Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

  Holy moly! More than one jailbird in the family?

  “Your father isn’t in prison. He broke out.”

  His eyes bugged out. “What?”

  “I thought you read the paper.”

  “Mostly I look at the pictures,” he said. “The news is too depressing.”

  He had a valid point. “Your father broke out and I don’t think your crazy brother is in prison either. Not if he’s sending me body parts. Do you have any idea where I can find him?”

  “What is with women? You are crazy. You ask the same questions over and over, expecting different answers. How can I give you different answers if the questions are the same? I can’t! How do you live with yourself, being so illogical? The only sane woman is my wife, and I have to say that, otherwise she will cut off my balls.”

  “Do you have issues with women?”

  “Of course I have issues with women—you are women! You live to torture men. We are not tidy enough. We want too much sex. We don’t want enough sex. If we don’t bring flowers we don’t love you. If we bring flowers it’s because we have done something wrong. ‘Take out the garbage. Bring in the garbage.’ Sometimes you say it when it is not even garbage day, to see if we will jump.”

  “My father takes out the garbage, but it’s always his idea.”

  He reopened his laptop and began jabbing at the numbers again. “No it’s not—guaranteed. He’s afraid of his wife.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Then he is afraid she will haunt him and nag about garbage from beyond the grave,” he muttered without lifting his head. “Go away, now. I can’t tell you anything else.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  He lifted his head. His mouth opened to argue.

  Then something went BANG! Glass shattered. Rigas slumped sideways, the laptop smashed as it belly-flopped on the marble-tiled floor. A red hole had appeared where his ear used to be. The ear itself had stuck to the tabletop. A bloody lake began to spread across the floor, its source on the other side of his head.

  I hit the floor and scooted backwards, out of the line of sight.

  My body shut down, but my brain couldn’t quit staring down at the dead man. He’d gone from living, breathing human being to a corpse in under a second. How could that happen?

  Nearby, the baristas were shrieking. My throat hurt, so it was possible I was screaming, too, but I’d mentally blocked it out. On the other side of the glass, across the street, the smattering of tourists were shouting and running. Obviously not their idea of a good time. I couldn’t see them, but the sound of panicked shoes pelting blacktop and cement is universal. The two baristas fled through the front door, which struck me as ridiculous: they were bolting toward the origin of the gunshot. I peered through the window as best as I could without getting my head shot clean off my shoulders. Nobody else appeared to be hurt, and I couldn’t see a shooter.

  Marika pushed two frappes into my hands. She knelt beside the dead man.

  “My Virgin Mary!” she said, wide-eyed. “I have never seen anyone shot before. Afterwards, yes, but never the shooting! She stared at him. “I would ask if you have a servietta but it is too late, he’s dead.”

  Maxi pads. I remembered Melas mentioning the usefulness of sanitary products, when we were rifling through Dad’s former best friend’s apartment, only a handful or so days back. On shaky legs, I stumbled sideways, plopped down on a chair out of the red flood zone. I sat the two iced coffees down, pulled out my new phone, dialed Melas.

  When I told him what had happened he swore. “Get down and stay where you are.”

  “I think the shooter’s gone,” I said.

  “Stay down. Someone will be right there.”

  “Why aren’t you following me?”

  But he’d already hung up.

  Huh. So much for tailing me. What had happened to scrape the hounds off my butt?

  And where was my smallish mob of assassins? They’d melted away at the first—and only—gunshot, it looked like. I wondered if one of them was responsible.

  I dismissed that theory immediately. If one of them had taken the shot the others would have pounded him into the concrete. No one wanted to miss out on their bounty. Still, when assassins flee it’s eerily reminiscent of the way birds and animals take a long, fast hike before an earthquake strikes.

  Less than a minute later, sirens began to wail in the distance. They were closing in on the kafeneio fast. Another minute and they were screeching to a stop, lights swirling, sirens howling. Two cops cars, with an ambulance riding their rear bumper. Melas wasn’t among them.

