Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  I finish up and flush, and use the sound to mask closing the cabinet. I turn on the water in the sink and peer behind the shower curtain. Again, nothing. Soap, shampoo, conditioner, a disposable razor, that’s it. This lady could pack for a weekend with nothing but a handbag, which reminds me, I haven’t seen one of those either.

  I run my hands quickly under the water, shake it off, and rub my hands on a hand towel.

  When I come out, I grab my coat, hand her my card, and tell her to call me if anything comes up, if anything comes to her, anything at all. She nods. “Thanks for your time, Ms. Jones,” I say. She nods again, a small figure dressed in black, coiled around her cup, and unlocks the door, opens it, and lets me out.

  Outside the door I mime a few steps softly fading away, and stand near the doorframe. I hear all the locks, snapping closed. I count to three minutes. I wait for the sound of drums, but it doesn’t come.

  CHAPTER 23

  Vinnie Amatucci

  At the 1812 Club

  Wednesday, January 15

  After my third straight day of hauling the cab all over creation, I dropped it off, got my own car, headed to Hyde Park, washed up, changed, headed back to the car and drove uptown. A strange mood had settled over me. Like every block that got me closer to the 1812 felt like the temperature dropped five degrees. Like every block the wind speed increased five knots. Like every block the snow got five inches deeper. There were bright lights flashing in my rearview mirror. I checked the speedometer. I was driving fifteen fucking miles an hour.

  Vince, I said to myself, either you are going to do this or you are not going to do this. You have to choose, one or the other. You can’t fade into some Zeno’s-paradox deal here, going slower and slower until it becomes an infinite regress.

  Fuck it. It was too late to go anywhere else, anyway. And as soon as I thought this, there it was, up on the right. I pulled around the corner and parked in a space halfway up the block.

  The place was packed. Every table was full, most with extra chairs pulled up, every barstool was taken, people were standing between the bar and the tables. There were even a couple of guys standing in the back, between the In kitchen door and the Out kitchen door. I recognized one of them, and did a double take; it was Horace Starr, fucking Horace Starr, holding a Miller longneck instead of his john-son: Whoa, progress.

  I looked up on the stand and Akiko was already set up, already ready. I tried to wave to her, but I was stuck in the crowd, which was pushing me back through the door. I felt like I was being sucked under by a tidal wave, going down for the third time, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to look and it was Sidney.

  “Ride my wake as I clear a path through the rabble, young Vincent,” he said, in his jolly way. He picked his string bass up over his head, shouted “Make way! Coming through!” and lowered it to lance-height, pointing straight ahead. I grabbed the foot peg on the bottom, and we quick-timed it through the crowd and up to the stand.

  Sidney jumped up, bowed to Akiko, and she returned it. I was still standing in what used to be the pit, floor level. I waved and she waved back.

  “Has anyone seen Jeff?” I asked, looking around.

  She came out from around the drums, he sat down at the bandstand, facing me.

  “Were you working late on Monday?” he asked.

  I nodded my head.

  “Tuesday, too?”

  “Yeah, trying to get ahead so I can take off for the weekend. And?”

  They looked at each other.

  “Jeff’s dead,” she said. “Somebody killed him at his apartment, they think Sunday night.”

  Sidney pulled on my sleeve, something a four-year-old would do. “The detective, Ridlin, he never caught up with you?” he asked.

  “Detective?”

  “Paul didn’t call you?” Sidney asked.

  “I don’t know. I was out, and I don’t know if the message machine was on or off; I haven’t checked since…Sunday, I think.” I looked at the two of them. “Do they know who killed him? Why he was killed?”

  “They don’t have much to go on, it seems,” Sidney said. “It’s all rather mysterious.”

  We all stood around for a bit, letting the silence sink in. There was a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t identify.

  “What’s with the crowd?” I asked. “Do they know it’s only us?”

  “So I can infer that you haven’t read a paper since Sunday, either,” Sidney said.

  I shook my head, No.

  “We’ve become something of a cause célèbre, my young friend,” he said.

  “Fucking Tribune,” Akiko growled.

