AHMM, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Lenihan completed the loose paraphrase of Miranda and asked Bittamann if he understood those rights.

  Bittamann nodded.

  "No,” Lenihan said, “you gotta say it out loud."

  "Yes, I understand."

  "Yes, you understand what?"

  "My rights."

  "Close enough. Now you wanna tell us what you're doing with that gun you just dragged out from behind the lockers and how it got there?"

  Bittamann opened his mouth to answer, hesitated, then closed it.

  I spoke quietly again. “Dan?"

  He wrinkled his brow and looked over at me.

  "It wasn't Earl Peterson who beeped me this morning, was it?"

  He dropped his eyes and shook his head.

  "It was you up front who saw the woman shoplifting, called my beeper, then ran over and confronted her, wasn't it?"

  He looked up at me and nodded.

  "And where was Peterson?"

  Dan's eyes were misting over. “In the back room."

  "What happened, Dan?"

  A single tear ran down his cheek. “Earl came running out onto the floor when he heard me holler at the woman. When she looked back at him, I stuck my hand into her bag to get the necklace. But what I grabbed ahold of was a gun. I pulled it out of her bag, and while I was standing there staring at it, she ducked around me and ran for the door, and then ... then..."

  "Then what, Dan?"

  Tears were streaming down both his cheeks now. “I don't know. Earl was screaming at me. He tried to yank the gun out of my hand. He yelled, ‘Give me that goddamned gun, you pervert, she's getting away.’”

  Lenihan came up alongside of me and said, “And what, you just shot him?"

  "No ... I don't know ... I don't remember even hearing the gun go off. All I remember is Earl lying there on the floor bleeding."

  "But I bet you remember lying to Dymond about being in the back room to use the office phone to call 911,” Lenihan said, “when what you really went in there for was to toss the gun behind the lockers."

  Dan's shoulders sagged, and his body shook convulsively. “God,” he sobbed. “What've I done?"

  Lenihan's tough countenance and cop's eyes softened for a couple of heartbeats before he turned and stepped out into the store. He opened his phone and punched in a number.

  "Yeah, Lenihan here. I'm at the Chic Boutique over on Newbury. I need transport for a prisoner and someone from CSU to bag a gun."

  * * * *

  Two weeks later, Daniel Bittamann had been arrested, arraigned, indicted, denied bail, and was sitting in county lockup awaiting trial for second-degree murder. Dan and his partner had hired one of the best criminal defense attorneys in Boston, who, when interviewed on one of the morning shows, said he was confident he could get the charge reduced to involuntary manslaughter. I hoped that he could, but I wasn't that confident.

  Thanks to her powerful husband and his lawyer, the senator's wife wasn't even on the radar anymore. It helped, of course, that when the police—who were finally allowed to see her—questioned Mrs. Wellington on the whereabouts of her gun, she went to get it for them and discovered it miraculously missing. “Stolen,” the senator was sure, “while the missus and I were on vacation.” The news stories didn't even mention the senator or his wife, but they sure had a field day with me.

  Along with my picture, the who, what, where, when, and why of my involvement in the shooting made it through two full news cycles. The two remaining merchants who had hired me said that my picture plastered all over the evening news for two days running would make working undercover in their stores impossible and that my connection to the murder would be bad for business. They didn't say it, but I think they held me responsible for Peterson's death, thought I somehow should have been there to prevent it. At any rate, they exercised the right-to-terminate clause in our contract.

  Like I said, there's more than one kind of mean.

  And most days, more than enough to go around.

  Copyright (c) 2006 Ernest B. and Alice A. Brown

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE END OF THE LINE by Leslie Budewitz

  Everyone left Kina.

  Sooner or later, one way or another, everyone left the village. Its gray stone towers had housed the Maniot people for centuries, its terraced fields had grown their olives and grapes, its steep hillside pastures had fed the goats that gave them meat and milk and cheese. Scores of tourists—Greeks and foreigners—drove fast cars through the Mani's narrow roads, stopping to gawk at the towers and marvel at the sea, the wild Mediterranean. They came and they left. Dmitra had left once. At first, Cyprian counted the months on his fingers. But when the girl had been gone more months than his hands could tell, he'd stopped counting. When the seasons had gone full circle and the olive trees were once again in flower, he realized he did not want to know how long his daughter, his only surviving child, had been gone.

