Nine Fingers (17 page)

“Don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” I say, “but while we’re trading aphorisms,
two’s company, and three’s a crowd
.”

“What, you didn’t like our little show?” the brunette asks.

I start to blush. Usually I’m the last to know, but this time I feel it, a dense heat flowing from my neck to my hairline
and beyond. “Don’t get me wrong. It was quite, uh, stimulating, the little I caught of it, but—”

“Fuck it. Two’s company, three’s a threesome.” And with that she reaches down and takes my cock in her hand.

“Pleased to meet you, too. And your name would be…?” I ask.

Akiko sits up. “Sorry,” she says again. I am seeing a whole different side of her. “I’m a terrible hostess. I kidnap you while
you’re in a drugged and helpless state, I kneel on you and wake you up, I spill water on you, I fail to act impressed by your
manly equipment, I neglect to introduce you to my friend.…I’m just being a terrible person tonight.”

“You did capture my supply before the authorities could grab it and smoke it up themselves so I could return to a drugged
but not entirely helpless state, I’ll give you that,” I say. “But you’re right, you haven’t introduced me to your friend.”

The brunette shrugs, turns away from her. I see it clearly then: There is a decision to be made and she is not going to be
the one making it.

Akiko starts in. “Look, I’m not just being impolite. We talked about this,” she says, including the brunette, “and I wasn’t
sure you would want to know. It’s complicated—”

“Complicated?” I say. “How many syllables does it have? Any glottal clicks? Lots of velar fricatives?”

She rolls her eyes at me, and squints sideways at the brunette.

“Hey,” I say, “your friend is lying here naked with her hands on my family jewels—”

“To be precise,” the brunette says, “these are the family jewels,” she says, reaching down to squeeze my testicles, “and this,”
she says, circling the head of my cock, “is the royal crown.”

Part of me wants to brush her hand away. Part of me wants to leave it there. That part is temporarily winning.

“What’s the big mystery?” I ask the brunette directly. “Are you some sort of a secret agent? Some kind of mystery woman?”

“Can you keep a secret?” Akiko asks. “I mean,
really
keep a secret?”

“Sure,” I say, none too convincingly.

Akiko looks me in the eye. “Her name is Laura. This trouble with the band, you know? It’s all about her.”

I try to let this sink in.

“Hi, Laura, my name is Vince.”

She shakes my dick like she’s shaking my hand, and this time the two of us giggle while Akiko is being serious.

“Don’t you want to know what it’s all about?” Akiko asks. “After what’s happened? After what they did to you?”

I turn to the brunette and take back the pipe and the lighter with my right hand. I get it between my teeth, take a couple
of hits, hold the smoke in a good long time. I finally let it out. “If you want to tell me,” I say.

“Let’s tell him later,” the brunette says. “One thing you have to learn about these things,” she says, giving my erection
a little tug, “is that talking is not their strong suit, and another thing is that you never let one of these go to waste,
not if you can help it.”

“
You
never let one of those things go to waste,” Akiko corrects her.

“That’s right,” Laura says, “
I
never let one of these go to waste.”

There is a look here, a moment in which some meaning has been passed.

“Hey,” I say. “You guys have something going on, and that’s great. I don’t need to get in the way or anything.” I make a move
to arise but the brunette still has hold of my cock, firmly.

“Yes, we’ve got a thing going,” the brunette, Laura, says, “as you could spy with your own little eye. But it’s not an exclusive
thing. She likes girls. I like girls and boys—”

“And probably donkeys—” Akiko cuts in.

“And probably donkeys,” Laura echoes, “but there are no donkeys here at the moment while there
is
what seems like a perfectly serviceable dick, right here in my hand.”

I jump in. “Hey, excuse me, I think I just missed my stop, so if you want to let me off at the next block I’ll just—”

“No,” Akiko says to me. She turns to Laura. “We
have
talked about it. It could be, what was your word, Vince, ‘stimulating,’ like watching us was stimulating for you.” She looks
me in the eye. “Was it really stimulating?”

“Oh, you have no idea, even as half-conscious as I was, as I am.”

“And you only got to see the very first act,” Laura says, “mere foreplay.” And with that, she lets go of me, rolls over on
top of Akiko, and kisses her deeply.

Ah, shit.

