In Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

  “Donk,” I said in my best don’t-mess-with-me voice. Which, to be honest, wasn’t that great. Even as a bill collector I’d lacked bite. Mostly I shamed debtors into paying up with my good manners.

  “You need a man to handle this,” he said in Greek, shushing me.

  Marika snorted. “She is more of a man than you are.”

  Was that a compliment? I rubbed my cupid’s bow, trying to decide if I needed to start waxing. Last time I checked there was no dark hair sprouting there, but half my DNA was Greek. Excess hair could strike at any time.

  Donk took the high road by ignoring her. He addressed the Italian bozos in the kind of English no one should use. “Women, eh? They talk, talk, talk. What they say? No-thing.” I tried crushing him with a look but his mouth kept moving. “We look for someone who make the Ben-ja-mins. You two ... you looks like smart mens who knows Ben-ja-mins.”

  “Donk,” I said.

  He laughed, bro-style. “See? Talk, talk, talk.” He did the little yapping hand gesture that has put many a husband in an early grave, then winked at me, the scrawny little jerk. “Say my name, bay-bee.”

  If that’s how he wanted to play it, it would be my pleasure. “Sure thing, little Yiorgos.”

  His mouth fell open stupidly. His eyebrows shot up. Red stained his cheeks. He shuffled backwards to let the adults do the talking.

  Meanwhile, Baked Potato and Beaver were busy laughing at Donk’s predicament.

  “Goodbye, little boy,” Beaver said between snorts of derision. Then he yelped as my shoe scraped down his shin. He chased it with a jagged stream of Italian curse words.

  I did a one-shouldered shrug. “My foot slipped.”

  Baked Potato watched his buddy hop around for a moment, then he nodded at me. “We told you we don’t know anything about anything.”

  “Come on. Donk was right—you two do look like you know a thing or two.”

  “No-thing. That is what we know—capishe?”

  “Nothing,” Beaver wailed. He was having pain management issues.

  Please, how stupid did they think I was? Maybe they didn’t know anything personally, but I was certain they knew a guy who knew another guy. Like law enforcement, crime is a whole sticky network.

  “Either of you bozos ever hear of a Greek mob boss named Katerina Makri?”

  “Who?”

  My forehead scrunched up. “How about ‘Baboulas’? Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Ba-who-ass?”

  Either they were liars or Grandma’s wooden spoon didn’t reach as far as Naples, Italy.

  “Okay ...” My gaze cut to the phone on his hip. That one tiny plan was still rattling around inside my head. “I don’t suppose I can borrow your phone?”

  Baked Potato tipped back his head and laughed. “Do I look stupid?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  It was wasted on him. “If I give you my phone you will steal it. I know this because that is what we do.”

  “I won’t, I promise.”

  His face said he no understandee my English. He stole phones therefore everyone stole phones. Criminal logic.

  “Just one teensy phone call. Please.”

  His face said my words didn’t compute. “Teensy?”

  “Small.” With two fingers I showed him just how small. What I left out was the part where that call would be to Greece, and, depending on his plan, expensive. He might have to sell a kidney.

  “Okay, okay.” He tugged the phone off his belt. “One call, okay? If you steal it I will cut one of these two. The fat one, I think, because she will run slower than the bambino.”

  Marika eyed him dangerously. “Did he just call me fat? I heard him say fat.”

  “Not right now, Marika.”

  Baked Potato slapped the phone into my hand. The cover was pink and dotted with tiny hearts. I looked at him and he shrugged. “I stole the phone, okay?”

  “From who, a fifteen-year-old?”

  “She was maybe ten.”

  Ugh.

  People do weird stuff. Me, I stepped sideways to make the call, even though it gave me precisely zero more privacy.

  “What’s the number for Greece?” I asked Marika.

  She made a face like I was speaking Bulgarian.

  “Three zero,” said Donk. “I give my number to a lot of girls on the internet. They all want to talk to the Donk.”

  “How many actually call?”

  “None yet, but they will. Probably they are intimidated by me.”

  I shook my head and made the call. The internet is king of the world, but there are still ways of getting numbers you don’t know without resorting to your search engine of choice. The call I made was to the operator, and, after a long stretch of silence, where I was sure she’d hung up on me, the phone began to ring.

