Never Fuck Up: A Novel (39 page)

Ballénius’s eyes were unfocused. He was looking off into the distance. Then he nodded.

The women looked like two question marks. One of them wondered if Thomas could wait until after the race. The bald guy didn’t seem to give a shit. Ballénius got up. Walked ahead of Thomas.

They made their way through the tables. Out to the gambling booths. It was completely empty up there now. The race was starting in thirty seconds.

“What do you want?” Ballénius asked, still without looking at Thomas.

“I’m glad I got ahold of you. It’s regarding something pretty serious. A homicide.”

Ballénius faked surprise. “Oh, damn. But what do you want with
me
?”

Thomas explained quickly. That they’d found a phone number in a dead man’s back pocket. That the number probably went to a plan that Ballénius’d had earlier, which’d been checked with his daughter. The guy leaned against the wall. Screams and cheers could be heard from
down in the Congress. The race’d begun. He was gazing somewhere past Thomas.

The dude: jumpy as hell. This wasn’t ideal at all. In a real investigation, they would’ve brought Ballénius in for informational questioning. But now Thomas was running his own race.

“So, now I want to know if you know who the dead guy is.”

John’s eyes flitted past his own. “Where did you find him, did you say?”

“Ten Gösta Ekman road. Out in Axelsberg.”

“Okay.” Ballénius’s sad face contorted. To the extent that it was possible, it looked even more crushed than before.

“Do you know who it might be?”

“No idea.”

“Do you recognize the address?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Thomas was stressed—this was as far from a good interrogation situation as you could get. He had to get something out of him right away. Pulled a fast one.

“Your daughter already told us that you know. I spoke with Kicki yesterday.”

John Ballénius looked shocked. Just stared at Thomas and said, “Kicki?”

“Yes, Kristina. We’ve been speaking quite a bit. I even went out to see her in Huddinge.”

It sounded like John was whimpering. “It that true?”

“Yes, as true as the fact that you know who the dead guy is. Isn’t that right?”

“It could be an old buddy of mine.”

“Are you sure? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know him anymore. It was a long time ago. I don’t know anything.”

Loud cheering in the background. A high-odds horse was about to bring home the race..

“Come on, or else we’ll have to bring you in for questioning.”

“I guess you’ll have to do that, then.”

“Goddammit. Just tell me his name.”

“I told you, I don’t know anything. That was many years ago. He was always a little kooky. Was always kind of weird. I felt bad for him. Real bad.”

“But what is his name?”

John stood still. Then he said, “Claes.”

“Claes what?” Thomas was almost 99 percent sure of the answer. Still: he wanted a confirmation. Come on now, John Ballénius. Come on.

People were coming up from the restaurant. Milling around the gambling booths. The race was over down there. It was time to bet on the next horse. The spaces outside the cash registers were filling up quickly.

Thomas tried to get Ballénius to spill it—it had to be Rantzell who’d been called from Ballénius’s phone. Claes Rantzell.

Suddenly, Ballénius made a jerky motion. Threw himself to one side. Thomas tried to grab him. Got hold of his shirtsleeve, held firm for a microsecond. Then the fabric slid through his fingers.

Ballénius rushed toward the lines by the gambling booths. A ten-foot lead plus the element of surprise. Straight into the crowd. The guy hauled ass like a maniac. Thomas ran after him. Chased the tall man for as long as he could. Even more people were pushing their way toward the cash registers. A few were waving tote tickets. Toasting one another, cheering. He tried to push his way through.

Thomas saw John Ballénius’s lead grow.

He waved his badge. To no avail. There were too many people.

He yelled. Pressed. Tried to push through.

He had to do something.

Mahmud was on his way to see his dad. The Iraqi club in Skärholmen, Dal Al-Salam. Robert gave him a ride. They drove in silence. Listened to Jay-Z’s phat beats. Robert drove like a maniac.

It’d been a week since Mahmud’d made his last payment to the Born to Be Hated dudes. He should be happy. He should feel free, independent, unbound. Should.

