Sweetness sits on the edge of the desk. I take it he doesn’t like the look of the couch either.
They sit. The Raper says, “What can we do fer you two gents? Always obliged to help the police, ain’t we, Jack?” He pronounces it “Jeck.”
“That we is,” says the Ripper.
They have accents like characters in a Guy Ritchie film. I’m certain it’s feigned or exaggerated.
“We’d very much appreciate your help,” I say. “We’re trying to locate a missing person.” I show them Loviise’s photo.
They both laugh at it.
“And you’re amused why?” I ask.
“Listen, mate,” the Raper says, “have you ’ad a look at the birds out in the club? This one ain’t exactly in their league, now is she.” It’s not a question.
“I’m not suggesting she’s come here to work as a prostitute. I thought, as you two must be quite knowledgeable about the inner workings of prostitution in Helsinki, you might tell us where to look, give us a place to start. She’s Estonian. I don’t think she’s here of her own volition, and if she’s engaged in prostitution, it’s by force, not by choice.”
“We can’t help you, mate,” the Ripper says. “It would be a betrayal of professional confidence, wouldn’t it, Mack?”
“Aye, it would at that, and well said. A betrayal of professional confidence.”
“The birds work in here of their own free will,” the Ripper says. “We makes our profit on drink for the punters. We’re upstanding businessmen, an’ the only perk we gets is free pussy now an’ again, ain’t it so, Mack?”
“So it is. An’ what kinda man wouldn’t like thet? Thet’s what keeps me goin’ in this business when I’m feelin’ blue. Why don’t you toffs accept a little time with a couple birds as a show of respect for your esteemed positions. Get your knobs polished and then go back off in search of your missing girl.”
Sweetness stands up, reaches down and snaps a leg off the desk with one hand. He throws it at the Ripper’s head. He ducks. The leg has so much velocity that the jagged end penetrates the wall and sticks in it. The desk tips over. Sheafs of paper, bric-a-brac and a laptop slide onto the floor.
Both the Ripper and the Raper sit motionless, mouths hanging open in fear and awe.
“That was your answer,” I say.
The Ripper recovers first. “Thet weren’t necessary,” he says.
I shrug. “Apparently, it was. We expect your cooperation.”
“Our Da’ were a pimp and a numbers runner, among other things,” the Ripper says, “and we been in the cunt business, runnin’ his errands, since we was in our nappies. But Da’ weren’t an honest crook. He skimmed from his masters an’ ran his mouth, and Da’ ended up fish chum in the Thames. We learnt about this country, a place where a man can make a living and an honest one off the pussy trade, and we came here to start anew. We even donate to the police association, in both official and unofficial ways. We don’t want no trouble from ya, we just don’t want to be fish chum like Da’. You can understand that, can’tcha?”
I lean against the wall to take the weight off my knee. “Yes, but I don’t care.” I look over at Sweetness. “Cut off his little finger.”
Sweetness takes his Spyderco Delica out of his pocket and snaps it open.
The Ripper holds up his hands in a motion that says stop. “You win,” he says. “We don’t know who has yer girl, but it might surprise yer to know that a big part of our trade comes from spooks.”
“You mean spies?”
“I do. They come here because the other punters, just by walkin’ in the door, are showin’ they got weaknesses. They’re lonely, they got problems with the drink, an’ they got money, so they got good jobs, like engineers an’ such. Many got wives and families.”
“And spies make friends with them, then blackmail them for Finnish technology.”
“Yeh, the Russians especially try to keep up with the Joneses. And lots of Americans. And Chinese, among others.”
“And this is of use to us how?”
“We know the spooks, and some Russian spooks are in the very business yer interested in, includin’ the ambassador. If I was you, I’d start with them.”
I consider it. If we brace and shake down a Russian spook and he has limited or no information, those phone lines crackle and sizzle, Loviise disappears, and we get nothing. It’s a bad bet.
Sweetness and I look at each other. He shakes his head no. He thinks they’re holding back.
