Helsinki Noir

by James Thompson

  Once the name has been uttered aloud, nothing else need be said. My boys understand.

  Why do they accept the idea of assaulting one of their own? Because I chose him. Because four of them are relieved that they weren’t the one. And they are afraid—all of them, except for Rapa, feel how weak they are.

  They don’t have the strength to oppose the world on their own. Their detachment and little capers are a flaccid protest against this world’s perpetual, uniform decency. They want to follow me, the strongest-willed person they know, because in a tranquil, feeble country like this, people like me stand out. We draw to us those who have broken away from the herd.

  And this is what these boys are capable of. Attacking anyone. These streets and parks are named for old composers, but my boys will never hear that music. To our right are big, fast motor boats, but none of these boys have ever ridden in one. My boys will hear other music, will drive other vehicles, and the only power they’ll ever know will be in what they are about to do.

  Marko himself is the last one to realize.

  The boys are still in their huffing circle. Rapa rejoins the group and takes one of the plastic bags from Mika in the middle of a sniff, offering it to Marko like a condemned man’s last meal, the last supper, the final breath before the end.

  Marko takes the bag and stares into it. He looks at me, as confused as any fourteen-year-old can be, but he has just realized that the choice was him. He doesn’t know what is going to happen—none of us know with certitude—but it is clear that Marko will suffer at their hands.

  He raises the bag to his face and breathes.

  * * *

  Closer to the sea, the boys’ voices sound different again. The deep canine growls coming from their chests disappear and their shouts become the thin, ear-splitting screeching of birds.

  The others in the group shriek and yell, but Marko does not make a sound. The knowledge of what is to come silences him. He does not try to run. His fuzzy mind grasps that in his state he wouldn’t get very far. And if he tries to get away, he will only feed the bloodthirst of the other boys.

  We walk slowly along. Everything slows down, the glue holding the boys, this moment caressing me.

  Now there is nothing around, just the street, the park to the left and the sea on the right. Tall buildings loom ahead. Apartments for rich bastards.

  I remember a time before them, and I remember how this whole area changed when they were built. It changed from a place for regular people into an expensive, artificial place. Buildings constructed to maximize views of the sea brought inequality and class division. These buildings sliced out a strip of permanent happiness for the well-to-do, just like the boys slicing cabbages.

  Scratching cars isn’t enough right now. This night needs to be left with a more permanent mark.

  I look at Rapa. I don’t need to say anything. He understands the look.

  Rapa, you will become a problem for me someday, but now you are closer to me than anyone.

  I make a cutting motion, a hand holding a switchblade slicing a cabbage in the air, and Rapa understands: on this night a person will be cut. Marko.

  Driven wild by the summer and their detachment, how well these children will do the job.

  To our right in the distance looms a seaside restaurant. Marko tries lazily to move in that direction, but his attempt is futile. No one has been in the restaurant for hours, and there’s no one out on the patio.

  Marko gets back in line when Rapa follows him.

  Why Marko? Why did I choose him?

  Liban is everybody’s friend, the easygoing Somali who always agrees with everyone, too helpful to want to get rid of him. Toppe is stupider than Marko, Mika more sensitive and withdrawn and thus less useful. But Marko isn’t really anything. He has no personality. Cutting him will be like cutting air. The world would lose nothing if he just slipped out of it.

  And in that moment I understand why I agreed to Rapa’s idea to choose one of the boys. The end of summer is affecting me as well. When the boys return to school, I won’t see them every day anymore. My grip on them will loosen. They will become tamer, weaker in my mind.

  That is why I want to see them cut Marko.

  I want to see how red the sea turns when drops fall into it from an opened boy.

  * * *

  I walk ahead of the group.

  Marko staggers and spits, the glue making him cough, and I see that his body is seized with fear. He knows that pain is coming. Realizing that would sober anyone up, except for a teenager who’s spent half a day high on glue.

