James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

So a captain in the secret police is now an errand boy for an ultra-rich maniac. I look at Sweetness. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably safer to kill them, but on the other hand, they’re important men, the investigation would drag on for months, and who knows how it will turn out in the end. Like the man said, we’ve made enemies. We might get sold out somewhere down the line, end up in prison ourselves.”

“True. And in practical terms, we can always kill them later, but we can’t un-kill them if we do it now.” I turn to them. “Keep the wolves at bay and I let you live. For now.”

Osmo swigs vodka and chases it with beer. Now he feels confident that he’ll live through this, and he’s deadening his nerves. “Here’s what happened,” he says. “Pitkanen had a run of shit luck. First your boy trashed his face, then his eighteen-year-old girlfriend got pregnant. She went to his wife, who left him and took their two boys with her. His girlfriend ditched him, too. Since it all started with his face getting fucked, you and your crew symbolize all the bad shit that happened in a short time. He’s gone a little bonkers and I sent him to placate Saukko, but mostly to get him away from me and give him something to do while he pulls himself back together. I can pull his reins, get him out of your hair.”

I push the silenced muzzle up against Osmo’s temple. “If you don’t manage to keep your word, the consequences will be dire.”

Osmo and Jyri both agree to a truce with me. Since said truce is made under extreme duress, I have no faith in their promises, but the fear factor involved might tame them. I tell them to stand still and suck vodka. A Colt in one hand and a cane in the other leaves me no free hands. Sweetness lifts prints from the most obvious places. Sweetness isn’t a cop, but I’ve taught him this skill. If Osmo and Jyri try something stupid, I’m going to shoot them, and I want to do it myself, not push more killings on Sweetness.

Our backs are to the front door and I don’t realize anyone has entered until I hear it squeak when they close it behind them. Three men have guns trained on us. Small-bore handguns. Sweetness and I are about five feet apart. They all three look like nobody, or anybody. Spies, trained to blend in anywhere. I raise my pistol and point it at the head of one spook. In turn, he presses the muzzle of his pistol into my chest. Sweetness’s guns are holstered. A spook puts a pistol to his head. The third lowers his weapon and says, in English, “We came for the body and the girl, not to kill you. We’ll take what we came for and leave.” He looks at me. “Put down your weapon and tell me where the girl is.”

His promise doesn’t inspire my confidence. I lower my arm but don’t relinquish my weapon or answer his question. I look at Sweetness. He’s been involved in a lot of violence, but never in an honest-to-God gunfight. I have. I see the look on his face and read his mind. He’s going to make a play as soon as he thinks he has a chance of winning. He’ll lose.

The speaker of the three seems satisfied that the situation is under control and does a walk-through. He comes out with Loviise slung over his shoulder. She doesn’t resist, just looks at me through tears that say I betrayed her. He carries her out of the apartment. Fuck, I can’t have found her just to lose her again. What the hell is their motivation? Her future was to be a low-rent hooker. They have no money invested in her.

No way would they go to such extreme lengths out of pride and some ridiculous adherence to gangster code, not when the consequence could involve killing cops. Diplomatic passports or not, it would bring the shit storm of all shit storms down on their heads, and they know it.

I move my arm a fraction and shoot my assailant in the foot. He fires as he goes down and shoots me in the chest. God bless Kevlar. He goes to one knee, I shoot him in the top of his head. It bursts like an egg. Blood, skull fragments and brains splat on the floor behind him.

Sweetness uses the distraction to move his head away from the muzzle pointed at it. He starts to draw. It all goes slow motion for me. I know he’ll be dead in under a second. I shoot the other spook in the temple. His brains shower the couch, corpse and wall behind it.

“Go!” I yell. “Get the goddamned girl back.”

Sweetness sprints out of the apartment.

Jyri’s eyes show wild panic. “We’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”

“Empty the spooks’ pockets for me,” I say.

He rifles through them fast, tries to give me wallets, keys, phones and passports. I make him dump it all in my fishing tackle box and carry it for me.

“Let’s go,” I say. “Together. I move slow. Take the elevator with me. Run, and I’ll shoot you, too.”

We exit the building and find Sweetness alone. “I’m sorry,” he says. “He was too fast. A driver was waiting with the car running. I watched it pull away.”

The bullet to my chest didn’t even hurt much. He’d used a little 9mm pistol. I’ve learned a few things from Milo’s technical lectures and diatribes. The shot wasn’t even as loud as a firecracker. He shot me with a subsonic bullet. It didn’t break the sound barrier. The bullet packs enough punch to enter a skull but not enough to exit it, just bounces around inside the head ripping up brains. No muss, no fuss. An executioner’s rig.

Osmo still has a vodka bottle in his hand. Sweetness grabs it from him and takes a long drink. I tell them they’ll be hearing from me and they can walk home. My attempts at pacifism are a failure. Living in solitude in an effort to develop a Gandhi-like inner peace just didn’t work out for me.

“What about the corpses upstairs?” Sweetness asks.

“The spooks were already going to dispose of one body,” I answer. “I doubt if dealing with two more is much of an additional inconvenience for them.”

After so much effort, peril and death, the night is an utter failure. Loviise was in dire straits and terrible danger before I set out to save her. Now powerful people who hate me and know that I want to give her life back to her own her again. Surely, whatever ravages they intended to heap upon her before my interference will be increased tenfold as a way of getting back at me. I’m angry, dispirited and awash in the self-pity of failure.

We arrive at Filippov Construction at a quarter after seven a.m. I’m so tired I can barely hold my head up. We destroyed the locks the first time we broke into this place, months ago. I had new ones installed and have my own key. The bodyguard in the back of the Wrangler has yet to make a sound. Saukko has the best of everything. I’m certain his personal security is no exception, and the man we took prisoner is viper dangerous. Sweetness pulls away the tarp he lies under and blindfolds him. I keep my gun ready. Sweetness cuts the zip-lock shackles from around his ankles so he can walk inside. We have to wait. His legs have gone numb in the cramped position and he can’t manage it for a few minutes.

We take him inside a garage where tools are stored and maintenance on vehicles pulled. Sweetness sets a chair in the middle of the room, then zip-lock-shackles him to it. The chair is wooden. His strength is obvious. His forearms are as thick as sturdy oak tree limbs. He could burst the chair to splinters if he wished. I whisper to Sweetness, ask him to add shackles up and down his arms and legs so he can’t get leverage for a powerful muscle contraction. We keep silent, work by way of motioning to each other, to build fright. Scary things happen in the dark, in the silence.

I fill the two syringes with Stolichnaya and set out some props. A vehicle battery and cables. A chain saw. Bolt cutters. A burlap bag. Sweetness dumps a bucket of water over his head, refills it and sets it on the floor. The garage has a hydraulic lift for vehicle repairs. We chain his chair to it and lift him off the floor. I would cut his clothes off him-people are so much more vulnerable naked-but I intend to return him later, have nothing against him and don’t want to humiliate him by dumping him naked on the street. My knee throbs like hell. I drag a comfortable chair with wheels out of the office and sit down. Sweetness takes off his blindfold.