Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? (7 page)

Manny and Vikström pause at the edge of the living room. Who's she talking about? The voice comes from the kitchen, and they make their way toward it.

Angelina Rossi sits at a kitchen table. Standing across from her are two New London detectives, Herta Spiegel and Moss Jackson. They give Vikström and Manny stoical looks. Herta is about forty and stocky. Moss is the squad's one African-American. He'd been a light-heavyweight boxer at UConn ten years earlier, but now he's mostly known for being gloomy.

Fat Bob's ex-wife eyes Herta and Moss Jackson as a Sunday school teacher might eye a group of snot-flicking ten-year-olds. She wears a blue blouse and jeans. Vikström thinks she is beautiful in a dark, southern Italian way, thin, with dark hair on her bare arms. She is perhaps forty-five and has very white teeth. Manny feels she has too many teeth. He finds them too aggressive, or what he likes to call proactive. And he can't get past her mustache. It scares him. Women like that throw things.

Vikström moves forward. “Excuse me, who're you talking about?”

Herta looks at Vikström as if he's slow in the head. “Her ex showed up to get something.”

“Fat Bob's alive?” Vikström regrets the question as soon as he asks. The woman at the table and the two detectives give him
What a dummy
looks, while Manny moves back a few steps to separate himself from his partner. He stares at his fingernails to show that his thoughts are elsewhere.

“I thought he was killed downtown. He crashed his bike into a truck.”

The
What a dummy
looks intensify. “It wasn't Robert Rossi on the bike,” says Herta. “But the bike belonged to him all right.”

“Rossi busted in here thirty minutes ago,” says Moss Jackson. He speaks so slowly that he could turn a vivid description of the Crucifixion into a series of yawns. “He's not supposed to come within thirty feet of the house, so his ex called the cops. Before they got here, some guys in a green Ford shot up the Harley. Rossi ran out the back door. The Ford took off when they heard us coming. Neighbors heard more gunshots, but we haven't found any bodies.”

Angelina Rossi gives Vikström a cool look. “Bob's got money hidden in the house. That's what he's after. Technically it's mine, for all the shit I been through. He owes me. If he's dead, I inherit. I'll go straight to Vegas.”

Vikström finds Angelina's remarks too complicated for an intelligent answer. He turns to Moss Jackson. “So who was killed downtown?”

“Don't know,” says Jackson.

“Do you have any idea?” Vikström asks Angelina.

She cocks her head at him. “Some asshole.”

“Anyone go after the Ford?” asks Manny.

Herta and Moss look at each other and shrug. “Not really,” says Herta. “It was gone when the patrol car got here, and it took the officers a few minutes to hear about it because of the fire. Then they called it in.”

Manny laughs. “Now they'll pull over every green Ford in the county.”

“Where do you think your husband's gone?” asks Vikström.

“To hell, I hope.” The tendons in the woman's neck form a distinctive V, vanishing into the darkness of her blouse. Her hands are long and thin, and the nails are painted bright red with little white designs: maybe
A
's for Angelina.

“That's not a constructive answer,” says Manny.

Angelina stares at him until he looks away. Manny thinks that women like her put curses on perfectly respectable people, like police detectives. He thinks that underneath her blouse and jeans she's covered with black fur, or just thick black hair. The image scares him.

“Do you have a picture we can borrow?” asks Vikström politely.

“I burned every picture the day the divorce went through,” says Angelina, pushing back her dark hair. “Burned his postcards and birthday cards. A whole lot of stuff: shirts, magazines. Did it in the backyard.”

“What about a list of his friends?” asks Vikström.

“He has no friends.”

“Oh, come on,” says Manny, “everyone has friends.”

Again she stares at him until he looks away.

“What about close acquaintances, business associates?” asks Vikström.

Angelina turns in her chair, giving them her back.

Herta takes her notepad, rips out a clean sheet of paper, and puts it on the table in front of Angelina along with a yellow No. 2 pencil, almost new. “You don't want to answer these questions downtown. Start writing some names.”

Angelina picks up the pencil, snaps it in half, and tosses the pieces to the floor. Then she begins tearing the sheet of paper into thin strips. The detectives think it will take a straitjacket and a lot of rope to get her out of the room.

“Can't you see we're trying to help you?” There's a whine in Vikström's voice.

