Nine Fingers Read online

  He turned to the Big Guy. “Are you getting any of this? Is any of this sinking in?”

  “I guess so,” he replied.

  “He guesses so,” the one with the gun said to me. “He guesses so. I mean, it should be obvious to anyone, even a four-year-old. The thing with the hand is supposed to be a threat—‘Tell us what you know or we’ll break your hand’—but he can’t even wait for the first question. That’s not how you use a threat. I mean,” he said, leaning around me so the Big Guy could see he was now talking to him, “I mean, what are we supposed to do now, threaten to break his hand again? Is that it? Is that how it’s supposed to work?” he asked, glaring now.

  “I was just,” the taller guy said, “I was just trying to emphasize the seriousness of the situation, that’s all.”

  “ ‘Emphasize the seriousness of the situation,’ he says,” talking to me. “Can’t he understand that the time to do that, if there even is a time to do that, is after the victim—that would be you—fails to see the seriousness of the situation, not before he even knows what the situation is? I mean, am I right or am I right?”

  It seemed as if he expected me to nod. I nodded.

  “Of course I’m right. Even,” he leaned around me again, talking to the taller man, “even the victim here knows that. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, even the victim knows that.”

  I started to find my voice. I groaned.

  “All right, that’s enough of that,” he said, pointing the gun back in my direction. “I’m beginning to think I liked you better when you were mute with pain.”

  I bit down on my tongue, trying to suppress another groan.

  He turned in his seat until he was facing me. The gun was hanging off his fingertip, and he had gone back to waving it around. I was worried it was going to go off and blow both of us up unless he got control of it.

  “No nodding now, and no moaning, we need real answers. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All right, then, who is it?”

  “Who is it? I don’t know what you mean. I mean, who is what?”

  “You know what we mean, who is it, who’s the one?”

  “Who’s the one?”

  “Yes, who’s the one? Who’s the one she’s with? Who is it?”

  “Who’s the—she who?” I asked. Realizing how incoherent it was, I added, “I’m really trying to answer your question, but I don’t know who you mean. The anaphoric reference was ambiguous. Just tell me who you mean and what you want to know, and I’ll—”

  The little guy with the gun made a motion at the taller one, like a twitch of his head. Nothing happened. The taller one stood there not comprehending. The little one made the motion again, more exaggerated this time. The taller one frowned. The little one with the gun made the same twitch, very slowly, and the taller one threw his head back in an epiphany—ah-HA!

  And slammed the door on my hand again.

  I screamed. With this second slam I had found my voice again.

  The little one with the gun brought its muzzle up to my right ear and cocked it, quite distinctly. “That will be enough of that,” he said. I stopped screaming, and started slowly waving my hand up and down as I bounced in my seat.

  The little guy with the gun turned to the bigger one. “We went over this, didn’t we? We went over this yesterday, and we went over it today, and I could have sworn you had it down, I—”

  “What?” the taller one said. “That’s not what you wanted? I mean, it was obvious, the guy was not understanding the seriousness of the situation, just like you said yourself, he—”

  “No! Like you said. I didn’t say it, you said it. I hate when you do that, quoting something you said as if it’s something I said, when I didn’t say it at all. He wasn’t questioning the seriousness of the situation, he wasn’t sure what the situation was. The evident pain from the first incident clearly distracted him, and he—”

  “What?” asked the taller guy. “That wasn’t what you wanted? What was wrong?”

  “I was giving you the signal to get his attention a little bit, to slap him, or—”

  “Whoa. Stop right there. There is no signal for me to ‘slap him or something’ because I do not go around ‘slapping people or something,’ that’s not what I do. Guys who go around ‘slapping people’ are—”

  “All right, all right, slap, hit, punch, what is the difference? I just wanted—”

  “It’s a big difference. I do not slap people. ‘Slapping’ is not something—”

  “All right! All right! I got it. Punch. Hit. Smack. Is that better? Hmmm?”

