Never Fuck Up: A Novel (18 page)

Mahmud looked out the window again. Babak was in position. Mahmud walked over to the entrance. Closed it. “All right, McBrat. This is how it is.” He walked back to the shop boy, or whatever he was. “I need to know if Wisam Jibril bought a car here, either directly or through someone else. That’s all. You with me?”

Mahmud was a hard-core guy. His broad jaw formed a square face. Today, he was rocking a tight, short-sleeved V-neck T-shirt and track pants. Freshly pumped arm, shoulder, and pec muscles were clearly visible through the thin fabric. His tattoos accomplished what they usually did. Obvious to anyone: unnecessary to mess with this dude.

Still the guy said, “I can’t answer that. I don’t know what it is you want, but I am going to have to ask you to leave the store now.”

The guy walked over to open the door. Mahmud caught up with him. Three long steps. Grabbed the guy’s arm. Hard. The brass knuckles around his fist, hand in his pocket.

“Come with me, buddy.”

At first, the brat barely seemed to realize what was happening. Babak came in. “What the hell are you doing?” the brat asked. They couldn’t care less about his whining. Mahmud held the hand with the brass knuckles down along the length of his leg. Didn’t want it to be visible from the outside.

“Ey, come with us now. We won’t do nothing bad.”

The brat—not a fighter. They dragged him into the inner room behind the cars. Closed the door. An office: stylin’ oak desk, a flashy-looking computer and pens. Bottles with ink, or something. This was
probably where they signed the contracts for these million-kronor cars. Mahmud told the shop kid to sit down. The guy looked more scared than a seven-year-old shoplifter caught barehanded.

“It’s simple. We’re not going to fuck with you anymore. Let’s try this one more time. We just wanna know if you’ve sold a Continental GT to an Arab named Jibril. It’s also possible that he was with someone else who bought it, like, on paper. But you know. You’re the only place in town that sells these cars and you can’t sell too fucking many a month. Am I right?”

“What is it you want, really? You can’t do this.”

“Shut up. Just answer the question.”

Mahmud took a step closer. Stared the kid down. Clear as day how this prejudiced brat saw him: a huge, lethal
blatte
from some war zone somewhere where they killed one another for breakfast. A bloodthirsty demon.

“We sold a car like that two months ago,” he finally peeped. “But it wasn’t to an Arab.”

“Do better.”

“No, it wasn’t an Arab. It was a company.”

Mahmud reacted right away. There was something the kid wasn’t saying.

“Stop playing now, bratty, you know more. What, Arabs can’t have companies?”

Mahmud opened the door. Peered out. No one in the showroom. He bitch-slapped the shop boy. Gave him his craziest look.

“Racist.”

The dude was still sitting on the desk chair. His cheek red like a stoplight. Looking straight up at Mahmud. Babak with the baseball bat in his hand.

Mahmud hit him again. This was awesome—pure American interrogation technique.

The brat’s eyes watered. Drops of blood fell from his nose. But at least he held the tears back.

“I don’t know. Honestly.”

Mahmud exploded. Kicked the guy in the chest. Inspired by Vitali Akhramenko’s crazy kicks in the Solna sports center. The desk chair went flying into the wall. The guy fell on the floor. Screamed. His eyes twitched. Maybe a tear.

“Fuck, man, you’re crazy.”

Mahmud didn’t answer. Punched the guy straight in the face. Bull’s- eye. Felt like something broke.

The guy shielded his face. Curled up. Mahmud leaned down.

“Tell me, now. ’Cause it’ll just get worse for you.”

The brat bitch whimpered, “Okay, okay.”

Mahmud waited.

The guy whispered, “This is how it was. We sold a Continental two months ago. There were two guys in the store, I think. On paper, the official buyer was a company, but one of the guys was getting the car. Definitely.”

In a calm voice Mahmud said, “Can we see that paper?”

