All the Things You Are (24 page)

Try Gene Peterson Madison WI Monroe High.

First item is a news feature on Madison.com. She clicks the link.

Madison Man Adds Bulls to Badgers
, reads the headline, which goes on to explain that Gene Peterson, who played high-school basketball for Monroe High in the 1970s, has become the official supplier of uniforms to the Chicago Bulls as well as the Wisconsin Badgers. Basketball for Monroe High in the seventies. That's the right time frame. Were there two of them?

She clicks back, and finds that Gene Peterson has a Wikipedia page. Nothing fancy, but to the point:

Gene Peterson is the founder and CEO of Peterson Sportswear, Chicago. Peterson is a native of Madison, Wisconsin, and attended Jefferson Junior High and Monroe High schools. He went to DePaul on a basketball scholarship, but a severe anterior cruciate ligament injury brought a premature end to a promising career. He founded Peterson upon graduation in 1986, and has built it to the major national brand it is today. Among the NBA franchises Peterson supplies exclusively to are …

Claire's eyes shift down the page. Sure enough, there's a photo of Mr Square Jaw again. That has to be Gene Peterson, the Gene Peterson Danny was at school with. But if it is, who was the weird guy she nearly slept with in Chicago? Who is the dead guy in her backyard?

She gave the cops the picture, the only picture she had of any of Danny's high-school buddies. Danny didn't even know she had it; she had found it tidying a closet one day. There were no names attached to it, it was just a picture of Danny and another guy – the guy in Chicago, the guy who was dead in their yard. Although the guy in their yard had been through the mill, he looked like he'd been having beer for breakfast for quite some time. But she was pretty certain it was the same guy. Why had he lied and told her he was Gene Peterson? Who were Danny's other friends? She knew there were four of them, he had told her that much, back in UW, when he used to talk about the past. It was after they got married, or told the world they had got married – that was when he began to clam up. That was when the past became enemy territory.

What was it he used to call the guys, back in UW? God, it was such a long time ago. The Four Somethings. Seasons. Winds. Tops.

Steady, Claire.

The Four Horsemen. That was it.

The Four Horsemen.

Danny, Gene … Dave, Danny and Dave. Dave, Danny, Gene … plus one.

Don't they have high-school reunion websites?

Monroe High, 1982/83.

Let's go.

T
he first thing that occurs to Danny as he hits the I-90 is that he's being followed, or at least, that he was traced to Rockford. So he can get over his paranoia about using his cell phone. He turns it on and calls Dave Ricks and tells him he's in trouble and needs to see him urgently, and Dave hears him out and talks him down and gives him directions to his studio and Danny turns his cell off again, just in case – and without checking his voicemail messages – and drives.

He doesn't feel he can afford to stop until he hits Chicago, in case there is anyone in pursuit, but his hands and face are smeared with blood and while he could live with it, not a bad visual representation of how he feels, he doesn't want some other driver reporting him to the highway patrol as if he's some kind of runaway axe murderer. Or indeed, as if he's Danny Brogan. He finds a box of tissues in the glove compartment, folds them into wads, dabs them with one of the bottles of mineral water that roll around the floor of the Mustang and cleans himself up as best he can. Catching sight of himself in the rear-view mirror, he can't quite believe what has happened. Jeff is dead. Somebody shot Jeff, a sniper, a
hit man. A
hit man
? What kind of world is he living in?

Danny stalls on that for a while. Someone shot Jeff, Jeff is dead, and that segues into the TV report as they left the restaurant:
Ralph
is dead, Ralph Cowley, and the photograph of Danny, they must think Danny did it, well of course they do, there's a dead body in his backyard and he's taken it on the lam, what are they supposed to think? Then there was a shot of Mr Smith. What's up with that? Mr Smith might nip a child's ankles, but that's the height of it. Unless … but the idea something bad has happened to his dog is just too much to bear. Jeff, Ralph, Mr Smith, round and round they go, Danny shivering and muttering and crying a bit, and he is on the industrial outskirts of Chicago before whatever life-preserving adrenaline he has – or whatever he has left over from when he floored the car away from Rockford and placed the call to Dave Ricks – floods his system and enables his brain to function.

