by Jens Lapidus
The Globe was completely packed. Schumer hollered gags from the stage. Roksana laughed so hard that her stomach ached.
Billie was about to fall off her seat. People were crying with laughter all around them. Roksana kept casting side glances at Nikola—he looked stiffer than a Christian Democrat at a leather-bear club.
“Last time she was here, some guy in the audience shouted ‘Show us your tits!’ ” Roksana said.
Nikola turned to her. “What happened then?”
“Amy replied: ‘That was cute, but now you’re going to be saying that to the people in the parking lot,’ and two guards came in and escorted the guy out. Everyone cheered.”
Nikola leaned in to Roksana, as though he didn’t want anyone around them to hear. “You don’t think it was planned?”
Roksana had no idea, and she didn’t care. “Don’t you like her?”
“She stands up for who she is. I like that.”
Roksana changed the topic. “Did you check how many you can get for the Our Land Club security?”
“It’s gonna be fine. But this is a onetime thing, me doing this,” said Nikola. “Just so you know.”
Roksana felt a double warmth in her body. Maybe the club thing would work out. Maybe they would manage to get the money together. Plus: she would get to hang out with Nikola again. For three whole days.
* * *
—
Finally, the day arrived. June 6. The Natio-anal Day, as Z called it. The starting shot. Roksana climbed up onto one of the stages and looked out at the old industrial building. It was insanely impressive. In just a few hours, it would all begin.
More than eight hundred tickets had been bought in advance, for five hundred kronor apiece. But they had huge overheads, too: wages, staging, the sound system. They would need to sell at least double that, plus a serious amount of K, just to break even. Not to mention what they needed to sell to cover their debt with the psychos.
Billie was beaming when she arrived with her six-foot-tall images of various vaginas that she would be setting up as an installation in one of the party rooms—they had promised her that in exchange for all her help. “I’m thinking this could be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for in the pussy guerrillas.”
Roksana and Z had worked for twenty-two hours of the past twenty-four. Organizing entry, setting up bars, mediating between the two art students who had fallen out over their different views on the symbolic meaning of neon colors in shaman culture.
She called her father.
“How are you, Roksana joonam?”
“I’m really good. Z and I have organized a huge party.”
“What’s that? A party? What party?”
“A music festival, I guess you could call it. We’ve invited some DJs to play.”
“That sounds nice. But are you also finding time for your studies?”
Roksana sighed. “Dad, I’ve been working on this day and night for the past few weeks.”
“On a music festival?”
“Yes, Baba. Organizing it so people can play and listen to music. Music, Dad, that’s good, isn’t it?”
He started talking about Roksana’s trip to Tehran again, but she thought that he sounded happy. What about her? Was she happy? Yes, she definitely felt very exhilarated and very happy—there was just a tiny hint of worry there, too. Would they manage to make enough money? They were putting everything on the line right now.
Their three-day party was finally under way. DJ John Hudson kicked things off on the big stage, with more than five hundred people dancing like they had never done anything else. You could hear the bass line right over in Södermalm. On the small stage, DJ Asian Girl was playing. It was hysterical—she had announced that she was releasing two new songs in honor of the club, and that had gone through Stockholm like lightning. After just a few short hours, anyone who hadn’t heard of Our Land Club before, now knew all about it. The line was snaking back practically all the way to Bromma Airport. Song after song, gig after gig. DJ after DJ. Tunes pumped out through the old turbine halls like two hearts pumping blood through the body. The cops came by and wondered what the hell they were doing, but Roksana waved the alcohol license they had been granted at the last minute in their faces—the police smiled then and congratulated her.
They kept going until 3 a.m. the first night: they didn’t want to overstep their license. They managed to sell more than three hundred thousand kronor worth of K.
Day two was the same, only better, with even more people. Even more people on a K high. Even more banknotes in the huge Nike bag one of Nikola’s guys was watching over.
Day three was a haze. Roksana hadn’t slept a wink. She was running around fixing things the whole time, selling Special K—the one thing she regretted was not getting a chance to talk to Nikola. The weather was so warm that people were talking about a tropical night. More than three thousand people turned up that day, and the money was flooding in faster than into the Minecraft inventor’s account. The music washed over them, embraced them, took them on a deep journey. People weren’t going home. They were drinking energy drinks and getting half an hour’s sleep to recharge their batteries behind the closed outlet shops. People were breathing the helium from the balloons, drinking beer, and taking Kit Kat like it was food. They danced until seven thirty in the morning. It was a blast. The club of the century. It wasn’t a success—it was a phenomenon.
* * *
—
At eight in the morning, Z pulled the plug on the amplifiers. The DJs staggered down from their booths. The handymen turned up and started taking the stages apart—they had probably slept like normal people last night. There were still people everywhere, both outside and in the two halls.
Roksana, Z, and Nikola were standing by the entrance, breathing the fresh air and chatting. Eyes narrow with tiredness. She weighed the duffel bag in her hands. “I’m glad we took only cash. It’ll make things easier for us. Want to guess how much we’ve got in here?”
