He’s a Russian named Sasha Mikoyan and his passport is diplomatic. So he’s a spy or an attache or both, and the Harper brothers didn’t lie. People from the Russian embassy are taking part in the slave trade.
The Russian diplomatic mission, given the circumstances of his death, whorehouse, kidnapping et al., will probably exercise their right to keep Finnish law enforcement out of this. I put his passport back in his pocket but take his wallet and iPhone, so I can carry out an investigation of my own. I’ve developed quite a collection of gadgets tonight.
“Let’s go,” I say. I check the time, now three fifty-five.
Loviise has a traveling bag. Sweetness carries it for her as we walk to the car. I want to discuss this situation with Sweetness, but don’t know if our abductee in the back can understand Finnish. I jam cigarette butts deep in his ears, cover them with duct tape, and put shooting-protection earphones on top of that. He couldn’t hear a bomb drop.
We all get in the Wrangler. I sit up front with Sweetness. Saukko’s man hasn’t made a sound. Apparently, he’s smart enough to know it won’t help, and he’s just waiting, pondering how to get through this, preparing himself for the worst. This marks him as a cool professional. Sweetness hits his flask.
“This may rank as one of the longest nights of our lives, but we’re going to have to make this a murder of opportunity,” I say.
He doesn’t catch the double entendre. “What do you mean?”
I’m rattled and overwrought, exhausted and in pain. I haven’t had this much physical activity since I was shot. I rub my knee. “Saukko said he had nothing to do with knocking out my windows and harassing me. I believe him, do you?”
I start chain-smoking, try to clear my mind with nicotine.
“Pomo, that evil fuck is ten times smarter than I am. I don’t know.”
“Pitkanen isn’t doing this alone, that leaves the minister of the interior, the national chief of police, and our new parliamentarian and Finland’s best hater, Roope Malinen. I don’t think Malinen has the stones for it, but the minister and the chief do.”
“What about Adrien Moreau? He was after the ten million and we killed him. Maybe somebody associated with him?”
I shake my head. “He was a self-sufficient loner. I don’t believe he would have involved anyone else.”
“It could be hate groups as well. We really put the fucks to those neo-Nazis for selling strychnine-laced heroin. And all the groups are interconnected.”
Over thirty people died of strychnine poisoning before dealers figured out what they were selling and pulled the bad smack off the streets. “But they don’t have a SUPO agent on their side, or if they do, it’s because the minister ordered him to work with them. I think we need to interrogate the minister and the chief, and that crime scene is the place to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I told the chief if he didn’t fuck off about the money, I’d frame him for a crime and kill him in the process of arresting him. It’s late on a weeknight. They’re probably in their beds. We should abduct them.”
Sweetness chuckles. “Cool. You really gonna kill the chief?”
“No, not cool. Crazy. And I don’t want to hurt anybody. But Saukko and his Shit List and his threats, plus the attacks and other threats against my family, have me scared shitless. I’ll murder whoever I have to and sit my jolt in prison before I’ll let anyone hurt my family. Later, we’ll interrogate the guy in the back, and I hope before we go home we’ll know where the truth lies and who our enemies are and aren’t. We can’t protect ourselves and ours until then. That includes Jenna and even your mother.”
That possibility seems to have not struck him yet, and when it does, as it did for me, it carries fear with it. He nods his head slow, shakes a cigarette out of a pack and lights it. “You’re right,” he says. “We deal with this now.”
I feel sorry for whoever Sweetness decides is to blame. He’ll kill them-after punishing them-and if we can’t discover who is guilty, he’ll take the position of the crusader leader, a bishop who, when asked by his troops how to tell who was Catholic and who wasn’t, answered, “Kill them all, God will recognize his own.”
17
Lay out the plan for me,” Sweetness says.
I picture the map of Helsinki and think of the most expedient way to do this. “Go to my house so I can grab my crime kit. Then to Milo’s. I need something there. I want to at least minimally process that apartment before the Russians claim diplomatic privilege and shut it down. “Maybe you could ask your mother if Loviise can stay there until we can make arrangements for her to safely return to Estonia. They have a common language. Loviise could have someone to talk to.”
