Four Kinds of Rain

by Robert Ward

  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!”

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  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 tha
t? 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.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  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.