Helsinki Noir

by James Thompson

  Marina ruffled Marko’s mohawk. The karateka’s hard hand felt soft.

  “Where’d you get this from, you an old punk rocker or something?”

  “Punk rocker, my ass. Indian.”

  The light changed, Marina started on her way. “All right, you behave now, so I don’t have to come use my stick on you.”

  Marko almost forgot his destination as he stood there watching the swishing of Marina’s ass in her coveralls. So light.

  At the corner, some brand-new ex-drunk was timidly hawking The Big Number, holding his newspapers under his arms as if they were full of X-rated photos. They weren’t; the dirty pictures were up on the billboards for the whole world to see. The only things forbidden on billboards were images of poverty or marginalization.

  The paper seller had slouched shoulders and a beer belly; you could tell how he had spent his time. Marko was a brick shithouse and proud of it. Kept himself in good shape. Spent at least an hour at the gym every day, a few hours on his days off. His job was easier when you had a little mass, a little muscle. He didn’t go to the bars or walk the streets at night. If he did, someone would always come up and start something up. First a fight, and then a court case after Marko kicked the guy’s ass. Or the cops would pick up both of them, but Marko always took the fall.

  Besides, Marko had plenty of chicks, one-night stands. He would have liked something permanent, but the chicks didn’t. They were either bimbos, which he had no interest in, or students of sociology or philosophy who just wanted to try out what it felt like with a big guy. Then they’d get scared and wouldn’t dare answer their phones anymore or say hi if he ran into them; they’d cross over to the other side of the street and slip onto the first bus or tram that rolled past. Maybe they’d heard somewhere that Marko had a girlfriend.

  He had never dared to try anything with Marina. They were just coworkers. Marina was small but solid, you could sense it somehow. It would take a lot to break her. Unlike Marko, who was built but fragile.

  Fucking fragile. No, he was also strong. Fucking strong. He would never break. Nothing could break him.

  * * *

  The Academic Bookstore. Academic, my ass. As if your average working man couldn’t buy a book. Or rip one off. If he felt like it. Marko didn’t feel like it. What the fuck was he going to do with a book?

  And that fucking millionaire there on the stand in the bookstore, sucking in his pale gray mustache as he spewed out his truths, a smile on his lips and blue eyes flashing behind his tinted glasses. His baby shit–yellow tie fluffed and a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket like the swollen tongue of a hanged man. And the interviewer, a slick young guy, all he did was simper, lick the millionaire’s ass there on the stand. What the fuck did either of them know about life?

  “People need to stop complaining and go to work. I didn’t become a millionaire by twiddling my thumbs and whining.”

  Work, huh? What work had that douchebag ever done? Played with other people’s money at the bank, that was the extent of his work history. Pulling in sick amounts of cash the whole time. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

  It pissed Marko off, but what were you going to do? You couldn’t whack millionaires, that would mean jail time.

  From the shelves, A Message from the Angels struck Marko in the eye like a dart hitting a dartboard. Message, my ass. A black angel was going to come and claim the hero of the moment, like in that song. This black angel was wearing the black coveralls of the security company. It was going to drag the guest of honor around the corner and whack him behind the knees first, then in the kidneys. Maybe boot him in the nuts and the ribs. But not in the face—that was only for drunks. You can kick them wherever you want, no one will say anything. Drunks and hippies and alterna-fruits and all the fucking fundraisers and sprout-eaters and sand-niggers. All the fucking bastards with nothing better to do.

  Marko had nothing better to do now either. He’d gotten the boot from his boss and his lady. He had stuck it to a drunk, even though it was against the rules, and some fucking idiot had filmed it with his cell phone and posted it online. He had stuck it to another woman, not even a stranger, his lady’s sister, but that was against the rules too. No one had filmed it or put it online, but his lady’s sister had gotten a bad conscience and sent a text message to her sister. So, he got the boot from both, once his boss caught wind of the first bit of intel and his old lady the second.

