“No coffee shops. We can get you some grub from a drive-thru or something.”
“What’s wrong with the Teboil? I like that place.”
“I wanna talk in the car where it’s private,” Suhonen explained. He switched to the slow lane. Two other cars continued onward to the tunnel, but Suhonen veered southward onto Mannerheim Street.
“You smell like detergent,” Suhonen remarked.
“New job.”
“Congrats,” said Suhonen, though he was already wondering how that might affect the plan they had in store for him. “Somewhere north?”
“Yeah,” he hedged.
“You selling soap or cleaning?”
“Cleaning.”
Continuing past the Teboil station toward downtown, they passed the lofty office buildings of Ruskeasuo and the residential districts of Pikku-Huopalahti.
“What company?”
“None of your business,” he shot back.
The trip continued in silence. Suhonen turned on the radio. Radio Rock was on commercials so he changed the station. He let a classic hit from the Rolling Stones play quietly in the background. Suhonen had only been asking about Salmela’s work so he could steer the conversation toward the job they’d been planning for him.
“Where can we get some food?” Salmela asked. “I’m fine with anything but burgers. My stomach can’t take those additives.”
Suhonen drove past a Hesburger and a McDonalds to the Töölö section of Helsinki. Nestled in an old streetcar station was a Turkish kebab place that would do the trick.
“You okay with kebabs?”
“Sure.”
The lights turned green and the car lurched ahead. Suhonen figured he could hint at the job opportunity before the restaurant, but he wouldn’t get into the details until afterwards.
“How much is your debt now?”
“Fifty less than yesterday.”
Suhonen wondered what that meant, but decided not to pry-at least not yet.
After a few minutes, he spotted the Turkish place, situated on the corner of Topelius Street, near the Töölö library. There were no parking spots, but the street was wide enough that Suhonen was able to double-park in front of the restaurant.
“Now’s your chance to take that nap,” Suhonen said stepping out of the car. Above the windows of the restaurant were thick yellow letters, spelling “Pizza.” Functional sign, he thought. Even if the owners change, the sign can stay.
Ten minutes later he returned with two kebabs wrapped in foil and slid back into his seat. He handed the food and plastic forks to Salmela and pulled a bottle of water out of his pocket.
Suhonen started the car and put it in gear. He decided to drive to the soccer fields on the north end of the Hietaniemi beach. Salmela unwrapped his kebab and immediately began forking it into his mouth. The sweet smell of the dressing filled the car.
* * *
Lieutenant Jaakko Nykänen was sitting in his cramped office at the NBI bunker. His left hand massaged his whiskers, and his right rested on the mouse. He was skimming through intelligence reports, which had been uploaded into the database throughout the day. Some of them were just routine police reports. A criminal flagged for surveillance had been stopped for speeding, or say, drunk driving.
Some had more valuable inteclass="underline" who met whom, for example, or who called whom. Every day, the Finnish police had dozens of ongoing phone-tapping operations. Not every piece of information ended up in the database, of course, but the bulk of the most important ones did. The bigger problem was that they didn’t always know which criminals they should have under surveillance, and when.
Nykänen knew-by name-at least a thousand outlaws tied to organized crime. Of those, a couple hundred were hardened criminals. When needed, he could create a computerized diagram of the connections and contacts between selected individuals. The computer was a wonderful tool.
One report in particular had caught Nykänen’s attention. He had read it once already, but returned to it again.
According to the report, black market operator Mika Konttinen, aka Mike Gonzales, had met Ilkka Ranta that afternoon. The encounter had been observed in Tampere, at the restaurant in the Ilves Hotel. Working on another case, NBI investigators had followed a different suspect into the same restaurant. They had spotted Ranta and a man, later identified as Gonzales, together.
Ranta was an exceptionally interesting character. The man had made his money during the recession of the early ’90s, and even more after the tech stock bubble burst in 2000. During rough economic times, the situation for men of money was even easier than in good times. The fundamental rule for getting rich still applied-buy low, sell high.
That morning, Suhonen had mentioned Gonzales’ connections to the Skulls and to some Russian-Estonian man. Nykänen had forgotten the name and was unable to check it in the computer. Why couldn’t Suhonen enter his leads into the database, Nykänen brooded. The police employed too many old-school cops who didn’t grasp the importance of sharing information.
In any event, Gonzales-Konttinen could be the key to nabbing Ranta.
Ranta’s business practices were known to be tough, and there was plenty of intel on his shady deals. The police had never found anything illegal, even though financial crime detectives and internal revenue agents had combed through his businesses and contracts. Now approaching sixty, the man understood the importance of staying out of the public eye so as not to arouse envy, which always spawned accusations. He drank his expensive whiskey inside his granite-walled home, and his villa in Spain never appeared in the home decorating magazines. Ranta was also connected to state government.
His activities had never met the probable cause threshold, so the police couldn’t tap his phone or search his home. Because of his status, the state prosecutor’s office was always involved from the get-go in any investigation concerning him. Prosecutors had a much higher threshold of probable cause than the police did. Both at the NBI and at the prosecutor’s office, the bosses, who were closer to the political establishment, made all the final decisions on big cases.
Gonzales and the Skulls might just be the Trojan horse they needed to nab the millionaire, thought Nykänen. Damn. If only they’d managed to plant a microphone at the table of the Ilves Hotel. From a technical standpoint, it would have been easy. The hotel had wireless internet, which could pick up a signal from a small mic hidden in an object on the table.
Surveillance could take a while, but if they could use Gonzales to build a connection between the Skulls and Ranta, it would present an opportunity to put the man under closer scrutiny. If they could show probable cause for, say, incitement to felony extortion, the surveillance could spawn leads on his other activities as well.
Nykänen took a swig of lemon sparkling water from the bottle on his desk.
They could launch the case as a joint effort between the NBI and Helsinki police, but it would gradually shift to the NBI, especially if Ranta wound up in the crosshairs. If the case pertained only to the Skulls, the Helsinki PD would take the lead. Most of all, Nykänen wanted Ranta behind bars.
The end game was beginning to look a lot better now, thought Nykänen. But the NBI would have to oversee Suhonen’s informant so they could more easily shift the target from the Skulls to the millionaire. Small-time drug smuggling didn’t interest Nykänen in the slightest-Ranta would have to be the ultimate target.