by Alex A King
“Enough. Jeez. Donk.” I held out my hand. “Phone, please.”
He pulled it out of his pocket, slapped in on my palm, glaring at Marika. She was giving him the killer stink-eye.
Blissfully, Donk’s phone had a signal. I’d worry about roaming charges later. No question that I’d reimburse the kid—he was caught up in this just as much as we were. I scrolled through his Contacts list. One, and only one, name jumped out at me.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, and this was as desperate as it got. I did it: I called Baby Dimitri.
“What do you want, eh?” he said, picking up on the third ring.
“Is that any way to talk to your customers?”
He chuckled. “Katerina Makris-with-an-S. Why are you calling me on my worthless nephew’s phone?”
I took a deep breath and laid it out for him.
“Theos and Christos,” he said when I was done, invoking God and Christ. “Are you fucking crazy calling me? You know the NIS have got their heads right up my kolos. Probably they are listening to this right now. They will kill me. I have to go.”
“Wait!”
Too late. He’d already ended the call.
We’d see about that. I hit redial.
The Godfather of Espadrilles and High Heels answered immediately. “I’m not here.”
“Wow, the NIS works fast, because your ghost is answering your phone. Where should I send flowers?”
“Tell me again how you are not your grandmother, eh? Because to me you sound just like the woman.” He let out a sigh like there was a giant pain in his ass, which there kind of was—me. “I cannot help you, okay? You know what your biggest problem is?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea.” It began with F and ended with Y ... with AMIL wedged between the two letters.
“You do not think like a criminal. Wake up, Katerina Makris with an S. You are living in a criminal world now, with people chasing you who believe you are a criminal, too. And there you are, la-la-la like a little girl with a basket of sweets, skipping to her grandmother’s house.”
“La-la-la,” Laki said in the background. Then Baby Dimitri’s sidekick cackled. Where was he with one of his little firebombs when the NIS had loaded us into their vans? I could have used him then.
“Skasmos,” Baby Dimitri hissed at him. “Can’t you see I am trying to have a conversation here?” Then he was back. “You do not think like a criminal, and that is your biggest problem. You understand?”
I thought about it. “Not really. Can you tell Aunt—”
The line went dead. Baby Dimitri had ended the call—again. I wandered back to where Marika and Donk were busy contemplating the baker with his breads in display. They were some mighty fine-looking loaves, stacked in their uneven pyramids. Very Italian, the way they didn’t give too much of a damn how they were arranged.
Marika wiped the back of her hand across her lips. “What did he say?”
“Can’t help us. We’re on our own. He won’t even call the Family.”
“They will be looking for us,” she said. “I know it.”
I was sure she was right, but the NIS had dumped us so far away I wasn’t sure the Family would even know where to start. Not unless Hera and her rotten band of assholes had left a trail of breadcrumbs. Which she wouldn’t. She struck me as the neat type; anal-retentive, Freud would call her. Nobody dressed that well unless they also had issues with everything being perfect, sterile, and breadcrumb-free.
“I don’t think they even know where to start,” I said, thinking about Elias. Where was my bodyguard? Was he crying in a cell somewhere, wishing he had some of Stavros’s fondant patates instead of bread and water?
Bread and water ...
My stomach growled.
Marika plopped down on the ground. Fat tears began to roll down her cheeks. Her lower lip wobbled. “I am so hungry I could eat the child, even though he is all bones.”
“We do have find food,” I agreed.
“What’s aaaaaap?” Donk shot a worried look at Marika. “What is she crying about? Did she lose a kilo? Don’t worry, you’ll find it again—and its friends.”
Marika wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “When I eat and get my energy back I am going to slap you.”
I raised my pointy finger at Donk. “You. Enough with the weight comments.” I swung the finger around. “And you—enough with the hitting. Do you both want to go into timeout?”
“Timeout does not work.” Marika sniffed. “Not with my boys.”
