Life Deluxe (36 page)

Mahmud, Jimmy, and Javier were sitting at their regular hangout: Pattaya Sun Club. Were stretched out down by the beach. Akon blasting in the background.

Babak wasn’t there—he was still sleeping.

Robert and Sergio hadn’t wanted to roll to Thailand. They’d gone to other countries.

Tom wasn’t there either—dude’d split for Bangkok to gamble. Jorge’d tried to forbid him to go—“You’re not gonna be able to keep it together,
huevon
. You’re gonna start betting higher and higher. I know you.”

Tom just grinned. Claimed he could increase his dough tenfold at the casinos in Bangkok. The fact that Lehtimäki’d been bitten by the gambling bug—an understatement. Over the past few weeks, the dude’d bet on everything. Who got the most hits off a joint. Who could chug a bottle of vino the fastest. Which cockroach would be first to make it to the sugar cube he’d put under the table.

Jorge sat down. Lanterns that were lit at night: suspended from the palm trees. The wicker chairs creaked.

He wasn’t hungry. Ordered a fresh-squeezed pineapple juice. Jimmy and Javier were chowing on breakfast. Mahmud claimed he was eating lunch. Jorge suspected he was doing all kinds of bullshit at night—peddling drugs to Brits, Germans, and Swedes who needed to escape their homelands in more ways than one.

Shades on. All the boys were bronzed. You could hardly make out Mahmud’s tattoos. The
ALBY FOREVER
text on his forearm was starting to fade. He ought to touch it up.

Javier’d even gotten a sunburn. Whined that the girls he was getting weren’t as fine.
Amigo:
out of control.
Hermano:
a sex addict or something. Going on nonstop about the best strip joints, the best hooker bars, the best go-go dancers. Bragged about the Kama Sutra, double-deckers, six-packs, shockers. Even babbled about
the lady boys
—the Thai version of trannies, they were everywhere. The other guys messed with him—called Javier
ibne
, banana-banger, Vietcong-cock-connoisseur.

Javier didn’t seem to give a shit about the names they called him. “I’ll do anything and anyone over fourteen. I don’t give a shit if they’re real chicks or not. They just gotta look good.”

Jorge’s juice arrived.

“Jorge,” Jimmy said. “Listen to this shit.”

Jorge put his shades on too. Closed his eyes. Pretended to listen.

Mahmud continued telling the story he was in the middle of: “So I was boozing like a
suedi
. Happy hour on top of happy hour, you know. Then that Russian chick showed up, the one I was hanging with the first few weeks we were here. Remember her?”

The others apparently knew whom he was talking about.

“I was sitting with some German
blattes
, good guys,” Mahmud went on, “and she just, like, steps right up to me and goes, ‘There you are.’ And I’m like, ‘Who are you?’ And she’s like, ‘You can’t sell like you’re doing. This ain’t your territory. You’ve gotta pay.’ And I laughed. Like, who the fuck does she think she is, right?”

Jimmy grinned. “Maybe you hadn’t been hard enough on her, Big Papa?”

“Shut it, man,” Mahmud shot back. “What the fuck should I do? I hardly sold nothing. Just some weed to a few Germans and Brits. And five grams of coke to a guy from Gothenburg I met on the beach. The coke here comes like pieces of chalk—you break ’em up and hack ’em on your own. There can’t be a monopoly on that.”

Jorge leaned over. “What’ve I said?”

“I know, I know,” Mahmud said. “But it was so little. I didn’t think it would bother anyone, honest.”

“How much she say you gotta pay?”

“I’m not gonna fucking pay.”

Jorge interrupted him. “You’re gonna pay. We don’t wanna attract unnecessary attention.”

“But Babak thought I should just fuck it.”

