Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?

by Stephen Dobyns

Genres: Mystery; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

In the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, and newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. But then he sees a familiar man - who else would wear an Elvis pompadour in this day and age? - lurking around the crime scene. Where does Connor know him from? And why does everyone he knows keep showing up dead?

Release date: September 1, 2015

Publisher: Blue Rider Press

Print pages: 368

Sample

ONE

It’s an early spring morning in late winter, a welcome oxymoron with balmy breezes that send Connecticut College students back to their dorm rooms for shorts and flip-flops. Bare legs proliferate. Businessmen loosen their ties. One mad rogue, the owner of a coffee shop, moves two small tables with chairs out to the sidewalk. Motorcycles emerge from winter hibernations. It would be wrong to say it’s a good day on which to die, but surely one can imagine worse days.

This is Bank Street in New London, Connecticut, the name referring not to commercial activity but to the curving riverbank of the river Thames, which the street follows. We can see the river if we look across the cellar hole next to the Salvation Army thrift store, where a dozen rusty pilings rise from the ground. The lot contains a depressing collection of broken glass, plastic bags, plastic bottles, and decrepitating cardboard boxes, but we can ignore that. Down the slope and dividing the back entries of Bank Street enterprises from the train tracks is Water Street: more of a wide alley with pretensions than a street. Then comes the river with a few pleasure piers and the coast guard’s three-masted, 290-foot cutter, the Eagle, which is a wonder to see under full sail. Across the river in Groton, those great gray square buildings flanked by yellow cranes are part of the General Dynamics shipyard where submarines are made, though few get made nowadays.

Bank Street is a hodgepodge of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century buildings, ranging from the beautiful to the ugly, granite Gothic Revival to redbrick Victorian to the brick-and-tin Salvation Army thrift store, a small-box version of a big-box store next to the granite Custom House. In an early version of urban renewal, Benedict Arnold and his Hessians put prior Bank Street buildings to the torch in 1781.

Back by Firehouse Square is where the historic district begins as modern streetlights change to retro streetlamps and Bank Street changes to one-way, heading downtown. The Greek Revival–style F. L. Allen Firehouse is now an art gallery, while a sign on the three-story granite house of Captain Benjamin Brown across the street advertises a Chinese-medicine practitioner. A bucket truck squats by the traffic island, and high in the air a service technician fixes the streetlight. Two traffic lights hang below an arm extending from the same pole; they sway slightly as the fellow in the bucket does his work.

If we could take his place for a minute, we’d have the chance to inspect the nature of this Monday morning in early March: cloudless sky, men and women carrying their coats over their arms, kids already in shorts, one fellow parked in front of the Firehouse Art Gallery has put down the convertible top of his blue Mazda Miata, people pause to address friendly remarks to one another as they go about their business, sunlight reflects off the river where we see seagulls, and from an open window we hear one of those older rock tunes heard mostly in supermarkets: the Eagles or Fleetwood Mac. It’s a day that feels like unexpected forgiveness.

Beneath us a blue Mini-Cooper waits at the light. The driver’s elbow, hidden in a brown leather sleeve, pokes from the open window. He makes his left turn from Tilley and drives slowly down Bank Street, looking for a parking space. There, he’s found one. Gingerly, he pulls up behind a four-door Chevrolet Caprice sedan, which has to be twenty years old. The original dark cherry paint has faded, giving the big car a mottled aspect. The trunk is held shut with a length of rope, and a busted-up teardrop spotlight hangs down the side of the driver’s door. The man climbs from his Mini and glances at the Caprice with mild interest, but before he can cross the street, he’s startled by a blast from a train’s air horn. About forty passenger trains come through New London each day, and two-thirds stop—Amtrak’s Northeast Regional and the Acela Express, as well as a commuter line between New London and New Haven. And each blasts its horn. As if in response, the Mini goes beep-beep as the locks click shut, and the man continues across the street to a shoe-repair shop. The Greek shop owner has been there for more than thirty years and prefers to be called a cobbler.

