by Alex A King
The old woman patted my hand. “I was in denial the first time, too, right up until it came out. Then I acted surprised and said, ‘A baby? I did not even know I was pregnant!’ Of course I was only fifteen and very, very fat, like a watermelon, with piggy eyes and flat feet. In those days women had three choices. Marry the father; marry a man who was not the father; or give the baby to the nuns and pretend it never happened.”
“It never happened. I’m not pregnant.”
“Then I hope you know some nuns.” She peered out the window. “Look at that putana.” After crossing herself, she shoved the binoculars at me. “Virgin Mary, what kind of woman is that? I bet she has a mouni like a warehouse. Trucks in and out all day.”
“I like you,” Marika told her.
We watched. We waited. Hera didn’t do anything interesting unless arranging herself naked on Melas’s bed was interesting. Which it wasn’t.
“My Virgin Mary,” Kyria Kalliope said. “What happened to her mouni?”
I looked. I wished I hadn’t. “Brazilian wax.”
Down on the street, a car approached and pulled up to the curb. A police car. Melas was home. My guts twisted into loose knots and made a serious attempt at strangling my stomach.
Marika gave me a well-meaning smile. “He will send her away, you will see.”
“He never sends them away,” the older woman said. “Not until after.”
I didn’t need to ask after what—I knew exactly what.
Two-handed, I covered my eyes. “I can’t watch.”
“No problem, I can watch for you,” Marika said.
There was silence, and lots of it, from the two women.
Curiosity got the best of me. “Did he throw her out into the street naked?”
“Not yet,” Marika said.
“What are they doing?”
“What do you think they are doing?” Marika asked.
“Drinking coffee?”
“Go with that,” she said.
Kyria Kalliope jerked away from the window. “They are kissing, and he likes it. Some parts of him more than others.”
Feeling totally bummed out, I thanked Kyria Kalliope and slouched back to the moped with my poor me face on. Marika’s slippers slapped the ground behind me as she hurried to keep up.
“Maybe it was not what it looked like,” she said. Remember that movie where the woman is dancing in her house and she is murdered, then it turns out she is alive and really Melanie Griffith—but Melanie Griffith back when she had thin lips and no breasts?”
“You mean Body Double?”
She stared at me blankly for a moment. “No ... I think it was called something else.”
Foreign translations. I’d done some Googling and discovered that Die Hard appeared on the big screen with the title Very Hard to Die, so I could only imagine what they’d done to mangle Body Double.
“Forget it,” I said. “They were kissing. He had a choice and he chose Hera.”
“Maybe she forced him.”
“Did it look forced?”
She made a face. “Mostly it looked wet.”
Ugh. My heart ached. Stupid heart; it had no business hurting.
I straddled the moped and waited for Marika to climb aboard. She didn’t. What she was doing was scratching her head and watching some distant point.
“Everything okay?”
“I thought I saw something,” she said.
“What kind of something.”
There was a whistling sound, the kind fireworks make on July Fourth. The thought crossed my mind that it was Greece in early September, which meant there shouldn’t be any fireworks. Then I remembered I knew next to nothing about fireworks in Greece, and whether or not they were banned like in certain parts of the United States. Then I was all out of time for thinking other things because something fiery was flying through the air towards us.
“Bomb,” I screeched, and shoved Marika into the thirsty trees drooping over the sidewalk. I managed to land partly on top of her but not on the pregnant part. The head part was under my chest.
Something went boom behind us, and then there was a horrible crackling sound of newborn fire, followed quickly by the clanging of metal falling to the ground. Moments ago there had been only one metal object nearby and it was part of my disguise. Was.
I rolled off Marika’s head in time to see Aunt Rita’s moped devoured by hungry flames.
Shit. Shit. SHIT.
This was so not my week, my month, my summer. My freakin’ life.
Feet thundered towards us. Elias and Xander were on the move. Neither man looked amused. Xander jerked me up off the ground and began inspecting me for potentially fatal wounds. Elias kept on running, headed for the projectile’s point of origin. Once he ascertained that my death wasn’t imminent, Xander took off in the same direction. His weapon was out, and he was closing the distance between himself and Elias. They vanished around the corner of a house further down the street. One of Melas’s less friendly neighbors? I hadn’t picked this for a rough neighborhood. It was an older neighborhood but not run down or dying. People around here cared about their homes and gardens.
I helped Marika up off the ground. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?”
She looked dazed was how she looked. I probably had the same stunned look in my eyes.
“You’re not dead or bleeding.”
“Then I am okay. What happened?”
“Someone shot a missile or something at us. Come on, we’ve got to go before Melas and Hera spot us.”
We both looked at the moped’s burning skeleton. The spiraling black smoke had to be doing a number on the ozone layer.
“Go where?” she asked.
There was only one way out of here that wasn’t on foot, and that was Elias and Xander’s ride. “The car,” I said.
“You mean steal it?”
“No, I mean get in it and hide.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “I have never stolen a car before.”
“What about the Ferrari in Naples?”
“That was different because the boy stole it. If we steal a car together we will be like Thelma and Louise.”
