Helsinki Blood (24 page)

B
ack at home, the others are just waking. I show off my catch of the day. Kate wrinkles her nose at it. Like many people not accustomed to country living, hunting or fishing, she prefers such foods from the grocery store, in Styrofoam and plastic wrap. I clean them, put a couple in the fridge for dinner and the others in the freezer chest. To my surprise and delight, I open the lid and find the freezer full of game meat, from rabbits to moose roasts, and vegetables that Arvid and Ritva must have grown last year. Kate doesn’t know how to cook game, but I do. It will save a fortune in restaurant bills and give me a pleasurable task to fill my time.

Sweetness tells me that he’s had a talk with Jenna. She’s bored and wants to go back to Helsinki. He doesn’t say it, but I can see he wants to go, too.

“The thing is,” he says, “you can’t drive. Kate needs to go to her therapy. You need help carrying things and to go places, like the doctor, once in a while. I don’t want to leave you in the lurch. You want me to take Jenna to town and then come back here?”

I mull it over. Young love. He’ll pine and drink even more without her here. I think they’re mostly unhappy because with Mirjami gone and Kate back, the dynamic has changed. We’re not living in party central anymore. The people who want us dead have other things to contend with at the moment. Only Jan Pitkänen remains an unknown quantity. Saukko could bring in a killer, but bullets will kill us just as dead in Porvoo as in Helsinki. And with Milo living on his boat, Kate and I would be here more or less alone. We’re relatively safe and need that alone time as a family.

“Kate can drive,” I say, “and she’s in pretty good shape now. We’ll rent a car. Go back to Helsinki and have some fun. If we need anything, I’ll call. Thank you for all you’ve done for us.”

He nods and smiles, I imagine relieved that he doesn’t have to force Jenna to make a choice between going to Helsinki alone, unable to spend every waking moment with him, or staying here with people twice her age or more and boring her to tears. “I’ll drop you at a rental place on the way,” he says.

They go to pack. I tell Kate they’re leaving. She doesn’t say she’s glad, but it’s obvious. She just went off a binge drunk, and watching them get sloshed every night, even if it doesn’t make her want to join them, may be conjuring up some bad memories for her.

Ace detective that I am, as Yelena Merkulova pointed out, surely I can find Natasha Polyanova. With the investigative prowess of Sherlock Holmes, I Google “Russian trade delegation” and “rental properties,” and it pops right up. They have an office in Eira. Her e-mail address and business phone number are on the website.

Sweetness comes downstairs to grab a beer, and I ask him if he still has all that cash he won cheating at poker. Mirjami never had the chance to take it.

“Yeah,” he says, “it’s in a paper bag in my backpack. Why?”

“You mind if I borrow a quarter million? I’ll transfer it back from my offshore account to yours.”

He pops the top of his beer with Kate’s new reindeer antler bottle opener. “Sure. What for?”

“Bribes. I don’t even know if I really need it.”

He brings it to me, I toss it in a desk drawer, and we go to rent a car. Sweetness and Jenna drop us off at the agency on their way. Kate asks what we should get.

I sweep my arm in a semicircle. “This car lot is your oyster.” I see her eyeing a new Mercedes SL convertible. I point at it. “I like that one.”

“It will cost a fortune.”

I shrug. “So? We’ll lease it. Drive in style to your heart’s content.”

She looks at me, appraising. “You’re rich now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I won’t be for long. I like to throw money around and I waste too much of it. Enjoy it while you can.” This is true. I never give a damn about money unless I don’t have any. My own tastes are expensive, but my wants are few. My salary sufficient. Despite my childhood poverty, money isn’t high on my list of priorities. We drive away in the Mercedes.

That evening, we have our first family dinner in months. Kate keeps me company while I cook. Fresh perch in a chanterelle sauce. The mushrooms doubtless gathered in the local forest. New potatoes, sweet and no bigger than my thumbs. I take an excellent chardonnay from Arvid’s extensive collection of wine and spirits. The sun is strong outside, but I light candles for ambiance. We don’t talk about illness or crimes, sins or forgiveness. I’m happy. I don’t remember the last time I could say that.

