Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? (10 page)

Vikström can't comment about this.

Gazzola comes on the line. He has the raspy, gurgling voice of a broken sewer pipe. Introductions and explanations are made. As for Leon Pappalardo, Vikström says he only wants to talk to him, but perhaps someone from the Brewster police department should come along in case of difficulties.

Chief Gazzola keeps it short. “No problem. Glad to help. See you soon.”

Vikström cuts the connection. “We're all set.”

Chief Gazzola waits for the New London detectives on the front steps of the police station. He's smoking. Manny parks, and the detectives get out. A warm southern wind has begun to nibble the snow.

“Hey, I'm over here!” shouts Gazzola. In fact, he's the only other person in sight. He drops the cigarette and grinds it with his heel. Heaps of snow flank the steps, but the steps themselves have been nicely shoveled.

Greetings are exchanged. Gazzola is a tall, cadaverous man in his fifties. His fingers are stained dark yellow from tobacco, and his skin is as gray as cardboard. He begins to cough a series of phlegm-packed, liquid coughs that turn his face pink. Then he twists around to spit a yellow dollop into the snow.

“I do a lot of work out here,” says Gazzola, looking around the steps. “I can smoke, and inside I have to chew Nicorettes. So I end up saving money.”

“Very sensible,” says Manny.

Gazzola gives him a look to gauge his tone but reaches no conclusions. “No reason to go inside. You know how it is: people always want something. We can drive to Pappalardo's right now. His wife works at a hospital in Providence, but I expect he's home.”

The chief drives a spotless black Lincoln Town Car with super suspension. It has a soothing, aquatic motion. Closing his eyes in the backseat, Vikström imagines he's on a raft at sea. He conjures up sailboats and dolphins. Mermaids flit by.

“They let you smoke in this car?” asks Manny.

“The city council's putting it to a vote. So everything's up in the air till then, meaning no smoking. They were supposed to give me a driver, too, but no dice.”

“It must be lonely at the top,” says Manny in a way that makes Vikström snap open his eyes.

“It's not bad. They give me a lunch allowance.”

Pappalardo and his wife live on Newport Street, a few blocks from Morgan Memorial Hospital. It's a gray Craftsman bungalow with two junipers in the front yard, which, in the snow, rouse Manny's memories of youth. No footprints mar the snow's smooth surface.

“I love the snow, don't you?” says Manny.

No one answers. Vikström thinks he's lying.

Chief Gazzola pulls in to the driveway. The men get out and wade through the snow to the front porch. Gazzola lights a cigarette.

“I hate to disturb the snow's pristine surface,” says Manny.

Vikström thinks,
Give me a fuckin' break.
His shoes and socks are still wet from their visit to Fat Bob's. If he catches a cold, he'll instantly put in for sick leave.

Gazzola climbs the wooden steps and pushes the bell. They can hear it ringing inside the house. Nothing happens. Gazzola pushes it again and knocks on the door. Time passes.

“He must of left early,” says Gazzola.

The covered front porch runs the width of the house, with a large window on either side of the door. Manny goes to the window on the left. Vikström goes to the right. They peer in.

“You goin' to head back to New London, or you want to get lunch? My treat,” says Gazzola. “I can pick up Pappalardo once he gets home.”

Vikström cups his hands around his eyes so he can see more clearly into the living room. At first he sees nothing; then that changes. “There's something over here you should look at, Chief.”

Chief Gazzola isn't a reader and brags about it. “Books make you dumb,” he's fond of saying. But if he read mysteries, he'd feel a chill when Vikström says, “There's something over here you should look at, Chief.” It's a sentence we find in hundreds of crime novels. Manny recognizes it and joins Vikström. The three men peer through the window, bending forward and cupping their hands around their eyes. A brick fireplace faces the window, with an easy chair on either side. An archway on the right leads to a dining room. By the window is a dark library table.

“What's to see?” says Gazzola.

Manny draws a sudden breath. “Keep looking.”

It takes Gazzola about three more seconds. “Are those feet? Bare feet?”

“This is a bad sign,” says Manny.

“Don't start,” says Vikström.

“You think he's napping?” asks Gazzola hopefully.

Manny goes to the front door. It's locked. Rearing back, he slams his boot against it just above the knob. With a cracking sound, the door springs open and hits a wall.

“Hey, you can't do that!” shouts Gazzola. “This is private property!”

But Manny is already inside, followed quickly by Vikström.

