Nine Fingers

by Thom August

  This is his Chicago flop, where Powell is putting him up with a friend.

  “No, I mean permanent residence.”

  He’s sitting, bent forward, his elbows on his knees. He looks up at me.

  “Permanent residence? None. For tax purposes, I list a P.O. box in Davenport, Iowa.”

  “P.O. box number…”

  “Eight-zero-six,” he says.

  “Music is your only source of income?” I ask, then immediately retreat. “Look, I could care less. Informational purposes only.”

  He nods. “Mostly music. What I make I put in the market.”

  “You one of those day-trader guys?”

  He shakes his head. “Hardly. I have a broker, she handles all of that. I send her money, she invests it. We talk maybe twice a year and maybe make some minor adjustments. She keeps enough cash in my account, pays the bills. She has a key to the P.O. box and power of attorney.”

  He pauses, then reconsiders. “I pay on time, pay estimated quarterlies in advance, pay state taxes every place I play, even report tip income. Mr. Straight and Narrow.”

  The guy has the smallest paper trail I’ve ever seen. He could do all of this off the cuff, not declaring a dime. They’d never catch him. But he doesn’t.

  I have a sudden thought: It would also be the perfect cover for our assassin, the bag lady, the motorcycle cop, whoever. All the travel, anonymous hotels, all cash income. Just mix in a couple of aliases, it would be airtight.

  “Her name? The broker?”

  He gives me a name, Melissa Yeo, a phone number, an address.

  We talk about how he got stuck in Chicago, the plane, the storm, like that.

  “Talking to Amatucci,” I say, pushing it, “he feels this is your first time in Chicago.”

  “It’s not on my regular rota.”

  That’s not what I asked.

  “I would think that Chicago would be a regular stop, all the clubs here and all.”

  “No. Never has been.”

  “Any reason?” I ask.

  “Just hasn’t been on the list,” he says.

  The more I look at him, the more familiar he looks to me.

  Am I recognizing someone, slowly, in stages, or just getting used to the way he looks? Slow down, I think, slow down.

  “What about this time? Plan to stay around?”

  He pauses, looks away. “If I could, I’d be on the next plane. This situation…”

  “But…” I say.

  He looks toward the wall. “It’s Paul. He’s good to play with. There’s something special there…”

  “So how long?”

  “As long as it works. That’s what I do. I go someplace, get some work, meet some players, and stay as long as it works. As soon as it stops working, I go someplace else.”

  “You prefer that, or does it just work out that way?” I ask.

  “It started that way by chance, but right now, I prefer it, yes.”

  “A couple of weeks, a month or two, a year?” I ask, trying for a time frame.

  He looks at me again. “As long as it works,” he says.

  I change gears. “The picture, the woman. You know her?”

  “No. I’m sure I’ve never seen her before.”

  “You sure?”

  “She looks a little like someone I used to know, and if I had seen her I would have remembered the resemblance.”

  “This ‘someone you used to know.’ ”

  “She’s…she died. A long time ago, at about the same age as the woman in the picture.”

  I finish some notes in my pad. Close it. Stand up. Stretch.

  He gets to his feet as well.

  “Oh. Just out of curiosity. How’d you lose the finger?”

  He looks down. “An accident, when I was young,” he says, and sits down at the piano I have just abandoned. A wave of arpeggios slams my back just before the door shuts behind me.

  CHAPTER 28

  Vinnie Amatucci

  Jones Apartment

  Thursday, January 16

  I don’t remember much about what happened after the bigger one shot the smaller one in the head. There was a lot of pain, I do remember that, then I passed out. I remember only flashes of the ride in the ambulance, the bumpy trip to Cook County General. I remember X-rays, and the heavy lead apron, and some test where they rolled me into a long narrow tube, a CAT scan or an MRI, one of those. I remember the banging noises, as if they were whacking the tube with hammers, and I remember another set of noises like the grinding of gears. I remember them telling me to hold my breath, over and over, for what felt like longer and longer intervals. Then I was out of the tube and shivering on a gurney and begging for a blanket. I remember them putting the intravenous drip in my arm, and I remember the drugs, oh, do I remember the drugs—the good shit, morphine. I remember that once the drip was working, they wheeled me all around the fucking hospital, for what felt like hours, as if we were in a time trial, an endless gurney journey. I remember they rolled me into a very bright room, and I remember squinting and asking where I was. Then I was out for a long time.

