Lucifer's Tears

by James Thompson

  “You should have taught at a Finnish university. You can fuck your students.”

  “You can?”

  “Yep. Two consenting adults. And?”

  “I turned into my dad. I got depressed and started drinking from the time I get out of bed in the morning and using drugs. The truth is, I didn’t come here just to be with Kate. My life is shit. I came here to get away from it for a while.”

  But instead, he brought his life and its attendant shit here with him and dumped them in our laps. “I’m curious,” I say. “The expensive clothes and boots, your—shall we say discriminating—palate for food and wine. How did you develop such expensive tastes on a grad student’s budget?”

  He smirks. “I had a girlfriend with a rich daddy. We lived high on the hog on his money. When I fucked the freshman, I lost my cash cow along with my position.”

  “Bummer. And how did you come to lose your fancy boots?”

  “When I was in that bar—the one where you bailed me out of trouble—I hung out with a couple guys. We did some lines of speed. One of them told me how much he liked my boots.”

  John pauses.

  I light another cigarette. “And?”

  “I really didn’t know all my cards were maxed out. I thought I had a little credit left. I told you I wouldn’t upset Kate.”

  “You’re a considerate human being, but you digress. And?”

  “I still had a hundred-euro bill in my wallet. He told me to call him today, said he had more speed and we’d party all day.”

  I resist the urge to slap him. “After what happened to you yesterday, are you so incredibly stupid that you were going to do the exact same thing again today?”

  He nods.

  “And this speed freak set a trap for you. He thought you’re a dumbass drunk druggie foreigner, unable to do anything about it, so he ripped you off for a few euros and your boots.”

  He nods again.

  My headache begs me to smack his head off the windshield. “You fucked up bad.”

  The muscles in his face twitch. “I’m broke. It’s twenty below and snowing. I don’t have any shoes or money to buy them. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Let me think for a minute.” I light Marlboro number three and shut my eyes. The migraine issues an earsplitting shriek. I open my eyes again, look out the driver’s-side window and see a cash machine across the street. “Wait here,” I say.

  I take two hundred and forty euros from the machine and give it to John. “Now you have money, you can maintain your pretense for Kate. Make it last. How bad are your drug and alcohol problems?”

  His face goes sheepish. He massages his pale feet. “I can make it without the speed. I mostly use it to keep from getting sloppy when I binge-drink. I found a bottle of kookoo or whatever that vodka is called in your house this morning and took a couple hits to get rid of the shakes.”

  “Did you do what I told you and lie to Kate about your outing yesterday?”

  He holds his soaking socks up in front of the heater. It blows wet dog smell around the car. “I went to the National Museum. The prehistory of Finland archeological exhibit was incredible.”

  “Today you went shopping,” I say. “You wanted some warmer boots and got some just like mine.”

  “What happened to my Sedona Wests?”

  “You’re a humanitarian. You gave them to UFF, our version of Goodwill. I’m going to fix this. What did the guy who ripped you off look like?”

  “Tall. Thin. Stringy shoulder-length black hair. He wears a worn-out black leather biker jacket.”

  I check received calls in my cell phone and their times, and find the number that must belong to Securitas Arska. I call him and tell him I’m looking for a speed-head that hangs out in Roskapankki and repeat John’s description of him. Arska knows who he is. I offer Arska a hundred euros if, when he sees the speed-head again, he’ll detain him and call me. Arska agrees.

  I pull the car out into traffic and give John instructions. “I want you out of the country as soon as you can do it without rousing Kate’s suspicion about why you’re leaving earlier than planned. Until then, I’ll keep booze in the house for you. Hide your drinking from Mary and Kate. And no drugs. I want you on your best behavior.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

  Migraine screams deafening loud. I light cigarette number four.

  “Kari, I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me,” he says, “and I’m sorry that I’ve put you in such an awkward position.”

  He’s sincere. It makes it hard for me to hate him.

  I wear army combat boots in the winter, and have since I was in the service. They’re warm, comfortable and durable. I take John to an Army-Navy store near our house, so he can get a pair for himself, give him directions to the nearest liquor store, tell him to get semi-tanked and go home.

