I check received calls in my cell phone and their times, and find the number that must belong to Securitas Arska. I call him and tell him I’m looking for a speed-head that hangs out in Roskapankki and repeat John’s description of him. Arska knows who he is. I offer Arska a hundred euros if, when he sees the speed-head again, he’ll detain him and call me. Arska agrees.
I pull the car out into traffic and give John instructions. “I want you out of the country as soon as you can do it without rousing Kate’s suspicion about why you’re leaving earlier than planned. Until then, I’ll keep booze in the house for you. Hide your drinking from Mary and Kate. And no drugs. I want you on your best behavior.”
“Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”
Migraine screams deafening loud. I light cigarette number four.
“Kari, I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me,” he says, “and I’m sorry that I’ve put you in such an awkward position.”
He’s sincere. It makes it hard for me to hate him.
I wear army combat boots in the winter, and have since I was in the service. They’re warm, comfortable and durable. I take John to an Army-Navy store near our house, so he can get a pair for himself, give him directions to the nearest liquor store, tell him to get semi-tanked and go home.
25
I park on VAasankatu, in front of a shut-down Thai massage parlor. It’s snowing hard now. My knee throbs along with my head, and I limp toward Hilpea Hauki. I hear a dull creak over my head and look up. Heavy snow on a slanted rooftop breaks free and avalanches toward me. I press up against a building. The avalanche passes in front of my face, lands with a thud and forms a three-foot-high snow dump at my feet. I wade through it and go on to Hilpea Hauki.
Milo got here before me. He’s sitting on a couch in a rear corner nook, away from other customers, a cup of coffee in front of him. The bar is almost empty. “I’d rather have beer,” he says, “but I’ve been up for more than thirty hours. It’s hard to stay awake.”
I get coffee, too, and sit in an armchair at a right angle to him. “Why haven’t you slept?” I ask.
“I’ll get to it.”
“So what’s this secret information you can’t tell me at work?”
His eyes are red slits. The black circles around them have that excited dull shine. “I said I’ll get to it.”
He’s going to start with the story of creation and work his way forward through the history of the world before he gets to the point. He’s having fun and he’s exhausted. I give him latitude, sink back in my chair and wait.
“What do you want to do with the Silver Dollar case?” he asks.
“I want to send the bouncers to jail for involuntary manslaughter, but it won’t happen. Securitas isn’t guilty of anything. We should turn them loose.”
“They could have tried to stop it, to make the bouncers put Taisto Polvinen down.”
“Not stopping isn’t the same as doing.”
He shifts in his seat. His movements are jerky from exhaustion. “That rent-a-cop girl is a fucking cunt,” he says.
“For a man of your intelligence,” I say, “you have a limited vocabulary.”
Then I get it. His tough talk is a facade. “I think of her as ‘gum-chewing bitch cow,’” I say. “She speaks with this annoying Helsinki teenager accent. When I interrogated her, she repeated the questions back at me and made fun of my northern accent. I don’t care for being mocked. I asked her where she’s from and she said Helsinki, which was a sham. I called her a liar and told her I could tell she’s from the Kotka area. She called me a cocksucker.”
“It’s funny how so many people in Helsinki are from somewhere else,” Milo says, “but pretend they’re from here.”
“They want everyone to think they’re big-city sophisticates, instead of small-town rednecks. It’s the Finnish innate sense of shame. I think some of us feel guilty just for having been born.”
“Yeah, we can be like that,” he says. “We can hold the bouncers until Friday without charging them. Let’s leave them in the tank for a couple more days just to fuck with them. Maybe the prosecutor can make a case out of it later.”