Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (17 page)

I wondered how long it would take Melas’ mother to hear—

“Nikos! There is my boy.”

Not long, apparently. The woman had hearing like a bionic dog. She was standing at the crossroads in a housedress, her hair a Spartan helmet. The only way to escape was to turn around and run, but she struck me as the kind of woman who had mastered the hunt.

“Mama,” the mama’s boy beside me said.

“Kyria Mela,” I said, wishing I had the guts and wherewithal to yell, “Fire” and bolt. Unfortunately, she knew where I lived.

“Where are you going? What are you doing?”

“We were going to grab a coffee,” Melas said.

“What for do you want to pay for coffee? You are wasting your money. Come home and drink coffee for free.”

He was going to cave, wasn’t he? Oh boy …

“The department is paying for it,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“But do they have homemade
finikia
? I do not think so. In fact, I suspect both the
kafeneios
here buy their pastries. I cannot prove it—yet—but I keep my eye on them.”

“Can’t the cup tell you?” I asked.

Her iron gaze stuck to my face. “The cup does not deal in trivia.”

Oookay. Let me crawl back into my shell
.

“Relax, Mama,” Mela said. “This is business.” His hand settled on the small of my back. Old eagle eye didn’t miss a thing. Her eyes narrowed to vicious slits. I considered that she might be a supernatural creature, maybe a banshee; something that shot blue lasers from its eyes. Their current black-brown state was a disguise, an effort to blend in with normal society.

Next time I came to Makria I’d pack a stake.

“Business? Who does business with pretty women, unless they are prostitutes?”

I looked up at Melas. “The longer we stand here the more it’s going to cost you.”

His mother gasped.

“It was a joke,” I said lamely. “Policemen from Thessaloniki are at the compound. They’re trying to bust my grandmother.”

Kyria Mela was living proof that it was possible to frown using one’s entire body. She drew herself into a tight, angry column, her face pinched like a crab had been using it for claw-snapping practice. “I will go over there and tell them Katerina Makri has done nothing!”

“Mama,” Melas said. “It’s okay. It’s under control.”

But it wasn’t, was it?

“What are they looking for?” she demanded.

“More like a whom,” I told her. “A guy who broke out of prison.”

“Yes, we saw him on the news.” She patted my arm, moving from psycho banshee to empathetic human being so swiftly that I wondered if aliens had paused the world and swapped out her body for a kinder, gentler clone. “He will turn up eventually and your grandmother will be vindicated. Go. Enjoy your coffee. If you need me, I will be at home. Alone.”

She turned and sped up the narrow, cobbled road, leading to most of Makria’s residences. Straight ahead was Ayia Aikaterini—Saint Catherine’s—and to the left was the village square, filled with souvenir stalls,
tavernas
, coffee shops. There was more mountain above and behind Makria, but from here it still seemed like I was standing on the world’s roof. Melas steered me toward a table in the shade of a sprawling beech, its ropey roots punching up the cobblestones. Mother Nature was one pushy broad. He ordered two coffees, two waters, then asked if I wanted sweets. I shook my head, and the waiter moved off.

“Why didn’t you leave me at the compound?” I asked Melas.

“I wanted to know what you knew before they got to you.”

I chewed on my bottom lip for a moment, calculating what, and how much, I could say.

“I saw Rabbit.”

“I know. Your name was in the sign-in book.”

“No. At the compound.”

“Shit.” His expression turned several shades grimmer. “Shit. Why are you telling me this?”

“A problem shared is a problem halved?”

“What?”

“It’s an expression.”

“In America, maybe. Here it’s a problem doubled, especially if you share it with a cop.”

“Well excuse me,” I said. “It just came out. You were being so nice to me and all, I thought I should share something.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “What do you want?”

“Nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Quit nagging me about going home. And stop getting in my way. I’m going to keep hunting for my father, with or without your help.”

“I could put you in a cell and keep you there.”

“You could try. I’d chew my way out.”

