Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?: A Novel

by Stephen Dobyns

  We shouldn’t hold Connor’s discomfort against him. He’s not a cop, he’s not a soldier or a private detective. He’s a former schoolteacher and small-time casino employee. His one fistfight was in ninth grade, and it was broken up by the assistant principal, which was fortunate because Connor was losing. It’s wrong to think he’s a coward; rather, he’s never been tested.

  —

  Manny Streeter gets home around nine, having spent the past five hours with Vikström seeking out men who were acquainted with Fat Bob, these being men who worked on their bikes at Hog Hurrah. The first was the owner Milo Lisowski, whom Vikström had talked to the previous day. “It’s not exactly that I dislike Fat Bob,” Lisowski said. “He owes me money. He owes everybody money. He gambles. People look for him all the time.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?” Vikström had asked.

  “Because it had nothing to do with what we were talking about.”

  The fact is, Manny had thought, Fat Bob is a loser. He used his accounting skills, whatever they might be, to try to beat the system, to win at cards, roulette, even the slots, but as he kept telling Milo Lisowski, “It needs some tinkering.” It being his scheme.

  “He says it’s surefire,” Lisowski told Vikström, “one that’ll make him rich.” His wandering eye had drifted across the detectives like a curtain in a gentle breeze.

  “So it’s cheating,” Manny said, making a statement.

  “That’s an exaggeration. He calls it a technique.”

  Lisowski had given them the names of half a dozen men, and they talked to three of them. All said what Lisowski had said: “He owes me money.” But none actually disliked Fat Bob. They might be angry or peeved or disappointed, but they didn’t dislike him. Nor, however, did they like him.

  “The problem,” said one of the men, “is that I see the money as a loan and Fat Bob sees it as an investment.”

  It seemed to Manny that none of these guys had a motive for murder. Why kill Fat Bob when he owed them money? They might want to kill him after they got their money, but not before.

  Vikström disagreed. “Someone just got sick of him, so sick that the money didn’t matter.”

  As it turned out, neither detective was correct.

  Manny and Vikström also went back to Fat Bob’s little house. The police had put a seal on the broken back door, and it was still in place. But when the detectives shone their flashlights through a window in the door of the garage, they saw that one of the motorcycles was missing. There were only four.

  “Is it the gray one?” Manny had asked.

  “I don’t remember a gray one,” Vikström answered.

  So that’s how matters stood. And for Manny, getting home and taking off his boots in the entry, it’s been a day with lots of movement but little progress. Now he’s cold, wet, hungry, and depressed. What he wants most is to grab something to eat, hurry to his karaoke box, and belt out a few songs. Some people are coming later for a song session, and Manny wants to limber up his throat. His little beagle, Schultzie, is doing a welcoming dance around Manny’s feet as he makes his way across the living room. “I’m home,” he calls, bending over to scratch Schultzie’s ears.

  Yvonne is in the kitchen, and there’s the sound of dishes being taken out of the cabinet. She calls out to him. “You won’t believe what happened today. I gave a thousand dollars to Marco Santuzza to save beagles like Schultzie that are hooked on cigarettes. Aren’t you proud?”

  Manny stops so quickly that he almost steps on the dog. He’s aware of five of what he might call assertions, concerning belief, money, Marco, hooked Beagles, and pride. All, to Manny’s mind, are false, and he means to beat them back one by one, by showing Yvonne her mistake. His immediate problem, however (his statuelike half crouch signifies confused thought), is with which one of the five should he begin?

  ELEVEN

  For Fidget it was the best of days and the worst of days, the luckiest of days and the least fortunate of days. For everyone else it was simply Wednesday, which doesn’t mean they liked it. At daybreak Fidget hurried out of his hutch under the I-95 bridge to make his way to Bank Street, full of expectations. Yesterday afternoon had been warmish, and it rained in the night; today was supposed to be warm without rain, so the snow would continue to melt. Few cars were out at this hour. Delivery trucks crisscrossed the downtown. Fidget’s tail was for the most part somnolent, apart from sudden flips, like those of a man experiencing bad dreams as he slept.

