“And his ‘unfortunate demise’ will take place how?”
“In his summer cottage, which is a short trip from my summer cottage by boat. We either lure him there, make him believe he’s meeting someone, or take him there by force. It doesn’t matter much, just so long as we get him there alone, without his family.”
Milo has all the bases covered except one. “How do you plan to get all those people in one place?”
His smile is knowing. “I don’t. You stole all of their phones, BlackBerrys, iPhones and iPads. They contain their calendars. We know where they’ll be and when. If they’re too spread out for us to shoot them all in one day, we plant bombs.”
“Bombs. So you’re not concerned about collateral damage?”
“If I wire them up so that a cell phone completes the circuit-Iraq jihad style-we can do it in line of sight and ensure no innocents are injured. There are three of us, after all. We choose which of us kills who, with time intervals to support the lone-gunman theory, and it should work out.”
“And where will you get the explosives?”
“Helsinki is expanding at a tremendous rate. Because of geography, we can’t grow outward, and nobody wants skyscrapers here, and so we’re building downward instead of up. Underneath the city, there’s an ever-expanding warren of tunnels. And those tunnels are created with explosives. It won’t be hard to liberate a small amount for our purposes. There must be tons down there.”
“And what if Moore doesn’t kill the Corsican father and son who intend to wipe out everyone on Saukko’s Shit List?”
“We either murder them too, or the money disappears from the safe-deposit box-I’m not sure how to pull that off yet, but I’ll work it out-and their deal is off. According to Moore, there’s nearly a million in it. I wouldn’t mind to heist it. Let’s see what comes of it.”
“Let me think about this,” I say, and step out for some cold water and kossu. It doesn’t take me long to make up my mind.
I sit back down in the sauna. I’m cold from the shower, splash some water on the stones to warm me up. “No,” I say.
Milo’s eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean no. I don’t want to murder all those people.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. They want to murder you and your family, and I’m sure mine and Sweetness’s along with them. You think they knew Mirjami and Jenna were going to be in the Audi when it blew? They assumed it would be Kate.”
“Sorry,” I say, “I just can’t see us doing it.”
“Pomo,” Sweetness says, “I’m with Milo on this one.”
These two have never put me on the defensive before. “When did this become a democracy? Sweetness, you call me pomo-boss-doesn’t that imply I make all final decisions?”
Milo gulps beer, now hot and ruined, says “Yuck,” and goes out to get a cold one. He sits down beside me. “We don’t want to usurp your authority or make you angry, but you’re the boss in work-related matters. When it comes to protecting ourselves and the people we love, we get a say in what happens. I won’t ask you to participate if you’re dead set against it, but this is going to happen.”
I think of Kate. My extra-legal activities were the spark behind her emotional trauma. If she found out I murdered someone, or was even an accessory to murder-which, having heard the plan, I de facto am-it could end our marriage and make her even sicker. I have to balance this against stopping further attempts on her life. I explain this to the others.
Milo replies, “The manifesto, the guns and possibly explosives will take us a couple weeks to get together. You have time to think about it. And as far as Kate goes, if you decide to take part, just hide it from her. You would anyway.”
“Let’s let it go for now,” I say. “We’ll move to Arvid’s place, and in the meantime, keep me posted on the progress you make. Deal?”
“Deal,” he says.
“Anybody have any ideas about how to find Loviise Tamm?” I ask.
“The way I understand it,” Milo says, “she was snatched by Russian diplomats. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“So they probably either took her to the embassy or to another whorehouse. Another whorehouse seems way more likely to me.”
“Me too,” I say.
“And Russian diplomats are overseeing the operation?”
“Well, I think most aren’t really diplomats, but spies here with diplomatic passports for cover. With some hired help from a few Finns, according to the files we pulled out of their electronics.”
“Then we need to tail the people working at the embassy until they lead us to the right whorehouse. The problem, of course, is that there are twenty or thirty of them, and only three of us. It would be fucking helpful if we had the manpower of the police department for this.”
I lean up against the wall and pull one knee up, let the bad one lie flat on the bench. The heat is easing the pain in both my knee and my jaw.
“Let me think about this,” Sweetness says, and fetches fresh beers for all of us.
He sits down and says, “I’m hesitant to suggest this, but I could call my cousin, Ai.”
“Ai,” Milo says, “as in what people yell when they’re in pain?”
“Yeah.”
“Why is he called Ai?” I ask.
“He’s my cousin, my dad’s sister’s kid, sixteen now. My aunt was a bad drunk and drug user, turned really mean when she was high. When Ai was about three, he tried to take a cookie or something, and she smashed his hand when he reached for it. She hit him hard with an iron skillet and broke bones in his hand and wrist. He screamed ‘Ai’ and started to cry, which made her madder. She said she’d give him something to really cry about, and she stuck his hand in a pot of boiling water and held it there. Dad went over there about three days later and Ai hadn’t been given any medical treatment. The skin peeled off like a glove almost to his elbow. Dad didn’t want his sister to go to jail, so he just took Ai home, put burn ointment on it and wrapped it up till it healed. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“His hand is withered and all the nerves in it are dead. Plus, it always looks worse than it is because he puts cigarettes out on it to impress people and make them think he’s tough. Which he is.”
“That still doesn’t explain why he’s called Ai,” Milo says.
“I told you his mom was fucking mean. She started calling him that to make fun of him. She would actually tell the story when she was drunk and stoned, like it was funny, and the nickname stuck. Now he doesn’t like to be called anything else. Like it’s some kind of badge of honor.”
“You said ‘was’ mean. Where is she now?”
“Disappeared three years ago. Ai says she went out to score and never came back. I think the truth is he killed her. He’s meaner than she was. He’s like the fucking devil, that’s why I hesitate to call him. She was on permanent disability because of her substance abuse, and Ai lives alone, has since she disappeared. I think nobody ever reported her as a missing person and he lives off her social security pension.”
“What about his father?” I ask.
“He doesn’t know who his father is.”
“And he can help us how?”
“He runs a gang in East Helsinki. They would follow the Russians for us, if the price was right.”
Jesus, what a story. “What the fuck,” I say. “Give the kid a call. It might be interesting to do business with a teenage devil incarnate.”
26
Sweetness secures an invitation to visit Ai for us. Despite Sweetness’s assurances that he’s in fit condition to drive, we’re all drunk, and I insist that we take a taxi. It pulls up in front of a building that screams government subsidized. A place to warehouse refugees, dopers, drunks, the mentally ill, and some people who just suffer the misfortune of being poor.