  He knows that crying out won’t help. Our shouting has made the residents of the surrounding buildings numb—if anyone is still awake, they are undoubtedly cursing us.

  The boat docks loom in the darkness. There. We will never forget what we are about to do. This we have to do in an open place, on one of these docks stretching out into the waiting sea.

  Rapa hangs in the back. He is watching in case Marko tries to slip away.

  Rapa, have I really taught you so much?

  * * *

  The giddy feeling that something big and uncontrollable is happening. That feeling quiets the boys. For a second none of us make a sound, and the loudest noise is Marko’s panting. His breathing becomes labored.

  As we descend the steps to the docks, the stillness of the night continues to envelop us.

  But then a thin, slightly distorted sound breaks the silence. Music, from a radio. I locate it instantly. On the farthermost dock is a guard booth. In it is a man, his head sagging down. From the windows of the booth shines a yellow light that we couldn’t see from the street, like the music that we couldn’t hear until we headed down to the docks. The man is dozing despite his radio playing old-school pop.

  The situation changes. Even Marko, who has reluctantly climbed down the stairs to the docks, realizes it.

  A boat guard is acceptable.

  * * *

  A soft splash as Toppe enters the water. Idiot. But the man in the booth doesn’t stir as Toppe paddles around the chain-link fence protecting the docks and crawls out of the water.

  We hurry after him, still hardly making a sound. Marko tries to sneak off somewhere, but Rapa makes sure he stays with the group. And as we each clamber onto the dock, some sort of power flows into us.

  I see the brightness in the boys’ eyes, the electric charge that comes from stalking another man. Their brains are full of Red Sun and butane and everything they’ve sucked in today—the mesmerizing walk to this place, and the knowledge that just moments ago we were planning to cut Marko but now we have a completely new victim.

  We have a new Chosen One. A man swollen by too stable a life sitting slumped in an old T-shirt. I can see the ring on his finger. Somewhere there is a family who will soon awake to a call from the police.

  The guard booth is unlocked. The door stands open a crack. We surround the booth. Toppe and Rapa approach the door, and Rapa pounds on it with his fist. The man shoots out of his chair.

  He isn’t at all prepared for this, this slumbering boat guard. He lets out a yelp.

  “Shut up,” Rapa says. “Get out.”

  Then Rapa and Toppe are halfway into the booth, dragging the man out. He is bigger than them, but too taken by surprise to put up a fight, and with all his heavy breathing, the only thing he accomplishes is some flailing and a stream of confused sounds.

  Rapa and Toppe have their switchblades out. Horror fills the fat man’s eyes. He staggers out onto the dock, forced by these boys.

  “Down, get down,” Toppe says.

  And the man collapses to his knees. We need something to bind him with. Even Toppe the idiot recognizes it and starts looking around in a nearby boat for a rope. When he finds one, he cuts pieces for the man’s hands and feet.

  When the guard sees how the blade cuts the rope, his face twists into a grimace. He makes a sound again, but Rapa presses his knife against the man’s cheek and the sound stops.

  * *
*

  There are four, maybe five nights like this in a Helsinki summer.

  When Rapa sets his switchblade on the man’s cheekbone and flicks a slice in it, I feel the warmth of the night, I feel the flow of blood pulsing in the man, the frenzy of the boys, the dregs of society, surrounding me.

  A dark line trickles down the boat guard’s face. He closes his eyes.

  Rapa, give us a victim worthy of us. Mark this man so we will remember this night.

  Rapa takes a step back and raises his hands.

  In anticipation, I close my eyes.

  * * *

  So much happens in so little time. I hear steps: one of the boys is moving. But I don’t hear the strike. Where is the strike?

  I open my eyes. Rapa has stepped even further back.

  The boat guard before him sways on his knees. The man is ready to accept the blow. We are all waiting for the blow, but it doesn’t come.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Rapa says to the man.

  The man yelps again and leaps from the dock into the sea.