“They didn’t steal the car. It belonged to Louise.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because that is not how I remember it. Maybe they showed a different version here.”
“They don’t just do that.”
“Are you sure?”
Further down the street, Hera was making her appearance. She’d stopped to dress ... more or less. Definitely less. She was in her underwear, gun in the upright and deadly position. Lucky for us her head was turned the other way. I grabbed Marika’s arm. “To the car. Now.”
A split second later, we dived into the black bullet. Somehow I ended up in the backseat. Again. And Marika was riding shotgun.
We watched Hera pace the sidewalk outside Melas’s place. A moment later, Melas appeared at her side, buttoning his shirt.
My heart fell into my aunt’s sandals. I looked away.
“Does something about Nikos seem strange to you?” Marika asked thoughtfully.
“Strange how?”
“Strange like he lost some weight and shrunk a little bit. Does he wear lifts in his shoes, do you think?”
I sneaked a peek. Now that she’d brought it up, Melas didn’t seem like himself.
I grabbed my phone, dialed his number.
He picked up on the third ring. “Melas,” he said.
The man with his back to me hadn’t touched his phone.
I stared. I thought about it—hard.
“Where are you?” I asked Melas.
“At my desk,” he said. “Why? Everything okay?” His voice warmed up. “You want to grab dinner with me tonight?”
“So you’re not at your house?”
“No. What’s going on?” Now he sounded suspicious, and rightly so.
“Mistaken identity. As you we
re, Detective.”
I hung up before he could fire another question.
“That’s not Detective Melas,” I told Marika.
She inspected not-Melas. “He looks like Melas.”
Now that I was getting a good look at Pretend Melas I could see the cracks in the facade. Body a touch less beef, a little more cake. Narrower shoulders. Flatter butt. But from a distance—say, from across the street or maybe in a darkened bedroom—he could be Melas.
“Ew,” I said, considering what Hera had done, and in Melas’s own house.
Marika’s head bobbed up and down. “There is something wrong with that woman. We should shoot her.”
“We can’t just shoot her.”
“Takis could. I could ask him ...”
“Maybe some other time.”
Xander and Elias reappeared empty-handed a few minutes later. They snuck up from the back, avoiding Hera and Faux Melas. I’d managed to convince Marika to change the station to something current and boppy with less volume. Xander didn’t look happy. Was that because he hadn’t caught his man or because of the change in the music situation?
He yanked the passenger door open, hauled Marika out, planted her in the backseat next to me.
“Welcome to where all the cool people who like good music and hate bad music sit,” I told her.
“This is not fair,” she said. “I get car sick.”
“You don’t get car sick.”
“I do now.”
Xander reached over and sent me straight to musical hell with one twiddle of the sound system button.
“Did you guys find the shooter?”
Elias swiveled in his seat. “No.” He turned back around.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
I tapped Xander on the shoulder. “What’s his problem?”
Xander ignored me. He twisted the key in the ignition and performed a U-turn. His gaze met mine in the rearview mirror; although it’s possible he was trying to see out the back and past my head.
Suddenly Marika yelled, “Stop!”
Xander hit the brakes. We all snapped forward then slammed back into our seats.
Marika rolled the window down, stuck her head out, and barfed slop all over the road. Then she rolled the window back up. She dabbed her lips with a tissue.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Now I am hungry,” she said. “Where are we stopping for lunch?”
We all looked at her in horror.
“No lunch,” I said.
“Yes, lunch. It is the law. Employees must have a lunch break, and I am an employee.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works in organized crime.”
She swiveled in her seat to look at me. “Is there a union?”
I shrugged.
“No,” Elias said, his voice low and disbelieving. “No union.”
Xander hit the gas. He didn’t stop until we reached the compound.
#
I couldn’t help myself—I needed a shower and I needed one now. How did widows do it? All that black, it was like being stuffed into a witch’s oven in a candy cane house. Back in Grandma’s shack, I peeled away the damp layers. I looked down ... and shrieked.
The inside of my thighs were black. So much for fast-drying paint.
I called Aunt Rita. “How do I remove black paint off the inside of my thighs?”
“I’ll be right there.”
Five minutes later, Aunt Rita rocked in wearing strappy sandals, hot pants, and a sparkly halter. In one hand she carried a bottle of something a dubious shade of orange.
“Will it work?” I asked, eyeing the bottle. My knowledge of the Greek language didn’t extend to automotive and home renovation products.
“The cousins say yes.”
Color me doubtful. “Will it work on people or just on inanimate objects? Because there’s a difference.”
“There is only one way to find out,” she said, ferreting around under Grandma’s sink. She pulled out a cleaning cloth and handed it to me along with the bottle. “If it eats through your skin, I know an excellent plastic surgeon.”
That wasn’t the least bit reassuring.
But it did work, and I didn’t lose too much skin. Mostly it was like a rough chemical exfoliation. In some tax brackets, women paid a fortune to slough this much skin off their faces.
