Life Deluxe (15 page)

Dad wasn’t happy about the fact that Natalie planned on going. She understood, that’s how it had to be. Her parents hadn’t exactly been Sweden’s most liberal before the assassination attempt, but they also didn’t want to treat her like a child anymore. Now they were trying to rein her in. And she understood them: the entire family had to be careful.

And what’s more: they didn’t just need to be careful. They had to avenge what’d happened.

Louise whined about Natalie being wishy-washy. “You’ve gotta come. You need it. Or I’ll go with Tove instead.”

Natalie wanted to go, but she didn’t have the energy to comment on Louise’s childish attempt to play her against Tove. Plus: Louise should know better than to nag at her—she knew what’d happened.

But two days before the party, Mom was actually the one who brought up the question. They were sitting in the den watching
Grey’s Anatomy
. Not Natalie’s favorite show, but she was okay watching it ’cause Mom liked it. Mom said that she’d talked things over with Dad, that they couldn’t keep her locked up forever. That Natalie must to be allowed to go out, live her life. They wanted her to have fun. Like before.

But when they’d discussed the matter again, Dad’d been kind of short: “You’re sleeping here, at home.”

“Okay,” Natalie said. “But maybe Viktor can pick me up and drive me home?”

“Isn’t he going to the party?” Dad wondered.

“No, he’s not invited.” Natalie was actually kind of relieved about that. Viktor worked around the clock these days. But not with his car
showroom in Hjorthagen. Instead he said things like “I’m out on a job,” and “Soon, soon the money will start flowing.” She thought the whole thing was a bore.

Dad didn’t comment. He ended the discussion instead. “Since you’ll be sleeping here, me, Patrik, or Stefanovic’ll drive you home. Where and when do you want to be picked up?”

Back at Jet Set Carl’s enormous pad. Overflowing clothes hangers and a huge guy with a shaved head and unmistakable appearance: dark jeans, black leather jacket, and a turtleneck that fit snugly over a bulletproof vest. Bouncer, to the millionth power.

He checked his list. Natalie didn’t know if she and Louise were on it.

Louise tried to flirt. Pouted her lips. “Will you be inside at the party later? I want to get a picture of us together. I’ve never seen such a cool bouncer before.”

Louise smelled too strongly of J’Adore—and she was acting like someone who wears too much perfume too.

The bouncer didn’t even glance up. His fingers stopped at a point on the page. He looked at Louise, then at Natalie.

“You’re Kranjic, right?”

She nodded.

“Welcome.”

They took their jackets off. Louise asked Natalie if she thought she’d put too much self-tanner on her face.

Natalie was wearing a dress she’d found at a vintage place in the Marais. Diane von Furstenberg—smashing, if she did say so herself. She was carrying a purse from Louis Vuitton. Stuffed with her iPhone, wallet, two packs of Marlboro Menthol, keys, a blush, YSL’s classic gold mascara, at least five Lancôme Juicy Tubes, and the new portable emergency alarm.

Louise was wearing a short, ruffled skirt and a tight tank top that she’d bought at the Marc Jacobs sale in Paris. Her push-up bra pressed her boobs up more ridiculously than usual. She would’ve needed a push-down instead.

The heat, the din from the party, and the smell of expectation in the air rose up like a wall of wonder. They pushed through. Inside: blond babes, B-list boob models with D-cups, and blazer boyz abounded.

The goal was to quickly find someone they knew or to be hit on
by someone. They wanted to avoid having to stand around like losers, waiting for something to happen. To look alone was totally taboo.

They went into the kitchen—an enormous room, probably a thousand square feet. A bar’d been built in one half of the room. Smirnoff ads covered the walls: Jet Set Carl knew his product placement. Bartenders who’d been hired from the biggest club downtown bubbled up a steady golden stream of Taittinger and mixed drinks with the advertised booze as the main ingredient. In the corners: huge speakers were pumping out Eurovision-style music—appropriately ironic. The ceiling was covered in spotlights. Suspended from it were two crystal chandeliers the size of motorcycles. The light was reflecting in them like in the disco balls at the clubs Jet Set Cal usually controlled.

Natalie stared straight ahead. All her friends rocked that look all the time: the dead gaze. On the street: determined steps, head still, don’t turn it for anything except possibly avoiding being run over. At bars: stand and wait for your friend outside the ladies’ room and never meet anyone’s eyes—showing that you cared about others was a weakness.

