“I was there, Vincent. This morning.”
Paint drops on lining paper. The kind of spill that he otherwise hated, which quickly stiffened on the surface so that, when you walked on it, it cracked like a soft-boiled egg and the sticky goo in the middle would get tracked onto other floors.
“When the gates were opened. When he came out.”
It was difficult to get bothered about paint on the heels of shoes when the rest of the world might collapse.
“You were . . . there?”
“Yes.”
“Without saying anything to me?”
His father placed the roller in the pan and leaned the long, grooved shaft against the wall and sat comfortably on a paint can.
“Yes. It seemed best that way.”
“Best . . . what way?”
“Since you don’t seem to want to talk about him.”
Ivan relaxed against the imaginary backrest of the paint can, fished out a packet of rolling tobacco and the smaller, red-colored one of Rizla rolling paper, and spread the light-brown tobacco on one of the thin, dry sheets.
“Or am I wrong? Every time I try to talk about your brother, about Leo, you keep on . . . sanding or filling or whatever the fuck you’re doing instead of answering.”
Ivan stood up, opened the window wide and took out his lighter in the wide window bay, and drew in the first drag.
“You are my sons, you belong together. Dammit, I’ve taught you that and now it’s more important than ever—you need to be able to stick together without robbing banks.”
“So you were there? At the gate?”
“Yes.”
“You were standing there, with Mama and Felix?”
“Yes.”
Vincent moved around nervously, one foot very near the paint drops.
“Did you talk, did you say anything about . . . your working with me?”
“No. I don’t want to meddle. You’re all adults now.” Ivan spat out small tobacco flecks into the spring air.
“So. The telephone call just now. Why were you not there?”
“I didn’t have time.”
“Of course you had time, Vincent.”
His father looked at him, through him, with his head lowered and his chin jutting out and his gaze razor sharp, exactly the way Leo and Felix said he used to scrutinize them—he had been too young to register it back then and remember now.
“Don’t push him away. He needs you. Don’t you get it, Vincent? Leo can change. Like I did. Like you did. You are all still brothers, in spite of what happened.”
“I’m not pushing him away.”
Vincent took a step closer to his father. They were the same height and had bushy hair that made its way forward over two crowns in identical waves.
“It’s not about that—I just couldn’t stand there and wait. Not in front of those fucking walls, again. I don’t ever want to see a prison again! Do you understand, Papa? I was seventeen when we started. Seventeen! And behind those fucking bars of Mariestad prison I got it. That it was me. That it was me, who at the age of seventeen, jumped over checkout desks with a machine gun over my shoulder. And that fucking isn’t me now. Never again.”
He let the anger subside. He had learned to do that. It would be hissed out in small doses, like fiery fumes. If you let too much ooze out all at once, it didn’t ebb away. Quite the opposite, it grew and demanded more space.
“I will see him. Tomorrow. We’re having lunch.”
“You and Leo?”
“Me and Leo and Felix . . . and Mama.”
“Her too?”
Shit. He hadn’t planned to mention Mama, who wanted to gather her sons together at her house. It was unnecessary. Maybe even unkind.
“Yeah, it was her idea to . . . you know, at her place.”
An indifferent look. His father tried to glance at him nonchalantly before he grabbed the long, grooved pole to pick up more paint on the roller. But he wasn’t indifferent. Not on the inside. Vincent was sure of that. Every time he tried to get close—which was the whole idea, to get close to a different father, having entirely missed the earlier one—the words had frozen inside the heavy body, encapsulated and unformed. The only thing he had learned was that his father never let him in by talking about himself.
