by Robert Ward
“Except you,” Lori said.
There was a real sincerity in her voice, Bob thought. The first time all day that she hadn’t been speaking like a tough professional but from her heart. What he did, who he really was, had gotten through to her.
But then, Bob noted to himself, as they grabbed a cab to head to the Lodge, if he hadn’t committed a crime against his own patient, Lori Weisman and the Today show wouldn’t be here at all.
That night the Lodge opened up for a special performance of Bob Wells, Jesse Reardon, and the rest of the fabulous Rockaholics. Bob Wells rocked and blasted out tasty blues licks on his Les Paul and Miss Jesse Reardon shook her sweet body and sang with every ounce of throaty, dark, purring sensuality that was in her. The cameras pumped everybody up. The Lodge patrons went nuts dancing and showing off for the cameras. Old and Young Finnegan danced on the bar again, with a bunch of biker chicks they’d brought in from redneck Glen Burnie, wild-looking women with bandannas around their heads and safety pins through their ears. Ethel Roop and Perry Swann were there and ended up making a wild dance couple, big Ethel shaking her belly while Perry kept pointing to his crotch, which made Bob a little afraid he might expose himself on the dance floor. But Perry managed to keep control of himself, which Bob took as a good sign. Hell, maybe he was even making some progress. Tommy Morello and Lizzie Littman did a wild dance that ended with them practically having intercourse on the floor, as Jesse blasted out “Hard to Handle.” The television cameras really pumped everybody up, not the least of whom were Dave and Lou Anne, who made sure they were right up front catching lots of airtime. They shook and shimmied and did the electric slide two feet in front of the band.
When it was all over, and Dave was helping pack up the speakers and amps, Lori Weisman hugged Bob Wells and looked at him with something like awe in her expression.
“Seriously,” she said, “working in television you get a little jaded. But meeting a guy like you—well, it really does something for my spirit.”
“Thanks,” Bob said. “But that’s the whole point of what I do. It’s not that I’m some kind of saint. It’s that you feel better when you’re kind. You feed your spirit when you do good.”
Bob heard himself say the last speech with a seeming sincerity and simple honesty that used to be his true nature. Now, however, having given in to temptation, the words seemed to float disembodied from his mouth. They had been true only when he was true. Now they were just words, unconnected to any heartfelt part of himself. Words that were no different from a commercial that sold beer or Viagra on television. He had, he realized, gone from being a man of distinction, even though a virtual unknown, to a shill for himself, and the thought made him suddenly dizzy and sick.
“What you just said, that’s fantastic,” Lori said. “I’d like you to say that for the camera. Oh yeah, there is one more thing, Bob. I have to ask you this so the piece just doesn’t seem like one long blow job.”
Everyone laughed at that one, except Jesse, who eyed Lori suspiciously.
Bob put his arm around Jesse’s shoulder and kissed her neck to show her he wasn’t tempted by the sophisticated woman from the big city.
“Well,” Lori said, “a couple of local detectives, guys named Garrett and Geiger, contacted me just tonight and said that you were under suspicion in the bombing. That you’d been seen with one of the dead men, a guy named Ray Wade, only a few days before the explosion took place.”
Bob felt a great rage starting inside of him. What were they doing, screwing up his moment in the sun? The bastards, the sons of bitches. He looked down at the floor and took a deep breath. When he looked back up, he was smiling, in his friendly and humble way.
“It’s true I knew Ray Wade. Years ago, he played in blues bands with me. We live in a funky part of town and you get to know all kinds of people. But the idea that I was involved in some kind of criminal activity with Wade, well, that’s crazy.”
“But isn’t it true,” Lori Weisman said, “that you played poker with Ray Wade and some of his buddies and you lost almost all of your retirement money?”
Bob felt a lump forming in his throat. When he looked at Lori Weisman now she wasn’t the same friendly and openly worshiping person she’d been for the past two days. No, there was a sharp, hard glint in her eyes.
