Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  Sparks flutter down onto the curled-up, yellowed linoleum. He lights another cigarette with a little pink disposable lighter. Keeping the smell of death away, as long as he can.

  “Anything else I should know?” I ask.

  “All I got, man,” he says.

  “One thing,” I say. “He was a sax player. Played in this band, part-time. I see a music stand, I see some music on it. Where’s his sax?”

  Carter looks me in the eye. His eyes are dark brown in his light cocoa face, and turned down at the side like an old basset hound. The bags are starting to get deeper. Couple of years they’ll dominate his strong face.

  “Man, they was right,” he says, “you are good.”

  “Well, it’s the obvious question.”

  “Maybe. Maybe there is one thing,” he says. He reaches into his left coat pocket, pulls out a plastic evidence bag, holds it up so I can see it. “This be part of a saxophone?”

  It’s a little twisted piece of brass, with a circular piece of what looks like mother-of-pearl attached to it, the whole thing not more than an inch long.

  “Yeah. A key. From a tenor saxophone.” I turn to him. “Where’d you find it?”

  He grabs me lightly by the elbow, leads me gently over to the corpse. Leans me down in front of it, blowing smoke all around us.

  “See this mark here? On his forehead?”

  I nod.

  “Where we found it. Like, embedded in there. Like our guy hammered it in there with something—”

  “His fist maybe?” I ask.

  “Look at it, man. Only way he hammered it in with his fist is if he was some kind of karate man or somethin—. I mean, it was hammered in.”

  “So,” I ask, “what did he hammer it in with?”

  “Uhhh, a hammer?” he says. “And no, we didn’t find no motherfucking hammer, and we didn’t find no prints on the thing…”

  He turns to me.

  “You know what all this is?” he asks me. “You know what all this means, Ridlin?”

  I turn. I look at him.

  “It’s a mystery,” I say.

  “See?” he chuckles. “Like I be saying. You good.”

  Not this good, I think to myself. Nowhere near this good.

  CHAPTER 21

  Ken Ridlin

  Interviews

  Monday, January 13

  I spend the rest of the day interviewing the members of the band. I start with Powell, the leader, the trumpet player. He lives in a high-rise at South 47th and Lake Park, all funny angles, very vertical looking. I park the car, announce myself on the intercom, he buzzes me in.

  I take the elevator up to the 8th floor. The building is in pretty good shape—you can usually tell from the elevators. Here, they work, and they don’t smell like piss. I show the badge at the keyhole. He lets me in, a tall African American male, thirty or so, a thick, well-trimmed goatee on a lean, carved face. He’s got a great view from up here, facing east over the IC tracks to the lake, these big floor-to-ceiling windows inviting you to look out. From this view, you’d never know you’re across the street from the southern boundary of one of the poorest and most violent slums in the city. That’s Chicago, for you. Cross 47th Street heading north and half the buildings are boarded up, there are crack vials lying in the gutter, junkies skittering in the shadows. Stay south of 47th and you’ve got Elijah Muhammad’s house, Muhammad Ali’s old house, a classic Frank Lloyd Wright house, Robie, I think, and the U. of C., all part of Hyde Park, a racially mixed upper-middle-class enclave right in the middle of the ghetto. Clean streets, good schools, lots of shopping. What’s the difference? It’s the stupid race thing.

  Powell leads me to a couch in the living room—it’s a one-bedroom—and I sit facing the lake. He sits catercorner on a black leather recliner with his back to that magnificent view.

  “That your favorite chair?” I ask. Got to start somewhere.

  “Well, I’m not sure I would call any chair a ‘favorite.’ ”

  “I couldn’t help but wonder. You got this great view here, the railroad, the lake, the boats, and your favorite chair is facing away from it…”

  He lets himself think about that. I let him think about it.

  “Well, this is where I sit when I’m in this room…”

  “It sure is a great view. This was mine, I couldn’t help staring out the window. Bet it costs a bit extra, having that view.”

