Kate ordered a pizza and a bottle of orange Jaffa, her favorite Finnish soft drink. The salt and sugar in the pizza and pop did her a world of good. She was embarrassed and felt guilty, but for no tangible reason. She remembered little and wasn’t certain if she should be mortified at her behavior last night or not. She had discovered morkkis, an integral part of the Finnish hangover. A state of usually irrational moral guilt inherent to the Finnish consciousness. I told her it was OK, I was sure she did nothing embarrassing, just got loaded. This usually helps people recover from morkkis. I chilled out with her for a while, then went to meet Jyri.
26
I cross the street, go back the way I came, toward the clock over the entrance at Stockmann. “Gimme Shelter” is still stuck in my head. The pretty girls have finished their ice cream, but they continue to bop, bebop and rebop, and once again, the syncopation of their jam box techno and the Stones annoys me. The Gypsy beggar remains prostrate.
So, between January twenty-sixth, the day I asked Kate if I could become a more effective cop, a man empowered to truly help people by bending the rules of engagement in the war against crime, and today, May second, I’ve gone from, if not a paragon of virtue, a cop who mostly observed the rules governing my profession, to a man who has no qualms about breaking any law, committing almost any act, to achieve my own ends. I had become a changeling.
I don’t care. My transformation has brought me only success and wealth. Jyri’s invitation to hang out with his pals means it has also brought me acclaim. I’m sure he doesn’t brag about me as a thief. He doubtless describes me as his protégé, but as a tough guy who bends the rules and who has single-handedly done what an entire metropolitan police department had failed to do, and turned Helsinki into the only narcotics-free big city in the world since Las Vegas during its golden years, when the punishment for dealing dope was a bullet in the head and a sandy burial in the desert.
And also, doubtless, he invented a fiction about the source of the monies accrued—he would have admitted only to a fraction of the fortune accumulated—and claimed it had all gone to campaign funds and worthy causes.
I make calls, check crime reports. Helsinki continues to go to hell. White and black youth gangs attack each other with knives, lead pipes, sticks, whatever crude weapons are at hand. Women, both black and white, are raped. Especially Finnish white women converted to Islam, referred to as nigger-fucking traitors. Helsinki suffers a barrage of race-related incidents. At public transportation stops, name calling and spitting is the norm. Little kids get no exemption. The emergency room at Meilahti Hospital is overrun with casualties requiring set bones and stitches.
The media covers up the incidents. They’re unreported or downplayed, maintaining a fa?ade of racial harmony. Helsinki? A race problem? Nope, not us. Here in the Nordic Mecca, we live in brotherly paradise. Welcome to the City of Love.
I call Milo and Sweetness, tell them we’re to be on parade for the powers that be. Bring the girls. Wear your .45s in shoulder holsters. Wear jackets over them as if to hide them. Make an impression.
The babysitter shows up at eight thirty sharp. She’s a pleasant older woman in a floral dress and her gray hair done up in a bun, as if she’s been typecast for the role.