“That’s a lie,” Bob said. “I lost some of my money and as a result I quit playing cards.”
Dave was standing right by the two of them and he couldn’t resist chiming in.
“Maybe you ought to ask Detective Garrett why he hassles Bobby all the time.”
Lori Weisman raised an eyebrow.
“Do you know why?” she said.
“Oh yeah, I do,” said Dave. “Because Bob clocked him in a street battle a long time ago when they were both young. He’s always hated Bob because he’s an activist and he doesn’t kiss any cop’s ass.”
Lori smiled and shook her head.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s it for now. If I need any more, can I come back down?”
“Of course,” Bob said. “You’re one of us now. You can come back to good old Baltimore anytime you want.”
“And you’ll buy me a crab cake and a National Boh?” she asked.
“Night or day,” Bob said. “Right, David?”
“Oh yeah,” Dave said. “You bet, Lori, any old time.”
They all hugged one another and Bob felt better. He was pretty sure she wasn’t going to do a hatchet job on him. It was probably just like she said. She had to put a few negative things in, so it didn’t make him out to be too good, some kind of saint.
As Bob and Jesse drove home, drunk and weary from the big media day, Bob felt a kind of bittersweet quality to it all. He had, at last, become a celebrated person in his town and soon he would be known all over the United States, maybe even the entire world, but at what cost?
As he turned down Aliceanna Street, he couldn’t help but remember something his mother, Grace, used to say when he was young: “Far better for a man to lose his life than lose his immortal soul.” No other quote had ever had such an impact as that one. It was possible that through all the changes he had gone through in his life, this one phrase had been the rock of his beliefs.
And now … now he had crushed the rock underfoot, given up his soul for worldly success. For fame and money and power.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t enjoy it. He’d loved being the center of attention for the past few weeks. It was exciting, fantastic … actually being taken seriously, people waiting eagerly for his next utterance.
But there was still the problem of the truth.
He had always been honest, earnest … good old Honest Bob Wells. Indeed, he had been such a goody-goody that he was a bit of a joke even in his own neighborhood. And maybe even more than having the money, Bob had wanted to take a vacation from that dogged, patient, and boring little man that he’d always been. He wanted to fly in the face of convention, show himself and the world that he was bigger than any of them imagined.
And he had done it. Okay, he had stumbled through it, escaped by the skin of his teeth, but in the end, did he really deserve all this attention?
No, of course not.
The thought tortured him. He had gotten all the attention for the wrong reasons.
He tried for the thousandth time to tell himself that life was ironic—that he was really getting the attention for the heroic way he’d saved the kids—and beyond that, belatedly for all the good works he’d done in the past.
But no matter how many times he said it … he still couldn’t wipe out the guilt and horror he felt for hatching a plan that had killed so many men, including his old pal, Ray Wade.
No amount of rationalization could totally wipe away the feeling that he was a fraud. And all this talk of his greatness, all the loud huzzahs from the media, rather than make him feel better, in the end, only terrified him. For if he had quietly sneaked away into the night, there would be no risk of the world finding out
just what a creep and phony he was. But now, famous, lauded as a saint … oh God, now a fall from grace would be a thousand feet high, with only the street to break it.
And perhaps, worst of all was that he had to keep his sins secret from Jesse. She had a vision of him, now completely reinforced by today’s media show, that she had found the last honest man. The guy she had been looking for all her life. An old-fashioned man of dignity and honor.
Even now, as he drove toward a sign, which said ROAD CLOSED DETOUR, he could see her sneaking looks at him from the passenger seat. Her face just glowed with love, admiration, and respect. All the things he would have loved to have won from her honestly, he had, instead, cheated to obtain. And how quickly all those loving, admiring looks would vanish and be replaced by hatred and scorn … if she knew what kind of a man he really was.
God, there was the pain of it.
He feared losing what he had cheated to get even though he knew that his old self would have found all his winnings worthless.
He had five million in the basement wall, and yet he felt not like a man of wealth and reputation, but more like a crab scuttling down a windblown Chesapeake beach.
