Easy Money (9 page)

During the days on the bed in the kid’s room, an idea had started to take shape: Go to a homeless shelter. Would solve the problem of needing a bed, but his need for cash remained. There was another, bigger idea, too. Dangerous. Dicey. He tried to push it away, since it involved Radovan.

Jorge asked some junkies downtown where he could sleep. They told him about two places: Stadsmissionen’s place by Slussen, Night Owl, and KarismaCare by Fridhemsplan.

He walked down to the Hötorget subway stop. It was eight o’clock at night. The turnstiles didn’t look like how he remembered them before he was locked up. Harder to jump. High Plexiglas barriers that slid open and closed like doors when you swiped your pass at the front of the turnstile. He didn’t want to waste money. He didn’t want to walk to Slussen. Risk analysis. The turnstiles were too high to jump. He glanced toward the guard in his booth: He was reading the paper. Seemed to care less about his job. He watched the flow of the crowd. Not a lot of people. He made loops. Navigated. Speculated. Calculated. Finally, a group of youngsters approached. He walked into their group. Slid along. Close behind a guy in his early twenties. There was a beep from the turnstile when it sensed that he’d slipped through behind someone. The guard didn’t give a fuck.

Rode to Slussen. Checked the address on a map in the subway station.

He was tired. Longed for a bed.

Rang the doorbell. Was let in.

It looked cozy. The reception desk was right by the entrance. Farther in: a group of tables and chairs, a sink and an oven against one wall. A TV stood in a corner. People sat and played cards. Chowed. Watched TV. Talked. No one so much as glanced at him. There was no one there that he recognized. No one there seemed to recognize him. Super.

The receptionist looked like the librarian at the city lib. Same style, same dowdy threads.

“Hi, can I help you?” she said, looking up from a crossword puzzle.

Jorge said, “Yeah, I’ve had some trouble finding a place to stay lately. Heard this is a good place.”

Put on that saccharine-sweet pity-me voice. He didn’t have to fake it. He was broken, for real. The woman seemed to get it. Social Services ladies/welfare officers/shrinks were always understanding. Jorge knew their kind.

“We’ve got some beds open, so it should be fine. Have you been without a residence for long?”

Converse. Be nice. Say something believable. “Not too long. About two weeks. It’s been rough. My girlfriend kicked me out.”

“That sounds difficult. But at least you can stay here for a few nights. Maybe things will work out with your girlfriend. In order for you to stay here, all I need is your name and personal identification number.”

Fuck.

“Do you really need that info? Why?” He thought, I do have a personal identification number. Can I give it out?

“I know that a lot of people may not want to disclose that kind of information, but even a place like this costs money. We’ll send an invoice directly to your social welfare officer, if you have one. Two hundred kronor per night. So, unfortunately, I’m going to need your personal identification number.”

Cunt. He couldn’t give her fake digits. No way it’d work.

“I can’t do that. I’d be happy to pay cash.”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t take any cash payments anymore. We stopped doing that two years ago. Maybe you should be in touch with your social welfare office?”

Fucking cunt fuck.

Jorge gave up. Said his thanks. Stepped back out on the street.

Regretted trying. Hoped he hadn’t raised any red flags.

Wondered if anyone’d recognized him. Looked at his reflection in a shop window. Black hair. Curly. His beard was getting longer. His skin darker than it really was. It should be enough.

A thermometer pointed to fourteen degrees Celsius.

Where would he sleep?

He thought about his other plan—his cash idea. Did he dare? Challenge Radovan.

JW counted the money again. Twenty-two thousand clean, and then he’d still partied like Paris Hilton four weekends in a row, and on top of that been able to buy a Canali blazer.

He weighed the forty-four five-hundred-kronor bills wrapped with a rubber band in the palm of his hand. Usually, he kept them hidden in a pair of socks in the closet. Selling coke paid well. He’d made the money in a month. Paid back his debt to Abdulkarim and passed his Financial Analysis exam, too.

Abdulkarim praised him, wanted him to work with coke full-time. The flattery warmed. The flattery fed him confidence and sweet dreams for the future. But JW declined—he was planning on doing it all: partying, dealing, studying.

