Easy Money

by Jens Lapidus

34

  The strategy: to import directly. Buy at the source, South America. In this case, no direct deal with a syndicate. They weren’t that big yet. But Abdulkarim’s connections plus Jorge’s brains might equal jackpot.

  Import was the vital point. As large and low-risk as possible.

  So far, they’d brought home smaller portions. Through mules, through the mail, in shampoo bottles, in toothpaste tubes, bags of candy. Expansion demanded larger quantities.

  Jorge’s main job: to work home the product. To push the stuff wasn’t a problem; the bottleneck was working it home.

  Jorge’d spent the past couple of weeks as follows: in the car outside Radovan’s; at Fahdi’s place, planning import; south of the city, networking.

  He needed kale to hate Rado.

  Needed Rado hate to keep making kale.

  Life on the lam. Hate, plan, sleep-life was simple.

  Everything at the mercy of Abdulkarim. A miracle that the Arab accepted Jorge’s hate project. He probably didn’t grasp the scope, didn’t know the Latino planned on completely breaking the Yugo boss. Jorge indirectly owed the Arab loyalty for taking him under his wing, giving him a roof over his head and medical attention after Mrado’s assault. Abdulkarim’d invested heavy in Jorge-boy. Really, it couldn’t be measured in money. Abdul never said anything. But Jorge knew: He expected returns on his investment.

  Today the first serious import of his own would go down, been planned for months. The Brazilian courier. De miedo.

  The rule was to use someone who wouldn’t attract attention. Jorge knew more than he ought to know about her-Silvia Pasqual de Pizzaro. The contact person from São Paulo’d told him. She was twenty-nine years old. From Campo Grande, near Paraguay, where unemployment was sky-high. Only finished elementary school. Had her first baby, a daughter, at eighteen. Since then, she’d been living with her kid and her mother. The second kid came at twenty, the third at twenty-two. All the babydaddies were long gone. Silvia’s mother worked as a seamstress but had respiratory problems.

  He could figure it out easy: The little family was on the brink of total destitution. Silvia Pasqual would do anything for a couple of reais. Tragic? No. That’s life. You have to take risks if you want to get somewhere. Jorge knew.

  Jorge gave the how-to orders. Two cabin bags were bought. Make: Samsonite-large, magnesium-light. The genius devil in the details: The retractable handle was made of aluminum-hollow. Drilled into with a 0.1-inch drill under the rubber handle at the top. Six hundred grams of blow fit in each bag’s handle. Total value on the street: at least three million. Easy money.

  The final pour-in was pulverized mothballs. In the unlucky case of dogs, the sharp smell might distract their sniffing. The drill hole was welded shut. The rubber handles were put back. They could check the bags’ contents as thoroughly as they wanted. They could check Silvia all night, feel her up everywhere, X-ray her, make her sit on a toilet in a customs holding pen for three days. They’d find nada.

  But that wasn’t enough. He nagged at himself: Do it right. Jorge’d heard about tons of smart freight methods that’d been blown ’cause customs got suspicious. If they thought something was shady, they wouldn’t let it go. Jorge’s solution lay in careful instructions to Silvia, conveyed through his contact in Brazil. She learned the spiel by heart: She was going to Sweden to visit relatives who lived outside Stockholm. Stay for a week. He gave her a number to give in case they asked: one of Jorge’s prepaid cell numbers. He gave her an address: a house that belonged to Fahdi’s godfather. She got over fifty bucks’ worth of clothes-couldn’t be obvious that she was an impoverished illiterate from the Brazilian campo. He had her learn simple English phrases. Maybe most important of all: She flew via London; the ticket wouldn’t show she’d flown from Rio.

  Should be just right.

  Saturday afternoon. A clear day. Finally.

  Jorge leaned against the fence that surrounded the yellowish church at Odenplan. In front of him was the Hotel Oden. Jorge’d been standing there for two hours already. Waiting for Silvia Pasqual de Pizzaro.

  She should’ve been there over an hour ago. Jorge: a little anxious, but everything was probably under control.

  He called the airport. The plane was delayed by thirty minutes. Maybe the woman’d had trouble with the buses. With the passport controllers, the dogs, the airport police. Jorge hoped for suerte’s smile.

  Their two cars were parked farther down on Karlbergsvägen, within sight. One boosted by Petter. The other rented by Mehmed, using a fake driver’s license. Elegantish.