He had gone from helping the people on the bottom to being a bottom feeder. And the thought made him sick.
He turned down Latrobe Street, a street so narrow that his old Volvo could barely squeeze beneath the redbrick row houses, which leaned over them like jagged, broken teeth.
“What the hell’s going on, Bobby?” Jesse said.
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure this street goes through.”
He stopped the car and started to back up.
“That’s not going to work,” Jesse said.
“Why?” Bob said.
“Because of Mister Softee back there.”
Bob looked in the rearview mirror and saw the ice-cream truck blocking their path.
“Christ, it’s after midnight,” Bob said. “Who gets ice cream at this hour?”
“No one, asshole,” came the reply.
Bob turned and looked out the open window and saw Emile Bardan’s face staring back at him.
“Hi Doc,” Emile said, as he shot Bob in the chest with a dart from a five-thousand-volt air-taser gun.
Bob fell backward, his muscles immediately going into wild convulsions. His eyes were filled with a shower of red sparks. He saw a hand come in the window, a hand holding a rag of some kind. He wanted to push it away, but his arms jerked in spasms and then he became aware of the sickening smell of ether. A few seconds later he was out cold.
Jesse leaped out from the passenger side and started running toward the ice-cream truck. She was only a few feet away when the dart hit her in the back and she fell, convulsively twitching, on the street. Even as out of control as she was, she tried to crawl away, but it was no use. The ether-soaked rag came down on her face, as well. She heard a bell ringing in her head, and within seconds, Jesse lay unconscious on the dark street.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bob felt as though someone had cracked his brain and the odor of ether on his shirt made him nauseous. But neither of these was as agonizing as the pain in his arms and ankles, both of which were bound by packing tape. He looked around and saw a bust of some ancient figure sitting near him. He should know that man’s name, Bob thought. All those years of education and he could remember so little.
He looked again and recalled it. Alexander the Great. Yes, the conqueror himself. And how much of his legend was really just gossip, lies, innuendo turned into “fact”? Bob glanced around the room and his heart sank.
Jesse lay bound and gagged on the floor across the warehouse room. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing. God, he’d never wanted to involve her. Seeing her there, bloodied and covered with alley grime, he felt a wave of shame and self-hatred pass through him. The sensation was so strong it was as though he’d swallowed poison.
And, he thought, in a way he had. He had succumbed to evil and evil was poison. And poison didn’t care who drank it. Its job was to kill, not to make moral distinctions. But Jesse … good, decent Jesse … whatever Emile did to him, he deserved. But not Jesse.
“Ah, I see you’re awake,” Emile said.
Bob turned his head and twisted around on the couch a little. Across from him, the art dealer sat in a comfortable overstuffed chair, a spiral notebook in his hand. Next to him was a gooseneck lamp, which he now shone into Bob’s eyes.
“Good to see you, Bobby,” he said. “I’ve missed our little sessions.”
“I bet you have,” Bob said.
“No, truly,” Emile said. “I especially enjoyed the one over the telephone.”
Bob said nothing, but strained against the tape. He could feel it loosen a bit.
“Jesse?” he said. “Is she dead?”
“No, no, no,” Emile said. “Not at all. Though she will be soon, unless you give me my money.”
Bob said nothing, but squirmed around some more. The money was his only bargaining chip. As soon as he gave it to Emile he and Jesse were both dead.
“By the way, Bobby,” Emile said, “I watched your little taping session out in front of your house today. You had the fat woman and the flasher out there. I have to admit, I felt a little residual jealousy. I mean, those two nobodies on national television? And you didn’t invite me? I mean, think of the interview I could have given the Today show, Bob.”
Bob looked a little past Emile. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jesse squirming, trying to get free. He had to keep Emile talking.
“If you’d only called and told me where you were, I would have seen to it that you got some airtime,” Bob said. He tried to smile a little, to show Emile that he was somehow still in control.
