Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?: A Novel

by Stephen Dobyns

  “Course I’m okay.” Vikström’s eyes are shut tight. “Who said we could prowl around across the river? It’s out of our territory.”

  “Just want to take a peek, that’s all.”

  Angelina Rossi has told Manny that Fat Bob has an old high school chum—“a real loser”—who lives in a faded, postwar subdivision off Center Groton Road. “His name’s Otto something, but you’ll see his house. You can’t miss it. It’s up against the woods—a fixer-upper. Otto’s been there forever.”

  Vikström opens his right eye half a crack. “You think Fat Bob will be there?”

  “It’s a lead, that’s all,” says Manny. “They’re both bikers.”

  “Half the world are bikers.”

  Manny gives the Subaru another spiteful swerve. “Don’t get all fuckin’ philosophical on me, Benny! And stop that la-la-la shit!”

  Recently Vikström has read that close to the country’s biggest bridges live people who drive the terrified across those fragile structures spanning the abyss: Good Samaritans who offer their services for a price. But the I-95 bridge is too short to support such a career. What a pity.

  The house, a bungalow, is on Hill Street. Rusted car parts decorate the dead grass. The trees are leafless, but an evergreen stands to the left of the driveway. It’s still festooned with Christmas lights, as if Otto were keeping his hopes up. No car is in the driveway, but it might be in the garage. It’s five-thirty, and the sun is going down.

  Manny cuts his engine. “You want to take this one?”

  “Let’s do it together,” says Vikström, staring at the house.

  “Makes you nervous, doesn’t it? I don’t blame you.”

  “I’m not nervous. It’s just part of our job description: doing things together.”

  “It’s not our business to do it together if we’re outside city limits. I’ll wait here. These banged-up bungalows are a little creepy.”

  “What d’you mean, ‘creepy’?’

  “There’s a silence about them.”

  Vikström listens. “What kind of silence?”

  “You remember that poem about folks living lives of noiseless distraction?”

  Vikström opens his mouth, then closes it. He climbs from the Subaru.

  “Any last messages for the wife?”

  “Fuck you,” says Vikström.

  The subdivision is probably full of navy or ex-navy, stand-up guys who start drinking early in the afternoon. In the backyards of a few houses are small boats covered with blue tarps. Vikström walks to the front door. The roof’s overhang sticks out about four feet from the house, to protect the postman from the elements when he delivers the bills and junk mail. Vikström rings the bell; he hears a tinkling from inside. He’s nervous, and he knows he wouldn’t be nervous if Manny had kept his mouth shut. He rings the bell again. In the front seat of the Subaru, Manny leans back as if to take a nap. Then Vikström glances at his feet, jumps, and nearly falls. He’s been standing in a puddle of blood. Manny starts laughing from the car. Vikström calls to him, “There’s blood here!”

  Manny scrambles out of the car and hurries to the house. The pool of blood is mostly dry, about a foot long and shaped liked Florida without the panhandle. As he reaches the porch, a silver 159 Interceptor with a discreet light bar and a toothsome front crash bumper turns in to the driveway behind the Subaru. The car has no markings, but Vikström knows it right away. He takes his police ID from his jacket pocket. Manny turns, sees the state police car, and takes out his ID as well. A trooper in a gray Stetson gets out, his slow movements meant to show professional composure and superiority in the presence of local cops. His passenger gets out more quickly—a balding, middle-aged guy. His gray work shirt is spotted with blood, and his left arm is in a blue hospital sling.

  “You catch ’em?” shouts the balding guy.

  “You mean Fat Bob?” asks Vikström, still on the steps.

  “No, not him, the other ones. Fat Bob lit out on his bike, straight through the backyards. Lucky he didn’t get gagged on a clothesline.”

  “You’re Otto?” says Manny.

  “Bob stayed here a few nights. I didn’t know the cops were looking for him. ’Cross the river I don’t hear nothing.”

  The trooper stands looking up at the winter trees. He’s nodded to the New London detectives to concede their legitimacy: a grudging nod. Manny thinks all troopers look the same. Maybe it’s the hats. How do they tell one another apart?

  “So where’d the blood come from?” asks Vikström. “What’s going on?”

