Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (6 page)

“
H
ave another
dolmada
,” I told Stavros.

“It won’t fit.” He shoved it into his mouth anyway.

This was potentially our last meal and we were taking it seriously. That meant we had picked a seaside
taverna
with a reputation for excellent food. Not that it was difficult to find good food in Greece. Throw a small rock and you were bound to hit a plate fully loaded with delicious eats.

Only a generous blue umbrella stood between us and the sun; it kept knocking on the canvas, trying to find a way in. We were alone. Well, unless you counted the German couple sitting two tables away. They had first-degree burns but they looked happy about their situation. All the other pansies had retreated to their cloistered bedrooms, snoozing the afternoon away because they lacked the fortitude to handle the blistering heat.

Did I say pansies? I meant the smart people, who probably weren’t in danger of winding up at the bottom of a deep hole on Turkish soil.

I sucked down another
frappe
. Greece had cornered the market on iced coffee. They tossed instant coffee, sugar (or not, if that was your thing) cold water, and ice cubes into a cocktail shaker, then shook until the whole thing was dense foam. Then they poured it into a tall glass, stuck a straw in, and changed your life.

“I was thinking we could stay here forever,” I said. “We’ve got food, drink, the beach, and a bathroom directly across the street. Grandma wouldn’t kill us in front of all of these people.”

We looked at the German couple.

“In front of all these two people,” I said.

Stavros thought about it for a moment. “Or we could run away.”

“Where would we go?”

“Las Vegas. I hear you can get anything in Las Vegas.”

True, but did you really want it?

The more I thought about it, the more the idea had merit. We could run away. It had worked for Dad—

Oh. Yeah. His mother had known where he was the whole time. She’d even come to visit me, with Mom’s help. I had no recollection of the time we spent playing together at the park, but apparently Xander had been there, too.

Maybe we could run farther. New Zealand sounded promising, or … what was that nugget on Australia’s foot called? Tasmania.

“How about Antarctica?” I said.

“I like polar bears,” Stavros said. “We should do that, right after I go drain the snake.”

“Wrong pole.”

“I like penguins,” he said, switching hemispheres. “They are cute in their little tuxedos.”

He jogged across the street to the
taverna
’s storefront. The cooking happened inside the building, but the tables and chairs were mostly outside along the waterfront, with a few inside for people waiting to take their food to go.

I dragged my gaze up and down the deserted beachfront road. Nobody but us and the Germans and a couple of stragglers down the far end of the promenade, knocking back
frappes
. The sun was at its highest point, shooting for a top-down assault. The heat was coiling into one massive, overstuffed feather duvet, and it had plans to smother those of us dumb enough to be outside.

Stavros jogged back, his fly half mast. His face was pale, his eyes wild.

“Get up! I hear a helicopter!”

Now that he mentioned it, I did hear the faint buzz of an incoming bird.

“Probably a police helicopter. Or a news helicopter.”

“No, the local police cannot afford a helicopter. Baboulas bought it from them!” he said urgently. “We have to run. Or hide. Or run and hide.”

“What about the check?”

He dumped a wad of euros on the table. “Happy? Let’s go!”

The whirring was moving closer. It sounded like a swarm of furious giant hornets.

I stood and stepped out from under the umbrella, my belly loaded with good Greek eats. When I moved it was how I imagined wading through quicksand, which, so far, hadn’t been a real problem. The dangers of quicksand had been overhyped in my childhood.

What I needed was a good nap, but the caffeine surging through my system wouldn’t give me permission. The coffee wanted to dance, the food wanted to nap, and so they struggled for dominance while I watched the sky, a hand shielding my eyes from the glare.

There was a helicopter, all right, and it was moving our way.

Inside my head I started running, but my feet hadn’t received the message. All the food in my gut was blocking the transmission. If running was going to happen I wouldn’t be the one doing it.

“Argh! It’s coming right for us!” I said lamely.

“That’s what I said!”

“What are we going to do? I can’t run! Not with all this food in me.”

“Too bad we are not Ancient Romans,” Stavros said as the helicopter lowered its belly to the road. The Germans had their phones out, capturing footage of the most unexpected part of their vacation. “They used to vomit their food before the next course started.”

