by Alex A King
The doctor. Ugh. I slapped my forehead. I’d forgotten about the doctor and tonight’s date.
“You know I’m single, right? I can date whoever I like.”
“Do you like him?”
“I haven’t met him.”
“Then you’re not out with him right now?”
“No! I’m sneaking between the trees outside the compound.”
“What?”
Oops! I ended the call, turned off the ringer, stuffed the phone back into the pocket in Aunt Rita’s somber skirt. If I was lucky Melas wouldn’t come looking for me. Although knowing Hera, she was already tracking him, and the last thing I wanted was him leading her to me. As far as disguises went this was a pretty good one and I didn’t want it compromised.
Mount Pelion’s main road was just up ahead. I wheeled Aunt Rita’s moped to the tree line and peeked out. Sure enough, the NIS vans were lined up like marshmallows. All that white, clearly they weren’t worried about discretion. The engines were off, the windows were down, the doors wide open. A thin curl of cigarette smoke rose from the far side. There was low chatter, and every so often someone chuckled.
I crouched down behind ... I don’t know ... some kind of tree to assess the situation, which was a fancy way of saying I was watching the watchers. The tree was a treeish one, jutting up between crude hedges of gnarled bushes.
Okay ... where was Hera? It was possible she’d ridden her broom to rip off a wiener or slap a kitten, but sooner or later she’d be back. Operation Stalk the Makris Family was her pet, and I was the paw she wanted to twist so the mouth of the dog would yelp.
Then the front van shook and Hera climbed out. She fanned her face with one hand and glanced around with a sour twist to her painted lips.
“Sooner or later we’ll be able to pick the scab,” she said into her phone. “Scab can’t dodge me forever.”
“Us,” one of the other agents called out. “You mean dodge us.” He wasn’t visible but Hera flipped him off anyway.
Scab? What or who was Scab?
“The uncle is here, too,” she said, addressing whoever was on the other end. “So far he’s done nothing except sit around the hospital room with his mother, playing the devoted son. If only Scab knew.” Hera laughed into the phone. “If only they all knew.” The person on the other end had something to say about that. Hera quit laughing fast. “I haven’t forgotten. No, I told her we don’t know anything about her father.”
A gasp shot into my throat but never made it out, mostly thanks to the whopping huge hand covering my mouth. I stuck out my tongue and licked it, but only because I couldn’t get a good bite. The hand vanished as quickly as it had appeared, then it wiped its palm down my cheek.
I smothered a yelp and twisted around to see Xander crouched behind me. Well, he was a dark blob, but a distinctly Xander-shaped dark blob. I didn’t know many dark blobs shaped like beefcake. Melas was broad through the shoulders, but he was a leaner cut of muscle than Grandma’s favorite bodyguard.
“Why aren’t you at the hospital?” I whispered.
Using two fingers, he pointed to his eyes then to me. His message was clear: he was watching me.
“Grandma’s orders or Hera’s?”
Nothing. I couldn’t gauge his reaction because of all this darkness.
“Forget I asked,” I said. “The only answer is Grandma, because even if you were the NIS’s guy you’d lie. It’s all very Princess Bride. A clever guy would say Grandma, because only a fool would admit to being NIS when his boss is a deadly crime lord. And you don’t strike me as a fool so you’d definitely say Grandma, because I’m her granddaughter and I’d tell her if I was sure you were an NIS mole.” I made a face. “If you’re confused, that makes two of us.”
I felt rather than saw the edges of his lips rise, but I definitely saw the outline of his head shake. My long-term plan was to slowly drive him to drink and squeeze the answers out of him while he was inebriated. If he wasn’t a drinker, he would be after another month or so with me around.
That was a sobering thought. Summer was almost over, and still no Dad. I’d never lived through an autumn without him.
Xander inched forward until we were hunkered down behind the tree, side by side. We sat. We watched. My legs got numb so I sat flat on the dirt. Xander shifted positions, too. Stakeouts were boring. At least the NIS vans had monitoring devices, snacks, and—judging from the shouts and expletives spraying from inside the van—board games.
