Easy Money

by Jens Lapidus

  Now he felt he had to move. Cell phone games wouldn’t help. Had to do a few laps. The question that worried him: Was it his new snort habits or the Camilla thing that was making him jittery?

  He eyed the people in the train car. Tedious, tired people. Sven squared. JW wore common camouflage: Acne jeans, Superlative Conspiracy sweatshirt, and semi-ratty Adidas running shoes. He blended in. Suitable for his parental reunion.

  He’d made up his mind after the conversation with Susanne. Playing private eye wasn’t his thing anymore. Even so, it’d felt strange to call the police, to talk to the investigator who’d been in charge of the case. He’d explained what he’d found out: that Jan Brunéus’d had some kind of relationship with Camilla Westlund in the time before her disappearance. That Susanne Petterson was aware of this and had told JW. That Jan’d given Camilla top grades despite her lack of attendance.

  The investigator’d promised to look into the info more closely. JW assumed that he meant that Jan Brunéus would be called in for questioning.

  That JW’d been in touch with the police was a contradiction. Abdulkarim couldn’t know.

  But it’d felt like a relief-he’d let go of the burden. Was letting the police do their job.

  He’d drifted back into denial. Focused on C, school, and Sophie. Prepared the London trip. Discussed strategies with Jorge. Sold. Dealt. Counted cash.

  He’d made up his mind: He wouldn’t tell his parents what he’d told the police.

  He was arriving in Robertfors within five minutes. His stomach was growling violently. Was it worry or hunger?

  In truth, he knew he was worried about seeing Mom and Dad.

  It was almost six months since he’d last bid them good-bye and studied his mother’s worn face and his father’s tight jawline. Would they be feeling better now? JW couldn’t stand being reminded of the tragic plodding of their lives. His goal had been to get away, start over. Be accepted as something different. Something better. Bigger than his parents’ whole-milk lifestyle with its accompanying angst over a lost child. He’d wanted to forget.

  The train pulled into the station. People were waiting for arrivals and to depart themselves. The brakes screeched loudly. His car stopped right in front of his waiting parents. JW saw that they weren’t talking to each other. As usual.

  Tried to calm down. Look happy and relaxed. As he ought.

  He stepped down onto the platform. They didn’t see him at first. He walked toward them.

  JW knew that Margareta was trying to call out. But for some reason, she’d been unable to raise her voice ever since the Camilla thing. Instead, she greeted him with a tense smile.

  Hugs.

  “Hi, Johan, let us take your bags.”

  “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.” JW handed one of his bags to Bengt.

  They walked toward the parking lot together in silence. Bengt still hadn’t said a word to his son.

  They were sitting at home, in the kitchen. Wood paneling along the walls and stainless-steel counters. A white Electrolux stove, linoleum on the floor, and a shiny wooden table from IKEA. The chairs were Carl Malmsten copies. There was a copy of a PH-lamp in the ceiling that cast a warm purplish glow. Above the sink hung green pots with words painted on them: Sugar, Salt, Pepper, Garlic, Basil.

  The food was on the table. Thin strips of beef with a blue-cheese sauce. A bottle of red wine, Rioja. A carafe with water. A glass bowl with salad.

  JW didn’t have much of an appetite. The food was good; that wasn’t the problem. It was really good. Mom’d always been a good cook. It was something else-the look of the place, the topics of conversation, and that Bengt talked with his mouth full. Margareta’s clothes were all wrong. JW felt like a stranger. The combination bothered him-contempt mingled with a sense of security.

  Margareta reached for the salad. “Tell us more, Johan. How are things?”

  A few seconds of silence. Her real question was: How are things in Stockholm? The city where our daughter disappeared. Who are you spending time with? You don’t run with a bad crowd, do you? Questions she would never pose directly. The fear of being reminded. The fear of coming too close to the dark scream of reality.

  “I’m doing really well, Mom. Passing my exams. The latest one was on macroeconomics. There are over three hundred students in the class. There’s only one lecture hall that’s big enough.”

