Helsinki White

by James Thompson

  I noticed that Milo, Sweetness and I had all adopted the same style. Cargo pants. Clothes with lots of pockets for things like Tasers and silencers. Bowling shirts that didn’t need to be tucked in, to cover the waistband repertoire: pistols, knives, saps, etc.

  They had girls with them, a surprise in itself, because Milo and Sweetness aren’t exactly ladies’ men, but these girls astonished me. The official age for admission at Kaivo was twenty-four, but that in truth only applied to men, and it was discretionary, to enable the doormen to weed out young testosterone-tweaked troublemakers, but the legal age was eighteen.

  These girls were young, one about twenty, the other maybe sixteen. Even that didn’t really surprise me. Girls as young as fourteen made their way in if they were beautiful enough and with the right people. What got me was that these girls, on a patio jammed with gorgeous women, were so stunning that they made the others look like a coal miners’ convention. They drew open stares, even from other women.

  It was only about fifty degrees Fahrenheit, but the tables had heaters in the shape of beach umbrellas overtop them that made it hot sitting there. The girls introduced themselves as Mirjami and Jenna. They were tipsy and giggly. They sparked my six-year-old self in an adult body, and I had an insta-hard-on in moments.

  I sat next to Mirjami, the teenager. She was tanned, told me she had just returned from vacation in Málaga. She was long and thin and dressed in a Hello Kitty outfit. A short pink Hello Kitty top with spaghetti straps showed a piercing in her belly button and golden nut-brown skin surrounding it. Hello Kitty regalia: handbag, cell phone cover, necklace, watch, earrings and bracelet adorned her.

  Milo went to the bar to get us all drinks. He made it back fast with a full tray, said he cut the line, flashed his police card and held up a C-note to make his intentions clear. He dropped the bartender a twenty. The girls got two cosmopolitans each. Milo, Sweetness and I got two shots of kossu each and a beer. I had little desire for alcohol since my brain surgery. I enjoyed my increased sharpness of thought and didn’t like to dull it. Now, though, seemed like a good time.

  Mirjami and I clinked glasses and said “Kippis”—cheers. She downed the cocktail in one go and I did the same with the kossu. Milo inserted an earbud connected to his cell phone. He was monitoring the dealers’ conversations. I asked him if he heard about Arvid. He nodded. Neither of us wanted to talk about it right now, but we drank to his memory.

  The almond shape of Mirjami’s eyes made me think she had Sami blood. She made me think of cherry pie. Yum. She wore pink lip gloss, glitter polish with heart and moon designs on little brown fingers and toes. I imagined her small breasts were like scoops of chocolate ice cream with cherries on top. She had big, heart-shaped sunglasses over them, but I later saw that she had brown doe eyes with long lashes. She wore flip-flops and white pedal pushers, like she was ready to hit the beach. I could have wrapped my hands around her waist. I imagined my tongue in her belly button. She sat close to Milo, and so I thought she must be with him.

  Jenna. Apple pie. She had big, baby blue eyes in a round face. White perfect skin. Ruby lips that required no lipstick. A button nose. Waist-length white-blond hair. She was a snow queen. A blond Cinderella. She also wore a revealing top, but jeans and sandals. Even though she sat, from my angle to her, I saw she had a wonderful ample bottom. And huge high breasts like the proverbial ripe melons. Height: Five foot nothing, tops. Apple and cherry pie. A slice of each would be a great combination. It was Mirjami who really got to me, though.

  A Dusty Springfield song came on. “Son of a Preacher Man.”

  “I love this one,” Mirjami said. “Dance with me.”

  “I’d love to”—I tapped the lion’s head on my cane—“but I can’t.”

  No one else was dancing. “Then I’ll dance for you,” she said, got up and started swaying to the rhythm. Jenna joined. Then Sweetness. And finally Milo. The girls radiated sexy. Mountain-sized Sweetness was light on his feet, a good dancer. This was a day of revelations. Milo danced like most men, incompetent, but he made up for it with enthusiasm. The song ended.

