“Call now and ask her. Promise her that I’ll arrange a dependable babysitter.”
I move a couple of steps and turn away from him for privacy. Kate has a terrible hangover and I expect a firm no. I extend the invitation and mention that she’ll meet people that might be valuable contacts in her work as general manager at Hotel K?mp.
She takes me aback, agrees without protest. “Sure,” she said, “sounds great. Thank him for me and tell him I’ll look forward to it.” She pauses. “Can I bring Aino along?” Her assistant restaurant manager, new best friend, and object of my desire.
Kate was puking this morning. Enthusiasm? We ring off.
I turn back to Jyri. “We’d love to. OK if she brings a friend? She’s good-looking,” I add, because I know *-crazed Jyri would crawl through hell soaked in gasoline for the chance to even glimpse a beautiful woman.
He smiles, as if truly pleased. “Of course. Great. Invite your team as well, and tell them they’re welcome to bring dates if they like. The babysitter will be at your place at eight thirty.” He turns on his heel and his brisk walk, probably due to the hundred and fifty K in his hands, says he’s on cloud nine.
The purpose of the dossiers is to provide info for me and my black-ops crew to target criminals, so we can rip off their money, drugs and guns.
I can remember, almost word for word, the conversation Jyri and I had during the Filippov investigation, when he talked me into heading up a black-ops unit while begging me to suppress evidence against him.
“I’ll give you anything you want,” he said, “just make this go away.”
“That’s a problem for you,” I said. “I don’t want anything.”
He leaned toward me. “I’ve been thinking of putting together a black-ops unit. Anti–organized crime. The mandate is to go after criminals by whatever means necessary, to use their own methods against them. No holds barred.”
“We already have such a group. Our secret police. They’re called SUPO.”
“There’s a problem with SUPO,” he said. “They don’t work for me.”
“So you want to be some kind of Finnish J. Edgar Hoover?”
“Yes.”
I laughed in his face. “No.”
“You think I don’t know you, but I do,” he said. “You suffer from a pathetic need to protect the innocent. You think you’re some kind of a Good Samaritan in a white hat, but you’re not. You’re a rubber-hose cop, a thug and a killer, as you’ve demonstrated. You’ll do anything to get what you view as justice. Let me give you an example of how badly we need this kind of unit. Only seven cops in Helsinki investigate human trafficking full-time. Here in Finland and the surrounding countries, thousands of gangsters orchestrate the buying and selling of young girls, and hundreds or thousands of those girls pass through this nation every year, most on their way to their destination countries. With our limited law enforcement resources, we can’t possibly make even a dent in the human slavery industry. Picture all those victims and how many of their bright shiny faces you could save from abject misery, abuse and terror, from being raped time and time again.”
He sensed my interest.
“Milo”—referring to my partner—“knows black-bag work,” he said. “He’s a genius with great computer skills, and he’s also a killer. He could be your first team-member acquisition. Then you can staff it with whoever you want.”
Milo learned black-bag work because he’s a voyeur. He B&Es homes just to go through people’s things. He’s a violent nutcase with an IQ of a hundred seventy-two.
“I’m not killing anybody,” I said.
“I’ll leave that to your discretion.”
“Milo is a loose cannon and a liability.”
“Milo is a nervous puppy. He needs a firm hand to guide him. Yours.”