Life Deluxe (41 page)

“Smart. Do you know anyone who’s done that for real?”

“I might, but that was mostly back in the day. I think it’s better to play in a different league. Considering how much the state steals from people, it’s more than right that the citizens strike back. Right?”

“I agree with you.”

“At the races and the casino, you can only work with pocket money, really. So it’s better to use other simple solutions, in case someone might be interested in that.”

“Like what?”

“You make sure you put your money in different accounts, broken up in small enough parts that the banks’ alert systems don’t signal foul
play. Then you transfer the money to a company with a foreign account in a country with bank secrecy. Then you let the foreign company loan money to yourself in Sweden. It’s perfect. On paper, you don’t have any income—you just have borrowed money, after all. And the best part is that you can deduct the interest you pay to your own foreign company from taxes. Pretty sweet, right?”

“Smart. So do you know someone who’s done
that
in real life?”

“I might. But I wouldn’t recommend all the mess of having lots of different accounts and making small deposits.”

“So what would you do?”

“You’ve got to have connections in the bank and currency-exchange world. Get it? Connections.”

Hägerström thought: maybe it was all happening. Maybe JW was going to start opening up for real.

“Yes, connections are everything,” Hägerström said. “If you want, I’d be happy to introduce you to some people sometime.”

“That’d be wonderful.”

“But I’m curious—where did you learn this stuff?”

“I don’t know about ‘learned.’ You know, I had some savings when I was doing time. I’ve worked with my own money. I started on a small scale. I didn’t want to end up in trouble on the inside, like with that nigger who jumped me in Salberga—you remember. So when a dude asked me if I could help him with something, I said yes, in exchange for his protection. He had a few hundred thousand. And I never ask where it comes from. I think it’s every individual’s responsibility what they do with their money.”

Hägerström nodded.

“The guy wanted his girlfriend and kid to be able to buy an apartment. That’s easy enough to understand, he just wanted to help them out. But you can’t quite buy real estate with cash—that’s when people start asking questions. So we used the method I just told you about. I talked to a buddy who’d just gated out, asked him to go with the girlfriend, help her open bank accounts with four different banks. Those accounts were tied to the same account that was already controlled on the Isle of Man. She did the rest herself. She deposited four hundred thousand kronor per account over a few months, but never deposits larger than twenty grand a pop. After four months, the whole kitty was safely in the account on the Isle of Man, and she could buy herself a small one-bedroom in Sundbyberg.”

Hägerström clapped his hands quietly.

“But that kind of thing would be even easier to do today,” JW said. “Like I said: it’s all about having the right connections. The currency-exchange offices are the best things God ever created.”

“Bravo.” He hoped JW would keep talking.

JW grinned. “You don’t need to know more details than that. But tell your acquaintances that no one knows this like I do. And what’s even more important: I’ve got all the right connections.”

The attacks on Natalie’s finances—the estate’s finances. She had to understand how all the assets in Serbia’d been dissolved. She had to deal with the issue of cash assets in Switzerland. The solution was Mischa Bladman, or his crony, JW. They were the ones who’d set up Dad’s financial system abroad.

On top of that was the fact that Thomas’d seen Stefanovic meet that JW guy right after he’d met with Svelander the john—JW was involved in some other way too. She wanted to know more. She had to meet JW.

Natalie spoke with Bladman—he was tight-lipped. “I know JW, we work together off and on. I can’t say more about him than that. He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

Natalie knew he was lying, but she also couldn’t put too much pressure on Bladman—he was sitting on critical information.

Goran told her, “JW—he’s Sweden’s Bernie Madoff.”

“Do you think he’s on Stefanovic’s side?” Natalie asked.

“I don’t know. That guy’s an independent contractor.”

She asked him to get hold of JW. Goran promised to pull some strings.

He called back a few days later. “I’ve talked to that guy now. Or rather, I sent one of my guys. Explained to JW that we won’t accept that any schemes or businesses that were begun by Kum are finished by anyone but us. But he wasn’t too receptive. I think you have to speak to him personally.”

A few days later, they met at a restaurant near the Royal Dramatic Theater, Teatergrillen.

She dug his choice of venue. Teatergrillen: international feel. Global class. Luxury packaging in a sweet way.

Drama details everywhere: abstract paintings, harlequins, masquerade masks with long noses, drapes that had that stage curtain feel to them. Round booths in half circles around the tables. Light-colored stone walls. Wall lamps shaped like drama masks, red wall-to-wall carpeting, red painted ceiling, red armchairs—like, everything was red. Except the tablecloths were white. A feeling of privacy—in just the right way. There were shielding walls like dividers behind the seats. You could see other diners in the restaurant, but they couldn’t hear everything you said.

JW was sitting in the booth, waiting for her. He rose.

Shook her hand. Looked her in the eyes, deeply. She smiled. He didn’t smile.

He was wearing pressed dark-gray-flannel pants, a double-breasted jacket, and a pale blue shirt with blue cufflinks that had gold crowns on them. His hair was slicked back, as though he’d just come out of the shower.

They sat down. JW ordered a martini. Natalie, a Bellini.

They looked over the wine list.

They talked shared acquaintances: Jet Set Carl and Hermine Creutz. They discussed nightclubs in Stockholm: the new bar at Sturecompagniet, the new upstairs at Clara’s. They ticked off the party weeks at the top vacation destinations: Saint-Tropez and Båstad.

JW sounded like a major slickster—Natalie knew the guy’d just been released from prison after five years. Like, how posh was that?

JW ordered a bottle of wine that cost seven thousand kronor.

The food arrived. They started eating.

