Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? (26 page)

First voice: “Back door's sealed up, too.”

Second voice: “What about the garage?”

We have heard these voices before. Manny and Vikström are paying a visit to Fat Bob's small house on Montauk Avenue to make sure it's shut tight.

Manny: “What I don't fucking see is why the black Denali is after Fat Bob.”

Vikström: “He owes people money. The Denali's probably an enforcer trying to collect on past-due debts.”

Manny: “So the Denali works for the casino?”

“No way,” says Vikström. “The casino doesn't need enforcers. But someone
at
the casino might make a private bet with someone else at better odds. The betting doesn't have to be on a table game, though. It can be on how long it takes a fat guy to walk to the men's room. The casino only supplies suckers willing to make the bets and hustlers willing to take them up on it.”

As the detectives talk, Fidget idly listens from above. He wishes they'd leave so he can return to his aquatic dozing, but he'll be patient. After all, he knows their voices. How could he not after so many years of receiving their negative attention?

“The problem for the hustler,” Vikström continues, “is how to collect on the debt. So he might use an enforcer. In this case it's maybe the guy in the Denali.”

“But you don't know this.” Manny chuckles to suggest that Vikström rarely knows what he's talking about and is just spouting hot air.

“I don't know squat. I'm only saying the guys in the Denali are probably trying to collect money.”

Manny's about to say,
Squat don't count.
Instead he's distracted. “For fuck's sake, the Fat Bob's gone! That's five gone in a week!”

The violent segue is caused by Manny looking into the garage and realizing that the last of the Harley Fat Bobs—the black one—has vanished.

Vikström peers over his partner's shoulder. “I thought the garage was supposed to be secured.”

“They only secured the house, the lazy fucks. I bet Lisowski took it.”

“Maybe,” says Vikström, “and maybe not.”

—

A
round one o'clock Connor sits at the bar of the Exchange on Bank Street waiting for his lunch: a hamburger with Swiss cheese and mushrooms and a side of french fries. He drinks a Corona. Given his druthers, he'd drink a dozen.

A new windshield for the Mini-Cooper is being delivered from Hartford. The manager at the New London auto-glass shop has said the car will be ready around four. He's dying to ask Connor why his windshield was smashed twice in a twelve-hour period, but he bites his tongue. After all, Connor might be returning often. The walk to the Exchange took Connor half an hour and confirmed what he already suspected: his Bruno Magli slip-ons are too loose and chafe his Achilles tendons.

Didi, when Connor calls to tell him what happened, says, “Why the fuck did you go to her house? It's not just you that Chucky's mad at. Your brother says he thinks we're out to steal some goddamn jewelry. At least pick up the mail!”

Connor decides to wait till after lunch. He dislikes being yelled at. Pure petulance on his part. But he's increasingly reluctant to be part of Bounty, Inc., and this feeling has grown to the point that all he wants is to see how many Coronas he can drink before passing out. But he'll refrain. We may have noted that Connor suffers from a complex mix of responsibility and irresponsibility, leading to alternating impulses that cancel one another out. Warring good and bad angels, people say. Whatever.

Before reaching the Exchange, Connor stopped at the travel agency a block away to see Linda, but a note taped to the glass said she'd gone to lunch. The one fact he knows for sure is that she isn't having lunch in the Exchange.

At this moment a man takes the stool to Connor's right and jostles him with his elbow as he removes his leather jacket. “My fault, my fault!” says the man.

Connor didn't see the man enter, but he realizes it's Fat Bob even before he notices the motorcycle tattooed on his left forearm. However, he's not in the best of moods and says nothing.

“You seen a little red guy around here?” asks Fat Bob.

Connor thinks it's a racist remark. “Are you referring to a Native American?”

“No, no, a little red guy. Red hair, red face, rides a red scooter. Wants to shoot me.”

Connor wonders if his assumption of racism is in fact an indication of his
own
racism. “He's the man who was chasing you yesterday morning past the train station? I haven't seen him today. Have you seen Fidget?”

“The homeless guy? Not recently. The cops probably arrested him again. Why're you interested?”

“Just curious. Why's the little red guy want to shoot you?”

“Just a misunderstanding. Anyway, he's a nut job. Calls himself Jack Sprat.”