Z grinned. “Over two mill, I reckon.”
Nikola looked happy, despite the fact he had barely slept for three days. “I’ll say three.”
Roksana took his hand. Nikola squeezed it back: his palm was warm and dry. Z smiled; Roksana could see from his face that he understood.
“What’re you two doing now?” he asked.
She squeezed Nikola’s hand harder. He did the same. She whispered to him: “Shall we show our tits to one another?”
Then she saw something she really didn’t want to see. Three police cars pulling up on the gravel out front. Nine officers opening the doors and striding toward them.
“Oh shit,” Z groaned.
“Run,” Nikola hissed.
Roksana ran. She ran with everything she had. Over the gravel. Toward the road. Nikola was beside her, Z somewhere behind them. She was panting. Her feet ached. Her chest burned. She was clutching the bag as tightly as she could. It swung against her side. So long as they hadn’t had any plainclothes officers in there to see how much ketamine they had sold…Please, God.
She thought about throwing the bag behind a building, but the police officers were too close behind her. She could see them out of the corner of one eye: huge, with their chunky boots and jingling belts.
She thought about her father’s voice when she told him she had organized a music festival: somehow, it had contained a note she had never heard before. Some kind of surprised hope. She could hear her grandmother’s words: “You can be whatever you want to be. He could, too.”
Roksana had thought she could do what she wanted—she was an idiot.
She glanced back. Saw the flushed officer’s face sneering at her. He shouted: “Stop.”
The morning light felt too bright. The sun too warm.
She could see the water’s edge up ahead. Huvudsta on the other side.<
br />
She wouldn’t be able to make it much farther. She needed rest. Sleep.
The police officer threw himself at her.
Roksana stumbled. Tried to break her fall, scraping both knees in the process. Her chin hit the gravel and rocks.
At least five kilos of ket: how many years would that be? Z had once mentioned four years. The officer pulled her hand behind her back. She dropped the bag.
Four years in prison?
“I’m arresting you on suspicion of illegal alcohol sales,” the cop panted.
Roksana almost started to laugh, she couldn’t believe it was true—so they weren’t suspected of dealing. What a joke. What a triumph. There was nothing to be afraid of.
She got up; the officer no longer seemed as gruff as she had first thought.
She smiled.
“I’ll take that,” the officer said, taking the bag of money from her hand.
Roksana started to cry.
She was so tired.
41
The pigs had arrested the person they thought was Teddy but who was, in fact, Dejan. Kum’s stomach had quivered with laughter as he and Teddy walked away. “Those idiots,” he said. “They’ll have to release him within thirty-six hours. Those are the rules.”
Teddy hadn’t been laughing. “I thought I’d met the world’s first honorable cop. But I guess I was wrong.”
“I think you need to try Restylane. I can help you with that. And this isn’t some homo thing, I swear.”
After half a day at the clinic in Östermalm—which, according to Kum, his wife frequented more often than she went to the gym—Teddy had looked like a new man. Mazern tried to explain it, sounding like a nutty professor: “They inject this gel beneath your skin with the thinnest needle I’ve ever seen, it gives you volume and smooths out fine lines and wrinkles. Then I think we should emphasize your chin and get rid of your nose-to-mouth lines.”
“Nose-to-mouth lines?”
“You’ll see,” Kum had said.
It didn’t matter. The doctor had given him a local anesthetic. Teddy’s face went numb, disappeared: he wished he could stay in that state. When he looked in the mirror afterward, he didn’t just look ten years younger—he didn’t look like himself. It was another face staring back at him. Fresher, happier. And they had removed all the hair on his head, too. He was as smooth as a baby’s bottom. His scalp was glistening—and his beard looked even longer than before.
Kum had opened the door and stepped into the room. “Dejan told me you were living like a pas these past few weeks.”
“I’ve been living in a Fiat,” said Teddy.
“That’s not over yet,” Kum had replied. “Just because you look different, you can’t go back home or show your face in town like normal. You’re still wanted for murder, my man.”
“I know.”
“But now you look like a cross between a bald Viggo Mortensen and a Ryan Gosling with cancer. It’ll make your life easier.”
Teddy knew the godfather was right.
* * *
—
Two days later, Dejan had been released.
“They had plenty of questions about you, let me tell you,” he said when they met by a clump of trees in Skärholmen. “But I didn’t say shit. Kept my mouth shut and breathed through my nose like you’re meant to.”
“Thanks for all your help.”
The Mauler nuzzled Dejan’s leg.
“Kum’s done a good job on you, I have to say. Did I mention that you look like a mix of a bald Mads Mikkelsen and if Ben Mendelsohn had survived a nuclear war?”
“Hopefully it’ll make my life a bit easier.”
“But you’re still in the shit.”
“Yeah, I don’t need you to tell me that. They’ll arrest me eventually, and I’ll be sent down for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“That’s probably true, sadly. Because they’ll never believe it if you tell them that the dude out there was shot by a pig. That’s not in their worldview.”