*  *  *

The front door slammed shut. It sounded like someone had knocked something onto the floor out in the hall—maybe it was Mom’s umbrella, maybe it was the bicycle pump that was always propped up against the dresser.

It must be him.

No one else came over to their house in the middle of the week without ringing the doorbell, and no one else shut doors with such a definitive sound.

It must be Claes.

Niklas raised the volume on the TV. He was watching the same movie for the third time this week:
Lethal Weapon
. Mom didn’t like it when he watched what she called “scary and violent” movies, but she didn’t have the energy to stand up to his protests. He’d learned that a long time ago—Mom always gave in if you asked enough times.

But Claes, he didn’t give in. Niklas knew it was pointless to even ask Mom anything when Claes was there. Not because Mom was less easy to convince, but because Claes got involved and ruined everything. He forbid Niklas to do what he wanted—to watch movies, to go out at night, to get candy from the grocery store. Claes messed everything up. And the old man wasn’t even his real old man.

But sometimes he was nice. Niklas knew when—it was when Claes’d gotten money from his job. He didn’t keep track of exactly when that happened, but it happened too seldom. On those days, Claes came over with a bag of chips and some Coke, a couple of movies, and raspberry licorice. Always raspberry licorice for some reason, even though there was lots of much better candy. He brought bags for him and Mom that looked heavy. Niklas recognized the white bags with the text
RECYCLING AT SYSTEMET
, meaning the state-run
liquor store. He knew what the sound of clinking bottles meant. Sometimes they uncorked that very same night. Sometimes they waited until the weekend. The result varied with Claes’s mood.

Claes came into the living room and positioned himself in front of the TV, right when Mel Gibson was about to dislocate his own shoulder. He looked at Niklas where he lay, slouched down in the couch. One of the sofa cushions was about to tip over the edge and fall down on the floor.

“Niklas, turn the movie off,” he said.

Niklas sat up on the couch and reached for the remote control. The numbers on the hard buttons’d been worn off. The TV was old and looked like it was sitting in a wooden box. But at least there was a remote control.

He turned the TV off. The video continued to run in silence.

“Turn the video off, too. It’s unnecessary to keep it turned on. Don’t you care that your mom doesn’t like it when you watch shit like that?”

Niklas opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out.

Mom came in and stood in the doorway.

“Hi Classe. How was your day? Can’t he watch the movie a little? You and me can make dinner.”

Claes turned to her.

“I’m damn tired, just so you know.”

Then he sat down on the couch next to Niklas and turned the TV on again. The news was on.

Niklas got up and went into the kitchen. To Mom.

She was peeling potatoes, but stopped when he came in. She took a beer from the fridge.

“Niklas, can you go bring this to Classe? It’ll make him happy.”

Niklas looked at the cold beer. There were small drops on the outside of the can, like it was sweating. He thought it looked funny and wondered to himself, The fridge was cold—so why was it sweating? Then he said, “I don’t want to. Claes doesn’t need a beer, Mom.”

“Why can’t you call him Classe? I do.”

“But his name is Claes.”

“Yes, that’s true, but Classe is nicer.”

Niklas thought Classe was an uglier word than
corduroy.

Mom took the beer herself and brought it out to Claes.

Niklas lay down on the bed in his room. It was too short; his toes stuck out. Sometimes it felt a little embarrassing: he was about to turn nine years old and he still slept in a kid’s bed. The same bed that he’d had his whole life, Mom said. They couldn’t afford a bigger one. But on the other hand, he almost never had any friends over anyway.

He picked up an old issue of
Spider-Man
from the floor and started reading. His stomach was growling. He’d learned at school—that meant you were hungry.

Yes, he was super hungry.

No real food came, even though the hours passed. He ate toast with jam and drank chocolate milk instead. The potatoes that Mom’d peeled were lying unboiled in the pot. Out in the living room were two empty pizza cartons, a bunch of empty beer cans, and Mom and Claes on the couch. They were watching some other movie. His
Lethal Weapon
, which a friend’s dad had copied for him, was still lying on the floor in front of the VHS player.