“More,” I say.
The two Andy Warhols look at each other and the room is silent for about sixty seconds. They’re trying to decide who they’re most afraid of. Sweetness’s knife is a lock blade, designed to be opened with one hand. He depresses the lock with his thumb. He closes it, opens it. Closes it, opens it. Seconds tick by.
Mack the Raper stares at me, takes in my cane and gunshot face. “Yer that famous cop I seen on the telly, ain’tcha?”
“Yep.”
“Is this method the secret behind yer crime-solvin’ success?”
“Yep.”
He looks at his brother and nods. The Ripper says, “If I give ya everything you need, I want it forgotten. No rat jacket and coppers showin’ up here regular.”
“Agreed.”
“Yer in luck. Once a month, the real toffs have a poker game, which is tonight. They meet, play, and make deals for women, gambling rights, guns, dope. Even gas and oil. The whole shebang on a global level. Need a tactical nuke to build yer own dirty bomb, that’s the place to go. Different men are invited, dependin’ on the business at hand, and fly in from around the world to play. I’m told the Russian ambassador was invited tonight. You find him, and he can find yer girl.”
“Where?”
“King’s Royale. The game starts at midnight.”
King’s Royale. Helsinki’s other major whore bar. Owned unofficially by a Finnish billionaire-actually now a citizen of Monaco-Pasi Palo, who reputedly uses King’s Royale to launder money in Finland. Officially, it’s owned by a holding company owned by a holding company owned by a holding company registered in Singapore, and there the trail goes cold.
I know this because so many police want to see him jailed for trafficking in arms, women and dope, but especially arms. His business partners are reputed to be Russian mafiosi, including generals in the Russian army and the FSB, the new, democratic Russia’s KGB. His best clients are said to include Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, and Than Shwe of Burma. Some of the world’s most vicious dictators.
“You ever been to a game?” I ask.
“We went once, cuz they wanted to talk to us about girls,” the Raper says, “but it costs a hundred thousand euros to get in. Too rich for our blood.”
“How tight was security?”
“Not like you might think. It’s in Punavuori, and you can’t exactly line up fifty men with Uzis in that trendy little part of town, can you, mate? Just a few men. Two at the door that leads from the nightclub upstairs, but they can’t hear nor see nothin’ downstairs. Two outside the delivery entrance to usher the players in-they come and go that way-one bloke stays at the door and the other escorts the players in when they arrive. A couple are posted outside the door of the room they play in, and more bodyguards are inside the room itself.”
It’s odd to hear that area, the district of Punavuori, called “trendy.” It used to be considered a dangerous place inhabited by lowlifes. Gentrification. “How can they run a high-security game with a nightclub in full swing?”
“For you, mate, that’s the beauty of it. Ya got one club upstairs, and another one downstairs, as they spin different kinds of music, so each one’s soundproofed. An’ behind the downstairs club is a private room, very posh, and also soundproofed. You could set a bomb off in there and nobody would know. A word to the wise. If ya go there, yer a dead man.”
“Do they always use the same security people?”
“Palo’s boys.”
“And do you know them?”
“Yeh, since he owns thet club we cross paths once in a while, us bein’ in the same trade and all.”
I snap open the lion’s mouth on the handle of my cane, run my fingers along the razor teeth, feel the sting and think. I turn to Sweetness and switch to Finnish. “Do you want to do this? We might get killed.”
He puts his knife back in his pocket. “I don’t think we have any choice. We probably won’t get another chance, and you promised her mom.”
At the moment, I’m so depressed about Kate, her problems and our marriage that I don’t care if I live or die. “I promised her. Not you. Aside from creating an international incident that may land us in prison, it has all the hallmarks of a kamikaze mission that only an addled mental defective would consider.”
Sweetness chuckles. “I figured that out on my own. But a promise is a promise, and if you go, I go. I just don’t know how you can do it with your knee as fucked up as it is. And if I said no, I have a feeling you’d try to go by yourself.”
