Easy Money (44 page)

Mrado and Nenad walked out of the garage. If Radovan answered, they didn’t stick around to hear it.

Successful blackmail tactic in review. Three months’d passed since Jorge got the five photos of the captains of industry. He thanked Richard, the computer geek, with all his heart. Surprised that the dude hadn’t demanded he be let in on the action. Rocking the blackmail gig with J-boy was never even up for discussion.

Jorge’d had the photos printed on photo paper. The quality still wasn’t super, but it was easier to see who was pictured and what they were doing.

He wrote a letter to go along with the pictures, labored over the words.

“The attached picture was taken of you at Sven Bolinder’s party in March. It will be sent to your wife within ten days. In order to prevent this from happening, deposit fifty thousand kronor at account number 5215-5964354 at SEB one week from today at the latest.”

Jorge’d been in touch with an old junkie. Had the guy open the account at SEB. He pocketed the debit card and the password himself. Was gonna withdraw the deposited money as soon as possible.

Worked wonders.

The four silver daddies, one of whom appeared in two photos, deposited the dough, no questions asked. Jorge couldn’t pressure them all at the same time, since the debit card had a withdrawal limit. Knocked one off the list every other week.

After two months—J-boy’d be 200,000 richer.

Easiest gig in town.

Poor suckers, they knew he’d be back for more.

He hoped Radovan would find out that someone was fucking with them. That someone knew what he was up to.

Abdulkarim kept applying pressure. “You gotta rig your squad. Get more retailers. There’s a George Jung–class shipment coming soon.”

Jorge’d finally gotten info about the shipment from Abdul. It was blow, of course. A lotta pounds, over two hundred, according to the Arab. Could it be true? If so, it was the single biggest imported load Jorge’d ever heard of. His old homeboys in Österåker would faint if they knew.

The buzz about the double brothel homicide’d died down. Other rumors were festering. War within the Yugo Mafia. Revolt against Radovan. Defectors from the organization. What did that mean for Jorge’s hate project?

A few days later, Fahdi told him which Yugos’d left the organization: Mrado and Nenad. Fate’s fantastic feats. Those were the very men who were number two and three on his hate list, after their former boss, Radovan. Mrado for the pain. Nenad for Nadja.

The computer geek called in the middle of June. The dude’d dragged out on time. Blamed a CS championship. Jorge thought:
Counter-Strike
—who gives? You should’ve called earlier.

Jorge’d tried to put a fire under his ass. Was only supposed to take a few weeks; had taken two months. But he hadn’t been able to do much about it.

At least now the time’d come.

He picked up the computer at the computer geek’s place that very day.

Jorge was keyed up on the way over. Maybe there was stuff on the laptop that would lead to even more cash.

He walked up Lundagatan.

Rang Richard’s doorbell.

Stepped inside.

“Hey, man, I don’t know you and don’t know anything about whatever it is you’re up to. Just so you know.”

Jorge thought the comment was strange. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing, really. Just thinking about what’s on that computer. Some stuff is, um, pretty disturbing.”

Jorge just wanted the computer and whatever was on it. “It’s cool,
chico.
You want more dough, or what?”

“Dough? No, I just wanted to warn you. So you don’t get into trouble.”

Jorge didn’t know what to expect.

He thanked the guy for his help. Paid. Peaced.

He was tempted to open the laptop on the train on his way home. Stopped himself. Best to wait.

Home in Helenelund. He sat down on the couch.

Opened the computer. Wallpaper: a vast green lawn and a blue sky.

He checked the desktop: not a lot of icons. My Computer, Trash, iTunes, two games: Battlefield 1942 and the Sims. Excel and Windows Media Player were also on the desktop. A couple of folders.

He started looking through the folders one by one.

Afterward, he thought, If I’d known what I’d find, I might’ve stopped looking.

One folder contained images of weapons downloaded from the Internet.

Another folder contained MP3s.

The third folder: English cheat sheets for computer games.

The fourth folder held the names of the johns, their aliases, and passwords. At least three hundred names. Jorge skimmed through the list. Mostly Svens, but some
blattes,
too. Fahdi was there. Jorge already knew his alias. Abdulkarim was there. Jet Set Carl was there. Jorge didn’t recognize the other names—had to look closer into all that. Potential gold mine.

Next folder: draft of the Web site where the brothel advertised. Pictures of women. Snippets of text. Telephone numbers. Jorge scrolled through the pictures. Girls posing in stark rooms with strong lighting. He found two pictures of Nadja. Exposed. Alone. Vulnerable.

The list of names was good. The pictures of Nadja were tough but not crushing. Jorge clocked that this was the way the hooker industry rolled. It was the contents of the final folder, an MPEG file, that made him hurl.