“You need a search warrant!” shouts Gazzola.

Leon Pappalardo lies on his back with his bare feet sticking into the living room and the rest of him in the dining room. The feet are huge and pink. They look like inflatables. He wears baby blue pajamas with gold stars. It would be wrong to say that he lies in a pool of blood. It's a lake.

Manny and Vikström feel surges of pleasure that the body is in Rhode Island and not New London. Pappalardo has been shot in the chest, probably with a shotgun. A streak of blood and tissue is spread across the dining room table.

Gazzola stands back by the front door. “Is he dead?”

Neither detective answers. Vikström thinks that Pappalardo won't have to worry about his weight anymore, won't have to dye his hair. These are two of death's small consolations.

Gazzola joins them and fumbles for a cigarette. “Jesus, this is too big for me, way too big. I got to get the staties on the horn this very second!”

Y
vonne Streeter is a woman of few doubts and many opinions, which she feels obliged to share with others. She lives in a twilight area between the assertive and pushy, and her opinions—or truths, as she calls them—exist for the benefit of her neighbors near and far. She likes being a policeman's wife—a detective, no less—and she feels that some of Manny's authority as a guardian of the people is borne on her shoulders as well. We might think its weight would become a burden, but Yvonne is a full-figured woman, size eighteen, and she looks upon women beneath size twelve with scorn.

Such qualities give Yvonne a high-minded heft, and she takes care never to act in ways she sees as undignified, by which she means silliness, girlishness, giggling, blushing, nervousness, and tears. She walks as a queen walks, with her full weight upon her heels, and imagines herself an offensive lineman on morality's football team. She does not brag, nor does she need to brag; she is amply defined by her measured words and movements.

In her own house, she relaxes a little, which doesn't mean she's relaxed; rather, she loosens her moral corset a notch or two. Her kids are in California, and she enjoys her vocation of helping her husband with his police work by giving him advice. And she loves karaoke. When she's up on the little stage of their karaoke box with the microphone gripped in her hands, she feels released from the day's troubles, released from the necessity of being right, released from her size-eighteen authority; she imagines herself a butterfly broken free of its restricting cocoon.

At times during the day, she takes a break from her housework or her volunteer hospital work, where she cheers up the terminally ill with recitations of life's hard truths, and slips into the dimly lit karaoke box, steps onto the stage, and, without recorded music or the lyrics unrolling before her on the computer monitor, she sings from a place deep in her gut, sings in the way she felt born to sing, and her little beagle, Schultzie, will jump up beside her and howl his heart out, howls that swirl around her forceful singing like a figure skater on ice. You'd have to be sitting at one of the small tables to feel the glory of the moment.

At times Yvonne loves Schultzie more than she loves karaoke, and at times she loves karaoke more than Schultzie, but mostly they run neck and neck through the allocation center of her desires. Schultzie is a two-year-old tricolor beagle with a jet-black saddle and light brown areas in the shapes of European countries. Although Schultzie cannot talk, he can howl meaningfully, while his mobile features form an exhaustive projection of idea and emotion.

At noon the day after Marco Santuzza's death, Yvonne's telephone rings. It's the landline, which is surprising because Yvonne and Manny rarely use the landline—they prefer their cells—and their number is unlisted. Yvonne stands in the hall in her tiger-striped bathrobe and eyes the phone suspiciously. After four rings she lifts the receiver. “Yes?”

“Madam, do you want little Schultzie to cough his heart out in the throes of nicotine addiction?”

The deep baritone voice carries within it the sound of galloping horses touched with distant thunder. It is a voice caressed by the melody of water swirling within an otherwise empty fifty-five-gallon metal drum. The faint vibrato creates for Yvonne images of dark shadows of rippling silk across a sunlit wall. And she fears that her heart might stop, so violently is it beating.

“Do you want little Schultzie snatched from the street by roving bands of beagle thieves and spirited away to midnight laboratories where he'll be forced to consume one coffin nail after another?”

Yvonne is so stunned that she sits down on the rug next to the telephone table, torn as she is between the medium and the message. She's caught within the rippling baritone, and the house around her vibrates as vigorously as a belly dancer's abdomen at the crescendo of her display.

“Vaughn?” she whispers. “Vaughn? Is it really you?”

“It's in your power to save Schultzie from a death as terrible as those faced by Christian martyrs. The needles and knives of medical research are a horrible fate for so sweet a hound.”