The boyz’d accepted that he provided the goods. They were polished boys. It suited them, having the goods delivered without needing to get their delicate hands dirty. The only one who reacted was Nippe, who dissed him as a joke, “Are you low on cash, or what? Kinda seems like it, since you’re, like, a runner all the time now. Just say the word and my old man will lend you some.” JW ignored him. Thought, Soon I’ll be able to buy Nippe’s old man and shut him up for good.

JW checked himself in the mirror. His lion mane was well groomed with the generous amount of Dax wax he’d just smeared into it, on top of all the wax that never completely washed out. He used to cut his own hair. Now he had other opportunities. Maybe he’d go to the same hairdressers as the boyz: Sachajuan, Toni & Guy, only the best. Fine thought.

All his clothes were secondhand: the Gucci jeans, the Paul Smith shirt, and the Tod’s loafers with the characteristic cleat-like rubber soles. That’s why it felt so good to put on the Canali blazer. No wrinkles, nice structure, crisp feeling. Even the smell was new.

He was nearly six feet tall, fair and with a slim face. Slim wrists. Slim neck. Everything slim. Piano fingers. Defined jaw. JW changed his pose in front of the mirror. I look good, but maybe I’d look better if I bulked up a little. Gym membership, here I come.

It was a Saturday. He was going with Nippe to one of his friend’s parents’ place, an estate in Sörmland. JW had met the guy, Gustaf, a couple of times before at the nightclub Laroy. The plan: dinner followed by a party. Everyone was staying the night. Sophie and Anna were going. Some people he didn’t know were going. Best of all, Jet Set Carl was going.

With some luck, maybe he’d be able to get with Sophie. With even better luck, he’d make a good impression on Jet Set Carl. Definitely an opening to C channels.

It was 3:00 p.m. JW felt sluggish, tired for no reason. He hadn’t even partied the night before. He sat down on the bed, pulled up his legs, and counted the money again. Relished the rustle of paper. Waited for Nippe to honk down on the street.

The sales curve pointed straight up. The weekend after he’d treated Sophie and Anna in the park, he’d made his first deal. It started with him treating a second time. But never in Humlegården again—he’d decided that was a one-time thing. Too lame.

They’d been hanging out at Putte’s, as usual. The whole gang: JW, Putte, Nippe, and Fredrik. Sophie, Anna, and two other prep school broads’d been there, as well. The boyz were in on the deal: JW scored the ice and they all split the bill. This time, the girls wanted in. JW played pasha, all generous and munificent, treating them each to a nose. The two new girls, Charlotte and Lollo, had never tried before. The mood got high, not just metaphorically. They felt molten-hot, impulsive—Autobahn-speeded. Everyone appreciated JW, the guy who brought the party. After three hours, they jumped in cabs and rode down to Stureplan. JW packed four grams. They went into Köket. Business as usual: danced, boozed, flirted. Nippe managed to get blown by two birds. After half an hour, one of the new girls, Lollo, came up to JW and said she thought the whole thing was so wonderful. Asked if he had any more and insisted on paying. JW looked concerned. Said she shouldn’t have to pay but that he’d promised another friend some. She said, “Come on, you just gotta give me a few noses. You gotta let me pay.” He said, “Sure, I’ll see what I can do.” He thought, Daddy’s paying anyway. He unloaded the whole stash for twelve hundred a gram. Wholesale price was six hundred. Profit: 3,400 kronor. Compared to the gypsy-cab gig, it was mind-blowing—a whole night’s work in the Ford equaled three minutes of ingratiating talk at a club, and he’d had a drink in his hand and a pretty girl to look at the whole time. Not bad.

Same deal the next weekend, but with different people. Pregame in a different apartment, party at a different club, after party in a different pad. He’d raked in seven thousand kronor net, even though he’d handed out a total of five grams for free.

