I DROVE FOR THE FIRST TIME since my surgeries. It was no problem. My knee was more than strong enough to depress the pedals without bad pain. We took my Saab and located the Ford with the body in the trunk. Milo has master keys that fit almost any vehicle. He and Sweetness took it—I was trying to make them spend more time together—and I followed them to Filippov Construction, in an industrial park in Vantaa.
Milo picked the gate lock. Sweetness hit his flask. The area was surrounded with a heavy chain-link fence topped with two strands of barbed wire and lined on the inside with corrugated green fiberglass, so no one could see in.
We drove into a spacious asphalt lot filled with small-grade heavy equipment. A couple Bobcat dozers, a cherry picker, a forklift and other machines, along with industrial waste, yet to be disposed of, and containers to hold it. I stayed outside in the morning sunshine while Milo and Sweetness suited up.
They came out looking like mad scientists from a bad sci-fi movie, covered head to toe in everything from respirators and goggles to rubber aprons. They carried tools to open the barrels and set to work. They decided the best method was to dump the gangster in the empty barrel and then cover him over with acid.
They backed his Ford up to the tank and popped the trunk. Lifting him out was no easy task. He had been dead just long enough for rigor mortis to hit its peak. He was ironing-board stiff. Luck was with them, though, because he had lain in the trunk in a near fetal position. Otherwise, they would have had to break nearly every bone in his body to make him flexible enough to fit in the barrel. Luckily as well, Sweetness was with us. He lifted the gangster by himself from an awkward position, using only his arms, as there was no way to angle himself so he could get his back into it. Milo and I never could have accomplished it.
They opened the barrel of acid and the empty barrel, too. Sweetness fired up the forklift and, slow but sure, began drizzling sulfuric onto the gangster.
I wore no protection and leaned against my Saab, a good thirty-five yards away, to keep from breathing the fumes.
“I hope I haven’t interrupted you at an inopportune moment,” a quiet voice said to me.
It scared the shit out of me and I jumped.
Sweetness must have seen sudden movement in his peripheral vision. He kept cool and eased the forks back, stopped pouring. He gestured with a black-rubber-glove-covered hand to Milo and pointed in my direction. They came toward us, taking off their headgear and gloves as they moved. I saw Milo rip a hole in the back of his paper suit, and saw what was coming.
The man beside me waited without speaking. He wore a black cloth bomber jacket, jeans and boots. His head was shaved. He had large and ornate French paratrooper wings tattooed on the sides of his head. He looked like the devil incarnate.
Milo smiled as he neared, and reached into the hole in his paper suit. He drew down on Satan, but the man produced his pistol so fast that it seemed magical. “Deputy Dawg,” he said, “will never outdraw Yosemite Sam.”
Milo scowled and lowered his Glock, beaten. “Who are they?”
“American cartoon characters. I have a great affection for classic American cartoons. My favorites are Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.” Satan paused. “I don’t think guns are necessary,” he said. “Shall we put them away?” He made the first gesture by replacing his Beretta in the holster at the small of his back.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“A man of wealth and taste.” It was as if he’d read my mind and thought about Satan and came up with the Stones riff.
He introduced himself as Adrien Moreau. He was a French policeman, Finnish by birth, but spent fifteen years in the French Foreign Legion, hence his name. He’d exercised his right as a Legionnaire and taken French citizenship and identity. He asked if we could have a private conversation while my colleagues finished disposing of the body in the barrel of acid, and I agreed.
The looks on their faces said they didn’t like missing out on the conversation with this interesting new character, but they respected my wishes and went back to sloshing acid without complaint.
“I believe you and I could have a mutually beneficial relationship,” Moreau said.