When the Devil's Idle (25 page)

Patronas smiled
to himself, recognizing the look on his friend’s face. It was what
Papa Michalis called his ‘panoptic, all-seeing eye,’ a term he’d
gotten from a book by the Chios author, Michael Plakotaris, who was
an expert on Sherlock Holmes. The so-called ‘eye’ came upon the
priest whenever he and Patronas worked together, a sign not so much
of schizophrenia as of enthusiasm. But the people in the grape
arbor didn’t know this. They just thought he was crazy.

The windows were
open and the old man’s hair was sticking straight up, his long gray
beard ruffling around his neck like a scarf.

The Bay of Campos
was the largest on the island. A gentle breeze was blowing and
kymatakia
—little waves—made a soft, lapping sound along the
shore, pleasant to the ear. Far out in the bay, windsurfers were
flying through the air like human dragonflies.

Patronas wondered
what had happened to the boys he’d seen windsurfing in Campos on
his honeymoon, the ones he and Dimitra had spoken of. “Do you think
our sons will look like them?” he’d asked her. “Better,” she’d
replied with that stolid, unflinching certainty of hers.

“
You
ever go swimming?” he asked the priest, his eyes still on the
boys.

“
Not
anymore. I had to give it up when I took my vows. Anyway, I am old
now, all knobbly and wretched. Fish would flee if they saw me, take
to dry land.”

After parking the
car, they walked along a dusty road, checking the numbers of the
buildings, trying to find the rooming house where Maria Georgiou
had stayed. Rented mopeds and cars were parked in the sand, and
people were lying in the shade of the feathery trees that lined the
beach.

A more formal
operation was set up farther down, directed by two young men
sitting under a faded yellow parachute. It offered rented chaises
and umbrellas, kayaks and canoes and waterskiing
lessons.

Shielding his
eyes, Patronas looked out at the bay with longing. The sea was
absolutely clear in the shallows, darkening where the land dropped
away and the water deepened. In the distance, he could see rocks on
the floor of the ocean, clumps of seaweed undulating in the
current.

The rooming house
they sought was about fifty meters beyond the parachute, situated
on an arid strip of land. A wooden sidewalk was laid across the
sand leading up to it.

The owner,
Antonis Pavlos, remembered Maria Georgiou well and spoke highly of
her. “Sure, she stayed here,” he told Patronas. “I was glad to have
her. I get tired of speaking English day in and day out: ‘Please,
breakfast over at ten, after, no. Towels not for beach.’ It grates
on me. And she was a nice lady. Kept to herself and never asked a
thing. She stayed on the first floor here.”

“
Can
you show me the room she rented?”

“
A
couple of kids are in there now, but seeing as how you’re the
police ….” He shrugged. “Come on, it’s this way.”

Initially, he
hadn’t known what to make of the two of them—a priest and a
detective showing up at his rooming house—but he’d made a fast
recovery.

Patronas had
noticed the man’s discomfort. Doing something illegal on the side,
Mr. Pavlos was. A fiddle with his taxes, maybe.

He didn’t care.
He was here to investigate a homicide. Unpaid taxes were no concern
of his.

Pavlos unlocked
the door and pushed it open. Sparsely furnished, the room was very
clean and faced an impromptu parking lot on the sand. Two twin beds
and a chest of drawers filled the space.The walls were decorated
with tired botanical prints, the floor by a strip of old carpeting.
The bathroom was down the hall, Pavlos informed them.

A suitcase was
open on the floor, and Patronas stepped around it and opened the
door of the terrace. Made of poured concrete, it held a folding
rack for laundry, exactly as Maria Georgiou had described. A line
of cars were parked very close to the terrace, again in keeping
with what she’d said. There was a taverna on the other side of the
lot and he could hear voices from where he was standing, the
clatter of dishes. Perhaps the victim had been on his way to eat
there with his family when she’d spotted him.

“
Would
you mind walking outside and standing next to that car there?” he
asked the owner. “I need to check something. Once you’re there,
start talking in a normal tone of voice.” He wanted someone besides
the priest to do this, an independent observer.

“
People will think I’m crazy,” Pavlos complained.

“
It
will only take a minute. Trust me, it’s important.”

Disgruntled,
Pavlos headed out the door and soon reappeared outside. He walked
over to the car Patronas had picked out and started muttering to
himself. Standing in the door of the terrace, Patronas could see
and hear him clearly, every word as clear as a bell.

“
Malaka
,” the owner was saying. Jerk.
“
Paliogaidouri
.” Old donkey. In case Patronas hadn’t
realized the invective was directed at him, he opened his hand and
raised it, giving the
mountzose
,
in other words, ‘eat
shit,’ the universal Greek symbol of contempt, the equivalent of
‘fuck you.’ He and Pavlos laughed.

When Pavlos came
back inside, Patronas quizzed him about the job offer that had led
Maria Georgiou to the house in Chora. “Did she hear you talking
about it and volunteer? Or did you come up with the idea
yourself?”

They were
standing in the lobby, talking, and Patronas had his notebook
out.

“
It
was my idea,” the owner of the rooming house said. “She liked it
here and said she wished she could to stay on longer, but that she
couldn’t afford it. We often talked about it. What’s this about
anyway?”

“
We’re
investigating a murder.”

“
That
German in Chora?”

Patronas
nodded.

“
Maria
had nothing to do with it
.
Leave her alone. She’s over
seventy years old.”

“
So
was the victim.”

“
Bah.
This isn’t his country. He should have stayed in
Berlin.”

“
Stuttgart,” the priest interjected. “The victim, Walter
Bechtel or Bech, depending on what time frame you are referring to,
was from Stuttgart. The family called themselves one thing during
the war and changed their name afterward.”

“
Who
cares?” The owner snorted. “Fucking Germans.”

