by Alex A King
“Papa!” Mario barked.
Aldo wasn’t in a listening mood. “A broom handle. Can you believe it? A broom handle. And it was ...” He made a face. “ ... Let me just say unnatural things had been done to that broom handle. And the cucumbers that were always disappearing from the garden ...” He shook his head sadly. “My daughter is more of a man.”
“I don’t have a sister,” Mario said.
Aldo shook his hands at the aluminum ceiling a couple of dozen feet above our heads. “Exactly.” He looked back at me. “Did Katerina send you here to learn how to make a little art?”
“Something like that.”
“You are not the first in your family to come here. Your uncle, I think it was, was here not long ago, but he was working with another group.”
I seized on that. “Kostas?”
“No, the other one.”
“Rita?” Color me confused.
“No. The eldest one. Michail.”
CHAPTER 8
My stomach fell directly into my shoes. It did not pass GO. It did not collect two hundred bucks. Michail was my father’s name. “When was he here?”
“Not long ago.”
“Is Italian time like Greek time? Because ‘not long ago’ could mean anything if we’re talking Greek time.”
He grinned, and then reeled off a time frame that lined up perfectly with the dates inside the Italian passport I’d found in Dad’s safe.
All my blood pulled out of my body and rushed to my face. Everything above the shoulders was hotter than Hades. Below the neck I was giving Elsa from Frozen a run for her chilly money.
This was the second-worst possible news. It meant Dad was neck-deep in a life of crime, decades after he’d abandoned the Makris Family to live quietly in America, raising me and working for a company that didn’t exist. Like ogres, Dad was an onion: he had a lot of layers, and a lot of them were stinky. There’s no good way to spin a counterfeiting education.
Except there was, wasn’t there? Because I was doing it.
But this was different, I told myself. Ultimately I was here for Dad. I couldn’t find him if I was stuck in Naples, penniless and without a phone, so I’d sidled up to the dark side, hoping to find a light without a train attached.
“Huh,” I said. “How about that.” My gaze skated sideways to the phone hanging on the metal wall. Would anyone mind if I made a call? “Which group was he working with?”
“The Napoletanos,” Aldo said.
Even I knew Napoletano was a name that meant you were from Naples. It was probably as common as ants. Hurl a pizza slice and it would slap a Napoletano.
“Of course,” Aldo went on, “I have to wonder why your family sent you after they sent him.”
I went with the truth, no need to dig a deeper hole. “Michail was abducted a few weeks ago. He hasn’t been found yet. The Napoletanos’ printing secrets went with him.” I showed him my splayed hands. “So my family sent me.”
“Kidnapping.” Aldo spat on the ground. “Kidnapping is for amateurs. God willing your uncle will come home to your family with all his pieces.”
“Kidnapping is good,” Mario said. “It twists peoples arms and keeps them honest.”
“This one.” Aldo shook his head in disgust. “Don’t you have some balls to juggle in your mouth?”
“Keep it up, old man, and I will put you in a retirement home.”
Aldo slapped the air. “Pah! You need me. You have no talent for anything. You—” he tapped me on the shoulder “—come with me.”
With thoughts whirling in my head, I followed him over to the laptop.
“All of this,” he told me, “is an addition to a photo manipulation program. Every group has their own base process. This is my design. Years it took me. With this printer this program creates an almost-perfect euro.”
It was difficult to imagine the elderly and rustic Aldo as a programmer. “Almost?”
Aldo plucked a twenty-euro note out of his pocket. “There are three ways to detect a fake. Feel. Look. Tilt. The print on a real euro is slightly raised. The paper is crisp, not ... how you say ... floppy.” He touched a finger to his watery eye. “Hold a genuine euro note to the light and you will see three things: the hologram becomes ... what is the word ... you will see rainbow light. On the back, more rainbows when you hold it to the light. Europe likes rainbows. We are all trying to forget dark times in our history. Now we tilt the money. Do you see the silver stripe? Do you see how the green number dances up and down?”
