Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  “No, not again!” I screamed. “Just fucking pick a goddamned lane!”

  I was parallel with the bus, and he wasn’t about to move out of his lane for something as small as a cab. Shit.

  I pulled the wheel left and jumped the center divider, swerved all the way toward the curb of the northbound lane to avoid an oncoming Ford, then passed the Cavalier in the center lane, jumped the divider back and pulled up parallel to the bus, leaving a trail of sparks behind.

  I honked at him like crazy, and Ridlin flashed his badge. We edged just in front of him and Ridlin was out of the cab before I had finished braking.

  CHAPTER 46

  The Cleaner

  On Foot in Hyde Park

  Thursday, January 23

  12:35 A.M.: I do not know how they make me but they make me. It is Amatucci. He is calling out to Ridlin. Pointing his busted hand at me and I am wishing the bus would come.

  And what do you know—it does. Get on. Drop the fare. See them jump in the cab. Going the wrong way—this Amatucci has got himself a pair of brass ones.

  I need to disappear. What are they looking for? Workingman, beard, plaid coat. Without those they have nothing. Means leaving behind evidence. Hate to do that.

  Half-block south of 53rd. Next stop a block away.

  Shrug off the coat. Take off the hat. Pull out a black watch cap. Pull the cap on, down low. Roll up the coat and hat. Jam them under the seat. Leather jacket, now. Different look. The beard must go. Not where citizens can see my actual face. After.

  Driver starts to pull over. Two people outside getting on. When the door is closing, jump up, step forward, down the two steps, outside. Facing away, my head low on my chest.

  The bus edges out into traffic. I walk alongside it. One car, two cars, a van. I get behind it, squat down. Reach up, find the corner of the beard. Work it free. Ditch the beard under the van. Look through the windows for that big black Checker. There they go. Swerving in and out of traffic. I look away and head north to the corner, west along 53rd. Need to get out fast.

  This is not good. I am wearing my actual face, and I never go out with my actual face.

  CHAPTER 47

  Vinnie Amatucci

  At Akiko’s Place

  Thursday, January 23

  That night I ended up hanging around Akiko’s place. I’m not sure how she heard that I was cooped up at the police station all day, but when I walked out the door, she was sitting there in her beat-up old Buick, waiting for me. I walked around to the police lot and got my cab, and she followed me to the Fat Man’s stand. I got into my own car, she took off. I gave her a five-minute head start and drove up to her place, throwing up a couple of amateurish evasive maneuvers along the way.

  I was starved, and, of course, she had almost no food in the place. She finally scrounged together a fried tofu, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on some kind of multigrain bread and I wolfed it down. It wasn’t bad, considering it was tofu, but by that point I would have eaten the linoleum off the floor. As soon as I was done inhaling the food, I walked her through it.

  They had taken down the IDs of everyone on the bus, put a CTA police officer at the wheel, and driven us all downtown for questioning. Landreau and Ridlin and I took the Fat Man’s cab. The main question was who got a good look at the guy, and what exactly he looked like. They had two sketch artists there, a male and a female, circulating among the crowd with these computer tablet things, and the first one, the guy, would draw what he heard you describe; then the woman would eventually come along and draw what she heard you say. It was a little weird; you’d think you had nailed it with the first one, and you’d look at the drawing and say to yourself, “Yeah, that’s him,” and the second artist would come along and would do something entirely different, and it would also look right somehow, even if it didn’t look much like the first one. Another lesson in the subjectivity of experience.

  I kept having this feeling that he was familiar from somewhere, but all my drawings of him were mostly of his back, because that’s most of what I saw from my angle. I’ll tell you, I never knew how many different ways you could draw a back—how broad are the shoulders, how narrow is the waist, how long are the arms, and do they turn out or turn in or hang straight?