  The previous day he had spent several hours on Bank Street looking for the “wallet,” a word that blinked golden in his mind, as he willed the snow to disappear. The wallet had been attached to the dead man’s belt with a chain that snapped at the time of the accident. That was simple fact. The question for Fidget was, what happened next? Clearly the wallet had flown into the air, but in which direction? This was a subject that required careful thought. The problem was that the wallet had been attached to the very region of the dead man that had been ripped in half. If the wallet had gone with the lower half, it would have slid under the truck; if it had gone with the upper half, it would have bounced off the truck. Unfortunately, the side wall of the truck didn’t present a smooth surface. Eight vertical reinforcing ribs, each about six inches wide, separated seven panels. How and where the wallet struck a rib or panel would affect the trajectory of the ricochet. And perhaps, too, the wind could have influenced the distance the wallet was thrown. Fidget pauses to think. Had there been a wind? His conclusion, at last, is that the wallet could have bounced off in any direction.

  A further complication was that the sidewalks had been cleared of snow and the snow pushed to the curbs; possibly the wallet was buried within one of those mounds near where the truck had been. Fidget knew he couldn’t attack these mounds with his bare hands. People would notice. The work needed subtlety. So he had borrowed a cane from the Salvation Army store by hiding it under his coat and had spent a part of the afternoon and evening digging and poking into slushy snow piles. And he had to do it cunningly so no one would ask, “Whatcha looking for?” Well, the process took longer than expected, and a few times he was indeed asked, “Whatcha looking for?” Luckily, his answer was offensive enough to send people on their way. “I’m looking for the dead guy’s fingers. The accident ripped off four of them. And his balls—his balls were cut right off. If I find them, the family will give me a reward.” Years of lying had made Fidget the Babe Ruth of falsehood.

  In any case, no wallet was found. As for the dead man, during the morning Fidget had called him Fat Bob, but then around noon he’d learned the dead man was Marco Santuzza. Since Fidget knew neither man, it hardly mattered what name he was called, except that increasingly Fidget would shout, “Where’s the fuckin’ wallet, Fat Bob?” This was later changed to “Where’s the fuckin’ wallet, Santuzza?”

  But that was yesterday. Then, during the night, the sky cleared, and when Fidget emerged from his hutch at daybreak, it was with well-rested hopes. It shouldn’t be thought, however, that with all this digging and shouting Fidget had forgotten the man with the black pompadour. If the wallet was a potential gift from heaven Number One, the man was a potential gift from heaven Number Two. But on Tuesday the man had appeared only once and hurried up the stairs to his office. Then he’d hurried back down the stairs and vanished up the street before Fidget had screwed his courage to the sticking place, meaning about five minutes.

  This morning the mounds along the curbs were smaller, but Fidget ignored them to explore a new idea. He’d assumed that the wallet had been thrown either forward or back, but what if it had been thrown to the side, meaning into the alley itself? It was this prospect that sent Fidget to Bank Street at the crack of dawn.

  A dozen yards down the alley were two dumpsters, and it surprised Fidget that he hadn’t paid more attention to them earlier, because dumpsters were like mothers to him: they fed him, clothed him, they sheltered him from the cold. So he trotted down the alley to explore their
environs.

  There’s no point in dragging this out. He looked under them and over them, in front of them and behind them, to the right and to the left of them. Of course he found the wallet, and it was in a space exactly in the middle between the two dumpsters. Some folks argue that the nonreligious can’t have spiritual experiences, but for Fidget his discovery of the wallet was definitely a spiritual experience. And if he hadn’t worried about attracting annoying attention, he’d have sung a hymn.

  Fidget stepped back to the wall to inspect his discovery. It would be nice to say he was abruptly changed into a rich man, one of the glorious one percent, but this was not the case. The wallet contained seventy-seven dollars. But for Fidget this was a fortune. He could stay drunk for quite a while on seventy-seven dollars and might get something to eat as well, though Fidget hated to waste his money on food. He rifled through the rest of the wallet—credit cards, driver’s license, all made out to Marco Santuzza, and Fidget wanted none of them. They’d only lead to trouble. So he dropped the wallet on the floor of the alley and headed back to Bank Street. But leaving the wallet where it could be found was a mistake.