  “Actually, no. If I moved out and someone else moved in, it probably would. When I first moved in it was a federal low-income housing project. I was a student, and I got in because of that. I’m no longer a student, but I’ve kept the place as the building transitioned to the private sector, so you could say I’m grandfathered in.” He turns his head slowly, only his head, looks out the window.

  “Did your favorite chair use to face the window, and you got tired of it?”

  He pauses, his brow twists together a little.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” I add.

  “No, I was just thinking. No. Actually, that chair was always right there, virtually the same angle. Not always the same chair, but always the same spot.”

  I get the feeling I don’t want this one to feel too protected. Your introverts? Your quiet types? You have to soften them up.

  “Actually, to complete your ‘investigation,’where I use the view is in the bedroom.” He stands up, walks past me, turns a corner. I stand up and follow him. He waves me through an open door. There’s a king-size bed on the left. There’s another floor-to-ceiling window, with an even better view. And right in front of the window is a music stand, and behind that a white ladder-back chair.

  This is where he practices. This changes the whole chair thing.

  “I see,” I say. I turn back toward the living room.

  “What did you study,” I ask, shifting gears. “Music?”

  He was thinking about the chair, or the view, or something. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry. I was asking what you studied when you were at school. At the U. of C.”

  “Yes. Right. No. Psychology, not music.”

  “Were you going to be a therapist, a psychotherapist? Something like that?”

  “No, nothing like that. I was studying cognitive psychology, how people think and reason and process information, how they acquire and utilize language. I was in a research program. I guess I thought I was going to teach, do research, something of that sort.”

  “Not something to help people? Not some therapy kind of thing?”

  A small expression, almost a grimace, crosses the bottom of his face like a shadow. “Not to help people on an individual basis, no. Just research. We still don’t know enough about how the brain works, the mind works, take your pick, epistemologically, to be very helpful to anyone, except on the most superficial of levels.”

  “Interesting,” I say. I’m taking notes, and I use a moment to add a few words to my pad. Some people, it makes them feel important if you write it down. Makes them think it’s serious. Must be working. He used a word, I can’t even spell it, whatever it means.

  “Well,” I say, “the first time I met you, last…Wednesday…at the 1812 Club, I spoke with the members of the band, and one was the saxophone player—”

  “Tenor-saxophone player.” He cuts in. “Sometimes alto, but mostly tenor.”

  “Right, tenor-saxophone player, a Mr. Jeffrey Fahey.”

  I look up. His eyes show me nothing.

  “I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Powell, that Mr. Fahey was found dead this morning.”

  “Dead? This morning? How long had he been dead?”

  “The coroner is still running some tests, but sometime last night.”

  He frowns. “Suicide?” he asks.

  “Suicide, it’s interesting you would say that. What would make you think that?”

  “Mr. Fahey—Jeff—was rather self-destructive. He had a history you’re probably aware of…”

  “Yeah. All on file. But that was a long time ago—
”

  He looks away.

  I pause, let some time run. “If you’re suggesting that his problem with drugs—cocaine—was more recent than the ten-year-old bust we have on file, then maybe you better tell me what you know,” I say, firmly.

  He nods, shakes his head a few times. He looks up. “Can I get you anything to drink? I’m going to have a glass of water.”

  “Yeah, water’s good,” I say.

  He gets up. I follow him into a tiny kitchen. It’s very neat. The whole place is very neat, I notice, looking around. There’s a rack over the fridge. A good single-malt Scotch—Macallan—Jack Daniel’s bourbon, Tanqueray gin, Canadian Club rye whisky, bottle of red wine, bottle of white. All top-shelf brands. And all mostly full. We’re having water. He gets ice out of the freezer, a jug of Poland Spring water out of the fridge, glasses out of a cabinet. He pours two, hands me one. Takes a sip, walks back to his favorite chair, sits down. I sit back down on the couch.

  He takes another sip, clears his throat. “The last time I saw Jeff, he seemed to have…relapsed. This was not a rare occurrence, you understand. He acted…wild…out of control. Stormed off at the start of the second set, smashed his saxophone to pieces, left without it. It was, I don’t know, shocking, in a way, although it wasn’t surprising, if that’s not too fine a distinction.”