The sickest, most disgusting shit he’d ever seen.

It was five minutes long. Enough for a lifetime’s worth of nightmares.

The video’s opening scene: a room, harsh lighting, a table.

Two men in ski masks dragged a person into the room whose head was covered in a cloth bag. Judging by the body, it was a girl.

One of the men: dark leather jacket, beefy. The other: dressed in a suit. Both spoke Serbian.

Forced the girl onto the table. Hands tied behind her back. Fought back as hard as she could.

The big guy pulled off the cloth bag. A girl, face swollen from crying. Blond, Nordic appearance. Yelled in perfect Swedish, “Let me go, you pigs!” She kept screaming. Jorge couldn’t make out all the words. The beefy guy said something. Hit her on the side of the head. Jorge recognized his voice. It was Mrado. The dude in the suit caressed her cheek. She spit in his face, screamed. A couple chaotic seconds. The girl screamed again, “How the fuck could I be with you?” Mrado pulled a gun. Pressed the barrel into the girl’s mouth. She grew silent. The steel scraped against her teeth. She cried. The suit guy was angry. Chewed the girl out: “You’ll never spit on me again, you fucking cunt.” Unbuttoned his pants. Tore off her workout pants. She lay still. The gun still in her mouth. The man in the suit pulled out his dick. Forced the girl onto her stomach. Mrado with the barrel of the gun against the back of her head instead of in her mouth. The suit guy raped her. Thrust. Faster. Went on for two minutes. Jorge threw up. He’d seen tons of pornos, but this was for real. The suit guy—finished. The girl—shattered. Mrado raised the gun. Looked into the camera. His eyes were visible through the slits in the ski mask. Said, in Swedish, “A warning to all you who’re thinking of fucking with us.” The last minute. They carried the girl to a chair, her workout pants still around her ankles. Mrado hit her in the stomach, over the arms, in the face. Drops of sweat went flying. Blood went flying. Her eyebrows were torn open. Her lips were busted. Ears swollen. Just shards of her left.

The video ended abruptly.

The girl’s appearance reminded Jorge of someone, but he couldn’t figure out who.

The only good news: the video’s hideousness. It should be ill evidence against Mrado. The dude would regret that he’d beaten up on J-boy. For about twenty-five to life.

That night.

Jorge couldn’t forget the MPEG video. Assumed it’d been used as fear propaganda for whores who stepped outta line. Had looked closer at the movie’s stats: It was about four years old. Did they run the same trailer over and over again?

A parody of sleep. First he couldn’t fall asleep. Then, once he’d finally fallen asleep, he woke up several times an hour. Went to the bathroom. Nightmared. Reminded him of the nights before his escape from Österåker.

He felt like shit. Go ahead, watch porn and be happy—but not rape and abuse live in front of the camera.

Who the hell did the raped woman remind him of?

He groped at memories.

It felt good to have shot the shit out of the pimp and the brothel madam.

Now Mrado, the other guy from the video, and Radovan were next in line. He would crush them.

J-boy’s on your tracks.

In the morning, he drank strong coffee. Had to get going. Had to forget. It was Abdulkarim’s high holiday.

The huge shipment was arriving.

Jorge was part of the preparations—he and JW were supposed to watch over the delivery. From Arlanda to the cold storage facility.

He was meeting up with Abdulkarim, Fahdi, and JW in an hour to plan.

This was big. What he’d seen in the video the night before was bigger.

But now he had to focus.

The shipment would soon be here.

***

Confidential.

Attn: Inspector Henrik Hansson, Special Missions Unit
Fax number: 08-670 45 81
Date: June 22
Number of pages: 1

Business: Operation Snowstorm, Project Nova

Operation Snowstorm begins tomorrow at 10:00. All units will gather at Bergsgatan, room 4D, for an internal run-through.

Johan Karlsson, who has served as an infiltrator within the realm of Project Nova (under the name Micke), has information that the target group is planning to receive a very large shipment of cocaine. The shipment is expected to arrive at Arlanda with flight B746-34 from London at 8:00 tomorrow. From there, it will be driven in containers by trucks from the transport firm Schenker Vegetables to the Västberga Cold Storage Center. The exact location for unloading is unknown at present.

There is a possibility that several high-ranking persons within Stockholm’s Yugoslavian Mafia network will be present at the unloading of the shipment of cocaine. According to present instructions, Operation Snowstorm will therefore wait to strike until it is possible to arrest as many of these persons as possible.

We are currently working to gather exact information regarding the time of unloading and will be in touch as soon as we do.

The Special Missions Unit, Project Nova’s head surveillance team, as well as Drug Enforcement are included in Operation Snowstorm. This fax has been sent to all officers and unit chiefs.

