Lucifer's Tears

by James Thompson

  “This is powerful stuff. How could it have been kept secret for so long?”

  “Near the end of the war, Valpo saw trouble coming. We destroyed as much documentation as we could.”

  I’m in over my head. I’m a detective, have no business in the political realm. “You’re asking me to relay a threat to blackmail the Finnish government into protecting you.”

  “It’s not a threat. I am blackmailing them. Tell the interior minister that I’ll also discuss our treatment of POWs.”

  “The death rate in our POW camps was high,” I say, “but be fair. We didn’t have food to adequately feed ourselves, let alone them.”

  “We held sixty-five thousand POWs. About thirty percent died. That rate was surpassed in Europe only by Nazi Germany, with its death camps, and by the USSR. Stalin was just as bad as Hitler. The death rate here wasn’t so high until we decided to use already sick and starving POWs for forced labor. Then they started dropping like flies. And we could have made sacrifices, fed them better if we wanted to. We just didn’t want to.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think anyone will believe all of this, even from you.”

  “Boy, you’re naïve beyond words. We shared the Nazi vision. Expansionism and room for the nation to grow. An agrarian paradise populated by ethnic Finns. That dream lives on. Don’t you watch TV?”

  “A bit.”

  “Think about, for example, the Elovena ads. They’re not selling porridge, they’re selling Aryan propaganda. If Leni Riefenstahl had made those commercials, Hitler would have come in his pants. A hardworking beautiful blond mother in the countryside, surrounded by her adoring, content, and even blonder oatmeal-glomming children. Fields of grain ripple in the breeze. Like it or not, boy, that idyllic Nazi vision is alive and well in this country today.”

  His cultural view is extreme, but his point is well taken. I think about Christmas Eve, and the beginning of the twenty-four hours of official Christmas Peace. At noon, in front of the town hall in Turku, a band plays Porilaisten marssi—March of the People from Pori—and the Christmas Peace song reminisces about covering the land in the blood of our enemies.

  “You still haven’t told me how my great-grandpa and your father knew each other,” I say.

  He gets up and brings me a package of meat out of his freezer. “As I said, you’re a good boy. I’ve decided I enjoy your company, so I’ll save that story. Come back tomorrow, we’ll eat and I’ll tell it to you. You’ll like it, it’s a good one. Ritva is tired. You better go now.”

  I have a murder to solve, don’t have time to lounge around and listen to war stories, but I realize, to my surprise, that I don’t care. Somehow I need it, and I’m already looking forward to it. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  31

  IT’S TIME TO PICK UP where Milo left off. I’ll tail Linda, maybe have a chat with her if the opportunity arises. I head southwest, from Porvoo toward Vantaa. Powerful winds gust and make the car shimmy. Snow drifts in fat flakes. The air currents shift, and for a couple minutes, the snow flies up toward the sky instead of down toward the ground. It amuses me, doesn’t happen often.

  I ponder Arvid’s revelations. Part of me wants to believe him, because I feel some affection for him and Ritva. As a Finn, though, I want to dismiss all of it as a cheap scam designed to weasel out of trouble. The detective in me is skeptical. First, because he lied to me in the beginning and claimed he was never at Stalag 309. Second, because he may be jerking my emotions, using the grandpa angle, telling me to call him Ukki to make me let my guard down and use me as a patsy. I need to be wary of Arvid. I wonder, too, if he would really write a book intended to destroy the self-image of a country he worked so hard to protect.

  The ring of my cell phone breaks my thoughts. Securitas Arska calls. He’s at Roskapankki. The guy who stole John’s boots is there. “Give me half an hour,” I say.

  I change direction and start toward Helsinki, drive fast despite the snow. I call John and tell him to meet me at Roskapankki. He says he’s busy right now. I hear a squeal and giggle in the background. I’m interrupting a fuck session. Good for John. “Too bad,” I say. “Go there now. I’m going to get your boots back for you.”

  He brightens. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

  Headache Alien screeches. I find myself furious. John is a decent guy, problems or no, didn’t deserve to have a speed freak steal his boots and leave him barefoot in the snow in minus twenty degrees. Then I realize the real reason for my anger is that said speed freak was mean to someone Kate loves. Same difference, I’m enraged.