The week after, he’d met Sophie for a coffee in Sturegallerian, by Stureplan. They talked about sweet clubs, stylish clothes, shared acquaintances. Talked about serious stuff, too. What they wanted to do when they graduated. Sophie was studying economics at Stockholm University but wanted to try to transfer into the Stockholm School of Economics for her junior year. Had to get top grades on all her exams, study hard, be disciplined. Then she was going to London to do right for herself, to work. JW wanted to work with stocks; he had a head for numbers. She got personal, asked about his parents and background. JW was evasive, said they’d lived abroad most of his childhood, that they lived on an estate in Dalarna now, and that she probably didn’t know them. She wondered why they didn’t live in Sörmland, or somewhere else closer to the city. JW changed the subject. He was an old hand, had a store of conversation topics up his sleeve. They talked about her family. That worked; Sophie let his background go and talked about her own instead.

She came from the countryside, from an estate, and had enrolled in a regular school in first grade. Hadn’t worked. Her classmates weren’t nice to her. Called her a snob, didn’t pick her for teams in gym class, thought it was totally fine to swipe her stuff. It almost sounded silly, but JW understood, for real. After sixth grade, she’d switched to the prep school Lundsberg. To her own kind. She loved the place.

JW couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was his best source of sales and she was so foxy, but she seemed genuinely nice, too. A good girl. His goal was clear: He would work on her, doubly.

The next weekend, JW’d hung out with Sophie and her group of girlfriends at a private party. Lollo loved snow, shouted at JW, “This stuff totally gets me off! My sex life is, like, amazing!” Sophie loved snow. Anna loved snow. Charlotte loved snow. Everyone at the party loved JW. He made eight grand.

The weekend after that—last weekend—they’d pregamed at Nippe’s on Friday, then went to Kharma, where a table waited for them, and then on to an after party at Lollo’s. Saturday started with dinner at Putte’s, followed by a reserved table at Café Opera. The evening ended with an after party at Lollo’s again—crammed with new faces.

A new record: He’d cashed in eleven grand net.

Weekdays he tried to study. He felt like a new person. C sales did wonders for his finances, his confidence, and his wardrobe. Still, he got no peace. Thoughts of the yellow Ferrari kept bothering him. The night the Arab’d suggested he sell coke was the first time he’d ever asked about Camilla. He’d hoped that maybe someone knew something, but deep inside he didn’t think it would lead anywhere. But now there was the Ferrari tearing down Sturegatan at a furious speed as a constant image in his mind. He had to know more.

He’d called the National Road Administration. Unfortunately, JW didn’t remember the car’s license plate number, but it worked anyway—vehicle registration was a wonderful state institution. Anyone could find out who the owner of any Swedish registered car was. If the car was unusual, you could get information even without the license plate number. According to the guy at the Road Administration, there were two yellow Ferraris in Sweden the year Camilla went missing. One was owned by the IT millionaire Peter Holbeck, and the other was owned by a leasing company, Dolphin Finance, Ltd. The company specialized in sports cars and yachts.

JW began by looking up Peter Holbeck. The man’d made his money on Web consulting. Now, in retrospect, JW thought the whole thing seemed so obvious. How the hell could they think that consultants should make five million a head for building websites that any fifteen-year-old computer geek could handle? But that hadn’t bothered the entrepreneur and fake visionary Peter Holbeck. He sold out in time. The Web agency had 150 employees. Six months after the sale, the agency was shut down. One hundred and twenty of the employees lost their jobs. Peter Holbeck made 360 million. Now he went skiing eighty days out of the year and spent the rest of the time in Thailand or other warm places with his kids.

JW’s question: What had the IT millionaire been doing the spring Camilla went missing?

He took a chance on easy answers, tried to call Holbeck. It took three days to track him down. Finally, he got hold of him. Holbeck sounded short of breath when he answered the phone. “This is Peter.”

“Hi, my name is Johan.” It wasn’t often that JW introduced himself with his real first name. “I have some questions for you. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“Are you a journalist? I don’t have the energy to speak to you people.”

“No, actually not. It’s regarding a private thing.”

Holbeck sounded surprised. “Shoot.”

“I’m looking for a woman, Camilla Westlund. She disappeared about four years ago. No one knows where she is. We know that she was sometimes seen in a yellow Ferrari before she disappeared. You owned one of those during the year in question. Thought maybe you know something. Maybe you lent out the car, or something?”

