In Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

  My foul mood followed me back to the yellow VW Beetle Grandma had given me to drive while I was here. The Beetle was adorable, but at times like this I really missed my old Jeep. The Jeep was mine, free and clear. No strings. No bugs or tracking devices. I jumped in the driver’s side, listing slightly as Marika dumped herself into the shotgun seat.

  “Where are we going now?” Marika asked me as I fired up the ignition. Two car lengths back, Elias eased away from the curb in one of the Family’s black SUVs. Grandma takes security seriously, which is why I have my own bodyguard. Well, two if I counted Marika, although I wasn’t sure if I should. Marika was more like a friend with liabilities.

  “Back to the compound so you can take that test.”

  “I was thinking we should stop for a little something to eat first.”

  “I thought your bladder was about to burst.”

  “If we stop I could pee.”

  “What about the test?”

  “There is always tomorrow.”

  Over my dead body was she putting it off another day. This was Greece; I knew how this would go. At this very moment, as I was cruising along the coastal road, phone calls were being made, texts were being sent, possibly news agencies were receiving tips about how the country’s most infamous mob boss’ newly returned—and completely unmarried—granddaughter had been bumping uglies without a raincoat, and was now knocked up. Greece wouldn’t care that it was completely untrue. Here the truth never got in the way of a juicy story. Lies were performance art.

  “No. No tomorrow. Only today,” I said, teeth gritted.

  She held up both hands. “Okay, okay. We can stop to eat and I will take the test there. Yes?”

  As far as ideas went, that didn’t suck. I made a non-committal noise and began considering our dining options. My stomach growled, clearly liking Marika’s plan. Like my hormones, my stomach could be stupid. I pointed the car in the direction of the coast, souvlaki on my mind.

  “Katerina,” Marika said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “Did you know the NIS are following you.”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. Sure enough, a white van had elbowed Elias out of the way and moved into his place.

  “Great. Perfect.”

  There was a long pause. Then Marika said, “And I think you are also following them, too.”

  Damn it, she was right. A second white van was now hogging the space in front of the beetle. I let out of a grunt of annoyance. Freakin’ Hera.

  I reached over and grabbed my phone out of my bag, dropped it in Marika’s lap. “Text Grandma. Tell her we’ve got company.”

  Marika did as I asked, then we waited. I maintained my position as the filling in a shit sandwich. No, I was something tasty and All-American—peanut butter and jelly. It was the bread that was shitty.

  “Anything?”

  “Not yet ... Wait.” She flashed the screen at me.

  Text message from Xander. One word: Cooperate.

  Xander is Grandma’s silent but deadly bodyguard and henchman. For the most part he goes where she goes. Xander is made of concrete blocks and he never speaks. Whether he can’t or just chooses not to, I’m not sure. All I know is that he’s never spoken to me. Xander is also the kind of hot that makes a woman want a spanking. Because I’ve spent my whole life avoiding violence, Xander makes me feel conflicted about a lot of things.

  Cooperate? Was he high? No way was I about to cooperate with the NIS—not with Hera at the figurative wheel.

  Look at me, defying law enforcement. What was going on? A few weeks ago I was a law abiding American citizen who drove the speed limit and always stopped at the zebra crossing outside Wal-Mart. Now my family was the Greek mafia, and I was figuring out the best way to evade Greece’s CIA. Greece is that hand basket to hell they warn you about, and I was riding in that basket, chowing down on Grandma’s cookies.

  My brain blipped, stuttered, rewound. Xander wanted me to cooperate? Was that an order from him personally, or did it come from a higher authority—aka: Grandma. Because if cooperating was all Xander’s idea, then maybe I should button my lips and say nothing. It wasn’t long ago that I’d discovered Xander carried around an NIS identification card, which, he told me (non verbally, seeing as how Xander didn’t speak) was a fake.

  But was it really?

  Greece confused me.

  My life confused me.

  I pulled over to feel sorry for myself for a moment. Cooperating was secondary.

