In Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

  Baby Dimitri shook his head slowly.

  “Katerina ... today, maybe you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of the world is out to get you, but not all of it. Could be the shooter was aiming for something else and missed.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I already told you.” He grinned, wide and sharklike. “I know nothing about nothing.”

  “Which means you know everything about everything.”

  He waved a hand at me. “Semantics.”

  “No—logic.”

  “Get out of here, Mr. Spock. You are bad for my business.” He winked and settled back down in his chair, legs crossed, a smile on his face.

  #

  Logic, and Baby Dimitri’s mouth, had told me that Laki was the guy behind the rocket launcher that had blasted Aunt Rita’s moped off the planet. But why? We liked each other, in a grudging, distantly respectful way. Laki seemed like the kind of guy who’d consider it rude to shoot at me. Very Hannibal Lecter of him.

  Unless, like Baby Dimitri suggested, it wasn’t about me.

  Marika, then?

  No. Marika was Marika. When she wasn’t fumbling the bodyguard job she was a housewife and a mother. The only people plotting her murder were her husband and kids—and only when she made them pick up their towels and reminded them wipe properly.

  Maybe the shooter hated mopeds.

  Unless Laki had missed his target. That didn’t seem like Laki.

  But considering the possibility that he did miss his target—accidentally or purpose—what or who was his real target?

  There were two candidates, only one of them was appealing: Detective Melas or Hera. Blasting Hera off the face of the earth wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever heard. I’d probably laugh for just a week or so, and maybe I’d walk the family dogs over her grave and let them pee all over it. But I wouldn’t be bitter or anything.

  She and Melas were both strong potentials. A policeman and an NIS agent. Not difficult to imagine why either of them would be on a criminal’s radar.

  So which one was it?

  This was all assuming Laki was the shooter and I wasn’t the target.

  My phone chose that moment to vibrate. I glanced at the screen. The blood in my face made a run for it.

  #

  Under the grapevine’s shade, the Kyria Mela said, “It was the person following you. They were the target, not you.”

  That reassuring—yet not at all reassuring—statement emerged from one of the most terrifying mouths on the planet. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Having a missile or rocket or any kind of projectile shot up your butt is definitely a desperate situation. So here I was drinking coffee with Kyria Mela at her request.

  On purpose.

  Latent masochistic tendencies, perhaps.

  She’d called and I’d hoofed it back up the mountain, shivering in my sandals.

  I leaned forward, peered into her good china. “That’s in the cup?”

  “Everything is in the cup.”

  “Where is my father?”

  “Except that. Not in your cup, anyway. In another cup ... maybe.”

  “Whose cup?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Couldn’t you look in my cup and find out whose cup?”

  Her stare was loaded with more than a hint of disbelief. Her stare said I was a dumb ass. “It does not work that way.”

  Ask me, the cups weren’t that awesome and helpful. Maybe that’s why in Ancient Greece oracles’ lives ended badly; someone always got tired of their vague “maybe, maybe not” nonsense.

  “So what can you tell me?”

  “There is someone following you. A dark man.”

  A brown blob on the inside of a cup was a dark man? Amazing. “Who is he?”

  “How do I know?”

  “The cup?”

  “There is a story going around that you are pregnant.”

  “No,” I yelped. “I’m not pregnant. Not even close. And especially not to your son, or anyone else’s son.”

  “I know you would not be that stupid. Now tell me everything about Italy. Do not leave anything out. I will know if you do.”

  Dog trainers say otherwise, but when it comes to me fear is an excellent motivator. The whole story spilled out of my mouth, and Kyria Mela mopped it all up with her ears. After, she vanished inside with my empty cup, and when she returned it was with a big smile. A smile that wasn’t for me.

  Uh oh.

  “Mama,” Hera squealed, rushing through the gate. She kissed Kyria Mela on both cheeks and arranged her face into the sweet, innocent angel position.

  Ugh, so fake.

  “Katerina,” she said, all artificial sweeteners laced with acid. “What are you doing here?”

