Four Kinds of Rain (23 page)

Except it wasn’t Halloween and they wouldn’t be hopping up again in this life. Not now. Not ever.

He’d killed them both.

Oh God, don’t think about it. Don’t let it get to you.

But what to do with them?

Nothing. Just clean up, turn the AC up real high, so they didn’t start to smell right away, then get the hell out of there.

Go home. Get rid of the bloody clothes.

Act like it never happened.

And tomorrow, marry your girl, get through this, and have a tremendous third act in your life.

Fame, wealth, and glory.

If you can just get through this.

Bob took a last look at them, checked to see if the drunks were dispersed on the AA corner, and headed out the front door.

Please God, he thought, as he closed the door behind him and wiped the doorknob clean, just let me get through this and I’ll share my money with the poor for the rest of my life.

Bob found himself walking briskly, with perfect posture, down the dark street. It was funny, he thought, when he was a kid his mother had always told him not to “slouch.” She had warned him that “slouching” might lead to other bad habits, like “smoking” or “drinking” or “gambling” or “worse.” Bob had always wanted to ask her what “worse” might be. “Fucking,” maybe, or “sucking” or trying to become a saint?

How about “double homicide”?

That was funny, so very funny. A block away from his house. Walking on this perfect spring night, with all the little tendrils budding on the lonely street trees, Bob began to laugh hysterically.

It was positively hilarious. “Slouching” was the crack in the dike, right?

He would have been all right if he just hadn’t “slouched.”

Well, he wasn’t slouching now. No, he was walking tall and proud, taking long, quick (but not panicky) steps toward home. Over his blood-splattered shirt, he wore Dave’s old Baltimore Colts jacket. Funny, he’d always wanted one of those, but had never gotten around to getting one.

Walking along, with his Colts jacket on. Just like a good old Baltimorean. One of the guys. “Hey, ain’t it a shame that Johnny U died.” “Hell yes. Never was a better man, no sir.”

And not slouching. Uh-uh. No slouching for Bob Wells, the hero of Baltimore.

Bob Wells, ready at the fore, sir. Bob Wells, grappling hook in hand, ready to serve, sir. Fire the cannons, get ready to board ship, Cap’n Dave!

He came to American Joe’s and crossed the street. Better not to run into anyone else. Then he had a truly disconcerting thought. What if he looked inside American’s and Dave came out to talk to him?

“Hey, Bobby, wassup?” Dave talking like a black gang member so he could still pretend that he was young.

“Hey, Bobby, get any new patients? I know it’s tough, kid, but hang in there.”

“Hey, Bobby, I’m really making progress on my novel. I really am. The great American working-class epic lives! Of course, I’m through for today, so why not come in and join me for a little drink, buddy?”

He could really see Dave walking out of there, a grappling hook in his head, just as cheerful and optimistic as ever, followed by Lou Anne, babbling away, behind him. Though it was impossible to understand precisely what she was saying, since she didn’t have a tongue.

Bob felt faint. His head seemed to be swirling in big loopy circles, so he hitched up his posture another notch. No “slouching,” a dead giveaway for bad character. Garrett sees him coming down the street like this, a sloucher, why he’ll know … know at once …

Only a hundred feet or so until he got home, Bob felt like he was going to puke.

Inside his house. Jesse not home yet. Time to take the bloodstained shirt off. But what to do with it?

Burn it in the fireplace? But what’s he doing building a fire in April?

Wash it? But can’t some invisible bloodstains be detected by the police nowadays? Christ, with the computers and laser technology they have now they can see anything.

Bury it out back? But what if a stray dog wanders in from the alley and digs it up?

Why hadn’t he thought of all this before he lost his temper and sliced his friends in half? Had he done that? Wasn’t it all just a joke? A bad dream?

Why … why hadn’t he just agreed to pay Dave off?

Because … because Dave would have come back over and over again, like all blackmailers.

Because Lou Anne wouldn’t be able to help herself. She’d talk and talk and talk some more. He could just see her at the hairdressers:

“You think your cousin’s a lunatic, hon? Well, let me tell you ‘bout a
real
lunatic. Bob Wells, the so-called hero. I can tell you a thing or two about him, you best believe it, sweetie.”

She could never keep her mouth shut. No way.

But that wasn’t really it, either.

