Lucifer's Tears

by James Thompson

  “I know.”

  “What’s the red jelly for?”

  “It’s lingonberry jam. Take tastes of it with the liver. It’s traditional.”

  We eat in silence. He cleans his plate. I pay our bill and order a taxi to take us home. On the way, he stares straight ahead. After a few minutes, he says, “Thanks for paying my bar tab.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I won’t upset Kate.”

  “Good.” I take out a notepad, scribble my number on it and give it to him. “Stay out of trouble, but if you don’t, call me, not Kate.”

  He nods.

  As an afterthought, I take his number and put it in my cell phone, in case he disappears and I need to find him.

  My impression is that John is a decent person when he’s sober, but those moments are few and far between. He needs help, and because he’s Kate’s brother, I’d like to get it for him, but our baby is on the way. John frightens me. I’m scared he’ll upset Kate and cause her to lose our child. I can’t let that happen. I want him to go back where he came from.

  19

  JOHN AND I GET HOME around two a.m. Mary is in bed asleep. Kate wanders out into the living room in a nightgown. “So what have you two been up to?” She sniffs. Her voice is testy. “Never mind, I can smell what you’ve been up to.”

  “Just a Finnish boys’ night out,” I say. “A couple drinks, sauna, some good food.”

  John smiles and nods. “I ate liver for the first time since Mom was alive. I even liked it. I got my blood sucked. I haven’t decided if I liked it or not.”

  She looks at me. “Blood sucked?”

  “Kuppaus,” I say.

  Her vexation fades. She laughs. “You really did have a Finnish night out. John, what did you do all day?”

  “I’m pretty tired. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  “Kate, let’s go to bed,” I say, “so John can have peace and quiet on the sofa.”

  She hugs her brother good-night. I wash my face and brush my teeth. On the way back, I tell John to invent a lie about what he did today.

  He’s already half asleep. He nods. I go to our room and get into bed with Kate. She snuggles up beside me. I wrap an arm around her.

  “Did you really have fun?” she asks. “I was afraid you two wouldn’t hit it off.”

  “Let’s just say we’re getting to know each other. But yeah, we had a good time. He learned a little about Finnish culture this evening.”

  “The baby is kicking,” she says. She takes my hand and rests it on her belly so I can feel it, too. “How is your head?” she asks.

  It hurts. I lie. “It’s okay.”

  “Our day got off to a strange start,” Kate says. “After you left this morning, John and Mary and I were having breakfast, talking about things that happened when we were kids. After Mom died, and Dad started drinking, we didn’t have much money and moved into a run-down little house. We had a neighbor who was just a regular guy, a nice guy. He lived by himself. Another neighbor drove home drunk and crashed his car through the wall of the nice guy’s house into his living room while he was watching TV. The car went over top of him and crippled him for life. The three of us kids ran over and saw him pinned under this big Buick. The strange thing is that we all have different memories of what Dad did. John remembers that Dad ran into the house to help. Mary remembers that he stood on the porch and watched. I remember that he was drunk, sitting in the kitchen alone, and didn’t even get out of his chair to see what happened. It was an awful thing to see, traumatizing for us.”

  “Trauma affects people in strange ways,” I say.

  “I was the oldest and I’m sure Dad was dead drunk. Maybe the trauma hurt John and Mary so badly that they invented better memories so they wouldn’t have to think of Dad like that.”

  I think of John’s behavior today, and wonder if reliving the ugly memory set him off. “Could be.”

  “After cancer got Mom,” Kate says, “I became their mother. I was supposed to protect them. When I went off to college, I thought Mary was old enough to look after John, but they’ve changed. I feel like something is my fault, but I don’t know what it is.”

  Kate is a grown woman. I don’t want to treat her like a child, but the miscarriage hurt her in deep places. It can’t happen again. I think of preeclampsia, hypertension, placental abruption—the placental lining separating from her uterus—the child’s death, her death. I want to protect her for just a little while, until our daughter is born. The idea of this visit from her siblings seems worse and worse to me.