And that nothing would come out now either. So while Ivan was spreading the matte paint on the roller onto the other half of the kitchen ceiling, Vincent turned toward the sink and tap and he filled the pail with water and mixed the grout. Leo can change. Wide, gentle arm motions, kneeling on the hard floor, filling in the spaces between the tiles. Like you. Like me. Just a few days ago the bathroom had been framed by chocolate-brown, very glossy tiles halfway up and then yellow-and-orange flowery wallpaper that took over the rest of the wall up to the ceiling. Now everything was chalky white. The change was simple and beautiful on the outside. But in the world Leo had just left, you wake up every morning, face the daily routine, and know all that shit is just a thin veil covering the violence on the ladder that everyone clings to. And you participate because you have to and you hold on tight as you struggle to be free, as the kicks hit the snitch, who won’t be able to stand, sit, or piss afterward. What he himself experienced, Leo, of course, had also experienced. His big brother, whom he loved so much and who once was everything to him, had served a longer time behind the concrete, in even worse prisons. That meant there were more clinging to the very top of the ladder of violence.
Yeah. He had lied just now on the telephone. Not because he was avoiding him—because he was afraid. Afraid that when Leo was outside those walls, he would continue to plan crimes that required his brothers’ involvement.
———
Twelve paces remaining. And he recognized it—the expanse of grass and moss enclosed by a three-foot-high stone, a single beautiful fir tree and two low-growing birches.
Leo’s breathing was calm and he felt at ease. To stand here like this, thirty-two paces plus thirty-seven paces plus ninety-two paces in a forest away from a rest area in northern Södermanland, somewhere between Södertälje and Strängnäs, it was as if no time at all had passed. He remembered everything so well.
He whisked away tufts of grass, moss, and brown leaves. The folding spade’s edge was sharp and cut through meandering roots in the black soil. Twelve inches down. No deeper. There he bumped against it—the cover under protective plastic that could be torn away; an end cap that had been carefully protected with insulation tape and then gaffer tape. In about a minute the spade edge had carved its way through every layer. The cover itself could be screwed off. The inside was rounded, made of smooth, hard, gray plastic. An ordinary PVC pipe, or sewage pipe as it was called when it had sprung a leak at someone’s house and the stench wafted out into the house. There was no smell of sewage, shit, or marsh here. It smelled of motor oil.
Next to the pipe was another one just like it. Plastic, sleeve cover, tape. He had buried two of them vertically in the ground.
His own “safe house.” If everything went to hell, he would always have a way out. And it had gone that way. A failed robbery and then a policeman named John Broncks.
Leo lay down on his stomach and stuck his right arm down into one of the gray pipes, which pointed upward. He felt the black garbage bag and the thick motor oil. And then, a piece of metal. It, too, was rounded.
He pulled up the black garbage bags, one assault rifle out of each pipe, greased and wrapped up in layer after layer of plastic wrap. And as he reached deeper down, his hand felt around under them. First, he reached the packets of ammunition, twenty bullets in each, vacuum-packed to protect them against fluctuations between hot and cold, as well as condensation that would have made them useless. Then, under those, were the packets of banknotes, warm clothes, safety razors, scissors, and hair dye. He counted the money, kept half, and put the other half back together with the clothes and supplies for changing his appearance. These were intended for escape. Then he carried soil and grass and leaves and m
oss to the hole and raked over the entire area with a branch to wipe away footprints.
A quick look at his new watch. Four hours and twenty-three minutes left.
He was in a hurry.
That cop’s brother was likely wondering where the hell he was.
BACK THROUGH THE forest barely woken by spring, the duffel bag full and a little heavier on the axle with twenty pounds of assault rifles, ammunition, and money. He crept carefully forward the last bit to the rest area—not to be seen, never to leave tracks. Two new tractor trailers had stopped there while he was hiking and digging. Now they were close to the busy European road, parked temporarily in front of the car he’d rented for the day. Leo crept closer, hidden by two rather small fir trees. The transport vehicles had Lithuanian registration. Two youngish drivers were smoking, chatting, and laughing. He waited them out, just as he had done before with the Polish driver, until they had had time to drive a good distance away in the inner lane and no one else was on the way in. Then he hurried to the car, opened the trunk, and lowered the plastic bags with the weapons down into the empty plastic tub.
