Lucifer's Tears

47

We get back to my place. John crashes on the couch. I go to bed, and for the first time in I don’t remember how long, I have no headache and feel no anxiety, and sleep the sleep of the dead.

I wake up in the middle of the afternoon and check my cell phone. I kept it on silent while I slept. I have seventy-two missed calls. Press, police and God knows who else are trying to contact me to find out how it came about that in my presence, in the restaurant of the city’s finest hotel, a ninety-year-old Winter War hero put a bullet in the brain of a Russian businessman whose wife had recently been murdered.

I go back to the hospital to be with Kate, but she’s sound asleep. I hold our baby, enjoy the quiet and sit next to her. Finally, I decide Kate may not wake for hours, and go back home to get something to eat. Mary continues to wait, in case Kate wakes and needs something.

I find John in the kitchen, a bottle of kossu in front of him. He’s not tanked, just drinking. “I guess you know I told Kate about myself and everything you did for me,” he says.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Are you pissed off at me?”

“No.”

“Can I give you a brotherly hug to congratulate you on the birth of your child?”

It makes me laugh. “If you have to.”

He stands and gives me a hard squeeze. “Want to have a drink with me?” he asks.

I sit down with him. “Sure.”

He fetches me a glass and pours me a drink. We nurse our vodkas and share a comfortable silence, something I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.

My phone rings. It’s Jari. “Hi, little brother,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to you since we left your house in a rush. I’m sorry about that.”

It amuses me when he calls me “little brother,” since I’m almost twice his size. “It’s okay, just a little culture clash. It happens.”

“I wanted to check on you. How’s your migraine situation?”

“Better today. Kate gave me a healthy baby girl this morning, both of them are fine, and my headache went away.”

“You have a baby! Wow! Congratulations! You busy right now?”

“No. Kate’s asleep and I’m at home.”

“Then we’re going to have your varpajaiset. ”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

I smile and sigh. “Okay, then meet me at Hilpea Hauki and we’ll do it.”

His voice is full of glee. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”

We hang up.

“Come on, John,” I say. “We’re going out. It’s time for my var pajaiset.”

“Varpajaiset?”

“Varpaat are toes. A varpajaiset is a party. When a man becomes a father, he’s supposed to have a drink for every toe his child was born with. So I’m required to have ten drinks. I suspect you will, too. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

We tramp through the snow over to Hilpea Hauki and sit at a corner table. My phone rings, it’s Milo. “Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov,” he says. “That’s fucking awesome. You have to tell me the story.”

“Not now,” I say. “Kate had a baby girl, and I’m having a varpajaiset at Hauki.”

“That’s great news,” he says. “Can I come?”

His voice is so full of enthusiasm that I can’t say no. “Sure. Come over. Buy me a drink.”

Within a few minutes, Jari and Milo are sitting with us, and our table is covered with beers and shots. Apparently, I’m expected to exceed the ten-drink quota. The mood is gregarious, the jokes are silly.

“All right, Milo,” I say, “now I’m ready. Tell me the story behind your Hitler Youth dagger.”

He beams, thrilled that I asked him to tell a story. “My great-grandpa took it off a Russian soldier in the war. Which means he must have taken it off a German soldier.”

He pauses, once again attempting to build anticipation.

“That’s vaguely interesting,” I say, “but I was expecting something more.”

“I wanted to make you ask. I’m coming to the good part. Great-Grandpa gave it to Grandpa, who gave it to Dad, who had a weakness for women. One day, Mom decided she had enough and stabbed Dad with it.”

Milo grins. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or not. “Did she kill him?”

“No, she stuck it through his leg and ripped a seven-inch gouge in it. He nearly lost the leg, missed weeks of work. Mom got her point across. He quit cheating on her after that.”

A good story. It gets a laugh out of me. We toast to Kate, and all of us knock back another kossu.

My phone rings again. It’s Jyri Ivalo. He also wants to hear about Arvid capping Filippov, and he wants to know if I’ve got my hands on the evidence against him and certain prominent others. I tell him I’m celebrating the birth of my child, and if he wants to talk to me, he has to come to Hauki and buy me drinks to earn the privilege. I hang up on him, as he’s so often done to me.

Milo slams his shot glass onto the table to get our attention. He doesn’t have enough body weight to have a good head for alcohol, and his eyes glisten. He claps a hand on my shoulder. He raises his voice, as drunks tend to. “I admire this guy,” he says. “I killed a man this week, and it’s eating me up. I feel fucking awful. Kari, you don’t seem to feel anything about it. You tough motherfucker.”

I don’t have words of wisdom for him. I shrug. “It’s something that happened. You did the right thing. Time will make it better.”

“You killed a man once,” he says. “How did you live with it? Did time make it better for you?”

We’ve been drinking hard and fast, and the booze has gone to my head, too. I feel like I owe him the truth. “When I blew that gangster’s head off, I felt nothing but relief that it was him instead of me. I didn’t feel guilt, or anything at all. Never have. The only reason I went to therapy for it was because I thought my lack of guilt meant something was wrong with me.”

The others look at me for a long minute and try to decide if I’m joking or not. Jari decides that I am and starts laughing, so the others do, too. I’m pleased that Milo feels remorse. It lessens my worry that he’s disturbed beyond repair.