  “I don’t know what I ever saw in you . . . You’ve always been an asshole, but this time you crossed the line. With my own sister?! I’d kill that fucking whore, but I’d have to go to prison and she’s not worth it. Neither are you. So get your shit and get out of here.”

  “You’ve been a good guard and showed up for all of your shifts, but these overreactions are starting to get out of hand. The guy’s in ICU, and we don’t know if he’s going to make it. That’s bad PR for the company. We can’t turn a blind eye to this . . . Bring your ID and keys to the office on Monday.”

  Marko wasn’t sure which had said which, his boss or his bitch. Who gave a shit? The boss had been yakking over the phone, the bitch at arm’s length. The boss he had told to fuck off with a promise to kick his ass; the bitch had lunged at him with the bread knife, but missed. He’d slammed her into the wall and she’d slid to the floor, her skirt rising up to her waist. For old time’s sakes he had fucked her there in the entryway, from the front and the back among the grit and the dust and the shoes, blown his load in her eyes and then grabbed his shit and tried to leave. The bitch started waving the knife again and calling him names, but she ended up tripping onto her own blade. The blood had spattered all over, but luckily not on Marko. He had watched her twitch for a while, then headed out. The entryway smelled of lust and blood, the stairwell of piss and microwave pizza. Hard to say which was more disgusting.

  All his crap was in a gym bag at the station now. It’d be safe there until evening; at night, the railway company would empty the lockers. Or actually, the guards would.

  How the fuck would this whole shitty society stay standing without guards these days? There was no fucking way. Normal people wouldn’t dare to go to the train station if there weren’t guards there. Or walk around downtown or in those fucking malls from hell. Nowhere. Cops were being cut all the time, guards were being bumped up.

  Except Marko. Marko had been cut.

  Should he go to the police academy? No. He had tried right after completing high school and his military service, but they wouldn’t take you if you were color blind. You had to be able to tell a red light from a green one. Or was it the other way around? Maybe both.

  “A market economy is better or at least nicer than a democracy, in that, in a market economy minorities aren’t left to fend for themselves,” the millionaire was saying. “Is it fair that Parliament gets to mandate income redistribution?”

  The crowd was as heavy as an overcoat, though not that many people were wearing theirs. They would have been sweating; Marko was sweating in his trench coat. He was standing near the Esplanade entrance, but there was no way he’d get closer to the stand without using force. And it wasn’t time for that yet.

  “How would you summarize the message of your book?” the interviewer asked.

  “The core issue is, of course, freedom. Freedom of choice. In my book, I develop a vision of the future in which people—and companies—vote more and more often with their feet, as they say.”

  “Why?”

  The millionaire shrugged. “Voting with your feet is far more common than voting at the ballot box. We see it in consumer choices, investment decisions, and the places people choose to live and study. If taxes rise too much, who’s going to want to live here anymore?”

  He was damn right about that. But what was an unemployed guard going to live on abroad? And what taxes did an unemployed person pay in the first place? Fuck! No, the guy was wrong. He was just thinking about things from his own perspective. And there weren’t exactly a lot of fucking
millionaires in Finland.

  “The tyranny of the majority must come to an end. When it comes to decision-making, instead of level-headed politicians, we need visionaries with new ideas for the future. From a financial perspective as well.”

  “Do you see yourself as one of these visionaries?”

  The millionaire laughed. “Well, of course I possess the necessary competence, but I prefer my current job. And life isn’t solely about work. It’s also important to be able to enjoy a change of scenery when you feel like it. Aside from my manor, I have several homes around the world.”

  Blow me, asshole. Easy to talk when you have the dough to do whatever you want. Otherwise every guy in the world would head for Thailand to screw slant-eyed bitches and toss back beers under the palms.

  But there was something to what he said before that. They needed a new leader. Someone who would bring a real hard rain to clear the unfit out from their midst. Someone who knew who needed to go and stop polluting the air.

  Some Marko.

