Doing Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

  “Dina has been visiting Baboulas, demanding to know when she’s going to strike against the family’s enemies.”

  “What did Grandma do?

  “Nothing. What can she do? She cannot kill Dina just for being crazy.”

  Dina was Dad’s ex-girlfriend—the one who preceded my mother. He had fled Greece abruptly without bothering to take Dina along ... or tell her he was leaving. She still didn’t realize they'd broken up. That he’d had a wife and child in between then and now was just a speed bump on true love’s path. Her home was shrine to Dad’s fabulosity. Dad was my dad and I loved him, but I drew the line at putting his face on throw pillows. My aunt—Dad’s youngest sibling, who had started life as Dad’s youngest brother, but was now his baby sister—said Dina rediscovered her virginity when she and Dad started dating. Before that her privates were like a train station. And Aunt Rita would know; she’d ridden that train, back when she was still a man.

  The front door opened and Takis stuck his head in. “Time to go. Now.”

  “Time to go,” Marika said in a singsong voice. “Now.”

  Takis looked at her. The look was all dirty, and not in a sexy way. “Woman ...”

  “Do not forget the luggage,” she said.

  “Wait there,” he said, “I will need the boy to help me carry the biggest bag out. Maybe Katerina, too.”

  Marika snorted. “Keep talking and I will spit in your food.”

  Oh for crying out loud. I didn’t have time or the stomach for marital discord. It reminded me that I was single and my only prospect could throw my entire family away for life.

  I grabbed my own bags, threw a backpack over one shoulder, double-checked that I had my phone, then parked myself on the porch until the others trailed out.

  Takis tossed our luggage into the back of the van. He shoved Donk in and slammed the doors. Once again, I waved goodbye to my Jeep. Grandma had given me a bright yellow convertible VW Beetle to drive in Greece, but it wasn’t the same. The Jeep was mine. It had been mine when both my parents were alive and happy under the same roof.

  “You leaving me again, Kat?” Reggie Tubbs called out from his front porch.

  “Temporarily.”

  He waved me closer. I didn’t want to, but I figured the best security you could have was a nosy neighbor.

  “First there was that one clown who said he was a cop hanging around. Now you’ve got a couple of goons following you.”

  I had a feeling he had dropped a question mark. I didn’t tell him the cop who wasn’t a cop was in fact a cop—a real dead cop. Reggie Tubbs still had ties to law enforcement, and not as a registered sex offender.

  “They said they were vice.”

  “That explains the goofy outfits. You see what detectives wear these days? In my days they wore suits and ties. When I was a kid they even wore hats. You never see men in hats these days unless they’re those baseball caps, and even then they wear ‘em wrong.” He stared pointedly at Donk, who had jumped back out of the van. Donk noticed us looking, grabbed his crotch, and leered. “What is that?” Reggie wanted to know.

  “The nephew of my grandmother’s colleague. Calls himself Donk.”

  “Didn’t know you had a grandmother.”

  “She’s Greek.”

  He got an interested gleam in his eye. “Single?”

  “Widow.”

  “She like American men?”

  “She’s your age, and she’s spent a lot of one-on-one time with gravity.”

  His face fell. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  I pulled out a piece of paper, scribbled my email address and cell number, and reached up to give it to him. “Can you let me know if you see anyone else snooping around?”

  “You in some kind of trouble?”

  “Always.”

  “You want to come inside, talk to Judge Junior about it?”

  “Never.”

  “Worth a try,” he said. He held up the paper. “I’ll let you know.”

  I thanked him and trotted back to the waiting van. Then we hit the road, headed for the airport.

  ~ ~ ~

  We’d been driving a while when Takis glanced over at me. Donk had called shotgun but Marika had clipped his ear and sent him scrambling for the back. Then Marika had hopped in beside the kid. Which left me two choices: ride with the bags or ride with Takis. The passenger seat, at least, had a seatbelt and direct access to the air conditioning.

  “What are you looking at?”