“Mom will probably help, but she’ll be furious if I call at this hour and ask to bring a stranger to her house. It has to wait until a decent hour. And she could be in danger. We’ll have to stash them both somewhere.”
We have no time to waste. Sweetness pulls out onto the road. “How do you know Loviise isn’t lying? She could have killed that Russian.”
I just want Kate to see me save the girl. I can’t get over the idea that it will redeem me in her eyes, and in some small way, my own. “I don’t think Loviise is clever enough for that, but I’ll lift prints off the knife and print her just in case. Even if she did, it was justifiable and I don’t want her prosecuted. We send her home anyway.”
“What do we do with her for tonight?”
I chain one smoke off the other, flick the end of the last one out the window and watch in the passenger-side mirror as the cherry-red end smacks off the street and bursts like a little firework. “Keep her with us. They know we have her. We offended important people. They might try to snatch her back, just to put us in our places.”
“They might decide to put us in our places by killing us,” Sweetness says.
“True. First, we snatch the minister and the chief and force the truth out of them about the harassment against us. If they pass inspection, we let them go home, if not. .” I raise my hands, palms up, and shrug, as if to say the situation is beyond my control. “Then we go to Vantaa, to Filippov Construction, and interrogate Saukko’s man there.”
The construction company specialized in toxic waste management. It’s been closed since its owner, Ivan Filippov, was shot dead while I investigated him for murder. The site has served us well in the past. It has privacy, and we’ve dissolved the bodies of two gangsters in acid there, to cover up their murders and prevent a gang war.
“And then?”
“And then we make Loviise safe with your mom and go home. It’s Mirjami’s birthday, and remember, we have to shop for a gift for her when the stores open.”
“I could just give her all the money I won. Wrap it up with a card that says it’s from both of us.”
“That’s generous. You cheated, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I’ll buy you a book of card tricks and teach you. But that’s why I asked for a fresh deck, so I knew where each card was when I started shuffling.”
This gets a laugh out of me. “You’re not afraid of anyone or give a shit about anything, do you?”
He looks at me, solemn. “Not much. I’m careful where I place my affections and concerns. I don’t have room for many.”
Wisdom from the baby-faced behemoth.
• • •
WE RUN the errands fast. I have a fishing tackle box with basic crime-scene processing equipment in it. I dump all my newly acquired electronica on the dining room table, grab the box, some other odds and ends, and some photos featuring the minister and chief. I’ve way overdone it and I’m fading. I scarf some painkillers and tranquilizers to keep me propped up. Then we shoot over to Milo’s, and I take the sperm samples connecting the men we’re about to abduct to the crime scene of Mrs. Filippov. Both the chief and minister live in apartments in Eira, not far from the scene of tonight’s murder.
I check the time. Five ten a.
m. I do it the easy way, ring their door buzzers, wake them, and announce that I have business concerning Saukko’s money and it can’t wait. The greedy fucks both think I’m acquiescing, returning the money, and let us in. I make Jyri Ivalo use his cell phone to call mine-to create the illusion of a phone conversation-and keep the phones open for five minutes, and to fetch his service pistol, which I take. We force them to get dressed and into the vehicle at gunpoint. Back to the crime scene we go.
Loviise is frightened, doesn’t want to go back, but Sweetness reassures her that everything is for her own good, that we’re trying to stop the people who were bad to her, and we show her our National Bureau of Investigation ID cards, which she can’t read, but she seems reassured. Probably more by our demeanors than IDs.
We escort them all up to the apartment. Sweetness and I slip on paper shoe covers and surgical gloves, but don’t allow them to do the same. I ask Loviise if she would mind to wait in another room while we men talk. She’s nervous to be back in the apartment but complies. The minister and chief view Sasha Mikoyan’s corpse with surprise and bemusement. Jyri Ivalo speaks first. “What the hell are you doing, Vaara? This makes no sense.”
First things first. I make them stand on each side of the corpse. “Sano muikku”-Say whitefish. They don’t smile. I have Sweetness snap pics of them and the corpse together with his cell phone camera.
