by Alex A King
On the ground, Mario laughed. “A little precaution I like to take.”
His wife rolled her eyes. “Listen to him bragging. This idiot takes no precautions. I take precautions. My house. My security. My precautions.”
“What precautions?” I asked, starting to feel desperate.
“You should have just killed him,” she said, “leaving behind only one witness who would happily lie while you make your getaway. I enjoy playing the grieving widow.”
“Just how many times have you played it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “All of them.”
Yowza! I grabbed the man formerly known as the Armani Hobo by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
“And go where? It’s too late now,” he said.
Sirens closed in on the property fast.
“Police?” I asked
“Worse,” Mrs. Fontana said. “Dirty police. They work wherever there is the biggest paycheck. They come if I don’t press a code on my phone every hour.”
I was done with Italy. These people were officially too crazy and too paranoid for me—and that was saying something given the crooked shape of my family tree.
“Perfect,” I said, “because I didn’t do anything. My conscience is clean.”
“What about me?” Mario blubbered. “You shot me.”
“Yeah—by accident!”
“You’re still holding the gun.”
I looked from the gun in my hand to the ocean grasping at the shore with its foamy hands. I pitched the gun into the water. “What gun?”
Beside me, the hobo groaned. “That was my only gun.”
“Relax,” I said, “according to Marika you can always buy a gun from a shady guy under a bridge.”
“I was that guy,” he said.
“And you don’t have more guns?”
“I sold them.”
“What was the next part of your plan?”
He scratched his head. Lice, probably. “Wait for the helicopter.”
“What helicopter?”
Up at the house, tires came to an apathetic stop. Maybe Mario’s wife was paying them, but she wasn’t paying them enough to care more quickly. The sirens quit. Given the distance between here and the house, we had a minute or more, depending on how long it took them to search the premises for trouble.
Now that the sirens were silent I heard the telltale buzz of an incoming helicopter. Then I saw the blowfly in the sky. The black helicopter was closing in fast.
“Please tell me that’s for us,” I said.
No answer. The Armani Hobo was busy. Either he was signaling to the helicopter or he was answering my question in the medium of interpretive dance.
The helicopter dipped lower. The pilot resembled a manly, broad-shouldered Princess Leia. It hovered overhead. A cable with a harness attached tumbled out. Neither of the Fontanas looked happy or impressed. Probably they had their own rescue copters. Me, I was a girl from Oregon. I grew up in the suburbs, where choppers never performed last-minute rescues to yank me out of trouble. Yeah, I was impressed.
“Who are you?” I shouted at the hobo.
He grabbed the harness and held it out to me. “Get in, Katerina Makri.”
“Makris with an S. What about you?”
He shot a look up at the house. There was no sign of the cops but there would be any second now. “Get up there now. You’re your family’s future, whether you want to be or not,” he yelled over the rotors’ whomp-whomp-whomp.
I stood my ground. “I don’t know who you are, but you saved me. Now I’m returning the favor.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“Mostly I just like to know stuff. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”
He fastened the harness around himself, and then he threw me over his shoulder.
“You remind me of my mother,” he yelled.
CHAPTER 11
Cops poured down the path to the beach. Cops on the rocks. Heh. The high of the narrow escape was making me woozy. Now that we were safely on the helicopter, the Armani Hobo plopped me down on the metal floor and unhooked his harness.
“Xander,” he shouted. “Great timing.”
Xander? Xander was here?
I shoved the hobo out of the way and pushed to the front of the helicopter. The pilot’s head turned. Manly Princess Leia was Xander.
For a moment he gawked at me.
Ung. The poison ivy. Mario’s darlings had turned me into a beast.
Then Xander smiled like he was genuinely glad to see my face, misshapen or not.
This was one of those times where it wasn’t easy to be me. I was filled with the burning desire to grab his massive shoulders and kiss him until we couldn’t breathe. On other hand I wanted to plant my foot in the middle of his broad chest and kick him out of the helicopter. Where was he two days ago when we needed rescuing?