  A little later, I remember the detective talking to me, the same one I talked to at the 1812 a week ago, the tall one with the loose skin, but I don’t remember what he asked me and I don’t remember how I responded. And then I must have gone out again. Then I remember waking up again later this morning, feeling an itch on the left half of my scrotum, going to scratch it, and being unable to move my left arm. I remember looking up and seeing my hand, covered in plaster, hanging in the air in front of my face. Then I remember more X-rays, and more drugs, and being gone again for a long time, until it was dark outside. I don’t know what time it was; there was no clock in there and they had taken my watch—it had been on my left wrist.

  And I remember Akiko coming to the hospital, and signing forms, and talking to doctors, and wheeling me out to her heap of a car.

  And after that I don’t remember a thing for a long time. Nothing. I was still on medication, but they had switched me to pills instead of the intravenous drip, some kind of Percocet or Percodan instead of that good sweet morphine, and the pills were really atrocious, miserable shit that just made me want to lie down and close my eyes and watch the time slip away. I felt as if I were watching my IQ drop by ten points a minute.

  And then I was remembering all of this. I felt no urgency about trying to remember; it was just my brain exercising itself, like an involuntary spasm. It was just listing and sorting and categorizing and linking, going on about its business as if I weren’t involved at all, just a machine clearing its circuits.

  But at this second, I am not dreaming. I open my mouth, lick my lips. They are dry, and taste a little metallic. I must have breathed in when I licked my lips, because now I could smell something. It is salty, with a sweet undertone of musky perfume. It is familiar somehow, but on this one I could do the listing and the sorting but not the categorizing or the linking. I can’t complete the sequence. I can’t quite place it.

  Then a sound. A sigh, a breath, released. A long breath. Then a giggle, no, more like a chuckle, like “Huh, huh,” like that. Female. A low, husky female voice.

  I stretch my neck, left and right, forward and back. I let out a breath and let my head lie back. My eyes are still closed.

  I remember my left hand, and decide to do another empirical test—I try to wiggle my fingers. I can’t. I mean, I can feel them moving a little, but they only move a millimeter and then they are bumping into something. And they hurt. My kinesthetic sense tells me my hand is on my chest, my stomach, somewhere around there. And I am lying down, flat on my back, which is curious, since I never sleep on my back.

  I breathe in again and there’s that smell again. It is time to stop teasing myself. I turn my head to my left. I open my eyes.

  And then I blink twice. I am in a darkened room, lit by candles, on a bed, and there is a woman lying next to me, a woman I don’t know. Long wavy hair, almost black, but with an auburn glin
t in the candlelight, high chiseled cheekbones, a smooth forehead, big deep-sunk dark eyes, the lids molded to her eyeballs with a thin dark crescent of a crease at the top. I can see them because she is looking at me, her eyes half-open. Her mouth is open slightly, and she sucks in a breath, sharply.

  I move my eyes and see that she is naked, with extraordinary breasts, a flat stomach, not six-pack abs but no flab at all, and a trimmed bush of pubic hair, with Akiko’s face pressed up against it, her eyes closed, a look of concentration on her face. I look back up at her face—the brunette—and realize I do know her. It’s the woman in the red dress, the yellow dress, whatever, the one who made the big entrance at the 1812 Club last night, if it was last night, the one who parted the crowd at the Marriott last weekend. She is looking at me but not really seeing me, her breath is ragged, getting faster. Her face is flushed, the red creeping down to her chest, and then she looks away from me, rolls her eyes back, and she comes.

  Big-time. In waves.