Of course this isn't the real Vaughn Monroe, “Old Leather Lungs,” but our own Vaughn who sits at the dinette table of the Winnebago parked in Brewster. He has made six calls, and Yvonne's is the seventh name on the list. He has instructions and a script written by Didi with promptings of what he might say. Squeezing the phone between his ear and shoulder, he carefully paints his nails with clear polish.

“Tell me,” whispers Yvonne, “is this the real Vaughn Monroe? Will you sing me ‘Racing with the Moon'? Please, please?”

Yvonne's response is like other responses Vaughn has received, though a bit stronger. The need, at this point, is not to let the woman get too excited. Otherwise she won't hear his pitch.

“Vaughn is my working name,” says Vaughn, “but Vaughn's not usually my real name. My real name is . . .” Here we have to imagine Vaughn putting down the nail polish, taking off the black leather motorcycle cap, and looking inside. “My real name is Marco Santuzza.”

Yvonne finds this disappointing, but she knows from a place deep within her that Vaughn Monroe's resurrection probably hasn't happened. Pity. She gets to her feet and shakes herself just as Schultzie shakes himself after a bath.

“Should I call you Vaughn or Marco?”

“Whichever works best for you.”

“I'll call you Vaughn. You have his voice. It's wonderful. Tell me, Vaughn, can you sing?”

“Only for circles of intimate friends. Sorry.”

Yvonne sighs. “Then how can I help you?” The disappointment in her voice could strip granite crumbs from a tombstone.

So Vaughn tells her about Free Beagles from Nicotine Addiction, Inc., or FBNA. He speaks of their dedication and hard work and of the many beagles they have saved because of the generosity of their benefactors. Thirty-five thousand beagles disappear into the nicotine labs each year, while twenty-five thousand others are used to test the effects on beagles of tear gas, car exhaust, and smog. Many of the beagles have been abandoned by their owners; others are bred on special beagle farms in Pennsylvania, where they are kept in cages and never see the light of day.

Yvonne is so moved by the magnificent baritone that she barely understands a word. She could easily listen to the voice all day. Vaughn is only a few minutes into his spiel when Yvonne withdraws a checkbook from her purse and promises to send him a check that morning.

“Where shall I mail it?”

It mostly happens that benefactors first receive a donation form, but at times the enthusiasm of a benefactor leads him or her to send a check directly to a post office box. Some even send cash.

Vaughn gives her the address.

“I'll go to the post office right away.”

Yvonne puts down the receiver. The house feels suddenly smaller. But even though a melancholy sadness has settled over her shoulders et cetera, she feels cleansed, purified, and she gets busy making out a large check from her personal account.

—

I
t should be said that Yvonne Streeter is not a generous person. When a neighbor comes to borrow a cup of sugar, Yvonne charges her a buck. Sometimes she's generous to her husband, Manny. Generally she's generous to her three kids in California as long as they don't make the trip to the well too often. And she might be generous to her brother, her sister, and a bunch of cousins. It depends on her mood. But when calls come from the United Way, Easter Seals, and various cop and firemen associations, the caller is unable to finish a sentence before the phone goes dead. A ten-year-old Cub Scout who knocked on her door to ask for a summer-camp contribution wept as he was berated for his arrogance and opportunism. These days cobwebs drape her doorbell.

So it may seem unlikely that she should give so generously to Free Beagles from Nicotine Addiction, Inc., but generosity is not the issue; rather, she is asserting her devotion to her dog, Schultzie. She is
celebrating
that devotion! And her gift is a result of Didi's two-pronged attack using research and pinpoint selection. With Vaughn's highly honed computer skills, Didi pries loose the names of beagle owners from the computers of vets in a fifty-mile radius. But not just any beagle owners. No. He chooses those who rush their dogs to the vet for the smallest excuse (“Smoochie's off his feed!”) and who do it every few weeks.

The second part of the attack is Vaughn's imitation of Vaughn Monroe, but again Didi is selective. He mostly calls no one under fifty and prefers to call women, who statistically have more adrenalized relationships with beagles than men do. These are also women whose parents' musical preferences were fixed before the advent of rock and roll. It's nice that Yvonne likes Vaughn Monroe today, but what's crucial is that she grew up listening to Vaughn Monroe. She listened to him in her crib!

Yvonne, in fact, was
waiting
for Vaughn's phone call. This expectation was like a mild tickling in her cerebellum that had persisted for years. As a result, she topples faster than a sapling gnawed by a beaver. It was fated to happen. Our single surprise is that her large check wasn't larger, but no matter.