  I had a clear image of the coat, and could visualize every color, every line, and spent a lot of time describing it, which turned out to be pointless because he had ditched it and the cops had found it. I also kept reaching for an ephemeral sliver of an image of his face, something that felt like it was there, just out of reach, but after a while, I just couldn’t say. I mean, the guy had a coat on, he was facing away from me 90 percent of the time, and I was mostly preoccupied with Landreau freaking out and Ridlin stalking the parking lot. But I would let them draw what they drew and then say, “No, not like that, more like this,” and they’d go back in and change it and I’d say, “Yeah, well, not quite so exaggerated,” and they’d change it back a bit. It was all computerized, so there wasn’t any erasing, in the traditional sense of the term, but they could do it freehand, like an actual artist would, using the tablet and a stylus. They each started out in pure black-and-white, and added shading and color later on, building it up a layer at a time.

  We were all supposed to be sequestered and neutral, but there was no room to isolate all forty-something of us, so you couldn’t help but overhear snatches of conversation. Some people were very definite about it—“No, No, No. Not like that at all. His nose was much more plain than that,”—while others were a little less sure—“Well, that could look like him, I mean, in a certain light, at a certain angle…”

  You could see that the artists were making multiple passes at people with a purpose. It’s all basic psychology. Some people do better at recall; they can tell you what they saw, or at least what they remember they saw, without much prompting. Others are better at recognition; they might not consciously remember anything off the top of their heads, but if you give them three drawings, they can say, “Well it definitely wasn’t Number 2.” It’s as basic as the difference between fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice.

  As to Landreau, he wasn’t denying he recognized the tapping, and he wasn’t confirming it either. I had the sense that Ridlin could have pressured him—thrown him in an interrogation room with some unfriendly detectives—but he didn’t. I think he was as spooked by Landreau’s reaction as I was.

  When we got to the end of the first round, the two artists huddled together in another room and the cops went around and got us all coffee and soda and whatever. We waited a while and they came back in and showed us what they called a “consolidated version” of the guy, and I have to say, it looked surprisingly familiar, even the face, and that was kind of eerie.

  Then Ridlin walked in carrying a plastic bag, and showed us the beard, which they had found somewhere near the 53rd Street stop. He couldn’t take it out of the bag—they were still checking for fingerprints or fibers or DNA or whatever—but it looked right. So he posed the question to the sketch artists: what does this guy look like without the beard and mustache?

  They went off to their side room again, while Ridlin went around to everybody, trying to find out if anyone had looked out of the window and seen him taking off the beard. No one had. I was a little stunned, myself—it had looked real enough to me. But, like I said, I had only had that one fleeting glimpse of his face. The sketch artists asked a few people to come into their side room, one at a time. I wasn’t one of them.

  After another hour, the artists came back in with three drawings of what they thought the guy might have looked like without the facial hair. Actually, by this time, they weren’t drawings but electronic portraits, done up in color and laser-printed on nice glossy stock. They passed sets around to everyone there, and we all started to debate which one looked the most like him. For some reason, they made no pretense of sequestering us this time around. They hadn’t even randomized the letters they used to label them—it was just A, B, and C, and everyone h
ad the same A, the same B, and the same C.

  None of the pictures were pictures of his back.

  For me, C resonated, somehow, just a little “click” from my unconscious when I saw the picture. I didn’t know why; it just did.

  Most of the rest of the group liked B, and hardly anyone thought it was A. Ridlin thanked everyone, gave us all free passes for work and vouchers for bus fares and lunch, and we all dispersed. All except Landreau, who stayed there with Ridlin.

  As I finished the telling, Akiko went to the kitchen to pour some more tea. I was wishing for a cup of coffee, but she didn’t have any. I was also wishing for a coat hanger to reach inside my cast and scratch the back of my left hand, which was making me crazy. I glanced at her open closet, and there were lots of hangers there, but they all looked like wood—cedar, in fact. Why you would hang a collection of black T-shirts on expensive cedar hangers is beyond me, but that’s Akiko. I went into the bathroom, took a leak, washed my hand, and then had some trouble zipping up; one-handed, it’s not easy.

