Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  NINE FINGERS

  Thom August

  OUT OF NOWHERE

  What struck me was that it happened so quickly. They were playing along in an easy, mellow shuffle and then came the crash of the shot and the shattering of the glass. I didn’t actually hear the “bang”; the sound of the breaking glass erased anything that may have come before it, like a low-grade retrograde amnesia. Everyone dove to the floor. Me, I was already on the floor, so I froze. I know, I know, it’s not very heroic, but that’s what I did. I looked around; no one seemed to be shot. It’s funny, but I immediately interpreted it as a gunshot, without question. People were bleeding a little—cuts from the glass—but everyone was up and moving around. My pulse slowed, my breathing deepened. I was almost feeling—what, relief?—when I saw the guy slumped over the piano keys. I was squatting at the left side of the bandstand as you look at it, looking at him from about ninety degrees, toward what had been his left profile, eighteen inches away, and as soon as I saw him I knew he was dead….

  Contents

  COVER PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  Twenty years ago…

  Even with the blindfold on, I could see the light, tiny shards stabbing where the fabric bridged my nose. As they walked me down two flights of stairs—fourteen steps each—the light dimmed.

  Even with my nose broken, I could tell it was humid. A basement? A warehouse? A faintly metallic taste touched my tongue, like old meat, like cold blood.

  We were waiting. They had lifted me onto a cold steel table, maybe an examining table, maybe a butcher’s table, maybe a desk. It was heavy; when I rolled it didn’t budge. The temperature was cold, not much more than forty degrees. I was still sweating from the brief resistance I had put up, and the sweat was drying, making me shiver.

  Don’t shiver, I told myself. Don’t let them see you shiver.

  We were waiting.

  I tried to count how many people were there. Not people: men; when they had grabbed me from behind they had that smell: sour, tangy, with an edge. Sweat, coffee, cigarettes.

  The man on my left had a noticeable wheeze. His breath came in short rapid gasps, at a tempo of forty breaths a minute. There was another man directly behind me who kept tapping his foot on the cement floor in a unique beat, accenting the first beat of each measure, then the first two beats, then the first three, then all four, like TAP-two-three-four, TAP-TAP-three-four, TAP-TAP-TAP-four, TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP. He was consistent, kept good time. A third man, at an oblique angle to my right, was humming, no particular tune, roughly in the key of F. He had no rhythm, and his pitch kept wandering off-key, flat. I heard other noises—footsteps, creaking boards, a sneeze, an occasional low grumble—but all of this was farther away. There were more men here than the three, and I couldn’t make them out. But in the inner ring, within a yard or two of where I was sitting, I could hear three.

  No, four men. Someone to my left suddenly cleared his throat, very rhythmically—mm-HMM, mm-HMM. It was Wheezer, TAP-TAP, Hummer, mm-HMM, and me. Waiting.

  I heard a door slam in the distance. There were footsteps, quite a few of them, coming closer. Leather-soled shoes. From the sound of them, the floor was cement. One out front, others following behind. They came closer, then stopped. Deep breaths, I told myself, deep breaths.

  “Want me to take the blindfold off?” one asked.

  “Not yet.”

  It was him, the husband. He was close to me, right up against my face. I had seen him in the papers, had glimpsed him from a distance once or twice. He was older than the two of us, by close to twenty years. I was forming an image of him in my mind when I could suddenly feel his breath hot against my cheek. Something happened—a signal, the reading of a well-known look—because I could hear everyone else in the room back up two paces.

  “So, tell me,” he said in a whisper, “did you?”

  It was vague, maybe on purpose. I was trying to form the words to respond, when, from behind, TAP-TAP took two steps forward and punched me in the back of the neck. Not a slap, a punch. I started to roll forward. Hands reached out and propped me up.

  Again: “Did you?” The voice was breathy, a ragged baritone, sandblasted to sibilance.

  “Did I—” I started to ask. I heard the scrape of the floor behind me and felt another punch to the back of the neck, more toward the right side. I rocked forward. TAP-TAP stepped back. I was reeling, close to passing out.

  “Listen to this,” he said to the others. “The man is seeking clarification.” The others chuckled. An inside joke.

  He came up to me even closer. TAP-TAP had stopped tapping, getting ready for another blow. It occurred to me that there is an etiquette to these things, a protocol.

  “I’ll be more specific: Did you sleep with her? Yes or No. Did you sleep with her?”

  I slowly but firmly shook my head back and forth.

  “I need to hear you say it,” he whispered. “You need to say it.”

  I cringed, waiting for the punch. It didn’t come. I paused, for just a few beats. It’s not just the sound, but the silence that counts. “No, I didn’t sleep with her. Never, not once.”

  Out of nowhere, another punch on the back of the neck.

  “Easy, my friend. I want him conscious.”

  Two steps, backing up behind me.

