by Alex A King
“Who won?” Pappas wanted to know.
I looked at the dead, at the living, at the rusted out factory that used to give Greeks jobs.
“Nobody,” I said.
Melas’s gaze collided with mine.
Takis voice sliced through the night. “Hey, malakes, are you going to stand there talking about makeup and dresses with the woman or are you going to be useful?”
Shaking his head, Pappas peeled away and went to check out the situation, leaving me with Melas.
He chucked his chin at the battlefield. “What happened here?”
I thought about it. At the end of the day I could distill tonight into one word, which was good because conversation wasn’t my thing right now. “Greed.”
His hand found mine. He reeled me in for one of those long, full-body hugs. Something came up, but I didn’t say anything; he felt too good. And at some point during the hug, the box holding all my words popped open, and I wound up telling him all about Mario, Hera, Aldo, and the NIS guy whose name sounded like something that would clear up with a ten-day course of antibiotics. What I didn’t tell him was that I was certain Baby Dimitri was the program’s other buyer, and that the missile that almost killed me was meant for one of the Fontanas for their treachery.
“I need my kolos kicked,” Melas said when I was done. He brushed a kiss against my hair. “I’ve been working so hard to avoid Hera when I should have had my eyes and ears on you.”
“Hey,” I said, pulling back. “It’s not your job to watch out for me. Like I keep telling Grandma, I’m an adult. Maybe I need a bodyguard or two, but I don’t need babysitters. Everything I do is my choice. I chose to come out here tonight.”
After an anonymous text message, the origins of which were still a mystery, I realized.
“Trouble follows you around.”
I thought about it. “I don’t think so. I’m looking for trouble because that’s where I’ll find my father. The bad guys are bees reacting to me poking their nests.”
“It’s more than that. You’re Baboulas’s granddaughter and potential heir. It’s dangerous to be you.”
“It won’t always be.”
His forehead scrunched. “What do you mean?”
Not about to divulge my plans to straighten the crooked limbs in the family tree, The American in my shook my head instead of using the Greek chin tilt. “It’s late, and I need cake. Know where I can get some?”
He smiled. As always, it was devastating. No wonder Hera couldn’t let go.
“I do.”
“It’s not your mother’s place, is it?”
“Relax,” he said, “she’ll be asleep.”
Kyria Mela didn’t sleep, I suspected. She hung upside down in a dark closet, alert and waiting all night long.
There was a noise behind us. We turned around. Mario had quit his weeping, and was staring up at Melas with a hungry twinkle in his eyes.
“Oh-la-la, who is this? Come to Papa.”
Melas twitched. “Who’s the guy?”
“Italian counterfeiter.”
“Ignore the sandal,” Mario said. “Pretend this one does not have a bullet hole through the middle.”
Melas looked at me. “Does he know his foot is bleeding?”
“Right now I don’t think he cares.”
“Shock.”
“No, that’s just Mario. He thinks he’s fabulous.”
Detective Melas shook his head. “Italians.”
CHAPTER 22
It had finally happened: Grandma had lost her damn mind. Most of the family was gathered in the massive front courtyard between the tall iron gates and the arch that lead to the inner courtyard. The cars were tucked in the garage. The cats, dogs, and my one goat were snoozing in the shade. Loud, excited Greeks crammed all their words into the same space at the same time. I was pretty sure there was at least one bookie in the crowd. As I watched, I noticed all money seemed to be flowing toward Takis, who was standing on the fountain’s edge, scribbling in a notebook.
The Family bookie.
Bingo.
I made my way over to him.
“Who’s the favorite?” I asked.
Takis looked up from the notebook, while stuffing more cash into his pocket. The family wasn’t betting in small bills; they’d brought what looked like their life savings to this event.
“Baboulas. Always Baboulas.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Who’s your money on?”
His grin was so greasy I almost slipped. “Papou. He has been in that thing for years.” He nodded to where the three contestants were prepping for the big race, all strapped into their wheelchairs.
“Anyone put money on the other guy?”
Takis went tst. “His foot was shot, that is all. What for is he in a wheelchair anyway? He’s a mouni. When they put a Band-Aid on his foot he kept crying about his shoe. What kind of man is that? Men don’t care about their shoes. We lose a shoe we buy another one. Same thing when we lose a woman.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost sprained an eyelid. “Have you talked to your wife lately?”
He shrugged. “Sure. This morning she told me to pick up my underwear and I told her she sounded like a goat.”
How he’d ever convinced Marika to marry him was a mystery. Roofies, probably.
“Talk to her. Talk to her like she’s someone you love.”
Two palms up, he made a face. “Why? What did I do wrong?”
“Just talk to her,” I said, hoping I was doing the right thing.
The contestants lined up near the fountain. When the hospital had let her go, they’d put Grandma in the equivalent of a plaster diaper. If anyone tried pinching her on the butt they’d be in for a surprise—although I was pretty sure Grandma was past the butt-pinching days.
The NIS vans were here, along with Detective Melas. He was allowed in; the NIS had to wait on the other side of the gate. But the Family let their money pass between the bars without any trouble. Very magnanimous; I wondered if they’d let the NIS collect any winnings.
