Nine Fingers (23 page)
Authors: Thom August
In the Black Limo
Thursday, January 23
11:05
A
.
M.
:
In the bus thing, what do they call it? Kiosk, that’s it, on 51st Street at Lake Park. Wind is off the lake. Pain is about
a five. Not good. Dull ache. Sharp pangs now and then.
My car is parked, a lot uptown. Take a bus down to here. Disguise: workingman. Scruffy beard. Work boots. Plaid ball cap with
earflaps. Big thick safety glasses. With the side shields. Thirty extra pounds under the shirt. Thermos. Greasy paper bag.
11:07
A
.
M.
:
Here they come. A big black limo. Step forward, to the curb. They don’t even slow down. Go past, turn right, around the corner.
What the hell? Look to see if they pull over, better spot for a pickup. No. They keep going.
11:11
A
.
M.
:
Here they come again. They stop at the kiosk, wait. Hear the door locks click open. Slide in the back, close the door. Off
we go.
The Old Man, the Nephew. Both again.
Old Man looks me over. “We went right by you, the first time.” He chuckles to himself.
Turns to the Nephew, “What did I tell you? Is this guy the best or is this guy the best? I’ve been knowing him all my life,
and even
I
can’t tell it’s him. Jesus Christ.”
The Nephew gets right to business. “What do you have to report about last night?”
Like we are having some meeting. Like I am vice president of something.
Turn it around.
“What was she doing there?”
“She was
supposed
to be there?” the Nephew says. “That was the whole fucking plan—”
I cut him off. “Not Laura. Her mother.”
The Old Man slides forward. His eyes coming out of his head. “Amelia?” he says.
Nod.
“Fuck,” the Old Man says. “Fuck fuck fuck. What
was
she doing there?”
“Wait a minute,” the Nephew says. “Walk me through it, step by step.”
“Band plays a set. Starts another. The middle, Laura walks in. Takes over a section of the bar. They finish the second set,
she is cheer leading. Amatucci, the piano player, at the bar, is near her. Between sets? They come over to see him, get a
drink, whatever. She hugs them all, kisses them all—”
“This is getting ridiculous,” the Old Man says. “We start this out as a simple little thing, and now look at what we’ve got.”
“ ‘She kisses them all’?” the Nephew says. “Every one of them?” I nod. “Then what happened?”
“Middle of hugging the last one in line? Amelia walks in, reaches over, belts him, grabs Laura by the hair, hauls her out
of there. The end.”
“The right hand?” the Old Man asks. “She’s got a hell of a right hand, that one. ‘Coulda been a contenduh.’Wait, who’d she
hit?”
“Piano player,” I mutter, “Landreau, the new guy.”
Zep is watching, too close. The way he does. Sees something.
“Do you know him?” he asks.
It is all coming down now. All coming down. A ringing is starting in my ears.
“Could be I know him. Could be I do not.”
“What makes you think you might know him, my friend?” the Old Man asks.
He is looking right at me. He is waiting. He will wait all day, he has to. It is what he does.
“He is missing a finger, right hand. He has got nine fingers.”
The Old Man stares harder. Lips are set tight in his face.
“My friend,” he says, real quiet. “Which finger?”
Cannot stand to look at him. I look down.
“This one,” I say. Wiggle the pinkie.
He sucks in a breath. Sits back in his seat. Looks out the window.
A taste of metal, rising in my throat. A sound of wind, rushing through my head. A knife slicing in, behind my eyes.
It is all coming down. Feel it all coming down.
In the Fat Man’s Cab at 51st and Lake Park
Thursday, January 23
I walked into a coffee shop to get myself a little caffeine, just to restore the natural balance. The guy behind the counter
was Indian, or Pakistani. He handed over the cup, said “A dollar forty.” I love the way they do that retroflex “r,” with the
tongue circled up toward the back of the soft palate. I reached into my pocket and slid two dollars onto the counter. He handed
me the change, I left a quarter, picked up the coffee, and shuffled toward the door.
“Have a nice day,” he called after me.
Right. And realized I was still holding the turn indicator. Fuck.
I looked around for the gray Cavalier, and it was gone. I looked for a fleet of black-and-whites, their blue lights flashing,
a phalanx of cops kneeling facing the door, pointing shotguns at me. They weren’t there either.
