Helsinki White

30

Kate pretends that she’s just sleepy, acts as if she hadn’t blacked out. With a little assistance from me, she remembers everything and exhibits enthusiasm for the trip. Whether real or feigned, I don’t know. I see that she has that kind of nerve-jangled hangover that comes from days of drinking, but puts on a perky face rather than admit how bad she feels. She doesn’t comment when I feed Anu with formula from a bottle rather than hand her over for a suck on a tit. She doesn’t want to discuss her behavior. I don’t want to make her. She sits with her laptop and researches Turku, plans her day as a tourist. I go to the grocery and load up on snacks, beer and soft drinks for the trip.

Everyone shows up at eight a.m. sharp. The men will take the Jeep Wrangler, since we have Milo’s guns to transport, and the girls will ride in the Audi. Kate is nervous but excited and looking forward to her first long-distance Finnish driving experience. Mirjami, once again in Hello Kitty attire, has a license, and says she’ll give Kate driving pointers.

However, they have differing ideas about how to spend the day. Turku was Finland’s original capital-its cathedral was consecrated in 1300, and it still has remnants of the Middle Ages, or re-creations of it along cobblestoned streets. Established by Sweden, it still feels more Swedish than Finnish, and Swedish is spoken at least as much, if not more, by its residents. The Aurajoki divides the city.

Kate would like to see handicrafts and go to the tourist area, where people in authentic clothing, blacksmiths and weavers and such, make things the old-fashioned way. Also, Turku Castle is, if not the biggest in Finland and the Scandinavian region, close to it. She suggests that exploring it could also be a fascinating way to spend the day.

Mirjami and Jenna want to go to Muumimaailma-Muumin World. Kate doesn’t know what it is. We’re all surprised. The Muumit-Muumi plural-are one of those things you just take for granted everyone knows about.

Jenna laughs. “You’ll know about it soon. All little kids love the Muumit.” She explains that the Muumit are characters from a series of books by Tove Jansson. They’re round white trolls with big hippopotamus noses who live in Muumin valley, and they and their friends have adventures in the forest.

I think it finally sinks in that she’s twice Jenna’s age. “And of all the things to do in Turku,” Kate asks, “you would most like to spend your day with the trolls?”

Jenna grins wide and gives a vigorous nod of her head. “Uh-huh.”

They compromise. Muumin World is on the island of Kailo beside the old town of Naantali. The town grew around an old convent, and is composed mostly of wooden houses along narrow cobbled streets that house handicraft shops. They can all have their fun.

Sweetness wants to drive. I say sure, but no kossu. He hands me the keys. I toss them to Milo. He likes to drive, I want to think. I notice Moreau has stubble blurring his wings of Icarus. I ask why. He says he believes we’ll wrap this up soon. He’s growing hair for changing identities.

We load up the vehicles and agree to meet in the market square for lunch. I put Anu’s car seat in the back of the Audi, strap her in, and we get on the road.

In my mind, I replay my conversation with the minister of the interior. He said that in early 2009, Veikko Saukko promised to donate a million euros to Real Finns. A short time later, his son and daughter were kidnapped. Welshing on a million-dollar promise causes hard feelings. This provides motive.

Veikko’s son, Antti, was himself affiliated with the racists. This provides potential accomplices. He disappeared, although the ten-million-euro ransom had been paid. The kidnappers had made good on their bargain to release the daughter. Why show good faith in her instance, and then dispose of the son? Unless Antti took part in the kidnapping, rather than being a victim of it. And if he then fucked his racist buddies somehow, it could have sparked the shooting of his sister as payback. Antti had recently been stripped of his position as chairman of the board of Ilmarinen Sisu Corporation. Fucked in the ass by his father without provocation. Well, there was that fucking-Daddy’s-wife thing, but still, this provides additional motive.

Jussi Kosonen supposedly perpetrated the kidnapping. He’s dead. His three children are missing. It stinks of a setup. Kosonen was a patsy. If they kidnapped his kids while his wife was away and forced him to keep Kaarina Saukko in his basement and later deliver her, he would be useless after retrieving the ransom money for them. Hence, a bullet in the back of his head. It would be the most practical thing to do with him. His children likely got the same treatment.