  “My dear, imagine the impact on your self-esteem if the story had been broken by the ‘Fucking’ Sun Times, instead. Do be grateful for small but significant favors.”

  “And they mentioned that we were going to be back here tonight?” I ventured.

  “Mentioned?” Akiko. “Mentioned? I’m surprised they’re not arresting everyone who isn’t here. They’ve made it into a ‘civic duty’ to support us in our time of need.”

  Just then a wave of quiet swept through the crowd, and the bodies parted at the door. The crowd separated and there she was, the brunette in the red dress, from the Airport Marriott, gliding into the room. She looked just the same, except she wasn’t wearing the red dress. This one was yellow, the color of a pale glowing sun drawn by a four-year-old. It draped over her in some places and it fit her tightly in others, and she wore it like her skin. She slinked straight to the corner of the bar. A man, maybe thirty-five-ish, six-two and 250, with a round face and a thin brownish mustache and straggly mousy hair that desperately needed to take a meeting with Mr. Shampoo, saw her coming, ceremoniously offered his seat to her, and stood aside, his mouth open to the wind. She batted her eyes in thanks, then reached out for his arm as he helped her onto the stool. He was admirably steady, and remained fixed there until she settled herself, left leg crossed over right. The she patted his arm, said something quietly to him, and he took two paces back. A guy who must have been a friend of his, a shorter guy with a goatee and a receding hairline, grabbed him by the arm, then slowly wheeled him to the left and ushered him down the bar, people patting him on the back as he walked by.

  As I watched them go, I caught movement beside me, and Paul was there, with Jack Landreau in tow, still carrying that ugly case. Paul looked serious, shook hands all around, and when he came to me, said, “You heard about Jeff? Man…”

  “Just now.”

  “What? You heard just now? For the first time?”

  I nodded. He took my hand again, then pulled me close for a hug.

  When we broke it, I locked onto him, and said, “What’re you gonna do, right?”

  “Right,” he said.

  I turned and pointed to Landreau. “I thought he’d be out of town by now. He didn’t seem to want to stay. What’s the story?”

  “I called him Monday night, after the police came to see me. He took a cab down to Forty-seventh, and we stayed and talked, played a little bit. Vince, the guy has played everywhere, you know what I’m saying? With everybody! Anyway, I told him we could get him some work, and he decided to take the opportunity.”

  “Is he still staying at the Marriott?” I asked.

  “No, we moved him out of there on Tuesday. He’s staying at Rolando’s. You remember Rolando?”

  “Rolando Fitzgerald, the guitar player?” I asked. “Sure, how could I forget?” Rolando had played with us for maybe a month, early on, back in the beginning. He was just money, a beautiful player—way too good for us then, and he’d probably be just a little too good for us even now, although, to give him credit, he never acted that way, not one little bit. “How are they hitting it off?”

  “Jack called me this morning, begging me to come pick him up. Rolando kept him up playing and listening until dawn.”

  That was Rolando all the way, a man whose enthusiasms were all-consuming.

  We were
interrupted by Louie, the owner, who pointed at his watch.

  “How’s the piano?” Paul asked. “Do we need to tune up?” I slung my coat off my shoulders and draped it on the bench. I looked at the piano and remembered. Roger Something had had warm blood pumping through his veins and had spilled most of it on that piano. A cold wind stroked my neck and I shivered, involuntarily. I forced myself to look at it.

  It was a different piano entirely, a Baldwin still, but a different model—they must have traded it in—and it was much better. Louie had put a new rug over the riser, a plush maroon, how ironic, and the window looked different somehow, double-paned? I reached out and played a simple B-flat-major chord, then some octaves.

  Not bad. Not bad at all.

  “Close enough for Indigenous African American Music,” I said.

  I settled in on the bench, and reached over to activate the sound system. I got my Uher and plugged it in, got a clean tape out of my pocket and put a minute of leader on the front of it, all the while tapping the B-flat so everyone else could get set. Sidney took a while, Paul was ready at the go, and Jack blew at his feet so quietly I couldn’t tell if he was in tune or not.