  The guys came back to the table. The girls didn’t stop. They danced playful. They did the swim. The mashed potato. The twist. They vogued. They mimicked John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing in Pulp Fiction. They did it well. People applauded. The girls grooved on the attention.

  “The Russians are here,” Milo said. Two men walked away from the bar. One carried a bottle of Smirnoff in a champagne bucket.

  The girls came back, then went for so-called nose powdering.

  “How in the fuck did you guys pick up those two girls?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Milo said, “they’re a little out of our league. Mirjami is my cousin. She’s got a thing for cops. Plus, I flash my cop card and get us in places so she doesn’t have to wait in lines or sometimes even pay, and she’s my chick magnet. I like going out with her because it gives the impression that I’m cool enough to get a girl that gorgeous, and we’re pretty good friends, too.”

  “And I guess they don’t card her if she’s with you.”

  “She’s twenty-two, she doesn’t need me for that.”

  “Jesus, I thought she was a kid.”

  “That’s just her club thing. She works at it. Actually, she’s a registered nurse and more mature than I am. That’s for sure.”

  “Same with me,” Sweetness said. “Jenna is my cousin, and she’s only sixteen.” He went all glum, knocked off a kossu.

  I had the girls’ ages backwards. “What’s with the sad face?”

  “I like her a lot. You know, not like a cousin.”

  “Bummer,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah. And what’s worse, I think she likes me, too. We just can’t do anything about it. Plus, she’s so young.”

  The girls were on their way back. The Russians lucked out and got a table two down from ours. I changed the topic. “When they get halfway through the bottle, let’s make the snatch.”

  “I can do it alone,” Milo said. “It won’t look obvious that way.”

  “You sure?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s going to take, like, two minutes.”

  “Is Kate mad at me?” Sweetness asked.

  “For what?”

  “What I said. It’s the truth. I ain’t got nothin’ against niggers.”

  “No, she’s not mad. Just don’t say ‘nigger’ in English or she’ll get furious. And in Finnish, call them ‘black people.’ How did you get to be such a good dancer?”

  “I took lessons when I was a kid. Mom made me.”

  The girls sat down. “I’m kind of afraid to go back home today,” Jenna said. She looked like a child with huge breasts.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I live in East Helsinki, and it ain’t safe there.” Her eyes met Sweetness’s and I saw affection there. He was right about that.

  The Russians drank fast. Their bottle stood half empty. Milo excused himself. When he came back, he brought more drinks.

  I watched the news earlier. Anger over the bank robbery murder, in addition to Vappu boozing, equaled vandalism and violence. Drunken whites had beaten blacks, knocked out storefront windows, burned a couple cars. A black girl was even raped. Blacks had retaliated.

  “We’ll get you home safe,” I said.

  The Russians finished the vodka bottle, turned it upside down in the ice bucket and left.

  Mirjami kicked off her flip-flops and propped her feet up in my lap. I was too embarrassed to move and my dick went stiff again. She felt it and giggled. She wiggled her toes against it to tease me. I liked it, stroked her brown feet. She liked it. She was chewing bubble gum. She blew a bubble until it got so big that it exploded in her face. Pow! She laughed and picked it off her cheeks.

  Only one word came to mind to describe her. Yummy. She captivated me. Prior to the removal of my tumor I would have paid her scant or little attention, barely noticed her at all. A ninny half my age. I desperately wan
ted to fuck the daylights out of her. Other than Aino, I hadn’t wanted another woman since I met Kate. Surgery had changed me.

  Milo monitored the Russians’ cell phones. “Hey, Kari,” he said, “it’s your round. Come on, I’ll go to the bar with you.” We stopped halfway between our table and the bar. He whispered in my ear. “One of the Russians just called his boss to say he got ripped off and killed the guy from the other gang. When they saw the empty trunk, he stabbed the guy fast, pushed him into the trunk, and shut it. We’re going to have to get rid of another body.”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “Yep, fuck.”

  We stood there for a minute and thought about it.

