All the Things You Are (32 page)

That she married when she was nineteen, and moved to Madison, Wisconsin, not knowing it was in fact the town of her birth.

That her husband was killed in a traffic accident when an oil truck jackknifed on the Beltway.

That before he died, he had set his wife up in her own hairdressing business in the city.

That at this stage, Deirdre had become used to the diminutive name everyone had called her for years, and had taken to signing Deirdre as Dee, even on official documents.

That furthermore, she had taken the surname of her husband, Martyn St Clair, upon marriage, and she had retained it after his death, and from that moment on would style herself Dee St Clair.

I
n her apartment on East Wilson, Dee St Clair is crying. You can tell by her eyes that she has been crying for some time. She's sitting in that living room of hers with the view out across Lake Monona, and you can see the lights of the houses across the shore, and the star trails of fireworks in the darkened city sky, and smell the jasmine and grapefruit candles burning slow around the room, but Dee isn't looking out the window and even if she was, she probably wouldn't notice the lights or the lake or the fireworks or any damn thing at all. Dee isn't aware of the scented candles either; she is barely aware of her own breathing. Dee is responding to emails and texts and calls because she has no option any more. Not all of them. Sometimes the screen of her iPhone flares up and flashes and she winces and looks away until it stops. She wishes it could all stop without anyone else getting hurt, but the way it's going, that's not likely. She wishes it had never started in the first place. But it did, and willingly or not, she is at the heart of it. So she texts, and she emails, and she sometimes pulls herself together to talk without sounding as if she's falling apart, and in between times, she cries. If only she had never met him. If only fate wasn't fate. She cries and she cries and she cries. But when the call comes, the call to move, Dee will do what she's called to do. It's too late now to do anything else.

In a store room in the cellar of the converted grain store on West Wacker, Dave Ricks is making a telephone call. We can't hear what he's saying, or tell if he's angry, or excited, or upset. Well, maybe we could if we came a little closer, but we don't really want to. We know we're going to find out soon enough, and sometimes it's better to wait. Sometimes it's better, and sometimes we're a little uneasy about learning the truth, even when deep down we know it's what we want. There's a riot of emotion in Dave's face, that's for sure. In the meantime, we're looking around the room, and thinking this must be the office Dave started the design consultancy in. From little acorns. But the longer we look the sooner we stop thinking about design consultancies, or business acumen, or Chicago architecture. The longer we look the sooner we stop thinking at all. Soon all we do is look, is stare, is gape.

For the walls of the cellar are covered with paintings, hundreds of paintings, barely a square inch of wall space to be seen. The paintings are of different sizes. Some are framed, and what a variety of frames, gilt, and steel, and plain and painted wood. Some are behind glass, some are bare canvas. The paintings are in different styles, some clear as a photograph, some thick with swirling paint, some naturalistic, some almost abstract. The paintings come in different colors, some bright and garish, some muted and monochrome.

But for all these differences between them, our eyes gradually begin to find what they have in common. And it dawns on us that every single painting depicts the same scene. The scene is a window, which is dark, but which either reflects, or is surrounded by, not just bright light, but fire light. Sometimes it is the merest flicker, sometimes it is in full blaze. And in the window there are two children. Sometimes you can make out their little faces; sometimes they are abstracted until they are mere shapes; sometimes they are death's heads, skulls or ghouls. But in every picture, it is the same: two children, gazing out in fear, at the flames that will devour them.

C
harlie T is actually quite relaxed about the whole reconnaissance thing in Ripley Fields. For a start, there's no problem spotting the aunt and the two girls, and since there's a predictable route they're taking, house by house, he and Angelique can keep their distance. And unless they live here, or close by, it's most likely they've driven. There's a bunch of cars parked down near the entrance to the estate. If that's the way they've come, well, it would be hard to give chase without drawing too much attention to themselves. He could wait in the car, but that doesn't allow for the possibility that the targets are residents here. So there's a limit to how bad things can get.