A mix of B- and C-list celebs were milling about. She eyed the makeup of people: the model Rebecka Simonsson, the writer Björn af Kleen, one of the many Skarsgård brothers, Blondinbella and a dozen other boobie bloggers, the actor Henrik Lundström, and the fashionista Sofi Fahrman paraded past.

Smack in the middle was that cheesy writer who’d been in the tabloids recently for appearing on TV with a spray tan and his shirt unbuttoned to his navel.

Natalie missed Paris. She missed the time before everything’d started happening with her dad.

Louise had Lady Gaga eyes, without even having done a line yet. Did her best to maintain the bored, dead-gaze expression. It was obvious: she didn’t want to show how impressed she was.

The host was standing a bit farther in the room. He was dressed in a pink tux.

Louise pinched Natalie on the arm as discreetly as possible. “D’you see? Over there, that’s Jet Set Carl. Damn, he’s so hot.”

Natalie didn’t bother responding. The host’d obviously seen her. He made his way toward them. A look in his eye that seemed genuine enough. A broad smile that looked gross.

“Natalie, I’m so glad you could make it. How is everything, really?”

“It’s fine. How are you?”

“I’m great. So fantastic to have this done, finally. It took almost a year and a half. But it ended up pretty sweet, right?”

Then he sounded more serious. “But I understand your situation. It must be very scary. That’s why I’m so glad you could come tonight.”

Natalie didn’t know what to say. Her father’d been subjected to an assassination attempt, and here she was, partying. She felt like an idiot.

“It’s fine.” She turned to Louise. “This is my friend, Louise Guldhake.”

Louise’s smile wasn’t a real smile, more of a grimace that she thought looked like a smile. But it seemed to work on Jet Set Carl. He kissed her on the cheek.

“Hi, Louise. Wonderful to see you here. You’re having a good time, I hope?”

Then he leaned over and whispered something in Louise’s ear. Natalie thought,
This might be a memorable moment for Louise Guldhake
.

Later. She walked out into the foyer, found her shearling coat, smiled at the bouncer, and took the stairs up.

The terrace looked like a forest of metal mushrooms—gas-powered heaters to temper the cool May air. Jet Set Carl didn’t take any risks—a third of the terrace was covered in a party tent filled with infrared heaters. But it was okay out. The guests were crowding in. Enormous speakers were blazoning out Rihanna’s latest hit.

The same ads for Smirnoff everywhere.

She eyed the people. The same mix as downstairs in the apartment. The same meaningless expressions on everyone’s faces. Except for the ones who were too high to conceal their fascination with the celebs.

Natalie glanced down over the railing. The sky was dark blue. Light rose from the city. She glimpsed the dome and spire of the Hedvig Eleonora Church. Farther off, she saw the tower above Saluhallen, the large luxury food market. Dim silhouettes in the spring night. She remembered the conversation she’d had with Dad when he came home from the hospital.

“Natalie, I want to exchange a few words with you,” he’d said. Always that complicated Serbian, even though he knew Natalie preferred to speak Swedish.

They’d gone into the library.

Stefanovic had been sitting at the desk, Goran in one of the armchairs,
Milorad in another. All three of them’d been down in the parking garage at the time of the assassination attempt. Dad sat down in his armchair, the one he always sat in. One of his arms was dangling in a sling.

Natalie greeted the men. They kissed her on the cheeks: right, left, right. She knew them all. They’d been part of her family’s inner circle for as long as she could remember. Still, she didn’t know them at all. She got the feeling that they were meeting as adults now. For the first time.

Dad poured out a glass of whiskey.

He let the liquid spin around a few times in the glass before he tasted it.

“Natalie, my daughter, I think it’s important that you take part in some of the conversations we are having in here. Would you like some?”

Natalie looked at him. He was holding the whiskey bottle and a tumbler in his hands. Johnnie Walker Blue Label. It was the first time in her life that he offered her whiskey.

She accepted the glass. Dad poured.

He turned to the others in the room. “This here is my daughter, do you see? She doesn’t turn down a drink. A true Kranjic.”

Stefanovic nodded over in his corner. The men in the room liked her, she could feel it—Dad’s associates. The only people outside the family whom she could trust right now.