  Police Constable Pappas picked up on the third ring.

  “Pappas? Oh my God, it’s Katerina Makris. Don’t hang up ...”

  “I ... wasn’t going to.” He sounded bewildered. “Is there a problem?”

  The story tumbled out of my mouth, followed by, “Is Melas around?”

  “Naples?” Across the miles, I heard him shaking his head. “Melas is at the hospital.”

  An alarm went off in my head. “Hospital?”

  “You don’t know.” Flat. Not a question.

  Panic saddled up its man-trampling horse. “Is he with my grandmother?”

  “Yes ...”

  “What—”

  A hairy hand flashed before my eyes. Baked Potato snatched the phone away.

  “Are you calling Greece on my phone? You can’t call Greece on my phone! The charges will eat me alive.”

  “I thought it wasn’t your phone.”

  “It wasn’t at first, but now I’m paying for the plan, and my plan, it does not include international calls. You owe me big money now!”

  “I don’t owe you anything. You tried to rob us. Or did you forget that part?”

  He whipped out his knife, danced it through the air like a drunken ballerina.

  “Say ‘bye-bye.’ ”

  I stumbled backwards, narrowly avoiding the blade. “Time to go,” I yelped, grabbing Marika and Donk.

  “I can take him,” Donk said. Chest puffed up, he danced from foot to foot. Someone had been watching too much pay-per-view boxing.

  Damn it. Last thing we needed was Donk going chest-to-blade with Baked Potato. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him along the sidewalk, away from danger.

  “Why did you do that?” he whined.

  “I’m saving your life, dumb-ass.”

  “Nice,” he said.

  #

  The evening was one dead end after another. Working girls, boys, and girl-boys were less than helpful. Mostly they wanted to give me fashion and makeup tips. Two out of ten drug dealers pulled knives on me. One offered me “anything I wanted” for an hour with Marika. Another dealer offered me the same amount of anything for ten minutes with Donk.

  Every so often I caught a glimpse of the homeless guy I was starting to think of as the Armani Hobo. He was lurking around the edges of this whole shitty trip, marking his territory. For a guy who never had a drink in his hand, he sure peed a lot. He really needed to see a doctor about that. Our luck scraping Naples’ seedy underbelly had improved whenever he was in sight. It wasn’t long before I was actively trying to stay in his shadow.

  “No more,” Marika said. “My feet ...”

  She eyed Donk, but the teenager didn’t bite. A clear sign that Marika wasn’t the only sleepyhead. I yawned in solidarity.

  Grandma was in the hospital, and things were bad enough that Melas had to be there as extra security. So far I’d failed to infiltrate the counterfeiting business in the Naples area, and I still had two dependents—maybe three—to take care of. Things looked dark—partly because it was dark. All the pretty lights in Naples didn’t obscure the fact that night was here and we had nowhere to sleep, eat, or pee.
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br />   “Things will look better in the morning,” I told my two compadres. “In the meantime, we need a roof over our heads. We should look for a homeless shelter.”

  “Bridge,” Marika said. “I have always wanted to sleep under a bridge.”

  Marika was living the life of a cloistered mob wife until I stumbled into Greece. Now she was living dangerously in Naples, minutes away from sleeping under her first bridge.

  “I’ve never slept under a bridge either,” I admitted.

  We looked at Donk.

  “I got a handjob under a bridge once,” he bragged.

  “It does not count if you do it yourself,” Marika said.

  Donk opened his mouth to deliver a cutting remark, but I cut him off by clapping my hand over his piehole.

  “Okay,” I said, attention sliding to the Armani Hobo, who was skulking nearby. “Let’s find ourselves a hospitable bridge.”

  #

  As far as bridges went it was definitely not a bridge. It was more like the stoop of some kind of shop. A bookstore, I thought, squinting through the glass. Over the door, a decent awning shaded us from the moon. We’d agreed on a bridge, but there’s a limit to how far you can walk on a handful of bread.

  “What makes this better than an alley?” I asked Marika.

  “This does not smell like urine.”

  “Yet,” Donk said.

  We looked at him. Hard. “If you need to go, pick another stoop,” I said.

