Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? (29 page)

“Give me your honest opinion,” says Manny. “Whose version of this song do you like best? Vaughn Monroe, Bobby Vinton, or Sam Cooke?”

Vikström imagines breaking Manny's fingers one by one.

“Ha,” says Manny. “We're over the bridge. I distracted you. You didn't even notice we were crossing the bridge. Believe me, Benny, I'm looking out for you. I'm in your corner.”

—

O
nly one car is in the driveway when they reach Caroline Santuzza's house on Godfrey Street: a dark Chrysler PT Cruiser that must be a dozen years old. In front of the Chrysler is a red scooter.

“Ah,” says Manny, “Giovanni Lambertenghi is in residence.”

Vikström knocks on the front door; after a moment he rings the bell. A woman's voice from inside shouts, “Hold on to your horses, will you?”

Manny and Vikström wait on the small porch as Caroline Santuzza unlocks the door. They can see her through the glass with a red towel around her head.

“Don't let the cats out!” she shouts.

A large black tomcat bullies its way through the opening door and darts between Manny's legs. He stumbles and grabs Vikström's shoulder, then lets go as if the shoulder were hot. No way does he want to feel obliged to Vikström for keeping him from falling.

“Jake, Jake!” shouts Caroline. She turns angrily to the detectives. “You let him out, so you go find him!”

Manny says, “We have a few more questions to ask. It won't take more than a minute. Sorry about the cat. Can we come in?”

Caroline Santuzza crossly stands aside to let them enter. She's a big woman wearing a pink Mother Hubbard, and the detectives have to brush against her as they pass. Manny thinks it's like brushing against a giant marshmallow.

“Marco's funeral's tomorrow morning at ten o'clock.” She follows the detectives into the living room. “I don't want you guys to be there, no way.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” says Manny. “Did you solve the head problem?”

Caroline glares. “It's in the box. They couldn't attach it, but it's between the feet, so I got a shorter casket. It was cheaper.”

“Good thinking,” says Manny.

Looking around the living room, Vikström counts eight cats, three more than last time. The couch and two armchairs are ripped to shreds, so it's difficult to determine their color.

“I wonder if you can tell us more about the man who visited your husband,” asks Vikström. “You said he was wearing a hoodie.”

“I didn't like him,” says Caroline. “He made Marco tell me to go into the kitchen. Marco was afraid of him.”

“What did he look like?” asks Manny.

“He was wearing a hoodie, like I said. I didn't see much more than that. And he was big.” She nods at Vikström. “Taller than you. He had great big fat hands.”

“Did you hear his name?” asks Manny.

“Marco didn't introduce us.”

“Could it have been Chucky?”

“Like I said, we weren't introduced.”

“What did he want?” asks Vikström.

“He was paying Marco to do something. I don't know what. Marco didn't want to do it, but it was a lot of money. I asked him about it afterward, but he wouldn't say anything. He was scared.”

“Anything else?” asks Vikström.

Caroline shakes her head. “Maybe Giovanni knows more. Marco talked to him a little. Should I call him? He's upstairs in his room.”

Caroline goes to the foot of the stairs. “Johnnie, some guys want to talk to you! Get down here, will you?” She turns to Vikström, slightly embarrassed. “He's been playing Killzone 3 all day. Yesterday it was Mortal Kombat. Some days he never comes downstairs. You should hear the noise!”

“He should try karaoke,” says Vikström. He hears Manny growl behind him.

Jack Sprat is as they saw him before: red hair, red-freckled face, and a red shirt. He also wears blue jeans, but if they came in red, he'd prefer them.

“Hunh?” he says. His red eyes are perhaps a result of all that video gaming.

Manny asks about Marco. Jack Sprat stands on the first step of the staircase, which makes him as tall as Vikström, who thinks that Jack Sprat looks like a force of nature rather than a thinker, one of those forces of nature that rips through towns in the Midwest without apology.

“Marco called him Chucky, but they weren't friends,” says Jack Sprat. He looks at the two detectives with dislike. “He was paying Marco to do something. I don't know what, but it was something in Marco's building downtown.”

This is about all the detectives get. Jack Sprat says Chucky's hoodie was dark blue and he wore black motorcycle boots. He also mentions Chucky's big hands.

More out of curiosity than to rile him up, Manny asks if Jack Sprat still thinks Fat Bob was responsible for Marco's death.

