by Alex A King
“Yes, and I had some help,” I admitted.
She frowned. “Which one is it: yes, you came up with it yourself, or you had help.”
“You asked if I thought you were stupid. The ‘yes’ was for that.”
Her gun jabbed me in the head. “I can do this because I’m NIS. A regular person couldn’t do this. You couldn’t do this.”
“I bet I could if I had a gun.”
“You don’t have a gun.”
“True ...” Mustering up my stealth skills, I slipped my hand into the gap between my skirt and back, closed my fingers around Dad’s slingshot. In a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, a slingshot wouldn’t win against any of the other items, but it didn’t have to. “But I’ve got something not even remotely better.”
I whipped out the slingshot, flipped it around, and jabbed Hera in both eyes simultaneously.
Too quickly I realized she was wearing sunglasses. Who the hell wears sunglasses at night?
Corey Hart doesn’t count.
“You broke my sunglasses!” She walloped me with the butt of her sidearm again. This was getting really annoying, so I punched her. Right in the nose.
The center of her face went up like a fountain. Hera was a squirter. Blood shot out in every direction. With one hand she grabbed her nose, with the other she went on a manhunt for a tissue. The whole thing would have been more satisfying if my hand wasn’t on invisible fire. Punching hurts.
After pulling out a thick wad of tissues and pressing it carefully to her nose, Hera came back to deliver seconds (or was it thirds). I was busy nursing my howling knuckles when the bitch kicked me in the shins with her stupid kitten heels, giving me even more reasons to hate those shoes with their silly, stunted stems. Kitten heels are the corgis of the shoe world, except corgis are cute and smart. No one in the history of ever has said, ‘Wow, those kitten heels are sexy, useful, comfortable, and great for walking’.
“Move,” she said.
I tried, I really did, but the pain dancing across my knuckles was paralyzing. Lucky for me, Hera helped me along, nudging me with her gun.
“You’d make a great shepherd,” I told her. “Have you considered a career change?”
She poked me. “Keep walking.”
“Did that gun come with the job or did Greece make you buy it yourself?”
“We get all the best toys given to us.”
“No wonder the country is in trouble, giving free stuff to idiots.”
She gave me another jab, to the ribs this time.
We threaded through the factory, which stunk to high heaven of old olive brine. It takes years—possibly decades—for a property to get over olive production. Maybe even then the best thing for it is to set the whole place on fire. Cleanse it all the way to the ground. Anyway. It stunk. And from past experience I knew the stench would linger in my hair for hours.
Apart from us, the place was empty.
“Are you here alone?” I asked.
“Never assume you’re alone just because you can’t see anyone watching.”
Ominous. Very Big Brother. “Have you read 1984?”
“It was the first novel I read.”
“Was the second one Animal Farm?”
“How did you know?”
“Just a guess.”
She shoved me into what had once been an office. No windows. Peeling pale green paint, the exact shade of a mental illness. Clinical depression maybe. Possibly crippling anxiety. Hope came to die in rooms this color, crushed beneath kitten heels. The sad space had one seat, an old fashioned swivel chair made of wood.
I pressed my hand to my chest, fluttered my eyelashes. “For me?”
“Sit.”
Because she had the gun and the badge that gave her the authority to toss me into a cannon and fire me off the planet, I sat. Moo Face rewarded my obedience by handcuffing my narrow wrists to the chair’s sturdy arms.
Then she stepped back to survey her handiwork. She smiled like I was this close to being a joke.
“Has Nikos seen your costume?”
I rolled my eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t bring me here to discuss Melas.”
“Your presence is a happy mistake. I’m making—what do Americans say?—lemons from lemonade.”
I didn’t correct her. “You didn’t text me?”
“No. I would have if I thought I could get you alone. Are you ready for your debriefing now?”
“Sure. Looks like I’m not going anywhere for a while.” My head quietly chewed on the influx of new information. If Hera hadn’t texted me, then who was my mysterious correspondent? Were they here right now, listening and watching, or was me being detained by Hera their endgame? If that was the case, thanks for freakin’ nothing.
