Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?: A Novel

by Stephen Dobyns

  “Got to find him first, right? Stands to reason.”

  “After we find him.”

  “Then we have a chat.”

  “What can we charge him with?”

  “Shit, Benny, you know that as well as I do. We can suspect him of all sorts of stuff, but we can’t charge him with squat. Like, he’s bound to be connected to the guy in the Denali who shot Otto in the arm, but try proving it, that’s what I say.”

  “And Lisowski?”

  “Ditto. We’ll never find his pistol.”

  “And Fidget?”

  “He’ll probably turn up dead. He’s carrying too much treasure to stay alive for long. Shit, he’s probably dead already.”

  Several policemen have been checking package stores, looking for the store where Fidget might have made a large purchase. But Manny and Vikström have yet to hear from them.

  Likewise, policemen have been checking motels looking for Fat Bob, but so far there’s no trace of him. As Manny has said, “He’s probably got a broad someplace, or maybe Jack Sprat has already shot him.”

  “What about Connor what’s-his-name?”

  “The charge, Benny, what’s the charge? Angelina fucked us on that one.”

  “And the FBI guys?” asks Vikström.

  “Maybe they’re still tiptoeing around, or maybe they’ve gone home. Maybe their job ended when Sal got whacked.”

  “Don’t you think there’s too much we don’t know?”

  Manny is cracking his knuckles one at a time and slowly. It’s a sound that sets Vikström’s teeth on edge. He’s positive Manny knows this.

  “That’s life, right?” says Manny. “How often have you been satisfied with how much you know? Like never, right?”

  Vikström is about to say, Don’t go all philosophical on me, which Manny often says to him, when the phone rings. Manny picks it up. “Yeah… . Yeah… . You’re fuckin’ kidding me! … Okay… . Okay… . We’re on our way.

  “Someone’s broken into the Capitol Theatre,” says Manny.

  It takes Vikström a moment to gather his thoughts. “But it’s closed.”

  Manny jumps up and lifts his hands as if preparing to catch a large ball. “That’s the fuckin’ point, Benny! The theater’s been closed for forty fuckin’ years!”

  —

  Linda drops her flashlight. It hits the floor, goes out, and rolls down several steps. “Rats,” she says.

  A prey to mild rodent phobia, Connor hastily sweeps his light in a circle around him before realizing she’s only voicing a mild curse. “I see it. It’s by the wall.” Had he heard scurrying noises? Perhaps he’s mistaken.

  They’re ascending the narrow corridor next to terraced loge seating on the right side of the theater. The boxes are empty; all the seats were taken out years ago. Plaster flakes off the walls, and they try not to brush against it as they climb. The air feels old, with a damp, musty smell flavored with rodent droppings. Connor and Linda have come in through the back, across the stage, and passed under the proscenium arch to reach the stairs to the balcony: their destination. Shreds of purple velvet curtain hang from the round arches above the celebrity boxes. High above, the ceiling is a smudged shadow with ragged hints of great images, perhaps Roman gods, that seep bit by bit into the empty theater. Their flashlights are too weak to show the main floor, the stage, or the terraced loges on the opposite side of the dark vacancy. Now Linda’s light is broken. Connor, who finds his own emotional state endlessly fascinating, wonders if he’s frightened. But it’s not fear he feels, at least not yet; rather, he’s as tense as a stretched rubber band. He begins to regret their adventure. The theater’s like a great tomb.

  “My iPhone has a light,” says Linda. The cell phone in her hand begins to glimmer. “It’s pathetic, but at least I can see my feet.”

  The man from the historical society had introduced himself as Jasper Lincoln. Connor, having a certain familiarity with bogus names, was skeptical. Letting Connor and Linda in by the back door, Lincoln had said he’d wait there for their return. “I’m allergic to dust,” he’d explained. “But you’ll be delighted by the interior. It’s pure Egyptian.” He wore an apple green sport coat, had a long Lincolnian face, and was probably about forty. “Just rap on the door when you’re done, and I’ll open up. I promise.” Then he laughed in a way that made Connor’s palms begin to sweat. But Linda had already passed through the door, and so Connor followed. The sound of the door slamming shut reverberated through the hallway. Connor had been mildly surprised that Jasper Lincoln hadn’t inquired how long they would be.

