Vengeance (12 page)

    
Built in the 1960s, the stairwells of the building had been painted many times over the years, but judging by the flaking paint, yet another coat was in order. Suhonen stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator reeked of urine.

    
There were four apartments on the fifth floor. Next to the stairwell leading upstairs was a brown door with no name tag.

    
Suhonen couldn’t remember if he had ever been here on a bust. The VCU had ransacked quite a few of the flats on Aleksis Kivi Street.

    
Suhonen rang the doorbell.

    
His old friend Salmela opened the door, and the nauseating stench of sweat and rotting food mixed with fresh cigarettes wafted into the hallway. “Come in,” said Salmela.

    
Dirty clothes lay all over the entry. Shoes were cluttered about and only two coats remained on the hangers; the rest were in a heap on the floor.

    
Suhonen didn’t say anything, just followed Salmela, who was dressed in jeans and a grubby white shirt, into the living room. Suhonen dodged the beer cans, bottles and laundry littering the floor, glancing briefly into the bedroom on the right. He wouldn’t have been surprised at all to see a city rat slink out from behind one of the cardboard boxes.

    
The living room was on the smaller side, with a TV in the corner, and in front of that, a gray sofa that even the Salvation Army wouldn’t have deemed acceptable. Its seat cushions were sagging and the upholstery was torn in many places. Salmela sat down at the table. A full ashtray, glasses, two opened cartons of milk and a few dishes lay on the table. Apparently, Salmela enjoyed liver casserole as well as mac-and-cheese.

    
Looking fatigued, Salmela dug out a twenty-two caliber pistol and set it on the table. “Take it.”

    
“What’s going on?” Suhonen asked, a shade of worry in his voice.

    
Had his friend shot someone? The apartment stunk, but not of a corpse.

    
“I was thinking about shooting myself, but then I came to my senses. This .22 is just too small for the job. If you’ll give me your Glock, I can take care of it right now.”

    
Suhonen’s 9mm Glock 26 was in a shoulder holster beneath his leather jacket, but he had no intention of lending it to his childhood friend. Developed specifically for concealed carry, the “baby” Glock packed power and accuracy into a small package.

    
Suhonen and Salmela had been friends since childhood.
They had both grown up in Lahti, a town of about 100,000, an hour north of Helsinki. The two had belonged to a small youth gang that burglarized attics. When the gang was finally busted in action, Salmela was along, but Suhonen was at home with a raging fever. The best friends had ended up on opposite sides of the law, though their friendship hadn’t ended. It had actually blossomed—Suhonen picked up street intel from Salmela, and in return, had helped his friend out of a few legal jams.

    
But Salmela was now in a steep downhill slide, not unlike many of the other former members of their youth gang. Their alternatives had been violent death, suicide or drinking themselves to death. Some romantic might think that a tough enough woman would be able to set her man straight, but that wasn’t really true. Suhonen knew that the women in these circles were every bit the alcoholics the men were. A tough woman would just make the fights more vicious and inflate the risk of a violent end.

    
“You won’t get
my
weapon,” said Suhonen.

    
“Not fair.”

    
In a tough situation, a firm approach was best. “If you shot yourself with my gun, how do you think I’d explain that to the NBI?”

    
Salmela’s eyes met Suhonen’s for the first time. His eyes were bleary, but at least he wasn’t terribly drunk.

    
“Guess you have a good point.”

    
“Right.” Suhonen chose not to ask questions, but waited for Salmela to make the first move. The man sure hadn’t called him here to win pity with his suicide talk. Or at least Suhonen presumed so.

    
“Listen, Suhonen.”

    
No response.

    
“You know my life has been going down the shitter for the last twenty years,” Salmela continued.

    
Suhonen knew. His prison terms had destroyed his marriage. His son—a promising soccer player—had ended up a drug dealer and was shot to death in an apartment a half mile from where they now sat. During his most recent stretch in the brig, Salmela had gotten mixed up with the Skulls and took an iron pipe to the head. Not from the Skulls, but from someone else.

    
Suhonen thought about what to say. Expressing regret for the past was pointless, but Salmela shouldn’t expect much from the future either. “What happened now?”

    
“How’d you guess?”

    
“Come on… I know you. What’s there to whimper about in the past?”

    
A tear came to Salmela’s eye. “A lot, actually.”

    
“Well, I know,” Suhonen eased off. “You’re right about that.”

    
“And you’re right that there’s nothing I can do about it,” Salmela brushed the tear out of his eye and lit a cigarette. “Suhonen, our history…”

    
“Eero, don’t bother…” said Suhonen unflinchingly. “Get to the point.”

