Nine Fingers by Thom August Read Free Book Online

some shit hole. “Of course, all the good hotels up there have
     Midway vans, every hour or so, if you need to get back here.”
    Go ahead, make it worse.
    “Is there a Marriott?” he asked.
    “There are two, actually. I’ll take you to the better one, near the airport. I know that one pretty well—we play there all
     the time. As a matter of fact, we’re playing there tomorrow night.”
    He locked onto my eyes in the rearview mirror for a full second, the first time we had really seen each other. There was something
     there, no, there was a lot there, but I had no context to help it make sense.
    “OK,” he said, “Let’s do it,” and sat back into the seat.
    I hit the button, craned my neck around, nudged the gas pedal and we were out into the traffic and the slush, heading toward
     the Cermak Road exit about half a mile away. The snow had piled up since I had arrived. I turned up the wipers and cranked
     up the heat.
    I usually let the fare know my intentions up front, and to let them have a say in which route to take. Hey—if you’ve got a
     preference or a plan, it’s better you tell me now than after we get there. If I want to go back roads and you want to go Tri-State,
     and I just heard on the box that the Tri-State is all fucked up, I’m going to tell you. But it is your nickel.
    “Here’s the plan, and if you have a different preference, let me know, OK?”
    I made a point of pausing here, looking back in the rearview. He looked up.
    “We’ll head a mile or two north to the Stevenson, take that west to the Tri-State, head north to DesPlaines Road, then about
     two miles east to the Marriott. There are more direct routes, but it’s getting sloppy out there, and I think we’d do better
     to stick to the highways.”
    “Sounds sensible,” he said, and off we went.
    Cermak was a mess, only one lane open each way instead of the usual three. We were poking along in deep ruts, skidding whenever
     we hit a cross-rut. This kind of driving is like cross-country skiing: you can’t really stop or go on command, but if you
     work at it you can control the sliding. It also helps to have a good car, and the Fat Man has made these as solid as possible—great
     tires, plenty of pull when you want it, brakes that, if you really want to stop, you can kick and they’ll catch. I even heard
     a rumor that the Fat Man’s own Marathon was a custom four-wheel-drive job, with a tranny lifted from an Audi Quattro.
    The fare was looking out the window, his face close to the glass.
    “Does this Marriott have the shuttle buses you mentioned?” he asked.
    “Yup, to both airports—O’Hare every fifteen minutes and Midway every hour. They have all the amenities—decent restaurant,
     room service, indoor/outdoor pool. Cable, HBO, nice lounge. The other one is a Marriott Residence Inn, and you…you didn’t
     look like you were ready to take up residence…”
    He looked up at this, a wry grin creasing his face, just a tease of a smile, but something, finally. His left arm was still
     around that funny case. Either it’s the world’s worst-designed hidden-bottom case, totally obvious, or it’s designed for something
     special, I thought. He turned away from the window and glanced at the case, his hand lingering on it.
    Without looking up he said, “You said you ‘play there’? ‘Play there all the time’?”
    “Oh,” I said, “Oh, yeah. I’m with a band that has a regular gig there, on Fridays, every second or third one, like tomorrow,
     in fact, from nine ’til midnight.”
    “You’re ‘with the band’? What do you play?” he asked.
    “I play piano, and I’m like their manager, their agent,” I stumbled.
    “ ‘Like their manager, their agent’…?” he echoed.
    “I was one of the original members, about four years ago,” I said. “It started as a bunch of U. of C. students just having
     a good time. Man, some of the early gigs we had…”
    “ ‘U. of C.’?” he echoed,