Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

“I will stay out here, too,” Marika said in a loud voice.

  “Oh, good, because you were not invited,” the older woman said.

  When the front door slammed, I was on the inside, while freedom was on the other side. For a moment I wasn’t sure I shouldn’t make break for it.

  “I suppose you want to see him,” Kyria Mela said.

  I stood there blinking in the dim light for several seconds. Who did she mean? With four missing men in my life, it could have been any of them.

  “Yes?” I finally managed.

  “Your grandmother needed a place to hide Rabbit. I volunteered, of course.” She led me down the hall, to the room where Melas and I had sipped coffee the other day before she read my cup.

  “Help me,” she said. Together we moved the table aside, then peeled back the patterned rug. For a country built on rock, people sure had a lot of basements around here. “This is temporary. He is moving on soon.”

  “Away from Greece or away from life?” Because with Grandma’s crowd you never knew.

  “All I know is what Katerina told me. She said he was moving on, and I was to help you if anything happened to her.”

  Sure enough, Rabbit was in the ground, crouched in what was one small evolutionary step up from a spider hole. He was in sweatpants and a tank top that should have been a misdemeanor.

  “Are we going now?” He squinted up at us. “Because this is worse than prison.”

  “All he does is complain,” Kyria Melas said. “He is lucky to be alive and out of prison, and what does he do? Complain, complain, complain. I do not know how he got even one woman to sleep with him and have his child, let alone dozens.”

  “Charm.” Dogas peered up at me. “My plane ready? You want some sausage before I go?”

  “What plane?” I conveniently sidestepped his second question, the way one avoids cow patties, if they can possibly help it. “There’s no plane that I know of.”

  “Gamo ti Panayia mou! Then what are you doing here?” He yelped when Kyria Mela clipped his ear with her shoe.

  “I came for coffee.”

  “She came for coffee,” he muttered. “I thought you came to move me.”

  “I didn’t know you were here until now!”

  “You did not know?” Kyria Mela asked me.

  “I didn’t know.”

  She patted me on the shoulder. “The cup knew, that is all that matters.”

  Rabbit cleared his throat. It took a while. When he’d finally cleared the sticky debris he said, “Get me the hell out of here.”

  “You shitweasel. I trotted out one of my favorite compound words. “My grandmother is in police custody because of you.”

  “Did I tell her to break me out of prison? No. She did it on her own.”

  “Yeah, because she believed you—or whoever commissioned that box—knew something about my father’s kidnapping.”

  “Your father’s kidnapping.” He made a sour face. “He was a criminal. He is still a criminal. If someone kidnapped him it is because he did something to deserve it.”

  “My father drives trucks. He moves bubble wrap and packing peanuts.”

  That may or may not have been true, given that I’d discovered Dad was out of the country, posing as an Italian, on at least one of his alleged long hauls. But I wasn’t about to tell that to this clown.

  Laughter rolled out of the old man. “Packing peanuts. Ha!”

  A minute later I’d hauled him out of his hidey-hole and dumped him on the rug. It took a while, okay? I’m five-four and on the pathetic end of fit.

  “Talk.”

  He folded his arms. “What do you want me to tell you, eh?”

  “What do you know about my father?”

  “More than you will ever know.”

  “Start with who kidnapped him.”

  “That I don’t know. Could be anyone.”

  “All that matters to me right now is who has him and how I can get him back.”

  “You? Ha! You are a child. You cannot do anything if the people who have him do not want him to be found.”

  “Sounds to me like you know them.” I looked at Kyria Mela, who was now holding a metal box that resembled a military-issue footlocker. “Does it sound to you like he knows them?”

  “I think you are right,” she said.

  He slapped the air with one hand. “I am old man and until a few days ago I was in prison.”

  “Which is like the information hub for crime. Crime moves through prisons. Pull a string inside and people dance outside. I’ve seen movies,” I said. “I know these things.”

  Kyria Melas had something to say. “This one will not talk, not without encouragement. He is too stubborn, too old. You want to open an oyster, you have to force it to open.”

  “Huh?” That bit of eloquence was from me.

  The old guy cackled. “Poor little Katerina, you are surrounded by crime. You do not even know what this woman is.”

  “Used to be,” Kyria Mela said. “I left that life behind a very long time ago. But for you I could make an exception.”

  “Crime is in the blood. It never goes away.” He nodded to me. “You are standing beside one of Greece’s finest torturers. The soviets tried to recruit her but she was too loyal. A Makris dog.”

  “Huh?” None of this was making sense. Kyria Mela was in the crime game?

  “It is true,” she said casually. “But that was before Nikos came along.”

  He pointed at her with his thumb. “Biggest joke in history, this one’s son is a policeman.”

  “We’ve met,” I said. My knees began to wobble. They’d been doing that a lot lately. “I need to sit.”

  “On the floor—you cannot fall off the floor. Put your head between your knees,” Kyria Mela said.

  Funny, I’d given her son that same piece of advice the other day.

  My bones shook. I looked up at Rabbit, who had helped himself to a chair. “Who sent the boxes?”

  Two palms up. “You keep asking, I keep not knowing. You see the problem?”

