'