  “Um-hmmm. See what you mean,” I say.

  “I always had this image of him as a sort of a man driving too fast on an icy road. He never learned to turn in the direction of the skid, if you see what I mean, never learned to turn much at all.”

  I nod, make notes.

  “His playing was like that as well,” he continues. “He would just go off, into his own thing…”

  “Like a needle stuck in a groove,” I finish. “Sorry,” I say, “that must be pretty out-of-date.”

  He sits up straight, his eyes light up, he grins. He waves to a bookcase on the corner behind him where the north-most edge of the window meets the wall, and I see there are hundreds, no, thousands of records lined up there. Not cassette tapes, not CD’s, but records, vinyl LP’s, even what look like old 78’s. I am drooling, thinking about what must be in there.

  “I’ve transferred most of this to…newer media, but I still have the originals, so, yes, I take your reference. And yes, that’s exactly what Jeff would get like, ‘like a needle stuck in a groove.’ Precisely.”

  I nod. I let him continue.

  “When he was smashing the saxophone, that’s the image that came to me, that he started it with one swing, and he could have stopped, with only minimal damage. He had made whatever point he was trying to make, but he couldn’t let himself let go of it until the thing was in pieces, and I mean, in pieces. A sad thing, really.”

  “This was when? When he smashed his saxophone?”

  “Saturday night, 10:09 P.M.”

  “Was this when you felt he might have…‘relapsed’?” I asked.

  He looks down at the floor, then peers up at me. “I’m sorry to say that I’ve known a number of cokeheads, Detective. He was loaded. Not just a little.”There is a touch of sadness in his voice, like he felt sorry for the guy. Like there was something he could have done. Seen a lot of coke-heads myself. Nothing you can do. Not a damn thing.

  “So, I’m curious, why did he smash up his instrument? He was a professional player, semiprofessional anyway. Why throw it away?”

  He pauses again. “I could answer you on a lot of levels, I suppose. The ‘presenting issue’ was that he found himself standing on the bandstand with his sax at the ready, but no mouthpiece plugged into the neck. I have no idea where it went. He was surprised by it, too, and frustrated, and took that frustration out on the instrument.

  “Look,” he continued, “you’re going to hear that the two of us didn’t get along. We didn’t. I thought he might have a talent, and he was abusing that talent.”

  “He knew you felt this way?”

  “Yes. Certainly. I tried to be positive about it, constructive, to phrase it more as a challenge. But he knew how I felt, how we all felt, for that matter.”

  “All of you?” I ask.

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  “You said there were ‘levels’ to his unhappiness and you talked about two—his job and his playing. Anything else?”

  Some people you just have to be patient, let them wrestle with it. Other people need structure. Powell is one of those.

  “He drink?”

  “Excuse me?” he asks.

  “Well, some people with that problem, the powder, they go on to alcohol, or other things. Then there are the ones that just lose all interest in everything.”

  “Yes, anhedonia.”

  “Anhe—what was that?” I say.

  “Anhedonia. ‘An,’ like ‘anti.’ ‘Hedonia,’ from the same Greek root word as ‘hedonism.’ It’s a well-known syndrome. When people, as you say, ‘kick’ something, and it doesn’t much matter what it is—cocaine, alcohol, a lover—they often go through a period in which they cannot get pleasure from anything. Life is gray, dull, flat, uninspiring in all its aspects. That’s one reason withdrawal is so difficult. Without the treasured object, life becomes lifeless.”

  “Huh,” I say. “Have to remember that one.”

  Should be easy to remember, since I’ve been living it all these years myself.

  “It’s a cognitive coping strategy. You love something more than anything else, you love yourself when you have that something. Suddenly, you can’t have it. So how do you stop wanting it? You stop wanting anything, turn off all desire. It dims the lack of possessing the object by dimming all joy.”

  “Hunh…” I say. “Interesting theory.”

  Theory my ass.

