Nine Fingers (12 page)
Authors: Thom August
Interviews
Monday, January 13
I spend the rest of the day interviewing the members of the band. I start with Powell, the leader, the trumpet player. He
lives in a high-rise at South 47th and Lake Park, all funny angles, very vertical looking. I park the car, announce myself
on the intercom, he buzzes me in.
I take the elevator up to the 8th floor. The building is in pretty good shape—you can usually tell from the elevators. Here,
they work, and they don’t smell like piss. I show the badge at the keyhole. He lets me in, a tall African American male, thirty
or so, a thick, well-trimmed goatee on a lean, carved face. He’s got a great view from up here, facing east over the IC tracks
to the lake, these big floor-to-ceiling windows inviting you to look out. From this view, you’d never know you’re across the
street from the southern boundary of one of the poorest and most violent slums in the city. That’s Chicago, for you. Cross
47th Street heading north and half the buildings are boarded up, there are crack vials lying in the gutter, junkies skittering
in the shadows. Stay south of 47th and you’ve got Elijah Muhammad’s house, Muhammad Ali’s old house, a classic Frank Lloyd
Wright house, Robie, I think, and the U. of C., all part of Hyde Park, a racially mixed upper-middle-class enclave right in
the middle of the ghetto. Clean streets, good schools, lots of shopping. What’s the difference? It’s the stupid race thing.
Powell leads me to a couch in the living room—it’s a one-bedroom—and I sit facing the lake. He sits catercorner on a black
leather recliner with his back to that magnificent view.
“That your favorite chair?” I ask. Got to start somewhere.
“Well, I’m not sure I would call any chair a ‘favorite.’ ”
“I couldn’t help but wonder. You got this great view here, the railroad, the lake, the boats, and your favorite chair is facing
away from it…”
He lets himself think about that. I let him think about it.
“Well, this
is
where I sit when I’m in this room…”
“It sure is a great view. This was mine, I couldn’t help staring out the window. Bet it costs a bit extra, having that view.”
“Actually, no. If I moved out and someone else moved in, it probably would. When I first moved in it was a federal low-income
housing project. I was a student, and I got in because of that. I’m no longer a student, but I’ve kept the place as the building
transitioned to the private sector, so you could say I’m grandfathered in.” He turns his head slowly, only his head, looks
out the window.
“Did your favorite chair use to face the window, and you got tired of it?”
He pauses, his brow twists together a little.
“I don’t mean to pry,” I add.
“No, I was just thinking. No. Actually, that chair was always right there, virtually the same angle. Not always the same chair,
but always the same spot.”
I get the feeling I don’t want this one to feel too protected. Your introverts? Your quiet types? You have to soften them
up.
“Actually, to complete your ‘investigation,’where I use the view is in the bedroom.” He stands up, walks past me, turns a
corner. I stand up and follow him. He waves me through an open door. There’s a king-size bed on the left. There’s another
floor-to-ceiling window, with an even better view. And right in front of the window is a music stand, and behind that a white
ladder-back chair.
This is where he practices. This changes the whole chair thing.
“I see,” I say. I turn back toward the living room.
“What did you study,” I ask, shifting gears. “Music?”
He was thinking about the chair, or the view, or something. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry. I was asking what you studied when you were at school. At the U. of C.”
“Yes. Right. No. Psychology, not music.”
“Were you going to be a therapist, a psychotherapist? Something like that?”
“No, nothing like that. I was studying cognitive psychology, how people think and reason and process information, how they
acquire and utilize language. I was in a research program. I guess I thought I was going to teach, do research, something
of that sort.”
“Not something to help people? Not some therapy kind of thing?”
A small expression, almost a grimace, crosses the bottom of his face like a shadow. “Not to help people on an individual basis,
no. Just research. We still don’t know enough about how the brain works, the mind works, take your pick, epistemologically,
to be very helpful to anyone, except on the most superficial of levels.”
