Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  “You call it,” I said.

  We stopped at a light. A car turned from the street to our left into traffic ahead of us. “XUQ, a rather infelicitous combination.”

  “Extremely Uncommon Quality, Exotic Unknown Quantity, Exhausted Ugly Queen, Excitedly Unbelieving Callgirl, Exhibitionist Under Cover, Extroverted Unlikeable Killer, Ex-Uncle’s Kisses, Express—”

  “Time. Well done, well done. Eight, on a difficult string like that! You are getting way too proficient for me, my boy.” “Me? I’m Extremely Un-Qualified.”

  It wouldn’t have counted as a score—there was a repetition—but it worked well enough as a pun, and he threw his head back and laughed. He reminded me in that moment of the photos you see of Franklin Roosevelt, riding in the back of an open car, his great big head thrown back in a belly laugh so large you almost believed it was genuine. The gesture was fake, but the laugh erupting from within it was real.

  We continued on like this until we got to California and turned north. He called time-out, looked out the window, and before we knew it, we were there. Our custom was to settle up on the game before he went inside, so we traded piles. I was up eight bucks, not a bad start.

  In ten minutes, all with the clock on, he was back, and it was off to Highland Park, farther north. We played another few rounds, and he started hot but I caught him and passed him and was up another ten when we parked. This address was a house, a big shaded thing that looked like old money. He hopped out with his bag and I waited until he was inside, took a couple of hits off the pipe, opened the window, lit a cigarette, and waited.

  Next was downtown, then the far South Side, then way out west to Naperville, then downtown again. We gave the game a rest for a while—it tends to take it out of you after a while—then played sporadically off and on until his last stop. Just before then, he said to me, “Let’s try one more for you, now…CLP.”

  “Cunt Lover’s Paradise, Clit Licker’s Paradox, Come Like a Panther, Clever Lesbian Paradigm, Clumsy Loose Pants…uh…Can’t Live Permanently, Can Love Perpetually, Crunchy Light Peanuts, Catastrophic Last Period, Certainly Lousy Penmanship, Clearly Lost Perspective…uh…Call Later, Perhaps, Crummy Little Pinch, uh…”

  “Time.” He edged closer to the front seat. “Well, now, Vincent, you seem to have established a new record of sorts. I count thirteen, that’s correct, thirteen phrases in thirty seconds. I’m having trouble seeing how one of us might top that. In the beginning, you seemed to have been running with a theme of sorts.”

  “The lesbian thing?” I said. “Don’t know what came over me, sir. I will say that I have always identified with them, though. They love women, I love women. They like cunnilingus, I like cunnilingus.”

  “And a cunning linguist pervert you are, with thirteen all at once,” he said.

  “That makes fourteen,” I said, and he opened his mouth wide and laughed his FDR laugh, his head thrown back, as he counted out the money.

  On the way back to the Drake he was in a philosophical mood, going on about life, and existence, maybe owing to the fact that I was up twenty-nine bucks. I didn’t join in but looked thoughtful, as if he were maybe on to something. Of course, if I had been down twenty-nine bucks, it might have been different.

  A little after noon I dropped him east of the Drake. He paid up the toll, well over $240, plus a tip of an even sixty, thanked me for a “most pleasant divertissement,” giving it a French accent that wasn’t even close, then said “See you same time next week, young Vincent.” He swung open the door, hauled the case out of the cab with both hands and was gone. I always make it a point never to look in the rearview mirror after him, never to wait around—the guy is a good customer and I’d just as soon keep him—so I pulled right out into traffic as soon as he shut the door and booked up the street back to Michigan Avenue South and headed for Jazz at Noon. Uh-oh, I thought. Jeff was usually there. Well, I’d deal with that when I had to deal with it.

  CHAPTER 19

  Vinnie Amatucci

  Jazz at Noon

  Monday, January 13

  The joint was quiet, not many players were hanging out. I looked around the room carefully—there was no Jeff to be seen. Instead, there was a whole Dixieland band from downstate someplace, with the striped shirts and the arm garters and the plastic straw hats taking up the stage. They were pretty bad, except for the tuba player, a little bear cub of a guy who played his ass off, but they didn’t know they sucked and wouldn’t get off the stand. They must have planned this for months, their one trip to the Big City, and couldn’t let go of it.