  The vans came to roost behind and in front of us. There was no sign of Elias, mostly because there was a big van obscuring the rear view.

  Marika shot me a horrified look. “What are you doing?”

  “Stopping to see what they want.”

  “Are you crazy? I have a bag full of guns.”

  Jesus Christ in a camper van, she had a valid point. Were her guns legal? Who knew. Someone probably had a license for them, just not a henchman’s wife—bodyguard or no bodyguard. I nudged the Beetle away from the curb and zipped off at a speed slightly lower than the posted sign on this stretch of road. Last thing I wanted was for law enforcement to have a legitimate reason to haul my butt in. Better for them to have a half-assed reason that a lawyer could give them endless legal grief about.

  Argh! I was starting to think like my family. At the rate I was going I’d be negotiating with drug suppliers for better percentages by the end of the week.

  “What are you doing now?” Marika asked.

  “Going back to the compound?”

  “Baboulas will kill you if you take the NIS there.”

  In my family killing someone wasn’t an empty threat. Yes, I was her only female grandchild, and yes, I was potentially—if Grandma got her way—heir to the Makris family, uh, Family business, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t make me vanish like a scientologist’s uncooperative spouse if she thought it was best for the Family.

  “Where am I supposed to go? Is there some kind procedure for this kind of thing? Because I think there needs to be a formal procedure and a binder explaining all the steps.”

  “Who knows? I am just a bodyguard. I could call Takis and ask.”

  I rolled my eyes. If she called her husband he’d take over, and when Takis took over ... Actually, when Takis took over things got done. Not always the way I wanted them to, but he was good at his job. Which was probably why Grandma kept him around. His personality wouldn’t be winning any prizes for charm any time soon.

  “Try Stavros.”

  Stavros is my cousin. He has pelt of a bear, and a penchant for porn that may or may not involve animals. Although his job title is technically henchman, he’s really just a sweet guy who wants to settle down with a good woman and raise children.

  Marika called Stavros. When he picked up she put him on speakerphone.

  “I know,” Stavros said when we told him about the NIS. “Elias told me.”

  “Told you when?”

  “He’s on the other line right now.”

  “And?”

  “And what? We were talking about what I am going to cook for lunch.”

  Marika perked up. “What are you cooking?”

  “Fondant patates and herb chicken.”

  “Fondant patates? What are fondant patates?” Marika asked.

  Patates. Greek potatoes. Exactly the same as American potatoes, but with a different arrangement of vowels.

  Stavros explained. When he’d finished, Marika let out a shoulder-shuddering sigh. “Takis would never forgive me if I served a new patates recipe. That man wants tiganites with every meal.” Tiganites. Fries.

  “That does sound delicious,” I said. “Can we focus on the NIS? Xander told me to cooperate. Should I cooperate?”

  “Until they try to stop you, just keep doing whatever you were doing,” Stavros said.

  “And if they do stop us?”

  “Answer their questions honestly and tell them nothing. Technically that is cooperating.”


  “I don’t know anything!”

  “Good. I would stick to that.” He ended the call.

  Marika gave me a hopeful look. “Can we eat now?”

  #

  We stopped at a souvlaki joint where Marika loaded up on gyros. I ordered souvlaki and Epsa lemonade. There was nothing like the local-made lemonade back home. While I was paying for us both, Marika vanished.

  I trotted back to the Beetle.

  No sign of her.

  Oh, boy. Was this another kidnapping thing, because I was getting pretty tired of kidnappers and other crazies. Yes, my family was a pack of criminals, but there are levels, or so they kept telling me. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure my family didn’t do kidnapping. Abduction seemed like it was probably the most common tool in the criminal toolbox. Want to make the other guy squeal? Take someone who belongs to him.

  No more abductions, for crying out loud. Takis would have my head if his wife had been kidnapped and he was forced to stay home with their kids. I wasn’t sure he’d make it twenty-four hours with the fruit of his puny loins.

