Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

  “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.

  * * *

  I FOUND Penka on her usual stoop. She wasn’t alone. Sitting next to her was a scrawny kid, more bantam rooster than human. He was dripping in gold chains with chunky euro sign pendants. His oversized tank top revealed his distant relationship, twice removed, with the gym. The back of his saggy, baggy pants wasn’t visible from the street, but I instinctively knew there would be a mile of boxers when he stood.

  Penka had perched her significant-sized self on the far end of the stoop. She was wearing red shorts and an off-the-shoulder top that didn’t want to be there. Her hair had been recently re-dipped in a bucket of bleach and styled with a blender. Her customers liked her to look cheap. It made them feel better about their habits. The stoop was attached to an empty beach house, built in the fifties and, by the looks of it, abandoned not too long after. The house stuck out like a recently whacked digit in the row of apartments and motels that had sprung up in the 80s and 90s.

  “You want to buy asshole?” She hooked her thumb at the kid, who was still at least a couple of years away from his twenties. “Here, I have one. I give it to you cheap.”

  “Wow, thanks. Too bad there’s only room for one in my underwear.”

  “You keep laughing, fatty,” the kid told Penka. “You’d be sucking my dick if my uncle told you to.”

  “Who’s his uncle?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Baby Dimitri. This is internship.”

  “Wow, drug dealers have interns?” The things you learn.

  The kid nodded at me. “Who’s the bitch?”

  “The bitch,” I told him, “is going to punch you in the throat if you’re not careful.”

  He scoffed at that. “Nobody hits the Donk.”

  “Donk?”

  “You don’t know the word donk?”

  I exchanged glances with Penka. She rolled her eyes. I knew how she felt. “No.”

  “It’s like thees,” he said in the worst American accent I’d ever heard. “Yo, donk, wats app?”

  My eyes went big and round. I felt my mouth sag in horror. The douche on the step mistook my reaction for ignorance.

  “You never heard of Snoop Donky Donk? Man, you are old.” He zeroed in on my chest. “Nice t
its though.”

  It was without regret that I punctured his hot-air balloon. “Haven’t you heard: he’s Snoop Lion now.”

  His arrogance bottomed out. “What?”

  “Snoop Lion. Google it.”

  “Matherfacker,” he said, snatching up his phone.

  “Some intern,” I told Penka.

  “Most drug dealers no have interns. Only me. I am lucky.” Her face said, No, not lucky at all. “What you want?”

  “Came to ask you if you know a guy. How’s business?”

  “Business stinks. Nobody wants good drugs—they all want cheap sisa now. This economy is eating my paycheck.”

  Sisa was Greek meth. It was currently chowing its way through the drug-using population, due to its affordable street price.

  “You could get another job,” I suggested.

  “Who would hire her,” Donk said, “except the circus?”

  Penka whacked him upside the head with a packet of Ambien.

  “This job is okay. Gives me plenty of time to read.” Penka always had a magazine handy. She had a penchant for the fashion and gossip rags. “So tell me who is this man you look for?”

  “Calls himself the Eagle. Or maybe other people call him the Eagle. Whatever. Eagle. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Donk flapped his arms. “Caw, caw.”

  “That’s a crow,” I told him.

  “Eagle.”

  “Crow.”

  “Eagle.”

  “Have you thought about killing him?” I asked Penka.

  “Donk.” Penka opened the cooler behind her. She tossed him a bottle of cola. “Have a drink.”

  “That’s right,” he said, grinning. “Bitches bringing me drinks. Where’s the Cristal?” He popped the lid, chug-a-lugged half the bottle.

  “No Cristal,” Penka said dryly, which was the only way she ever said anything. “What you think this is? You want champagne, go intern for cocaine dealer.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said. Then he slumped over.

  We both looked at him. He was out cold.

  “Uh,” I said. “Did you know Baby Dimitri’s nephew passed out?”

  “I don’t know how that happened. Maybe something in his drink.”

  “Like drugs?”

  “Could be drugs, could be he was tired. Very tired.”

  “Let’s go with tired,” I said. “Funny, he still looks like a loser when he’s sleeping.”

  “Is the open mouth and the drooling.” And the ridiculous outfit that was cool in certain circles, ten years ago. “I heard the name Eagle,” she went on. “Maybe a place. Where, I don’t know. I am Bulgarian, not Greek. Why you ask?”

  “It’s a potential lead in my father’s disappearance.”

  “Maybe he is there.”

  “Sounds high up.”

  “Americans are soft.”

  “I don’t mind heights,” I said. I didn’t mind heights, except the high ones. It wasn’t a phobia per se, but it could become one, say, if I fell.

  “Is maybe not too high,” she said, back-peddling.

  “Too late. My mind is already contemplating the worst.”

  “If you were Bulgarian you would always contemplate worst.”

  * * *

  BABY DIMITRI WAS my next port of call. I couldn’t peg Baby Dimitri. On one hand he and Grandma were enemies and business competitors, but the way he spoke he had a lot of respect for her. The Godfather of the Night and Souvenirs was Dad’s generation, but he dressed for Florida in the 1960s. His shoes were white, his pants were sharply creased, and his shirtsleeves were folded high on his wannabe biceps. He had the look of a man who invested heavily in Brylcreem.

  I found Baby Dimitri and his henchman Laki sitting outside, under the cover of his shop’s striped awning. It was one in a chain of stores catering to tourists and locals. A narrow road separated the string of shops from the beach. The storefronts were done up in colors that had clashed so often they were flaking and peeling. Baby Dimitri sold a colorful mixture of shoes and souvenirs.

  “Katerina, Katerina,” Laki said. “Here is Katerina Makris.”