JW and Jorge were sitting in a rented pickup. They were waiting, didn’t talk much, were just quiet.

JW’d drawn up the plan. Two trucks from Schenker Vegetables would pick up the containers at Arlanda. The teamsters who drove would go straight to Västberga Cold Storage. They were in the know enough to get that what they were transporting was valuable, but also not to ask any unnecessary questions. JW and Jorge were waiting to follow the trucks. Make sure they didn’t go off track, didn’t pinch any of the shipment, didn’t get in touch with suspicious people. Abdulkarim and Fahdi would meet them at the cold-storage place. When the truckers left the scene it would be time for the Arab, JW, Jorge, and the rest to slice open the cabbages and repackage the coke. Move it, restow it. Rake in the dough.

What Abdul didn’t know, of course, was that JW was the biggest double-crosser of the decade. He’d informed Nenad of every single part of the plan. According to their agreement, Nenad would be armed, would take control as best he could, maybe tie people up, including JW, and boost the goods. It would be smooth and easy.

Abdulkarim’s time as a player was over.

And no one could blame JW.

It was brilliant.

That morning, Abdul’d held an executive briefing meeting. Gave orders like some sort of drill sergeant. As if he’d ever been in the service. JW, Jorge, Fahdi, Petter were riled up, ready, and, above all, potential cocaine millionaires.

The Arab went over the rules. New prepaid cards in new cell phones were a given. As soon as the goods’d been unloaded, the phones and the cards would be destroyed and Abdulkarim would distribute new phones. They all had to wear gloves—the traditional way of avoiding fingerprints. Fahdi brought a police radio with him in the car—the easiest way of knowing what the cops knew and, if they knew something, where they were going. They had to wear blue jeans and blue cotton sweaters—not a lot of people knew it, but forensic scientists hated blue cotton fiber. It was practically impossible to pin a person to a garment like that, since it was by far the most common textile residue people left behind. They had ski masks in their pockets: if the brass made a crackdown and you were able to get away, it was best that no one saw your face.

Finally, just as they were leaving—and it came as a bad surprise—Abdulkarim dealt his final card: He had Fahdi distribute weapons to Jorge and JW.

“You need these, boys. Like the dudes in England. We’re just as good. Now it’s for real. If the cocksucking cops try to fuck it up, just go for it.”

JW got a black gun. It gleamed. Felt dangerously beautiful. He sat on Abdulkarim’s couch and weighed it in his hand. A Glock 22. Fahdi showed him how to work it—the safety, the extra trigger safety, and the magazine. Then he demonstrated the right way to hold it, how to take the recoil.

Jorge got a revolver. Was cool about it.

JW felt torn—a mix of terror and delight.

Jorge was calm. He had dark circles under his eyes and whined about having slept like shit. His hair was straighter than usual. JW thought, Did he forget to use the Afro curler?

They were parked outside the gate by the fence at Arlanda’s freight terminal. Waiting for the trucks. JW in the driver’s seat and Jorge next to him. The Chilean stared out the window.

The car they sat in smelled new.

After ten minutes, Jorge turned to JW. He looked strange. Pensive, but tired at the same time.

“JW, you got a sister?”

JW took his time answering. In his mind, the chaotic questions piled up: Why did Jorge ask that? Does he know something about Camilla? Did Sophie tell him something?

JW nodded. “I have a sister. Why?”

Jorge replied, “Nothing. Just wondering. I’ve got a sister too. Paola. Only seen her once since the escape. Heavy. I carry her with me, always.”

JW lost interest. Jorge just wanted to talk. He didn’t seem to know the Camilla story. That his sister was missing, that she’d been with her teacher, who’d given her top grades in exchange for sex. That she’d ridden in a yellow Ferrari with an unknown Yugoslavian. That something’d been seriously fucked up.

Jorge was a solid guy. Lived up to the ghetto myth about the hard-core
blatte.
At the same time, he was a good person who’d shown real gratitude toward JW for picking him up in the woods.

JW said, “I carry my sister with me, too. I’ve got a picture of her in my wallet.”

Jorge turned to face JW.

He didn’t say anything.

The conversation dried up.

They watched the gate.

JW thought Jorge didn’t just seem tired; he seemed stressed-out, too.

After half an hour, the freight trucks drove out. Two of them, with the text
Schenker Vegetables
in green lettering on the sides of the containers. They’d already seen several identical cars and had started sweating. No way they could miss the right cars. Imagine if they followed the wrong shipment. Ended up with a ton of cabbage without C. JW and Jorge both had slips of paper with the license plate numbers in their hands—this time it was the right trucks.

JW slipped into first gear. Slowly rolled after. The trucks drove up the ramp and swung around the terminal, JW right behind them.