  Beside me, Marika hit the floor with a thud. It took a split second for the absence of gunfire to register, but that didn’t stop my heart from freaking out.

  I crouched down beside her. “Marika?”

  She opened one eye. “I have never seen someone shot before.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  “I realized my husband shoots people, like that shooter did.”

  Oh boy. Think fast. “I don’t think he does it from far away like that.”

  “Do you think?”

  Takis struck me as shoot-a-person-in-the-back-up-close kind of guy. “Shh, the police are coming. Don’t say anything about Takis shooting people.”

  She closed her eye. “I can do that.”

  “Gamo ti Panayia mou,” the first cop through the door said. He was a walking barrel that had rolled in a police uniform. There was a small, greasy tzatziki stain on his shirt. “I remember you,” he said, pointing at me. “You’re the one who kicked all that stuff off Melas’s desk.”

  “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”

  “You did. I was there.”

  Now I remembered him. He’d hauled Penka away, that first day in the police station. He’d been wearing a tzatziki stain then, too.

  “Okay, so that was me.”

  He scoped out dead Rigas on the floor. “You kill him?”

  “No!”

  The other cops were outside, separating witnesses and gawkers into separate piles. They seemed normal, not like gunmen, but what did I know? Marika looked like someone’s mother—which she was—and yet she carried enough firepower on our adventures to sink a smallish submarine. So appearances could be dirty, rotten liars.

  “You see my problem,” Stained Shirt said. “I’m looking at a dead guy, then I’m looking at a mobster’s grandkid and—“ He looked at Marika. “Who are you?”

  “Who am I? Nobody. I am a woman drinking frappe.”

  “You don’t have a frappe.”

  “That is because she took them.” She pointed to me.

  Now wait a minute, I never took any—

  I looked down at my hands. Sure enough, I was holding two frappes. That explained why my hands were cold. I’d figured it was shock. I shoved one at Marika, who began sucking on the straw with a ‘See? I told you’ look on her face.

  Stained Shirt shook his head, probably out of a desire to clear away the feeling that he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start from the beginning. What happened?”

  I gave it to him from the top, minus the potentially incriminating details. Unfortunately that left me with a lopsided story. I had come in, talked briefly to Rigas Dogas, then a gunman shot him in the head. That sounded flimsier than plastic wrap, even to me.

  Stained Shirt groaned and shoved his notepad back into his shirt pocket. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’m going to hand you over to Detective Melas. You’re more of a headache than I want or need.”

  “That seems fair,” I told him.

  Another cop car rolled up to the curb. Melas. He shot a glance at the shattered window, then moseyed over to the uniforms talking to witnesses. He was in plainclothes again today, flat-front trousers and a button-down shirt he hadn’t bothered to tuck in. He’d rolled up the sleeves. Somehow he managed to blend dressy and casual and make it look like he fell off the cover of Delicious Bad Boys Magazine. Too bad ninety-
nine percent of my brain was occupied by, oh, the dead guy on the ground.

  Poor Rigas Dogas.

  After a few moments, Melas broke away from his compadres and moseyed into the coffee shop. He looked down at the dead guy, then steered me outside.

  “You okay?”

  I shoved my sunglasses onto the bridge of my nose. “I want to puke on your shoes, does that answer your question?”

  He gave me a funny look, inched out of the splash zone. “Witnesses are saying the shooter was some weirdo with a bird on his shoulder.”

  “An eagle?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll get it out of you one way or another.”

  “What are my choices?”

  He leaned in close. “Now you’re flirting with me? Your timing is—“

  “You wish,” I said. “If I was flirting with you there’d be no mistaking it. I want to know what my options are, that’s all.” Because Melas had a history—well, not him, but his mother definitely had a history of using brute force methods of getting information out of people, and there was a good chance she’d passed the gene down to her son. So I thought it was fair to ask what my options were, before the torture started.

  He stared at me. He did intensity almost as well as Xander. I wanted to crumple like a tin can.

  “Kat …”

  “Oh, all right. The guy with the eagle, I think his eagle was the one that delivered the second box.”