After a while, what with Xander keeping me company and all, I began to feel like I owed him an explanation of some kind.
“Hera knows something about my father’s disappearance. At first she said she did, then she said she didn’t, but I think she was lying the second time. So my master plan is to follow her around and figure out what she knows—if anything. What do you think?”
He shrugged.
Xander had the communication skills of a brick wall.
“Hera mentioned someone or something called Scab. Does that sound familiar?”
Nothing from the silent man.
“Scab?” I gnawed on a hangnail. “Who or what is Scab? Is that a Greek Scab or an English Scab? Because I only know what a scab is in English.”
He looked at me. The penny dropped.
“I’m Scab? Are you kidding me?” I flopped back on the dirt. “That’s the best code name they could come up with? A whole dictionary at their disposal and that’s what they chose? That’s pathetic. Or I’m pathetic. I don’t know which is worse. Scab. Why Scab?”
Xander shrugged. Again.
I pulled out my phone and Googled. About thirty seconds later I pocketed the phone. Scab—or SCAB—was an insult aimed at American women. Stupid Caucasian American Bitch.
Charming. I bet Hera Googled that all by herself.
“Do you have a codename?” I muttered. “I bet you do, and I bet it’s a good one. Something edgy, like Tasty Python or Silent But Deadly. Grandma probably has a good one, too. A name that doesn’t grow over open wounds. Scab. Ha. She’s such a cow, and all because she thinks I’m sleeping with Melas. Which,” I pointed out, “I’m not.”
Xander stood. Probably he didn’t want to hear all about how I wasn’t doing the horizontal mambo—or any kind of mambo—with Melas. I wasn’t miffed. It wasn’t like we were friends anyway. Xander reached down and hauled me up off the ground. He touched a finger to his lips; the international sign for “shut the hell up."
Fine. If Xander wanted me to be quiet I’d be quiet.
“What is it?”
The whites of his eyes shifted and I knew he was rolling them at me. He nodded to the road. Sure enough a vehicle was pulling up alongside the vans. I heard a car window roll down, then the driver said, “We’ve had complaints about your vans blocking the road. Move along.”
Shit, shit, shit. Melas was here. I hoped he wasn’t about to start poking around the tree line.
“We’re not blocking the road,” one of the NIS guys said. “We’re on the shoulder.”
There was a pause filled with disbelief. Then: “Have you looked at the road? There’s no shoulder.”
“Of course there’s a shoulder. How else could we be on the shoulder?”
“There’s no shoulder,” Melas said in his no-bullshit cop voice. “If you don’t get these vans out of here I’m going to get busy writing tickets and call a tow truck.”
Hera’s head popped up like a meerkat at the sound of Melas’s voice. “Nikos, is that you?” Like she didn’t know. Her fake coyness made me barf a little in my mouth.
“What’s happening?” another voice whispered behind us.
Elias had joined our sad party.
“Jeez,” I whispered back, rolling my eyes. “This was supposed to be a solo mission.”
“I have orders,” Elias said. He was right, he did have orders. And I suppose I was glad he and Xander were here, what with the scary woods surrounding me and all. Trees are beautiful during the day, but at night they look l
ike servants of the devil.
A few dozen feet away Hera said, “Are you hungry, Nikos? I’m starving. Let’s go down to the paralia and eat. My treat.”
Ugh, could she be more obvious? Next thing she’d be asking him to come back to her place.
“After,” she continued in a sickly sweet voice, “you could come back to my place. Or we could go back to yours. Do you still have the pole?”
Double ugh!
Elias snorted. Xander said nothing.
“You know I do,” Melas said, keeping it neutral and professional. “I caught you and your guys in my house, remember? The firehouse pole is still there. You can’t miss it.”
“But I do miss it,” she said, all seductive sexpot and zero shame.
There was a pause, then Melas said in a stiff, cool voice, “Move the vans. They can’t be here.”
