Wolves and Angels (14 page)

“Why?”

“She doesn’t wanna
talk about it, but someone said it was burnout.”

Suddenly Kauppila jumped like she’d been caught doing something wrong. She glanced at the watch hanging from a necklace around her neck and panicked. “Oh my God! I’ve got to hurry... Elisabeth the Third still hasn’t been bathed.”

“Elisabeth the Third?”

“Yes. Her real last name is Kolmonen. She’s this three
-
hundred
-
and
-
thirty
-
pound carcass of a woman. I just can’t do this.”

The last words came out as a shrill groan, and Kauppila disappeared at a run into the hallway that led to the rooms. Koskinen put his baseball cap back on and, before he left, heard that now they were belting out “The Hymn of the Häme” in the dayroom. The group was already on the last stanza: “So gallant are our heroes, with sense and strength to act when ever called upon.”

Koskinen only needed a couple of minutes to ride to the Cat’s Meow. An electric wheelchair on the other hand probably needed quite a bit longer, even though the asphalt on
Susi Street
was smooth, and the route had no large hills. Koskinen had to admire the stubborn will to live that would drive a seriously disabled person to continue participating in normal life instead of giving in to his handicap.

A
t the intersection of Kissanmaa
and
Susi Streets
stood a square plaza. In the center stood a takeout kiosk and around it four-story apartment buildings with small
shops on the ground floors ranging from hair salons to a bicycle repair shop and the office of a hockey club. The Cat’s Meow was on the eastern side of the plaza.

Near the door was a bicycle rack, and Koskinen left his there to keep the others company. He hooked his thumbs over the waist of his pants and stepped in—nobody paid any attention to
a
man in
a
windbreaker suit, and why would they have? Koskinen stood at the door and swept his eyes around the smoky bar.

Tapani Harjus and Hannu Ketterä were easy to identify—they were the only ones in wheelchairs among the motley clientele. Each wore a black leather jacket, and on the back of the one facing away from the door, the letters F and A had been painted in large white capitals.

Two other men
,
dressed in army-issue camouflage jackets
,
also sat at the same table.
T
he four of them were engaged in a heated exchange. Koskinen ordered a pint from the bar and walked with it to the table.

“Is this seat taken?”

This aroused surprise, and no wonder since there were empty tables and chairs all around. The men looked at Koskinen suspiciously, and no one answered his question.

Koskinen decided to get straight to the point: “I was just at Wolf House and heard that you were here.”

Their expressions became even more leery.

“What kind of a faggot are you?”

“Lieutenant Koskinen, Violent Crimes Unit.”

The men in the army jackets stood up without saying a word and took off as if Koskinen had announced he
was suffering from some airborne strain of pulmonary syphilis.

He sat down in one of the chairs and thought about how to start the conversation. However, his opponents beat him to it.

“Lemme guess!” one of the men in a wheelchair said with his eyes squinted in a cunning expression. “You’ve come to arrest me and Tappi for Raymond’s murder.”

Koskinen guessed that the speaker was Hannu Ketterä. And that meant the other, called Tappi,
was
Tapani Harjus.

“Not at all.” Koskinen laughed and raised his beer glass, “I just came to shoot the
shit
.”

Harjus looked at him
belligerently. “
We don’t got shit to talk to you about!”

“Well, then let’s shoot the
breeze
,” Koskinen said without turning his eyes away from the daggers Harjus was throwing at him.

Ketterä took a more relaxed attitude than his companion. “Fire away! Ask us anything you want. We may be cripples, but we
ain’t got
brain damage. It don’t take a genius to see you didn’t come here to the Cat just to kill time.”

“Not at all,” Koskinen said.

He looked at the men appraisingly. Tapani Harjus was a solidly built athlete, and his broad shoulders signaled that he had obviously carefully sculpted his upper body. His neck was thick, and even his bald head looked muscular. The dark stubble on his scalp meant that his hair had not left on its own. Hannu Ketterä’s hair, on the other hand, was a ruddy bristle about an inch
long extending from his forehead all the way to his neck. The tapered mustache projecting to the sides and his long goatee were also carrot red. Ketterä had a small build; compared to his friend he looked downright frail.

Harjus got tired of waiting. “Ain’t you ever seen a cripple before?”

Koskinen took a long gulp of his beer. It tasted marvelous
,
quenching his thirst from the bike ride. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and ignored Harjus’ question.

“You knew Raimo
Timonen
?”

“A little too well.” Harjus guffawed as Ketterä crossed his arms seriously. “Peace be to his soul and may he be buried face down.”

Koskinen realized that it was pointless trying any of the traditional small talk or beating about the bush: “Who killed him?”

Even a direct question didn’t seem to faze them. “You tell us and we’ll buy him a beer.”

“Did Raymond have any enemies?”

“Half of Finland.”

Koskinen drained his glass and then studied each man in turn. “Could it be someone at the home?”

“One of us?” Harjus chortled, rocking back and forth in his chair. “Come on, big fella!”

“What about one of the nurses?”

“Why not?” Ketterä stroked his red goatee. “Every one of those girls hated Raymond like a boil in their ass cracks.”

A middle-aged woman began swaying her hips on the
karaoke stage at the back of the bar, and then started singing. She had curlers under a babushka headscarf and a serious speech impediment with pronouncing R’s.
Her
piece was “Down by the River
,
” and Koskinen couldn’t hear what Harjus was saying across the table.