  He turned to me. “All right, back to you. We know she’s been coming to see your little group here, and we know she’s been seeing someone in your little group here, and we need to know, and, believe me, we are on a ‘need-to-know basis’ here, we need to know who it is. That she’s seeing.”

  I tried to take this all in. I turned to the taller one. “Please don’t get me wrong. I fully understand the seriousness of the situation. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, trust me. I’m just a little unsure of what he’s asking me. So don’t hit me, don’t break my hand again, I’m trying, here.” I turned to the little one with the gun, trying to get my breath.

  He looked at me and then looked around me to the bigger one. “You see? You see this? He’s comprehending the seriousness of the situation, as you put it, not as I put it. Sometimes all it takes is some solid questioning to clear up any misunderstandings. It doesn’t always take breaking their hands. It’s like I was telling you the other day, it’s just like what I’m always telling you, every single time—”

  “Stop it! Fuck you! Shut up!” The taller one screamed, then leaned right across me and shot the shorter guy right in the middle of the forehead. The Little Guy slumped back in his seat, a big dollop of blood rolled down his forehead and between his eyes and down the side of his nose, and that was it, he was dead. I froze solid. I had the strange thought, “thank God this is my car and not the Fat Man’s cab.”

  The taller one started hopping around outside the car, waving the gun, looking up and down the street.

  “Look,” I said to him, trying to make my voice as calm as possible. “I don’t know who you are. I didn’t even see your face, right? And I’m looking away from you even now, right?” I let this sink in.

  “I can’t identify you, I don’t want to identify you. There’s no sense in making this any worse than it already is. Please don’t shoot me, I’m asking you, you have no reason to, it won’t help me understand the seriousness of the situation, I think I already understand the seriousness of the situation…”

  At that point I forced myself to shut up, and what I heard was my heartbeat, up around 190, pounding in my ears, and nothing else. I edged a look to my left, and saw he was running back up the road as fast as he could go, and had already covered half a block, which was pretty impressive, considering the ice and the slush.

  I looked at my left hand and almost gagged. Fingers were pointing where fingers are not supposed to point. There was a crease across the back of my hand that hadn’t been there five minutes ago, and it was in the wrong direction. I held my left hand up while I patted my pockets with my right hand, looking for the keys. I found the ring, isolated the car key, slipped it in the ignition, turned it to Accessories, turned on the lights and the emergency flashers and leaned forward onto the horn. And that’s all I remember because at that point I let go and passed out.

  CHAPTER 25

  Ken Ridlin

  Cook County General Hospital

  Thursday, January 16

  It is three o’clock in the morning. I have been talking to Amatucci for half an hour after waiting here at Cook County General for three. His story is all fouled up. Not like he is lying. I don’t think he is lying. But the situation he is describing is all fouled up. Fouled up and getting worse.

  Lieutenant Ali pokes his head in. I point at my watch and hold up one finger. A minute later I head o
ut of the room. We walk down the hall to the waiting room and sit on two spring-strung vinyl-covered chairs. There’s no one there but us. He wrestles his coat off, rubs his eyes. He looks terrible. His dark skin has a gray pallor. His brown eyes are bloodshot.

  I remember hearing about him, that he is a wild-ass, back in the day. Runs with the Muslims’ security squad, busts a lot of heads. Then he leaves town, comes back, takes back his former first name, and joins the force. Go figure.

  “Thanks for the call,” he says. “I asked to be in the loop and you reached out. I appreciate that. What have you got?”

  “We have the outline of our story,” I say. See, cops know, there’s always a story. “And it sounds like a messy one .”

  I pat my pockets like I am looking for a smoke. I don’t smoke anymore. He sits back. I sit back. I pull out my notepad and start to spin it out.

  “Amatucci is just finishing the first set inside when this motorcycle cop pokes his head in, says to follow him, there’s a problem with his car.”

  I pause. He arches one eyebrow, the left one.