  I dumped the food in the car and looked around, hands on hips. The two NIS vans had parked in formation. Behind the rear vehicle, Elias was idling. I trotted over to the black SUV. He stuck his head out the window as I approached.

  “Can we head back to the compound?” he said. “I’m going to be late for lunch. Stavros doesn’t like it when I’m late for lunch. Today it’s fondant patates. I don’t know what they are but they sound amazing.”

  “Have you seen Marika?”

  “She’s not with you?”

  “Does she look like she’s with me?”

  He peered past me. “I would say no. You cannot miss Marika.”

  That was true enough. Marika was a lot of woman.

  I walked to the middle of the narrow street, looked left, looked right. Nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Plenty of foot traffic in the form of Greeks scurrying towards their homes for lunch (which was really dinner, seeing as how lunch is the main meal of the day around here) and their afternoon naps. America prided itself on being a democracy—well, sort of—but as far as I was concerned my home country deserved a big pointy F for failing to adopt the siesta. Afternoon naps are the best thing ever. Who wouldn’t vote for naps?

  Just as I was about to yell her name, Marika came dashing out from the grimy alley between buildings.

  She eyed my empty hands. “You did not eat my gyro, did you?”

  “Where were you?” My voice might have been a touch frantic and high pitched.

  “I had to pee.”

  “There’s a public bathroom down there?”

  “No.”

  I looked at Marika. She looked at me. I tried not to imagine the possibilities.

  “Never mind,” I said, moving on. “Did you take the test?”

  “What test?”

  “The pregnancy test.”

  “Heh. I forgot. Oh well, there is always tomorrow. Where are my gyros?”

  Too annoyed to speak, I hooked a thumb at the Beetle. Half of Greece thought I was knocked up now, and the rest wouldn’t be far behind. As hot a topic as Grandma was, I’d probably make headline news tonight, and all because Marika had made me promise not to tell anyone she might be pregnant.

  Wasting no time, Marika settled into the passenger seat and began rummaging around in the bag of food. “Now that my bladder is empty there is more room inside. You only got one souvlaki?”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Me either. And a good thing, too. I could not survive another one.”

  Deny, deny, deny. Maybe Marika wasn’t a Makris by blood but she was definitely family by attitude.

  I reached out to give back her change, then snapped my hand back without handing it over. I’d spent a lot of time with the counterfeit money the Germans had passed to Kyrios Spiros, the village of Makria’s butcher. (Although I’d never use that word in his presence, given that it sounded awfully close to slang for penis.) This money had that same slippery, not-quite-legit sheen.

  I jumped out of the car, raced back into the souvlaki store. “Where did you get this money?”

  The staff looked at each other, shrugged, then laughed.

  “You know this is a shop, eh? Where does anybody in a shop get money? Customers.”

  “Real helpful,” I said, although they were right. Anybody could have passed the notes. This wasn’t exactly a low traffic area—not even in late summer. The souvlaki shop was popular with locals and tourists who needed to refuel after long stretches of doing nothing at the beach. I skulked back to the Beetle, wondering who the culprit was this time. Probably it was a remnant from the Germans who’d passed the last batch of Monopoly money. They were all dead, but their crime lived on. Whoever paid for their souvlaki with funny money probably didn’t know it had been printed in an Italian basement. Naples, Italy (as opposed to Naples, Florida) was where criminals flocked to learn the art of printing euros.

  Marika looked at my empty hands. Her face fell.

  I suppressed a sigh. “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought you were going for dessert.”

  “No dessert. They sell souvlaki and gyros.”

  She sniffed. “Maybe we will see something on the way.”

  Time to hit the road again. I clicked my seatbelt, turned the key in the ignition, then turned it off again. We weren’t going anywhere. Only a New Yorker could get out of this parking spot, what with the NIs vans closing in on us.