And I was right, our black-ops unit had predecessors, and they were military. My guess would be sheep-dipped Erikoisjaakarit, Special Forces, and they had gone to Russia on a mission concerning the human slave trade. So, like me, they had higher motives than ripping off dope dealers. And they were pros. And they died. And we’re bunglers. We’d better goddamned well improve our paramilitary skills.

The quiet has gone on for too long. Nervous puppy Milo has to break it. “Want to hear a joke?” he asks no one in particular.

No one answers. This doesn’t stop him.

“A priest checks into a hotel and says to the clerk, ‘I assume your porn is disabled.’ The clerk answers, ‘No, Father, it’s normal porn, you sick fuck.’”

Moreau chuckles. Sweetness guffaws. I smile. I never thought to practice laughing.

“Somebody tell a story,” Milo says.

Sweetness asks, “What kind of story?”

Milo thinks about it. “A fuck story. And it has to be true.”

No one volunteers.

“Kari, you taciturn bastard. Tell us a story.”

I’ve never told a sex story, although I have a number of them. I spent years as chief of police in an area with a major ski resort. A perk of being a single cop in a tourist area is the availability of women looking for short-term affairs-vacation entertainment. I never went overboard with it, but if I felt the need, women were almost always there for me. I’ve seldom listened to sex stories, either. The kind of people I’ve mostly spent my life around don’t brag about intimacies, don’t need that kind of self-esteem reinforcement. I decide I’ll try it, just this once, to see what it’s like, even though I know this is some kind of brain surgery post-op quirk manifesting itself.

“OK. This one time. Some years ago, back when I lived in Kittila, it was the night before Christmas Eve. I was making rounds, stopped in Hullu Poro, a big bar there. I was in civilian clothes but had my Glock in a belt holster. This girl comes up to me. She’s a half-Arab and half-German aerobics instructor, about five foot five, had on a tight T-shirt and jeans, and I could tell she had a six pack and an ass so high and firm you could sit a beer can on it. Skin the color of milk chocolate. Black hair down to her ass. Perky breasts. Around twenty-five years old. A beautiful girl. She took a plane to Levi by herself for Christmas on a whim.

“She walked up to me, I didn’t even see her coming. ‘Can I see your gun?’ she asked.

“I said ‘No.’ She asked if I was a cop, and I said ‘Yeah.’ ‘Will you show it to me later?’ she asked. I said ‘Maybe.’

“She asked me what time I got off and I said midnight. She wanted to go techno dancing and asked if I would take her. I said I would be honored. She said it was too bad I was a cop, she’d like to do some X.

“As it happened, I busted some Austrian Eurotrash rich kid that night for speeding, going about a hundred and thirty miles an hour. Baron von Dogfucker or something like that, who had brought about a hundred of his closest friends to celebrate Christmas with him in Levi. He had enough Ecstasy with him for all of them to celebrate in high style for days. He had a baggie full of the shit and I had never tried it, so I thought, What the fuck, and stuck four hits of it into my pocket before I entered it into evidence.

“After work I went up to her room and brought a bottle of wine. We had a glass, I said ‘Surprise,’ and took a couple of tabs out of my pocket. We ate one each. I didn’t like it at first, it felt like my mind was shaking apart, but it didn’t last long and then it was a really enjoyable high.

“I took her to a place where they were spinning techno. She kept falling over, laughing, had no sense of up, down or sideways. I kept scooping her up and setting her back on her feet. She swept all the drinks off the bar with her arm. I bought us more.

“She wanted me to take her home. She wanted to hear Finnish language and asked me to read to her, so I pulled a Bible off the shelf and opened it at random to the book of John. Just when I got to ‘and the Word was made flesh’-I’ll always remember the citation. It’s 1:14-she made her move and we started fucking. The floor, the bed. The sauna. The snow. You can do it in the snow after the sauna for a few minutes when your body temperature is high enough, just don’t get your genitals in it. I tacked a sleeping bag to the roof and we climbed up and fucked under the moon.