He shook his head and laughed. “I believe you.” His gaze slid left. “Jesus,” he muttered. His mother was moving this way, cutting across the village square, a small plate in each hand. She sat both in the middle of the table and dusted her hands together. “You eat sweets, eat homemade.” She shot death rays at the proprietor, a small, round man with a white apron and a friendly countenance. If pushed to it, I’d choose his sweets over hers; there was a high probability of poison or truth serum in her offering. To me she said, “Come back to see me again soon. We will have coffee, us women.”

“Okay,” I stammered. And I would, as soon as I wanted to self-flagellate, which would probably be soon.

She stamped a kiss on her son’s head then hurried off again, headed toward the church.

Melas drove me back to the compound. The black metal birds were still outside the gates, pilots waiting on their cargo. There were no other signs of life, except the security guard, who was sitting in the guardhouse, biting his nails.

It was a bad habit—one I sometimes shared—but at least he wasn’t spanking the Greek monkey, like his predecessor.

“What’s happening?” I asked him. Melas was at my side. I had a feeling he wouldn’t peel off until the other guys packed up their high-tech toys and buzzed away.

“They are searching the place.”

“The whole place?”

He nodded. “They are talking to everybody.”

“What did they ask you?”

“Katerina—“ Melas started.

I shot him a not-now look.

“The wanted to know about a man called Dogas.”

“What did you tell them?”

He shrugged, two palms up. “Nothing. I don’t know any Dogas. They showed me a picture, but I have never seen him before.”

If he was lying he was good at it. Probably it was genetic.

“And they asked if Baboulas has a helicopter. I said I know nothing about a helicopter. I stand at the gate all day, and all I see are cars, motorcycles, and sometimes farm animals. But no helicopters except these ones.”

He went back to his post, leaving me to deal with Melas.

“Want me to come with you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I can do this.”

“Do what? Lie to the police?”

“Whatever it takes,” I said.

Was that true, would I do whatever it took, even if it was wrong?

And who would be responsible for the measuring?

Grandma was sitting in a chair near the pool when I stomped into the courtyard. Her chin jerked up the moment she spotted me. The meathead cop swiveled his upper half to follow her line of sight.

He jumped up as I closed in on them. “Who are you? You the granddaughter?”

The courtyard was silent and still even though every corner seemed to be filled with small clusters of law enforcement and family. Takis was nearby with two cops. His arms were folded, his expression closed. He was mouthing off about steroids and their effects on male genitalia. From the looks on their faces he wasn’t making friends. By the pool, Stavros was sweating as a three-man clump loomed over him. His mouth was moving, his expression playing dumb.

Xander was nowhere in sight. I wondered if Grandma had stashed him away somewhere as soon as trouble dropped out of the sky. Did they know about the underground hideaway and control room? What about the armory, such as it was? I mentally crossed my fingers that Grandma’s secrets were safe. Somewhere along the way, the good guys had become the enemy. They were an impediment, cluttering the path between my and my goal. I never assumed, for ever a moment, that they could help me get to Dad—not these guys, at least.

“I’m Katerina Makris,” I told the cop. I planted myself close to Grandma. “You okay?” I asked her.

“They are doing their jobs,” she said. “Apparently they lost a prisoner.”

“Stelios Dogas was not lost,” the cop said. “Someone broke him out.”

“It was probably aliens,” I said. “It usually is.”

The cop twitched. “It wasn’t aliens.”

“Are you sure? Because, man, aliens are pretty tricky with their spaceships and their beams of light.”

He was looking at me like I should be the filling in a straitjacket burrito. That was kind of the idea. I wanted him to think I was an airhead, this side of nuts.

“That your yellow car out front, the VW?”

“I don’t own it.”

“You drive it?”

“Never on Sunday.”

If he got the move reference it didn’t show. “What about on the other days?”

“Only on some of them.”

“You ever drive it to Larissa?”

“Not even once.” That, at least, was true.

“Because a Katerina Makris signed into the Larissa prison on the day the prisoner escaped.”

“I was there, but I didn’t drive.”

“Did you record a prison break while you were there?”

“No.”

“Why were you at the prison?”

“I like convicts.” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively.

“You’re sick,” he told me. “You should get help.”