  I kept glancing in the side mirror to see if we were being followed by Vanilla Ice and Mexican Tony Soprano.

  “She’s looking at the Donk—who do you think? Even the old ladies love the Donk.”

  “Heh.” Takis chuckled. “He is calling you old, Katerina.”

  There was a boyish squeal from the back. Marika cackled.

  “Just being a good sidekick,” she said. “My mother had a good trick to keep us in line. She would sit her hand on our shoulder—very loving—then she would yank on those fine hairs on the nape. Nobody knew how we suffered.”

  Thinking about it made my eyes water. “I’m checking to see if we’ve got a tail.”

  “Those two malakes in the GMC?” Takis said. “They are back there. Way back.”

  Takis was good—I hadn’t spotted them. But then he’d have to be if he worked for Grandma. My cousin’s cousin’s cousin was fifty percent moron, fifty percent stone-cold henchman. I wasn’t sure which scared me more.

  “Can they stop us leaving?” I asked him.

  “Maybe.”

  The thing about Portland traffic is that it’s borderline civilized. Even during rush hour people still remember things like manners. That didn’t make me hate the inevitable slow crawl toward the airport any less. The air was hazy with a mixture of summer’s dog breath and disappointment. Every so often a plane swooped low over the highway, like we were all take-out meals in metal boxes, waiting for pickup.

  Takis was grinding his teeth. “If we were in Athens we would be there by now.”

  I gawped at him. “Athens? Athens, Greece?”

  “Where else is Athens?”

  I couldn’t be bothered explaining that we had an Athens right here in the US, along with a Rome, and our very own Paris down in Texas. “Athens traffic is hell on earth.” If hand-to-hand combat was your thing, the streets of Greece’s capital city were for you. No discernible rules. Hit-and-run was a fact of life. Athens was the jungleiest of the concrete jungles.

  “It is civilized,” Takis said. “In Athens nobody cares if you get out and punch a bad driver or drive up on the sidewalk.”

  “We’re on the highway. There’s no sidewalk.”

  “What is that then?” He nodded to a grassy area running alongside us.

  “A field. And I’m pretty sure the airport owns it, so if you zip over there you’ll wind up in Homeland Security custody—again.”

  “This country makes no sense,” he muttered.

  That’s when I remembered the guns he’d stashed in my house. When I asked about them he shrugged. “I put them in your attic.”

  “You hid illegal weapons in my house?”

  “Attic.”

  “The attic is part of the house.”

  “Then yes, I hid illegal weapons in your house. What if you need them?”

  “Jesus,” I said, flopping back in the seat. I needed smelling salts. I needed a cool cloth to lie across my forehead. I needed one of those lamps with a genie inside. I had wishes to make, damn it.

  The van jerked forward. We were on the move again. Soon we were cruising past the terminal. I pointed to where people were rolling, dragging, hauling bags through big revolving doors. Shuttles came and went. Cops cars paid homage to the idea of parallel parking by not giving a damn about things like lines or breathing room.

  “You do know that’s the terminal, right?”

  “I know,” Takis said.

  “Is this one of those man things, where you pretend you know but don’t?”r />
  Marika chuckled behind me. “It is like she knows you.”

  “Gamo ti putana,” Takis muttered. “I know where I am going. Who is driving, eh? Who is driving?”

  “Do you need to ask for directions?” I said.

  “What for? I know where I am going.”

  “The terminal ...”

  “Back that way, I know. But we are not going to the terminal, smarty-pants.”

  I sobered up. “Where are we going?”

  “Shaddap and you will see.” He glanced in the side mirror. The van was creeping now, thanks to the glut of airport traffic. “The two malakes are still there. If they wanted to stop us they could have done it by now,” he told me.

  “What do they want?”

  “Let me consult the coffee cup and I will tell you ... How the fuck do I know?”

  Marika reached out and touched him—hard.

  “Gamo tin Panayia mou!”