  He'd only wanted her to return.

  But now, the girl's wondering—and her wandering—were over. In the truest spirit of the Maniot, the people of the god Aries, he had done what was necessary.

  And she would stay.

  * * * *

  Life had been hard for Cyprian, but he had known its blessings. His Sofia—what a blessing she had been. With soft eyes and hair as dark as the shadows of midnight, she was just a teenager herself when Cyprian married her. He was older, not long back from the civil war that had followed the Italian and German invasions. His eyes bore the scars of battle, and so did his heart, and even though the village girls knew they could no longer be choosy about husbands, not one of those starry maidens dreamed of marrying Cyprian.

  Until Sofia.

  Cyprian leaned back in his wooden chair, its blue paint chipped and worn but still as bright as the sky over Kina on the day she accepted his proposal. He could see her laughing up at him, a hand trailing through the blood-red poppies, her heart one with his. Only death could take Sofia from him, or from Kina, and it finally had. She lay in her grave a hundred meters above the village, on the same hillside where they'd buried their sons. Nikolaus, the eldest, dead of a fever at two. Then, years later, Pavlo. Cyprian's heart had nearly broken when the sure-footed youth, raised on the rocks like a goat, fell from a stone wall and tumbled like the pod of a thistle toward the sea.

  How long had it been? He could not say. Sofia had taught him long ago to leave the carving of notches in the door frame for happy times. “For the blessed memories,” she'd said. “The ones God gives us to keep us company."

  Their deaths had left Cyprian with his fields, his herd, his stone towers, and his treasure: Dmitra.

  Ah, Dmitra, the child of his old age. So much like her mother it made his heart weep to see her among the olive trees, in the garden, or resting against the kitchen doorway.

  She was a good girl, who did as she was told. Like the other village girls, she had little schooling, but Pavlo had taught her to read and write in Greek, and she spoke the language better than Cyprian did. He was a Maniot and preferred the old tongue.

  After Sofia's death, the girl took over her mother's chores and the house ran almost as well. Better in some ways, he had to admit.

  But a few seasons after Sofia died, the summer the fires raged through the Mani, an ugly spirit rose up in the girl. Cyprian blamed the fires. They blazed through the drought-stricken olive groves and scorched the earth that had fed so many Maniot for so long. They destroyed the vines, the fields, the gardens. They blackened the famed stone towers at Vathia almost beyond recognition.

  They conquered the Mani in ways no foreign army ever could.

  And behind them came the strangers—and Dmitra's questions. Whenever foreigners stopped in Kina, Dmitra greeted them. Mainland Greeks came to fight the fires, and Dmitra asked questions. Men came from the European Union with talk of money for reforestation, for rebuilding, and Dmitra asked questions. Albanians came to work the stone, with skills only the ablest of the Maniot men stil
l possessed, and Dmitra asked questions.

  He, old Cyprian, never ill a day in his life except for the fevers from the war wounds, became sickened by her questions. By her talk of leaving.

  He feared he would lose her, despite his insistence that her future belonged in the Mani. Her desire to see the world beyond these hills burned just as strong.

  "Papa,” Dmitra said, “why should I stay? There's nothing here, nothing in all of Mani."

  "Nothing?” he shouted. “You know nothing. Everything is here. The sea, the sky. The goats, burros, olive trees. The village your family built, where we've lived for centuries."

  She shook her fist at him and at the gray stone tower that was their home, high above the narrow road that wound through the town. So angry at him that she forgot to close the pine shutter of her bedroom at the top of the tower, letting the sun glint off the glass. A sailor would go blind, he told her.

  "There is no future here,” she said. “Nothing to do but what you've always done. That's no life for a girl."

  "It was good enough for your mother.” For Sofia.

  Her face softened; she tilted her head, and a wisp of black hair loosened from her scarf.

