The Mykonos Mob

by Jeffrey Siger

  “That was nice,” she said.

  “Very nice.”

  “I’m glad we did it.”

  “Me too.”

  “I don’t think either of us could stand holding off much longer.”

  “Obviously,” he said, kissing her neck.

  “Isn’t it nice being adults?”

  Yianni laughed. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Of course you did. You thoughtfully had a condom.”

  “I always carry one.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Toni smiled.

  Yianni raised up off her chest to look in her eyes. “Why do I have this feeling you’re not like any other woman I’ve dated?”

  “Or screwed.” Toni patted him on the butt. “This one’s got to get back to town and prepare for work.”

  “What? We’ve only just begun.”

  “Just how many condoms do you have?”

  Yianni smiled. “Enough.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Toni made it to work without a nap but only after a long, hot shower. As she walked into her familiar bar space, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way.

  Content was the word. Yes, she felt content.

  Yianni struck her as a really nice guy. He’d wanted to stay with her when he dropped her off at the hotel, but she insisted he return home. It would be tough enough finding a way to survive at her piano until three, and impossible if she spent the intervening time with Yianni in bed.

  She had no idea where this was headed, and though she knew it was way too early to contemplate more than a physical relationship, broader thoughts kept creeping into her mind. She wondered whether some universal, innate feminine instinct triggered “is-he-the-one?” thoughts about every man a woman slept with.

  She tried putting those thoughts out of her mind, because reading a piano-bar crowd required a skill akin to gaining your balance on a surfboard...while playing a piano. Tonight, it took longer than usual for her to find her footing, what with random thoughts of her afternoon with Yianni popping up in her head, but she finally caught her second wind, and the room responded by steadily filling her tip jar.

  “Hey, Toni, play us some Barry Manilow,” shouted a guy at the bar.

  Her fingers cringed. It would kill the room’s party-hardy mood. “Barry Manilow? I don’t do Barry Manilow.”

  “Of course you do,” said another.

  “Not on Thursday nights,” she said.

  “It’s Monday.”

  “Close enough.” She smiled.

  The guy stumbled off his stool headed straight for her. He had the dark black curly hair, deep blue eyes, broad practiced smile, and athletic figure that would set many a woman’s heart instantly aflutter. And many a man’s, too, she suspected.

  “I’d like to buy you a drink.”

  “That’s very kind, thank you.”

  “Not here, back at my hotel.” He named the favorite hotel of big-spenders looking to impress one another with their pricey couture clothes and jewelry.

  He was hitting on her more directly than most. That sometimes came with the territory of working in a bar. But in light of her recent pondering over female instincts, she wondered if there might also be a male instinct that sensed when a woman had just been laid.

  “No, thank you. I find I do my best work in a goat herder’s hut.”

  As soon as her last set was over, Toni put her stuff away and headed out the door, aimed straight home to bed.

  At three in the morning you’d think that would be easy to accomplish. But the island’s party scene was only gaining momentum. It didn’t matter which way she walked, the crowds were the same, and so with little wind tonight, she took the route next to the seawall.

  She made it to where the walkway narrowed down to single-file passage between the sea on one side and café tables on the other. As she waited patiently for her turn to pass through the pinch point, she realized she was standing next to Karavakis’ son. He and another local of about his age sat at one of the café tables, commenting in Greek on everyone passing by.

  She’d never actually met Karavakis’ son. Yes, she’d heard a lot of bad things about him from a lot of people, but she’d never had the chance to sit down and talk with him. Or even listen to him.

  A young woman at the table next to his jumped up and squeezed past Toni, immediately followed by the guy who’d been sitting with her, calling out in English for her to wait for him. Toni took the unexpected drama as a sign from the Fates, and grabbed the empty chair closest to young Karavakis.

  A waiter yelled to her in Greek, “What do you want?”

  That caught the son’s attention. He turned to see who’d gained the waiter’s interest.

  Toni said in English, “Please speak English, I don’t speak Greek.”

  “What do you want?”

  She ordered a beer, taking great care to mispronounce its Greek name.

  The son shook his head and sneered, “Xenos,” to the waiter, dissing the foreigner, then continued his conversation with his tablemate.

  The subject of their conversation, Toni quickly learned, was neither interesting nor unexpected. It focused on the female bodies passing by...more specifically, on one part.

  He pointed at a woman passing by in skin-tight gold lamé shorts and matching halter top and commented on the tightness of her ass. “You ever notice how tight a girl’s butt cheek gets when she steps with the opposite foot?” He squeezed one hand tightly closed, then sprung it open. “Then it releases. I love that moment.”

  “I think the same thing happens to a man’s ass,” his companion said.

  The son leaned across the table. “I’m not interested in a man’s ass.”

  “I didn’t say that you were. Just pointing out a fact.”

  “All I want to know from you is how to make more money from the business. If you can tell me that, then I’ll be interested in your facts.”

  “I thought things were working pretty good.”

  “Not good enough. If we want to grow, we’ve got to be bold, think big, modernize.”

  “Like what?”

