Back in business. The long-lasting feeling: J-boy, baddest bad boy in town. El choro. Phoenix out of the ashes. Gotten back up after what they thought was a knockout.
His life vacillated between justified hate and high-level blow business. The hate toward Radovan amp; Co.: the ones who’d shredded him. The blow business: his job for Abdulkarim.
But Jorge was the man with the plan; he would break Radovan’s empire once and for all. Make sure the Yugo Mafia got locked up or wiped out. All he needed was more information and time to plan.
R.’s day would come. Jorgelito was mad certain.
Flashbacks.
Jorge’d recovered surprisingly quickly. First, when JW found him in a thousand pieces in the woods, he didn’t clock a thing. Who the hell was this Ostermalm creamer? Buzzing about new markets, blow-biz expansion. Did he want in?
Fifteen minutes of explaining to a busted Latino.
Jorge was hardly listening at the time.
JW promised that a car would come. That he’d fix painkillers.
Jorge asked him to leave.
JW walked down to the road.
Jorge left alone on the ground. Half an inch of movement equaled otherworldly pain. The cold crept up on him. Jorge wanted to pass out. Disappear. But the questions were buzzing worse than the pain in his head: Would the Yugos hurt Paola? Would they leave him alone now? Should he skip the country right away? In that case, what were his chances? No money, no passport, no connections. In other words, about as much chance of survival as a twiggy with attitude at Osteraker.
Darkness settled over the forest. The weather was getting worse. The trunks of the trees looked black. The branches hung low to the ground.
Felt like his upper arms and thighbones were broken. Felt as though his back was torn apart. Felt as though he’d gotten a second asshole torn up beside his first. Nature’s strange symmetry completed: two eyes, two nostrils, two arms, and two legs. And now, two assholes.
He tried to sleep. Not a chance.
He shivered.
The definition of eternity: Jorge’s one and a half hours in the forest before JW showed up again. He had a big guy with him, a gorilla. They lifted him. Jorge thought he was going to die for the second time in four hours. Pest or cholera. First to be beaten to death by a psycho Yugo and then to be carried to death by an enormous Lebanese.
A white Mazda van was waiting on the road. There was a padded gurney in the back. They strapped him down. A Swedish-looking man who Jorge, at the time, thought was a real ambulance EMT poured morphine down his throat. He numbed off. Dreamed of dancing grocery bags.
Fragments of memory.
Woke up in a stark room. Confused. Safe, but scared he’d ended up in a hospital. He’d get treated at the same time as he’d get found out-be sent right back to his cell at Osteraker. Then came the pain. He howled.
A big man in the room, the same man who’d carried him to the van. The guy in a turtleneck and dark blue jeans. Jorge realized he wasn’t in a hospital. Something about the man signaled the opposite-that face didn’t belong in the health-care sector. Dark, coarse features. Scratches/scars along one side of his face. The man smiled; gold gleamed in his upper row. Maybe that’s what confirmed it-no one who worked in a hospital would grin with a gold grill like that.
The man, Fahdi, smiled, “ Allahu akbar, you’re alive.”
A few days later. He woke up. Someone was dabbing at his arm; it was a sickly green color. On one arm and his left thigh, scabs were healing. Improvement. So, he wasn’t beaten black-and-blue anymore-he was beaten green.
The guy dabbing at his arm introduced himself as Petter and said, “You’re gonna be fine, man.” Jorge let his arm fall down on the bed again. The guy reached for a glass of something red. There was a straw in the glass. He held up the straw to Jorge’s mouth. Jorge sucked. It tasted like raspberry Kool-Aid.
The guy left the room. Jorge looked at the wall. Drawn curtains. Was there a window behind them? He tried to turn his head. Hurt too much.
Lay still. Fell back asleep.
Morphine dreams: Jorge was walking on a dark road with Paola. Along the side of the road were tall green stone walls. Spotlights lit up stretches of the road. Soft asphalt. Jorge’s feet sank down. Created imprints in the granulated, warm mass. He thought, If I have to run now, how fast can I go? His sister turned to him, “My prince, do you want to play war with me?” Jorge tried to lift his foot. It was hard. The asphalt mass stuck to him. Black, coarse. Felt heavy.
