The purpose of the dossiers is to provide info for me and my black-ops crew to target criminals, so we can rip off their money, drugs and guns.
I can remember, almost word for word, the conversation Jyri and I had during the Filippov investigation, when he talked me into heading up a black-ops unit while begging me to suppress evidence against him.
“I’ll give you anything you want,” he said, “just make this go away.”
“That’s a problem for you,” I said. “I don’t want anything.”
He leaned toward me. “I’ve been thinking of putting together a black-ops unit. Anti-organized crime. The mandate is to go after criminals by whatever means necessary, to use their own methods against them. No holds barred.”
“We already have such a group. Our secret police. They’re called SUPO.”
“There’s a problem with SUPO,” he said. “They don’t work for me.”
“So you want to be some kind of Finnish J. Edgar Hoover?”
“Yes.”
I laughed in his face. “No.”
“You think I don’t know you, but I do,” he said. “You suffer from a pathetic need to protect the innocent. You think you’re some kind of a Good Samaritan in a white hat, but you’re not. You’re a rubber-hose cop, a thug and a killer, as you’ve demonstrated. You’ll do anything to get what you view as justice. Let me give you an example of how badly we need this kind of unit. Only seven cops in Helsinki investigate human trafficking full-time. Here in Finland and the surrounding countries, thousands of gangsters orchestrate the buying and selling of young girls, and hundreds or thousands of those girls pass through this nation every year, most on their way to their destination countries. With our limited law enforcement resources, we can’t possibly make even a dent in the human slavery industry. Picture all those victims and how many of their bright shiny faces you could save from abject misery, abuse and terror, from being raped time and time again.”
He sensed my interest.
“Milo”-referring to my partner-“knows black-bag work,” he said. “He’s a genius with great computer skills, and he’s also a killer. He could be your first team-member acquisition. Then you can staff it with whoever you want.”
Milo learned black-bag work because he’s a voyeur. He B amp;Es homes just to go through people’s things. He’s a violent nutcase with an IQ of a hundred seventy-two.
“I’m not killing anybody,” I said.
“I’ll leave that to your discretion.”
“Milo is a loose cannon and a liability.”
“Milo is a nervous puppy. He needs a firm hand to guide him. Yours.”
“It would take a hell of a lot of money,” I said. “Computers. Vehicles. Surveillance gear.”
“In two weeks, Swedish and Finnish Gypsies are going to make a drug deal for Ecstasy. A hundred and sixty thousand euros will trade hands. You can intercept it and use the money for the beginning of a slush fund. I’ll get you more money for equipment later.”
“No.”
Frustration gripped him, resonated in his voice. “I told you I know you, and I do. You hate your job. You’re frustrated because you can’t make a difference. You’re a failure. To your dead sister.” He brings up the high death toll from a previous investigation: “To Sufia Elmi and her family. To your former sergeant Valtteri and his family. To your dead ex-wife-and in your personal life-to your dead miscarried twins and, as such, to your wife. To that pathetic school shooter Milo capped. You’re a failure to yourself. You’ve failed everyone you’ve touched. You’ll take this job to make up for it. I’m offering you everything you ever wanted.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Because of your aforementioned annoying incorruptibility. You don’t want anything. You’re a maniac, but you’re a rock. I can trust you to run this unit without going rogue on me.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“No one ever finds out anything about my involvement in this case,” he said. “I’ll organize everything, get you the manpower. Fix this for me,” he said, “and run my black-ops unit.”
I bought into Jyri’s specious diatribe like the naive fool that I am. I’ve helped no one, but hurt several people, and there are more to come. I’ve succeeded only in alienating my wife, the person I remember being dearest to me.
There’s a great myth believed by nearly everyone that Finland is corruption-free. Police and politicians are scripture pure, dedicated to the good of the nation beyond all things. Foreigners even write about it in travel guides for tourists. The best thing going for our black-ops unit is that no one would believe such a thing could exist, or that corruption could be so widespread at such high levels of government.
I run a heist gang. I’m a police inspector, shakedown artist, strong-arm specialist and enforcer. Three months ago, I was an honest cop. I’m not sure I care how or why, but I reflect on how I could have undergone such a drastic change in such a short time. Jyri wanted me to recruit some other tough cops, but I refused. More than four people is too many in on a secret. The group is just me, Milo, and Sweetness. Milo is a sick puppy, but he’s grown on me over time because of his enthusiasm. Sweetness is a baby-faced behemoth, whom I hired out of sympathy, because of his size and capacity to commit violent acts without enjoying them, and to piss Jyri off. Which it does. Jyri refers to him as “the oaf.” Sweetness often seems a simpleton, but he’s far from it.
To quote Sweetness: “Life just is. Ain’t no reason for nothing.”
1
A little over three months before my meeting with Jyri, Kate gave birth to our first child, a girl, on January twenty-fourth.
It was an easy birth, as childbirths go, no more difficult than squirting a watermelon seed out from between her fingers, only sixteen hours from her first contraction to me cradling our child in my arms. When I first held her, I felt a wealth of emotions I didn’t know existed, and I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but I loved Kate tenfold more for the gift she had given me.
She was an easy baby. Didn’t cry much. Often slept through the night. She wasn’t officially named until her christening, but we chose to call her Anu. A simple and pretty name, pronounceable by Finns and foreigners alike, important in a bi-cultural marriage.
Our bi-cultural marriage changed me. When I met Kate, like many Finnish men, I was unable to utter the words “I love you.” I’ve heard women complain more than a few times that their husbands don’t tell them they love them. The typical answer: “I told you I loved you when I married you. If anything changes, I’ll let you know.” But she told me often, with sincerity and without shame. I learned to return the sentiment. At first, it was awkward for me. Before long though, I learned to say it first, it felt natural, even good, and I couldn’t understand why it had ever been difficult.
I had been suffering severe migraines for the better part of a year. I thought they were the result of stress related to Kate’s pregnancy-she had miscarried twins the previous December, and I was scared that it would happen again-but Kate insisted I had tests run. My brother, Jari, is a neurologist. I went to him and he sent me for an MRI. The day we brought Anu home from the hospital, it fell upon him to tell me that I had a brain tumor.
Kate and I had always had a great relationship, were best friends as well as husband and wife, but there was a sticking point that stood between us. My failure to tell her about my past or current events in my life, especially if they’re unpleasant. She isn’t as bad as, say, characters on American television shows who throw hissy fits upon finding out that their spouse had a one-night stand twenty years ago and five years before the couple even met, and believe the lives of their spouses, even their deepest and most private thoughts and emotions, must be open books. But a couple times, Kate has found out things about me that shocked her, and she’d like me to open up, at least a little, so she can know and understand me better. It’s hard for me, just not my nature. Kate said she viewed my failure to tell her about events relevant to our life together as a form of lying. And it disturbed her that I kept much of my past under lock and key.