Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  I turn to Ali. We rise. The captain pushes up out of his chair.

  “Oh, David, that reminds me,” he says. “The car, the car on Saturday night, the Mercedes limo with the out-of-state plates—we ever get anything back on that, from, where was it?”

  “Wisconsin. It was Wisconsin,” Ali says. “No, their system is down, some techie thing. They won’t have that for us until at least tomorrow, the day after.”

  There it is. A confirmation. We know whose car it was, we know what she was doing there, but we don’t know officially, and we don’t want to know officially.

  “Anyway. You’re gonna get this guy, Ken, I just know you are.”

  He sticks out his hand, engulfs mine with the two of his. Gives it two firm pumps and an extra grasp. He leans forward.

  “You’re doing a great job, Ken. It’s great to have you back. You be taking it easy now, you hear? And watch your back. If they come at you, they’ll come at you from the back. That’s the way they do it.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that,” I say. Right, I think. From the back. The way he did it.

  Nothing but smoke and mirrors. If it’s not the smoke that gets you, it’s the mirrors.

  CHAPTER 60

  Vinnie Amatucci

  In the Fat Man’s Cab

  Monday, January 27

  By eight-fifty we had made three stops, one out west, one on the South Side, and one up north. I was letting the Accountant win at license-plate poker and he was in a fine mood. Then, on the way back to the South Side again, I hit a run of undesired luck.

  I was looking to get him comfortable, a little bit ahead, but not too noticeable. But he was calling the plates for me, and he pulled out an “AL.” Two letters only. I couldn’t help myself.

  “A Loan, Any Left, All Longer, Amazing Linguist, Ass Licker, Aardvark Love, Artichoke Lover, Alcoholic Liqueur, Absolutely Lovely, Affected Lisp, Astounding Lies, Astonishing Lips, Astronomical Levels, Aeronautical Lessons, Astral Learning—”

  “Time,” he called. “Well, look who’s back in the game after a brief respite. Fifteen quick points, and some interesting pairings along the way.”

  “Are you referring to ‘Astronomical Levels, Aeronautical Lessons, Astral Learning’? ” I asked.

  “Actually, I was thinking of Amazing Linguist, Ass Licker, Aardvark Love. You do have the nastiest mind, Vincent.”

  “All the better to beat you with, my dear,” I said.

  A car cut in front of us. We both looked up. It was my turn to call, his turn to play.

  “FCK.” Bad letters, I thought to myself. He was going to get FCK—d, for sure.

  “Uh…uh…Four, uh…Four Christian Knights…Five Cold Killers, uh…Fifteen Classic Kalliopes…”

  Calliopes starts with a “C,” but I let it pass. He was still stuck when the timer beeped.

  “Time’s up,” I said. “Tough letters to work with. That was a three.” I paid up.

  We stopped at a light. The clock on the dash said nine o’clock. I looked down at the phone on the seat to my right. Nothing yet.

  “Time out,” I said. “I have to drive for a minute or two here.”

  “If I didn’t know you better, Vincent, I’d wonder if you’re trying to give me a break.”

  I smiled at him in the mirror. “Why, do you need a break?”

  He waved me off, chuckled to himself, and looked out the window.

  In three minutes we were there, a residential neighborhood, all double-deckers shoulder to shoulder, a few scrawny trees out front. I pulled in at the curb and popped the locks. He slid forward, grabbed his briefcase, said, “I shall return,” and hopped out the door.

  He took five quick strides toward a doorway, and went in. As soon as the door closed behind him, the phone rang. It was nine-twenty. I picked it up.

  “Metro Car Service,” I said.

  “Can you talk?” Ridlin asked.

  “He just went inside. Your timing is perfect.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Southwest Side,” I said. “Vincennes and Eighty-fifth.”

  “I’m downtown. If he goes anywhere north or west I can get there before you do.”

  I glanced to my right and saw the Accountant coming out of the doorway.

  “Here we go,” I said into the phone. “Follow my lead.”

  Before the door opened I was into my rap.