Now that he mentioned it, throwing up sounded like an inevitable evolutionary step. But it would have to wait, because Xander jumped out of the chopper and landed on the ground with a visual thud.

“The good news,” I yelled, nodding to the front of Stavros’s pants, “is that you already got rid of your coffee. Again.”

“
S
it
.”

I pulled out the kitchen chair, sat, tried not to freak out. The sight of Grandma measuring ingredients into a bowl made me want to hurl.

Grandma’s baking meant one of two things: either she was trying to cope or trying not to explode. Hopefully, if she exploded it wouldn’t be in my direction.

“Somebody had to go see Rabbit,” I said. “You were gone! I had no choice! Okay, I had two choices, but that was the better one. So don’t even think about reprimanding me. If you’d told me what you were up to then I wouldn’t have been there with Stavros and his camera. Also, not to be judgmental, but you broke a man out of prison. That’s not exactly sound decision-making.”

I’d made the mistake of standing mid-rant, after Grandma had commanded me to sit. Grandma wasn’t a woman you defied unless you wanted to wind up standing at the bottom of that hole in Turkey, with a lot of dirt taking a nap on your head.

“And you thought it was best for you to go see him?”

“Who else was there?”

“The whole Family,” Grandma said quietly. “Did it not occur to you that I would not wander off, who knows where, when there might be a clue at last about my son’s whereabouts?”

“You didn’t tell me anything. You left.”

“I do not have to explain myself to you, Katerina. You have one foot out of the cradle. And now thanks to your … zeal, I will have the police asking difficult questions.”

“I told Stavros not to record it.”

“So he told me. I will deal with him later.” She put an uncomfortable amount of weight on the word
deal
. The range, with Grandma, was impossible to gauge. On the one end was baking, on the other … execution.

I didn’t have the ovaries to ask where on the spectrum this particular
deal
fell. I was worried she might tell me, and then I’d be forced to do something crazy to plead for my second cousin’s life.

“Go easy on him,” I said. “He was there because of me.”

“You can leave now.”

“Okay …” Where were the threats to send me back home or lock me in the dungeon? Unease hoisted itself onto my shoulders. It wanted a piggyback ride. It
expected
one.

“I have a lot of baking to do.”

“Okay.”

“And many decisions to make.”

That unease wrapped its hands around my throat and squeezed as it tried to get a better foothold on my spine. Panic pulled out its billows and began to huff and puff at my adrenal glands. I could almost feel the cool breeze above my kidneys as it fanned. Decisions about what?

Then I remembered she had Rabbit here somewhere. Possibly in the dungeon.

“What about Rabbit?”

“What about him?”

“He didn’t send you that box.”

“I never said he did,” Grandma told me. “I told you I knew who made the box.”

The wily old bat was at least one square ahead of me on the chessboard, once again.

“He told me who sent it.”

“Oh, he told you, did he? What name did he give you?”

“The Eagle.”

“The Eagle.” She made a face. Not a very impressed face. Somehow I’d pictured her more excited than this. “You do not think that is strange?”

“Why would it be?”

“You walked in there, a stranger, and he gives up the name.”

“He did ask for a favor.”

“A favor.” The question mark had been hammered flat until it was more like a long, uncomfortable period.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I wrapped it up in conditions. The name for an equal favor.”

“An equal favor.” Her obsidian eyes degraded to flint. “Oh, well, that is different. An equal favor.”

“I did what I thought had to be done to find Dad. If it was the wrong thing … sorry, but you weren’t there. It was my call to make.”

“”There is nobody named the Eagle that I know of—not in this business. And I know the people Stelios Dogas knows. We go all the way back to the beginning, Rabbit and I.”

“Could be someone new.”

“No.”

“Could be someone old with a new name.”

“No.”

“Why would he give me that name then?”

She smiled. Grandma was a little old lady, but that smile make my innards wobble.

“It is a dangerous thing to owe a favor. The people who come to me to ask for my help, they know this. Never do a favor unless you are certain of the other person’s loyalty. A gift is different.” She shrugged over the bowl as her hand worked. “You can give anybody a gift. If they choose to repay you someday … then it is a good surprise. If not, then you are not disappointed. But favors … favors are dangerous. You asked for a name and promised an equal payment in return, and now I will have to take that favor upon myself to fulfill, when he asks it of me.”