  “Kate, you were thirteen when your mother passed on, still a child yourself. Your father was the grown-up. He was responsible for all of you. He failed you. Don’t take that failure onto yourself.”

  “I can’t help my feelings,” she says.

  It’s hard to blame the dead for anything, easier to shoulder their guilt. “But you can try to rationalize them, to maintain perspective.” Pot calling kettle black. I can’t do it, either.

  “Enough about that,” she says. “Tell me about your day.”

  I tell her about the Filippov murder, the Silver Dollar death, about Arvid Lahtinen, about the accusations against him, and about his connection to Ukki. Again, I lie by omission, and don’t tell her about passing out on Arvid’s floor.

  Kate rolls toward me and lays her head on my chest. “You haven’t told me much about Ukki.”

  “He was a good man. I loved him. And my grandma, too. They were kind to me.”

  “You shouldn’t worry about it then. Mass murderers aren’t kind to children.”

  Couldn’t they be? “I just want to know the truth about him, for good or ill.”

  “Why? If he was a good grandpa, what difference does it make what he did in wartime?”

  A good question. I haven’t asked it of myself. The answer is apparent. “It’s my nature. If he took part in the Holocaust, I won’t love the memory of him less. I just need to know.”

  “Yes,” she says, “you’re like that. Life would be easier for you if you weren’t.”

  She’s more right than she knows.

  “Do you have to get up early tomorrow?” she asks.

  “Yeah, to see Jari.”

  “Let’s get some sleep then,” she says, and snaps off the light.

  20

  RESCUING JOHN MEANT I had to leave my car in the police garage overnight. I get up and leave early to fetch it, then drive to the hospital. In the waiting room of the neurology polyclinic, I browse household cleaning tips in a women’s magazine. The reading selection here leaves much to be desired. The polyclinic radiates sterility, but I stand instead of sit. The last time I took a seat in a public medical facility, when I left, my clothes smelled like piss.

  Jari calls me into an examination room. He sees the gunshot scar on my face and flinches, but doesn’t comment on it. The last time we saw each other was three Christmases ago. He’s aged since then. His hair is grayer, he’s thinner. We share a quick brotherly hug, he tells me to sit down. I describe my headaches. He types the symptoms into a computer.

  “On a scale of one to ten—one being mild discomfort and ten being the worst screaming pain you can imagine—how would you rate your headache at the moment?” he asks.

  The pain is dull but nagging. “About a three.”

  “You say that the problem started about a year ago, but that you’ve had a constant headache for three weeks.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you describe the headaches as increasing in severity as well as duration?”

  “They’ve gotten a lot worse over time,” I say.

  “On that one-to-ten scale, how would you rate the worst episodes?”

  I picture all my teeth being drilled through to the roots without anesthetic as ten. “Eight.”

  “You’ve always been laconic,” he says. “I think you’ve been through some intense suffering. Why did you wait so long to have this taken care of?”

  “I saw a ge
neral practitioner six months ago. She gave me extrastrength Tylenol and something she called a pain diffuser. She said they give it to people with chronic problems, for instance, who’ve lost limbs but still feel pain in the missing parts. I took it for three days, and it helped the headaches but made me so stupid that it was hard to speak. I threw it in the trash.”

  “Does the Tylenol help?”

  “It used to. Not anymore.”

  “Are your nerves so bad that you can’t eat or sleep?”

  “I’m a little off my feed, but I eat. I can’t sleep.”

  Jari has me track his finger back and forth with my eyes, checks my balance and reflexes, a few other things. He runs his fingers over the scar on my face, tells me to open my mouth. He looks inside with a medical penlight. “The bullet took out two back teeth,” he says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have chronic pain or any paralysis as a result of the wound?”

  “Just some stiffness in my jaw and minimal paralysis. My smile is a little crooked.”