  “Leaving.”

  “Good idea. You should do that.” Her gaze reconnected with a beaming Kyria Mela. “Can you read my cup for me? I understand if you don’t have time right now.” She fished around in her bag. “Look, I brought you a gift.”

  I didn’t stick around to see what kinds of hostess gift snakes give, but I managed to catch Kyria Mela’s gasp of delight.

  On the safe side of the gate, I spotted a stone. My toe reached for it. I kicked it down the cobbled street, around sheep droppings, between tourists, to the crossroads that branched off in four directions.

  I glanced down the road to my right and spotted Makria’s lone priest hurrying toward me.

  “Katerina!” he boomed in his cheerful voice. Father Harry is a big man with—as far as I can tell—small ambitions. Being in possession of a tiny, devoted flock suits the long bearded Greek Orthodox priest. He adores Grandma, and now—by, I suspect, default—he adores me.

  After casting a longing glance over my shoulder, I rushed over to see how I could help Makria’s only priest. Antiperspirant, perhaps? A towel to mop up the sweat? Greek Orthodox clergymen spend their days (and possibly their nights) clad in black cassocks and stovepipe hats. Father Harry’s cassock looked damp enough to squeeze a full glass of eau de pappas; pappas being the Greek word for priest.

  I greeted the priest, forgoing the ring kissing. God and I were still on the outs. These days I found more comfort and less ambiguity in philosophy. Was I a brain in a vat? Could be. I was okay with that as long as I didn’t think about it too hard.

  “How is Kyria Katerina?” he asked, not seeming to mind one bit that I broke tradition on the ring kissing thing. Mind you, a few days ago I’d saved him from a dirty Portland cop with his nose wedged up Winkler’s German schnitzel, so probably I had some spiritual wiggle room as far as Father Harry was concerned.

  I assured him that Grandma would live another day, and hopefully a lot more after that one. I didn’t mention the table-dancing incident, in case it affected her standing with The Big Guy.

  “Your grandmother ... what a woman,” he said, beaming. “Have you given any thought ...” He prattled on, but my eyes were on Hera, who was done with Melas’s mother and was now pulling out of the village in her cutesy little car.

  My phone buzzed.

  Grandma. I’d been summoned to the hospital once again.

  “I have to go, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind,” I told Father Harry without the slightest clue what I’d just signed up for.

  Grandma was holding court with two of her three kids this time. Dad, of course, was missing in more ways than one. Aunt Rita had found time to go full glamor girl in a sparkly sleeveless jumpsuit and a Farrah Fawcett flip. I’d noticed she tended to gravitate toward the seventies, when disco and its queens were cool.

  I told Grandma about the flaming moped, but she nodded like she already knew, which she probably did.

  “I need koulourakia,” she said.

  If there was one thing Grandma didn’t like to waste it was time. Probably because at her age, sick or not, time was a dwindling resource.

  “Okay ...” I said. “Good to know.”

  Everyone was looking at me. Aunt Rita shrugg
ed. “I don’t bake,” she said.

  “I don’t bake either. I’m just Grandma’s helper!”

  “How hard can it be?” Uncle Kostas said.

  “You’re not in this conversation,” I told him. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Alleys to pee in? Guns to dump in garbage cans?”

  “Katerina,” Grandma said in a dangerous sort of voice.

  He shrugged off my half-assed interrogation. “I figured I would stick around for a while, maybe help find my brother.”

  “The recipe is easy.” Grandma paused, and looked me up and down, paying particular attention to my apparently useless hands. “Ask Marika to help you. She knows the recipe. Not my recipe, but hers is almost as good as mine.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You want some herbal additives?”

  “Of course, or I would not ask you to bake anything. You are not ready to be unleashed on a kitchen yet—not my kitchen.”

  Grandma was right, of course. I had the watching thing, and the stirring when I was told to stir thing down pat. But putting Greek cookies together from scratch, without an idiot-proof recipe? Forget about it. American cookies were easy, but Grandma’s pot cookies weren’t exactly chocolate chip.

