Christer Lindberg was, at least on the surface, a responsible citizen. It would work.
Mrado didn’t want to meet Lindberg personally, kept his distance. He’d had Goran explain most of it. Mrado’d only spoken with the guy once on the phone. All he was told: Mrado was a friend of Goran and could fix fine flow in exchange for signatures on various documents and possible questions from the tax man.
Lindberg according to Mrado: proletarian caricature. Talked intense Sven Swedish, peppered with cliches and shallow insights. Mrado thought about their one and only conversation. Couldn’t help grinning to himself.
“Hi, I’m a friend of Goran. I’m calling about a business idea with video-rental stores. Has he mentioned something about it to you?”
“Yes siree.”
“Do you know what it’s about?”
“Let’s put it this way: I wasn’t born yesterday. I get the idea.”
“Can I ask you a question? What did you do before you started working for Goran?”
“Yours truly worked as a truck driver for Ostman Akeri, in Haninge.”
“And how was that?”
“That was like night and day, so to speak.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, Ostman wasn’t exactly the type to turn down a drink. Goran showed up one day. Took over the entire operation. Strongly done, so to speak.”
“His name is Goran.”
“Ha, ha. Right, Goran. I’m not too good with names.”
That was enough. Mrado didn’t want to get close to Lindberg in any way.
He sent the guy paperwork. Asked him to sign. Explained some more what it was about, that a friend of Mrado and Goran was gonna open video-rental stores. Needed someone registered in Sweden to be on the board of the company. Lindberg would get a one-time fee of twelve thousand kronor if he signed. After that, they’d give him ten thousand every six months, as long as it all flowed smoothly. Mrado instructed him what to do if any nosy authorities got in touch with him.
It was “good as gold,” as Lindberg put it.
Mrado got in touch with a company that sold shelf companies. Bought two. Paid a hundred grand per company. Sent in all the paperwork that Lindberg’d signed. Changed the names: the Stockholm Video Specialist, Ltd., and Video Buddy, Ltd. Set up bank accounts. Switched accountants. Landed storefronts.
One of the stores was on Karlavagen. They took over an old videorental place, Karlaplan’s Video. Some poor Turks owned it. Mrado sent Ratko and Bobban to scare them a little. They stopped by ten minutes before closing one night in October. Explained the situation. The two Turks refused. Two days later, when the guys opened the DVD case for Batman Begins that’d been returned through the slot in the door- boom boom. One of the Turks lost four fingers and the sight in his left eye.
Mrado bought the space a month later for thirty grand. A steal.
The other video-rental store was in the Sodertalje Mall. The store-front used to be a dry cleaner’s. Business was bad for the previous owner, also a Turk. Chance changed channels-the Yugos against the Turks. Low odds on the Yugos. The dry cleaner’s sold for twenty thousand kronor. Didn’t need convincing. They just moved right in.
He renovated and rebuilt the storefronts during the month of November. Used a Rado-owned demolition firm. Neat way to give the demolition firm clean, taxable profits.
Mrado threw out the pornos at Karlaplan’s Video. Bought a ton of children’s films-full-stocked Disney paradise. Lined one wall with shelves of penny candy. Rebuilt the registers, made sure you could buy lottery tickets, magazines, membership. Repainted the place, started selling paperbacks in one corner. The final product: the mildest, most child-friendly video store in all of Ostermalm.
Good impression.
The store in Sodertalje: Mrado sold the dry-cleaning machines to some old contacts, Syrians. Sodertalje was their Jerusalem. Mrado knew-he’d hung out with Syrians growing up. Was even invited to weddings sometimes. The Syrians: one of the tightest networks in Stockholm. Dominated the dry-cleaning and B-list barber biz. Entrepreneurs. Mrado nurtured his connections. Dry cleaners and hairdressers-just as good for money laundering as video rentals. Could come in handy.
Within two months, the video stores were working perfectly. The basic idea was simple. Mrado had 400,000 kronor in cash. Two hundred thousand went to buying the companies. The remaining hundred grand per company, divided into smaller sums, was added to each company’s account. The money covered the storefronts, the renovations, and the purchase of DVDs. Guys from the gym manned the stores from 4:00 to 10:00 p.m. every night. Everything under the table. RIP-right in pocket. On paper, Radovan was employed and was a stockholder. Mrado was employed part-time. He added money to each company’s account every other day. When it was running smoothly, each store actually made fifty thousand a month. With Mrado’s creative bookkeeping: three hundred thousand a month. Left after Radovan was paid a salary of twenty-five grand a month, Mrado twenty, and other general costs and taxes were taken out: around 150,000 kronor per store. Clean. Summa summarum: the salaries plus the stores’ remaining assets-white as snow.
Money from the coat checks was run through the video business on paper-after tax payments, what came out at the other end were honest bills. Best of all, if the business went to hell, it was Lindberg who went there with it. Mrado and Radovan were not on the board and were not registered on paper anywhere.
Despite the laundromats, he had problems. They weren’t enough. In the past months, his insomnia’d only gotten worse. The Radovan situation-more aggravated than ever. Was it because of Mrado’s demand for a larger cut of the coat-check business? The Yugo boss seemed patronizing. Gave responsibilities to Goran and the others but not to Mrado. R. was planning something without M. Indications leaked out via Ratko and Bobban. The question: Had R. just put Mrado on building up the video stores in order to keep him busy? Question number two: What could Mrado do without this crap in his life? Would he even exist without it?
He longed for the good old days.
Ratko didn’t show. Mrado got up. Paid. Walked toward the casino alone.
Casino Cosmopoclass="underline" state gambling nest par excellence. The philosophy of hypocrisy perfected. To gamble is a Lutheran sin. To gamble is a waste/stupid/socially deviant. To gamble leads to addiction; at the same time, it sows a clover field for the finance minister. The people need entertainment, bread and circuses. Come on-gambling’s just a little thrill, right? The automatic game machines were the worst-cashed in five billion kronor for Big Brother every year. Put people in financial ruin. Sunk families like mini Titanic s. Crushed dreams. Along with obesity, the new welfare disease was gambling addiction. Up 75 percent since the automatic game machines and casinos’d opened.
The casino bouncers greeted Mrado. He glided past the entry-fee registers. For regular folks, they checked IDs and compared with head shots in their database. The first time you went to the casino, you had your picture taken. Mrado didn’t need to do that stuff-he had a membership. Anyway, Mrado was Mrado.
The place was a cross between a well-refurbished turn-of-the-century amusement park and a cheap yacht. Five floors. The street level was the slickest. High ceilings, fifty feet. Nicely painted wood paneling. Original moldings and designs. Four enormous crystal chandeliers. Mirrored walls made the room feel even bigger than it was. Red carpeting. Eight big roulette tables in pairs of two. Between every pair, on an elevated platform, was a tux- or suit-clad casino employee in a black leather swivel chair. Job: to keep their eyes on the game, make sure no one pulled any moves. Minimum bet on the roulette table: five hundred on color, evens, or columns. You could blow a grand in five minutes, easy.