  “But I did submit the trip sheets, goddamnit,” I said, “I left the fucking things where you told me to leave them, man. Just because you can’t find them doesn’t mean it’s my fuck-ing problem. Why don’t you ask the other drivers?”

  He slid the rest of the way in, and I looked up as if in surprise. I was going “Uh-hunh, Uh-hunh” into the phone, and motioned to my watch and held up one finger.

  I listened along, rolling my eyes, shaking my head, for a minute. Ridlin was filling the air with nonsense—“The sky is blue. The temperature is thirty degrees. The humidity is twenty percent. Traffic conditions are normal,” like some reporter on the radio.

  I jumped in. “Hold on a minute, just hold on,” then listened some more. “No, I’m supposed to be making some money for you, and I’ve got a passenger here who needs to be going somewhere and I can’t find out where he wants to go, so hold on a minute, OK?”

  I held the phone to my chest, like I was covering the speaker, turned in my seat, and said, “Sorry, my boss can be an asshole sometimes. Where next?”

  The Accountant chuckled. “Your boss? I could tell you stories…”

  I waited expectantly, neither encouraging him nor discouraging him.

  “454 North Goethe,” he said, pronouncing it in the Chicago style, “GO-Thee.”

  “454 North Goethe it is,” I said, the phone an inch away from my lips, my voice plenty loud enough for Ridlin to hear. I put the car in gear and headed back into traffic. I put the phone back up to my ear.

  “Listen, I gotta run. Can we talk about this later? Would that be OK?”

  “4-5-4 North Goethe,” Ridlin said, almost a whisper, and clicked off.

  CHAPTER 61

  Ken Ridlin

  On Goethe Street

  Monday, January 27

  I park just past the target location on Goethe. I am early. I sit back and wait.

  Five minutes pass. I focus on not falling asleep again.

  I hear a car coming up behind me and check the side-view mirror. It’s Amatucci in that big black cab. I hunker down while they pass. I count to ten, then sit up in the seat and peer out.

  The cab stops, and a guy gets out. A little guy, five-three, five-four. Can’t weigh more than 140, soaking wet. Dark gray topcoat, black fedora, light gray gabardine slacks. And the shoes, those white ones with the black on the toes and in back.

  He goes up to the door at 454, rings the bell. Someone comes right away, lets him in.

  I get out of the car, walk to the corner. The wind is coming in from the west.

  All it takes is a minute and he is back out the door and down the steps. Here we go. I reach into my jacket pocket, get my shield, clip it onto my breast pocket, cover it with the lapel of the overcoat. I take out the gun, holding it down against my side.

  Amatucci turns his signal on, edges into traffic. I start into the street, like I’m crossing. He brakes. I turn, hold up my hand. He rolls the window down, sticks his head out.

  I flip the lapel over, show the badge. “Police business. Open the back door.”

  He pops the locks. I step to the back door, open it up, get in.

  “Drive,” I say.

  “Yes, sir, officer,” he says. “Where to?”

  “Take a left, go two blocks south. Then pull over.”

  He does, and we stop. The Accountant is holding onto his briefcase like it’s a defibrillator and he’s having a heart attack.

  I turn to him.

  “Open the bag.”

  “You have a search warrant?” he asks, his voice a little breathy.

  My gun is in my right han
d. I show it to him. “This work?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Oh, sure,” he says.

  I reach across with my left hand and punch him in the nose. It is like popping a balloon. Blood spurts onto his white shirt. He teeters forward, holding his face with both hands. I pull his handkerchief out of his breast pocket, hand it to him.

  “Steady pressure. Pinch it. Hold it there. Don’t take it off.”

  He nods. Holds the pocket square to his nose. I pat him down while we wait for the bleeding to stop. He’s not carrying.

  “Open the bag.”

  He takes the handkerchief away from his nose. Looks at it. It is bright red. Another spurt bounces off his chin and onto his shirt.

  “Like I said, don’t take the pressure off.”

  He nods.

  “Open the bag.”