  Linda continues up the sloping corridor. She wants first to explore the balcony and then take the stairs down to the front entrance and box office. Lastly they’d return through the bare auditorium to the small orchestra pit and perhaps investigate the actors’ dressing rooms. Connor sees her thoroughness as a virtue, but he worries about what might lurk behind the farthest range of their vision. He regrets the loss of her light and worries that his own batteries might fail. As far as he’s concerned, the cell phone flashlight is useless.

  They’ve just reached the balcony when they hear the rear door bang open. Perhaps Jasper Lincoln means to join them after all. Heavy footsteps cross the stage, and a booming voice calls out, “Zeco, I’m going to break your face!”

  Connor is almost surprised by how unsurprised he feels.

  “Who’s Zeco?” whispers Linda.

  “I’m Zeco,” says Connor.

  “I thought your name was Connor.”

  “It is Connor, but it’s a long story.”

  “So you have two names?”

  “Get down, get down!”

  A bright light sweeps across the auditorium. Connor crouches behind the balcony railing and pulls Linda after him.

  “The floor’s filthy,” she says. She starts getting up. “Who’s down there?”

  “His name’s Chucky. Please, don’t let him see you.”

  “Zeco, I’m going to hunt you down like a rabbit. I’m going to hurt you! If it weren’t for your brother, you’d be dead.”

  “Does he always talk like that?” asks Linda, speaking with a tone of scientific curiosity. “He sounds like the Big Bad Wolf.”

  “Get down! He’s serious.”

  Linda crouches behind the railing. “I like the name Zeco. It’s exotic.”

  “Please,” says Connor. “It’ll be awful if he finds us.” He sees Linda fussing with her phone. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling 911. And this doesn’t look a bit like Egypt!”

  Connor is appalled. “You can’t do this. He’ll kill us!”

  But Linda is already talking into the phone.

  The balcony railing consists of iron scrollwork panels with open areas that brighten and darken as Chucky’s light passes across them.

  “The police are coming,” whispers Linda.

  “You shouldn’t have done that. They’ll arrest me.”

  “Why should they arrest you again?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Linda makes an exasperated noise. “Why’s everything with you a long story?”

  Chucky’s light stops swinging back and forth, and its beam throws shadows of the scrollwork across Connor and Linda. “I see you, Zeco, you and your girlfriend. I’m looking forward to this.”

  Connor tries to make himself smaller as he hears Chucky’s heavy boots plod heavily across the floor. Then he sees Linda has jumped to her feet. “Get down, get down,” he whispers. What a nuisance that the innocent lack a guilty conscience. It robs them of their susceptibility to terror and trades it for indignation.

  Linda ignores him. “All right, Mr. Chucky!” she calls out. “I’ve just called 911. The police will be here in two minutes. I’ve told them about you!”

  We must pause to consider Chucky’s response. He had imagined Linda to be curled up in a terrified puddle on the floor. It never occurred to him she might call the police. It seems somehow underhanded. Mostly when Chucky m
enaces people, they collapse and weep. It would be silly to say he thinks Linda is not playing by the rules; nevertheless, he finds her response unfitting. Bullies expect their victims to feel bullied. Linda has let him down. Of course his response isn’t rational, but it’s not rationality that has brought Chucky to where he is today.

  “Do you hear the sirens, Mr. Chucky? Here they come!”

  Chucky’s light abruptly shifts from the balcony railing, and his big boots clomp away toward the back.

  “D’you realize how furious he’s going to be?” says Connor, impressed.

  But Linda isn’t paying attention and seems to be listening for something far away. “He’s left the door open,” she says. “I’m afraid it’s time to go.”

  —

  As Vikström jogs across the parking lot to the back door of the Capitol Theatre with Manny a few steps behind him, he wonders if he should preserve his resistance to the possibility of singing. Although dismayed by the idea of standing on a stage and caterwauling “Riders in the Sky,” he thinks it might, in the long run, make life easier. The sniping could disappear, friction would be reduced. It’s not that he wishes to make Manny a friend; rather, he desires the comfortable neutrality that Vikström believes to be the foundation of any good partnership. Isn’t that worth the mortifying self-abasement of singing about a lone cowpoke?