  “A motorcycle cop? In the middle of a snowstorm in the middle of the winter?”

  “Yeah, I know, I know. Wearing sunglasses, even. At night.”

  He squeezes his eyes together, shakes his head, sits back.

  “Amatucci didn’t get much of a look at him, except his uniform, which was a real one, far as we can tell, and his back, which he says…”

  I flip open my pad.

  “He says he saw his back so clearly he could pick it out of a lineup of thousands.”

  “A lineup of thousands of backs,” he repeats.

  I nod.

  “And there was no problem with his car?” he concludes.

  “Sure there was. There was a little guy sitting inside it with a gun. And a taller guy coming up behind him. They interrogated him, if that’s the word for it.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  I think about how to put it.

  “Good help is hard to find…”

  He nods, waits.

  “They start this interrogation by slamming the car door on his hand.”

  “His hand? Man…He’s the piano player, right? Which hand?”

  “Left hand. They had him place his right hand on the steering wheel and his left on the doorjamb, like he was straphanging …” I say, pantomiming.

  He nods his head. “How bad is his hand fucked up?”

  “Seven or eight broken bones, some dislocations they had to pop back in, a few splinters they removed. Pins, they put some pins in. Don’t think there’s any nerve damage, far as they can tell. But they’re not saying, you know how it is.”

  “Well, it’s only his left hand—”

  “That’s the thing,” I say. “He is known for his left hand.”

  I let this sink in.

  “Ah, Jesus,” he says.

  Are Muslims supposed to say “Ah, Jesus”? Don’t they say “Ah, Mohammed,” or “Ah, Allah,” or something?

  “Anyway,” I continue, “Amatucci is frozen there in pain and the two interrogators start arguing back and forth. The taller guy outside reaches around Amatucci and pops the little guy one in the forehead, nine millimeter, then runs away down the street.”

  “Good help is hard to find,” he says. “Who are these losers?”

  “The dead vic was Charles W. Cantrowicz, a.k.a. Charley Canty, Sir Charles, Little C, Canty the Dandy. He’s a known associate, not made. The taller one we think might be a guy named Santo DiUllio, formerly of New Jersey. Amatucci didn’t get a good look at him, tried not to get a good look at him, in fact. Might have saved his life. But Canty and DiUllio were a team, small-time B&Es. Did some time together in Joliet. We’ve got an APB out on him.”

  “Amateur hour,” he mutters.

  “Our institutions are crumbling,” I say. “If you can’t count on the Mafia to do things right, who can you trust?”

  He nods his head.

  “The actual interrogation, what there is of it, is worse. They keep asking ‘Who is it?’ and “Who is she with?’ ”

  “ ‘Who is it?’‘Who is she with?’ ” he repeats. “Who the fuck is the ‘she’?”

  “That’s the question, all right. Amatucci was spotted by an off-duty who called in the EMTs—and I got called as well, and by the time we got back to the club most of the patrons had left. But we did get one description of a woman. She was there, watching the band.”

  I turn my head, look at him. He looks back. He is tired.

  “There’s nothing that ties her to the band…yet. We’re trying to get a sketch, circle back to the other places they play. See if she’s been seen there.”

  He nods. Waits. Finally asks, “One particular woman? Help me out here, Ken.”

  I flip open the pad.

  “Woman comes in, two minutes before they start, walks directly to the front corner bar stool, commandeers it, and locks in on the band for every note in the first set. Doesn’t take her eyes off them for a second. The break comes, around nine forty-five, drags on a little, they’re getting fidgety. Then the cornet player talks to the trumpet player, puts down the cornet—”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t remember a cornet player in the last incident report, and I would remember because I don’t know what the hell a cornet is.”

  “Same as a trumpet,” I say, “but shorter with a rounder tone.”

  I immediately regret the “rounder tone” part. I don’t want to lead him in certain directions.

  “The cornet player is new, he sat in with them on Saturday when Fahey was last seen in public—”

  I have put this wrong.

