I glance over at the security flunky. “Get my friend and me beers and vodkas.” He looks at Saukko. Saukko nods assent.
“Your son called you ‘a human monster,’” I say, “‘the worst sort of pig.’ He hated you. He shot at me and tried to kill me. He would have killed my partner if a bullet hadn’t stopped him. Adrien Moreau, who you hired, killed his mistress. He shot her through the belly to kill the fetus and watched her bleed out. It may be that I bear guilt for those deaths, but you share it.”
The security flunky parks drinks on the table for me and Sweetness, took the liberty of making a fresh gin and tonic for Saukko. Flunky’s white shirt is streaked and speckled with blood from the salt that blew through it. His head is seeping blood. I’m guessing that, as the salt dissolves into his system, he’s going to be really thirsty for a couple days.
My pain is bad from so much activity. I chase painkillers with beer.
“None of this makes any difference,” Saukko says. “You were sent to do a job, you failed, and my boy died. You’ll pay dearly, far more than ten million is worth to you. An eye for an eye. Your child belongs to me now. Her name is Anu, isn’t it? We’ll forget tonight ever happened, because I have dibs on you and want to see you suffer before you die. No one here will have you killed. Finish your business with Sergey and get out.”
Sweetness says, “This is a card game. I want to play cards.” He points at Palo’s dead body. “You’ve got an empty chair.”
The gangsters around the table laugh. The ambassador says, “It takes a hundred thousand to get in the game.”
“I’m good for it. An IOU OK for now?” A frank admission that we’re crooked cops.
The ambassador waxes indulgent. “Sure.”
This is bizarre. I give up my seat for Sweetness. The other bodyguard, not the drink flunky, brings him a hundred thousand in chips. “Whites are a thousand. Blue five thousand, red ten thousand. Max bet is twenty-five thousand, unless upped by mutual agreement.”
“Gosh,” Sweetness says, “and we’re playing for keeps?”
Saukko says, “The money is only a metaphor, now rendered meaningless. We played for blood. Who won and lost the real game is already decided, only the debts remain unpaid.”
“It might interest you to know that Inspector Vaara didn’t kill your son. I did. I dumped two clips of.45 caliber hollow points in his face and chest. Shit, what a mess. But I guess you saw it at the morgue.”
“Good to know,” Saukko says, “you son of a bitch. You can join Vaara on The List.”
“The List?” I say.
“The Shit List. That’s where my worst enemies go. Bad things, horrific things, happen to people on The List. I plan them with care. You, for instance, have some kind of preoccupation with saving women. I’m going to take your child, maybe tomorrow, maybe in ten years, and have her tortured to death. Waiting appeals to me. The older your daughter gets, the more you’ll love her. Maybe after I bust her prepubescent cherry, I’ll sell her for an Asian snuff film. What do you think, Vaara?”
He wanted to scare the mortal hell out of me, and he succeeded so well that I don’t even feel anger, just terror. I unscrew the handle from the shaft of my cane and pull out the thin twenty-inch sword contained within it. I reach across the table and press it against his chest, over his heart. “I think I should just end your miserable, bitter life right now.”
On his shirt, a bloodstain flowers around the blade. He pays no attention to it. Instead, he proffers a grin worthy of Satan. “I wouldn’t, if I were you. You don’t know how The Shit List works. The hits are prepaid, like a debit card for death. It’s called the ‘button down’ method. My death takes the finger off the button, the punishments are carried out, and my enemies join me in hell.”
I return the sword to the cane. I’m speechless.
Sweetness, however, isn’t. “Are we gonna play or not?”
Saukko laughs out loud. “Boy, you have style. If I wasn’t going to kill you, I’d offer you a job. It was Palo’s deal. Since you have his seat, I guess it falls to you.”
“Give me a new deck,” Sweetness says. “I don’t trust you criminal fuckers.”
The bodyguard who gave him his chips hands him a pack of Bicycle cards. Sweetness breaks the seal, tosses out the jokers and shuffles with speed and thoroughness. Everyone antes. He passes the deck to the right and the Arab cuts the cards.
“Seven-card stud,” Sweetness says, and deals with confidence. As dealer, he runs the hand fast, calls out the cards as he flips them faceup. He bets high, but not high enough to drive anyone out of the hand. When he deals the last card facedown, they’ve already bet seventy thousand per player. No one folded. He tosses in a red chip. Ten thousand more. Everyone sees and calls. Around the table, the players throw their cards down by turn. All have good hands. Saukko has aces and eights, the hand the Wild Bill Hickok legend says he held when he was shot dead. Sweetness flops down three kings, says, “Thanks, guys. I’ll cash out now. You know how it is, places to go and people to see.”
I give the ambassador his phone. Sweetness takes all the electronica from the table, to make sure we have time to get away. Whether we live through the night is still up in the air. He dumps all the junk into a gym bag one of the players must have brought to carry cash. He takes his half million euros and tosses it in the bag, too.
The ambassador makes a quick call and rings off. He gives me an address and tells me to be there in half an hour. I take his phone from him. Whoever he called knows where the abducted girls are kept. I can track that person through his dialed numbers.
Sweetness says, “Thanks, guys. We’ll have to do this again sometime.”
The painkillers are kicking in, I push myself to my feet and gimp out the door. Sweetness covers me until I’m out of the room and then follows. “Plug your ears,” he says, and tosses in two more flash-bangs behind him as a parting gesture. Even with my ears protected and eyes shut, it’s like a nuke went off in the room. We step over the two cuffed guards in the hall and walk away.
We get to the delivery entrance. The guards there remain as we left them. I point at Saukko’s personal bodyguard and ask Sweetness, “Would you cut the zip-lock cuffs off his legs and pull the tape off his mouth? I want to take him with us. Men with their mouths taped shut tend to draw attention on the street.”
“Why take him with us?”
I want to puke from anxiety. “This Shit List thing. He knows Saukko’s business. We have to interrogate him and find out if it’s true, and if so, how to nullify it.”
Sweetness cuts him loose. This guy is a trained killer. I’m a crip with guns I barely know how to use. I cock the hammers of the shotgun and keep him at arm’s length. “Don’t say a word. Don’t make sudden movements. Or you get both barrels. Walk in front of us out to the street.”
He nods.
When we get to the Wrangler, I order him to get in the rear of the vehicle, rebind his ankles, retape his mouth, and throw a tarp over him.
16
We drive away. The dashboard clock reads ten after three. We drive a short distance to the address supplied to us. I ring the buzzer. No answer. I smash the apartment building’s front-door window with my sap, an extendable steel baton, reach inside and let us in. We take the elevator to the fourth floor. I ring. Again, no answer. Burning up a clip from my silenced Colt works as a key on the bottom lock. The door swings open a fraction. The Gemtech silencer I’m using, courtesy of Milo, really is a gem. I hear little more than the slide cycling and the used casings pattering on the floor as I’m firing. No waking the neighbors. Sweetness picks up the spent brass for me. The top, heavy-duty lock is usually meant for extra security when leaving. It’s unlocked, which suggests someone is inside.