Not far to the next medium-sized town, Strängnäs, which had a large enough population to have a do-it-yourself car wash. The woman behind the checkout at the gas station had a beautiful smile and a friendly voice. She explained that behind the station there were three large washing bays of the same size with solid walls between them, that one of them would be available soon, and that the shortest possible booking time was an hour. He paid for it and for a degreasing agent. He was on his way out when he turned back.
“I’d also like a can of lube oil. Regular 5-56 would be fine.”
“Got something that jams?”
“More to be on the safe side. So that something won’t jam.”
“Yeah, it works for most things, I use it myself to fix my cycle chain and—”
“Thanks.”
Three identical cubed structures about the size of typical garages. Through the window in the folding door to the left he caught a glimpse of a local taxi. It was probably the taxi owner himself who was wiping the dark-blue car roof. To the right, an older car with extra lights, fog lights, dual exhausts, and a bumper sticker that said VOLVO TOP DOG was being carefully pressure-washed by a very young man with a gold cap turned backward. So the cube in the middle was available and Leo backed the rental car in, with the trunk turned away from view. It had real walls on each side, exactly as the woman at the cash register had promised, not the flimsy kind of hanging walls that exposed more than they hid.
He began by washing the car, not especially carefully, but it needed to have a slightly wet, nicely clean shine when he drove out again in a little while. He verified that the car blocked the view in one direction and that the three walls took care of the rest. He opened the trunk, took out the plastic tub holding the black garbage bags, and spilled them out on the floor of the car wash. Two AK4s. Before he’d buried them, he’d thoroughly greased the metal and then smeared on thick motor oil, as much as possible, both rifles bathed in it, and finally encased them in plastic. Not so that the oil would stay there—so that water wouldn’t get in. With grease and oil they never rusted. Encase them properly and drop them down into the pipe and they could stay there forever. As long as the accompanying ammunition was properly vacuum-packed, the depth of the hole didn’t mean a thing.
Now all that had to go.
Leo unwound the plastic wrap, layer by layer. He drowned the weapons in both petroleum and alkaline degreasing agents, let it work awhile, and flushed all the surfaces with the high-pressure hose like the guy in the gold cap with his Volvo in the next garage—but on full force. Weapons are not as fragile as car engines. He blew them clean with compressed air. Last, he dried them off with one of the rags that was hanging on the hooks over the hose and sprayed them with lubricant.
He left the gas station and headed for route 55 north, via Strängnäs Bridge with its fantastic view of Lake Mälaren’s still, glittering water and with two ready-to-fire automatic weapons in the trunk. Thirteen miles according to Sam’s directions, from the beautiful bridge to the ferry landing to the car ferry that left once an hour, a car trip through the original Sweden. In these woods, the runestones were jostling with Bronze Age graves, and on the edge of the road were signs for bed-and-breakfasts and flea markets. He was supposed to turn right at the country store and drive a little slower the last bit on a winding, badly repaired, godforsaken road.
Sam.
A friend.
Someone he even trusted.
He never trusted anyone outside the family circle, and yet he had learned to do exactly that. In spite of the rage, the hate he’d felt the first time they spoke to each other.
———
A sleepy morning, yet another shift with the wood blocks and screws. Leo had stood up, stretched, and seen, through the window, a car parked outside the prison gate. And then, when a man about forty years old climbed out of the driver’s seat, something in him snapped, exploded, and became waves pushed up to his throat in a yell. Blind fury felt like this. That fucking cop! Broncks even looked like he had on the last day of the trial. Shit, if he wasn’t even wearing the same clothes—jeans, leather jacket, ordinary shoes. A moment later the yell came back, stronger.
