Nine Fingers Page 5

  We cruised east on DesPlaines, just plowing along. The snow up here was about seven inches deep, and piling up. I was thinking that maybe it was becoming the kind of night to deadhead to O’Hare, a rarely attempted maneuver, and see if I could pick up some scraps—people finally giving up, airport staff who didn’t want to drive, whatever.

  I was also thinking about why I was jabbering on and on to this perfectly strange stranger about my perfectly strange hobby, if that’s what it was, and why I was feeling so this-way-and-that-way about it, when up ahead loomed the Marriott. I swung in along a path of lights glowing softly through a thick coating of snow. We pulled up under the canopy. I stopped the meter and gave him the total, about twenty-two bucks. He pulled the money clip and handed me a twenty and a ten, said “Thanks. Keep it.” That half-smile again. I handed him a receipt, and he snaked it into his pocket. He tucked that case under his arm, pulled his coat closer around himself, placed his hand on the door handle, then turned and said, “Good luck with the music. And play your piano, every single day, no matter what,” and was gone out the door. I could see him wave off the doorman, politely, as if it were some failing of his that he wasn’t yet frail enough to need help; then he went in through the revolving doors and was gone.

  Interesting fare, I was thinking, when one of the doormen blew his whistle directly in my fucking ear—me turning to face front as he swiveled to face me. I hear you, I wanted to shout. I fucking hear you.

  I pulled forward a few dozen feet. I looked through the window and it wasn’t snowing, it was raining. Big fat drops splattering on the windshield, increasing in intensity as I sat. I turned the wipers from intermittent to full. What was this shit?

  Suddenly there was a knocking on the driver’s window. I rolled it down two inches. It was the doorman again. “You can’t park here. If you’re going to wait you have to move it over to the cabstand there, on the other side of the circle,” he said, swinging his arm.

  “Yeah, I got you,” I said, like this was news or something. “What’s with this rain? Is it going to wash all this snow away? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “Not gonna happen,” he said.

  “Say again?” I asked.

  “Temperature’s dropping. They say it’s gonna rain for an hour, then drop into the teens and freeze,” he said. Curious—he sounded strangely happy telling me this. What, like he wasn’t going to be outside in this mess chipping ice while I was sliding all over the roads? Where was the fellow feeling, the salary man’s solidarity?

  “Sounds like lots of fun for all of us,” I said, sarcastically.

  “You weren’t here in ’78, were you?” he asked.

  “You mean that blizzard, the one that stopped Massachusetts for a week?” I asked. “No, where I was it mostly missed us.” Where I was was still practically in diapers, but for some reason I didn’t mention that.

  “Well, out here,” he said, “it snowed about a foot, rained two inches, froze, and the temperature didn’t get above twenty degrees for the next week. Highest murder rate in the city’s history, that was. People killing each other over a fucking parking space. Lot of heart attacks, too, people trying to get their cars open with scrapers, picks, hatchets, acetylene torches…I remember in my neighborhood there were cars that didn’t get opened until April. A fucking mess. ‘The Deep Freeze,’ the TV assholes called it.”

  Great.

  “Well, sounds like fun for all of us, ” I repeated.

  Some people do not respond to sarcasm, and he was one of them. He leaned back from the window, gave the car a rap, not too subtly reminding me that I had to move it along, and stepped back under the canopy.

  I pushed a button to check the outside temperature: 33° with 96 percent relative humidity.

  Hmmm…Maybe I should call the home base and see what they knew. I never liked to call in—it had something to do with autonomy—but this might be a good time to break with precedent.

  And as I thought that, the cell phone on the dash rang.

  I stared at it while it rang two times.

  “Metro Car Service,” I said, picking it up. “How may I help you?”

  It was the Fat Man. I could tell by his breathing, even before he said anything.

  “What you doing, sport? Where you at?”

  “Just dropped off a fare at the O’Hare Marriott, trying to figure what to do next.”

  “Fixing to be a motherfucker out there,” he said in that raspy voice of his. “Don’t need no cowboy shit. Don’t need my cars sitting in the shop. Be better if you go to ground, wait this out. You off tomorrow, right? Not driving?”