  “Wow. There are so many of you. Does the lecturer use a microphone?”

  Bengt, with a chewed gray beef mass in his mouth: “Of course they do, Mother.”

  “Yes, they do. It’s kind of funny, ’cause they draw all these graphs and curves. You know, in a perfect market, the price is where the demand curve meets the supply curve. All the students copy every single graph into their notebooks, and since there are so many different curves, everyone’s got those four-colored Bics-you know, the pens with four different colors of ink in them-so they can tell the curves apart. When the lecturer draws a new curve, three hundred students switch colors at the same time. A little clicking sound for each one. It’s like a symphony of clicks in the lecture hall.”

  Bengt grinned.

  Margareta laughed.

  Contact.

  They kept talking. JW asked about his old school friends from Robertsfors. Six of the girls were moms. One of the guys was a dad. JW knew that Margareta was wondering if he had a girlfriend. He didn’t bother to share. The truth was, he didn’t even know the answer.

  A sort of calm washed over him. Warm, safe grief.

  After dinner, Bengt asked JW if he wanted to watch sports with him. JW knew that was his attempt at intimacy. Even so, he declined. Preferred to talk to Mom. Bengt went into the living room by himself. Settled into the La-Z-Boy. JW could see him from the kitchen. He stayed where he was and talked to Margareta.

  Camilla’d still not been mentioned. JW didn’t care if the topic was taboo. For him, his parents were the only people with whom he’d ever consider really talking about her.

  “Have you heard anything?”

  Margareta understood what he was talking about.

  “No, nothing new. Do you think the case is still open?”

  JW knew that it should be now at least. But he hadn’t heard anything, either.

  “I don’t know, Mom. Have you changed anything in Camilla’s room?”

  “No, everything is just like it was. We don’t go in there. Dad says he thinks it gives Camilla peace that we don’t intrude.” Margareta smiled.

  Bengt and Camilla’d fought furiously the year before Camilla moved to Stockholm. Now JW looked back on it with nostalgia: doors slamming, crying from the bathroom, screaming from Camilla’s room, Bengt on the porch with a cigarette between his fingers-those were the only times he smoked. Maybe Margareta felt the same way. The ominous fights were their last memories of Camilla.

  JW helped himself to another slice of blueberry pie. Gazed out at his father in the living room.

  “Should we join Dad?”

  They watched a movie on TV together: Much Ado About Nothing. Modern interpretation of Shakespeare, using the original language. Difficult to understand. JW almost fell asleep during the first half. During the second half, he calculated the kind of money he was missing out on making this weekend. Shit, the alternative costs for spending time with his parents were high.

  Bengt fell asleep.

  Margareta woke him up.

  They bid JW good night. Went to their room.

  JW remained seated, alone. Prepared himself mentally. Soon he’d go up to the room. Her room.

  He flipped through the channels. Lingered on MTV for five minutes. A Snoop Doggy Dogg video was playing. Asses shook in time to the song.

  He turned it off.

  Climbed into the La-Z-Boy.

  Settled in.

  He felt empty. Scared. But, strangely, not restless.

  He turned out the lights.

  Sat back down.

  The silence was so much deeper than by Tessin Park.

  He go
t up.

  Tried to walk silently up the stairs. Remembered almost step by step which stairs creaked and what strategies to employ to avoid them. Foot on the thick inner edge, foot in the middle, step over an entire stair, step on the edge, on the narrow section, and so on-all the way up.

  Another two steps’d become creaky since he’d moved away from home.

  Maybe he wasn’t waking Bengt. He was definitely waking Margareta.

  The door to Camilla’s room was closed.

  He waited. Thought Mom might fall back asleep. Pulled the door while simultaneously pushing slowly down on the handle. It didn’t make a sound.

  When he flipped the light on, the first thing he saw were the three baseball hats Camilla’d hung on the opposite wall: a dark blue Yankees hat, a Red Sox hat, and a hat from her junior high graduation. The text on it: We rocked and rolled in black lettering on a white background. Camilla liked baseball hats like a fat kid likes cake. Uncomplicated. If there was one, she wanted it.

