Vengeance (5 page)

    
“Hear you there. You had some photograph?”

    
Suhonen dug two folded letter-size printouts out of the breast pocket of his leather jacket. It was his best photo from the Velodrome; one of the images was the original, the other a close-up of Gonzales and the unknown man.

    
Suhonen set the printouts in front of Indres and pointed to Gonzales. “This one I know, but who’s this other guy?”

    
Indres looked at the photos for a moment. “What’s this about?”

    
Suhonen chuckled to himself, but not aloud. This is how it always went with these intelligence types. Nothing was free. Everyone wanted to know more about the case.

    
“This is Mike Gonzales…”

    
“A foreigner?” Indres cut in.

    
“Nope,” Suhonen shook his head. “A homeboy. Formerly Mika Konttinen.”

    
“OK. Go ahead,” Indres said, tasting his coffee.

    
Suhonen did the same before continuing. “So, this Gonzales-Konttinen is a pretty well-known black market operator. Construction fraud and such. That in itself doesn’t interest us, but lately he’s been hanging around with the Skulls. And the day before yesterday I snapped these photos of him with buzz cut here.”

    
“Gonzales is under surveillance then.”

    
“Nope. Just a coincidence.”

    
Indres laughed. “Good police work calls for coincidences. Do you have an open investigation on this Gonzales?”

    
“No. Just gathering intel.”

    
“But there’s something interesting about him?”

    
Suhonen thought for a second. “Isn’t it enough that the guy is a con-man, hangs out with real bad guys and drives a BMW sports car?”

    
“Sure. That’s plenty. Especially the Beamer. Nobody with that car could be a good person.”

    
Indres, Suhonen knew, rode a Harley in the summer months.

    
“So you know him?” Suhonen asked. He was beginning to tire of the prying.

    
“A Russian is a Russian, even if he’s fried in butter,” Indres said dryly.

    
“Though in this case it’s one of our own homegrown Estonian-Russians. The man’s name is Sergei Zubrov. Lives in Tallinn. A good year ago, Zubrov was involved in a big cocaine trafficking operation, but never ended up in court.”

    
“What’s he doing now?”

    
“We haven’t been tracking him,” Indres said, shrugging.

    
“So he hasn’t been involved?”

    
“You think he’s doing some business with this Gonzales?”

    
“It’s a possibility, at least.”

    
Indres nodded. “I can look into it a little further. It’s easier to track the Russians than our own outlaws. The Russians still have traditional hierarchical organizations where each man has his own role. Our local hoodlums have shifted to more of a project-based model where the group comes together for one specific gig, and when it’s completed, the team breaks up. We really don’t have any pure drug or theft gangs anymore. Each gang member works and gets paid on a job-by-job basis. It’s pretty damn difficult to keep up on who’s dancing with who.”

    
Suhonen poured himself another cup of coffee.

    
The men chatted for nearly an hour before Suhonen announced that he had to leave.

THURSDAY,

OCTOBER 22

CHAPTER 4

THURSDAY, 8:30 A.M.

VANTAA PRISON, VANTAA

Tapani Larsson was marching along a concrete walk through the prison yard, headed toward the perimeter wall and the main gate. His pace was brisk and the pot-bellied guard struggled to keep up. Last night’s rain had dwindled into a light drizzle.

    
Larsson’s tattoos rose from beneath the collar of his leather jacket, reaching toward his bald head. Winding around his neck were a snake, a naked woman and an eagle. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes hard and piercing.

    
Larsson was fuming, but less so today than over the last year and a half. The man’s hand continually closed into a fist and reopened again. Hand, fist. Hand, fist. Larsson, the Skulls’ second-in-command, had served most of his sentence in Turku’s new prison in Saramäki. In accordance with standard procedure, he was to be released from the prison nearest his home. The Helsinki Prison was full, so the pen in suburban Vantaa got the job. Larsson couldn’t care less which institution’s door slammed shut behind his back, as long as he was on the outside.

    
The prison guards at Vantaa would have rather kept the violently unpredictable man longer, but the Court of Appeals had shortened his extortion sentence from three-and-a-half years to sixteen months. Today marked the end of Larsson’s term.

    
Larsson’s last three months in the Turku Prison had been spent in the maximum security ward. He had wondered about the decision, but somehow the warden had been convinced that Larsson had been orchestrating criminal activity from within the prison walls.