  His co-dees, Petter and Mehmed-hustlers with skill. Made the blow go like never before. Jorge organized from the top. Petter and Mehmed kept the buzz alive with underlings and dealers, kept their contacts fresh, sold, spread rumors. Produced profit. Both were housing-project kids from the outer boroughs. Both pulled a line themselves now and then.

  Petter: south of south side supporter. Thought he was abroad as soon as he entered the inner-city limits. Soccer fanatic. Party boy. Perfect sales channel to the Swedish working class.

  Mehmed: Tunisian. Blatte bad boys’ distributor. Loved to coast in his Audi A4 along the cracked streets of Botkyrka. A hero on his turf: the asphalt jungle.

  Now Mehmed was waiting in one of the cars. Was gonna meet Silvia at her hotel room as soon as she got there. Empty the Samsonites of blow. Go down to the car. Drive to Petter’s apartment. Give him the gear. Petter would weigh it, check the grade, repackage. Then bring the bags out to Jorge. The plan ought to be waterproof.

  Jorge’s job was mostly to survey the transaction. Petter and Mehmed were good guys-but also typical guys who’d do anything for cash. Like shovel the snow on their own. Blow Abdukarim and Jorge off. No one trusted anyone. But J-boy was smarter than that, had gotten an extra involved, an IT guy who used to be a customer of Jorge’s in earlier days. The IT dude was just payrolled for the day. Was gonna put on a little show for the sake of security. The dude was sitting in his car farther up the street. Jorge commended himself: What a fuckin’ ill plan.

  He waited. Reminded him of the wait outside Radovan’s house. But the difference was that here he knew something would happen.

  Was thinking. What’d surfaced about Radovan? Above all, Jorge’s hate’d surfaced at full force. Stronger with every day. He breathed hate. Ate hate. Dreamed hate. To whip Rado with a baseball bat, across his kneecaps, mouth, forehead. Shoot Radovan in the gut with a shotgun. He tried to cool down. Think pragmatically instead. How could he nail Rado without risking his own livelihood?

  Darko’s info was helpful. Jorge’d looked up that Nenad guy. The dude bossed over huge stores of whores. Jorge recognized the name from way back; Nenad was a well-known personality on the blow circuit, too. No one knew how. Everyone just knew that. No one could connect Rado and Nenad. But it would come. Jorge felt certain. It was a lead anyway.

  Jorge asked around among contacts who visited hookers. Not hard to find-Fahdi was one.

  Got bored waiting for Silvia Pasqual de Pizzaro.

  Jorge scrolled through his memories. A couple of days ago Fahdi’d taken him to the brothel, an apartment in Hallonbergen. External balconies, echoing stairwells, dried-up potted plants. Fahdi made three calls before they went. Explained how it worked: mouth-to-mouth method. All the clients gave their real names at their first visit, told the brothel madam, Jelena. After that, they used aliases and passwords. Agreement: The real name was not recorded anywhere. All the whores worked under aliases. Visitors had to be recommended by someone else before they were let in. The madam probably checked up on people somehow.

  There was an anonymous website-the server was somewhere in England-with pictures of the girls. You could sit at home, pick and choose. Either they came to you or you went to the apartment in Hallonbergen. Fahdi preferred Hallonbergen.

  Jorge’d imagined something lavish/luxurious.

  Instead, the dankest shit J-boy’d ever seen. Bad energy washed over him as soon as the door opened. A
red wallpapered hall. Two stained velvet couches and a fake Persian carpet. Stank of sweat and smoke. In the background: Tom Jones. What bullshit.

  Jorge and Fahdi kept their jackets on. A woman approached them. Heavily made-up face. Short hair, dyed red. Enormous bust. Long, curled fingernails that had to be plastic. Fake pearls hung around her neck. Fingers studded with stones. Strangest outfit Jorge’d ever seen. A black tailored blazer, looked proper enough, but when she turned around he saw the blazer had a deep V cut into the back, almost all the way down to her culo. She spoke bad, broken Swedish. Recognized Fahdi. They exchanged pleasantries. Jorge understood-it was the madam herself, Jelena.

  Jorge and Fahdi sat down. Waited.

  After fifteen minutes, a man walked into the hall. Turned his face away as he left the apartment. Silent agreement: They’d never seen each other. The woman came and got Fahdi. Through the kitchen door, Jorge glimpsed a coffeepot on the counter. Bizarre feeling. The brothel madam was having her coffee break, like at any regular workplace.