  As I was working my way through this maneuver, I heard a key turn in the main door, then another key, then heard the door open, and close.

  I dropped to my knees, looked through the bathroom keyhole, scared of who I might see. Was it him, the Godfather? One of his henchmen?

  I heard Akiko scampering in from the kitchenette, then heard her stop in her tracks, then walk forward two steps.

  It was Laura, in the flesh, and her flesh was as lovely as ever. They embraced. I made a show of turning the water faucet on and off and then rattling open the bathroom door.

  She looked at me, up and down, and said to Akiko, “Well, look what we have here.”

  “Nice seeing you again, too,” I mumbled.

  “Vince was at the police station this afternoon, all day,” Akiko cut in. “They think they got a look at the guy, like, the one who’s been stalking the band? They had two sketch artists there and they had a whole bus full of people trying to make up a drawing of him. So I met him there and he followed me back here.”

  Laura arched her eyebrows.

  “I didn’t think it would be safe for him at his place,” Akiko said, her eyes cast down toward the floor.

  “Was Vince the one who identified him?” Laura asked.

  I jumped in. “Actually, it was Jack Landreau,” I said.

  “Jack Landreau?” Laura snarled. “And you believed him?”

  I looked at Akiko; she was looking at her shoes.

  “As it turned out, the guy who he, uh, identified, got on the bus. We got in my cab and chased the bus, and by the time we caught up with it, he had gotten off.”

  “Let me see if I’m following this. A man gets on a bus, and then a man gets off the bus, so that man must be some kind of mass murderer? Because Jack Landreau said so?”

  “I wouldn’t add the ‘must be’ in there,” I said. “But between when he got on and when he got off, he ditched his coat and his hat in the bus—”

  “Sounds like he was forgetful, not dangerous—”

  “And he ditched his false beard and fake mustache, too,” I added. So there, bitch.

  I couldn’t figure out why she was being such a shit—the tone of voice, the attitude. It was all-of-a-sudden-Hello-and-go-fuck-yourself. What, did she think I had something going with Akiko, by myself? Right. First, Akiko is jealous because she thinks I have something going on with Laura, then Laura is jealous because she thinks I have something going with Akiko. That’s me—all the women think I’m such a stud that all the other women must be fucking me. Give me a fucking break.

  I didn’t say this, but moved over to the futon and flopped my ass down. I reached into my kit bag and started to fill the pipe. My thoughts were getting a little yang, and it was time to yin them out a little.

  “Can I get you some tea?” Akiko asked her.

  “Sure,” Laura said. “Japanese gunpowder?”

  Akiko nodded.

  Laura looked around, then came and sat down next to me. I made a point of not looking at her, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed that she was wearing all black, just like Akiko. I also noticed that hers was silk and fit a lot tighter.

  “Are you sure that whoever it was didn’t follow you over here?” she asked.

  I looked over at her. “I didn’t think that with forty people trying to draw his picture, he’d be waiting for us outside 1100 South State Street, but, just in case, I had Akiko make a show of following me to the cabstand where I left the cab, and got back in my car. I waited ten minutes, took a very indirect route here, parked a couple of blocks away and walked in the back way.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “It probably wasn’t perfect,” I said, “but still…”

  She nodded.

  I reached out to her with the pipe, “Would you care for some, uh, tea?” I asked.

  “Why, Vincent, you are so chivalrous,” she said. She took the pipe, I fired up the lighter and held it for her, and she took a long hit, and then another. She didn’t smoke it delicately, but sucked it down in great gulps, and held it in like an experienced pothead, not exhaling until there was almost none left to trickle out.

  I took a hit myself, then passed it back. She took the lighter as well this time, and fired it up. I had no doubt that she would be equally practiced with a line of cocaine or a spike of heroin.