  He fiddles with the clasps. “It’ll queer the bust, you know,” he says. “Illegal search. You start with that, it doesn’t matter if I confess that I’m the fellow on the grassy knoll in Dallas. You won’t be able to use anything I say, anything I do, anything that happens at all. ‘Fruit of the poisoned tree,’ right? You know all this, right?”

  “I know it,” I say. “I just don’t care.”

  He sighs. He pops the clasps. Plops it down on the middle seat between us. Amatucci has turned around. He’s been wondering what’s in this bag for a long time. He’s curious.

  I look inside. It is full of envelopes. Fat ones. I pull one out. It has an address on it, today’s date. Handwritten. It’s not sealed, the flap is just tucked in. I open it. A lot of cash money. Hundreds, fifties, twenties, nothing smaller, in order from big bills to smaller bills. I count it. Fifty-eight-hundred-fifty in this envelope. Open another one. Twelve-thousand-two-hundred. There must be dozens of these in there.

  He is still holding the handkerchief to his nose.

  “If this isn’t a bust, what is it, a rip-off? Pretty stupid rip-off, Officer Number Twenty-Five-Eighty-Five. Go ahead. You won’t live long enough to buy yourself a cup of coffee.”

  “Not about the money,” I say.

  “So if this isn’t a bust, if this isn’t a rip-off, what the hell is it? You are aware that this isn’t my money, aren’t you? And you are aware of whose money it is, aren’t you? And you’re aware that these people do not take kindly to people taking their money, aren’t you?”

  I turn to him. “A while ago, you had somebody waiting for you, some address on the West Side. Some muscle.” I turn to Amatucci. “What was the address again, Amatucci?”

  He lowers his head, gulps. He murmurs, “Forty-seven hundred block of South Cicero.”

  The Accountant looks up, tries to stare a hole in Amatucci through the rearview mirror.

  “This guy,” I say. “You need to call him out again. It’s not you we want, it’s him.”

  “Careful what you wish for, friend,” he says.

  There is a look of terror there. “Yeah,” I say, “but we still need you to call him out.”

  He turns sideways. “Well, it’s not that easy.”

  “Sure,” I say. “What is it—you call a guy who calls a guy who calls him?”

  “Well…”

  “So call the guy who calls the guy who calls him.” I reach into my jacket pocket, pull out one of those cheap cell phones you can buy at the corner store, which is where I bought it. It’s got twenty dollars of calls in it. Plenty for what we need. And can’t be traced.

  “What do I say?” he asks.

  “Same as last time. Same location, South Cicero. Say the same guy stiffed you. That’s what it was last time, right? He stiffed you?”

  He nods his head, his left hand moving up and down clamped to his nose. I could tell him he can take the pressure off. But it would take the pressure off of him, a little bit.

  “The bleeding’s probably stopped,” I say. “You can lose the handkerchief.”

  Carefully, he pulls it away. The blood has dried to a dark maroon. No more bright red.

  I lean over, hold out the cell phone. He takes it.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “That seems to be your specialty.”

  He dials the number. And I think: maybe he’s right.

  CHAPTER 62

  Vinnie Amatucci

  On South Cicero

  Monday, January 27

  I dropped Ridlin back at his car and the Accountant and I drove up in the cab. He was hunched over in the corner, where I couldn’t quite see him, his chin in his hand. I pulled over on Cicero as soon as I got to it, about twenty blocks north of where we wanted to be.

  “I don’t think we want to be seen talking when we get there,” I said. “It might look like we’re plotting.”

  “When do we get around to the plotting part, dear boy?”

  “Hold on,” I said, and slid out the door. I opened the left rear door, motioned for him to slide over, and hopped in, closing it behind me.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said.

  I reached down and untied one of the Accountant’s shoes, the left one.

  “You see him come up, you get out, you look down, you see your shoe is untied. You motion to the guy and lean down and tie it. That’s when Ridlin is supposed to show up.”

  “And you?” he asked. “What is your role in this caper, Vincent?”

  “My role is to get us there, and to get us out of there, and to keep my head down.”

  He nodded. “Affecting disaffectation, as usual,” he said. “How typical.”

  Gee, thanks for the analysis, as if I don’t know how fucked up this is.