  Then a hard-bop fool sax player I’ve met named Horace Starr got on the stand and he went a little out there. The tuba player was still up there—there was no string-bass player in the house—and he kept up just fine. Starr took like twenty-three choruses on some imitation Bird thing, the name of which I forget but which I started thinking of as “Idiocity,” and in the middle of the twenty-second he started to scratch his nuts with a vengeance right there on the stand, and just couldn’t stop, just like his playing. And through it all he played a chorus and a half with only one hand on the damned sax, just overblowing high notes, honking, squeaking. Three assholes in business suits sitting near me in the back, who couldn’t see the scratching and thought this was artistry of the highest caliber, applauded like crazy. Horace finally had to resort to using both hands at his crotch and that was too much of a limitation even for him, so he hopped off the stand and headed for the door, still pawing away.

  “Hey, Horace?” I called out to his fleeing form. “Get it looked at.”

  By this point it was 12:50 and still no Jeff, which was a relief. I had no idea what I would have said to him. The playing itself was pretty dispirited. People were soloing too much and trying to show off. Plus they had gotten into this stupid speed groove, with not a single ballad in over an hour.

  These sessions usually go on until two or three o’clock, but by one o’clock I had had enough. Some things move you forward, some things leave you right where you are. This shit was moving me backward. I turned to get a waiter to settle up, and out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn I saw my mystery man, Jack Landreau, heading out the door, carrying that same weird case with him. I reached for my clip to throw down a five and run after him, but all I had was twenties—I had left my big wad of singles from the Accountant in the cab. I craned my neck trying to see him again, but I had to wait two minutes for the waiter to show up and another three for him to shuffle back with my change. I raced outside but by the time I got there, he was gone, if he had ever been there in the first place.

  O—Hare’s open again, I reminded myself. He’s probably on his way to, where was it, Detroit? And as I thought that, a wave of disappointment rippled through me. I wanted to hear him again, to bring back that spark.

  Outside, the sky had clouded over and the temperature had dipped. My mouth tasted like stale watery beer and fatty pastrami and my mood felt as sour as the aftertaste. I got back in the cab and sped out of there as fast as I could.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ken Ridlin

  Near Fullerton and Halsted

  Monday, January 13

  In the middle of a shift in the middle of the day in the middle of a thought the call comes in and I head right over. I’m already in my unmarked, so I make a right and head up Lincoln. Five minutes is all. It’s a one-bedroom apartment in an old building off Halsted near Fullerton. As I get close I hear the screech of the El overhead and to my right. Rents must be cheap here.

  I pull up, park. We’ve got it cordoned off. I flash the badge and they wave me through.

  Inside, Carter of Homicide is leaning on the door frame, smoking a cigarette with purple gloves on. Three lab techs are scurrying around, taking samples, dusting for prints. There are no uniforms inside. A good sign. It’s under control.

  I come up around Carter so he can see me, and flash the tin again. It’s not necessary. He’s expecting me.

  “Yo, Ridlin. G
ood you could make it, man. We got us one messy motherfucker, here.” He looks at the cigarette. The ash is almost an inch long. He reaches over, hooks opens the right-hand pocket of his brown tweed jacket with his left hand, flicks the ash in there with his right.

  I look again at the gloves.

  “Purple?” I say. “This a fashion statement?”

  “Nitrile,” he says. “Purple nitrile. Got me a allergy to that latex shit.”

  I look around. The techs are swarming like flies around a lump in the corner. I see two feet on the floor, one wearing a blue sock and one not. The rest is blocked.

  “What have we got?”

  “Male vic, thirty-three years old, died of an acute drug overdose, far as we can tell so far.”

  “Yeah, so…”

  The knowing glance—this is news? We get a few a day, and they’re not homicides.

  “I mean what you call a acute drug overdose. Somebody stuffed his nose with blow, highest quality Bolivian, beau-coup shit, and I mean stuffed. His nose was kept mostly closed—marks look like a plain old wooden clothespin, and, no, we ain’t found no clothespins. His mouth was stuffed with a sock—looks like the one off his left foot—and duct-taped shut.”

