Authors: Thom August
Small Group Practice Room—University of Chicago
Thursday, January 16
It’s noon and Amatucci is still in the hospital. The doc started talking about inserting some more pins, and I cut him off
right there. I really don’t want to know.
I drive down to Hyde Park, park north of South 59th Street, and walk over to the practice-room complex. This is where they
usually practice, once a week, every Thursday. Powell told me it was a leftover from their old days as a band made up of students.
No one had classes at noon. And as for Thursday, if they did it on Friday the brass players would be all played out for that
night. If they did it on Wednesday, the subatomic particle physicist clarinet player would forget everything they had practiced
before the weekend gigs.
For my purposes, it works—private, secluded, comfortable for them. I can hear them inside, tuning up. I take a deep breath,
grab the doorknob, and walk in. I’m carrying a black case and a manila folder, and I set them down on top of the beat-up spinet
piano. Everyone is present: Powell, Worrell, Jones, and the cornet player or piano player, Landreau. They stop playing.
Powell reintroduces me around. We all shake hands. Introduces me to Landreau for the first time. Six-foot-even, 175, trimmed
salt-and-pepper hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing scars. Check that: We shake, and I notice he’s missing the little finger
of his right hand.
This stops me. How do you play the piano without the little finger of your right hand? Do you learn to play the piano, then
lose the finger, then decide to relearn it all over again? Do you lose the finger early, then decide to learn to play with
only nine fingers anyway? My brain is spinning as this sinks in, and for a second I forget where I am and why I am here.
I sit down on the piano bench. I figure I’ll start with the truth and improvise from there.
“You people have a problem. A bigger problem than you know. You’ve got three victims in just over a week, and it’s not over.”
I pull out the morgue picture of Tremblay. Place it on the music stand on the piano.
“First, Wednesday the eighth. Roger Tremblay. 1812 Club. Sitting in for two songs. One thirty-two-caliber slug in the back
of the head.”
Landreau is looking on intently. He wasn’t in town yet for Tremblay. I’m guessing they didn’t tell him: “Hey, the last guy
who sat in? He got shot in the head.”
“Tremblay has all the earmarks of a mob hit, except for the victim himself, who had no connection to that world. No gambling,
no vice, no dope, no loans. A citizen. Right now, we’re treating it as a hit gone wrong. Mistaken identity.”
I pause, look at them.
“Which means he was aiming at one of you, or at Amatucci.”
“I don’t see how—”Worrell begins. I hold up a hand to silence him.
“Next. Sometime Sunday night Fahey is killed in his apartment on the Near North Side.”
“Excuse me,” says Worrell, “but I must confess that I am a little curious about exactly how he died. Are you at liberty to
divulge that? Unless it’s confidential police business—”
“He was tied up and gagged. Someone filled his nose full of cocaine. Every time he took a breath, he snorted some more in.
Died of a heart attack. Massive.”
His eyes pop. “A most curious exit strategy,”Worrell says.
“Before you start making any plans, understand he was tortured along the way.”
“Tortured?” Worrell asks.
I slip a morgue picture of Fahey onto the music stand, next to the picture of Tremblay. It’s not detailed enough that you
can see much, but you can see he doesn’t look right. Powell and Worrell peer in. Jones is still staring at the corner. Landreau
is looking at me, not the photo.
“His fingers—broken. His toes—broken. His ears, his tongue, his eyes, removed.”
Powell looks ashen. Worrell stares even more intently, leaning in more closely.
“And you are deducing that the same person killed both Tremblay and Fahey, one with a gun and the other with torture and illicit
drugs?” Worrell asks. He is in the mentor role, speaking for his young charges.
“We have reason to believe the killer was the same in both incidents,” I say, vaguely, “despite the differences in method.”
“Is there anything you can—” Worrell presses.
“No.”
They frown, but nod their heads.
“Then last night, Wednesday again, 1812 Club again. A man posing as a motorcycle cop lures Amatucci out of the club during
a break with a story about car trouble. He leads him to two other men, waiting at his car, who attempt to interrogate him.
The two men get into a fight. One shoots the other one, takes off. In the course of the, uh, interrogation, they break all
the fingers of his hand—”
“Which hand was it?” Worrell asks.
“Left,” I say.