  “With an S,” Baby Dimitri added. They both chuckled.

  Laugh it up, sleaze-balls.

  “Hey, Laki,” I said. “Burn anything lately?”

  Baby Dimitri’s decrepit flunky flashed his gold tooth. It was the only thing in his mouth that wasn’t gum or tongue. “Business is slow. You need anything burned?”

  “Not today.” His face collapsed like a soufflé. Oh, man. “But if I do I’ll let you know.”

  He perked back up again.

  What kind of person hates to make a mobster feel bad? A person like me, that’s who.

  “I met your nephew,” I said to Baby Dimitri. “Interesting internship you gave him.”

  “How is my worthless nephew?”

  “Sleeping on the job.”

  “Gamo ti Panayia mou,” he swore. “That boy! Lazy! All he wants to do is wear gold chains, listen to the rap music, and fuck my prostitutes for free.” He shook his finger at me. “I would not let him touch them even if he paid top dollar. As lazy as he is, it could be contagious. What can I do with lazy prostitutes? Nothing”

  “He calls himself Donk. That’s not his real name, is it?”

  He shook his hands at the sky. “Donk! His real name is Yiorgos—George—but that is not good enough for him.”

  “Not ‘kanksta’ enough,” Laki said.

  The things Greeks could do to a G were interesting. They forced it out the nose and tacked on a K.

  “Kanksta! Thuks! That’s why I sent him out with one of my dealers. Give him a taste of reality.”

  “He’s slumped over on a stoop, sleeping. Before that he was complaining about boredom.”

  He shook a finger at me. “That’s the idea. There is nothing tough about selling drugs. Nobody thinks you are cool. They will say you are cool to your face, but only because they want your product for cheap or free.”

  “Maybe you should throw him in the deep end of the pool, show him how bad it can get.”

  He squinted at me like I was laying a trap. “Why?”

  “If he’s that lazy he’ll probably think selling drugs is easy money he doesn’t have to work too hard for. Give him something that will scare the wits out of him.”

  “Hmm …” He made a ‘Keep talking’ circle in the air with his finger.

  “That was kind of my entire sales pitch.”

  “Maybe I need to send him outside the Family.”

  “Great idea,” I said. “You should do that.” Then I noticed he was looking at me thoughtfully. “No. No, no, no. My Family won’t want him.”

  “Not them—you.”

  “I definitely don’t want him. He called me old, so I had to crush his hopes and dreams.”

  “See? You can teach him respect.”

  “What do I know about respect? Nothing. Ask my grandmother.”

  The rotten jerk, he pulled out the big guns, aimed them at the part of my head responsible for honor, duty, and promise keeping. “You owe me a favor.”

  “I …” My mouth dropped open. When I recovered I said, “This is worth more than a cheap bag of marbles!” A week or so back Baby Dimitri had gifted me a bag of marbles that I used as ammo for my Dad’s old slingshot—the only weapon my grandmother would let me have. He’d told me they were a favor, and that I owed him one in return. Now he was calling it in.

  “I don’t recall putting a euro value on the favor—“ He looked at Laki. “—Do you?”

  “Nothing, that’s what I remember,” Laki said.

  “Fine,” I said. “But I want something else besides the marbles. Something bigger.”

  “You want a ball?” Baby Dimitri turned to his sidekick. “Do we sell balls?”

  I blinked. “No, I don’t want a ball. I don’t mean physically bigger.”

  “Okay, what do you want?”

  “Information.”

  “What kind of information?”<
br />
  “I need to find a place or a person.”

  “And you think I know?”

  “Don’t you know everything?”

  He nudged Laki. “I like this one. She has fire and she knows when to give me compliments.”

  Laki’s shoulders shook with silent mirth. “You should hire her. Snatch her out from under the old woman’s nose.”

  Given that you could hurl a rock in Grandma’s birth decade and hit Laki, he had some nerve.

  Baby Dimitri leaned back, folded his arms, made himself comfortable. “Okay, tell me.”

  “Eagle. That’s all I’ve got to go on. Maybe it’s a person. Penka thought it might be a place.”

  He chuckled. “Too easy. If you’re talking a place, it’s Meteora.”

  Meteora. Middle of the Sky. Towers of sandstone with monasteries gripping the tops and sides. Meteora had been home to monastics since the 1300s, now six monasteries remained out of more than twenty. Today they were inhabited by fewer than ten monks and nuns apiece, operating primarily as tourist attractions.

  “Meteora?” I nibbled on a hangnail.

  “Meteora,” he said. “The eagle’s nest is one of the old monasteries nobody uses. If you’re asking about a person, they say that’s where the Eagle lives. But my guess is there is nothing there but the bones of monks and some bricks. What about it?”

  “So the Eagle is a person?”

  “He is a rumor, and one I haven’t heard in several years. Sometimes rumors are true, other times they are wishful thinking on the part of people who like to believe in things. Why you ask?”

  “It’s probably nothing,” I said. “I was curious, that’s all.”

  “Where did you hear about the Eagle?”

  “Nowhere.”

  He gave me a sly look. “Does this have anything to do with Rabbit? A little mouse told me you went to see him, minutes before a mysterious man busted him out of prison.”

  “No.”

  “It is a mystery.” His fingers tapped out a rhythm on his knee. Lights flickered in his eyes. He was enjoying this. “Why would a pretty girl go to see an old fossil like Stelios Dogas?”

  Laki left his seat, sauntered down the sidewalk. From the back I saw him dive into his pocket and pull out a packet of tobacco and rolling papers.

  “Where’s he going?” I asked the Godfather of the Night and Cheap Shoes.