  “So every time he breathed, he had to suck air in through his nose, and…”

  “You got it…Hell of a way to go, you ask me. Higher and higher and higher and out. There sure be worse ways. If that’s all there was.”

  He pauses, looks at me.

  “But it ain’t.”

  I wait. I let him tell it his way. You learn that on the job.

  “He was, you know, tortured. For like hours. All his toes—broken. All his fingers—broken. Looks like all his ribs—broken. Somebody did not like this motherfucker, and somebody got real personal.”

  “Personal?” I ask. “Like sex crimes personal?”

  “No. Pants are still on, for one thing. But he’s got marks all over him, look to be coming from a fork, one a his own, we think, matches the spacing. And I mean all over him. Not just marks, like he was poked. Marks, like, maybe a half-inch, a inch deep. Plus his eyes, his ears, his tongue, all, you know, removed.”

  “You find them?”

  “ ’Fraid so. Glass bowl in the kitchen. Washed and rinsed and cleaned. Like, you know, specimens, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Time of death?”

  “Hard to say, hard to say. Meat Wagon say none of the wounds was postmortem, he lived through it all, you call that living. Guess is, he started to lose it, to pass out, our guy stuffed some more blow up his nose and brought him around for some more fun. As for when? Maybe eight hours ago, maybe twelve, round there. Sometime last night, for sure. But he took a long fucking time dying.”

  “So somebody not only wants him dead, they want him to know he’s about to be killed, they want him to suffer.”

  “Sure looks likes he did, too. Shit himself, more than once, premortem.”

  “Bleeding?” I asked.

  “You know? That’s somethin—. Not much at all, considerin—. I mean like the fork-wounds and the, uh, the removals. Our guy knew where to stick the fork, so it do hurt, but it don’t spurt.” He chuckles. I flash him the old cynical grin, the one I have honed all these many years.

  He holds his notepad with the right hand because the left holds the cigarette, and flips it so the next page comes to the front. Nice move.

  “They can’t tell ’til they get him under the knife. But they think he aimed at all the major organs. Marks by his liver, both kidneys, spleen, pancreas, gallbladder, intestines. Lot around the pancreas, wherever that is, some reason.”

  He looks up.

  “Best be taking notes, man. Gonna be a short quiz, end of this period.”

  He winks.

  “The guy, the one with the fork, he had to know what he was doing,” I venture.

  I look over. Still can’t see anything. Not that I want to.

  He turns, steps out the door, the cigarette has gone out, toasted right down to the filter. He puts it in the pack that is in his coat pocket. He lights another one .

  I watch. He wouldn’t mind if I bummed one. Wouldn’t think anything of it. There are cops who only smoke at homicide scenes. Covers up the smell. It’d be the most natural thing in the world.

  “Trace evidence?” I ask. “Hair? Fibers? Prints?”

  Carter looks me in the eye. “Look around you. Guy’s a single white male, thirties, you ever see a single white male, thirties, got a place this neat? I mean, ’less he’s a faggot?”

  “Was he—” I start to ask.

  “Nah, man. Pile of stroke books in the closet. Penthouse, Hustler, Juggs, like that.”

  I look around. The apartment, what I can see of it, is spotless. Not a thing out of place. Books lined up exactly at the edge of the bookshelves, stack of magazines all facing the same way, wooden floor looks like it was just polished. Even the rug shows vacuum marks.

  “Are those vacuum marks?” I ask, pointing with my chin.

  “Next-door neighbor thinks she heard one, ‘very a-typical,’ she says, for the vic.”

  “She notice when?”

  “Not exactly.” He flips open a notepad, reads. “ ‘All I know is it was still dark, ya know? I heard it, wondered what the fuck, went back to sleep. I had a get up to go to work in the morning. I never hear the vacuum in there. I didn’t know he even owned one.’ ” He closes the pad.

  “Maybe he was just a neat freak,” I offer.

  “Neat freak? Look around, man. My baby’s momma’s momma don’t keep house this neat, and she thinks it’s gonna get her into heaven. We checked the drawers, kitchen, and bedroom. Fuckin’ mess. Shit just stuffed in there. Silverware drawer? Knives where the forks s—posed to be, shit in there backward. Fridge smells bad, dirty clothes in the closet just laying there. No, the vic wasn’t neat. But our boy sure was.”