  Holy crap, this was our Star Wars moment: one NIS van backing up, the other inching forward. We were Leia, Luke, and Han in the trash compactor. Possibly there was a monster flopping around beneath us, but I didn’t like to think about that.

  “Uh oh.” Marika lowered the gyro to chin level. “What do you think they want?”

  “To be as annoying as possible.”

  “Then it is definitely working. I hate being crushed to death when I am eating.”

  Probably they didn’t care. The vans’ side doors slid open and a bunch of men in black jumped out. They had big guns and bulging pockets in their cargo pants. Even Marika’s guns weren’t that big.

  “Their guns are bigger than my guns,” Marika said, noticing the same thing.

  “Those are some pretty big guns,” I admitted.

  “I bet if we ran they could hit us.”

  “You think?”

  My sarcasm shot right over her head. “Most likely they have had training.”

  The men in black surrounded us. Their expressions were as dark as their ninja commando costumes. They looked like they’d been taking fashion tips from Xander; only not all of them had the coloring to pull off a sea of black.

  Xander could. Xander could pull off anything, I suspected. He wasn’t just silent, he was also drop-dead gorgeous, in a stoic, cut-from-marble way.

  Hera slunk out of the van in her banana yellow jumpsuit. What did she want this time? We’d already cleared up the pregnancy rumor. Maybe she wanted to gloat about how she’d slept with Melas and I hadn’t.

  Ha! The joke was on her: I didn’t want to do the horizontal Zorba dance with Melas. Okay, yes, the part of me that had lousy judgment did, but the smart part was in control of my underwear, which meant my clothes were staying very much on.

  I rolled my eyes at her. “What do you want this time?”

  She held up a perfectly manicured hand, tipped with blood red talons. “We’re asking the questions.”

  “Was that a question?” I looked down at the ground. A wad of gum was graying on the cracked sidewalk. “Because I think the question mark fell off.”

  For the record, a Greek question mark looks like a semi-colon. I still haven’t figured out what they use for a semi-colon; possibly a question mark.

  “This will go more smoothly if you cooperate.”

  “Legally, do I have to?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? Have you got something to hide?”

  “Not really.”

  Her
mouth formed a disappointed twist. “I will be the judge of that.”

  “You’d save me a lot of time if you’d just tell me what I’m hiding.”

  She yanked open my door. “Get out.”

  “What’s the magic word?” Marika said from the passenger seat.

  “Now,” Hera said.

  “Go nowhere until she says please,” Marika told me. “I let my boys go hungry for a whole day because they would not say ‘please,’ and they are children. This one should know better. She is old.”

  Hera shot her in the face with a handful of eye daggers. “Don’t make me hurt you.” One of the men in black cleared his throat. She wheeled on him. “What?”

  “The boss said no torture.”

  “You sure he said that?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  Hands on hips. Boobs in the at-attention position. “You think maybe you heard him wrong?”

  The man in black’s eyes stuck to her jumpsuit, chest high. “Now that I think about it ... anything is possible.”

  “Get in the van,” she told me.

  I thought about Xander’s text and how I really didn’t want to follow his advice. The problem was Hera: the woman was a skanky bitch-face. Man, it was really hard to believe she and her sister Irini ever swam in the same gene pool. Irini Pappas is married to Police Sergeant Pappas, a decent all-the-way-to-the-bone cop who works with Detective Melas. Irini doesn’t like her sister much, but she likes me for reasons I don’t understand.

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s not optional.”

  “Still not getting in the van. If you’ve got something to say, say it here.”

  She looked uncomfortable. “It’s classified.”

  I said nothing, but I did give her one of my mother’s give-me-a-damn-break looks.

  “Okay. We’re trying to catch a fish, and you look like a worm to me. Doesn’t she look like a worm?” She appealed to the ninja yes-men, who nodded dutifully, mostly because ninety-nine percent of their attention was on her boobs. They were impressive, I had to give her that, like a set of man-made Himalayas.

  I double-took. “Wait—what?”

  “Worm. I said you’re a big, fat worm.