  “I could pull one of his nails,” Kyria Mela said. “Or snap the little finger. Then he will sing.”

  “No,” I said. “No singing.” Or screaming. Sitting outside in the yard were too many people with guns. Last thing I wanted was all of them blasting their way in here. And I didn’t want Melas to discover his mother’s secret the hard way. If she wanted to tell him, that was one thing, but no one likes hearing from a virtual stranger that their mother is secretly the tooth, nail, and waterboarding fairy. “Give me a name.”

  “I gave you a name.”

  “The Eagle.”

  “And there was an eagle, yes?”

  “There was an eagle with another box—one you said you didn’t make.” I chewed on a hangnail, until Kyria Mela pulled my hand away.

  “I will put hot pepper on it. That is what I did to my children.”

  No wonder they fled Makria.

  Once more, with feeling: “Who commissioned the box?”

  He opened his mouth. I held up my hand, five-fingered, not giving a toss if I was insulting him or not. “The real name.”

  “A favor for a favor.”

  “No favors. Give me the name—the real name—and I’ll see about getting you out of here. That’s it.”

  Kyria Mela stepped forward with her metal box of what I suspected was mean tricks. “Go wait outside, Katerina. If it is important to you I will get you your name.”

  I tried the standing thing again and failed. Dizziness washed over me. “Who commissioned the box, Kyrios Dogas?”

  “He will kill me if I tell you!” the old man hissed.

  Kyria Mela grabbed my arm. “Katerina, go.”

  “There’s a policeman outside,” I told Rabbit. “If you don’t give me the name I’ll tell him where you are. The cops can have you.”

  “Oh-ho-ho, already defying your grandmother, eh? What will she say about that?” His words were bold but his smirk was on shaky ground.

/>   “She’s not here, thanks to you, and while she’s away I’m in charge. I don’t like it, but that’s what she wanted. So I’ll do things as I see fit, including giving you a one-way ticket back to jail.”

  “She broke me out of prison for a reason.”

  “Yes, and you didn’t deliver, so she did it for nothing. As far as I’m concerned, back you go. We have no use for you. I have no use for you.”

  It was cold but it was true. If he knew nothing, he was worthless. I was okay with sticking him in a police car, sending him straight back to the hell he’d come from.

  The problem was Detective Melas.

  Rabbit was here in his family’s home. If I steered Melas toward the escaped prisoner, there was no way not to involve his mother.

  There would be questions from higher ups. Difficult, potentially career-destroying inquiries.

  I couldn’t do that to Melas. He was one of the good guys—the genuinely good guys. What kind of person would I be if I dragged him down with me? Not too many days ago he was part of a four-man team that had saved my life. No way was I about to thank him by ruining his career.

  So basically my threats were emptier than the US vaults holding Germany’s gold. But I didn’t want Rabbit to know that.

  My body unfolded as I stood. I was doing my best to tack an extra foot onto five-four.

  “We’re done here,” I said. “The police can have you.”

  Poker wasn’t my game. As far as I knew I didn’t have a bluff face. But I tried, as I stalked out of the room, to move like I meant to leave him here for the police. My breath caught and held.

  “Wait.”

  I exhaled, pivoted, strode back into the room. I said nothing, raised my eyebrows.

  He leaned forward in the chair. His knuckles gleamed white as his fingers bit into his knees. The ravines in his skin deepened. “You have no idea what you are asking. He is … he is my son!”

  “Your son?” I echoed.

  Two palms up. “What is a man to do?”

  “Ungh,” I said. Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. I dropped into one of Kyria Mela’s fancy chairs. “Your son.” I gnawed on that a moment, then looked him square in the eyes. “Which one?”

  “The craziest one.”

  Of course. Which other one would it be? The crazy one is always the obvious candidate.

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? He didn’t say, I didn’t ask. He demanded I make him a box, and that was all.” Something in his voice rang trueish. My gaze slid to the woman holding the metal box. She nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “He is telling the truth,” she said. “I know when a man is lying.”

  Probably she did.

  I rubbed my temples. I’d never had a full-blown migraine, but there was one lurking nearby, waiting to squeeze my brain.

  “What about the other boxes?”

  “Maybe he made them himself, I don’t know.”

  “Does he have a name—a real name?”

  “Katerina … You don’t know the trouble you bring on yourself. Do you hear that sound? It’s the water coming for you. You will drown in this world.”

  “Good thing I can swim. Tell me his name. Please.”

  “I have already given you too much rope. No more.”

  “His name.”

  “Would your father give up your name so easily?”

  He had me there. For all his recently discovered flaws, I knew my father would die rather than give up my name to someone who might wish me harm. For now I’d stand down, find another way into the fortress.

  “I don’t know what Grandma had planned for you. She obviously wanted you out of jail and alive, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. So I’m maintaining the status quo until I get different orders or I figure out something better. Which,” I added, “doesn’t seem likely, given that I’m winging it.” I turned to Kyria Mela. “Is it okay with you if he stays until it’s safe to bring him back to the compound?”

  She nodded.

  I had one more question for the man known as Rabbit. “Are you really Papou’s brother?”