  For a moment, he forgot who she was. “Sofia,” he said softly, his hand reaching toward her.

  "Papa,” she said, “life in Kina was enough for Mama because she had you.” And that had been true. Cyprian and Sofia fit together like stone against stone at the base of a tower. They had been the life and foundation, the joy, of Kina for forty-one years.

  No need of notches to remember that.

  He feared he would lose his daughter, despite his insistence that her future belonged in the Mani. Her desire to see the world beyond these hills burned just as strong.

  Cyprian would not prevent Dmitra from going to another village on the peninsula, to Lagio or even Katronas. How else could she meet an eligible boy? A Mani boy, like his Pavlo, dead too young, or Nikolaus, who had no chance to live. It was up to Dmitra to carry on the family line. Though if she didn't marry, he would understand. Not many young men were left in the Mani.

  Pavlo had left once. He'd made it all the way to Sparta and came back with nothing but a twelve-gauge shotgun and dissatisfaction with everything Mani. Cyprian could not bear such a loss again.

  "You belong here,” he told his daughter. “You have no need to be anywhere else."

  "Papa, you have no need. But me—” She pointed at her heart, her cheeks flushed the red of the setting sun. “—I want to see more."

  "No one has ever conquered the Mani,” he replied, as though that were reason enough, and she tossed her dish towel on the table in exasperation.

  * * * *

  The spring moon was full. In its pale light, Dmitra placed her feet with care between the crocuses and irises lining the old burro trail, ever mindful of the tragedy that had befallen her family here, when Pavlo stumbled to his death.

  Pavlo, elder brother, much loved, much missed. She had never known Nikolaus, dead long before she was born. How different life would be if one of them had lived. Papa would still fiercely maintain that her place was here, among the rocks, the wind, and the sea, but she would have an advocate, a younger voice—a male voice—to plead her case.

  She spread her skirt with care and settled on a rock wall overlooking the village and the sea beyond. She loved Kina, no question. She had no desire to leave here forever. Just for a while.

  "A little while, Papa,” she'd begged over and over. “A few months, a year. Let me take a job with a family watching children, or in a school."

  Over and over, he tried to make her see that there was no use for such a world; they had everything they needed here in Kina. Here on the Mani, the southern tip of the Peloponnese, the farthest south one could go without crossing to an island. Outsiders thought it harsh and desolate. They were weak; Papa was strong, and so was Dmitra, because they were Mani.

  She turned her gaze to the south, where moonlight softened the hard edges of the square towers and turned the stone almost golden. This was her home. Her ancestors had built the tower houses stone by stone. They'd cleared the slopes and built the terraces like the one she sat on. They had planted the trees and nurtured them.

  Out on the water, a ship moved slowly across the horizon. Her heart quickened. Her friend Melina had found a job on a tourist ship—Dmitra had saved the postcards sent from ports around the world, names she was not sure how to pronounce: Le Havre, Copenhagen, Bristol, St. Petersburg, Miami. And Istanbul, the name that would send her father into a rage at the vile Turks, even though the only Turk she had ever met had been a road worker, young and handsome. Her father had raged for days after seeing her talk with the Turk at the taverna where she waited tables. The roadwork must have ended then, because she had seen the Turk no more.

  Dmitra knelt beside the terrace and pulled out a loose stone. Behind, in the secret space, lay the olive wood box Pavlo had carved for her tenth birthday. She slid it out, sat once more on the stone wall, and removed the lid. One by one, she looked longingly at the postcards. She did not need Copenhagen or Miami. Athens would do, or Nafplion. Perhaps she could work in Monemvasia, in a taverna or one of the small hotels. She'd heard talk of the village at the head of a causeway and the ancient settlement, now partly restored, where people came from all over Europe and even America to hike and swim and watch the sea. A different sea.

  That's all she wanted—a taste of something different.

  She slipped the folded drachmas out of her skirt pocket and put them in the box, between Istanbul and Lisbon. Almost enough now, for the plan she and Eleni were making.

  When Dmitra looked up, the horizon was empty. The ship had sailed on.