Patronas fought
to regain control of the interview. “Who told you about the
job?”

“
A man
who rents a room from me mentioned it. He asked me to find someone
as a favor to him. Hans Müller, his name is. He’s a German, too.”
Pavlos snorted again.

Patronas wrote
the name down in his notebook. “Where can I find him?”

“
He
usually eats lunch across the street. He’s a sociable fellow, Herr
Müller. Likes to talk. If you find him, he’ll tell you what you
want to know.”

The three of them
walked across the street to the taverna. A group of Germans were
sitting on the patio, their table covered with the remnants of a
meal.

“
Him.”
Pavlos pointed to a fair-haired man with a sunburned face. “That’s
Müller.”

Dressed for the
beach, he was wearing a swimsuit with seagulls on it, an unbuttoned
shirt and heavy leather sandals. As Müller spoke neither Greek nor
English, they had to rely on a waiter to translate, a tattooed
native of Patmos named Babis.

Patronas was
uncomfortable using him, but had no time to file a formal request
and wait for an official translator to arrive from Athens. “Just
tell us what he says,” he instructed the waiter. “Nothing fancy.
Keep it simple.”

Müller had been
coming to Patmos for years and knew the owners of the house, the
Bauers, the waiter reported. They asked him to find a woman to
clean and do laundry at their house in Chora, cook an occasional
meal. They had specifically requested that this woman be Greek.
They’d been very emphatic on this point, not wanting to trouble
themselves with immigrants and their attendance problems. They’d
hired one in the past, nationality unknown, and she hadn’t been
reliable. She’d left without giving notice, taking a trash bag full
of things that didn’t belong to her.

“
Not
the family silver, but just about everything else.” The waiter
snickered as he shared this. “
Hazocharoumeni
,” he said under
his breath. Happy idiots.

The Bauers spoke
some Greek and thought it would be better if they were seen to
support the natives—given the current political climate in
Greece.

Hans Müller
smiled nervously, watching them as the waiter translated what he’d
just said. “Also, a Greek would have papers, so there’d be no
problem with the authorities.”

“
Did
you meet her?” Patronas asked. “Meet Maria Georgiou?”

“
She
seemed old for the job,” the man admitted, “but she assured me she
could do the work. Anyway, it was only for a month; summer was
nearly over.”

He gave them his
address and phone number in Germany and his local contact
information in Greece. He said his passport was back in his room,
that he never risked taking it to the beach, but that he’d get it
for them if they needed it.

Patronas waved
him off. He’d check him out when he got back to the station house,
but he was certain Müller was who he said he was. He’d played only
a walk-on part in the drama of the Bechtels and Maria Georgiou and
had no reason to lie.

“
How
do you know the Bauers?” Patronas asked him.

“
I got
to know them here in Campos. He and I took windsurfing lessons one
summer.” He shrugged. “I see them when they’re here—not in Germany,
never in Germany.” There was anger in his voice, a sense of
grievance. “I’m a plumber,” he said by way of
explanation.

They are rich,
Müller was saying, and own a summer house while I rent a room. They
might ask me to find them a maid or to fix a leaky faucet, but that
is the extent of our relationship. They’d never invite me to their
home back in Stuttgart or introduce me to any of their
friends.

Patronas thanked
Müller for his help; then he and the priest walked back to the
rooming house with the owner. “She ever make any phone calls?” he
asked Pavlos.

“
Who?
Maria? No, she never called anybody. I don’t even think she had a
phone. That’s one of the reasons I tried to help her. She seemed so
alone.”

Patronas and the
priest had lunch at another taverna on the beach, not wanting
Müller to think they were stalking him. This place, too, was full
of tourists, and they watched them without comment. Few Greeks were
in evidence. The majority hailed from northern Europe.

“
We’re
losing our country,” Patronas said morosely.

“
We’re
resilient.” Papa Michalis had put on his reading glasses and was
studying the menu as if it were one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. “We’ll
survive.”

“
Will
we? Look around.” Patronas made a broad gesture. “Do you hear
anybody speaking Greek? We could be anywhere, Father—London,
Heidelberg, Atlantic City. Nothing here is ours.”

Even their waiter
was foreign, a slight adolescent from India or
Bangladesh.

They ate at a
table in the corner, fish again, which Patronas, of course, paid
for. His walk on the sand had given Papa Michalis an appetite, and
he ate and ate, the pile of bones on his plate growing apace while
the one on Patronas’ dish remained relatively small.

A whale inhaling
plankton didn’t come close. The Greek expression, ‘
ilektriko
piorouni
’ was better, electric fork, although in Papa Michalis’
case, the fork might well be jet propelled.

“
This
murder doesn’t add up,” Patronas said.

Papa Michalis had
pulled the head off the fish and appeared to be licking it. “You
need to look elsewhere for your murderer.”

“
You
just say that because her father was a priest. Priests get into
trouble. Look at that mess they made in America.”

“
Those
men were Catholics.” Papa Michalis paused. “Priests might be
sinners, Yiannis, I’ll grant you that, but as a general rule, they
don’t kill people. Well, at least not since the Inquisition.
Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, might have condemned thousands of
so-called heretics to death, but he only signed the orders; he
didn’t do the actual killing. Do you know they wore special
garments, the condemned, called
sanbenito
, which depicted
the fires of hell, and that religious authorities hung them up on
the rafters of the churches after they were executed?”

“
Why?”

“
As
lesson to the others, I suppose. Who knows? The church has done
many puzzling things over the years. Endorsing the Fourth Crusade,
for example, was a mistake, and that business with Galileo and the
sun …. Well, you know how
that
turned out. Far worse
was affixing the blame for the death of Christ on the Jews. The
suffering caused by that is unimaginable, and no amount of
apologizing by the Vatican will ever make it right.”