by Alex A King
“Only when they want something.” One finger scrolled through messages, then she gasped, clutched her chest. “My Virgin Mary! Detective Melas has been shot!”
“What do you expect, he is the police,” Takis said. “Bullets go with the job.”
My head went spongy. All the smart stuff oozed out, leaving behind a cold sludge. Inside my chest my heart came to a standstill. I didn’t have the wherewithal to poke it. “Shot?” Was he alive? Dead? Why wasn’t anyone saying?
“Shot,” she said, “With a gun. You know: bang bang.”
“She knows what a gun is, you idiot,” Takis said.
“Keep it up,” Marika said, “and no more tiganites for you. Not from my kitchen.”
Subdued by the prospect of no more French fries, Takis yanked his own phone off his belt and began tapping frantically on the screen.
“Why not call them, eh?” Marika said.
Takis didn't look up from his phone. “Because if Melas was shot he is at the hospital, and if he is at the hospital then he is probably in the ICU, and if he is in the ICU then you cannot have your phone on in there.”
“Shot,” I whimpered again.
Marika reached over to pat me on the shoulder, slapping Donk’s head on the way past.
“You will live,” Marika told him when he complained.
“You try being squeezed in a back seat between a whale and a hot old lady.”
“There is nothing wrong with Katerina’s weight,” Marika said. To me: “Melas will be fine, you will see.”
Takis couldn’t help himself. “Unless he dies ... or he is dead already.”
The SUV was roomy for normal activities like sitting the right way up and possibly having cramped sex, but there was no way I could curl into the fetal position and rock without banging into Xander’s seat.
“Oh Jesus,” I might have said. Xander’s expression was unreadable in the rearview mirror. He stepped on the gas until we were shooting away from the airfield. We sped past the road I knew would take us back up the mountain to Makria and the family compound, hurtling us into the heart of Volos, where the wild things were the other drivers on the road. The SUV threaded through the streets, dodging slow-moving donkeys and rusty Romany pickup trucks, until it lurched to a stop in the ambulance bay of the Volos hospital.
A head poked out from between the automatic doors. The security guy opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head. “Oh, it’s you. Never mind.” Then he scuttled back inside.
“Come here a lot?” I asked Xander. Of course he did. The Family probably had all-access passes.
We bundled into the hospital, minus Xander, who went to park. At the reception desk Takis leaned hard on the counter and asked for Melas’s whereabouts. Words were exchanged. Bribes were made ... and accepted. Moments later, after Takis had bought a coffee, we were riding the elevator to the top floor.
Donk slouched along behind us. “Why do I have to be here? I hate hospitals. Do they have hot nurses in high heels?”
“Haven’t you been in a hospital before?” I said to him.
“Nobody in my family gets shot.”
“Sure they do,” Takis said over his shoulder. “Nobody tells you, that is all. Take a look at your uncle's kolos sometime.”
“Gkangksta,” Donk said, looking impressed.
The elevator doors opened on a scene straight out of the movies. Henchmen were stationed alongside the ICU’s double doors, making sure no one was getting in or out unless they had a reason.
I knew the henchmen, by sight if not name. They were Grandma’s.
“No cops?” I said to no one in particular.
Takis shrugged. “The country cannot afford to put their own men here. It means taking them off the street. So Baboulas is in charge of security while Melas is here.”
I looked at him. “And you know this ...?”
He held up his phone. “Magic.” He pressed the OFF button, clipped it back on his belt.
The ICU was quiet, save for the blips and beeps and the soft scuff of shoes on linoleum. Greek nurses were skilled in the arts of magazine flipping, gossiping, and collecting the fakelaki (little envelopes) that swapped hands if you wanted professional medical care. Greece had nationalized medicine, but the death-gurgling economy meant there was a chronic shortage of giving a rat’s ass. If you didn’t pack family for a hospital stay in Greece, and you were low on cash, you were out of luck if you needed any actual nursing—and in some places, doctoring.