The man is on his way to pick up a pair of shoes, new soles, heels, and a good polishing for his black Bruno Magli slip-ons, a rush job because he only took them in on Saturday. The shoes were a gift from his older brother, Vasco; actually they’re hand-me-downs that Vasco found too tight. Vasco has rich tastes, and over the years his brother has benefited. Another item taken from Vasco is a purposeful stride, leaning forward and walking quickly, which, when a teenager, our friend liked enough to copy and which makes any destination seem the only one possible.

The man’s name is Connor Raposo, though his Portuguese parents baptized him Juan Carlos and into his late teens everyone called him Zeco. But just before college, he decided he needed a new identity and changed his name to Connor. He’s in his mid-twenties—thin, six feet tall, straight nose, chestnut eyes, moderately handsome, black hair that grazes the collar of his jacket, though if we were really looking down from a cherry picker, we might see an incipient bald spot, which in twenty years, if he lives that long, will overspread his dome. Besides his purposeful walk, he has a purposeful face. Connor will appear somber even when telling a joke. But his expression derives from the shyness he felt as a kid; it discouraged people from talking to him. You know that bromide “He’s laughing on the outside but crying on the inside”? Connor’s just the opposite.

Unlike the pasty winter faces of others on Bank Street, Connor’s face is tanned, which is no surprise, since he left San Diego a week ago, and yesterday, dropping off his shoes, was his first visit to New London. What else? He wears jeans, running shoes, and a brown leather jacket he’s had since college.

But to move along: Connor has given the elderly cobbler his claim ticket, and the cobbler has held up the black Bruno Maglis for Connor’s inspection. He sets them on the counter, where they glisten like anthracite. The leather soles are a change for Connor. Usually he wears soft, rubber-soled shoes and he walks as softly as a wink, whether to sneak toward something or sneak away, he can’t be sure. The cobbler counts out a fistful of one-dollar bills—Connor’s change—while apologizing for having nothing bigger.

“You want a bag?” The cobbler has gray tufts of hair sprouting from his ears, woolly entanglements to snatch the oncoming words one by one.

“Never mind, my car’s right across the street.” He stuffs the bills into his jacket pocket.

A sound grows audible, a distant purr, which leads the cobbler to shake his head. “The first of the season, just like robins.” Then, seeing Connor’s blank expression, he adds, “Harleys—spring, summer, and fall they come roaring past.”

The distant purr changes to a low rumble that increases in volume and reverberates off the stone buildings. It’s an intrusion that loosens the mind from previous thoughts. Indignant seagulls flap away toward the water.

“We have noise restrictions in California.” Connor had a noisy Harley in college and loved it. “Can’t you make a complaint?”

Before the cobbler can answer, the Harley flashes by, twin headlights, a blur of candy orange, Stinger wheels, Tommy Gun pipes, lots of chrome, a growl like a brontosaurus. It’s a snapshot shooting past the window. The plate glass shivers.

Then everything gets faster yet: the roar of a second motor rises above the roar of the Harley, a woman screams, a squeal of rubber to make Connor brace himself. Next comes a packed combination of noises: a collision of metal against metal, a wrenching shriek, glass breaking, the crunch and clatter of hundreds of little bits scattered across the pavement; a window shatters, and hidden within the variations of smash is the sound of a speeding biker striking an immovable object.

Connor hurries to the sidewalk. A large green dump truck has backed out of an alley and across Bank Street, ramming a parked BMW 300-something, shoving it over the curb into the now demolished display window of a music store. The guy on the Harley has hit the side of the dump truck.

But it’s worse than that. The truck’s dump box rides high on the axles, and the lower part of the Harley—wheels, V-twin engine, transmission, chrome pipes—has passed beneath, while the top part of the Harley—twin headlights, handlebars, gas tank, and half of the biker—has not. They’ve been separated. The rider has been ripped in two, so his bloody torso lies in the street, while under the truck at the end of a red smear are the legs, one with a boot, one not. The head has been detached from the neck and has vanished. Connor turns away so as not to lose his breakfast.