Natalie was surprised that the mood was so light, convivial. Goran’s dude’d been a bit hard on JW, after all. She eyed him again. The guy: an actor. He played the archetype of a Stureplan brat. A Jet Set Carl copy. A climber made from concentrate. Still, there was something more to him, behind all that. JW’s eyes were intelligent, gleaming.

Natalie inched closer to him on the seat. Their bodies were almost touching.

She speared a piece of fish on her fork but changed her mind and let it remain on her plate. “I want to discuss business with you, JW.”

He took a sip of wine.

“I know you worked for Dad before you disappeared for a few years,” Natalie went on. “I also know that you weren’t always on his good side.
You made your mistake. But he let it slide, so you were able to help him with some of his finances. My dad understood people. He thought: you wouldn’t rip us off one more time. No one does that.”

The flame of the wax candle flickered gently.

She could tell by his eyes that he knew what she was talking about. Goran’d told her how JW’d become a kingpin in Dad’s dealer stable. But at the very end, he’d tried to pull a fast one—rigged a deal with some other guys. Things went to hell, and the cops arrested both JW and the other guys. All of them got locked away for years.

“Take it easy,” JW said. “That was a long time ago. But there’s a lot of talk going around now, you know. About Stefanovic, Goran. You. I helped your father. But now I want the cards on the table. What is it you want?”

Natalie raised her fork with the fish once again. Popped it into her mouth. She finished chewing before she spoke.

“It’s simple. I’m the one who’s controlling all the businesses my dad started. That goes for all his business partners too.”

JW’s hands were completely still on the table. The cufflinks gleamed. Natalie noticed his nails. Real Swedish fingernails: unnecessarily short, unfiled, unpolished.
Dad’s fingers never would’ve looked like that
.

JW leaned over. “You have to understand that I’m not like any other basement consultant. Normally when people want advice, they go see a more-or-less willing lawyer or accountant. Best-case scenario, they pretend they don’t really know what it’s all about. They’re trained to be blue-eyed, and then they construct some system that’s supposed to work. But things are different with me. My clients can speak openly with me, and my arrangements are designed with the specific intent of fulfilling my clients’ wishes.”

“But didn’t you understand what I just said? All business coming from my dad will be controlled by me. Not by anyone else. That includes Stefanovic.”

He understood—that much was obvious. But he explained that he didn’t exactly know what Stefanovic did. Just that he made sure money was moved back and forth in the correct way. He refused to name people or banks. But Natalie already knew the main player: that horndog politician Bengt Svelander. Still, JW was open enough for Natalie to get something out of the conversation—he didn’t deny his dealings with Stefanovic. The guy was a pro.

“You must also understand that I don’t want any problems,” JW said. “If I let you take this over, what do I tell your father’s former crony? That’s not how things work. The wheels have been set in motion, things are rolling along nicely right now. The current machinery works.”

Natalie turned her head. Looked JW straight in the face. Didn’t he understand? His head, that was what would be rolling if he didn’t do what she told him to do.

The next day. Natalie was sitting in her Golf. Heading south. She was driving—kind of a bizarre feeling: next to her, folded over in order to fit, was Goran. When she picked him up near Gullmarsplan, he’d insisted. “You drive. It’s your car, boss.”

The same clothes as always: tracksuit and sneakers. But today he’d rolled up his sleeves. His beefy forearms revealed him for who he was: pale green ink—the double eagle and the Serbian Republic of Krajina’s coat of arms. Natalie loved those arms—they’d held her that time down in the parking garage under the Globe Arena. When Dad’d been shot.

They turned off toward Huddinge. No traffic. Middle of the day, pre–rush hour. The person they were meeting should be home at this time. The person they were meeting should know certain important things.

The Golf was nice to drive. Not like one of Viktor’s massive showroom vehicles that she borrowed sometimes, where a toe-flirt on the gas pedal made the motor erupt like an Icelandic volcano. Still, the Golf was powerful. Spirited, somehow.

Goran and she were silent. Natalie was focusing on finding the way. The GPS signaled a crossroads.

“Natalie, you’re a good driver,” Goran said.

“Thanks. You know who was my driving teacher?”

“I know. Him.
Izdanjik
.”

“Yes, him. The traitor.”

“Your dad was also a good driver.”

“Maybe that is why he had way too many cars.”

Goran grinned. Natalie cracked a smile. It was the first time she’d joked about Dad since his murder.

They were quiet for a few minutes.

Then Goran said, “You’ve got a sense of humor. Just like your dad.
And you understand people. Also just like your dad. I remember when he was going to hire me for his security guard company. Do you know what he did?”

“No.”

“He set out a packet of cigarettes and a jar of dip on the table in front of me without saying why. The interview began. I held my hands in my lap throughout the entire interview. Because I knew his trick, I already knew him from before. The ones who spun the snuffbox or the packet of cigarettes never got the job. Your dad tested people that way.”

“Why?”

“In the bars in Belgrade they sit all day, drinking, and smoking and spinning their packets of cigarettes. Unemployed, unwilling to work, lazy good-for-nothings. Your father didn’t want to hire men like that. He wanted to surround himself with active people.”

Natalie turned to him. “Goran, I’m glad I have you. I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for you. You can spin as many snuffboxes as you want with me.”

Finally: the residential area. Small, flat homes. On average, about half the size of the houses at home in Näsbypark. This:
southern
Stockholm—the mere fact that there were suburbs out here was contrary to logic, somehow. She’d thought these territories contained only massive housing projects.

They drove along one of the streets with one-family homes. Parked: Volvos, Saabs, and Japanese family cars. Again: an entirely different car park from Näsbypark. Except for the Volvos, of course: they were everywhere in this country—but where she came from she mostly saw the SUV models and the S60s. Natalie thought that some Swedes were so retarded—loved Volvo like they loved the royal family, even if the car company hadn’t had anything to do with Sweden for probably ten years.