  Milo said, “This is an easy one because we have a half-empty barrel. We don’t even need the forklift, we just have to stuff the body into the barrel. We have a half a million in dope and half a million in cash. Sweetness and I will dump the body. You take the swag, buy the girls another drink to make them happy and take them home. We’ll do the rest.”

  It was a kind gesture. “You trying to keep me out of the doghouse with Kate?”

  He sniggered. “Yeah.”

  “Thanks.” I put the stuff in my car, the guys left, and I bought a last round. The girls were tanked anyway.

  I stayed quiet, listened to them talk. Jenna spoke East Helsinki Finnish, and Mirjami spoke stadin slangi—city slang. I didn’t understand half of what she said. The kids have developed a slang dialect so rich that a dictionary of it was recently published. It’s about three inches thick. Mirjami started talking to me, telling me a story, and I finally admitted, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Can you speak something resembling standard Finnish?”

  This made her laugh. “Sure,” she said, and made the transition for me. “It’s like my outfit,” she said. “When I go out, I play ‘let’s pretend.’ Normally, I speak like somebody with an education.”

  I took them home, first Jenna, then Mirjami. As she got out, she said, “You like me, don’t you.”

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “I thought so,” she said. “See ya,” and bounded up the sidewalk to her door.

  When I got home, Aino and Kate sat drinking a bottle of sparkling wine together. I checked the fridge, there was plenty of breast milk. It was still early. I was close to sober. I suggested they get out of the house, celebrate Vappu, have a few drinks. They leapt at the opportunity.

  25

  The post-Vappu blues. Kate woke, scurried to the bathroom, retched and vomited. I was asleep when Kate got home, but she and Aino must have really tied one on. Kate isn’t much of a drinker. She was becoming more and more Finnish every day. She made it back to bed by way of serpentine tacking, too dizzy to walk straight.

  Anu heard the heaving and woke up crying. I changed her diaper and used breast pump milk to feed her. I had coffee and a cigarette, got comfortable in my man chair, and Anu laid in my lap while I browsed the Sunday paper. Katt perched on my shoulder, as if reading along with me.

  The violence, turmoil and rioting was downplayed, described as “displays of discontent and anger, as demonstrated by friction between blacks and whites and a lack of order in those areas in which immigrant populations were concentrated.”

  Cover-up.

  Editorials discussed “the justified fear of whites, confronted by armed and violent malcontent foreigners.”

  Because our experience with people of color is relatively new, the Finnish language has yet to develop the wide range of hate vocabulary compared to, say, the United States, but write-in commentators did their best. Little nigger children should be vaporized, or at least sterilized, before they reached breeding age. Quotes by “Martin Lucifer King” were mimicked. “We shall overcome…all over your nigger faces.” “I have a dream…to see your faces burnt off with blowtorches.” And so on.

  Hate congealed. Amoebas of hate divided and subdivided and renewed themselves in abhorrent mitosis. Almost all the countries in the European Union were faced with immigration problems. An interesting response to an editorial. “If we can’t kill them outright, could we re-institute slavery and sell them as chattel, and thus receive compensation, recoup the monies spent on their maintenance?” The most reasonable suggestion was to simply revoke the EU membership of those countries with low per capita incomes, and send their former inhabitants back where they came from. A thoughtful comment by a good hater.

  I expected a call from Saska Lindgren, and my premonition proved correct. He asked if I could meet him at the same address as before. The entire black family there was now dead. I told him I’d like to bring the rest of my team, and a consultant I was working with. He said no problem. I called Milo, Sweetness and Moreau, and told them where to meet me. I didn’t need them, but Milo would want to take part, I had promised Moreau, and because of Sweetness’s unusual reaction at the murder scene of the soldier in the forest, I thought he needed to get accustomed to death investigations.

  I put Anu in her crib and told Kate I was sorry to leave her in such a condition, but I had to go to a murder scene. She was ghastly pale and nodded acknowledgment without opening her eyes.

  On the way over, I called Jyri and arranged to meet him later. He was less than pleased that I called at such an early hour the day after Vappu, but I assured him it was worth the pain of having his hangover disturbed. I promised he would be glad to see me, because I had a hundred fifty thousand euros for him. I usually skimmed ten percent off the top, but there was so much money, and the amount had such a nice ring to it, that I didn’t bother.