“Interesting,” I say. I’m taking notes, and I use a moment to add a few words to my pad. Some people, it makes them feel important
if you write it down. Makes them think it’s serious. Must be working. He used a word, I can’t even spell it, whatever it means.
“Well,” I say, “the first time I met you, last…Wednesday…at the 1812 Club, I spoke with the members of the band,
and one was the saxophone player—”
“Tenor-saxophone player.” He cuts in. “Sometimes alto, but mostly tenor.”
“Right, tenor-saxophone player, a Mr. Jeffrey Fahey.”
I look up. His eyes show me nothing.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Powell, that Mr. Fahey was found dead this morning.”
“Dead? This morning? How long had he been dead?”
“The coroner is still running some tests, but sometime last night.”
He frowns. “Suicide?” he asks.
“Suicide, it’s interesting you would say that. What would make you think that?”
“Mr. Fahey—Jeff—was rather self-destructive. He had a history you’re probably aware of…”
“Yeah. All on file. But that was a long time ago—”
He looks away.
I pause, let some time run. “If you’re suggesting that his problem with drugs—cocaine—was more recent than the ten-year-old
bust we have on file, then maybe you better tell me what you know,” I say, firmly.
He nods, shakes his head a few times. He looks up. “Can I get you anything to drink? I’m going to have a glass of water.”
“Yeah, water’s good,” I say.
He gets up. I follow him into a tiny kitchen. It’s very neat. The whole place is very neat, I notice, looking around. There’s
a rack over the fridge. A good single-malt Scotch—Macallan—Jack Daniel’s bourbon, Tanqueray gin, Canadian Club rye whisky,
bottle of red wine, bottle of white. All top-shelf brands. And all mostly full. We’re having water. He gets ice out of the
freezer, a jug of Poland Spring water out of the fridge, glasses out of a cabinet. He pours two, hands me one. Takes a sip,
walks back to his favorite chair, sits down. I sit back down on the couch.
He takes another sip, clears his throat. “The last time I saw Jeff, he seemed to have…relapsed. This was not a rare occurrence,
you understand. He acted…wild…out of control. Stormed off at the start of the second set, smashed his saxophone
to pieces, left without it. It was, I don’t know, shocking, in a way, although it wasn’t surprising, if that’s not too fine
a distinction.”
“Um-hmmm. See what you mean,” I say.
“I always had this image of him as a sort of a man driving too fast on an icy road. He never learned to turn in the direction
of the skid, if you see what I mean, never learned to turn much at all.”
I nod, make notes.
“His playing was like that as well,” he continues. “He would just go off, into his own thing…”
“Like a needle stuck in a groove,” I finish. “Sorry,” I say, “that must be pretty out-of-date.”
He sits up straight, his eyes light up, he grins. He waves to a bookcase on the corner behind him where the north-most edge
of the window meets the wall, and I see there are hundreds, no, thousands of records lined up there. Not cassette tapes, not
CD’s, but records, vinyl LP’s, even what look like old 78’s. I am drooling, thinking about what must be in there.
“I’ve transferred most of this to…newer media, but I still have the originals, so, yes, I take your reference. And yes,
that’s exactly what Jeff would get like, ‘like a needle stuck in a groove.’ Precisely.”
I nod. I let him continue.
“When he was smashing the saxophone, that’s the image that came to me, that he started it with one swing, and he could have
stopped, with only minimal damage. He had made whatever point he was trying to make, but he couldn’t let himself let go of
it until the thing was in pieces, and I mean, in pieces. A sad thing, really.”
“This was when? When he smashed his saxophone?”
“Saturday night, 10:09 P.M.”
“Was this when you felt he might have…‘relapsed’?” I asked.
He looks down at the floor, then peers up at me. “I’m sorry to say that I’ve known a number of cokeheads, Detective. He was
loaded. Not just a little.”There is a touch of sadness in his voice, like he felt sorry for the guy. Like there was something
he could have done. Seen a lot of coke-heads myself. Nothing you can do. Not a damn thing.