  He grins. “That’s no big deal, you don’t smile much anyway.” He sits, ponders the situation. “There’s a bundle of facial nerves in the vicinity of the bullet wound. Damage to them could cause your headaches, but your lack of other symptoms makes me think that’s not the case here. There’s nothing readily visible wrong with you,” he says. “We need to run tests.”

  “What do you think the problem is?” I ask.

  “This is largely a process of elimination from the most to least likely causes. Let’s see if you have a brain tumor, then we’ll check for nervous system disorders.”

  This alarms me. “Those are the most likely causes?”

  “Little brother, you don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation or how very fucking stupid you’ve been. You need an MRI. The waiting time for an MRI in the public health system in Helsinki is nine months. You could die while you wait. It happens all the time.”

  “The police have private medical coverage,” I say.

  “Screw the system, both public and private,” Jari says. “I’ll twist some arms and get you as far up the line as I can. You’ll get the MRI in at most a couple weeks, and a blood test as soon as you leave this office.”

  “Okay,” I say. Something occurs to me. “I thought you were getting rich in private practice. What are you doing here in a hospital?”

  “The pay for public doctors is so abysmal that most of the good doctors have fled to private practice. So what you have left is recent graduates from medical school, some bad doctors, some older doctors, and lately an influx of foreign medical workers. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but many of the foreigners speak poor Finnish and often depend on English.”

  “But foreign doctors have to pass a language test in order to practice.”

  “That doesn’t guarantee spoken fluency. Two parents brought a child with an ear infection in to see me last week for a second consultation. They’d seen a foreign doctor and his language skills were so poor that all he could tell them was, ‘It’s not cancer.’ And when, for instance, elderly people come in and don’t speak English, they sometimes feel that they can’t relate their problems. They feel neglected by the system. I come here two mornings a week to help out. I think of it as my civic duty.”

  Jari always was a good guy.

  “How’s your bum knee?” he asks.

  “Worse every year. There’s not enough cartilage left to hold it together. I have to sleep with a pillow between my knees to keep the pressure off, or it starts to go out of joint in my sleep and the pain wakes me up. At least it used to, back in the days when I slept.”

  “Getting kneecapped with a bullet has a tendency to do that. Have an orthopedist examine it again. Reconstructive surgery probably won’t fix it, but might improve it.”

  “I’ve got a baby coming. Better to limp than not walk at all.”

  We share an uncomfortable silence. I wait for him to ask the inevitable.

  “Why have you been avoiding me?” Jari asks. “You don’t return my phone calls.”

  I’ve been asking myself the same question. I discovered the answer but can’t share it with him. It’s about old hurt and anger. Dad used to beat the hell out of me. Jari is older than me, but never did anything to stop it. Maybe he couldn’t.

  When Jari got out of high school, he told Dad he wanted to be a doctor. Dad asked him who the hell did he think he was, told him he thought he was better than his upbringing, to come down off his high horse and get a job. They argued. Dad punched him in the face. Jari left that night, and I didn’t hear from him for almost two years. He had moved to Helsinki and gotten into the university. He abandoned me.

  “I don’t know why,” I say. “I didn’t realize I was doing it until Kate and I had been here for a few months and I hadn’t gotten in touch with you.”

  He nods. “I get that, but I’m still your brother.”

  “I know. For whatever reason, I’ve been distant, but it has nothing to do with you and I’ll make myself get over it. Kate’s brother and sister from the States are here visiting us. Why don’t you bring your wife and kids over on Thursday. I’ll cook us a big family dinner.”

  “Sounds good,” he says. “You have to go now. Patients are backing up.” He hands me some papers. “These are the order for your blood test, which I expect you to take now, and prescriptions for some new meds.”

  “What kinds of meds?”

  “Opiated painkillers, tranquilizers and sleeping pills. I want you to use them freely. You need rest and relief from pain.”

  I grab my coat and start to protest. He pushes me out the door. “See you Thursday,” he says.