I believed her. To kids like hers, timeout was an opportunity to plot the next major disaster. An idea flashed into my head. Simple—a broadest of broad strokes of an idea. But it just might work.
I clicked my fingers. “Donk, phone.”
“What is the magic word?”
I gritted my teeth. “Please.”
“That’s not the magic word.”
“Just pretend I said it.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“Phone now or I’ll strangle you.” I rolled my eyes. “Please.”
“Even if I wanted to I couldn’t.”
“Did you get robbed? Please tell me you didn’t get robbed?”
He stared at me. Realization dawned. I hadn’t given his phone back. Duh.
I reached into my pocket but my hand came out empty. I looked around. No phone. “God on a gondola,” I said. “Stupid Italian pickpockets.”
Donk didn’t look unhappy. He rubbed his hands together, grinning. “The bad news is that my phone got stolen. The good news is that now my mother will buy me a better one.”
Marika and I gawked at him. “That’s the good news?” I said.
“It’s great news! I’ve been asking for a new one for months now. How am I supposed to do business with an old phone?”
“You’re a school kid,” I said. “You’re not supposed to do business at all.”
“I have ambition,” he said. “I’m going places.”
“You sure are.” And what a place it was. Aside from the overflowing trash and the general filth, Naples was paradise. “But I bet you imagined going there with money.”
“Money was part of the plan.” He glanced around. “Being poor sucks.”
“You’ve only been poor this afternoon.”
“Yes, and it’s the worst afternoon of my life. Beautiful women everywhere and I don’t have any way to get them to like me.”
“Buck up, little camper,” I said. “You’re the Donk.”
He raised his head. “You are right. Wait here, unless you see me running. If I am running, you should run, too.”
#
We found a bridge big enough to fit all three of us underneath. This is what my life had come to, eating stolen bread under a bridge that smelled like pee—stale and fresh. Something about this moment struck me as familiar. As I chewed I thought it over.
Man, the Italian bread was good ... and also just like Greek bread.
Then it came to me. “Holy cows on a conch shell, I remember this from a movie.”
Marika nodded like she knew. “Aladdin.”
“Aladdin,” Donk agreed. “When he breaks the bread and gives it to the children.”
“You are the monkey,” Marika said to him.
“Fack you. You are the monkey.”
“You are all skinny and ooh-ooh-ooh!” Marika made monkey noises that struck me as scarily accurate.
“I can’t believe we’re stealing to eat,” I said.
“Technically this one did the stealing.” She hooked her thumb at Donk.
“If bakers did not want people to steal then they should make it more difficult,” the thief in question said.
His logic had a small amount of logic in it, which bothered me. Normally I didn’t condone theft, but I’d been afraid Marika would go Godzilla and storm Naples. This place seemed pretty laid-back and ill equipped for a Godzilla attack.
Now that I had food in my stomach I could think.
<
br /> Hera’s actions weren’t about petty revenge, although there was certainly an element of that present. The woman was a bitch, after all. But she couldn’t have used NIS resources without a valid reason and authorization. And there was only one reason I knew of to airlift us to the Naples area.
Uncle Kostas.
Counterfeiting.
Two things that, smushed together, made one.
To get home with the NIS’s help, possibly we’d have to make contact with the counterfeiters, maybe learn some new skills. Which was a bit of a problem. Art isn’t my thing. Stick figures? Even those are shaky when mine is the hand steering the pen.
Satisfaction was something I didn’t want to give Hera. This was war. Right now, all I wanted was to shove her perfectly coiffed head down a Greek toilet. The pipes are narrow. There’s no seat. Standing room only. Shoving her head down a Greek toilet would be perfect.
Normally I’d jump to do what law enforcement wanted me to do. On TV the good guys give people choices: do this or go to prison. Old me would jump to it to avoid prison. New, post-Greece me felt yucky about doing the NIS’s bidding. My DNA was suddenly all chatty, pointing out how cooperating with law enforcement wasn’t what my people were known for.