No, he had killed them because they knew. He would have done it even if he’d been one hundred percent sure that they wouldn’t say a word. They knew and they would always look at him differently. They would always hold it over him. Dave and Lou Anne, inferior people to him in every way, knew that Saint Bob was a liar and a thief and he couldn’t bear the thought of it.

They knew he was a fake, that all the years of serving others and saying how “giving is its own reward” and how “true happiness is helping a troubled kid” was just so much bullshit.

That in the end, Dr. Bob Wells, the kindest and the best and the most true, was really the greediest and most egomaniacal of them all. They knew that he had waited and waited for some sign, from the world at large or from God himself, some sign that his good works had been recognized … that the Rudy Runyons of the world wouldn’t take it all, and when that sign failed to manifest itself, he’d collapsed and become the very thing he hated most. A user, a predator, a liar, and a thief.

Bob ripped off the shirt and got a pair of scissors out of his medicine chest in the bathroom. He began to snip apart the shirt, dropping the pieces in the toilet, like bloody confetti. When that was done, he’d have to do the same thing with the Colts jacket. Jesus, that was a shame. He could probably get an easy two hundred bucks for it on eBay.

What was he thinking? He had five million downstairs.

He had to get used to that idea. That he was rich. That he didn’t need to scrimp and save.

God, Dave. Old Dave. His pal. His bud.

Christ, the guy could really get on your nerves, but still … the truth was he was going to miss old Dave. Dave McClane had been his one real fan. It was true. Through thick and thin, Dave worshiped Bob for his purity of purpose and though Bob had laughed at him and his sentimental “workers of the world, unite!” bullshit, he now realized how much he was going to miss Dave’s sweet and hopeful rants. Why, there was a period of Bob’s life, in the not-so-distant past, that all he’d had to look forward to were afternoons in American Joe’s, where old Dave propped him up.

Bob snipped away at the shirt and felt as though he was cutting up Dave’s body. Yes, Dave had loved him. It wasn’t just hubris for him to say that he’d really been Dave’s hero. Which made the way things turned out a little more understandable. You could even say that it was
better
… really, it
was
better for Dave to be dead than to have to give up worshiping Bob. Because once he knew that Bob wasn’t for real, Dave had lost his own sense of self, too, and had become a mere cynic. And idealistic, sentimental Dave made a lousy cynic. No, that wasn’t him, the true and kind Dave, at all. He had only become that way because … because … (Bob suddenly couldn’t bear the thought) because Bob had caved in, gone for the money. Because he didn’t want to be alone when Bob and Jesse split the scene for good. Which made Bob kind of responsible for Dave’s lame attempt at blackmail. Didn’t it?

No, no, no … that was absurd. We’re all individuals. We’re all grown-ups, aren’t we? He couldn’t be responsible for Dave’s actions any more than Dave was responsible for his, could he? That was the way it was now, right? Everybody was out there in the jungle fending for themselves, and an adult, a grown-up male in his fifties for chrissakes, doesn’t have any right to blame somebody else for his moral failures, does he?

It comes down to weakness really. It comes down to moral weakness. The thing is, Dave wasn’t strong enough to do what had to be done.

Doesn’t it come down to that? In the end, Bob thought, tears flowing down his face, doesn’t it come down to something like, “Dave was in over his head. Way over his head”? Doesn’t it come down to something like, “If you play with the big cats you’re gonna get scratched”? Doesn’t it all come down to that?

Isn’t all that “I am my brother’s keeper” stuff bullshit? Doesn’t everybody know that’s only a pipe dream, something you tell kids … but nobody really believes?

Yeah, of course it is. The brother’s keeper, the Good Samaritan, those are all just fairy tales, right? No different than, say … Santa Claus.

Of course … of course … so why was he crying so hard. Thinking of Lou Anne staring at him, her tongue all torn out of her head.

Bob snipped away at his bloody shirt, dropping it piece by piece into the toilet.

The way to think of it, the way to position it in his head was that Dave McClane’s death, and Lou Anne’s, as well, had been necessary.

He looked down at the bowl and flushed it, watching the bits of bloodied shirt going round and round and he said out loud, so as to confirm the reality of his new stance:

“Thanks, Dave. You did it, man, you played your part. I’ll miss you. Both of you. ‘Bye, buddy. I’m sorry, man. But, as a wise man once said: It be that way sometimes.”