  “I don’t have any reason to mean it that way…” I say.

  He waves it off.

  “Anyway, he showed up again tonight, last night, and played cornet with them the first set. Crowd was impressed, what I hear.”

  He is sitting hunched over, letting me tell it.

  “So after Amatucci doesn’t come back, they’re out a piano player—”

  “Trumpet, cornet, bass, and drums might be a bit thin, unless they were playing some modern shit—” he deciphers. I’m surprised—he knows the music, a little.

  “They don’t really play that much modern, uh, stuff, from what we understand. Anyway, the cornet player sets down his cornet, sits down at the piano, and off they go.”

  He looks around. He notices I’m waiting. “Yeah? And?”

  “Turns out he was even better on the piano than on the cornet, and the people who our people talked to loved him on the cornet.”

  The lieutenant sits up, yawns, looks at me, “And the name, rank, and serial number of this prodigy would be…?”

  “Landreau. Jack Landreau. Nothing turns up so far in the system. I haven’t had a sit-down with him yet.”

  I let that hang there. I’m trying to tell him something without telling him anything.

  “It gets worse,” I say. “The woman…”

  “The ‘Who’s she with?’woman?”

  I shrug.

  “Maybe. They’re getting set up for the second set, her cell phone rings. She picks it up, listens for five seconds, drops a twenty on the bar, and leaves without her change, the back way. The time is 10:38.”

  I seek his eyes.

  “The woman,” I say. I look at him. “How long have I been doing this, asking what someone looks like…?” I ask, rhetorically. I flip to the next page in the pad:

  “Exquisite body…Incredible legs…Extraordinary cheekbones…Magical eyes—”

  “What is this? Poetry night?” Ali asks.

  “It gets better. Height: five-foot-two, five-ten, five-six, five-nine, five-five, five even…Weight: 110, 100, 125, 130, 115, 120, all over the place, right? But: Eyes: café au lait.” A little pause here. “Four of the six people I talked to said café au lait, two said light brown. She walks in and the place freezes, every eye on her. At the level of evidence—” I hedge.

  “Evidence?” he says
. “Evidence is this: How many women we know of with that general description and those café-au-lait eyes could walk in and stop the room? And make everyone remember her for a month?” He is rubbing his forehead.

  “Well, it’s a short list…”

  “But we both know who’s number one with a bullet, don’t we, Ken?”

  I look away. What can I say?

  “If it’s ‘Laura on the Loose’ again, we are both fucked, I’ll tell you that right now, Ken. It’s fucking Laura Della Chiesa, man! Shit!”

  He crosses his hands under his armpits. I sit there slumped forward.

  We both squirm for a moment.

  “Do we know ‘Who’s the one? Who’s she with?’ In the band?”

  “No, no one seems right for it.”

  “But you’ll talk to the cornet player.”

  “Tomorrow.” I look at my watch. “Today.”

  He’s been slumping backward, and now he pulls himself up, slowly comes to a standing position. I unfold myself from the chair. He stretches, then looks me in the eye.

  “Oh,” Ali says. “The chief says to ask you about the Riddler.”

  He lets it hang there. I wonder what would happen if I just got up, turned on my heel and walked away.

  “What’d he tell you?” I ask him.

  “Some.”

  “I guess,” I sigh, “we do need someone on the inside…”

  I wait for him to let me off the hook. He lets me twist instead.

  “Hell, Lieutenant. I haven’t played in years, I don’t know…”

  “What was it?” he asks. “Sax of some kind, wasn’t it? Which one? I see you as an alto man.”

  “I played most of them,” is what I say.

  He wants to ask me why I stopped. I want to tell him to go fuck himself if he does.

  He doesn’t.

  He picks up his coat. “Let’s keep her name out of it for now, if we can, but let’s also make sure it’s her.” That’s the trick, for sure. “And since you agree that it makes sense to get access to the inside, to have a presence…”