  I looked out at the crowd. Yellow Dress was still there, smoking a cigarette, sipping a martini.

  I turned to Paul. He leaned in, and motioned the rest of us in as well. “No set list tonight, given the circumstances. We’ll just make it up as we go. Start with ‘A Closer Walk’?” He turned to Jack, said maybe five words in his ear, then counted us off and we were into it.

  “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” is an old spiritual. We start it slow, like a funeral dirge, and play a chorus or two that way, then kick it up to an andante tempo and let it swing. Jack picked right up on the harmony thing with the slow dirge at the start, playing behind Paul, and we made the transition to the up-tempo without a hitch. And it was as if we hadn’t stopped playing since Saturday night, we were still in that massive groove. After a group chorus, it was solos. Sidney took a beautiful one, a scant two choruses, but it was just right, like an appetizer that leaves you wanting more. Paul and Jack traded fours again like long-lost brothers, each one going right where the other one led him, then they handed it off to me. I took two quick and interesting choruses, and slid it back to Jack.

  Who played a song. I don’t know how else to put it. He improvised an entire melody that just happened to be based on the same changes as “Just A Closer Walk With Thee,” and it just came out of his horn, straight, simple, and just there. Paul had been comping along, little blues riffs underneath, and he pulled his trumpet away from his lips and listened.

  The second chorus, he improvised around this new melody, and the third chorus he twisted an improvisation around the improvisation, I don’t know how, but it was understated and right. He used the same sign Paul uses to signal the last chorus, then in the last eight bars, cakewalked us into the slowdown back to the dirge, mournful and slow, and we were out.

  The crowd loved it, and gave us a nice round of applause. Paul introduced everyone. I thought he might say something about Jeff—there was a pause there at the start—but he kept it simple and got through it. From there, we went into “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,” then into “Singin’ the Blues,” an old Bix favorite, and it was just swinging. I hadn’t realized how much smoother, how much tighter we could sound.

  This guy Jack was right there, every measure, and his lyrical touch opened doors we had walked right by in the past. The whole two-trumpets thing was a little novel, to say the least, but the way he and Paul were playing together, it didn’t really matter; they could have been playing goddamned penny whistles.

  Paul reached into his case and pulled out some sheet music—melody and chords for some song, “Spreading Joy.” “Can you read this OK, Vince?” he asked.

  “Gee, Paul, I really don’t know.”

  Yeah, this is one of our little jokes. I used to take lessons as a kid, once a week, with a dweeby guy with nasty breath who came to the apartment on Thursdays—Mr. Colonna. And he would have me play the first four or eight bars of each exercise I was supposed to practice on my own, and then send me on my way. Of course, I wouldn’t practice once; instead, I’d be out messing around. And when the next lesson came along, I’d just pick up the book and sight-read my way through it, seeing it for the first time. Fooled the poor guy for over a year. So my problem isn’t can I sight-read, it’s what to do when there’s nothing in front of me.

  This one was in F. The sheet was in Paul’s typical geometric notation, and after looking through four bars I knew I had heard it, some Sidney Bechet two-soprano-saxes number, no doubt transcribed from something in Paul’s estimable collection. Our Sidney—Worrell, not Bechet—saw his copy, set down his bass, held up his hands, ran outside—no coat, no hat; I don’t think he owns one of either—and came running back twenty seconds later with this weird horn, a crazy-looking thing with two bells and four valves.

  He flicked the valves a few times, blew hot air into the mouthpiece, turned to me, and played a B-flat. I played one back, and he was on the money. He turned and wedged his big bear body in between Paul and Jack. Jack gave Paul a look, like “Why not?”And we were off.

  The song is basically this running passage going up and up and up, and then down and down in stages, with three horns playing in harmony through the whole run. Jack played the lead, Paul played a soprano voice a third on top of him, and Sidney played like a countertenor thing underneath them, until they got to the sustains, when he did something to switch the horn and went to a walking bass line, like a trombone. This went back and forth and round and round, chorus after chorus: simply magical. I was comping along merrily. Akiko was kicking the bass drum like it had offended her, keeping an almost military time on the snare. Toward the end, they got into this thing imitating Sidney Bechet’s vibrato, which was just as wide as could be without fracturing, and for a while they all got it, perfectly in sync, and then we wrapped up with one glorious chorus, couldn’t stop, put a coda on top of that, and a quick call-and-response between Paul and Frank, topped by Sidney all over that funky horn, and we were out.