  I change the topic, back to the night Fahey went crazy. Did he notice anybody strange at the club that night? Anybody the same as at the 1812 Club last week? Anybody else in the band acting funny? He tells me he didn’t notice, he plays with his eyes shut, helps him hear the music better. As far as the crowd, the band, no, nothing jumps out at him.

  I admire his view of the lake. I think about the better view in the other room, and the practice stand, and the chair. He plays with his eyes closed. He never sees it.

  We go over some more details about the band, but there’s nothing there. No agent—the piano player does all the bookings. No after-hours clubs. All of them except for him have straight jobs and have to get up in the morning. No other history with drugs from anyone in the band, except he drops some hints about some pot, but come on, nobody kills potheads.

  And in a few more minutes we’re done. I drain my glass of water, ask him can I use his bathroom, do my business, wash up, thank him for his time, and head for the door. He shakes my hand, genuinely enough. I notice he has already placed my empty water glass in a rack in the sink. A neat freak? I think. I look around. The place is very neat. This guy could maybe do the cleanup up on Halsted, but the murder?

  Too early to be making any judgments, I think. Just gather the information, let the pattern form. Do not get out ahead of it.

  CHAPTER 22

  Ken Ridlin

  Further Interviews

  Monday, January 13

  Because they are on the list, and because the list is where you start, I spend the rest of the day chasing down Professor Sidney Worrell, bassist, and Ms. Akiko Jones, percussionist. He lives south and she lives north, but it’s not my gasoline.

  Worrell is a professor at the U. of C. Teaches history of science, philosophy of science, like that. Has a big house in Hyde Park, near the college, half a mile south-by-southwest of Powell. He’s a big man, big all over, not fat but just big, like a bear. A thick sandy beard covers his face. He’s dressed casually, even for a philosopher: beat-up sneakers that used to be white, frayed khaki slacks, a blue oxford shirt, short-sleeved. He has got more hair on his forearms than I have on my whole body.

  But I see right away that his guy cannot be our guy because our guy is a highly organized type and
this house may be the worst mess I’ve ever seen. It’s not dirty, not so’s you would notice, but he has got stuff piled up everywhere. Books, papers, magazines, the Tribune, music, records, tapes, CD’s, you name it. There are floor-to-ceiling bookcases everywhere, but they’re so jammed full you can’t even see what they’re made of. And most of the floor space is taken up with these piles. It takes him two minutes just to clear off a chair so I can sit down, moving the pile that’s on it very delicately.

  There’s a woman buzzing around, small looking. When she scoots by, he doesn’t acknowledge her; she doesn’t say anything to him.

  I look through the piles while he’s rearranging. One pile has mostly philosophy books, but there’s some art books, a chemistry textbook, and a string of comic books, of all things, thrown in. Another pile is more magazines, some architecture books and blueprints, and a few computer books. There’s no logic to it that I can see.

  When he moves the piles, he’s very particular about where he wants them to go, and shambles around the place looking for just the right spot to put them down. Frowns, shakes his head. Places them down just so. Go figure.

  The guy must be a genius, like they say he is, just to find anything.

  When we finally get situated, his conversation is like he’s reading me something off a page instead of talking to me. Very precise, very clear, unlike his surroundings. Every sentence is a complete sentence, and they all tie together into paragraphs.

  We spend an hour going over it, starting with the background. Couple years back, Amatucci and Powell are both in one of his classes. Amatucci is in it because it was required for his major, Powell is in it just because he is interested. Takes all the tests, too. Gets an A, doesn’t count. Worrell asks him about it, does he want to sign up for credit for the course after it is done. Powell says to him, “That’s very thoughtful of you, but it won’t be necessary. It was a very insightful course. Thank you for your time.” Cool as a breeze off the lake. Following his own agenda.

  Worrell is in some brass quintet in the college, and Powell shows up to play trumpet, of course. I ask Worrell what a brass quintet was doing with a string-bass player in it. He wasn’t playing string bass with them, he says, he was playing tuba and euphonium.