Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  Better. A little better. If a little is good, a little more can be better, so I had a little more.

  I thought I’d head down toward 51st Street. There was a shopping center there; maybe I could pick up a grocery shopper, or a bus rider who was tired of waiting in the wind. Maybe I could pick up some lunch. I checked my watch; it was almost noon.

  I pulled back into traffic, headed east, and who was there, straddling both lanes, but the gray Chevy. She was in the middle of the road and she was backing up. Backing the fuck up!

  I hit the brakes, pulled over to the curb next to a hydrant, and stopped to wait her out. “Free entertainment,” I thought. “Not for the first time, and definitely not the last.”

  A city bus came roaring up from behind us and she yanked it into drive. The bus swerved around her, edging into the oncoming traffic, leaning on his air horn. She jerked it into reverse again, and got diagonal. If she kept this up, she was going to be broadside to the flow of traffic.

  She sat there, not moving, for close to twenty seconds. It was pure dumb luck that not a single car came by. Finally, she lurched into the oncoming lane, got straightened out, and started twitching back to the right. Not all the way, mind you, but a little. I pulled out behind her, giving her lots of room. She kept making turns, all at the last minute, with no signal ever; a right, a left, straight two blocks, a left, a left. “What the fuck is this?” I mused. “Slalom driving?”

  Two more blocks and damned if she didn’t turn right into the parking lot of the shopping center I had been heading for, a strip mall off 51st Street, across Lake Park from the elevated tracks. She wandered down one lane, headed down another the wrong way, found two spaces open together, and pulled in diagonally across both of them. I had been planning to park next to her; instead I pulled into a space facing 51st. I got out, closed and locked the door, walked over, and, wearing my best hundred-watt smile, rapped on her window.

  She looked up at me in surprise, then rolled the window down.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” I said. “If you don’t mind my asking, what the fuck?”

  She was looking up at me, her brow wrinkled like I was speaking Martian.

  Sometimes you wonder if there’s even a point.

  I reached in the window. She jerked backward, her hands curling up in front of her. I smiled, leaned in, and pointed at her directional lever. I smiled at her, said, “Now, this little stalk here is called a directional signal. You push it to the right, a little blinky arrow comes on pointing right,” I demonstrated. “You flick it to the left, a little blinky arrow comes on pointing left.” She sat there, mesmerized by the flashing lights.

  “Some drivers use this to let other drivers know where they’re going.”

  She was still looking up at me.

  “But not you,” I said. A half smile was competing with a look of confusion on her face.

  “Well, you won’t be needing this, now will you?” I reached for the base of the lever, got it in a nice tight grip, and yanked it out by the roots.

  It was kind of beautiful, the snap of the plastic as it broke free of the housing, the sight of the wires all red and green and black as they pulled free, the frozen look of horror on her face, her hands coming up to her open mouth, as I came away with the stalk in my hand. She looked at it carefully, as if it was the first time she had seen such a thing. Maybe it was.

  I held the stalk aloft, examined it in my hand, and turned toward her one more time.

  “Have a nice day,” I smiled. “And happy motoring.”

  CHAPTER 42

  The Cleaner

  In the Black Limo

  Thursday, January 23

  11:05 A.M.: In the bus thing, what do they call it? Kiosk, that’s it, on 51st Street at Lake Park. Wind is off the lake. Pain is about a five. Not good. Dull ache. Sharp pangs now and then.

  My car is parked, a lot uptown. Take a bus down to here. Disguise: workingman. Scruffy beard. Work boots. Plaid ball cap with earflaps. Big thick safety glasses. With the side shields. Thirty extra pounds under the shirt. Thermos. Greasy paper bag.

  11:07 A.M.: Here they come. A big black limo. Step forward, to the curb. They don’t even slow down. Go past, turn right, around the corner. What the hell? Look to see if they pull over, better spot for a pickup. No. They keep going.

  11:11 A.M.: Here they come again. They stop at the kiosk, wait. Hear the door locks click open. Slide in the back, close the door. Off we go.

  The Old Man, the Nephew. Both again.