  The untouched room of a seventeen-year-old. To JW, it was almost more childish than that.

  There was a window in the middle of one of the room’s short ends. The bed was opposite the window. Camilla’d begged for a whole year to get a double bed to replace her twin. Pink coverlet with flouncy edges. Different-colored throw pillows, some with hearts on them, were spread at the foot of the bed. Margareta’d sewn them. Camilla used to kick the pillows to the floor before going to bed.

  A young girl’s room.

  Every object was a memory.

  Every item a chip in JW’s armor.

  More baseball hats were arranged in a bookcase. On top of the bookcase were framed photographs: the family on a ski vacation, JW as a baby, three friends from school-wearking makeup, smiling, full of expectation.

  The rest of the shelves were filled with baseball hats.

  Above the bed was pinned a poster of Madonna. A strong, successful woman with a mind of her own. Camilla’d been given it by a guy she’d dated in eighth grade. He was four years older, a secret she kept from Mom and Dad.

  JW’d thought about how after the disappearance, when he was still living at home, he’d never gone into the room. It’d been empty for so many years, and the effect of the stored and reinforced memories hit him like a punch in the face.

  Camilla at her junior high graduation. Hair in an up do. White dress. Later that night: wearing a camo-colored baseball hat. The stories JW’d heard about her behavior at the graduation party. Next memory: Camilla and JW in a fight over the last glob of Nutella. JW: pulled into the room and beaten up, smeared with his own sandwich-with an extra-thick layer of Nutella. Later: Camilla next to JW on the bed, when they were friends again. She showed him her CDs: Madonna, Alanis Morissette, Robyn.

  Read the text on the inserts. Said she was definitely going to leave, go to Stockholm.

  Enjoyed hanging out together.

  There was a built-in bookshelf and two mirrored closet doors on the left wall.

  Unread YA books and CDs were lined up on the shelves, but only the ones she hadn’t taken with her to Stockholm. A Sony stereo-a gift on the day of her confirmation. Camilla liked music better than reading.

  JW opened the closet doors.

  Clothes: skinny jeans, miniskirts, pastel-colored midriff baring tops, a jean jacket. A black corduroy coat. JW remembered when Camilla’d brought it home. She’d bought it herself at H &M in Robertsfors for 490 kronor. Too expensive, Mom thought.

  Next to the folded tops was a storage box with reinforced metal corners. JW’d never seen it before. Stiff gray cardboard. JW recognized the type; he’d seen similar ones at container stores in Stockholm.

  He pulled the box out and set it down on the bed. It was filled with postcards.

  A half hour later, the postcards were all read. Seventeen in total. Camilla’d been living in Stockholm for a little over three years before she disappeared. During that time, she’d been home three times. It made Margareta sad; Bengt angry.

  But apparently she’d at least been writing postcards. Cards that JW’d never seen, and that Margareta’d saved and put in Camilla’s room. Maybe she thought they belonged there, as though no other place was sufficiently holy to store the fragments of her daughter’s abridged life.

  Most of it was stuff he already knew. Camilla wrote thin descriptions of life in Stockholm. She worked at a café. She hung out with the other waitresses. She lived in a studio in Södermalm-the south side-that she rented through the owner of the café. She studied at Komvux. She quit the café job and started working at a restaurant. Once, it said that she’d ridden in a Ferrari.

  Not a word about Jan Brunéus.

  She mentioned her boyfriend in some of the letters. He wasn’t referred to by name, but it was clear the boyfriend owned the car.

  One postcard, the last one, contained information JW didn’t already know.

  Hi Mom,

  I’m good. Things are going well for me and I quit the restaurant. I work as a bartender instead. Make good money. Have pretty much decided to forget about Komvux. Next week I’m going to Belgrade with my boyfriend.

  Say hi to Dad and Johan!