Blood and body fragments paint the nearby cars and windows of shops. The street is a mess of color. The truck has continued to roar; then the driver cuts the engine and climbs from his cab, his face creased with astonishment. A young man in a formerly white shirt stands across the street from Connor with blood streaming from his shoulder. It’s a little after ten o’clock. Connor smells gasoline mixed with the smell of the river at low tide. For a nanosecond the scene is without movement or sound, except for someone retching.

Then, as if a lever were yanked, all becomes noise and action. People cry out. A young woman in shorts covers her face with her hands. If Connor were closer, he’d see spots of blood on her white legs. Some people hurry away; others run toward the wreckage with eye-popping avidity. There’s a rush of randomness and instability that people try to reduce to order. Another young woman spits into a handkerchief and dabs at red spots on her blouse. A man in a blue business suit sits on the sidewalk with his legs outstretched, cleaning his glasses with his necktie. Cars honk as drivers are forced to stop farther back at Firehouse Square and have as yet to realize the reason for the delay. Soon comes the sound of sirens. Seagulls circle.

Connor stands twenty feet from the accident. He stares not at the truck or the biker’s multiple bloody fragments but at a black leather Harley cap by the edge of the curb. He stoops to pick it up, half expecting to find the top part of a skull. But there’s nothing, a few sweat marks, a few black hairs, and grease from whatever stuff the dead man put on his scalp. Oh, yes, the Harley cap has a red satin lining and on the lining is written a name in black ink: MARCO SANTUZZA.

A pair of broken aviator sunglasses lie in the gutter. Closer to the truck lies the torn black sleeve of a leather jacket in the midst of broken glass and pieces of metal. A hand extends from the cuff; silver rings embellish the fingers and thumb, one with a blue stone, another showing a skull. Connor again turns his head to avoid being sick and looks into the faces of twenty men and women gaping past him, their features magnified by disbelief.

Connor’s sensory receptors are on serious overload as the street grabs his attention, but the strain creates a fog, and he has to half close his eyes in order to see. Now he shakes his head to free it of bloody images. He wants to get into his car and leave, but the street is jammed with cars and there’ll be no freeing his Mini-Cooper until these are cleared. Just beyond the square is fire headquarters, a two-story brick building with two large bays. Out of one pokes the red nose of a hook and ladder truck. This is where the fire marshal has his office, but because of the traffic jam, the firemen won’t go anyplace unless they walk.

People try to direct traffic, waving their hands to urge drivers to back up to Tilley Street, but some drivers have left their cars and have run forward to see the drama. People raise smartphones to take pictures. A police car half on the sidewalk makes earsplitting horn blasts as it pushes past the cars. For Connor the noise comes from inside his head: it’s his brain’s response to the awfulness. He tucks the Harley cap under his arm, meaning to keep it as visual proof of what he’d rather forget, and leans against the cobbler’s window. The door is open, and the cobbler is down by the smashed Harley, staring at something unpleasant near his feet. Connor retrieves his Bruno Maglis from the cobbler’s counter and makes his way between the jammed cars to lock the shoes in his Mini-Cooper.

This would be the moment to use our cherry picker again, but how much can be said? Once we’ve reached a point beyond belief, words are unreliable. “I can’t believe this is happening!” At least a dozen people say this. Clichés soothe at such times; they link the horrific to the banal and make it tolerable. A few seagulls peck at bits of bloody tissue. Connor still hasn’t seen the biker’s head, which is just as well. It’s been smashed to fragments, or on a rooftop, or is bobbing down the river.

—

Now we come to a difficult introduction. Standing across the street by the crushed BMW is an elderly, homeless man who has a tail. No, no, he doesn’t really have a tail, but he is certain he woke this morning with a tail, a long, gray, scabrous tail without fur. Perhaps the fur has fallen out; perhaps it never had fur in the first place. This is something he can’t recall. Right now the tail is no more than a sinuous dark shadow, but the man’s hands have begun to shake, and the more they shake, the sooner his tail will reappear, unless he gets a drink first.

The previous evening, in the bushes beneath the Interstate 95 bridge, he had blended a fifth of Everclear with five packets of grape jam snitched from a Greek diner. This reduced the alcohol proof from 190 to about 187, which he still saw as potent. He chose grape because he meant to make something winelike. Perhaps he had succeeded—he can’t remember, because he blacked out almost immediately. This, to his mind, is a good thing. Erasure is what he’s after, the more the better.