  We settled on the stoop side by side, three pathetic little birds. I half hoped Marika and Donk would start bickering. I wanted the distraction after Baked Potato whacked our shot at a police rescue and cut Pappas off before I could find out about Grandma.

  A figure moved in the thin darkness. Our Armani Hobo again.

  Beside me, Marika and Donk were out cold. I wiggled my arm and realized it was damp with drool. Eww.

  “Hey!” I called out to the man in the once-luxurious coat. My voice came out more like a hiss because I was trying to be considerate of my sleeping companions.

  He glanced over at me, then shuffled away to a garbage can further down the street. After poking through it for a moment, he shot me another furtive glance before ducking around a corner.

  What was he up to?

  Sighing, I gently propped Marika up against Donk and eased my butt off the stoop. I hoofed it to the garbage can, glancing around to see if anyone was witnessing the stony rock bottom of my adult life, to date.

  That was really saying something the way my life had been going lately.

  I peered into the garage can. Shockingly, it was overflowing with garbage. Had Armani Hobo been foraging for food? Down here on my life’s rock bottom it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. How old could the garbage be? Not to mention we were talking Italian garbage here, not crappy chicken nuggets and Big Mac wrappers. This was high quality, foreign garbage, which instantly meant it was a better class of garbage.

  Funny—it reeked like American garbage.

  Oh well, beggars couldn’t be choosers. And with that cheery thought in mind, I went picking through the wrappers and containers, searching for something that would turn my joyless little trio’s frowns upside down.

  Then my hand hit something hard, cold, and potentially deadly. Unease crept up my arm.

  The Armani Hobo had dumped his gun.

  #

  Back home, once you toss something in the garbage it’s considered there for the taking, the Supreme Court declared back in 1988. Yeah, there are local laws that override the California vs. Greenwood ruling, but for the most part garbage is public domain. Dumpster diving is a growing thing back home. There are even some loons out there who do all their fine dining at dumpsters. Unsurprisingly, they call themselves ‘freegans’. The difference between freegans and the homeless is that freegans collect paychecks, own homes, and happily drop five bucks per cup at the local coffee shop for coffee ground between the butt cheeks of a free-range exotic animal.

  But Naples wasn’t home. For all I knew they’d whip me with a Prada belt and toss me into an Italian prison, where I’d be forced to live out my days subsisting on grappa and Italian bread.

  As far as ideas went, this was probably one of the bad ones. But on the other hand, what if a child found it? Better for me to take it. Besides, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Armani Hobo had left the gun for me. Which was a first; even my own grandmother wouldn’t give me a gun. Instead, she’d found it funny to give me Dad’s old piece—his childhood slingshot. But, I can hear you saying, David slew Goliath with a slingshot, so that sounds like a pretty great weapon.

  No. David brained Goliath with a sling. Totally different weapon.

  But Dad’s slingshot wasn’t so bad. I’d used stones as ammo before, and Baby Dimitri gave me a bag of marbles for when I wanted to shoot people in style. Baby Dimitri also gave me a statue with an aggressively huge wiener, but that was less of a weapon and more of a talking piece. The sucky thing about a slingshot was that at my skill level—novice—it took a few seconds to load up the cradle and aim. Mostly it was useful for hiding in the bushes and freaking out the bad guys. Greeks are more superstitious than most.

  Unfortunately, like my phone, money, family, and sunglasses, Dad’s old slingshot was in Greece.

  I stuffed the gun in my dress pocket. Too bulky. Too much sag, even though the gun was smallish and as ladylike as a death contraption could be.

  “Would it have hurt you to have left a holster?” I called out, aware that I was looking a gift gun down the barrel.

  Something flew toward me, out of the darkness. I picked it up.

  Huh. An inner thigh holster.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  A gun made me feel like I’d leveled up. I could shoot a rat if I had to, or wave it threateningly at a bad guy. One way or another I had to find the bad guys in order to get home. I just didn’t know how.

  Gun concealed in its holster, I returned to the stoop to wait for sleep or morning.

  #

  Marika eyed my leg. “Is there a gun strapped to your thigh or do you have a secret you have not told me?”

  “Gun.”