  Love, Camilla

  That was news to JW. That Camilla’d been planning to go to Belgrade. With the boyfriend.

  He made the rapid calculation: Why go to Belgrade? Because you were from there.

  Who was from there? The man with the Ferrari.

  He was a Yugo.

  30

  Stefanovic as lecturer. He probably wasn’t familiar with the term strategic consultant, but if he’d worked for Ernst & Young, they would’ve been proud.

  It was serious. Organized. The elite were gathered around a conference table in the VIP room on the top floor of Radovan’s bar. Radovan, Mrado, Stefanovic, Goran, and Nenad. The conversation was held in Serbian.

  Mrado: responsible for the coat checks and other racketeering/blackmail/hit-man jobs.

  Stefanovic: Radovan’s bodyguard and CFO.

  Goran: bossed over booze and cigarette smuggling.

  Nenad: biggest supplier of coke to Stockholm’s dealers, and also ran the trade in whores, apartment bordellos, and call-service chicks. Was responsible for the entire gamut of services. Nenad was Mrado’s closest among the colleagues-he saw in him the same desire he felt to be his own man. None of Goran or Stefanovic’s rimming.

  The room and the bar’d been searched for hours. The cops were on the hunt. Stefanovic’d looked for any recording devices: under tables, chairs, behind lamps, under ledges. Checked civvies in the bar downstairs, suspicious cars, cameras in the windows across the street. It was the first time Radovan’s entire cadre had been together, in person, in over a year and a half.

  Dangerous.

  Stefanovic began ceremoniously. “Gentlemen, three months ago I was given the task of figuring out what we should do about Nova. You’re familiar with it. The Stockholm police began the project four months ago. They’ve got their sights set on us and other groups. They’ve already collared more than forty people, mostly those in the western region. Thirty are already convicted. The rest are rotting in jail while they wait to stand trial. All of us in this room appear on their list of the hundred and fifty persons who make up the core of organized crime in this city.”

  Goran grinned. “Where did they get that idea?”

  Stefanovic cut him off. “Funny, Goran. Are you stupid because you’re a loser, or a loser because you’re stupid?”

  Goran opened his mouth, then closed it again without a word. Like a fish.

  Radovan looked at him. Most of the time, Goran was his fluffer, but now he wanted seriousness. Mrado thought: One point docked for Goran.

  Stefanovic took a sip of mineral water. “During the last five years, we’ve concentrated our focus on five different areas of business. Then we run some other treats on the side, as you know-freight skimming, tax stuff, et cetera. We have a total turnaround of about sixty million kronor a year. Deduct general costs from th
at-the price of laundering the cash and paying off the guys. Your net result is something like fifteen. Add your earnings from your own and our shared legal businesses. Clara’s, Diamond, and Q-court. The demolition firm and the video-rental stores, et cetera. You’re all co-owners in one way or another. You live well on this stuff. But the businesses work differently. The margins vary. The whore biz is rolling. The cigarettes are okay. The blow is flying. Right, Nenad? What’s the price today?”

  Nenad spoke slowly. “We buy for four fifty. Sell for between nine and eleven hundred. After turnaround costs, we earn an average of four hundred per gram, given that we don’t bulk.”

  “That’s good. But everything can get better. If we can zero in on the source, we can press down the prices more. And, anyway, coke is the riskiest of the businesses. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s important that we have several functioning businesses simultaneously. The risk is really high when it comes to ice. We have to be mobile, be able to switch between different areas depending on the relationship between risk and revenue.”

  Radovan nodded.

  Mrado wasn’t surprised about the level of the lecture. He’d talked to Stefanovic two days ago, when he’d told him the instructions Radovan’d given him: “The presentation is for professional businessmen who deal in crime. I want numbers, statistics. Background analysis, prognoses, constructive solutions. No brainless gangster chitchat.” Still, Mrado was amazed. Unusually open description of Radovan’s empire. Mrado pretty much knew what made up Radovan’s domain, sure, but this was the first time R. himself, through Stefanovic, was giving numbers in detail.