Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?: A Novel Read online

  “I don’t know any family in Detroit. I’m from Saint Louis.”

  “Never been there. I’m from Minneapolis,” says Connor, who was actually from Cleveland. He sticks out his hand. “Name’s Connor Raposo.”

  The man’s handshake is almost painful. “I’m Sal Nicoletti. You Italian?”

  “Pork and cheese.”

  The caterpillar eyebrows go up half an inch. “Say what?”

  “My dad was Portuguese. He liked to call it ‘pork and cheese.’”

  “Funny guy.”

  “Yeah, sometimes.”

  Connor is sure he hasn’t heard the name Sal Nicoletti before, but he’s also pretty sure he’s seen this man in a Detroit casino, probably the MGM Grand, where Connor worked for a year. “I used to have a Harley, a small one. I had a few close calls and got uncomfortable on it. So I sold it.”

  Connor continues to talk, easygoing and disengaged, the way men talk when they are waiting for something else to happen: a car repair, a ball game. Sal’s office overlooks the river, which is a good thing, but it’s also about twenty yards from the train tracks, a bad thing. “Fuckin’ train horn knocked me outta my chair the first coupla times.” But Connor’s mind keeps grinding away, seeking a clearer memory. Sal’s in his mid-thirties, wears jeans, a black shirt, and genuine eelskin boots, which add several inches to his height. All Connor can recollect about the person he’s trying to recall is something’s not right about him, something destructive.

  —

  No way it wasn’t an accident. You kiddin’ me? Course it’s an accident.” Detective Manny Streeter is talking to his partner, Benny Vikström, next to the dump truck. “Where’s your evidence?” Manny’s a stocky fellow and walks like a brick on legs. His chin, mouth, and nose, even his eyebrows and ears, seem oversize, and he shaves his head to conceal his hair loss, going bald by choice rather than be “fucked over by the fickle finger of fate,” as he’s said more than once. He wears a blue suit, and the jacket is open to expose a silver belt buckle the size of a fist with a replica of James Earle Fraser’s End of the Trail, showing a dying, spear-carrying Indian on a skeletal, staggering pony. It’s so distinctive that most people notice the belt buckle before noticing Manny.

  “I don’t have any evidence,” says Vikström, “but we’ll keep looking.” He now carries his jacket over his shoulder because of the heat. They’ve been at the scene two hours, and it’s past noon. Having talked to some people and picked up what information they could find, they’re ready for lunch. But the information isn’t much. A truck backed out of an alley, and a man on a motorcycle crashed into it. The dead man’s name seems to be Robert Rossi, which is the name Vikström gets when he calls in the plate number. But the victim’s wallet is missing, and this bothers the detectives. The wallet was attached by a chain to the biker’s belt loop, and only a bit of chain remains. Presumably the chain snapped and the wallet was flung somewhere. Just like the head. They’ve directed a few policemen to look for it.

  “So let’s say it was premeditated,” says Manny. “What’s the motive? Why’d he come barreling down this street instead of another? And the driver—what’s his name, Poppaloppa?—you think he’s got the brains to plan this? No way, José.”

  “Lardo.”

  “Say again?”

  “Pappalardo.”

  “Whatever.”

  Vikström, with his mind on lunch, leans back against the truck. Just as he’s getting comfortable, his face changes; a memory has struck him. He turns quickly and says, “Do I got that dead guy all over me?”

  Manny inspects the back of Vikström’s white shirt. “Well, maybe here and there. Some red spots, a few sort of grayish. But they don’t look bad. I mean, they don’t look like parts of a dead guy.” Manny keeps a straight face in such a way that Vikström can see that Manny is trying to keep a straight face.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Vikström twists his neck, attempting to see the back of his shirt. He thinks he sees a suspicious blotch that wasn’t there before. “You could’ve said something when you saw me leaning back.”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “You thought I’d been leaning on top of the dead guy on purpose?”

  “I figured you’d already checked out the truck, know what I mean?”

  “No,” Vikström says, “I don’t.”