  Struggling in the water, he moves farther off until his feet find the bottom and his movements gain strength. Then he is on the shore and on his way up to the street. The only sound coming from him is sloshing water. Something keeps him from crying out. Perhaps there is only enough air in his lungs to get away.

  Rapa turns to Marko. Still with his knife.

  I can’t help but smile. On top of it all, the boy has a dramatic flair.

  Where has this boy learned all this? From me?

  Marko retreats, his eyes filled with blurry disbelief and distress. Toppe grabs and holds him tight.

  Rapa, you are becoming an artist. Carve us a statue to commemorate this night.

  The sea around us is black, the air unbelievably warm, and the switchblade in Rapa’s hand shines as he turns and moves toward me.

  “Jenkem is real,” he says.

  He sticks the knife in me, over and over again.

  I have taught you too well, Rapa. Groping at my throat and belly, I see myself erupting in a torrent, not of drops but waves. I flow into the water.

  And have just enough time to see how I make the sea turn red.

  KISS OF SANTA

  BY LEENA LEHTOLAINEN

  Stockmann Department Store

  Translated by Jill G. Timbers

  1.

  It was a bitter-cold December evening. The wind whipped sleet into my face as I crossed Mannerheimintie Street. The lights changed and I barely managed to whisk a half-blind old woman safely out of the way of an approaching streetcar. The conductor rang the warning bells and the old woman thanked me effusively in Swedish. She called me “young man.”

  Stockmann Department Store was festively lit, as always in the weeks before Christmas. The employee entrance was on the Mannerheimintie side. A man was waiting for me at the elevators. He was about four inches shorter than me. His Boss suit fit elegantly. The frames of his glasses were the latest thing, straight out of Vogue.

  “Miss New York?” he asked. On the phone he had insisted we use no names.

  I nodded. The man summoned the elevator and took me to the basement level.

  “The employee lounge is on the eighth floor, but there’s a secret conference room down here where we’ll be left alone.” He opened a four-inch-thick steel door. Behind it was an interior reminiscent of a Töölö drawing room in the center of old Helsinki: a deep cushiony sofa, two classic Le Corbusier armchairs, a glass table with an orchid arrangement on it. The windows opening onto a park were of course just artful photo-realistic paintings. My sleet-drenched parka and worn boots did not fit the setting at all.

  “Please sit down.” The man used the formal form of address, rarely used in Finland. “May I bring you coffee or tea?”

  “Neither, thank you.” I steered clear of unnecessary stimulants while working. They just clouded my focus.

  The man pulled a file from his briefcase and flipped through the papers inside it. His face was pasty and pale, his black hair oiled into place. His eyebrows had been plucked into narrow streaks. His voice was low and expressionless.

  “Hilja Ilveskero, age twenty-eight. Graduated from the Queens Security Academy in New York with excellent marks three years ago. Employed privately by Finnish individuals after graduation, but currently unemployed. Why?”

  “My former employer moved to a company in Tokyo that provides security services to its key employees. You’ll find his letter of recommendation among my papers.”

  The man smiled. “Of course, I have checked your background. In today’s world one cannot be too cautious.”

  I snorted. It appeared that Stockmann Department Store Security Chief Henrik Bruun and I spoke the same language.

  “You are accustomed to carrying a weapon in your work and employing direct physical force when necessary,” he stated. “Precisely the man . . . the person . . . we need. We are looking for an extra guard for the Christmas season. I did not wish to say more than that to the employment authorities. The job is not quite the normal lying in wait for shoplifters and removing troublemakers. It’s a question of in-house scrutiny. Thieves have infiltrated our staff. Your job is to expose them. You will need a suitable disguise: you will thus become one of the house Santa Clauses.”

  2.

