by Robert Ward
“No,” she said. “Why ruin a good thing, darling?”
Huge laughter. God, she was great. A born performer.
“Jess, is he really this humble guy at home?”
“Absolutely,” Jesse said. “The only place Bob’s not humble is in bed.”
More laughter. Bob laughed, too. Fantastic. Now he would be known as a sexy saint.
“Time to go,” he said. He made a face part grimace and part smile, the kind that said he was dealing heroically with his pain.
Jesse wheeled him across the parking lot, toward their car and the waiting Dave McClane.
“Hey guy,” Dave said.
“Dave,” Bob said. He wanted to jump out of the chair and hug old Dave for the piece he’d written, but he suddenly understood that their relationship had changed. They were no longer two losers wasting the afternoon at American Joe’s tavern.
Not anymore.
Now Bob was a hero and Dave was his Boswell.
It was amazing, really. Because of Dave’s savvy in writing the piece, both of them had completely reinvented their lives.
Bob felt a huge surge of gratitude toward Dave. Thank God for old Dave’s loyalty, his faith in Bob’s greatness.
Tears sprang to Bob’s eyes.
It had finally happened. Bob was somebody in the world at large.
Thanks to his dear old pal …
It was all he could not to throw his arms around Dave, thank him profusely. But, of course, that wouldn’t do.
He was a hero now. He had to play the part of one. Modest. Kind. Understated, like the saint Dave had made him out to be.
So instead of hugging and kissing the man who had pulled him from the mulch of obscurity, Bob offered Dave a manly, understated handshake.
As the press snapped the picture and the TV cameras whirled just behind him.
“Good to see you, Dave,” Bob said. “That was a fine piece.”
“You earned it, Bob,” Dave said, smiling, his eyes shining with admiration.
Bob nodded in an old-fashioned Gary Cooper way, then let Dave and Jesse help him out of the wheelchair and into his car. And as he fell into the passenger seat (giving another little clenched-teeth grimace of pain so the cameras could catch it), Bob suddenly felt the clean rush of saintliness.
He was a real hero. Of course he was. Hell, as much of one as, say, Jessica Lynch, who hadn’t done a damn thing but get caught and raped, and as much of one as any football star murderer or billionaire basketball crackhead. Why beat himself up about his “authenticity”? That kind of thinking—rigorous honesty—why, that was for the old world, and the old Bob. America wasn’t about that anymore, if indeed it ever was. That kind of thinking was for losers. So was the whole guilt trip, too. Why, in this world, the real world, you were as you were perceived to be, and Bob was perceived as a hero. Only a schmuck or some kind of overearnest graduate student of Ethics 101 would question the validity of his new fame and fortune.
And besides, Bob thought, as Jesse slowly rolled out of the lot—and as Bob gave all the reporters a George S. Patton-esque thumbs-up, which would be shown that night on the News at Eleven—just think of all the thousands of good things he’d done over the years, helping the poor, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised. The truth was he was an artist, a special kind of artist, who didn’t use paint or words, or play music, but rather an artist who used humanity as his canvas.
He was, he thought, as they eased out into the traffic, a kindness artist. Like a metaphysical Johnny Appleseed, he moved from place to place, dropping dabs of kindness and insight.
And now, at long last, the world would be able to see his life’s work.
That happy thought brought tears to his eyes.
His miserable life had come to something after all. He was finally being recognized. And God, he was loving every minute of it. Bob Wells, American hero. At long last.
On the bright spring morning Bob arrived home his phone never stopped ringing. It was, he thought later, as if all the calls he’d been waiting for his entire life were taking place in one day.
There were calls from the Washington Post, calls from a paper in Richmond, Virginia, and finally, as the day ended, calls from The New York Times and, sure enough, a publisher called Pavilion Press in New York City.
As Bob waited for it to get dark enough to go retrieve his money, he answered them all. He told his life story over and over again, adding nifty little touches each time. For the Post, he said that he’d muttered a little prayer just before his fateful leap. For the Virginia paper, he mentioned his father’s name and his own jogging, “which gave me strong legs.”
But he saved the best for The New York Times. He mentioned that he was a “religious man … quietly and privately religious … that there were ‘certain spirits’ he communed with and these spirits aided him when the chasm looked insurmountable.” That was just the right thing for a hero. A low, steady flame, which he could turn up in time of peril. The Times guy loved it, and the piece practically made Bob out to be a male Mother Teresa.
The editor, Jane Bennett, from Pavilion Press, was the best of all. She said that they wanted to do a book with him and put it in their new Real Heroes line. She actually articulated the very thought Bob had wondered about so many times: “Why should jocks and movie stars be the real heroes? They don’t do anything for mankind.” Right, Bob thought, damn right. He agreed to go up to New York in the next few weeks to meet with a ghostwriter who would interview him and actually write the book.
“As long as it’s real,” Bob said, not only playing the modest hero but actually feeling that way as he spoke.
“Absolutely,” Jane said. “We don’t write a thing without your ‘input.’“
Yes, that was great, fantastic. Input. They wanted his input!
He hung up in a delirium of happiness, only to receive another call.
