Four Kinds of Rain (22 page)

“Yes, I do,” Dave said, with finality.

“But you have a problem, Dave,” Bob said.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Dave interrupted. “Since I wrote the original story making you out a hero, how can I turn around now and write another story telling the truth? Who would believe me?”

“Yeah, who would?” Bob said.

“I thought about that,” Dave said. “And I decided that I don’t need to write a story at all. All I have to do is tell Detective Garrett about this, about how I went to see you in the hospital and how I told you what I know and how you threatened to kill me if I talked. They might not believe that either, but Garrett wants you so bad that he’ll start investigating Emile Bardan. And guess what? He’ll find out that he’s an art dealer with a very shaky reputation. Oh yeah, and one other thing, that he’s disappeared from his home and his art gallery. Yeah, I found that out just recently. Wonder where he is, Bob?”

“I have no idea,” Bob said.

“Well, of course not,” Dave said. “But I bet Detective Garrett would find all this very interesting, don’t you think? Especially when I tell him that Bardan was your patient. He’ll find that very fascinating because he’s already put together some fragments of a sculpture of some kind from the brewery floor.”

“When did you hear that?” Bob said. His voice rose a little. How he hated Dave now. The phony, the sycophant, the third-rate hack.

“Heard it yesterday,” Dave said. “From a good friend of mine who works the crime blotter. They’re already getting the idea, Bobby. All they need is a little push in the right direction.”

Dazed, Bob stood up, his legs wobbly, his head spinning. He walked toward the far corner of the room. Dave, sensing his panic, stood up and followed him. Bob felt a fire building in his chest. It burned so hot that it made him want to run out the door, go hide somewhere until it went out. But, of course, that wasn’t going to work. He would never get away from Dave now.

His back still to Dave, Bob picked up the sextant, rattled it around in his hand, then set it down. He looked at the binoculars. He could just see Dave peering out at the sea at night, pretending he was a nineteenth-century whaling captain. The idiot, the moron. To think that he could be stopped by a third-rate creep like Dave McClane? It was the ultimate insult.

“How much do you want?” Bob said.

Dave moved up behind him, only a couple of feet away, and Bob felt as though he’d suffocate.

“That’s a good question,” Dave said. “See, I don’t know how much you made from the heist, Bobby.”

“I didn’t make anything,” Bob said, trying to sound bitter. “There was a bomb, remember?”

“I do recall that,” Dave said “But I know you, Bob. You wouldn’t go into this thing without making something out of it. You’re too smart for that.”

Bob almost laughed. Dave was right again. What a smart and clever bastard Dave was.

“How much do you want?” Bob said. His eye lit on the old grappling hook. It was polished and sharpened. Cap’n Dave always took care of his relics.

“Well, since I don’t really know what you made,” Dave said, “I have to look at it another way. How much is your freedom and your new life worth to you, Bobby?”

Bob reached down and picked up the hook. It was surprisingly light and balanced nicely in his sweating palm.

“How much do
you
think it’s worth?” Bob said, squeezing the hook’s handle.

“Two million dollars,” Dave said. “And a fifty-fifty split of whatever money you make on your book and any movie or television deals we make about your life. Since I made you, I think that’s a fair and equitable deal.”

“Very fair,” Bob said. “Does anyone else know about me, Dave?”

Dave hesitated for a second before saying, “No, of course not.”

“What about Lou Anne?” Bob said. “She knows, right?”

There was a short silence before Dave nodded his head.

“Okay,” he said. “I had to tell Lou Anne. But she’ll never say a word. Not as long as you pay.”

“Don’t worry,” Bob said. “The check’s in the mail, Dave.”

He pivoted quickly on his right foot, faced Dave, then raised the hook above his head and brought it down with all his force into his old friend’s right eye.

Dave fell backward screaming, as blood and bits of eyeball splattered on his shirt.

“Bob?” he said. “Oh God … God …”

Bob moved in on him, slashing him again, this time through his ear, ripping it in half. There was a brief moment when they both watched it fall to the floor, and then Bob took the hook and sliced it in a sideways stroke across Dave’s neck. The blood surged out, flowing down his shirt, making spiderweb lines over his pants.

Dave made a low groaning sound and fell to the floor, the blood pouring out of the severed veins and pooling around his chin.