“I didn’t ask you to—“ I started.

“It is my responsibility as the head of this Family and as your grandmother.”

I inched toward the screen door that separated the kitchen from the front yard. Outside held fresh air, and freedom, and also the outhouse. In here there was a grouchy munchkin-sized ogre with a compulsion to bake.

“I’m going to check on my goat.”

She looked up from the bowl. “Before you go, what was in the box?”

“You don’t know?”

She shrugged. “Why else would I ask?”

“I figured you’d opened it before leaving.”

“No.”

“It was … uh … a man’s penis.”

“Not a woman’s?”

Oh God, was she kidding? I checked. There it was, the twinkle in her eyes.

“It wasn’t Aunt Rita’s,” I said carefully, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

The pause that followed was so long that I couldn’t be sure it was technically a pause. For all I knew the conversation had ended, and on a deadly note.

Well done, Kat. Insult the Godmother’s youngest child, the one she’s sore about anyway.

“It wasn’t Dad’s,” I said, eager to wedge something other than my own foot into the silence. “I figured you’d want to know.”

“I do not want to know how you know.”

“Dina,” I said. “She identified it for us. She kept pictures.”

We both made faces.

“That woman …” she said

I
wanted
to hunt down the name Rabbit had given me, but finding out there was no such person had lopped off that plan’s head. The twerp had tricked me.

I left Grandma’s house and trotted over to one of the courtyard’s tables, with Googling on my mind. I pulled up the Crooked Noses Message Board, a forum dedicated to organized crime of every flavor. The top thread in the Greek Mafia sub forum was all about Rabbit’s prison breakout. Stavros’s video had gone viral. He’d killed the original but the Internet’s memory was long.

The Crooked Nosers were filled with speculation, most of it about who had shot the video. They had managed to uncover the news about my visit with Rabbit, and now they were pooping out a million and one scenarios about what I could have been doing there.

It’s got to be connected to her father’s disappearance,
they said.

Stelios Dogas has been in prison fifteen years. What would she want with him
?

Child support
, someone suggested.

My mouth fell open. Where did they get this stuff? I couldn’t even defend myself without leaping out of the virtual closet.

I was checking my email—I’d won the Irish lottery again—when Detective Melas swaggered through the archway. His face was hard and grim. Whatever was scheduled to come out of his mouth, I didn’t want to hear it.

“I didn’t do it,” I said as he planted himself in front of me like a statue. All that was missing from this art installation was Zeus’s thunderbolt. Also, Melas was wearing too many clothes to be an actual Greek statue, but it was probably better this way. For both of us.

“I know, I saw the video. Know what else I saw?”

“Why don’t you tell me.” I rubbed my stomach. No more last meals for me. Next time I’d prepare to die on an empty stomach. “I ate a huge lunch and now I’m too tired to play guessing game.”

“You and Stavros chatting, that’s what I saw.”

“Technically you didn’t
see
that, you heard it.”

His eye twitched. “What I also saw was the hood of your yellow car.”

“Lots of yellow cars in Greece. It’s a happy color.”

“Do those people sound like you?”

“A lot of people sound like me.”

“Were their names on the visitors’ list at the Larissa prison?”

“Maybe. Who can say?”

“I’m thinking you can.”

“If the wind changes direction,” I said, “your face could be stuck like that.”

He pulled the stick out of his ass and sat in the chair directly across from me.

“That looked like Baboulas flying that helicopter,” he said.

“Pretty much every Greek woman over the age of seventy wears black.”

“And the guy on the ground looked like Xander.”

“Lots of guys look like Xander.”

“He’s a walking boulder. Almost nobody looks like him.”

“
Almost
nobody isn’t the same thing as nobody.”

I fiddled with my phone and tried to play cool, which was harder than it sounded when it was this hot. The pool and fountains were tormenting me with their lapping and splashing. Yes, I could have jumped in the pool, but under this sun I’d fry. I’d already lost an anaconda’s worth of skin.

“I think Stelios Dogas is here somewhere,” Melas said.

“If he is nobody’s told me about it.”

