“Pepe knew of Despotiko?”
“Please. Who doesn’t? Anyway, I told him, if he didn’t believe me to ask Despotiko’s wife for a recommendation from her husband. He did, and what happened after had nothing to do with me.”
“Are you saying Mrs. Despotiko told Pepe that her husband recommended the Colonel?”
“No. A few days later Mrs. Despotiko was in the club and asked my son to tell me that Despotiko had recommended Pepe use the Colonel, just as I said he would. So, I passed the message on to Pepe.”
“I assume he now trusted you to be telling him the truth?”
Karavakis seemed about to bristle, but didn’t. “I guess so.” He leaned forward in his chair. “To repeat, I had absolutely nothing to do with anything that went down after that.”
“Do you have any idea of anyone who might have been involved in the Colonel’s death?”
“Not a clue.”
Yianni stood up and extended his hand across the desk toward Karavakis. “Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Karavakis.”
Karavakis reached out to shake Yianni’s hand but did not get up from his chair. “Glad to be of assistance.”
Yianni turned toward the door.
“Detective.”
Yianni looked back over his shoulder. “Yes?”
“Be careful around Despotiko’s wife. She’s a real tiger, and whether or not she shows you her claws…” he paused, as if considering whether to go on, “…while showing you everything else, those claws are always there and at the ready.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
He left the office, and pressed through the dancing throng toward the parking-lot exit, wondering how much of their conversation Karavakis had recorded. After all, performances like that were meant to be preserved.
“You didn’t believe him?” said Andreas, tapping away on his desktop with a pencil in his right hand while holding his phone to his ear with his left.
Yianni sat in the police cruiser, engine and air conditioner running, at the far end of The Beach Club’s parking lot. “Let’s just say he was cagey. He tried to get me to bite on whether I’d interviewed Mrs. Despotiko.”
“How would he know?”
“She or your buddy Telly could have told him.”
“He might have assumed that since you were interviewing him you’d be interviewing her.”
“Or some combination thereof. He’s so used to lying to police, it’s second nature to him not to cooperate. My guess is he wanted to tell us only what he thought we already knew.”
Funny how cops and crooks so often think the same way, thought Andreas.
“So, where do I go from here, Chief?”
Andreas stared out the window at his building’s reflection in the windows of the neighboring building. “Not sure, but tomorrow’s Friday, and with any luck I’ll make it to Mykonos with Lila and the kids on the afternoon ferry.”
“Does that mean I’m on my own until then?”
Andreas smiled. “Try not to get into trouble.”
“I’ll remember that if I happen to run into any.”
“You’re not so bad at the cagey routine yourself.”
“On that note, I think I’ll say goodbye.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Bye.”
Andreas hung up the phone, but kept tapping away on the desktop with his pencil.
It was never the big things that tripped up a perp; the little details tended to be their undoing. Trouble was, they were often so small that even cops missed them. Like now.
Instead of backtracking the way he’d come to the beach, Yianni took a narrow, roughly paved road twisting up through the rural heart of the island. He planned to make his way to Lila’s family’s home through the farming community of Ano Mera, the island’s only other town, five miles due east of the far-better-known harbor town that bore the island’s name.
With roots tracing back to 4500 BCE, Ano Mera had a proud history, but like so many other island places, the tourist boom had decidedly changed the agrarian world of its residents. Though the road still offered breathtaking switchback views of deep-green farmland edged in hillsides strewn with massive gray-beige boulders, rapidly encroaching patches of new construction had infected the scene.
At the crest of a hill, the road narrowed to wind between old homes and businesses massed at the outskirts of the old town. A bit farther along, it passed by the village square to meet up with the main highway connecting Ano Mera and Mykonos town.
From there, it took Yianni fifteen minutes to drive to Lila’s, most of it over one-time donkey trails with a hill on one side and a cliff on the other. As his police cruiser rocked and rolled along the washboard road, he wondered if Lila’s family purposely kept it that way to discourage the curious from impinging on their privacy. Whether intentional or not, it must have worked, because he’d yet to see another soul on the road. As he reached the top of a particularly steep stretch of road, a panoramic view of a virtually unspoiled part of the island’s north-central coast spread out before him. Below, at the very tip of a peninsula, sat his destination, a natural stone and stucco compound of gardens and broad terraces nestled up against the sea, with not a neighbor to be seen.
He wondered how long that would last.
Yianni stopped the cruiser, rolled down the windows, turned off the engine, and sat listening to the sound of the wind off the sea whipping up scents of wild rosemary and thyme over and around ancient stone walls lumbering up and across the rocky hillsides. This was a rare and peaceful moment, in a rare and peaceful place far removed from the craziness of the club he’d just left—and the life he led as a cop. He wondered if Andreas had similar thoughts when he came here. He must. How could he not?
Yianni started the engine. Enough daydreaming. Time to get back to reality. At least his reality.
