Never Fuck Up: A Novel (36 page)

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Hi there, I’m under here.”

“I can see that. Did the decision come in?”

Thomas rolled out. Remained lying on the creeper. Looked up at Åsa. He’d made up his mind. It felt overwhelming. Big. But they didn’t deserve better, his traitor colleagues.

“They dropped the internal investigation, but I was transferred. To the traffic unit.”

Her face was upside down. It was still obvious—a smile, relaxation. She breathed out.

“Oh my God, what a relief. That’s wonderful. I thought they’d do something worse.”

“Åsa, it’s fucking awful. How can you say that this is a good thing? Don’t you understand what working in that unit’s going to do to me? I’m going to rot. I can’t do it, I have to fix this. I don’t know how, but please don’t say that it’s a good thing.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s still a relief. Imagine if you were convicted. I can’t help it.”

Thomas got up. “There is one more thing I have to tell you.”

“What?” She looked worried.

“I’ve actually said yes to another job offer. As a head security guard. It’s private. Completely outside the force.”

Åsa continued to look worried.

“I’m taking it.”

“Are you joking with me, Thomas?”

“Not at all. I’m completely serious. It’s a part-time job that I think sounds really exciting. So I’m going to call Adamsson tomorrow and tell him that I’m only taking the traffic job part-time and that he can shove his damn sympathy up his ass. The rest of the time, I’ll do this other thing.”

“Thomas, you can’t do that. That doesn’t sound stable at all.”

Thomas felt tired. Didn’t have the energy to argue anymore.

At the same time: maybe this was the beginning of something new.

The worst rain all year, even though it was still summer. It pissed on the city. Smattered against the windshield like machine-gun fire. Sick, if you thought about it. Mahmud remembered the sound of machine-gun rounds from when he was a kid. A family wedding in a Baghdad suburb. Back then you shot because you were happy, Dad used to say.

Hopefully, this was his final run to the Shurgard facility for today. Sköndal. The place looked like a cross between a knight’s castle and a barn. A tower with a big-ass sign:
SHURGARD SELF-STORAGE. OUR SPACE, YOUR PLACE
. Pale-pink wood look—in actuality, the place was sheet metal. Surrounded by asphalt: parking lots, ramps to storage areas, unloading docks. Last week it’d been the storage facility in Kungens Kurva, the week before that the one in Bromma. He’d been across half the city, but they looked the same everywhere he went.

Mahmud dug the place. The idea was tight. No need to meet the Yugos’ underlings unnecessarily. This operation ran on a strictly need-to-know basis, as Ratko put it. They refilled the stuff as soon as Mahmud informed them he wanted to make a withdrawal. He dropped paper off ahead of time at a Yugo-owned bodega in Bredäng. The Yugos were smart: the rules were tougher than at Guantánamo Bay. Mahmud was a nobody in their world. If he got done, they’d say they’d never seen him, never even heard his name. Again: the setup was thick as cream—from their perspective.

What could he do? His debt to Gürhan was what’d made him do it. Honestly: his promise to Erika Ewaldsson hadn’t been 100 percent bullshit. He really didn’t want to be rolling like this. Muscle juice, that was his thing. He chowed on the stuff himself, so why not finance his own body by dealing some pills? But this—if he got collared again he’d be benched for the long haul.

He’d borrowed Robert’s car. Felt weird. A cute little Golf. Sporty: curved gray leather seats, big Navi Plus, and fresh fenders. Nothing wrong with it, but he’d made his previous rounds in Babak’s deluxe
ride. That was all over now. Babak’d cut him off. Since Mahmud’d told him about his collaboration with the Yugos. Babak’d asked Mahmud to pack his stuff and move. Shit—Babak was a whiny fucking pussy. A
sharmuta.

Outdoor storage units were a little more expensive, but much easier to get to with a car. You didn’t have to go inside the facility, didn’t have to pass by too many surveillance cameras, didn’t have to face too many petrified peeps. Ratko’d grinned when he’d told him that the storage unit was even insured.