•   •   •

M
ILO AND
I continue our faux morning fishing. He’s still miffed, but at least speaking to me. We approach the islands where we took target practice the day before, he cuts the engine, drops anchor and starts putting things together. A box, some sort of electronic gadget, is on the bottom, then a sheet of plywood, then a small folding boat chair with a cloth seat and backrest, then a tripod with flexible legs. He curves each leg so that they’re all on the plywood, but its head is over and to the left of the chair, over the armrest. He screws a Y-shaped mount onto the tripod. It resembles a vise, with two sets of pincers a couple feet apart. He lays the Barrett on it and tightens it, locks it into place.

He pushes the gun around with one finger, to make sure the tripod head allows for fluid movement, both vertically and horizontally. “Sit and look,” he says.

He set it up for his height, so I have to hunch over to see through the scope. The boat is rocking, but the gun isn’t. It’s as steady as if we were on solid ground. He’s built a stable gun turret. He surprises me sometimes, but this falls just short of amazing. “How in the hell did you do that?” I ask.

“The same way you watch TV on a boat. Ever wonder how the dish stays focused on the satellite so it’s possible? It’s done with a fiber-optic gyroscope. Two laser beams are fired through the same fiber in opposite directions. The beam traveling against the rotation has a shorter path delay than the other beam. The differential phase shift is calculated, translating one part of the angular velocity into a shift of the interference pattern, which is measured. It provides precise rotational rate information, largely because of its lack of sensitivity to shock, vibration or acceleration. It has no moving parts and doesn’t rely on inertial resistance. They’re so reliable that NASA uses them in space projects.”

“Jesus, this must have cost a fortune.”

“Actually, no. I put this together for very little money.”

I stand up. “Let’s see it work.”

He sits down. “I’ll be a little off, because my stock-to-cheek weld is a little different in this position, but I can prove the point. The big advantage is that I can just close my right eye and barely touch the rifle with anything except my index finger.”

He fires three rounds, examines his marksmanship through the scope and smiles. “Check it out.”

I have a look. The three bullets are in a six-inch group. “OK,” I say. “I take back what I said and I shouldn’t have laughed at you. This is brilliant.”

“I didn’t invent the idea. Fiber-optic gyroscopes have been used in fire-control systems for a long time, but apology accepted. Go fish or something. I need to sight in the rifle I stole from the good major and make sure it’s worth a shit.”

Our pistol practice goes better today. Milo brought disposable pie tins to shoot at, and we hit them at least most of the time from fifteen paces. We go through a thousand rounds again. Today, he asks me to shoot a video of him. He puts on a white paper crime scene suit to keep his DNA from getting on the outer clothing, then puts on camouflage fatigues and a balaclava. We adjust his clothing to hide the white underneath.

“Look at me. Is there anything to give away my identity?” he asks.

I give him a once-over. “Your hand and wrist brace.”

“Fuck, I forgot. I’ve got the shit I stole from Malinen.” He takes off his hand brace, slips on a class ring, a watch and a scarf. Subtle and masterful, I think. Small things people forget when disguising themselves.

I make a film for YouTube as he fires the guns he stole from the major: the Barrett—he forces himself not to wince—the automatic rifles and a couple semi-auto pistols. He has to do all this right-handed, and it’s hurting him badly. The balaclava masks his pain. I wish another one of us could have done this. Unfortunately, it has to be him because he’s about the same size as Roope Malinen, and both Sweetness and I are much too big to be believable in the role.

We start packing up to go, and he sighs. “Shooting left-handed just feels so fucking unnatural.”

I start to make a joke about jerking off with his left hand, but don’t.