  He held up his phone. “I want you to make us an app.”

  “What kind of app?”

  “One that draws in the customers.”

  “That sounds risky. Might make it too easy to trace you.”

  “You think collecting face-to-face from johns and janes is any safer?”

  His associate had no response.

  “Let me show you what a competitor out of Athens is running right here on our island. They actually have the balls to call it consumer-friendly.” He tinkered with his phone. “Once you download the app, you take a selfie and send it off to the site.” He held up his phone and snapped his friend’s picture. “That way the woman knows who you are. Then you describe the body type and whatever else you’re looking for, and the site sends you photos of women in your area who meet your specs. You pick the one you want, and she shows up.” He fiddled with the keys on his phone.

  “Bullshit. I don’t believe it.”

  Junior smiled as he worked his phone. “Just wait. Like every other Athenian business, they realize the only real money to be made during tourist season is on Mykonos.”

  “It’s too crazy to be true.”

  “Which is precisely the sort of thinking that keeps us operating in the Stone Age.”

  Just then, the waiter showed up with Toni’s beer. The bill was three times what it should be for a local. As Toni fumbled through her tip money, two breathtaking blondes—at least breathtaking at close to three-thirty in the morning—stopped in front of the son’s table.

  “We understand you boys want to party.”

  The son gave his colleague a wink. “Welcome to the future, my friend. Hassle-free hooker service.”


  Toni handed her money to the waiter, stood, motioned for the two women to take her table, and walked away with her beer. She’d heard enough. No reason to worry about misjudging the lad. He’d most definitely earned the “like-father-like-son” title of Boy-pimp.

  Andreas and Yianni spent much of their morning studying the hospital’s videos and the local police’s slim file on the now-dead motorcyclist. The videos showed a confident young woman dressed as a nurse entering the hospital through its main entrance, going directly to the staircase leading to the victim’s floor, entering his room, injecting his IV, and leaving the same way she’d come; all as if this were something she did every day.

  They stared at a paused close-up of the killer’s face.

  “Not a hint of anxiety,” said Yianni.

  “She could be on drugs.” Andreas leaned in closer to the image. “I think she’s wearing a dark, short hair wig to cover up much lighter, longer hair.”

  “That could be face putty here and here to disguise her features.” Yianni pointed at her cheekbones and nose.

  “It’ll be a guaranteed zero on fingerprints from the IV.” Andreas turned off the video. “In keeping with hospital procedures, she wore hospital-issue gloves in the room. She probably wore them coming into the hospital, too.”

  Andreas picked up the file. “Not much more in here on the victim than we already knew. A twenty-five-year-old Bulgarian immigrant, received residency permission to work on Mykonos, despite a checkered criminal background. No record of criminal activity since coming to the island two years ago.”

  “Extraordinary, isn’t it,” said Yianni, “how when authorities in their wisdom grant an immigrant with his sort of background the chance to work as muscle for a truly bad guy, he undergoes a miraculous transformation and no longer does bad things.”

  “Someone’s been protecting his arrest record from expanding, because for sure we’re not the first ones on the island to experience his kick-the-bike routine.”

  Yianni smiled. “But we are his last.”

  Andreas stared at Yianni. “You sound like Tassos. The guy’s dead. At least try to show some respect.”

  “You mean like the respect he’d have shown to us at our funerals? Or do you mean like the respect whoever ordered him to kill us would have shown Lila and the kids with a huge bouquet of flowers?”

  Andreas kept up his stare. “Like I said, you sound like Tassos. Which reminds me, I ought to check in later with Maggie to see what sort of luck she’s having with the other hospital video footage.”

  “What do you expect her to find?”

  “No idea, but if anyone can find something, it’s Maggie.” Andreas slapped his thighs and stood up. “Let’s get going. It’s time to head off to Ano Mera and our visit with Mr. Pepe.”

  Yianni and Andreas sat on the outdoor terrace of a virtually empty one-story taverna facing Ano Mera’s architectural highlight, the fortress-like monastery of Tourliani. The taverna sat amid a slew of other one-story buildings, mostly tavernas, surrounding the flagstone town square.

  “So, where’s our guest of honor?” said Yianni, looking at his phone.

  “Give him time, he’s only twenty minutes late.”

  “It shows no respect. Do you think he’d be late for a meeting with Karavakis?”

  Andreas gave him a long look. “What the hell has you so ornery?”

  “I’m not ornery,” said Yianni.

  “Yeah, sure. Considering your mood, I’ll play bad cop with Pepe.”

  “Okay, it’s Toni. I don’t know what to make of her. I know she likes me. At least I think she does, but she doesn’t want to be with me as much as I want to be with her.”

  Andreas shook his head. “My friend, you sound smitten.”

  “Bitten?”

  “Either word works. It’s none of my business, but I think you ought to step back, give her room to figure out her own way into a relationship.”

  “Relationship? Who said anything about a relationship?”

  Andreas smiled. “Frightened as you may be by the word, I’d say that’s where you’re headed.”

  Yianni pressed his lips together. “She’s not like any other woman I’ve ever known.”