  We should step back and look at this exchange, because it’s at the center of their relationship. Manny tries to drive Vikström crazy, Vikström tries to ignore it. They’ve had many such exchanges that conclude with Vikström feeling diminished in a small way. Vikström’s sure Manny does it on purpose, but he’s not totally sure, and of course Manny denies it. For Vikström such exchanges add needless tension and distrust; for Manny they add moments of joy.

  Vikström and Streeter have worked together ten months, but they’ve never been close. Vikström thinks Manny’s too competitive, meaning too ambitious, while Manny thinks Vikström is too loosey-goosey or goosey-loosey, he can’t recall which, but it means Vikström follows his intuition while Manny likes everything down on paper. That’s how it was at the start; then it got worse.

  Vikström wants to strip off his shirt to look for splotches. Instead he bends his features into a semblance of indifference. He’s pretty sure that Manny has done this business about not warning him on purpose, and he’s sure that Manny knows that he knows, which is Manny’s ambition.

  “I’m not saying the accident was premeditated,” says Vikström, as if nothing has happened, “but neither am I saying it wasn’t premeditated. The driver wasn’t telling the truth, or all of it, and I’d like to spend more time digging around.”

  “How’d he know the Fat Bob was coming? How’d he time it?”

  Vikström shrugs. Manny hates it when Vikström says, I just got a funny feeling about this one, so he says, “I got a funny feeling about this one.”

  They walk back up Bank Street to where the trapped cars are being freed. Vikström furtively wipes the back of his shirt and then inspects his hand. Nothing. Two cops direct traffic. Cars honk. Soon the truck will be towed to a garage where its brakes, accelerator, and clutch will be checked. But right now the forensics guys are still picking up bits of Robert Rossi, and technically, as Vikström says, the truck should be sent to the morgue along with a good hunk of pavement. Manny doesn’t laugh; outside the confines of his home, he limits his humor to irony, sarcasm, and mockery. Both men have considered transferring to another section, but each wants to remain in the Detective Bureau, so each waits for the other to make the first move.

  Up ahead they see Fidget collecting spare change from people whose cars remain stuck. Fidget slaps at something behind him, level with his coccyx.

  “I bet he’s got fleas,” says Manny, who doesn’t want to get too close.

  “Hey, Fidget,” calls Vikström, “hold up. I want to talk to you.”

  Without turning his head, Fidget hurries forward, but his knees are iffy and keeping them stiff makes him look as if he’s walking on stilts.

  Vikström catches up with him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Going deaf?”

  “Jeez, Detective, this is prime picking time. If I don’t get these people now, they’ll be gone.”

  Vikström shakes Fidget’s arm. “What’d you see when the bike hit the truck?”

  “Bike?”

  “The motorcycle,” says Manny, “the motorcycle!”

  “Yeah, I saw the Harley hit the truck. Is that what you’re talking about? It was awful. I got blood on my coat.”

  Vikström and Manny look at the multilayers of gray that cover the once-beige raincoat with an impasto effect. No bloodstains are visible, which doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the porridge.

  “I mean, did you see anything you should tell us about?” asks Vikström.

  Fidget swats a hand behind him to quiet his tail that’s flicking back and forth like a twenty-foot bullwhip. He knows what Vikström is saying, but he also knows if he has any
chance to turn this event into cash, he has to keep quiet. “What’s to tell? I saw a Harley smash into a dump truck and a biker turned to splop. What’s more to say than that?”

  THREE

  The gravel access road to the Hannaquit Breachway is the victim of months of bad weather and resembles, to Connor’s mind, a long ravioli mold with indentations on either side. Half are filled with water, and Connor steers his Mini-Cooper around them as he heads toward the beach. At times he’s thrown against his seat belt; at other times he’s bounced up to bang against the roof. As protection he wears the black motorcycle cap from the accident. It helps a little.

  On a ridge above the water, a white, older model Winnebago Journey has been drawn into a campground parking slot reserved for self-contained RVs. The campground, of course, is closed for the season, but Connor was told that an assortment of deals had been made, the truth of various falsehoods had been asserted, and bogus regulations had been upheld, all of which had permitted them to park illegally. When he questioned this, he was informed that the coast of Rhode Island was full of fellow Portuguese and that close associates had settled matters. In any case, the details hardly signified, because now, with a salt pond behind it and the ocean in front, the thirty-nine-foot Winnebago with two open slides is the sole vehicle in residence, which is how Connor’s friends like it.