I did.
“Very difficult to replicate just one of these things,” he continued. “But all of them? Near impossible. The good news is that most of the other idiots are trying to make good-enough money. Theirs are not almost-perfect.”
“What’s your secret?”
He made a face. “The paper, the ink, and the program. None of these things are easy to get. The first two require friends in useful places. The program ... you can have the program for a hundred million euros.”
I almost choked. “That’s a lot of money.”
“Not to somebody like your grandmother.”
No, I was pretty sure it was a lot of money, even to Grandma. “I’m not here to negotiate. I’m here to learn.”
He slapped me on the shoulder, steering me back toward Mario. “And you have learned! You have learned the price of making money Aldo Fontana’s way.”
“What about me?” Mario whined.
Aldo didn’t waste time looking at his son. “You. Ha!”
The warehouse doors rumbled open. Light filled the space. A red pickup truck that had seen better days and cleaner places slowly backed into the warehouse. When the driver jumped out he left the engine running. No one seemed worried. Maybe they didn’t know about carbon monoxide poisoning. You’d think gangsters would be more clued in about death and how to make it happen.
I edged closer to the door where the air was gritty and slightly less gray. At Mario’s house the air tasted like sea salt. Here it tasted like I’d been sucking on a tailpipe. The men worked fast, loading up the truck with the stack of boxes that had been sitting in a far corner all this time. The warehouse was so large I hadn’t noticed them until now.
“Money?” I asked Aldo.
“Money,” he confirmed. “That mignotta Mario needs new makeup and maybe a pretty dress.”
Ten minutes later, the truck peeled away, bumping over garbage as it fled the scene of the crime—which the entire warehouse technically was. I played third wheel while Mario and his father argued loudly in Italian. Their frantic, vivid hand gestures created a light summer breeze.
They shut up when another vehicle stopped outside. A car door slammed, and a moment later a figured dressed in navy blue, topped with a jaunty peaked cap, stepped into the warehouse. Everything about him screamed, “Cop,” especially the badge on his hat. His head swiveled slowly as his gaze gobbled up the scenery, one slow eyeful at a time. It grazed passed me, then doubled back for a second look. And a third.
Jeez, dude. Take a picture.
Words shot out of his mouth like bullets out of a Gatling gun. Aldo and Mario fired their own Italian ammo. I understood nothing except the body language. The cop wanted to know who I was and why I was there. Maybe I was bad feng shui.
Aldo explained—or at least he explained something—while the cop continued his visual security sweep of my person. When Aldo was done, the guy spoke in English.
“They call this part of Campania the ‘triangle of death’. Do you know why? I will tell you.”
What was with people around here? They spent an exorbitant amount of time asking questions they were going to answer for me.
“It is the garbage,” he went on. “It is everywhere in this place. Everything you see, everything you touch, is made of shit. The water here? Poison. The air? More poison. That is just the environment. The people here are the head and body of the shit. Aldo and his brat here? Two shits.”
“We are shit,” Aldo said,
also in English, “but we are rich shit. And we are making you rich shit, too.”
“It is true,” the cop said. “I like money very much.” He nodded to me. “Become shit if you have to, but don’t drink the water. Buy bottled.”
“Get out of here,” Aldo said without a trace of humor in his voice. “You got what you came for.”
“I will have that program,” the cop said.
“Not unless you have a hundred million euros.”
Two rows of stained teeth flashed at the old man, the kind of grin that belonged in a predator’s mouth. “Does the money you give me count?”
Aldo laughed. “Real money.”
The cop made a face. “Too bad.”
“For you,” Aldo said, “but not for me. Sooner or later somebody will pay.”
“A hundred million,” Mario scoffed. “A hundred million is nothing in this business. I know people who would pay a billion.”
Aldo looked around, a curious look on his face. “Where, eh? Where are these people lined up to pay a billion euros for my program? Oh look, there they are.” He nodded to a shadowy corner of the warehouse—which was all of them, basically.