  I enter Roskapankki. John skulks near the bar, ashamed. Arska sits on a bouncer stool near the door, says he didn’t have to detain the guy I’m looking for, he isn’t going anywhere. He points at a table with four losers sitting at it, half-full pints of beer in front of them. I slide Arska two fifties. I order six beers at the bar, tell John to bring them to the table. I pull up two chairs and sit with four derelicts in their mid-twenties. Their eyes tell me they’re flying. They look at me, amused and curious. John sets beers in front of all of us and takes a seat beside me, huddles close for protection. I note, to my surprise and pleasure, that he’s sober.

  “Hi, guys,” I say. “My name is Kari. Let’s be friends.”

  They check out the gunshot scar on my face. Their laughs are bemused. They’re thinking, what the hell, free beer. We clink glasses. John doesn’t have to tell me who stole his boots. The lankhaired greaseball fuckwad beside me is wearing them. I don’t have to tell him I’ve come for the boots. My presence here with John announces it.

  “Nope,” Fuckwad says.

  I smile. “Nope what?”

  “Haista vittu.” Sniff cunt. His friends tense up, smell violence brewing and start working themselves up to beat the shit out of me, en masse.

  My dad says that to me when he’s drunk and angry. I don’t like it. “I’m a cop,” I say, “and I’m prepared to overlook your stealing John’s boots if you kindly and quietly return them. I also won’t shake you down for drugs.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not holding, and I’m keeping the boots. Fuck off and run along now.”

  He wants to be tough in front of his friends. They chuckle. I sigh. “I’d rather not go to the trouble of arresting you.”

  One of his buddies says, “I recognize you. You’re one of the cops that killed that retard down the street yesterday.”

  “Yep,” I say.

  Fuckwad laughs, has no respect for anyone or anything. “Please, arrest me. It will make a great story. Retard killer arrests boot thief.” He points at John. “You should have seen the look on that guy’s face when I told him to take his boots off and give them to me. He didn’t even put up a fight, just sat down in the snow and did it.”

  He cackles at the memory. He’s serious, he’d rather go to jail than return the boots. I suppose he’s arrested on a regular basis and it makes no difference to him. John stares down at the floor, humiliated. Fuckwad’s friends howl and knee-slap.

  Of course, humiliating John was the point of stealing the boots in the first place. Disgracing others is Fuckwad’s idea of a good time. Both my headache and temper flare. I won’t arrest Fuckwad. At least not today.

  When I was a young guy and first moved to Helsinki, I bartended in räkälät like this on occasion to make ends meet. The beer glasses are cheap and thick—hard to break—but the surface tension of the glass is so great that when they shatter, they explode.

  I laugh along with them, good-natured. With my left hand, I hold up my pint in front of Fuckwad’s face and squeeze. He looks at me, smirking and quizzical. I squeeze harder, the glass goes off like a bomb, shatters into a thousand pieces. Beer and glass fly away from me toward Fuckwad, into his face and across the room. He recoils in his chair and gawks disbelief, face beer-soaked and covered with tiny bleeding cuts.

  His friends shoot upright to their feet and back away. John and I remain seated. I glance around. Ars
ka still lounges on the bouncer’s stool. He winks at me, amused. The bartender gapes, says nothing.

  Fuckwad’s eyes brim with tears. “You fucking asshole,” he says, “you could have blinded me.”

  I pick little glass shards out of my left hand and flick them at him with my right. “That was the idea,” I say. “Didn’t work.” I pick up another pint. “I could try again.”

  He trembles and raises his hands to his face. “Please no.”

  “I asked you nicely. Give me the boots.”

  He tries to jerk them off as fast as he can. He turns his chair over and pitches to the floor. He keeps tugging at the boots.

  I get up, stand over him and wait. I let blood drip from my hand onto his head. He offers me the boots.

  I take them. “Get out,” I say.

  His eyes dart, looking to his friends for backup, but they’re chuckling again, this time at his humiliation. He rights his chair and pulls himself back into it. He gives me a pitiful look of appeal.

