by Alex A King
I hurried down the hill, on a mission to tighten her loose lips—if they were loose. This was a woman whose hair didn’t dare move, in case she whacked it with a hairbrush. I turned right at the crossroads, rushed into Saint Catherine’s, panting.
Kyria Mela was lighting candles, pressing their bottoms into the candle stand’s shallow sand pit. Her mouth was moving a mile a minute. The ear on the other end of the conversation belonged to Father Harry.
Her mouth stopped when she saw me.
Father Harry whipped around. “Katerina!” he boomed.
Everything about the priest was jolly. He was Santa Claus in a black cassock and matching skoufos—the little black hat Greek priests wear. Could I trust him? Who knew? But I liked him anyway. Who doesn’t like Santa Claus?
“What news, Katerina?” he asked. His voice dropped to a loud whisper. “What news of your grandmother?”
“The lawyers are doing what they can.” I tried to give Kyria Mela a meaningful glance without Father Harry catching on. “Did you hear, the police found that escaped prisoner in Kala Nera this morning.”
“Back to prison with that one, then, eh?” the priest said.
“Uh, not exactly. He’s too busy being dead.”
Only one of the two was surprised, and it was Kyria Mela. That I hadn’t expected. A piece of me had suspected if Rabbit was dead then Kyria Melas could have been the person who made him that way. Not the dominant piece, but definitely a piece the size of a chocolate square.
“Dead!” she exclaimed. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “This morning he washed up on the beach in Kala Nera.” I gave her a look I hoped she’d interpret as Don’t say anything, the church is bugged, and I think maybe she got the message because her lips tightened into thin white lines. Whatever her plan, whatever her orders, something had gone wrong, because in her mind Rabbit wasn’t supposed to be dead. The last time she’d seen him he’d been alive, and she had every expectation that he’d remain that way until it was his time to go.
Father Harry made a small noise. “That man is God’s problem now. He will face our Maker and our Maker will decide what is to be done with him.”
He was wrong. Rabbit was my problem. He was supposed to be kept alive, but he died on my watch. And as long as they were holding Grandma, he’d continue to be my problem. Alive, there was a chance he could have been useful somehow. But now … there was no way they’d believe the Family had nothing to do with his death.
I wasn’t entirely convinced of Team Grandma’s innocence either.
“Kyria Mela,” I said, giving her the Let’s get out of here eyes. “Could you read my cup please?” It was a lie, of course. I didn’t want her reading my cup again—ever. But I had to get her out of the church somehow.
Father Harry groaned. “What did I tell you about divining the future? It is against the church.” It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t speaking to me. “If God had meant us to know the future he would have given us the capability of foresight. Reading cups is the devil’s work.”
Kyria Mela grabbed my arm. “Yes, yes, and I remember a time when you came to me to ask if the church would take you. You did not say no to the cup then, eh?”
“It is a sin!”
“I read my cup this morning,” she said to the priest. “It told me you would die. An accident. A fall from the dome while you were cleaning the cross.”
“I do not clean the cross. The Greek Orthodox Church has a maintenance team.”
“You fell from the cross. The cup never lies. I saw you splattered on the ground. Hundreds of tourists were taking photographs. Some were taking selfies with your corpse. And the video of your fall became the most-watched video in the YouTube history.”
Father Harry scurried to the rear of his church, muttering the whole way. He vanished through the back door.
“Priests,” she said. “They are worse than people on new diets. Everything is a sin, unless the Bible says otherwise. Even then they are picky about what they choose to believe.”
“This is why I don’t go to church.”
It was part of the reason, anyway. My beef with God had more to do with my mother’s premature death from cancer. I’d prayed and prayed and He was like, Shh, I’m in Cancun, helping teenage girls go wild without their parents finding out.
She smacked the back of my head. “You should always go to church. How else will you know what is going on in town?”
Like everyone else she had automatically assumed I was a new and permanent stick of furniture. No one seemed to understand that I’d jump the first plane out of here as soon as I had Dad back.
Dad. Somehow his kidnapping was all tangled up in this wad of criminal insanity. Funny, only last week I had assumed it would be easier to hunt for him with Grandma out of the way. Now she was someone else I was worried about.
Over Kyria Mela’s shoulder I saw Marika sucking on a frappe straw while she chatted to a tangle of tourists. Whether they could understand her or not wasn’t clear. If they couldn’t, it wasn’t slowing her down. She glanced over at me and went to wave, then snapped her hand back to her side when she realized whom I had for company.
“When did Rabbit leave the hole in your floor?” I asked Kyria Mela. “Did someone come to get him?”
“A man came to get him last night. Some creep with an eagle on his shoulder. It shit down his back and he did not care. What kind of man is this?”
Rabbit’s son, that’s who.
The sun was fierce but it couldn’t stop the invisible yeti using me to wipe its feet. Goosebumps punched their way to the surface of my skin.
“Did Rabbit say anything?”
“Only that he was surprised the man had not come sooner. Dogas went peacefully. We did not know the man wished him harm. Even if there had been a problem, my husband and I are not equipped for any kind of battle. We keep a peaceful home, except for my old tools. My husband does not know I have them. I promised to give them up.”