  “Maybe that was too ambiguous. Maybe that was too quaint. We’re all grown-ups here. Let me be more precise: Did you ever have intercourse with her? Did you put your dick inside her pussy? Did? You? Fuck? Her?” More insistent now.

  “No. Not once. Not ever.” I paused. “I swear.”

  “You swear,” he echoed. “You swear.”

  “I swear. I never had intercourse with her.” Then bluntly: “I never fucked her. Never.”

  “He’s fucking lying,” a different voice chided. It was his brother.

  There was a pause. Maybe ten long seconds passed.

  “But tell me,” he whispered, “you loved her, right? You
still love her, right?”

  I sighed, “Yes.”

  “Then why not?” he asked. “Why didn’t you?”

  I dropped my head, shook it back and forth. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated?” he said. “You fuck her or you don’t fuck her. What’s complicated?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t sure she loved me. I wasn’t sure she should love me. And then, there was you…”

  The other voice again, high-pitched, whiny, insistent: the brother. “Come on, Zep. Let’s do this. Why are we fucking wasting time with this fucking piece of shit?”

  All the little miscellaneous noises stopped.

  Then the hoarse voice again, the husband speaking, not to me but to his nephew, a little louder; speaking to the room, to all of them.

  “Here’s the thing: she says they didn’t.”

  He let it sink in.

  “She says they didn’t. She swore to me three times. He’s wrong: she does love him, she’s crazy for him. If it was up to her, she would have done anything. But she swears she didn’t. If I kill him, that makes her out to be a liar. I don’t really care if the fuck is lying, but I will not make my bride out to be a liar.”

  This was a sermon. It spoke the syntax of justice. “On the one hand…” Now it was time for “on the other hand.”

  “But he’s got to pay. He can’t just walk, can he? It’s our fucking honor.” The brother played his part in the call-and-response, desperate, a tenor to the older man’s baritone. Wagnerian overtones.

  It’s got to be uncomfortable for them, I thought.

  “Yeah, he’s gotta pay. They always gotta pay. That’s how it works. That’s how we get respect. But it has to fit what she said happened. You have to consider the larger picture. I will not confirm others’ perceptions of her. I will not give a reason to the rumors.”

  “So he walks away, just like that? He walks away clean?” The brother was enraged, a petulant teenager, angry that someone else seemed to be about to get away with something.

  There was another pause. He was making this a lesson, to me, obviously, but to them as well. When you give the lesson, the one to whom it is administered needs time to understand it, to sort it out, to know that it is not capricious or random. But this wasn’t just for me; he was preaching to the choir. He was giving them all time to understand, so that when he pronounced judgment they would already have thought it through that far.

  Then, softly, “He’ll pay, but he’ll pay what he owes. You mentioned ‘honor.’ That’s what honor is—he pays what he owes, not more, not less. Beyond that isn’t honor, it’s anarchy.”

  I was stunned by his words—wise, articulate. Or was I elevating the style because they hinted that I might live? Stop thinking about him. Stop getting ahead of yourself. The sounds—the wheezing, the tapping—had faded from my awareness. All I could hear was a crescendo of white noise rushing through my head.

  The brother scuffed his feet on the floor, turned away.

  “No, stay,” the Don said. “You’re so ready to exact revenge, you can help. Hold him down.”

  The sound of feet on concrete, shuffling closer. Rough hands grabbed me, sat me up, held me by my arms and shoulders.

  Slowly they quieted. And he spoke.

  “Piano player, huh? Hotshot piano player. The great Franco Giamelli. Mr. Symphony. Could have had any woman in town, any two of them, if he wanted. But he had to go after mine.”

  His voice had changed, lost its patina of grace.

  “Maybe that’s your problem, going after what you can’t have. You knew who she was, you knew who I am.”

  He turned away, said, “Right side pocket, my jacket.” Then, “His right hand, stretch it out.”

  Then I felt cold steel wrapping around my right pinky finger, slowly tightening until it was touching all around. Some kind of curved knife? A pair of shears? A cigar-cutter?

  “Next time you don’t even try. You see, if you had fucked her, I’d be cutting off something else and stuffing it down your dying throat. But even though you didn’t, you had the thought. In your mind you considered yourself worthy of her. And that has to have consequences.”

  A short pause. This speech wasn’t for me, but for them. His voice had modulated back toward its loftier plane.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said. “First, you never see her again. I don’t mean you don’t go out with her—I mean your eyes never land on her again. You see her on the street? You turn around and walk the other way. You see her at a restaurant? You walk out and you never go back. You never see her again—you don’t even look at her picture in the newspaper.”

  I nodded.

  “Second, you never see this town again. This is my town. And because it’s my town, it’s her town. This town is closed to you. So you go find yourself another symphony. You go play your piano some where else. You never come back to Chicago, you got it?”

  “Yes,” I muttered, “I don’t see her again, and I never come back to Chicago.”

  “Good. Very good. And one more thing. You don’t go reaching for that high note, ever again.”