The prisoner on the other side of the corridor in the middle, cell 7, was Sam Larsen. He was serving a life sentence—the prison guards had come and gotten him for an unannounced visit. Just that cop and Larsen together in a narrow visitors’ room! Broncks must be there to receive information. Broncks, who had carried out the investigation, framed him, and split apart three brothers and their father but lacked both the weapons cache and evidence for most of the bank robberies the prosecutor was aiming for. And now he was visiting Sam Larsen, head of the prison council, with access to all the fucking gossip.
That afternoon Leo set foot uninvited into a fellow prisoner’s cell for the first time.
Confronted him.
Spoke of a code of conduct, the prison’s age-old rules, the sex offenders on the bottom just like the snitches, the phony ethics he hadn’t cared about—a sort of hierarchy for those who chose being locked up as a lifestyle and who didn’t interest him. He wasn’t a criminal in that sense. He asked his questions only on his own account and was only interested in protecting himself and his brothers.
Sam stared and waited him out.
“Are you done?”
“No.”
And then he came closer.
“Then make it so you are—if you want to leave my cell without broken bones.”
“A little snitch? Threatening? It’s usually the other way around, isn’t it? Especially since everyone here will know before long.”
So close that everything was blurred.
“Will you listen?”
“Yeah?”
“That fucking cop you’re talking about . . . He came here to let me know my mother died. So show a little respect and get out of my cell. Let me grieve in peace.”
No more threats. No raised voice.
There had been no need.
The prisoner who had forced his way into cell 7 felt stupid and ashamed and he left.
It was of course later, after being locked into the cell in the evening with a long night ahead, that Leo thought a lot about why a police officer, a detective in the investigation squad, had a job description that included informing prisoners that their mothers had passed away. He’d come to the conclusion that a detective wouldn’t be likely to. That Sam Larsen hadn’t told the whole truth. That tomorrow morning he’d have to make another visit to that cell, and that he wouldn’t leave until everything was said.
———
The winding, narrow, bumpy road ultimately did have an end. Having arrived, after the sharp bend and the clearing two deer fled into, Leo faced beautiful blue water and a bright-yellow cable ferry. Arnö was visible on the other side of the sound. It was always difficult to judge distance across lakes and seas, but he gue
ssed it was just about a half mile. He looked at the display on his cell phone. It was almost one o’clock and in a minute the ferryman would come out of the red wooden house, fold up the boom gate, and turn on the engine for a short, five-minute trip between the mainland and one of Lake Mälaren’s islands, five minutes that divided silence from still more silence. Twelve year-round residents and not that many vacationers, that was how Sam described the island. Thus it was the perfect place to be able to prepare and dismantle everything undisturbed. He drove on board, answered the ferryman’s wave, and, when they had left the land, he got out of the car to breathe the fresh air, look down into the water, and follow the white swirls that played around the boat’s hull.
———
He had done it, made a second visit, forced his way into cell number 7 where Sam Larsen was standing with his back toward the door making his bed. The unwritten, the forbidden. Despite the agreed signal—the red string that Sam had wound around the door handle and which, in that cell block, meant stay the hell away, don’t bother me—he went in uninvited. It gave the advantage. The man in the cell wasn’t prepared. Leo had opened the door carefully and examined the broad shoulders, aware that the inmate in front of him was clearly bigger and stronger than he was. He had been transforming frustration into musculature in the prison gym for a period of twenty years. A single blow was all he’d have if Sam decided to lunge, to act. If dialogue were replaced by violence, Leo would go for the larynx. And after a perfect punch right there, the snitch wouldn’t be able to talk with that fucking cop again either.
“You were lying yesterday.”
Sam turned around quickly. But didn’t attack. After a moment, he answered, not even raising his voice. The unreasonable aggression between them, the unexpressed, impending threat, the mutual hate and hostility that filled every breath in the twenty-square-foot room was obvious nevertheless.
“Excuse me?”
“How much did you squeal? You’re running around out there in the cell block with your big ears, snatching up everything, and then pissing all over me by trying to hide the shit behind an incredibly stupid explanation—that a cop would come here just to say a mother is dead.”
The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2 Page 5