Slugger

by Martin Holmén

  I duck and take cover as the windowpane explodes. Shards fly over my head. The brick hits a mannequin and knocks it over. I hear a shrill scream from behind. The youth sticks his head through the window’s jagged hole like a lion tamer.

  ‘Jew vermin!’

  The boy pulls his head out again and legs it. He disappears northwards, towards Röda Kvarn Picture House and Stureplanen. I get back on my feet. My shoes clatter against the floor. The door opens inward, not outward, and I curse but am soon standing outside on the pavement. I run a few metres towards Mäster Samuelsgatan but then stop.

  ‘Where the fuck did that bastard go?’

  My words echo in the silence. The hot air is completely still. Combined with the street dust and soot, it creates a quivering curtain between the façades of the buildings. A couple of cars drive past. A horse clops down one of the side streets. Two ladies standing outside the Svecia Hotel with small chic hats and parasols turn their eyes to the tailor’s.

  A bloke with a wide gold watch chain over an equally wide belly and a copy of Svenska Dagbladet tucked under his arm has stopped next to me. There is a redness to his cheeks as if he has had a few glasses too many with his Sunday roast at the Cecil restaurant on the other side of the street. A group of loitering upper-class kids with grammar school crests on their caps have stopped on the other side of the street to gawp at the tailor’s, with massive grins on their faces. People are popping up and vanishing in the windows of the houses above them like a fucking puppet show. Herzog’s apprentice stands outside the shop armed with a sleeve board. He is brandishing it like a scythe.

  ‘Bloody cosmopolitans!’ shout a couple of the swankily dressed kids. They take a few steps out into the road and the others follow behind. Herzog’s assistant backs up to the door and waves his weapon in front of him a few times. The sound of a police whistle travels down from Norrmalmstorg when someone from District 7 gets wind of what has happened.

  The kids hesitate and go back to their side of the road, but they don’t leave. My jacket, with my wallet, cigars and the pistol I reclaimed earlier today, is still hung up inside. But I don’t much fancy going back in if it’s about to become a police matter.

  The copper arrives. He’s a pale bloke with shiny red lips like a neon sign in his doughy white face. He grabs hold of the apprentice’s arm and pushes him inside the tailor’s. One of the kids lights a cigarette. Another is doubled over in what looks like a fit of giggles.

  ‘What is going on?’

  The stout man next to me has a squeaky voice. He takes off his glasses and dabs himself lightly over his face and neck with a handkerchief. He smells of hot toddy in the height of summer. I peer down the sun-broiled street. The drain grates glint gold.

  ‘Someone put a brick through Herzog’s window.’

  He clucks and folds his handkerchief up into his pocket.

  ‘Just a matter of time before those goggle-eyed types are packed off to America, don’t you think?’ He puts on his spectacles. ‘Pity about all those fine suits.’

  The man taps his newspaper on his head in a farewell gesture and saunters north towards Stureplanen. Another copper arrives and stations himself outside the tailor’s. I am at a loss and stand there awhile in my shirtsleeves.

  A cream-coloured Cadillac with claret mudguards is moving slowly up Biblioteksgatan. I watch it pass. The sun’s rays explode all over the lacquer. It rolls past me and parks outside Cecil.

  A hefty mitt grabs the car’s frame from the inside, and a man heaves himself out. His thin shirt pinches around his broad shoulders and he has metre-long braces running down his chest. His jacket is slung over his arm, at the height of his bulging abdomen, hiding his right hand. He toddles over the crossing and tips the brim of his hat to shield himself from the sunshine.

  ‘Kvist! Well, I’ll be damned!’

  I recognise the bloke but can’t place him. It’s happening more and more these days. I look around. The police are still standing outside the tailor’s. The corpulent bloke holds his palm up to an old Buick and crosses the street. The sunlight flashes on his gold tiepin. His blue eyes look leaden in the heat. He’s a good twenty centimetres taller than me and I back up half a step to even it out.

  ‘Roslagsgatan man, aren’t you? We’ll drive you home.’