“Yeah, I would.”
“How?”
My pain level has gone down considerably since getting the cortisone shots. “Slowly and carefully. And that’s why I brought the sawed-off room sweeper.”
“Then let’s go.”
I check the time on my cell phone, wish I hadn’t destroyed my watch. It’s a few minutes after midnight.
I switch back to English and say to the whore-mongering brothers, “Put your thinking caps on and figure out how to get in and out alive, because you two are coming with us.”
“Why us?” the Raper says. “We gave ya what ya wanted!”
“Because,” I say, “the two of you are such harmless, pathetic, brainless morons that no one would suspect you of doing anything that requires balls.”
Pissed off and afraid, the Ripper says, “Ya told us you’d leave us be if we told yer what ya wanted.”
“No, I promised you no rat jacket. And you may not pimp the girls in your club, but you make deals with their pimps-don’t tell me you don’t take kickbacks-and in my eyes, that makes you scum.”
“They’ll fuckin’ kill us. We’ll have to leave the fuckin’ country.”
I draw my silenced.45. “It’s me now or them later. You boys are good at plying your trade. I’m sure you’ll start over somewhere else and prosper.”
In fact, I wouldn’t kill them or have Sweetness cut off their fingers, but I’ve done a good job of convincing them otherwise.
“Ya can’t just murder us. You’ve been seen. You’ll end up in the nick same as any other murderer, copper or not.”
I show him the taped-up.357 Magnum. “You pulled this. It was self-defense. We had no choice.”
Fear: the great motivator. He doesn’t hesitate, makes a call. The table is full. He says they’re happy to sit in when other players want breaks, and really, they want to come to talk business more than play. He gets the invite. My guess is they’re bush-league players and the others just think of them as easy money. Two idiots to fleece and send packing.
“You’re going to need the cash as a stage prop,” I say, “to convince them you’re there to play. Find it.”
“You expect us to have two hundred thousand euros just layin’ around to no purpose?”
“I hope you do,” I say, “for your sake.”
He turns even paler, scowls, furious at having his life turned upside down, calls me a “filthy fucking rat bastard prick,” and says, “I guess we gotta take it with us to flee the fuckin’ country anyway, cuz of you.”
“It would likely be in your best interest,” I say.
He pulls a cheap reproduction of a Pre-Raphaelite painting off the wall to reveal a safe behind it. It’s stuffed with cash. He jams it all into a gym bag. “I guess you win, mate,” he says, “but goddamn you to hell fer it.”
“We’re not fucking friends,” I say, “so if either of you calls me fucking ‘mate’ one more time, I’ll shoot you on general principles. So fuck you and let’s go.”
15
We go out to the Wrangler. The Ripper sits in front beside Sweetness. I sit in the back beside the Raper, my silenced Colt pressed against his side. They might try to bolt and run while we’re at a traffic light. This gives them incentive to stay in the vehicle and behave. We park down the street from King’s Royale. To reach the back of the club and the delivery entrance, a vehicle has to pass through an alley. The buildings on both sides of it make the alley a perfect shooting gallery, while hiding and protecting the guards at the club door around the corner at the back of it. I have no visibility for the first leg of this operation.
How to do this? The Harper brothers could just forewarn the guards that police are coming, walk in, the door locked behind them, and earn some points from Pasi Palo for the tip-off. No doubt they’ve both already considered this.
“You two remember who you’re dealing with,” I say. “Two cops from the National Bureau of Investigation.” They don’t know Sweetness is officially employed as a linguistic specialist. “If you screw us, we’ll kill you tonight if we can. If not, we’ll ruin your business, charge you with all sorts of shit, have your books examined and nail you for tax fraud. I’ll make it my personal business to see you get max prison sentences. The list of our ways to fuck up your lives is long, and if you fuck us over, it’ll be your own asses you’re peddling, as if anyone would want them, instead of spending your evenings drinking cognac with spies and getting your dicks sucked.”