Angelina doesn't turn. The detectives wear their professional faces—serious, menacing, and impatient—but they're thinking about if the dog has been walked and if there's time to watch any TV tonight.

Manny's cell phone rings, a rising and descending trill. Putting it to his ear, he says, “Uh-hunh, Uh-hunh, Un-hunh, Oh-oh,” and cuts the connection. He waves at Vikström. “We gotta tear ourselves away.”

“We done here?” Vikström feels like a dog freed from the pound. He nods to Herta. “Take Angelina downtown. Use a straitjacket if you have to.”

He and Manny hurry toward the front door, ignoring the shouts that come from the kitchen. Out on the porch, Vikström asks, “What's going on?”

Manny runs down the steps. “They found the head, but they're not sure who it belongs to. I mean, they know it belongs to the dead guy, but they're not sure of the dead guy's name.”

—

I
t comes as no surprise that many men and women are filled with phobias. This one's sure he's about to be sucked up into the sky; that one must snap his fingers three times whenever he sees a white dog. Indeed, we're fortunate to have only two or three, since they can be a physical handicap like any other—like the man who has to hop fifteen times to get to the bus stop.

One of Benny Vikström's greatest embarrassments is his fear of heights. He's seen shrinks, he's taken antianxiety pills, he's been hypnotized. Nothing works. All he needs is to climb onto a three-step stepladder and his body becomes someone else's. His knees shake, his belly flips over, his hands tremble, black spots flutter before his eyes. He might even get teary.

It's remarkable that he's kept this phobia hidden during his years as a cop, but his deception has taken hundreds of little lies. For instance, if an assignment requires him to drive across the I-95 bridge over the Thames River between New London and Groton, he'll get someone else to drive while he sits hunched in the passenger seat with his eyes shut, whispering, in a musical way, “La-la-la-la-la.”

“What're you singing?” Manny Streeter might ask.

“An old Beach Boys song from high school. I can't get it out of my head.”

“Too modern. The old tunes are the best tunes, as far as I'm concerned. How come you hum it every time we drive over the bridge?”

“I guess the water sets me off. Do you know ‘Surfin' Safari'?”

“No,” Manny might say, “I really don't.”

Manny is perhaps the only cop who knows Vikström is terrified of heights, but he keeps it to himself so not even Vikström knows he knows. This seeming ignorance offers Manny a wide range of subtle chastisements to increase the frustrations in Vikström's life, which in turn decreases Manny's level of general disappointment. Seeing Vikström terrified cheers him up.

The issue of Vikström's phobia once more declares itself when they reach Bank Street, where the head has been found. A hook and ladder from the fire marshal's headquarters up the street is parked in front of a three-story building. On the first floor is a used-clothing store called Never Say Die. A ladder extends from the fire apparatus to the top of the roof. Four cops and firemen stare thoughtfully upward, while three firemen on the roof stare thoughtfully down. Manny decides they are sharing a philosophical moment and that finding a severed head, which has been thrown one hundred feet onto a rooftop, is more than enough to make one thoughtful. It's raining slightly, and misty auras wreathe the streetlamps.

Manny and Vikström approach the truck. It's their job to look at the head before forensics removes it. They make their greetings and exchange handshakes. The fire department has been searching the roofs for the head for several hours, and now, a fire captain tells Manny, they've hit pay dirt.

Manny's disappointment, which has become one of our leitmotifs, is like a nagging sore throat: sometimes better, sometimes worse. As Manny realizes the pleasures that lie ahead, the sore throat fades entirely. He pauses to speak to a fire lieutenant and then hurries after Vikström.

“Guess we have to go to the top,” he says. “Like, it's part of the crime scene.”

“We take the stairs?”

“Nah-unh, it'd mean busting into the building, and the fire marshal doesn't want to do that. We'll take the ladder.”

Vikström stares at the ladder, which to his subjective vision extends into the dark for half a mile. His belly begins to flip-flop. “Why don't you go up, and I'll stay down here and keep an eye on the car.”

“That's no problem.” Manny calls to a patrolman. “Hey, Wiggins, keep an eye on the car while Benny and I climb up to the roof.”

“Sure thing, Detective.”

“Okay, Benny, let's get a move on. I'd like to be home before midnight.”