Emile laughed and shook his head.
“I’ve developed my own little theory about you, Bob,” Emile said. “Want to hear it?”
“Why not?” Bob said.
Emile crossed, then recrossed his legs.
“Well, first off, I think you’re a victim of serious narcissistic grandiosity disorder. Perhaps it stems from your father, Bob. His saintliness as a union leader gave you impossibly high standards to live up to. The only way you could outdo him was to repress all your natural desires for status, power, and prestige. Then belatedly, after Meredith left you for that fraud, Rudy Runyon, you began to see that this strategy was perhaps not the best way to live a life. Coming to this correct conclusion, a sensible person would have perhaps learned a business, tried to have a meaningful second career to tide them over in their declining years, something like selling antiques on eBay. But not you, Bob. You were just as grandiose as ever, exchanging one extreme form of living, saintliness, for another, criminality. When I dangled the bait in front of your eyes, you jumped right at it. I’ll even bet you convinced yourself that it was your destiny. That was all part of my plan, by the way. I knew that you had a power fixation, so I offered you a god. Utu. Someone an incipient egomaniac like you could fixate on.”
Bob felt the sting of Emile’s words. It was all true, he thought, every bit of it. His eye drifted to Jesse, who was awake and still struggling with her bonds.
“That’s a brilliant analysis,” Bob said.
“Don’t try and flatter me, Bob. That’s a weak trick. And it won’t save you. There’s only one thing that can do that, handing over my money.”
“Now who’s bullshitting who?” Bob said. “You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
Emile gave Bob a devilish grin and shook his head.
“You guessed it, Bob. No, of course not … I can’t do that. But I can make your death pleasant, a quick bullet, or very, very ugly.”
Behind Emile, Jesse had somehow gotten her right hand free. But if Emile turned to check on her, they were finished.
“I don’t think I’m going to tell you,” Bob said.
Emile left his chair at once and walked toward Bob, smiling.
“Play it your way, Bob,” Emile said. “Before I kill you, ma
ybe you’d like to see ‘your’ mask?”
“You don’t have it,” Bob said. “You never had it.”
“Wrong again, Bob.”
He walked over to a wooden cabinet, opened it, and took out a case. He hit a recessed button, the plastic cover slipped back, and Emile took out the mask.
It didn’t disappoint. There was something terrifying, fierce, and vindictive in the god’s expression. Bob felt a chill. Looking at the mask, he suddenly felt that he was looking at himself, at what he’d become, something garish, ugly, and distorted from his original self.
Bob struggled against his bonds. How he wanted to smash the mask, nearly as bad as he wanted to smash Emile’s face.
“You see?” Emile said. “He’s really marvelous, but I can tell from the way he’s reacting that he doesn’t like you. After all, Utu was a god, not a lowly, third-rate psychologist who steals from his patients.”
There, Bob thought, he had said it. And Jesse had heard it. Whatever she’d thought before, now she knew what a low and evil person she had fallen for. Bob saw her twisting harder now … she had one hand free. Then it occurred to him that hearing what she had maybe she’d get free and not help him at all.
After all, why should she?
Above him, Emile slipped the mask over his face.
“How do I look, Bob?”
“Like an asshole with a mask on,” Bob said. But that wasn’t what he really thought at all. Emile looked like an avenging god from some place deep in Bob’s own unconscious. Something one might see after a night of drinking and taking pills. Someone who knew what he had become, and was here for vengeance.
“Very brave,” Emile said. “Let’s see how brave you are in a few minutes, though, when you’ve lost your legs.”
Emile reached down from the other side of a large packing crate and picked up a portable power saw. He pulled the rip cord and it sounded like a starving animal.
“See, handy to have these around. We use them to make packing crates. Ship our paintings and sculptures all over the world. And by the way, to keep out moisture and heat, this room is sealed tight. So any screaming you do—and trust me, Bobby, there’s going to be quite a lot—won’t be heard by anyone except me and you. And Jesse, of course.”