  21

  I GO TO ANOTHER WAITING ROOM, Stand and read until my turn comes up. I have a busy workday ahead and waiting frustrates me. A nurse draws some blood. I exit the hospital and look at the prescriptions in my hand. I dislike taking medication in general, but Jari was right. Passing out at Arvid’s house taught me that I need relief. I go to a pharmacy and get them filled.

  It’s minus ten degrees, crisp and pleasant, a little after ten a.m. A darkened sky looms over a snow-white city. I lean against my Saab, smoke cigarettes and make phone calls. First in line is Milo. His voice is hushed, uncharacteristic of him. I ask him if he can run background checks on Iisa Filippov and Linda Pohjola. He says he’s working the case from a different angle at the moment and can’t talk right now. He asks if we can meet later, outside the police station. He has things to tell me. I suggest Hilpeä Hauki at two thirty. He says perfect, he lives in the neighborhood. My interest is piqued.

  Next I call Jaakko Pahkala. I’ve know him for years, since I was a uniform cop in Helsinki, before I moved back to my hometown of Kittilä and took over the police department there. He’s a freelance writer for the Helsinki daily newspaper Ilta-Sanomat, for the gossip magazine Seitsemän Päivää, and the true-crime rag Alibi. Jaakko loves filth, specializes in scandal.

  “Hello, Inspector,” he says. “This is a pleasant surprise. I thought you would never speak to me again after the Sufia Elmi case.”

  Jaakko committed obstruction of justice by releasing details of the murder that I wanted suppressed, published morgue photos that demeaned the victim and did his best to discredit me and have me fired because I refused to grant him an interview.

  “I didn’t, either,” I say, “but you have your uses.”

  He laughs. His high-pitched voice grates on me. “Who do you want dirt on?”

  “Iisa Filippov.”

  “I’m interested in her murder myself. What do I get?”

  Jyri wants Rein Saar hung out to dry. I’ll make it hard for him. “A good scoop, provided I stay anonymous.”

  “Give.”

  I light another cigarette, exhale smoke and frozen breath in a long plume. “Iisa Filippov and Rein Saar were both stunned with a taser. He would have had a hard time giving her a prolonged torture session after that. And the taser is missing, wasn’t a
t the crime scene.”

  “Damn,” he says, “that’s good.”

  “Your turn,” I say.

  “Iisa Filippov was a party girl, fuck monster and trophy dick collector. Notches on her bedpost include Tomi Herlin, Jarmo Pvolakka, Pekka Kuutio, and Peter Mänttäri.”

  Herlin: a heavyweight boxing champion and hero-of-the-people-turned-politician and then finally drug-addled sad case. He committed gun suicide eleven days ago and lay dead for two days before his body was discovered. Pvolakka: the only ski jumper in the world to have won gold medals in Olympic Games, World Championships and Ski Flying World Championships, and to have finished first in the overall World Cup and Four Hills Tournament. Also hero-of-the-people-turned-nutcase and finally loser with a penchant for stabbing others. Kuutio: former minister of foreign affairs. Forced to resign because of a scandal involving hundreds of harassing text messages he sent to a stripper. Mänttäri: aka Peter the Great. Washed-up porn star.

  “Drugs?” I ask.

  “Of the recreational variety.”

  “Her husband?”

  “Straitlaced cuckold.”

  I was once made a cuckold and was hell-bent on murder for months, even though I never committed it. I can imagine Filippov feeling the same. I picture my unfaithful ex-wife, Heli, sociopath and killer, burned to death on a frozen lake. I remember some of her last words to me. “Deserve,” she said. “Nobody gets what they deserve. If we did, we’d all burn in hell. We’re all fucking guilty.”

  “Friend Linda Pohjola?” I ask.

  “Party girl but not fuck monster. Iisa and Linda liked to get high and dress up alike to titillate. They even learned to speak and act alike. Iisa usually followed through after aforementioned titillation, Linda generally didn’t.”

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Maybe. I’ll think about it. More will cost you more, too.”

  I ring off and go to work.