“And she was an expert at sucking cock. Every time I came, she sucked me again and made me hard, over and over. At some point, we took the other hit of X. She loved 69, had almost no bodyweight. I was three times her size and turning and lifting her was no more difficult than rolling myself over in bed.

“The date lasted thirty hours. After maybe the tenth time, my orgasms were dry, just powerful contractions. We did it nearly twenty times. Afterward, my dick was so tender it was hard to touch it without discomfort for days. I took her back to her hotel. She called me to say good-bye and I gave her a ride to the airport. We never spoke again. I never wanted to do it again. The experience was unrepeatable. At Baron von Dogfucker’s hearing, I learned that the Ecstasy was in four-way hits. We were supposed to break them into pieces, so we were really high. When I drove her to the airport, she told me that her father had just died, and she came to Levi after his funeral with nothing but the clothes on her back. She was just escaping. She was a nice girl.”

“Damn,” Milo said, “that was a good story. I didn’t know you can fuck in the snow.”

“Milo,” I said, “you can fuck in the burning sands of the Sahara. People always fuck. Always find a way.”

“Got any more stories?”

A failed experiment. I took no pleasure whatsoever in relating a sexual adventure. “Yeah, but you only get the one. Now it’s your turn.”

He grips the wheel with his knees to steer while he cracks his window and lights a smoke. “I would if I had any. I don’t have that much experience. I’ve had two semi-long-term relationships, three or four short-term, and no one-night stands. I have the feeling I’m a lousy fuck, just don’t know what I’m doing.”

Moreau says, “It’s hard to be a lousy fuck, unless you have a problem with premature ejaculation or are impotent. Let’s face the facts. Sex consists of heat, lubrication and friction. If those things are all in order, your sexual performance is probably at least adequate.”

“You’re a man of the world,” Milo says to him. “You must have some good stories.”

“I haven’t had a girlfriend for more than twenty years. I have sex exclusively with prostitutes. And never the same woman twice.”

This intrigues both Milo and Sweetness. Their heads turn toward him. “Why?” Milo asks.

“Relationships and the emotions they entail are time-consuming and a distraction from weightier matters. However, like most men, I enjoy sex. A business transaction has no complications, and I have no concerns such as yours. The experience is solely about my pleasure. And why never the same woman twice? It guards against ennui. I never sleep with African women, because the AIDS rate is so high. I most prefer Southeast Asian woman. They tend to be beautiful, accommodating, and I find their vaginas interesting, reminiscent of elephant skin. There’s something both exotic and erotic about it. I seldom engage prostitutes there anymore, either, though, for the same reason. AIDS is a danger.”

There’s something exotic about Moreau himself. He’s a strange man. I’ve never met anyone quite like him.

“Sweetness, that leaves you,” Milo says.

Sweetness reddens and takes a long pull from his flask. “I don’t have any stories.”

We’re all quiet for a moment. We take his meaning and don’t want to embarrass him further. Not even Milo.

“I’m between a rock and a hard spot,” Sweetness says. “I’m in love with Jenna. I don’t want to be with anyone but her, but I can’t do anything about it. She’s my third cousin once removed.”

Milo and Moreau burst with laughter. I bury my face in my hands in disbelief. Milo loses control of himself, has to pull the car over to the side of the road.

Sweetness drinks more, fights back tears. His face is the color of strawberry jam.

I reach over the seat and put a hand on his shoulder. “If she’s that distant a cousin, it’s not incest. There’s no danger of a genetic-related birth defect.”

He looks back at me, blinks, unbelieving, afraid I’m teasing him. “Really?”

“If I fucked Mirjami,” Milo says, “my aunt’s daughter, our child might have eight arms and three heads. But you have no worries.”

He takes this in for a while. “Still, she’s only sixteen.”

“She’s of legal age,” I say, “and you’re only twenty-two. That’s between you and her, and you and your conscience.”

“For what it’s worth,” Milo says, “cousin or not, I would fuck the daylights out of Mirjami if she let me. That’s why God made birth control.”

“I wonder if Jenna has feelings for me too,” Sweetness asks.

“I’ve seen the way she looks at you,” I say. “I think it’s safe to say that she does.”