  25

  I PARK ON VAASANKATU, in front of a shut-down Thai massage parlor. It’s snowing hard now. My knee throbs along with my head, and I limp toward Hilpeä Hauki. I hear a dull creak over my head and look up. Heavy snow on a slanted rooftop breaks free and avalanches toward me. I press up against a building. The avalanche passes in front of my face, lands with a thud and forms a three-foot-high snow dump at my feet. I wade through it and go on to Hilpeä Hauki.

  Milo got here before me. He’s sitting on a couch in a rear corner nook, away from other customers, a cup of coffee in front of him. The bar is almost empty. “I’d rather have beer,” he says, “but I’ve been up for more than thirty hours. It’s hard to stay awake.”

  I get coffee, too, and sit in an armchair at a right angle to him. “Why haven’t you slept?” I ask.

  “I’ll get to it.”

  “So what’s this secret information you can’t tell me at work?”

  His eyes are red slits. The black circles around them have that excited dull shine. “I said I’ll get to it.”

  He’s going to start with the story of creation and work his way forward through the history of the world before he gets to the point. He’s having fun and he’s exhausted. I give him latitude, sink back in my chair and wait.

  “What do you want to do with the Silver Dollar case?” he asks.

  “I want to send the bouncers to jail for involuntary manslaughter, but it won’t happen. Securitas isn’t guilty of anything. We should turn them loose.”

  “They could have tried to stop it, to make the bouncers put Taisto Polvinen down.”

  “Not stopping isn’t the same as doing.”

  He shifts in his seat. His movements are jerky from exhaustion. “That rent-a-cop girl is a fucking cunt,” he says.

  “For a man of your intelligence,” I say, “you have a limited vocabulary.”

  Then I get it. His tough talk is a facade. “I think of her as ‘gum-chewing bitch cow,’” I say. “She speaks with this annoying Helsinki teenager accent. When I interrogated her, she repeated the questions back at me and made fun of my northern accent. I don’t care for being mocked. I asked her where she’s from and she said Helsinki, which was a sham. I called her a liar and told her I could tell she’s from the Kotka area. She called me a cocksucker.”

  “It’s funny how so many people in Helsinki are from somewhere else,” Milo says, “but pretend they’re from here.”

  “They want everyone to think they’re big-city sophisticates, instead of small-town rednecks. It’s the Finnish innate sense of shame. I think some of us feel guilty just for having been born.”

  “Yeah, we can be like that,” he says. “We can hold the bouncers until Friday without charging them. Let’s leave them in the tank for a couple more days just to fuck with them. Maybe the prosecutor can make a case out of it later.”

  “Agreed.”

  Milo finishes his coffee, goes to the bar and comes back with a refill, takes on a furtive smile. “I went back to Filippov Construction last night, then to Filippov’s house,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “To search trash
cans,” Milo says. “I hoped he was stupid and threw out the gear he wore while he killed his wife. He wasn’t.”

  “Filippov is an asshole, but missing taser or no, there isn’t any evidence to hang the murder on him. Not yet, anyway.”

  My lack of confidence irks Milo. “And that’s why I’m trash-diving, to find evidence and hang him.”

  I switch gears. “This thing I’m investigating for the national chief of police is taking more time than I thought. Can you do the legwork, background checks and basic stuff on the Filippov case for a day or two?”

  “Sure. If you tell me about your top-secret mission.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Because explaining about Arvid would lead to a question about the reason behind my involvement, and the answer is Ukki. I’m not prepared to go there with Milo. “It’s just not your business.”

  “You’re an annoying fuck,” he says.

  “Funny,” I say, “I’ve had the same thought about you.”

  This gives him pause. “I’ve been doing the Filippov case legwork,” he says, “which is why I was up all night.”

  At long last, he approaches the reason for our clandestine liaison.

  “Iisa Filippov’s life insurance policy makes her worth eight hundred and fifty thousand, dead,” he says.

