Life Deluxe (49 page)

Jorge: stressed like a drug mule with a full stomach.

Nervous like a babyface on his first day of school.

Wiggin’ like a CIT robber on the lam. Which was exactly what he was.

Jorge’s world: had come crashing down. Again. Mahmud was still in the hospital. The Thai fuckers who wanted to sell wanted all the cash at once. Babak was threatening to snitch like a bitch.

Life was shitting on Jorge. Life was sucking horse cock. Life was more unfair than a Swedish court’s way of convicting addicts. He was tired. Rap-life remade as crap-life. G-life transformed into L-life. L as in loser.

Jorge’s anxious thoughts were on repeat: maybe he should turn himself in. Call the cops and demand that they take him. Check into an arrest cell for a few months. Install himself behind bars again. Be interrogated around the clock. Be humiliated by fake-friendly cops who would try to get him to wrap his bros.

No
.

NO
.

He was J-boy. The king. He would handle this. They could count to nine—he would always get backup.

Plus: there was some light in the darkness. That Hägerström dude was being useful, even though he was an ex-cop. According to JW, police records showed that he was a bad boy, had fallen hard. No wonder he got booted from the pigsty.

Jorge was gonna buy a place in Phuket. Mahmud and Javier were waiting. And Tom and Jimmy would also need him sooner or later. He wouldn’t let them down.

Now, today: the effect of too much shit—Jorge on the escalator on the way toward baggage claim at Arlanda Airport. No other way out: on his
way home to Stockholm either to help the Iranian somehow or to dig up the cash and bring it back to Phuket. The alternatives were his for the picking. But he had to go home.

He’d made it through border control with his fake passport. Now: just customs left. This couldn’t go wrong. He couldn’t fuck this up.

On the walls: large photos of Stockholmers. Benny Andersson, Björn Borg, the King. And then the owner of a kebab stand. The latter: completely unknown
hombre
.
WELCOME TO MY HOMETOWN
, it said. Jorge thought:
The kebab nigga isn’t even Swedish, how can he welcome anyone?

Then:
Wrong thinking—the kebab guy is just as Swedish as me. And I don’t have anything else—this is my hometown, my home. I belong here
.

His thoughts were interrupted. Someone rested a hand on his shoulder.

“Hi. Were we on the same plane?”

Jorge turned around. He recognized the hazel eyes immediately.

The girl with dreadlocks that he’d borrowed the phone from in the bar in Pattaya. She smiled.

“Yes, probably,” Jorge said. “But I had to ride with the luggage.”

She laughed. She had a nice mouth. “Well, shouldn’t you be coming out on this baggage carousel then?”

“Yeah, but I crawled out and hid in your dreads. You didn’t notice?”

They laughed together.

The girl asked where he’d been traveling over the past few weeks. Jorge told her the truth, that he’d been in Phuket. It sounded like she’d been around half the globe. Trekked in the jungle in Malaysia, visited orangutans in Indonesia, shopped electronics in Singapore, smoked weed in Vietnam.

She had a ring in her nose and was wearing a worn white T-shirt and hippie tie-dye pants. Jorge did some wishful thinking: if the customs guys didn’t stop her to check for smokes, then there was no way they were gonna stop anyone on this flight.

They kept talking. The bags rolled out on the carousel. Jorge’s arrived first. He picked it up. Set it down on the floor. Walked over to the girl, was just about to say goodbye. Then he stopped. Thought:
I’ll wait for her instead
.

She noticed that he was waiting. Glanced at him. Smiled faintly. Asked if he had more bags.

Her bag arrived after another minute or so.

They walked together out toward the customs control area.

The girl asked where he was going in Stockholm. What he was doing. When he was going to get back on the road again. He felt worry pounding through his body. His stomach hurt. Vomit urges were pushing up his throat. He stared straight ahead. Saw the customs guys standing around, talking, fifty yards farther up. He tried to respond to the girl’s questions.

He saw a dog, a German shepherd.

He saw it sniff at the bags that passed through customs.

He felt his own pulse pound faster than Little Jorge’s baby heart.

He wasn’t carrying any drugs. But the dog meant the customs guys were on their guard. That they were ready to pluck passersby for control. And a control would mean another scrutiny of his passport. He didn’t think he was listed as wanted—if he were, it should’ve been noted in the documents that he’d gotten from JW through Hägerström. But they’d picked up Babak now—the situation could’ve changed.

They approached.

The sweat on his palms almost made him lose the grip on his suitcase.

The girl babbled on.

They walked toward the entrance to the customs area.

Nothing to declare
.

He met the eyes of one of the customs agents. The guy’s eyes bored straight into his.

But no reaction.

Jorge passed. The dog didn’t even bother sniffing his bag.

They emerged on the other side.

A few Thai families and fat cabbies holding signs with names scribbled on them.

He was on Swedish soil again.

There was a God.

One day later. He was sitting at Paola’s house. Örnsberg. Fall colors on the trees outside.

Little Jorge was crazy happy that he was there. Ran back and forth and wanted to show drawings he’d made.

Hijo predilecto
. The best in the world.

In the kitchen. Jorge and Paola. Mom still didn’t know that he was home.

Jorge’d rung the doorbell at midnight. At first Paola didn’t want to let him in. Through the sliver of open door: thirty minutes of whispered discussion. Finally he was allowed to crash on the couch in the living room. She was still pissed at him.

But now: she’d just picked up Junior at day care. She was leaning over the kitchen table. Jorge looked at her. Her eyes were no longer filled with laughter. Her dimples were gone. Instead: two creases dragged down the corners of her mouth. She looked twice as old as the last time he’d seen her. She looked ten times sadder.