  —

  At a coffee shop two blocks farther up Bank Street toward the train station, Manny Streeter and Vikström are sitting at a table by the window, but each has turned his chair so they don’t directly face one another. Manny has also turned away from Vikström to conceal his black eye. Fat chance. We don’t know if this has been your experience, but black eyes are harder to conceal than bright red pimples on the tip of your nose. Black eyes also lead to questions, amused looks, bad jokes, and bogus remedies designed not to test your patience—you’ve already lost your patience—but to test your ability to keep from becoming homicidal. Whatever.

  Manny is drinking tea, Vikström is trying the Postum. At eight o’clock they will meet Marco Santuzza’s landlord, who will unlock the door to Marco’s second-floor office and let them look around. Right now it’s seven-thirty, and Manny and Vikström are just passing the time, though delicately.

  “I don’t quite understand,” says Vikström slowly after he has kept silent for ten seconds. “What does it mean, ‘hogging the mike’?” He tries to keep every trace of emotion out of his voice—that is, he sounds like a benign robot. And he also tries not to laugh, that’s very important. He thinks he may have a chance to mend fences, but only if he keeps himself under total control.

  Manny still sits turned away from Vikström. “What the fuck you think it means? Hogging the mike means hogging the mike. He wouldn’t give it up!”

  “And he punched you?”

  “He punched me with the mike. It hit me right in the eye. Fuckin’ broke it—the mike, I mean. We were wrestling. He said it was an accident. Cheese!”

  “Cheese?”

  “Jesus Christ! What’s wrong with you?”

  Vikström sips his Postum. It doesn’t taste as good as he’d hoped, or as good as when his mom made it for him forty years ago. “Are the mikes expensive?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the mike! Each person has so much time to do their number, that’s never more than five minutes. Those are the rules. So after fifteen minutes I decided to take charge, and he hit me with the mike. Maybe it was an accident, maybe not.”

  Vikström feels he can only nod sympathetically. If he says the smallest thing, like That’s a shame or People can be disappointing or No accounting for taste, Manny will accuse him of sarcasm.

  “‘Jezebel.’ You know the song? Frankie Laine? Normally I like it, but for fifteen minutes? ‘If ever the devil was born, / Without a bunch of horns, It was you, Jezebel, it was you… .’ D’you know it?”

  A guffaw sneaks its way up Vikström’s throat, but at the last moment he turns it to a cough and gulps more Postum. “Can’t say I do.”

  “I told him never to come back. You think that’s too strict?”

  “Well, fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes.”

  “Exactly what I told Yvonne.”

  The difficulty, thinks Vikström, is that the whole conversation could be a test. Manny might be faking it in order to lure Vikström into making a compromising statement. Then Manny would shout, Aha! I knew you were lying the whole time! After all, it’s happened before.

  Vikström doesn’t care if Manny likes him, though most people like him. What is important is to have someone he can trust, someone who will watch his back and whose back he’ll watch in return. He’s sick of this passive-aggressive bullshit that gets less passive every day. At times Vikström thinks the Mountain Bike Patrol might be an improvement, though he hasn’t ridden a bike in twenty years. Even now Manny is staring at his mouth as if expecting wickedness to leap from it. And if Vikström makes the mistake of looking at his watch, Manny will accuse him of being bored.

  Yesterday Vikström spent the whole day with Manny, and after visiting Mrs. Santuzza they talked to a dozen of Fat Bob Rossi’s and Marco’s friends and business associates. But Vikström’s request for additional police assistance had been nixed by their supervisor, who said there wasn’t enough evidence to show that Marco was murdered. Until Vikström and Manny found evidence that someone had signaled to Pappalardo, the death officially remained an accident.

  “You kiddin’ me?” Manny had shouted. “What about the guys that shot up Fat Bob’s Fat Bob?” It had been past six-thirty, and Manny wanted to get home, though if he’d known that Yvonne had given a thousand smackers to Free Beagles from Nicotine Addiction, Inc., he might have sought out a motel.