A waitress brings Connor his hamburger with Swiss cheese and mushrooms and his french fries. Fat Bob nods at it. “Get me one of those suckers, will you?” he says to the waitress. “And a Corona.”

“I thought the cops were after you,” says Connor.

“Them and all the world,” says Fat Bob with a touch of melancholy. “How's the lying going? Making improvements?”

“I don't seem to get better.”

“Yeah, Angelina said that. She said you'd stopped by twice collecting money for ex–prom queens and smokin' beagles. Seems like a hard way to make a buck.”

Connor's surprised. “How d'you know it was me?”

Fat Bob reaches over and takes several of Connor's fries. “She described you: tall, black-haired guy with a tan. Said you were an awful liar.”

“She called the cops on me.”

“Yeah, she does that to everyone. Don't take it personal. Just stay away from her and you'll be fine. Right now she's been selling my bikes. I'd been storing them out at my place on Montauk Avenue. It's driving me crazy. She wants money for a face-lift, says she wants to look like a prom queen again. Someone on the fuckin' horn's been telling her she owes it to herself.”

“Why'd she call you? I thought she hated you.”

There's a pause as the bartender appears. He's a round, middle-aged man with a shaved head and a stained white apron. He puts a little cardboard coaster advertising Guinness in front of Fat Bob and a bottle of Corona on top.

“She gets a charge from turning the blade. Like, she calls when she sells one of my Fat Bobs cheap. I mean, she'll sell a bike worth fifteen grand for five thousand.”

“Scary.”

Fat Bob sprinkles salt on Connor's fries and takes a few more. “She's got this guy who runs Hog Hurrah helping her: Lisowski. Says I owe him money. You mind if I put ketchup on these suckers?” Fat Bob squirts dollops of ketchup on Connor's fries.

“Go right ahead,” says Connor. “So why are the cops looking for you?”

Fat Bob sighs. “You know Marco?” He takes a few more french fries.

Connor shakes his head. “I only saw him . . . after.”

“I'm bummed he got killed, I really am. But it wasn't my fault. I offered him my bike, and he took it. I mean, it was like a test-drive. He said he wanted to buy it.”

We can't say how much Fat Bob believes this. He owed Marco money as he owes everyone money, and he might have offered Marco a cheap price on the Harley and urged him to take a spin.
Ride it to work today,
he might have said.
You'll love it.
After all, on that Monday morning the weather was beautiful, and at that time Fat Bob still had five other Fat Bobs in his garage on Montauk.

“Did you have an appointment to meet Sal?” asks Connor, taking a guess.

“Hey, look at it this way: If I'd ridden that bike into town, I'd've been smashed to pieces just like Marco. I'd put money on it.”

“Someone hates you that much?”

Fat Bob rubs his chin, a thoughtful gesture with a touch of irony. We should say that Fat Bob is one of those fellows who could shave two or three times a day, so thick is his beard, and now, at lunchtime, his heavy cheeks and chin are darkened by incipient stubble. Indeed, when he rubs his chin, there's a sound like a cat scratching in its litter box, but very faint.

“The ex-wife might stick a knife in me if she wasn't afraid to get in trouble, like jail. But she calls to say people keep asking if I'm dead yet. They want my stuff, and they're ripping off my bikes. I'm fuckin' broke. And I lost my job at the casino. They said I had a conflict of interest. Like I wanted their money.”

The waitress brings Fat Bob's hamburger with Swiss cheese and mushrooms and his french fries. He and Connor engage in some companionable chewing until Connor asks, “So you'd seen Sal upstairs when you were visiting Marco?”

“We'd talked.” Fat Bob lifts the bottle of Corona to his lips and drinks. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You know his real name was Danny Barbarella?”

Fat Bob lowers his voice. “Dante, he liked to be called Dante. I met him once in Detroit, and then I read about the court stuff. What a fuckup. He sure wasn't any good at hiding himself. He should've gone to Guam.”

“That's what his wife said.”

“Yeah, it was the general consensus. He was too fuckin' easy to spot.”

Sal, we can say, had his weaknesses, and a big one was vanity. He loved his rockabilly pompadour, but if he'd lopped it off in favor of a crew cut, he might be alive today. And the gold chains, rings, bracelet, gold Rolex, and Montegrappa St. Moritz Limited Edition Woods eighteen-karat-gold rollerball pen drew attention. Sal saw this as part of his fundamental self; his very essence was mixed in with his pompadour and bling like hair gel.