Chapter Six
A maid showed Yianni to a guest room twice the size of his bedroom at home. It faced due east, overlooking a mat of pink and green oleander running down to the sea. He liked it here. But this was Mykonos, and with Andreas arriving tomorrow, this might be his last free night to enjoy the town. He took a quick nap, showered, shaved, changed, and left, hoping to catch the sunset at the bay in Little Venice, where six centuries-old windmills symbolized Mykonos itself.
He stopped by the police station to drop off the cruiser and asked a sergeant if he could borrow a motorcycle, a far more practical way to get around in traffic—and a much less intimidating way to offer a ride home to a newfound friend than in a police car. The sergeant handed him the keys to an impounded BMW motorbike, saying that its owner was locked up on Syros on drug charges and wasn’t expected to need it any time soon.
Yianni turned right from the station onto the road connecting the airport to town. In five minutes, he’d weaved his way down through heavily backed-up traffic at its rotary with the new road, to a dead stop at its jammed intersection with the old road just before the bus station. In high season, and with a cop nowhere to be found, this was the most hectic intersection on the island, if not in all the Cyclades, but to get to the windmills’ parking area you had to pass through the congestion.
Yianni abandoned his plan for parking by the windmills and squeezed his motorcycle into a sharp left turn, heading downhill toward the sandy cove of Megali Ammos. Eighty meters beyond the intersection, he turned right at a narrow lane and stopped by a large green trash container. He smiled. At least one thing hadn’t changed in the years he’d been away. The secret parking space he’d discovered as a rookie cop still existed. He carefully worked the motorcycle up onto a rock ledge concealed between the container and a stucco wall separating the lane from the back of a hotel.
He stood for a moment to take in the view of Megali Ammos. He held many fond memories of that waning crescent moon beach, with its bamboo-capped, white stone shack
of a taverna wedged onto the beach at its near end. He wondered if it was still as he remembered. For sure its view of the sea and sunset hadn’t changed, each evening offering the romantically inclined shimmering combinations of gun-metal blue, silver, and gold against a backdrop of vermilion skies and shadowy, distant islands.
But he wasn’t in the mood to be sitting alone watching a sunset. He wanted to be in the middle of the action. By now, every bar and taverna with a seaward view to the west would be packed with tourists. So, that’s where he’d go, west along the one-time donkey path where he’d parked, toward the windmills and Little Venice. The path ran beside a ten-meter drop down to a rocky ribbon of sand bordering the sea. On the other side of the path sat the rear walls of a line of older hotels built back in the day when shielding guests from the fierce winds regularly whipping in off the sea seemed more important than offering a sea-view entrance.
The path meandered in the direction of a tiny, red-roofed white church atop a craggy promontory and a ridgeline dotted with windmills. He’d have no glimpse of the setting sun until he reached the church, but he still had plenty of time to make it there.
With practically everyone else already in place for the sunset, he had the path to himself, except for someone walking in the same direction a hundred meters ahead. From behind, he couldn’t make out if the person was male or female, but whoever it was wore short blond hair, a white tee-shirt, and jeans.
Yianni smiled at the welcome moment of serenity before the coming night’s likely disorienting madness. He heard only himself and the sound of water lapping up against the shore below.
That’s when he heard the scream—a quick, muffled one, but undoubtedly a scream—coming from below.
He saw the person ahead of him run to the edge of the cliff and look down. Yianni did the same, expecting to see someone struggling against the sea. He saw no one in the water, but off to his right, on a bit of beach up by the entrance to a tiny cove near the church, he saw a man standing with his back to the sea.
“Hey, who’s screaming?” he heard a woman shout in English. It was the stranger up ahead.
The man ignored her.
“Malaka,” she yelled louder. “Who’s screaming?” she yelled in Greek.
The man below darted a quick look up at her and then looked back into the cove. He said nothing.
The woman ran farther ahead to a place where she could see down into the cove. Yianni broke into a run to catch up with her.
“Get the fuck away from her, asshole!” the woman yelled in Greek, and then again in English.
Yianni ran faster. As he did, the woman began picking up rocks and whipping them over the ledge at the man down by the entrance to the cove. By the time Yianni reached the woman, her rock-tossing had sent the man running off along the shore away from the church.
Yianni looked over the edge into the cove. A second man wrestled with a woman on a beach towel, one hand gripped over her month, the other tearing at what remained of her bikini.
The quickest way down was to jump, but that would break a leg for sure. And he couldn’t dare risk using his gun and hitting the victim. So, he yelled. “Stop! Police!”
The man looked up as the woman standing next to Yianni launched another rock, scoring a perfect bull’s-eye on the attacker’s forehead. His hands fell free of his victim, who screamed as she rolled away, jumped to her feet, and ran along the beach toward a set of rough-hewn stone steps leading up to the church.
The attacker didn’t move. Yianni thought the rock might have killed him. Self-defense was a tricky subject in Greece. Especially in defense of a stranger. Even more so when you’re a foreigner. He did not like the way this was shaping up. He’d have to arrest the Good Samaritan on a murder charge for doing the right thing. He needed to catch up with that victim to corroborate the rock-thrower’s story.
