Helsinki White

23

Vappu-May Day, the heaviest drinking holiday of the year. In Helsinki, a good day to stay at home. It’s amateur night, normal people reduce themselves to the level of dumb beasts. Children as young as ten or twelve pass out on the streets of downtown. May Day Eve fell on a Friday, so festivities would begin as soon as people got off work and continue for three days.

When I was a young man, the drinking culture was much different. People still got shitfaced, but with style. Men wore suits to bars, and doormen wore them also. The madding crowds didn’t shriek about whose turn it was. They waited in line, humble. Patrons were required to sit at tables. They couldn’t switch tables at will. If they wanted to move, they had to ask a server to move their drink to another table for them. Bartenders didn’t sling drinks, they administered communion, and were frequently addressed as herra baarimestari-sir barmaster-and it wasn’t until about thirty years ago that women were allowed in drinking establishments without male escorts.

Vappu, too, has changed. In a time that doesn’t seem that far distant, Vappu had been a drinking day, especially for university students, but also a family day. People donned their high school graduation caps-still the tradition-but took their kids out with them, had family picnics. It lacked the tone of complete debauchery now attached to it.

It’s a different world now. Banks would also carry more cash than usual, as people prepared to pour their bank accounts down their necks. A good day for a robbery.

Every year, the great hope is that Vappu will be warm, and the nation can sit on sidewalk patios, drink, and celebrate the rite of spring. This year was a disappointment. The temperature was just above freezing and rain drizzled. No matter, spring would be celebrated nonetheless.

At ten thirty a.m. on that dreary May Day Eve, with the tellers’ cash drawers freshly filled, two men entered the branch of Sampo Bank in Itakeskus, in East Helsinki. They wore black military-style clothing, ski masks, and carried AK-47-type rifles. Each had two banana clips fastened end to end with black electrical tape, so that when one clip was shot empty, the two-clip rig would only have to be flipped to re-load, eliminating the need to reach for another clip.

They fired off bursts into the air to make their presences known and began screaming in thick, grammatically poor English. One shot an unarmed bank guard dead. They didn’t have to order people to lay prone on the floor. The few early customers flung themselves down in the hope of staying out of harm’s way. No alarm was triggered. The robbers ordered the tellers to fill black plastic grocery bags with money. One teller, an older woman, too terrified to move, was also executed.

The robbery was over in less than three minutes. Before they left, one robber bellowed, “We strike against the enemies of God.” The other laughed and shouted, “Lock your daughters up, you motherfuckers, we comin’ to get you.”

I was called within minutes of the robbery and told to come to the crime scene because, as with the young soldier whose throat had been cut, it was felt that the robbery was related to the murder of Lisbet Soderlund.

Milo living so close to me was a convenience. I called him, picked him up, and we were at the bank within half an hour. It wouldn’t be my case, it would go to Saska Lindgren. Apparently, a race war was in progress, he would be given the cases related to it, and I would consult because of the presidential mandate concerning Lisbet Soderlund. We questioned all present. We looked at the videotapes. Although we couldn’t be certain because the only exposed skin we had to go by was the area around their eyes, all agreed that the perps were black.

Milo rolled a tape back and forth a few times. “The rifles they used,” he said, “are Rk 95 Tps, the type stolen from the training camp. An unlikely coincidence.”

According to the rules of battle as set forth by the white combatants in this race war, the original decree was “For every crime committed by black men, we will kill a nigger in retribution.”

That hadn’t proven accurate. A number of crimes had been committed by blacks since then without retribution. My gut told me, though, that they had realized the difficulties behind killing a black person for every crime committed, but as was the case with the young soldier, murder would be answered with murder, and if we couldn’t unravel this fast, more people would soon die.

Later that evening, Milo called me. He’d picked up something interesting on a cell phone tap. Helsinki was heroin dry, and Russians were going to try to re-lubricate. The Russians believed they were safe, as only two men knew about the deal, the seller and the buyer. One would bring five kilos to Helsinki tomorrow. It was worth a million euros plus on the street. The deal was for half a million, wholesale price.

The normal price of a gram of heroin was a hundred twenty euros. With the city bone dry, the buyer planned to sell it for more than twice that price. He would distribute by the ounce, and then one more rung down the ladder, smaller dealers would sell by the eight ball-three and a half grams-but end users would pay two hundred fifty a gram. Plus, this was eighty-eight percent pure Afghan heroin. Street heroin was usually fifty percent. He could step on it hard with lactose and sell it off as close to eight kilos. In Afghanistan, a kilo costs five thousand bucks. Five thousand becomes a million. The stuff entrepreneurial dreams are made of.

Tomorrow was Vappu. They would seal the deal and celebrate spring by having some drinks on the patio outside at Kaivohuone-The Well Room-at five p.m., and then make the exchange in the parking lot. Milo asked if I wanted to take it on.

I considered it. What was my goal? To make Helsinki heroin-free or gangster-free? I wasn’t a social worker, the answer was gangster-free. Stealing the city dry has been a mistake, but unleashing five kilos on Helsinki would mean a total loss of control, dealers back in business. Also, it might cause a number of overdose deaths, as junkies whose systems were nearly clear shot up doses that, when totally hooked, would only have gotten them high.

“Let’s snatch it,” I said. “It’s an easy one. We just go out to the full parking lot and pop their trunks. People won’t recognize me with my image overhaul. Nobody will even give us a second glance.”

“It’s Vappu for us, too,” Milo said. “What do you say we have a few drinks while we’re there?”

“OK. Why not? Let’s have some fun.”

“I’ll call Sweetness and tell him to meet us,” Milo said, and rang off.