Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  And that’s the way the first set ends, not with a bang but a rebellion.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Cleaner

  Airport Marriott—The Gig—First Set

  Saturday, January 11

  The band is not bad. The bass player, he is someone I could listen to. He has got these fingers? Knows right where he wants them to go? The drummer, she is a dynamo, but holding herself back. This I can appreciate. This is the kind of music my old man used to listen to. Brings back the memories. The trumpet player is the leader, they all look to him. Except the sax. The piano player, the real piano player, Amatucci, is not great, but he is pretty good.

  Room is starting to fill up. One hundred and twenty-two. No familiar faces. The waitress is leaving me alone. I am applauding. Tapping my foot. Nodding my head. Nothing conspicuous. No more, no less than anyone. A big silly smile wants to break out. I am not letting it.

  The sax player? A cokehead. No question. Seen them all, and he is the poster boy for it. Lost inside himself but wants to squeeze the rest of us in there with him.

  Last song? Out of control. No music, just noise. Trumpet is pissed, you can see it if you look. The sax runs off, soon as they are done. Got to get himself back to even. He is racing to the can for a couple a toots. To convince himself he is playing like a genius.

  The crowd sees it. Sees an arrogant prick. He gets some looks.

  Maybe enjoying myself too much, here. Lost in this old music. Nothing figured out.

  Just waiting.

  And then she walks in.

  All by her lonesome. People are talking it up and then it gets quiet. Heads turn. Eyebrows raise again, like for the sax player. This time? Means something different.

  What they see: a woman, hair reddish brown, wavy. A red slinky dress. Hugging every curve, and there are plenty of them. Not heavy, not thin. A perfect body. Long sleek legs up to here. A meaningful ass, something to grab on to. Full breasts, high up. And the face. High cheekbones, pointy eyebrows, dark eyes. A narrow chin, but not too pointed. A Roman nose. And the full lips, the same color as the dress. The crowd, they are imaging those lips on them. All the men, some of the women.

  I do not see all this. Seen it before, plenty of times. I look at the crowd looking at her. I could stare, I wanted. Drool, I felt like it. Jump on the table, I had a mind to. No one would notice. She knows how they see her. And she is not even playing it up, not even a little. Seen her when she was. Could stop the whole Dan Ryan Expressway from a mile away. Not now. Not hardly trying.

  Laura Della Chiesa. The Princess. The one and only offspring of Giuseppe Della Chiesa, the Boss of all Bosses of Chicago. My guy’s little baby girl.

  Like I said. Seen it before. Been some time. Christ, I remember bouncing her on my knee, up at the house. Remember her falling asleep in the crook of my arm. Could always get her to stop crying when no one else could. She probably does not remember that, not now. Seen her since but she has not seen me. Makes it a point not to be involved. Never seen with our crowd.

  I look, see if she has a handler with her, public place like this. I reach down to tie my shoe, glance around from under the table. Take a good look. Nobody. Possibilities? He is out parking the car. He is out waiting in the car.

  Take one sip of ginger ale. Tapping my foot to the Muzak, do not even know what it is.

  A sudden pain, sharp, under the ribs. Wait. Two deep breaths. Fish out two red-stripe pills, right coat pocket. Toss them down. Another sip. Swallow. Count out two minutes.

  She picks the seat at the corner of the bar. Next to the bouncer. Conspicuous. But safe. The bouncer, he is turned to stone. Cannot get his mouth to close. Cannot get his eyes to blink. Laura is reaching into her purse. Dropping a bill on the bar. OK. No handler.

  She takes a pack of cigarettes from her purse. Camel non-filters. That’s Laura. Slides one out, taps it against her watch. The bouncer and the bartender and the manager are so quick with the flames they make a pileup. Almost set her on fire. She puts it to her lips and leans toward the manager. Laura has a way of knowing. Knowing who is trouble. Who is safe. The manager has got the tux. The patent leather shoes. Gay, whatever. She knows it. He is leaning over, trying too hard, laughing too loud.