Mario belonged to law enforcement now, although there was some confusion about exactly which arm he belonged to. Both the local cops and the NIS wanted him, and I was sure Interpol would be along soon to stake their claim. His own people—the Camorra—hadn’t sent anyone to issue threats if he wasn’t released. To them, without his program, Mario was worthless.
As for Aldo, he’d vanished. The official story was that he’d slunk off into the night, probably bound for one of the borders. The unofficial story was that the last time I’d seen him he was flanked by Takis and Xander. Chances were excellent that Aldo was now Grandma’s guest in the very nice lodgings below ground, otherwise known as the dungeon.
Aunt Rita climbed up onto the fountain’s marble edge, raising a flare gun into the air. She shook her head at the three contestants, clearly unable to believe this was what they did for sport, winked at me, then fired.
They were off!
Grandma won by a prominent nose. In a fit of bitterness at being bested by someone who’d been in a wheelchair for—comparatively—five minutes, Papou reached back for his shotgun and threw it at Grandma. He missed. Instead, he nailed Mario in the face.
Mario burst into tears. “My face! Do you know what I will be wearing for my mug shot? Bruises! I hate Greece. I want to go back to Italy, where people are civilized.”
Suddenly every last man, woman, and child in the family understood English with perfect clarity. Money stopped changing hands. The cheering died. A couple of hundred or so stink-eyes Mario shot Mario in the skull. Nobody calls Greece uncivilized—nobody.
“Can I shoot him?” Takis called out.
Mario whimpered. “Not again. I am running out of toes.”
Hera pressed her face to the gate’s bars. “No shooting. He’s ours to shoot if we want to shoot him.”
I scowled at her. She flipped me off and slunk back to her van.
Melas grinned at me across the courtyard. He t
hreaded his way through the crowd, who’d switched back to cheering, thanks to Aunt Rita’s announcement that celebratory refreshments, aka: a Greek feast, would be happening in the courtyard any minute now. The band—all family—were already tuning up.
“Hungry?” he asked me when he reached my side.
“Not really.”
He rubbed his hard, flat belly. “I’ll eat yours then.”
Clearly he’d forgotten the time someone had accidentally mixed a human penis in with the kokoretsi meat. Given that kokoretsi is made of all the gross body parts and tied to the steel spit with sheep intestines, I’d failed to see the problem, but Melas had suffered an immediate projectile reaction.
“You won’t have to. The family makes enough to feed the barbarian hordes.”
He winked. “Counting on it.”
Donk sidled up to me. He slung his arm around my shoulder, ignoring the over-protective death stares hitting him from all directions. My family isn’t big on men touching me. They have issues.
“Katerina,” Donk said. “What’s aaaaaaap?”
“The sky,” I told him.
He laughed like a donkey. Hee-haw, hee-haw. “Very funny. You are my mentor, yes?”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“Partner?”
“Definitely not.”
“Friend?”
“Stretching the truth.”
“Pal?”
“You tried to kill me.”
“That was weeks ago, and I was doing it to score points with my uncle. How about sex monkey?” Then he yelped.
“No,” Melas said, bending back the kid’s finger. “No sex monkey.”
“Ow! Ow! I was just going to ask Katerina what she thinks of my plan.”
I wrenched Melas’s hand away. He grinned at me. “What plan?” I asked Donk.
“When I finish school I am going to join the NIS.”
“Ha-ha,” I said. “You’re going to finish school? I thought you hated school?” Then the second part of his sentence sunk in. “The NIS? Are you crazy? Baby Dimitri will kill you!”
He gave me a jaunty wink. Your average American teenager wasn’t capable of jaunty, but Greek kids were on playing on a different level. “He can try. Maybe I’ll arrest him.”
“And your mother?”
Goodbye jauntiness. Now he was just a kid again—a worried kid. “I had not thought of that. Do you think he would hurt her?”
Baby Dimitri was a man who had allegedly killed his siblings. Donk’s mother was a half sister and, thus far, exempt from the godfather of sibling rivalry’s wrath, for reasons unknown to me. And Baby Dimitri employed a crazy old man who liked to blow things up, like the Fontanas and NIS vans.
Melas clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it yet. You’ve still got another, what, year at school?”
“Two,” Donk said. “Any advice?”
“Study hard,” Melas said.
“I was thinking something more useful. A fail-safe way to cheat, maybe. Write on my hand? No. Too obvious. Shoe?”
Melas shook his head and laughed.
Donk’s gaze slid to me. “Can I still follow you to see how organized crime works?”
“Uh, no?” I said.
“Awww, why not?”
I shook my head and made a beeline for the interior courtyard. Melas followed.
“NIS,” I muttered. “Who would want to join the NIS on purpose?”
“He could do worse.”
“Worse how?”
“The NIS isn’t all bad. You’re looking at them through a biased lens.”
“I’m not a criminal.”
“I didn’t say you were.” His lips twitched. They wanted to smile. “I’m talking about this rivalry between you and Hera.”
“There’s no rivalry.”
