Doing Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

by Alex A King

  “One of those friends of yours is dead.”

  “Which one?”

  “The guy. Big hole in his chest. You could park a German car in that hole—that’s how big.”

  He grunted. “And the other one?”

  “Missing. You know a man called Kostas Makris?”

  “I know a lot of people.”

  “Michail Makris?”

  “I’m not answering any more of your questions.”

  “Katerina Makri?”

  “La-la-la, I can’t hear you.”

  “Can you hear me now?”

  “La-la-la.”

  “How about now?”

  The tuneless singing continued.

  “Probably she’s going to kill you,” I said. “Your German friend.”

  Magic. The singing stopped. “What?”

  “That’s what I heard?”

  “Heard from who?”

  “La-la-la,” I said, shoving my fingers in my ears.

  ~ ~ ~

  Before we left, Police Sergeant Pappas sprung Donk. Between us, Elias and I hauled the inebriated teenager to the Beetle and tossed him in the backseat. We figured he wouldn’t feel a thing anyway. And if he did, we’d deny everything and blame it on someone we didn’t like.

  “Who?” Elias wanted to know.

  “Someone everyone hates.”

  He nodded. “Ivan the Terrible.”

  “Donk won’t know who that is.” I didn’t think school was Donk’s bag. He seemed more suited to smoking in the boys’ room and bragging about sex he’d never had.

  At the corner I spotted Lopez and Bishop staring up at the sky. A shriveled raisin in black shrink-wrap had a finger pointed in their faces. Her mouth was moving at supersonic speed. I wondered what she was preaching.

  “You did this,” Lopez called out.

  I flashed him a fake, toothy grin. “You’re welcome!”

  The raisin slapped him back to attention.

  We jumped into the Beetle and I pulled away from the curb. The American cops tried to make a run for their rental car. Pappas’s mother stuck her foot out, tripped them both with the one move. Something told me she’d practiced on her kids.

  “Fack you,” Donk said, rising up in the rearview mirror like the undead. “I know who Ivan the Terrible is. He’s an enemy of my uncle’s.”

  I might have screamed, and swerved, and almost flattened an elderly widow staggering across the road with two plastic mesh grocery bags. Yikes! It was true; I was this close to being everything that stupid German said I was.

  The old woman set down her bags, chopped her hands at her crotch—a Greek gesture that invited me to suck on something she most likely didn’t have. The nerve of some people.

  “You want me to do it back? I can do it back.” Elias was overenthusiastic and determined to do a good job.

  Heart racing, I eased the Beetle back on track. “No, but thanks. What the hell are you doing?” I tossed the words of my shoulder, into the backseat.

  Donk had the audacity to put on an offended face and point at his chest two-handed. “Me? What are you doing?”

  “You were in jail! We rescued you!”

  “I was under the covers,” he said in English.

  “Under the covers? You mean undercover?”

  “That’s what I said. Undercover. Getting close to the enemy.”

  A light bulb sputtered on in my head. Must have been one of those fluorescent things. “The German?”

  “I figured if I could get close to him, find out who he is working for, then that information might be worth something to someone.”

  “You mean my Family.”

  “Or my uncle.”

  “So you pretended to be drunk.”

  “I wasn’t pretending. You ever hear of method acting? I’m like the Greek Brando.”

  Oh brother. “You’re lucky they didn’t ship you off to Korydallos.” Korydallos Prison Complex was Greece’s most infamous prison. Located near the port city of Piraeus, it made American prisons look like palaces. Rat was increasingly on the menu—if you could catch it. Cells were close to standing room only. They probably had a whole wing waiting for my Family. “So did you get anything?”

  “Someone came in to question him.”

  “Who?”

  He stared at me in the rearview mirror, rubbed his thumb against his fingers in the universal gesture of ‘pay up’. The little worm. “What is it worth to you?”

  “Ten euro.”

  “Show me the money.”

  I gestured for Elias to get it out of my purse. He passed it back to the wannabe gangster and world’s worst actor. Donk stuffed the bill in his baggy pants.

  “It was a woman.”

  “A German woman?”

  The little weasel drew an invisible zipper across his lips.

  I sighed. “How much?”

  “Ten.”

  Elias crossed his palm with another ten. “American,” Donk said.

  What did Americans want with him? Maybe euros weren’t the only money the Germans were printing. “Did she come alone? Did you hear what she said?”

  His hand shot out, palm up. The fingers wiggled.

  “Ten?” I said.

  “Twenty.”

  “For crying out loud!”

  Donk shrugged. “If you won’t pay, someone will.”

  “Give him the twenty.”

  That vanished into his pocket, too. “She came with a man.”

  “And ...?”

  “I think maybe she was stupid. But she was sexy. Nice tits. Good ass. She was old, though. But older women are hotter in bed, so I would do her until I got bored.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What did they talk about?”