  It’s four-thirty, and Connor hasn’t eaten. Getting boxed in on Bank Street upset many plans. Still, he’s rented a post office box in New London, picked up a rush order from a printer’s, made various purchases, and acquired several telephone books.

  It would be wrong to say that Connor’s mind remains a blur from the accident that morning, but he suffers from a sort of double vision as the bloody display of the biker, disassembled and confettied against the side of the truck, is repeatedly projected upon the scene around him: blue sky, sand, and tall pines, a breeze rippling the surface of the salt pond, the ocean extending to the horizon. So Connor exists in a state of wince, with his hands clutching the steering wheel.

  He parks behind the Winnebago next to a gray Ford Focus rental. The Winnebago is at the end of the breachway, while to the left are about twenty empty RV slots. Farther on stand a row of summer cottages on stilts. Connor pauses to admire a snowy egret pretending to be a bush at the edge of the pond; then he gathers his Bruno Magli slip-ons from the front seat and takes his parcels from the back. The phone books he’ll get later. With arms full, he makes his way around the side of the Winnebago to the front door, which is open. It’s low tide, and the sea does little more than slosh. Gulls seek snacks along the waterline. From somewhere comes a rhythmic thump-thump-squeak, over and over.

  Sitting in a lawn chair by the door is a man or a boy in a bulky black sweatshirt with his back to Connor. He’s small, and his straw-colored hair is mostly cowlick. Leaning forward, he focuses on a yellow pad of paper balanced on his lap.

  The question of whether he is man or boy is a question asked by many. His cheeks are pink and show no sign of facial hair. If we touched them, we’d be struck by the smoothness of his skin, and if he stood up, we’d see he’s five feet tall. But he doesn’t seem short as much as unfinished, as if he were waiting for two or three more growth spurts to top him off. Nor does he seem short when he walks, because his step is purposeful and his back straight. He will look businesslike even in a casual dawdle along the beach. As we might suspect, he copies this from Connor, whom he admires, just as Connor has copied it from his brother Vasco, but the boy or young man exaggerates the walk to the point that, in motion, he appears robotic.

  Observing him, we might think him anywhere between thirteen and thirty. His head is long and shaped like a loaf of bread, with a high forehead, a stub of a nose, and a round chin. Along with the sweatshirt, he wears jeans and pointed black boots. Oh, yes, his nails are clean and nicely trimmed. This wouldn’t need to be said, but it’s the result of obsessive behavior, so Connor thinks. The fellow spends hours keeping them perfect, filing and painting them with clear nail polish. Another thing: his left eye is blue and the other green, and at times he seems to glance at you with the blue one and at times with the other; and the blue eye shows his feelings as one way and the green shows they’re another, but they never show the same together.

  All in all, the man or boy is a mysterious fellow, and Connor, who has known him a month, hasn’t figured him out, meaning he never knows what he’s thinking, if he’s thinking at all. The most Connor can say is he’s pretty sure he has Asperger’s, or something like it; on the other hand, he might be simply weird. As for his name, or real name, Connor doesn’t know it, though he and the couple inside the Winnebago call him Vaughn, because his voice has the same rippling, velvety baritone as the late singer Vaughn Monroe; and whenever Vaughn speaks, Connor feels a faint thrill, the same as he felt years ago when he first heard Vaughn Monroe sing “Riders in the Sky,” which was one of Connor’s granddad’s favorite songs. But Vaughn, or whatever his name is, has never heard of Vaughn Monroe. Or so he says.

  Vaughn has another talent: numbers to him are what colors were to Van Gogh. He’s a math whiz, which, for our purposes, means he’s a whiz with computers and has developed formidable hacking skills. Perhaps he can’t get into Pentagon computers or the computers of those pesky Russkies, but the computers of moderate-size businesses or organizations pose no problem. He’s a twenty-first-century Peeping Tom. Not long ago he peeped for the sake of peeping, rather than for financial reward. But that’s changed.