  I arrived about ten a.m. The street was lined with vehicles. The press, cops, forensics people, curious citizens, all milled about. Police tape lined the whole of the property, meaning the house and its small front and back yards. Spring was here. The snow was all gone now, and likely wouldn’t be back for the next few months. The temperature was about the same as yesterday, but a wet breeze made it feel colder. Milo was already there, sitting on the front stoop, talking to Saska. Sweetness and Moreau hadn’t arrived yet.

  “So they killed the rest of the family,” I said.

  Saska nodded.

  “How?”

  “It’s too much to describe. Go out back and have a look if you want.”

  “I’m in no rush. I’ll wait on the others.”

  “I don’t like looking at it,” he said. “It’s just another murder in a sense, but this one is just so fucking disillusioning.”

  Milo got up and motioned for me to follow him out of hearing distance of the crowd. “We took the body and dumped it like we planned,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “Well…it was weird. We opened the trunk and the guy wasn’t dead. Almost, but not quite. He didn’t move or say anything, but he looked at us and blinked. I wasn’t sure what to do. We could have dumped him in front of a hospital.”

  “But,” I said.

  “But Sweetness didn’t even want to talk about it. He took a pull off that flask of his, felt around the guy’s chest and found a spot between his ribs near his heart. Then he took that knife I gave him and just slid it into the guy’s chest. Killed him dead as a hammer. ‘Problem solved,’ he said. Then we suited up, dropped the guy in acid, sealed up the barrel and left.”

  “What did you do with the car?”

  “Took it to East Helsinki and torched it with a Molotov cocktail. I figured it would go unnoticed, since other cars were burned in the area.”

  “Good plan.”

  “That’s all you have to say? ‘Good plan’?”

  I shrugged. “What should I say? What’s done is done.” I felt a little silly for thinking Sweetness needed to get used to murder scenes. Other than that, I had no other feelings about it, one way or another.

  “Sweetness is a fucking psycho.”

  “I watched you kill a man. Are you a fucking psycho?”

  “The circumstances were different.”

  “Semantics.”

  He stared at me for a minute. �
��That surgery changed you,” he said.

  “Listen,” I said, “I hired Sweetness in part because I recognized in him the ability to commit acts of violence without angst or upset. You enjoy violence because it makes you feel like a tough guy and reinforces your self-image. But your self-image is a lie you tell yourself. If you hurt someone, you feel guilty about it, suffer, have to unburden yourself and cry on my shoulder. You probably feel bad about wrecking that SUPO agent’s face. Sweetness couldn’t give a shit less if he hurts someone, just doesn’t care one way or the other, and I don’t have to listen to his sob sister boo hoo hoo remorse.”

  I pounded Milo’s ego to dust. I didn’t mean to. He stared down at his muddy boots. “You can be really mean sometimes.”

  I fake smiled and held up my cane. “I can also be nice. You be nice, or I’ll tell my lion to bite you.”

  He just shook his head and wandered off.

  Sweetness and Moreau showed up, I introduced them to Saska, and we all went back to view the murder scene. The racists who promised retaliation proved as good as their word. First, the young men were gassed to death, and now this.

  Their mother and sister were laundry-line lynched, then set ablaze. The laundry poles stood opposite each other, and cords to hang up wet laundry were stretched between them. The poles weren’t high enough for a proper lynching, so the killers had tied their ankles and wrists, cinched them tight behind their backs so they only needed about three feet of clearance, and hoisted them up the laundry poles. One body lay on the ground. The other, miraculously, still hung. The rope hadn’t quite burned through.

  The bodies were mostly burned down to the bone, the flesh reduced to soot hanging on it. And in the grass near them, the words neekeri huora were burned into the lawn.

  Milo shook his head in disbelief. “For God’s sake, why them?”

  “It was likely the most repulsive thing the murderers could think of,” Moreau said.

  Saska said, “I don’t know what they used, but it was a really powerful accelerant.”