He looks at me, imploring, looking to me for truth, wisdom and certainty. “Are you sure?”

I nod. “Pretty sure. I think you can count on it.”

His laughter diminishes to a chuckle, and Milo pulls out onto the highway again. I get a mental image of tiny Jenna and huge Sweetness. They take off their clothes. He must have a dick that would put Moby Penis to shame. She flees naked into the night, terrified.

The oddity strikes me. My killer, my Luca Brasi, and I have just had our first father-and-son talk.

“May I see your cane?” Moreau asks.

I hand it to him. He turns it over in his hands, examines it, admires it. “It is quite unique. At least, I have never seen such a thing. It must have been made for a very rich man, most likely royalty. The lion’s-head handle must be close to a half pound of gold, plus the jewels are large and high-quality, and it is the work of a master craftsman. How does it function?”

He hands it back to me. I smack the bottom tip of the cane hard against the car floor. The lion’s mouth snaps open to near a hundred-and-eighty-degree angle. Sometimes I carry it with the mouth open because it offers more surface area to hold on to, and also because I like the feel of the razors against the skin of my fingers. Of course, I can’t shift my grip without drawing blood.

“The teeth are daggers and the edges razors on both sides. The two canine fangs aren’t for cutting. They’re spring releases. When pushed backward and depressed, the springs engage and the mouth clamps shut. So when swung like a baseball bat, the canines hit the target and the lion bites.”

“Ingenious,” Moreau says.

I’m curious about him, and suspicious of his motives. He’s a spook for another government. He likely has an agenda that I haven’t even guessed at. “Tell me about Mexico,” I say.

“It is a miserable shithole.”

I feign the practiced smile. “I meant about what you did there.”

“As I said, as with all commodities, narcotics distribution is a global enterprise and delicately balanced. Many nations depend on drugs for the economic stability of their countries. The U.S. and Mexico among them. The balance was disturbed in Mexico and many thousands died in a war for control of the trade between the Sinaloa cartel and the Juarez gang.

“It reached a crisis level so acute that the U.S. would soon have to invade Mexico, the drug trade truly would be halted, or at least severely damaged, and the economies of the two countries along with it. What made the situation unique is that the vast majority of the drugs pass through a tiny area, the border crossing of the twin cities of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. Through this funnel-which, ironically, the U.S. supposedly created as part of its War Against Drugs-dope passes into the States. Money and weapons pass into Mexico. To control this crossing is to control the drug trade.

“The answer, of course, was for one side to win the war and halt the killing. Some colleagues and I analyzed the situation and decided Joaquin Guzman Loera’s Sinaloa cartel was the best candidate, having exported more than two hundred tons of cocaine and a vast amount of heroin into the United States over the past decade. Their army was killing many people, but the wrong ones. We assisted them in killing the appropriate rivals, and trained their best soldiers, bringing them up to Special Forces standards. Sinaloa won the war, the death toll dropped significantly, and the economies of both countries remain intact. Mission accomplished.”

“So you were an assassin,” I say.

“In Spanish, an assassin is an asesino. Not a person of importance. I held the title of sicario, an executioner.”

“What’s the difference?”

He scoffed. I was a babe in the woods. “The number of zeros in my monthly pay.”

“As a French advisor, Guzman paid you as well?”

He grimaced, losing patience with me. “Of course I doubledipped. He also gave me the heroin I gave to you. A parting gesture of thanks. He was most grateful. He made last year’s list of the world’s top billionaires.”

We entered Turku. I changed the subject. “Can you acquire false passports for me?”

“Of course, but does ‘false’ mean fake or registered in the country of identity?”

Kate, Anu, myself, Milo, Sweetness, and then I think: Jenna. Sweetness might refuse to leave without her in a romantic hissy fit. “Six, registered, and preferably diplomatic.”

He laughed. “My friend, you may be overestimating my capabilities.”

“I doubt it.”

“That you realize you may need them increases my estimation of you. Let us make an agreement. As regards the passports, when our business is concluded, if I am satisfied, I will see to it that you are also satisfied. They will not be diplomatic, but from a country with a predominantly white population, so that you do not stand out.”

Good enough. The passports will bring us one step closer to safety.