Jorge raised his voice. “Okay, so Babak thought you should just fuck it, ignore whatever the bitch was saying? Smart. Wanksta’s real fucking smart. I’m so damn tired of Babak, man. He thinks he’s some hotshot just ’cause we used his ride. But he’s not the one calling the shots. What else has he fucking done? Huh? If I say you pay, you pay. How much they want?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“What?” Jorge spilled pineapple juice onto the wicker table’s glass top. “They want ten thousand dollars?”

“Yes.” Mahmud’s voice: worried.

“How much’ve you been peddling, really?”

“Not much, honest.”

Jimmy got involved. “That’s not the thing. The thing is they’ve realized
we’re not regular tourists. They think we’re trying to establish ourselves here since we’ve stayed so long.”

The worry was washing over Jorge in waves. Ten thousand dollars—that was alotta bank. They were probably all thinking the same thing right now: the way the situation could’ve been.

Jorge saw images projected on the inside of his sunglasses. All the guys together in the living room of the apartment in Hagalund. Dressed in protective gear, plastic gloves, boots, and new ski masks. Dressed to handle a virus attack from hell.

One security bag in the middle of the floor.

Important to get the money out quick. The Finn’s advice: get rid of the cash, fast. Stash it in a few safe places: ’cause no matter what happens—they can arrest you, convict you, shut you up for
muchos años
behind bars—but if you’ve kept the cheese somewhere safe, you’ve always gained something.

The Finn’s guy was holding the ax. An LED was blinking its red light on each bag. Two holes on either side of the LED: you needed two different keys to open these bags.

Or else you did what the Finn’s guy was about to do. Jorge was standing beside him. These days he knew more than most about CITs. But there was one thing he didn’t know: he had no idea how all this “smart DNA” shit worked. The Finn didn’t know too good either. They just knew that the bags might have ampuls in them, filled with something that could spread all over whoever opened them. Something the five-oh could use to find them, impossible to wash off. These particular bags were sprayed with CIT semen that would identify them like a rape kit. That’s why the teams looked like HIV researchers right now.

The dude raised the ax.

Everyone stared.

Jorge already felt like he was coming down, even though it was just an hour or so since he’d taken the roofies.

The dude sliced the blade through the air.

A clicking sound. Jorge leaned down. Looked closely. The bag’d cracked near the opening on the short end. Just as they’d calculated. All they had to do was lift the lid.

The other guys leaned in as well. Jorge opened the bag.

Straightened his goggles. Looked down. Four plastic bags. Nothing
that sprayed out. No sound. No powder, as far as he could tell. Maybe all the talk about smart DNA was just that, talk.

He opened the bags one by one. Set the booty on the table.

The guy the Finn’d sent was doing the same thing, counting bill by bill.

Mahmud was playing the announcer, using a loud voice. Eighty-one thousand Swedish kronor, cash. Thirty thousand euros. Ten thousand kronor in state-issued coupons. Seventeen thousand worth of scratch-and-wins.

Bad.

It was like some shitty comedy. A nasty cunt-parody.

But maybe there was more in the other bags and sacks.

They repeated the procedure, bag by bag. The Finn’s man divided them up. Jorge checked for smart DNA. Jorge and Mahmud counted. The Finn’s man recounted.

Three hours later, they’d gone through all the bags plus the sacks.

Less than two and a half million kronor, total.

Them: stunned.

Them: tricked by the Postal Service. Maybe by the insider too.

Them: losers without borders.

Them: porked like passed-out virgins.

The only hope for J-boy right now: lottery luck—that there was an unexpected amount of cash in the three bags that he’d hidden away.

The bags that he, Mahmud, and now also Babak had stashed away from the Finn and the others.

Hägerström woke up the next morning to his cell phone ringing.

Unlisted number.

He picked up.

“Are you still sleeping?”

It was Inspector Torsfjäll. His voice sounded raspy and hoarse. Almost as if he too had been out partying the night before.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m good,” Hägerström said.

That was a lie in more ways than one. His entire body ached.

“I’m calling to see what’s going on. We haven’t spoken in a while.”

Actually, they had an agreement stating that Torsfjäll would never be the one to call Hägerström first.