“Yeah,” he said, “there’s rivalry. You both want me.”
“I don’t want you.” Much.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about. Like I told you: Hera is history. Ancient history.”
I opened my mouth to ask how ancient (we were in a country where history was more ancient than most) when a scream burst out of the second floor windows. Masculine voice with female pitch. I snorted, then clapped my hand over my nose. Lovely. Class was really my forte.
Melas turned to look. “Is Baboulas torturing someone already?”
“It’s just Takis,” I told him. “Marika just ruined what hopes and dreams he had left.”
Understanding dawned on his face. “He’s only finding out about the baby now?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him?”
“Because I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Congratulations,” he said, grinning. “You are the first Greek in history capable of keeping a secret.
“You want to hear another secret?”
That grin of his sprawled further. He leaned closer, the gap between us all but non-existent. “Tell me.”
Tilting my head, I let my lips skim his ear. “You’re being watched,” I whispered.
He pulled back, expression quizzical. “Hera?”
I shook my head slowly, putting on a grin of my own. “Possibly, but there’s someone else.”
“Who?”
I shrugged. “That’s for me to know.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“Not a chance. You said it yourself; I’m the first Greek in history capable of keeping a secret. This one is too delicious to share.”
He groaned. Shoved his hand through his hair. Fell back into one of the chairs scattered around the courtyard.
“Come here,” he said, patting his lap.
It didn’t happen. Which was too bad because I really wanted it to happen, even though I knew better. We were interrupted by one of the cousins.
“Someone here to see you, Katerina,” he said.
I shot Melas’s empty, denim-covered lap a longing glance. I wanted to be there.
“Who is it?” I asked my cousin.
He shrugged. “Some guy. He’s out the front, talking to Baboulas.”
If he was talking to Grandma surrounded by most of the family, he had to be friend not foe. Was this another one of Grandma’s blind dates? I groaned at the thought.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I said to Melas.
His phone beeped. He glanced at the screen, made a face that told me work needed him—and now. “Later?”
“Crime waits for no man or woman,” I told him.
Melas walked with me under the arch. We parted ways on the far side, where the sun bit into the shelter. I watched him leave, wondering if we’d ever be playing for the same team. He was one of the good guys, and here I was standing with one foot in the shade.
As he reached for the car door he turned around to wave.
I raised my hand to return the gesture.
Despite my family connections, I didn’t think I was a bad person. My life was up in the air right now, but eventually I’d find Dad and the dust would settle. Then I’d see if Detective Melas wanted to vacation in Portland, far away from Greek eyes and tongues. Maybe Greece wasn't the only place where anything could happen.
“Katerina,” Grandma called out. “This is my doctor. He wants to meet you.”
“In a minute,” I said without looking back.
I stood there watching the police car throwing dirt and stones. A weight lifted from my shoulders. My uncle hadn’t given me all the answers—or any of them—but he’d given me the compass. As soon as I could tear myself away from the festivities I’d make a list. One by one, no matter how long it took, I’d start with the last place I expected to find Dad, then cross off each location until I found the most important person in my world.
With or without my family.
With or without Melas.
But something told me all of them would rally to help me hunt.
We’d talked, Grandma and I, after I mentioned the brownie incident. The bag Takis had gi
ven me was filled with hemp bred with nonexistent THC. There was no high to be had in the whole batch. When I’d asked why, Grandma smiled. But it was a sad sort of smile. “Trust, Katerina. I have very little trust in people—even family. I wanted your uncle to believe my mind was cloudy.”
“And?”
“A son is a son until he gets a wife. A daughter is a daughter for the rest of her life.” She said the words in slow, careful English, probably because the Greek translation of the old saying didn’t rhyme. I understood the words and what they meant, but not what she meant by them. Riddles upon riddles. And I still didn't know why Grandma had sent me to visit Dora Makri.
A warm feeling spread over me. I turned toward the fountain, to where Grandma had been holding court moments ago. Then she’d been smiling. She wasn’t smiling now. Nobody was.
They were all watching me.
Somebody screamed. Marika, maybe?
Overhead, the sun changed from bright, boiling white to a cooler yellow. Something was biting into my chest. This was the source of the warmth; damn Greek mosquitoes. I looked down to see a red flower pinned to the front of my dress.
Huh, I thought, when did I put that on? I had no recollection. You’d think I’d remember such a huge, unwieldy accessory.
I took a step toward Grandma, and then my legs buckled.
Normally falling hurts.
Not this time.
Relief swept over me as I collapsed in what I was sure was an unflattering heap. Now I could rest. Sleep had been intermittent since arriving in Greece, my dreams littered with fragments of violence.
Someone turned the volume down—way down. I could barely hear the screams or the thunder of footsteps now.
But the laughing ... that I definitely heard.
The End
Thank you for reading In Crime, the fourth of Kat Makris’ adventures! Want to be notified when my next book is released? Sign up for my mailing list: http://eepurl.com/ZSeuL. Or like my Facebook page at: https:// www.facebook.com/alexkingbooks. Want to say hello? Come on over to alexkingbooks.com or send me an email at [email protected].
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