CHAPTER 29

Vinnie Amatucci

Jones Apartment

Thursday, January 16

This time it’s the brunette, Laura, who takes the lead. She gets on top of Akiko, resting on her elbows, and kisses her deeply,
their lips melting together. She slides up, dips down to nuzzle an ear, slides up some more. Her left breast is close to Akiko,
who twists up to reach for it. Laura hovers just out of reach until Akiko arches up and clamps a nipple between her lips.
Laura scoots away, sliding down and burying her face between Akiko’s small breasts, then licking her way up the inside of
each one. Her hands mold Akiko’s breasts, her thumbs strum across the hardening nipples, lightly. She gives each a tiny lick,
then swoops down between Akiko’s thighs. She starts in, licking at a slow pace—teasing her. Her face comes up to look at Akiko,
and it’s glistening. Then she leans back down. There is no teasing now.

Akiko squirms, her breath ragged. Laura knows exactly what she is doing; this is no fumbling first time. Akiko makes a sound,
then a gesture with her hand. Laura shakes her head vigorously back and forth. Akiko reaches for her, and Laura slaps her
hand away.

“Come on up here,”Akiko says.

“Well,” Laura says. “I’m kind of busy at the moment—”

“Come up here,”Akiko says, “please?”

Laura stops, pulls her head up, looks her in the eye. “Shut up and come for me.” And swoops back in.

And with that, Akiko throws her head back, tilts her pelvis up and abandons herself. It happens quickly, no more than another
ten seconds, then a yelp and a shudder and a growl deep in her chest and she’s over the edge. Laura doesn’t let go, but burrows
deeper, and Akiko continues to spasm, her yelps turning into deep moans, her hips bucking up and down until she finally grabs
Laura by the hair and drags her off. “God,” she says, “you are too good.”

They chuckle at this, two deep belly laughs, and flop against each other loosely.

After a minute or so, Laura turns and looks at me. I’m harder than ever, and feel as if I could have come any time during
this without even touching myself. But the moment was somehow too sacred for me to sully it.

Laura gets up, grabs my feet, and pulls me down on the bed so my ass is on the edge and my feet are on the floor. She kneels
down between my knees and pulls her hair back from her face with her left hand, over her shoulder. Then, using only her lips,
she engulfs me with her mouth, just the tip at first, then more as she slides down it until it hits the back of her throat.
She pulls almost all the way off me and then does it again, and again, her tongue sliding between her lips to snake around
the root of it.

I arch up, but there’s nowhere to go. My cock is buried as far as it can go without going up her nose. She bobs up and down
a few more times, then stands up, and says, “Bad angle.”

She pushes me up the bed, turns around, and nestles down on top of me in a sixty-nine, her sex just out of reach of my tongue.
I’m about to complain about this when she grabs my cock with her lips again and slowly, agonizingly, slides her lips all the
way down to my balls.

I’ve heard about women who can do this, but never experienced it and it’s all I can do to keep from exploding. I want to buck
up, but her hands are flat on my thighs, her teeth are close to my scrotum. She pulls up and descends again and I’m in bliss,
practically crawling away from underneath her.

She pulls off for a second, says, “Don’t fucking move.” I want to say ‘Yes, ma’am,’ or at least salute. I’m thinking of how
to say it when she slides all the way down again, and I groan.

I look up and Akiko has crawled up toward the head of the bed and is licking Laura from her ass to her clit in long slippery
strokes. I want to help but I’m pinioned under the both of them. I try to move my arm but it’s the wrong arm and the cast
bangs against someone’s thigh.

Broken hand? What broken hand?

Two more deep strokes and Laura kneels up and turns around. “Fuck me,” she says. “I need you to fuck me.” She’s on her knees
now, positioned with her knees on the end of the bed, her magnificent ass arched up in the air.

I somehow manage to lever myself up off my back and stumble toward the edge of the futon. I get my legs under me and turn
around.

“Akiko, get me a condom, quick,” she says.

Akiko looks bewildered for a moment, shakes her head, and spreads her hands palms up.

“Oh, shit, of course not,” Laura says. She turns to look at me. “Put it in my ass,” she says. “You’ll have to put it in my
ass.”

“Hey, that’s OK, really,” I say.

“Now,” she says. “Now.”

Well, if you put it that way.