Bow-legged, I joined my aunt in the kitchen. She’d scrounged up a tin container with a vanilla flower on the label. While I was in the shower, she had poured two tall glasses of iced water. She looked up in time to see the question on my face.
“Vanilla mastic,” she said.
I might have clapped my hands and squealed a bit. “Vanilla submarines? Melas told me about them.”
“They are a rite of Greek childhood. Nothing rots more baby teeth.”
“Do I look like I care right now? Hand it over and no one gets hurt.”
Laughing (the sound like a bag of rocks in a cement mixer), she gave me one of the glasses. The other she kept for herself. We stood in Grandma’s crappy kitchen, in her crappy shack, sucking vanilla mastic off a spoon. It wasn’t heaven but it was on the same street.
Aunt Rita was watching me, a curious look on her face.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“What do you think of my brother?”
“Uncle Kostas?” I shrugged. “I don’t really know him.”
“Do you trust him?”
The answer rolled out easily. “No.”
“Neither do I.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “You watch out for yourself, and I will watch him, okay?”
#
“Hahahahaha-No.”
That resounding laughter punctuated with the exact word I didn’t want to hear had just fallen out of the mouth of one of my interchangeable cousins manning the garage. I asked for another vehicle and what did I get?
Sarcasm.
Could be Greeks invented sarcasm, but that didn’t mean they got to sharpen their sarcasm skills on me.
“Fine.” I rattled my key ring. “Then I guess I’ll just take the Beetle.”
“Good choice,” he said. “You should do that.”
“I will.”
“Perfect.”
“Right now.”
“Okay. Where are you going?”
“Wherever I want.”
“Does Baboulas know?” He caught sight of Elias slinking into the garage behind me. Elias saluted him and hopped into his usual black car, waiting for me to take off. “Never mind,” my cousin said. “Elias is with you.”
“Keep it up,” I said, “and I’ll tell Grandma you smoke near her cars.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I might.”
“She’d kill me.”
“She might.”
“Think of me when you drive over my speed bump, eh?”
“I will.”
I hopped into the Beetle, gave Elias a wave, and turned the key. Before I risked picking up Hera’s trail again—which, let’s face it, wouldn’t be that difficult—I wanted to know who’d shot a rocket at Aunt Rita’s moped and why. Elias and Xander’s reactions had been cavalier, to say the least.
Granted, my experience with rocket launchers was limited, but I only knew of one person in the area who owned one and liked setting things—and people—on fire.
CHAPTER 18
My pointer finger shot into the accusatory position. “Know anything about a flaming projectile that was shot at me earlier today?”
“Who, me? I know nothing about nothing.”
The guy who knew nothing about nothing (which, grammatically speaking, meant he knew everything about everything) was Baby Dimitri, Godfather of the Night, shoe and souvenir salesman, and Donk’s uncle. Godfathers of the night deal with the kind of crimes that blossom in darkness ... although Baby Dimitri didn’t mind dipping his toe into the lighter hours, as long as it was profitable. The scrawny, aging gangster dresses for Florida in the 1960
s, keeps his hair tamed with slime, and spends most of his time parked in a chair outside his shop. A chair he was in right now.
“Come on. You know everything about everything.”
Serious hand waving ensued. “No. I like to pretend I know everything. That way people have no idea what I do know and what I don’t know.” His reply was negative but I could tell he was pleased. My accusation meant his act was working.
I stuck my head in his shop and glanced around, taking stock of his, well, stock. Baby Dimitri carried a shoe for every foot and a souvenir for everyone who has ever dreamed of spending too much on a cheaply made trinket with GREECE scribbled across the front.
“Is any of this stuff made in Greece?”
He went tst. “Too expensive. It is cheaper to buy Chinese and import.”
“I can’t even imagine why Greece is circling the drain,” I mumbled.
“Politicians and bankers bent Greece over and gave her something she would never forget.”
“Her? Are you sure about that? Because Greece has a reputation and historical precedent for certain male proclivities ...”
He stared at me for a moment, a curious expression on his face. I couldn’t figure out if he wanted to have me killed or make me do a jig. Then he laughed.
“And you say you do not want to be Baboulas.” He grabbed my face with both hands and shook my head vigorously from side to side. “You are already your grandmother, but with smaller breasts and a bigger ass.”
“Mine are smaller, seriously?” That was a bit of good news, because looking at Grandma I thought my future was destined to be saggy.
He made a face and let me go. “She was something, in her time.”
I stuck my head back into his shop again. Scratched my head. Readjusted my ponytail. “Gee, I just realized what’s missing in this picture. Laki. Where is Laki?”
Shrug. “Who knows where that malakas is?”
“You?”
He laughed. “Laki is his own man. He comes and goes as he pleases.”
I highly doubted that. Laki was Baby Dimitri’s right-hand man, and probably his left. “He been setting any fires lately, say, to any mopeds?”
“Mopeds ... what mopeds? Why are you obsessed with fire and missiles? If you look I bet you will find Laki playing tavli with the rest of the stupid old men.”
“I doubt that,” I muttered. I recounted the tale of the exploding, formerly pink moped, with a few edits.
