The Bodyguard (5 page)

“I have a home office there,” he announced. “I’ve been racking up too much overtime, and you can get home by tram. I hope you have a bus pass—no need to spend government money on your fare.”

Why hadn’t I asked him to show me his badge? Was this really Laitio and not some clever hit man who had happened to get my phone number from the Bureau? All I could see from the backseat was the long and bushy mustache he was sporting, which looked fake. His hair was hidden by the hat.

He managed to find street parking behind the Olympic stadium, and I followed him into the lobby of a nondescript building. I took a cursory glance at the list of residents for all seven floors: at least the name Laitio was there. We squeezed into a small elevator, and once its old-fashioned cage door clanged shut, I imagined Frida in the shed, scratching at the doors furiously. I looked down at Laitio’s black shoes. They had ornate eyelets and black-and-white laces. He smelled of cigars.

The apartment door had the name Laitio on it, but he walked to another unmarked door and opened it. I figured it had been a service entrance back in the day. The cigar smell was stronger inside. When Laitio took off his hat, I saw that he was bald. He reached out to take my coat, accidentally grazing my back, which startled me. If Mike Virtue had seen that, he would have made me run around the block ten times as punishment.

Laitio wore a dark-gray pinstripe suit jacket and a tie with a subtle argyle pattern. He opened the door to his office, which was filled with cigar smoke. I didn’t wait for him to ask me to sit down; I went for the dark leather couch. Laitio fell into his office chair and pulled open a desk drawer. Inside was a box of cigars. After he selected his smoke, he separated the cigar’s cap from its head with an angry snap. When Laitio pulled the thick cigar to his lips, the sight was not attractive.

“We’re not allowed to smoke at the Bureau offices, so I have this little deal here,” he explained and blew smoke toward me. He probably knew the tobacco laws better than I did and would be able to enumerate the reasons why he was allowed to puff away here. Laitio may not have remembered that I was a seasoned traveler in Russia, where smoking was rampant. A little smoke wouldn’t bother me.

He started questioning me about my work history. He didn’t have a computer or a voice recorder in front of him, just a couple notepads. But he didn’t write anything down.

“They focus on insignificant things, like the tobacco laws, but then they ignore the real issues, like murders,” Laitio complained, sucking on his cigar. He suddenly switched gears. “Are you and your girlfriend planning on having a church wedding even though the bishops are still against it?”

“Is that any of your business?” I asked.

“I just wondered if you were the faithful type. Did you have an affair with Anita Nuutinen?”

“I don’t fool around with my clients. And as far as I know, Anita only liked men.”

“Were you jealous?” he asked. I stopped responding to his absurd questions, and let him smoke his cigar in silence, watching his mustache move. Valentin Paskevich had a mustache, too, but it was more of a European style, small and sharp.

“So you went all the way to America for security training, eh? Do you also always carry a gun?”

I wanted to reply by pulling out my pistol, but I didn’t want him to confiscate it. He then asked me about people who had been threatening Anita.

“Being her bodyguard was more about general safety, but like I told you on the phone, she was afraid of her former business partner and lover, Valentin Paskevich.”

Laitio sat still for a moment.

“Her lover? Nuutinen and this whatever-his-name-is had an affair?”

“Yes, for many years. I guess you haven’t done your homework on Anita that well.”

“Thank you, Ms. Smart-ass. Nuutinen didn’t seem to have any friends. Her daughter was somewhere in Asia at the time and won’t be back in Finland until later this week. Now tell me more about this Paskevich.”

It seemed wise to steer the conversation away from me, so I took Laitio’s cue and told him all I knew about Anita and Paskevich’s business and all the scams they were involved with after their falling out. Laitio scribbled down some notes and didn’t interrupt me once.

“So, you started working for Nuutinen after she and Paskevich were no longer lovers. She must have been a real piece of work,” Laitio marveled. “Well, was there enough for you to do? Fighting and shooting, like a real bodyguard? Shoot men in face and kick them in balls?” he asked, as if he were reading from a script.

“There was no need for that. My presence was sufficient protection.”

“Apparently. As soon as you left, Anita Nuutinen was killed. Why did you resign so suddenly? Did your girlfriend get jealous?”

“Nuutinen had decided to buy a lynx fur coat and I didn’t approve of it.”