  I glance at his hidden hand and take a quick look around. Something about him makes me wish I had got that Husqvarna from the tailor’s.

  ‘Like hell. I’m getting measured.’

  ‘Herzog looks a little busy for the time being.’

  The huge man slurs his words. He puts his thumb and forefinger between his lips and blows a whisky-scented whistle down the street. The police officers outside the tailor’s look in our direction, nod slightly, put their hand on their sabres and disappear through the door.

  ‘As if by bloody magic, right?’

  The man in front of me smiles with his mouth but those leaden eyes radiate violence. He gestures towards his Cadillac with his left hand. On the other side of the crossing someone opens the back door of the car. First I see an ivory cane with a gold tip followed by a pair of crocodile high-heels, and I realise that I have no choice but to do as I am told.

  I am standing knee deep in shit.

  ‘In America, it’s common for whole families to spend the night out on fire escape platforms during the worst of the heatwaves.’

  Ma sticks a cigarette into an ebony-coloured holder and places it between her painted lips. She is wearing a pair of white gloves so thin that one can see the fine blood vessels that run like tattoo ink over the backs of her hands.

  I have never met her, but I know who she is.

  The Cadillac’s wheels knock dully like an uninvited guest against the tram tracks as we pass Odengatan and drive into enemy territory. Ma’s two sons, Svenne Crowbar and Nix, look from the left pavement to the right and back again. Nix has one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gearstick, and a revolver in his lap.

  They share no similarities to speak of. Nix’s face could have been carved out of granite: he’s a chiselled and thick-set bloke with a monobrow that makes it look like he has two thin moustaches, one on his brow and one on his upper lip.

  Svenne Crowbar’s puffy mug keeps appearing in the side mirror. His eyes look about as sly as a cud-chewing cow. Sweat has burnt red furrows into his neck flab. There is a snapping sound as he bites off a fingernail.

  The leather back seat creaks with my movements as I try to get a box of matches out of my trouser pocket. Ma is waiting patiently, as if she has never done anything else.

  The phosphorous stick rasps against the striking surface. The sudden flame is reflected in Ma’s diamond necklace and her deepgreen silk dress. It’s an exclusive number with lace and frills that fits tightly around her full-figured body, but it probably hasn’t been in fashion since the war.

  ‘Is that so?’

  Not the slightest tremor in my voice gives me away. She meets my gaze. Her pupils are so large they seem about to take over her blue irises. I lean forward and offer her a light. A heavy scent of perfume washes over me as she puffs on her cigarette and holds out her hand in a polite gesture.

  ‘Of course they have different habits in the heat over there.’

  Ma takes a drag. The smoke that fills the passenger compartment is of the same colour as the streaks in her dark hair.

  Svenne Crowbar whistles from the front seat and points at the right-hand pavement.

  ‘Rickardsson,’ he says, turning to us.

  It feels like an ice cube has lodged in my throat when I hear the name. Is Ploman’s gangster still out on his walk? I tip the brim of my hat over my eyes. I sure as hell don’t want him to see me in this company. Ma cranes her neck and then hides her face behind the hand holding the cigarette.

  ‘Take it easy and turn left into Frejgatan.’

  The characteristic double-click of a revolver cylinder turning one notch fills the car, and me.

  ‘If we drive up alongside hi
m I can pick him out,’ says Svenne Crowbar.

  ‘Left, I said.’

  The tone in Ma’s voice sounds as if she were instructing servants. Something that is not foreign to her if the rumours are true. People say she was a vicar’s daughter, seduced by the city’s most brutal gangsters in the flower of her youth.

  ‘In time. It is important to choose the opportune moment.’

  Ma leans forward and slaps Svenne Crowbar on the shoulder. She turns to me.

  ‘Four times they have tried to do me in, and four times they have failed. I have a whole left leg full of metal shards to prove it.’ Her cigarette holder flutters slightly between her fingers as she continues. ‘And it has cost them dearly every time.’

  Nix takes his shaky left hand off the steering wheel and clenches it hard three times. It is unbearably warm in this smoky back seat. My shirt is sticking to the seat. My neck cricks as I stretch it out.