Although ... they’d given me what I wanted in a roundabout way. It was just me and Hera in this room; questions could go two ways.
“Who’s the fish you were trying to hook by sending me to Italy?” I asked her. “And what about my father? Do you know something or don’t you?”
“You really are stupid. Thick in the head. I don’t know what Nikos sees in you. Normally he goes for women with a brain.”
“So why was he with you then?”
She spat on my feet. Classy.
“Was that an insult or were you banishing the evil eye? I’m betting it was the second one, but it’s hard to tell when you’re so trashy.”
“I ask the questions,” she said. “Start from the beginning.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“Pretend it was.”
“The beginning ... Where I woke up in an alley in Naples, dumped there by you and your minions?”
“Not that part,” she hissed. “The beginning of the important things. I know you met with Mario Fontana. What did you learn?”
“That poison ivy comes in different strains.”
“What else?”
“Naples really has a garbage problem in places. They really need to get the mafia involved, because the Camorra are seriously useless when it comes to waste management.”
“God, you are annoying. I sent you there for information and I know you didn’t walk away empty-handed. Mario. Tell me about him.”
“Every other person I met there was named Mario. You’ll have to be specific.”
She tossed a picture in front of me. Sure enough, there was my flamboyant host, grinning up at the photographer. His teeth were the kind of white seen in nature documentaries about Antarctica. His mesh shirt revealed a mile of oiled and bronzed chest. “This Mario.”
“Maybe I met him.”
“We understand you stayed at his home.”
“I was kind of a prisoner. It wasn’t exactly consensual.”
“Did you say no?”
“No.”
“Then it was consensual.”
Not really. I’d met up with Mario with one specific goal: find information on Dad ... and maybe get something to feed the NIS to get me back home again. Meeting Mario—or someone like him—was my choice; getting dumped in Naples was not. Staying at Mario’s beachfront mansion hadn’t been optional.
“I bet you think no sometimes means yes,” I told her.
She shrugged. “Sometimes. It depends how I’m playing.”
Too much information. “Does Fake Melas like to play those games?”
“Not as much as the real one.”
Up came my hackles. Down went my self-esteem. “There’s a word for women like you.”
“Keep it up,” she said, “and the next place I send you will make Naples look like a child’s party.”
So I told her. About the warehouse, about Aldo, about the printing program he’d designed. “The police are in on it,” I said, and described the exchange that had taken place in the warehouse.
“Of course they are,” she said. “They want to live—and live well.” She nodded like maybe I’d done something okay ... but not quite good. Well if she wanted more I didn’t have it. Too damn bad.
“Your father,” she said next.
My mind went blank. “What about him?”
“You are the worm, he is the fish.”
“Why?”
“I know what you probably think, that we are trying to catch your father so that we can use him to finally sink our claws into the Great and Terrible Baboulas and bring her to a much-deserved justice—”
I raised my hand. “Actually, I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
“Oh.” She made a funny face. “What were you thinking?”
“I was contemplating earthquakes and how Greece hasn’t had one since I’ve been here. Aren’t we overdue?”
Her forehead crumpled up. “I don’t have a cool speech for that.”
“Sorry. Can’t you just make it up as you go?”
“I’m beautiful and very clever, but I’m not good at improvising. They asked me to leave improv class.”
“Too many uncomfortable silences?”
She tilted her head sideways. “You, too?”
“No.”
We stared at each other.
I said, “This is one of those uncomfortable silences you’re famous for, isn’t it?”
“I’m not famous for them, but yes.”
“Trust me, to them you’re still that creep who couldn’t act. I can see why they asked you to leave.”
“That bad?”
“So bad. I’m really uncomfortable.”
She grinned. “Good.”
Time was something I was trying to buy so I could think. Unfortunately Hera was right. In my mind the NIS wanted wiggle me like a worm so they could catch Dad to use as bait to reel in Grandma. But in my equation Dad was the middleman—a middleman they didn’t need.