We'll skip over Vikström's excuses—for example, sore ankle, upset stomach, useless duplication of effort—because Manny shoots them down one by one like he was shooting hippos in a kiddie pool. Soon Vikström stands on the truck at the base of the ladder staring upward as if into a grinning human skull. The only good thing about the climb, or rather the least bad thing, is that the ladder has handrails, so Vikström can climb with his eyes shut while hanging on to the rails.

“I'll go behind in case you take a tumble—ha, ha, ha,” says Manny.

The temperature has continued to drop, and the wind has increased. A few snowflakes make their appearance.

Vikström puts a foot on the bottom rung. Time passes.
I'm a fraud,
he tells himself. He considers turning to the men on the street and confessing his phobia. He'll shout it out, and then, when the laughter stops, he'll hand in his badge and move to Florida. These are the thoughts his fear triggers. He takes another step, and now both feet are on the ladder. The metal handrails are cold against his hands. Maybe thirty rungs rise above him before he gets to the top.

Manny thinks Vikström moves as slowly as a fast-growing plant. He bangs a hand against the ladder. “Get cracking, Benny. Life's going by. You need a push?”

“I'm moving, I'm moving, I've never been on one of these things before. There's no other way to get to the roof?”

“Only the fire escape.”

The truck's engine idles and creates a vibration, which Vikström doesn't like. It should be said that Vikström is a brave man. He's had people shoot at him and he's shot back; he's fended off rabid dogs; he's run into burning buildings; he jumped into the Thames last November to save a toddler who fell in the water. That stuff meant nothing to him. It's heights he doesn't like. He also hates exposing himself to these other guys, to have them think he's cowardly. He loves their praise, hates their criticism. That's not unusual, is it? Lastly, he's ninety percent sure that Manny knows the truth about his phobia and is tormenting him on purpose.

“You don't start moving faster,” shouts Manny, “I'll jab your ass with a pin!”

Vikström has climbed five rungs. He hears guys down below laughing. Of course he thinks they're laughing at him, but perhaps one has just told a joke about a parrot. Vikström shuts his left eye; the right's open only a crack. He doesn't go “La, la, la”—it seems too small, too picayune, for such a climb. Instead he picks a rousing marching song to distract him from imminent death. Very faintly he sings, “‘Over hill, over dale, we will hit the dusty trail, / As the caissons go rolling along.'” Manny appears not to notice. This, however, doesn't last. By the time Vikström's climbed ten more rungs, he's singing loud enough for the others to hear. By the time he's climbed fifteen, he's gone operatic. But no, we exaggerate. At most Vikström's singing is an operatic mutter. Manny hears it, though, and several cops down below, rascals that they are, join in.

It's a pity that Uncle Didi Lobato isn't here to enjoy the fun, because it would be one more example of the tradiculous: singing cops below, severed head above, one miserable musical guy in between. Surely the god of capriciousness and whimsy looks down from a cloud and rubs its paws. Such gods feed on humiliation. But probably every cop has a phobia that could lead to a collapse. For one it's spiders, for another it's snakes, for a third it's going into the attic. Of course their exteriors look tough. There's nothing they can't handle. But deep in their guts is a small square of Jell-O.

It takes Vikström several minutes to get to the top. A fireman on the roof reaches over to help him up. Vikström staggers a few feet to catch his breath. Then, abruptly, he asks the fireman, “How'd you get up here?”

The fireman points to a little building that looks like an outhouse but is actually the top of the stairs. “I busted the lock,” he says.

Vikström spins around, meaning to hurl Manny from the roof, but his partner has joined the group surrounding the head. He knows it's dangerous to dawdle. Vikström bends over with his hands on his knees until he breathes normally and his wish to murder his partner has temporarily passed.

Five lights illuminate the mess on the surface of the roof. The cops look like Boy Scouts around a bonfire. The head is squarish, with short black hair, a black mustache, and a trimmed beard, at least on one side of his face. The other side is mostly gone. One ear has been torn off, but the other sports two gold earrings. Teeth are broken. The neck is a savage slash. No one wants to look, and each keeps turning away, but then each turns back again, unable not to. “Didn't some witnesses say he was wearing a cap?” asks a cop. “I wonder what happened to it.”