Life Deluxe (70 page)

So many people were mixed up in this web of business. People who saw her as a leader. Someone who was in charge. Who gave orders.

But who was she, really? She’d never dreamed of being the head of a large organization. And when she reflected, she didn’t even know what she’d dreamed of being. Everything was blank—everything’d been possible. But maybe leading was what she was meant to do.

Vladimir was approaching the end of his monologue.

“We don’t care who we collaborate with, as long as it goes smoothly. The recent fighting between the two of you is impeding our business. People are getting nervous. Important people don’t want to accept our
services or our gifts. Decisions are being delayed, which in turn delays Nordic Pipe. Your disagreement is costing a lot of money, every day.”

Natalie glanced at Sergey Barsykov. He seemed to have spit out his gum.

“Now you have to agree somehow,” Vladimir said. “You, Kranjic, have material that we need. And so do you, Stefanovic.”

The final bit came as something of a surprise, that Stefanovic also had material. But it wasn’t so strange—the bribe and blackmail work must’ve been happening on many fronts at once.

The Russians and JW rose. The plan was to allow Natalie and Stefanovic to discuss things on their own. How they chose to divide up the market in Stockholm was their business. Solntsevskaya Bratva would let them settle their business on their own. According to Vladimir, they had no alternatives—when they returned to the conference room in two hours, she and Stefanovic must have reached an agreement.

Natalie remained in her seat.

Stefanovic was seated across from her.

“Okay,” he said. “You hear what they want. Let us talk.”

Natalie fumbled in her inner pocket.

The comb was resting safely in its case.

Jorge didn’t give a shit about the cold.

Cold didn’t exist to him. Too many scars in his personal history. Too many raw memories.

Jorge: had seen most things. Dudes who’d been cut, friends on bad trips, girls who’d been fucked with a gun to their head. Stockholm’s underworld: his home. His school. His day care.

But now: this was different.

Tonight—him: prepared to die.

Tonight:
You are me, and I am you. My blood cleanses us all from sin
.

His mother didn’t know anything yet. Jorge’d called her—told her Paola and Jorgito’d gone away for a few days.

It was time.

He and Javier were sitting in a freshly boosted Citroën. The E20 highway southbound. On their way to Taxinge. Past Södertälje. A gravel pit.

The Finn’s honcho’d informed them of the meeting place an hour ago. “Bring the money, come alone.”

Jorge’d borrowed five thousand from JW yesterday. The cash was resting atop piles of fake bills that he’d cut himself. Rubber bands around them. The Finn would never fall for it—but that wasn’t the point. If it worked for a few seconds, that would be enough.

Javier: not as serious. Said: “What a rescue,
huevon
. Even if they pick me up tomorrow, it was worth it.”

Jorge could hardly think about what was gonna happen later. Right now it was all about the shit with the Finn.

“Why couldn’t Hägerström come?” Jorge said.

Javier drummed his fingers on his knees. “He said he had to take care of his son.”

Jorge thought: Hägerström was shady. Why could he come to Javier’s
rescue mission but not to the meeting with the Finn? Why hadn’t he said anything about a kid to Jorge, while he’d told Javier he was gonna be with his son?

“He’s got a kid?”

Javier nodded. “Sure. I’ve seen pictures of his son at his crib. His place is banging, man.”

Again: the Hägerström dude was weird. Jorge could understand why he might not want to be part of this now—maybe a rescue mission with an AK-47 was enough for one day. And maybe the ex-screw really was gonna be with his son. But why’d he never mentioned the kid before? And how could he afford to live it up like that?

One more thing was itching Jorge’s head. Hägerström’d brought a bunch of secret police docs to Thailand from JW. Jorge remembered how he’d opened the envelope and unfolded the documents before reading them.

Nothing strange about that—ordinarily. But a couple of days ago, Jorge’d met up with JW and handed over the six hundred large. He’d received an envelope in return. He’d opened it and peered inside. A folded piece of paper, he could see the text—the name of a bank.

JW’d said, “We’ll be professional about this. You’ll get invoices and information from us. Check it—we even fold the letters the real way.”

Jorge had asked, “What you mean?”

JW showed him. “You always fold letters so the text is facing out.”

Jorge hadn’t made the connection. Until now: Hägerström must’ve secretly opened the envelope that JW’d sent down to Thailand, read it, and put it back. But folded the documents in a different way than JW had.

But then maybe that wasn’t strange. If someone sent a secret envelope with Jorge, he would’ve done everything in his power to sneak a peek too.

But overall?

An ex-pig, ex-screw who’d remade himself as a G-wannabe? How likely was that?

He turned to Javier. “Fuck man, I don’t trust Hägerström.”

“I do.
Hombre
just rescued me twelve hours ago. What else I gotta know?”

“But he’s shady, man.”

“Who isn’t shady?”
“He’s been a cop, a screw. He turned up from nowhere down in Thailand.”

“
Calmate
. I said, he freed me. And he wasn’t just in Thailand for your sake. He had his own biz too.”

“What biz?”

“Buying emeralds and shit.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me. He got a bunch of texts from his sis about buying stuff like that. ‘Bring ’em home,’ stuff like that.”

They kept driving. The darkness outside: as black as Jorge’s thoughts.

The underworld was not his world anymore. Paola, Jorgito—they were his world.