So ... what was she saying about Dad?
“I’m also thinking you’ve put on a bit of weight.” I tilted my head. “Comfort eating or stress? You can tell me.”
She crouched down in front of me, smiling a little too hard for somebody who sucked at improv. “If anything I’ve lost weight. Being in love kills my appetite.”
“I’m pretty sure being in love with yourself doesn’t have that same effect.”
A nasty grin spread itself across her face. For a moment she looked ugly. “The NIS wants Michail Makris because he’s one of ours.”
Sitting was good. Sitting meant not falling over from the shock. The cuffs helped.
“Dad is NIS? Since when?”
She shrugged one tanned shoulder. “It’s classified.”
My mind was spinning like a spin-and-puke ride at the fair. First I’d discovered Dad was the offspring of one of Greece’s most notorious mob bosses, then I found a mountain of money, alternate identities, and a gun stashed in Dad’s safe. And now this?
Keeping up was nauseating.
I thought about puking on Hera’s kitten heels, but then decided that would be a waste of good vomit.
“You didn’t know.” Her smirk reached maximum wattage. “Isn’t that delicious?”
No wonder she was so skinny. Eating people’s pain isn’t exactly filling or nutritious. “Hey, I don’t even know if it’s true yet. All I’ve got is the word of one crazy woman who is currently holding me hostage.”
“You’re not a hostage, and I’m not crazy.”
“It’s pretty crazy to strip off your clothes and hop naked into the bed of a guy who dumped you years ago, when he’s not home—and with a cheap carbon copy. Crazy, pathetic, and desperate. Poor little Hera, all you’ve got is sex, and Melas doesn’t even want that from you. I guess he’s too smart to stick it in crazy.”
“I’m not crazy!”
“Crazy.” With one finger I drew a little loop in the air by my temple. “Cuckoo. Nuts.”
“Nuts?”
“Crazy,” I explained.
“It still doesn’t change the fact that your father is one of us.” Her expression turned cunning. “What do you think Baboulas will do when she finds out?”
Have Dad skinned alive, most likely. And no, that wasn’t a euphemism. Every so often I see lists going around Facebook: copy and paste this list, then mark each thing you’ve done with an X. If Grandma were on Facebook, she’d definitely have an X next to Skin a Person Alive.
“You’re assuming she doesn’t already know.”
“Our sources say she doesn’t.”
“Our sources say she doesn’t,” I said in a mocking voice. “Who’s your source? Xander?”
Her mouth puckered up. Her tan vanished. When she recovered she was still on the light and bitter side of normal. “No. And no more guesses. I’ll never tell you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Grandma already knows there’s a leak. Everyone does. It’s not exactly a well-kept secret. I bet Grandma even knows who it is.” And probably everything Grandma fed that person was laced with bullshit. Even a kid knows to find a snitch you tell each person a different story and wait to see which one leaks out. Then—BAM—you’ve found your rat.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “We’re the best.”
Keep talking, I thought. She was giving me gold nuggets. If Hera was the NIS’s best and brightest, the rest of the department had to be potatoes.
“So the big plan is to use me to bring Dad in? Great idea. Except ... not so much. You do know he was hauled away from our house by a couple of dodgy looking guys, right? Which means he was legitimately kidnapped, which means he can’t just drop by and do whatever it is you want him to do. That’s not how kidnapping works.” I watched TV; I knew a thing or two.
She smiled. I didn’t like it when she smiled. “Was he?”
“There was a reliable witness!” Well, mostly reliable. Reggie Tubbs was a retired judge. He recognized a criminal when he saw one. Or, in this case, a couple of them.
“You mean Reginald Tubbs, your next door neighbor?”
Suddenly I didn’t like where this was going, which was really saying something given how shitty this trip had been to begin with. “What did you guys do to Mr. Tubbs? Is he okay?”
“Reginald Tubbs is fine, but he texted me a picture of his penis.” She made a frowny face.