I take the Raper’s cell phone, put my number in it, and give it a speed dial with the number one. I call my own phone number, give it back to him and tell him to keep the line open so I can hear everything that’s said.
I ask Sweetness for his Taser, take out my own, and show the brothers how they work. “You two are going to talk your way into getting the door unlocked, then zap the men guarding it with these. Keep shocking them until they’re unconscious. Look for security cameras and get out of sight of them. Then you tell me and we’ll be there in a heartbeat.” I pull the sawed-off in its black garbage bag out from under the seat and show it to them. “We’ll be right behind you with this, and when we get there, I’ll tell you what to do next.”
I smell fear sweat and they both tremble. “Pull yourselves together, goddamn it, or you’ll end up dead.” I hand Sweetness the bag with the lockbuster shotgun and he takes a roll of duct tape from the glove box.
They nod, and we pile out of the Wrangler. They have trouble making themselves walk down the street. Sweetness kicks the Raper in the ass. “Move.”
Off they go, and we trail a little less than a minute behind them, shotguns hidden in the bags, but cocked with our fingers on the triggers. It gets dark a little earlier every night as summer progresses. The light is dim. For a moment, I think it makes us unobtrusive, but realize my limp and Sweetness’s size make that impossible.
We reach the corner and peer into the alley. The brothers walk into it. We give them a head start and follow. They reach an inner courtyard and turn right. I listen to them blabber inane bullshit to security about why they want to attend the game. But they flash the cash and it gives them an appearance of veracity. I hear electric zaps.
The Raper unpockets his phone and speaks to me. “The blokes are out cold. Me satchel full of cash made ’em believe we’re here to play. I got me foot keepin’ the door open, an’ there’s a security camera on top a the door.”
Sweetness peers around the corner and blows out the camera lens with his pistol. He motions for me to follow.
I recognize one of the bodyguards. He answered the door once when I visited Veikko Saukko’s home. I take it he’s on loan this evening. He had an iPad and used it to check Saukko’s appointments, appeared to serve as Saukko’s secretary as well as security. We use zip-lock plastic ties to cuff their hands and feet. Saukko’s man is an obvious powerhouse. I double-shackle him to make sure he can’t use his strength to snap the zip-locks. I take his iPad, it might have some useful info
rmation in it. We tape their mouths shut. They start coming around.
“Can we scarper now?” the Raper asks.
“Soon,” I say. “Take us to the game, put on happy faces, and tase the guards outside the door. Same deal. I’ll listen. Tell me when they’re down.”
“Yer a God-rotted bastard,” he says, and does as he’s told.
We follow the brothers through the kitchen storeroom, they motion for us to stop, and they start down a hallway. Upstairs in the nightclub, the music must be blaring. Here in the staff area, I can’t hear a goddamned thing. The soundproofing is excellent. The Raper gives me the go-ahead. We start down the hall. I go as fast as I can, which isn’t very. Two more guards are down. We secure them, disarm them, pull the batteries out of their phones and fling them back toward the storeroom. I tell the brothers to get the fuck out of here.
We take the shotguns out of the bags. I cradle the sawed-off under my arm and take two flash-bangs out of my pocket. I press myself against the wall to avoid shrapnel. Sweetness angles himself away from the door to do the same. We do it fast. He fires and kicks the door open. The roar is deafening in this confined space. I pull the pins on the grenades and toss them into the room, turn, plug my ears and close my eyes. Three seconds. Thunders like the cracks of doom and flashes like supernovas.
We charge in. Some made it under the table when the door flew open. Those standing went down. Six players at the table. Two gunmen bodyguards. They’re all deaf, blind and disoriented. A couple puke from inner-ear-liquid imbalance. We start screaming. “Everybody facedown on the floor. Lock your fingers behind your heads.”
I realize I’m shouting in Finnish. I scream it again in English. Sweetness takes my cue, shouts orders in Russian.
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