Music moved toward her up the train’s central aisle, from an accordionist who played with one hand and panhandled with the other. Suitably, but annoyingly, the song was “New York, New York.” Brand searched her pockets and found a mass of mostly American coins, sorting among them for something in Swedish crowns while the busker waited on her.
Finally, she did what she would do in any foreign country where she didn’t know how to read the coinage, simply holding out her hand with the money displayed, thinking the busker would choose one. Brand realized too late that a twenty dollar bill lay folded up amongst the quarters, nickels, and gold ten-kronor coins. The accordionist, who kept up his one-handed playing, deftly swept up the coins along with the bill, pocketed it all, and fled down the car before he could be confronted.
“American,” another passenger now said, slurring the word dismissively. Mur-ken. Brand glanced up at him. The guy stood swaying over her, sporting a nearly clean-shaven scalp, looking as unpleasant as any skinhead she’d ever encountered in the bowels of New York City transit.
Brand averted her gaze, not wanting to get into it with the guy. She wondered about how quickly the Swedes typed her as an American. Her background must be written on her face.
“Du,” the skinhead said, then continued on in English. “You people come here on a seven-day tour and think you know. But you know nothing.”
What have I done to deserve this? Brand wondered. She looked up. White flecks of saliva frothed in the side creases of the beefy man’s mouth.
“Jävla bitch,” he said under his breath.
“How about you back off?” Brand said.
“Back the fuck off!” Brand demanded. The anger that had grown in her lately, usually kept at a simmer, now rose to a boil. She didn’t like the guy crowding her, so she rose up, her own Swedish tall gene on full display. Her intimidating six feet had always served her well as a cop.
The skinhead tried to block her back down into the seat. She dodged the move. He and Brand wound up nose to nose. The train slowed for a station.
“What are you doing here, bitch?” the guy snarled, chest-bumping her again. “Go home!”
The New York nut lock was a move Willie Urrico had originally taught her, when she first moved out of transit and joined patrol. Skells of every flavor saw a blue uniform as something of a challenge. The savvy street cop’s response to actual physical contact was to place a lateral forearm across the subject’s upper chest, for stabilization purposes, then make a quick clutch at the groin.
With a deft movement, Brand did exactly that. Urrico’s New York nut lock avoided whatever plumbing got in the way and aimed directly for the more vulnerable tea bags.
The skinhead wheezed out a cough of pain, his foul, fish-scented breath hitting Brand full on. She pushed the guy away. Brand was not afraid of him, but more fearful of herself, of her furious desire to inflict real damage. She turned and crossed to the exit doors.
Brand’s fellow riders remained buried in cell phones, books, or whatever distraction they carried with them. She read their reaction not as indifference but as a careful observance of privacy, a sort of studied, collective froideur. Not that there was much to see. The guy stood swaying, his body cocked at half mast, still wheezing when the doors slid open.
Brand stepped off the train. She tried to quiet her inner trembling, standing on the platform as the train pulled out. She mentally pictured her actions being caught by a cell phone camera.
“Shit.” She was now glad that she had left her sidearm behind that day. A weapon would have surely complicated matters, had authorities entered into the picture.
The twisted face of the skinhead on the train moved past Brand in slow motion. He slammed his fist against the window glass and glared, throwing her the horned fuck-you hand gesture.
She aimed a kick at his face and connected with the train as it gained speed. It continued on, and he was gone.
“Shit,” Brand said again. She tried to summon up one of the calming techniques learned from her NYPD-ordained anger management training. But such measures seemed to be in lock-up somewhere, while the blond beast had been allowed to roam free.
16.
T-centralen, the Central Station of Stockholm. Brand emerged from the underground platform on an escalator, joining the steady stream of workaday subway riders. She passed through an exit barrier and became part of the random flow of foot traffic, everyone busy getting somewhere, swarming out of an anthill.
Temporarily disoriented by numerous options to reach street level, she encountered a bizarre tableau. A community of homeless set up a crude encampment against a concrete wall that curved backward into a dark tunnel. Brand realized she was staring blankly at a young girl-child of eight or nine, her braids being fussed over by a trio of older women stood out from the group. Bulging, tarp-covered bundles were heaped high around them. The camp spilled over to an underground tunnel that led back toward the t-bana entrance.
Yes, the homeless, an immediately familiar sight from Brand’s time on transit patrol, yet subtly different from the residents living on the streets of New York City. The same pathetic collections of possessions, sure, desperately held fragments of a disordered life, and always the jury-rigged sections of cloud-colored plastic and stuffed-full shopping bags. These common elements were probably similar all over the world, from Rio, Mumbai, and Cape Town to the shifting jungles below the Queensboro Bridge.
But the differences became clear as Brand passed among them. She saw colorfully dressed women in long skirts and scarves folding up bedding. Men in dark clothing, loose pants and shabby jackets stood by, speaking on cell phones. Other women moved aside the plastic-covered bundles