The only hole in the plan was the access to Arlanda. Theoretically, the truck drivers could’ve ripped them off in there. They were the only ones allowed on the loading docks within Arlanda’s vicinity. But the risk that they’d have exchanged the goods for worthless crap was minimal. The truckers knew the deal: If they ripped off Abdulkarim and the others, they’d have to pay. According to the Arab, with their lives.

The task was important. Not let the trucks or the drivers out of their sight. Even if the truckers didn’t totally grasp what they were driving, it was too many pounds to take even the most negligible chances.

The trucks stopped for a few seconds by one of the parking lots just outside of Arlanda. Long enough for Jorge to jump out of the car. Check that it was the right guy driving the right truck. If it’d been the wrong guys, they would’ve forced them to get out of the trucks and into the car. Then driven them to Abdulkarim and Fahdi for the full treatment.

Jorge waved. That meant green light—correct guy behind the wheel in each car.

They kept driving.

It was a nice day. Two lonely clouds in a blue sky.

Jorge seemed preoccupied. Was he scared?

JW asked, “What’s up? You stressed-out?”

“No. I’ve been stressed-out a couple of times. Know how that feels. When I ran from Österåker, almost a mile at record speed, then I was really fucking stressed-out. A sign is that I smell. I smell like stress.”

“Don’t take it personally, J., but you look like shit,” JW said, and laughed. He thought Jorge would grin.

But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “JW, can I take a look at that photo of your sister?”

JW’s thoughts in anarchy again: What the hell does Jorge want? Why all the talk about Camilla?

JW held the wheel with his left hand. Groped in his back pocket with his right. Pulled out the thin wallet in monogrammed leather: Louis Vuitton. In it he had only bills and four plastic cards: Visa, driver’s license, gas card, and a rewards card to an upscale department store.

He handed it over to Jorge and said, “Look under the Visa card.”

Jorge pulled out the card. Under it, in the same slot, was a passport photo.

The Chilean checked out his sister.

JW kept his eyes on the road.

Jorge returned the wallet. JW put it on top of the glove compartment.

“You look alike.”

“I know.”

“She’s pretty.”

Then silence.

The trucks were driving slowly. Abdulkarim’s orders were that under no circumstances were they to speed—the highway to Arlanda was a favorite haunt for the traffic police.

Less than an hour later, they were driving through the southern sections of the city. So far, it’d been smooth sailing.

JW called Abdul. “We’ll be there in forty. The trucks’ve been driving calmly. The drivers are cool. Everything seems to be working.”

“
Abbou.
We’ll be there in twenty. See you there,
inshallah.
”

Despite their new phones and cards, Abdulkarim’d decided that all numbers, times, and the like would be divided in four. In other words, JW and Jorge were actually ten minutes from Västberga Cold Storage. Abdulkarim, Fahdi, and the others would be there in five. JW thought it was a bit much. If the police were tapping their calls, they were screwed no matter what. Jorge almost seemed asleep in the passenger seat. JW couldn’t have cared less about him. He fantasized about the future financial fiesta. He set his goal: When he had made twenty mil, he would stop with coke. The delicious part of the calculation: The goal might be reached within a year.

Fourteen minutes’d passed. The trucks backed into the loading docks, spots five and six, by the cold-storage facility. JW parked the car.

He said to Jorge, “This’ll be a chill day. You just be chill, too.”

Jorge didn’t seem to be listening. Was he focused on something else? What the hell was he up to?

They got out of the car and walked over to the freight trucks. The two drivers’d climbed out. JW thanked them and discussed briefly when they could pick up the cars again. Then he paid them. They got three thousand kronor each, cash in hand. A good mood settled. Maybe they thought it was cigarettes, liquor, or other small-time stuff. The risk that they understood that they’d just driven 100 million kronor in cocaine to, at the moment, the most nervous drug pushers on this side of the Atlantic was minimal.

Jorge got out of the car and took a turn around the loading docks. It was his job to scout out the area.

Petter, who’d arrived with Abdulkarim and Fahdi, walked in the opposite direction. He was also scoping out the scene. Made sure everything was straight.

Fahdi emerged from a steel door on loading dock number five.

He nodded to JW. Made eye contact with Jorge in the distance. Meaning: Everything’s been cool here so far.

Abdul opened the container on one of the trucks so that JW could look inside. In the dark he glimpsed a pallet and six rows of boxes.

Passed it. Instead, he groped with his hand in one of the boxes in the pallet behind the first one and picked up a head of cabbage.

Fahdi’s stare was fixed on the cabbage.

JW held it in his left hand.

Pressed his right fist down between the stiff white leaves.

He could feel it distinctly—the plastic baggie.