Free Helsinki Blood by James Thompson

information. She throws her arms around me, careful not to hurt my face, and thanks me over and over. After that, there’s no way I can let her down.

12

    A fter Salme Tamm leaves, Sweetness gives me a stern look, as he would a wayward child. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”
    “I started this black-ops garbage of ours so I could do things exactly like this. You know, help people, especially young women in trouble. This girl is in deep shit.”
    He has a pull out of his flask and sits forward with his elbows on his knees. His big frame nearly fills my oversized armchair. “Before you can help anyone else, you have to be able to help yourself. You can barely get around the house. How are you going to investigate a missing person? Who was most likely conned and abducted by criminals, I might add.”
    I finish off my coffee. “The cortisone shots are working. My jaw is almost pain free at the moment, and my knee is improved. And I have you to help me.”
    “
Pomo
, you hardheaded asshole. This is beyond foolish. We have enemies watching us, and we don’t know what their limits are, if they have any. We have two women and a baby in this house that we have to take care of. Safeguarding them is our first priority. Call the cops that deal with human trafficking in Helsinki, pass it off to them and let it go.”
    He made salient points. I weave my way through them. “There are hundreds of prostitutes in Helsinki. There are seven detectives mandated with monitoring the human slave trade. I’ve spoken with a couple of them. They’re pissing in a rainstorm. For every arrest they make, a thousand gangsters are ready to step up and take their place. The profit in buying and selling young women is tremendous. As to the girls, we load them in your Jeep Wrangler and drive around for about an hour to make sure we’re not being tailed, then we leave them in a hotel until the job is done. Or pick them up every night after we’re done working, if you and Jenna and your love that’s bigger than any love that ever loved a love can’t stand to be apart for a whole night.”
    He leans back in the chair and thinks it over. “If Jan Pitkänen is harassing you and it means the minister of the interior is behind him, it’s ninety-nine out of a hundred that the national chief of police is in on it, too.”
    “Those two are like Frick and Frack. Where one turns up, you generally find the other. I warned the chief if he fucked with me anymore, I would kill him.”
    “You going to?”
    I play with my cane, remember I need to wash the beer fat glop out of its mouth. “I don’t want to, but can’t rule it out. People lose respect for those who don’t live up to their threats. On the other hand, Roope Malinen hates our guts, he could have a part in all this.”
    Roope Malinen, Finland’s best hater—he can boast of writing the nation’s most popular blog—was elected to parliament and chairs the committee on immigration affairs. He hates us because we humiliated him and exposed him for the dickless coward he is. He most likely hates me the most, since I was the brains behind the operation that helped ensure Real Finns didn’t take the election. Plus, Malinen had his eyes on a million euros Veikko Saukko promised as a campaign contribution, and our activities made sure he didn’t get it.
    Saukko, a billionaire racist, had promised to boot up a million euros to the campaign kitty if a display of serious intent to rid the country of immigrants was exhibited. I’m told that, after neo-Nazis murdered dozens of mostly blacks with strychnine-laced heroin, he was true to his word, but gave it to the National Coalition Party to disseminate.
    I haven’t spoken to him since the death of his son. Saukko wanted me to investigate the case, the prime minister, who wanted to give Saukko his way ordered me to take it. Saukko, as well as the interior minister, wanted me to find and capture his son, Antti Saukko, a murderer, but not put him