  “Why do I have a feeling you know who he is?”

  “He’s Rabbit’s crazy son.”

  “Who’s the guy in the coffee shop?”

  “Also Rabbit’s son.”

  “Tough family.”

  “Different mothers. Must run on the father’s side”

  “Do I want to know why you were in Rigas Dogas’ coffee shop?”

  “We were getting coffee.”

  He looked at me.

  “Okay, Marika was getting coffee while I asked him questions.”

  “What questions?”

  “Where his brother was, for starters. I had no idea they were … I’m not sure ‘estranged’ is the right word.”

  “What did Rigas say?”

  “He denied any knowledge of his brother, beyond the basics. He even thought his brother might be in jail with their father.”

  “Stay there,” he said. He walked over to the water’s edge, made a phone call. He swaggered back a moment later.

  “He was,” Melas said. “Until a week ago.”

  “Did he break out, too?”

  He shook his head. Very not-Greek of him. “He did his time so they let him go. Assault and battery.”

  “Let me guess, he was in Larissa’s prison.”

  Nod. “Blood with blood.”

  “So he commissioned the box from his father before he got out, and he made the second one himself … why?”

  “Maybe he likes you.”

  “I’d rather he pulled my pigtails or something.”

  “Pigtails?”

  I bunched my hair into two fists. “Pigtails.”

  “Mmm,” he said, in something dangerously close to a growl. “I like that.”

  I let my hair fall back into position. “Forget it.” Too bad I didn’t want to forget it. I’d conjure up that hunger on his face when I was alone, and relive it over and over. Stupid hormones.

  “You’re not the kind of woman a guy forgets without the help of amnesia.” Then he flipped the switch and went back to business. “I’m guessing he sent the first box, too, since that’s the one he commissioned.”

  “That seems like a safe bet. But why?”

  We stood there for a moment, metaphorically scratching our heads. Melas in cop mode was intense, focused. He was granite and steel. Cold things. I couldn’t help wanted to put my hands on him and warm him up.

  “Nobody else has turned up missing a heart or … or …”

  “Penis,” I said.

  He shot me a look. “Organ. So it’s probably also a safe bet that he’s responsible for the murders of three middle-ranking criminals. No sign of Harry Harry’s eyes?”

  I shook my head, clinging to my American body language. Then I remembered something. “I thought you were supposed to be following me.”

  “The guys from Thessaloniki called off the dogs. They found Rabbit.”

  Cold water poured through my veins. “Where?”

  “Kala Nera.”

  Kala Nera—Good Waters—was one of the Pagasetic Gulf’s coastal villages. It sat about a half hour’s drive southeast of here, if you drove like a normal person. Greeks could shave the journey to fifteen minutes or fewer.

  “Does that let Grandma off the hook?”

  Some morsel of information was caught behind his teeth.

  “What?” I asked him suspiciously.

  “He’s dead. He washed up on the beach. A bunch of kids had been using him as a raft.”

  My first reaction was to make a face. Greek kids did weird things for entertainment. Then my second reaction—the sensible one—kicked in. How could Rabbit be dead? Yesterday he’d been at the bottom of a hole in Melas’s childhood home. How had he turned into a piece of driftwood so quickly? My stomach turned a shade more sour.

  “Do you think it was his son?”

  “I think a lot of people wanted Rabbit dead, but his son is top of the list.”

  “What’s his name, the crazy son?”

  “Periphas. Periphas Dogas.” He was staring at me like he expected me to make an instant connection.

  I didn’t—at least not until I pulled out my phone and hit the Internet. The name was vaguely familiar.

  “The king Zeus turned into an eagle,” I said. “His mother must have been a hippy.”

  He nodded. “Apparently Periphas took the name personally. His records show he has an eagle tattooed on his back. The wings extend across his arms.”

  “The man takes his mythology seriously. So what now? Wait—they found Rabbit. Does this mean Grandma gets to come home?”

