Life Deluxe (17 page)

Jorge paused dramatically. Gauged the guys’ reactions. Did they get it? They were gonna eliminate the
pacos
—like true cash terrorists.

Sergio opened his mouth first. “I don’t get it, man. How we gonna wipe out the five-oh in Stockholm? They everywhere.”

Jorge knew that they could see his crooked smile. The crescendo. The Finn’s ideas. The coup that divided real Gs from wannabes—what would give them legend status.

“You saw the pictures of the cop stations and their garages, right? We’re not gonna use helicopters or whatever to get into Tomteboda—you know what happens when you try to be too flashy. No, we’re gonna slaughter the pigs instead. We’re gonna secure our escape.”

Another dramatic pause. Jorge looked around.

The dudes were sitting in silence.

Once again Jorge thought about all the unanswered questions. How were they gonna break through that fence? How were they gonna get into the vault? Then he zoomed in on his own big question: How would he gyp the Finn? He hadn’t even said anything to Mahmud about that.

He had to forget the question marks now. Said, “We’re gonna trash the cops’ possibilities. Light fires in the right places. We’re gonna knock this whole city out.”

A few of the guys grinned. Tom looked like he was thinking. Viktor shook his head.

“What, Viktor? You don’t follow?” Jorge said.

“Yeah, I follow. But I don’t follow what’s so fantastic when you don’t even know how we’re gonna get into that vault. And is torching shit really that smart? You know what they’re gonna call it? Terrorism and shit.”

Jorge didn’t respond. Just glared.

Thought: Why was Viktor peacocking? Why didn’t he just shut up? The dude acted like a little Babak, like a little
culo
.

Jorge wondered if this dude would really be able to handle the pressure.

Hägerström thought about how things had gone with JW so far: nowhere. A couple conversations in the chow hall. Some shooting the shit in the hallway.

He had even sat in the guy’s cell and tried to talk about his noble family. Same reaction every time. Polite response. Nice enough attitude. But no progress. JW was obviously interested in Hägerström’s life in Stockholm—he loved when he talked about restaurants and bars downtown or the summer people in resort towns like Torekov and Båstad—but not in talking about the other stuff. Hägerström assumed that JW wanted to see some tangible evidence before he let his guard down.

It would probably work out in the end. Hägerström was putting his plan into action today.

A sly path to JW’s confidence.

An ugly path, some might say.

But in this case, the ends justified the means. And besides, Torsfjäll had greenlighted it.

Hägerström was feeling fresh even though it was only seven o’clock in the morning. He was on his way to the penitentiary in his Jaguar XK. That alone was pure pleasure. The XK’s 400-horsepower V8 motor sounded like it was powering a racing car. But what had made him buy it was the design. The lines of the XK were drawn perfectly. Some said that Jaguar had even one-upped its E-type with the XK.

Any other car, and this kind of luxury would have felt flashy. Expensive cars could easily signal new money, in the same way that exaggerated home movie theaters could. What’s more, Hägerström was trying to keep a low profile among his colleagues. But when it came to the Jaguar, he just couldn’t help himself. It was simply classic. Let his colleagues talk.

He almost thought of the penitentiary as a normal place of work. That was a strong point. The more at home he felt, the better he played the game.

In the beginning, he commuted from the city, but since it took over two hours there and two hours back, not including traffic, his days weren’t spent efficiently. After three weeks he got an apartment in Sala, which was less than two miles from the penitentiary.

Sometimes he went home on the weekends, mostly to see Pravat. He was discreet about it. If the other screws found out he had a place in Stockholm, they would begin to wonder. How could he afford two apartments? Wasn’t the Jag enough? In that case, why didn’t he work in the Stockholm area? But if they thought he just visited someone in the big city once in a while, that was okay. They knew he had been fired from the police force in the capital, after all.

Hägerström parked the car in the staff parking lot outside the prison. It stood out, as usual. Most people here drove semi-run-down Volvo V50s or Passats. Esmeralda drove a BMW from the 3 series, sure, but it was a few years old and could be compared to a Jaguar XK in about the same way that a Certina watch could be compared to a Patek Philippe.

Hägerström walked up to the outer fence. Slid his key card through the slot. Pressed the button. He didn’t need to say anything, they buzzed him in.

He walked up the gravel path. Fence on all sides, except in front of him—that’s where the wall towered up. He repeated the same procedure. Slid the card through the slot. Pressed a button, looked up at the surveillance camera, and smiled.

A general state of confusion prevailed among the inmates. What had happened to Radovan Kranjic—the Yugo godfather, alias the mafia king, Mr. R—was creating waves on the water. Rumors were cropping up faster than all the conspiracy theories about 9/11. The questions lumped together like institutional mashed potatoes: Who was behind the assassination attempt? How would the police respond?

Hägerström thought about the operation. He had been focusing on a newly admitted inmate named Omar Abdi Husseini. Sentenced to five years in prison for incitement to commit aggravated robbery against two Swedbank offices in Norrköping. Omar Abdi Husseini had that dense, bored look that you only rock if you haven’t gotten enough sleep or if you want to show how much you don’t give a shit about anyone or anything. He walked slowly, talked slowly, even picked his nose slowly.
The dude reeked of authority, for miles. Or else one might think he just reeked of unstable freaking psychopath. Not clear which was worse, really.

Hägerström had asked Torsfjäll to look the guy up.

After a few days, he was given a copy of a so-called multisearch, a search that was run through all the police’s accessible databases at once: the criminal records, the records over potential suspects, the customs investigation’s databases, the tax authority’s databases, and so on. As well as a printout of a section of a report from the Stockholm County Police, a few articles from Swedish newspapers, a memo written by the Special Gang Unit with information from the SGU’s own informers, undercover agents, and canaries.