When I asked him that exact question, he winked at me, then he focused on the Armani Hobo behind me. The hobo and Xander did some elaborate hand-slapping thing that guys do.
“Xander, my man. Good work.”
Xander, predictably, said nothing. He never did. Whether he couldn’t or wouldn’t, I didn’t know, although I had my suspicions that it was the latter. For whatever reason, Xander refused to talk—to me, anyway.
“Are Marika and Donk okay?” I asked.
Xander nodded.
“What now?” I asked them.
The Armani Hobo shrugged out of his long coat, dropped it onto one of the seats. He sat down beside it, buckled himself in and closed his eyes.
“Now we rest.”
#
One of us rested. Mostly I sat there fighting the urge to bite my nails.
The Armani Hobo opened one eye. “Are you staring at me?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Have you come to any conclusions?”
“Nope.”
He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“You. Why didn’t you shoot Mario?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You had the gun.”
“Yeah—that you gave me.”
“You chose to pick it up. Why would you pick up a gun unless you intend to use it?”
“So someone else wouldn’t. What if a child had picked it up?”
“You know any kids who poke through the garbage?”
Not off the top of my head, but Marika and Takis’ kids were definitely contenders. Thinking about them with a loaded gun made me shudder.
“Did Aldo really want his son killed?”
“Not his son.”
“He raised Mario, therefore that’s his kid. Are you telling me he Aldo Fontana really paid you to have me kill Mario?”
“Do you always ask this many questions?”
“This is a slow day.”
He closed his eyes. “My Virgin Mary.”
#
“Wow, you don’t smell so good,” Aldo said to me when he jumped aboard Grandma’s plane. Xander had landed in an undisclosed, to me, location. Asking was an exercise in futility, so I just held my tongue. We’d moved from the helicopter to a plane I immediately recognized as Grandma’s. Xander didn’t waste time. He made a beeline for the front of the aircraft and fired up the engines. The Armani Hobo and I buckled up and waited for takeoff.
And that’s when a car came skidding to a stop outside the plane and Aldo had bolted out and up the steps. He’d flopped down beside me, buckled his seatbelt, and now he was looking at me with a wrinkled nose.
“I’ve been wearing these clothes for three days. You don’t exactly smell fresh either. What is that—ink?”
“I had to make some more money before I left. Papa has got to live somehow.” He hefted a large duffel bag onto his lap.
I eyed the luggage. “Fake?”
“Real and freshly laundered.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Italian food finally got old.�
�� He grinned. “Or maybe it was me who got old, eh?”
That was more like it. Nobody got sick of Italian food.
An hour later, we landed on Grandma’s private airstrip on the outskirts of Volos. The four of us piled into the gleaming black SUV parked at the edge of the field. I aimed for the shotgun position but somehow—sorcery, I suspected—wound up in the backseat again. Xander had issues with me sitting in the front. It had all started with his appalling taste in music and my inability to keep from changing the station. Rembetika—Greek folk music—is the malformed offspring of horny cats and silverware scraping across a greasy plate. Play it to POWs, you’d be violating the Geneva Conventions. Xander flicked on the sound system. A guy with a toothache began warbling about how the Turks had stolen his goat but left his mother.
The Armani Hobo jumped into the front seat. His identity was still a mystery to me, despite my attempts to lure him into a game of Twenty Questions. It could wait. My eyelids were suddenly heavier than physics said they should be. The hot Greek sun crept through the SUV’s glass, patted me on the head, and told me a tiny nap wouldn’t hurt anyone.
I woke up sometime later, face plastered to my arm with a streak of drool. It was just me and Xander in the car. We were parked outside the Volos hospital.
“Where did they go?”
Xander pointed to the hospital.
Fear tackled me. “How is Grandma?”