OK, I thought. You seem to have survived this little episode of temporary insanity, Vince, now it’s time to reestablish contact
with the mother ship.
I walked up to the cab, set the coffee on the roof, tucked the indicator under my arm, and reached for the key. I pulled it
out and opened the driver’s-side door. I pulled the turn indicator out of my armpit, and for some reason I looked up. Landreau
was standing by the passenger door, and right next to him was Ridlin, the cop.
“Hey, Vince,” Landreau said. A little smile played at the corners of his mouth.
“Yo, what are you guys doing down here?” I asked.
“Looking for you,” Ridlin said.
“Looking for me? Holy shit. A whole city, a couple of million people, a couple of thousand taxicabs, and you’re looking for
me and you find me? Holy shit!” I was amazed at the mystery of it, the beauty, the grace.
“I called the Fat Man,” Ridlin said.
So much for the mystery, the beauty, the grace. I
knew
that cab was tagged with some kind of GPS device. The Fat Fuck knew right where I was, at every minute of every day.
“OK, here I am,” I said. “Why are you looking for me?” I said.
Ridlin looked up and into my eyes, then down at the indicator, then into my eyes again.
“You’re not breaking any laws here, are you, Vince?”
“Me? Breaking laws?” Shit, that was an intelligent riposte.
“What’s the story with that?” he asked.
“Story? This?” I asked, indicating the indicator. “I found this when I pulled in, on the ground, and was going to dump it
in the trash.”
I looked over at Landreau. He wasn’t looking at me, he was staring past the front of the cab, toward the bus shelter on the
sidewalk, and his eyes were bugging out.
I looked at Ridlin. He looked at me. We both looked at Landreau. What the fuck?
On 51st Street
Thursday, January 23
Landreau stopped staring at whatever he was staring at, and ducked his head down, turned away from the street, and started
yanking on the door of the cab, trying to rip it open. It was locked, and I had the key in my pocket.
“Vince,” he whispered, “open the door. Open the goddamned door.” He looked panicky, flushed, but the strange thing was that
he was whispering, as if someone might overhear him. What, like Ridlin wasn’t going to hear him?
“Jack,” I said, “take it easy. What am I going to do, spirit you away while he’s standing here with a gun in his pocket when
all I have is,” I looked in my hand and there it still was, “this…turn indicator?”
“Open the door, Vince,” he said. “Please open the door.” He had his back to the street and was leaning way over, still yanking
on the handle. I had never seen him like this.
I got the keys out, clicked the clicker, and I swear he was inside before I heard the click.
Ridlin looked at me, his brow furrowed, his mouth hanging open. He reached quietly into his coat and took out his gun, all
oily menace, and let it hang from his hand. He turned slowly around, looking at the lot, scanning every car, every pedestrian,
every housewife pushing a cart. His head was turning like a gun on a turret, slowly sweeping. Oh, shit. Here we go again.
I took two steps over to the cab, pulled the door open, and slid inside. Landreau was still down in the seat, almost on the
floor, breathing hard.
“Jack,” I said. “What the fuck is it?”
He shook his head back and forth, three times, hunkered a little lower.
“Look, man, you’ve got Ridlin spooked. He’s stalking the crowd like a lion looking for which gazelle to cull from the herd.
He looks like he won’t be happy unless he shoots somebody.”
He wasn’t responding. I took a shot.
“Jack, you saw somebody, somebody who scared the shit out of you. Who was it, man? You’ve got to tell me and you’ve got to
tell me now.”
He was holding his right hand against his chest. His eyes were wild, darting around.
“Talk to me, Jack!”
And he started snapping his fingers. There was a pattern to it, a rhythm:
SNAP-two-three-four
SNAP-SNAP-three-four
SNAP-SNAP-SNAP-four
SNAP-SNAP-SNAP-SNAP
It was one of those old-timey stop-time things, the kind of thing you play when you’re comping behind someone who’s playing
a solo.
I looked around for Ridlin. He had wandered maybe twenty yards away, still stalking. I reached into my coat and pulled out
a cigarette and a lighter. I took one drag to get it going, tucked away the lighter and took another, a deep one, all the
way to my toes.
And as I exhaled I looked toward a group of people waiting for the bus in the kiosk. There was a guy dressed like a workingman,
with a scruffy beard. I didn’t know him, but something about him looked oddly familiar. I looked more closely. He was tapping
his foot:
TAP-two-three-four
TAP-TAP-three-four
TAP-TAP-TAP-four
TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP
It was the same rhythm.
