The forty-year-old undercover detective had long hair and a messy black beard, and he wore a leather jacket. Showing up at the North Haaga strip mall on an American motorcycle, or any American-made car, would’ve made people think he was a biker gang member. Today Suhonen didn’t want that. The gang image scared people and Suhonen wanted them to talk. He softened his appearance with a baseball cap that made him look like a geek. Juha Saarnikangas had brought him the cap from a trip to Minnesota the year before. On the front of the navy blue cap were the red letters for the Minnesota pro baseball team, Twins. Nobody knows how Juha Saarnikangas, who had a number of drug-related convictions, had gotten to the States and what he had done there. Nonetheless, he had disappeared from the crime scene in Finland. Rumor had it that he’d come into some money and was living in Thailand. The same rumors kept making the rounds about him hitting pay dirt in some con job relating to fine art in the U.S.
In any case, the detective hoped the baseball cap would give him a less menacing look. This time he wasn’t pretending to be a tough professional criminal.
The North Haaga mall on the corner of Nӓyttelijӓ Street and Ida Ahlberg Street was one of the many strip malls built in Helsinki in the ’50s and ’60s. Suhonen remembered reading somewhere that, according to Helsinki City classifications, the miserably outdated mall was architecturally and environmentally among the most esteemed.
The light from the streetlamps bathed the pale gray buildings in a yellowish hue. The sleet from earlier in the day had changed to snow. Toukola sped up. The strip mall was built around a town-square type area; a fountain that once stood in the center of the square had been covered over in asphalt years ago. Suhonen couldn’t see anything worth preserving there.
The mall had an Alepa grocery store, a small convenience store, a few pubs, and a pizzeria, as well as a continuing education center. Suhonen was familiar with two of the pubs, Sailors and Keskipiste, but the Alamo had only opened its doors the previous summer and was new to him. Takamäki had said Laura Vatanen frequented the Alamo, so Suhonen was interested in its regulars.
Suhonen had also asked the Narcotics team about Jaakko Niskala, whose fingerprints had been found in Vatanen’s apartment. Someone remembered Niskala had been involved in a stolen goods operation, but he wasn’t considered big time. The Narcotics team had him pegged as a drunken loser with a violent temper and sticky fingers when an opportunity presented itself. He also had some history with drugs. Suhonen could find out all about the guy if he spotted him in the pub. He had seen his photo and would easily recognize him.
Sometimes it took weeks to find hardened criminals or escaped convicts, but someone in their circles would inevitably crack. It might be a friend or an acquaintance that got sick of the constant police attention, or someone who wanted to collect their debts. Sometimes it was a live-in girlfriend, anxious to give the boot to her boyfriend’s lazy loser of a pal. The police would then pick up the crook in a way that didn’t disclose the tipster’s identity. Generally the more money the criminal had, the harder it was to find him.
The case at hand was much less complicated: this was a group of drinking buddies, not professional criminals. These guys could be found either at home or in the pub; and if one of them had disappeared right after a murder, they would’ve become an obvious suspect. Suhonen had decided to start with the bar, but if the men weren’t there, he’d check around the apartment buildings. Of course, he might not find anyone tonight.
Suhonen saw the blue Alamo Bar sign next to the screaming yellow advertisements of the Alepa store. The bar had two windows with a door in between. A hand-drawn sign promised a pint of beer for 2.80 euros. Below it were the words No Karaoke-Ever. Both were effective ads.
Snow coated the ground now, and Suhonen felt the freezing temperature on his face. Outside, the music from the pub sounded like garbled noise, but at the door Suhonen recognized it as Irwin’s “Ooh Las Palmas.”
Suhonen smirked and stepped inside. The place clearly called for his “smooth rock” approach rather than “heavy metal.”
Remember the Alamo, Suhonen mused. As a kid in the ʼ70s, he had seen the John Wayne Western in a movie theater in Lahti and loved it. He’d found the DVD in a clearance bin a couple of years ago. Now that he watched the movie on DVD, the plot seemed slow. But the scene where the Americans desperately take a last stand against the Mexicans still thrilled him.
The bar was decorated to look like a saloon; old photos of movie stars in Westerns hung on the rough-hewn, dark-stained plank walls. The tables were wooden, or maybe they were vinyl, made to look like wood. The twenty-foot-long bar counter stood about thirty feet from the door. The Alamo was small and dimly lit.
A few men were seated at tables, and it made Suhonen think of scenes in the Westerns where a stranger walks into a saloon full of local drunkards. In the movies, gunfire would usually ensue within two minutes. Though Suhonen was prepared, he didn’t want it to come to that. His Glock 26 was tucked in its holster under his leather jacket.
The men at the tables eyed the tough-looking stranger as he walked up to the bar and ordered a beer. In a Western it would’ve been a whiskey, of course, and the bartender would’ve poured it with a trembling hand. But this large, mustached man’s hand was steady as he set the mug on the counter. Music blared down on the bar, making it hard for Suhonen to eavesdrop, so he decided to get a table. He spotted his target right away: Jaakko Niskala’s seat was closest to the window. Suhonen sat down so he could hear Niskala and his friends with his right ear and keep his eye on them without looking like he was watching. He wouldn’t approach them unless the situation called for it.
The four men at the table, between the ages of thirty and forty, seemed to be made from the same mold, and they blended into the Alamo Bar atmosphere. All were shabby and sad looking with the kind of bad karma that usually came with a gang of sixteen-year-olds looking for trouble. The group’s composite IQ seemed to decrease when they were together. Apart from Niskala, Suhonen didn’t know any of them.
Suhonen had trouble picturing Laura Vatanen as part of this group. She had to have had a sassy personality, despite her disabilities, to deal with these guys. Suhonen couldn’t imagine Laura as a beer-swigging bar slut. She might’ve become one in another twenty years, had she spent her time with this gang.
Sipping his beer, Suhonen glanced at his cell phone. He didn’t have any missed calls or texts, but he wanted the others to get the idea that he had reason to be there-he was expecting someone.
Irwin’s song ended and another began, “Swimmies, damdadaa! Pants, damdadaa! Tanning lotion, damdadaa! And ski pants too!” Suhonen straightened the brim on his cap and thought of all the shitty situations his job forced him into.
He sipped his beer slowly, listening to the conversation at the next table. It was mostly nonsense about the weather, sports, and booze. Nothing was said about the obvious topic of the day-the police and the hearse visiting the apartment building a few hundred feet away. Of course they might’ve already had that discussion, or else they didn’t want to talk about it.
Suhonen decided he needed to be proactive in order to get results, although it might’ve been more efficient to haul everyone to the station for questioning. The innocent would tell the truth and try to place blame on their buddies. Takamäki wanted Suhonen to figure out who besides Fingerprint-Niskala would need to be brought in to the station.
Suhonen took another sip of his beer and with a nonchalant stretch walked slowly to the next table, feigning boredom.