Laitio burst out laughing so hard his mustache trembled. “You think I believe that story? You’re no animal-rights activist; you’re an army woman! Who paid you to leave Nuutinen behind? This Paskevich character or one of his minions? Was thirty silver rubles enough?”

The lynx story went right over his head, obviously. He didn’t need to know about my past.

“Or did you do it yourself? You took her to a quiet street and killed her? And now you’re here, acting all innocent until you drop out of sight to live off your blood money on the island of Lesbos with your girlfriend, or whatever people like you do.”

I couldn’t help but detest Laitio. His suspicions indicated that the Bureau and the Moscow militia had no clue about this case. Maybe they didn’t even want to be involved.

“Surely you have access to Anita Nuutinen’s phone records. You can check them to see that I called her many times, apparently even after she was already dead. Why would I have done that if I were her murderer?”

Laitio let out his unpleasant laugh again.

“You think I’m an idiot, sweetheart? Of course you would have, so that you could sit here and ask that innocent question! So you regretted leaving her, eh?”

“Yes, I did. I tried calling her, and—” I was going to tell Laitio that I had gone after Anita, but his phone rang and interrupted us. He answered, and apparently he was angry with whoever was on the other end.

“Could you leave for a moment?” he spat at me. “Just go to the hallway. I’ll let you back in as soon as I’m done. And don’t even think about running away—I’ll send half of Helsinki’s police force after you!”

I did as I was told. Although it was annoying to be bossed around, it was nice to get out of the cigar smoke and into the hallway, and the balcony offered even fresher air. To my surprise I could hear Laitio’s voice coming from a small window that was letting out more sound than smoke. He spoke in English with a heavy accent.

“I don’t believe you. It’s all bullshit and you know it. Shut up! I’ll contact the Finnish Embassy and our foreign minister.”

When he went quiet, I slinked back to the hallway, and soon his angry red face appeared at the door. His bald head was beaded with sweat when he pulled me in.

“Get your hands off me or I’ll make an official complaint!” I shouted.

“Who’d believe you? I’ve been a cop for thirty-two years without a single incident. Goddamned irresponsible women like you really piss me off—you’ll do anything for money. The Moscow militia found the murderer. Some homeless alcoholic who was living at the Frunzenskaya subway station. They found him dead from alcohol poisoning today, with Nuutinen’s wallet and passport on him.”

I stared at Laitio in disbelief. Now I understood why he’d been yelling on the phone.

“A homeless man. But wasn’t Anita shot?” I asked.

“How would you know about that?”

“You said so on the phone.”

“Ooh, but I didn’t! I wouldn’t be so stupid as to tell a suspect how the crime was committed. No Finnish media has reported these details.”

I had told Laitio during our first call that I had not heard anything. I quickly came up with a story about how I had been to an Internet café in Joensuu and happened to check the Russian news sites. Laitio asked me to give him the café address, and I said I hadn’t paid attention to it; it was the one near the marketplace.

The militia’s story about a homeless murderer was ludicrous. They may have believed it, and someone may have manipulated the evidence to make sure that a single wallet would be sufficiently convincing. But a homeless man probably had nothing more on him than a knife and his own fists, and Anita wouldn’t have gotten near homeless people, anyway. Bullshit, indeed. Laitio was right.

“So you’d been poking around Russian websites, huh? You speak Russki, or did you get a call from the killer?” Laitio was still trying to be menacing, but he had lost steam after the phone call and started to slump. His cigar had gone out, so he lit it again.

After a moment he opened the box and offered me one. When I declined he frowned and launched another tirade. “What’s the matter? You’re too good for the good stuff? I thought you had a reason to celebrate! Where are you keeping the blood money, huh? In a safe somewhere in Moscow? Goddamn it, if I catch you trying to cross the border, I’ll have you arrested!”

I let him rant for a while, then I asked whether the militia in Moscow had closed Anita’s case in light of this news. After some expletives Laitio confirmed that they had. He reached into his desk drawer again. This time he produced a bottle of cognac, skipped the glass, and drank straight from the bottle.

“Get the hell out of here, you whore,” he said. “Go think about what you’ve done. Be happy that we found out about the killer just now—otherwise I’d have you jailed as a suspect. You wouldn’t have been so stupid as to kill her yourself, but there’s no denying that you’re involved somehow!” Laitio took another massive swig out of the bottle and glared at me. The cognac dripped down his chin.