  ‘My jacket and wallet are still at Herzog’s.’

  ‘We’ll drive you back, soon.’

  The car passes my street. I take a look.

  Old man Ström is stacking sugar crates outside the junk shop. That blasted Captain Wång is standing at his cigar booth on the other side of the street, fanning himself with his gold-laced hat while entertaining a small crowd of kids outside the tobacco shop. He likes to amuse them with his shaky seaman’s English and an occasional tale of thievery from the seven seas, but as far as I know he was never more than the captain of a local archipelago boat.

  I also suspect that he is related to Hjalmar Wång, the young socialist who shot the wrong man in Kungsträdgården when the tsar was visiting, but he doesn’t dare breathe a word about it. His anaemic, Bible-loving wife would hit the roof.

  ‘Mr Kvist lives here on Roslagsgatan, right?’

  Ma lets a thin plume of smoke escape from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘A bit farther up, above Lundin’s funeral parlour.’

  ‘Enemy territory for us, home ground for you.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Johannes Church strikes quarter past five. Herzog was kind enough to open for a fitting and now I am afraid he’ll be closed.

  ‘My shooter is still at the tailor’s.’

  ‘What are you going to do with that?’

  ‘Have to kill someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Ma chuckles.

  ‘Kvist lives up to his reputation.’

  I stifle a sigh. God knows what this damned bitch is talking about.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’ll be there soon.’

  We turn right and follow Sveavägen up along the flower beds of Vanadislunden Park. The pansies are blooming like black eyes after a fight. Nix takes a left by the old emergency shelters. We pass the Getingen area with its shapeless conglomeration of scrapyards, abandoned workshops, warehouses and hovels. Ploman’s boys usually dump their bodies here if they can’t sink them in the waters of Brunnsviken. I have a shooting pain in my little finger stump at the thought.

  Ma takes a brown glass jar out of her handbag.

  It’s so big that she can hardly get her fingers around it. There is a small spoon inside the lid. She scoops up a little white dust and presses one finger against her nostril. With a whistling sound she snorts the powder up the other nostril, picks up the gold-rimmed pince-nez that is hanging on a silk cord at her bust and places it on the tip of her nose, as if to close it. She pulls out a lace church handkerchief from the sleeve of her dress and dabs her Cupid’s bow clean from the remnants that have clung to a few dark downy hairs.

  Nix pulls up and parks outside the launderette. The sound of the engine dies, and at once we can hear the birdsong from the narrow garden that splits Ynglingagatan in two. A lone cyclist winds up the street, as you do when you have the whole road to yourself and happen to be in a good mood. He is dressed in work clothes and covered in a fine layer of sawdust. Both Svenne Crowbar and his brother pull their hats down to cover their faces. I instinctively sink down in my seat.

  ‘Perhaps you know the people who work in the moving company up there?’

  Ma points past the bonnet ornament to the stone steps at the far side of the garden and sniffs. They lead up to St Erik Park. Some little girls on the pavement below are chalking up a hopscotch. This is a secluded, protected area of the city, far from the centre, but the distant drone of Solnavägen is still audible. I suck in air through my teeth and nod.

  ‘Ploman, Rickardsson and the Reaper.’

  ‘As you know, they control Vasastan, and my boys and I control Östermalm, while Piggen and his crew have Söder, and Belzén of Birka takes care of Kungsholmen.’

  ‘You get ten per cent of everything there.’

  ‘Belzén and I have had a lucrative partnership for many years. Kvist is well informed.’

  There is a shooting pain in my little finger stump again. It was the Söder thugs who took off the tip with a pair of pliers and a hammer when I conned them with a fixed fight many years ago. I have always suspected that it was all part of a bigger picture, seeing as it was immediately followed by the breakout of the biggest and most brutal bout of gang violence our nation has seen since the bloody Dacke War. Since that day I have always turned down the big dogs when they ask me to dance.

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kvist is mumbling!’

  ‘Didn’t say a word.’

  Ma shakes her head slightly, sniffs and continues.

