The Federal Prison Camp in Oxford is around the corner from the Correctional Institution, near the junction of county roads A and E. Danny presents his driving license, along with the visitor authorization form he had applied for two weeks back and finally received in the mail on Friday. He processes through a metal detector and sets it off. An officer pats him down with meaty hands, and his coins, watch and sunglasses are removed and stowed. He takes off his belt and is admitted to the visiting room.
An ex-con who drank in Brogan’s once told Danny prison smells like when you have shit on your shoe, but before you figure out that’s where it’s coming from: there’s a terrible, deathly smell, but you don’t know what it is – and it’s like that all the time. And that’s what the visiting room smells like: sweat and stale air and body odor and pungent cleaning product and tobacco smoke and cheap air freshener. And shit. The chairs in the room are mostly too small, little child-size plastic chairs that are hard to squeeze into and out of. They don’t appear to help the smell either, because once you sit, your knees ride up and your face comes closer to your feet, so even if you don’t actually have shit on your shoe, you think you do. Like a demoralized priest who has heard one confession too many, Danny had forgotten what the ex-con told him across the sanctity of the bar counter; now, as he furtively checks the soles of his shoes and finds them clean, that’s when he remembers.
There are about twenty-five people waiting, adults and children, seated around tables. Some of the adults even have adult-sized chairs. Danny stands and his chair comes with him, making him feel like a trainee clown. He unsnaps himself and tries another chair, but it’s no better. He flashes on a visit he and Claire made once to a prospective, legendarily select kindergarden for the girls, where they were seated in the same kind of chairs while the ‘director’ of the center, a humorless woman in a brocade coat and floral Birkenstocks and red-framed spectacles, talked at them about child-centered learning and wholeness and wellness and the vital need for full parental participation and Danny suppressed the urge to ask, if they were going to shell out so much money, why they had to participate fully as well, only for Claire to announce, when the meeting was through, that her career, such as it was (and at the time, it didn’t even amount to teaching) couldn’t justify her parking the kids in a creche, even one so dedicated to child-centered wellness. He remembers the moment because of the chairs, but also because it was emblematic of one aspect of their marriage: behavior on Claire’s part of which Danny disapproves (wishing to place the children in a creche when she has no job to go to) but tacitly appears to condone; and then a policy change where she comes around to his position, without his having argued his case. And so he feels triumph (that he will get his own way) and pride (that Claire and he are of one mind on so much) and a certain shame at his own passivity – what kind of man will not from time to time openly disagree with his own wife? The kind of man he is, it seems; the kind of man who would rather sit in a child’s chair than walk around the room until he has found one to fit an adult. The kind of man who, rather than ask his wife if she’s been unfaithful to him, rather than tell her the extent to which their life is falling apart, will vanish with her children so he can try and put a stop to it.
When the prisoners enter, all dressed in spruce-green work shirts and pants, Danny stands, wriggling once more out of his chair. A blond-haired, pasty-faced prison guard weighing maybe three hundred pounds approaches, his breathing audible before he speaks.
‘Mr Brogan?’
Danny nods.
‘Outside, sir.’
Danny follows the guard out, wondering what has gone wrong. Has he knowingly made a false declaration on his visitor application form? Maybe the cash in his wallet has been found to be counterfeit. That would be theater people for you. But now, here they are outside on a wooden patio stretching the length of the visiting room. There are four picnic tables fixed to the floor, and Jonathan Glatt in prison greens is seated at one of them.
‘Said he wanted the air. Said you wouldn’t mind,’ the guard says.
‘I don’t.’
‘Too cold out here for everyone else,’ the guard says in a peevish tone, sounding as if it was too cold out here for him.
Danny can see the camp’s perimeter fence, and Jeff’s Mustang in the parking lot, and beyond the highway, a mix of trees stretching toward the horizon, some almost bare of leaves, some evergreen and glistening in the burning fall sunshine. He was going to have to tell Jeff something – not the truth, or at least, not the whole truth, but a more accurate version of the truth than he’d told his sister. In the meantime … in the meantime, it is cold out here, but at least it doesn’t smell of shit.
‘I won’t be long,’ Danny says to the guard, placatory as ever. Danny the pleaser. He sits down at the table opposite Jonathan Glatt, while the guard lingers on the steps at the rear entrance to the facility. Glatt, whose tan has faded since the last time Danny saw him, but who still looks like a guy with a winter tan, twenty pounds heavier with close cropped silver hair and silver-rimmed glasses, looks at his visitor through milky-blue eyes with no recognition whatsoever, taps a bitten nail on the cover of a black Moleskine notebook and begins to speak.
