Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? (4 page)

Eartha inspects the cap but sees no blood. Didi says, “Is today really your birthday?”

Vaughn looks shrewd. “I got a special condensation.”

There's a general silence as the others consider making a comment and then don't. After a moment Eartha says, “If you'd said something earlier, I'd have baked you a chocolate cake.”

—

T
hirty minutes later Connor sits at a spot above the water where the grass meets the sand. He has a ham sandwich, a Dos Equis, and is practicing not looking at Eartha, who lies on a yellow towel nearer the water to his right. He likes her all right, but he has no romantic feelings. At the moment she's stretched on her back; the ruby tips of the nipple bars sparkle, and her surgically enhanced breasts rise and fall with each breath, or maybe they're affected by the movement of the tides, maybe the moon governs their rise and fall. Connor ponders this and then turns away to free himself from their fleshy distraction, eat his ham sandwich, and study the ocean.

Directly across from him, he thinks, is Portugal, perhaps even Lisbon, where he's been twice to visit a great-aunt in Baixa, the old town. What he likes best about Lisbon is it allows him to forget the United States, to forget people and institutions who want something from him. Lisbon is a city full of strangers, which for Connor is its major appeal. His Portuguese is limited to “hello,” “good-bye,” and “thank you.” Why know more than that? It solved a lot of problems and gave his brain a rest: a city of red roofs on the hillsides that glitter in the morning light.

But soon his thoughts drift from Lisbon to Sal Nicoletti in New London, or rather Nicoletti's mysterious familiarity. If Connor had in fact seen him in Detroit, then why did Sal lie about not having been there?

Earlier, when their cars were freed, Sal's battery had been dead just as he feared. It made only a clicking noise. Instead of calling a garage, Sal wanted to get a cab and go home, where he had another battery already charged in the garage.

“I'll give you a ride,” Connor said, “if you don't mind riding in a toy car.”

“As long as you got room for a dead battery.”

So Sal opened the hood of the Caprice to display an engine that seemed to have been dipped in rust. He removed the battery and put it in the back of the Mini-Cooper. “I appreciate this. Like, you don't know me.”

“No problem.” Once they had turned around on Bank Street past Firehouse Square, Connor asked, “What's your office like? You said it faced the train tracks?”

“An office office.”

Connor expected Sal to follow this up with a further remark about the view or the convenience or places to eat, but there was nothing. Sal had his eyes closed.

“You lived in New London for long?” asked Connor.

“No, not long. The wife's got family here.”

“And you moved here from Saint Louis?”

“What're you gonna write, my life story?”

“Sorry. I'm just making conversation.” He glanced at Sal, who had shut his eyes again. Earlier he and Sal had been involved in a certain amount of light chat: comments about the accident, questions about the missing head, and the general nuisance of the truck blocking the street. Now Sal's mood had changed.

Connor turned south on Ocean Avenue, which ran more or less parallel to the river: a mix of modest Victorian and early-twentieth-century houses; and then, past the railway tracks, larger Victorians with big lawns and big trees, still leafless in March, interspersed with brick ranch houses from the fifties. Sal lived on Glenwood Place, a loop of split-levels and ranch houses off Glenwood Avenue.

It was sunny, and the car's windows were down. Connor heard several chain saws tidying up from a February storm. On the sidewalk a woman in blue shorts pushed a jogging stroller in which a blond child snoozed. Connor's usual way of starting a conversation, especially with strangers, was to ask questions, so he pressed ahead despite Sal's apparent irritation.

“You got kids?”

“Yeah.”

“How many?”

“Boy an' a girl, little ones.”

“They must keep you busy.”

Sal stared straight ahead. “The trouble with talk like this, it's like eating air. It's got no content, no protein. What's the point?”

“Aren't you curious about people?”

“Not unless they got something I want.”

“That's pretty cynical.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Outside sports and cars, I don't see the purpose.”

“Talk's good for the jaw muscles. It keeps the face trim.”

Sal kept staring straight ahead. “You're a funny guy,” he said disagreeably.

Connor laughed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Sal's house was a brick ranch house with a large and treeless lawn. A light blue Chrysler Town & Country was parked in the driveway next to a small red tricycle with a white seat. Connor pulled up behind the Chrysler.

“I'd invite you in,” Sal said with no trace of sincerity, “but the place's a mess. Kids, know what I mean?”

“You want a ride back downtown?”

“No thanks, the wife'll do it.”