    
The maximum security ward was no
Papillon
, but it wasn’t far off. An hour a day outdoors, a miserable weight room and all visits conducted behind thick plexiglass. The purpose of maximum security was to try to soften up the inmate. Try harder, Larsson had thought. Captivity had only made him more defiant.

    
Government oversight of the maximum security ward essentially consisted of an assistant parliamentary ombudsman visiting once a year to make sure the flowers were watered.

    
Larsson spit on the wet prison lawn. Not to protest, just to spit.

    
The previous day, he had been transported from Turku on the prisoner train and had slept the night in a Vantaa cell. Wake-up call was at 6:30, breakfast 7:00 sharp. At 8:00, he turned in his prison duds and signed for his civilian clothes: boxers, a dark green T-shirt, white sport socks, combat boots, camouflage pants and a black leather jacket. His other belongings—a radio, books, shaver and toothbrush—were in his duffel bag. He had given his tube of toothpaste to a friend in the Turku pen.

    
After receiving his civilian clothes, Larsson was given a Certificate of Release verifying that he had served his time. The guard had cautioned him not to lose it—the police database wasn’t updated immediately, so in the interim, Larsson would be considered a fugitive without the certificate.

    
Next stop was the teller. Some inmates had earned thousands of euros by working, but Larsson hadn’t been interested in that. He signed for eight euros, all that was left in his prison account. Prisoners weren’t allowed to carry cash, so all transactions in the cafeteria were paid electronically.

    
Larsson reached the checkpoint in the perimeter wall. Beside it was a large metal gate for cars and trucks. The guard in the booth pressed a button and the lock on the interior door buzzed.

    
Larsson yanked the door open. Freedom was less than five yards away. On the left was a plexiglass booth and directly in front of him, a metal detector. The guard almost made a crack, but then bit his tongue. “Papers,” he said dryly.

    
Larsson said nothing, just dug the certificate out of his pocket and handed it to the guard. His escort had stepped aside to wait by the door.

    
The guard examined the document and pushed a second button. The exterior door was now open. Larsson took his certificate, folded it back into his pocket and left without a word.

    
Once he was outside the walls, the guard in the booth looked at Larsson’s escort. “So... You think he’s been reformed?”

* * *

Suhonen lay on the bed of his Kallio apartment. Two minutes ago, his clock radio had kicked off the day. For some reason, he had tuned it to Radio Suomipop, and at 8:30 sharp, the morning DJ had played a classic Finnish hit “Adult Woman.” Before that, he had joked about condoms that were tough enough to be passed from father to son.

    
Suhonen listened to the tired Finnish pop song, unable to summon the energy to get up and change the station.

    
“All that we share, together we bear,”
the singer crooned over the airwaves.

    
His trip to Tallinn had been worthwhile. Toomas had revealed an important name, even if Suhonen didn’t know why Sergei Zubrov was in Finland yet. Today he would dig. Maybe the Narcotics guys would know something about the man.

    
Dinner with Marju had been enjoyable. Just for fun, they had decided to dine at one of the tourist restaurants in Old Town. After strolling hand in hand down the cobblestone streets, Suhonen and Marju had settled on the Olde Hansa Restaurant, where the wait staff was dressed in medieval garb and served beer in ceramic steins. Ordinarily, Suhonen wasn’t fond of the tourist traps, but then it had felt good. If he only could’ve stayed the night. Rocky seas had made the return trip less than pleasant, but Suhonen had napped in his chair the entire trip.

    
His thoughts were cut short by the ringer on his phone, which lay next to the radio. Suhonen flicked off the music as he picked it up. The caller was displayed as “private.”

    
“ Ye-eah,” Suhonen answered.

    
“Ainola here,” a man said. Suhonen recognized the voice of the Helsinki Prison warden. “Bad time?”

    
“Not too bad. I’m at home in bed.”

    
“At home? In bed? Aren’t real civil servants supposed to be out there fighting the evils of the world?”

    
“What evil is transpiring now?” Suhonen said, stretching his toes. He hoped he could make it to the station gym today.

    
Ainola’s voice became serious. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but you should know.”

    
“What’s that?”

    
“Tapani Larsson is getting out today. Vantaa Prison is releasing him this morning. Actually, he’s probably already out, since it’s half past eight.”

    
“That I didn’t know.”

    
“You do now,” Ainola said. “I thought I’d call, just in case.”