Everything was fucked up. He was tired. Worn down. Above all, pissed off. They bent him over and did him so hard he wept. Used him like a dumb bitch who just took it. Forced him into the corner of the ring, beat him up mentally like he was a defenseless nobody. A huge betrayal.

Not Gürhan and his boys. But the ones he’d thought would save him: the Yugos—Radovan & Co. Christian fucking crusading Serbs, worse than the Zionists. Fuck them. Easy enough to say, but not so simple to do.

Robert turned to him.

“
Habibi,
what you thinking about? You look crushed, man.”

“Nothing. It’s cool.”

“All right, big-shot hustler. If you say so.”

They continued to listen to the music.

Last weekend, Mahmud’d been in touch with Stefanovic. Asked to meet up. They set a time and place: Saturday night, Black & White Inn, a bar in Södermalm, Stockholm’s South Side. Stefanovic informed him, “You know, we can’t be meeting up all the time. But I’ll send someone.”

Mahmud was planning on breaking up with the Yugo fuckers. Sell the last round of blow that’d he’d picked up and then: a clean break. Find a normal job. Make Erika E. happy. Above all: make Dad happy.

Tom’d given him a ride that time. The guy liked vintage cars—drove
a Chevy from 1981, black with flames painted on the hood. Mahmud didn’t get why. Tom assured him, “The engine and the box are from ’95, so this baby rolls like a skateboard.”

Tom was chill. Had taken a different route than Mahmud, but never looked down on
blattes
like him. Studied real academic stuff in high school. Mahmud grinned at the thought: it took the guy five years to graduate, but look at him now. Tom, twenty-two years old—had learned the debt-collection industry like a crazy college kid. As he put it, “Soon, I’ll start my own company and then both Intrum Justitia and the Hells Angels’ll have to watch out.”

Tom’d asked Mahmud to take the wheel for a sec. Fished out a manila envelope. Poured the powder on a CD case. Almost impossible to make real lines while they were sitting in the car. They had to wing it. Live on the edge. Tom rolled a bill, sucked a noseful. Took back the wheel. Gave Mahmud the bill. He tried to appreciate the amount. Sucked. Shit, that was probably half a gram. The rush was even stronger on days when he’d worked out before. Two seconds later: his gums tickled, grew numb. Then:
schwing
.

The lights on the road floated together like in a photograph. The night was mad beautiful. His emotions were soaring. The road was like a long strip on a racetrack, lined by crazy fireworks.

Black & White Inn: a Yugo-owned place. Everyone needed their laundromats. Mahmud and his buds never really made sums big enough to need washing, but he knew that if you played in the big leagues, you had to do it sooner or later. Gürhan’s gang ran their money through dry cleaners, video-rental stores, and other Syriac-run businesses. The Yugos ran restaurants and bars. Maybe even heavier shit: offshore accounts, islands in the West Indies, stocks, and crap like that.

Mahmud had to wait in the car. The rush was too sharp. After fifteen minutes, he felt more normal. They walked in.

Usual pub vibe. Beer ads in old wooden frames and wood paneling along the walls. Wood tables and wood chairs on the wood floor. The people here must have pretty poor imaginations.

The place was half empty. A dude met them. Eyes that looked sunk into his skull. Broad, blanched. Brutal appearance. Led them into some sort of VIP room. Closed the door behind them. Ratko, Stefanovic’s gorilla, was in there, leaning back in a chair. The Yugo was dressed in a
relaxed way. Chiller style today than anything Mahmud’d seen him or Stefanovic rock before. Ratko today: T-shirt, black jeans, and Sparco racing shoes. Mouth half open, chin up in the air. Don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. Fight-picking look par excellence. But the dude was usually cool to Mahmud at the gym.

The Yugo nodded. “Hey Twiggy, you good?”

Real ballbuster comment: “Twiggy.” Look in a mirror, Mahmud was twice as beefy as Ratko. But Mahmud was still as high as a skyscraper. Confidence on top. Wanted to take care of this fast. Responded without taking the bait. “I’m a’ight.”

Small talk for five minutes. Then Ratko interrupted the chat: “I understand things’re going well for you, sales-wise.”