He shakes his head, despondent and dejected. I know how he feels, it’s hard to be a crip. I’ve just been one for much longer than he has and am used to it. I don’t offer solace. Everything feels unnatural. There’s nothing to say.

On the ride back, I ask him if he thinks he can pick a lock and do a B&E with me.

“What for?”

“The Russian trade delegation rental office. The girls they use as prostitutes live and work in apartments run by them. It’s possible they keep all the girls’ passports there, too. Best-case scenario: We find the passports, or maybe their identities are on file, either on paper or in an office computer. We find the names of who is in charge of what, just unravel everything and shut down their operation.”

“I don’t know if I can do it with my lock pick set, but with an electronic pick gun, yeah, we can get in.”

I’ve always wondered how Milo manages to hack anything and everything. “And their computers?”

“Computers are odd little beasts. First, most people don’t bother to password-protect their computers. When they do, they usually use a predictable password, so it pays to learn a little about the owner. Their birthdays. The names of their kids and pets. If the passwords are random they’re hard to remember, and people often write them down and stick them under their mouse pads or somewhere in the area of the computer. Some computers have default passwords. Some have slots almost never used, for multimedia cards, memory cards, picture cards. I insert one with a virus and it goes unseen. People don’t notice when you look over their shoulders as they open their computers. And if all those simple tricks don’t work, there are more time-consuming ways to get it. Mostly, though, it’s just through people’s stupidity.”

“My idea is that the day before you carry out the assassinations, we take the info we’ve gathered there, send it to the police and all the newspapers, and while you’re doing your thing, half the force is busy making raids and arrests.”

He nods. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s do that tomorrow instead of coming out here.”

My phone rings. It’s Ai. “You asked for regular reports,” he says. “We’ve done thorough investigative work, and I have a comprehensive report for you.”

“Do you have dependable encrypted electronic gear?”

“No.”

“I’d like to come to your place at five thirty tomorrow morning. Is that acceptable?”

“Yes. That way, I won’t be late for school.” He rings off.

Now I bring up an uncomfortable but unavoidable subject. “I don’t know about killing Jan Pitkänen.”

Milo shuts off the engine. “You fucking hypocritical son of a bitch.” I’m sitting down. He takes a swing at me—with his bad hand and at my shot jaw—but I move my head and his fist goes by me. He pulls it together and doesn’t try again.

“I said something to you once about Sweetness killing a man. You called me a weak sob sister and told me to quit my whining. Pitkänen tried to kill your wife and child, and murdered my cousin—who never hurt a fly—and you’re having second thoughts. You’re supposed to be in charge here, but I’ve had to plan everything, do everything, and Sweetness and I are taking most of the risk. You’re telling me you can’t even do one simple fucking thing?”

He’s right, I’m a hypocrite. “Let’s just say I’m conflicted about it. I think when the people supporting him are dead, he’ll fade into the woodwork and leave us be. I’m thinking about buying him off.”

“This is about Kate, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess it mostly is.”

“Well, I saved her fucking life, not you. You think I don’t care about her? As long as that prick lives, she’s in danger. Let me put it this way: He’s dead. If you don’t kill him and I have to, we’re through. I’ll never speak to you again.”

“If I do and Kate finds out, my marriage is over.”

“I swear to you, after the fact, we’ll never talk about it again, even amongst ourselves. Kate will never know. You seem to keep forgetting that these people want to kill us and your family. Wouldn’t you rather lose Kate than see her and Anu murdered? Which course of action demonstrates your love for them more?”

He’s right. “I just want out. I don’t want any more blood, any more deaths.”

He lights one cigarette off the other. “You decided to play this game. You can’t just quit when you want to. Grow up.”

“And we play for blood.”

“That’s right. We play for blood.”

Milo will do it if I don’t, so Pitkänen’s dead either way. And Milo saved Kate. And I owe him a debt for that act of true friendship so large that I can never repay it. “You win. I’ll do it. But that means I have to know when and where. You should tell me everything about your plan.”