Kate and I often shop in the S-market. It’s interesting how quickly we adjust to things in life. The druggies don’t harass us, and so become invisible unless they fight or cause scenes. Like much of Helsinki, normal middle-class inhabitants, even the well-to-do, exist side by side with the scum.
A bank ATM is attached to the wall beside the S-market. A little squab bones of a girl inserted her card. The machine spit her card out instead of money. A young man in a black bomber jacket with a bloated alcoholic face slapped her. I told Sweetness to pull into the square. We watched.
Squab Bones was underdressed in a tattered coat, had little ears and a low forehead, small pointy teeth inside a scarlet smear of a mouth, sores on her face. Crystal meth or heroin had whittled her down to nothing. Best guess, she buys whatever it is from him. The man looked simian and his mean eyes were glazed. She tried to speak. He grabbed her by her short dirty hair and jerked her head to and fro. She slipped, fell to the ice, started to sob.
Something should be done. I couldn’t do it myself. “Sweetness,” I said, “go over there and punch that guy in the head. Hurt him.”
“OK, pomo.”
He reached in his coat pocket and took out a flask, had a pull from it and put it away. I checked my watch. Ten forty-five a.m.
Sweetness meandered over, the simian paid no heed. I rolled my window down to listen. Sweetness hit him with a right hook, lightning fast. So fast that at his size, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Simian’s teeth were clenched in anger. I heard Simian’s jaws both crack broken. His mouth hung funny. Blood shot out of his mouth like a burst water balloon.
Somehow, he kept on his feet. Teeth flew. He spat bridgework. He gagged on a tooth he swallowed that went down the wrong way. He hacked and coughed it out of his airway, spit it out, started crying, and the expression on his face asked Sweetness why. He leaned over, put his hands on his knees. Blood drooled from his mouth in a thin stream and puddled on the ice at his feet.
Sweetness hit him again. A straight jab angled down to the face. Simian’s front teeth broke out. His nose crunched flat. He flew backward, hit the ATM and collapsed.
I called out. “Go through his pockets.”
Sweetness took his wallet. Dope in eight-ball packets. A switchblade.
“Any money in the wallet?” I asked.
He pulled it out and counted. “Three hundred and sixty.”
“Give it all to the girl except the switchblade and the wallet. Throw it in a trash can.” To force Simian to go to the trouble and expense of replacing the cards and ID.
Squab Bones snatched the drugs and money and, dope greedy, didn’t bother to say thank you. Wounded animals are like that. She ran into the subway station.
Sweetness got behind the wheel, hit the flask again and we pulled out.
“You’re fast,” I said. “Have you trained?”
He grinned. “Naw, just another of my natural gifts.”
We rode in silence for a while. Something rolled back and forth under my seat. Judging by the sound, it was a bottle of booze to refill the flask throughout the day.
“How much do you drink?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t keep track.”
“Been drinking hard long?”
“More since my brother got killed. It’s not so much that I like to get drunk. It just steadies my nerves.”