  “I said out.”

  He whimpers. “It’s minus fucking twenty-five degrees.”

  I nod toward John. “If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for you. I’m going to stand outside and watch. You’re going to walk until I can’t see you anymore.”

  He gathers his courage and little remaining dignity, and starts to take his coat from the back of his chair.

  I shake my head. “No coat.”

  He lurches toward the door. I give John his boots and follow, and John tags along behind me. I thank Arska, step outside, ball up some snow in my cut hand and watch Fuckwad hurry along the ice.

  John stands beside me. “I didn’t know it was possible to crush a beer glass in your hand,” he says.

  “Me neither,” I say.

  He puts an arm around my shoulders. “I’ll never forget this.”

  “Me neither.”

  “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

  “Be a brother your sister can be proud of. Be her friend.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he says.

  “Tell her you missed your Sedona Wests and bought them back from UFF,” I say.

  “I haven’t been around much. Nobody noticed they were gone.”

  I check my watch. We’re near the house. Jari and his family are coming over for dinner tonight. I have just enough time to groceryshop, go home and check on Kate, and still make it to Filippov Construction and tail Linda when she gets off work.

  32

  IT STARTS SNOWING hard again. John tags along while I groceryshop. We go to Alko. I buy a couple bottles of wine and two bottles of Koskenkorva. I tell John to hide one in his suitcase and sneak drinks to stay level, warn him not to let Kate catch him boozing alcoholic-style, especially in the daytime.

  We go home. Kate and Mary are watching Dr. Phil. A bad sign. Kate hates Dr. Phil. It tells me Kate prefers listening to the good doctor to conversation with her sister.

  I say hi to Mary, kiss Kate hello and touch her belly. “Learning anything from Phil?” I ask.

  She mimics him. “Haaaney, what yoo got yourself is a drankin’ problem. Watcha need to dooo to cure yoor problem, haaney, is quit yer goddamned drankin’.”

  She does a good imitation. It makes me laugh. John sits down to watch TV with them.

  “What’s for dinner?” Kate asks.

  “Karjalanpaisti.”

  She smiles. “Dee-yummy.”

  “I better get it started. Kate, I have to go out to work again. If I prep it now, can you pop it in the oven at five, so it will be done when Jari and his family get here?”

  “Sure,” she says. “What happened to your hand?”

  “I slipped on the ice, and rock salt in the snow cut it. No big deal.”

  “What is karjalanpaisti?” Mary asks me.

  “Something good. You’ll see.”

  “How’s your headache?” Kate asks.

  “Not bad.”

  My head is splitting. I go to the bedroom and get a painkiller, so I can make it through the evening without my migraine singing songs that tell me to do bad things, and put dinner together. When I’m done, I go to the living room, sit down next to Kate and read the newspaper. I come across an article about the harsh treatment of Jews in Finland, and Helsinki in particular, during the nineteenth century. I think of the word Pasi Tervomaa used. Confluence. The persecution of Jews is suddenly everywhere I look.

  The article says Jews were confined to living in designated areas. Jews were denied passports. Jews were forbidden to conduct many types of business, including, of course, moneylending. The list of citizens’ rights denied Jews is long. Because of these oppressive laws, a quarter of Finnish Jews either left Finland on their own or were deported.

  This runs contrary to my perception of the Finnish treatment of Jews. Our country takes pride in its wartime record in that regard. Common wisdom holds that we protected Jews. During the war, they fought alongside other Finnish troops. Strangely enough, this means that Jews also fought alongside Germans. Finnish soldiers even operated a field synagogue.

  Heinrich Himmler pushed for the deportation of our Jews to concentration camps. Our legendary general Gustaf Mannerheim replied, “While Jews serve in my army, I will not allow their deportation.”

  Mannerheim’s hero status is such that he’s viewed as Finland’s Messiah. His military prowess and adroit political abilities allowed him to play the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany off one another, and ensured that neither overran us. On Independence Day in 1944, Mannerheim visited the Jewish synagogue in Helsinki and took part in a commemorative service for the Jewish soldiers who had died in the Winter and Continuation Wars, and presented the Jewish community with a medal. These things are common knowledge.