I stood up and imagined grabbing his cigar and stubbing it out on his bald head. I wanted to stay out of jail, so instead I grabbed my coat and headed down the stairs. Out on the street, I could hear Laitio yelling at me from his window, “And don’t think you’ve seen the last of me! We’ll meet again!”

5

Riikka was in the kitchen, but Jenni wasn’t home. I pulled a bottle of beer from my backpack and opened it with my teeth. I drank half of it before I asked Riikka whether she’d seen anyone else looking for me besides the police. She said the building had been quiet; only the usual Jehovah’s Witnesses had been knocking on doors. And there had been a Russian student selling paintings he’d made. Our neighbor had bought one and asked the boy in for coffee and quiche. This story about a Russian student didn’t sound quite right, so I called our neighbor to invite myself over later to check out the painting she’d bought. A widow, she was delighted to have some company, and I always enjoyed her baking.

Before I went to bed, I looked around for anything out of the ordinary. I had carefully chosen my room and situated my mattress in just the right spot: I had made sure nobody would be able to shoot into the room from the street. It might be possible from the roof across the road, but the shooter would have to risk being seen. I set my Glock next to my mattress. It was loaded. Riikka and Jenni had never seen it, and I should have kept it in the gun case behind lock and key, but this time I just wrapped it in Anita’s scarf. It smelled of her perfume, vanilla and patchouli, a greeting from beyond the grave.

Frida came to me in my dreams. We ran on the frozen lake, and I pulled fish out of a hole in the ice for Frida to play with. When we reached land, we heard a gunshot in the forest, and Frida was suddenly full of seeping wounds, just like the fur Anita had worn on the night of her death. I woke up, startled, and realized that the sound of someone trying to come into our apartment had woken me up. It didn’t sound like a break-in; more like someone attempting to open the door with the wrong set of keys.

Slowly I stood up and reached for my gun. I peered into our foyer. When the door opened and someone hobbled in, I instinctively raised my gun. Drunk out of her mind, Jenni stared at the gun for a moment and then began to scream.

I rushed back to my room, closed the door behind me, and hid the gun in my purse. Then I came back to the foyer, pointing my flip phone at Jenni like a gun.

“Jesus, stop yelling! You’ll wake the whole building!”

Jenni had collapsed in a heap in the foyer.

“But there was a gun pointed a
t . . .
”

“A cell phone, Jenni. I thought someone was breaking in with all that noise. I was about to call the cops. You’re so wasted you couldn’t tell a moose from a squirrel,” I whispered so that Riikka wouldn’t wake up. I could hear her stirring in her room. I hoisted Jenni up and pushed her into the bathroom in case she needed to throw up.

Mary Higgins, my landlady in New York, had occasionally come back to our Morton Street apartment half unconscious from a mix of cocktails and cocaine. She’d made me her hangover maid, asking me to feed her salty foods and meds. It was a great deal, for which I had Mike Virtue to thank, as he was Mary’s cousin. The location in the West Village was perfect for me, and I suppose he wanted me to keep an eye on her. She was a performance artist who’d sometimes take me to clubs where I never necessarily knew the sex of the person I was talking to. Although I was less enthusiastic about these outings than Mary, I did enjoy seeing people adopt a role for an evening.

Studying at the academy was like a full-time job, and it was a thirty-minute commute to get there. At that time the dollar was worth more than the Finnish markka, so my disposable income was limited. In Manhattan I felt disconnected from home, but I enjoyed telling strangers stories about my past and creating a new identity. One day I was a Finnish cleaning lady, Anneli; the next I was Helene, a Danish art student. I returned to Finland with a large supply of Mary’s beloved antinausea pills and business cards from people I’d met; people I’d left in the morning with a promise to call but never did.

I gave Jenni a double dose of the pills once she’d crawled out of the bathroom. They’d taken a toll on Mary’s memory, and the next morning, when I returned from my morning run, I hoped they’d done the same to Jenni. She was sitting in the kitchen, slowly sipping on orange juice. She was sickly pale, except for her bloodshot eyes.