  “I got pinked,” says Otto. He makes a gesture with his thumb over his shoulder toward the trooper. “He brought me back from the hospital.”

  At ten o’clock that morning, a black Denali pulled in to Otto’s driveway and tooted its horn. Fat Bob was asleep in a spare room, and Otto went out onto the porch. The driver got out and said he was looking for Fat Bob. “Nope,” Otto told him, “I haven’t seen him for a coupla weeks.” Then the passenger got out. The men were around forty, nicely dressed and physically fit. Otto made a point of this. “They looked like they worked out a lot. I mean to start doing that myself. I’m a winter gainer, and my wife’s repugnated by it.” Was there anything else that struck him? “They looked like guys who wouldn’t care shit about a good joke.”

  The men responded to Otto’s statement about not seeing Fat Bob by saying they wanted to come in and look around.

  “I told them, ‘No way.’ They weren’t official. I mean, they were just guys. Even if Fat Bob hadn’t been inside, I wouldna let them in. Like, my house’s my house, don’t you think?”

  Ignoring Otto, the men walked toward the porch. So Otto stepped inside to grab a shotgun. And why did Otto have a double-barreled shotgun leaning against the wall inside the door? So he said he always kept it there. He liked to play it safe.

  When Otto stepped onto the porch again, he heard Fat Bob’s motorcycle start up behind the house. The men ran back to the Denali. Brandishing his shotgun, Otto shouted at them to stop.

  “Guy didn’t give any warning. Just raised this pistol and fired. Startled me so much I pulled the trigger. I wasn’t aiming or nothing. The shotgun kicked back out of my hand, and I did that.” Otto points up at the overhang to indicate a ragged hole about a foot and a half across. “So I went down. I didn’t need to go down, like the bullet only hit my arm, but what’s the point of staying on my feet? I mean, Fat Bob was already tearing through backyards on his hog. It wasn’t like I was protecting him anymore. By the time the two guys got into the Denali, Bob was out on the road. Now I got this fucking hole in my overhang. You think insurance’ll cover it?”

  A neighbor called the cops, and soon three squad cars showed up.

  “I hadn’t meant to call them myself. Anyway, I’d nothing to say. Shit, my neighbor had more to say than me. He wanted to tell a whole story. He’s like that. But he didn’t get the plate number of the Denali, though he said it didn’t look like Connecticut. And he couldn’t say any more about the two men than I’ve said myself. A statie took me to the hospital, and a statie brought me back. They kept asking about that smash-up in New London, but I didn’t know anything about it. They asked all sorts of shit, and after a while they got tired asking.”

  “So what’d the two guys want?” asks Manny.

  “They didn’t tell me. They wanted Fat Bob, that’s all.”

  “What for?” asks Vikström. “Take a guess.”

  “I figured Bob owes them money.”

  “Who d’you think they’re working for?” asks Manny.

  “I figured they’re working for themselves.”

  “Nah, they’re just soldiers,” says Manny as he taps Otto on the chest with one finger. “They work for someone bigger, someone big enough to make you keep a shotgun right beside the door. Give me a name.”

  Otto looks stubborn. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Manny keeps insisting and Otto keeps denying until Vikström interrupts
to ask Otto if he knew Milo Lisowski and the Hog Hurrah. Otto says he heard of the place but he’d given up his bike years ago after a crack-up. “Pitched into a ditch and busted a leg. You can’t hang around a bunch of bikers if you’re driving a Chevy. You start getting chilly looks. But Bob kept bitching about Lisowski, said he’d been taking his bikes, thinking Bob was going to get killed. Bob called it pillaging.”

  By now it’s dark. The state cop and his silver Interceptor are gone. Vikström gets Otto’s last name—Schwartz—and a phone number. He asks Otto if he knows Marco Santuzza or Pappalardo or Jack Sprat. He doesn’t. Otto says he only knows some navy guys. They play poker Wednesdays. Vikström and Manny look at one another—itself a rarity—and shrug. They know that Otto has another name he’s not revealing: the man who’d hired the two guys in the Denali. They walk back to the Subaru. Both know they need to talk to the FBI guys, but it can wait till morning.

  “Pillaging,” says Manny. “You can arrest a guy for that.”