“Don’t feel special. He sends them to everyone.”
There was a knock at the door. The knocker didn’t hang around waiting on Hera to answer. He walked right in, already grinning in his shiny suit. I recognized him instantly as the third guy from outside Baby Dimitri’s shoe and souvenir shop. Laki had blown up his car, and Baby Dimitri had inferred that the guy was NIS. Now here he was, oozing slime.
“Did the taxpayers buy you a new car yet?” I asked him.
“A very nice one, thank you for asking,” he said smoothly. He cut to Hera. “Did you get anything out of her?”
“Wisecracks and sarcasm, mostly.”
“Don’t feel bad,” I said, “that’s what most people get out of me. Ask Grandma. She keeps telling me I’m just like my father.”
“Michail has a smart mouth,” he said. “He always did.”
Things weren’t looking good. It was one thing for Hera to make cracks about Dad being NIS, but it was another for a legitimate human being to act like he knew and Dad were pals.
My shoulders slumped. “So it’s true then, my father is NIS?”
“Oh, he’s definitely one of ours,” the guy said. He offered me his hand. “Orestis Papadimitriou.”
Was that his name or his species? I stared at his hand. Staring was the best I could manage under the circumstances. “Sorry,” I said. “Some sad, desperate loser tied me up. You know she’s a creep, right?”
He inclined his head at Hera, and after an epic amount of eye rolling she popped the cuffs off.
I rubbed my wrists. “Thanks. Are those cheap cuffs? They’re not nearly as comfortable as Detective Melas’s cuffs.”
Hera growled.
It was a low, satisfying blow. Definitely worth it. I kind of liked Hera unhinged. It made her more likely to say stupid, enlightening things.
Orestis propped himself up against the wall, legs
crossed, coffee in hand. Classic cop pose. “Do you know where Michail is?”
Easy answer. The truth, too. “No. If I did I’d be back home, living my life. A life I really like. Greece is beautiful but it’s kind of like the dumb, drunk girl at the bar.”
He gnawed on that a moment, then he said, “Okay, you can go.”
Hera wheeled on him. “You can’t do that!”
“Go?” I said, dazed by the sudden plot twist. The NIS was just letting me go? That didn’t seem very NIS-ish. “Are you going to shoot me in the back as I’m running away?”
“No. We don’t shoot people in the back.”
Hera raised her hand. “We did that one time.”
“Okay,” he said, “maybe that one time. But he deserved it. And maybe one other time that I can think of. But you have nothing to worry about, Katerina.”
And yet I was still worried. Color me crazy, but the NIS didn’t exactly inspire trust.
“So I can really go?”
“Sure. Why not? Don’t believe me?” He shrugged, tossed a glance over his shoulder. “I’ll make it easy for you. We’ll go first.” He yanked open the door and waited for Hera to slip out. She didn’t look happy.
“Be careful about the company you keep,” she warned me. “Soon you will have to made a choice and pick a team.”
“Are you sure you ate the brownies?”
Worried, she looked down at her concave stomach. “Can you tell?”
Then they left me alone in the room with all my fears for company.
#
It took me about ten minutes to work up the guts to leave the room. I didn’t really believe they’d let me walk, not after Hera had tried to squeeze blood from this soggy stone. Peeking through the door’s narrow slit, I tried to muster some courage. A bullet could fly out of nowhere at any moment, burying itself in some vital part of me. Even if it hit like, say, a toe or something, I’d be in the kind of pain Band-Aids and a kiss couldn’t fix.
No shooters.
No flying bullets.
No NIS.
The old factory appeared to be abandoned, factory lines rusting in peace, tin roof slowly eroding, thanks to the killer combination of relentless summer heat and salty sea air. Stars peeked through the holes, creating this weird metaphor for the recent twists in my life. Someone, it seemed, was always watching me. Privacy was for other people. Not Greeks—because they didn’t seem to have any—but there were definitely people in the world who did stuff without someone recording and reporting on their every move. Instead, they did it themselves on social media.
