All the Things You Are by Declan Hughes Page A

says.
    â€˜I don’t.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Are you kidding me? What a self-deluding asshole you are.