“So, I’m curious, why did he smash up his instrument? He was a professional player, semiprofessional anyway. Why throw it
away?”
He pauses again. “I could answer you on a lot of levels, I suppose. The ‘presenting issue’ was that he found himself standing
on the bandstand with his sax at the ready, but no mouthpiece plugged into the neck. I have no idea where it went. He was
surprised by it, too, and frustrated, and took that frustration out on the instrument.
“Look,” he continued, “you’re going to hear that the two of us didn’t get along. We didn’t. I thought he might have a talent,
and he was abusing that talent.”
“He knew you felt this way?”
“Yes. Certainly. I tried to be positive about it, constructive, to phrase it more as a challenge. But he knew how I felt,
how we all felt, for that matter.”
“All of you?” I ask.
“Yes. Definitely.”
“You said there were ‘levels’ to his unhappiness and you talked about two—his job and his playing. Anything else?”
Some people you just have to be patient, let them wrestle with it. Other people need structure. Powell is one of those.
“He drink?”
“Excuse me?” he asks.
“Well, some people with that problem, the powder, they go on to alcohol, or other things. Then there are the ones that just
lose all interest in everything.”
“Yes, anhedonia.”
“Anhe—what was that?” I say.
“Anhedonia. ‘An,’ like ‘anti.’ ‘Hedonia,’ from the same Greek root word as ‘hedonism.’ It’s a well-known syndrome. When people,
as you say, ‘kick’ something, and it doesn’t much matter what it is—cocaine, alcohol, a lover—they often go through a period
in which they cannot get pleasure from anything. Life is gray, dull, flat, uninspiring in all its aspects. That’s one reason
withdrawal is so difficult. Without the treasured object, life becomes lifeless.”
“Huh,” I say. “Have to remember that one.”
Should be easy to remember, since I’ve been living it all these years myself.
“It’s a cognitive coping strategy. You love something more than anything else, you love yourself when you have that something.
Suddenly, you can’t have it. So how do you stop wanting it? You stop wanting anything, turn off all desire. It dims the lack
of possessing the object by dimming all joy.”
“Hunh…” I say. “Interesting theory.”
Theory my ass.
I change the topic, back to the night Fahey went crazy. Did he notice anybody strange at the club that night? Anybody the
same as at the 1812 Club last week? Anybody else in the band acting funny? He tells me he didn’t notice, he plays with his
eyes shut, helps him hear the music better. As far as the crowd, the band, no, nothing jumps out at him.
I admire his view of the lake. I think about the better view in the other room, and the practice stand, and the chair. He
plays with his eyes closed. He never sees it.
We go over some more details about the band, but there’s nothing there. No agent—the piano player does all the bookings. No
after-hours clubs. All of them except for him have straight jobs and have to get up in the morning. No other history with
drugs from anyone in the band, except he drops some hints about some pot, but come on, nobody kills potheads.
And in a few more minutes we’re done. I drain my glass of water, ask him can I use his bathroom, do my business, wash up,
thank him for his time, and head for the door. He shakes my hand, genuinely enough. I notice he has already placed my empty
water glass in a rack in the sink. A neat freak? I think. I look around. The place is very neat. This guy could maybe do the
cleanup up on Halsted, but the murder?
Too early to be making any judgments, I think. Just gather the information, let the pattern form. Do not get out ahead of
it.
Further Interviews
Monday, January 13
Because they are on the list, and because the list is where you start, I spend the rest of the day chasing down Professor
Sidney Worrell, bassist, and Ms. Akiko Jones, percussionist. He lives south and she lives north, but it’s not my gasoline.
Worrell is a professor at the U. of C. Teaches history of science, philosophy of science, like that. Has a big house in Hyde
Park, near the college, half a mile south-by-southwest of Powell. He’s a big man, big all over, not fat but just big, like
a bear. A thick sandy beard covers his face. He’s dressed casually, even for a philosopher: beat-up sneakers that used to
be white, frayed khaki slacks, a blue oxford shirt, short-sleeved. He has got more hair on his forearms than I have on my
whole body.