They got out of the Mini, and Sal retrieved his battery from the back. Connor kept thinking about Detroit and the various places where he might have seen Sal. Robins chittered fragments of song in nearby leafless maples; their bits and pieces sounded like the hurried excuses of the guilty.

“Let me open the garage door.”

“No thanks, I'll get it.”

The screen door banged open, and a woman came out onto the steps. The sight brought Connor to an abrupt stop. What was most evident, after her beauty, was her height. She was at least six feet, easily taller than Sal, and she looked athletic. Perhaps she was a runner or played tennis. Her black hair hung past her shoulders. She wore white shorts and a white T-shirt. Her legs went on and on.

“Where's the Chevy?”

“Battery went dead downtown. I gotta change it.” He turned to Connor. “Thanks for the ride.”

The woman's skin tone was dark, and Connor guessed she might be southern Italian or Greek. Her eyes were black, and her nose was straight. She gave him a half smile, as if she knew his thoughts. She had a large mouth and full, sensuous lips that Connor thought would be ugly when she got angry, like an activated wood chipper. But the smile was beautiful.

“Hey, Connor, you hear me? I said you can go now. Like, thanks for the ride.” Sal grinned, but his eyes were stony.

So Connor had gotten into the Mini again and reversed out of the driveway. His eyes, however, remained fixed on the woman talking to Sal. She glanced at him again, and he stared back. There was a sudden honking; Connor had nearly rammed into a mail truck.

C
onnor, sitting above the ocean, decides that the way he'd looked at Sal's wife isn't the way he looks at Eartha. With the other woman, Connor had taken her in from her yellow flip-flops to her black hair. It wasn't a generalized look; it was absorption. With Eartha his look is more focused, though she also is beautiful.

As if his thoughts have called her, Connor sees Eartha standing next to him.

“Mind if I sit down?” She has draped the yellow towel over her shoulders, and it remains slightly open. Connor finds this more evocative than the bare breasts. He wonders if there's something wrong with him.

“Of course not.”

“It's getting colder, don't you think?” She crosses her arms over the towel.

“It's supposed to snow tomorrow. A real storm.”

“That's great. It never snows in San Diego. I've only seen it on mountains.”

“You can get tired of it pretty quickly.”

The purr of Eartha's voice generates a vibration in Connor's duodenum. He wonders if that's the effect she produces on the phone. But of course it is; that's why Didi brought her along. Just like Vaughn, she has a skill that Didi intends to use.

“I stuck my foot in the water and nearly froze it off.”

Connor makes a sympathetic grunt and keeps his eyes on the ocean.

“It must have been terrible for you this morning, seeing that man killed.”

“I expect it's the worst thing I've ever seen, and I didn't even see it. I heard the crash and ran outside.”

“And it was an accident?”

“I guess so, but I heard two cops talking, two detectives, and they weren't sure—at least one of them wasn't.”

“Like it was murder?” She says this in almost a whisper.

“I doubt it. The detectives weren't sure, that's all I can say.” Through this exchange Connor looks at the water, then at a tree, and then at his feet. He and Eartha are silent a moment.

Eartha clears her throat, a theatrical noise, a soft-palate growl. “Does it bother you, I mean me sitting here? You don't look at me.”

Connor laughs. “I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude. I think I've got a fixation.”

Eartha glances down at her towel-covered breasts. “You mean my boobs?”

Connor laughs again, but his laughter has a metallic quality, a palpable insincerity. “That's right.”

“That's what they're for, the implants, to cause fixations. Before, they were nice enough but pretty usual, know what I mean? Not too big, not too small.”

“There's nothing usual about them now.”

Eartha nods with satisfaction. “That's what I wanted.”

“You're not afraid it makes you a kind of stereotype?”

“Like a sexpot? Jesus, Connor, who the fuck cares? I like being looked at.”

They go back to staring at the ocean. The tide has turned, and the sloshing is louder. Soon they'll have to move.

Connor says, “I saw an incredibly beautiful woman this afternoon, and I can't even remember her breasts. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.”

“What made her beautiful?”

“Everything: her face, her body, her hair. And she had incredible legs.”

“You're a romantic,” says Eartha. “That can be a problem. I bet she leaves her dirty underwear on the floor just like I do. She burps, farts, and has messy periods. Really, Connor, you've got to imagine the whole package.”