The man’s name is Fidget, but it isn’t his real name. It’s just what he’s called. As for last names, he’s had a bunch of them. Nor is he sure of his age, though he knows he’s over sixty, but that’s been true for a while, so maybe he’s seventy by now. He wears a Red Sox cap, a torn raincoat that once was beige, pants of an uncertain dark color, and muddy sneakers. In place of laces, he uses twine. His gray hair is currently short, and if his cap were removed, we’d see that it has a ragged look. A girl under the bridge cut it in exchange for three cigarettes. And Fidget is thin enough that his body seems to vanish beneath his raincoat, as if the coat were draped over a parking meter. His long face is gray, unshaven, and somewhat disarranged from years of violent readjustments. The middle of his nose, for instance, makes a distinct curve to the left, something like a question mark. His eyes resemble those of a pug dog: dark brown and protruding. It’s not an ugly face, though it’s seen a lot of use.

But the tail is a concern. There’s no hiding a tail five feet long that won’t stay wrapped around his waist. It likes to flip about like the tail of a disgruntled cat. Fidget wishes he could meet these downturnings of fortune philosophically, but as his age increases so his patience decreases. A few years ago, he had paws instead of hands, and once he had the hooves of a palomino horse, which were noisy. So a rat’s tail is a step up, as long as people don’t see it. Fidget believes if he just had an alcohol drip, as he once had a morphine drip, he wouldn’t be plagued by illusionary appendages.

He’d been on the sidewalk by the music store when the accident took place, and although he is shocked by the man’s death—the tearing asunder and general horror—he also looks for opportunity, as he always looks for opportunity. This morning he thinks he has found it. He feels sure he has seen something he can turn into money, maybe a lot of money, if he’s patient.

Right now he focuses on how he’ll spend his money, and these imaginings are a lively pleasure. He’ll say good-bye to sleeping under the bridge. He’ll rent a single-room apartment with an electric fire and an armchair where he can sit in the evenings and chew on a good cigar. It’s a happy-making image; it also strikes him as suitably modest, so modest that he feels sure of its fulfillment. But as for patience, Fidget knows no patience, unless it’s the open-ended patience called forgetting.

Fidget has moved into the street closer to the scene of the accident to a spot that he believes is free of the dead guy’s fleshy remnants. He wears no socks, and his sneakers have holes. No way does he want bits of the dead guy glued to the bottoms of his feet. A city detective talks to the driver of the truck as they stand by the open door of the cab. Fidget wants to know what they’re talking about. The keys are in the ignition, and a steady ding-ding-ding comes from the cab. A TV truck has driven up Bank Street to the other side of the dump truck, and a cameraman films the dead guy’s feet, one with a boot, one not. No way is that shot going to make the evening news.

Fidget takes a step closer, then turns his back to suggest a lack of interest. Coming toward him along the sidewalk are ten firemen pulling a very long hose. They grunt and stumble and press on, as if pulling a full-size elephant by its trunk. Shielded by firemen, Fidget takes another step toward the detective. He’s had dealings with this man, whose name he can’t recall, and he knows the more pissed the man becomes, the more quietly he speaks. At the moment the detective is not raising his voice above a whisper. As for the driver, he’s saying something about the brakes or how his foot slipped. He holds his hands in front of him with his palms facing out; a drop of sweat hangs from the tip of his nose. He’s a middle-aged guy with a big belly, and his face is as round as a poker chip.

Three uniformed cops make their way toward the truck, shooing gawkers from the scene. Fidget knows these cops from a multiplicity of threats and head slaps he’s received in the past. None can he call friends, but he’d like to hear something useful before he’s yelled at. He steps over the fire hose to the wall of a vacant furniture store across from the music store, and he stands quietly except for giving an occasional thump to his tail. It’s again begun its serpentine gestures.