A clearer image of the man started to take shape when Hägerström studied the SGU’s insider information and the general reconnaissance register, which contained all reconnaissance observations that had been made over the years, regardless of whether there was actual suspicion of crime.

It was strange: the social worker ladies always blamed broken relationships, absent fathers, addict parents for creating the juvenile delinquents who, a few years later, were living the gangster life or were doing time at one of the supermaxes. But guys like Omar Abdi Husseini—and Hägerström had seen this kind of thing before—were not led astray by the fact that their families had fallen apart and were unable to set boundaries. Abdi Husseini had a good family, his dad wasn’t a total deadbeat, and his mom wasn’t a crack addict. It was something else.

The thing about Omar Abdi Husseini was that all unofficial information led to the same conclusion: the dude was president of Born to Be Hated.

And BTBH was Stockholm’s fastest-growing gang. The gang had come from Denmark to Malmö to Stockholm and truly understood the potential of the young, angry kids from Stockholm’s ghettos. They recruited riot boys who torched cars and garbage chutes and then peppered the firemen who came to put out the fires with rocks. They weren’t like the Yugos or the Syrians, who kept to their own ethnic brethren. Not like the HA or the Bandidos, who mostly recruited among maladjusted Svens or relatively well-integrated second-generation immigrants. And not like the Fittja Boys or Angered’s Tigers either, who were based around only one particular geographical area. The Born to Be Hated skipped the touchy-feely loyalty bull and the motorcycles.
They didn’t care about the media or even try to run legal front businesses. They didn’t try to glamorize any particular ghetto. They had a president and a vice president but didn’t give a shit about complicated rules or venues to meet up in. The prisons, the gyms, the pizzerias, and the rec rooms in their parents’ homes—that’s where they gathered. They recruited the craziest
blatte
boys from the entire region. And they were on the rise.

Omar Abdi Husseini was perfect for what Hägerström had in mind.

Hägerström made his first overture one week after Omar came to the Salberga pen. The BTBH president was lying under the bench press machine in the workout room. Huffing and pressing. Making small noises with every lift. They didn’t keep the free weights locked up here, as they did at a lot of other prisons.

Hägerström positioned himself next to him. Helped the guy on the last lifts, which he wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. The president was huge. Not just tall and wide—everything about him was big. It looked like his fingers could have popped a soccer ball, his head was double the size of Hägerström’s, and his biceps were comic book outlandish—he must have taken juice before he was locked up. The tattoos on his neck were clearly visible: BTBH and ACAB. He had Arab writing and eagles tattooed into his arm. Crocs on his feet.

Omar looked up. “You want something?”

Hägerström tried to look relaxed. He had to meet Abdi Husseini with respect. Not be too forward.

“I just wanted to check what’s up,” he said. “Everything good?”

“You go ahead and keep checking.”

“So how was Kumla?” The classic question put to a newbie who’d been sentenced to a longer prison term. They all passed through the Kumla Supermax, sat off at least three months there in order to be evaluated and placed. The risk classification that had been attached to Abdi Husseini had been good reason to keep him at Kumla, but he didn’t have any previous convictions, so the Department of Corrections was forced to him move out of there.

Omar responded, “Just fine, man.”

The president sat up on the bench. Wiped his face with a towel that was draped around his neck. He looked away. But Hägerström knew how to relax the giant.

“I just wanted to say that I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.”

“From who?”

“Gürhan Ilnaz. I used to work at Hall.” Gürhan Ilnaz was the former VP of the same gang as Omar. Hägerström had actually never met the guy, but it would take time for the truth to circle its way back to Abdi Husseini.

Omar flashed him a broad smile: a bolt of satisfaction in his enormous face.

“Cool. Gürhan’s solid, man.”

Omar got up. Wiped his forehead again, then he wiped down the bench’s vinyl cover.

Walked back to his cellblock.

Two days later it was time again. Omar was talking with another inmate outside his cell door. The inmate was supposedly a former member of the Werewolf Legion. Hägerström approached them. Made some small talk. The weather, the chow, the new treadmill at the gym, a little of this and a little of that. He could do that kind of thing. He was known as a cool screw.

After five minutes, the Werewolf Legion dude walked away.

Omar remained. Still monosyllabic, but he also didn’t seem to have anything against shooting the shit.

After a few minutes, Hägerström changed the subject. Started talking about other inmates instead. He told him how much gossip was going around. He brought up all the bullshit. He didn’t mention JW, but he could see that Omar was listening.

The message was expressed: people were talking.

The message was impressed: there was some shit going around.

The message was stressed: there were those who were spreading rumors about Omar.

Hägerström walked in through the central guard area. Greeted the guards on duty. Continued into the locker room. Fished out his cell phone. Hung his clothes in the locker. Put his work clothes on: dark blue chinos, a sturdy leather belt, and a dark blue button-down shirt with the Department of Corrections logo on it. He passed through the metal detectors, hauled his keys up onto the conveyor belt. He
greeted the screw on guard duty. He didn’t set off the alarm signal. He never did.

He walked through the corridor toward his unit, still high on the rush of joy from the weekend.

Saw images in his mind’s eye. He had picked Pravat up at day care on Thursday. They had gone to Grandma’s house. Lottie still lived in the flat, even if it was probably a bit lonely since Father passed away.

He should really talk to Mother about certain things. But he couldn’t do it now, not when Pravat was with him. And what was more, she was probably worrying too much about how he had been fired from the police. How would she ever understand what he was really doing?

It was a beautiful residence—actually appropriate to use the word
residence
rather than
apartment
. Grandma Lottie called all apartments residences, though. She didn’t use the word
apartment
at all. All apartments, even Hägerström’s first studio that’d only been 250 square feet, were residences. He smiled to himself.