I keep my.45 leveled at Jyri with one hand, my cane in the other. As with everyone else tonight, I confiscate their electronics to keep from being recorded. I’m aware, though, that some of them will have GPS tracking devices in the event of their auspicious owners’ disappearances. Then I think, So fucking what, they all know I took them and where I live.
“On the contrary,” I say, “it makes perfect sense. I’ve suffered damage to my property and threats against the lives of my family because of your imaginary ten million euros. I warned you if you didn’t let the matter drop, I would frame you for a crime, then kill you when you turned violent resisting arrest. The matter hasn’t been dropped. The butcher knife in that man’s back-incidentally, he’s a Russian diplomat, or more than likely a spy on a diplomatic passport named Sasha Mikoyan-is your sword of Damocles.”
I’ve confused him. “How so?”
I toss a pile of photos on the coffee table. “Have a look, both of you.”
They both flip through them. Osmo Ahtiainen, the minister, says, “OK, you got me. I’m not photogenic when I fuck. So what?”
Jyri Ivalo gets the message but pretends otherwise. “So we’ve fucked some of the same women. Big deal.”
“And here we are in a house of prostitution, an administrator of said house is dead, you’re both drunk, and your fingerprints are on the murder weapon.”
“No we aren’t, and they aren’t.”
“But they soon will be, and you’ll be very drunk. Too drunk to recall what happened here.”
I pull plastic freezer bags from my fishing tackle crime-kit box. “These are semen samples that you were both stupid enough to deposit in the mouth of Ivan Filippov’s mistress.” I take out the syringes Jari left at my house. “Your semen samples will be found in Mikoyan’s various orifices.”
Both of them go pale and reflect shock. The ramifications of what I can do to them hits them like slaps to the face.
I take the samples to the kitchen and put them in the freezer so they don’t thaw and deteriorate. I return with beers and bottles of vodka. “Start drinking. Fast.”
“Conclude,” Osmo says.
“As I’m an officer close to him, even known to socialize with him, Jyri called me and begged me to extricate him from a jam. He was very drunk. You two-given your voracious sexual appetites and lack of choosiness when it comes to your sexual partners, tag-teaming a man won’t really surprise anyone-but you had some kind of quarrel. You don’t even remember what about, but Mikoyan ended up dead. I came here after Jyri’s call, saw the corpse and informed you both that I can’t protect you from this. Jyri, in a last-ditch attempt to preserve his freedom, drew down on me and I had no choice but to kill him. Osmo, I haven’t decided what to do with you yet. Shooting you as well would be the most expedient. You’re not drinking. Chug-a-lug. Mikoyan’s DNA, by the way, will be found in your mouths and on your genitals.”
They both take deep drinks from the vodka bottles. I think they’re glad to have it. “What do you want to put a stop to this?” Jyri asks.
“I already explained the consequences of fucking with me to you. Repeat to me what I told you.”
He slurps Stolichnaya, knows his life hangs in the balance of the next few seconds. “We’ve covered that ground.”
I put my Colt to his forehead. “Indulge me, for the sake of clarity.”
He doesn’t want to say it. I nudge his forehead with the barrel.
“You said you would kill me.”
I move the gun fast, shift the muzzle to the right, fire, and shave off the bottom of his left earlobe. Not much, maybe an eighth of an inch. But he doesn’t know that. He just feels hot blood drizzling down his neck and thinks his ear is gone. He reaches up, finds it still there and sheds tears of relief.
“By all rights,” I say, “I should go ahead and kill you, but I feel generous and forgiving.”
He bursts into self-righteous anger. “You wanted to be someone important, to be above the law to further your own agenda. I gave you that and you stole from me.”
“How could I steal something from you that didn’t belong to you?”
“I didn’t send people to harass and threaten you. It’s not true.”
