“There a problem?”
“Absolutely not. It’s all good. It’s a pleasure to drive you, Abdul.”
“Don’t call me Abdul. It means ‘slave’ in Arabic.”
“Okay, boss.”
“Me, I know you donwanna drive to Stureplan, JW. Know you donwanna be seen there. Got fancy buddies there. You’re ashamed, man. Never be ashamed.”
The Arab fucker knew. How? Maybe not so strange, if you thought about it. Abdulkarim was out a lot. He’d seen JW with his friends around Stureplan. Connected the dots. Understood why he didn’t tend to make pickups there. The rest was just simple math.
He had to do damage control.
“It’s not that bad, Abdulkarim. Come on, it’s no big deal. I just have to make some money. Want to be able to party and stuff. This isn’t the kind of thing you tell everybody.”
The Arab nodded. The Arab laughed. The Arab controlled the convo. Small talk.
Then it happened. The offer.
“Me? I know you need the big cheese. I got a suggestion. Pay attention. Could be up your alley.”
JW nodded. Wondered what was coming. Damn, did Abdulkarim like the sound of his own voice.
“I have some other business, other than the cabs. Sell C. I know, you’ve bought candy from me. Through Gurhan, you know, the Turk you and your buddies get it from. But Gurhan won’t work. Big Jew. Tryin’ to rip me off. Skims the top. Sells too high. Doesn’t keep good books. And, worst thing, he buys from some other guy, too. Tryin’ to be clever. Play us against each other. Pressure me. He says, ‘If I can’t get it for four hundred a gram I don’t wanany this week.’ Messy. No good. That’s where you come in, JW.”
JW was listening but didn’t catch on. “Pardon me, but I don’t think I’m following.”
“I’m wondering, you wanna sell instead of Gurhan? You run this taxi thing real good. You hang at the right bars. Believe me, I know. Bars where people’s drills are as full of sugar as sugar drills. You’d do good.”
“What’s a sugar drill?”
“Forget it. You in or what?”
“Shit, Abdul. I have to think about it. I was actually thinking about that the other day. Wondering how well the Turk makes out.”
“Don’t call me Abdul. And sure, go ahead. Think about it, big man. But remember, you could be like Uncle Scrooge. Swimming in it. You want in. I can feel it. Call before next Friday.”
JW focused on the road. They drove down Birger Jarlsgatan. He was nervous. Kept a lookout for the boyz while trying to hunch as low in the seat as possible.
Abdulkarim rattled on in Arabic with the meathead in the back. Laughed. JW grinned without knowing why. Abdul grinned back, continued to jabber in Arabic to Fahdi. They were approaching their final destination.
Stureplan. Huge lines outside the nightclubs and bars: Kharma, Laroy, Sturecompagniet, Clara’s, Koket, East, The Lab, and the rest. More people out than ever in the daytime. A gold mine for gypsy cabs.
JW stopped the car. Abdulkarim opened the door. “You know the deal. Before Friday.”
JW nodded.
He stepped on it.
JW’s last pickup of the night was a hammered middle-aged man who mumbled something about Karrtorp. JW said he’d take him there for three hundred kronor.
He drove in silence. Needed to think. The man fell asleep.
The road was dark. Hardly any cars out except a few taxis. JW felt the anxiety of decision making wash over him.
On one hand: fantastic luck, a chance, a real opportunity. Probably nothing else offered the kinds of margins that coke did. How would it work? Buy a gram for five hundred, sell for one thousand? Calculate. The boyz alone could easily do four grams a night. He should be able to turn twenty thousand kronor. At least. He multiplied. Gains from one night: ten thousand. Holy shit.
On the other hand: mad dangerous, really fucking illegal, scary. One mistake and he could screw it all up, his whole life. Was it his kind of gig? It was one thing to use now and then. Dealing was a totally different ball game. Be a part of the drug industry, make money on other people’s fried sinuses, their wrecked lives. Didn’t feel right.
On the other hand: No one ruined their life on coke, as far as he knew. Mostly, it was better people who did it anyway. Like the boyz, for instance, who snorted to have a good time, not to escape some bottom-feeder existence. They studied, had money and good families. No problem for them. No risk of tweaky junkies. No risk JW had to suffer a bad conscience.
On the other hand: Abdulkarim and his crowd were probably not the nicest boys in town. Just take the backseat gorilla. Didn’t take much to see that Fahdi was lethal. What would happen if JW couldn’t pay, got in trouble? Messed up sales? Was robbed of merch? Maybe it was too dangerous.
On the other hand: the money. A sure way. An easy way. Learn from Gekko: “I don’t throw darts at a board. I bet on sure things.” The returns in this industry were guaranteed. JW had the need-and he wouldn’t stay a tragic Sven. There’d be an end to the secondhand clothes, the home-cut hair, and the boarding. An end to being cheap. The dream of being able to live normally could come true. The dream of a car, an apartment, a fortune, could come true. He’d be included in the business plans the boyz had.
he’d be included.
Successful entrepreneur versus loser.
Crime versus safety.
What to do?
6
Saturday night in Stockholm: clubs, chicks, credit cards. Trashed seventeen-year-olds. Trashed twenty-five- year-olds. Trashed forty-three-year-olds. Trashed all ages.
Bouncers with leather jackets and cocky attitudes: denied, denied, denied. Some didn’t get it-find your kind of place or be denied entrance. Don’t try to get in where you don’t belong.
Along Kungsgatan, the Svens caravanned. Along Birger Jarlsgatan, the brats were on parade. Business as usual.
Mrado, Patrik, and Ratko were going on a raid. They grabbed a beer at the blingy hub Sturehof before starting out. Tonight they were doing the south side, Sodermalm.
Coat checks equaled gold mines. Calculation of a midtier place: Force everyone with some sort of jacket or other personal item to check it. Twenty kronor a head. Extra for bags. Four hundred people passing through on average. Sum: at least eight thousand kronor per night. Ninety percent off the books. All money in cash. Impossible for Big Brother Tax Collector to control the revenue. And the only cost was a pretty girl to stand there and run the show.
The scheme was advantageous: The Yugos collected a fixed rate of three thousand per weekend night. Nothing on weekdays. The place and the coat-check personnel had their own agreements about how the rest was distributed. Win-win: good business for everyone.
Strategy of the night: Mrado and Ratko stood in the background. Patrik fronted, did the talking.
It had to go off smoothly. If shit went down, Mrado would have to take the consequences. The fight for Radovan’s favor was getting heated. Mrado was competing with the other men directly under R.: Goran, Nenad, Stefanovic. It’d been different under Jokso: Then they played like a team. Serbs together. Three types of coat checks in Stockholm: the ones Radovan controlled, the ones someone else controlled, like the Hells Angels or the club king Goran Boman, and finally, the ones that were independent. The latter: no good. Proceeded at their own risk.
They started at Tivoli on Hornsgatan. The place: Radovan-controlled. Patrik went up to the girl working the coat check. Mrado nodded. Recognized her. They went way back. He put his hand on Patrik’s shoulder. “I got this. I know her.”