  Up ahead Vikström sees two uniformed officers standing on either side of a smaller person by the back door of the theater. The smaller person is Linda, and both detectives find her familiar. Actually, they’d seen her in the post office earlier in the day when they handcuffed Connor and marched him from the building. But they won’t remember this. Instead, when Linda explains that she works at the travel agency, they’ll assume they saw her there or near there or perhaps through the window. Even though this is perfectly reasonable, it doesn’t happen to be true. Perhaps it’s of no consequence, but if they recalled seeing Linda at the post office, they might also recall that she’d given Connor a small wave.

  Vikström and Manny are normally very good at traveling up or down the chains of causality required by police work, and conceivably, by concentrating on Linda, they might move step-by-step back to the moment when they saw her in the post office, et cetera. Instead they are sidetracked by one of the uniformed policemen describing a vehicle that moments before exited the parking lot at high speed.

  “It was a dark Yukon Denali, maybe black, maybe dark blue. We didn’t see the plate number.”

  “Chucky,” says Vikström.

  “Ahh,” says Manny.

  And so the detectives don’t inquire about Connor, who is crouched down just inside the theater, waiting for the police to leave.

  One policeman has put in a call to the station about the Denali, and most likely other police cars are attempting to find it, but in this they won’t succeed. The Denali is already crossing the I-95 bridge heading north, while Chucky is in the backseat shouting, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” This is how he calms himself.

  As for Linda, she’s told the uniformed policemen that when she was passing through the parking lot and noticed that the back door of the theater was open, she decided to investigate. After all, she has the little flashlight on her cell phone.

  She repeats this to Manny and Vikström, and perhaps she flirts a bit and appears mildly girlish to suggest the innocence of her curiosity. But then, she says, to her horror, a man followed her into the theater and the door slammed shut.

  Vikström thinks the young woman is pretty and believes her; Manny thinks she’s shrewd and has his doubts.

  “What happened next?” asks Vikström.

  Linda looks up at the two detectives and wrinkles her brow as her portrayal of breezy audacity shifts to enact female vulnerability and distress. “He laughed,” she says, lowering her voice.

  “Laughed?” Manny and Vikström say this more or less together.

  “A loud, deep laugh. He said I was his little rabbit and he was going to catch me. That’s when I called 911. I was frightened.”

  Vikström assures Linda that she did the right thing. Manny remains silent; he feels there’s more here than meets the eye. But both detectives believe they have no reason to hold her.

  Traffic is noisy on Bank Street, and perhaps there’s another train. Or perhaps the hearing of the two detectives isn’t as keen as it once was. Whatever the case, they don’t catch the single ring of Connor’s phone just inside the door of the theater. Connor smothers it against his jacket as he answers it.

  “You’re messing up again, little brother. Get out here now.”

  “Where do I meet you?” It wouldn’t occur to Connor to refuse.

  “I’ll call you again when you’re on your way.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Connor once more sits in a leather banquette in the Scorpion Bar: the tequila, skulls, barn board, and glitter. It’s nine-thirty, and the bar is getting full. Scantily clad Scorpion girls prowl the catwalk, while a tall blonde on the mini-stage flings and thrusts her body to recorded music made up of explosive chords, drums, and a tenor seeking erotic eruption by screaming, “Yeah! Yeah!” There’s no sign of Vasco.

  Then Connor realizes he knows the blonde, though the last time they met she had black hair. But the endless legs are tip-offs. Wrapped in a tiny black halter top emblazoned with the image of a scorpion, her breasts seem ready to explode through the fabric as she flicks her hair in circles and kicks up one leg after the other. Her fur boots prance as if crushing an army of fire ants. Connor finds nothing sexual about her dance; it’s like the serious labor in a YMCA exercise class, and beads of sweat fly from her forehead. Still, he’s instantly on his feet and moves toward her.

  What he means to do is unclear, and perhaps we’ll never know, because abruptly someone grabs his arm. It’s Vasco.

  “Hold up, Zeco. You’re wasting your breath.”

