Four Kinds of Rain by Robert Ward Page B

his head.
    “I was barely aware of it, I suppose,” he said. “I mean, I’ve always known, but not known, if you know what I mean. Murder is something that happens to other people.”
    “Yes, I know,” said Bob. “But why would he bother to kill you? It’s the mask he wants, not your life.”
    “Not exactly,” Emile said. “He wants control. He wants to have complete freedom. You know what Edwards was in college? A utopian leftist. I was always a centrist politically, but not old idealistic Colin. He believed in a new world, and all that. A real fanatic. But when he couldn’t get it, oh man, you just don’t know. Those are the worst kind, Doc, the ones who have the big dreams. It’s the same with the artists in the world. I love painting and I love sculpture, but the people who make it, the ones who won’t compromise or play the game, they’re the ones you have to fear, because they don’t really give a shit about people. They live for ‘ideas’ or ‘beauty’ or ‘God’ or some other abstraction. They’re bad news. A guy like Colin could kill me tomorrow and never lose a single night’s sleep over it.”
    Bob looked down at the rug. For a second he’d felt that Emile Bardan had been describing him, not Edwards.
    “Time’s up for today,” Bob said, looking at his watch. “But I think we’ve done some important work.”
    “Yeah, I think so, too,” Emile said. “Hearing myself talk about Edwards, I just realized something.”
    “What’s that?” Bob said.
    “If he comes after the mask, and I’m around, what I have to do is shoot him in the fucking head.”
    “A very bad idea,” Bob said.
    “Maybe, Doc,” Emile said. “But outside of this bastard I have a good life. And I don’t intend to let the son of a bitch do to me what he did to Larry. I mean, what would you do?”
    “I’m not at all sure,” Bob said. “But I don’t think that it’ll come down to shooting a gun.”
    “I hope not,” Emile said, as he went out the office door. “But if the bastard comes around, I’m going to shoot first.”
    Bob slumped down in his chair. The session had left him exhausted and shaken. He thought about Emile’s version of Colin Edwards. Was it possible the man was actually a killer? Maybe it was true and, if so, perhaps Emile Bardan was eminently sane.
    And then he thought about what Emile had said to him. You had to fight if you loved something. But how much would he risk now that he was in love? How far would
he
go to protect his new life?
    Bob was due over at Jesse’s in an hour. Then they were going to Victor’s restaurant down at Harborplace for Lou Anne’s birthday. Christ, Bob could already see the bill there. He’d have to put it on his card, which was already ridiculously overextended. But what choice did he have?
    He locked the front door behind him and took a walk toward the harbor. As he neared the pier the wind whipped up, pushing him back. He put his hands in his jacket and pushed forward. The cool air refreshed him. He looked at a big freighter anchored eight or nine miles out, and heard a ship’s horn in the distance. He loved it here. He could think, open his mind, and then suddenly there was something coming to him … something he felt that had been there for quite a while … maybe months … but up till now he hadn’t been able to really picture it.
    But he could feel it coming now.
    He felt the wind whip off the water, the sea spray hitting his face, and then he had it. He saw and felt it as clearly as he could see the tide and the steam coming from the freighter’s stacks.
    The thought was so clear, so vivid, that he laughed out loud and did a little dance, a kind of a jig, on one foot.
    How could he have not seen this before? Because he had never considered this answer before. It was almost like stories he’d read of scientists who were blinded by an old paradigm. They couldn’t solve the problem until they came up with a whole new question. What was that