But I see right away that his guy cannot be our guy because our guy is a highly organized type and this house may be the worst
mess I’ve ever seen. It’s not dirty, not so’s you would notice, but he has got stuff piled up everywhere. Books, papers, magazines,
the
Tribune,
music, records, tapes, CD’s, you name it. There are floor-to-ceiling bookcases everywhere, but they’re so jammed full you
can’t even see what they’re made of. And most of the floor space is taken up with these piles. It takes him two minutes just
to clear off a chair so I can sit down, moving the pile that’s on it very delicately.
There’s a woman buzzing around, small looking. When she scoots by, he doesn’t acknowledge her; she doesn’t say anything to
him.
I look through the piles while he’s rearranging. One pile has mostly philosophy books, but there’s some art books, a chemistry
textbook, and a string of comic books, of all things, thrown in. Another pile is more magazines, some architecture books and
blueprints, and a few computer books. There’s no logic to it that I can see.
When he moves the piles, he’s very particular about where he wants them to go, and shambles around the place looking for just
the right spot to put them down. Frowns, shakes his head. Places them down just so. Go figure.
The guy must be a genius, like they say he is, just to find anything.
When we finally get situated, his conversation is like he’s reading me something off a page instead of talking to me. Very
precise, very clear, unlike his surroundings. Every sentence is a complete sentence, and they all tie together into paragraphs.
We spend an hour going over it, starting with the background. Couple years back, Amatucci and Powell are both in one of his
classes. Amatucci is in it because it was required for his major, Powell is in it just because he is interested. Takes all
the tests, too. Gets an A, doesn’t count. Worrell asks him about it, does he want to sign up for credit for the course after
it is done. Powell says to him, “That’s very thoughtful of you, but it won’t be necessary. It was a very insightful course.
Thank you for your time.” Cool as a breeze off the lake. Following his own agenda.
Worrell is in some brass quintet in the college, and Powell shows up to play trumpet, of course. I ask Worrell what a brass
quintet was doing with a string-bass player in it. He wasn’t playing string bass with them, he says, he was playing tuba and
euphonium.
“How do you spell that?” I have to ask.
“T-u-b-a,” he says.
Serves me right.
He stops the interview to actually show me one, a euphonium, I mean, “a rather rare exemplar,” he says, “of the double-belled
variety.” It’s like some little shrunken tuba but with four valves instead of three and two horns sticking out of it instead
of one, the smaller one pointing forward and the bigger one pointing up. The little horn looks like a sort of midget mutant.
He fiddles with the valves, gets them working, and then plays something on it for me, some classical thing, and the guy can
play the damn thing like you wouldn’t believe. It sounds about the same range as a trombone, baritone, except when you press
the fourth valve, then the sound comes out of the little bell, and it is way higher, a countertenor. I look over, he has got
an electric bass in the corner, a cord running to some amplifier. I ask about it. He says he plays with some rock band, too,
and string bass isn’t their thing.
Neither is double-belled euphonium, I bet.
“As you may well infer,” he says, “I’m a bit of a dabbler, in music as well as in my academic endeavors. I seem to have this
predilection for blurring the obvious boundaries.”
Turns out the guy has two PhD’s, not one. One’s in astrophysics, the other’s in philosophy. Even got an MBA, a business degree
from somewhere, had “some entrepreneurial notions early on around NASA” he puts it, “back when they were actually doing interesting
research.” Couldn’t stand all the colonels. “I got on quite well with the generals, when the colonels would let me see them,
but the colonels were decidedly second-order.” Figures “a more free-form academic life” fits him better.
I bring the discussion back to Powell. Powell gets approached for this jazz band that needs a trumpet player. They also need
a bass player, and he thinks of Worrell. Actually starts with them playing tuba, more old-timey style, but as the band changes
he picked up the string bass, too.
