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.