Never Fuck Up: A Novel (33 page)

At home in Sweden, all the reports from the telephone companies would be waiting for him. They’d promised him that.

At home in Sweden, in a few days, he would know if he would stay or not.

At home in Sweden, reality could do what it wanted with him. He felt ready.

Or not.

The cunt parole office at Hornstull was lamer than ever. Mahmud’s mood: cuntier than ever. He’d been an hour early. The receptionist claimed that Erika Cuntwaldson refused to come out and see him. “I’m sorry, she’s in another meeting.” Yeah, right—sure she is. Humiliation tactics were their thing. To always let Mahmud wait. He was gonna fucking pork that bitch in her “other meeting.”

Mahmud eyed the magazines and newspapers. Thought:
Gracious Home, Dagens Nyheter
—so gay. Name a single ordinary
blatte
who read shit like that. But the car magazine was okay. Mahmud flipped through it. An article about the new Ferrari. He drooled for a while. Then he thought: Should he split? Clock on his cell read fifty more minutes to go. He
should
split. But still: Erika was okay, after all. Plus: if things got messy with the parole office the cops would be all up in his shit, and if the cops were up in his shit social services would be all up on him, and so on. If you thought about it, the principle was clear enough: never end up in the system. ’Cause once you’re in, they won’t let you go. Ever.

Mahmud’d borrowed a cellie from Babak that he’d pocketed at his dad’s store. Could hold hundreds of MP3s. Babak’d loaded it with an ill mix. The baddest beat-bangers: P. Diddy, the Latin Kings, Akon. But also: Haifa Wehbe, Ragheb Alama—real Middle Eastern groove. Mahmud leaned his head back. Chilled. He was never gonna let slip that he waited this long to see his parole officer.

He’d dreamed the nightmare again. Back in the woods. Pine trees and fir trees eclipsed the sky. Arms raised to the heavens. The rifle gleamed in a cold light that seemed to be coming from streetlamps. Lamps in the middle of the woods? It seemed weird even in the dreamworld. On the grass in the middle of a ring of men dressed in black—Mahmud was looking diagonally down as if he were floating above the scene—he saw Wisam. Wisam’s hands were black from the blood on his face. It ran slowly. Warm. Hot like a stream of lava. He lowered his
head. Stefanovic pointed the rifle at his neck: “We’re killing you, not because you deserve it but because we need it to show up in our balance sheet.” Wisam looked up. Eyes red from crying. A pulsing cut on his cheek. But maybe not. The blood was smearing his cheeks. His chin. Was running like in slow motion. “Help me,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time. Ever since he’d seen the Yugos pick up the Lebanese bro that afternoon. The dreams were fucking with his head. Patient. Persistent. Sharp like a cocaine rush. The forest clearing. The piss in the grass. Akhramenko’s jabs in the ribs of a faceless opponent. Stefanovic’s smile. Gürhan’s grin. Born to Be Hated. He tried to smoke up before going to bed so that he’d have an easier time falling asleep. Didn’t go to the gym or drink Coke too late at night. Only watched boring TV shows. It still didn’t work.

The memories were whipping him.

Stefanovic’d asked him to get in the car. He was dressed in a suit, with a cell phone in hand, and he was in a radiant mood. He turned to Mahmud, “Great thanks for your help.” Then he kept talking into the phone. In Serbian.

They were driving toward Södermalm. Slavic music on the stereo. A red light on Vasagatan. “Was it hard to get ahold of that asshole?”

Mahmud grinned. “No. Shit, man, I’m a dog-catching king.” Now, two months later, that grin almost felt as disgusting as if he’d laughed at his mother’s grave.

Erika rapped her knuckles on the table in front of him. He opened one eye. She smiled. What the fuck was she smiling at? Mahmud kept his earbuds on. Couldn’t hear what she said.

She knocked him on the knee. Tried to say something that couldn’t be heard through the phat beats, 50 Cent.

He took the earbuds off.

Dragged his feet all the way to her room. As messy as usual. Just as much paper, coffee mugs, bottles of mineral water, dead plants, nerdy posters with weird chunky peeps on them. Caption:
Botero
. Fuck, man, Botero, that’s what she was—a cow.