  It takes the bouncer and the bartender a couple of seconds to put out their lights. The bartender remembers it when the match burns his fingers. He is red. Sweating. He wipes the bar, massages his fingers with his towel. Asking what he can get her, then jumping when she speaks. Almost knocking over the other bartender, the skinny one, who comes in for a closer look. He snaps at her. She snaps at him. Little domestic drama there. Like they have a past.

  He has got the silver shaker. He has got the long spoon. Martini. Stirred, not shaken. He is stirring it a little too much, trying to impress. A real martini drinker would tell him to stop it, he is bruising the gin, the vodka, whatever. He reaches for a glass in the upside-down racks over his head, flips it right side up, almost drops it. She is chatting with the manager. He pours. Spears three olives with a pick. Slides them in. Bows. She turns her head. Picks it up, turns back to the manager, like she doesn’t see any of it.

  She does see it. Catches it all, but is not going to give him the satisfaction. Crosses one long leg over the other. It turns her away from the bartender, the bouncer. Toward the manager, who is talking like a man on death row. Telling his story, his one chance to get the words out. Her red shoe dangles off her right toe—how did it survive the ice and snow and slush?

  Always was a heart breaker. Stone cold just like her old man.

  The bartender starts making himself busy. Wiping down the bar. Polishing the glasses. The bouncer still cannot move. Like if she looked at him his dick would fall off.

  I pull my own eyes away, make like I am not looking. That would be conspicuous, not looking. I roll the ginger ale around the glass.

  What is she doing here? Coldest night of the year. All the way out at the airport. On her own. Meeting someone? No one with her yet. Waiting for someone? Has not looked at her watch once, five-thousand-dollar black Movado like it’s there for show. Just slumming? More likely she would be slumming at the Checkerboard Lounge on the South Side, with the brothers. Really rubbing her father’s nose in it. But up here in the suburbs, with mostly white folks?

  There is something missing.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  This changes everything.

  CHAPTER 13

  Vinnie Amatucci

  Airport Marriott—The Gig—Second Set

  Saturday, January 11

  I step outside and get some cold air in my lungs, plus some tobacco. The thing with Jeff has me worried. I’ve looked at the second-set playlist, and there’s a lot of trumpet-and-sax-together pieces in there, a lot of tight arrangements. It’s a little more modern, which should be to Jeff’s liking, but it has some harmony things, which he will hate. I don’t know what’s with the guy. He can play a little, but he always acts like it’s an imposition. Even when Paul goes out of his way to program stuff that he likes, Jeff acts like, “Go ahead, make me fucking enjoy it.” The guy’s a head case, and tonight it’s like it’s the full moon and Mercury has gone retrograde.

  I check my watch and head back inside. Paul is warming up his mouthpiece, Sidney is bowing his bass, Akiko is doing little paradiddles on the snare drum with her fingers. She seems up tonight, but contained as always—you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t know what to look for.

  But no Jeff. Shit. Here we go again.

  Paul has a thing about starting on time, not quite obsessive-compulsive, but it’s there nonetheless. All these four years, I can’t remember him ever being late for anything. The man has some kind of philosophical position about it, no doubt. It’s all thought out with Paul, except the music itself. When he puts the horn to his lips all that recedes into the background. He never repeats a solo, hardly ever even repeats a phrase, which is rare, to tell you the truth. And it’s not thought out at all; it just flows out of the moment.


  He signals me to turn on the voice mike on the piano. He strides over, taps it twice, not to check to see if it’s live, but to let the crowd know he’s going to say something. They quiet down.

  “Welcome to the Airport Marriott. We’re ‘New Bottles,’ as in ‘Old Wine, New Bottles,’ and we’re pleased to be here on this wintry night. We’re also pleased that you could be here to share it with us.”

  A slight pause.

  “I must have been having so much fun the first set that I forgot to introduce the members of the band. So, if you will allow me…On piano, Mr. Vince Amatucci…”

  Akiko gives a drumroll and a cymbal crash. Bah-dah-BUM. Polite applause surges out of the crowd. I do a little bow from the piano bench.

  “On the string bass, Dr. Sidney Worrell…”

  Another flourish from the drums. Sidney acts like they’re applauding for somebody else, looking around, his eyebrows crinkling, a hint of surprise on his face.