—

B
enny Vikström and Manny stand inside the double overhead door of Hog Hurrah, a motorcycle shop specializing in Harleys on the other side of I-95. The six men working on bikes all have ponytails, even the bald guys. They wear black boots and jeans with silver chains connected to belt loops and fat wallets stuck in back pockets. Most wear black Harley T-shirts, some with flames, some without. They look like a family of bad brothers. Vikström is surprised he doesn't know any of them, meaning he's never arrested them or seen them in the station. He doesn't mind Harleys, but he hates the noise. No one has looked at him, though they've seen him. There's constant racket: a radio playing heavy metal, the hiss of an air hose, the clank of a tool hitting the concrete, the whine of a power wrench, the banging of metal on metal. The smudges of grease on their faces make an abstract painting.

After being ignored for ten seconds, Vikström takes a hammer from the floor and hits it against the side of a metal barrel. He keeps hitting it until the other noise stops, even the radio.

“I need information about Robert Rossi.”

The men shake their heads. Their expressions indicate mental vacancy, dim thought, and negation. They start working again.

“Rossi was killed on a motorcycle this morning on Bank Street. He was cut in half. I need to notify his next of kin, and you're going to help me find them.”

“Cut in half?” says a man standing by the door of a small office. The studied blankness of the men's faces changes to shock and focused attention, which again gives them a resemblance.

“Maybe he was broken into a hundred pieces, but the top half and the bottom half were the biggest chunks,” says Manny. “And we can't find his head.”

The men wince. This evidence of human feeling warms the detectives.

“I knew him best,” says the man who'd spoken. “I'm Milo Lisowski. This is my place. Fat Bob worked here sometimes. Fuck, he's dead? He owes me money.”

“Fat Bob? That's what you called him?”

“Everyone calls him that. He's got a bunch of Fat Bob bikes, the model. He collects them—or collected them. He had six or seven, all colors.”

“Fat Bob on the Fat Bob?”

“That's right.”

“You got an office?”

Vikström and Manny follow Lisowski into an office with a window looking onto the garage. He's about forty-five, of average size, and he wears gray overalls. He's got either a wandering eye or a glass eye, Vikström can't tell which. Benny is unsure which eye to look at, making it difficult to gauge the man's thoughts. Lisowski's hands are black with grease, and he picks at the larger bits with a fingernail.

“These guys work for you?”

“No, no, just one of them. The others use the space and tools at so much per hour. That guy by the lift is a dentist. He gives me a deal on my teeth.” Lisowski opens his mouth to show his white teeth. “We got all sorts. It's a moneymaker.”

“They got the biker face,” says Manny, who hates motorcycles, “like the world could explode and it'd be a nuisance.”

“They aren't bad guys. They got families, most of them. They go to church. This place is like a clubhouse without the obligations. They're only part-time tough. In school they were straight-A students, and they feel guilty about it. Here they can sound tough, swear, and talk dirty. They throw away their neckties—it's liberating. But if a couple of real biker-gang members showed up, these guys would shit their pants.” He sits down on a beat-up swivel chair next to the beat-up desk. The chair squeaks. “Tell me about Fat Bob. Fuck, he said he'd give me my money this week.”

Vikström stands. “Did he like being called that?”

“Sure. Fat Bob riding a Fat Bob. It was his special form of ID. He was nuts about that particular bike.”

“And was he . . .” Vikström pauses a beat “. . . overweight? Did he have a belly?”

“He was husky, barrel-chested, and my age. The belly was a work in progress. It's the name that was important. He was part-time tough, like I said. Basically he's an accountant and works at a place downtown. He's really dead?”

“Well,” says Manny, “I didn't check his pulse, but he was in two pieces.”

Lisowski grimaces. “I've known him a bunch of years, but we weren't close. Not that I wanted him dead or anything. How'd it happen?”

So Vikström describes the accident. “A truck backed out of an alley. . . .” He keeps it short, not wanting it to inflate the event, but even the simplest description held its drama. “There wasn't much left to identify.”

Lisowski keeps grimacing as if each word had a sharp point. “Bobby rented time here like the others. I got his wife's address someplace. They're split up.” He searches through the papers on his desk. “He was just here this morning. You can die quick—I guess that's no surprise. I can't get my head around it.
Bam
, you're gone!”

“When was he here this morning?” asks Manny.

“He was waiting when I got here. Then he left around nine-thirty with another guy. Both were riding Fat Bobs. I think Bob was trying to sell him one.”

“Fat Bob selling Fat Bobs. What's the other guy's name?”

“Marco Santuzza. He's also an accountant.”

Vikström leans against a file cabinet. “They were friends?”

