Vengeance (15 page)

    
Suhonen thought it best to keep his mouth shut.

    
The VCU officer responsible for allocating cases across the various units appeared at the door. He was in his forties and wore a flannel shirt.

    
“Listen, Kari. I’ve got a seventy-eight-year-old woman, found dead. Based on the report, no crime suspected. She died at home, so just a routine cause-of-death investigation. I’ve been calling it out here in the hallway, but nobody seems interested. So what now? It’s your unit’s turn.”

    
Takamäki looked at Joutsamo and Suhonen.

    
“Nobody interested?” Takamäki wondered. “Hell, I’ll go myself.”

    
The case officer raised his eyebrows.

    
“What, you don’t think a detective lieutenant can handle a dead grandma case?”

    
Takamäki stood up and marched out. Suhonen and Joutsamo glanced at one another. From the hall, they could hear Takamäki asking him, “Where can I find a crime scene bag?”

* * *

The meeting at the Skulls’ compound continued.

    
“Anyone have any issues?” Larsson asked, his eyes wandering over the crowd.

    
“Something your brothers can help with?”

    
Nobody answered. The VP’s gaze stopped on Osku, the short one with a goatee.

    
“Osku? Problems?”

    
Osku’s eyes darted over to Niko, who nodded.

    
“Well, not anymore. The brothers already stepped up.”

    
“In what way?”

    
“Last Tuesday some guy tried to hit on my girl at the bar, so this morning, me, Niko and Roge dropped by to teach him a lesson in manners.”

    
“What kind of lesson?” Larsson probed.

    
“A few hooks and kicks to remind him what he’s allowed to do and what not,” Osku said. Roge sniggered as if to affirm the story. “We busted the window of his car, too, just to make sure he doesn’t forget. I think he learned his lesson.”

    
Larsson nodded. “Okay, very good. That’s exactly how we do it. We got your back…but in these types of situations we should think about the brotherhood, too.”

    
“Uhh, how’s that?” Osku asked.

    
“Good question,” Larsson said without the slightest hint of condescension. “If something isn’t clear, ask. There are no stupid questions. Creativity is important, too. What kind of car was it?”

    
“A red Alfa Romeo.”

    
“Okay. In that case, a creative solution would’ve been to make the guy sign the title over to us. What do you think? Would’ve he signed the papers?”

    
Osku glanced at Roge. “Yeah, I think he would’ve. It didn’t even cross my mind.”

    
“Next time I’m sure it will. Anybody else have anything to report?”

    
One of the men spoke up. “I’m protecting an auto repair shop over there in Pitäjänmäki. They had a burglary a week ago. Typical breaking and entering. The place was ransacked and some money, cell phones and tools were stolen. The owner asked me to take care of it, and I suspected a couple of local junkies. So I paid them a visit, seized the goods and returned them to the owner.”

    
“Good,” Larsson said. “Builds customer loyalty—maybe he’ll recommend us to his friends.”

    
Nobody else had anything to report.

    
“Couple more things. One. From now on, we need a guard on duty during the day as well. Two. This place is a mess,” he said, glancing at Aronen.

    
“Sami’s making a guard-duty schedule and cleaning rotation. You can clean it yourself or get somebody trustworthy to do it for you. Questions?”

    
Nobody had any.

    
Larsson invited Aronen and Niko into his office. Some business was best conducted behind closed doors.

* * *

Suhonen had heaped his plate with macaroni casserole and salad from the police cafeteria. He found an empty table and sat down.

    
Hell, the undercover policeman thought. It was a tricky situation. His friend Salmela was tangled up in a dope smuggling operation that Suhonen should probably tell Narcotics about. On the other hand, that wouldn’t help the ex-con turn over a new leaf. Salmela wouldn’t be able to cope with the two-and-a-half year sentence—he would tie one end of his sheet to the bars and the other around his neck.

    
He sprinkled salt on the tasteless macaroni and squirted some ketchup on top.

    
Salmela was a link to the Skulls, but he’d never testify that one of the Skulls’ key players had financed the drug shipment. That would earn him a spot in the protective custody ward, where he’d fare even worse.

    
Salmela needed money. His debt was somewhere in the range of fifteen to twenty thousand. The Helsinki police didn’t have that kind of money for informants, but the Interior Ministry or the National Bureau of Investigation might.