He just wanted to solve this shit with the Finn, then go back to Thailand. Live the café life again.

Still: that Hägerström dude was messing with his focus.

He picked up his phone.

Four signals. Then JW’s voice.

“Yes, hello.”

“Yo, it’s me.”

“Hey, I’m kind of busy right now. Everything cool?”

“No. What’re you doing?”

“I’m waiting for a really important meeting to end. I’m at a hotel near Arlanda.”

“Your buddy, that Hägerström guy. There’s something mad wack about him.”

“Why? He’s here with me now.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, he’s here with me now. At the hotel.”

Fifteen minutes later. They stopped the car.

Javier got out. Jorge’s conversation with JW’d ended quickly. JW was busy. Jorge’d only had time to explain about the weird texts that Javier’d seen in Thailand.

Fuck that now. He had things to settle.

Let JW deal with his own shit.

Still: he was happy that Hägerström wasn’t with them now.

He turned to Javier. “You take the forty-seven. Go up over there.
Look for the lights from this car or some other car. Find a spot where you got good eyes on me and the Finn.”

Javier wasn’t grinning. Was just holding the assault rifle. He understood now: shit was real. Jorge felt stiffer than stiff.

He started the car back up again. The bulletproof vest he was wearing was heavy.

He drove in through the mountains of sand.

All around him: the gravel pit. Heaps of sand, rocks, gravel. Everything covered in a white layer of powdery frost. Or maybe it was a thin layer of snow. What was the difference, anyway? Washed-out shadows. Dark boulders. Facing him: a machine, at least twenty meters high. Some kind of stone crusher.

Silence.

A lonely place.

A place where no one would see them.

A good place for the Finn.

Jorge turned the car’s headlights off.

The darkness—his friend.

He remained sitting in the car. Picked up his phone. Called Javier.

Whispered: “D’you find a place?”

Lights from the road that led in toward the gravel pit. Two cars.

Jorge switched on the Citroën’s high beams.

They drove in. The back car stopped at the entrance to the gravel pit. Blocked the exit.

The lead car pulled up. Stopped. Kept the lights on.

Jorge’s phone rang.

A voice: “Kill your lights. Get out of the car.”

Jorge opened the door. Climbed out. Was blinded by the headlights from the other car.

He squinted. Heard car doors opening.

Two men emerged.

He walked sixteen feet toward them.

One dude in a leather jacket and a black beanie.

One dude in a down jacket and a baseball cap.

They were standing thirty feet away now. It was hard to make out their faces in the strong backlight. Arms hanging down at their sides.

The baseball cap dude said, “You got the cash?”

“Yeah, you saw the pic I sent. You got my sis and the kid?”

“Yeah, yeah. They’re back there, in the other car.”

Silence. The baseball cap guy raised one of his arms. Jorge glimpsed the silhouette of a gun.

“Neither of you is the Finn,” Jorge said. “I can hear that.”

“No.”

“Is he here?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“No Finn, no deal.”

The baseball cap guy didn’t say anything.

Jorge remained silent.

Steam was billowing out of their mouths.

Finally the baseball cap guy said, “All right, the Finn’s here. He’s in the other car too.”

Jorge said, “I want him to get out.”

The Yugo elite and the UC elite were rubbing elbows on the sofas in the lobby of the Radisson Blu Arlandia Hotel.

Hägerström was sitting with JW in one sofa group. They were waiting for the meeting between Natalie Kranjic and Stefan Stefanovic Rudjman, taking place in one of the upstairs conference rooms, to end.

Hägerström had seen three other men come downstairs with JW—they looked like they were from Russia or Eastern Europe. They had disappeared by now. Maybe they were outside. Maybe they were sitting in some room in the hotel. He didn’t know who they were.

But he knew who the rest of the dudes down here were.

Stefanovic’s men were sitting on one sofa.

Kranjic’s men were sitting on another sofa. Hägerström knew their names: Goran and Adam. Then a surprise: Thomas Andrén, his old friend and colleague. Hägerström had never suspected that Andrén had sunk this low.

Their eyes met. Thomas didn’t give anything away, but he must have been wondering what Hägerström was doing here.

On the rest of the sofas, by the check-in counter, upstairs, outside the entrance, and in the bar: schools of civvies. Torsfjäll had promised that this would be the hit of the century. As soon as they got a green light from the other unit—who were at the gravel pit with Jorge, Javier, and the Finn—shit would go down.

JW seemed to be in a good mood. He was playing with his phone. Firing off texts, e-mailing, surfing. He answered phone calls, walked around the lobby talking on his phone out of Hägerström’s earshot. He appeared indifferent to all the Yugo mafiosos sitting off time in the sofas.

Hägerström thought of Javier. He was with Jorge now. He hoped he would take it easy.

JW sat back down in the sofa. “Your sister—she’s a real estate agent, right?”

“Yep.”

“You got her number?” he asked. “I’d like to ask her something. I’m in the market for a place.”

Hägerström wondered what JW wanted to ask Tin-Tin about right now. He hadn’t said anything previously about buying an apartment. And Hägerström didn’t want to get his family mixed up in this. On the other hand, JW had already been to a moose hunt with Carl.

He gave JW Tin-Tin’s number.

JW typed it into his phone. Walked off a few yards.

Hägerström saw him talking on the phone.