    
Salmela laughed. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you. Nip the bullshit in the bud. Good.”

    
“So?”

    
“I need some money.”

    
“How much?”

    
“Ten…actually twenty.”

    
Suhonen looked pensively at Salmela. Under other circumstances, he would have fished out a twenty-euro note and handed it to Salmela as a joke. But he knew what the man had meant: ten or twenty grand.

    
“What happened?”

    
“You know I wouldn’t have called unless I was in real trouble, given you’re a cop and all. I’m in pretty deep shit.”

    
“So?”

    
Salmela took a drag on his cigarette. “Actually, it started with this childish idea that I should get off this damn hamster wheel. I ran up some debt in prison and wanted to take care of it once and for all. So, with some help I managed to order a few pounds of speed from Tallinn.”

    
Suhonen stared at Salmela, whose eyes were fixed on the table.

    
“I borrowed the money to pay for it, since I don’t have any. The dope was supposed to arrive on last night’s boat, but Narcotics busted the mule at the harbor.”

    
Suhonen startled.

    
“So the whole job went to shit. Now, on top of the old debt, I owe another ten grand. And to some heavies, too.”

    
“Who?”

    
“No, I can’t…”

    
“I can’t help if I don’t know.”

    
“That fat porker from the Skulls. You know Niko, right?”

    
Suhonen nodded. He knew Niko Andersson: a true prototype of a gangster. Tormented in school for being overweight, he was driven to crime, then prison and found brotherhood in a gang, where he got the admiration he so lacked. During long stakeout nights, Suhonen had often mused that many of these guys could have ended up in some radical religious sect, but in prison, the gangs were a more powerful influence.

    
“How much do you owe all together?”

    
“Well, the two grand from prison has ballooned to eight grand with interest, plus this ten grand. So eighteen grand all together.”

    
Suhonen reflected. He had two grand in his bank account, but he could never raise the other sixteen.

    
“How’d the two grand turn into eight?”

    
Salmela chuckled. “Don’t ask me about the math, but supposedly the interest keeps running up because I haven’t been able to pay. I’ve got nothing to sell either. Social security pays for the flat and I’d barely get a hundred for this crap.”

    
Suhonen surveyed the room. A hundred was wishful thinking.

    
“The old debt is for the Skulls. What’s the new one for?”

    
“The Skulls too.”

    
Not good, Suhonen thought. “Who organized the drug deal?”

    
Salmela looked up from the table. “Can’t talk about it.”

    
“Really?”

    
“A middle man. He promised to arrange the four pounds, but he wanted ten grand in advance. I scraped up some of it from a couple sources and Niko wrapped it all up. I don’t know where it went wrong. We were waiting for her last night and everything seemed fine, but the cops picked her up right in front of the terminal. Don’t know much more. Obviously, Narcotics was tipped off.”

    
“Had they been tipped off, they would’ve arrested her right away in the terminal. That’s how it usually works, anyhow.”

    
“Well, that could be, but it doesn’t change the outcome.”

    
Suhonen was glad that he and Toukola hadn’t arrested her, but had stayed further back among the other travelers. “I can ask around in Narcotics. Won’t do you much good now… But she had the whole four pounds?”

    
“Yeah. Apparently she’s made the trip a few times before, too. Tapes the stuff to her sides and just walks off the boat. Simple but effective, they say. Not this time, though.”

    
“Who was the middle man?”

    
“Some Estonian shithead. Niko knows him.”

    
Suhonen mulled over Salmela’s story. According to his friend, the mule should have had four pounds, but they only found twenty ounces on Marju Mägi. Had Salmela been swindled? What role did the Skulls and Niko play in the scheme?

    
“Well, let’s think about it. I have an idea what we can do next, but I need to do some research first,” said Suhonen.

    
Salmela nodded. “Okay.”

    
Suhonen rose and began to clear the dirty dishes off the table. “This pad of yours is quite the dump. I’ll just clean a little if you don’t mind.”

    
Salmela didn’t say anything, just stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. A butt tumbled over the rim onto the table, but Salmela didn’t bother to pick it up.

    
Suhonen opened the window, scraped everything off the table into a couple of yellow plastic bags and began to gather the dirty clothes from the floor into one bag, and the empty bottles and cans into another.

    
After a good hour, the dishes were washed, the floors swept and the apartment was almost in better shape than Suhonen’s own.

    
He didn’t pry any more about Niko or the Skulls. He’d have time to get back to that later.