James Thompson - Lucifer's tears

The muscles in his face twitch. “I’m broke. It’s twenty below and snowing. I don’t have any shoes or money to buy them. I don’t know what to do.”

“Let me think for a minute.” I light Marlboro number three and shut my eyes. The migraine issues an earsplitting shriek. I open my eyes again, look out the driver’s-side window and see a cash machine across the street. “Wait here,” I say.

I take two hundred and forty euros from the machine and give it to John. “Now you have money, you can maintain your pretense for Kate. Make it last. How bad are your drug and alcohol problems?”

His face goes sheepish. He massages his pale feet. “I can make it without the speed. I mostly use it to keep from getting sloppy when I binge-drink. I found a bottle of kookoo or whatever that vodka is called in your house this morning and took a couple hits to get rid of the shakes.”

“Did you do what I told you and lie to Kate about your outing yesterday?”

He holds his soaking socks up in front of the heater. It blows wet dog smell around the car. “I went to the National Museum. The prehistory of Finland archeological exhibit was incredible.”

“Today you went shopping,” I say. “You wanted some warmer boots and got some just like mine.”

“What happened to my Sedona Wests?”

“You’re a humanitarian. You gave them to UFF, our version of Goodwill. I’m going to fix this. What did the guy who ripped you off look like?”

“Tall. Thin. Stringy shoulder-length black hair. He wears a worn-out black leather biker jacket.”

I check received calls in my cell phone and their times, and find the number that must belong to Securitas Arska. I call him and tell him I’m looking for a speed-head that hangs out in Roskapankki and repeat John’s description of him. Arska knows who he is. I offer Arska a hundred euros if, when he sees the speed-head again, he’ll detain him and call me. Arska agrees.

I pull the car out into traffic and give John instructions. “I want you out of the country as soon as you can do it without rousing Kate’s suspicion about why you’re leaving earlier than planned. Until then, I’ll keep booze in the house for you. Hide your drinking from Mary and Kate. And no drugs. I want you on your best behavior.”

“Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

Migraine screams deafening loud. I light cigarette number four.

“Kari, I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me,” he says, “and I’m sorry that I’ve put you in such an awkward position.”

He’s sincere. It makes it hard for me to hate him.

I wear army combat boots in the winter, and have since I was in the service. They’re warm, comfortable and durable. I take John to an Army-Navy store near our house, so he can get a pair for himself, give him directions to the nearest liquor store, tell him to get semi-tanked and go home.

I park on VAasankatu, in front of a shut-down Thai massage parlor. It’s snowing hard now. My knee throbs along with my head, and I limp toward Hilpea Hauki. I hear a dull creak over my head and look up. Heavy snow on a slanted rooftop breaks free and avalanches toward me. I press up against a building. The avalanche passes in front of my face, lands with a thud and forms a three-foot-high snow dump at my feet. I wade through it and go on to Hilpea Hauki.

Milo got here before me. He’s sitting on a couch in a rear corner nook, away from other customers, a cup of coffee in front of him. The bar is almost empty. “I’d rather have beer,” he says, “but I’ve been up for more than thirty hours. It’s hard to stay awake.”

I get coffee, too, and sit in an armchair at a right angle to him. “Why haven’t you slept?” I ask.

“I’ll get to it.”

“So what’s this secret information you can’t tell me at work?”

His eyes are red slits. The black circles around them have that excited dull shine. “I said I’ll get to it.”

He’s going to start with the story of creation and work his way forward through the history of the world before he gets to the point. He’s having fun and he’s exhausted. I give him latitude, sink back in my chair and wait.

“What do you want to do with the Silver Dollar case?” he asks.

“I want to send the bouncers to jail for involuntary manslaughter, but it won’t happen. Securitas isn’t guilty of anything. We should turn them loose.”

“They could have tried to stop it, to make the bouncers put Taisto Polvinen down.”

“Not stopping isn’t the same as doing.”

He shifts in his seat. His movements are jerky from exhaustion. “That rent-a-cop girl is a fucking cunt,” he says.

“For a man of your intelligence,” I say, “you have a limited vocabulary.”

Then I get it. His tough talk is a facade. “I think of her as ‘gum-chewing bitch cow,’” I say. “She speaks with this annoying Helsinki teenager accent. When I interrogated her, she repeated the questions back at me and made fun of my northern accent. I don’t care for being mocked. I asked her where she’s from and she said Helsinki, which was a sham. I called her a liar and told her I could tell she’s from the Kotka area. She called me a cocksucker.”

“It’s funny how so many people in Helsinki are from somewhere else,” Milo says, “but pretend they’re from here.”

“They want everyone to think they’re big-city sophisticates, instead of small-town rednecks. It’s the Finnish innate sense of shame. I think some of us feel guilty just for having been born.”

“Yeah, we can be like that,” he says. “We can hold the bouncers until Friday without charging them. Let’s leave them in the tank for a couple more days just to fuck with them. Maybe the prosecutor can make a case out of it later.”

“Agreed.”

Milo finishes his coffee, goes to the bar and comes back with a refill, takes on a furtive smile. “I went back to Filippov Construction last night, then to Filippov’s house,” he says.

“Why?”

“To search trash cans,” Milo says. “I hoped he was stupid and threw out the gear he wore while he killed his wife. He wasn’t.”

“Filippov is an asshole, but missing taser or no, there isn’t any evidence to hang the murder on him. Not yet, anyway.”

My lack of confidence irks Milo. “And that’s why I’m trash-diving, to find evidence and hang him.”

I switch gears. “This thing I’m investigating for the national chief of police is taking more time than I thought. Can you do the legwork, background checks and basic stuff on the Filippov case for a day or two?”

“Sure. If you tell me about your top-secret mission.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Because explaining about Arvid would lead to a question about the reason behind my involvement, and the answer is Ukki. I’m not prepared to go there with Milo. “It’s just not your business.”

“You’re an annoying fuck,” he says.

“Funny,” I say, “I’ve had the same thought about you.”

This gives him pause. “I’ve been doing the Filippov case legwork,” he says, “which is why I was up all night.”

At long last, he approaches the reason for our clandestine liaison.

“Iisa Filippov’s life insurance policy makes her worth eight hundred and fifty thousand, dead,” he says.

“It’s not a pittance, but not exactly a fortune either these days.”

“This afternoon, I spent some time going through her phone, making calls, finding out who her friends are. Everyone spoke well of her.”

He must think his detailed account of routine police work builds my anticipation. It only makes me miss the days when you could smoke in bars. “Glad to hear it.”

“And neither her husband’s nor her own personal bank accounts show signs of abnormal transactions.”