He “picks up” the string bass. Jesus.
Guy’s nice enough, but he scares me. Lot of horsepower there, though he keeps most of it under the surface, covered by the
verbal folderol, which tempts you to dismiss him as some kind of twit. I think to myself: Do not make that mistake.
Says he wasn’t aware of Fahey’s cocaine problem. Wouldn’t know what that might look like, unless he was doing it right in
front of him. Not something he ever “dabbled” in. A brain like his, it would be like putting sugar in a Lamborghini’s gas
tank.
As I get up to leave, I trip over one of the piles and send it sprawling. His eyebrows get frantic, his breath runs ragged,
his neck turns red. He stands with his hands on his hips and mutters that it’s going to take him a while to get everything
back in order.
I almost laugh out loud, but catch myself. I make my voice all serious again. “Now that you mention it, Professor, I’m a little
curious. Nothing to do with the case, but, how do you keep track of all this stuff? How is it all organized?”
He looks up from the chaos at his feet to stare me in the eye. “The system is purely chronological,” he says. “Everything
is categorized by when I read it. I’m afraid I have a mind that works that way, sequential yet nonlinear at the same time.”
I must look skeptical. He adds, “If you actually read through some of the piles, you would find that there’s something of
a theme to each one, however remote. And if you read through all of them, you would see a mosaic of all my little obsessions.”
I believe him. Why not?
Akiko Jones lives in a small apartment up on the North Side, a little north and west of Fahey’s place, and not too far from
mine. Small four-story, the buzzers don’t work, the lock on the main door is broken. As I check the mailboxes I watch two
people push the door in and walk right up the stairs. I follow them in. The names are by apartment number, not by spelling.
There’s a Jones in B, and no other Joneses. Beyond the main door is a stairway leading up to the right. I open the main door,
walk left, go past Apartment 1, Apartment 2, then right again, and there is a door there, no number on it. I open it, no lock,
and there’s a stairway leading down.
I walk down the stairs and turn right. I walk down a long straight hallway with storage lockers on both sides, closed and
cinched with Master locks. I hear a faint thumping sound. Eventually there’s a door, and the thumping is louder. There is
a faint impression in the paint where a “B” used to be. I knock on the door. The thumping stops. A few seconds pass. I see
her spy me through the peephole. I hold up the shield. Then I hear what must be a dozen bolts turning. She opens up a crack,
the chain still on the door. A single woman, these days, you know.
I flash the shield again, she takes a closer look, shuts the door, unhooks the chain, removes the bar, lets me in.
She’s dressed all in black. No shoes or socks. Thin black sweatpants, sleeveless black T-shirt. Her hair is also jet-black,
short. The shirt is cut off just below her ribs, and her stomach is flat, muscled. Six-pack abs, just a hint of flesh to smooth
the edges. Asian eyes, those folds at the corners. You could cut cheese on her cheekbones, sharp and distinct. Her complexion
is a little darker than Asian, though. On her, it looks outstanding. You’re not supposed to say this anymore, but she’s a
looker.
I scan the apartment as she relocks the door. Talk about your contrast. Unlike Worrell’s, this place is naked. It’s a studio,
semi-separate kitchen on the left, open closet and closed bathroom door on the right. I know the type of place. Used to live
in one, same layout as this. She has one of those futon things folded up on the floor next to the wall near the door. Looks
like it doubles as a bed. There’s a small table next to it, black lacquer, with a small lamp, a black candle, and a black
digital clock. Across the room is a huge set of drums in front of a pair of tiny half-windows that face an alley. She plays
facing in, unlike Powell. (As for Worrell, I get the feeling he plays anywhere he happens to be sitting when some instrument
leaps into his hands.) Behind the drums is a stereo, cassette deck, CD, all stacked up, expensive-looking but small. All in
black, of course. I’m picking up a theme here. I get the feeling there is something missing. I look around again, cataloging
things. And it strikes me. No TV. No computer. Interesting.