He winces. “What’s the prognosis?” he asks. Landreau has turned away, lost in himself.
I place a picture of Amatucci, asleep in his hospital bed, next to the other two. His left hand is hanging up in the air,
wired and bandaged and hooked up to some tubes.
“I was there this morning,” Powell interjects. “They’re not saying, because they really don’t know. Some dislocations, some
broken bones, some bone chips. They operated last night—reset the breaks, cleaned up some debris, put some pins in his fingers
to stabilize them so they’ll heal straight. They called in some orthopedist from Evanston, a specialist. He’s aware that Amatucci
is a piano player, and is doing all he can so he’ll still be one. But it’s going to take time, and work, and luck.”
“These people,”Worrell asks, “were they Mafia as well? As far as you can tell?”
“Yeah,” I say. “The one who’s dead, we have an ID on him. Spent time in the joint. The other one is his jail house buddy. We’re
trying to track him down.”
They’re not sure what to say. Finally, Powell weighs in.
“You used the word ‘interrogated’; what do you mean when you say they ‘interrogated’ Vinnie?”
I can hear the quotation marks he puts on the word. I probably put them on it myself when I said it.
“I use that word loosely. It was done loosely. But the gist of it was,
‘Who is it? Who is she with?’
”
Their foreheads crease, except for Jones, who was already scowling. I don’t catch a flash of recognition from any of them.
I wait for Worrell to jump in with a paraphrase.
“ ‘Who is it? Who is she with?’ Detective, I fail to see the meaning in this. To what, or to whom, does it refer?” he obliges.
“Well, that’s what I’d like to ask all of you,” I say, bouncing it right back.
I am thinking that this is an unlikely quartet of prospects for Laura Della Chiesa. I am also thinking: Who knows? I mean,
I think of some of the women who have slept with
me,
for God’s sake…
I take out one of two remaining items in my manila folder. It’s a composite sketch of the woman in the yellow dress who was
at the 1812 last night. It does look a lot like Laura.
“Who is she?” I ask, turning it around. They stare intently.
“She was at the 1812 last night,”Worrell says. “She arrived just before Paul and Jack, made quite a stunning entrance. She
sat right up front, and wore a rather dramatic yellow dress. She seemed to be enjoying the music. I didn’t see her at the
end, though. Who is she?”
“Who is she?” I echoed.
“I saw her there, too,” Powell says. “As a matter of fact, she was at the Marriott last Saturday, too, in a red dress.”
“Is there anything she did that made her especially memorable?”
He grinned. “Detective, there’s nothing she did that
wasn’t
memorable. Her mere presence left quite an impression. I wasn’t watching her during the sets, but I was aware of her. And
at the end, when we left, she bowed to me, even kissed Jack’s hand.” He looked up. “Hard to forget.”
“Kiss of death?” I ask myself. Don’t get ahead of yourself, I think.
“Anyone else remember her there?”
Worrell says, “Yes, of course,” and Jones nods.
“None of you knows this woman?” I repeat.
They shrug. I reach into the manila folder one more time. We’ve made up a photo array, Laura, taken from one of her many
bookings, and five other brunettes, in a tic-tac-toe arrangement. I slide it out of the folder and place it on the stand,
next to the other pictures, on the right. In putting it there I nudge Tremblay’s picture off the stand. It flutters to the
floor.
“Take a minute and look at these pictures and see if any of them look familiar,” I say.
“Lower right,” Worrell and Powell say in unison. “That’s her, that’s the woman in the red dress, yellow dress, whatever,”
Powell adds.
“Quite an exquisite specimen,”Worrell adds. “Who is she, if I may ask?”
I turn to Landreau. “Is that her?”
He glances sideways at the photo. “She looks very familiar.” “Ms. Jones?” I ask.
She looks over, lazily. “I don’t know if I saw her, if I saw anyone. We Chinese people are a little nearsighted.”
“But my dear, you must have seen her,” Worrell gushes. “An absolutely fabulous creature—”
“Can’t say I did. Can’t say I didn’t,” she says. “I don’t spend a lot of time staring at chicks in bars.”
“Who is she?” Worrell asks me.
I look them over. Nothing.