  “Where am I supposed to get the ... you know ... green stuff?”

  “Takis will give you what you need.”

  Takis. Great. “Anything else?”

  “Just the koulourakia.” Grandma winced, reminding me that she wasn’t just a high-ranking gangster, she was also a sick old lady. Throwing together pot cookies wasn’t in my skill set, but I could learn. I mean it wasn’t like she was going to be selling them to children, like her other drugs. This was a sort of moral gray area for me, what with Nancy Reagan doing her pre-mortem ‘drugs are bad, mmkay?’ routine in my head, and Oregon’s new pro-marijuana laws, ensuring that it was perfectly okay to be weird and high in Oregon.

  I kissed Grandma on both cheeks, waved at my uncle, and was about to hug the stuffing out of Aunt Rita, when she said, “Let me walk you to the elevator,” and looped her arm through mine. It was just us two girls.

  “My eyes fourteen,” she said, which was a Greek saying that meant she was on the lookout for trouble, not that she mutant arachnid. “Everywhere my brother goes, I am watching him.”

  “Uncover anything interesting yet?”

  She made a face. “He pees a lot.”

  “I noticed that. Urinary tract infection?”

  “Maybe it is a big stick tickling his prostate.”

  The elevator doors parted. Xander stepped out. Takis was with him.

  “Katerina,” Takis said. “Baboulas has something for you. Let’s go.”

  I hesitated, as one does when they hear a notorious crime lord’s henchman wants to give them something. “Do you mean the you-know-what?”

  “If the you-know-what is you-know-what, then yes.”

  Xander held the elevator door for us. Takis and I left; Aunt Rita and Xander stayed. Aunt Rita got the better deal.

  Down in the parking lot, Takis wiggled his fingers at me. “Keys.”

  “You’re not driving my car.”

  “It’s not your car. It belongs to Baboulas.”

  Technically yes, but also no. “Mine.”

  “Fine,” he said like I was killing him, “but if we are overtaken by donkeys it will be your fault.”

  “I don’t drive that slow,” I muttered.

  “Tell it to that old lady,” he said as I pulled out of the driveway. The old woman in question was using a walker decked out with black streamers to add an extra layer of outward devotion to her status as a widow.

  “What are you stopping for?” he barked.

  “Red light.”

  “Red light,” he said, disgusted. “Who stops at red lights?”

  “People who don’t want to die?”

  “People who don’t have any place better to be than stuck in traffic. Go up on the sidewalk.”

  “I’m not driving on the sidewalk.”

  “Why not? Are you too good for the sidewalk? Just drive up on the sidewalk.”

  “I’m not driving on the sidewalk. There are people walking up there.”

  “Not for long,” he said, and yanked the wheel. The Beetle jumped the curb, landing the two passenger’s side tires squarely on the sidewalk. People scattered. I slammed on the brakes. The smell of burning rubber wafted out from the undercarriage.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded.

  “Me?” He shrugged. “Nothing. What is wrong with you? Why did you stop? Now even the traffic that was stopped before is overtaking us.” He leaned back against the Beetle’s seat and adjusted his sunglasses a shade too casually.

  What was he up to? People like Takis are always up to something. They’ve got cunning and shenanigans stitched into their genes.

  Swiveling in the driver’s seat, I took stock of my surroundings, looking for glints of light sparking off nefarious things like cameras and other assorted objects made in China for the sole purpose of spying on people like me, who were minding their own business and stopping lawfully at red lights.

  “What?” Takis said.

  “Hmm ...”

  The only thing familiar was Elias behind me in his usual ride. Smart guy, he hadn’t followed me onto the sidewalk.

  Elias stuck his head out the window. “You okay?”

  I gave him two thumbs up and hoped it wasn’t an obscure Greek insult.

  “I think you’re up to something,” I told Takis.

  “Who me? What am I up to? I am doing as I was told: taking you to get something Baboulas wants you to have. Keep up the paranoia, you will be Baboulas in no time.” He looked at me. “Don’t you want to hit me or anything?”