Dad began to speak again, “We are at a crossroads.”

Natalie took a sip of whiskey. It burned pleasantly in her throat.

“I want you to be here, to understand what is happening. The demolition firm, the alcohol and cigarette importing business, the gambling machines, the coat checks—you know what I do, Natalie. We do some other business too. But we don’t have to talk about that right now.”

He swirled the whiskey in his glass again.

Natalie was aware of more things than what Dad was mentioning now. His business sprawled in all directions. A lot of what he did wasn’t considered kosher by people like Louise—but that was the immigrant’s lot in life. And was it really that much better to make your money as a venture capitalist who slaughtered companies and fired workers, then created smart solutions so that you didn’t pay a cent in taxes, like Louise’s dad did?

Radovan’d come far, considering that he’d started out as a twenty-year-old at the Scania factories in Södertälje. He’d worked himself up
from nothing, against all odds. Most of the businesses he ran today weren’t illegal, but he would still always be considered a criminal in the eyes of Swedish society. So the Svens could go fuck themselves—if you never gave someone a chance to do honest work, you had to accept that that person sometimes played outside the rules. The land of the Sweden Democrats was only going to get worse.

“Stockholm has been our unthreatened market for many years,” Dad continued. “We’ve faced challenges, of course. Kum Jokso was killed. Mrado Slovovic tried to trick us. Those fuckers who blew shit up out at Smådalarö wanted to break us once again. But, and you know this, no one breaks a Kranjic. Right, Natalie?”

Natalie imitated Dad, spun the whiskey around in her glass. Smiled.

“And now someone tried to rub me out in a fucking parking garage. This is a new time we’re living in. We’ve been following this development for a few years. More and more players want a piece of the pie. You know who I’m talking about: HA, Bandidos, Original Gangsters, the Syrians, the Albanians—they’ve been around for a long time. But they’ve done their business, and we’ve done ours. And really, it’s only HA who’ve been playing in our league. But the newbies: the Gambians, Dark Snakes, Born to Be Hated—I mean, it’s like the damn
Jungle Book
. Before, people used to accept us, knew it was best for everyone not to attack us. But these new little monkeys haven’t understood that we’ve had a stabilizing effect on Stockholm’s gray zones. They lack history, they haven’t understood that everyone appreciates order, even the cops. HA, Bandidos, and the older factions make good money in their own fields. The higher-ups in the hierarchy hire illegal workers and manufacture invoice frauds in the construction industry. The ones lower down on the rungs do their racketeering and dope. But all the new tadpoles want is chaos, as long as they’re kings of their own fucking ghettos. So maybe there are some people who think they’ve got something to gain by getting rid of me.”

He took a deep breath.

“But—the guy in the parking garage was no amateur, that’s for sure. So you can rule out some of those greenhorns right away—they only deal with
un
organized crime. Someone is making a serious attempt to get rid of me. I don’t know who it is, but it means that someone is trying to get rid of
all of us
.”

Natalie listened. She agreed with her father. Someone was trying to get rid of him, that much was clear. And this someone hadn’t just
started a war against Dad. It was a war against her entire family and everyone sitting in the study right now. That could not be tolerated. It was humiliation.

She regarded the men in the room.

Dad was wearing a cuffed shirt and chinos. He looked grave.

Stefanovic was nicely dressed. Well-ironed, striped shirt with French cuffs and silver cufflinks that had
GUCCI
written on them. He wore his hair in a sharp side part, had well-trimmed stubble, and a tight silver bracelet around one wrist. Stefanovic was the only one who cared about his appearance like that.

Goran was wearing a black tracksuit, as usual. Always Adidas. Worn-looking running shoes, Nike Air—all the time. Funny to think that Goran, the most untrendy Serb in northern Europe, had purchased a pair of retro-hip shoes. Or else he’d just worn the same shoes since 1987—actually, that was not entirely impossible.

Milorad rocked jeans and a polo shirt—a pink Lacoste. He was tan and looked really fit too. Saint-Tropez here I come, or whatever. Milorad tried to look young, but in Natalie’s world, he’d been around for as long as Dad had.

She wondered who these men really were. If they would protect Dad. If they were capable.

And then a final thought shot through her mind. A thought that burned: Could they really be trusted?