Bob sat down in one of the hard captain’s deck chairs and watched Dave twist and twitch on the floor.

“Sorry, Dave,” he said, “but I’m not taking any passengers on this trip.”

As he watched Dave die, he waited to feel a surge of pity or unbearable guilt, but instead felt nothing at all.

He took this as a good sign. All his life he had been too attached to the other guy’s story to do anything for himself. Well, that was over now … he was out there at last, fighting his own battles, on his own destined path.

Bob noticed the smell of the blood. It was overpowering really.

He leaned down and put a little of it on his forefinger. Was it wrong to taste it?

Bob put his blood-dipped finger into his mouth. It was warm, thick, salty, like goose gravy, he thought, though he had never tasted goose gravy, had only read about it in fairy tales.

Bob sat back and watched Dave McClane, his oldest friend, leak his life’s blood out all over the wooden floors.

When his body had stopped twitching, Bob pulled himself out of Dave’s chair and walked upstairs to the bathroom. What he needed now were some towels. Lots and lots of towels.

After he cleaned up the mess, moving Dave’s corpse into the cellar, Bob realized he would have to hang out for the rest of the afternoon, until Lou Anne came home from the Lodge. He dreaded sitting there in old Cap’n Dave’s house. What was he supposed to do all that time? Read a novel? Watch TV? Bob looked at the corner and saw the bottle of booze. God, that was tempting. But what if he got drunk? What if he fell asleep?

No. He couldn’t let that happen. The price of crime was vigilance. Wakefulness.

Bob sat down in the hard deck chair and stared blankly at the wall.

“You’ve done it now,” he told himself. “You’ve really done it now.”

It was about seven o’clock at night when Bob heard Lou Anne outside the house, having trouble with the lock. Jiggling it left, then right, as Bob, waiting behind the door, nearly laughed. Somehow it (and everything else) made perfect sense. Of course, she would have trouble with the lock. She was goofy, awkward, and loud Lou Anne, wasn’t she?

She rang the bell once or twice, and called out “Dave?”

But, of course, Dave didn’t answer. Instead, a smiling Bob Wells did.

“Bob?” she said. “What are
you
doing here?”

Bob saw the fear in her face. Loudmouthed, flashy, and fleshy Lou Anne. Was there any doubt in the world that she was going to talk?

“Dave and I are down in the cellar,” he said, shutting the door behind her. “Conducting a little business.”

“Oh,” she said, dropping her coat and packages on the ugly little Victorian couch. “Well, that’s fine. You boys go right ahead.”

She started to head to the back of the house to avoid the distasteful subject, but Bob quickly crossed the room and blocked her way.

“Oh, come on, Lou Anne,” Bob said. “No need to be defensive about it. Dave told me that you know everything.”

“About what?” Lou Anne said, playing dumb. She looked past him, out to the friendlier confines of the small dining room.

“Lou-Annnne,” Bob said, in a singsongy way. “We’re all friends here. It’s a business decision, right? You and Dave know certain damaging things about me and Dave chose, out of loyalty to our old and deep friendship, to keep those things hidden, so that we all might profit. Right?”

“I … I guess so,” said Lou Anne. “Where is Dave?”

“Like I just told you,” Bob said. “He’s down the basement, Lou Anne. That’s where we’re making the deal. You know, blood brothers, cutting our arms and pressing the wounds together so that we’re bonded forever.”

Lou Anne looked like she was going to cry. Bob truly hoped she wouldn’t do that. More than just about anything, he hated tears and scenes.

“Come on down with me, Lou,” Bob said. “You’re part of this deal, too, and there are still some very important details we have to go over.”

“I have to get dinner ready,” Lou Anne said.

“Dinner can wait,” Bob said, turning so that she could get by, but only in the direction of the basement steps.

She hesitated, so Bob edged behind her and pushed her a little.

“Come on, sweetie,” he said. “We finish this deal and then we can all go out to Little Italy and celebrate.”

“I don’t really like Italian food,” Lou Anne said. “Besides, I’m on a diet.”

Bob smiled in a pained way and picked up the grappling hook, which he’d placed on the table next to the dried black-eyed Susans.

They were halfway down the basement stairs when Lou Anne smelled the blood.