Jack Sprat sputters with anger. “Fat Bob made Marco take the bike. Marco didn't want it, didn't want to ride it. Fat Bob knew the guy was downtown waiting to signal Pappalardo to back up. Marco and Pappalardo were buddies. It drove him nuts to think he'd killed Marco instead of Fat Bob. So that's murder. Fat Bob murdered him.”

“But you can't prove it,” says Vikström.

Jack Sprat sputters some more. “I knows what I knows.”

C
onsider a king-size lazy Susan thirty-six inches across. It's turned by an electric motor, though not too fast. We don't want anybody to fall off. The man standing on it is naked, but to avoid giving offense we place a flashing swirl of light over his genitals, something like the visual distortion superimposed over the faces of the innocent on TV news shows. The effect of the flashing swirl is to draw attention to the genitals at the same time it conceals them.

The man has flat feet and pink, tuberous toes resembling fingerling potatoes of the sort called Russian bananas. The nails need trimming. The ankles are swollen; perhaps the man spends too much time walking around. The calves are muscular and darkened with leg hair extending from the metatarsus to the knees, which are puffy and bear a resemblance to twin Winston Churchills, minus the nose. The thighs are as thick as the waist of a ballerina. Here the dark hair evident on the calves is more abundant, giving the thighs a chimpish aspect. The buttocks are brawny, while the circumference of the hips, belly, and hairy chest are equally round, making the entire torso resemble a fifty-five-gallon drum. The extra-large scapula and clavicle extend from the chest, letting the arms hang down like fat kielbasas ending in soft, seemingly bloated hands, the backs of which are shaved to accentuate their whiteness.

The man's neck is short, meaty, and nearly nonexistent: a pedestal on which a basketball-shaped head seems insecurely balanced. A small chin protrudes like a carbuncle. The mouth is thin-lipped, with many small teeth, more than seems normal. Fat cheeks and a nose like an oversize thumb, once broken and badly reset. Swollen and seemingly boneless cheeks with old acne scars; dark, hooded eyes that may or may not be looking at you—surely it's the massiveness of the head that makes the eyes seem small—dark eyebrows and a large rectangular forehead like a car bumper. The thin, dark hair shows an almost touching vanity, with tufts of it stuck down as if glued upon the vulnerable, denuded areas. The oddly delicate and parchment-colored ears resemble midnight moonflowers.

This is Chucky.

We've said before that he has a single personality, while others we've met have multiple personalities and shifting identities. Robert Rossi versus Fat Bob, Eartha versus Beatriz, Céline versus Shirley, Connor versus Zeco. We could go on. But Chucky is only Chucky, an enforcer, a facilitator, and a bully. His ambition to be a bully began in his crib when he pushed his stuffed animals around; in kindergarten he broke the heads off his toy soldiers; then, through his school years, he refined his skills. He fed on the defenseless as a whale feeds on plankton. He bulked up. He became monosyllabic. He didn't graduate.

We've also spoken of people having a dominant emotion: disappointment for Manny, resentment for Angelina, revenge for Jack Sprat, while Connor's dominant emotion is confusion, if indeed confusion is an emotion, which he often articulates with the phrase “Just who am I?”

Chucky's dominant emotion is a lust for power. He'd never ask, as Connor asks, “Just who am I?” He feels he knows exactly who he is, and he'd be glad to explain it to you either verbally or physically, preferably the latter. But Chucky was not born Chucky. As with others we've met, he changed the name his parents gave him, which was Holcombe. But in third grade he decided that Holcombe wasn't a credible name for a bully, and so he became Chucky. He's never regretted the decision.

Along with his dominant emotion, Chucky has a fatal flaw. He loves gold; he loves it as a dragon loves gold, as something to sit upon rather than spend. It was Céline who told Chucky that Sal Nicoletti was Dante Barbarella. She sold him the information after Sal slapped her. Céline also told Chucky about Sal's gold: the rings and necklaces, the cuff links and bracelets, but especially the Rolex Oyster Perpetual GMT-Master II with an eighteen-karat yellow-gold case and an eighteen-karat yellow-gold bracelet, plus a sprinkling of diamonds, sapphires, and rubies. She also told him about the Montegrappa St. Moritz Limited Edition Woods eighteen-karat-gold rollerball pen, though Chucky can barely write his own name. But having heard about them, he wanted them all.