And that's what concerns Charlie T the most: that he's going to get embroiled in a course of action with Angelique alongside, and end up endangering her, and as a result, himself, the kids, the entire fucking enterprise. Not to mention wanting nothing to do with her harebrained fucking scheme to kidnap the kids and try and extort money out of their father. This is of course also in the context of trying to stop beating himself up over Angelique being here at all, and what a walkover he seems when she wants her way. What Charlie is hoping, basically, is for nothing whatsoever to happen, him and Angelique to drive their car load of yuppie trinkets back to Chicago, hit the bars for a few, decant themselves up to her apartment, pop open the vial of amyl nitrate she filched from the hospital and ride each other into merry, raw oblivion. The idea that Angelique can be both the ultimate porny girl
and
a, well, the, possible mother of his children … this happy dream fills Charlie T with a warm, horny glow. This would be everything he could possibly ask for. The only problem is what kind of life can the two of them have together if he does the work he does? Against that, what other kind of work can he do? Tending bar is not going to keep him remotely satisfied, let alone Angelique.

As if in answer to his prayers, if they can be called prayers, his phone throbs with a text message. It's from Mr Wilson:
Client says it must all go down tonight.

Charlie T fires back:
Does client have an address for mark?

And by return:
You're in the field, Charles – improvise. Client says it'll be worth double.

Double? That's not bad. Not enough to clear his debt, but a start. All right. Let's make the conditions a wee bit more secure. The targets reach the house on the far corner and start working their way back towards them. He draws her into a copse of trees between two big neo-Colonials and lays it out for her quietly.

‘Angelique, pet, something's come up, I need you to wait in the car. OK?'

‘What's come up?'

‘Instructions.'

‘What instructions?'

‘I can't really go into that.'

Angelique gives him that look, the disappointed-in-him look, makes him feel about five years old.

‘Charlie. Instructions are for kids. Remember where we're going with this. Whoever that guy is, Mr Weirdo—'

‘Mr Wilson.'

‘Whatever. The point is, you need to be the sole trader here, not an employee. You're the one who does the work—'

‘The intelligence is part of the work – a crucial part.'

‘My point exactly. And where is the intel on this job? You don't have a name, an address, you're left to improvise. With my assistance, I surely don't have to point out. So if this Wilson guy is not upholding his end of the bargain, well, you've got to stand up for yourself. A deal is a deal, am I wrong?'

She's not wrong. She's not wrong. And man, she looks hot being not wrong, the streetlights glistening in her hair, her sticky lips red and full, her cheeks hot with passion, with fire. As if she can read his thoughts, she pulls him close and kisses him, rubs a thigh against his hardening cock.

‘And the best thing is,' she whispers in his ear, grinding herself against him, ‘I think I know how they got here.'

‘How?' he says.

‘You notice they've all got mud on their boots? The girls are wearing Uggs and there's mud stains halfway up them? And she's got hiking boots caked in mud as well?'

‘I hadn't noticed, but I'll take your word for it.'

‘Well. It's dry tonight. It hasn't rained in over a week. The ground is hard. Where did they get the mud from?'

‘You tell me.'

‘Ripley Fields. Lake Ripley. There's a lane way between houses over that side, we passed it our first time around; I don't know for sure, but I've a pretty good idea it leads down to the lake. Maybe there's some kind of walkway down there, a lakeside path or something. I'm ready to guess that's the way they came, that their house is accessible from the path. And if that's so …'

Charlie T jumps in and has to reduce the volume immediately, so excited has he become.

‘If there's adequate forest down there – and it's wild enough up here, so there's no reason to expect it isn't – it could be perfect. Out of sight, easy to separate the kids, to spook them … that's really smart, Angelique.'

‘Don't you mean “partner”?'

Charlie thinks a bit, and grins. ‘I do.'