He gave me a thumbs up. My shoulders slumped with relief.
“Can we go see her?”
He jumped out to open my door. I tried taming my hair but I was a hopeless situation. Sand and grime had turned my yellow dress a dreary shade of urinary tract infection. My new shoes had prematurely aged. Hot tears weren’t far away from turning me into an epic disaster.
Xander moved behind me.
“What are you doing?”
Silently—as if he did things any other way— he gently gathered up my hair at the base of my skull, smoothing the strands as he worked, and fastened the bundle with a rubber band that I guess he kept handy for hopeless causes like me. Then he patted me on the head like I was a good doggie and moved around to the front.
“Did you just do my hair?”
He shrugged. His lips twitched as he bit back a smile.
Tears misted my eyes. I brushed them away with the back of my hand and jammed my Hay-Beans onto my nose to hide the redness. Crying isn’t something I do prettily. “Let’s go see Grandma. You keep an eye out for wolves.”
#
Elias fell into step alongside us just inside the hospital doors.
He squinted at me sideways. “Boss? Is that you?”
“Ignore the head and skin. It’s temporary.”
He let out a relived sigh. “It’s good to see you, boss. I was worried. You and Marika alone in Italy ...”
“I’m just glad the NIS didn’t get all three of us.”
He tugged at the neck of his black shirt. “They took me back to their van. It was terrible. Do you know how much perfume that woman wears?”
He meant Hera, of course. “It covers up the smell of brimstone, I expect. What did they want?”
“They asked questions—lots of questions—about you and the Family. I told them nothing.”
Elias was loyal to my family. Grandma had given him a respectable job after he’d been hired by an Albanian mobster to be an assassin. His first hit was supposed to be yours truly. Instead of gunning me down, Elias switched teams.
I shot him a grateful smile. “How did you get away?”
“Stavros brought them some bad sushi. Hera is probably still in the bathroom.”
“I don’t think so,” a woman’s voice said from behind us. I groaned turned around. Hera. Ugh. And damn her. Here I was wearing dirty laundry, while she managed to keep linen pants crisp and unwrinkled. It was unnatural.
“Christos,” she said, laughing her butt off, “what happened to you? No, don’t tell me just yet—I want to look at you and enjoy the moment.”
The Armani Hobo’s pill had worked magic on the itching, but I was still red and bloated.
I put on my best ‘I smell dog poop’ face. “Get thee behind me, Satan.”
“Wait—stand over there. I want to take a photo so I can remember this forever.”
“Go to hell.”
“You’re only here because we’re okay with that,” she said. “Time for a little debriefing.”
I folded my arms. “No.”
“Awww. You say that like you have a choice. You don’t go anywhere until we’ve had a chance to ask our questions.”
“Let me think ... No.”
“We have information about your father’s kidnapping you might find interesting. But you have to give something to get something.”
Now she had my attention. For genuine, reliable information about Dad’s whereabouts I’d do almost anything, including dance on the end of Hera’s string.
“Do you?” I said casually, not wanting to sound desperate.
“Let me think,” she said, the big copycat. “No.”
Argh! That cow. “You’re made of shit. You know that—right?”
She shrugged. “I lied. So?”
Enough was enough. I slammed her shin with the pliable rubber sole of my sad-looking new shoes. Hera’s pants had started the day white. Now, as she hopped around on one foot, they bore a black skid mark down the front.
“You little skeela,” she snapped. “Your whole family is doing down, starting with you.”
Everything I’d been through these past few days was all her doing. I’d had more than enough of Hera to last a lifetime. My hand snapped out, seizing her by her hair. One little twist of my wrist and gold spooled around my fingers. I jerked her towards the sliding doors.
“Help me,” she called out.
Nobody did. They were too busy watching the one-sided cat fight. Xander stood there with his arms folded. Elias was snickering. And outside, Hera’s band of black-clad zombies were milling around, exchanging glances. My guess was they didn’t like her any more than I did. Hera was beautiful with her long blond hair and her big boobs, but that dream died a swift death every time she opened her mouth. I felt sorry for them having to work with her in close quarters.