This one he could not believe. A producer from the Today show named Lori Weisman called. She sounded hysterically excited about “meeting Bob.”
“I just think what you did, why, it’s so amazing,” she said. “We live in a world now where each act of heroism gives the rest of us strength to carry on. I mean, I think your story could be a real inspiration to all of America, Bob.”
Bob heard her words and realized that this was truly it, the apogee of his success. His great dream was coming true. Television interviews! On the Today show! He would be part and parcel of the national colloquy. He, Bob Wells, was going to be on network TV!
“That’s fine,” he said, trying to sound cool and calm, as though this kind of thing was swell but not his real focus in life. “But I can’t spend too much time in New York, because, well, I can’t leave my patients.”
He looked at Jesse, who was walking through the room, and she gave him a complicit smile. She understood that he was playing it up, and why shouldn’t he, after so many years of being invisible.
There was a long silence on the phone then, during which Bob thought he might have overplayed his hand. Maybe she was thinking, What a phony asshole.
But when she came back on the phone she was even more breathless than before.
“That’s so great,” Lori Weisman said. “That’s the spirit we want to catch, and I don’t think you can do that, catch the real you, in the studio. No, I think I need to come down there. Bring the camera crew and film you as you minister to your people.”
For a second Bob couldn’t get his breath. They were going to come to him? Like he was some celebrity.
“You mean, come to my house and hang out?” he said, realizing he sounded lame, but too stunned to care.
“Absolutely,” Lori said. “Listen, Bob, when I read Dave McClane’s pieces about you, I knew this was a huge story. It’s the kind of thing people need now. In a world of Enron phonies and fucking perv priests and greed and suicide bombers, we all want to hear about a good guy who puts other people first, you know?”
Bob could hardly speak. At last, at long last the
y finally understood him and the world would hear his story. It was so wonderful … he could barely breathe.
“So can we come down, Bob?” Lori said.
“You bet,” he said. “But as far as filming my patients, well, we’d have to ask their permission. I mean, I can’t compromise their treatment.”
“Of course not,” Lori said. “We’d get them all to sign releases. How’s the day after tomorrow sound?”
“Fine,” Bob said. “Great.”
“We’ve heard from Dave McClane that you and your girlfriend play in a rock band. Any chance you could play that night?”
“I guess so,” Bob said. “I mean, you’d have to call Link, the guy who runs the Lodge, but I think he might be able to work it out.”
“Great,” Lori said. “Bob, I think this is going to be really terrific. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“Same here,” Bob said. “Thanks for calling.”
“No,” Lori said, her voice suddenly bulging with emotion, “thank you, Bob. It’s easy to get cynical in this world and I think our viewers are really ready for a real hero.”
“Gee, thanks,” Bob said, and hung up the phone.
“Bob, you ought to get up to bed,” Jesse called from the kitchen. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
“I’m okay,” Bob said. “Just a little headache.”
He reached into his pocket and took out the bottle of Vicodin.
Suddenly, he was struck with a terrible fear. What if while Lori was here, the cops told her that there was some question regarding Bob’s involvement with a mass murder on the fifth floor?
Neither Garrett or Geiger had mentioned his name in the article about the bombing, but they were lying in wait. It could happen at any moment. Why, instead of a piece glorifying him, the whole thing could come out as an exposé.
Bob fell back on the couch. It was getting dark. Maybe, if these well-meaning reporters dug into his past, they’d find out that he hung out with Ray Wade. Maybe they could even connect him to the crime. What if they talked to the bartender at Elmer’s? Had anyone seen him in there? And what of Cas and Tony’s relatives? Did they know about him? Would they come forward and tell the cops the truth? And where was Emile Bardan? Would he come back and kill Bob in his bed?
Then he took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was okay. So far no one had anything on him. What he had to do was take things one step at a time. Isn’t that what he always told his patients?
One step at a time. And the first step, the step he had to do right now, was to go get the money.
He lay there on the couch until Jesse came out of the kitchen.
“Bob,” she said, “you really should get your rest.”
“I know, Jess,” he said. “I’m just fine here. I need to think through a few things, that’s all. You go up. This has all been hard on you, too, baby. You need your sleep.”
“Okay,” she said.
Then she looked at him in a curiously cold way.
“Bob,” she said. “You know they found these bodies upstairs from where you saved the kids. And one of them was Ray Wade. I have to ask you this …”
Bob looked up at her with the most earnest of his shrink faces.
“You want to know if I had anything to do with those guys?”
“Yes, I do,” Jesse said. “I have to know.”
“No,” Bob said. “That’s the answer. I saw Ray as a friend, but you don’t really think that I would have had anything to do with his business dealings, do you?”
“I hope not,” Jesse said. “I sincerely hope not.”
“Don’t you believe me, Jess?” Bob said.
“I want to,” she said. “But you told me you were attending a seminar up at Hopkins that night. So how’d you end up taking a walk by the American Brewery? At one o’clock in the morning.”
“I came home and couldn’t sleep,” Bob said. “You know how I am, tossing and turning all night. I lay there for an hour, then said ‘to hell with it,’ and got up to take a walk. Usually, after a walk, I sleep just fine.”