But as Yianni was about to give chase, the attacker clawed to his feet. He fixed his eyes on the woman who’d thrown the rock. From his glare, Yianni didn’t have to wonder what he had in mind for her. She responded with a new barrage of rocks aimed at the man’s head. He ducked and ran away in the same direction as his accomplice.
“Lady, don’t move from here. I’ll be right back.” Yianni raced off running parallel to the fleeing attacker. He knew where the man was headed. The only path up from the shoreline lay near where Yianni had parked his motorcycle. If the attacker made it there, he’d hit the main road and disappear into the crowds.
Yianni caught up with the man just as he staggered up onto the path from the shore.
“Stop right there,” said Yianni.
The man froze, blood running down his face from a gash on his forehead. His eyes darted up the path toward the main road. He stood a bit taller and younger than Yianni, but lanky.
“Don’t even think about it,” said Yianni.
The man pulled a switchblade out of his pocket.
Yianni pulled a compact nine-millimeter pistol from a holster hidden inside the front of his pants. “You’ve got a knife, I’ve got a gun. You lose, asshole. Drop it or die. Five-four-three—”
The attacker dropped his knife.
“A wise decision.” Yianni told him to turn around and stepped forward to handcuff him.
The man started to turn away, then suddenly whipped his arm around, aiming to strike Yianni in the throat with the flat of his hand.
Yianni blocked the attacker’s move with his free hand, and with his gun hand cracked the pistol alongside the man’s jaw, sending him sprawling back down the hill toward the water.
“Now, that was a dumb decision.” Yianni edged down to where the man lay, yanked him over onto his belly, and pinned his arms behind him to cuff him.
“So, you really are a cop.”
Yianni looked up to see the woman standing on the path.
“I thought I told you to stay where you were?” He jerked his head in the direction of the cove.
“You did.”
“But you didn’t listen.”
“Right again.”
The assailant cuffed, Yianni stood and looked at her. “I get it. You’re the aggressive type.”
“Type of what?”
“Rock-thrower.” Yianni yanked the man to his feet and pushed him up the hillside.
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“I’m not saying you did anything wrong, but it’s lucky for you I’m a cop. The law doesn’t take kindly to what you did.”
“To a pig like that? What about what he tried doing to the woman in the cove?”
“Agreed, but first we’ve got to find the victim. Without her, the most I can charge him with is assaulting a police officer.”
“But we both saw what he was doing to her.”
“Yes, and he’ll say she was a tourist girl, willingly cooperating until some madwoman began tossing rocks and chased her off.”
The woman stared at him. “You’re serious.”
“Just being realistic.”
As the man stepped back up onto the path, Yianni pressed him into a sitting position on the ground. “Then again, a dirtbag like this has probably attacked other women, so there’s a chance one of them is still on the island and could identify him as her attacker.”
“Do you really think so?”
Yianni shrugged. “Who’s to say? Most want to escape the memory and flee the island as quickly as they can, rather than endure the rigors and embarrassment of trying to prosecute a rape charge on a notorious party island.”
“What if I find the woman from the cove?” she asked.
“And convince her to do what?”
“Press charges, or at least talk about how she feels.”
“Don’t let me discourage you, but my guess is you’re the last person on earth she wants appearing on her doorstep. You’ll remind her of what she’s trying to forge
t.”
“But she’s had her Aegean vacation turn to horror. She’s probably blaming herself for coming here alone, not the predatory bastards who attacked her. The experience could haunt her for the rest of her days.”
Yianni wondered if she were speaking from experience.
“I agree. If you find her, hopefully she’ll testify.” Yianni yanked the attacker to his feet. “Time to get you into the welcoming arms of Mykonos’ finest.”
The woman stepped toward the man. He swung around to face her, his arms cuffed behind him, a sneer on his face.
She glared at him. “You think this is all fun and games?”
The man snickered and spat at the ground in front of her. The woman smiled, stepped forward with her left foot and let loose a World Cup-class soccer kick to the man’s balls with her right.
Yianni grabbed the woman by her arm and pulled her away from the man, who was now writhing on the ground and screaming.
“That will be enough of that. Now sit down over there on that wall, or I’ll have to arrest you too.”
He called for backup and spent most of the ensuing fifteen minutes listening to the woman heap abuse on the attacker’s every part, including the size of his manhood. One of the two cops who arrived immediately recognized the woman. He called her Toni. She gave her nationality as American, her place of residence as a hotel near where Yianni had parked his motorcycle, and her reason for being where she was that she was on her way to her job at a piano bar in Little Venice.
Yianni confirmed the details of Toni’s statement, leaving out the part about the brief encounter between her right foot and the perp’s balls and her fifteen-minute berating of the man.
By the time the cops finished taking statements and carted off the would-be rapist, the sun had long since set.
The Mykonos Mob Page 7