    
But twenty grand was a lot of money. They wouldn’t cough that up for one amphetamine case. Salmela would need to offer something more, but did he have some other interesting chunk of intel? Probably not, Suhonen guessed.

    
Could he
obtain
intel that was worth that kind of money? Maybe. But the ministry and the NBI weren’t the only ones willing to pay for intel. Insurance companies also paid for tips that led to the reacquisition of stolen property.

    
Suhonen chewed his food as he considered the alternatives. There weren’t many.

* * *

The office behind the bar at the Skulls’ compound was rectangular: Twelve feet long and about fifteen wide. Black cardboard covered the windows in this room as well. The furnishings were bare. In the middle of the room was a round dark-brown table, ringed by five black plastic chairs. Against the back wall was a worn hide-a-bed, and beside that, a lone bookshelf with a messy stack of magazines. The top issue was a rumpled
Playboy.

    
Larsson sat down at the table. Next to a thermos was a stack of paper cups and a folded laptop.

    
In the corner rested a device that resembled an old minesweeper or a metal detector: a five-foot-long shaft joined to a disc the size of a frying pan. Aronen had swept the room for microphones just before Larsson’s speech. He had also done it in the morning, but now checked the room again just to show Larsson that he was working hard.

    
He didn’t find any microphones this time either, not the police’s, nor another gang’s.

    
Aronen plopped down on the sofa and Niko seated himself at the table with Larsson.

    
“Coffee?” Niko asked. If his plastic chair had had arm rests, his fat backside wouldn’t have fit into it.

    
Larsson shook his head.

    
“Something else?”

    
“No,” he snapped impatiently. “Tell me about Roge and Osku. Are they trustworthy?”

    
Aronen deferred to “Dumbo,” though he’d never use that name to Niko’s face or there would be fisticuffs.

    
“Yes. I’ll vouch for them,” Niko said without hesitation.

    
“You better. What are their backgrounds?” Larsson continued to probe.

    
“Straight out of juvie. Assaults and theft.”

    
“Drugs?”

    
“The usual stuff, but they’re no junkies.”

    
That seemed to satisfy Larsson. Niko was a simple man, but sometimes that came in handy. Larsson would have sensed it immediately had he been lying to protect his
protégés.

    
“Where’s Steiner?”

    
“Haven’t seen him in a week,” said Aronen from the sofa.

    
That didn’t surprise Larsson. “On a bender?”

    
“Don’t know—he hasn’t been here.”

    
The Skulls’ rookies and prospects were at the compound daily for guard duty, but for Rolf Steiner that wasn’t required. The white-haired man had been a member almost from the beginning, when the president had recruited him in the pen. Steiner had been in for felony drug trafficking, felony assault, and involuntary manslaughter. He had beaten a low-level pusher to death for pilfering drugs. Steiner had been charged with murder, but his shrewd lawyer had managed to reduce the charge to involuntary manslaughter, shaving years off of his sentence.

    
“You’ve tried to track him down?”

    
Aronen nodded.

    
“His phone is off. Not sure what he’s up to, but he definitely knows you’re out. Though I’m not sure if he remembers.”

    
“Well, he’ll get here when he gets here,” Larsson said and shifted gears. “I hear the cops seized some drugs?”

    
Niko cleared his throat. “Yeah. Some Estonian bitch got nailed right off the boat.”

    
“How much?”

    
“Twenty ounces.”

    
“That’s not so much.”

    
“No,” Niko looked relieved. “The other mule was on the same ship with three pounds. That one made it through.”

    
“Who messed up?

    
“Don’t know yet.”

    
“Who’s paying for the lost dope?”

    
“Now
that
I know,” Niko smiled. “The guy who ordered the shipment thinks the cops got all four pounds. He’ll pay us for the full load—even for the three pounds that made it, so we’ll double dip. Best of all, he won’t rat us out.”

    
Larsson laughed. “That’s good. What about the Turk?” He was referring to the pizza shop owner who had accused two Skulls of extortion, then let the police plant the secret camera that had put them behind bars.

    
“Haven’t done anything yet. It’d be a little obvious to burn down the restaurant right after the ruling,” Aronen said.

    
Larsson agreed. “But let’s not forget it.”

    
“Of course not.”

    
“Every snitch will get what’s coming—and hard,” Larsson said and paused. His eyes roamed the room. “We need more manpower. Damn pigs have thinned out our ranks the last couple years.”

    
“What do you mean?” asked Niko.