  “ ‘Our boy’? Any evidence of the killer’s sex?”

  Carter looks at me again. His eyes are mournfully cynical. “I known some bitches in my time maybe wanted to do something like this to a man, maybe dreamed about it, you know? Of course, the men prob’ly had it coming, you know. But a woman couldn’t do this. Maybe could neaten up this good, but the wounds? In your experience? You think? I ain’t no profiler, but come on, man. Shit, had to be a dude.”

  “A professional?”

  “Sure looks like it, don’t it? Somebody who had his self a plan, knew what the fuck he was doing. Also looks like some kind of message was being delivered, though fuck if I know what it was.”

  We look around. He continues.

  “Hair? Fibers? Prints? Nothing. I mean nothing. He vacuumed, vacuum cleaner’s gone. He swept up and mopped—no broom, no mop. No cleaner or polish under the sink, but you can fuckin’ smell it. Can you fuckin—smell it?”

  I sniff, sniff again. “Pine-Sol, and some kind of lemon wood polish…”

  “Yeah, Pledge, whatever that shit is,” he said. “Just try and find some in here. Zip. No towels, not one sponge, no garbage bags in the garbage cans. This guy cleaned up, and then he cleaned up the cleaning shit. Be surprised if we find one fucking atom off of this guy.” He turns to me. “They find atoms these days?”

  “Don’t know about atoms. Maybe molecules, DNA, like that.”

  “Yeah, DNA. Doubt it. Doubt if he left behind the air he breathed out. Probably took that with him, too.”

  “What’s the connection? Why’d you call me?”

  “You mean, aside from I got nobody here to talk to except the lab rats, and they ain’t big on conversation?”

  The cigarette ash is getting longer. He hooks open the right pocket again, flicks it in. He reaches into his other coat pocket, pulls out a wallet, flips it open to a picture ID.

  “That case you’re working, the drive-by murder at that club last week?”

  “Maybe more like a ‘walk-by’ than a drive-by, but yeah?”

  “A ‘walk-by’ murder?” he says.

  I shrug
.

  “This was your sax player. We found this, ran the name. One prior, but also got us a hit on your interview list. Computer flagged it. Your name came up.”

  He holds up a wallet. I’m not wearing latex gloves. My hands are in my pockets. I lean in, look at the ID. Jeff Fahey—the name is familiar. The lab guys are moving aside. I don’t want to look. We take three steps over. I look.

  I can’t tell. His face is all contorted, plus without the eyes, the ears…

  “You sure it’s him?” I ask.

  “Fingers are all broke but they still got prints. See, we anticipated your question. First thing we did. And we got a hit. One prior, ’bout ten years back.”

  “Cocaine possession,” I mumbled.

  He looks at me. “He shoots, he scores. What’s the word? ‘Ironic’?”

  “That’s the word.”

  “Nothing since. Stayed clean, or just got his self a more reliable connection. Got a job at the Merchandise Mart, some kind of broker’s assistant, some shit. Plays in this band, his off hours. Guess neither one paid too good, the look of this place.”

  “Or he stuffed most of it up his nose.”

  He nodded.

  “The rest of the neighbors,” I ask, “they see anything? Hear anything?”

  “Aside from the vacuum? Nothing. Wait, one guy said he thinks he saw a cleaning van parked outside. He’s on graveyard shift, left around 10:45 P.M.”

  “Name? Plate number? Model…anything?” I say. “Pretty please?”

  He consults the notepad again, flips another page. “ ‘White…not new…picture of a mop and pail, Something-or-Other Cleaning,’ he says.”

  “We could bring him in, let the hypnotist have a crack at him,” I venture.

  He looks at me. “You believe in that shit?”

  “Doesn’t matter if we believe in it. Only matters if the subject believes in it,” I say.

  He tilts his head. “Got a point there.”

  We stand still for a minute, two minutes, his eyes looking at the floor in front of him, mine flicking around the room. He steps outside, grinds the cigarette into the heel of his shoe.