“Did he work for the Family, too?”
“No. He is a good man, like Nikos.”
She took off in the direction of her house, leaving me at the crossroads. I wandered over to see what Marika was up to.
“Thank Zeus,” she said. “I think these people are looking for sex. They keep asking for poutsa. The Family does not do prostitution so I don’t know what to tell them. What do I know about prostitutes? Nothing.” She frowned. “Or maybe they’re asking about that dick in the box you got. Say, what happened to that?”
“Kokoretsi,” I said.
Her mouth dropped open. She made a small whimpering sound, like somebody crushed their heel on her foot. Which gave me time to ask her three new friends if they needed help. Both men and the woman were paper white, with painful looking red patches where the sun had smacked them. They wore a similar uniform of loose T-shirts, baggy shorts, and what we called fanny packs back home. Their faces were the kind one saw in commercials advertising products that end with -wurst.
The woman of the trio, who spoke in thickened English, told me they were looking for a butcher’s shop. I pointed her in the direction of a shop with animal carcasses swinging in the front window. It wasn’t hygienic, but it was Greece. Their heads bobbed with gratitude and off they went in search of—much to Marika’s relief—meat.
“Did you get the information you needed from the scary woman?”
“The son came for Rabbit last night.”
“The one with the eagle?”
I nodded. We hoofed it back to the car and zipped back to the compound. It wasn’t until I stopped outside massive garage that I remembered the box stowed under the driver’s seat.
“Crap,” I said. “I need to call Melas. I promised him I’d let him know if another box showed up.” I fired off a text message and told him about the delivery.
My phone rang. “Where are you?” he asked.
“At the compound.”
“Stay right there. And don�
��t open the box.”
As if I could. For that I needed Tomas, and I wasn’t sure he was around.
Takis emerged from the arch’s shadow. He didn’t look happy.
Marika groaned. “I have to go—my baby needs his diaper changed. Let me know if you are going on more adventures, okay?”
* * *
PAPOU WAS in the kitchen when I carried the box back to Grandma’s shack. Yes, Melas had told me to stay where I was, but didn’t think it was a literal command. It would have been torture. The flagstones were engaged in a tennis game with the sun, and standing between them only meant I would wind up baked. Grandma’s place had walls, but it also had shade.
“What’s a guy got to do to get killed around here?” he said when I walked in.
“Join the Dogas family?” Argh! I slapped my forehead. “Sorry,” I said. “That was insensitive. I’m sorry about your brother.”
“What’s insensitive about it? My brother was a prick. He lived like a prick, now he’s dead like a prick.”
“Kids were using him as a raft,” I said.
“Huh. I didn’t hear that part. They left out the best bit. What good are sources if they leave out the good parts?”
I sat the box on the kitchen counter, opened the refrigerator, poured a tall glass of chilled water. “Drink?” I asked him.
“Only if it is coffee. Do you know how to make Greek coffee?”
“Sure,” I said. I’d never made it before, but how hard could it be?
Five minutes later, the old man was grimacing. “Gamo ti mana sou, what is this?”
“Coffee?”
“Weak. It’s like a mouni without hair.”
He was lucky I’d made him a cup of coffee at all, and now he was complaining?
“Is Xander back, too? Where have you guys been? Did you know the police took Grandma?”
“How do I know where Xander is, eh? What am I, his babysitter? He is a grown man. Probably he’s with a woman. I wish I was with a woman. Give me the phone.”
I passed him the house phone’s receiver.
“Shit,” he said. “I am so old I forgot all the phone numbers I used to know. Let’s go get your car. You can take me for a drive.”
“What for?”
“So I can look up some of my old flames, that’s what. Some of them are dead, but a few are still kicking.”
“You want me to drive you to a booty call?”
“Of course not. I already told you I can’t remember the numbers. My plan is to show up uninvited and surprise them.”
“Can’t. Detective Melas is coming over.”
“Bah!” He slapped the table. “Even that malakas can get laid, but me? I used to be a stallion!”
The conversation was taking a gross turn. Then the rest of his words sank in.
“I’m not sleeping with Melas,” I yelped.
“Maybe not, but you will be.”
“Will not.”
“You have to! I put money on it! Don’t tell your grandmother.”
“Wait—there’s a pool going?” Heads were going to roll, and in this Family that wasn’t a metaphor. My eyes narrowed. “Who started it?”
But I already knew, and he confirmed it when he said, “Takis.”
I called Marika. “Is it okay if I kill your husband?”
“Only if I can help,” she said. “I have never killed my husband before.”
Stavros came through the kitchen door. “Whose husband are you killing? If you need a henchman I can help.”
“Takis,” I said. “And probably I’m going to torture him first for being a little weasel.”
“I know torture. Only the basics, but I’m learning. Baboulas tells me I might be able to work my way up.”
“If anyone is getting killed around here, I’m first,” Papou said. “You want to practice your killing on me?” he asked Stavros.
Stavros made a face. “Baboulas would kill me.”