“I told him he should be more subtle,” says Fat Bob. “But he thought I wanted his stuff—his Rolex and gold chains and stuff. He thought I was threatening him.”

“And were you?”

“Just a little.”

“His wife said his jewelry only amounted to about five thousand.”

“You kidding? The Rolex alone's worth over fifty. I could sell it for twenty-five in a heartbeat. Anyway, she wasn't his wife.”

Connor sipped his beer. “Why would he want to kill you? Did you try to get money out of him?”

Fat Bob put a hand over his eyes. “Did Angelina tell you that? I might have tried to touch him for a little loan, I can't remember. But for fuck's sake, I'd never threaten him. Anyway, he didn't give me a dime.”

Connor doesn't believe this, but he won't challenge it. “You know Chucky?”

Startled, Fat Bob slops a little beer on his shirt. “Jesus, I'd never borrow money from Chucky! He'd shoot me in the foot if I was no more than a day late in paying him back. And that'd be just the start. You met Chucky?”

“Once or twice.”

“Don't go near him. He likes scaring people. Fuck, he scares me all the time.”

“What's he have against you?” Connor considers what might have happened if Chucky had caught him with Céline the previous evening. Ruefully, he recalls her nakedness beneath the nearly severed nightgown. He'd less than a half inch left of needle lace to cut when Chucky had started pounding on the door.

“Nothin', nothin'! Well, he knows I'd seen Dante in Detroit. He knows I knew Dante and Sal were the same guy, so he might think I figured he'd whacked him. But I'd never be that dumb. As far as Chucky is concerned, I keep my mind blank.”

“So Chucky shot Sal?”

“No way, it was an outside job. At most Chucky was a kind of facilitator.”

“Did you tell Chucky you'd seen Dante in New London?” This is Connor's big hope: that he can blame Fat Bob for spreading the news that Dante Barbarella was hiding in New London. It would let Connor off the hook about outing Sal to his brother, meaning Sal had already been outed. What a colossal relief it would be!

Fat Bob chokes, coughs, and spits up a bit of burger. “Fuck no! I never go near him. You go near Chucky, then some way or other he takes a piece of you. He likes to own people.”

Perhaps Fat Bob is not entirely truthful. After all, two guys in a Denali came looking for him at Otto's place near Ledyard. Maybe they only wanted to chat, but as we know, when Otto showed them his shotgun, one of them pulled a pistol and winged him in the arm. It suggests that Chucky may have a fatal agenda as far as Fat Bob is concerned. But Connor isn't privy to this information.

“Chucky and Marco had some deal going,” says Fat Bob, talking and chewing at the same time. “I don't know what it was, but I saw Chucky up in Marco's office. Whatever it was, it scared Marco, but Marco was more scared of Chucky than he was of what Chucky was scheming. At first I thought Chucky'd killed Marco, but I was wrong. I mean, it was an accident Marco got killed, no matter what others say. And it was Sal that did it, not Chucky.”

“D'you know Céline?”

Fat Bob shakes his head. “Who's that?”

“She was living here with Sal and pretending to be his wife.”

“Oh, yeah, Shirley—hot, hot, hot! I didn't see her here, but I saw her in Detroit. Wants to be a torch singer but can't carry a tune. Maybe it doesn't matter.”

Connor's inner voice shouts,
Shirley, Shirley, Shirley!
His outer voice asks, “Is she involved with Chucky?”

“Nobody wants to be involved with Chucky. If she's mixed up with him, it's because he's got some hold over her.”

We shouldn't think Connor dislikes the name Shirley. He can rattle off the names of many famous Shirleys: Shirley Temple, Shirley MacLaine, Dame Shirley Bassey, and Shirley the Girly, a drag queen he knew in San Diego. But once he'd wrapped his heart around the name Céline, other names were only barking noises.

The bartender reappears and taps the bar to get Fat Bob's attention. “Bob, hey, Bob, you wanted me to keep an eye peeled for Giovanni. He's out front.”

Fat Bob jumps off his stool. “Shit, I hate to leave food on my plate,” he tells Connor. “You finish it if you want.”