“I
know
,” I said melodramatically. “That’s what
everyone
says.”

He cleared his throat. “Did you meet with Stelios Dogas while you were there?”

“This is going to go really slowly if you keep asking me questions when you already know the answers.”

“There’s more to asking questions than getting answers.”

I did a ditzy head wag. “Like … what?”

“The truth.”

Should I fluff my hair? I wasn’t good at these things. Probably my hair was too sweaty for a real fluffing. “Sure, I met with Dogas.”

He stared at me. I stared back. It looked like he was waiting on extra words to roll out of my mouth. Too bad. If he wanted words, he’d have to work for them. His whole body was tense. Any tighter and bits would start snapping off.

“What did you see him about?”

“Um … It’s kind of embarrassing.” God, gods, and the other deities would have to forgive me for the lie I was about to tell. Any other time I would tell the cops I was hunting down a lead on Dad, but if I told them the truth it would dunk Grandma in the boiling water. The last thing I wanted to do was give them a motive for her springing Dogas from the clink. “My plan was to make him fall in love with me so we could get married. Then when he died—and he’s so old it’s bound to be soon, am I right?—I’d have him stuffed and sell him to a crime museum.”

Grandma was watching the sky, her face as unyielding as a brick.

He straightened up. “The crime museum?”

“Uh huh. I think it’s in Kentucky or something. They’re always looking to acquire new pieces. They pay big, too.”

“My Virgin Mary,” he said. “You Americans are sick.”

I did a cutesy one-shouldered shrug. “It’s culture.”

There was movement at the arch. A gang of suited men—government suits, zero shine—strode into the courtyard as though their pockets were stuffed with bits of paper that gave them permission to do bad things. They were golems: take away their paper they’d be unarmed.

They stopped for a moment, scanned the courtyard, then one of them pointed and nodded in our direction.

My flight-or-fight kicked in, and then stood down when it realized I was screwed.

“Find the brother?” one of them asked the cop interrogating Grandma and me.

“Not yet.”

Brother? Whose brother?

“Keep looking.”

He reached into his coat then presented Grandma with a piece of paper. She looked it over, no expression to indicate whether it was good news or bad.

Then she stood, without so much as a groan. She was steel, and she wanted them to know they would crawl before she would bend. “Katerina,” she said. “Tell your aunt to call my lawyers.”

The men didn’t cuff her, which was the best I could say. They formed a loose square around her and marched her toward the arch.

“You can’t take her!” I yelled at them. “What right do you have? Where are you taking her?”

“It will be okay,” Grandma said over her shoulder. But she didn’t look okay to me. What she looked like was a little old lady. My grandmother.

“Police brutality,” I said. I whipped out my phone and began filming. One of the meatheads broke off the pack and snatched the phone out of my hands. He flung it across the courtyard.

“You can’t do that!” I shouted.

“Katerina, stay,” Grandma said. “The family needs you here. Be here for them.”

I
stood
watch in the courtyard, arms folded. I stood until the sun skulked away and the cops went chasing after it in their helicopters. Family came and went, all of them with questions and not nearly enough answers.

“Katerina,” Marika said. “Come. Eat. There is nothing you can do right now.”

“They said something about a brother. Rabbit’s brother, I presume.”

The night was warm but it was taking tiny cool bites. The answer popped in my head like a fragile bubble.

“Papou. He’s the brother, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Probably, like me, they thought you knew.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t know.”

“You are one of us, so sometimes we forget you don’t know all the things we have always known.”

That made sense. “What do I do now? Who’s in charge?”

“I think you are.”

Yikes. There was no way I could run the Family until Grandma’s lawyers jimmied the door, greased the wheels of justice.

“Okay,” I said. “I want to see Aunt Rita, Papou, Xander, Takis, and Stavros in the kitchen as soon as possible. “And anyone else Grandma would call during an emergency.”

“Baboulas would not say as soon as possible. She would say right now.”

“Right now, then.”

“I will tell Takis to find them.”

N
o Papou
. No Xander. It was Aunt Rita, Takis, and Stavros gathered around Grandma’s kitchen table.