I sit down with him. “Sure.”
He fetches me a glass and pours me a drink. We nurse our vodkas and share a comfortable silence, something I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.
My phone rings. It’s Jari. “Hi, little brother,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to you since we left your house in a rush. I’m sorry about that.”
It amuses me when he calls me “little brother,” since I’m almost twice his size. “It’s okay, just a little culture clash. It happens.”
“I wanted to check on you. How’s your migraine situation?”
“Better today. Kate gave me a healthy baby girl this morning, both of them are fine, and my headache went away.”
“You have a baby! Wow! Congratulations! You busy right now?”
“No. Kate’s asleep and I’m at home.”
“Then we’re going to have your varpajaiset. ”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
I smile and sigh. “Okay, then meet me at Hilpea Hauki and we’ll do it.”
His voice is full of glee. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”
We hang up.
“Come on, John,” I say. “We’re going out. It’s time for my var pajaiset.”
“Varpajaiset?”
“Varpaat are toes. A varpajaiset is a party. When a man becomes a father, he’s supposed to have a drink for every toe his child was born with. So I’m required to have ten drinks. I suspect you will, too. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”
We tramp through the snow over to Hilpea Hauki and sit at a corner table. My phone rings, it’s Milo. “Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov,” he says. “That’s fucking awesome. You have to tell me the story.”
“Not now,” I say. “Kate had a baby girl, and I’m having a varpajaiset at Hauki.”
“That’s great news,” he says. “Can I come?”
His voice is so full of enthusiasm that I can’t say no. “Sure. Come over. Buy me a drink.”
Within a few minutes, Jari and Milo are sitting with us, and our table is covered with beers and shots. Apparently, I’m expected to exceed the ten-drink quota. The mood is gregarious, the jokes are silly.
“All right, Milo,” I say, “now I’m ready. Tell me the story behind your Hitler Youth dagger.”
He beams, thrilled that I asked him to tell a story. “My great-grandpa took it off a Russian soldier in the war. Which means he must have taken it off a German soldier.”
He pauses, once again attempting to build anticipation.
“That’s vaguely interesting,” I say, “but I was expecting something more.”
“I wanted to make you ask. I’m coming to the good part. Great-Grandpa gave it to Grandpa, who gave it to Dad, who had a weakness for women. One day, Mom decided she had enough and stabbed Dad with it.”
Milo grins. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or not. “Did she kill him?”
“No, she stuck it through his leg and ripped a seven-inch gouge in it. He nearly lost the leg, missed weeks of work. Mom got her point across. He quit cheating on her after that.”
A good story. It gets a laugh out of me. We toast to Kate, and all of us knock back another kossu.
My phone rings again. It’s Jyri Ivalo. He also wants to hear about Arvid capping Filippov, and he wants to know if I’ve got my hands on the evidence against him and certain prominent others. I tell him I’m celebrating the birth of my child, and if he wants to talk to me, he has to come to Hauki and buy me drinks to earn the privilege. I hang up on him, as he’s so often done to me.
Milo slams his shot glass onto the table to get our attention. He doesn’t have enough body weight to have a good head for alcohol, and his eyes glisten. He claps a hand on my shoulder. He raises his voice, as drunks tend to. “I admire this guy,” he says. “I killed a man this week, and it’s eating me up. I feel fucking awful. Kari, you don’t seem to feel anything about it. You tough motherfucker.”