But my ancestors and still-living relatives weren’t stuck in Naples with a pair of dependents. I couldn’t say “Screw it” and hitch a ride with a potential serial killer back to Greece. Carjacking or straight-up car theft went against everything I believed in, no matter how much my genes were rubbing their collective chins, going, Hmm, now there is an idea we like. Stowing away on a train? Knowing my recent luck we’d wind up in Russia, shot to death for not having papers. Going to the American Consulate was out of the question. Sure, they’d help me, but what about Marika and Donk? The Greek Consulate was out, too. They were bound to be in the NIS’s pocket. Government departments were, as Dad always said, the same shit.
Which left me with what?
Nothing.
Even my one phone call hadn’t worked out how I’d hoped.
I peered out at the street. Naples was a busy, bustling city, in a relaxed way. Nobody seemed too worried about much of anything, least of the garbage piled on the streets. If I closed one eye the overflowing trash blurred, while the view sharpened into brighter, better focus.
How had Dad seen Italy?
A light bulb came on in my head. One of those searing, industrial lights used in stadiums. Dad had been here in Italy. Not traveling as Michail Makris, but as one of his foreign alter egos. The man had a safe full of false identities, and that safe was in the master bathroom at home. I really didn’t want to picture him perched on the toilet, trying to decide who he was going to be on any given day. Anyway. Dad had been in Naples—and recently. And given recent events, it hadn’t been a leap to consider that he might be mixed up in this counterfeiting thing.
I was in Naples. Dad had potentially been in Naples. This was, maybe, possibly, a loose thread I could pull.
Suddenly Baby Dimitri’s total lack of assistance didn’t seem so lacking after all. He’d basically tipped me off. I wasn’t thinking like a criminal, he had said. What would a criminal do if they wanted to infiltrate a counterfeiting ring?
Find another criminal.
“Crap on a cracker,” I said aloud.
CHAPTER 4
The Italian working girl backhanded Donk.
He limped back to us with a big grin on her face. “I touched her breast. Nice.”
“Jiminy freakin’ Cricket.” I grabbed my head with both hands, because this—this—was what I was working with. “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.”
I trotted across the street to where two prostitutes in thongs (one pink, one red) and net tank tops were lounging against a wall, looking pissed off at the world. I get it, I wanted to say.
“Hi,” I said in effervescent English. “How are you this evening?”
Their gazes scraped me from top to bottom, then they went back to looking deathly bored. “What do you want?” Pink Thong wanted to know.
“I don’t suppose you know someone who could teach me to make money?”
She looked me over again. “How much money?”
“As much as I can make.”
“In those clothes?” She said something to her gal pal in the red thong. They both laughed, and not in a ‘with me’ kind of way.
Wait a minute ... “I didn’t mean I want to be a prostitute!”
Their laughter stopped dead in its tracks. “We are not prostitutes,” Pink Thong said. “We are business women.”
“Entrepreneurs,” Red Thong added.
Clearly it was Casual Friday.
“Entrepreneurs. Obviously.” I slapped my forehead theatrically. “Silly me. Let’s rewind, okay? Making money. Euros. Printing.” My printer noises weren’t great but impersonations aren’t exactly my forte. Unless I’ve been drinking—then they’re Oscar-worthy.
Both women instantly rolled their eyes. “She thinks we are criminals,” Red said to Pink. “We are businesswomen—understand? Maybe in America this is the work of a criminal, but in Italy what we do is good, honest work.”
“I know that,” I said, trying to dig myself out of the hole I was apparently up to my neck in. “But I thought maybe some of your, uh, coworkers or clients might be, uh, connected?” If this were the Summer Olympics and I were a gymnast, I’d be looking at straight zeroes.
“There is only one way to make money,” Pink Thong says. “Get a job. An honest job, like us. Now get off our corner, eh? You are scaring our customers away.”