  “On drums, Miss Akiko Jones…”

  It would be impolite for her to give herself a little flourish, so I do the honors with some ascending chords. She bounces up and down in her seat, shakes her head, one hand turning one of the screws on the snare.

  “On tenor saxophone,” Paul looks to his left, sees no one there. This gets a chuckle from the crowd, but something more as well, something not as nice. “On tenor saxophone, has anyone seen Mr. Jeff Fahey?”

  Sidney does a comic “OOH-wahh” on the tuba, and the crowd breaks up.

  Paul is almost embarrassed to be caught making fun of one of his own and mutters, “I’m sure he has been unavoidably detained, and will be with us momentarily.” Abruptly, he hands the microphone to me. He can’t stand to announce himself. Quickly, I add, “And on trumpet, Paul Powell,” stringing it out, like some ring announcer at a boxing match, undermining the effect his understatement was designed to evoke. Paul bows deeply, then reaches back for the mike.

  “We’d like to showcase the musical talents of one of the band’s original members. This is a composition for the piano by one of the greatest trumpet players—actually, cornet players—in jazz history, a man who played brilliantly before meeting an untimely end at the age of twenty-eight. Still revered by people who know the music, the man I’m speaking of is the late Leon Bix Beiderbecke, of Davenport, Iowa. The composition is called ‘In a Mist,’ rendered by our own Vince Amatucci. Vince?”

  I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Paul say so much in one breath. As for the tune, obscure but wonderful doesn’t even begin to say it. I can’t even remember the last time I played it. I remember the first time, though, about a month after the band started, when Paul brought me the sheet music and said, “Please indulge me, if you would. I just have to hear this in the air. I came across the sheet music the other day—it’s quite rare—and have been hearing it from the page, and playing it one line at a time on the horn, but it’s not enough. Could you…?” It was a special moment, a rare glimpse of vulnerability, one of our first moments of bonding, and I feel a slight tightening in my throat as the memory comes back to me now.

  The other band members are shuffling off the stage and I’m thinking all this and trying to remember what fucking key it’s in—it’s in good old C, of course—and I look up and see the guy from the cab the other night, the guy who couldn’t make up his mind, standing framed in the light of the entranceway, that same weird suitcase in his hand, leaning against the door jamb, and I think, there’s still no Jeff, where the fuck is Jeff, and what is that guy doing still here?

  And all this takes maybe two milliseconds to rattle through my addled brain, until I say to myself, “Not too fast, Vince, do it justice,” and start.

  It’s a strange enough piece, as if Debussy had smoked opium and played whatever came out and then transposed it upside down. I’ve heard the old 78 of Bix himself playing it—playing it a little too rushed for my taste—but of course he was really a cornet player, not a piano player, and self-taught on both instruments at that. And I’ve read the stories of how, when it came time to write it down for the publisher, he couldn’t play it the way he had played it on the record; he just had to improvise on his own improvisation, until they just said “Fuck it,” and had someone just transcribe the record. Play it too slow and it’s a dirge. Play it too fast and you lose all the subtlety. Dense, packed chords, little runs, a rhythm that skips around. Classical and jazz, jazz and classical melded into something else. And I try to shut these thoughts out of my head, and let the lyricism of it flow through me, and start to get there about the time I get to the bridge, which is almost a funky bebop kind of thing, fifty years too early. Then it just sings out, real stride piano, the left hand dancing up and down the octaves, the right hand belting out on top, before it cycles back to the chorus, this shy little rhythmic thing, subtly building, the chords all sly and thick. Until the very end, when it slows, and somehow darkens and brightens all at once, reaching up into the stratosphere, almost as if he couldn’t bear to end it.

  And I’m doing it justice, I think, and the crowd starts to applaud, until someone who just can’t wait for it to unfold its curious logic starts clapping very loudly, yelling “Bravo, Bravo,” which is really inappropriate for this particular piece of music and my own stumbling homage to it, and at the last second I realize it’s Jeff, striding up to the stand.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Cleaner

  Airport Marriott—The Gig—Second Set

  Saturday, January 11

  10:02 A.M.: Something is fouled up. You can tell. Trumpet is dying to start, you can see it. But no sax. Trumpet introduces the band. Buying time. Takes a little dig at the sax guy. Jeff Fahey, file this away. F-A-H-E-Y, F-A-H-Y, whatever.