“What’s that horrible odor?” she said.

“I don’t know, Lou Anne,” Bob said, walking behind her. “It’s not my house. But my guess would be dead vermin. Do you have rat traps down here?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, her voice trembling.

She was far enough downstairs now that she could see Dave, who was propped up in his old rocker, with his back to her, just a few feet across the basement room.

“Dave,” she said, and Bob could hear a mixture of hope and panic in her voice.

“He’s busy looking over our agreement,” Bob said.

She turned to look at him.

“You’ve written it all down?”

“Yes, we have, Lou,” Bob said. She really was too stupid to live.

He sliced through the air with the grappling hook and caught her in her mouth. When he pulled the blade out, half of Lou Anne’s tongue came out with it and landed on his shirt.

What to do with them both? Where could he hide their bodies? The best thing, Bob began to think, was to get them down to Bogert’s Cove. But Christ, that meant boxing them up, carrying the box from the house to the car. What if the neighbors saw him?

Oh Christ, why had he been so damn impulsive?

A smart murderer would have lured Dave down to the cove, killed him there, and dumped him in. But not him … oh no, he had to kill them right here in their own house.

And what of tomorrow? When they didn’t show up for the wedding? What about that? Wouldn’t people come looking for them? Of course, they would.

Why had he picked up the damn grappling hook?

He looked out at the street. On the corner a bunch of alcoholics banded together, after their AA meeting. There was always something going on at that bloody corner, if not there, then at Brandau’s bar up the street. There was no way he could sneak them out.

He had to wait … think …

Wait a minute. There might be a way.

Maybe he should simply leave them here, go to his wedding tomorrow as scheduled. Dave and Lou Anne don’t show. So what? Dave got drunk or Lou Anne was protesting because she didn’t get to be maid of honor.

But what if somebody stopped by to check on them and found their bodies? Wouldn’t it be obvious that Bob had killed them?

No, Bob reminded himself. You only feel that way because you did it. No one else will have any idea.

No, Dave was his best friend, the guy who made him famous. Why on earth would he kill Dave? And even more so, if he
were
going to kill him, would he do it the day before his wedding, when anybody knew the bodies would be found? Of course not.

Bob began to laugh. The very impulsiveness of it all had worked for him. Who kills the best man at his wedding the day before his very marriage ceremony?

Only a lunatic.

And over what?

No one else knew what Dave and Lou Anne knew about Bob. To the rest of the world Bob was a selfless hero. In an age of reevaluation of the spiritual life … post 9/11, Bob stood as an emblem of purity, of courage and commitment.

His kind of goodness transcended petty nationalism, transcended even religious differences.

People needed him to be heroic. They wouldn’t want to believe he had anything to do with it.

Yes, he was bulletproof.

It would be a terrible shock to Jesse, of course. Almost unbearable. Bob would have to take care of her. Nurse her back to mental health. Which he’d do, with all his gentle care and skill. With all his heart. And money.

But now the question was what to do with them? If only there were an old trunk sitting around like at Emile’s? But there wasn’t….

The thing was he had to make sure they kept until tomorrow. They couldn’t start smelling up the block. That was a real problem. Of course, he could turn the air-conditioning up. Yeah, he could do that. They’d keep until tomorrow afternoon.

He looked down at their bodies, Dave propped up in his chair and Lou Anne on the couch.

Lou Anne’s eyes were still open, like she was staring at him.

He wanted to walk over and shut them, but he was afraid to touch her again. He wiped off the grappling hook with his bloody shirt.

He was going to have to borrow one of Dave’s old jackets to get home. And he had to leave soon, before Jesse got back from her trip to the Etta gown shop.

Her parents and sister were coming. Later that night. God, he had to play host to them after he had just killed his best friend and his wife.

Jesus, looking down at them gave him the creeps.

It was like Dave and Lou Anne were goofy teenagers on Halloween. Like they were playing a gag on him. Yeah, that was exactly how it felt. They’d covered themselves with some pig blood they’d gotten at the butcher’s and they’d had fun painting each other’s faces. Then they’d situated themselves in the cellar like a couple of mutilated corpses and they called Bob and they waited for him to come over. And as soon as he reacted—”What the hell’s going on, you guys?”—they’d jump up and say, “Happy Halloween!”