  Old Man looks me over. “We went right by you, the first time.” He chuckles to himself.

  Turns to the Nephew, “What did I tell you? Is this guy the best or is this guy the best? I’ve been knowing him all my life, and even I can’t tell it’s him. Jesus Christ.”

  The Nephew gets right to business. “What do you have to report about last night?”

  Like we are having some meeting. Like I am vice president of something.

  Turn it around.

  “What was she doing there?”

  “She was supposed to be there?” the Nephew says. “That was the whole fucking plan—”

  I cut him off. “Not Laura. Her mother.”

  The Old Man slides forward. His eyes coming out of his head. “Amelia?” he says.

  Nod.

  “Fuck,” the Old Man says. “Fuck fuck fuck. What was she doing there?”

  “Wait a minute,” the Nephew says. “Walk me through it, step by step.”

  “Band plays a set. Starts another. The middle, Laura walks in. Takes over a section of the bar. They finish the second set, she is cheer leading. Amatucci, the piano player, at the bar, is near her. Between sets? They come over to see him, get a drink, whatever. She hugs them all, kisses them all—”

  “This is getting ridiculous,” the Old Man says. “We start this out as a simple little thing, and now look at what we’ve got.”

  “ ‘She kisses them all’?” the Nephew says. “Every one of them?” I nod. “Then what happened?”

  “Middle of hugging the last one in line? Amelia walks in, reaches over, belts him, grabs Laura by the hair, hauls her out of there. The end.”

  “The right hand?” the Old Man asks. “She’s got a hell of a right hand, that one. ‘Coulda been a contenduh.’Wait, who’d she hit?”

  “Piano player,” I mutter, “Landreau, the new guy.”

  Zep is watching, too close. The way he does. Sees something.

  “Do you know him?” he asks.

  It is all coming down now. All coming down. A ringing is starting in my ears.

  “Could be I know him. Could be I do not.”

  “What makes you think you might know him, my friend?” the Old Man asks.

  He is looking right at me. He is waiting. He will wait all day, he has to. It is what he does.

  “He is missing a finger, right hand. He has got nine fingers.”

  The Old Man stares harder. Lips are set tight in his face.

  “My friend,” he says, real quiet. “Which finger?”

  Cannot stand to look at him. I look down.

  “This one,” I say. Wiggle the pinkie.

  He sucks in a breath. Sits back in his seat. Looks out the window.

  A taste of metal, rising in my throat. A sound of wind, rushing through my head. A knife slicing in, behind my eyes.

  It is all coming down. Feel it all coming down.

  CHAPTER 43

  Vinnie Amatucci

  In the Fat Man’s Cab at 51st and Lake Park

  Thursday, January 23

  I walked into a coffee shop to get myself a little caffeine, just to restore the natural balance. The guy behind the counter was Indian, or Pakistani. He handed over the cup, said “A dollar forty.” I love the way they do that retroflex “r,” with the tongue circled up toward the back of the soft palate. I reached into my pocket and slid two dollars onto the counter. He handed me the change, I left a quarter, picked up the coffee, and shuffled toward the door.

 
“Have a nice day,” he called after me.

  Right. And realized I was still holding the turn indicator. Fuck.

  I looked around for the gray Cavalier, and it was gone. I looked for a fleet of black-and-whites, their blue lights flashing, a phalanx of cops kneeling facing the door, pointing shotguns at me. They weren’t there either.

  OK, I thought. You seem to have survived this little episode of temporary insanity, Vince, now it’s time to reestablish contact with the mother ship.

  I walked up to the cab, set the coffee on the roof, tucked the indicator under my arm, and reached for the key. I pulled it out and opened the driver’s-side door. I pulled the turn indicator out of my armpit, and for some reason I looked up. Landreau was standing by the passenger door, and right next to him was Ridlin, the cop.

  “Hey, Vince,” Landreau said. A little smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  “Yo, what are you guys doing down here?” I asked.

  “Looking for you,” Ridlin said.