So Chucky sold the information about Sal to some gentlemen in Detroit, and they contacted a nameless fellow in Cincinnati who agreed to do the removal work for financial considerations. Chucky was also asked if he'd like to do the removal work, but Chucky isn't a killer. He might beat a person to a splop of jelly, but at the end the person was usually alive. Indeed, Chucky might beat the same person five or six times, allowing for periods of recuperation between each application.

As a facilitator, Chucky arranged to pick up the shooter from T. F. Green Airport just south of Providence, drive him to New London, and drop him off on Bank Street outside Sal's office. Then, when the man finished his work and came back downstairs, he'd be returned to the airport.

But Chucky's desire for Sal's gold led him to a concurrent plan that involved Marco Santuzza. A few perceptive readers may already have deduced this. Marco would wait by the door of his office till the shooter left. Then he'd hurry to Sal's office, remove Sal's jewelry, putting it in a small black bag, and run back to his own office. Altogether it might take him two minutes.

But Marco didn't want to do this. Maybe he was squeamish about removing the rings from Sal's dead fingers. Maybe he was afraid of being caught by the police. We've never really met Marco, so it's difficult to understand his reasons. For us he was only a shadow shooting past the window of the shoe-repair store.

So Chucky offered Marco a thousand dollars. Marco, though tempted, was hesitant. Then Chucky threatened to turn Marco into a splop of jelly. This is Chucky's threat of choice: “I'll fuckin' turn you into a splop of jelly.” So Marco agreed to divest Sal of his jewelry as described. Later in the day, after the police had done their work, Chucky would collect it. This seemed like a fine plan for all concerned, though Marco continued to have doubts. However, he was being paid and his face would remain in one piece.

Unluckily, two days before Sal was to be shot, Fat Bob lent Marco a Fat Bob to drive to his office, and that was that. Leon Pappalardo backed up his dump truck, and Marco was mushed.

Chucky was furious, but who could he punish? Certainly he suspected Fat Bob of a hidden agenda, and Chucky meant to engage him in his favored nonverbal communication—biff, bam, boom. But although Fat Bob might have given his bike to Marco for devious reasons, he knew nothing about Chucky's plan to filch Sal's bling.

So what could Chucky do? He employed two thugs, but he trusted neither to remove Sal's gold. Thus he was forced to fetch it himself. He jumped out of the Denali before the shooter, crossed the street, waited for the shooter to return to the Denali, and then meant to hurry upstairs to remove the rings, et cetera. But Fidget went upstairs first, occupied himself for a few minutes, and came rushing back down. Then Connor went upstairs and came rushing back down. And perhaps other people were nearby on the sidewalk who made Chucky hesitate, or perhaps there was traffic. Whatever the case, when Chucky went upstairs, Sal's jewelry and the Montegrappa rollerball pen had vanished. We expect he roared and shouted, but when he was done, he ran back down to the sidewalk. He looked for Fidget and Connor, but they were gone.

By then the Denali was on I-95 heading north. Chucky was ready for this and had another car parked a block away, off Golden Street. And Chucky saw himself as being disguised—that is, he was wearing a dark hoodie. But Chucky is a big man, and a gorilla wearing a hoodie still looks like a gorilla. So much for the disguise.

—

Y
ou ever tried singing?” says Manny. “You know, like, in the privacy of your own shower? Even humming a little tune?”

Vikström cringes. He's been filling out overdue reports while Manny plays cat's cradle with a loop of string. They are in their office, and it's after seven.

“Come on, tell me,” says Manny, “you must of sung sometime.”

Vikström lowers his head and keeps writing.

“Like, as a kid,” says Manny. “Kids are always singing.
Sesame Street
, you watch
Sesame Street
?”

Vikström turns his chair slightly so he can't see Manny's face.

“You remember their theme song? ‘What Are the Directions to Sesame Street?' You must have sung that. Sometimes we do it in the box—that's ‘karaoke box' to you.” Manny laughs.

Vikström knows that Manny knows that's not the real name of the
Sesame Street
theme song, and he wants to shout it out: “Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?” Instead he clenches his teeth until they moan.

“You sing along with those great characters? Squirt and Bernie, Oswald the Grouch, and Fat Bird?”

Vikström snaps his ballpoint pen in half. “What're we going to do about Chucky?” His question emerges as a loud hiss.

“Got to find him first, right? Stands to reason.”

“After we find him.”

“Then we have a chat.”

“What can we charge him with?”