  “How about you?” I asked.

  “How about me?”

  “I would imagine that the people watching you have more resources at their command than the one guy who may be watching me. How’d you get away?”

  She took a hit, passed it back, nodded. “You’re right about that,” she said in a low dope-whisper. “The last time, I think they wanted me to get away. I really should have known better. This time, they didn’t, so I had to use all my wiles.”

  I must have given her a look, because she jumped right in. “No, not those wiles. But I did have to get creative—slipped out with the help, went by foot to a CTA stop, took the train west for a couple of stops, switched to a bus, walked here kind of backward, and came in over the fence.”

  I gave her an approving glance.

  “I have some experience at this,” she said. “You could say I had a sheltered childhood.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. I grabbed the pipe and took another hit. It wasn’t the pot that was confusing me; it was her. I felt awed by her, and attracted to her, and a little bit scared of her. Not just by her father, the mob and all—yeah, that was scary enough—but by her, all by herself. Usually, once I’ve been with a woman, that way, these kinds of nerves seem to go away, especially when it’s been good. Not with Laura.

  Akiko came back with the tea. She hooked a little table with her foot and dragged it in front of the futon, placing the tray on top. She knelt next to it and poured the tea. It felt like some kind of Kabuki moment. It made me a little uncomfortable—I hadn’t rated a table, just a mug—but Laura seemed at ease with it. She slumped back on the futon, letting herself be served.

  When Akiko was done pouring, she came around the table and sat down on the other side of Laura. She took her hand, then, and it struck me that they probably hadn’t been together since the night I was there last, and that had been, what? A week? They had seen each other at the Casbah, but that had been in public, and it hadn’t ended too well. Laura made no move toward Akiko, but let herself be caressed a little.

  “So, what does he look like?” she asked. “This guy?”

  I held up a hand, my bad one, reached into my coat with my good one, and fished out the sketches of “The Workingman.” I laid them out on the little table, in order, first the Beard, then A, which nobody bought, then B, which most people liked, then C, my own personal favorite, kind of fanning them across.

  I looked over toward Laura to grab back the pipe. Her hand had gone up to her chest, her mouth was open, and her face was turning white. It was the same gesture her mother had used at the
Casbah.

  Akiko put down her teacup and knelt in front of Laura, holding her hand, the one pressed to her chest.

  “Laura, do you know one of these men?” she asked.

  Laura turned slowly and looked at her, and nodded slowly, swallowing.

  I picked up the four pictures and riffled through them. “Which one, Laura,” I asked. “Which one do you know?”

  She glanced past the Beard, past A, looked for a minute at B. When her eyes settled on C, her hand went back up to her chest again, and the rest of the color drained from her face.

  “He looks much older,” she said, “but I guess he would. And there used to be a scar through the middle of his left eyebrow, but I guess it grew in or he had it fixed or…” her voice trailed off, almost wistfully.

  “Laura,” I asked. “Who is he? How do you know him?”

  Se looked at the picture again, then turned to look at Akiko.

  “It’s over, baby. I’m so sorry. He’s going to kill us all.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Ken Ridlin

  At Headquarters

  Friday, January 24

  You would think I just figured after all these years out how the Chicago Fire really started. Not just how it starts but who starts it. Not just who starts it but why. Not just why but with which match. The whole HQ mobilizes to handle the witnesses on the bus, the way we do. A Red Ball. A Full-Court Press. An All-Hands. Different people call it different things. It’s a routine, and we fall into it like a bone-tired man into a soft feather bed.

  Me? I am pissed. If I really stay with Landreau, back at the lot, work him, give him some room, get him to talk, maybe I nail this guy. Maybe I crack open a couple dozen of unsolveds. Maybe I get back to where I was, once. But no. I have to play the hero. Pull out the gun. Scan the area. One minute of quiet conversation, he tells me. Maybe. But I couldn’t give him ten seconds.