“Think he’s got something to do with your father’s abduction and that box with the … the …?”

“Severed penis?”

He looked slightly relieved that I’d wrenched out the word stuck in his throat. “With that.”

It was sympathy that made me sigh and say, “Okay, I talked to Rabbit—Dogas—but I had nothing to do with the prison break. No, I don’t think he’s got anything to do with my father’s kidnapping. No, he hasn’t got anything to do with the box. He made it, that’s all.”

“Made it?”

“I guess the guy’s hobby is making puzzle boxes.”

“So you’re saying he made it for someone else?”

I nodded. “Someone offered him a trade.”

“What did he get in return?”

I told him and he grinned. “Sounds like a good trade.”

“Oink.”

The grin sprawled wider. “Guilty. So who commissioned the box?”

“A guy called the Eagle.”

He chewed on that a moment. “Never heard of him.”

“That’s what Grandma said. She thinks he was bullshitting to get me out of there.”

“I hate to say it, but she’s probably right. We’re not talking a good person here. The man was in prison for a reason.”

“What did he do?”

“They nailed him on public indecency, but that was an excuse. Name every crime there is, he’s done it.”

I wondered if Greece had crazy laws like we had back home in some states. In Oregon we weren’t allowed to pump our own gas or use canned corn as fishing bait.

“Fifteen years for public indecency, isn’t that extreme?”

“Thirty years. There was a donkey involved.”

Eww
.

My brain was quietly working through mental Pilates. Rabbit had thrown this Eagle person’s name out there with confidence. If he was a liar he was unflinching. I’d bet a very small amount of real money, or a large amount of Monopoly money, that the Eagle was a real person. Just because Grandma and Melas hadn’t heard of him, didn’t mean he didn’t exist.

As soon as I could untangle Melas from my hair I was going back to the Crooked Noses Message Board to see if they knew of any references to this Eagle.

If that failed, well, I wasn’t exactly without friends in the Greek underworld.

Okay, friend. Singular.

And not exactly a friend. Penka was more like a Bulgarian drug dealer who traded prescription drugs for thick wads of cash. She worked for Baby Dimitri, Godfather of the Night and Trinkets. We kind of bonded while she was chained to a bench at the police station. Last week I went with her to a funeral for her friend Tasha, a Russian dealer and prostitute, who’d been murdered by the Baptist for the crime of being a police informant.

Melas stared at me. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m not thinking. Ask around, it happens a lot.”

“Liar. You’re always thinking.”

“How can you tell?”

“Smoke coming out your ears.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you want me.”

“I don’t want you or anything like you.”

“Sure you do,” he said. “You’re afraid to admit it.”

“That’s date-rape logic.”

His eye was this close to twitching. I brought out his inner neurotic. Luckily for one of us—maybe both of us—his phone buzzed. He picked it up, scrolled one-fingered. Then he stood.

“Leaving so soon?”

He blew a sigh. The hair flopping over his eyes fluttered. He shoved it back into place with an impatient hand.

“Got to go. But I’m not done with you yet.” It was almost awkward, the way he stood there, like he couldn’t figure out what to do with me. Behind his eyes a solo round of kiss-kill-marry was taking place.

I decided to toss the poor guy a bone. Probably not the same bone he wanted to toss me, judging from the decision that had finally happened in his head, and that had now worked its way into his eyes and settled on his mouth. He was smirking. Definitely smirking. My underwear was a wall he wanted to blast through. My continent was something he intended to conquer. He wanted to go Alexander the Great on my ass.

“Fire!” I shrieked.

He cocked his head. “What?”

I waved my hand at his phone. “It’s an emergency, whatever it is. Hurry. You know where to find me when you’re done.”

He shook his head and wandered back the way he’d come, bewildered. A moment later I heard the roar of his wheels spinning dust and stones.

With Melas out of the way I went on an intelligence hunt. The Crooked Noses didn’t have anything for me in their archives. I could have started a new topic but what if someone in the Family was keeping tabs? An inquiry about this Eagle, on today of all days, might backfire.

There was no other choice: I had to take my investigation to the streets of Greece. They weren’t particularly mean, but they were throwing up sheets of skin-melting heat.