  “Looking for me? Holy shit. A whole city, a couple of million people, a couple of thousand taxicabs, and you’re looking for me and you find me? Holy shit!” I was amazed at the mystery of it, the beauty, the grace.

  “I called the Fat Man,” Ridlin said.

  So much for the mystery, the beauty, the grace. I knew that cab was tagged with some kind of GPS device. The Fat Fuck knew right where I was, at every minute of every day.

  “OK, here I am,” I said. “Why are you looking for me?” I said.

  Ridlin looked up and into my eyes, then down at the indicator, then into my eyes again.

  “You’re not breaking any laws here, are you, Vince?”

  “Me? Breaking laws?” Shit, that was an intelligent riposte.

  “What’s the story with that?” he asked.

  “Story? This?” I asked, indicating the indicator. “I found this when I pulled in, on the ground, and was going to dump it in the trash.”

  I looked over at Landreau. He wasn’t looking at me, he was staring past the front of the cab, toward the bus shelter on the sidewalk, and his eyes were bugging out.

  I looked at Ridlin. He looked at me. We both looked at Landreau. What the fuck?

  CHAPTER 44

  Vinnie Amatucci

  On 51st Street

  Thursday, January 23

  Landreau stopped staring at whatever he was staring at, and ducked his head down, turned away from the street, and started yanking on the door of the cab, trying to rip it open. It was locked, and I had the key in my pocket.

  “Vince,” he whispered, “open the door. Open the goddamned door.” He looked panicky, flushed, but the strange thing was that he was whispering, as if someone might overhear him. What, like Ridlin wasn’t going to hear him?

  “Jack,” I said, “take it easy. What am I going to do, spirit you away while he’s standing here with a gun in his pocket when all I have is,” I looked in my hand and there it still was, “this…turn indicator?”

  “Open the door, Vince,” he said. “Please open the door.” He had his back to the street and was leaning way over, still yanking on the handle. I had never seen him like this.

  I got the keys out, clicked the clicker, and I swear he was inside before I heard the click.

  Ridlin looked at me, his brow furrowed, his mouth hanging open. He reached quietly into his coat and took out his gun, all oily menace, and let it hang from his hand. He turned slowly around, looking at the lot, scanning every car, every pedestrian, every housewife pushing a cart. His head was turning like a gun on a turret, slowly sweeping. Oh, shit. Here we go again. I took two steps over to the cab, pulled the door open, and slid inside. Landreau was still down in the seat, almost on the floor, breathing hard.

  “Jack,” I said. “What the fuck is it?”

  He shook his head back and forth, three times, hunkered a little lower.

  “Look, man, you’ve got Ridlin spooked. He’s stalking the crowd like a lion looking for which gazelle to cull from the herd. He looks like he won’t be happy unless he shoots somebody.”

  He wasn’t responding. I took a shot.

  “Jack, you saw somebody, somebody who scared the shit out of you. Who was it, man? You’ve got to tell me and you’ve got to tell me now.”

  He was holding his right hand against his chest. His eyes were wild, darting around.

  “Talk to me, Jack!”

  And he started snapping his fingers. There was a pattern to it, a rhythm:

  SNAP-two-three-four

  SNAP-SNAP-three-four

  SNAP-SNAP-SNAP-four

  SNAP-SNAP-SNAP-SNAP

  It was one of those old-timey stop-time things, the kind of thing you play when you’re comping behind someone who’s playing a solo.

  I looked around for Ridlin. He had wandered maybe twenty yards away, still stalking. I reached into my coat and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. I took one drag to get it going, tucked away the lighter and took another, a deep one, all the way to my toes.

  And as I exhaled I looked toward a group of people waiting for the bus in the kiosk. There was a guy dressed like a workingman, with a scruffy beard. I didn’t know him, but something about him looked oddly familiar. I looked more closely. He was tapping his foot:

  TAP-two-three-four

  TAP-TAP-three-four

  TAP-TAP-TAP-four

  TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP

  It was the same rhythm.