  It tickled terribly under my nose. I was accustomed to using mustache glue to dress as my male alter ego Reiska Räsänen, but the Santa Claus disguise also involved a beard down my chest. I glued the eyebrows over my own; they shaded my bespectacled eyes. I rouged my nose to a drunkard’s red and added a few moles with makeup. Long white hair covered my ears. I wore a fat suit under the red Santa Claus coat, overalls that added about forty pounds and also hid my meager maidenly curves. It felt strange to sit, because the suit’s stomach and chest squeezed together and the thighs bulged to the sides. My walk became more ponderous and imposing than my usual spring. I stretched often so I’d be ready for action when I needed to be quick. I slipped the gun and spare cartridge under my left arm, between the fat suit and the Santa coat. I opened a seam and attached it with Velcro. I was used to do-it-yourself repairs and sewing from a childhood spent on the remote island of Hevonpersiinsaari, a backwoods locale whose very name means Horse’s Ass Island, far removed from department stores like Stockmann.

  I pulled on thin red mittens edged with fur, because my bare hands looked feminine even though I kept the nails short and unpolished. I entered the elevator on the lowest level of the parking garage. Bruun and I had agreed that I would get into costume in the secret room. That way I could best hide my identity.

  “When the employees leave the building, they have to exit through this well-lit corridor,” Bruun had explained to me after the department store closed. The security measures appeared sound: employees carrying anything from the store would have to show a receipt. No system was 100 percent sure, but Bruun and the guards had been checking the exits for over a month now and no one would have been able to smuggle through the large amounts of expensive goods that had been disappearing from the store: cameras, phones, PDAs, expensive jewelry, as well as cosmetics worth hundreds of euros. Design cutlery had been taken from the housewares department. All together, the losses had already climbed to nearly 30,000 euros.

  The missing items were all small in size. They would have been easy to conceal in clothes or under a bag’s false bottom. But how had the alarms been deactivated and the locked cases opened? These were the questions that had turned the security chief’s suspicions toward the staff.

  I started with routine work, running the data on any new hires in the past several months and checking the security camera tapes. I had worked earlier as a store detective at a shopping center in Vantaa. The kleptomaniacs and candy snatchers didn’t interest me, but since I was a foot soldier in the security field, I had done everything they paid me for. One of the compulsive thieves I’d caught, an R&D director for a big corporation, had tried to bribe me not to report his crime, swea
ring it was a sickness. I’d refused; he didn’t offer me enough.

  After the foundation, it was time to pull on Santa’s boots. My grandfather had made them; he had been the village shoemaker. My late Uncle Jari had added roughness to the soles.

  The leather boots with their upturned tips gave a Finnish stamp to the corny Coca-Cola Santa’s red garb, and they made it easy for Bruun to distinguish me from the store’s other Santas, of which there were five, working in two shifts. I didn’t envy them: to listen to spoiled brats’ overblown wishes and pose with tots on their laps, careful not to take hold of the wrong place and send the parents screaming pedophilia. I had a bag of candy in my pocket to give the kids when necessary, but I’d tell them to send their wish lists straight to the North Pole.

  People stared when I stepped into the department store’s elevator, even though Santa was an everyday sight in Finnish stores in December. A little boy about two stepped back into his mother’s coat. I tried to smile, since my purpose was not to arouse attention but to observe. The mustache tickled more than ever.

  The cosmetics department was still quite empty. I made my way over to the counter from which the most products had been taken. The most expensive cream, a gold-toned fifty-milliliter bottle of night cream promising eternal youth, cost over 500 euros. Six bottles of that had been stolen from the display shelf over the last few weeks. The security camera had not disclosed the guilty.

  A woman in her fifties with pleasant laugh lines approached me. “Is Santa thinking of a present for Mrs. Claus?” Her name tag read, Merja.

  “The lady’s already 300 years old but I love her old too,” I quipped back, and the woman gave a warm laugh. She was the brand’s dedicated consultant. She of everyone would have had it easiest to pinch the creams. Even if she sold them under the store price, the profit would be considerable. But who would recognize the value of a 500-euro night cream? It made more sense to steal things with a market ready and waiting.