“Shit, Benny, you know that as well as I do. We can suspect him of all sorts of stuff, but we can't charge him with squat. Like, he's bound to be connected to the guy in the Denali who shot Otto in the arm, but try proving it, that's what I say.”

“And Lisowski?”

“Ditto. We'll never find his pistol.”

“And Fidget?”

“He'll probably turn up dead. He's carrying too much treasure to stay alive for long. Shit, he's probably dead already.”

Several policemen have been checking package stores, looking for the store where Fidget might have made a large purchase. But Manny and Vikström have yet to hear from them.

Likewise, policemen have been checking motels looking for Fat Bob, but so far there's no trace of him. As Manny has said, “He's probably got a broad someplace, or maybe Jack Sprat has already shot him.”

“What about Connor what's-his-name?”

“The charge, Benny, what's the charge? Angelina fucked us on that one.”

“And the FBI guys?” asks Vikström.

“Maybe they're still tiptoeing around, or maybe they've gone home. Maybe their job ended when Sal got whacked.”

“Don't you think there's too much we don't know?”

Manny is cracking his knuckles one at a time and slowly. It's a sound that sets Vikström's teeth on edge. He's positive Manny knows this.

“That's life, right?” says Manny. “How often have you been satisfied with how much you know? Like never, right?”

Vikström is about to say,
Don't go all philosophical on me,
which Manny often says to him, when the phone rings. Manny picks it up. “Yeah. . . . Yeah. . . . You're fuckin' kidding me! . . . Okay. . . . Okay. . . . We're on our way.

“Someone's broken into the Capitol Theatre,” says Manny.

It takes Vikström a moment to gather his thoughts. “But it's closed.”

Manny jumps up and lifts his hands as if preparing to catch a large ball. “That's the fuckin' point, Benny! The theater's been closed for forty fuckin' years!”

—

L
inda drops her flashlight. It hits the floor, goes out, and rolls down several steps. “Rats,” she says.

A prey to mild rodent phobia, Connor hastily sweeps his light in a circle around him before realizing she's only voicing a mild curse. “I see it. It's by the wall.” Had he heard scurrying noises? Perhaps he's mistaken.

They're ascending the narrow corridor next to terraced loge seating on the right side of the theater. The boxes are empty; all the seats were taken out years ago. Plaster flakes off the walls, and they try not to brush against it as they climb. The air feels old, with a damp, musty smell flavored with rodent droppings. Connor and Linda have come in through the back, across the stage, and passed under the proscenium arch to reach the stairs to the balcony: their destination. Shreds of purple velvet curtain hang from the round arches above the celebrity boxes. High above, the ceiling is a smudged shadow with ragged hints of great images, perhaps Roman gods, that seep bit by bit into the empty theater. Their flashlights are too weak to show the main floor, the stage, or the terraced loges on the opposite side of the dark vacancy. Now Linda's light is broken. Connor, who finds his own emotional state endlessly fascinating, wonders if he's frightened. But it's not fear he feels, at least not yet; rather, he's as tense as a stretched rubber band. He begins to regret their adventure. The theater's like a great tomb.

“My iPhone has a light,” says Linda. The cell phone in her hand begins to glimmer. “It's pathetic, but at least I can see my feet.”

The man from the historical society had introduced himself as Jasper Lincoln. Connor, having a certain familiarity with bogus names, was skeptical. Letting Connor and Linda in by the back door, Lincoln had said he'd wait there for their return. “I'm allergic to dust,” he'd explained. “But you'll be delighted by the interior. It's pure Egyptian.” He wore an apple green sport coat, had a long Lincolnian face, and was probably about forty. “Just rap on the door when you're done, and I'll open up. I promise.” Then he laughed in a way that made Connor's palms begin to sweat. But Linda had already passed through the door, and so Connor followed. The sound of the door slamming shut reverberated through the hallway. Connor had been mildly surprised that Jasper Lincoln hadn't inquired how long they would be.

Linda continues up the sloping corridor. She wants first to explore the balcony and then take the stairs down to the front entrance and box office. Lastly they'd return through the bare auditorium to the small orchestra pit and perhaps investigate the actors' dressing rooms. Connor sees her thoroughness as a virtue, but he worries about what might lurk behind the farthest range of their vision. He regrets the loss of her light and worries that his own batteries might fail. As far as he's concerned, the cell phone flashlight is useless.