  —

  What’s too much of a good thing? For Didi it’s knowing that Angelina Rossi was called twice: once for Prom Queens Anonymous and then for Free Beagles from Nicotine Addiction. This might fall under the category of the tradiculous, but Angelina has acted suspiciously by asking Connor to return later. This fools nobody, and for Didi the police and the tradiculous fit together as nicely as thumbtacks and ice cream. So he decides to stop the phone calls until he thinks it’s safe to continue.

  It’s Connor who brings the news that Angelina has been “double-dipped,” as Didi calls it. Neither Didi nor Eartha likes its possible consequences, while Vaughn says, “I find myself unable to associate myself with that thesis.” But it’s not clear if this is agreement, disagreement, or something else. And since Vaughn sits on the floor with his back to them as he fusses with his yellow sheets of paper, it’s not clear that his statement concerns the others at all. His short, peroxided hair gleams in the overhead light—a small light beneath the larger one.

  Though Connor was the one to bring this news, his mind is on Vasco’s call and his warning to stay away from Céline. Connor doesn’t want Céline to know he told anyone that Dante Barbarella was living in New London under the name Sal Nicoletti, but if she has to know, Connor wants to be the one to tell her. This means driving back to New London and ignoring his brother’s warning that “very bad things” will happen if he sees Céline. Those bad things are a subheading under the main heading of “Chucky.”

  Again we ask if Connor is brave or a coward, recalling that his only fistfight was in ninth grade, and he was losing when it was broken up. That was twelve years ago, and since then nothing’s happened to make Connor a better fighter: no kung fu classes, no karate. In fact, he’s better at almost everything except fighting. Connor, however, feels it’s not about fighting—it’s about Céline, and if a few bruises are the price he has to pay to see her, it might be okay. But he’s not going to tell Didi or Eartha, who will try to talk him out of it. This suggests that Connor has doubts, though he claims to have no doubts. How difficult are these emotional mix-ups that inhibit Connor from exploring the consequences of self-deception.

  Didi opens the envelopes that Connor brought from the post office. It’s a job Didi likes to do himself; it lets him imagine that the foolishness is worth the trouble. Eartha sorts the checks. At times a dog lover or former prom queen sends cash, always a special pleasure. It’s only a pity they all don’t send cash.

  “By the way,” says Didi to Connor, “your brother called. He said you been hanging around that woman whose husband was shot the other day. He said it’ll lead to serious trouble. You’re not doing that, are you?”

  Connor’s back is turned; otherwise his face might provide an ugly admission. “Of course not!” he says, loud enough to imagine he’s convincing. In fact, he intends to drive back to New London in just a few minutes, but he wants to change his shirt, brush his teeth, and put on a drop of Didi’s cologne, which is called Tough Guy.

  Vaughn looks up with one of those expressions that Connor can never interpret and says, “You describe one of life’s internal vulgarities.”

  The gleam of Vaughn’s peroxided hair under the ceiling light hurts Connor’s eyes as he tries to sort through Vaughn’s possible meanings. At last he asks, “You expect me to answer that?”

  “Any pro-boner work often causes dysentery instead of thanks.”

  Connor sees Didi and Eartha looking at him thoughtfully. He wants to ask if they know what Vaughn is saying, but he’s afraid they do. “I gotta go pee,” he says.

  Didi watches Connor walk by. He knows that Connor intends to see Céline despite his warning, though he doesn’t know Céline’s name. Who she is and why Vasco would be worried about it doesn’t concern him, although it should. Didi sees himself as living in another world; he believes he lives in the Winnebago as if in the shell of a fast turtle, a kind of rocket turtle. If there’s a problem, he can speed away. Here again we see one of Didi’s weaknesses: If he believes that something is true, it must be true. Didi is more concerned that Connor is lying. It means their partnership—though of course it isn’t a partnership—is coming to an end. Pity.

  To cheer himself up, Didi keys in a number on his cell phone. A woman answers. “Yeah?”

  “Is this Angelina? Angelina Rossi?”

  “And who the fuck are you?”

  “Wait! For both of our sakes, look out the window and into the sky.” Didi’s voice is as smooth as warm molasses. This is what I was born for, he thinks.

  Angelina protests, Didi reassures. Angelina makes rude remarks, Didi is sweetly repentant.