Jyri walks in and comes up behind me. “A word, Inspector.”

He’s disconcerted, uncomfortable. I feel like toying with him. “When you bring a round of beers and shots for the table, we can chat.” My voice turns sarcastic. “We’ll use veiled and secretive language to keep the others in the dark.”

He has no choice, does as he’s told. When he comes back, I ask, “What do you want to know?”

My phone rings again. I don’t see the caller on the display, but answer to interrupt and further disconcert Jyri.

“Inspector, this is Sulo Polvinen. Can I talk to you?”

I give him my stock drunken answer for the evening. “I’m celebrating the birth of my daughter at Hilpea Hauki. The address is Vaasankatu 7. Come here if you want to talk to me.” I hang up on him, too.

“What happened at Kamp?” Jyri asks.

He’s brought a round of kossu. I insist we drink it and toast to Kate again before I answer. Then I give him a most succinct account.

“Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov, because if he stands trial for murder in Finland, he won’t be extradited to Germany. He also did it as a favor to me, so you and your buddies won’t fuck me later. Filippov believed he was murdering his wife, but Iisa tricked him into murdering Linda, the woman he loved. I let Iisa go. She’s going to embezzle the funds from Filippov Construction, disappear and live out her life-I believe-as Linda Pohjola, probably in another country.”

“Did you retrieve the things we discussed?”

“I know where they are and will retrieve them in due course.”

He looks like he wants to reach across the table and choke me. “I want those things.”

“No, Jyri,” I say, “I think I’ll hang on to them for a while. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

He doesn’t know how to answer and scowls at me.

I have pity on him. “You’re safe now. Everything has been resolved to your satisfaction. You have my word. And about the job you offered me. I’ll take it.”

He brightens. “You will?”

“Yes. And now that we’re partners in crime, I’ll regard you as just that, a partner, rather than my boss.”

His brightness withers.

Sulo Polvinen comes in. I tell him to take a seat. “There’s no need,” he says. “I’ve come to turn myself in for attacking the bouncers at the Silver Dollar.”

“Have you got any money?” I ask.

He looks baffled. “Why?”

“Because the price of admission to sit at this table is a round of kossu. Until you bring it and drink with us, I won’t even consider arresting you.”

He screws up his mouth, doesn’t know what to say, goes to the bar and does as he’s told. He spreads the shots around the table and sits. “To my lovely wife and my darling daughter,” I say.

Our crowd is drunk now, and the toast is loud and raucous. “So, Sulo,” I say, “tell me why I should arrest you.”

“I tried to kill two men. My father is going to be punished for my crime.”

I chase the kossu with beer. “Your father is going to jail for murder. He’ll get ten years. If you confess to the attack, you go to jail and he still gets ten years. What would it help for you to sit in prison, too?”

“I did wrong. I deserve punishment.”

“Your father is a piece of shit who put you up to the attack in the first place. If you go to jail, your mother has no one. Your request for incarceration is denied.”

He didn’t expect this. It stuns him to momentary silence. “Well,” he stammers, “what am I supposed to do, then?”

Jyri sits across from me, still disconcerted. He wanted something, I told him no. He’s not used to it.

I say, “What you’re supposed to do, Sulo, is get on with your life and make something out of yourself.”

He stares down at the table. I slide him a pint of beer. He says, “I don’t know how to do anything.”

Jyri says he wants a black-ops team. It needs tough guys, and Jyri says I can staff it as I like. I test Jyri’s sincerity. “Sure you can. Do something about people like the ones that killed your brother. Be a cop. I’m starting a new unit and could use a mountain-sized kid who’s not afraid to take out two bouncers with a box cutter.” I look at Jyri. “That’s okay with you, right?”

We’re playing big dog/little dog again-only this time our roles are reversed. “Sure,” he says. “Whatever.”

“And you’ll see to it that Arvid Lahtinen is released from custody tomorrow. Right?”

Jyri nods.

“Don’t you have to go to school to be a cop?” Sulo asks.

I do this because I feel my power, because I can. “Your employment is contingent upon studying while you work.” I point at Jyri. “He’ll see to your admission into a law enforcement program. I’ll pay you two thousand a month cash out of my slush fund while you study.”

Sulo can’t grasp his sudden change in fortune, toys with his glass, sloshes some beer on the table. “Okay,” he says.

“Of course,” I say, “I don’t know you, and your employment is subject to termination at my whim. You have to prove yourself. Don’t fucking disappoint me.”

Jari is baffled, can’t comprehend the conversation. I guess he thinks the booze is confusing him. Milo gets it all. He loves watching me abuse Jyri, is working hard to keep from bursting out laughing.

I feel satisfied, even giddy. “Well, gentlemen,” I say, “I believe I’ve done my duty pertaining to alcohol here this evening. It’s time for me to go home. I have a wife and a child to attend to in the morning.”

“Don’t forget, you have an MRI in the morning,” Jari says.

I had forgotten.

“Is Kate coming home tomorrow?” he asks.

“She should be.”

“We have some things to drop off for your family. Do you mind if we come over? It’s important to Taina. She wants to make amends.”

“Jari, you never have to ask if you can come to my home,” I say, and don my coat.

Except for John, who didn’t understand the conversation but is content to drink heavily, the men I leave at the table look mystified, furious or amused, each for his own reasons.