Helsinki White iv-3

by James Thompson

  “This is insane,” she said, “and can only end badly. We should leave now, take the money you’ve got and go to Aspen. You can use your stolen money and pursue hobbies: take nature photos, collect stamps, whatever.”

  “I gave you that opportunity,” I said, “and you declined. I know it wasn’t fair because you felt like you might be granting the last wish of a dying man, but now things are what they are, and I’ll see this job through. I took the job because I wanted to do some good. And before I quit, I will. We may have to leave, but not yet. I’m sorry.”

  The news started on television, and we both almost missed it. The main story:

  “Winter War hero Arvid Lahtinen committed suicide this morning…”

  We were both dumbstruck. Our argument ceased and I turned up the volume. He shot himself outside his house, probably because he didn’t want to decomp for God knows how long before someone found him. He put on a suit, carried a chair outside, and sat while he put the gun to his head. I suppose he thought it would be more dignified than being found in a heap on the wet ground. The reporter speculated on the reasons behind his suicide, discussed the murder charges against him, both domestic and international, and his achievements as a national hero.

  Kate cried. “Why?” she asked me.

  I thought what sparked his action was his time here, the remembrance of what it was like to be part of a family, the realization that he would be old and alone now, had nothing to look forward to but a slow death in an aged, soon-to-be-failing body. Before long, illness, the loss of his home and independence. And he would have to do it alone, without his beloved wife of half a century.

  “Because he didn’t enjoy life without his wife. Because he knew he had had a good run, but his time was over, and if he left now, he could die with his dignity intact.”

  “He was my friend,” Kate said.

  “Mine too. He told me that he was leaving everything to me. I should have known then.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. House. Money. Everything.”

  Kate sat down next to me in the oversized chair. We were silent together for a while.

  “Work with Moreau,” she said. “You fucked up a lot of things because you didn’t have the experience to know better. He does. If you learn, you can achieve some of the good that for some mystifying reason is driving you, and we can stop all this.”

  “OK,” I said.

  I was Arvid’s heir and so responsible for his funeral arrangements. The service was held in Helsinki’s magnificent and most prestigious church, Tuomiokirkko. It sits atop Senate Square and looks down upon both the city and the sea. The church was full, and the man and what he represented were truly mourned. I acted as a pallbearer. It seemed, after he was laid to rest, that nothing was ever the same again. Especially for Kate. I don’t know if the suicide of a man she called friend awakened something inside her, or killed it.

  23

  Vappu-May Day, the heaviest drinking holiday of the year. In Helsinki, a good day to stay at home. It’s amateur night, normal people reduce themselves to the level of dumb beasts. Children as young as ten or twelve pass out on the streets of downtown. May Day Eve fell on a Friday, so festivities would begin as soon as people got off work and continue for three days.

  When I was a young man, the drinking culture was much different. People still got shitfaced, but with style. Men wore suits to bars, and doormen wore them also. The madding crowds didn’t shriek about whose turn it was. They waited in line, humble. Patrons were required to sit at tables. They couldn’t switch tables at will. If they wanted to move, they had to ask a server to move their drink to another table for them. Bartenders didn’t sling drinks, they administered communion, and were frequently addressed as herra baarimestari-sir barmaster-and it wasn’t until about thirty years ago that women were allowed in drinking establishments without male escorts.

  Vappu, too, has changed. In a time that doesn’t seem that far distant, Vappu had been a drinking day, especially for university students, but also a family day. People donned their high school graduation caps-still the tradition-but took their kids out with them, had family picnics. It lacked the tone of complete debauchery now attached to it.

  It’s a different world now. Banks would also carry more cash than usual, as people prepared to pour their bank accounts down their necks. A good day for a robbery.

  Every year, the great hope is that Vappu will be warm, and the nation can sit on sidewalk patios, drink, and celebrate the rite of spring. This year was a disappointment. The temperature was just above freezing and rain drizzled. No matter, spring would be celebrated nonetheless.

  At ten thirty a.m. on that dreary May Day Eve, with the tellers’ cash drawers freshly filled, two men entered the branch of Sampo Bank in Itakeskus, in East Helsinki. They wore black military-style clothing, ski masks, and carried AK-47-type rifles. Each had two banana clips fastened end to end with black electrical tape, so that when one clip was shot empty, the two-clip rig would only have to be flipped to re-load, eliminating the need to reach for another clip.

  They fired off bursts into the air to make their presences known and began screaming in thick, grammatically poor English. One shot an unarmed bank guard dead. They didn’t have to order people to lay prone on the floor. The few early customers flung themselves down in the hope of staying out of harm’s way. No alarm was triggered. The robbers ordered the tellers to fill black plastic grocery bags with money. One teller, an older woman, too terrified to move, was also executed.

  The robbery was over in less than three minutes. Before they left, one robber bellowed, “We strike against the enemies of God.” The other laughed and shouted, “Lock your daughters up, you motherfuckers, we comin’ to get you.”

  I was called within minutes of the robbery and told to come to the crime scene because, as with the young soldier whose throat had been cut, it was felt that the robbery was related to the murder of Lisbet Soderlund.