  ‘However, our markets have developed, and both Ploman and Piggen have strengthened their positions lately, at our expense. Schnapps might still be the lamp oil Swedes use to face the darkness, but there are other sustainable sources of income now. I am talking foremost about narcotic powders such as cocaine and morphine, and ether, gambling and Jews.’

  She is shaking her jar. I take out my timepiece and look at it. The hands are completely still.

  ‘By and large the German refugees arrive into the city on the goods train at Södra Station in the south. That makes them Piggen’s and the Söder lads’ concern. Ploman controls Karlberg of course, as well as Norra Station in the north, but he wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole. Why he turns down those revenues I don’t know.’

  Svenne Crowbar whistles for the third time in a matter of minutes and gestures towards the steps. Once again the car is filled with the clicking sound of a revolver.

  ‘That was quick.’

  Life and movement break out in the car. Ma opens a little hatch on the inside of her door and signals to me to do the same. I fumble around, find a knob and get it open. The latch consists of a centimetre-thick sheet of steel. I stick my hand inside and take out a pistol with Russian lettering and a star embossed on the butt. A Tokarev-30. I think.

  ‘The body of the car is reinforced with fourteen hundred kilos of armour plating and can withstand most things, but keep away from the windows.’

  They learnt their lesson when the Reaper rigged Pa’s car with dynamite cartridges and blew the head of the family to hell. I slide farther down into my seat as my thumb gropes the pistol to find the safety catch. My nerves are begging for a smoke.

  I peek out through the side window. On the bottom step, around thirty metres away, stand two blokes dressed in three-piece suits despite the heat. One, with round glasses on a potato nose, points at our car, and the other starts walking along the opposite fork of the road, partially hidden by the garden between us.

  Virtually impossible shot.

  ‘High time we moved. Can Kvisten lift his feet?’

  I do as I’m told. Every limb is dripping wet with sweat. My breathing has become irregular. The car stinks of tobacco smoke, perfume and suspense.

  There is a snapping sound as Svenne Crowbar bites off another fingernail. The kids by the stairs start playing hopscotch. One of them, with a plaid dress and thin pigtails, stops and stares.

  Ma opens an oblo
ng latch in the floor. She picks up a submachine gun with a walnut-coloured butt and a drum magazine.

  ‘Ten shots per second.’ Her red-painted lips part into a smile. ‘In the end life comes down to a question of firepower.’

  The Cadillac growls into life and Nix releases the clutch. Slow and controlled, he pulls out and crawls along Ynglingagatan, no faster than the cyclist who just passed us. There is a metallic sound as Ma covers her weapon, ready for battle.

  A firecracker of a woman.

  ‘This is a game Kvist has played before. Don’t give them a whiff of hesitation. Else you will always lose.’

  ‘Never taken a count.’

  My words come out as a hoarse croak. I try to swallow. Maybe it’s good that my cigars are at Herzog’s. My throat is so dry that it would probably catch on fire if I lit one.

  The man by the stairs follows us with his gaze and reaches his right hand into his jacket. The little girls’ shoes clack against the pavement. The scent of fresh sawdust wafts from the timber yard farther down the street. The saw blades screech sharply even though it’s Sunday. I am squeezing the pistol so hard that I can feel my pulse beating against the butt. A steam engine whistles from Norra Station.

  The girl in the plaid dress starts her game. She hops: one, one, two, one, two, one.

  The man by the stairs has dark eyes, spectacles and a waxed moustache. We slow down around the left turn. The bloke nods at us with a smirk. One end of his moustache points needle-sharp up to the cloudless sky.

  The little girl turns around in the chalked circle at the top of the hopscotch and starts hopping back. Nix picks up speed, we pass the timber yard’s howling saws and pick up more speed going south along Upplandsgatan. There isn’t much traffic. I take a deep breath and manage to finally swallow the saliva in my bone-dry throat. In the front seat Nix lets out a high-pitched chuckle.

  Ma turns her ample body completely around and rests the barrel of the machine gun on the back seat so that she can keep watch through the oval back window.