“Hi. Nice to see you here,” she greeted me and took another laborious gulp from her juice. Mary’s pills would keep her from throwing up, but she didn’t seem to remember that I’d given her anything. “Riikka told me I woke you up some time around three when I got home. Sorry. I guess we started the semester with a bang.”

“No problem. I fell asleep shortly after. Can I have some of your juice? I’ll buy you some more later.”

It was Sunday, so I’d have to wait a day before signing up for unemployment. I had no intention of waiting the requisite three months before starting a new job, so I started looking. I checked the help-wanted ads in the newspaper and saw one for a security gig at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. I applied for it online. While logged in, I sent another e-mail to Monika von Hertzen as well, although I didn’t know what kind of Internet access she had these days. She was one of the few people who knew about Frida.

Elli Voutilainen, our neighbor, must have been at home because of the lousy weather. She’d lived here since the building had been constructed and acted as a godmother to most of the other residents. Occasionally I helped her with cleaning her windows or taking the rugs downstairs to be aired out. When I rang her doorbell, she came to the door in an apron, releasing the wonderful aroma of lingonberry pie into the stairwell.

“Well, hello, Hilja! I haven’t seen you in a while, but I did notice you running out there in the rain this morning. Be careful you don’t catch a cold!”

“I don’t get sick easily; I’ll be fine. May I come in?”

“Come, come! I was just making a lingonberry pie—I was in Nuuksio with Sylvi and Väinö picking the berries. Just another five minutes and it’ll be done. Want some coffee, too?”

We sat in her living room, where the walls were covered in the miniature porcelain plates she’d produced over the years. She’d given me a couple in the past. Mrs. Voutilainen’s specialty was flowers and birds, and the paintings she had collected depicted the same. I noticed there was a new print on the wall. It gave me chills.

“The girls told me you had a Russian salesman over. Is this the painting you bought from him?” I looked at Mrs. Voutilainen, who was about five feet tall and as fragile as her porcelain. “You really shouldn’t let complete strangers into your home,” I said, turning back to the painting, unable to look away.

“You think I’m helpless, don’t you? No need to worry; I can tell who is having a hard time and who isn’t. This Yuri seemed like a kindred spirit. He’s a garbage truck driver during the day and paints in the evenings, and he sends all his earnings back to his family near Murmansk. He looked so hungry I had to invite him in for coffee and some ham quiche.”

“Did you choose this painting?”

“No, Yuri picked it out for me. He said its colors would make a good addition to this room, and he was right—look how it matches my sofa and the wallpaper. I preferred the swan he’d painted, but I thought he’d have an easier time selling that one than the one I bought. Let me pop into the kitchen to see if the pie is ready. I’ll set the table.”

I took a few steps toward the painting. The signature was large and clear:
Yuri Trankov
. It probably wasn’t his real name. The paintings may not have been his, either. It was easy to buy amateur paintings in bulk from some homeless person at a Moscow subway station. This Trankov wasn’t a bad artist; the painting was incredibly realistic. It was small, only about eleven by fifteen inches, and in other circumstances I would have greatly admired it. It depicted a lynx leaping from a ledge to attack a deer. But this piece of art could only be interpreted as a warning. What did that voice mail say again? That I should keep quiet if I didn’t want to end up as dead as the lynx Anita had been wearing?

Over coffee I tried to pry for more details about Trankov from Mrs. Voutilainen. He had appeared with a bag on wheels containing about a dozen small paintings of animals. He’d asked for fifty euros, but she had given him sixty because she happened to have three twenty-euro bills in her purse.

“Did you two speak in English? You don’t know Russian, do you?”

“No, and my English isn’t great, either. Yuri spoke Finnish, and very well considering that he’s only been in Helsinki since last fall. Obviously a motivated young man.”

Elli Voutilainen didn’t have any children of her own; she loved taking young people under her wing. I asked whether Yuri had happened to leave any contact information, but apparently he was so poor that he didn’t even have a phone. Mrs. Voutilainen accused me of being prejudiced against Russians—all Yuri took were three slices of quiche, and that was only after she had insisted on it. I didn’t think Yuri had any plans to rob Mrs. Voutilainen; he was just a messenger, and his message had been heard loud and clear.

Because she was a skillful artist herself, I asked her to make a sketch of Yuri for me. She shook her head.