“Come on, Mahmud, you don’t have to act like a two-year-old just because you showed up early today.”

Mahmud rolled up his earbuds. “Who do you think you are?” And, in a softer voice: “Cunt.”

Erika stared at him. Mahmud knew: you had to’ve known her for a while to know how angry she really was. Erika: you could measure that chick’s fury by how still she sat. Right now: she was moving less than the naked statue on Hötorget.

Thirty seconds of silence. Then Mahmud said, “Okay, I was too early. It was my fault. Sorry. I just get so pissed at your reception chick. Why couldn’t she ask you to see me a little earlier?”

Erika moved her hand—a good sign.

“It wasn’t her fault. I was in another meeting. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Mahmud. You’ve got to understand that. Anyway. Let’s forget that now. It’s fly that you’re here.”

Mahmud grinned at her word choice:
fly.
Man, did she talk like that? In his heart: he couldn’t help thinking Erika was okay after all.

“How’s the job search going? You’ve practically got to be CEO somewhere by now.”

If it’d been anyone else: Mahmud would’ve lost his shit. On purpose. Taken it as a diss. A way of making fun of him. The thing with Erika: deep down, he knew that’s not what she meant. He usually knew that at other times, too, but here—it’s like he couldn’t have a beef with her for longer than five minutes.

“Honest, it’s not going too good. I haven’t been called to interviews lately.”

They talked. Erika chatted on as usual. Told him he had to sign up for a course, be in touch with some job-placement agency, his social worker. That he had to stay in touch with his dad, his sisters. A strong family was important. A social context was important. Old friends were important.

He felt a headache come crawling on. Disturbing. Wisam: an old friend.

He switched on the look-like-you’re-listening look. But couldn’t relax. Tried to soften the headache that was starting to scream: WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?

It felt like he had to hold on to something. Like he was about to collapse. Fall, crawl around like an insect on the linoleum floor. Felt like he wanted to tell everything, spill it all, to Erika. No.
Khara.
That wouldn’t work. Never.

He held out. Bit the bullet. Said yes to everything Erika wanted to hear yes to.

Fifteen minutes later, they were done.

Thanks, thanks, see you in two weeks.

Fast. Out.

Two hours later. He was staying with Babak for a few days, couldn’t take Dad’s whining.

Things were going good for Babak. He’d gotten a new forty-six-inch Sony flat screen. “Not some cheap sale model,” as he said. “The real stuff, more pixels than there are
blattes
in Alby. You feel me?” Babak pushed product like never before: blow, weed, even cat. Could talk about it all day: the coke wasn’t like before. It wasn’t just high-class flyers and the Stureplan clowns that were doing it. The opposite. The Sven Svenssons and the Ali Muhammads next door were ripping lines more often than they downed beers. Everyone was doing it. The prices’d dropped like at an after-Christmas sale. Soon: C would be bigger than weed. Babak transformed every coin into paper. The reward: flat screen, chicks, lackeys. Babak’d gotten two clockers who dealt for him. And that’s when the real profits first started pouring in.

Reward of rewards. Two weeks ago, Babak’d bought the number one
blatte
man’s wish: a BMW. The ride was an ’07, bought as part of a debt settlement with some poor Finn in Norsborg who couldn’t deliver.

Mahmud felt it strong: he was so jealous. Of his brother. Hated the feeling. At the same time, he promised himself: one day he’d own even flyer shit.

Babak said, “What’re you doing? You’re stressing me out.
Habibi,
sit down. Let’s watch a flick.” Sometimes he sounded so funny: spoke Arabic, but said the word “flick” in Swedish.

Mahmud responded coolly, “Yo, I gotta run some shit by you.”

“No problem. The movie can wait. Fire away.”

“I did something stupid. Cunt stupid.”

Babak did a double take, pretended to look surprised. “Come on, when did you
not
do something cunt stupid?”

“Seriously, Babak. This stays between us. Only. I betrayed someone I didn’t wanna betray.”