Mario minced toward the door. He paused dramatically, hand landing delicately on one hip. “Everybody wants the program. Do you know how many people have tried to steal it, eh?” Then he returned to his elegantly executed flounce.
Aldo winked at me. “Listen. Five ... four ... three ...”
From outside, Mario whistled.
“That is for you,” his father said. “Best not to keep him waiting, otherwise he might take you shopping.” He faked a shudder. “What a son, what a son. I will be seeing you soon, I think, so no goodbyes, eh?”
#
Mario bitched about Aldo all the way back to his beachfront mansion.
“He is jealous because I am young and he has one foot in the grave and the other on a hoverboard.”
Aldo wasn’t quite that old, but his toe was definitely creeping up to the cemetery gates. I made noncommittal noises, hoping Mario would interpret them in a way that wouldn’t increase his urge to kill me.
He bitched through lunch—caprese salad, with, he bragged, homemade mozzarella.
“You made it yourself?” I tried not to sound impressed, but I really liked cheese. Anyone who could make cheese without his or her own farm was my hero.
“I did not say it was made in my home, but it was made in someone’s home.”
Ha. So much for that.
The salad arrived moments before the main course, a pasta dish bursting with color and flavor.
“Puttanesca,” Mario explained. “Whore pasta.”
I inspected every forkful suspiciously before shoveling it into my mouth, in case it contained real prostitutes. You just never know about people. Mario struck me as being about as stable as a giraffe on roller-skates.
“It’s great.”
“Puttanesca is my papa’s favorite. That’s why I spit in it every time.”
That didn’t slow me down. Hey, spit or no spit, the pasta was excellent. Besides, the heat must have killed at least some of the bacteria.
Mario balanced his fork on the side of the bowl. He stared at me across the table, his eyes lit up with crazy. “Are you here to steal from me?”
“Steal what?”
“My program.”
“I didn’t even know you had one until you took me to the warehouse.”
He made a sound of disbelief. “Everyone knows about Mario Fontana’s counterfeiting application. It is the best in the business.”
“Not me,” I muttered. “But then I’m not really up-to-date on the organized crime business. There needs to be a magazine.”
He nodded like he knew—which he did. “Nothing in this business changes, except when it does. There are two absolutes: money and power. Everything is about the acquisition of money and power, or preventing the loss of either or both. If I lose my program I lose money and I lose power. My money—my fake money—will no longer be the best. If you steal from me—if you are lying about your intentions—I will fucking kill you. Capishe? And I don’t like to kill with my own hands, so I will be very—how you say—grumpy. Grumpy is not good. Grumpy makes the crow’s necks.”
“Feet. I’m sure it’s crow’s feet.”
“Why would their feet be on my face?”
“I don’t make this stuff up.”
“Crow’s feet.” He laughed, shook his head. “You Americans.” His laughter died. “I think my papa is going to ass-fuck me. And I don’t like being ass-fucked.”
I said nothing.
“Do you think he is going to ass-fuck me?”
I said some more nothing.
That didn’t slow Mario down. He leaned back in his seat. “He is going to ass-fuck me, I know it.”
“He’s your father.”
He wagged a manicured finger at me. “Somebody has never seen The Empire Strikes Back.”
#
For someone who wasn’t a prisoner I was an awful lot like a prisoner. Dinner showed up at my door late—by American standards, anyway—carried by a smirking Baked Potato.
Glaring, I snatched the tray from his hands. Fragrant steam rose from the dishes. “Don’t you have tourists to rob?”
“Even for a woman you talk too much,” he said before locking me in for the night.
“Even for a sexist pig you’re a sexist pig.”
“Pigs are delicious. Are you calling me delicious?”
I rolled my eyes and kicked the door shut.
Expert hands had prepared dinner. The gnocchi was homemade, each potato dumpling a tender bite. The sauce was smooth with a sharp hint of Parmigiano-Reggiano. For dessert they’d served me a generous slab of tiramisu steeped in coffee liqueur. Prison food in a mansion was pretty damn great. Now that the buzz of the day was wearing off, I began to unpack every detail one item at a time while I ate.