Fidget had seen the truck back out of the alley and shouted, “Hey!” or “Watch out!”—he can’t recall which—but nothing could be heard over the noise of the truck and the approaching motorcycle. Then, in a second, it was too late. He barely had time to duck into the music store’s alcove and crouch down with his hands over his head. The destruction of the Harley, the truck hitting the BMW at the curb and pushing it onto the sidewalk, the smashing of the music store’s display window have created serious wreckage, and if it hadn’t been for the BMW, the truck would have broken through the window to crush the shiny trumpets and trombones.

Now the nearest cop shouts at him, “Get the fuck outta here, prickhead. You some kind of pervert?”

Fidget moves back up Bank Street. No way does he want to get hit with a nightstick. His tail flaps back and forth. He smacks it to keep it quiet, but this only excites it. Over the years he’s had many humiliations. The tail is just the most recent. But Fidget can’t let it distract him from future profit.

—

Detective Benny Vikström stares at the truck driver’s belly, which hangs over his leather belt like a slab of snow curving over the edge of a winter roof, although this particular slab is covered by a blue work shirt. Vikström tries to guess how many gallons of beer over how many years produced a gut like that.

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t hit the brake.”

The driver, Leon Pappalardo, shifts from one leg to the other. “I tried, I slammed down my foot but only hit the gas. I already told you I never drove this truck before. The pedals are different, I mean the space between them, like, it’s narrower. Then the gas stuck, and before I could fix it, I hit the Beemer.”

“And the guy on the bike?”

“Like I said, he ran into me. I feel bad about it.”

Vikström lifts his eyes from the man’s belly to his face and decides he doesn’t look as if he feels bad. He looks scared. Vikström has seen this look often: pretend calm and confidence with fear leaking from the guy’s face like water from cupped hands. And Pappalardo’s dyed black hair suggests a vanity that, to Vikström’s mind, sits uneasily with the belly. It might even suggest a kind of ambition.

Benny Vikström’s name is Swedish, which should surprise nobody. He likes his name, though he’s tired of people asking, “Whadja say it was again?” And when he spells it for someone, he adds, “With an umlaut,” which leads to more questions. He was born and brought up in New London, but his parents came from Malmö fifty years ago. Soon after that his father, Acke Vikström, took a job at Electric Boat.

Vikström is forty-five, thin, a few inches over six feet, with one of those long, angular faces that appear cut from granite. His high cheekbones have an alpine look; his eyes are bright blue. His thinning blond hair is turning gray and is cut short with a fringe in front. He’s been a New London cop for fifteen years and a detective for five. By his figuring he should be a detective sergeant by now, but women fucked up the competition. He doesn’t complain, for the most part. It’s this equal-opportunity stuff. Even the police chief’s a woman, for crying out loud.

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t hit the brake.”

Leon Pappalardo’s head shakes like a bobblehead doll’s, and he squints up at Vikström. “Aren’t you fuckin’ listening? I already—”

Vikström reaches out and taps on the beer belly with a knuckle, not a gentle tap. He’s half a foot taller than the driver and looms. “What did I say? You be nice, I’ll be nice. Didn’t I say that before? But I don’t have to be nice. Generally I’m not a nice person, or so the wife says. Generally I’m vicious.”

Vikström wasn’t scheduled to work this morning, but someone called in sick. Not that Vikström thinks the guy is sick. On a glorious day like this, he’s most likely gone for a walk on the beach, like Vikström wanted to do instead of getting bent out of shape by the guy on the motorcycle. No, that isn’t right, not by the guy himself—by the guy’s many little parts. Their confetti-like aspect makes him queasy.

Vikström’s gray suit coat brushes Pappalardo’s belly. “You mean you got excited and just couldn’t tell the difference between the brake and the gas? What kind of shit is that?”

Pappalardo again bobbles his head. His dyed black hair is held in a ponytail, which sways back and forth.

“I got big feet, just look at those feet.” The men stare at the feet, encased in old work boots with the shiny edges of the steel toes breaking though the leather. “D’you see many like that? Size fuckin’ fourteen. I’m lucky to get them in the cab.”

“So you killed this guy because you got big feet?”

“No way. He was going like a rocket. It’s, like, both our faults.”