  Friday was my usual day off, and, aw, he remembered, how sweet.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m off.”

  “That’s good.” There was a pause. “I got a place for you to put the vehicle, keep it from getting all iced up.”

  He then proceeded to walk me through a complicated set of directions back to O’Hare. Not the cabstand or the terminals, but the ass end of the airport, where the cargo terminals are. It was eerie: a couple of times he gave directions that were stunningly precise and timely. I drove for four or five minutes until he said “Turn left, now—no, not right, left, where that white van is coming from.”

  Finally I said, “What the fuck?” The Fat Man was always doing shit like this. I mean always. How the hell did he do it?

  The car behind me flicked its lights on and off three times. Shit, he was right behind me.

  “OK,” I said. “I was wondering how I’d get a ride back to town.”

  He chuckled. “You think I’d let you hang at the airport, get your ass in all kinds of trouble?” he asked, rhetorically. “Where we going you can’t get yourself into without I’m with you. Taxi Number One will get you home.”

  The Fat Man’s personal cab is actually taxi number 1. Number 1 out of like 9,000. No one knows who he had to know to get that number.

  We slogged on, not making good time but moving anyway. The rain on the windshield was starting to hit, splatter, and then spread into crystals. I checked the outside temperature again: 28°, 92 percent relative humidity.

  We had somehow turned onto a runway, or a taxiing area. We pulled up to a little shack-like thing in the middle of nowhere, with a low slanted roof. The Fat Man, still behind me, honked three times and flashed his lights twice. We waited a minute. He did it again, and halfway through the flashing the side of the shack began to swing open over the top. There was a road inside, one lane with yellow stripes on each side.

  “In you go, driver,” said the Fat Man.

  I carefully edged inside, and flicked the beams to high. It was a road, one lane, and it tilted down at about a forty-degree angle. I headed down, the Fat Man close on my tail. The wipers started to squeak; I flipped them off. The sides of this tunnel, if that’s what it was, were almost perfectly smooth, all concrete, gray. Not dirty and dingy and sooty like a real tunnel.

  Finally we seemed to be at an end: a black wall with yellow diagonal stripes on it loomed before us. Behind me, the Fat Man honked three times and flicked his lights twice and the wall, which turned out to be a door, swung open, riding on rollers straight upward.

  I nudged the gas and we rode up into a huge hangar, empty of airplanes but half-full of containers, the kind that come in on planes and leave on tractor trailers and ships. They were stacked three high and there must have been a few thousand of them, all with different names and colors, but all the same exact size. There was a big crane fixed to the center of the floor, but I didn’t see any humans around.

  The Fat Man rolled his window down and motioned me to come on back.

  The snow on the cab was already starting to melt, which meant it was pretty warm in here. I opened the driver’s-side door so the Fat Man would know I had gotten his message, then started to gather up all my shit: money, kit bag, coat, hat. I secured everything in my backpack and hopped out. I pantomimed locking the doors with a question mark on my face, and he nodded twice. I went ar
ound and locked everything up, even tested the trunk to make sure it was secure, and walked around to his right front door. It was locked. I looked over at him. He made a motion, waving me to the back door. I had heard that the Fat Man never allowed anyone to ride up front with him no matter what the size of the party or the amount of the tip. This was one small piece of confirmatory evidence. Or maybe I just smelled bad.

  I got in the back.

  On the way back to town, he stuck to the back roads. We did no more than thirty-five, ever, but he got us to Hyde Park in less than an hour and drove like the cab was a part of him. Remarkable. We must have hit thirty or forty stoplights, and not one of them was ever red for us. I asked my-self: Does he have some kind of transmitter in the trunk that turns them green? With the Fat Man, you never know.

  We drove on past a drug store with an old-fashioned clock out front that read five o’clock, and it hit me. It had been a long fucking day. I suddenly remembered the shooting, the blood, the cold wind. I shivered. That was tonight? It felt like years ago.