  * * * *

  Every now and then, late in the evening, Cyprian took himself to the taverna to sit on the terrace outside, to share a bottle of ouzo and the talk of men. “I saw that Dmitra of yours coming into the village this morning,” Milos said as Cyprian topped off the small green glasses that dotted the table. “Wildflowers in her hair. What a sight, that girl."

  "A sight,” Petros agreed. “Like your Sofia."

  "Ah, Sofia.” May she rest in peace, they all thought, though no one said the words. To speak them was to acknowledge the pain, and that they could not do.

  The old men puffed on their cigarettes, drank more ouzo, talked about everything, talked about nothing. Their sons, their grandsons, their women. The olive crop, the health of the goats and cattle, last year's retsina. The change in the winds as the seasons cycled round. A gray cat missing the tip of one ear wove between their legs, searching for crumbs of dense yellow bread or a dropped bit of cheese.

  Finally, Kostas set his glass down hard on the scarred wooden tabletop and leaned forward, shaking his finger at Cyprian. “You are a selfish old man, refusing to let your daughter live her own life."

  Cyprian's jaw tightened and above his deeply veined nose, his eyes grew sharp.

  "You want to keep her here,” Kostas continued, “baking your bread and herding your goats. I don't blame you for wanting the company—your wife is dead and so are your sons. But your days will come to an end sooner than you think, and what will happen to your beautiful young Dmitra then, when she is no longer young or beautiful?"

  Under his sun-burnished skin, Cyprian's sagging cheeks flushed. “And who are you to talk? Your daughter, that Melina. She'll marry some Frenchman or a Spaniard, if she marries at all, and you'll never know your grandchildren."

  "She's a good girl, my Melina. She sends me a postcard every week."

  "And you think that means she'll come back and be content here?” Cyprian waved his hand. “Never."

  Kostas shook his head once, dismissing Cyprian's doubts, and pushed back from the table, his chair scraping against the worn stone floor.

  "Children are like birds,” Milos said. He was the father of two daughters, each now with growing families. Indeed, when Milos was in his fields or at his stone tower, his children and grandchildren
flocked around him eagerly. “You cannot hold them too tightly. They are born to fly."

  Milos's flowery talk set Cyprian ablaze. “You are fools. You know nothing—"

  "You are as stubborn as my black goat.” Kostas threw himself back into the fray. “I should send that goat over to you—trailing him through the mountains will keep you nimble. You can wait for him at night like you wait for your daughter."

  With those words, the rage that had fueled Mani warriors for generations spilled over. “Old man!” Cyprian shouted, rising from his chair so suddenly that it tipped over behind him, narrowly missing the gray cat. “You have insulted me for the last time."

  Whitehaired Petros put a gnarled hand on Cyprian's forearm. “Calm yourself,” he said in the manner of a man who has known another for decades and drunk the fruit of many vines with him. “Sit."

  Breathing heavily, Cyprian glared at the others.

  Petros righted the chair with one hand, the other still holding back his friend. “Sit,” Petros repeated. “He means nothing against your name or your honor."

  Cyprian lowered himself into the chair, grabbed his glass, and downed the liquor. Poured another and gripped it tight, his eyes locked with those of the man across the table, always the friend who dared to challenge him, always the friend who was not a friend.

  Milos lit a cigarette from the pack that lay between them. “Kostas speaks too bluntly, but he speaks the truth. No, no,” he said and held out a hand as Cyprian made to interrupt. “We all see how your Dmitra walks the hillsides. It's nothing, we know that. She's alone—who could a young girl meet anywhere near Kina?"

  The men exchanged glances and nods.

  "She's looking at the stars. She's dreaming. She's picking wild crocuses and orchids by moonlight. She is a gift from the heavens. You are right to cherish her.” Milos took a puff and fell silent. Petros refilled the glasses.

  "But Kostas is also right to question you,” Milos continued, his words cutting through the cloud of blue smoke that hovered above the table. The men were alone on the terrace. Only the owner remained inside, washing glasses and ashtrays. “The fates have denied you the chance to watch your sons grow old. Even so, your daughter deserves a future."