“Poor girl, you’re so suspicious of everyone, but I guess it’s part of your job.” She’d heard the same cover story as my roommates about my work. Despite her protests she began to draw, and soon an image emerged of a skinny man with sunken cheeks, a small goatee, and sideburns. She had captured his easily recognized Slavic features: the prominent cheek bones, forehead, and small, narrow nose.

“Too bad you don’t have his address. He would have liked this portrait. Can I buy it?”

“What do you mean,
buy
? Take it. Oh, and take some of this lingonberry pie to Jenni and Riikka. Which one of them was making a ruckus last night in the hallway? I suppose it was Jenni; the religious girl probably wouldn’t have.” Mrs. Voutilainen bustled back to the kitchen to pack up the pie and left me alone, staring at the painting.

At home I used Riikka’s printer-copier combo to make copies of the sketch. She also identified Trankov as the man who had showed up at our door.

“If you see this guy, let me know,” I said. “And do not let him in, under any circumstances.” I’d tell Jenni the same thing the next time I saw her.

“Why?”

“He’s not a nice guy. A skirt chaser. Better stay away from him.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“He tried. I’d rather not talk about it, you know, for professional confidentiality reasons.”

“Sheesh, what a job you have. Both the cops and the robbers are after you.”

In an attempt to steer the conversation in another direction, I made a joke about how I hoped I wouldn’t need her for spiritual guidance anytime soon.

I figured I could find out more about this Trankov character at the train station. Luckily, Riikka dragged Jenni to the movies later that day, and I had the house to myself to get prepared. I’d appear at the station as my alter ego, Reiska Räsänen.

I had created him a few years earlier. When Dylan Monroe, Mary’s friend from Tribeca, e-mailed me about his trip to Finland to teach a class on male impersonation, I signed up immediately—I knew being able to pass as a man would have its uses. The other students went for more colorful types of men: ice hockey players, CEOs, heavy metal fans, but I opted for a typical, all-around Finnish guy. The type who sat next to me at school and who played cards with me in the army.

Reiska’s hair was slightly longer and mousier than my own blond, cropped hair, and he had a thick mustache and a bald spot on the back of his head. Usually he tried to hide it with a baseball cap. His mirrored glasses were straight out of the ’70s. I needed bushier eyebrows to become Reiska. To make my skin appear more masculine, I piled on foundation; Dylan had recommended a particular brand. Reiska’s clothes were pretty much the same as mine; the combat boots and jeans were gender neutral, as were the jogging pants and sneakers he occasionally wore. The brown-and-gray-checked shirt had belonged to Uncle Jari and was a bit snug on Reiska, which was okay. Most important was his gait: it was confident, manly, and sent the message, “Get out of my way.” When Reiska had shown up in Moscow, prostitutes assumed he was a Finnish tourist.

His voice was the biggest hurdle. Mine was an alto, but it clearly belonged to a woman. Reiska’s speech was hard to decipher, as if he had something caught in his throat. He also had a stutter, which made him appear a little less tough than he wanted. Reiska did his best not to speak with a regional accent, but often an awkward turn of phrase gave him away. His lilt made it clear he was from Eastern Finland.

Dylan had asked me, why Reiska? Why this almost-invisible everyman? His question provided the answer. Reiska wasn’t interesting, which meant that women wouldn’t be running after him and men wouldn’t find him threatening. There was nothing enviable about him, and his dialect occasionally made him seem like a hick. People let their guard down around him.

Reiska’s scent completed my transformation. He considered himself a hip fellow—his aftershave and deodorant were both made by Ferrari. It was important to hide my own scent, so, coughing, I lit up a cigarette on my way to the bus stop. On occasion I’d even splashed Reiska’s clothes with gasoline. Our fingerprints would be the same, at least for now, so Reiska usually wore leather gloves, weather permitting.

Reiska knew some of the people hanging out at the train station and stopped to chat with them. A woman impersonating a man appears to be younger than her biological age. Dressed as Reiska I was twenty-five years old, a farm boy who had moved to the city. It was easy for him to mingle with a bunch of teenagers who were hanging around the station. A group was speaking in a mix of Russian and Finnish, including a couple of thirtysomething men in leather jackets. I inched closer, and it didn’t take long before one of them talked to me.