D
anny still has some of the sportswear he pulled off the rail in Gene Peterson's office: basketball tops and shorts, shiny man-made fibers unpleasant to the touch, and when the elevator doors open he flings them in front of him, head height, before he can see who it is he's flinging them at, and follows, head down, right shoulder exposed. Hit them low in the tackle, that's about as much football coaching as he can remember, let's hope it's a cop or a security guard and not somebody's grandmother or a pregnant lady, no, it's one of Chicago's finest and he's on his back, grabbing at Danny's feet, but Danny is driving his heels and steps off the cop's shoulder.

He can hear him scream as he runs up the incline towards the exit, up past pallets of crated supplies for the different offices in the Ainslie Building, hears the cop on his radio now, crackle and spit, flutter and wow, up past parked cars and a hugely fat security guy by a barrier who's coming out of his cabin.

Fuck this. Danny heads for the side furthest from the fat guy and vaults the barrier and runs up the slipway and nearly collides with a car coming down it and the slipway routes around into an alley but there's a set of metal steps and Danny piles up them and there he is, the roar of the street, North Michigan Avenue. Tribune Tower opposite and what did Claire say? North? That's left, two cops coming out of the entrance to the Ainslie, shit, Danny skids out on to the street and plods around the outside of a CTA bus moving slowly, cars honking, honk back if he could, fuck them, keep your nerve, keep your nerve. He navigates back toward the sidewalk by Nordstrom's looking for the underpass; there are the steps, down and three blocks. Go.
Go.

There are voices shouting, but he can't be sure if they're cops or people he bumped into or knocked over, or if they're even shouting at him.
Don't look back
, out of the underpass now, cross Rush Street, past the Meridien Hotel, Nordstrom's again, how big is that fucking store? Cross Wabash, Christ, he's out of shape, right side of the street, he can see the red sign on the corner, Grand El Station, past the Hilton Garden Inn and down the steps.

Danny fumbles in his pockets, looks at the vending machine, $2.25, he pulls three dollar bills out and stuffs them in and waits for the machine to whirr and grabs his ticket and walks towards the turnstile.

‘Sir?'

Oh, shit.

‘Excuse me, sir? You, guy in the gray suit?'

There are people staring at him. His breath is coming hard, hot sweat seeping down his face. He's lost the momentum. He turns around. A thick-set African-American man in navy pants and a yellow and red CTA reflector coat is holding his hand out toward Danny. In it are three quarters.

‘You a millionaire today, sir?'

‘Far from it,' Danny says.

‘Then pick up your change. Maybe you will be someday; stop throwing your money away.'

Danny takes his change. ‘Thank you.'

‘Best believe I'm not going to be a millionaire, giving it away,' the CTA guy says, and wheels away.

Danny goes through the turnstile and down on to the north platform, still watching for cops, still breathless, still jumpy. But he is smiling too, for the first time in he can't remember how long. It's nice to be nice. Even Chicago's still the Mid-West.

Chicago and Clark underground, up into the light for Clybourn, and then Fullerton. He's stopped panting by now, but he's still sweating like a pig. He gets off the train, and takes the down escalator, and follows the Exit signs and comes out on to West Fullerton Avenue beneath the tracks. There's a jumble of construction work on the street and the sidewalk opposite is closed, concealed behind green mesh fencing. Danny looks this way and that. This way, there's a Dominick's pizza restaurant. That way, there's a parking lot. In front of the parking lot, there's a tall, spindly tree with rust colored leaves. And in front of the tree, there's a woman dressed in black with long auburn hair. He walks toward her, trying to keep his expression steady, and he sees by her face, Christ, her beautiful face, that's she's trying to do the exact same. He looks over his shoulder, and doesn't spot anything, no cops, no one following, but when he looks back at Claire, his eyes flashing, red for danger, red for passion, her eyes flash right back at him, the two of them again, at last,
looking
at each other.

‘I've got the car right here,' she says, her voice tight, almost choking, almost laughing with the tension of it all.

‘Good,' he says, and he's almost laughing himself, adrenaline lighting him up. ‘Good. Let's go.'