  “It’s not a pittance, but not exactly a fortune either these days.”

  “This afternoon, I spent some time going through her phone, making calls, finding out who her friends are. Everyone spoke well of her.”

  He must think his detailed account of routine police work builds my anticipation. It only makes me miss the days when you could smoke in bars. “Glad to hear it.”

  “And neither her husband’s nor her own personal bank accounts show signs of abnormal transactions.”

  I sip coffee, work on my tolerance management skills.

  “Last night,” Milo says, “while I was trash-diving at Filippov’s house, I looked in the windows and saw Linda there with him. They left together and I decided to tail them. They went to Linda’s apartment. I stayed and surveiled them.”

  “Hoping to discover what?”

  “I got an idea that if they collaborated in the murder and he used protective clothing while he committed it, they could have stowed it in her place.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have disposed of it immediately after the killing?”

  He shrugs. “You never know with people. I trash-dived Linda’s dumpsters and came up empty.”

  He’s boring me shitless. My mind drifts to Ukki. I picture him executing a Communist with his little suicide pistol.

  “Something the matter?” Milo asks.

  “Nope. Please continue.”

  “So I sit outside her building all night, in case they try to sneak out to dump the stuff. Nothing happens. Early this morning, they left together—I guess to work—so I broke in and black-bagged her apartment.”

  My attention snaps into focus. “What?”

  His coat is beside him. He takes a nylon wallet out of a pocket, unfolds it, sets it on the low table in front of us to show me a lockpick set. Seven picks and two torsion wrenches. “I busted a burglar once,” Milo says. “In return for letting him walk, he gave me his picks and showed me how to use them. It’s pretty easy.”

  I shake my head, disgusted. “So you committed breaking and entering.”

  “It’s a hobby with me. I don’t steal anything, I just like to see how other people live, take a peek into the lives of strangers.”

  More sharing of personal details I don’t want to know. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I like to see the look on your face when I tell you about my hobbies.”

  I didn’t know I had a look on my face. “Do you tell other people this shit?”

  “ No. Just you.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “You should be.” He changes the subject. “Linda Pohjola is fucking hot.”

  I nod. “She looks like Bettie Page.”

  “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “She collects 1950s pinup magazines and movies. A lot of it is S&M and bondage, fetish-type stuff. She also has an excellent lingerie collection, which she scents with perfume.”

  I take this to mean she consciously impersonates Bettie Page. “So you break into apartments and sniff women’s undergarments.”

  “Not necessarily, but in this case, I had to search her underwear drawer. You know the old joke that goes, ‘What’s a Russian ass-shaker?’”

  It’s a classic. “Yeah. It doesn’t shake and it doesn’t fit in your ass.”

  He grins. “That’s the one. Well, lovely Linda has a non-Russian ass-shaker. A big green double-donged dildo. Big end for pussy and small end for ass.” Milo starts to sing a Beach Boys’ tune. “I’m pickin’ up good vibrations. She’s giving me excitations.”

  I want to see if anything causes him shame. “How did Linda’s dildo smell?”

  “Like soap,” he says. “She washes it.”

  My tolerance level just maxed. “You didn’t ask me to come here so you can tell me about your proclivity for voyeurism and Linda’s underwear and dildo.”

  He’s having the time of his life. His eyes sparkle, their dark circles have a liquid sheen. He folds up his lock-picker’s wallet, puts it back in his pocket, and puts a digital audio player in its place on the table. “I found her MP3 and bumped this over to my iPod. Listen to the second-to-last track,” he says.

  I put the earbuds in and listen. I hear smacks, followed by high-pitched grunts and squeals. Slurping sounds, like a blow job. Muted low moans at intervals, some of which are from a male voice. I’m nearly certain it belongs to Filippov. It goes on for eight minutes. Milo has a recording of Iisa being whipped to pieces. I stop the machine.

  “No, keep listening,” Milo says.

  A Nine Inch Nails song, “Closer,” from The Downward Spiral album, starts. It’s a dirgey anthem to self-hatred and sadomasochistic sex.