—

B
enny Vikström and Manny Streeter spend most of the morning in Brewster, much of it in Pappalardo's Craftsman bungalow. Generally they are bystanders, even tourists, as the forensics team comes and goes and local cops trudge door-to-door to ask neighbors if they've seen or heard anything suspicious. Then around noon a state police detective, Woody Potter, shows up.

This guy, Manny thinks, looks nothing like a detective. He wears jeans and a barn coat, a Red Sox cap and boots. He drives a Chevy pickup, and a goofy-looking dog, maybe a golden retriever, is salivating out the open window. He's maybe forty: a tall, muscular man with short brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a chin that juts forward like a challenge.

Manny tries being a bit patronizing, but Potter buys none of it. He doesn't say anything, but his chin juts out a little farther and his eyes get a little darker. Manny decides that Potter is one of those difficult people who lack a sense of humor.

Woody Potter listens to Vikström's explanation of why two New London detectives are in Brewster; then he asks Vikström, with a straight face, “Are you one of those famous Swedish detectives?”

Vikström opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

Once Potter realizes that no answer will be forthcoming, he points through the living room window to Gazzola, who's just crossing the street. “I need to talk to Chief Gazzola. We can talk after.”

“What's this Swedish-cop shit?” asks Manny when he and Vikström are alone.

Vikström shakes his head. He has no idea, and it worries him. He dislikes distractions and wants to get back to New London and chase down Fat Bob. There's also the unknown person—Manny calls him “the phantom”—who either did or did not signal to Pappalardo to tromp on the gas. Manny says they also need to talk to Marco Santuzza's widow, because the person who shot Pappalardo might be a friend of Santuzza's, or possibly a friend of Fat Bob's, seeking revenge. “It might even be the widow herself,” Manny offers.

Five minutes later Woody Potter hurries back inside. “Let's get out of here before Pappalardo's wife shows up. She's driving down from Providence. She works up there at a hospital. I can talk to her later.”

“You don't like the wife?” asks Manny.

“I've never met her, but I'm told she's upset. I'd like to avoid the emotion. Let Chief Gazzola deal with it—he's the one in charge. Unless of course you want to talk to her.”

“Not right away,” says Vikström. “You think that's cowardly?”

“Only sensible,” says Potter. “You're out of your jurisdiction.”

“Can we get something to eat?” asks Manny. “It's lunchtime.”

They go to the Brewster Brew, a coffee and ice-cream shop on Main Street in a former shoe store that now has round, marble-topped tables with sweetheart chairs. It doesn't serve lunch, but there are bagels and cream cheese, six kinds of Danish, and a variety of ice-cream sundaes. Potter orders black coffee. Manny gets coffee and two Danish—glazed apple and cheese and pecan—which he decides are lunchlike. Vikström gets a banana split with three scoops of ice cream, chocolate syrup, pineapple and strawberry toppings, crushed nuts, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry on top. This is another example of the battle raging between Vikström and his partner. He orders the sundae not because he wants it but to annoy Manny, who loves ice cream yet can't eat a spoonful without gaining weight. Vikström is thin and never gains weight no matter how much ice cream he eats. He sees it as a special gift and believes that if a person has a special gift, it's his job to flaunt it.

Jean Sawyer, owner of the Brewster Brew, brings the banana split by itself on a shiny, chrome-plated tray as if she were presenting diamonds to a king. “I want you to know you can have as many maraschino cherries as you want.” Jean pauses, thinks, and adds, “Up to ten.” She returns for the rest of the order.

Woody Potter watches how Manny stares at Vikström's banana split and guesses that an enmity of some duration exists between the detectives. Vikström wonders what Manny will do to get even.

On a shelf behind the counter along the far wall is a row of antique coffeepots and grinders, while over the shelf is a watercolor of an old guy in an old-timey white wig who looks like a sickly George Washington. Beneath the picture are the words
WRESTLING BREWSTER, OUR FOUNDER
.

“Who's the old man in the picture?” says Vikström.

“Don't ask,” says Potter. He turns to check the location of Jean Sawyer, who's behind the counter putting their cups of coffee and Danish on a tray. Potter leans forward and lowers his voice. “If you ask, Jean will spend four hours answering your question. You don't want that. It's supposed to be a picture of the guy that founded the town, but it's not. Jean held a contest and picked the picture of someone who
might
look like Brewster. But don't mention it. We're here on business only.”