Melas’s room was across from the nurses’ station. Again, the private security gave it away. Kissing and hugging happened—quietly—then we were free to file into the room. My eyes cut immediately to the figure on the bed, and my heart squeezed. I was used to Melas, big and bad and tasty, in his uniform or in plain clothes. Now he looked nothing like Melas.
Because the man in the bed was not Detective Nikos Melas.
Chapter 6
I opened my mouth. A hand clamped it shut. My eyes swiveled to take in the dour mug of Kyria (Mrs.) Mela, the detective’s mother. Kyria Mela was one of Grandma’s former employees, a torturer by trade. Her bobbed hair was helmet stiff and witch black. She liked me or she didn’t like me, depending on whether or not she thought I wanted to seduce her son and drag him to the dark side at any given moment. And yeah, she scared the bejeezus out of me, especially now that I knew she kept a box of implements handy, in case someone needed emergency torturing. The detective didn’t know about his mother’s past, and I wasn’t going to enlighten him any time ever.
“Walk with me,” Grandma said from behind me. Grandma was half a head shorter than me and shaped like an egg with waist-length boobs. Her eyes were dark, her cheekbones could slice throats, and she kept her iron-tinged hair hostage in a tight bun at her nape.
The rest of the room came into focus in pieces: the mummy in the bed; his not-really-his mother; Grandma; a handful of other people I didn’t know, but who I’d seen in the photographs on Kyria Mela’s table in her entertaining room.
Melas’s family was here, and so was a good chunk of mine, but where was he?
Grandma hooked her arm through mine, steered me back into the hallway, into the elevator, and outside. Xander pulled up in the SUV and jumped out to open our doors.
I slid into the back and buckled up. “You asked me to walk with you, not ride.”
“Did I ask? No,” Grandma said.
Away we sped. In silence. Lots of silence. Which was a blessing if you knew about Xander’s taste in music. He was a big fan of Rembetika, or Greek folk music. It’s the bastard offspring of a male cat being neutered without anesthetic and raggedy toenails down a chalkboard. And Rembetika’s lyrics were suspect, too. The squid was too big so I left the fish to drown was one I’d heard in Xander’s other ride. And I loved her but she left me for a donkey’s cheese.
“Where are we going?”
“You will see,” Grandma said.
I leaned forward. “Are you going to kill me?”
Xander shook with barely repressed laughter. Grandma elbowed him, cackling.
“She still thinks we are going to kill her. Relax, Katerina, nobody is going to kill you. If they do, the revenge will be terrible, I promise.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“How was America?”
“American.”
“Did Takis take care of your problem?”
“You already know he did.”
True,” she said, “but better to hear about it from you. Takis ... he exaggerates.”
I snorted. “He gave the dead guy a makeover and stuck him in a tree house. Then Marika told him to move it, so he put the guy in his boss’s car trunk. His boss is a police captain.”
Her head whipped around. Her eyes were beady and bright, and probably she could read minds. “That is the story he told me. I thought he was being dramatic so he would seem more interesting.”
“True story. And the Portland police really, really want to talk to me.”
&n
bsp; “What for?”
I shrugged. “They came over looking for their guy.”
“Takis told me that, too. But why did they come to your home?”
I told her what little they had told me, minus Lopez’s bits of winning humor. She made a sniffing sound. “Sounds like a setup to me. Where are they now, these two policemen?”
“Last time I saw them, PDX—Portland’s airport.”
Xander was steering us up Mount Pelion now, toward Makria. The roads were narrow and winding and often filled with livestock. Today they were clear.
Grandma glanced in the side mirror. “Is one skinny and looks like a black man dropped in bleach, and the other a fatty with a pumpkin head?”
Uh oh. “Yes. Why?”
“Look behind you.”
I swung around the backseat and stared. Sure enough, Lopez and Bishop were tootling along behind the SUV, stuffed into a dark blue Fiat.
“What?" I face-palmed. "How is this possible?”
“Technology,” Grandma said darkly. “It is a big pain in my kolos. Xander, pull over. You know what to do.”
“What?” I squeaked as we rolled to a stop. “You can’t kill them!” I stopped, thought about it. “Okay, you can—and probably will—but don’t. They’re American cops!”