“All this killing …” Papou slapped his hands on the table. “What’s a man got to do?”
“You could join my cooking class,” Stavros told him. “We get a discount if we refer someone. We’re doing puffer fish in a few weeks. If someone screws up it could kill you.”
“I know a guy who tried that,” Papou said. “Didn’t work. Now he’s got superpowers.”
Melas was the next one through the door. “Is that Kyrios Bides? He doesn’t have superpowers. He just thinks he’s invisible. We keep picking him up for peeping through windows and flashing at widows.” He nodded to the counter. “That the box?”
Papou snickered. “He’s talking about you,” he told me.
Chapter 17
LITSA WASN’T HOME. Luckily for us, all four of her sons were. They were systematically working their way through the pantry. The eldest boy, the spitting image of his mother, minus the fake boobs, was hacking a boule loaf into chunks, using a cleaver. Tomas was at the kitchen table, head bent over a pile of uncooked macaroni. One-fingered, he was shifting them into patterns, making macaroni art. I wasn’t an expert or anything, but the pattern looked mathematical.
The middle two boys howled like a pair of monkeys.
“Mama went out,” said the eldest boy. “So we’re cooking.”
“Do you know how to cook?” I asked him.
“No, but the voices in my head know. They’re giving me instructions.” He swung at the loaf again. A piece jumped across the room. Tomas snapped out his hand and caught it, without so much as a blip in his pattern making.
“Voices?” I asked.
“They’re people who live in my head. They’ve got nowhere else to go.”
“Have they always been there?” Melas asked him.
“Have you tried electroshock therapy?” I said, trying to be helpful. “Sometimes the voices move out after you do that.”
“He doesn’t have voices in his head,” one of the monkeys said. “He’s a skatofatsa.”
A shit face.
My mouth fell open. It would have hit the floor but it couldn’t reach—not while I was standing. I held out the box to Tomas. Said, “Help.”
He scrambled out of his chair and grabbed the box. “Oh boy, another one!” Fifteen seconds later he handed it back. “Whoever is making these, he needs to branch out. They’re too easy. Periphas. He was a king, until Zeus turned him into an eagle. I don’t know which I’d like more …”
“King,” his older brother said.
“Eagles,” the monkeys ooked. “Then we could peck people’s eyes out.”
Charming.
Melas and I fled in case the animals decided we were next on the menu. I threw a worried glance over my shoulder—I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t hunt us down.
I pushed Melas into Grandma’s house, slammed the screen door and pressed my back against it, gasping. Maybe I’d take Jimmy Pants up on his offer. Not being fit was making me look bad.
“I am going to win,” Papou crowed. “I can feel it. Look, she is already panting.”
“This isn’t a sex thing,” I said. “We were almost chased by wild animals.”
“Litsa’s boys, eh? The eldest three are monsters, but the youngest one has potential to be a human being.”
Melas’ gaze bounded from Papou to me and back again. “Win what?”
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“The bet. We—“
I leaped across the room, clamped my hand over his mouth.
“Nothing. No bet. He’s got late-stage syphilis. It’s making him crazy.”
Papou licked my hand. Argh! I wiped the old man goo on his face.
“See?” I said. “Crazy like a fox.”
They both looked at me. “American foxes are crazy?” Melas asked.
Oh boy. I wasn’t in the mood to explain that saying. So I said, “Only the old, crusty ones. Let’s open the box.”
Melas gave me a look like he wasn’t done wanting to know about the bet, but he sat the box in the middle of the table. He took a deep breath. “Read
y?”
Without waiting for an answer, he lifted the lid.
Inside, sitting in a red satin nest, was a pair of eyes. Dark brown, with a hint of too many years on the bottle. If only Eagle Boy had taken the Pontic Greek’s liver instead; pickled products handled the heat better.
“Huh,” Papou said.
We looked at him.
“It’s a little bit anticlimactic when you can guess what’s inside.”
Anticlimactic? Ha! Tell that to my gag reflex. It was trying to grab ahold of my stomach contents, but apart from the frappe I was empty.
Harry Harry’s, I presumed, eyeballs were staring at the ceiling. They didn’t blink, didn’t swivel. The pupils were cloudy and dull without life to animate them. My eyes began to water in solidarity. They weren’t crying, per se, but they had a good imagination. They knew gouging had been involved.
“Okay,” Melas said. Unlike the penis, the eyes didn’t seem to be bothering him in the slightest. “I’m going to take these back to the station. Hopefully this time they won’t end up in the kokoretsi.”
The color bled out of Papou’s cracks. “What?”
* * *
MELAS ASKED me to walk him back to his car. We left a retching Papou in the kitchen.
“He took that well,” I said.
“You went into a lot of detail. Are you sure that’s how they make kokoretsi?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m an eater, not a cook.”
“Then yeah, that’s how they make it.” Truth be told, I had no idea. I’d embellished for Papou’s sake. He almost barfed when I mimed stretching and winding the organ onto the spit.
“Jesus,” Melas said.
“Xander’s still missing,” I said.
“Xander’s fine. He’s that kind of man.”
“What kind of man is that?”