  Connor continues to pull. “I need to talk to her.”

  “There’s no point. Céline has gone back to being Shirley, an unwed mother with a pimply thirteen-year-old who divides his time between jacking off and smoking reefer. Forget about her.”

  Part of Connor wants to push toward the stage. Another part wants to give it up. Renunciation wins, and Connor relaxes. Vasco leads him back to the banquette.

  “You that crazy about her, little brother?” Vasco raises his voice to be heard over the music. He sits down on the banquette with his legs stretched in front of him. Connor sits at the small table on Vasco’s left.

  “I really don’t like her. It’s some kind of hypnosis. In fact, I met a woman in New London I like better.” Connor had driven Linda to her apartment on Cedar Grove after the police had gone. She’d invited him in for coffee, but Connor had to get to the casino to meet his brother. He had conflicted feelings about this.

  Vasco shows his teeth. It might be a smile; it’s hard to tell. “Stick with the sane ones. They last longer.” He again wears a gray-on-gray pin-striped suit with a vest and a black silk shirt, but his silk tie is bright scarlet.

  A cute waitress sets a glass and a bottle of Pellegrino in front of Vasco. “Here you are, Mr. Raposo.” She gives Vasco a wink and drifts away.

  Vasco squeezes a bit of lemon into his glass. As pretty young women walk past, he follows them with his eyes without moving his head. “Chucky called me just before I called you. He wants you dead.”

  Connor wants to ask what for, but it’s a pointless question.

  “Possibly I talked him out of it by saying you still might find the homeless guy with Sal’s gold. You think it might happen?”

  “I haven’t had any luck so far.” Connor considers the fact that someone he hardly knows wants him dead; presumably he wants Fidget dead as well.

  “Chucky found out the homeless guy made a bunch of purchases at a package store on the south side: vodka and snack food. So he must be holed up somewhere.”

  “I’d never turn Fidget over to him. Chucky would kill him.”

  Vasco shrugs. “T
hat’s your choice.” He goes back to watching the girls walk by, an activity he calls “appraising the talent.”

  Connor studies his brother’s black and betasseled alligator loafers with a bit of envy. He’s tempted to tell Vasco that the hand-me-down Bruno Maglis gave him blisters, but he sees the complaint for what it is: a childish shot at grievance already doomed to failure. When Connor entered first grade, Vasco was entering seventh; when Connor entered seventh, Vasco was entering college. Always, it seemed, Connor was scrambling to catch up. That, too, was doomed to failure. Once, when Connor was ten, he asked his sixteen-year-old brother for assistance in thrashing a bully who’d bloodied his nose. “Can’t help you, little brother,” Vasco had said. “Try hitting him with a brick.” So Connor tried the brick method, missed, and wound up in the principal’s office. Still, the bully never bothered him again.

  “Why did Chucky set up that game at the theater?” asked Connor. “What was the point of it?”

  Vasco tilted his head back and laughed. Then he straightened his tie. “It’s Chucky’s version of role-playing. He likes violent games. He only wanted to scare you and maybe break some bones. But having your girlfriend call the cops pissed him off. So, personally, I think you’d better leave town. I already called Didi and told him the same thing. Chucky doesn’t like refusals. He’s been mad at you ever since you showed up with the news that Marco had been killed.”

  “But I’d nothing to do with that.”

  “You were the messenger. For Chucky it’s not an excusable offense. He thought taking the Rolex and stuff from Sal’s corpse would be easy. Then Marco gets killed and Chucky keeps running into you and you make it all more complicated. He knows you’re aware of his involvement with Sal’s death, and he blames you for dragging in the New London police. He also thinks you’ve been talking to the FBI, telling them he was the one who hired the shooter.”

  Connor feels a chill. “You know that’s not true!”

  Vasco glances at his watch, a different Rolex from the one he had earlier in the week, a more economical Submariner, no jewels, no gold, no color, and made in China. But to Connor it looks like the real thing. “Guys like Chucky are paranoid,” says Vasco. “It helps keep them out of prison. Chucky doesn’t like how you’re hanging around. He doesn’t like how you seemed friendly with Sal. Then you were stalking Céline… .”