A couple of nights later: Paola was jumping double Dutch. Two ropes. Made out of twisted sheets. Two friends of hers were holding the ropes. Paola: eight years old. Jorge ran toward the ropes. Was about to fall. Stumble. And right then: an enormous blue trampoline. It cushioned the fall. He rolled around. Couldn’t get up. The trampoline was too soft. Like quicksand. He sunk down. Tried to support himself with his hands, his elbows, his knees. Paola laughed. The girls laughed. Jorge cried.
Later: The guy who’d dabbed at him, Petter, sat by the bed. Said everything would be fine. That Jorge would look so great. Better than before.
Jorge was too tired.
Didn’t ask what they were gonna do.
A bright light blinded him.
He turned his head. Shut his eyes.
Could instinctively feel that something was approaching his face.
A man he hadn’t seen before rubbed his nose with something.
Suddenly: extreme pain.
Screams.
Felt like his nose’d been torn off.
He sat up.
The man held him down.
Poured something down his throat.
He fell back asleep.
Someone was shaking him. “Wake up, buddy. You’ve slept enough today.” Jorge looked up. A dark-haired man. Maybe around thirty years old. In a suit. A shirt with broad cuffs. The top buttons undone. A white Craig David hat on his head. “Open your eyes for real.”
Jorge stared in silence.
“I’m Abdulkarim. Your chance in life. Your boss.”
Jorge, confused.
“You been lying here for over three weeks now. You gonna be a morphine junkie if you’re not healed already. You gotta be able to function by now. Raise your arm.”
Jorge raised his arm. Yellow at the top, near his shoulder, but otherwise okay.
“You look fine, buddy. Allah is great.”
Abdulkarim held up a mirror to his face.
Jorge saw the image of himself: a thin, dark-haired, and bearded man, maybe twenty-five years old, dark eyebrows, bulky nose, almost like a boxer’s, olive-colored skin.
A version of Jorge.
He grinned. At the same time, he felt sad. On the one hand, it was his chance. Abdulkarim-whoever he was-had fixed him up. Rubbed him down with a new type of self-tanner, curled his hair, dyed it. Better than he’d done himself. And he was skinnier.
But aside from that, something was different about his nose.
“What’ve you done to my nose?”
Abdulkarim laughed. “Broken in two places, buddy. Brought in a guy who set it straight. Hope it didn’t hurt too much. I think it looks better now. A little flat, maybe, but cooler.”
Jorge like Nikita: picked up off the street. Woken up, made up, fixed up to be their new supersoldier. How would the rest of the story go?
Abdulkarim kept talking.
“They pounded you real good. You looked like a fuckin’ blueberry when we found you. Then you became like the Hulk. Spotty green. Too bad you don’t have his powers.”
Jorge turned over in bed.
Abdulkarim tried to be funny. “What jerks. Did they pork you, too, buddy? Who was the bottom?”
Jorge fell asleep.
Everything’d gone so quickly. He was almost completely recovered from Mrado’s and Ratko’s rough treatment. The only problem: scars on his back and pain in one of his upper arms. He’d been given a chance to stay in Sweden and earn pesetas. That his nose’d been broken and realigned by Abdulkarim’s people could be an advantage. It was crooked, broader. Jorge’s appearance was even more altered.
Enough time’d passed since his break. The cops no longer had his picture as one of the top one hundred that popped up on their screens as soon as they had a lead. With his new look, the Arab’s money and help, Jorge realized he had a chance.
He knew why he was so perfect for Abdulkarim-his blow know mixed with his dependence and debt of gratitude to the Arab would make him the most faithful dog in Abdul’s dealer kennel. Abdulkarim’s business idea worked the way JW’d explained it. The boroughs were ready for a coke invasion. Blowkrieg. Jorge dug the plans. He’d thought about similar strategies when he was still at Osteraker.
Jorge and JW sat in Fahdi’s apartment during a couple of days in November and made plans. Abdulkarim stopped by and discussed the big picture. Guidelines, strategy. How much blow did they think they were gonna need for the month of January? In which boroughs were they gonna start? Jorge name-dropped. People they had to get in touch with. Dealers to contract. People to consult. Fahdi brought pizzas and Coca-Cola.