  Milo living so close to me was a convenience. I called him, picked him up, and we were at the bank within half an hour. It wouldn’t be my case, it would go to Saska Lindgren. Apparently, a race war was in progress, he would be given the cases related to it, and I would consult because of the presidential mandate concerning Lisbet Soderlund. We questioned all present. We looked at the videotapes. Although we couldn’t be certain because the only exposed skin we had to go by was the area around their eyes, all agreed that the perps were black.

  Milo rolled a tape back and forth a few times. “The rifles they used,” he said, “are Rk 95 Tps, the type stolen from the training camp. An unlikely coincidence.”

  According to the rules of battle as set forth by the white combatants in this race war, the original decree was “For every crime committed by black men, we will kill a nigger in retribution.”

  That hadn’t proven accurate. A number of crimes had been committed by blacks since then without retribution. My gut told me, though, that they had realized the difficulties behind killing a black person for every crime committed, but as was the case with the young soldier, murder would be answered with murder, and if we couldn’t unravel this fast, more people would soon die.

  Later that evening, Milo called me. He’d picked up something interesting on a cell phone tap. Helsinki was heroin dry, and Russians were going to try to re-lubricate. The Russians believed they were safe, as only two men knew about the deal, the seller and the buyer. One would bring five kilos to Helsinki tomorrow. It was worth a million euros plus on the street. The deal was for half a million, wholesale price.

  The normal price of a gram of heroin was a hundred twenty euros. With the city bone dry, the buyer planned to sell it for more than twice that price. He would distribute by the ounce, and then one more rung down the ladder, smaller dealers would sell by the eight ball-three and a half grams-but end users would pay two hundred fifty a gram. Plus, this was eighty-eight percent pure Afghan heroin. Street heroin was usually fifty percent. He could step on it hard
with lactose and sell it off as close to eight kilos. In Afghanistan, a kilo costs five thousand bucks. Five thousand becomes a million. The stuff entrepreneurial dreams are made of.

  Tomorrow was Vappu. They would seal the deal and celebrate spring by having some drinks on the patio outside at Kaivohuone-The Well Room-at five p.m., and then make the exchange in the parking lot. Milo asked if I wanted to take it on.

  I considered it. What was my goal? To make Helsinki heroin-free or gangster-free? I wasn’t a social worker, the answer was gangster-free. Stealing the city dry has been a mistake, but unleashing five kilos on Helsinki would mean a total loss of control, dealers back in business. Also, it might cause a number of overdose deaths, as junkies whose systems were nearly clear shot up doses that, when totally hooked, would only have gotten them high.

  “Let’s snatch it,” I said. “It’s an easy one. We just go out to the full parking lot and pop their trunks. People won’t recognize me with my image overhaul. Nobody will even give us a second glance.”

  “It’s Vappu for us, too,” Milo said. “What do you say we have a few drinks while we’re there?”

  “OK. Why not? Let’s have some fun.”

  “I’ll call Sweetness and tell him to meet us,” Milo said, and rang off.

  24

  Kaivohuone opened its doors in 1838, and began its life as a spa with a sea view for the Russian elite. It’s now a national landmark, not far from embassy row. For many years though, the stately white building has served as a nightclub. Legally, it holds a thousand people inside and four hundred outside, but in summer the place is oversold, so jammed you can barely move. Its prices, from cover charge to drinks, are outrageous, and the people that spend a great deal of time there do so partly to show off that they can afford to. Kaivo is the place to be on Vappu.

  Others go to rub shoulders with the wealthy, so that for a brief, shining moment, they can feel themselves one of them while they gawk around, hoping to catch a glimpse of a B-class star.

  It has traditionally catered to the children of wealthy Swedish-speaking Finns. Young people, many of them students, who can afford three-hundred-euro bar tabs two or three times a week, drinking themselves stupid under the midnight sun, despite never having had jobs.

  The city owns it. The neighbors hate it because the noise level makes it like living next to an airport with jets constantly taking off and landing during the summer months. It changed management a few years ago. It’s falling apart, shaken to bits by years of abuse from the throbbing sound system. Through some sort of backroom deal, it came into the hands of a Helsinki nightclub tycoon, with the agreement that he would put ten million into its restoration and convert it into a fine dining establishment the city could be proud of.

  Instead, he put about fifty euros into paint, gimcracks and doodads, made some cosmetic changes so that he could say he lived up to his word and renovated it, and kept operating it as a nightclub. The building still stands, the kids keep rockin’.

  I went to the front of a hundred-meter line to the outdoor patio, showed the doorman my police card, said I was there on official business, and was ushered in ahead of the crowd, gratis. The place was oversold and I could have shut it down as a fire hazard if I chose to, and they knew it. They would have plied me with free Dom Perignon for the evening if I asked for it. The patio was packed with beautiful young people weaving and staggering, their eyes glazed from their second-day drunk.

  I saw Milo wave at me. He’d managed to get a table, a small miracle. He’d probably showed his police card, intimidated some kids and commandeered it. Sweetness was with him. I pushed and shoved my way over to them. They had saved a seat for me.

  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 Malaga. 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 ap
plauded. 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?”