  At the moment Vaughn is drawing squares on a yellow sheet of lined paper. These come in three shapes and are as exact as if measured with a ruler. The large squares form three across the top of the sheet and six down. Then three medium squares are in each of the large squares and three small squares are in each of the medium squares. But these are just today’s squares. In his suitcase he has many other sheets of paper with squares of various sizes and configurations. When asked what they’re for, Vaughn explains they represent his thoughts.

  As Connor approaches, he asks, “Where’s Didi?”

  Vaughn turns and stares in Connor’s direction, but he doesn’t exactly look at Connor himself; instead his blue and green eyes stare at something past Connor’s shoulder. Even after a month, Connor finds this unsettling, but he no longer turns to see who is behind him, though he may get a tingle in the back of his neck. Also, if an hour or more has passed since they were last together, Vaughn will act as though he’s never seen Connor before. He does this now, as Connor smooths back the absent mustache that he shaved off when he split from his girlfriend. A moment goes by as Connor and Vaughn remain inert. Then Vaughn nods to the door of the Winnebago.

  Again Connor hears thump-thump-squeak, thump-thump-squeak. “Eartha?”

  But Vaughn is focused on the black motorcycle cap perched on the back of Connor’s head. “What’s that?”

  Connor takes it off and turns it over in his hands. The red satin lining flickers in the sunlight. “A cap I picked up in New London.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “Why should I give it to you?”

  “It’s my birthday.”

  “Is that so? How old are you?”

  Vaughn continues to stare slightly over Connor’s shoulder, and the stare seems as fixated as that of a snake hypnotizing a bird.

  Connor can’t think of a reason not to give Vaughn the cap, so he tosses it to him. “Happy birthday.”

  The noises from inside—thump-thump-squeak—continue.

  Vaughn holds the cap up to the sun. “Who’s … Mar-Co-San-Tuz-Za?”

  “The previous owner. He doesn’t need it anymore.” In fact, thinks Connor, he has no head to put it on.

  “It has blood spots.”

  Connor hadn’t seen them earlier, but now, bending over, he sees a few dark spots on the brim. Vaughn licks a finger, rubs at a spot, and holds up the finger, which has a red blush on the tip.

  “You want to give it back?” Connor asks him.

  Vaughn p
uts on the cap. It’s too big for him and wobbles a little before coming to rest on his freckled ears. “I like blood.” He nods to Connor and claps a hand over his heart. “I’m internally grateful.”

  Connor opens his mouth to speak and then changes his mind to say, “I’ve got phone books in the back of the car. Get them, will you?” Then he climbs the steps into the Winnebago and shouts, “All right, cut the racket! I’m home!” He crosses the floor to the dinette and empties a bag of cell phones onto the Formica surface of the table next to three laptop computers and a printer. From other bags he takes boxes of envelopes, order forms, receipts, and letterheads. The RV is a dozen years old, and the interior is shabby. The maple veneer peels from the cabinets and trim. Covering the couch, the love seat, and the cushions of the dinette set is an off-white plasticized cloth with gray baroque designs that resemble, in Connor’s mind, spiders and spiderwebs and are meant to camouflage stains, spills, smudges: the weekly overflow. The tan linoleum resembles tile, and it, too, has camouflage properties so it can go weeks without cleaning and the interior of the Winnebago might still seem presentable. A propane tank takes care of the stove and hot water.

  Connor sleeps on the couch, which folds out into a double bed with a very thin mattress. Vaughn sleeps on the love seat. The others, whose names are Didi and Eartha, have a queen-size bed in the rear bedroom. The living area smells of grease with a stronger smell of mold. From the bathroom comes a disagreeable smell that Connor can’t identify. Perhaps a squirrel was trapped in the metallic maze of the Winnebago’s undercarriage and perished.

  The bedroom door bangs open, and Didi appears. He’s Connor’s uncle, or that’s what he says, because two months ago Connor didn’t know he had an uncle by the name of Didi, which is short for Diogo. If anything, he might be his father’s cousin, since his name is Lobato rather than Raposo. But Connor’s father has six brothers, and no way can Connor keep track of them. Possibly Didi isn’t related at all, but Connor doubts this, because their business is a family business of many years’ standing and Didi claims to be Portuguese. “You’re a tugo; I’m a tugo,” he says.