‘Mr Brogan,’ he says, nodding his head philosophically. ‘I may not remember every face, but … Danny Brogan, two hundred and fifty-seven grand … what can I say?’ Glatt’s accent is Chicago, Danny doesn’t know which part, but it certainly sounds a lot more dis dat dese and dose than it did the last time they met, when he had the perky little Meg Ryan of a wife. Before Danny has a chance to say, ‘Sorry would be nice, you dick,’ Glatt starts up again.
‘Sorry, of course, I can say sorry, and I do say that, but do you want to know something? And I appreciate you may not want to hear this, and objectively, hey, of course I regret, which is a mealy-mouthed word, I am sorry your money is gone. “Is gone”, mealy-mouthed again. I am sorry I “stole” it. Except, thing is, since I had no intention of stealing money from anyone, I find it hard, not to say impossible, to “own up”, to bear what you might think is an appropriate burden of guilt, because without intention … you see what I’m saying? I didn’t break into anyone’s house, am I wrong? And sure, it happened, and it’s down to me: I had your money, and now it’s gone, and who else is here? But it’s, what will we say, like that kids’ party game, musical chairs? Where they take away a chair each time and the children are caught standing while the music’s playing? And then they’re out of the game? That’s how it happened, this whole financial meltdown: out of fear that the music’s gonna stop and there’ll be no chairs left. So someone panics, because of some fucking thing some guy says in a newspaper, or, or, the chairman of the Fed, or some mouth almighty in fucking Frankfurt, someone comes crying, he wants his money back, he tells someone else, then all of a sudden everybody wants his money so he can take it home put it under the fucking mattress. Now, forgive me, but if this is how everyone is going to behave, well, is that my fault? Because you cannot run a bank, an investment scheme, you cannot run a financial system, if everyone wants to keep their money under the fucking bed because they’re scared for No Good Reason. And you, my friend, you got burned, I’m sorry, and technically, yes, I’m responsible, but I’m gonna tell you, it’s like that guy wrote many years ago – The Madness of Crowds is what’s to blame.’
Danny hadn’t intended to lash out, judging it a waste of breath: get the information he needs and move on. But the human spirit, while it may be indomitable, is also only human.
‘Are you kidding me? What a self-deluding asshole you are. They catch you cold in the street, you’re out of your mind on drugs, you’re partying with teenage girls, you’ve bought your stripper girlfriend a condo …’
Glatt nods and does the philosophical shrug again, an ‘all the same to me’ look in his eyes.
‘No contest. Am I going to deny I turned into four-fifths of an asshole there? Lead us not into temptation, you know what I mean? They didn’t make that prayer up for no reason. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life likely as not incarcerated, and my wife and daughters are never going to speak to me again. And as I am a man, let me be a man, and live with what I have done as a man. But what I want to say to you (because you might find it a help) is this: Jonathan Glatt was not a fantasy. Jonathan Glatt was not Bernie Madoff, my friend. The funds my investors placed in my trust were in turn invested, widely and wisely. Just, a) when returns weren’t as eye-catching, or as brisk, as you wanted (I don’t mean you personally, I mean The Public At Large), we proceeded to b) bolster the yields with a little help from the new accounts. Which is strictly speaking not permitted. But hey, it’s what everybody wants, am I wrong? These days, everyone wants to think he’s the smart guy with the edge on everyone else. Everyone has an entitlement complex. Everyone wants more than he deserves, believes he deserves more than he does. No one wants to wait in line. And as long as new clients kept arriving, and the old clients were happy with their dividends, as long as we kept all the chairs in the game, nobody lost. As long as we didn’t stop the music, everyone was dancing. You wanna know something, Mr Brogan? And I concede, I took my eye off the ball there, what with the drugs, and the girls, and so forth, Jonathan Glatt is human, all too human, and he only has himself to blame, but, and I believe this: if everyone had kept their heads, and not called their money in, hey, we’d all be dancing still.’
Danny can’t take any more: his head slumps and he holds his hands up above it, palms out, imploring Glatt to halt.
‘This is not why I’m here in any case,’ Danny says. ‘I mean, not that I don’t think you’re a delusional fuck who will never get what he deserves, which is probably, I don’t know, death by public burning or some such, maybe that medieval thing where they disembowel you but you’re still alive—’
‘Hung, drawn and quartered. I saw that on the History Channel. Or was it BBC World? First they—’
‘Shut the fuck up and listen,’ Danny says. ‘I am not a member of your general public. I used to put my savings, when I had any, in the bank. You were recommended to me by an old schoolfriend of mine, name of Gene Peterson. An old friend I believed I could trust. Do you remember him? Gene Peterson? We met you for dinner.’