  I must have crashed, because the next thing I knew the car was stopped and the Fat Man was flicking the right rear door lock, like “Wake up! Wake up!” I jumped and saw that we had stopped in front of my building. I looked at him in the rearview: he looked fresh and cool and untroubled, like he was sitting in his favorite recliner with a beer in one hand, the clicker in the other, and the Cubs leading by five in the ninth.

  “Thanks for the lift,” I said. Then remembering, “Oh, where do I pick up the cab on Saturday?” Was I going to have to drag my ass back to O’Hare again, try to locate the hidden hangar?

  “Be the same place it always is,” he said. Not “if the weather lets up,” or “pending decent conditions.” No “should be” or “might be” or “probably will be.” No use of the conditional at all. The thing is, I believed him. What the Fat Man says goes, always.

  I pondered this, leaning back in the seat. I pondered Roger Something-or-Other. I pondered the reluctant fare and the runway bunker and the deep cold snow. My eyes closed, my breathing slowed, and I fell into a deep sleep, far away from the moment, a dark place where my dreams were closed to me, and my thoughts were hidden.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ken Ridlin

  1100 South State Street

  Friday, January 10

  The admin takes my arm, opens the door, wheels me around, walks me inside. The admin—Lieutenant Ali, David Ali—is six-foot-one, black, 180, thirty-six. Wearing a black suit, white shirt, black tie. Dressed like a Black Muslim. Which he used to be, back in the day.

  Times change. People, too. Sometimes.

  I look around the edge of the door, peek inside. It’s a big office. A very big office. A very big corner office. Two walls of windows, shaded by thick vertical drapes. A small, understated portrait wall—the Man and the aldermen, the Man and the mayor, the Man and the governor, the Man and the president, the one before the current one. The requisite shelves of legal texts break the light into a contrast of blinding shards of light and murky swatches of darkness. The Man has been smoking a cigar—against all the regs. The haze hangs in the quiet air. I start to crave a cigarette; even though I haven’t smoked in years I can taste it, I can feel the warmth in my lungs.

  Ali walks me into the room, his right hand on my shoulder, his left hand on my elbow. We take four paces over to the Big Desk. It’s all dark wood, polished to a high sheen. There isn’t a single piece of paper in sight. Ali nudges my right hand upward. From behind the desk Captain Hal Washington breaches, all six-foot-three and 350 pounds of him. I slow my approach, give him time to rise all the way up out of his chair. We do the Big Clasp. He wraps my right hand in his big mitt and squeezes. He places his left hand on top of both our hands. He’s going for a kind of benediction effect. Then two manly pumps and it’s done. His hands fall away. He motions me into a chair that Ali is already guiding into place beneath my knees.

  “Ridlin, Ridlin, Kenny Ridlin, it’s good to see you! How long has it been? Ten years? Twelve?”

  I suddenly remember: He’s always been one of those people who speaks in italics.

  “You’re looking good, Captain, if I might say—.”

  “It’s so thoughtful of you to lie to me, son!” he booms. “I look like shit!” His laugh shakes the walls. I remember that voice, filling every corner of any room he is in. I remember that laugh, the big bass rumble of it, from ten years back, or is it twelve. It was actually eleven. If I want, I can remember every year, every month, every day, every minute. I push the thoughts down, out of mind. He continues: “But you, how’ve you been keeping yourself?”

  Ali jumps in, picking up his cue—“That’s why I brought him by, Captain. It seems that Ken here has been doing some excellent work over in Robbery—he got us a break in that Moralita thing. Ken got the lead that cracked the case.”

  I know enough to shut up, smile demurely.

  “Why yes, I remember the case vividly,” the captain yells. Does he think I lost all those years because I had a problem with my hearing? “I followed it closely at the time, and when I was told about your, uh, break, I said, ‘Ken Ridlin? Of course. Ken Ridlin has always been a good cop,’ I said, didn’t I?” he says, turning to Ali. “I’ve said that more than once, haven’t I?”

