Jens Lapidus - Easy Money

She came from the countryside, from an estate, and had enrolled in a regular school in first grade. Hadn’t worked. Her classmates weren’t nice to her. Called her a snob, didn’t pick her for teams in gym class, thought it was totally fine to swipe her stuff. It almost sounded silly, but JW understood, for real. After sixth grade, she’d switched to the prep school Lundsberg. To her own kind. She loved the place.

JW couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was his best source of sales and she was so foxy, but she seemed genuinely nice, too. A good girl. His goal was clear: He would work on her, doubly.

The next weekend, JW’d hung out with Sophie and her group of girlfriends at a private party. Lollo loved snow, shouted at JW, “This stuff totally gets me off! My sex life is, like, amazing!” Sophie loved snow. Anna loved snow. Charlotte loved snow. Everyone at the party loved JW. He made eight grand.

The weekend after that-last weekend-they’d pregamed at Nippe’s on Friday, then went to Kharma, where a table waited for them, and then on to an after party at Lollo’s. Saturday started with dinner at Putte’s, followed by a reserved table at Café Opera. The evening ended with an after party at Lollo’s again-crammed with new faces.

A new record: He’d cashed in eleven grand net.

Weekdays he tried to study. He felt like a new person. C sales did wonders for his finances, his confidence, and his wardrobe. Still, he got no peace. Thoughts of the yellow Ferrari kept bothering him. The night the Arab’d suggested he sell coke was the first time he’d ever asked about Camilla. He’d hoped that maybe someone knew something, but deep inside he didn’t think it would lead anywhere. But now there was the Ferrari tearing down Sturegatan at a furious speed as a constant image in his mind. He had to know more.

He’d called the National Road Administration. Unfortunately, JW didn’t remember the car’s license plate number, but it worked anyway-vehicle registration was a wonderful state institution. Anyone could find out who the owner of any Swedish registered car was. If the car was unusual, you could get information even without the license plate number. According to the guy at the Road Administration, there were two yellow Ferraris in Sweden the year Camilla went missing. One was owned by the IT millionaire Peter Holbeck, and the other was owned by a leasing company, Dolphin Finance, Ltd. The company specialized in sports cars and yachts.

JW began by looking up Peter Holbeck. The man’d made his money on Web consulting. Now, in retrospect, JW thought the whole thing seemed so obvious. How the hell could they think that consultants should make five million a head for building websites that any fifteen-year-old computer geek could handle? But that hadn’t bothered the entrepreneur and fake visionary Peter Holbeck. He sold out in time. The Web agency had 150 employees. Six months after the sale, the agency was shut down. One hundred and twenty of the employees lost their jobs. Peter Holbeck made 360 million. Now he went skiing eighty days out of the year and spent the rest of the time in Thailand or other warm places with his kids.

JW’s question: What had the IT millionaire been doing the spring Camilla went missing?

He took a chance on easy answers, tried to call Holbeck. It took three days to track him down. Finally, he got hold of him. Holbeck sounded short of breath when he answered the phone. “This is Peter.”

“Hi, my name is Johan.” It wasn’t often that JW introduced himself with his real first name. “I have some questions for you. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“Are you a journalist? I don’t have the energy to speak to you people.”

“No, actually not. It’s regarding a private thing.”

Holbeck sounded surprised. “Shoot.”

“I’m looking for a woman, Camilla Westlund. She disappeared about four years ago. No one knows where she is. We know that she was sometimes seen in a yellow Ferrari before she disappeared. You owned one of those during the year in question. Thought maybe you know something. Maybe you lent out the car, or something?”

“Are you calling from the police, or are you a journalist?”

“Not a journalist. Didn’t I already say that? Not from the police, either. I’m a private person, calling about a personal matter.”

“Either way. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Are you insinuating something?”

“Sorry if this sounds strange. I just wanted to know if you remember anything.”

“Whatever. I was in the Rockies half of that year. On skis. The rest of the time I was in the south of Sweden or in Florida. With my kids. The car was parked in a garage in Stockholm.”

JW realized: no point in pushing it any further. Holbeck’d said enough. He ended the conversation.

The next day, he Googled Holbeck for hours. Finally ended up in the archives of Aftonbladet. Holbeck was mentioned in articles about luxury vacationers. It was true: He had a house in the south of Sweden and one in Florida, and he’d been skiing in the States the same year that Camilla disappeared. Maybe the IT millionaire wasn’t involved.

There was one more yellow Ferrari, after all. JW looked up the leasing company, Dolphin Finance, Ltd. Just the name gave off sketchy vibes. He got in touch with the National Registry of Incorporated Companies. The administrator on the other end of the line was helpful, told him that the company’d gone bankrupt a year ago. All the assets-the cars and boats-had been bought by a German company. There wasn’t much more JW could do. It was almost a relief. He could let the Ferrari go. Or could he?

A honk from the street. JW looked out and saw Nippe in the Golf that’d been a twenty-first-birthday present from his mom and dad.

They headed south on the freeway-on the road to peeps, parties, possibilities.

A classic Swedish hip-hop song on the radio. JW wasn’t a big fan of hip-hop, but he couldn’t help but dig Petter’s lyrics: “The tide has turned.”

It applied to him. Big-time. His time had come-to stop living a double life, to become like them, for real. To get even deeper in the clover. Eat them for breakfast.

They chatted. JW listened. Nippe had the hots for Lollo. Nippe thought Jet Set Carl’d had attitude last weekend-who did he think he was? Nippe complimented JW’s Canali blazer. Nippe discussed the latest reality-TV show. Nippe had verbal diarrhea.

“I might quit the finance focus. Thinking about marketing instead.”

JW’s interest, lukewarm. “Really.”

“Marketing’s where it’s at, especially branding. Sell any product at any price, no matter how cheaply it’s made. As long as it’s branded and marketed correctly. There’s such fucking potential.”

“Sure, but in the end it’s your core business that matters, the leverage of capital employed, the financing. If your marketing costs too much, and you never really make a profit, you die.”

“Sure, but you make money. Just look at Gucci and Louis Vuitton. The clothes, the boutiques in Stockholm, the fashion collections, all of that is just an excuse. What really makes it rain are branded accessories. Shades, perfume, belts, purses. China-made crap, little stuff. Branding, that’s, like, all it is.”

In JW’s opinion, Nippe wasn’t the sharpest brat in the pack, and today he’d apparently gotten hung up on one word. Like a broken record.

They chatted on.

JW dug life. Next month, he’d triple sales. He did some mental arithmetic: added, subtracted, multiplied. He saw sales curves, credit, cash. He saw a bull market in himself.

It took an hour to get there. Nippe told him it was an old manor where Gustaf’s parents lived. The parents-good friends with His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf.