“I just can’t picture one guy getting so much pussy. The only dates I’ve had lately are with Rosy Palm and Five Fingers.”
This makes me laugh, too.
Our boss, Arto, walks in behind Milo. “It always pleases me to see detectives enjoy their work,” Arto says. “Want to let me in on the joke?”
“Sure,” Milo says. “What do you call epileptic lettuce?”
“What?”
“Seizure salad.”
Milo howls at his own joke, which makes me laugh more than the joke. Arto giggles and says, “Jesus, that was awful.”
When Milo stops cackling, Arto asks, “You two have time to investigate a death?”
“No,” I say, “but we can make time.”
“Head over to the Silver Dollar nightclub. The bouncers there killed some guy.”
“Sounds good,” Milo says.
The problem is that when Milo says it sounds good, I think he means it.
17
Milo and I sign a car out of the police garage at seven thirty p.m. Today we get a 2007 Toyota Yaris. It’s dark out now. Snow still falls, and our headlights illuminate it. Helsinki is a lovely city in winter when it’s not hammered by sleet and covered in filthy slush.
I drive. Milo jabbers. “So you have an American wife,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“What language do you speak at home?”
“Mostly English. Kate has been here for going on three years. She’s learning, tries to at least use some Finnish words and phrases.”
“Well,” he says, “Finnish is a tough language. It takes time.”
“Yeah.”
“English is a moronic language.”
This seems to be my week to have strong and unsupported opinions thrust upon me. “And why might that be?”
“The letter C is unnecessary. It makes the same sounds as K and S. That’s a lot of waste. They should get rid of it. They don’t need B either. P is almost the same, does just as well.”
I make conversation, since I was so hard on him earlier. “Kate thinks A and O with the dots over them are pointless. English gets on just fine without them.”
Milo takes a pack of unfiltered North State cigarettes out of his coat pocket, cracks the window and lights one. My dad smokes the same brand. Tough-guy cigarettes. “So during this car ride,” he says, “we’ve managed to take two letters out of the English language, and two out of Finnish. We changed the world.”
Inane chatter. He’s trying to kiss and make up because he pissed me off earlier. “So you started smoking again,” I say.
He takes a drag and nods. “You really are a good detective.”
“How long did you stay off them?”
“Four years.”
His new job in murharyhma must be getting to him. We sit in silence for a few moments.
“Did you know Ilari and Inka are fucking?” he asks.
“Is this deduction another product of your people-person skills and extreme powers of empathy?”
“It’s the product of hearing them fuck in the bathroom after everybody got drunk at my ‘welcome to the new guy’ party.”
They both have spouses and children, and even though they’re partners, act as if they hate each other. I thought their vicious invective toward each other seemed forced.
At seven forty-five p.m., we pull up in front of the Silver Dollar and park next to an ambulance. To call the place a nightclub is a bit of a misnomer. It’s multifunctional, soaks up money in different ways. It opens at four p.m. to accommodate after-work drinkers. A couple nights a week, it offers line dancing. Finnish countrymusic fans don cowboy boots, hats, bolos and collar tips, and giddyup, pardner. Its biggest cash cow, though, is its four a.m. liquor license. Every other bar in the neighborhood closes at two, so when shit-drunk people get kicked out at closing time, they come here to this shithole to get shit-drunker for another couple hours. The place is packed most nights.
Milo and I walk inside. Two uniform cops are here. I introduce myself. They explain the situation. I tell them Milo and I will take it from here.
Music blares. People slurp beer. I look around. Plastic cups sit on beat-up dirty tables. The floor is filthy, the bar grimy. Dim blueand-red pseudo-nightclub lighting is intended to mask these things, but it doesn’t work. A prostrate body lies face-up in a corner. Two crime-scene techs and a pathologist crouch around it.
The dead man isn’t fat, but maybe two hundred and sixty pounds, well over six feet tall. He’s a baby-faced corpse, not much more than a kid, and appears as if he’s sleeping. Two bouncers and two rent-a-cops in police- style coveralls and boots stand around the massive corpse, hands in their pockets, shift their weight back and forth on their feet like they’re guilty of something.
I flash my police card. Milo pushes past the bouncers and rent-a-cops, bends down and talks to the pathologist.
A bouncer starts to shout in my ear, over the sound system. I yell, too, and cut him off. “Shut down the music. Turn up the houselights. Close the bar. Lock the door. Nobody leaves. The club is closed for the night.”
He tries to argue. The law doesn’t require that an establishment that serves alcohol be closed in the event of a death. His boss will be pissed off.
I shake my head. “We’re operating under my law. Do it now.”
Bouncer number one scurries off to follow instructions. Milo comes over. “Dead as a bag of hammers. Most likely because his hyoid bone is broken.”
The music dies and the house goes quiet, except for a lone sobbing. A heavyset young guy, another giant, sits on a barstool, holds his face in his hands and cries. I ask Milo to take photos and witness statements from customers while I question the bouncers and rent-a-cops. Milo uses the camera in his cell phone to snap pics of the corpse and the club. Apparently, he doesn’t mind deferring to me in matters that don’t require his overwhelming intellectual prowess.
Bouncer number two stands near me. He has big muscles encased in a layer of fat. He wears jeans and a tight black T-shirt.
I take out a notepad and pen. “What’s your name?” I ask.
“Timo Sipila.”
“Address, telephone and social security numbers.”
He gives them to me.
“What happened?”
“This guy and his brother,” he points at the boy giant in tears, “got into an argument. They started shoving each other. First we called Securitas-the rent-a-cops-then me and my partner, Joni Korjus, went over to calm them down.”
Korjus is also huge. I’m in a bar full of mastodons.
“The dead guy had an attitude, so we told him to leave,” Timo says. “He refused and started yelling at us to mind our own business. Securitas got here about the time we started to carry him out. They can back up my story.”
The rent-a-cops nod agreement.
I get to the meat of the issue. “Why is he dead?”
“I got him in a headlock, and Joni grabbed his legs. We carried him outside like that and then dropped him
