The dark circles around his eyes furrowed and he wanted to argue, but he didn’t want to ruin our fun today. Arvid handed it back to him. He put it back in his jacket and hung it up in the closet.
He came back and handed each of us a passbook and paperwork from a bank in Bermuda. Arvid, Kate, and Anu got them, too. “We all have offshore accounts now,” he said. “I put seventy-five thousand in each of them to start. Go to your accounts online and change your passwords and you’re all set.”
I thought Kate might be distressed by killing machines and repositories for stolen money. Instead, she seemed fascinated. “Why Bermuda?” she asked.
“Because I didn’t have to leave the country,” Milo said. “Opening an offshore account in Bermuda doesn’t require you to be present at the bank. An account can be opened by mail.”
Milo was on a roll and about to embark on one of his biblical length rants, citing the mandate I had given him to be in charge of acquisitions. Kate escaped, went to the kitchen to cut a cake she had made for the party. He ranted and words zinged through my head: window mounts, suction cups on glass, audio surveillance, wireless video, wireless audio, Bluetooth stealthware.
Just when I thought he would never stop, he asked us to look out the window. He pointed out two vehicles. “Those are ours,” he said. The first was a Crown Victoria.
I felt my eyes roll. “Oh, Milo, not a Crown Vic.”
The cliché of all law enforcement vehicles. Aside from actually being used by many American police departments, Crown Vics have also appeared in dozens or even hundreds of films and TV shows as cop cars. It’s an embarrassment.
Milo laughed so hard that he held his belly, trying to stop. “I know,” he said, “but I couldn’t help myself. This isn’t just any Crown Vic. This is the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. It’s got heavy-duty parts and two hundred and fifty horses under the hood, plus a higher idle, and the transmission has more aggressive shift points and is built for firmer and harder shifts. For God’s sake, it’s even got Kevlar-lined doors for gunfights. It’s only got twenty thousand miles on it, and I got it for four thousand euros. Besides, I’m going to be the one driving it most of the time.”
I conceded defeat.
“Maybe everybody will like this one better.” He handed Sweetness a set of keys. “You look like Gulliver in Lilliput driving around in your little worn-out shitbox.”
He pointed down at a good-looking SUV. “Behold the 2008 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara. It’s got four-wheel drive and four doors—I thought that would be handy for putting in Anu’s car seat—and an extra-wide wheelbase. And it’s a convertible, fun with summer coming on. It’s high on safety features: an electronic stability program and seat-mounted side air bags, a navigation system and Sirius satellite radio. And a MyGIG multimedia entertainment system to make driving fun.”
Sweetness crossed his arms and furrowed his brow, flummoxed, as if this were some sort of trick, afraid Milo was teasing him. “This is for me?”
“It belongs to the group, but I bought it for you to keep and be the primary driver, and I registered it under your name. So yeah, it’s yours.”
Still perplexed, he said, “Thank you.”
Milo didn’t acknowledge him. He turned toward me. “You like your Saab, so I didn’t get you a vehicle,” and then to Kate, “and I didn’t know if you drive or want a car.”
“I have a license, but I just use public transportation, since you really don’t need a car in Helsinki anyway.” She pointed at the small mountain of packages that still lay on the floor. “Should we take a break for cake and coffee?”
I said, “That guy I mentioned will be here in a little while. Let’s wait on him.”
Milo’s face said Goody goody gumdrop, now my circus won’t have an intermission. Four big and heavy boxes were in a stack. “These are care packages for all of us guys. They’re all the same.”
“Me too?” Arvid asked.
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“You’re one of us, one of the team.”