I kneel behind her. Akiko has slid beneath her, in a sixty-nine again, and is working her fingers, spreading the moisture
around. I dip the head of my cock into her pussy for lubrication, pull it out, get one foot on the bed for leverage, grab
my cock with my right hand and place it against her. She stops wiggling and I slowly ease the head in and wait. Her ass clamps
against my cock and the pressure stops me from coming on the spot. I stop dead and wait. She slaps Akiko’s ass, once, loudly.
“Stop it,” she says. “You’re distracting me. Wait until he gets it in.”

She starts to relax around me and I take the cue and slide in another inch, and wait. She’s breathing deeply now, long inhalations
and quick exhalations, willing her body to relax. It does, and I slowly slide all the way in and wait there.

She is tight, so fucking tight. I slowly slide halfway out and then all the way back in again and it’s easier this time and
she starts to back up against me in a regular rhythm, slow and steady at first. Her head droops down and buries itself between
Akiko’s thighs. I can feel a slight change in angle and realize that Akiko has done the same.

We start with long slow strokes, but she screams out, “Fuck me, goddamnit! Fuck me!” and we’re off at a gallop. It’s a different
sensation; all I can feel is her sphincter, just a narrow ring squeezing me, and nothing beyond it. She’s tight, and she’s
hot, and I’m pounding away for all I’m worth. I have my right hand on her hip, and try to get some purchase with my left,
ignoring the cast. She’s slamming back into me, rocking hard as I push in faster. My strokes get shorter and quicker and I
can’t even think about holding back, I can’t even think about thinking.

Then she stiffens, pauses, Akiko has worked her magic down below me. As they both start to spasm, I throw in four more fast
hard thrusts before I stop dead still, all the way inside, and I come. My dick is jumping and her ass is pulling and the both
of them are rocking and we all collapse into a heap on the futon, trapping Akiko underneath, my balls against her chin until
we roll over onto our sides.

I’m covered with sweat. We rock gently back and forth slowly for a minute until I flop over onto my back. I’m seeing stars
and hearing violins and have lost all sense of time until I feel a warm wet washcloth wrapped around my cock as one of them
washes me up, and that’s the last thing I remember until I drift off, dead to the world.

Later I wake and it’s dark and I don’t know what time it is and Akiko is pushing something into my mouth—a pill—and holding
a glass of water to my lips. I mutter something and crash again, totally beat.

A few hours later I wake up for a minute, and think to myself, Man, what an amazing fucking dream. Then I realize that my
right arm is asleep and try to move it and realize it’s under Laura, and we’re all three of us on our right sides spooning,
my softened dick nestled in the crack of her ass, her soft thighs against Akiko’s firmer ones. I flex my hand until the feeling
comes back, and fall asleep again and don’t feel a thing until morning is streaming into my eyes.

I sit halfway up and see that they’re dressed and sitting cross-legged on the bottom of the futon, sipping coffee from big
black mugs. They look over at me.

I rub my eyes with my good right hand and stare at the cast on my left. I look over at Akiko and say, “What did you mean when
you said that all the trouble in the band, Laura was behind it?”

And slowly, a little at a time, as if they’re talking to a troubled three-year-old, they tell me. I listen, and my dick shrinks
to microscopic size and my brain expands exponentially as I think: Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh, shit.

CHAPTER 30

Ken Ridlin

On to Wisconsin

Friday, January 17

Powell picks me up in his beat-up old Ford. I’ve got a gym bag with some clothes in it, plus three cases—an alto sax, a soprano
sax, and a tenor. I also own a clarinet, and a baritone sax. I don’t have the chops yet for the clarinet. I don’t have the
wind yet for the baritone.

Powell pops the trunk, I load in my gear. I open the back door, but Landreau is in there, fast asleep.

“Come sit up front,” Powell says

Powell is quiet, like he doesn’t want to wake Landreau. His driving is quiet, too—smooth and easy. The roads are a little
slick, but he’s comfortable. No nervous small talk.

We head toward the expressway. Amatucci has given him directions—290 North to 52 North to 12 North to 50 West. He hands me
a three-by-five card. It’s a list of songs for tonight. He explains that this is a private gig at a house. Someone they meet
at a club date, says he’d love to have them up to his place at the lake sometime. Yeah, right, they say. Last month he calls
to set it up. Amatucci takes the call, almost hangs up on him, quotes him way too much money. The guy doesn’t flinch, asks,
“Would cash be acceptable?” Faxes down a map, mails down an envelope with half the cash up front—must have picked up something
in Amatucci’s tone of voice. They’re locked in, it’s all set.

