While he worked on his electronics, I memorized the faces of the criminals entering the country aboard the Baltic Princess.
The ferries are cruise ships and offer all the amenities. The larger ones offer nightclubs and big stage-production entertainment. Cabins of various grades. Pubs. Shopping malls. A variety of restaurants, including fine dining. A buffet that offers at least fifty dishes. The main attraction is buying goods at Estonian prices. Alcohol, tobacco and luxury items, especially perfume and makeup, are offered at about half of Finnish rates. The trips are inexpensive, and the usual trip entails groups having parties at sea and drinking themselves into cut-rate comas.
They also transport about a hundred criminals a day from Tallinn into Helsinki. There is no airport-type inspection. The ferries bring thousands of people back and forth between the two cities every day, but have almost no security. The criminals bring drugs, guns, women pressed into prostitution. The border police safeguarding the harbors were recently cut by eleven percent, so they’re by and large lawless zones.
We took Milo’s Nissan Sentra. Not suitable for Sweetness the baby-faced ogre and a large man on crutches. My plan was to strong-arm a couple pimps, frame them up, stick them in a Finnish jail, and send their hookers back to Estonia.
It was a cold, blustery day, flurries of snow on and off. The full parking lot was filthy gray ice. We parked and leaned against the car. Milo and I smoked. Sweetness injected nuuska into the hole in his gum and took a hit from his flask. He offered it to us. We declined.
The ship landed. Passengers disembarked. Most bore heavy loads from shopping in Estonia. Some got in the taxi line. Some made for the tram. They were no good to us. We couldn’t shake them down in a crowd. Others made their way to the bar on the other side of the lot to keep the party rolling. I watched faces. For a while, it seemed I would be disappointed. No criminals from the rap jackets appeared. Then finally, when the ship was almost empty, two pimps with four girls headed toward the bar. All were well dressed, young, good-looking.
Sweetness held my arm to keep me from falling, and we met them in the center of the lot. We drew guns. We flashed police cards. The men swore, protested, threatened. The girls stayed quiet. Milo and Sweetness threw the men up against a car, kicked their legs apart, patted them down and took their passports. I took the passports from the girls, wrote down their names, DOBs and passport numbers so I could check up on them later, and gave their passports back to them. Two of them were underage.
Milo took the pimps’ flash rolls and handed them to me. I counted out about seven thousand euros, divided it into four, and gave it to the girls. Sweetness translated for me. “Go back to Estonia. Get out of Tallinn. If you don’t want to hook anymore, disappear. Get a job. This is your start-up money.”
They just stared at me. “Scram!” I shouted and Sweetness repeated, shouted, after me. They ran back to the terminal.
Milo took two pistols out of his coat and held them out to the pimps. They got the idea. Frame-up and jolt in Finnish prison. They refused to touch them.
We pressed Glocks into their chests. I said, “We put them in your hands while you’re alive or after you’re dead. Same difference.” Sweetness translated. They took the pistols, reluctant. We called the border police and handed the pimps off to them. We helped the girls. Strong-arm, extortion and frame-up. It seemed right. Mission accomplished.
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