  I see her muscles tense. I see her back arch. Her left hand is on her left breast, holding it. Her right hand reaches down and she grabs the back of Akiko’s head and pulls her closer. She shudders again, once, twice, her upper teeth raking her lower lip. She tries to grab a handful of Akiko’s short hair, can’t, and pushes her face away, muttering, “Enough, stop it, you know I get ticklish,” and rolls over toward me.

  I hear a rustling, and I see Akiko slide up her and lie on top of her, craning her neck up to kiss her, except as she does so she kneels on my left hip and I jump a little, involuntarily. She says something like “Oops, sorry,” and the brunette says, “I think our guest is awake.”

  Akiko looks at me. There is a look on her face I can’t decipher, not that it is blank, but more like there is more there than I can take in all at once. She sits up—she is naked, too—and says, “Sorry, Vince. I thought you were, like, out of it, all those pills. Did I wake you up? Sorry.”

  The brunette doesn’t let me answer. “No, you didn’t wake him up. He’s had his eyes open for a couple of minutes.”

  So she did see me watching her, she just didn’t let it stop her.

  Akiko asks, “Are you OK? How’s the hand? How are you feeling?”

  I look down at my hand. It’s in a cast and the cast is in a sling, and the sling is strapped tight to my chest. I can feel my hand inside all this; it is sore as hell, as if I don’t have bones in there, just shards of broken glass.

  “Shit,” I say, remembering how it got that way. “Shit.”

  “Can I get you anything?” Akiko asks.

  “Water,” I say. “I’m really thirsty.” My voice is full of gravel.

  She hops up, and knees the brunette in the thigh as she does. “Ow,” the brunette says. “We’ve got to do something about those knees of yours.” Akiko says “sorry” again and walks around the corner, out of sight. I hear the refrigerator open and close.

  A few seconds later she’s back, with a tall glass of water, the condensation already covering it. She looks at me, and sets it down on the floor. She turns to the brunette. “Help me get him sitting up.” They each reach a hand under an armpit and slowly ease me up. Akiko picks up the water and leans over me and holds it up to my lips. I try to sip it and spill a cold gulp of it down my chest. She says “sorry” again, and I realize that I have never heard her use that word once in the two years I have known her, and now I have heard her say it four, five times in the space of a minute-and-a-half. You never know with people. You never fucking know.

  She holds the glass up again and I drink again, and then gulp some more until I pull my head back and shake it side to side: no more.

  “I could get you another pill,” she says. “You’re not due for another hour or two, but hey, who’s counting?”

  I squint. I’m thinking about it.

  “Does the medication help?” she asks. “Is it taking the pain away?”

  “That’s not the way it works,” I say. “The pain is still there, but I’m gone. Far, far away.”

  She turns to the brunette and they giggle.

  “Are you sure you don’t need another?”

  “What I need,” I say, “is to take a piss, real bad.”

  I’m still half covered up. They pull the covers back, swing my legs over the side. The bed isn’t a bed, it’s a mattress on the floor, a futon. With my one good hand I can’t seem to get any leverage to stand up. I flop around for a minute until they get on both sides of me and pull me up to a standing position, one foot on the futon, one foot on the floor. I feel a little dizzy and they keep holding me until my head clears a little.

  Then they start to walk me toward the bathroom, one step at a time, and I realize they’re both naked and I’m naked, too. I also realize I have a hard-on, an impressive piss-hard-on, pointing just about straight up.

  The brunette notices, too, and as we get to the bathroom, says, “Are you planning on doing a handstand or do you want me to aim that for you?”

  I can’t tell from her tone of voice if she’s joking.

  “If you can help me sit down, I think I can manage it from there,” I say.

  They do, and then look at each other and leave, closing the door. My hard-on subsides a little, I manage to get it under the lid, and eventually I start to piss and keep pissing until I actually have to check to make sure it’s piss and not blood. I’m not counting, but it feels like I’ve been pissing for well over a minute. I finish up, give it a shake or two, lean forward, get my feet under me, and stand up. I reach behind myself and flush.

  I hesitate. I look for my clothes; they’re not in sight. I walk out of the bathroom, a little unsteadily, and they start applauding.

  “You really did have to go,” says the brunette.