Abdulkarim kept talking about import. They had to get more. Structure smarter smuggling.
Jorge taught JW everything he knew. The Ostermalm-boy inhaled the knowledge like a teenager inhales beer at his first kegger. According to Abdulkarim, the dude was a whiz at dealing to the Stureplan crowd. Jorge had a knowledge advantage. Still, JW tried to seem worldly. Snobby. Jorge didn’t like his style.
Abdulkarim, shady but good. In every other sentence he praised Allah, in every other sentence he talked blow pricing. One night at Fahdi’s, he said, “Jorge, can I ask you a serious question?” Jorge nodded. Abdul continued, “What religion do you have?” Jorge shook his head. “Mom’s a Catholic. I believe in Tupac. He lives on.” Tried to joke. All ghettoites knew about Tupac, didn’t they? The Arab replied, “You know, there’s a war going on. You have to pick sides. You think all the Swedes are gonna accept you just ’cause you got cash? Allah can give you guidance.”
JW claimed the Arab hadn’t always been like that. Before: only talked blow. Allah was definitely a new player on the field.
At the end of November, Jorge hit the streets again. At first, he was paranoid. Kept looking around every third step. The cops or the Yugos reappeared from his nightmares. He slept at Fahdi’s. Every time the Lebanese dude came home at night, Jorge woke up, thought it was the 5–0 and that he was done for. After a few seconds, the sounds from the pornos calmed him. He realized that he actually looked different. Bonier. Blacker. Broader beak.
He went to a tanning bed regularly. Kept curling his hair. Tried to learn to use a pair of dark brown contacts Abdulkarim’d given him. The rhythm to his step got better with every day; he did his best to walk like a gangsta.
He needed his own place.
Jorge got in touch with Sergio and thanked him for his help. Blessed/praised him. Told him everything was cool but that they couldn’t see each other for a while. Sergio understood. He explained: His broken fingers were still crooked; his girlfriend was still shaking like a kitten.
Jorge hated the Yugos even more.
Wrote a text to Paola from a prepaid phone that Abdulkarim’d given him: I’m alive and doing well. How are you? Don’t worry about anything. Say hi to Mama! Hugs /J.
Two guys, the Sven who’d taken care of him, Petter, and a Tunisian, Mehmed, became Jorge’s assistants. Looked up people in the Sollentuna area on his orders. Distributed grams to the right people. Sold on from there. Jorge himself worked the other projects. Places where his face, even if it was new, had never been known.
Everything went beautifully. In January, they grossed 400,000 kronor. After they’d deducted the purchase price and Abdulkarim’s cut: 150,000 kronor for Jorge, Petter, and Mehmed to split. Life was sweet. Jorge was royal-Jorgius Maximus.
One thought he hardly ever had time to think: Was this preordained? Was dealing C as far as an ordinary slumdog from a Stockholm ghetto could get? Was the race already rigged when his mama decided to leave Chile and try to become a normal citizen of a new country? It was like when you get on the subway and realize the train is going in the wrong direction. There’s nothing you can do. Can’t jump off the train. What happens if you pull the emergency brake? Jorge and his buds’d done that a ton as kids. The fuckin’ train didn’t stop in the middle of the track like you thought it would; it drove on to the next station before it stopped. What was the point of an emergency brake if you still had to go where you didn’t want to go?
Jorge’s project for the future slowly morphed. Leaving the country as quickly as possible was no longer a given. To get back at Radovan became more important. And there was still a long way to go on that road. He knew some about Mr. R.’s cocaine dealings from before-but not enough. Radovan must’ve thought J-boy knew a hell of a lot more than he did. If not, why send Mrado and Ratko after him? Jorge needed more, enough heavy shit to sink Radovan instantly.
Enough to put Paola out of danger.
Enough to sate his hate.
Abdulkarim’s plans took time. To establish the blow biz in the western boroughs as well as select areas in the south: Bredang, Hagerstensasen, Fruangen. And he was in the middle of planning/preparing a large shipment of snow. Maybe straight from Brazil.
Jorge’s new free life was keeping him busy.