“Pomo”-boss-“you know the number of people likely responsible for all this can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Actually less. It’s just a question of when we get off our dead asses, pay some visits, and put a stop to this bullshit.”
“Soon,” I said.
My worry for Kate had been so all-consuming, at first it made the harassment, a brick through a window, seem inconsequential. But at least to some degree, I had come to my senses. Someone crossed a line and I was beyond anger. Things were done that could have hurt my little girl.
I went into seclusion with the hope that it would bring catharsis, help rid me of anger. Allow me to reach inside myself and find a pacifist buried somewhere in my soul. Instead, I found a vengeful spirit that demanded a price be paid. The noise of the young people drinking, laughing and listening to music made me want to scream at them all to shut the fuck up. I took a sleeping pill and waited for it to kick in. As I fell asleep, visions of murder danced in my head.
10
July thirteenth. I wake up, plagued by anxiety, frustration and worry. I want to be alone. My apartment is full of people. My mind is bent. My nerves destroyed.
I get out of bed and find the others sitting in the dining room. I go out to the balcony to smoke. Sweetness follows me. “Bad news,” he says.
Just the idea of more bad news pisses me off. He points down at the street. The windows have all been beaten out of my Saab. I’m furious but feel no adrenaline. Although my emotions have returned to some extent, they’re by no means normal. Part of that abnormality is that adrenaline doesn’t accompany rage. I have no fight-or-flight response.
“It was about four this morning,” he says. “I heard the smashing and pulled on some jeans so I could go down there, but they worked fast and were gone before I could even get a look at them.”
I’ve been thinking like a victim instead of a predator, working from a defensive mind-set instead of taking the offensive. We must be under constant surveillance in order for our enemies to know the best times to attack us. I do what any cop with half a brain should. I watch for watchers.
I scan the rooftops. It’s a clear summer day, blue skies and sunshine. I look for the glint of light on optics. And I find it, but not where I thought it would be. It’s in the window of the apartment across the street from mine and one over. It offers a good view of most of my living room. The sun makes a double flare on the optics, so it’s binoculars, not a rifle scope. I tell Sweetness to look without looking.
He bends over, lights a cigarette and glances up over his cupped hand. He recently started smoking. He used nuuska-a kind of snuff-since he was a kid and so is addicted to nicotine, but women tend not to be turned on by a mouth with tobacco in it, especially since it tends to stick between the teeth, a bit unsightly-women who aren’t smokers themselves tend not to be thrilled by cigarettes either, but even less so by nuuska-so he traded his lungs for love. Plus Milo and I smoke, and Sweetness looks up to and mimics us, especially me.
“Well, pomo,” he says, “what’s the plan?”
I think it over. Thanks to cortisone shots taking the edge off the pain, my mind as well as my body is working better today. “I’ll get dressed, then we’ll both go downstairs. I’ll go out the front door and check out the damage done to my Saab. You go out back to the inner courtyard, between the buildings, and circle around the block so they don’t see you. Just press the buzzers for every apartment, someone will let you in, then you go get them and bring them out so we can talk to them.”
“Get them how?”
I shrug. “Knock on the door. That usually works. If they ask who it is, say police and hold up your National Bureau of Investigation ID. If they still don’t open, or notice that your ID says you’re a translator instead of a cop, use your silenced.45 as a key and shoot the lock to pieces. If you do, call me. I’ll come up and talk to other cops if they show, to make it seem like a legit bust. I’ll bring some dope to plant on them. If you have to shoot them, try not to kill them. We need to interrogate them.”
One of the nice things about being a famous cop is that other police, and everyone actually, tend to believe anything I say.
We get outside. I gimp over to my Saab. There’s a note inside, on the driver’s seat. “There are ten million ways your family could die, too.”
Someone is working very hard to get me to kill them. About ten minutes later, two men come out the front door of the building they were surveilling us from, Sweetness behind them, doubtless with his pistol at their backs. I lean against my Saab. He walks them over to me. They look like bikers: long hair, biker boots, primary drive chains from motorcycles as belts-handy because they can be used as steel whips or turned sideways and swung as flexible bludgeons-and leather vests. They don’t have gang colors, though, so they must be independents. One is rail thin, the other on the chunky side. The kind of blubber that comes from sucking down beer day and night for years.
I hold up the note threatening my family. Only someone in the know could have written it, because the official story for the media stated that the ten million euros in ransom money had been recovered. A good ploy. Finders keepers and tax free, too. Assuming they can get it back from me and my colleagues.
“Whatcha gonna do,” Chunky says, “gun us both down here in the middle of the street, in broad daylight?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet,” I say, “but you’re doing your best to talk me into it.”
They both smirk. Skinny leans against the hood of my car. Chunky stands in front of me with his arms crossed and legs spread. The ignoramus says, “Suck my dick, crip.”
Sweetness kicks out in a kind of high stomp that catches the side of Chunky’s knee and it buckles. I hear the crunch. Ligaments, tendons, all the shit that holds his knee together, give way. He falls to the street and grabs his destroyed knee with both hands. To his credit, he sucks it up, doesn’t make a sound, but the awful pain shows in his eyes.
“Inspector Vaara doesn’t likes back talk,” Sweetness says.
“No,” I say, “he doesn’t. No one likes a smarty-pants.”
“You’re cops?” Skinny asks.
“So they tell me. But you don’t have to call me inspector. Sir will suffice.”
I carry what is known as a gadget cane. Especially in the Victorian era, canes were made with every conceivable device built into them. Mine is my most prized possession and worth a fortune. Milo gave it to me, a gift purchased with our ill-gotten gains.
It’s made of thick ash. The handle is a lion’s head made of gold and weighs about half a pound. A cane meant for a big and strong man. Bang down on the floor hard with the tip, it spring-loads the lion’s mouth and snaps it open. The teeth are steel razors. Sharp contact, like swinging the mouth against something, forces the fangs backward, they trigger the mechanism, and the mouth clamps shut and bites with about three hundred pounds per square inch of pressure, about the same as a Rottweiler’s jaws. Pressing the eyes-one is a ruby, the other is an emerald-disengages the spring and the mouth lets go. Unscrew the shaft and another weapon, a twenty-inch sword, is unveiled.
Chunky has gone silent, sucking up pain. I picture what the tear gas might have done to my six-month-old little girl. I slam my cane’s tip into his solar plexus. It knocks the breath out of him and the pressure opens the mouth of the gold lion that comprises the cane’s handle. I run my fingers over the lion’s razor-sharp teeth, draw a little of my own blood. I shrug my shoulders. The lion’s mouth opening means that the fates have intervened and given me a sign. I smack him on his side with the lion’s mouth. It snaps shut and gouges a deep wound in his beer-swollen belly. Blood drizzles out of him.