  After a brief silence, Angelina says, “Okay, I did it. So what?”

  “Could you tell me what you saw?”

  “Darkness. Fuckin’ darkness and some stars.”

  “Ah,” says Didi, “I thought so. Did any of those stars seem to be falling?”

  “You mean like a shooting star? Yeah, maybe one.”

  “Angelina, bear with me. It wasn’t a shooting star.”

  Angelina makes the rasping, throat-clearing noise of a smoker. “So what was it, wise guy?”

  Didi’s voice is muted velvet. “Angelina, it was an orphan from outer space.”

  “Say what?”

  “Orphans from outer space. They’re out there wandering the back nighttime streets or trapped in halfway houses of desperation, and they need our help.”

  “Fuck you, asshole!” She cuts the connection.

  Didi turns to Eartha. “She hung up on me.” This, for Didi, is a minor letdown and a masochistic pleasure.

  Vaughn asks, “And who are the orphans of inner space? Are they, too, pigments of your imagination?”

  From her place at the table, Eartha reaches out and puts one hand over Didi’s. Along with her jean shorts, she wears a magenta crop top with spaghetti straps. “Yeah, people hang up on me all the time. Win some, lose some. You can’t let it mess with your thinking.” She laces her fingers behind her head with her elbows akimbo, then arches her back, forcing her breasts upward to distract Didi from minutiae.

  Connor pauses on his way out of the bathroom, where he’s brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and doused himself with Didi’s Tough Guy cologne to prepare for the evening ahead. He ponders Vaughn’s question: “Who are the orphans of inner space?” As with others of Vaughn’s remarks, it simultaneously made sense and no sense, except, as Connor recalls, Vaughn is an orphan: the son of Gone and Goner.

  TWENTY-ONE

  It’s past seven, and the houses on Glenwood Place are sporadically lit. People are having dinner, TVs flicker, a door slams. Connor parks the Mini at the curb and walks up the sidewalk to the front steps of Sal’s—now Céline’s—house. There’s no warm glow of a porch light to welcome him, but a light’s burning somewhere in the back. No car is visible. Connor keeps his mind blank, not only to avoid fantasizing on what lies ahead but also to avoid thinking about his brother’s warning, which means not thinking about C
hucky. He imagines he’s being watched by people in surrounding houses. He imagines them shaking their heads and saying to their spouses, There goes another dumbo.

  Connor rings the bell. After a moment the porch light comes on and he hears locks being unlocked. Then Céline stands before him behind the storm door. She wears a green Moroccan caftan with gold buttons and gold lacing decorating the high collar. Her lipstick is a darker green; her black hair is parted in the middle and hangs past her shoulders. She looks at Connor with her head tilted.

  Slowly, Céline opens the storm door. “You find Danny’s gold?”

  “Danny?”

  “Sal. Do you have the gold or not?”

  “A homeless guy has it: Fidget. I’ve been looking for him all day. I’ll find him tomorrow morning for sure.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I’ve got people looking for him.” Connor is referring to Linda rather than to an army of volunteers. “Is it true you weren’t married to Sal?”

  Céline’s laugh is like fingernails on sandpaper, expressive more of mockery than of delight. “Not only wasn’t I not married to him, but Sal wasn’t even Sal. The whole business was meant to keep Danny hidden until his trial in Detroit.”

  Despite knowing this, Connor hadn’t wanted to believe it. “You’re an escort?”

  “I was hired to act out a part. It was like a bad play. But Danny attracts too much attention. They should’ve sent him to Guam.”

  Standing just inside the door, Connor again tells himself that he’s the one to blame: it’s his fault Sal was killed. First he gets Sal shot, and then he pursues Sal’s wife, who turns out not to be Sal’s wife but an escort. Connor’s appalled by his behavior. Was it for this he left Iron Mountain? But though he’s appalled and has a long list of insulting names to hurl at himself, he’s excited to be where he is. He may not like Céline’s green lipstick, but he finds her beautiful, and he stares at her as a starved Great Dane might stare at a flank steak.

  She, on the other hand, stares back as she might stare at a superfluous purchasing option: another pair of cheap flat shoes. “So why are you here if you couldn’t find Fidget?”