  I looked over my shoulder at Landreau; he was still in the cab, snapping away. I looked to my left toward Ridlin, he was still stalking. I tried to both whisper and shout at the same time: “Ken!” It came out sounding like one of those guys with a hole in their throat, all hoarse and glottal. But it worked; he stopped in his tracks. “Ken, now,” I said. He started retracing his steps, walking sideways.

  “What?” he said.

  “Landreau…he was hearing a rhythm, and he started to snap his fingers…”

  Ridlin looked like he wanted to take my temperature with the back of his hand, the way my mother used to. I rushed ahead.

  “Listen, I know it sounds crazy, forget it. But the guy over there waiting for the bus is tapping the same rhythm with his foot.” I nodded my head subtly in the workingman’s direction.

  “Which guy is—”

  I could hardly hear him. My head was filling with a loud rushing sound. I turned.

  It was the bus. It had pulled up and the doors were open and they were all filing into it.

  “Shit,” I said. “Shit shit shit.”

  “Get in the cab, Vince,” Ridlin said. “Follow that bus.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Vinnie Amatucci

  In the Fat Man’s Cab

  Thursday, January 23

  We both dove into the front of the cab. I tried to fish the keys out of my pocket with my left hand, but of course that hand had a cast on it, and I jammed my stupid thumb on my pocket and yelped. I quickly switched to my right, patted my coat pocket—not there—patted my shirt pocket—not there—and finally reached into my jeans and found them. I thumbed the ignition key away from the others, jammed it at the ignition and missed entirely, scraping it along the plastic trim, cursing up a storm. The second time it went in, but it was crooked. I took a deep breath, pulled it out slightly, guided it home, cranked the engine to life, threw the shift into reverse, and looked up, my left foot on the brake, my right feeding it some gas.

  “Vince, he’s getting away.” Ridlin said this calmly, just reporting the facts as he saw them. I looked around and saw that I was turned the exact wrong way. My path would take me out the northern side of the lot, turning east; the bus had started facing east but had already turned south on Lake Park.

  “Shit shit shit.”

  I raised my left foot off the brake and slammed my right foot onto the gas, and backed up, and kept backing up. At the end of the one-way row, I swung into a diagonal sliver of a space, switched to drive, cranked the wheel all the way left, and blasted south down the nort
hbound row. Up ahead there were four cars lined up to exit the lot.

  “Hold on,” I said, “evasive maneuvers.”

  I swung the wheel left, gave a quick glance, squeezed between a parking sign and a concrete bench, miraculously missing both, and bumped over the sidewalk and over the curb and into the street, a spray of sparks kicking up where my muffler kissed the one and then Frenched the other. I lurched again and I was on South Park southbound.

  “Oncoming traffic on the left,” Ridlin said. I leaned on the horn and hit the gas again while I lurched the wheel to the right. I heard brakes and breaking glass over there, almost turned to look, but caught something out of the corner of my right eye. It was the first of the four cars leaving the lot that I had so skillfully exited, and he was now in the street, heading straight toward me, about to hit me broadside. I hit the horn again, jerked the wheel to the left, mashed the pedal down, and swerved around him, cutting into the northbound lane, and scaring a white Buick there over toward his right. As he moved, I jerked the wheel again and fishtailed us into a more-or-less straight position.

  Okay, I thought. Not bad.

  I looked up and the bus was all the way down to 53rd, and had pulled over to drop off and pick up. The driver was now edging back into the street, swinging the big behemoth into the center lane to avoid the parked cars in front of the bus stop. I stepped on the gas.

  I zoomed past 52nd and accelerated through a yellow light at 53rd and kept pouring it on. Nearing 54th I caught up with the bus.

  All I could see were the passengers on the left-hand window seats. That left the center seats and the right-hand window seats out of my view, unless I drove down the sidewalk. That could be fun, I thought. In the meantime, I started to scan the passengers.

  “Vince, look straight ahead,” Ridlin said.

  A northbound car was stopped in the middle of the road with his left-hand turn signal on. Fine. Understandable. But it wasn’t facing true north, it was facing north-by-northwest. It was the fucking gray Cavalier! She had begun her turn and stopped, her nose poking into my lane.