“I’ve tried to get hold of you,” Hägerström said. “We’ve got to make up our minds. My assignment was formally supposed to end when JW gated out. And he gated out one day ago. So, what do I do now?”

Torsfjäll was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “What do you think?” Hägerström thought about it. He had gathered good material over the past few months. He had copied the information every time JW asked him to be his errand boy. They had hundreds of bank account numbers, company names, banks, and names of lawyer front men in at least ten different countries. An enormous puzzle for Torsfjäll’s economic crimes guy to piece together.

But this was the first time Hägerström was really starting to get close. The gate-out party last night, Nippe, the nighttime walk, what he had done to the guy on Storgatan.

Oh my God
.

What had he done?

Hägerström pushed the thought out of his mind, said, “Things have been moving forward recently.”

“I do believe you’re thinking what I’m thinking. We don’t have anything
that would hold, so far. But you’re well on your way. It’s obvious that this little jewel is dealing with some really ugly business.”

“But he won’t let me in on the details.”

“No, but the details we’ve already got will entertain the economic crimes auditor for a while. And according to my sources, Hansén is moving to Dubai this fall. That goes along with our theory that, as different countries get rid of bank secrecy, JW and Co. are forced to move their assets. And this Nippe guy, I’ve put a tail on him several times since we saw him have lunch with JW. By the way, did you get anything out of him last night?”

Hägerström wondered how Torsfjäll could know that he had talked to Nippe at the party. Actually, Hägerström hadn’t even told Torsfjäll that he was going to JW’s gate-out bash. Torsfjäll must have other sources.

“Yes and no,” he said. “He was very intoxicated. But he confirmed that he knows JW well, and as he said, he wants to help JW. He didn’t say what that so-called help might entail. But he sounded interested when I mentioned potential clients.”

“Good.”

Hägerström considered telling him about last night’s assault. He looked down at his knuckles. Coagulated blood. Scabs in the process of forming. Maybe Torsfjäll already knew about all that.

The inspector said, “Either way, we’ve been able to deduce that Nippe is JW’s Lord Moyne, so to speak. He comes from a good background, he’s got safe money backing him up, and tons of connections. He’s a good face for any operation. Possibly his dad’s bank and currency exchange offices are involved somehow as well. It would be highly interesting, if that were the case. My guys’ve seen him at different bars and restaurants with at least seven different people, instead of meeting at his regular office. Of those seven people, we’ve seen five meet up a little later with guys working for Mischa Bladman. It’s all connected.”

“Yes, evidently.”

“But unfortunately, we haven’t seen any actual money exchanged. So in terms of hard evidence, this is all still pretty weak. You know, the National Economic Crimes Bureau doesn’t exactly have a stellar record when it comes to getting people convicted.”

“But it’s still a start, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And I’ve been able to get hold of the registration number for a
company with the help of the information that you helped JW smuggle out. It’s a Swedish company that we believe is controlled by Nippe Creutz. It sold a property in central Stockholm for four million euros two weeks ago. The buyer was a company that’s registered in Andorra. That is also included in JW’s documentation.”

Torsfjäll paused for dramatic effect. Hägerström wondered what was coming next.

“So, my econ-investigator says the property was appraised at double that value two years ago, at over eight million euros. That means that Nippe’s company sold an asset at a price seriously under market value. The buyers are probably paying the difference under the table. Nippe’s company doesn’t have to pay capital gains tax, and the buyers get an asset—paid for in half with dirty money—that they can sell and thereby get clean money in profit. And there you go: JW and Nippe helped someone launder four million euros.”

“Aha. Well, that sounds like pretty robust evidence.”

“Maybe. But real estate appraisal is not an exact science.”

“But you said it’s evident that JW planned the deal.”

“Yes, but it could be claimed that he helped only with the numbers for the deal. That’s not illegal.”

Hägerström didn’t say anything. He understood that this matter was a very complex crime.