I looked over my shoulder at Landreau; he was still in the cab, snapping away. I looked to my left toward Ridlin, he was still
stalking. I tried to both whisper and shout at the same time: “Ken!” It came out sounding like one of those guys with a hole
in their throat, all hoarse and glottal. But it worked; he stopped in his tracks. “Ken, now,” I said. He started retracing
his steps, walking sideways.
“What?” he said.
“Landreau…he was hearing a rhythm, and he started to snap his fingers…”
Ridlin looked like he wanted to take my temperature with the back of his hand, the way my mother used to. I rushed ahead.
“Listen, I know it sounds crazy, forget it. But the guy over there waiting for the bus is tapping the same rhythm with his
foot.” I nodded my head subtly in the workingman’s direction.
“Which guy is—”
I could hardly hear him. My head was filling with a loud rushing sound. I turned.
It was the bus. It had pulled up and the doors were open and they were all filing into it.
“Shit,” I said. “Shit shit shit.”
“Get in the cab, Vince,” Ridlin said. “Follow that bus.”
In the Fat Man’s Cab
Thursday, January 23
We both dove into the front of the cab. I tried to fish the keys out of my pocket with my left hand, but of course that hand
had a cast on it, and I jammed my stupid thumb on my pocket and yelped. I quickly switched to my right, patted my coat pocket—not
there—patted my shirt pocket—not there—and finally reached into my jeans and found them. I thumbed the ignition key away from
the others, jammed it at the ignition and missed entirely, scraping it along the plastic trim, cursing up a storm. The second
time it went in, but it was crooked. I took a deep breath, pulled it out slightly, guided it home, cranked the engine to life,
threw the shift into reverse, and looked up, my left foot on the brake, my right feeding it some gas.
“Vince, he’s getting away.” Ridlin said this calmly, just reporting the facts as he saw them. I looked around and saw that
I was turned the exact wrong way. My path would take me out the northern side of the lot, turning east; the bus had started
facing east but had already turned south on Lake Park.
“Shit shit shit.”
I raised my left foot off the brake and slammed my right foot onto the gas, and backed up, and kept backing up. At the end
of the one-way row, I swung into a diagonal sliver of a space, switched to drive, cranked the wheel all the way left, and
blasted south down the northbound row. Up ahead there were four cars lined up to exit the lot.
“Hold on,” I said, “evasive maneuvers.”
I swung the wheel left, gave a quick glance, squeezed between a parking sign and a concrete bench, miraculously missing both,
and bumped over the sidewalk and over the curb and into the street, a spray of sparks kicking up where my muffler kissed the
one and then Frenched the other. I lurched again and I was on South Park southbound.
“Oncoming traffic on the left,” Ridlin said. I leaned on the horn and hit the gas again while I lurched the wheel to the right.
I heard brakes and breaking glass over there, almost turned to look, but caught something out of the corner of my right eye.
It was the first of the four cars leaving the lot that I had so skillfully exited, and he was now in the street, heading straight
toward me, about to hit me broadside. I hit the horn again, jerked the wheel to the left, mashed the pedal down, and swerved
around him, cutting into the northbound lane, and scaring a white Buick there over toward his right. As he moved, I jerked
the wheel again and fishtailed us into a more-or-less straight position.
Okay, I thought. Not bad.
I looked up and the bus was all the way down to 53rd, and had pulled over to drop off and pick up. The driver was now edging
back into the street, swinging the big behemoth into the center lane to avoid the parked cars in front of the bus stop. I
stepped on the gas.
I zoomed past 52nd and accelerated through a yellow light at 53rd and kept pouring it on. Nearing 54th I caught up with the
bus.
All I could see were the passengers on the left-hand window seats. That left the center seats and the right-hand window seats
out of my view, unless I drove down the sidewalk. That could be fun, I thought. In the meantime, I started to scan the passengers.
“Vince, look straight ahead,” Ridlin said.
A northbound car was stopped in the middle of the road with his left-hand turn signal on. Fine. Understandable. But it wasn’t
facing true north, it was facing north-by-northwest. It was the fucking gray Cavalier! She had begun her turn and stopped,
her nose poking into my lane.
“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.