But it wasn’t the unfairness of not being allowed to finish the movie that hurt. It was the volume of Claes’s voice. Niklas knew what it meant.

Sometimes when he was this drunk, he was nice. But more often, he was scary.

It was only eight o’clock.

He went back into his room. Tried to concentrate on
Spider-Man
. There was a huge fight with the Juggernaut. Spider-Man threw his web over the entire street and hoped that it would stop the tank-like man.

Claes’s laughter and Mom’s giggles could be heard through his reading.

Juggernaut didn’t care about Spider-Man’s web. He kept walking with heavy steps that made deep impressions in the New York pavement. The web was stretched more and more.

Suddenly, the door to his room opened.

Niklas didn’t look up. Tried to seem unconcerned.

Read a few more panels: Spider-Man’s web didn’t break. The buildings shook.

It was Claes.

“Niklas, why don’t you go down to the basement for a while? You can play that table-hockey game or something. Mom and me, we need some time to ourselves.”

It wasn’t a question, even though it sounded like one. Niklas knew that.

Still, he kept reading. Juggernaut kept walking. The web held up. But the concrete in the buildings where Spider-Man’d fastened it didn’t.

“Did you hear me? Can you go downstairs for a while?”

He hated it when this happened. He wondered what they did when he had to go down to the basement like this. Claes asked now and again. The worst part was that Mom was always on the jerk’s side. Since she seemed happy tonight, Niklas did as he was told.

He got up. Rolled the comic book in his hand, grabbed the house keys in his
other hand, and left the apartment. The stairwell was dark; he had to turn the lights on.

He pressed the button for the elevator.

It usually didn’t last for more than a half hour or so. Then Mom would come down and get him.

Last night: Niklas was in a tunnel. Spots of lights in the ceiling. Echoes of heavy breathing. He turned around. He wasn’t being chased. He was the one doing the chasing. The tanto knife in one hand. The tunnel brightened. Who was ahead of him? A man. Maybe it was some bearded warrior from down there. Maybe it was the illegal broker. Then he saw: Claes turned his head. Opened his eyes wide. There was spit around his mouth. Niklas took long strides. The Mizuno shoes held up. The old guy stared. White light filled the tunnel. It was impossible to see anything.

Taxi Driver
for the second time today. Knife katas for two hours. Niklas, bare-chested. Like Travis. The sweat dried. Concentrating on the katas took its toll. He went into the kitchen and drank a few gulps of water. A luxury: to be able to drink straight from the tap. In Iraq, what came out of the tap was sewer water, if anything came out at all.

He felt nasty tired. The nightmares were really hitting him hard.

He sat down. Looked around. Despondent.

Mom’d moved back home. That heightened his loneliness. Eight years with buddies. Now: six weeks of loneliness. It was about to break him. He needed a job. Needed something to do. A goal in life. Very soon. Then there was the other thing too: Mom’s suspicions. She’d told him she was completely certain the dead guy was Claes. Niklas thought of his nightmare again.

It was raining outside. What kind of summer was this, anyway?
Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk.

He ate from a bag of chips. Saw Claes’s face in front of him. Crunched the ruffled, fried potato slices between his front teeth. Claes was gone now. The story’d gotten a happy ending. Niklas felt relieved.

He turned the DVD on again. His favorite scene. Travis tries to
apply for a job as a taxi driver. The guy hiring asks, “How’s your driving record? Clean?” Travis’s pitch-perfect answer: “It’s clean, real clean. Like my conscience.”

Niklas agreed. Whatever he’d done, his conscience was clean. There was a war out there. Fabricated moral strictures collapsed under extreme circumstances as easily as a concrete Iraqi house under a grenade attack. Just the rebars remained, stuck up out of the ruins like sorrowful arms.