First thing, did whoever shoot Jeff aim for Jeff, or were they trying to hit Danny? There wasn't a second shot, and Danny was in full view, so chances are it was Jeff. In which case, they – whoever ‘they' are – were trying to scare him. Good job, guys, you've scored a hundred percent on that front.

Second, it's looking increasingly like Gene Peterson is behind all this. Peterson had got him into Jonathan Glatt in the first place. He thinks of it now, in that Irish pub near City Hall, what was it called? The Dark Rosaleen? After a dinner at Everest on South LaSalle that must have cost four hundred dollars, Gene picking up the check, flush with his sportswear business. How everyone did well in Glatt's fund, the trick of it being, to receive the invitation in the first place. How the annual return was between ten and twelve percent, and had been for the three years he'd been involved. All the guys were in, Gene said, him, Dave and Ralph. It was almost impossible to get in, had been for a long time, but Glatt made an exception for Gene because he'd been able to point some high-worth individuals in Glatt's direction, guys with serious money. Danny had enjoyed the night, and felt flattered to be asked, and emboldened by Gene's success, as if it was his success too, or soon would be. Why limit it to the fifty grand they had in savings? Why not think big? He rang the bank the next day and had his two hundred grand in a matter of weeks, making sure the house was valued when Claire wasn't around. The bank would have lent him more, lent him twice as much. ‘It's a no-brainer,' the guy kept saying, nodding his approval at Danny's financial acumen, his sudden and mysteriously acquired market perspicacity.

And now he knew the truth about that: all the other guys were in, and then all the other guys were out, and he was left to pay the price. Everyone got away with it except Danny. The same way everyone seemed to get away with the Bradberry fire except Danny. Danny was to blame for it happening in the first place, it had all been set up so that he could get his revenge on Jackie Bradberry. Danny threw the fatal missile that set the house alight. And to top it all, Danny would in time marry the only child to walk away from the disaster.

And what about the fifth investor? On top of Gene, and Ralph, and Dave, and Danny? Claire Bradberry? There was no way that could be Claire herself. What could it have been though? Some kind of cruel private joke? Whoever invested under that name must have known the truth about Danny and Claire. It all pointed to Gene.

And then there was the thing Dee St Clair had told him, back when they had their … what would you call it, less than an affair, little more than a fling. That was what
he
called it, he knew Dee had felt differently, but that was just the way it went sometimes between two people. Would he have taken it further if Claire hadn't called from Chicago and asked him to take her back? It's not a question he can answer, or even contemplate. He simply can't imagine not spending his life with Claire. It had always been a bit awkward between Danny and Dee after that, but Dee had never said anything to Claire, and neither had he.

On the other hand, Claire had never said anything about her time with that guy Casey, that fucking guy, Jesus, how long has it been back on between them? Was it just a fling, a one-time thing, or has she been missing him,
loving
him, all this time? He knows the marriage had been light on thrills for a while, but it had never collapsed into coldness, let alone hostility. Just a certain distance now and then, the silences longer than they used to be, the flame guttering maybe, but never doused completely. Passion was still there. They'd had sex the night before the barbecue, for fuck's sake, and not just dutiful let's-get-it-done-because-we're-married sex; they had fucked like horny teenagers – better than that, horny teenagers who knew what they were doing.

Claire's trip to Chicago. He knew it was a crucial week for her. He had encouraged her to go since way back. She had avoided the site of her so-called failure for fifteen years until it loomed so large it had become an obsession; any time the city was mentioned on TV or the radio, he'd steal a look at her to gauge how she was taking it. He'd think twice even of renting a DVD or buying her a novel set there, in case it sent her into days of dreaminess and melancholy. It got so he would lose his patience with it all; what kind of narcissist thinks an entire city exists just to hold a personal meaning for her? Unless of course what she had been mourning (for that is what it seemed like to him, a deeply held, impenetrable grief he could neither pierce nor alleviate) was not so much the collapse of her theatrical career as the break-up of her relationship with Paul Casey. That, coupled with the integrity of a woman who would never dream of cheating on her husband, for Claire was straight about those things, for all her drama. She had not gone back because she didn't want to be tempted, and was realistic enough to suspect she would be.
Lead us not into temptation
. What had Jonathan Glatt said? They didn't make that prayer up without a reason. And – savor the irony – Danny had, not just persuaded her, he had practically goaded her into making the trip. He had led her into temptation. Had she fallen?