  Then the piano plays a solo. Strangest thing I have heard in a long, long time. Do not listen to much music, these days. Some you cannot help but hear. But not like this.

  Piano guy does OK with it. Hey. What do I know?

  Then at the end, Saxophone comes storming in. Making an ass of himself. Fully lit now. No pain. Showing up Piano. The crowd sees it. Trumpet and the others jump back onto the bandstand, get ready to start. Saxophone is standing in front of it. He and Trumpet are going at it. Trumpet all quiet, talking so you do not see his lips move, just the goatee bobbing up and down. This guy has some control. Can appreciate this. Sax is screaming, but he is facing away from the crowd. The words do not come through. Do not need to. Muscles in his neck as tight as cables.

  Saxophone jumps onto the stage. Glares at them all, one at a time. Clips his sax on that string they wear around their neck. Runs his fingers over the keys.

  An awkward pause. Saxophone turns to Piano, like he is telling him start already. Piano just stares back, then points at something.

  Saxophone looks down. He is holding the sax but it has got no mouthpiece on it. Just this open neck. And, swear to God, he leans over and looks down into the hole. Like the top part maybe fell in there. Pats his pockets, getting frantic. Looks high and low. No mouthpiece anywhere.

  Jumps down from the stand, unclips the sax. Turns back to the bandstand. Slings it over his head. Smashes it down on the edge of the bandstand. One time. Two times. Three times. Little pieces flying off. His face is purple. Drops the sax. What is left of it. Wrestles with the string around his neck, tries to tear it off. Ducks his head through it. Flings it at the bandstand. Aiming away from them. Knows if he touched Trumpet he would be toast. Something about Trumpet. One of those guys, if it came to it, he would not fight the guy, just kill him.

  10:10 A.M.: Saxophone gets halfway to the door. I sneak a peek at Laura. Her head is down, but her eyes are up, watching. Just her cup of blood. Sax turns around. Heads back toward the bandstand there. Veers right, goes around the back. Tossing coats up in the air. Finally finds his. Heads around the front of the stand, sees his sax lying there. A twisted lump of metal. There is a pause there. He turns his back on it.

  Turns toward the door. He is taking up the whole spotlight now, sq
uinting in the glare. Starts to force his arm into one of the sleeves. Gets the wrong sleeve, the wrong arm. Whips it off. Knocks a round of drinks off a table up front. Big crash. Sticky liquor everywhere. Starts to look for the sleeve. Every eye is on him. Thinks better of trying to get it on. Slings it over his shoulder. His keys go flying, coming out of a pocket. There is a laugh from the crowd. Then it stops, quick. Like watching someone slip and fall on the ice. Can’t help yourself.

  He looks around. Daring the keys to be found. Sees something a couple of yards over to his left, on the floor. Now he is on his hands and knees. Finds the keys. Stands up. One schmuck applauds. The sound cracks the silence. Saxophone looks for the clapper but the spotlight hits him and he cannot see and he’s got tears running down his face. He heads for the door.

  There is a guy there. Leaning on the door frame. Some kind of suitcase in his hand. Tries to dodge Saxophone. They feint back and forth. Guy in the door stands aside and ushers him through. Like a matador. Cannot see his face. Average size, average build.

  Saxophone almost rams into him, anyway. Gets past. Sprints out the door.

  The room is silent, then a hum of whispers.

  Trumpet leans in to the mike. There is a pause. The crowd settles. “That was Mr. Jeff Fahey, formerly on tenor saxophone…” There is a sadness in his voice, no anger at all. Cannot bring himself to hurt the guy. Even when he has been a total asshole.

  Picks up a little card from on top of the piano. Turns to the band, tears it slowly in half. Tears the halfs in half. Lets the pieces flutter to the floor. Piano shrugs. What are you gonna do?

  Trumpet picks up the mike. “Here’s an old Duke Ellington standard, ‘Mood Indigo.’ ” It is all wrong and it is just right. Makes the crowd take a big deep breath. Slows the old heart rate.