  “Just those words exactly, Captain.” Ali volleys. “That’s why, when Ken asked to be transferred back to Homicide, I brought you the paperwork, and you were excited at the news, and wanted to examine the files personally and—”

  “But—”he butts in. “Not ‘and’ but ‘but’ …But, and I want to be honest with you, Ken…” He turns the big puppy-dog eyes on me.

  When people say “I just want to be honest with you,” they are about to lie in your face. This is something you learn.

  “I had some…concerns, Ken,” he lies.

  He’s leaning back in the chair. His lip is turning down. His jowls are resting atop his big right paw. His eyes are cast to the side. He looks ponderous, like an actual thought might be forming inside his head. It’s a good impression, but it’s just not possible.

  “After all the, ah, after what happened and all back then, it’s…ah, ah…it’s a little surprising that you’d want to go back into this particular line of work.…There are so many options available nowadays.…”

  His voice trails off in invitation. I refuse to give him a reaction. I think about a quiet spot I know up in Lincoln Park, under the trees, in the shade, with a gentle breeze. My happy place, they called it in the sessions. I retreat into it. I wait him out.

  It doesn’t take long. He hates the silence. He can’t stand it. Never could.

  “But of course it’s your call, not mine. You know the department has always wanted to do the right thing by you, Ken.”

  His mouth is open, as if he’s waiting to taste my useless words on his fat pink tongue. He speaks again.

  “I just had to make sure all the ‘right people’ said it was OK for you to get back into the fray, so to speak.”

  This is all delivered in an empty spasm. All gesture, all protocol, all clichés, all quoting the quoting. It’s the way he’s always talked.

  Except when he talked very very slow, which was worse, much worse.

  “Captain,” I lie, blandly, “I appreciate your concern.”

  It’s a struggle to keep the tone out of my voice. He’s looking toward me but a little off at an angle.

  He looks toward Ali; then he looks back at me. Then he puts on the big wide smile.

  He says, “So we talked to all the ‘right people,’ and all the ‘right people’ said you were good to go. They couldn’t figure out why you’d want to make this choice, but they felt you were…uh…” he raises his fingers in the air again, quoting, “ ‘sufficiently…uh…well-adjusted such that it should not significantly affect your day-to-day operational performance.’ ”

  A wide empty smile creases his face.

  I stay with the noncommittal grin, with my teeth clenched behind
it.

  “That’s what they said, Ken.”

  I nod. Once. There is so much I could say, so little I dare to. He’ll talk again soon. He can’t help himself. The silence will make him crazy. He thinks the world would disappear if he stopped filling it up with himself.

  “So you have my blessings, Detective. I know that Ken Ridlin will always be a good cop, and an honor to the force.” No little quotation marks in the air this time, but still plenty of emphasis. As I try to consider whether there are any clichés he’s left out, he pushes himself up out of the seat again. I’m remembering that he’s a lot quicker than he looks. I rise from my chair. He leans over, grabs my right hand again, puts his left on top. Two short pumps again. Then he drops his eyes, stands back.

  Ali wheels me toward the door. We take two paces. It’s over. I start to relax. My muscles unclench.

  Then that big voice blasts out again from behind my back, “So, Kenny, what’ve we got you working on, to start? Anything interesting?”

  Ali jumps in. This is his job: to interpret, to remember, to fill the void. “Ken is working that shooting last night at the 1812 Club, that jazz joint up on Lincoln, sir, you remember—”

  He stops, turns, looks at us. His head angles toward the floor.

  “Of course,” he mutters. “We touched upon it earlier this morning.”

  “—Ken here was on his way home when he caught the call, and was the first one on the scene. We figured, since the swearing-in is later today, and since Ken has some history with the force, maybe we shouldn’t let the red tape get in the way right off the bat, and maybe he should take the case,” he says.

  The captain looks at Ali. He’s not giving much away. He swivels his neck to look at me, cocks his head. “Is that what you want, Ken?” he asks. He still has that big smile in his mouth. But now there is an almost wistful sadness in his eyes.

  “Sure, sir, if you say so,” I say. “Whatever you need me for.”