“They work on old bikes together. Or
worked
on bikes, make them look like new and sell them. So yeah, you could say they were friends with a business connection. Marco had a '54 Harley Model KHK they put back together and sold for a chunk of change. I don't know how much, at least fifty thousand. Beautiful bike. An art piece. But, you know, they all are if you spend the time.”

“What's this Santuzza look like?”

“Mid-forties, heavy, and he's got a full beard he keeps trim. And earrings, he wears a coupla earrings. Gold ones.”

“Give us his address as well if you have it,” says Manny. “Okay?”

—

C
louds moved in late that afternoon. Soon the bits of the dead biker would be washed from the surfaces of Bank Street. Detective Manny Streeter thought that was a good thing. He had come back again to seek out the clerks, store managers, office workers, even janitors employed in the buildings near the scene, which was still blocked off by yellow tape. Earlier he had talked to people out on the street; now he'd talk to the people in the buildings. This wasn't something that Streeter had decided to do on his own—Benny Vikström had decided it for him.

Manny still felt it had been an accident. No way had Pappalardo meant to run down the biker, identified as Fat Bob Rossi. To prove Vikström wrong, Manny intended to interview everyone he could find, and once he had his proof, he'd put it into his computer, print it out, and toss it on Vikström's desk. But Manny wouldn't shout, he'd only look disappointed. As for why he thought it was an accident, the main reason was that Vikström didn't. He liked it when Vikström was wrong.

Disappointment tending toward cynicism was a major emotion in Manny's life, at least out of the house, and one of his larger disappointments was Vikström. But it hadn't been always that way. When Manny had begun to work with Vikström ten months earlier, he'd been prepared to be friendly, or friendly for Manny—that is, less disappointed. He'd admired Vikström when watching him in the Detective Bureau and earlier as a patrolman. Vikström was stubborn and hardworking, and although he put too much value on hunches, at times the hunches paid off.

Then came the big disappointment. It wasn't that Manny stopped admiring Vikström, though the admiration had changed to grudging admiration, even bitter admiration. It wasn't that Vikström outranked him due to the length of time he'd spent as a detective. It wasn't that he went to a different church or ate sushi or voted Republican or was thin. No, it was more personal than that.

You see, Manny loves karaoke—not as much as his wife, Yvonne, does, but close; and the previous summer he'd gone so far as to build a karaoke box in the spare bedroom. After all, the kids had grown up and the bedroom was just wasted space. Some karaoke-loving friends helped him—they weren't cops—and in total it took a month to finish.

The karaoke box had a small stage with a karaoke system that included a lyric screen, a record option, and five thousand songs. It also had a stand-up mike, two handheld mikes, four Bose speakers, and Disco DJ stage lighting with strobes that made the rhinestones on the gold-stucco ceiling jump. Then, to create the right atmosphere, he'd added a fog maker and a bubble machine. There were four round tables and eight chairs as well as a bar and refrigerator. He even had a popcorn maker with flashing neon lights. The walls were padded, the windows covered. Yvonne was happy, as were Manny's friends, and mostly they liked the older singers: Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, and occasionally a young guy like Tony Bennett.

Manny and Yvonne have a beagle named Schultzie, who's like a child to them, a replacement for the adult children who live out west. Whenever Manny gets up on the stage and sings Eddie Fisher's “Oh! My Pa-Pa,” Schultzie howls his little heart out. This brings tears to Yvonne's eyes, which indicates the emotional intensity available in a karaoke box.

By the time the karaoke box was finished, Streeter and Vikström had been partners a few months. They worked okay together. If their wives had packed sandwiches, they'd often share them, each taking half a tuna fish and half a ham and cheese. They weren't friends, but Manny thought the karaoke box might bring them closer. So he invited Vikström to the opening.

He sprang it on Vikström one Monday night in fall in their unmarked car, a dark blue Impala 9C3, over by the high-rises. Vikström was driving.

“You busy next weekend? I got a treat.”

“What's on your mind?” Vikström had an eye on the sidewalk, looking for drug deals.

“It's for you and the wife. You both gotta come.”

Vikström glanced at Manny. “So? What is it?”

“You'll be impressed, I promise you. You'll love it.”

“Okay, okay, so what is it?”

“A karaoke box.”

“Say what?”

So Manny explained what it was: the lights, the music, the singing, the fog, the bubbles, the little refrigerator, and so on. Halfway through his description, Vikström drove the Impala over the curb, blowing out a front tire. A parking meter knocked off the driver's-side mirror.