genius devil in the details: The retractable handle was made of aluminum-hollow. Drilled into with a 0.1-inch drill under the rubber handle at the top. Six hundred grams of blow fit in each bag’s handle. Total value on the street: at least three million. Easy money.
The final pour-in was pulverized mothballs. In the unlucky case of dogs, the sharp smell might distract their sniffing. The drill hole was welded shut. The rubber handles were put back. They could check the bags’ contents as thoroughly as they wanted. They could check Silvia all night, feel her up everywhere, X-ray her, make her sit on a toilet in a customs holding pen for three days. They’d find nada.
But that wasn’t enough. He nagged at himself: Do it right. Jorge’d heard about tons of smart freight methods that’d been blown ’cause customs got suspicious. If they thought something was shady, they wouldn’t let it go. Jorge’s solution lay in careful instructions to Silvia, conveyed through his contact in Brazil. She learned the spiel by heart: She was going to Sweden to visit relatives who lived outside Stockholm. Stay for a week. He gave her a number to give in case they asked: one of Jorge’s prepaid cell numbers. He gave her an address: a house that belonged to Fahdi’s godfather. She got over fifty bucks’ worth of clothes-couldn’t be obvious that she was an impoverished illiterate from the Brazilian campo. He had her learn simple English phrases. Maybe most important of all: She flew via London; the ticket wouldn’t show she’d flown from Rio.
Should be just right.
Saturday afternoon. A clear day. Finally.
Jorge leaned against the fence that surrounded the yellowish church at Odenplan. In front of him was the Hotel Oden. Jorge’d been standing there for two hours already. Waiting for Silvia Pasqual de Pizzaro.
She should’ve been there over an hour ago. Jorge: a little anxious, but everything was probably under control.
He called the airport. The plane was delayed by thirty minutes. Maybe the woman’d had trouble with the buses. With the passport controllers, the dogs, the airport police. Jorge hoped for suerte ’s smile.
Their two cars were parked farther down on Karlbergsvagen, within sight. One boosted by Petter. The other rented by Mehmed, using a fake driver’s license. Elegantish.
His co-dees, Petter and Mehmed-hustlers with skill. Made the blow go like never before. Jorge organized from the top. Petter and Mehmed kept the buzz alive with underlings and dealers, kept their contacts fresh, sold, spread rumors. Produced profit. Both were housing-project kids from the outer boroughs. Both pulled a line themselves now and then.
Petter: south of south side supporter. Thought he was abroad as soon as he entered the inner-city limits. Soccer fanatic. Party boy. Perfect sales channel to the Swedish working class.
Mehmed: Tunisian. Blatte bad boys’ distributor. Loved to coast in his Audi A4 along the cracked streets of Botkyrka. A hero on his turf: the asphalt jungle.
Now Mehmed was waiting in one of the cars. Was gonna meet Silvia at her hotel room as soon as she got there. Empty the Samsonites of blow. Go down to the car. Drive to Petter’s apartment. Give him the gear. Petter would weigh it, check the grade, repackage. Then bring the bags out to Jorge. The plan ought to be waterproof.
Jorge’s job was mostly to survey the transaction. Petter and Mehmed were good guys-but also typical guys who’d do anything for cash. Like shovel the snow on their own. Blow Abdukarim and Jorge off. No one trusted anyone. But J-boy was smarter than that, had gotten an extra involved, an IT guy who used to be a customer of Jorge’s in earlier days. The IT dude was just payrolled for the day. Was gonna put on a little show for the sake of security. The dude was sitting in his car farther up the street. Jorge commended himself: What a fuckin’ ill plan.
He waited. Reminded him of the wait outside Radovan’s house. But the difference was that here he knew something would happen.
Was thinking. What’d surfaced about Radovan? Above all, Jorge’s hate’d surfaced at full force. Stronger with every day. He breathed hate. Ate hate. Dreamed hate. To whip Rado with a baseball bat, across his kneecaps, mouth, forehead. Shoot Radovan in the gut with a shotgun. He tried to cool down. Think pragmatically instead. How could he nail Rado without risking his own livelihood?
Darko’s info was helpful. Jorge’d looked up that Nenad guy. The dude bossed over huge stores of whores. Jorge recognized the name from way back; Nenad was a well-known personality on the blow circuit, too. No one knew how. Everyone just knew that. No one could connect Rado and Nenad. But it would come. Jorge felt certain. It was a lead anyway.
Jorge asked around among contacts who visited hookers. Not hard to find-Fahdi was one.
Got bored waiting for Silvia Pasqual de Pizzaro.
Jorge scrolled through his memories. A couple of days ago Fahdi’d taken him to the brothel, an apartment in Hallonbergen. External balconies, echoing stairwells, dried-up potted plants. Fahdi made three calls before they went. Explained how it worked: mouth-to-mouth method. All the clients gave their real names at their first visit, told the brothel madam, Jelena. After that, they used aliases and passwords. Agreement: The real name was not recorded anywhere. All the whores worked under aliases. Visitors had to be recommended by someone else before they were let in. The madam probably checked up on people somehow.
There was an anonymous website-the server was somewhere in England-with pictures of the girls. You could sit at home, pick and choose. Either they came to you or you went to the apartment in Hallonbergen. Fahdi preferred Hallonbergen.
Jorge’d imagined something lavish/luxurious.
Instead, the dankest shit J-boy’d ever seen. Bad energy washed over him as soon as the door opened. A red wallpapered hall. Two stained velvet couches and a fake Persian carpet. Stank of sweat and smoke. In the background: Tom Jones. What bullshit.
Jorge and Fahdi kept their jackets on. A woman approached them. Heavily made-up face. Short hair, dyed red. Enormous bust. Long, curled fingernails that had to be plastic. Fake pearls hung around her neck. Fingers studded with stones. Strangest outfit Jorge’d ever seen. A black tailored blazer, looked proper enough, but when she turned around he saw the blazer had a deep V cut into the back, almost all the way down to her culo. She spoke bad, broken Swedish. Recognized Fahdi. They exchanged pleasantries. Jorge understood-it was the madam herself, Jelena.
Jorge and Fahdi sat down. Waited.
After fifteen minutes, a man walked into the hall. Turned his face away as he left the apartment. Silent agreement: They’d never seen each other. The woman came and got Fahdi. Through the kitchen door, Jorge glimpsed a coffeepot on the counter. Bizarre feeling. The brothel madam was having her coffee break, like at any regular workplace.
Five minutes later, the woman showed Jorge into a room. A wide bed stood in the middle. Poorly made. An armchair. Shades pulled down. On the bed: the whore.
Jorge remained standing in the doorway. Looked at her. She was thin. Small nose. Maybe been pretty once. Today, expressionless. The clothes: a gray tank top, black tights, miniskirt, high-heeled shoes. Classic hooker look.
No, he was wrong. She was still pretty and was checking him out as much as he eyed her.
“Hi,” Jorge said.
“Hi, hot stuff. What up? You first time here?” Thick Eastern European accent, but still comprehensible. Good. Jorge’d expressly asked for one who spoke Swedish.
“How much for a suck?”
“Four hundred. For you. You hot.”
“Skip the talk. I’ll pay five hundred if you’ll tell me some stuff.”
“What? Talk dirty?”
“No, I wanna know how you got to Sweden.”
The girl froze. Not unexpected. Probably had strict instructions not to talk about anything but fuck/cunt/cock with anyone.
Jorge tried to make her relax. “Forget it. I’ll pay three hundred for the BJ.”
The girl agreed. Unbuttoned his pants.
Tugged down his boxers.
Jorge, no erection.
