James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

“Sorry,” I say, “I just can’t see us doing it.”

“Pomo,” Sweetness says, “I’m with Milo on this one.”

These two have never put me on the defensive before. “When did this become a democracy? Sweetness, you call me pomo -boss-doesn’t that imply I make all final decisions?”

Milo gulps beer, now hot and ruined, says “Yuck,” and goes out to get a cold one. He sits down beside me. “We don’t want to usurp your authority or make you angry, but you’re the boss in work-related matters. When it comes to protecting ourselves and the people we love, we get a say in what happens. I won’t ask you to participate if you’re dead set against it, but this is going to happen.”

I think of Kate. My extra-legal activities were the spark behind her emotional trauma. If she found out I murdered someone, or was even an accessory to murder-which, having heard the plan, I de facto am-it could end our marriage and make her even sicker. I have to balance this against stopping further attempts on her life. I explain this to the others.

Milo replies, “The manifesto, the guns and possibly explosives will take us a couple weeks to get together. You have time to think about it. And as far as Kate goes, if you decide to take part, just hide it from her. You would anyway.”

“Let’s let it go for now,” I say. “We’ll move to Arvid’s place, and in the meantime, keep me posted on the progress you make. Deal?”

“Deal,” he says.

“Anybody have any ideas about how to find Loviise Tamm?” I ask.

“The way I understand it,” Milo says, “she was snatched by Russian diplomats. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“So they probably either took her to the embassy or to another whorehouse. Another whorehouse seems way more likely to me.”

“Me too,” I say.

“And Russian diplomats are overseeing the operation?”

“Well, I think most aren’t really diplomats, but spies here with diplomatic passports for cover. With some hired help from a few Finns, according to the files we pulled out of their electronics.”

“Then we need to tail the people working at the embassy until they lead us to the right whorehouse. The problem, of course, is that there are twenty or thirty of them, and only three of us. It would be fucking helpful if we had the manpower of the police department for this.”

I lean up against the wall and pull one knee up, let the bad one lie flat on the bench. The heat is easing the pain in both my knee and my jaw.

“Let me think about this,” Sweetness says, and fetches fresh beers for all of us.

He sits down and says, “I’m hesitant to suggest this, but I could call my cousin, Ai.”

“Ai,” Milo says, “as in what people yell when they’re in pain?”

“Yeah.”

“Why is he called Ai?” I ask.

“He’s my cousin, my dad’s sister’s kid, sixteen now. My aunt was a bad drunk and drug user, turned really mean when she was high. When Ai was about three, he tried to take a cookie or something, and she smashed his hand when he reached for it. She hit him hard with an iron skillet and broke bones in his hand and wrist. He screamed ‘Ai’ and started to cry, which made her madder. She said she’d give him something to really cry about, and she stuck his hand in a pot of boiling water and held it there. Dad went over there about three days later and Ai hadn’t been given any medical treatment. The skin peeled off like a glove almost to his elbow. Dad didn’t want his sister to go to jail, so he just took Ai home, put burn ointment on it and wrapped it up till it healed. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“His hand is withered and all the nerves in it are dead. Plus, it always looks worse than it is because he puts cigarettes out on it to impress people and make them think he’s tough. Which he is.”

“That still doesn’t explain why he’s called Ai,” Milo says.

“I told you his mom was fucking mean. She started calling him that to make fun of him. She would actually tell the story when she was drunk and stoned, like it was funny, and the nickname stuck. Now he doesn’t like to be called anything else. Like it’s some kind of badge of honor.”

“You said ‘was’ mean. Where is she now?”

“Disappeared three years ago. Ai says she went out to score and never came back. I think the truth is he killed her. He’s meaner than she was. He’s like the fucking devil, that’s why I hesitate to call him. She was on permanent disability because of her substance abuse, and Ai lives alone, has since she disappeared. I think nobody ever reported her as a missing person and he lives off her social security pension.”

“What about his father?” I ask.

“He doesn’t know who his father is.”

“And he can help us how?”

“He runs a gang in East Helsinki. They would follow the Russians for us, if the price was right.”

Jesus, what a story. “What the fuck,” I say. “Give the kid a call. It might be interesting to do business with a teenage devil incarnate.”

Sweetness secures an invitation to visit Ai for us. Despite Sweetness’s assurances that he’s in fit condition to drive, we’re all drunk, and I insist that we take a taxi. It pulls up in front of a building that screams government subsidized. A place to warehouse refugees, dopers, drunks, the mentally ill, and some people who just suffer the misfortune of being poor.

Garbage is strewn around the door. Said door has the glass knocked out of it. Little kids are playing out front, despite it being past midnight. I notice they’re all white. Most often, quite a few of the tenants in these places are black immigrants. The government likes to dump them in shitholes like this. Usually, the government will control a portion of the apartments in a building like this, and the rest will be privately owned.

We take an elevator to the third floor and ring the buzzer. A teenage boy opens the door. “I’m not fond of cops,” he says. “Your ID cards.”

He holds out a hand, gnarled, withered and scabbed. His small and ring fingers are bent and twisted. He puts a cigarette out on his palm, flicks the butt into the hallway and keeps his hand out, faceup. The stench of burnt flesh sickens me. No doubt his intention. It’s apparent that the hand has little or no mobility. Seeing our police cards was a command, not a request. We lay them down on his dead hand. He inspects them with the other hand and gives them back. “Come in.”

We enter, and other than being polluted with blue cigarette smoke so thick it makes my eyes water, the place is immaculately clean. And well-decorated. About a dozen young men, aged about fourteen to early twenties, are hanging around, most of them sitting on the floor, almost all smoking and sucking on beers or ciders. They wear the white-trash uniform: black boots or sneakers, black jeans, hoodies, some of them with the hoods over their heads, some with baseball caps cocked at forty-five-degree angles. These are the kinds of kids I loathe.

Ai, however, doesn’t fit in this picture. He’s dressed in neat, preppy clothes. His Lacoste shirt is blue and pressed. He appears to be aged a hundred years old, the oldest teenager I’ve ever seen. His face isn’t scarred, it’s ravaged by life. He sits in a leather wingback chair, which obviously serves as his throne, and lays his forearms and hands on the armrests. For lack of anywhere to sit, the three of us stand in front of him, like petitioners to a king.

“No hello for your cousin?” Sweetness asks.

Dismissive, Ai says, “Hello, Cousin.”

He turns his attention to me. “State your business.” So he noticed that I’m ranking officer here from my police card. That escapes a lot of people.