“If it’s her and she’s been seeing someone in the band, or someone even
thinks
she’s been seeing someone in the band, then who she is is a goddamn nightmare. She’s Laura Della Chiesa, and her father is
the head of all organized crime in Chicago. If they think she’s with one of you, all of you are in danger.”
I stop myself. Don’t want to oversell it.
“Which brings me to the next point,” I say. I stand up, pick up the case I have set on the piano, sit back down on the piano
bench, and open it. I start taking out the pieces of my old soprano sax and assembling it while I talk.
“It’s been decided downtown that there should be a police presence on the inside. We’ve been too late too many times with
this thing. We could plant a bartender, but we’d have to plant one in every place you play, and that could get obvious. Same
with waiters, waitresses, customers. And none of them would have access to you offstage. So it’s been decided that the best
plant would be someone in the band. And I’ve been nominated.”
“You’ve played before?” Worrell asks. “I mean, jazz, this kind of music?”
I look at him, nod. I turn to Powell. “Probably way before your time, I’m afraid. I used to play under the name of Kenny Riddles
…some people called me ‘the Riddler.’ ”
“I know that name,” Landreau blurts out. “Played the reeds, all of them.”
I turn to him. “Didn’t you say you were in Detroit? I never played in Detroit. Only here. Only in Chicago.”
He blinked. “Word travels,” he said. “Even to Detroit.”
“How long ago?” Worrell asks.
“Long time. Eleven years ago,” I say.
“If I may ask, why did you stop playing?” Worrell presses.
“Maybe when you hear me you won’t have to ask,” I say.
“Not what I heard,” Landreau says.
I ignore him. I know better.
“Amatucci says you have two jobs up in Wisconsin this weekend. If we can find a way to work it, I need to be there,” I say.
Nobody protests.
“When does Vince get out?” Jones asks. It’s the only thing she’s said since I arrived. “I’m worried that whoever came after
him might, like, try it again.”
“He gets out this evening, and that’s probably a valid concern,” I say. “Should he be staying here or going to Wisconsin?”
Jones turns to me. “You, you’re like ‘on duty’ when you’re with us, which means you’re getting paid by the city, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I propose that we keep giving Vinnie his share, for as long as it takes. He can, like, stay here and heal up and focus
on being the band’s manager for a while.”
They all mutter their agreement. One for all. All for one.
“Where is he going to stay in the meantime?” she asks. “I mean, we can’t let him lie in that rat hole in Hyde Park.”
She turns to me. “Protective custody?” she asks.
“Afraid not,” I say. “It would make sense, but…”
“I could put him up,” Powell says. “The couch folds out.”
Jones consider this. “I’m the only one with an unlisted phone and address—the rest of you are in the book, except you,” she
says, turning to Landreau.
He nods. She looks at Powell, at Worrell. Worrell says, “You know, I don’t believe I know where you actually do live, my dear.”
“See? Like I said,” she says. “OK. When we’re done here, I’ll swing over to County and pick him up, and meet you all up there
tomorrow night.”
They fall to discussing directions to Wisconsin, and talking about who is going to ride in what car. I let them settle before
I go on.
“In the meantime, if I’m going to be on the inside, it has to work for you. I said I was
‘nominated
.
’
You get the final vote. So we ought to take some time while we have it, go over a couple things, you know, musically. Like
I said, it’s been a long time.”
So we practice. We start with some simple things, old chestnuts, then work up to more complicated modern pieces. I actually
know these better. They were big back in my time.
I look around during the second one, and can’t believe it’s Landreau at the piano. Not just the fingers—that is amazing enough.
But the expression, the body language—it’s a whole new person. While we are talking, it’s like he’s frozen in ice. Now, playing
the beat-up old spinet, his face is all lit up, his posture is ramrod straight, there’s energy coming off him in waves. I
take a quick solo, a single chorus, and he is looking at me, very directly, with light filling his eyes.
At the start, my head is all wrong, my fingers are behind the beat, my embouchure is tight, my sound is pinched and pale.
And I realize how good they really are as they carry me through it. But then we go on and I get flashes, and the old spirits
come to visit. A certain vibration starts to hum in my gut. And it’s not all bad. For stretches, it’s almost good. And a feeling
comes back that I thought had been gone for good, and flickers in and out of the present like a strobe light, making everything
shimmer.