He had missed her desperately. He hadn't wanted to discuss Ralph's visit the night of the barbecue because Claire was so hyped about her trip, told her it was just some Halloween drunk who'd got lost in the Arboretum. But that night, after she left, and the next morning, hungover and lonely, the fear began to kick in. And then someone sent him an email with a link to a Facebook page. Claire's Facebook page. Even though she claimed to despise Facebook. There was nothing incriminating on the page itself. She was ‘friends' with Paul Casey, but she was friends with a whole bunch of people. Although not Brogan's, he noticed: the bar had what he considered a deeply tedious Facebook page full of chirpy announcements about specials and cocktail recipes and so forth, Danny couldn't see the need for it, business hadn't been dwindling. But it seemed to keep the younger staff amused, and committed. Shouldn't Claire have been friends with the business that put food on her table and clothes on her back? The shrill petulance of the thought had embarrassed him then, and embarrassed him still.

Then a second email arrived. Attached was a screenshot of explicit Facebook messages between Claire and Paul Casey, messages that left little to the imagination. He tried hard to see them as flirtation, but the fact was, she had been making all the running. She was offering herself to him. It was hard to see it any other way.

That's what drove him to Chicago on her trail.

He had rung her room, had got the room number by insisting the room was, he can't remember now, maybe 790, repeating her address; he had tried this twice or three times with different receptionists until one of them had said, ‘No, Miss Taylor is in Room 435'. He remembers the thrill he felt when he got the room number, like he was a private detective on a case, and then the foolishness that followed: what the hell did he think he was doing?

The Allegro was a mid-price tourist place that catered to weekend visitors and groups in town for theater and shopping trips. He rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked down the corridor past Room 435. It was six-thirty in the evening. Maybe she would be there, changing before going out for the evening. He thought about knocking on the door, but he couldn't bring himself to do so, in case she was in there doing something else. Back by the elevators, there was a kind of lounge area in a recess by a window with a yucca tree and a couch and some magazines. As he sat there pretending to read the
Tribune
and surveying in what he hoped was a casual way everyone who entered or exited the elevator, his feeling of foolishness intensified.

He had never been jealous before, had always considered it an absurd, undignified,
unmanly
emotion. If your lover loved someone else, let her go, he reasoned, and had said as much to the countless lovelorn bar staff in Brogan's over the years. All of which amounted to this: he had never
felt
jealousy before, and was imaginatively incapable of understanding it. For when jealousy came, its venom was fast-acting and mind-altering, and the fear attendant on it (jealousy being fear plugged into the mains) – the fear of rejection, of betrayal, of humiliation – those fears cut deep and reach way back, back to childhood, to every moment he felt unloved, passed over, excluded. Danny couldn't bear to feel this way, like a neglected child, and yet he seemed powerless to do anything about it.

After an hour, he rode down to the lobby. It was Tuesday night, and his plan was to position himself at a table in full view of the door – Claire might have brought her key with her, and so watching reception wouldn't be enough. The problem was, the entrance was a floor below reception, which was where the bar was situated. He began to feel like he was being watched after spending ten minutes assessing various tables for their views, so he left the hotel and decamped to the bar across the street. He found a stool by the window. You could see the door clearly, although taxis and buses sometimes obscured it. This was probably as good as it was going to get. He sat there from about seven forty-five, first drinking coffe, then eating a burger and fries, not as good as Brogan's but not bad at all. The food revived his spirits; the coffee gave him the jitters. Around ten, he cracked and ordered a double Woodford, water back with a Honkers Pale to chase. The Honkers was a mistake, or at least, the second was, as it meant he needed a trip to the bathroom. He held out as long as he could. When he got back to his perch, it was twelve-forty, and three taxis were pulling away across the street, and he saw a flash of auburn hair in the revolving door of the Allegro Hotel, arm in arm with a dark-haired guy. He wasn't certain it was Claire, she moved so quickly, but he wasn't certain it was not. And if it turned out to be a false alarm, he would take it as a sign and call it a night.