“Get it? If there’s a break-in, at least the insurance company’ll pay us back for the store of balsa we supposedly have in there.”

Mahmud punched in the pin code. Fiddled with the key. His hands were slippery. The security in these places: pin code, keys, surveillance cameras. Still: he felt weak. Flashes of light in front of his eyes. The Range Rover with Wisam in the backseat. Why did he think about that? A player like him had to keep moving. Ditch the past.

’Cause after he’d sold the shit today, he’d be free. Soon his final payment to Gürhan and the Born to Be Hated
blattes
would be over and done with. Three months of terror drawing to a close. He just had to shovel this last snow. Damn, it was gonna be sweet.

The thirty G’s he’d gotten from Stefanovic plus crazy kronor he’d raked in through weed and blow sales over the past few months’d paid off 95 percent of the debt. And tonight at the gym—the deal was basically sealed with Dijma, a big customer. Tight. Then it would be
jalla adios
to Gürhan. But even more tight: good-bye to the Yugo swine too—the ones he’d been dumb enough to help liquidate a homie from the block—who he’d slaved for these two months, who’d reamed him so hard up the dirty when he’d asked them for help. He was gonna quit. Do what Erika Ewaldsson’d recommended: Stop with the criminal activity. Become a free man.

Mahmud locked the bag with the shit into his locker at the gym. The wrapping paper and plastic bulked it up. No risk getting it swiped at Fitness Center—if anyone got caught trying to boost something here, he’d first get his balls squeezed a few turns in the cogs of the ab machine and then get his head smashed under three or four plates on the thigh press. After that, they’d make a protein shake out of the sucker and treat the meatheads to samples.

Mahmud walked into the gym. The Eurotechno was blaring. He
greeted a couple of big guys by the free weights. What was chill about gyms: a
blatte
like Mahmud almost never had to feel alone.

On the schedule today: squats. At other gyms: a ton of hooked-up cardio machines and advanced press-and-pull gear designed to isolate muscles you didn’t even know you had. Sci-fi land or whatever. Nothing wrong with that, for some, but according to Mahmud, the key to bulking up was in the basic exercises. Always with free weights. And the squat was king of all free-weight exercises.

There was a lot of talk that squats led to busted backs and other problems. Mahmud knew better: the reason for back pain wasn’t the exercise in and of itself, it was bad technique. The solution was simple for anyone with half a brain. Mahmud’d done his research, talked to the others at Fitness Center. Instead of starting the movement at the hip, you should do what the strength guru Charles Poliquin’d always said: start the squat with your knees.

He loved the exercise. And soon he would go on the juice—then things would get even better. He put 180 pounds on each side of the bar. Began the maneuver by bending his knees slowly. As he lowered the bar, he only moved his hips when he needed to in order to maintain balance. He was going to do three sets of ten. He spit, snarled, growled between his teeth. Felt the blood vessels being pressed to the max. His eyes almost popped.
Abbou
—it felt good. He was only thinking about the lift, the move, the bend in his knees. No bad memories, no bad conscience, no bad karma.

When he was on the juice he’d be able to handle much more. And damn, he was gonna bulk up. With good discipline, he could gain twenty-two pounds. Inject Stanol and front-load Deca. The ampoules felt unreal, but Mahmud was happy needles didn’t scare him—the injection needles were as big as straws from McDonald’s. Then he’d take some Winstrol to dry out—he didn’t want to look like a balloon.

There were some minor downsides, too. The word at the gym was that your kidneys could take a hit. But he was only gonna do it for eight weeks.

An hour later: Dijma with a gripper in his hands. Dijma: buyer with a big B who never bought on credit—always cash. Dijma: the Albanian who didn’t work out too much, but who sold a crazy bunch of shit. Always applying mad force to the gripper. The muscles in his thumbs
big as tennis balls. The nails on the dude’s pinky fingers were long like on a porn star.