I shoved her out the door, giving her a rough shake as I unwound her hair.
“Now stay out!”
I dusted off my hands and stormed back into the lobby, where Xander and Elias were grinning their heads off.
“Now let’s go see Grandma,” I said.
#
The elevator pinged. The doors parted. Takis was there, slouched alongside the entrance to the ward with his head bowed over his phone. He glanced up as we exited. His face brightened. He opened his mouth, but I cut him off with my hand.
“Don’t even start with me,” I said.
“Your face—”
“Don’t,” Elias said, backing me up. “I just watched her throw the NIS woman outside.” Admiration tinted his words. “You are even smaller.”
Takis puffed out his puny excuse for a chest. “Who are you calling small?”
“If the children’s clothes fit,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in. I’d shot my insult load on Hera, and now I was spent. I just wanted to see Grandma then go back to the family compound and pass out for a few days. “How is Marika?”
“She’s at home with our children where she belongs.”
“Nineteen-fifty called—it wants you back.”
My cousin’s cousin’s cousin looked bewildered. “What did I say?”
“Where’s Grandma?”
As if I could have missed it. At the far end of the ward a mixture of cops and—if I wanted to be technical—robbers were gathered in the hallway. Melas broke away from the pack, swaggering in my direction. Damn, he looked good. Tired—but good. Melas is a shade less than six feet. He’s cut from a narrower piece of marble than Xander but he’s every bit as hard. With his dark honey-colored skin, chocolate eyes, and black hair, the ma
n is a binge eater’s fantasy feast.
Ugh. My face, my skin, my allergic reaction to poison ivy. I wheeled around and made for the elevator. Xander grabbed me, spun me back to face due north.
Detective Nikos Melas’s face broke into a grin. “Katerina?” His gaze slid past me to Xander. They exchanged courteous nods. He slung his arm around my shoulders and sniffed me. “Wow, they don’t shower in Italy?”
“Your girlfriend sent me on vacation without a change of clothes or money. I had to choose between toilet water or the bidet.”
His face scrunched up. “She’s not my girlfriend, and hasn’t been in a long time. Pappas called to let me know what was going on. I would have come to get you myself but I couldn’t get away. Xander volunteered.”
I shot Xander a grateful look. Normally he stuck close to Grandma. He must have been worried if he’d left her side for this long to airlift me out of Greece.
“Where’s the Armani Hobo?” I asked. “Did he come up here?”
Melas said, “Two men went into Baboulas’s room a few minutes ago. They’re in there with your aunt.”
Sure enough, Aldo Fontana and the Armani Hobo were in Grandma’s private room with Grandma and Aunt Rita. What the heck were they doing there? Neither man was family.
My aunt leaped up when she spotted me. She rushed toward me in a cloud of Poison and platinum blond curls. My father’s sibling normally eschewed her natural hair, reaching for one wig or another, depending on the day’s outfit. Today was a caftan—very 1970s. “It’s so comfortable,” she whispered in my ear as she enveloped me. “I don’t have to wear underwear.”
“Katerina,” Grandma said, “I can smell you from here. Two days in Italy and already you have picked up their bad habits.”
Grandma was propped up in bed, surrounded by lace-edged pillows I knew didn’t belong to the hospital. They weren’t Grandma’s either; her bed was a simple rectangle with one flat pillow per side and a sedate blue quilt. This was Aunt Rita’s doing, obviously.
“Three days. I’ll do better next time I’m abducted and dumped by the NIS. Hera’s so happy with me now that I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t abandon me in the desert with a bottle of salt water and an asp in a basket of figs.” I kissed her on both cheeks, Greek-style. “What happened?”
Grandma waved it off. “It was nothing. Just a little fall.”