  “It’s too hot,” I said. “I don’t want to break a sweat.” Or give anyone a photo op. Takis was definitely up to something.

  It was slow going through the city. Greece was waking up from its afternoon nap. Traffic was taking to the streets. When we reached the compound driveway, Takis told me to take a left before the gates. Until now I hadn’t paid any attention to the road that scooted around the wall, vanishing between the trees.

  “What’s back here?”

  “Farm,” he said.

  A little bell began to tinkle in my head. “I know that, but what’s at the farm?”

  “Farm things.”

  I knew two things about the family farm. One, that’s where the compound’s meat and produce originated. And two, somewhere on the premises was the Makris Family armory. Yes, I was a little bit obsessed with the idea of a giant horde of guns and ammo, especially after Xander had led me to believe the entire pitiful arsenal was concealed in the cramped root cellar beneath the conservatory. Marika had let it slip that the Family was armed to the teeth, and that the hiding place was located at the farm.

  “Do you mean guns?”

  Takis snorted. “Guns. Where do you get these ideas?”

  “Are you going to shoot me?”

  “Like I said: paranoid. Baboulas told me to give you the baking ingredients.”

  “You mean cannabis?”

  He sat bolt upright. “I mean keep your mouth shut, eh? You never know who is listening.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “I never know.” But I bet he did. It wouldn’t be the first time my car was bugged.

  I angled the Beetle around the narrow, pocked road, branches taking stabs at us as we sliced between the trees. Walking with Uncle Kostas we’d come at the farm from a different direction. This time I was greeting it head on.

  Last time I caught sight of chicken coops and piles of poop. This time, the main structures. If you could call them that. Compared to these barns, Grandma’s shack was palatial. Roughly hewn stone had crawled into drunken heaps and made inebriated efforts at jamming hats of reddish tile onto their heads. In a nearby field I witnessed a living violation; in Greece, it seemed, you could put a cart before the horse. Used to neat American bales, I was surprised to see h
ay bundled into tall shapes that looked like they could hide a human body. Goats milled around hay sandwiched between two rickety picket fences. Gangs of chickens roamed, beaks stabbing at the parched ground. Nowhere did I see signs of an arsenal.

  I did see donkeys though, which was pretty cool. These ones were grouped under sparse trees that leaned away from the farm, perhaps wishing they could uproot and move someplace more tree friendly, like Mordor.

  “Aww, donkeys,” I said.

  “You should go pet one.” Takis smiled. It was the smile of someone who knew if I went over there I’d get a literal ass kicking.

  “You first.”

  “I already did. Why do you think I married Marika?” He pointed to his thick skull. “Come.”

  The farmers were cousins and other assorted relatives—I could tell by their noses—dedicated to the art of smoking and sucking down coffee while huddled around a backgammon board. One thing was maybe, possibly certain: I hadn’t met this branch of the Makris family tree.

  Takis took off toward the backgammon game in progress. The tableau looked more like a sociology experiment than a friendly board game. Voices were raised; fists were at the end of their wrists, waiting for an opportunity to swing. The air was thick with curses. Nobody’s mother was sacred. Self-love was a recurring theme, with or without the other guy’s mother.

  Takis cleared his throat.

  He cleared it a second time.

  A third.

  “For crying out loud,” I muttered in English, and stomped over to the players, who were huddled under a narrow ledge of shade, courtesy of the wonky roof. They didn’t look up. At first.

  I tossed what I hoped was a figurative cat at the equally figurative pigeons.

  “Baboulas sent us,” I said.

  That got their attention, but not in the way I hoped. “Look,” one of them said, “it is the girl from YouTube. Would you like a chair to stand on? Let us know if you are going to yell so we can put the animals away.”

  I was vaguely aware of Takis peeling himself away from my side. Probably he wanted to distance himself from me. I flipped the backgammon board over. Black and white game tokens rained on the ground. Grown men wept.

  “What did you do that for?” one of the cousins cried out.