“Maybe you were talking on your phone and not paying attention.”

“I lost my phone. I mean, it’s in my house someplace. I’m always losing it.”

Leon Pappalardo’s sober, Vikström can tell that. He’s Vikström’s age, and he’s nervous. But he’s got a right to be nervous; maybe it’s not guilty nervous, maybe it’s I fucked up nervous. That’s the main thing—for Vikström there’s no clear reason to back up and hit the biker on purpose, which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Firemen stand nearby holding a dry line, and by now the police have pushed the gawkers thirty feet up Bank Street. Vikström knows some, like Fidget and the cobbler and the black gay guy who runs an art gallery—what’s his name?

Maurice, and who doesn’t like it when Vikström calls him Mo—pause—Reese, which isn’t a black thing like the guy thinks but goes back to the old cigarette ad: “Call for Phillip Mo—pause—Reese!”

Vikström sees his partner, Manny Streeter, talking to a man farther up the sidewalk, getting another version of the story. Vikström has already given the truck driver a ticket for reckless driving leading to an accident, which is a big ticket and could cost him his job, but Vikström would like to give him something bigger, if only because a guy got killed, though “rent asunder” was more accurate. As for the big-feet business, it’s bullshit.

Vikström pats Pappalardo’s stomach. “You a Budweiser man?”

Pappalardo looks up in surprise. “Sometimes. Mostly it’s Nasty-gansett, the new Nasty-gansett.”

“You’re from Rhode Island?” Narragansett is a Rhode Island beer.

Again the driver looks surprised. “Brewster. It’s on the coast, the first town up from Charlestown. I live in Brewster.”

“I know Brewster,” says Vikström. “I got friends there.”

“Mostly it’s a quiet place,” says Pappalardo. “If you like quiet.”

TWO

Connor Raposo’s Mini-Cooper remains trapped. There’s no getting it out until a lot of other cars are moved. He holds the dead man’s motorcycle cap and stands on the curb near the cobbler’s shop, trying not to be pissed off. Who’s he going to get pissed off at, the dead guy on the Harley, Marco Santuzza? Connor has work to do, money to liberate from other people’s pockets, like it or not, and he won’t make a dime by standing around Bank Street.

A few feet to his left, the street is blocked with yellow cop tape, while on the other side of the dump truck is a red pumper and a hook and ladder, as well as a white TV truck. The Harley’s busted fuel tank has spread gas over a patch of street, and the pumper is supposed to spray the pavement, but there’s an ethical problem, says the fire marshal. Since maybe twenty pounds of dead guy’s bits and pieces are stuck to the street, washing it down means sending ten percent of him into the sewer. So the fire marshal looks to ask permission, but he’s not sure who to ask: maybe the mayor, maybe a priest. Actually, he’s not looking for permission so much as looking for somebody else to share the blame. But that someone had better show up soon, because all that accelerant is a disaster waiting to happen.

Connor has already spoken to two detectives about what he saw, which was nothing except the flash of the Harley going by. One of them was Benny Vikström, the other was his partner, Manny Streeter. About twenty people stand near Connor, and thirty more are in the street and on the opposite sidewalk. Half are drivers of blocked cars, others are gawkers. At the moment Connor stares at an old bum in a Red Sox cap swatting at something behind him, though Connor sees nothing behind him. The swatting is secretive and angry, and what seems especially odd is the old guy keeps looking in Connor’s direction, though Connor is sure he’s never seen him before.

Forensics specialists lift small, unidentifiable bits with tweezers and put them into plastic bags. Two TV film crews interview bystanders. Print journalists clutch notepads, and one young female reporter has a photographer in tow. When the TV people asked Connor what he’d seen, he said he hadn’t seen anything and was only there to pick up some shoes.

Ambulance attendants stand on the other side of the tape, waiting to be told what to do, not that a stretcher will help. A mop and shovel would be better. Connor is struck at how he’s gotten accustomed to the horror, but the Harley is hidden behind the cops and forensics guys, and he can almost imagine that the body is gone. The fact that the street is speckled with blood, tissue, and body parts is ghas