  A sudden, searing pain, hot blood on my hand. I screamed, despite myself. Pain in my little finger. I tried to wiggle it but nothing happened except more pain. Then the flick, unmistakable, of a Zippo, and hot flame against the base of my finger—he was cauterizing it! I screamed again, and passed out, and came to, and screamed again, alone, in the dark, in the cold.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Cleaner

  The Near North Side

  Thursday, January 9,This Year

  8:00 A.M.: Drive over to the place we keep, up the Near North Side. Close to everything. Get anywhere in thirty minutes. Down the Loop in ten. What’s the word? Convenient.

  Park it down in the alley. Lock it up nice and tight. Slip on the latex gloves.

  No excuse for carelessness.

  Pull down the fire stairs. Quietly. Climb up the fire stairs. Quietly.

  When we rent the place? This safe house? One of our guys puts a key-lock in the rear window. Easy in, easy out. Across the alley from a warehouse. Nobody sees nothing.

  At the landing. Third floor. Find the key. In the lock. Slide open the window. Step over the transom. Close the window. Lock it up. Pull the shades. Flip the switch.

  8:11 A.M.: Have a look around. Have a good look around.

  Traps are in place. All clear.

  Another job. A simple one. Got a location. Got a target. Got a description. Got a time frame, couple hours away.

  Plan is, get there and back in the van, the one parked two blocks away. There is a set of panels inside, with magnets—Cook County General Hospital, Little Sisters of the Poor, Leukemia Hospice Service, Joe the Cleaner. Little joke, that one. Pick one out. Slap it up. No one is gonna give it a ticket. Park near the place. Walk on over. Do the job. Drive away. Easy.

  Got a plan. No reason to be careless. No excuse.

  Review the objectives:

  Do not get caught

  Do not get seen

  Leave nothing behind

  Hit the target

  Do it at the right time

  Avoid civilians

  Walk to the trunk in the closet. Who to be? North Loop, late at night, from the outside, in the snow. Narrows it down some.

  Here is one. Workingman? Watch cap, plaid coat, lunch bag. But what’s he doing up on Lincoln? At night? In the snow? No.

  Next? Officer, some kind? Police, Fire, Parks, you name it. Got them all.

  Always the same pluses, the same minuses, this one. And besides. Been saving these.

  Here is one. Could be the bag lady. Not too conspicuous, common enough. Dirty, messy. People do not want to look at her. Invisible.

  Have not used this one in a while. Could work.

  Open the wall safe. Pick a weapon. Close range, line of sight, one shot. Has to go through a pane of glass. And glass, not that other stuff, what is it? Plexiglas. No rifle, no shotgun, no scope, no sile
ncer. Just a simple pistol. Revolver or automatic? Automatic ejects the shells. Do not want to be trying to find empty cartridges in the snow.

  That pane of glass. Need something with a little oomph. One shot only.

  Here is a big-ass Colt forty-five. Long barrel, big loads. Could stop a horse. Glass? What glass? Maybe too much. Go right through the target. Go right through three people, the other side of the target. Also got three nine-millimeters, a three-fifty-seven. Too much. All too much.

  Here we go. A thirty-two-caliber Police Special. Mr. Smith & Mr. Wesson. Good stopping power. But with the four-inch barrel, not the two. Makes it accurate enough, this range. It is a revolver. Shells stay inside. OK. This is the one.

  9:10 A.M.: Pull back a small flap in the curtains. Look outside.

  Check all perimeters. No reason not to. Snow starting to pile up. Be less people on the street. Less cars. Bad visibility. Van has snow tires. Long as there is no rush? An advantage.

  Strip down to shorts, T-shirt, socks. Reach inside the trunk. First is the bodysuit. Latex. Fastens in back with Velcro. Next the long underwear—dark enough to cover the hair, my arms and legs. Next the panty hose—the warmth feels good.

  Next the dress. Extra touch, really. No one would see it under the coat. But if spotted, extra security. Fits OK. Looser than it used to be.

  9:15 A.M.: Early yet. Sit and wait. Do not want to leave too early, drive around. Get in. Get out. Instructions are very particular: 10:05, no earlier, no later.

  Call comes in yesterday, usual channels. Not my friend, not the Guy Himself. Someone lower down. A messenger. Know the voice, from before. Big-ass guy. Tiny little voice. Says: Here it is, here is the details. Terminate. 10:05. A little picky, you ask me. But no one asks me.

  Do not know why. Do not ask why. Not the one who decides. Just the one who acts.

  Take the time to fieldstrip the thirty-two, oil it, test-fire it. Good action, no problems. Load the rounds—five shells. One is enough. But. You never know.

  9:20 A.M.: Put on the wig, flatten it out. Tape it on. Tie the scarf on top of it. Just to be sure.

  Choose a purse, midsize. Plenty big enough for the thirty-two. Get a pair of gloves, black wool with no fingers. Put them on, over the latex gloves. Fit is OK.