  Threatening to sexually ravage the Virgin Mary won him another slap. Finally, he hunched over the steering wheel out of his wife’s reach and concentrated on driving. Soon we broke through the traffic by turning onto a right-bound road. Takis steered us past a chain link fence, to where a flock of smaller planes waited. Private planes, smaller commercial birds, Lear jets. My gut flip-flopped as I scanned the horizon for the one plane that wasn’t supposed to be here. There it was ... white, gleaming, smug.

  I blew out a big sigh. Family. “Why is Grandma’s plane here?”

  Takis didn’t say a word until he’d stopped. “Baboulas insisted.”

  “I insisted first—commercial flights, all the way.”

  “She insisted louder and with a gun.”

  “I have guns.” That he had left in my attic.

  “She pays me and gives my family a place to live.”

  Marika nodded behind us. “Also, she makes excellent baklava.”

  I couldn’t argue with that part, but the rest was up for grabs. “I’m not getting on that plane.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “The police can have you, then. I do not think they will just let you get on a plane.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!”

  “This is the police. They don’t have to know anything, they just have to think it.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

  “Think fast or they will be here.”

  “Who flew the plane here?”

  “Xander.”

  If Detective Melas gave me butterflies, Xander, Grandma’s perpetually silent bodyguard, gave me hot flashes. I kind of got the feeling he had that effect on every woman who swung straight, and the percentage of the male population that didn’t.

  “Xander can fly?”

  “Xander can do many things,” he said darkly.

  The plane door opened, revealing a narrow staircase, and down came Xander, looking like he was one of the Olympian gods stepping off the mountain for the day. He moved like a man with a mission—and apparently that mission was me. He covered the ground between us in no time and yanked the passenger door open. He reached in, pulled me out, threw me over his shoulder.

  “Argh! Not fair!”

  “I warned you,” Takis called out from the driver’s side.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I meant to. What is it they say?” I heard the opening and closing of the van’s back doors as Takis retrieved our luggage. “The thought is what counts.”

  “They’re talking about gifts when they say that.” My face bobbed against Xander’s very taut, very muscular butt as he carried me up the plane’s stairs. The others were following. “Like when someone gives you socks but you don’t have feet.”

  “What kind of asshole gives socks to someone without feet?” Takis said.

  Xander dumped me in what was becoming my usual seat on Grandma’s jet. Takis splintered off, taking his place in the cockpit. Marika made herself comfortable in the window seat beside me. The seats were rich chocolate leather. The carpets were some kind of natural fibers; you’d have to work hard to skin your knees on it. The accents were a touch too golden for anyone who wasn’t into rap. At the back of the plane someone had installed an icon box, complete with the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and a handful of saints, presumably for insurance purposes.

  “This is what the Donk is talking about,” Donk said, embracing the weirdness that is referring to yourself in third person. “My uncle doesn’t have a plane. Why does your family have a plane?”

  “Our family is better than your family,” Takis called out from the cockpit. “But hey, you get free shoes.”

  The engines began to purr.

  “Fack you,” Donk said, “I have to steal my shoes like everybody else.”

  Xander planted himself in the seat across from me. He was wearing dark gray suit pants, a plain white button-down shirt, and a tie that said he wasn’t a fan of clashing colors, complimentary colors, or colors. He was tall, he was dark-haired and bronze-skinned, and he had the kind of body that was probably carved in a gym but looked like he’d come by it the old-fashioned way: slinging boulders and digging trenches. What I couldn’t see from here, with all the clothes in the way, was the waterfall of scars that flowed down his back and stopped someplace below his belt. How he’d scored those I didn’t know ... and would never ask. Scars like that aren’t the result of good times.

  “Bouncer or businessman?” I said. He snorted, leaned his head back on the squishy leather headrest, and closed his eyes. Must have been tired if he’d flown all the way from Greece in one clean shot. The distance between coasts tacked another five hours to the trip. He folded his arms; they had a lot of chest territory to cover.

