“Yours too.” He rings off.
Next, Milo. “We’re going on a road trip tomorrow. Bring that nuclear arsenal or whatever it is you bought. Moreau is going to teach you to use it.”
“Cool! Where are we going?”
“Different places around the Turku area. We’ll probably stay the night, maybe at my brother’s place. And Mirjami is invited.”
“I don’t know if she can come. She might have to work.”
I recall that Mirjami told Milo she loves me. She pays me no undue attention. I find this strange. “Tell her if her love for me is true, to trade out shifts or something. Kate is coming in a separate car, and it will suck for her if she’s alone. In fact, she probably wouldn’t come and be disappointed.”
Milo says he’ll try. I tell him to be here at eight.
I make a similar call to Sweetness, and invite Jenna. It’s no problem for her, she doesn’t go to school and she’s unemployed. The girls are too young and immature to become close friends with Kate, but she seems to enjoy their company, at least on a superficial level.
I save the worst for last and call Jaakko Pahkala. I have a love-hate relationship with him. I love hating him. His little rat face, his squeaky voice, his attitude—everything about him annoys me. Pre–brain op, I would have gotten an adrenaline hate surge just by picking up the phone to call him. He refers to himself as a journalist, and is employed as such on a freelance basis by our most yellow skank rags. He loves skank. Lives and breathes skank. The uglier and more loathsome, the more he reveres it. Also, he’s petty and malicious. He once tried to have me fired because I refused him an interview.
Jaakko is like vile medicine. Sometimes it’s required, and in the same vein, at times he has his uses. This is one of them.
He answers his phone. “Inspector Vaara, this is an unexpected pleasure. How may I be of service to you?”
“I’m starting a new publication,” I say, “and I’d like you to be editor.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“‘Editor’ is euphemistic. You’re the sole employee, the publication date is uncertain, and you’re not to let anyone know the publication exists until I authorize you to do so.”
“And the nature of this publication?”
“We’re going to revamp the classic Be Happy.”
“The best magazine ever made in Finland,” he says. “I’m honored.”
I describe it as the minister defined it to me, but with my own spin on it. “It’s to be a hate rag under the guise of a scandal sheet. For instance, Lisbet S?derlund. You’ll paint her black, invent vicious details concerning her private life, and leave the reader feeling she was a traitorous slut who deserved to die.”
“My, my, Inspector. That is the skankiest skank that ever skanked a skank.”
“You’ll go after blacks, Jews and Muslims. Blame all our social ills on them. Picture 1920s American KKK hate materials, or pre-war German and French hate propaganda. I assume you’re familiar with those styles. As with the old Be Happy, do some career destruction. It’s OK if we get sued, but stay just on the side of the line where we don’t have criminal charges pressed against us for incitement of racial violence.”
“My familiarity with those styles would be better termed expertise,” he says. “I have a large personal collection of the literature.”
“In your first mock-up issue, go after the leading center and left political figures, as well as celebs. A lot of drug-and-alcohol-problem material, nympho and fag accusations, with the requisite images.”
“I have the latest version of Photoshop,” Jaakko says.
“At the same time, however, you’ll be collecting an equal amount of dirt on the right wing, Kokoomus, and Real Finns. You’ll keep these files secret for now. And of course you’ll have copies of everything for me. Everything.”
“Inspector, are you our new minister of propaganda?”
“You may consider me so.”
“And my compensation?”
“Two thousand euros a month.”