The Mauler had been running free, sniffing at old trunks. Teddy studied the dark trees. He knew Dejan was right. “So the only way is to find out who the cop at the estate was, if he even was a cop,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m screwed.”
Dejan’s eyelids had drooped. “Yeah, otherwise you’re screwed.”
* * *
—
The next day, Teddy had stepped into the garage where he had gone with Dejan a few months earlier. The same signs above the entrance ramp: Car Wash, Reconditioning—Central and South Stockholm. The same smell of exhaust fumes and cleaning products. Teddy had a plan. It was as crazy as it was simple.
The Arab who ran the place seemed to still be there, though Teddy had barely recognized Abdel Kadir—the man he knew as the Beard Man had shaved it all off. Teddy wanted to know whether his other business was still being run out of the garage. The concrete floor, the Ditec signs with pictures of maintenance products, equipment, wax, and polish had, at least, been the same.
Abdel came toward Teddy: rolled-up sleeves and flecks of oil on his hands. Acne scars and an old harelip now visible on his smooth face. “Maestro, how can I help you?”
The guy hadn’t been wearing his crocheted cap, and his tattoos were also visible. Teddy had scanned for signs: was he an ordinary mechanic with trendy tattoos, or were the images and words on his powerful forearms authentic? Arabic letters, symbols, a skull. And among those, the usual cursive script: Mamma tried.
“We met about six months ago, I was here with Dejan, the little Serb,” Teddy had said.
Abdel’s face showed even less expression than Teddy’s had after his cosmetic treatment a few days earlier. Maybe he didn’t recognize Teddy—that was the point, after all—or maybe he was just playing.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, he wanted to buy your other business because you were leaving, you said.”
Abdel Kadir looked boyish without his facial hair, but his voice was surprisingly deep. “Aha,” he had said. “That little Serb. I know who you’re talking about now. But I’m not going away anymore. I’m not doing that shit anymore.”
“Have you sold the business?”
The man’s upper lip looked almost unnaturally bent. “No, no. We’re definitely still doing that shit.”
Teddy had pointed to the curtain in the office. “Good, because I need something special. I need a police ID.”
The next day, Loke had faked a phone number from a local police station in northern Sweden and had called to register Teddy’s new cop alter ego. They had cooked up a story about his visit being part of a wider investigation with links to Stockholm; Loke had given them case numbers and the names of other police officers. The secretary at police HQ didn’t care: as long as the number displayed on the phone came from another station in Sweden, all was cool.
* * *
—
Today, Teddy was here: outside the Swedish Police Force’s headquarters—their enormous fortress in Kungsholmen. The protruding roof was shielding him from the sun. This was where Katja and Emelie had come for Katja’s interview, he knew that much. He strode through the tall, revolving glass doors and stepped into reception. There were a number of smartly dressed men and women, who he assumed were lawyers or prosecutors, chatting in small groups. They were probably waiting to be taken to interviews or run-throughs of various cases. He could see other people coming and going through the security barriers in the distance: people in jeans and chinos, wearing sneakers or military boots. They were cops: guaranteed.
Teddy walked over to reception. The guard behind the Plexiglas gave him a weary look. Teddy wondered how it must feel to spend every day dreaming of being a real officer but having to sit here keeping watch in a pretend uniform instead. He pushed his fake ID through the gap. “I should be re
gistered.”
His heart was racing like a small bird’s. He was wanted on a national level—and now he was heading into a building containing more officers than anywhere else in Sweden. The reception guard said something in too broad a southern accent for Teddy to grasp, but he nodded as he did it.
Teddy was buzzed through the security barriers—again a revolving door, this time controlled by the guard. He was inside now. This was insane. He felt the USB stick in his pocket, the one Loke had given him.
He started walking: cops everywhere. Old men with glasses and checked shirts, probably the ones who had investigated Teddy and his friends back in the day. Muscular women with ponytails, in exercise pants, and T-shirts with sports logos. Middle-aged guys with tattoos, beards, and ungainly gaits. Teddy hadn’t thought he would still be thinking like this, but the feeling bearing down on him was clear: I’m in enemy territory. I’m a parachute trooper who’s jumped straight into the lion’s den.
Loke had said it was simple: “You just need to go into a room where there’s a computer, any will do, and push this USB stick in. I’ll look after the rest remotely.”
Teddy kept moving, walking with his eyes fixed straight ahead, trying not to glance around, deliberate, as though he knew exactly where he was heading. The stream of pigs around him was never ending; he was like a fish in a school of sharks.
In the distance, he could see a couple of escalators. He took one down and found himself on the lower floor of the new building—the complex was enormous. There was a row of retro police motorbikes on display, and the ceiling had to be at least thirty feet high. To the left was the staff cafeteria, where a hundred or more cops were eating lunch, drinking coffee, and chatting—like they were completely ordinary people. There was no denying it was fascinating. To the right were three Ping-Pong tables, which felt out of place in the grand inner hall, but the cops playing on them seemed enthusiastic. They shouted and cheered between rallies, as though in the park. Teddy felt like wiping the floor with all of them—if you had spent as long inside as he had, you became a pro at table tennis.