Sweetness chuckles. “Cool. You really gonna kill the chief?”
“No, not cool. Crazy. And I don’t want to hurt anybody. But Saukko and his Shit List and his threats, plus the attacks and other threats against my family, have me scared shitless. I’ll murder whoever I have to and sit my jolt in prison before I’ll let anyone hurt my family. Later, we’ll interrogate the guy in the back, and I hope before we go home we’ll know where the truth lies and who our enemies are and aren’t. We can’t protect ourselves and ours until then. That includes Jenna and even your mother.”
That possibility seems to have not struck him yet, and when it does, as it did for me, it carries fear with it. He nods his head slow, shakes a cigarette out of a pack and lights it. “You’re right,” he says. “We deal with this now.”
I feel sorry for whoever Sweetness decides is to blame. He’ll kill them-after punishing them-and if we can’t discover who is guilty, he’ll take the position of the crusader leader, a bishop who, when asked by his troops how to tell who was Catholic and who wasn’t, answered, “Kill them all, God will recognize his own.”
17
Lay out the plan for me,” Sweetness says.
I picture the map of Helsinki and think of the most expedient way to do this. “Go to my house so I can grab my crime kit. Then to Milo’s. I need something there. I want to at least minimally process that apartment before the Russians claim diplomatic privilege and shut it down. “Maybe you could ask your mother if Loviise can stay there until we can make arrangements for her to safely return to Estonia. They have a common language. Loviise could have someone to talk to.”
“Mom will probably help, but she’ll be furious if I call at this hour and ask to bring a stranger to her house. It has to wait until a decent hour. And she could be in danger. We’ll have to stash them both somewhere.”
We have no time to waste. Sweetness pulls out onto the road. “How do you know Loviise isn’t lying? She could have killed that Russian.”
I just want Kate to see me save the girl. I can’t get over the idea that it will redeem me in her eyes, and in some small way, my own. “I don’t think Loviise is clever enough for that, but I’ll lift prints off the knife and print her just in case. Even if she did, it was justifiable and I don’t want her prosecuted. We send her home anyway.”
“What do we do with her for tonight?”
I chain one smoke off the other, flick the end of the last one out the window and watch in the passenger-side mirror as the cherry-red end smacks off the street and bursts like a little firework. “Keep her with us. They know we have her. We offended important people. They might try to snatch her back, just to put us in our places.”
“They might decide to put us in our places by killing us,” Sweetness says.
“True. First, we snatch the minister and the chief and force the truth out of them about the harassment against us. If they pass inspection, we let them go home, if not. .” I raise my hands, palms up, and shrug, as if to say the situation is beyond my control. “Then we go to Vantaa, to Filippov Construction, and interrogate Saukko’s man there.”
The construction company specialized in toxic waste management. It’s been closed since its owner, Ivan Filippov, was shot dead while I investigated him for murder. The site has served us well in the past. It has privacy, and we’ve dissolved the bodies of two gangsters in acid there, to cover up their murders and prevent a gang war.
“And then?”
“And then we make Loviise safe with your mom and go home. It’s Mirjami’s birthday, and remember, we have to shop for a gift for her when the stores open.”
“I could just give her all the money I won. Wrap it up with a card that says it’s from both of us.”
“That’s generous. You cheated, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I’ll buy you a book of card tricks and teach you. But that’s why I asked for a fresh deck, so I knew where each card was when I started shuffling.”
This gets a laugh out of me. “You’re not afraid of anyone or give a shit about anything, do you?”
He looks at me, solemn. “Not much. I’m careful where I place my affections and concerns. I don’t have room for many.”
Wisdom from the baby-faced behemoth.
• • •
WE RUN the errands fast. I have a fishing tackle box with basic crime-scene processing equipment in it. I dump all my newly acquired electronica on the dining room table, grab the box, some other odds and ends, and some photos featuring the minister and chief. I’ve way overdone it and I’m fading. I scarf some painkillers and tranquilizers to keep me propped up. Then we shoot over to Milo’s, and I take the sperm samples connecting the men we’re about to abduct to the crime scene of Mrs. Filippov. Both the chief and minister live in apartments in Eira, not far from the scene of tonight’s murder.
I check the time. Five ten a.m. I do it the easy way, ring their door buzzers, wake them, and announce that I have business concerning Saukko’s money and it can’t wait. The greedy fucks both think I’m acquiescing, returning the money, and let us in. I make Jyri Ivalo use his cell phone to call mine-to create the illusion of a phone conversation-and keep the phones open for five minutes, and to fetch his service pistol, which I take. We force them to get dressed and into the vehicle at gunpoint. Back to the crime scene we go.
Loviise is frightened, doesn’t want to go back, but Sweetness reassures her that everything is for her own good, that we’re trying to stop the people who were bad to her, and we show her our National Bureau of Investigation ID cards, which she can’t read, but she seems reassured. Probably more by our demeanors than IDs.
We escort them all up to the apartment. Sweetness and I slip on paper shoe covers and surgical gloves, but don’t allow them to do the same. I ask Loviise if she would mind to wait in another room while we men talk. She’s nervous to be back in the apartment but complies. The minister and chief view Sasha Mikoyan’s corpse with surprise and bemusement. Jyri Ivalo speaks first. “What the hell are you doing, Vaara? This makes no sense.”
First things first. I make them stand on each side of the corpse. “Sano muikku”-Say whitefish. They don’t smile. I have Sweetness snap pics of them and the corpse together with his cell phone camera.
I keep my.45 leveled at Jyri with one hand, my cane in the other. As with everyone else tonight, I confiscate their electronics to keep from being recorded. I’m aware, though, that some of them will have GPS tracking devices in the event of their auspicious owners’ disappearances. Then I think, So fucking what, they all know I took them and where I live.
“On the contrary,” I say, “it makes perfect sense. I’ve suffered damage to my property and threats against the lives of my family because of your imaginary ten million euros. I warned you if you didn’t let the matter drop, I would frame you for a crime, then kill you when you turned violent resisting arrest. The matter hasn’t been dropped. The butcher knife in that man’s back-incidentally, he’s a Russian diplomat, or more than likely a spy on a diplomatic passport named Sasha Mikoyan-is your sword of Damocles.”
I’ve confused him. “How so?”
I toss a pile of photos on the coffee table. “Have a look, both of you.”
They both flip through them. Osmo Ahtiainen, the minister, says, “OK, you got me. I’m not photogenic when I fuck. So what?”
Jyri Ivalo gets the message but pretends otherwise. “So we’ve fucked some of the same women. Big deal.”
“And here we are in a house of prostitution, an administrator of said house is dead, you’re both drunk, and your fingerprints are on the murder weapon.”
“No we aren’t, and they aren’t.”
“But they soon will be, and you’ll be very drunk. Too drunk to recall what happened here.”
I pull plastic freezer bags from my fishing tackle crime-kit box. “These are semen samples that you were both stupid enough to deposit in the mouth of Ivan Filippov’s mistress.” I take out the syringes Jari left at my house. “Your semen samples will be found in Mikoyan’s various orifices.”