  Marko tried to move closer to the millionaire, shoved people to the right and left out of his way. People grumbled, but no one said anything to him. At least not after they saw him.

  The interview ended, and the millionaire began to sign books. Marko picked one up from the stack and stopped shoving, moved along politely with the line. The blood vessel in his right temple was throbbing, but he calmed himself. There was no point calling pointless attention to himself yet. There would be time for that later.

  A little before it would have been his turn, Marko looked around and realized that there were too many people left in the store. A burly guard in black coveralls was hanging around the edge of the line, thumbs in his belt loops, and near the stage there was a broad-shouldered guy in a dark suit, maybe a bodyguard. Marko might not have time to carry out everything he had planned. Better to wait for the right opportunity.

  The millionaire continued signing for about half an hour. Eventually the line petered out, and he and the women from the bookstore and the publishing house and the guy in the suit went up to the third floor for coffee. Marko flipped through the travel books near the café, wondered where he would travel if he could afford it. Came to the conclusion that it made no fucking difference. He had a trip coming up real fast anyway.

  After finishing his coffee, the millionaire shook hands with the others and stepped into the elevator with the guy in the suit. Marko put on his gloves and rushed in after them, noted that the button for P3 was already lit, and nodded at the men. The elevator jerked into motion and began its descent.

  The bodyguard in the dark suit was big, just a little smaller than Marko. He’d have to take him out first. He was clearly wary, eyed Marko like he was a shoplifter. Marko was still carrying the book under his arm.

  “Could I get your autograph?” Marko asked, holding the book out to the millionaire.

  “Of course,” the man smiled, pulling out a gold ballpoint pen from the breast pocket of his dove-gray suit. “To whom shall I dedicate it?”

  “For Mar . . . tti.” Giving his real name might not be a smart idea. There was a camera on the ceiling.

  “For Mar . . . tti, huh?” The millionaire smirked, opened the book, and began scribbling. The bodyguard relaxed a little. “You did pay for this, didn’t you?”

  “Sure, I can show you the receipt . . .” Marko said, and started digging around his trench coat pockets with both hands. With his left he pulled out a department store receipt, saw the bodyguard tense up for a moment and relax again. Then with his right, he pulled out a sturdy yellow-handled Solingen meat knife that he had just bought from the department store and sank it into the bodyguard’s stomach.

  The bodyguard tried to grab the knife but fell to his knees, the blade tore through the white shirt and the flesh and into the breastbone. The guy had shaved his chest. His guts struggled to escape. He tried to hold them in, sliced his hand as Marko pulled out the knife. Marko immediately severed the guy’s carotid artery, blood sprayed onto the millionaire’s pants and all over the elevator. Like in the movies.

  As the shower of blood sputtered out and the bodyguard toppled over onto his stomach, the elevator doors opened onto the first floor.

  A horrified woman stared from the bookstore lobby, dropped her bags, and screamed. She looked like Mom that time she was fucked up and had knifed Dad for the zillionth time and the old man had actually croaked.

  The millionaire snapped to and tried to get out. Marko tossed him against the back wall and pressed P3 again with his gloved hand. The doors shut in front of all the idiots who had stopped at the elevators to gawk. No one had time to try and enter.

  “What . . . what do you want?” the millionaire asked surprisingly calmly. He was more thrown off than terrified.

  “What do I want?” Marko said. “I want to talk to you for a minute. Your basic theses are okay, but you’re totally fucked when it comes to some other stuff. I want to give you some advice.”

  “Advice? Me?” The millionaire looked almost amused, even though the bodyguard was emitting a death rattle at his feet and blood had sprayed onto the millionaire’s suit and glasses and cheek.

  “Yeah,” Marko said, yanking the glasses from the millionaire’s head and stomping them to shards with his combat boots. It pissed him off when the other person didn’t show him the proper respect. “We need a hard rain. You know that song, a haa-haa-haa-hard rain is gonna fall? That’s what we need. And I’m the rainmaker. It’s raining blood, as you can see.”

