33
Back in my apartment, I hand Milo my phone. Like so many things right now, I don’t want to do this, because it’s disrespectful of the dead. It’s a necessity. “Can you plaster the photos of Yelena Merkulova all over the Internet without them being traced back here?” I ask him.
He doesn’t bother to speak, boots up my computer, connects the cable from my phone into it and logs in to his own computer through our network. He bumps the photos from the phone over to my computer and says, “Going viral in thirty seconds.”
The Russian embassy, out of fear, will delay informing Yelena’s father of her death until the ambassador can find a way to weasel out of the culpability she ingeniously hung on him by writing on the wall in blood. In the interest of survival, the ambassador will try to have it scrubbed off the walls and have the fact that it existed suppressed. He’ll then claim it was an attempt to frame him. I’ll preempt that. Her father will learn of her death through these photos rather than through an e-mail. It’s mean. It’s ugly. It serves a purpose that justifies it. Her father will kill Merkulov because it will make him appear weak in front of the world if he doesn’t. The ambassador is neutralized, one less enemy to deal with.
I sentenced him to death. I feel remorse. Guilt is the overarching emotion that has defined my life. After having the tumor removed from my brain, I felt no remorse about anything. I knew it was a symptom of post- surgery illness, but I was glad of it. Of the many negative changes the surgery wrought in me, freedom from guilt was one I was glad of. I’m not sure if I should feel relieved that I’m healing, that the hole the tumor removal left in my brain is filling in with tissue and returning me to who I was before, or anger that unwanted emotions are rearing their ugly heads. I suppose I feel both.
“Going, going, gone,” Milo says. “Where’s my present?”
I look around. I hear Sweetness and Jenna in the kitchen and smell frying bacon. Part of their carb-free health diet. Kate must be in the bedroom.
In the foyer, over the coat rack, is a shelf for scarves, gloves and hats. Over the rack is a small storage compartment filled with junk. I point at it. “In there, on the left, in the very back corner, in a Stockmann gift bag.”
He takes a dining room chair, stands on it, finds the bag and gets down. He looks inside and pulls out something square, wrapped in brown paper. He starts to tear the wrapping off.
“Don’t,” I say. “I don’t want anyone else to see it.”
He grins, giddy with anticipation. “Then it must be extra-special good. What did you get me?”
“I didn’t get you anything. I hid it from you. I found it when we B amp;Eed a dope dealer and stashed it in the bag of cash that was in the same closet. It’s two bricks of Semtex.”
He cradles it like a baby and mimics Gollum from
His impression is so good that it’s eerie, and since his “precious” is plastic explosives, sounds psycho and a little scary.
“Semtex plastic explosive,” he says. “A Russian classic. And enough to take down a building. You really do love me, don’t you?”
I snap open the lion’s mouth on the handle of my cane and wonder what in the name of God I’ve just done. “With all my heart.”
“Can I kiss you?” He steps toward me. “Give me some tongue.”
I raise a hand to keep him at bay. “Down, boy. Down,” I say, as I would to a dog.
He grins and calms himself. The permanent pools of black around his eyes from self-imposed sleep deprivation glisten like oil. “Why did you keep it and hide it?”
“I couldn’t think of a way to dispose of it, stuck it there and forgot about it. I hid it because I was afraid you’d blow up a building with it.”
“So now you’re supporting my plan?”
I gesture toward the balcony. We go outside, close the door so no one can hear us and light cigarettes.
“So now you like my plan,” Milo says. “That makes me happy.”
I stare at the parking space where the Audi blew up. “No, I don’t approve. Not in the least. I just can’t find another solution and don’t want you to get caught. That’s why I gave you the Semtex. Not having to steal plastique is one less risk you have to take. What’s your timetable? Phillip Moore said we have a couple weeks.”
“Then we have a lot to do in a short amount of time. I have to burn the midnight oil and finish writing a crazed mass-murder manifesto, surveil the targets and figure out the most economical way to take them all out in one day. And most importantly, we have to learn to shoot. You can’t shoot for shit, and I have to learn to shoot left-handed. You’re still taking out Jan Pitkanen, right?”
I sigh and nod.
“I’ll GPS tag his car so you can find him when you’re ready, but he’ll kill you in a heartbeat if you don’t improve your shooting skills.”
So he will. We both light another cigarette and stand side by side in silence. My eyes keep drifting to the blackened spot where the Audi burned. “I forgot to tell you,” I say, “Moore said that ‘driving’ means that Saukko goes out in his yard and knocks golf balls into the sea.”
Milo flips his cigarette end down to the street. “I’m leaving now. The day is getting on. I’ll see you at Arvid’s-I mean your house in Porvoo-tomorrow.”
I make the sign of the cross in the air. “
“Forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin oh so grievously.” He laughs. “See ya.”
I let him show himself out and stay on the balcony. I turn what we’re doing over and over in my head, searching for a way out. It occurs to me that I haven’t called ace pseudo-journalist and collector of filth, dreck and skank Jaakko Pahkala, Helsinki’s king of reputation destruction via its scandal sheets. He’s on my payroll, supposedly collecting skank on politicians of all stripes for a planned hate rag. The plan for the hate rag went to the wayside, but I told him to keep working, collecting blackmail material for my own use should the need arise. The need has arisen. I sit in my armchair, rest my throbbing knee and call him.
“Hello, Inspector,” he says. “I’m surprised to hear from you.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m in Copenhagen.”
“Your line isn’t secure. Call me back from a pay phone or bar phone or something.” I hang up and wait.
Ten minutes later, he calls back. “I just spent money I don’t have on a disposable phone,” he says. “It doesn’t have much time on it.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“SUPO agents came to my house. I told them I work for you, thinking they would go away. Instead, they beat me up, confiscated just about everything I own and told me to get out of the country. Do you know how much time and expense I put into my literature collection?”
Meaning he collected hate. Pre-war anti-Jewish propaganda and what he considered the best Finnish skank, his specialties.
“What about the stuff you collected for me? Have you acquired anything new and valuable over the past weeks that I haven’t seen?”
“Quite a bit.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s the digital age. All the photos were in my computer, which they confiscated.”
“You have no backup?”
“Of course I do, in cloudspace, at a different address than the one I gave you before. But you can’t have it unless you pay me real money for it. You’ve cost me enough as it is. Do you have any idea how hard a time I’m having finding work here? My Danish-language skills are somewhat lacking.”
His whiny, pathetic voice has always grated on me and he’s a duplicitous prick. And I paid him a generous salary to collect the skank, so technically it already belongs to me. But he has a valid complaint, so I don’t point this out or make any demands of him. “How much?” I ask.