  “Fasten your seat belts,” Takis called out.

  I leaned over Marika, squinted out the window. Lopez and Bishop were leaning against their hulking SUV, arms folded, watching. I wiggled my fingers at them. So long, suckers.

  As Takis rolled toward the runway, I saw them hoist themselves back into the SUV. Hopefully that would be the last I’d see of Portland’s not-so-finest.

  ~ ~ ~

  As soon as Takis gave us the all clear I shrugged on my hoodie, pulled the hood over my face, and hoped no gun-toting morons would mistake me for an urban teenager. I figured I was safe-ish in the family plane; Greeks don’t usually care about the color of your skin. They’re more worried about the important stuff, like, Do you want seconds? and When are you going to have more children?

  I bit my nails when we landed at JFK to refuel and do immigration the legal way, for a change. The Family had ways in and out of the country that weren’t entirely—or at all—kosher, but I had insisted on doing this right. The Portland Bureau of Police hadn’t issued a ... whatever it is they issued to stop suspected criminals and persons of interest from fleeing the country. Which made me even more leery of Lopez and Bishop. They had badges, but something about them made me think of vegetables painstakingly concealed in a toddler’s favorite foods. If Dad and I were so interesting to them, why were they letting me run?

  While we were on the ground, I fired a text message at Melas, letting him know I was on my way back, and did he want to have a coffee sometime. Coffee is good. Coffee is for friends. Coffee says, I like your company, but if I wanted to see you naked I would have suggested dinner.

  Paperwork stamped, plane refueled, we rolled out of New York and kissed American soil goodbye, Greek-style, on both cheeks. Now, there was no knowing when I’d be back—if I could come back. Probably I was a fugitive on the run now. I should probably update my Facebook status to let people know that my life was at least a hundred-perfect more exciting these days. But now that I was ‘friends’ with most of my family, and at least one drug dealer, most of the replies would be something like, “We’re fugitives, too. Opa!”

  ~ ~ ~

  Twenty hours later, Takis said, “Get out. We are here.”

  Here was Volos, Greece, on the Family’s private airstrip. To look at Grandma you wouldn’t know she had anything. As it turned o
ut, out she had everything except a fancy wardrobe and a hairstylist.

  We stepped out of air-conditioned comfort into a convection oven. The plant life was apathetic; the ground was parched, and somewhere close by, Roma people were hollering about watermelons for sale. Suddenly, I really wanted a watermelon. Takis and Xander unloaded the plane and carried our luggage to an SUV from Grandma’s fleet. The family compound had a massive garage that housed everything from limos to my VW Beetle. Xander owned two vehicles of his own: a new motorcycle that had replaced the old one, after it had an accident with a Molotov cocktail; and a black European bullet he kept constantly tuned to the Shitty Music Station. We piled into the SUV and his hand moved toward the console.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said as he rolled us across the gravel and grass. “Or I’ll make baseless threats and give you dirty, ineffectual looks.”

  In the rearview mirror, his mouth twitched. Smile or grimace, it was hard to say.

  I checked my phone. Nothing from Melas. Guess he didn’t want coffee, or he’d exceeded his lifetime quota.

  Marika was holding up her phone to the window, angling it this way and that. “Trying to get a good signal,” she said. Then she made a satisfied sound. “There. A hundred text messages. Who sends a hundred text messages?” She pushed her weight across Donk, who was strapped between us in the backseat, and poked Takis. “Our children, that is who. Apparently they have tied up Stavros in an undisclosed location and they are demanding ransom.”

  “What do they want?” he said.

  “Bigger allowances.”

  “I allow them to live. What more do they want?”

  Marika flopped back in the leather seat. It made a farting noise.

  “Smartest thing you have said all day,” Takis said.

  She ignored him. “I will poison his food later,” she said to me. “I bet they have tied up Stavros in the bathroom. That is where they always put their hostages.”

  “They do it a lot?” I asked her, slightly horrified.