Mahmud laughed. Humility wasn’t his thing. “You can call me the King Snowman.”

Ratko grinned along. “Right?” But then his face changed. The smile vanished.

“There was something you wanted to talk about.”

Mahmud rocked, shifted his weight from the right to the left foot.

“I’m gonna start a new life. So I’m gonna quit selling. The gear I picked up a few days ago, that’ll be my last gig. But I already paid for that, so.”

Ratko didn’t say anything.

Mahmud looked at Tom. Tom looked at Mahmud.

Mahmud repeated, “I’m gonna quit selling.”

Ratko pretended like he didn’t hear what he said.

“Yo, you hear me or what? I quit.”

Ratko threw his arms open. “Okay, so you quit. What do you want me to say about that?”

“Nothing.”

“Right, and I’m saying nothing. But what’ll happen to your sister? And what do you think your dad will think?”

Mahmud didn’t understand what he was talking about.

“I mean, if you quit selling, then we’re gonna have to sell the tanning salon where your sister works. Oh, you didn’t know that? We own the place. And we’re gonna have to tell your dad that you’ve been slinging for us. We’ve got pictures of you dropping cash off in the store in Bredäng. We’ve got pictures of you picking the gear up at the storage facilities. We’ve got pictures of you working corners in the city. Above all, we’ve got photos of you and Wisam Jibril. It’s very possible that he
might hear what happened to that Lebanese. Because of you. What’ll he think about that?”

Mahmud had trouble producing saliva; his mouth was as dry as sand.

“I think you’re starting to understand now, Mahmud.

Tom took a step forward. “Fuck man, let him quit if he wants to.”

Ratko still had his gaze glued on Mahmud. “I think Mahmud can speak for himself.”

Mahmud just wanted to get out of there. He made an effort. Focused. Had to say something. He said, “Come on. I can quit if I want to.”

Ratko’s reply was like the bite of whip: “Correct.” A short pause, then he added, “But then your sis can forget all about her job and we’ll tell your dad. We’re honest people. He has to know, that’s all.”

In Skärholmen. Back to the present. Robert dropped Mahmud off outside Dal Al-Salam. Mahmud opened the door. A small bell jingled.

Inside, the smoke was thicker than in a hammam. The club couldn’t care less about any potential no-smoking policies: everyone in there was over fifty anyway—why did they need to be healthy? The room: small, square tables with green tablecloths and ashtrays. Plastic chairs, posters with images of the Spiral Minaret on the Abu Duluf Mosque in Samarra, the martyr monument for the Iran-Iraq war in Baghdad, pictures of the desert in Najaf, herds of sheep, camels. An old-fashioned TV was suspended in one corner: Al Jazeera news was on as usual.

The chatter volume was turned up to max. The old guys were doing their usual things. Eating pita bread, drinking coffee with an extreme amount of sugar in it, smoking strong cigarillos and hookahs, playing
shesh-besh
and patience, flipping through Iraqi newspapers. Mahmud got a kick of nostalgia right away: the bread dipped in baba ghanoush, the hookah smell, the sound of the old men and their frantic discussions, the images of the homeland on the wall.

Mahmud’s dad emerged out of the smoky fog.
“Salaam alaikum!”
Kissed Mahmud twice on each cheek. Looked happier than usual: maybe that wasn’t so strange—Mahmud hadn’t been to the club since he turned fourteen.

“Don’t you want to say hello to everyone?” Beshar spoke softly. His Iraqi dialect was stronger than usual—
ch
sounds instead of
k
sounds. But Mahmud knew what his dad’s friends thought about people like him, even though he’d only been locked up for a short turn. Iraqis who
ruined things for everyone else, who soiled the dignity of the community with their criminal records.

Mahmud said, “No,
jalla
now. I wanna go.”

Beshar shook his head. Mahmud thought, No matter what he says, it’s a relief for him not to have to drag me around in here.

They walked across Skärholmen’s square. The street vendors were hocking their wares as usual. Yelling out their claimed lowest-price guarantees.

They were picking up Jamila at her job, the tanning salon in Axelsberg. Mahmud remembered the Yugos’ threat.