  She held out her hand. “Give it to me. I am the bodyguard.”

  “You’re pregnant.”

  “Maybe—who knows?”

  Suddenly she turned an unflattering shade of green and puked on the step. Donk yelped and jumped sideways. We all hurried across the narrow street. None of us made eye contact with the step.

  “I am okay. That is what happens when I do not eat.” She glared at me. “Why do you say I cannot be your bodyguard if I am pregnant? Are you prejudiced against pregnant women?”

  “I’m not prejudiced! I don’t want you to get hurt. In case you hadn’t noticed, bad stuff has a way of happening to me—and around me.”

  “That is why you have a bodyguard.”

  “Two.”

  She didn’t look impressed. “Where is Elias, eh? Back in Greece, sipping on a frappe, looking at the girls. Meanwhile I am here with you, protecting you.”

  Given that her face looked like an oncoming storm, I didn’t fancy pointing out that, boy, she’d really come through for us with the whole Baked Potato and Beaver fiasco. And where was she went the hookers were mocking me? Across the street with Donk, that’s where. Not that I was bitter; she just wasn’t good at the ‘body’ part of ‘bodyguard’—or the ‘guard’ part. She was definitely more of an amusing sidekick.

  “If you get hurt Takis will kill me,” I pointed out.

  She made a face. “I would spit in his food if he tried.”

  “Well, maybe Grandma wouldn’t like a pregnant woman being my bodyguard. It’s the next generation at stake.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Did she say something to you?”

  “No ...”

  “Maybe something about how she does not want to have to pay me benefits—or pay me.”

  Donk did a double take. “Someone pays you money to be Katerina’s bodyguard? Ha-ha.”r />
  “Baboulas. Baboulas pays me,” Marika snapped, “because she knows I am good, and also because looking at me you would never expect me to be a bodyguard. When I am out with Katerina everybody looks at us and sees two friends. I am a master of disguise. That is why I am an excellent bodyguard.”

  “What do you do, sit on the bad guys?”

  “Enough, you two!” I shoved my finger up in Marika’s face. “You can’t have the gun. It’s mine.” Then I honed in on my second target with that same finger. “And you—stop baiting Marika, especially about her weight.”

  Marika slammed her hands onto her hips and sucked in her gut. “I am not fat—I am comfortable, just the way Takis likes me. And he knows women, let me tell you.”

  There was an unhappy, eye-bleach-necessary thought. If Takis knew women then I was Santa Claus. And if I were Santa Claus, I’d pile us into my damn sleigh and ho-ho-ho back to freakin’ Greece.

  The sun was coming up hard and fast. I had to pee and I’d already been pinched on the butt three times since Marika started arguing for custody of the gun. Day two in Italy was shaping up to be hot, painful, and wet if I didn’t find a public toilet soon.

  Across the way, an elderly storekeeper trudged up to the store we’d used for shelter. He bypassed Marika’s puke, shoved one of those heavy old-fashioned keys into the lock, and vanished into his shop.

  Somewhere below my belt my bladder reminded me that thirty was just around the corner and that it wasn’t as watertight as it used to be. I was this close to being mistaken for a fountain. Any second now tourists would start throwing coins at me.

  Marika followed my gaze. Her eyes lit up. “Me first. The baby, you know.”

  My mouth dropped open. Now she was playing the pregnant card?

  Legs crossed, I jiggled on the spot and watched her disappear into the shop. Beside me, Donk shoved his hands into the pockets of his slouchy pants.

  “Sometimes it’s good to be a man,” he declared. “The world is your toilet.”

  “It could be mine, too, if I had a bendy straw right now.”

  He stared at me, horrified.

  Years later, Marika emerged, moving at the speed of tortoise now that her bladder was empty. Me, I flew past her and all but fell into the store. Overhead, a bell jingled. Shadows rushed me. There was light but it was filtered by the windows and awnings. The one sunbeam I spotted was filled with dust dancing the tarantella. Behind the cluttered counter, the shopkeeper peered at me over the top of his half-moon glasses. Genetics had grabbed his skull and chin and smushed them closer together so that his features bulged out of his face slightly, like warm ingredients in a Panini. He reeled off a rapid-fire stream of Italian.