Dad had been here in Italy, soaking up the art of counterfeiting.
Local law enforcement was happy to collect government paychecks while dipping into organized crime’s deep, full pockets. All they had to do was look the other way and see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. Basically they were monkeys.
And Marika and Donk were locked up in a sea cave, at the mercy of the tide.
The bed called to me. This is the perfect place to assume the fetal position and cry like a little sissy girl, it said. Look at these pillows—look at them. They can take a lot of tears. Probably some punching, too.
It had a point. I wanted to bury myself in its soft, dense bedding and cry myself to sleep. Starting with Dad’s disappearance, I’d been heaved heard-first into a life that wasn’t mine. I was nobody—just some kid from Portland, Oregon. What did I know about mobsters and crime? I even returned my library books on time. Now here I was bumping elbows with Italian mobsters, trying to bleed them for information to appease Greece’s intelligence agency. It was that or they might squeeze Grandma. Okay, so in some circles—all the round ones—Grandma was a monster. But she was my grandmother and she was dying. Pressure was something she didn’t need more of, so here I was, drowning.
Come on over, the bed whispered like a delicious manwhore. We can have ourselves a time. You know you want me.
“Shut your damn mouth,” I told the silent bed.
Marika was right: I needed to get laid. It had been too long. For all I knew there really was a cobweb situation going on. Biology said it wasn’t possible, but deep down I worried that maybe the female anatomy was like a piercing, and if you didn’t use it once in a while it would close up.
If I made it back to Greece maybe I’d ask Melas on a date. At the very least it would be worth it to watch Hera’s makeup-smothered head explode.
I flopped back on the bed, arms outstretched, and let it hold me while I gathered my thoughts into a neat-ish pile. Shuffling through the mental deck, I organized and prioritized. Besides getting back to Greece and Grandma, I had one massive problem. Marika an
d Donk were caged in that cave. Leaving them there wasn’t an option. Mario had me, so he needed to suck it up and be satisfied with one hostage. That’s what I was and I knew it. What I didn’t know was his endgame, but I figured he’d reveal his hand before long. He was an idiot—he’d screw up and spill his guts.
So. Marika and Donk. Once they were out of the way I could move on to Phase Two, whatever that was. In between, I’d do the crying and rocking I was currently postponing.
I waited a while but God didn’t open the window, so I was forced to do it myself. The good news was that no tattletale alarms went howling to their daddy. The bad news was that my room was on the second floor. The gutters were too far away for me to shimmy down. The pool was too far away for me to jump into without me winding up as a cautionary tale, buried with my Darwin Award in hand.
Which left me with the trellis clinging to the wall. It looked sturdy enough to hold something besides the ivy that was currently wending its leafy way up the house. That could work, provided the ivy wasn’t poison.
Down I went, backwards. The trellis shuddered and creaked. Ivy slapped me in the face, tickled my arms and legs. I was going to fall and die, wasn’t I?
My feet touched the loamy garden earth.
Nope. Not going to die falling off a trellis tonight. I slowly exhaled and took stock of my surroundings. The courtyard was deserted. Back in Greece, the family compound hummed with low-level activity during the darkest hours. Dogs opened an eye as anyone with a pulse crept around the property. Guards patrolled, invisible mostly. The whole place had eyes and ears. Mario Fontana’s grounds were silent and still.
As I inched out of the courtyard and into the fresh, free air I half—no, three quarters—expected a shot to ring out and a bullet to bury itself in something maybe not vital, but definitely painful. My calf, probably. The muscle was softish. Not nearly as toned as it should be but harder than it was two months ago.
But there was no shot and no bullet.
I sneaked down the path that wandered between the palm trees, trying to cobble together some sort of plan. Tools? Didn’t have any. Weapons? One gun that possibly worked. Although maybe the Armani Hobo had ditched the firearm because it was a dud ...