  This isn’t the studio version. It’s a home mix. The sound track from Iisa Filippov’s torture session has been dubbed over the song. Her blunted cries syncopate with the song’s rhythm. It’s sickening, makes my stomach churn.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Milo says, “and ingenious. Linda and Filippov have sex while they murder Iisa and make a recording, so that later they can fuck along to the sound of Iisa dying. I’m picturing them killing her, that dildo in Linda’s cunt and ass. Filippov’s dick in her gorgeous mouth. If you listen close, it sounds like they come together when Iisa dies and goes quiet.”

  I listen again. He’s right. The idea is so appalling that for a moment I sit stunned.

  “‘Closer’ may be the best fucking song of all time,” Milo says, “paralleled only by Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir.’ You ever fuck to the rhythm of ‘Kashmir’?” He hums the bass line, makes little grinding motions with his crotch.

  In fact, I’ve fucked to both songs, but that’s not his business. “To your credit,” I say, “you were right. Filippov and Linda colluded in Iisa’s murder, but you fucked everything up. Now we have the evidence, but it’s inadmissible in court. What, Sherlock, are we going to do with it?”

  I don’t wait for his answer. Something hits me. Milo is unpredictable in the extreme. “Give me your pistol.”

  It’s in a quick-release holster in the small of his back. He grins, hands his Glock 19 over to me. I look around to make sure no one sees, pop the clip and rack the slide. A round flies out. He’s ready for anything, carries it with one in the chamber, cocked and locked. I pick the ejected bullet up off the floor. It’s crosshatched, as is the one at the top of the clip. He’s loaded up with dum-dum rounds. Teaching him how to make them was a serious mistake. I turn the pistol over in my hands. It has a selector switch at the rear left of the slide that my Glock lacks.

  I want to scream at him but keep my voice down. “You maladroit imp. You mental fucking pygmy. You installed a three
-round-burst selector.”

  His smile is smug. “No I didn’t. It’s a full-auto switch. Making the three-round-burst selector was harder than I thought. I got the schematics to the Glock 18, which has full auto-fire capability. The models aren’t too different. I had to do some hand tooling on the slide and barrel, but made it work.”

  “I told you not to fuck with your service pistol. What did you do that for?”

  He sticks his chin out, defiant. “Maybe because you’re not my fucking boss.”

  “Take it out.”

  “No.”

  “I’d like to turn you in for breaking into Linda’s apartment and jeopardizing this case, but that would botch everything, and she and Filippov would walk.”

  Milo says nothing, just stares at me.

  “I’ve had just about fucking enough of you,” I say. “I’ve treated you as a professional, and in return you’ve been arrogant, conceited and childish. I outrank you, and whether you like it or not, I’m going to be the boss of you. We can change the nature of our relationship. I can call you detective sergeant, and you can call me inspector. I have twenty years more than you as a cop, and you’re going to treat me with the respect I’ve earned.”

  He sneers, grits his teeth. We stare at each other. He clears his throat and holds out his hand. “My pistol.”

  I give it back. He does some minor disassembly, removes the switch and puts a little screw in its place to cover the hole it left. He puts the loose round back in the clip, racks the slide to rechamber it, flicks on the safety and re-holsters the pistol.

  I hold out my hand. “Give me the switch.”

  He hesitates, frowns, does it. I hear a series of distant popping sounds. The door to the bar opens. A woman yells, “Someone’s shooting on Helsinginkatu!”

  Milo and I grab our coats, get up and put them on as we run.

  26

  WE FOLLOW THE SOUNDS of sporadic gunfire. Big booms that I’m pretty sure are from a high-caliber, short-barreled pistol. The noise takes us to Ebeneser School. A small crowd on the sidewalk peeks into the schoolyard from behind the ivy-covered fence that I smashed a man’s face off of two days ago. Helsinki residents aren’t used to Arctic cold. They shiver and stamp their feet in the snow. We show our police cards. A woman tells me the shooting is coming from inside the school. I call it in, request backup.