  He scoffed. “Not anymore. It has been a long time since we were anything. Fifteen years ago the bastard put me in prison. Once a man sends you to prison he is not your brother.”

  The sun was clawing its way higher, heating up the small room, even with its shutters latched. Threads of gold peeked through the gaps.

  “Who brought him here?” I asked Kyria Mela, as we gravitated to the front door.

  “The quiet one.”

  Xander.

  He and Papou were still unaccounted for, so they were next on my must-find list. Xander hadn’t replied to my text.

  “Are you going to …” She gave me a look loaded with meaning.

  “Tell your son?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Your son?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Not now, not ever.” Unless I did. Which I wouldn’t. Not while the Family was taking bets, and not while we were on opposite sides of the morality fence.

  It was for his own protection.

  * * *

  THIRTY-SIX HOURS after Grandma had been brutally hauled away by the Hellenic Police, my family was driving me to drink.

  Katerina, should we kill a drug dealer? What if the drug dealer is stealing from us? What if the same drug dealer is stealing from us and calling us names? Katerina, what was the name of that tantric sex guy?

  “Sting,” I said.

  “Stink,” Stavros repeated. His thumbs worked like miniature pistons on his phone.

  “Why?”

  “Trivia game.”

  “The drug dealer isn’t a stupid game,” Takis said. “Or the stealing.”

  “What about the name-calling, is that real?” I asked.

  “Sure, that could be real.”

  Marika snorted.

  Takis turned on her. “Why are you here? I gave you four children and a house to clean—go clean them.”

  “The house is clean, no thanks to you, and your children are in the pool.”

  It was true, their kids were in the pool, not far away from where we were all sitting, under one of the courtyard’s grapevine trellises. It was early afternoon and the boys were practicing their drowning techniques. Fortunately, none of them showed any talent in that direction; too buoyant.

  “Rabbit’s kids,” I said, mulling over the morning. “Anyone here know any of them?”

  “Sure,” Stavros said, not looking up from his trivia game. “Rigas Dogas owns a kafeneio in Agria. It’s on the promenade.”

  My left eyelid fluttered. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Takis busted out laughing. “Did you ask? No. How can anyone give you answers if you don’t ask questions?”

  “Why are you such an asshole?” I asked him

  Marika had a smug look on her face. “Because I will not do a thing he wants me to do.”

  “Skasmos,” her husband said, telling her to shut up.

  “What thing?” I asked.

  “Don’t you tell her or I will—“

  Marika’s gaze landed on him with an almighty THUNK. It was like watching the space shuttle dock successfully at the International Space Station. “You will what?”

  “Take away your allowance.”

  His wife sucked in her breath.

  Stavros grabbed my arm. “We should leave before she explodes.”

  Marika shot up out of her chair. “No! You are not leaving—I am leaving. Katerina, let us go. Takis, you can watch the boys for once. It will do you good.”

  Like a summer squall, she moved off in search of a new piece of earth to rain upon. Unfortunately, she was pulling me along with her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You are going to see a man. Me, I am coming along for the coffee.”

  * * *

  IT WAS 2 PM when I killed the Beetle’s engine outside the kafenei
o. Parking was easy pickings; the Greeks had scurried back home to their beds, along with the smarter tourists. Not the rest of them. They’d paid for sunshine and they meant to get their euros’ worth of UVA and UVB.

  Inside, a couple of baristas were wiping down tables. The manager was stooped over a small laptop, tapping numbers into the keypad. He didn’t look up as Marika and I pushed through the door.

  “You want a frappe?” she asked me. “Because I am getting a frappe.”

  “Make it two,” I said.

  I helped myself to the chair across from the manager.

  “Rigas Dogas?”

  “Who’s asking?” He looked up at last, grunted. “You.”

  “Have we met?”

  “I read the paper.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “It’s full of rubbish and unflattering pictures.”

  He went back to his laptop. “What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for your brother.”

  “I have a lot of brothers and sisters. I don’t know where any of them are.”

  “The one with the eagle.”

  “Don’t know him. Don’t know most them.”

  “They say you do.” They didn’t say that, but they might have if I’d asked.

  He slapped down the lid of his laptop. The table shook. “Then they are lying to you. Go away, I’m a busy man.”

  “I want to, believe me, but your brother keeps sending me gifts.”

  His eyes met mine. “What kind of gifts?”

  “Body parts.”

  Horror skittered across his face, then vanished. “I don’t know him, and now I don’t want to know him.”

  “Your family is weird,” I said. “If I had siblings out there I’d want to meet them.”

  “Not me.” He tilted his chin up then down. “I know what my father is. I know what my brother is. Me, I live a quiet, honest life. I own this kafeneio. I sell coffee—good coffee.”

  Over by the counter, Marika was sucking on a straw. “It is good coffee,” she agreed.

  “Who is that?” he asked.

  “Her unofficial sidekick,” Marika said.

  “So your brother is a criminal?” I asked Rigas.

  For a split second he looked stricken. He’d stepped in doo-doo. “I don’t know anything.”

  Yeah, right. “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “Still in prison with our father? I don’t know!”