  An SS stalag, manned in part by Finns, where Jews were sent by the Finnish government with full knowledge that they would be murdered, is antithetical to history as written. We love Jews. We hate Jews. Which is it? I call Pasi Tervomaa and explain my confusion and misgivings. “Did Mannerheim know about the slaughter in 309?” I ask.

  “Let me put it this way. Mannerheim had the means to know if he chose to, and as such, he bore responsibility. If the Stalag 309 case had been brought before a tribunal at the end of the war, under the Nuremberg principles, Mannerheim would have been prosecuted as accessory to murder. That said, a lot of papers hit his desk, and he was an old man. He could have overlooked something. And the responsibility wasn’t his alone. The president and the interior minister at the time, Risto Ryti and Toivo Horelli, probably also gave their indirect blessings to Finnish collusion in 309 and the events that occurred there.”

  “I remember that President Ryti and some ministers were convicted in war responsibility trials. Is there any connection?”

  “No. Ryti and the others were sentenced in a show trial as a sop to the Soviets. They were charged with influencing Finland to wage war against the Soviet Union and United Kingdom in 1941, and for preventing peace during the Continuation War. By the way, it’s rumored that Mannerheim wasn’t charged because Stalin intervened. He liked Mannerheim. Or maybe Stalin didn’t actually like anyone, but found Mannerheim useful.”

  “This is all demoralizing,” I say.

  “I was disappointed when I learned these things, too,” Pasi says. “There’s a lot more information out there if you care to look for it. A lot of it in the public domain on the Internet. Most people just don’t want to hear it.”

  When I get off the phone, I hear Kate, John and Mary chatting. Mary isn’t lecturing. John isn’t drunk. Their voices are cheerful. They’re smiling. This heartens me. I say good-bye to them and set out to find Bettie Page Linda.

  33

  I DRIVE TO VANTAA. Road conditions are bad. Helsinki is experiencing a near-record snowfall. Snowplows run twenty-four/seven but can’t keep up. Towers of snow line the streets. Usually, snow is carted away in trucks and dumped, but the city has run out of places to put it. Some roads are impassable.

  I get to Fi
lippov Construction at four forty-five p.m. and park about fifty yards from the front door. Because of the falling snow, my car is almost invisible from this distance. Filippov and Linda exit the building at five and leave in separate cars. She drives a 2003 Ford Mustang. He drives a new Dodge Journey. They go in different directions. I suspect he’s going home and she’s going to Helsinki.

  Following Linda is easy. She doesn’t drive too fast, road traffic is light, and I’m difficult to spot because of weather conditions. I was right, she goes straight to downtown Helsinki and enters a parking garage. I park in the same garage. She walks toward Stockmann Department Store. I close the gap between us and catch her under the big clock at the main entrance. I touch her arm, and she turns.

  “Ms. Pohjola,” I say, “I’d like a word, if I may.”

  She bats her dark eyes at me and her red lips turn up into a charming smile. “Tell me, Inspector, what would you like to talk about?”

  “Sex, lies and videotape.”

  Her laugh is giddy. “Oh, dear, that boy that works with you has been in my computer. He also rooted around in my underwear drawer. If he’s going to be a successful voyeur, he has to learn to put things back in their proper places.”

  I wait.

  “Yes,” she says, “let’s have a chat. Do you have somewhere in mind?”

  “How about Iguana? The tables in the back might offer us some privacy.”

  She nods agreement and takes my arm. We walk like lovers across the street and into the faux Mexican restaurant. “A hot drink would be nice,” she says.

  She moves toward a big table in the rear and takes off her coat. Underneath it, she has on a tight black sweater and a short black skirt. Black stockings descend into black leather boots. Her attire doesn’t surprise me. A lot of Helsinki women refuse to succumb to the weather, no matter how severe, at the expense of fashion.

  I bring us two Irish coffees and sit across from her. She takes a sip. It leaves an ungodly sexy line of cream along her upper lip. She licks it away, provocative. Linda is drop-dead gorgeous. “Where shall we begin?” she asks.