  I pulled out into traffic and drove until I recognized the building, and when I saw an open parking space, I pulled in.

  The space was behind an old Buick, and I left plenty of room in case we had to leave quickly. I put it in park, cracked open the window, and lit a cigarette. I looked in the rearview mirror at the Accountant. He was staring darts at me.

  “Listen. It’s not about you. It’s about the other guy.”

  “Vincent, I appreciate your thoughtfulness about the possible consequences incurred by this situation to a minor entity such as myself, who, of course, you do not really even know,” deep breath, “but if it’s about ‘the other guy,’ as you call him, we may have played our last game of license-plate poker.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  We waited for five minutes, then ten. It was quiet. There was no sign of Ridlin. I was just lighting a second smoke when the Accountant twisted around in his seat.

  “He’s here,” he said. “Keep your head down. Cover your eyes with your hat, and don’t look at him. I mean, don’t even look like you’re looking at him.”

  “OK,” I said, shading my face. I didn’t see Ridlin anywhere.

  He opened the right rear door, and slid out, closing the door after him.

  From under the edge of my cap I could see a pair of legs coming toward the car on the sidewalk from the north, pulling even with the side-view mirror.

  I could glimpse the Accountant in the right side-view mirror; then he dipped down to tie his shoe and I lost him. I caught something out of the corner of my eye, just a blur, and when I swiveled my eyes the trunk of the beige Buick in front of us was opening and Ridlin was rolling out and with two steps he was right on top of the guy, pressing a gun to the back of his head. He reached behind himself, murmuring in the guy’s ear, and just like that he cuffed both of the guy’s hands behind him. He leaned him against the cab and patted him down, taking away two guns and a knife and a set of brass knuckles. Ridlin loaded it all into his pockets, then walked him into the back of the cab. The Accountant got in the front. I looked at Ridlin.

  “Holy shit!” I said. “I don’t fucking believe it! It was exactly like you said!”

  Ridlin muttered, “Lucky. Just got lucky.”

  I looked at the guy. He was maybe fifty, fifty-five, five-foot-ten or so and a bit under two hundred pounds. He looked…nondescript. Harmless. He al
so looked like hell. His color was bad and his eyes were bloodshot. His face looked drawn and pale.

  I pulled into traffic, and drove to where we had left my car.

  My car was parked on the right, and Ridlin’s unmarked brown Crown Vic was parked in front of it. There was a space on the left, legal. I grabbed it.

  “Let’s switch cars,” Ridlin said. He turned to me. “Can you leave the cab here?”

  “Yeah, the Fat Man will pick it up, if I call him.”

  I took my keys out, and he reached out and grabbed hold of my wrist. “You take the Accountant. He’s going to threaten you, bribe you, con you. Don’t listen. Just drive.”

  I got my stuff out of the cab and tossed it on the front passenger seat of my car. Ridlin uncuffed the Accountant from the cab and cuffed him into the right rear seat of my Jetta, snapping the free end to the grab handle over the door. Then he moved the Cleaner to his car, and cuffed him to a bar on the back of the front seat.

  At the edge of my awareness I heard the distinctive ring of the phone in my pocket. So did Ridlin, and we listened to it playing its tinny version of the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth.

  Maybe it’s Paul, I thought, checking on why we’re not at the meeting point. Maybe it’s the Fat Man, telling me not to do this. I let it ring.

  Ridlin looked at me. “You gonna get that?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m busy.”

  “Then,” he said, “let’s get going.”

  I locked up the cab and hopped into my Jetta, buckling in and starting it up. Within minutes we were on the Stevenson, with Ridlin glued to my bumper all the way.

  Finally, the Accountant said, “Where are you taking me, Vincent? What do you want?”

  “Like I said, you know, this is not about you,” I said. “This is about someone else.”

  He looked at the floor. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who my ‘friend’ is?”

  I looked down, stared out the window. “I have some idea…” I said. “But mostly, you’re someone who can get to someone we need to get to.”

  There was a pause before he spoke again.

  “You really do not know what a debacle you are about to—”

  He pronounced it “DEBB-ickle.”