Mahmud dug him, a straight thug. Dressed in classic gym getup: sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, a zippered hoodie. Looked around. No one. A Friday night—the gym was half empty at this time of day.

Mahmud put the weights down. “Hey, Twiggy, stop working your wank muscle and do some free weights instead.”

Dijma grinned. Rules of the hierarchy: Mahmud was bigger, Mahmud sat on the goods. Mahmud delivered. So: Dijma laughed at whatever Mahmud said.

In shit Swedish, “The gear, you got it?” Dijma was apparently stressed today.

“Sure. Fifty, in one package.”

“Fuck, man, you guys were gonna break it up.”

“Chill. You break it up. That’s no problem.”

“Okay, okay. And the price?”

“Nine hundred pesetas.”

“Pesetas?”

“Kronor, man. Fuck, you tired today?”

“Nine hundred kronor? No way. Eight hundred.”

“We’ve said nine hundred every time for months. So don’t think you’re gonna come changing it now.”

“Prices change. And you didn’t break it up.”

Dijma said it like it was some fucking macroeconomic certainty. Mahmud didn’t dig his grouse.

“This is bullshit. Nine hundred, that’s the deal.”

“Eight fifty, not a kronor more.” Dijma was too cocky for his own good.

Mahmud shouldn’t put up with this shit. But still: he needed the cash, bad.

His calculation: if he sold fifty times 850 a gram it would be 42,500. Mahmud’s cut: twelve G’s. Wasn’t enough to cover the final payment of fifteen to Gürhan. He needed nine hundred a gram. Or else he was screwed.

Mahmud took a step forward.

“Dijma, the price is nine hundred. We can negotiate next time, then I’ll give you eight hundred. But today it’s nine hundred. You follow?”

Dijma pumped the grip a few times. Mahmud didn’t drop his gaze.

The Albanian nodded. “For today, okay. Next day, eight hundred.”

Bull’s-eye. Dijma must be stressing about something; he’d folded too easily. Normally, this kind of thing could’ve made for some tense shit. But not today, and it wasn’t Mahmud’s problem—he was gonna celebrate.

They walked down to the locker room. Sat next to each other on the bench. Mahmud handed over the bag of gear. Dijma went into a toilet stall to test it. Mahmud, with a raised voice: “Ey, you don’t trust me or what?” The Albanian didn’t respond. Came out thirty seconds later, thumbs up, pushed over a plastic bucket that said
CREATAMAX 300
on the side—normally, bodybuilder milkshake. Today: dough. Mahmud dove his hand in. Fingered the bills.

Totally insane. In a few hours, Mahmud would raise his Stockholm ranking. Lose the Gürhan pigs. Quit the Yugo assholes. Become his own man. Rock for real.

Eleven-thirty, a Friday night in Stockholm: people acted like they were on speed. Had waited all week to go out, plus it’d been pouring all day. But now: the rain’d stopped—summer was back. It might be the last chance for that sweet outdoor buzz, that summer fuck, that weed flight. Muscle cars were driving down Sveavägen to cruise around, around, elbows stuck out through open windows: as
Suedi
as only Svens could be. The kids on their way from the joints in Vasastan that were about to close. Mission: make their way to Stureplan and guzzle some glamour. Mahmud: on his way to freedom.

Carried his gym bag slung over his shoulder. In it: 45,000 cash in a container that’d once held strawberry-flavored creatine powder. Thirty grand had to be repaid to Robert, for the advance for the Yugos. The remaining fifteen were going to Gürhan. No big sums, obviously. But it was Mahmud’s key to freedom.

He walked downtown. Played with the contents of his pocket. A Redline baggie, five grams. Ducked into the shadows of a building. Fished out a cigarette. Twisted it between thumb and index finger. The tobacco fell into his hand.

He poured the weed onto the paper, mixed it with the tobacco from the cigarette. Licked. Rolled. Ran the lighter flame along the edge of the paper a few times to dry the shit. Lit the spliff. Three deep hits. Smoke rings in the shadows. Relaxed feeling.

This was going to be an ill night.