Sweetness took breaks and went outside, he claimed, for fresh air. He was lying, and I wondered what he was hiding.
After a couple hours, I noticed that a car, an Acura, had been parked across the street for a couple hours, wedged in a slot cut by a plow in the snowbank. I thought I caught a glimpse of binoculars. I asked Milo and Sweetness to go out and investigate.
“Yes, pomo—boss,” Sweetness said, put on his coat and made for the door. Milo trailed behind. I went out on the balcony to watch. I must have asked Sweetness not to call me pomo at least a dozen times, told him that if he has to call me anything, to call me Kari. Milo approached the driver’s-side door, Sweetness the passenger’s side. Milo held his police card up to the glass. The driver’s-side window rolled down. The man reached toward an inner coat pocket. Milo drew his pistol so fast that I barely saw it. Milo hammered the man in the face and head with the butt of his Glock multiple times. I heard him scream.
The other watcher went for his pistol. Sweetness smashed the passenger’s-side window with his elbow—protected by his overcoat—and reached through the window. He grabbed the man’s shoulder with a massive hand and the man howled in pain. Sweetness held the man in check. Milo took their wallets, checked their identities. He tossed the wallets back into the car. The men drove away.
Milo and Sweetness came back inside. Milo laughed. “I just beat the fuck out of a SUPO agent,” he said.
“I asked you to investigate, not rearrange his face,” I said.
“He reached inside his coat. He could have been reaching for a weapon.”
I didn’t criticize further. Milo was right to stop him, even if he was overzealous.
So the secret police were watching us. I didn’t know if it was a big deal or not. I had a meeting with Jyri the next day. I would ask him about it then. We finished counting the money. Two hundred and fifty-two thousand euros. We’d stolen almost half a million that weekend. A good start. I figured what the fuck, and tossed the boys packets of ten thousand each. “This is a onetime event, I’m not even taking one for myself, but these are bonuses for a job well done,” I said.
4
It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon. I met Jyri for coffee at Café Strindberg, which overlooks Esplanade Park. Most of the customers at Strindberg are rich forty-something face-lift fraus with little manicured rat dogs. Jyri asked about the weekend.
I told him the total, minus a ten percent skim, not because I intended to steal it, but because he might take every cent, and we couldn’t do without funding. In this scenario, he might just keep it all and tell us to fuck ourselves. He’s not above that.
“All told,” I said, “we took in about three hundred and fifty thousand. It’s in the trunk of my car. I’ll give it to you when we leave.”
He smiled so wide I thought his face might rip. “Hang on to it for now. But three hundred and fifty thousand. Jesus fucking Christ. That’s incredible!”
He’s a snatch hound with a Casanova complex. His eyes darted out the window at every woman that walked by. “Now that we know it works,” he said, “let’s discuss the details.”
I had no doubt that the “details” had nothing to do with crime fighting.
He took a thin tri-folded sheaf of papers from the inner pocket of his immaculate suit jacket and pushed them across the table to me. “These will explain,” he said. “The minister of the interior gave them to me himself. He just wanted to make sure I’m doing what I told him I would do.”
EYES ONLY: INTERIOR MINISTER OSMO AHTIAINEN.