  The supervisor, Detective Sergeant Maggie Masters, stared at Manny until he looked away. “We don’t have evidence to show the events are related. You’ve already said people were chasing after Robert Rossi because he owed them money. For all we know, Rossi gave his motorcycle to Santuzza to pay off a debt.”

  “But some guy signaled Pappalardo to back up his truck, a short guy with a black pompadour. How many times do I need to say it?”

  Again Detective Sergeant Masters unleashed her icy stare. “Yes, somebody in a second-story office claims to have seen it, but we need more proof. Really, the man could have been scratching his ass.”

  Manny had shivered slightly as he labored to tighten the leashes of his self-control. “What about Fat Bob’s house? Can’t you send forensics over there? I bet the same person broke into his insurance office.”

  But that, too, might be tied to Rossi’s gambling debts, said Masters. If people thought Fat Bob had just been killed, they might plunder his office and house to get what money they could. After all, one of his motorcycles was missing. The detective sergeant admitted it might be useful to talk to Rossi, but he’d never contacted the police about his house, nor was he charged with anything. “All he’s done is lend a bike to Santuzza. That may have been a mistake, but it wasn’t a crime. As for Mr. Pappalardo, if Rhode Island wants our help, they have to ask. So far they haven’t.”

  Manny had wanted to keep arguing, but Vikström pulled him away. He felt it fortunate that Maggie Masters hadn’t told them to forget about Marco and Fat Bob.

  The afternoon interviews had led to little. Yes, Fat Bob owed people money because of his gambling debts, but the largest amount seemed to be five hundred dollars, which didn’t seem enough to lead anyone to murder. The description of the man with the pompadour was passed around, as was the description of the tall young man with the tan. One person thought the man with the pompadour also had an office on Bank Street, but he couldn’t swear to it. And there was the chance that Fat Bob’s ex-wife might have some involvement with the death, since she still held a life insurance policy on her ex-husband, though that seemed unlikely.

  But the interviews went too smoothly for Vikström’s taste. Some people were too affable and forgiving. He suspected they were hiding something—that is, lying about the amount of money involved. But he and Manny wouldn’t be given time to check their stories. Other work was piling up on their desks. The city liked it that the Detective Bureau was understaffed. It made everyon
e look busy.

  In the coffee shop, Manny continues to talk about his black eye and how operating a karaoke box fucks up his stress levels. Maintaining a buoyant exterior as emcee takes an emotional toll, and some ingrates and scumbags say the job of master of ceremonies should be a rotating position. Vikström gives sympathetic nods, purses his lip, opens his mouth in disbelief, and shakes his head positively or negatively, until every muscle above his Adam’s apple throbs.

  However, as they’re almost ready to leave, Vikström spots someone staring through the big front window over Manny’s shoulder. He points. “Who’s that!?”

  If the seat of Manny’s chair had been a bear trap ready to snap shut on his butt, he wouldn’t have jumped any faster. He spills his cup, his chair falls back and lands on the floor. But he doesn’t turn to look. “I know your tricks,” he says coldly.

  “Really, really!” shouts Vikström. “It’s the little red guy we saw yesterday! What’s he doing peering at us? I swear he’s got more to say!”

  “If you think I’m going to turn around, you’re nuts,” says Manny. Now indignation combines with the frigidity of his reply.

  Vikström is on his feet and still pointing. Then he dodges around Manny to the door. When Manny is sure that Vikström’s back is turned, he takes a quick look and sees the edge of a red coat disappearing.

  “Hey!” shouts Vikström, now out on the sidewalk.

  Manny’s impressed by how far Vikström can go with his little joke. He exits to the sidewalk. The waitress follows, waving their bill.

  Looking down the street, Manny sees that Vikström has shoved someone up against a wall. The man is half a foot shorter than Vikström and wears a red-and-black mackinaw cap and a red coat. “Jack Sprat,” Manny says to himself as he hurries to join his partner. The waitress hurries after him.