Xander parked on what only a drunk optimist could have called a shoulder. The Fiat pulled up alongside us, potentially constipating traffic up and down the mountain, and conveniently blocking Xander’s door. Bishop rolled down the passenger window so Lopez could lean over him. He indicated for me to roll down my window, so I did. But I made out like it was killing me.
“Wow,” Lopez said. “What a coincidence.” He glanced at his partner. “Isn’t this a coincidence?”
“Yo, total coincidence,” Bishop said. “Like, whoa!”
“What are you doing here?” Lopez clicked his fingers. “Let me guess. Working on that tan.” He peered past me. “Who’s the old lady? Your grandma?” His fingers wiggled. “Hi, old lady.”
Oh boy.
Grandma arched a brow with the skill of a super villain. “Did the pumpkin just call me an old lady?”
“A-yup,” I said, in my best hillbilly accent.
“It is one thing to be old. It is another to be called that by a gourd. I would like to make Tzak o’ lantern of his head. Stick a candle up his neck and watch his eyes shine.”
“That’s not a metaphor, is it?”
“I do not joke about turning people into decoration for Apokries.”
Apokries. It’s Greek Halloween ... in February. The name is literally a farewell to meat as Lent sweeps in and yanks the lamb chop out of every Greek mouth. Apokries lasts for three weeks and has nothing to do with the occult, but everyone still dresses up like a slutty nurse or a slutty schoolgirl or a slutty slut, and knocks on doors for free cakes and candy. At the end of the three weeks there’s a big carnival, where everyone does the usual carnival stuff, before setting aside fun until Easter.
I gulped.
“Who’s the big guy?” Lopez scanned Xander up and down. “The old lady’s boy toy?”
Oof. I wanted to tell him to quit now while he still had a head, but Lopez didn’t seem like the guy who excelled at taking orders—especially not from a woman.
“Boy toy? What is boy toy?” Grandma wanted to know. So I told her. “On the one hand I want to laugh,” she said. She made a face. “On the other hand I want to laugh, too.”
There was a gut-rumbling commotion behind us as a bus wheezed to a stop. The driver honked and showed the American cops the other, lesser-known, one-fingered Greek flag.
Lopez shot a glance in his rearview mirror. “Shit. Can’t the fucker go around me?”
No. No, he couldn’t. After polluting the air with half a dozen angry honks and the dull groans of a motor crawling to death’s door, the driver climbed down out of his bus and stormed over to the Fiat’s driver’s side window. Insults poured out of his mouth, thick and bitter. It was the usual blend of sexual perversions targeting everything Lopez had ever loved or held sacred, using a donkey’s deformed penis. I’d never looked at a donkey closely enough to know if they were all built that way, or just this particular one.
Grandma was howling in the front seat, tears streaming along the previously dry riverbeds time had carved in her face. Lopez didn’t have clue one what the driver was saying, only that he was saying it loudly and punctuated with spit. The fat cop launched into his own diatribe about the bus driver’s mother and her issues with her weight and promiscuity.
Brakes complaining and squealing about the pitch of the road, another bus rounded the corner—in the downward-bound lane this time. The driver performed a miracle, the rolling tin can screeching to a stop a split second before it concertinaed the Fiat. Now Lopez and Bishop were trapped, and they had two screaming Greek bus drivers threatening to violate their mothers with a variety of domesticated and wild animals. Gods were involved. Things were getting apocalyptic. Then a van pulled up behind us, intending to overtake the idiots via the wannabe shoulder.
I stuck my head between the two front seats. “Probably we should go now,” I told Xander and Grandma.
“Katerina is right,” Grandma said. “We should leave these two vlakas to their fate.”
Xander inched forward, miraculously working the SUV out of the tangle without so much as a scratch. The van that surged into its place wasn’t so lucky. Now that it was wedged between a mountain, two buses, and a Fiat, the driver couldn’t do a thing except roll down his window and add his voice to the unholy chorus.
“Crap,” I said, rolling up my window.