It’ll be three fifty-minute sets. Music for a hundred people. Background noise. Easy.

The list doesn’t follow Powell’s usual past-to-present pattern. Not much real old stuff at all. Nothing real new, either.
All ’30s and ’40s and mainstream ’50s, no bop, all standards. A couple of unusual choices—“Something in the Way She Moves,”
by George Harrison of the Beatles, “New York State of Mind,” by Billy Joel—like that.

I look at him. “Chicago Style?” I ask.

He nods. “After a whole hour-and-a-half of rehearsal, we’re not going to do a lot of complicated ensemble arrangements,” he
says. “So, yes, Chicago Style.”

What he means is, we’ll start each tune with an ensemble chorus, usually the trumpet or the sax playing the lead, then take
solos, two or three choruses each, three or four of us on each song, and then wrap up together with the ensemble melody one
more time. I don’t know how it got the name “Chicago Style.” Maybe in New York they call it “New York Style.” I wouldn’t know.
It’s the easiest way to go if you’re a pickup band. If you don’t know the tune, you can comp in the background and skip the
solo. Nobody gets embarrassed. This is for my benefit.

“Any tunes you don’t know?” he asks.

I look at the card again. “All depends on what key they’re in,” I say. “I’m not much on the sharps.”

“Ask Vinnie about the sharps, sometime when you have an hour,” he says. “He’ll give you a whole dissertation on it. We get
into anything you don’t know, just lay low. We’ll cover.”

I nod.

“So,” I say, changing direction, “why did you leave the U. of C.?”

He squints, then says, “I left because I was done.”

“Just got tired of it? Had enough?”

“I did get tired of it, yes, but I finished anyway.”

I must look lost. He says, “You must have me confused with Vince. He hasn’t completed his doctorate. He’s ABD.”

“ABD?”

“ ‘All But the Dissertation,’ ” he translates. “He has all the credits he needs, just has to write his thesis. I was at the
same point he’s at: I didn’t see the point of going any further with it. But I just couldn’t walk away. I don’t know why,
exactly…so I finished.”

“Dr. Paul Powell,” I say.

I’m not mocking him, but maybe it comes out that way.

“There are some people who think of me that way,” he says.

“But no thought of pursuing it, doing something with the degree?”

“Well, that would mean either a research job or a teaching job. I did both as a grad student, and I can’t say anything negative
about either. But after I got into the music, both prospects seemed a little…pale.”

“Never going to get rich being a musician,” I say.

“I was never going to get rich being a college professor, either.”

“Got a point there,” I say.

“Is that why you quit playing? To make the big money with the cops?”

He’s so quiet I have to keep reminding myself that he’s sharp. He’s so calm I have to remind myself he can sting.

“As long as I have the basics covered, money by itself is not a priority for me,” he says.

Landreau is snoring softly in the back. “Your friend said pretty much the same thing.”

He glances back there. “I wouldn’t doubt it,” he says.

“What do you know about him?” I ask. “Beyond you met him in Iowa and played together a few times?”

He pauses, thinks. There are still some people who do this, though they’re rare. He glances back at Landreau, who’s still
asleep. He turns to me.

“I know he’s the best musician I have ever met in my life, and I’ve played with a lot of people, names you would know. He
knows any song you can name, he can play every one of them in any key you can think of, at any tempo you want. He can play
every style from Dixieland to swing to bebop to free jazz to fusion. He has a beautiful lyrical sensibility; whole new songs
just flow out of him every time he plays. He has a dynamic sense that I can’t even fathom. And until the other day I never
knew he could do it on the cornet and on the piano as well, maybe even better.”

“ ‘Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln,’ ” I quote the old line, “ ‘how did you like the play?’”

He almost chuckles. “Detective, you got me; I’m in awe.”

“What about outside the music?” I ask.

“I don’t know much. Troubled childhood, dysfunctional family. He has some formal training from somewhere, but I don’t know
where or when. I don’t think he’s married, don’t think he has any kids, don’t think he does anything but practice and play,
play and practice.”

“And sleep,” I say.

Powell glances back at him in the rearview mirror. “Actually, he doesn’t even do very much of that. He once told me he read
something about Thomas Edison, the inventor, and how he never slept, and only sleeps about twenty minutes at a time every
couple of hours.”

