Jens Lapidus - Easy Money

He pulled the box out and set it down on the bed. It was filled with postcards.

A half hour later, the postcards were all read. Seventeen in total. Camilla’d been living in Stockholm for a little over three years before she disappeared. During that time, she’d been home three times. It made Margareta sad; Bengt angry.

But apparently she’d at least been writing postcards. Cards that JW’d never seen, and that Margareta’d saved and put in Camilla’s room. Maybe she thought they belonged there, as though no other place was sufficiently holy to store the fragments of her daughter’s abridged life.

Most of it was stuff he already knew. Camilla wrote thin descriptions of life in Stockholm. She worked at a café. She hung out with the other waitresses. She lived in a studio in Södermalm-the south side-that she rented through the owner of the café. She studied at Komvux. She quit the café job and started working at a restaurant. Once, it said that she’d ridden in a Ferrari.

Not a word about Jan Brunéus.

She mentioned her boyfriend in some of the letters. He wasn’t referred to by name, but it was clear the boyfriend owned the car.

One postcard, the last one, contained information JW didn’t already know.

Hi Mom,

I’m good. Things are going well for me and I quit the restaurant. I work as a bartender instead. Make good money. Have pretty much decided to forget about Komvux. Next week I’m going to Belgrade with my boyfriend.

Say hi to Dad and Johan!

Love, Camilla

That was news to JW. That Camilla’d been planning to go to Belgrade. With the boyfriend.

He made the rapid calculation: Why go to Belgrade? Because you were from there.

Who was from there? The man with the Ferrari.

He was a Yugo.

Stefanovic as lecturer. He probably wasn’t familiar with the term strategic consultant, but if he’d worked for Ernst & Young, they would’ve been proud.

It was serious. Organized. The elite were gathered around a conference table in the VIP room on the top floor of Radovan’s bar. Radovan, Mrado, Stefanovic, Goran, and Nenad. The conversation was held in Serbian.

Mrado: responsible for the coat checks and other racketeering/blackmail/hit-man jobs.

Stefanovic: Radovan’s bodyguard and CFO.

Goran: bossed over booze and cigarette smuggling.

Nenad: biggest supplier of coke to Stockholm’s dealers, and also ran the trade in whores, apartment bordellos, and call-service chicks. Was responsible for the entire gamut of services. Nenad was Mrado’s closest among the colleagues-he saw in him the same desire he felt to be his own man. None of Goran or Stefanovic’s rimming.

The room and the bar’d been searched for hours. The cops were on the hunt. Stefanovic’d looked for any recording devices: under tables, chairs, behind lamps, under ledges. Checked civvies in the bar downstairs, suspicious cars, cameras in the windows across the street. It was the first time Radovan’s entire cadre had been together, in person, in over a year and a half.

Dangerous.

Stefanovic began ceremoniously. “Gentlemen, three months ago I was given the task of figuring out what we should do about Nova. You’re familiar with it. The Stockholm police began the project four months ago. They’ve got their sights set on us and other groups. They’ve already collared more than forty people, mostly those in the western region. Thirty are already convicted. The rest are rotting in jail while they wait to stand trial. All of us in this room appear on their list of the hundred and fifty persons who make up the core of organized crime in this city.”

Goran grinned. “Where did they get that idea?”

Stefanovic cut him off. “Funny, Goran. Are you stupid because you’re a loser, or a loser because you’re stupid?”

Goran opened his mouth, then closed it again without a word. Like a fish.

Radovan looked at him. Most of the time, Goran was his fluffer, but now he wanted seriousness. Mrado thought: One point docked for Goran.

Stefanovic took a sip of mineral water. “During the last five years, we’ve concentrated our focus on five different areas of business. Then we run some other treats on the side, as you know-freight skimming, tax stuff, et cetera. We have a total turnaround of about sixty million kronor a year. Deduct general costs from that-the price of laundering the cash and paying off the guys. Your net result is something like fifteen. Add your earnings from your own and our shared legal businesses. Clara’s, Diamond, and Q-court. The demolition firm and the video-rental stores, et cetera. You’re all co-owners in one way or another. You live well on this stuff. But the businesses work differently. The margins vary. The whore biz is rolling. The cigarettes are okay. The blow is flying. Right, Nenad? What’s the price today?”

Nenad spoke slowly. “We buy for four fifty. Sell for between nine and eleven hundred. After turnaround costs, we earn an average of four hundred per gram, given that we don’t bulk.”

“That’s good. But everything can get better. If we can zero in on the source, we can press down the prices more. And, anyway, coke is the riskiest of the businesses. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s important that we have several functioning businesses simultaneously. The risk is really high when it comes to ice. We have to be mobile, be able to switch between different areas depending on the relationship between risk and revenue.”

Radovan nodded.

Mrado wasn’t surprised about the level of the lecture. He’d talked to Stefanovic two days ago, when he’d told him the instructions Radovan’d given him: “The presentation is for professional businessmen who deal in crime. I want numbers, statistics. Background analysis, prognoses, constructive solutions. No brainless gangster chitchat.” Still, Mrado was amazed. Unusually open description of Radovan’s empire. Mrado pretty much knew what made up Radovan’s domain, sure, but this was the first time R. himself, through Stefanovic, was giving numbers in detail.

Mrado regarded the men around the table. All in first-class suits. Broad shoulders. Broad tie knots like sportscasters’. Broad smiles when they heard the numbers.

Radovan was at the head of the table. His head was tilted back, chin in the air. Gave the impression that he wanted to have an overview of the others. Concentrated, steely look on his face.

Stefanovic: unassuming appearance. Mrado knew better-he was the other half of Radovan’s brain.

Goran was sitting with his arms crossed. Almost as beefy as Mrado. Almost as bitchy as a teen with a curfew. Followed Stefanovic with his eyes. Listened and analyzed the strategy. Had a lined notebook in front of him on the table.

Nenad rocked the Stureplan look. Backslick, pinstriped suit, pink tailored shirt. Matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. What gave him away was the Serbian cross tattooed on his hands. The Cocaine King/Whore Boss looked like a cocaine king/whore boss. Tried to pull a laid-back attitude-drawling voice, slow movements-but he was always jittery.

Stefanovic rose. Paced back and forth. “Let me give you a quick history lesson.”

Goran took notes.

“We’ve gotten competition over the last couple of years. When they took down Jokso in 1998, many of us thought the market shares were up for grabs, that there weren’t too many contenders in the cockfight. Then came the cease-fire between the Hells Angels and the Bandidos in 2001. You remember the terms. Neither of the gangs was allowed to expand. They had territories in Malmö, Helsingborg, and in two places on the west coast. But they were smart. Instead of the main clubs growing, the hang-around clubs grew, Red & White Crew and Red Devils, X-Team and Amigos MC. We are the people your parents warned you about, as they like to say. Mischievous boys. Today, they’re like ants and Sweden is their hill; even Stockholm’s crawling with them. As if that wasn’t enough, the prisons’ve really revved up: Original Gangsters, the Wolfpack Brotherhood, Fucked for Life, et cetera, et cetera. At first, they were loosely knit groups of young criminals and overgrown teen fists. Today, they’re almost as well organized as the motorcycle gangs, even outside the walls. What’s more, the Russian Mafia, the Estonian crime rings, not to mention the Naser Gang-we all know them-and the fuckin’ Polacks with their illegal Benz import have cut into large parts of the market. What’s happened?”