  Five minutes later, the woman showed Jorge into a room. A wide bed stood in the middle. Poorly made. An armchair. Shades pulled down. On the bed: the whore.

  Jorge remained standing in the doorway. Looked at her. She was thin. Small nose. Maybe been pretty once. Today, expressionless. The clothes: a gray tank top, black tights, miniskirt, high-heeled shoes. Classic hooker look.

  No, he was wrong. She was still pretty and was checking him out as much as he eyed her.

  “Hi,” Jorge said.

  “Hi, hot stuff. What up? You first time here?” Thick Eastern European accent, but still comprehensible. Good. Jorge’d expressly asked for one who spoke Swedish.

  “How much for a suck?”

  “Four hundred. For you. You hot.”

  “Skip the talk. I’ll pay five hundred if you’ll tell me some stuff.”

  “What? Talk dirty?”

  “No, I wanna know how you got to Sweden.”

  The girl froze. Not unexpected. Probably had strict instructions not to talk about anything but fuck/cunt/cock with anyone.

  Jorge tried to make her relax. “Forget it. I’ll pay three hundred for the BJ.”

  The girl agreed. Unbuttoned his pants.

  Tugged down his boxers.

  Jorge, no erection.

  She started sucking him.

  Felt strange. Filthy.

  Jorge was surprised-hadn’t thought he’d feel anything at all. He asked her to stop. Felt nauseous.

  She didn’t seem to notice anything. Or, more likely, she could have cared less that he’d gone pale and sat down on the bed.

  Two minutes of silence. He fingered the money.

  Made another go of it. “I’ll give you a G on top of the three hundred if you tell me something about Nenad.” He held up two five-hundred-kronor bills.

  Strangely enough, she started talking. Jorge’s theory: Now that he’d dished for sex, he couldn’t be a cop. Instead, he’d become a creature she knew well-a john was always a john.

  “Me, I not know much. But all know Nenad.”

  Jorge thought her voice sounded frail. “So, what’ve you heard about him?”

  “Nenad in charge. Nenad danger for life. They scared of him.”

  “Who? You girls or your pimps?”

  “All. Girls, pimps. Johns. He done stuff to people. He work for Mr. R.”

  Jorge thought, She’s saying a lot but really nothing. “What’s he done?” he asked.

  “Rape, beat, sick stuff, use girls for sick stuff. All scared. But me, no. Not give shit about him.”

  “And Mr. R., what do they say about him?”

  She looked up. Jorge thought it looked like she was smiling.

  “Mr. R. They talk, say him always with guns, him kill if offend, him control this city. Boss Nenad, who boss little pimps, who boss us. They say R. ice-cold. All power. Spread bad air. But me, I think exaggerate. Mr. R. not ice-cold. Mr. R. not spread bad air. Mr. R. spread Hugo Boss smell.”

  Jorge sat beside her on the bed. She was special. He couldn’t say what it was, but she had something. For sure.

  A knock at the door. Jorge got up.

  The madam poked her head in the door. Asked how long they were gonna go at it. Saw they were both dressed. Jorge on his way out. She nodded.

  The madam led him out.

  In the hall, Fahdi was talking to a guy wearing a hoodie under a blazer.

  Jorge and Fahdi left the apartment.

  “Who you talkin’ to when I came out?”

  “The girls’ pimp. The guy in charge. What a fucking cushy job.”

  Jorge woke from his reverie. Checked his cell. Back to the present-Odenplan, waiting for the courier: Silvia Pasqual de Pizzaro.

  Jorge saw the number on the screen. Recognized the digits before he heard the signal. It was Mehmed.

  He was wondering why nothing’d happened yet.

  Silvia should’ve been at the hotel ages ago. Something was crooked.

  They hung up.

  He kept waiting.

  Stared at the Hotel Oden.

  A taxi pulled up on the other side of the street: Top Cab. Fixed price from Arlanda Aiport: 350 kronor. The driver stepped out first. Opened the trunk, lifted out two Samsonite bags. A woman got out of the passenger seat.

  Obviously her. Dressed in black jeans, black wool jacket. Hat with earflaps.

  Silvia Pasqual de Pizzaro. Finally.

  Rolled the bags behind her to the hotel. The sand that’d been poured on the icy sidewalk crunched under the wheels.

  Jorge remained where he was. Mehmed stayed in the car, waiting for a green light from Jorge.

  Jorge eyed the entrance to the hotel for ten minutes. No one else went in or out. Good sign. If the 5-0 were on their backs, they’d probably want to bust the hotel, pluck the courier at the handoff.

  Jorge called the reception desk at the hotel. Asked if the woman’d checked in. He got the direct number to her room. Called Silvia. She answered. Shit English. She’d made it fine through customs. No one’d followed her. Everything seemed clear.

  Jorge texted Mehmed. Saw him go into the hotel. His instructions were to order lunch and send it up to Silvia. When the waiter came back down, Mehmed would ask if Silvia’d been alone in the room. If the answer was yes, time to go up and collect the blow.

  Jorge’d walked around to the other corner of the hotel. Saw the entrance from a side angle.

  Waited.

  Phone in hand. If someone suspicious-looking entered the Hotel Oden, he’d call Mehmed, stat. Plan B, in case of a chase: Mehmed would drop the gear out the window toward Hagagatan. Jorge could pick the shit up there. Book it to the car. Step on it.

  Nothing shady happened.

  Darkness was falling. The hotel’s vertical neon yellow sign glowed softly.

  Ten minutes passed. Jorge’d calculated that it’d take fifteen minutes to get the blow out of the bags.

  Five more minutes passed.

  Mehmed came out. Scratched his head-the sign that everything was under control. He had a plastic shopping bag from the NK department store in one hand. Started walking toward his car. Jorge watched from a distance. No one was following, as far as he could tell.

  Jorge saw his very own controller, the IT dude, get out of his car. Timing smooth as hell.

  Walked quickly after Mehmed. Caught up with him right at the car. Exchanged greetings. Jorge knew what they were saying to each other. Traded memorized phrases. A lot of people on the street at this time on a weekend. Made it worthwhile to put on a show. The IT dude asked loudly what Mehmed’d bought at NK. Mehmed told him about a jacket. Jorge saw the IT guy look into the bag.

  It all went fast. The IT dude put his hand in the bag.

  Pulled his hand out.

  Licked his finger.

  Tasted.

  They talked for another forty seconds. Split up. Mehmed got into his car. Started it.

  The IT guy kept walking down the street, his cell in hand.

>   Jorge got a text: Clean.

  Neither Silvia nor Mehmed’d ripped him off. The gear in the NK bag was real. The IT dude was a genius call.

  Jorge started his car. Pulled in behind Mehmed’s car, up by the red light at Dalagatan.

  Then they drove off.

  They were heading to Sätra. Petter’s apartment. Jorge looked around. Compared cars. Took note if anyone’d been driving behind them unusually long. He and Mehmed’d decided on a more roundabout route than necessary. If anyone trailed them, they’d know right away. Jorge wouldn’t make the same mistake as when Mrado and Ratko’d followed him so easily into the countryside.

  They took St. Eriksgatan. Over to Kungsholmen. Between Mehmed and Jorge the whole way: a red Saab 900. Behind Jorge the entire time: a Jaguar. But Jorge and Mehmed’d driven the straight shot so far. At this point, there was nothing strange about the same cars caravanning the whole way to Fridhemsplan.

  Vigilance.

  They took a left after Fridhemsplan. Through the Rålambshov Park. The red Saab was still sandwiched between them.

  Up on Västerbron bridge. It was dark out by now. The skeleton of the bridge was illuminated from below by floodlights. Jorge thought it was the city’s prettiest spot.

  Nerves electrified. Thought he could feel the fabric of his shirt move over the left side of his chest with every heartbeat. To himself: Do this right. Become seven pounds richer.

  Something in the red Saab caught his eye-a movement in the backseat.

  Jorge looked again.

  Something was off.

  They came to the crest of the bridge.

  The city’s silhouette draped in a dark blue shroud. The narrow bodies of the church spires like needles in his field of vision.

  Jorge picked up his cell phone. Called Mehmed. Told him to change route at the end of the bridge.

  Jorge kept his eye on the Saab. Saw more movements in the backseat. The people were putting something on. He hit his high beams. Shone straight into the back of the Saab.

  The men in the backseat were as visible as on a sunny summer’s day. They were putting something on that looked like heavy vests. Could only be one thing-bulletproof vests.

  Cunt.