“They will be fine ... or fine-ish,” Grandma said. “Unless they decide to become a problem. Then it will be pumpkin carving time. It has been a long time since I carved a pumpkin.”
Before long, Xander was easing the SUV down the dirt road that lead to the compound. The way was thick with trees—olives and other assorted fruits. Somewhere nearby was the family farm that kept the compound supplied with meat and eggs. It was like the North Pole: I knew it existed but I’d never seen it. The trees fell away, revealing the family compound and the stone wall that surrounded the grounds. The main building was two-story, white, and looked more like a swanky hotel than anyone’s home. But home it was to most of the Makris family and a handful of its employees. Out front was the massive garage that housed all the vehicles. A couple of the cousins were out there now, soaping down the limo. As always, the guardhouse was manned. When the guard saw us approaching he pushed a button to open the towering iron gates and came out to greet us.
“Hey, Katerina is back!” he said cheerfully. “How was America?”
“American.”
“I heard there was a dead cross-dresser in your house.”
“Policeman.”
He winced.
Xander parked between the fountain and the archway that lead to the compound’s courtyard. As soon as I got out, the perfume from Grandma’s gardens shoved its fingers up my nose. Grandma did all of the compound’s gardening, and she did it while she was doing Godmother stuff, tending to business and dealing with People with Problems. While she was temporarily incarcerated, I had taken over (not my choice) and dealt with matters that had required some delicacy. Never again would I mention souvlaki to a pair of sheep lovers.
Through the archway we went, where we were greeted by a passel of dogs and a lop-eared goat that was unofficially mine. I’d discovered it eating the curtains in Grandma’s guest room. Grandma had wanted to cook the goat but I’d gone to bat for its life. Now it hung around the compound, nibbling pool noodles and drinking out of the fountains. My goat was still nameless. I was waiting on a goat-naming epiphany.
Grandma didn’t live in the compound’s main building. Her residence was a doglegged dump crouching in the middle of the courtyard, hoping someone would put it out of its misery and swing a wrecking ball in its face. Her crack house was a family heirloom, passed from eldest child to eldest child. Dad w
as the eldest of three, which meant one day this heap would be mine. I was hoping for a loophole I could jump through without hanging myself.
Today, wherever we were headed, Grandma’s house wasn’t it. We passed the shack, the large swimming pool, two fountains, a dozen Makris children, and the conservatory. Xander held open one of the doors leading into the main building. Inside the floors were a dark, luxurious marble and the walls were a soothing cream. It reeked of money. Grandma’s shack smelled more like dry rot.
We stopped in front of a broom closet. Grandma turned to me.
“You have heard about the dungeon, yes?”
There was no denying it. Grandma knew I knew about the dungeon.
“Yes?” I squeaked.
She pushed me into the broom closet and followed me in. Xander stayed outside, closed the door. Maybe it was my imagination, but I think he winked at me.
It’s possible we had a secret, Xander and I. After an encounter that was one part sexual, two parts deadly, I’d discovered he posed occasionally as a member of the National Intelligence Service, Greece’s CIA. Whether he was faking it or not, I wasn’t sure. Whether Grandma knew the answer to the Xander riddle wasn’t something I knew, either. And I wasn’t about to give her a heads up. I didn’t know any of the players well enough to jump into the game. What if I doomed him to certain death? What if I doomed her to life in prison? She didn’t have much that much life left. Grandma was sick. Unless I thought Grandma was in trouble, I was keeping my lips zipped about the Xander situation.
Grandma shuffled 180 degrees, then pushed against the wall. It swung open, revealing nothing because we were standing in almost complete darkness.
“Come,” Grandma said, and took a step forward. By the way she suddenly shrank by several inches, I knew there were steps—I just couldn’t see them yet. I was suddenly worried about Grandma’s hips. What if she fell and shattered them? Old people were known for the fragility of their hips. And what about me? I was in my late twenties now—weren’t my bones starting to thin already? My bladder was already showing signs of tightening its belt and moving to a smaller container.
Then she vanished, inch by smooth inch.