  I make it back to the futon, and manage to plop down on it, not too gracefully. I reach over and pull the sheet over me.

  Akiko gets up, walks to the kitchen again, comes back. She has my kit bag in her hand, and tosses it over to the brunette.

  “I thought you’d want me to save this for you, keep it from the cops. It was in your car.” She turned to the brunette. “Why don’t you do this? I’m not good at it.”

  The brunette takes out the little black film can, finds some papers. “Open the other zipper,” I said. “There’s a pipe in there.” She does, finds it, loads it up. A couple of flecks land on her stomach. She picks them off, drops them in the pipe, tamps it down with her pinky. “There should be a lighter in there, too,” I add.

  She turns toward me. “I like a man who comes prepared,” she says, then reaches over, places the pipe between my lips, flicks the Djeep, and fires me up. I take a good hit and immediately start to cough my brains out, a good twenty seconds’ worth. “Good shit,” I say, quoting the old joke. I suck on the pipe again. It’s out. She flicks the lighter again, I take a hit and manage to keep it down this time.

  I reach up with my right hand and pass it over to her. She takes it, takes a hit, then another, and passes it to Akiko, who shakes her head and hands it back to me.

  “I forgot,” the brunette says. “Miss Purist. Sound mind in a sound body.” She goes to light me up again. She leans to her right, and her right breast nuzzles against my rib cage as she leans in. I take another hit, and a second one while it’s still going, and pass it back to her. A slow soft buzz is starting to creep into my head, different from the pills, familiar and warm and welcoming. A whole minute has gone by and I haven’t thought about my hand.

  She hasn’t moved, she’s still leaning against me. Akiko is now spooning her from behind, her left hand resting on the brunette’s left hip, as we pass the pipe back and forth. There is a languor in the room, and it’s not just the weed. And what is with Akiko? All her hard edges are gone.

  And I notice there’s something else in the room as well—Mr. Hard-On has reappeared. The brunette notices, too, and arches one eyebrow.

  “Looks like you’re feeling a little better,” she says.

  “Don’t mind him
,” I say. “He has a mind of his own, hasn’t listened to me since we were twelve.”

  Akiko leans up on her elbow. We’ve lost her; she doesn’t know what we’re talking about. She finally sees what has come up and makes this expression, her hand going to her mouth to cover a giggle, her eyes lowered.

  “Typical,” I say to the brunette. “We get high and she gets the giggles.”

  The brunette half turns, gives her a little scowl, slaps her on her hip. “Don’t you know anything?” she says. “You are not supposed to giggle at a moment like this. You’re supposed to say ‘Oh my God! I’ve never seen one that big!’ ” She mimes the whole thing, her mouth wide open, her eyebrows raised, her hands on the sides of her face, and now they’re both giggling.

  “It would be a lie,” I say, “but it is the protocol.”

  “Besides,” the brunette says, as if reading my mind, “size doesn’t matter, as long as you know what to do with it. And besides, this one is quite nice.”

  “That’s what you’re supposed to say,” I say to Akiko. “Whether it’s true or not.”

  “Sorry,” Akiko says.

  It strikes me that I’m intruding here, and maybe my discomfort starts to show. The brunette picks up on it. “I’m sorry to involve you in our little thing, here, but I just had to see her, and you were out cold, and—”

  “Hey. No problem. I’m the third wheel here. By the way,” I ask Akiko, “how did I get here? What am I doing here? And where is ‘here,’ anyway? Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture and all.”

  “The hospital was going to release you and the cops weren’t ready to put a guard on your place, and we were worried that the other guy, the guy who took off, might come back, so we’re at my place…Mi casa es su casa, at least temporarily,” Akiko says.

  “Don’t think I don’t appreciate it,” I say, “but while we’re trading aphorisms, two’s company, and three’s a crowd.”

  “What, you didn’t like our little show?” the brunette asks.

  I start to blush. Usually I’m the last to know, but this time I feel it, a dense heat flowing from my neck to my hairline and beyond. “Don’t get me wrong. It was quite, uh, stimulating, the little I caught of it, but—”