  The crowd went nuts, and Paul reintroduced the band and I segued into “Days of Wine and Roses” as he did, and all of a sudden there was this cop, a motorcycle cop, with the black boots and the leather jacket and the helmet pulled down low over his sunglasses, leaning over between the doorway and me, whispering to me and asking me if my car was license plate VLP-173. I said,“Yeah,” and he said, “Follow me, there’s a problem.”

  So I did.

  And there was.

  CHAPTER 24

  Vinnie Amatucci

  Outside the 1812 Club

  Wednesday, January 15

  The motorcycle cop turned left coming out of the door, away from the window. He twisted around inside his jacket, like he was digging in there for something. A few steps later he was hustling along. The wind was in our faces, snow was falling in fat flakes, and I was doing all I could just to keep up. All I could see of him was his back, leading the way. We got to the corner, turned left, walked up maybe fifty yards, and there was my car.

  The driver’s-side door was wide open, so I went over to it. There was a man in the passenger seat and he was holding a gun. The man was short, but the gun was long, and it dangled at a precarious angle from his right hand. Suddenly there was another man behind me, taller, wedging me toward the door. “Step in and sit down,” said the one with the gun.

  “What is this all—” I started to say, before the one behind me punched me in the right kidney. I doubled over in pain. As I bent over, I could see the motorcycle cop just keep on walking down the block, and around a corner to the left, gone. What the fuck?

  “All right, all right, you make a very persuasive argument,” I said. The one behind me guided me into the driver’s seat, but left the door open so he could crowd in and block me. The guy behind me was dressed in a nondescript manner, dirty chinos and boots and a ratty overcoat, a black watch
cap on his head. The one in the car was dressed in a navy cashmere topcoat and a gold silk scarf and a bowler hat. He seemed to have tuxedo pants on under the topcoat; I could see the stripe. He was smoking a cigarette with one hand while he played with the gun with the other.

  He said, “Place your hands where I can see them, please. One on top of the steering wheel, the other one on the roof of the car.”

  This seemed to be a somewhat odd arrangement. I mean, why not both hands on the steering wheel, or both hands on the doorjamb, or both hands on the dashboard or wherever? I was going to ask for some clarification, but he was waving the gun around in little figure eights a bit unsteadily, so I complied.

  “All right,” said the one with the gun, “let us proceed. We need you to tell us all you know about who—”

  But he never got to finish the question, because right then the one outside the car shut the car door on my left hand, just reared back and slammed it, hard.

  “We need fucking answers,” the Big Guy said, “so don’t fuck around with us,” he growled. I didn’t really hear him clearly because I was busy trying to scream. My mouth was in a big O and air was whistling out of it. There was no sound. But it was early yet.

  “Excuse me, but what precisely are you doing?” the one with the gun asked, leaning forward and around me. “I’m in the middle of asking him the question, the very first question, and you—what, may I ask, are you doing?”

  “This is just to show you we’re not going to put up with any bullshit, here. We need fucking answers and we’re fuck-ing gonna get them, you got me?” the Big Guy said to me.

  Pain had taken away my voice. I was holding my left hand up and away from me, too scared to even look at it. It was throbbing. I considered moving my fingers, but was too afraid to try.

  “Well, now, there’s the pitfall with your methodology right there,” the Little Guy said to the Big Guy behind me. “Now he can’t even talk because you went and broke his hand before I even asked him the first question. Do you see this? Are you paying attention? All he can do is nod. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get information from somebody when all he can do is nod? Do you? Do you? Are we supposed to just randomly ask every name we can think of and watch him nod yes or no? Does this sound professional to you? Does it sound efficient?” He turned to me and said, “The things I have to put up with. You wouldn’t believe…”