“But you know who did, don’t you? Minders watched my house. Interrogating them proved that they were cutouts run by SUPO Captain Jan Pitkanen, which, Osmo, brings us back to you. He’s your axman, isn’t he? Keep drinking. If your answer isn’t satisfactory, you two begin making your ways around the apartment, leaving touch prints, grab prints, footprints. It will appear that you’ve been here for hours.”
“Here’s the truth,” Osmo says. “You played a dangerous game and we took you into our confidence. You didn’t like the game, you cheated and didn’t want to play anymore. But you can’t walk away from it. You turned out to be a weak sister and disappointed us, stealing that ten million. You were already well-compensated. We took good care of you, and you betrayed us. The Powers That Be are most disappointed in you. Now everybody wants you and your buddies dead.”
He drinks, wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “The truth be told, we never needed you. We didn’t care if that left-wing bitch got her head cut off. We needed Milo Nieminen. He’s a bloodhound and we knew he’d find the money. It was always about the money. He’s shit crazy and needs a handler. That was your purpose. We always thought the kidnapping a sham that would lead back to that racist pig Saukko, via the Soderlund murder, then on to his son, Antti, and the money trail.
“And yes, I put Pitkanen on a detail to watch you with an eye toward recovering the money. He’s my liaison to Veikko Saukko, and via Saukko, to the Real Finn hierarchy and every hate group in the country. He has no strict instructions from me. I empowered him to use his own judgment in coordinating the campaign against you. Did Jyri know this? Yes. Did he fuck with you personally? No. And if you frame or kill Jyri and me, it won’t help you one jot. You’ve made too many enemies.”
“Pitkanen is your liaison to Saukko regarding what?”
“We were supposed to return his son and money. Instead, he got his son’s unrecognizable corpse and no money. Yet he contributed generously to the parliamentary campaign anyway and booted up the million euros he promised. Pitkanen liaises by catering to Saukko’s every whim. I don’t ask the particulars.”
So a captain in the secret police is now an errand boy for an ultra-rich maniac. I look at Sweetness. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably safer to kill them, but on the other hand, they’re important men, the investigation would drag on for months, and who knows how it will turn out in the end. L
ike the man said, we’ve made enemies. We might get sold out somewhere down the line, end up in prison ourselves.”
“True. And in practical terms, we can always kill them later, but we can’t un-kill them if we do it now.” I turn to them. “Keep the wolves at bay and I let you live. For now.”
Osmo swigs vodka and chases it with beer. Now he feels confident that he’ll live through this, and he’s deadening his nerves. “Here’s what happened,” he says. “Pitkanen had a run of shit luck. First your boy trashed his face, then his eighteen-year-old girlfriend got pregnant. She went to his wife, who left him and took their two boys with her. His girlfriend ditched him, too. Since it all started with his face getting fucked, you and your crew symbolize all the bad shit that happened in a short time. He’s gone a little bonkers and I sent him to placate Saukko, but mostly to get him away from me and give him something to do while he pulls himself back together. I can pull his reins, get him out of your hair.”
I push the silenced muzzle up against Osmo’s temple. “If you don’t manage to keep your word, the consequences will be dire.”
Osmo and Jyri both agree to a truce with me. Since said truce is made under extreme duress, I have no faith in their promises, but the fear factor involved might tame them. I tell them to stand still and suck vodka. A Colt in one hand and a cane in the other leaves me no free hands. Sweetness lifts prints from the most obvious places. Sweetness isn’t a cop, but I’ve taught him this skill. If Osmo and Jyri try something stupid, I’m going to shoot them, and I want to do it myself, not push more killings on Sweetness.
Our backs are to the front door and I don’t realize anyone has entered until I hear it squeak when they close it behind them. Three men have guns trained on us. Small-bore handguns. Sweetness and I are about five feet apart. They all three look like nobody, or anybody. Spies, trained to blend in anywhere. I raise my pistol and point it at the head of one spook. In turn, he presses the muzzle of his pistol into my chest. Sweetness’s guns are holstered. A spook puts a pistol to his head. The third lowers his weapon and says, in English, “We came for the body and the girl, not to kill you. We’ll take what we came for and leave.” He looks at me. “Put down your weapon and tell me where the girl is.”
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