  “That can be good.” Andreas paused. “It can also be a dangerous novelty. One kind wears well, one kind wears off.”

  Yianni stared at Andreas. “Since when did you become a relationship counselor?”

  “Since the day I got married.” He nodded across the square. “Looks like there’s our guy.”

  A pudgy man in a blue-and-white-checked shirt stood at the entrance to the square from the parking area.

  “He seems to be looking around for where he’s supposed to be,” said Yianni.

  “I thought he picked this place,” said Andreas.

  “He did,” said Yianni.

  They left Pepe to find them on his own.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Pepe finally, giving them his finest restaurateur smile.

  Yianni stood, shook hands, and introduced Pepe to Andreas. Andreas did not stand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” smiled Pepe, extending his hand as he sat in a chair directly across from Andreas, facing into the taverna.

  “You’re late,” said Andreas.

  “Sorry.”

  “Half an hour late.”

  Pepe’s smile faded as he withdrew his hand. “You dragged me all the way here from the mainland. You should be happy I came at all.”

  Andreas leaned in. “Be happy I’m not poring over every millimeter of every place you have an interest in, to see how dirty you really are. Because once I do, I can assure you that your businesses will be shut down tighter than a gnat’s ass. As for your new place on this island,” he waved his hand in the air, “never happen.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Andreas smiled. “Many have tried, but even your buddy who told you to pick this spot to meet with us knows better than to try that. It’s why he uses expendable numb-nuts like you to do his dirty work and take his falls.” Andreas leaned in across the table. “Let me put it to you this way. Either follow us out of here, or lawyer up for what I’m sure you and your partners will find to be years of joyful investigations, plus inevitable long-term accommodations provided by the state, all coming to you and them courtesy of you.”

  Andreas stood, motioned for Yianni to do the same, tossed ten euros on the table and walked away, turning only long enough to toss a kiss at a waiter standing in the doorway between the terrace and the building—and wearing an earpiece.

  As they walked across the square toward the parking lot, Yianni said, “Tighter than a gnat’s ass. What the hell does that mean?”

  “Gamoto. It’s the only thing I could come up with at the moment. Is he following us?”

  Yianni glanced back. “Yep.”

  “Then at least he knows what I meant.”

  Back in the parking lot, Andreas told Pepe to leave his car and ride with them. Yianni drove with Pepe next to him, Andreas in the backseat.

  “Head to Fokos,” said Andreas. “Ever been there, Pepe?”

  “N-no.”

  “Relax, you’ll enjoy it. It’s a trip back to old Mykonos, or at least to what’s left of its spirit.”

  They turned left out of the parking lot onto the main road, and took an immediate right at a tiny square. A paved road soon narrowed down to barely a lane and a half as it wove between borders of old and new stone walls. Beyond the walls, beige-brown fields and pastures ran off toward hills of different shades of brown, all heavily peppered in new construction threatening to overrun the tiny white churches and classic farm buildings of another era.

  After about a mile, the road widened to two lanes and turned to dirt. It ran north alongside a mile-long rainwater reservoir nestled between pristine desert hillsides veined in old stone wall
s and speckled with wild rosemary, savory, thyme, and goats.

  “The reservoir looks pretty low,” said Yianni.

  “The one in Marathi’s even lower,” said Andreas. “It’s a brewing catastrophe, brought on by years of drought, phenomenal growth, and woefully inadequate desalinization facilities.”

  Yianni glanced over at Pepe. “I guess he’s saying, ‘Pray for rain.’”

  Pepe sat looking out the window, saying nothing.

  “Isn’t the natural beauty of this island extraordinary?” said Andreas.

  Pepe still said nothing.

  The road alternated between broad arcs to the left and right, before a sharp swing to the left brought the far end of the reservoir into view.

  Hovering above the end of the reservoir, as if devouring the hillsides around it, loomed a mass of white villas.

  “Talking about catastrophes,” said Andreas. “Last I heard not a single one’s been sold, and the asking price keeps falling every year.”

  “The builder must owe a fortune to the banks,” said Yianni.

  “A lot of people owe fortunes to the banks, but the savvy debtors know the banks won’t push to collect. If they did, they’d have to report the defaulted loans to the EU as non-performing, and that would dramatically affect the banks’ financial health requirements. So, big debtors owing millions just ignore the banks and go on living as if debt-free.”

  “If it’s that obvious, how do the banks get away with it?” asked Yianni.

  Andreas smiled. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” He stared at a bright white egret standing on the muddy edge of the reservoir. “On top of that, you’ve got bank-loan portfolios filled with dead loans—ones where no one knows what’s owed, how to locate the debtors, or where to find written proof that there’s a loan at all. Some of those portfolios have been sold off to foreign speculators who are in for a big surprise.”

  Yianni glanced over at Pepe. “What do you think, Pepe? Is it too risky for you to be opening a new place in this treacherous economy?”

  Pepe gave him a quizzical look but didn’t speak.

  “I get it,” said Yianni. “Your business plan is simple: There will always be a big demand for booze, sex, and drugs.”