Jesse managed a smile.
“That’s true,” she said. “There’s another question I have to ask you, Bobby.”
“Sure,” Bob said. “Shoot.”
“Well, I know you jumped over the hole in the floor with the boy on your back, but how did you get over it the first time?”
“What?” Bob said. He really didn’t understand the question. “What first time?”
“When you came into the building,” Jesse said. “How did you get over the hole to get to the kids you heard screaming?”
Bob looked at her with astonishment. She really was sharp … thank God she was on his side.
“Well, that’s the weird thing,” he heard himself say. “You see, when I first went into the building, the hole wasn’t there yet. But while I was inside trying to wake Ronnie up, there was this huge, thunderous roar and the whole damn foundation just collapsed. So when I came back out …”
“The hole was there,” Jesse said, finishing his sentence for him. “That’s what I thought, Bob. It’s just amazing.”
“And it’s all true,” Bob said. “Have a little faith in me, Jess.”
“I do, Bobby. You know I do.”
She bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
“Don’t stay up too late,” she said.
“I won’t, baby,” Bob said. “Now you go get some sleep.”
Though it killed his battered knees and made his headache worse, Bob ran through the back alleys, over potholed cobblestones, past piles of trash as he made his way toward the American Brewery Building.
All the way there he heard the voices in his head: What if it’s gone? What if it’s gone?
The thought tortured him and his head throbbed all the worse for his fears.
Finally he came to the huge, old brick building, which loomed over him in the dark. He saw the yellow crime tape around the whole place. Good God, that had somehow never occurred to him, that they would search the whole building, inside and out. They might already have found the suitcase, sitting there behind the goddamned Dumpster.
Or maybe they left it there, empty, of course, to see who would come back and fetch it.
He wondered if they would have a guard hanging around the building now, just waiting for him to come. Bob began to berate himself. Christ, he’d been a fool, an idiot to save those kids. He’d gotten a few minutes of fame and glory, but the money might be gone. And there was Garrett, too. What if the guy was following him? Bob looked around the streets, at the alleys and the bar across the street called Mike’s. Detective Garrett could be sitting right in there, just waiting for him to come….
Maybe he should just leave the money. He was getting famous, right? Maybe his book and life story would be worth so much that he just shouldn’t risk it.
Yeah, right. You’re going to leave five million dollars sitting there, after what you went through to get it?
Bob felt a chill in the air, coming off the bay.
Time to go, hero.
Time to get paid, as dead Ray used to say.
He ran around the back of the building, staying close to the walls, trying to blend in with the shadows.
He walked over the condoms and pieces of charred concrete and then he saw it, the Dumpster. Same as it was yesterday. Great piles of cardboard on it. They hadn’t gotten to it yet ….
But what if some bum … some guy …
Shut the fuck up.
He had to look, he had to look now….
He slid back behind the Dumpster, reached down in the darkness. It should be right here.
And was.
Just like that. Easy as pie. He had the briefcase in his hand.
But was there anything inside?
He knew he should wait, wait until he got it in his house, but he couldn’t stand it.
Bob stepped out into the light and clicked open the case.
It was there. Money … piles and piles of neatly wrap
ped hundreds.
Oh, Jesus Christ on a crutch, he was rich … rich, rich, rich. And don’t forget famous, famous, and soon to be even more famous.
And then he heard it, a car coming, a siren screaming. Where the hell was it? Just a block away on Gay Street and heading this way. A trap? Had they just been waiting for the rat to come and pick up the case?
Bob turned and ran, across the battered, filthy lot next to the building, sliding on the gravel as he hit the alley, and then he was flying through the alley … his knees creaking, his body wracked with pain from his heroic leap. But he was moving fast, faster than he had in years, and the briefcase was in his hand and he wasn’t ever going to stop until he got home.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In the back of his basement, Bob sat on an old lawn chair and opened the suitcase. There it was … all his … all that money.
M.O.N.E.Y.
Five million dollars.
He took out a few of the packets, rubbed them across his cheek.
Oh God, he was rich.
He, Bob Wells, the poor guy, the martyr, the former laughingstock, was loaded.
He loved the smell of the new bills. They smelled like … like … well, there were no really good metaphors. Money smelled like money and nothing else smelled half as good. Okay, maybe a woman’s skin, yes, sometimes that could be great, but the feeling of power, the intoxication of the money, right now, it was way better than sex. Just holding so much of it made him a little giddy, mad. He wanted to get closer to the money. He wanted to inhale it. He wanted to take a bath in it. He wanted to—go ahead, admit it—make love to the money.
What a mad, mad thought … but why not? When you had money, anything you wanted became legitimate, didn’t it?
Mon, mon, money, moneeeeeey! All for him. Money!
He was like an animal that had finally found his own habitat. All those years of groveling to state officials to get money for the poor. All those years of visiting people in crummy bomb shelters of homes. That was over, history. He didn’t need that shit anymore.
It was the world of money, success, and glitter for Dr. Bobby Wells now.
He kissed the packets and felt like a priest observing a religious ritual.