“Are you calling from the police, or are you a journalist?”

“Not a journalist. Didn’t I already say that? Not from the police, either. I’m a private person, calling about a personal matter.”

“Either way. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Are you insinuating something?”

“Sorry if this sounds strange. I just wanted to know if you remember anything.”

“Whatever. I was in the Rockies half of that year. On skis. The rest of the time I was in the south of Sweden or in Florida. With my kids. The car was parked in a garage in Stockholm.”

JW realized: no point in pushing it any further. Holbeck’d said enough. He ended the conversation.

The next day, he Googled Holbeck for hours. Finally ended up in the archives of
Aftonbladet.
Holbeck was mentioned in articles about luxury vacationers. It was true: He had a house in the south of Sweden and one in Florida, and he’d been skiing in the States the same year that Camilla disappeared. Maybe the IT millionaire wasn’t involved.

There was one more yellow Ferrari, after all. JW looked up the leasing company, Dolphin Finance, Ltd. Just the name gave off sketchy vibes. He got in touch with the National Registry of Incorporated Companies. The administrator on the other end of the line was helpful, told him that the company’d gone bankrupt a year ago. All the assets—the cars and boats—had been bought by a German company. There wasn’t much more JW could do. It was almost a relief. He could let the Ferrari go. Or could he?

A honk from the street. JW looked out and saw Nippe in the Golf that’d been a twenty-first-birthday present from his mom and dad.

They headed south on the freeway—on the road to peeps, parties, possibilities.

A classic Swedish hip-hop song on the radio. JW wasn’t a big fan of hip-hop, but he couldn’t help but dig Petter’s lyrics: “The tide has turned.”

It applied to him. Big-time. His time had come—to stop living a double life, to become like them, for real. To get even deeper in the clover. Eat them for breakfast.

They chatted. JW listened. Nippe had the hots for Lollo. Nippe thought Jet Set Carl’d had attitude last weekend—who did he think he was? Nippe complimented JW’s Canali blazer. Nippe discussed the latest reality-TV show. Nippe had verbal diarrhea.

“I might quit the finance focus. Thinking about marketing instead.”

JW’s interest, lukewarm. “Really.”

“Marketing’s where it’s at, especially branding. Sell any product at any price, no matter how cheaply it’s made. As long as it’s branded and marketed correctly. There’s such fucking potential.”

“Sure, but in the end it’s your core business that matters, the leverage of capital employed, the financing. If your marketing costs too much, and you never really make a profit, you die.”

“Sure, but you make money. Just look at Gucci and Louis Vuitton. The clothes, the boutiques in Stockholm, the fashion collections, all of that is just an excuse. What really makes it rain are branded accessories. Shades, perfume, belts, purses. China-made crap, little stuff. Branding, that’s, like, all it is.”

In JW’s opinion, Nippe wasn’t the sharpest brat in the pack, and today he’d apparently gotten hung up on one word. Like a broken record.

They chatted on.

JW dug life. Next month, he’d triple sales. He did some mental arithmetic: added, subtracted, multiplied. He saw sales curves, credit, cash. He saw a bull market in himself.

It took an hour to get there. Nippe told him it was an old manor where Gustaf’s parents lived. The parents—good friends with His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf.

Gustaf welcomed them. JW made the same analysis of the guy as the last time they’d met: He was the essence of a backslick brat. Dressed in a tweed jacket, white chinos, red cravat, checked shirt with double cuffs, and Marc Jacobs loafers. Slicked hair stiff as a helmet—lion mane of lion manes.

The main house was over 21,000 square feet. Two massive crystal chandeliers dangled between the pillars in the hall, and paintings of snow-covered landscapes hung on the walls. A curved staircase led upstairs. Gustaf introduced them to Gunn, “the housemother,” as he put it.

“She’s the one who looks after me when Mom and Dad are gone.”

JW retorted, “I guess that’ll be needed tonight.”

Gunn laughed. JW chortled. Nippe giggled. Gustaf guffawed, loudest of them all.

Definite good vibes. Gustaf seemed to like him.

Nippe and JW were led away by Gunn, who got them settled in a guest room in one of the wings of the house.