Helsinki White

Then Moreau said, “It is little understood that the drug trade must be maintained, but controlled and balanced. Were the narcotics industry to suddenly cease, the economies of many countries, the U.S. among them, would be destroyed. I left the Legion a few years ago, am now a policeman, a superintendent in the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence Action Division. I was helping to restore that balance.”

He got up. “Which reminds me. I have brought a small gift for Kari.” He had brought a backpack with him and left it in the foyer. He got up, took something out of it, came back and placed a clear plastic bag filled with white powder on the table. “This is a half kilo of uncut Mexican heroin,” he said.

Kate’s jaw dropped. The others looked on with interest.

“For what?” I asked.

“You have destroyed this balance I spoke of. Because of it, now people commit suicide and a crime wave is in progress. If you distribute this, it will restore the balance and repair the situation for a time.”

“How did you get it into Finland?”

“In a diplomatic pouch. I travel on a diplomatic passport and am not subject to search.”

I shook my head. “How the fuck am I supposed to move that much heroin?”

Sweetness cleared his throat. He had made several trips to the balcony and his hip flask must be near empty. “I wasn’t exactly unemployed before I came to work for you. Me and my brother sold marijuana. Not a lot, just some, so we could have at least a little money. We never sold hard drugs, but I know some neekerit who do. I could front it to them, an ounce at a time or something like that. It’s worth about a hundred thousand euros. If I gave it to them all at once, they would steal it and leave the country.”

Kate flew mad. “First you steal drugs. Now you want to sell drugs. And”—she pointed at Sweetness—“don’t use language like that in my home.”

He was mystified. “I’m sorry. What language?”

I stepped in. “Kate, he meant nothing derogatory. Most Finns still say neekeri. It’s always been the word for black people, and it’s slowly changing, because the press and academics know how ugly it sounds and are now making substitutions for it, but they still haven’t even agreed upon what the right word should be. Until black people started coming here in the 1990s, Finns had almost no exposure to blacks and had attitudes something like Americans in the 1920s. When I was a kid, in the 1970s, my schoolbooks said neekerit were simple but happy. They liked to sing and dance. Sweetness meant no harm. And Moreau is right. We meant well, but we went too far and people got hurt.”

She softened. “Let’s discuss it later.”

“OK.”

“As to selling the heroin,” I said, “that’s not going to happen. Presumably, if junkies have the money to buy heroin, they have the money for a train ticket to another city. They can buy it elsewhere.”

“Does that mean you do not accept my gift?” Moreau asked.

“No, I’ll keep it. I might find other uses for it.”

He grinned. “Such as planting it and framing your enemies? Inspector, your waters run deep.”

I said nothing.

Milo jumped in. “I have more presents we could open.”

Kate groaned. “Milo, I don’t want to have to see any more guns.”

“Well, how about the presents for you and Anu, then?”

That got her. Curiosity overcame her anger and she smiled. “All right, then. Adrien,” she asked, “what inspired you to get those striking tattoos?”

His smile was warm. I saw that he liked Kate, and that she found him charming, heroin or not.

“I have jumped from airplanes eighty-seven times. On my thirty-seventh jump, my parachute failed to open. I thought I was a dead man, but it unfurled at about four hundred feet from the ground. I hit the ground like a rock, but was unscathed. I feared it was an augury of things to come. I felt that I needed protection afterward, so I took the wings of Icarus. As long as I don’t fly too close to the sun, I am now safe.”

As the others filed back into the living room, I asked him what he wanted for his heroin.

“At the behest of the French government, my goals are to find the son, recover the money and discredit the Real Finns Party. Were they to take power, Finland might leave the EU and upset the balance of things. Share information with me. Take me along when you conduct interrogations as you prosecute your murder investigation. I want nothing more.”

“Agreed,” I said, but felt certain that he did indeed want something more from me.

He cocked his head, inquisitive. “What did you do with all the drugs you stole?”

“I kept some for blackmail or unforeseen circumstances when I might need it. But we tossed most of it in Dumpsters.”

He tut-tutted me. “Such a waste.”

We took our places with the others again, and Kate was opening her gifts. She held up a pair of shoes. She giggled like a little girl. “Manolo Blahnik Nepala pumps,” she said. She slipped them on and they fit her perfectly, meaning they were tight and painful, as Manolos are meant to be. She looked at Milo. “Did Kari tell you my size?”

Moreau said, “He has an IQ of one seventy-two and an advanced sense of spatial relations. He also knows your bra size and, if you smile, the length of your teeth to a fraction of a millimeter.”

Milo turned red. Moreau had made his point. He knew things.

Kate then opened a package with a Gucci ‘marrakech’ evening bag with woven leather trim and tassels, and finally a bottle of Clive Christian No.1 perfume. She was in heaven.

“The bottle is handmade lead crystal with a thirty-three-carat diamond in the neck,” Milo said. “Its ingredients include Madagascar ylang ylang, vanilla, orris, natural gum resin, sandalwood and bergamot. It was weird. I went to boutiques to find this stuff and the salespeople all spoke Russian instead of Finnish. Russian tourists buy them here and Finns can’t afford them.”

Kate brought Anu to see her gift: a huge Steiff teddy bear. She loved it, kept petting the soft brown fur and wouldn’t stop. Arvid had fallen asleep in my chair. Sweetness was also sleeping. A flask of kossu—Finnish vodka—and half a cake had done him in.

“The last is for you,” Milo said, and handed me a long and heavy package. I ripped off the wrapping and gawked at it, astonished. It appealed to my childish like-or-don’t-like instinct, and I liked it very much. It was a cane, cudgel-thick. The handle was a massive lion’s head made from several ounces of gold. I had gone to so much work to become anonymous, and this would make me stand out in any crowd. I didn’t care. I loved it. I would carry it.

“Let me show you how it works,” Milo said. “Gadget canes were once very popular. They were made with just about every device imaginable. Bang down on the floor with the tip. It spring-loads the lion’s mouth and it snaps open. The teeth are steel razors. Sharp contact, like swinging the mouth against something, makes it clamp shut and bite with about three hundred pounds per square inch of pressure, the same as a Rottweiler’s jaws. Pressing the eyes—one is a ruby, the other is emerald—disengages the spring and the mouth lets go. Unscrew the shaft, and there’s a twenty-inch sword inside.”

While he explained, Kate unbuttoned her blouse and, at a discreet angle to the rest of us, began breast- feeding Anu. While I admired the cane, I noticed Moreau admire my wife in a way I wasn’t fond of. He picked up on my disapproval.

“Forgive me,” he said. “You have a most lovely family. Your wife calls to mind someone I once knew, and she too had an infant.”

I didn’t know if I liked him or detested him, but was sure that if my emotions were as they once had been, my feelings toward him would be nothing in between.

I opened the lion’s mouth and smacked the edge of the coffee table. Anu yelped. It bit so deep I couldn’t pull it free, had to depress the eyes to make it let go. Kate looked at me with disapproval. I had disturbed the child and damaged the table.

My knee would be fully recovered soon. I would limp, but it would be almost unnoticeable. “Milo,” I said, “this is the most wonderful toy I’ve ever owned. Thank you. It makes me almost sad I won’t need it for long.”

“You can always use it,” he answered. “A man doesn’t walk with a cane, he wears it.”

Moreau turned to Milo. “I think everyone is tired, perhaps we should make our exit. Are there more weapons