Tires crunched as he threw the police car into reverse, pulling onto the shoulder that didn’t exist. Hera and the NIS guys piled into their vans, performed three-point-turns, and sped towards Makria, just up the road.
Yikes! I had to follow them. That’s what the disguise and subterfuge was all about.
It was a risky move, but I wheeled the moped out of the trees and onto the shoulder, where Melas was watching the vans’ taillights fade, arms folded.
“That’s private property you were on,” he said to me.
I kept my head down, mumbled something about how I was sorry in a voice I hoped didn’t sound too much like my own.
“Wait—Katerina?” Disbelief coated the question. “What are you doing?”
I started the moped and pushed off but his hand snapped out in front of me, chest high.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said.
I shoved his hand away. “I’m not thinking about it—I’m doing it.”
He looked me up and down then grinned, despite himself. “What are you wearing?”
“What does it look like I’m wearing?”
“Who died?”
“You, if you don’t let me go.”
“Are you following Hera?”
“Maybe.”
“Why? Is it because of me?”
I snorted. “You wish.” I shoved his hand out of the way and pulled out onto the road, bound for Makria.
A moment later three car doors slammed, then I felt the warm hum of a police car on my tail. I glanced in the side mirror. Melas, Xander, and Elias were in tepid pursuit.
The village of Makria is a whopping half-kilometer—about a quarter mile—up the road from the family compound. Makria’s citizens are good, solid people. Hard workers. Decent. Discreet. Their jobs are the jobs that have always existed in this area. Bakers, grocers, farmers, and one priest. Melas’s father owns Makria’s bakery. We hadn’t met yet, but I pictured him as a big barrel of a man who lived in wife-beaters and was the proud owner of a bushy mustache that resembled a skittish forest creature. For some odd reason when I pictured Melas Sr. he never looked like his devilishly handsome son. Makria’s cobbled streets are for foot traffic only, with special dispensations for livestock and bicycles. If you bring a car you have to leave it in the parking lot outside the village.
I didn’t get that far.
Hera and her dastardly squadron were regrouping in the parking lot, the way evil has a tendency to do in the dark. I stayed back and out of sight, killing the engine not far from the village and closing the distance on foot. My entourage followed suit.
The tiny village of Makria was all lit up. Alive with music, dancing, and the general merrymaking that accompanied food, the village square partied the night away. Lucky for me, the shadows around Makria were thick enough to hide a secret or two.
I crouched down behind a low wall, a roughly hewn pile of stones cemented together with crumbling mortar.
“Your boyfriend is a poutsokleftis,” one of the NIS guys was saying to Hera. “He steals them, then he fucks them, then he eats them.” Then he yelped. “You are crazy!”
“Nikos and I are a team.” Hera’s voice wafted over like a noxious gas. “If you call him a dick thief you’re calling me a dick thief. I don’t think you want to call me a dick thief. Every dick I’ve seen was offered to me—including yours.”
The other guy yelped again, then he went silent.
“Are we clear?” Hera said.
There was a mumbled, pained answer I couldn’t make out.
Hera raised her voice to include everyone in her posse. “Unfortunately he’s right—but not about the dick stealing.”
“You mean he’s right that you’re crazy? We know.”
I saw Hera stick her arm out. There was a low buzz, then the agent fell to the ground with a heavy thud. No one picked him up. Friendship wasn’t really a thing among snakes, I guessed.
“Nikos showing up is a problem. I’ll have to persuade him to be more cooperative.” Her voice had a smirk in it.
Was Melas hearing this?
Worry ballooned inside my gut. Melas had made it abundantly clear that he and Hera had no future, and their past was basically an ancient relic, but Hera was all of Greece’s most beautiful goddesses rolled into one perfect body. Melas was male—overtly male. There’s a limit to how long a person can stare at a chocolate cake before they lose control and cram it into their mouth, one messy fistful at a time.
“It’s late,” Hera said. “Scab isn’t leaving her coop until tomorrow and we can’t just grab her off private property, so let’s pick this up in the morning. Stathis—is that your name? —You stay here tonight and monitor the situation.”