Glatt makes a thinking face, like a politician on TV pretending to consider a question, then he goes in his notebook.
‘Gene Peterson, Gene Peterson. Yes. Gene Peterson. He brought a few investors my way, not just you.’
‘All right. Well listen up, Mr Glatt. I’m not here to remonstrate with you or to ask you why you stole my money. I’m not even here to abuse you, although obviously the temptation is great. And I certainly don’t want to hear your justifications and rationalisations, your, uh, “philosophy of life”, such as it is. All I want you to answer, a couple questions about Gene Peterson. First, give me the names of the other investors he brought to you.’
‘I don’t think that would be …’
Glatt tails off, and makes a vague gesture with one hand.
Danny laughs.
‘I’m sorry. What was that? Ethical? “I don’t think that would be ethical”, is that what you were reaching for there? You’re a riot, do you know that, a laugh riot. You should take this act on the road. You’re ready for prime time, yes you are. All right, let’s do it this way: I say a name, and you say yes if I’m right, no if I’m wrong, how’s that? That doesn’t violate your “ethical code”, does it?’
Glatt grimaces, rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
‘Dave Ricks.’
Glatt nods.
‘I know Ralph Cowley for sure.’
Glatt nods.
‘That’s the gang all there. And did they all lose out? Did you fuck them all over?’
Glatt goes in his notebook again.
‘No. Matter of fact, each of them got out in time, and they were ahead when they did so.’
‘How much? Given your twenty-five grand minimum?’
‘Not like you. Less than forty K apiece, that kind of neighborhood.’
‘And Gene?’
‘Gene? Gene cashed out early too.’
‘He what? He … so I was the sucker. Gene got me in, and I came in for a huge whack, and his reward was, he got out?’
‘That’s not exactly how I’d put it. But I can see that’s how it appears.’
‘How’d you know Gene?’
Glatt does the gesture with his hand again, a flourish in the air, redolent of complexity, the abstract, the uncertain. How does anyone know anything?
‘I meet … I used to meet so many people,’ he says. ‘It could be anywhere. A dinner, a function, the gym. With Gene, our kids went to the same school in Chicago, in Oak Park, got to be friends, our wives, so on.’
‘I thought you were based in Milwaukee.’
‘Most of my business, my offices are … were in Milwaukee. My family lives in Chicago. My family …’
Glatt bows his head, shakes it, lifts it.
‘You know they never visit, have never visited. My wife, maybe not a surprise. My kids … my daughters are fifteen and twelve. I haven’t seen or heard from them in six months.’
Danny looks at Glatt, whose eyes have filled up, and thinks of all the families that he stole from, the families that he brought to ruin. He thinks of his own family, and tries to make it all Glatt’s fault. But he knows it’s not, knows that at least one of his old friends, his former friends, is to blame. Knows, too, that he is to blame himself. He thought he deserved extra. He thought he was entitled to something for nothing.
‘So everyone has a sob story,’ Glatt says. ‘Gene … we played tennis. He’s a guy, what, you were at school with him? I bet he was the captain of the team, whatever team, the guy you wanted to impress.’
Danny doesn’t nod or agree, doesn’t want to risk complicity with Glatt. (Although to be honest, how much worse could it get? There’s nothing left for Glatt to steal.) But yes, that’s exactly what Gene was like. Still is.
‘Because all the time, people were asking me, how can I get in on this thing? Pushing themselves forward. Eager. Greedy. Breadheads. It used to disgust me. Human nature, it can be dismaying. Gene was different. First thing he asked was, could he bring other people in, people he thought deserved a shot in the arm. It was his condition for signing up. He got in himself, then, once everyone else was established, he got out. And he didn’t lose a dime. In fact, he made a lot, quite a lot of money.’
Danny’s heard enough. He stands, nodding at Glatt, unable for the moment to speak.
Glatt looks up. ‘There was one other person,’ he says, his finger scrolling down a page of the open notebook.
‘Excuse me?’ Danny says.
‘There was one other guy Gene Peterson brought in. I never met him. But he got out ahead as well.’
One other guy. But there were no other guys. Just Dave and Danny, Ralph and Gene. No other guys who knew.
‘And who was that?’ Danny says.
‘Looking for the name … here he is … in fact, not a he. Claire is not a guy’s name, is it?’
‘Claire? Claire who?’ Danny says, his voice cracking.
‘Claire … Bradberry, it says here,’ Jonathan Glatt says. ‘Claire Bradberry. Ring any bells?’