The floors are wooden, with a high sheen on them. The closet is an open one, clothes hanging neatly inside. Again, mostly
black, and some white. There are two baskets up on top, must be where she puts things she can’t hang up, like socks and underwear
and such. Walls are a stark white, no pictures or portraits or calendars or anything. Except that one wall, behind the bed,
is covered with maps, all kinds of maps, like a collage type of thing. Mostly Chicago, but some L.A., a piece of San Francisco,
a slice of Boston. Glued up or taped up or something, they cover the whole wall, the only splash of color in the place. No
drapes, just thin white blinds covering the ground-level half-windows. And that’s it.
She offers me tea and I’m glad of it. It’s two blocks from where I put the unit to this place and I can still feel the late
afternoon wind up the back of my neck. She gets down a black canister, puts the water on. Scoops out three spoonfuls of loose
tea into one of those French coffee things that lets the beans and the water just mix together, no filter. No reason it wouldn’t
work for tea, I guess. When she reaches up to put the canister away, the shirt stretches away from her, and I catch sight
of her strong left obliques and the lower edge of her left breast.
We go back to the main room while we wait for the water to boil.
Now the question. Where to sit down. She gets the stool from behind the drum set, brings it over next to the futon, asks where
I’d like to sit. Futon’s a little low. I’m worried I might not be able to get up. I take the stool. She lowers herself onto
the futon, legs crossed, back straight. Those washboard abs are not just for show.
We start with background, “Where are you from, Ms. Jones?” and like that. Turns out her father’s African American, her mother
Japanese, met while he was stationed there in the army. She’s the only child. “They were…only married a short while,”
she says. Moved to Chicago, South Side, they split, she stayed with her mother, hasn’t seen her father in years, hasn’t seen
her mother in years either, though she calls on her birthday and Mother’s Day and such. Doesn’t sound like she dislikes either
one of them, just doesn’t need them. Gets me thinking. I look around, can’t see photographs of either of them. Of anybody,
it comes to that.
She got halfway to a degree in history at Baldwin Wallace College in Ohio, then got into the music scene and dropped out.
Knew right away she wanted to play drums—“Like, my DNA has that rhythm gene going on,” she says. Plays in three different
bands—two local rock bands I’ve never heard of and the jazz group. Answered an ad in the
Reader,
been with them almost two years. “It’s good discipline,” she says, “jazz. The rhythm is, like, more of a suggestion. It makes
you listen different.” Interesting. “Plus I had never used brushes before. The first time Sidney gave me a pair, you know,
he had to show me how to play them.”
Also works as a martial arts instructor in a dojo a couple blocks away. I ask how she got into that. “I guess I just have
that Japanese kung-fu thing happening,” she says. Kung-fu is Chinese, but I don’t say it.
She is playing me. I keep my big dumb cop look on my face all the same.
We talk about Fahey. She takes the news of his death quietly. No crying, no wailing, just a little frown. I ask, did she know
he had a problem? The drugs?
“Well, yeah, actually,” she says.
“Since when, if I might ask.”
“Well, he came up to me a couple of months ago during a break, said he had some friends coming to town, and asked me if I
knew where he could ‘score some,’ quotation marks.”
I let her continue, not taking notes. There are times you have to put away the pen.
“I didn’t think he had any ‘friends coming into town,’and I really doubted he’d go that far out of his way for them, if he
did. I mean, it
is
still illegal, right?”
A glimmer as she says this. She is making a little joke, testing me, too.
“Not my department, but, far as I know, yeah, it still is,” I say.
“I told him, like, no, I didn’t know anybody like that, sorry, but he might try some of the clubs, the rock clubs. Truth is,
I
do
know people like that. I’m not into it myself, but I didn’t want to get in the middle of it with him.”
“Why is that? I mean, aside from it being illegal,” I ask, adding, “which again, is not my department.”