  “She orchestrated and implemented a prison break. I don’t think they’ll be letting her go anytime soon, even without solid proof. I’m sorry.” To his credit, he did look sorry. He liked Grandma, even if he didn’t approve of her career choices. Good thing he didn’t know about his mother’s past.

  Kyria Mela. Yikes. How had Rabbit managed to escape her care?

  “I have to go,” I said. “Things to do.” Like checking on his mother.

  “You okay?”

  “Frappe,” I said. “Busting to pee.”

  “Uh huh …”

  Did he look like he believed me? That was a negative.

  I decided to play the frail damsel card. Desperate times and all that. I was, after all, about to do a good deed. “I’m from Portland, not Detroit. I’m not used to all this death.”

  “They’ve picked up since you got here.”

  “Confirmation bias,” I said in English, mostly because I didn’t know the Greek words.

  “What?”

  “Confirmation bias.” I spelled it out for him. “Google it. In the meantime I’m going to lie down.” I stopped short of pressing the back of my hand to my forehead. I wanted to seem delicate, not crazy.

  I trotted back to Marika, who was hammering Stained Shirt with stain removal advice. Poor guy, he looked dazed. Marika could be a human tornado. Good thing he didn’t know what she was hauling around in that big bag over her shoulder.

  “Ready for another adventure?” I asked her.

  “Are we going to watch another murder?”

  “Probably not.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Everything is kind of a downer after you’ve seen a murder.”

  I thought that was a good thing, but then I didn’t have four kids with a henchman, so what did I know?

  She pointed at Stained Shirt. “Work the soap into the stain, then rinse with vinegar.”

  “Rinse with v
inegar,” he said tonelessly. “Work the soap.”

  We went out to the Beetle. Paramedics were loading the dead kafeneio owner into the back of the ambulance. There was still no sign of my assassins. I wondered what they’d seen—if anything. Not that it really mattered now that the identity of the gunman wasn’t a secret.

  “Ay-yi-yi!” Marika yelped.

  I peered in. There was a wooden box on the driver’s seat. This one was smaller than the others, about the right size to hold a couple of eyeballs.

  “Okay,” I said, thinking fast. “Don’t squeal. Get into the car casually.”

  “But—“

  “No ‘but.’ Not yet. I’m going to tell Melas about the box, but I need to go to Makria first, without him knowing.” I shoved the box under my seat, trying not to think that I was probably sitting on Harry Harry’s eyeballs.

  “Okay. That sounds like a good plan.” She threw back her head and fake laughed. “We could be Thelma and Louise. I am Thelma, you are Louise.”

  I couldn’t remember which was which, so I wasn’t sure if her comparison was on the planet of accurate. “You know they die at the end, right?”

  “You don’t know that. All you see is them driving off the cliff. They could have lived.”

  “Probably not.”

  “I want to believe they lived.”

  “That cliff was the Grand Canyon!”

  She gave me a knowing smile. “We are arguing because we didn’t touch red the other day.”

  * * *

  WE BICKERED ALL the way to Makria, until I cut the engine in the small parking lot outside the village. Surprisingly, apart from a tour bus and the Peugeot we had the lot to ourselves. Still no sign of my assassins. Or Cleopatra.

  “Where are we going?” Marika wanted to know.

  When I told her she wagged her finger. “No, no, no. You see her, I am going to have another frappe, and maybe a little cake.”

  She rushed off toward the village square, leaving me to face Kyria Mela by myself. I trudged up to her tidy cottage, but there was no answer when I knocked. So I tried it Greek-style, standing in her yard, calling her name.

  A neighbor stuck her curler-speckled head over the fence. “She’s at the church. Go and you will find her there.”

  If the village square or promenade is the heartbeat of a Greek village, then the church is its conscience. Although, I wasn’t sure that was the case with Saint Catherine’s. The priest, Father Harry, was firmly on Team Grandma, and he’d allowed her to have the church bugged. If Kyria Mela was in church, spilling her secrets aloud during prayer, then it wouldn’t be long until the helicopters landed in Makria’s village square and airlifted her away.