From beyond the grave my mom muttered, Stand up straight as I hoofed it back to Marika and a drooling Donk. I yanked back my shoulders and made believe I didn’t suck at life.
Marika eyed me. “How did it go?”
“Great ...”
“Really?” She looked doubtful.
“... if great means I totally struck out.”
“Putanas turned you down?”
Donk snorted. “Congratulations, you are the first person in history to strike out with a prostitute.”
“At least they didn’t slap me!”
His face pinkened. “Only because I didn’t have money, otherwise they would have been all over me.”
“I bet you think strippers really like you, too. You’re not like the other customers, right?”
“I’m not. They said so.”
I patted him on the back. “You keep telling yourself that.”
His face fell. “Are you saying they don’t like me?”
“I’m saying stay away from people who are only your friends when you have money.”
“It is good advice,” Marika said. “You are definitely going to be a good Baboulas after the current Baboulas passes.” She crossed herself.
“Never.”
“Heh.” She hooked her thumb at me. “This one still thinks she can escape her destiny and Baboulas’s wishes.”
Donk bobbed his head like a stupid chicken. “Nobody escapes Baboulas’s wishes.”
Great. Now they were bonding over my fate. Remind me again why I didn’t just bail on both and head to the nearest American Consulate?
Because I’m not a jerk, that’s why. For better or worse these were my monkeys and this was my circus. Generally I’m not a fan of the circus; too many clowns.
“Let’s go find a criminal,” I said, breaking up their party.
#
We were standing on the sidewalk not too far from where this misadventure had started. So far we’d cozied up to precisely zero criminals. Like everything in life, when you need a decent criminal you can’t find one.
It wasn’t night yet, but it would be happening soon. We’d have to find shelter before we tripped on garbage and broke vital parts of ourselves.
Marika huffed and puffed. “How can we tell regular Italians from criminal Italians? Everybody is too well dressed. Even that hobo I keep seeing is wearing Armani.”
I shot Marika a look. “You’ve see
n him more than once?”
So far I’d seen the guy in the ancient Armani coat, or someone just like him, a half dozen times. We must have been traveling in the same social circles.
“What am I—blind? I have excellent eyesight. The only thing I do not see is something that is not there.”
“We need drug dealers.” Hands on hips, I took stock of the street. Businessmen, businesswomen, trendy professionals. Marika was right—everyone was too well dressed.
“We should go back to the police station and ask what places we should avoid,” she went on, “then we will know exactly where to go.”
I was this close to unleashing a dose of sarcasm, when I spotted salvation.
Or doom.
Probably doom.
But also possibly salvation.
Okay, it was fifty-fifty.
“Do you see what I see?” I said to her.
“That depends—what do you see?”
Baked Potato and Beaver, that’s what. Down the street both bozos were leaning against a wall, keeping a casual eye out for trouble. They looked like men good at finding it, which was exactly what I needed right now.
“Come on.” I set off down the street.
Beaver spotted us first. He slapped Baked Potato on the chest and nodded in our direction. “Hey! Remember us? It’s the bozos!”
Baked Potato didn’t look happy. He muttered something in Italian—probably, “Here come the losers who had nothing to steal.”
He pointed a finger gun at me. “Don’t come any closer. You went bang-bang at us.”
“I didn’t go bang-bang at you. If I’d had a gun I would have shot at you sooner. Anyway, that was then, this is now. Friends?”
He eyed my outstretched hand. “What do you want?”
“You look like a guy who knows people.”
“What kind of people?”
“I’m looking for someone who knows something about counterfeiting.”
They exchanged glances. Baked Potato chucked his chin at me. “What kind of counterfeiting? Money? Designer bags? Clothing?”
“Money.”
“We don’t know anything about that,” Beaver said.
“We don’t know anything about anything,” Baked Potato added.
To my horror, Donk stepped forward and planted himself beside me. He had on his teen thug face. Uh oh.