Harjus raised his voice: “Don’t play deaf. Get more beer or shove off.”

Koskinen took the empty glasses and made his way to the bar. The bartender was a man with a slouch—apparently
from being
permanently hunched over the tap. He filled the glasses and flashed his nicotine-stained teeth.

“So the Angels found someone new to foot their bill?”

Koskinen dug exact change out of his wallet and looked at the man curiously. “Are they well known here?”

“Better than well. There used to be three of them, but one of them kicked the bucket…if you can say that about a cripple.”

“It doesn’t seem like he’s exactly missed around here.”

“Nope. Even though Raymond spent his money pretty freely and bought a lot
of
drinks, he didn’t have any friends here.”

“Why not?”

“It only took five beers before he started picking fights. His legs didn’t work, and his arms didn’t really either. But still he could knock tables over with his wheelchair…”

“Did that happen often?”

“Almost every night over the most chickenshit things.”

“Like?”

“Like when somebody made the mistake of criticizing Diego Maradona, Raymond immediately started flipping out. Maradona was like some kind of God to him.”

“Why didn’t you ban Raymond?” Koskinen asked. “They do that
at
other places for less.”

The bartender wiped the counter with his dirty spotted rag and shook his head. “I did that once, but all I got was more trouble. The next day some reporter called from Helsinki and asked if this was the bar that was discriminating against handicapped people.”

The rag flew fifteen feet in an angry arc to the sink, and then the bartender continued, clenching his jaw. “Then in the next issue of
Hymy
was an article and two pictures, one of this bar and the other of Raymond—he looked like a wounded war vet or something. And then in the article he spun this bullshit about how he’d been turned away from the door of a bar, and how he had just barely had the strength to drag himself and his wheelchair there. It didn’t take long before some damn social worker lady called from the equal opportunity office and threatened to strip my liquor license if the discrimination didn’t stop.”

Koskinen noticed that the man’s hands were starting to shake uncontrollably. It wouldn’t be a good idea for him to go straight back to filling beer glasses.

“Luckily I don’t have to deal with that little shit no more,” he said. “If only I could get those two second-rate Stallones
knocked off too.”

Koskinen thought to himself that the bartender would probably have chosen his words more carefully had he known with whom he was speaking.

“Are they the same kind of troublemakers,” Koskinen asked innocently.

“Not as bad as Raymond, but still pain
s
in the ass.”

“Haven’t you told the authorities about all of this?”

“That wouldn’t help anything. Once when Harjus threw a glass into the wall I called the police. Guess what they said.”

“What?”

“An invalid couldn’t be dangerous enough to have us intervene. That’s the Finnish police for you. Lazy pigs.”

Koskinen nodded sympathetically and turned to carry the full beers to their table.

Warm words of thanks awaited him: “Where the hell were y
a
?”

“Did you get stuck having to listen to Urpo’s
whining
?”

“Who?” Koskinen asked as he sat back down in his
chair
.

“The owner and supreme beer bearer of this pigsty,” Ketterä explained. “Urpo’s put a bounty out on our heads.”

This triggered a quick series of images and connections in Koskinen’s mind. He drank his beer thoughtfully and looked around. At a quick count there were a couple of dozen custom
ers, most of them guys in track
suits just like him, with a few women with rasping laughs mixed in. There was a
payazzo
gambling machine
jingling away near the door, and the woman with the speech impediment was already on her third song onstage. This time it was an old Finnish song about forest fairies.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about, copper?” Harjus had to yell over the noise
,
and at the same time blew smoke from his cigarette into Koskinen’s face.

Koskinen decided not to lose his temper tonight. Instead, he replied calmly, “I heard that you two and
Timonen
didn’t see eye to eye…that you fought a lot. Is that true?”

Harjus and Ketterä’s jaws dropped in mock shock like they were in a slapstick farce at the community theater.

“Now who
’
d ever say somethin
’
like that? We loved Raymond like a brother
,
and we’re just heartsick over his loss,” Harjus bleated.

Ketterä chimed in. “The grief just knocked the legs right out from under us.”

Koskinen knew there was no point trying to grill them in these surroundings. He’d be better off bringing them down to the station tomorrow for a
n interview
. Their hard shells would crack in no time with Pekki and Kaatio loose on them.

But he still decided to go after a couple of things. “Is Pike sorry that Raymond’s gone?”

The men’s feigned surprise turned real. “So, you already met Pirkko-Liisa?”

Koskinen nodded, omitting the fact that everything he knew was second-hand.

“Why was she fired?”

If Harjus’ face had been surly, now it twisted into outright apoplexy. “Pike cared too much about us cripples. Some people saw that as misconduct, and that’s why she got the boot.”

“Cared too much?” Koskinen said in surprise.

“Yeah. She got along too well with us three. She hung out with us after work and made us feel like normal people. We drank wine, listened to music, danced...”

“You danced?”

Harjus looked at Koskinen with disdain. “What? Is it some kinda miracle that a cripple can dance?”

Suddenly the voice that had been seething with disgust turned wistful, and Harjus’ eyes closed halfway.

“Pike bent down to wrap her arms around my shoulders. She pressed her face against my forehead and slowly swayed her hips. She smelled like flowers. I rocked my chair in the same rhythm and caressed her soft buttocks with my other hand. Even you couldn’t have danced any better.”