Babak seemed to feel the seriousness. Mahmud paced. Started at the beginning, with the stuff Babak already knew. How he’d been pressed by Gürhan, through Daniel. How his desperation’d grown. How the opportunity’d come like a gift from Allah. The chance to do the Yugos a small favor that they’d pay for royally. To find Wisam Jibril, an old
friend from the hood, who’d ripped off Radovan. Babak’d already figured some of it out from before. Been to the Bentley store, heard how Mahmud’d gone door to door in every concrete tower looking for Wisam. But he didn’t know the whole story.

Mahmud stopped his pacing in the middle of the room. “You know, when he came to our place that day and I started talking to him, told him my business idea, suggested we meet up, I knew something else right then.”

“What did you know?” Babak asked.

“I knew I would regret this for the rest of my life. You feel me?”

Babak just nodded.

Mahmud kept going. He described how he’d tricked Wisam into going to the restaurant in Tumba, how the Yugos’d plucked the Lebanese, how Mahmud’d hopped into a BMW and driven off too. But they hadn’t trailed the car that Wisam was in. Instead, they drove in toward the city. Stopped at Slussen. Stefanovic told Mahmud to get out with him. They walked into one of the big buildings behind the Katarina Elevator. Took a cramped elevator up. Stepped out. There was a restaurant up there. White tablecloths, crystal stemware, pro waiters—real deluxe atmosphere. Mahmud’d had no idea there were joints like that on the South Side.

They had a reservation. The waiter seemed to recognize Stefanovic. Like, shit, you know?

Stefanovic ordered a drink. Mahmud didn’t plan on drinking, ordered a Diet Coke as usual. “I hope you like this place. I thought we’d celebrate. As thanks for helping us so much.”

Mahmud ordered foie gras with some kind of pear vinaigrette that was supposed to come with Serrano ham. He asked to have it without the final ingredient.

Stefanovic chatted. About the money he’d made at the K-1 fights, Jörgen Ståhl’s fantastic punches, some new bar by Stureplan. Mahmud liked the way he spit. Stefanovic was drinking wine. The entrées were served. Mahmud’d had a hard time choosing: a lot of fish on the menu and that wasn’t his thing. The waiter set his plate down. Grilled rib eye. Real stuff.

During the entire conversation, in the back of his head: he had to ask the Yugo what they could do about Gürhan and Born to Be Hated. Mahmud looked around. Hardwood floors, men in suits, ill view over the city. A couple of old guys at another table were staring at him and Stefanovic in a Sven way.

Stefanovic wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin.

“Okay, let’s talk business.” He lowered his voice. “First of all, I want to thank you again. It would’ve been hard to find him without you. The guys are taking care of him now. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Mahmud understood, but not really. For some reason, he shook his head.

“You don’t understand? This is how it is. We’re not taking him because he deserves it, but because we need it to show up in our balance sheet. You know, he didn’t really pocket too much in his little airport heist. We managed to take most of it back. So it’s not about the money. It’s about the principle. The rules of the game. Our entire business idea is built on one thing.” He leaned over, whispered into Mahmud’s ear, “Fear.”

Stefanovic took a sip of his wine.

“Anyway. You’ve proven that you’re a good guy. You did your job quickly, without making a mess, and in the right way. We appreciate that. Do you know what the most important thing is in this field?”

Mahmud shook his head.

“That we can trust each other. Trust is the only thing that matters. We don’t work with written contracts or stuff like that. Just trust. Do you understand?”

Stefanovic took a big bite of his food.

What the Yugo was saying sounded okay to Mahmud’s ears. “You can trust me. One hundred percent.”

“That’s good.” Stefanovic finished chewing. “You will get your pay today.”

Mahmud almost couldn’t keep up. It was all happening too fast. He needed to parry with his proposal. Still play according to the rules. He gathered his courage. Sharpened his talk.

“Hold on a sec, Stefanovic. Thanks for saying all that. It feels damn good to’ve been able to help you. Honest, it would’ve been hard for you to find that guy. He hung in my circles, not yours. You gotta be deep in the concrete to pull off a thing like that. And I’d be happy to work more with you. Word on the street is you guys are good. So, I’m yours. But, there’s something else I gotta talk about. I don’t want cash for the gig. I wanna know if you can help me with something else.”