  The millionaire sobered and fell silent. Marko shoved his left hand into the bodyguard’s armpit, found a matte-black pistol there. Looked like a Glock. He dropped the meat knife from his right hand and switched to the gun. It wasn’t exactly an Uzi, but it offered a little more range than a knife.

  The elevator doors opened onto the parking garage. There was no one in sight.

  “Where’s your car?” Marko said, dragging the man along by his tie. He almost tripped over his bodyguard.

  “I don’t know . . .” the millionaire started, banged the corner of his eye on the edge of the elevator door, and continued in confusion: “I don’t know. Koskela is . . . was my chauffeur. He looked after the Jag . . .”

  “How many Jags can there be down here?” Marko asked, pausing to look around.

  There wasn’t a single Jag in sight. The parking garage was shared with the neighboring department store and had three levels. It held six hundred cars. If the millionaire’s chauffeur had pressed the right button, they had two hundred cars to check. Or a hundred and fifty, not all the spots were full. How much time did they have? A minute? Thirty seconds?

  Marko pulled the guy along. He didn’t resist or cry out for help, he must have been at least a little shocked about his chauffeur’s fate.

  “Where . . . Where are you taking me?” the millionaire asked in a strangled voice. His tie must have been pressing against his windpipe.

  “What fucking business is it of yours?” Marko gave the tie a tug. “What fucking business is it of anyone’s? Shut the fuck up!”

  As they rounded the next corner, they saw the Jag, a burgundy XJ, an extra-long luxury model, of course. Marko yanked the millionaire by the tie headfirst into the back of the car so hard that his head slammed against the metal; it looked like he’d put a dent in the trunk. The man grunted and dropped to his knees.

  “Give me the key, I want to get out of here.”

  “I don’t have—”

  Marko shoved the pistol back into his pocket, a gunshot would arouse too much attention. He took the nightstick out from under his coat and whacked the millionaire in the temple. There was a rewarding thud, and the guy hit his nose against the back bumper. The blood sprayed.

  The first drops of rain.

  “What the hell are you talking about? You don’t have the keys to your own car?”

  The millionaire was holding his nose with both hands and looked at Marko as if he were a primitive life form. “You don’t think
I carry my car keys around, do you, if I have a chauffeur?”

  Marko realized that things had gotten out of hand. It was a couple of hundred yards back to the elevator, and it had zoomed back up as soon as they stepped out. The same elevator doors were already opening now, as well as those of the other elevator, and then the steel door to the stairwell popped open. Urgent footfalls approached from two directions.

  “Your game’s up, rainmaker,” the millionaire said. “It’d be smartest to give yourself up right away. There’s not going to be any more rain.”

  Something in Marko’s head snapped. He heard it clearly, as if a dry branch had cracked in two. He pulled out his pepper spray and misted the guy’s eyes with it.

  “No rain, maybe, but plenty of fog. How do you like that?”

  The millionaire bawled like a little baby. Marko began to smack the little baby with all his might, just like Dad had smacked him. Dad only had a belt but Marko had a nightstick, he was able to achieve serious results. The man’s arrogant expression melted into tears, Marko’s eyes were blurry with rage and then pepper spray, someone was spraying him in his eyes; he turned and sprayed back, someone yelled something but he didn’t hear what and couldn’t see anything. He just waved his nightstick around until it was knocked out of his hands, someone jumped on his back but he threw the person off, some little piece of fluff, he pulled the pistol out of his pocket and fired at them, then a few bigger pieces of fluff jumped on his back, knocked him to the ground, and wrenched the pistol out of his hand; he managed to fire it once more before easing his grip, the bullet headed in the wrong direction.

  The final shot cleared his field of vision, the mist and the spray and the tears melted in the gun smoke, and he saw everything clearly. Too clearly.

  The millionaire was wiping the corners of his eyes between the cars; he had a few bumps and bruises but they’d heal and he’d forget about them before long—his millions would take the edge off both. The guy would walk out of this whole shitshow without a scratch.