“I’ve still not gotten a decent job, and my unemployment is almost up. Do you understand what that means? That I’m living at subsistence level and am going to need to get help from welfare.”

“I understand, things are rough. I promise, I’m gonna do everything I can for you.”

Paola hissed, “Cut that crap. If you start with that again, you might as well just leave.”

He didn’t say anything.

She didn’t say anything.

He looked around. On the counter: a SodaStream, a water boiler, a toaster. On the fridge: phone number to the local pizza place, day-care photos of Jorgito, and drawings. A pile with clothes on a chair. A beeping sound from the fridge—it probably needed to be switched out.

She lived nine-to-five. She didn’t take any risks, had paid her taxes and her unemployment every year. But who was helping her now? Welfare, with four grand a month? That was a joke. Family was the only thing that mattered in these situations.

The insane part: right now Jorge envied her life.

He saw images. Him and Paola in the kitchen at home in Sollentuna when they were little. They were standing beside the toaster, waiting. A piece of toast each. When the slices popped up, they threw themselves at them. Grabbed the bread. Chased back to the table, hurled themselves over the butter knife that was standing in the package of butter. You had to be the first. First to butter your toast. That was their own private little morning competition. Both wanted the butter to melt as much as possible on their piece of toast.

Jorge reached his hands over the table. Brushed by Paola’s elbows.

“
Hermana
, you’re everything to me. I’ve made so many mistakes lately. But I’m back now. I’m going to set it all right.
Te prometo
.”

Paola just looked at him. Jorge couldn’t read her eyes. Was she pissed
again? Was she about to start crying? Did she understand all the love he felt?

He considered his own options. Either he tried to fix some sort of alibi for the Iranian—but he had no clue what Babak was gonna say when he was interrogated by the police about what he’d done on the CIT day. Or else he tried to free Babak. But with who? He wouldn’t be able to do it alone. And now all his homies were abroad or straight. Except for JW—Jorge had to talk to him. Soon.

The other alternative: screw the Iranian, dig up his own and Mahmud’s money in the woods, and go back to Thailand. Buy a place with Hägerström’s help.

Fuck
.

He regretted ever leaving his café life in Sweden. Who’d he think he was, anyway? All the fuckers, they just talked. About how easy it was to land mad gold. How easy it was to get loaded. But the criminal lifestyle was just as hard as a regular job. Or worse. Even more headaches, even more ulcers.

There were no easy roads. No broad paths. No life deluxe.

Everything was a lie.

Everything sucked cock.

Everything fucked him over and over.

He looked out the window: wind was blowing through the trees.

There was a STORM in his head.

The weather was nice, as usual. The shutter on the window created a faint striped light on the white wall. No paintings, no bookshelves, no curtains. Decorating wasn’t exactly the main interest in this place.

A lot of thoughts were running through Hägerström’d head. At the same time, a single thought overshadowed the others. A thought that gave him a kind of peace.

The past few days’d been earth-shattering.

He thought about Pravat. Hägerström wrote him several postcards a week. An adult might think that was hysterical, but he knew Pravat liked the pictures and the greetings, especially since they came from Thailand. Pravat had begun to ask questions about what adoption was and how his had happened. They Skyped sometimes, Hägerström from an Internet café, Pravat from his computer at school. Hägerström explained that both he and Mom had worked here, and that was why they had chosen Pravat. “You were the one we wanted, we chose you with love,” he said.

It was unclear if Pravat understood.

Hägerström could see his brother’s text in front of his mind’s eye. Carl wondered when he was going to come home—it was almost moose-hunting season. Hägerström didn’t know. But if he made it home in time, he might be able to arrange something with JW and that hunt.

He thought about all the texts he had gotten from Torsfjäll. Short snippets of information about Jorge and Javier. Hägerström was always careful to delete the messages after he read them.

He thought about all the negotiations he and Jorge had had before Jorge left to go back to Sweden. They were done now. Jorge had put in an offer for a café, and after three days, the seller had accepted. They negotiated about the terms, mostly about how the payment was
to be made. The deal now: payment in installments. Just what Jorge wanted—now he would get a chance to start the place up, make some revenue.

He wondered why Jorge hadn’t come back from Sweden. He had promised to return to Phuket immediately. The seller was actually supposed to have received his dollars yesterday. Maybe it was hard to get flights.

Jorge’s sudden trip home was obviously interesting. The first truly interesting thing that had happened since Hägerström got here. Because honestly, his stay here hadn’t done shit for Operation Tide. Jorge never talked about JW. He didn’t seem to know Mischa Bladman, or any of the Yugoslavs, or Nippe or Hansén. Torsfjäll said Jorge and Javier had probably been involved in the Tomteboda robbery earlier this year. It was very possible, but Jorge never hinted anything about it. He whined about being broke all the time. A friend of theirs was in a hospital nearby—Mahmud, whom Jorge visited every so often. Mostly the whole situation seemed pretty pathetic.

Maybe it was time to drop this investigation and go home—he had nothing to gain from being here right now.

Still, he had something fantastic to gain.

He thought back to the night when Javier had brought him up to his room.

The Thai girls had stepped into the living room in the suite. Javier had downed his drink. Yelled at Hägerström, “Ha ha—this is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

He was standing stiff as an icicle hanging from a Stockholm roof. He thought:
What the fuck do I do now?

One of the girls walked over to Hägerström. She had bangs and looked young. “You are very pretty, did you know that?” She spoke good English.

Hägerström responded in Thai, “I’m not interested tonight.”

The girl giggled, told her friend that he knew their language.

Javier was sitting in the couch, cozying up to his girl. Hägerström saw that he had pulled out a Baggie with white powder.

He tried to smile. The girl put her arm on his shoulder and responded in Thai, “Come, let’s go into the bedroom.”