If that’s true, I think, time’s almost up.

“What do
you
know about him?” Powell asks. “You must have been checking.”

I wonder how much to tell him. I also listen to hear if Landreau is asleep.

“Far as we can tell?” I say, quietly. “He doesn’t even exist.”

Powell looks at me.

“He gave me his mother’s name and address, long deceased. It checks out. Found a birth certificate, matches up pretty well.
Except he looks maybe five years younger than the certificate.”

“All that sleep deprivation must be keeping him young,” he says.

“Could be,” I say. “Except the certificate also says he has blue eyes, not brown.”

“That could be developmental,” Powell says. “A lot of babies, Caucasian babies, are born with blue eyes which turn brown or
green within a couple of weeks.”

“You know,” I say, “I heard that from somebody. Didn’t really believe it.”

“You can believe it,” he says. “It’s true.”

“Well,” I say, “that could explain the blue eyes, then.”

I hesitate. I’m not sure why I’m laying out my hand for him. It’s a gut thing, feels right.

“One thing it doesn’t explain,” I say.

Powell waits for me.

“We found the birth certificate, like I said,” I say. “We also found his death certificate, and that checks out, too. Jack
Landreau died a few months after he was born. Died as an infant, crib death, what do they call it—?”

“SIDS,” he says. “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.”

“Right,” I say.

Powell ponders this. “Any chance of a mistake?” he asks.

“Well,” I say, “it
is
government work. But still…”

“Why would somebody, I don’t know, change names like that?” he asks.

“This used to be a pretty standard way of getting an alias. Go to the library, look up birth certificates, cross-reference
them with deaths, find somebody who died young. Get a copy of the birth certificate. Tell them you lost yours. The feds have
a database of all births, and they have a database of all the deaths. Two different systems. Take the birth certificate, get
a Social Security number, use that to get a driver’s license. Get that, you can get anything—credit cards, whatever. No chance
of running into the real Jack Landreau—he’s dead.”

“You’ve been very clear about the ‘how’ of it; I was asking more about the ‘why’ of it.”

“Thought
you
might be able to help with that,” I say.

He thinks again.

“I would imagine that people who do that are hiding. People who do that are running from something.”

“But what is he running from?” he asks.

I look at him. “Do you want to ask him?”

He turns to me, shakes his head, once. No. We fall silent, The miles pass.

There is a stirring in back. Landreau sits up, rubs his eyes. “Where are we?” he asks.

“On our way to Wisconsin,” Powell says. “We’re almost there; it won’t be long now.”

So we keep driving. The roads get narrower and slower and eventually there we are. It’s a huge house, looks the size of a
golf clubhouse. A big porch, all the way around, dark hunter-green canvas awnings covering it.

Worrell and Jones are already there, and they join us. It is foggy and dank and cold. We walk around to the side facing the
lake. Nothing much to see until it parts and maybe half a mile away we see this house, all long horizontal lines. Landreau
whistles, Powell stares.

“What an amazing structure,” Powell says. “I wonder if it’s a real Frank Lloyd Wright or a knockoff. Too bad Vinnie isn’t
here—he knows them all by heart.”

“I imagine that would be a much more commodious place to play than this monstrosity,” the professor says, jerking his head
over his shoulder at the country club.

And a voice comes from behind us and says, “I’m afraid you gentlemen will never get the opportunity to discover that for yourselves.”

We turn. There is a guy there, mid-fifties, clean-shaven bald head. Dressed in tails, of all things, little white vest. Is
this the owner? No. There is something about his look.

“You must be the entertainment portion of the evening, am I correct?”

We nod.

“I was informed of your arrival, and told I should transact with a Mr. Amatucci…?”

This is the butler, the majordomo, whatever.

Worrell jumps in. “Mr. Amatucci is temporarily indisposed and will not be joining us, unfortunately. But we have secured a
more than adequate replacement.” He pauses. “I am curious—why did you say that we would never have the pleasure of playing
there, in that glorious house? Is the owner not a fan of indigenous music?”

The butler probably doesn’t know what “indigenous” means, but makes a quick recovery.

“I only mean,” he says, “that the owner of that house never mingles with our little community up here, and jealously guards
her privacy. Some call her “The Lady of the Lake.” I would imagine that you might be a trifle…loud…for her tastes.”

The little snot.

“We’ll try not to disturb her,” I say, “you show us where to go.”