Didi is about fifty and, as he says, “in tip-top shape”; he’ll also say his thick, silver-gray hair “is completely natural.” He parts it down the middle, creating swanlike silver wings at the sides of his head. His face is nearly a perfect oval; his nose is long and straight. The rims of his ears have small scoops at the back as if something had taken a bite from each. Didi tucks his T-shirt into his jeans and then zips his fly. He wears the self-satisfied expression of a man at peace with his libidinous wishes.
“Where the fuck you been?” he asks without animus.
“There was an accident in New London. My car got trapped.” Connor describes what happened as Didi goes to the refrigerator for a Dos Equis.
“You’re kidding,” Didi keeps saying, “you’re kidding!” He holds the beer out to Connor, who shakes his head. Didi flips off the bottle cap, throws back his head, and drinks.
Eartha emerges from the bedroom, interrupting Connor’s story. She’s a young black woman, and she’s naked except for the bottom half of a red bikini; she twirls the top half in her hand. Under an arm is a rolled-up towel. “You think it’s warm enough to lie on the beach?”
Connor turns away, though he knows it doesn’t matter. Eartha often walks around naked, drying herself after a shower, braiding her hair, or even cooking up a couple of eggs at the stove. Vaughn never pays attention, nor does Didi for the most part, leaving Connor to think he’s being oversensitive and stodgy. But Eartha is a “black knockout,” which she repeats just as Didi repeats that he’s in tip-top shape. In fact, her skin is a rich bronze. Maybe she’s thirty. Her name isn’t really Eartha; she’s called that because she has a purr like Eartha Kitt. This is helpful in their work, which we’ll get to shortly. Her real name is Shaw-nell, though sometimes she says it’s Beatriz, a Brazilian name. And sometimes Didi says they’re distant cousins.
Connor finds it difficult not to look at Eartha’s breasts, which are melon-sized and nicely balanced. The nipples are pierced with silver nipple bars that have small rubies at the tips, which twinkle in the light. At times Connor thinks it’s the nipple bars with their ruby dollops that attract him, but this is unlikely. His interest isn’t aesthetic, which is why he turns away. He’s afraid Eartha will think he’s leering, and the occasion has not yet arisen when he can say it’s the nipple bars that interest him and not their mounts. Since they’ve been together for only two weeks, Connor tells himself he’ll soon get used to Eartha walking around naked, but so far it hasn’t happened. Didi has said the breasts have been enhanced by implants and “have a nice bounce to them.” But they look real enough to Connor.
Didi puts the empty beer bottle on the counter. “Connor saw a guy on a motorcycle smash into a garbage truck. He absolutely exploded.”
Eartha puts a hand to her mouth; her large brown eyes grow larger.
“It was a dump truck,” says Connor, “a green dump truck. The driver backed out of an alley and boom!”
Connor continues his story as Eartha puts on the top half of her bikini. Didi ties it for her. Vaughn has entered with the phone books from the car and has set them on the table. He seems not to be paying attention to the story, but Connor knows he always pays attention. Connor is annoyed that the banality of his words doesn’t convey the horror of the scene. “Boom!”—what the heck does that mean? He wants to exaggerate, gesticulate, make faces, but he does none of that. A guy on a Harley piled into the side of a truck. It cut him in two. The pieces flew all over. I should have taken a video with my iPhone, thinks Connor.
“I have his cap,” says Vaughn in his deep Vaughn Monroe voice. “Connor gave it to me for my birthday. It has blood on it.”
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.”
—
Thirty 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.
FOUR
Connor, 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.”
—
Benny 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 Tshirts, 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 straightA 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.”
Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?: A Novel Page 4
