Nine Fingers (13 page)

“I didn’t want to owe Jeff anything, and I didn’t want him to owe me anything. That’s a policy of mine, in general, but with
Jeff, in particular.”

“Why him in particular?” I ask.

She’s been talking to me without looking at me. Now she brings her dark eyes up. “There was an evil spirit about the guy.
Bad mojo. Bad karma. Bad vibes. Foul humours, you know?”

Translating for the old fart. “Foul humours” is from Shakespeare’s day. A little before even my time.

“You’re going to ask ‘Is there anything particular you could point to that gave you that impression, Ms. Jones?’ and I’m going
to say, ‘No.’ It was just something about the way he was. Very self-centered. I mean, we were in this band, he was one of
the featured soloists, but it was never enough. Paul would take four choruses, Jeff would have to take six. Paul would try
to mix up the repertoire to add things he thought Jeff would like, like Charlie Parker’s “Cherokee” and shit? Coltrane, Horace
Silver, Monk, you know? But for Jeff, it wasn’t enough. That’s all he wanted to play. But what the band is about, it’s like
the whole history of that music. He came into it late, when it already was what it was, and expected everyone to cater to
him, like it was his band. He was always late, he was always a little shit to everyone, he was always overdoing it. I’m sure
he had a very small dick.”

That’s one part we never did locate, so I can’t comment. This is the most she’s said since we sat down. I hear the water start
to boil. She starts to rise.

“Before you get that,” I say, leaning forward. “He was a featured player, you played accompaniment. He played solos, and abused
the, uh, privilege, and you had to learn to use brushes and stay in the background. Was there something personal there…?”

The kettle is singing loudly. She wants to get up and get it, but forces herself to look at me, then look down, almost demurely.
“That’s very perceptive. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there was some chord he struck in me that I didn’t like.”

She is squatting on the futon, her legs crossed, and she somehow stands up without uncrossing her legs, balancing on the outer
edges of her feet until she rises to her full height. I think, How does she
do
that? She steps into the kitchenette to get the tea, and I creak off of the stool and follow her.

She moves the pot off the burner, turns the flame off, pours the water into the carafe where the leaves are, puts the lid
on it. “It’s better if we let this sit for a minute,” she says.

She turns, opens the fridge, looks in. From my angle I can see in, too. It’s just about empty. There’s two jugs of water,
one of them half-empty, a small box of blueberries, a half-a-head of celery. In the door is some olive oil. No mustard, no
ketchup, no mayo. No meat, no eggs, no cheese, no milk.

She turns, sees me looking. “You’re asking yourself, ‘What the hell does she eat?,’ right?”

I don’t say anything but she can tell she’s right. “Vinnie is always busting my ass about it. He calls me an ‘airitarian.’
”

“An airitarian?” I ask.

“You know,” she says. “Like a vegetarian lives on vegetables, a fruitarian lives on fruit, an airitarian lives on air.” She
shakes her head. “Food just…food just doesn’t do it for me, you know?”

“Well,” I say. “I’m not a big eater myself—”

“I bet you used to be,” she says.

I look at her. “Why would you say that?”

She looks me up and down, a cool appraising look. “You are a big American dude. What are you, six-four?”

“Well, close to that, about six-three or—”

“You look like you used to be even bigger. Not taller, of course, just bigger. Your clothes are hanging off you, even your
skin…”

“I had the clothes altered. I’ll have to tell that to the lady who did them. How can you tell?”

She gives that look again, no eye contact. “Must be Asian thing,” she says, doing an accent. “We all supposed to be good at
raundry,” she says.

“That’s Chinese, not Japanese.”

She turns, grabs the plunger on top of the carafe, slowly pushes it down, a little at a time, very steadily. I watch, wait,
enjoy the ritual.

She reaches up to a shelf, there’s those strong obliques again, pulls down two mugs. Black, what else. Turns back to me. “I
think I might have some honey somewhere around here, or a lemon, if I—”

“That’s OK,” I say. “Just black is good.”

She nods, turns, fills both mugs, hands me one. We head back to the main room. I sit on the stool again, take a sip of the
tea. It’s strong, and good. I look for someplace to put the mug, set it on the floor between my feet. She lowers herself back
into a cross-legged position, the tea in her lap all the way. Doesn’t spill a drop. Jesus.

“Let’s shift gears. Last Thursday at the 1812 Club, the guy who got shot, Mr. Roger Tremblay. You ever see him before?”

“No, never.”

“He ever sit in with the band before that?”

“No, never.”

“What was your reaction?”

“My reaction?” she asks. “Like, I freaked. I mean, it was so sudden, so out of place.” She looks down, then looks up at me.

“Ms. Jones, this has all the signs of a mob hit, a mob hit gone wrong. You have any idea why anyone would want to kill anyone
in the band? Any ideas at all?”

She looks away like she’s thinking but she’s already decided to say No. Then she says it.

“No.”

Some people you have to circle around them gently. Some people you go right at it. Do I know which one she is? I don’t.

“For example, is there any reason anybody would want to kill
you,
Ms. Jones?”

“No.” It is a little too quick. I let her have some room.

“I mean, I’m just a drummer, a not-so-great drummer in a not-so-great band. Why would someone want to kill
me?
”

Now she is asking me the question.

She pauses, nods. “Like I said, I live a very quiet life, you know? Music, working out, more music, more working out. It’s
all I really do.”

We sit in silence for a moment, sipping our tea. She has her eyes down, hidden from me. Oh, I think, we all have our little
secrets. Most of them are just that, little secrets, ordinary, meaningless, of no consequence.

But I don’t see any connection. That’s something you learn: don’t get too far ahead of the facts, don’t start following your
nose because chances are you might be smelling your own breath, nothing more. After all, it’s the closest thing you can smell,
and you’re too used to it to notice it.

She drains the last dregs of her tea, gets up, asks me if I want any more. I stretch my stiff legs, stand up, say thanks but
no thanks, and ask can I use her bathroom. She gestures to a door next to the closet. I head over as she walks to the little
kitchenette.

After I close the door and flip the seat up, I notice that the bathroom is as empty as the rest of the apartment. The towels
are white, not black, and the shower curtain is clear plastic. Interesting. So private, so closed off, yet when she’s naked
it’s all right there to see.

I piss in the toilet, and carefully reach over to open the medicine cabinet. One small glass. A toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste,
a hairbrush, all standing up inside it. Not a single aspirin, not a measly roll of Tums, no makeup, no moisturizer, no diaphragm
or pills or rubbers. No creams, no emollients. Nothing else. What the hell kind of female keeps an empty medicine cabinet?
What kind of person, it comes to that? Jesus.

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.