“Five years we’ve been working together,” Stathis—apparently—said, “and she never remembers me.”
“I only remember people who matter,” Hera said.
#
Papou was waiting in Grandma’s yard when I slouched back to the compound. On his shoulder sat Yiorgos the eagle, looking pissed off at the world.
“Did you forget? You forgot, eh? Nobody remembers the dead.”
“I didn’t forget,” I said. “And you’re not dead yet.”
The truth was I’d forgotten I’d promised him—again—that we’d go hunting tonight for the sake of his eagle’s mental health.
“You forgot,” he said, smirking. “After all I did for you. Now let us go.”
I looked down at my groovy threads. “Can I change first?”
“Into what? You look great. Better than ever. Every day you look more like your Grandmother.”
Just what I needed to hear right now.
We ventured into the forest of trees on Grandma’s property. The paved surface ran out fast.
Papou’s nifty wheels stopped. “If only I had somebody to push me,” he said in a sad, pathetic, completely manipulative way.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”
“What is that shit? Some kind of American shit? Horses, beggars,” he muttered. “Just push the wheelchair before I shoot you.”
The threat wasn’t empty. Papou kept a shotgun on the rack mounted behind his wheelchair. “Is the gun loaded?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe. You want to find out?”
When it came to guns I found it was always best to err on the side that didn’t go bang, which means I shut my mouth and pushed the chair.
“This is how I roll,” Papou said cheerfully.
Trees gobbled us up. Things got dark fast. Grandma’s equivalent of a consigliere looked down at the snapping twigs beneath his wheels. “Make some more noise, okay? I do not think they heard you over in Turkey. How can my eagle hunt for food if you are so loud that you scare his food away, eh?”
I stopped pushing. Kept walking.
“Hey, where you are you going? Are you abandoning me in the woods? Good idea. Why did I not think of it? I could have been dead years ago.”
Papou acted like he had a death wish. Ask me, what he liked was the attention and planning of his own exit. Grandma really needed to give him something more constructive to do than advise her.
>
“Okay,” I said, reluctantly turning back. I eyed Yiorgos. “Let's see if he’ll hunt.” I gently extricated the eagle’s head from the little leather hood. Yiorgos flashed me his one facial expression. “Shoo. Go find whatever it is eagles eat.”
The bird sat there. The eagle had no idea how to do eagle things. Mostly he'd delivered packages before.
“Give him a poke,” Papou said. “I cannot bring myself to do it.” He stopped, cupped a hand to his liver-spotted ear. “There is someone else out here with us.” Papou raised his voice. “Hey, malakas, we can hear you. You think you are clever and sneaky like the fox, but you huff and puff like a train.” He sniffed the air. “Did you klaso? What did you eat, eh? Your mama’s cooking?”
If someone was out there they were quiet. “Maybe you should send your eagle to check it out.”
“He might get hurt. You should go.”
“Me?”
“Is there something wrong with your hearing? Go.”
“And if it’s a bad guy?”
“We are the bad guys.”
He had a point. Still, I didn’t fancy wandering into the darkness alone.
“Probably it’s just Uncle Kostas again.”
Tectonic plates shifted on his forehead. Ravines deepened. “Eh? What do you mean again?”
I told him about my uncle’s late-night sojourn the previous evening.
“Around in circles, eh? Did he have a cigarette?”
“Not that I could see or smell.”
“A dirty magazine?”
“His hands were in his pockets,” I said. “I think.”
“Did I ask what you think? Tell me only what you know.”
“No magazine. Unless it was teeny tiny and in his pocket.”
His eyes closed. His head lolled back. Several moments passed. Was he dead? I really hoped he wasn’t dead.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright. “That way,” he whispered, finger pointed straight ahead. “What are you waiting for?”
“A weapon?”
“Show him your boobs, you will not need a weapon.”
To be offended or not to be offended? “What if it’s a woman?”
“Then you better hope she likes to do scissors with other women.”