Jesse’s parents, Chuck and Diane, and sister, Darlene, arrived late that night from West Virginia. Bob was delighted to see them. Hard-working, good people. The old man liked to drink, which was fine with Bob. He stayed up late with him, listening to his stories about Jesse when she was a kid. That was fine, getting a little head on, just what he needed to stop thinking about Dave and Lou Anne.

That and the kind looks and loving glances from Jesse.

In spite of the horror of the afternoon, Bob began to feel a warm glow, partially from the whiskey, of course, but partially, too, from being part of a real working-class American family.

They liked him. They were impressed by him.

After Chuck had half a snort on, he told Bob that he’d seen him on TV. Bob smiled and said, “Oh that?”—like it was nothing—but old Chuck put his arm around his shoulder and said:

“You ain’t nothing like I thought you’d be.”

Bob winced a little. Here it comes, he thought, the jealousy and bitterness. He half expected Chuck to call him a phony, a creep.

But old Chuck smiled and squeezed his shoulder.

“Onna TV,” he said, “I thought you were gonna be a damn saint and all, but you’re just a good old boy, like me. And I’m right proud to have you inna family.”

Bob suddenly felt a flush of emotion and had to wipe the tears away from his eyes.

“Damn,” he said to Chuck. “That’s how I feel, too. I love you guys and I love your daughter more than anybody in the world.”

The two men, overcome with raw emotion, hugged as Jesse and her sister watched from the dining room. And Jesse wiped away a tear or two of her own.

The church, Saint Stanislaus Cathedral, a huge concrete mausoleum of a place built in the early 1900s, looked especially imposing and impressive that early spring day. Or at least it seemed so to Bob, as he drove up to the curb with his new family. He had never paid much attention to the place as a house of worship. Mostly the church had been used back in the social activist days for community action meetings. Now, two thirds of the congregation had moved away and there was constant talk of the church closing its doors forever.

But today, Bob thought, as he walked inside, slapping hands with well-wishers, the old place seemed austere and somehow a little frightening. It was almost as if God was sending him a message through the marble pillars and that message wasn’t “Gentle Jesus meek and mild,” but “Fear me. Fear the wrath of God.”

Bob remembered feeling that way when he went to church as a kid. That the whole thing was scary, fearful, and now as he saw all the artists and people he’d worked with over the years, he began to shake a little inside.

He recalled, out of nowhere, an old preacher he’d heard once, who kept staring at him and saying, “Remember this, boy. By your acts ye shall be judged.” And he remembered taking an inventory of his acts that very Sunday afternoon, and already feeling even then, at the age of twelve, that his acts didn’t in any way assure him of a berth on the Heavenly Express.

And now … today …

No … he supposed not.

Not with two blood-splattered corpses sitting in a freezing basement just about a mile away.

But no need to think of that. Not now. No need to think of that at all.

Instead, think of all the people who had attended the church today. Bob peered down the aisle and felt a little better.

There were Ida Washington and Fannie Mae Edwards, the two old black women whom he visited every week for years and years. Why, they had loved him so much that they made him cakes and played spirituals for him on their piano. And there was old Wyatt Ratley, a man who suffered from a terrible burn he’d gotten working at Larmel Steel. He’d been so depressed he’d considering taking his own life, but Bob had worked with him for years, not only in the office but had actually made house calls to see him when he was too depressed to come out. Bob smiled seeing Wyatt there, and the old gentleman with the terrible scar smiled and waved to him from the fourth pew. And there was Ethel Roop, looking like a chubby Easter egg, all dressed up in a purple crepe dress that did nothing to hide her girth, but she was smiling at him, too … and just a few seats behind her was Perry Swann, looking neat and under control, and maybe, Bob thought, maybe I have helped them. And the wild Finnegan Brothers had come, too, Jack and Tommy, dressed in black leathers, their fierce beards and mutton-chops making them look like Visigoths … and they’d brought half of their biker gang … and now they were waving to Bob from the back pews … and he thought to himself, yeah, well, that should count, too, shouldn’t it? Giving pleasure to people through music? You can’t judge a man for his one bad act, can you? Okay, three bad acts. One robbery and a double homicide. (And could maybe God think somehow of the Dave and Lou Anne thing as, like, one murder? Like a package deal of some kind? Twofers?) Standing there waiting for Jesse and Father Herb Weaver, the activist priest, Bob tried to imagine how God might tote that up. Like how many good acts does it take to discount one murder?