  “What is that?” He lifted the twenty to his ear, listened for a moment to, I presumed, the delusional and egotistical voices in his head. “This twenty is lonely. It wants a friend. If you don’t pay, maybe my uncle will.”

  I didn’t want anyone scoring information before me, so I paid up. Again. With some grim satisfaction I watched as Elias passed over another twenty.

  “They were talking English, so I didn’t catch everything. Something about baby seals. She sounded like a freak.”

  Realization dawned—he was talking about me, the shitweasel.

  “I hate you,” I said.

  “Want me to hurt him?” Elias thumbed the blade he usually kept hidden. “I don’t usually do torture, but I’ve got some good ideas.”

  “Homey”—Donk pronounced it with an extraneous k attached to the h—“we worked together! We are colleagues.”

  The pointy end of the knife swung his way. “Just because you fumbled a gun doesn’t mean you were an assassin.”

  “Hey, I had a suit, too. A shiny one.”

  Elias scoffed.

  “No, I’ve got a better plan,” I said, glancing at Donk in the rearview mirror. I pressed the button to raise the top then made sure the back doors were locked. Now he couldn’t get out unless he had a pocketknife or a brick. “We’re going for a little drive.”

  “Strip club? You owe me.”

  “For what?”

  “You ruined my undercover work.”

  “Sure. A strip club” In his dreams.

  He punched the air. “Excellent. Good thing you gave me all this sweet cash.”

  “About the money ...”

  His eyes narrowed. “I earned it. Not my fault you’re stupid.”

  For the record, revenge tasted sweet and chewy, like Twizzlers. “It’s not real.”

  He laughed. “Looks real to me.”

  “Fake.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Still fake.”

  “Let him spend it,” Elias said. He looked back at Donk. “See how fast the police throw you back in jail. Then they’ll stick you on a bus to Korydallos. I hear they like boys in Kordydallos.”

  The kid squirmed in his seat. “Homey don’t eat poutsa.”

  Elias grinned. “Who said anythin
g about sex? I’m talking food. You’re young. The meat hasn’t had time to toughen up yet.”

  “They don’t eat people there.” Donk was sounding less and less certain.

  “Maybe they do,” Elias said, “maybe they don’t. But inmates go missing there sometimes, and suddenly their cellmates have full bellies and big smiles and toothpicks that look like bone.”

  Donk’s eyes were tearing up. “I want to get out.”

  “Don’t make him cry,” I said.

  “Men don’t cry!” Donk jiggled the door handle but the kiddie locks were doing their job. “It’s sweat.”

  “Relax,” I said, “you can get out in a minute. Let me park first.”

  While he had been leading me down the primrose path, stealing the fake-o money from my pockets, I’d been cruising toward the strip of coast where Baby Dimitri, Godfather of the Night and Statues with Big Wangs kept his shop. Usually he could be found sitting outside with his criminal cronies, backs to the front window. This partially concealed the thin layer of dust that covered the goods in his front window, which I figured was the point.

  Today it was Baby Dimitri, Laki, his pyromaniac buddy who was brushing up to eighty, and a third guy I didn’t recognize. Baby Dimitri had taken a boot up the butt sometime during the 1960s and landed in 2015. He wore white shoes and trousers with a crease that could carve watermelons. His sleeves were short and rolled to reveal biceps the size of boiled eggs. He was slime personified, but ... I didn’t mind the guy. At least he wore his slime up front, where people received ample warning before they slipped.

  “Where are we?” Donk’s tears had dried up, leaving him red-eyed. “Tell me we’re not at my uncle’s.”

  “We’re not at your uncle’s,” I said, all evidence to the contrary.

  “Man, you’re a real bitch. Even those tits can’t make up for this.” He eyed them as we all rolled out of the car. “Maybe if you lifted your shirt I'd feel better. Is that a front-closing bra?”

  “It’s all padding,” I lied. “As soon as I take it off—poof!—it vanishes. Without padding I’m so flat walls are jealous.”

  “That’s okay, I’m an ass man anyway.”

  “You’re not man,” I said. “But you’re an ass. Come on.”

  We slouched over to Baby Dimitri’s shoe-and-souvenir shop, Donk dragging his Clown Jordans.

  “Look who it is,” Baby Dimitri called out. He had a big shit-eating grin on his face. “It’s Katerina Makris-with-an-S, her pet bodyguard, and my worthless nephew.”

  My compassion kicked in. It was one thing for me to give Donk a hard time, but he was just a kid whose mother didn’t seem to have much use for him. Didn’t seem right that his own uncle was taking a sledgehammer to his self-esteem.

  “Your nephew has been helping me out. Turns out he’s good at keeping his ears open.”

  Baby Dimitri’s eyebrows rode an inch higher. “Oh really?”

  I looked at Laki. “Don’t set fire to my car, okay?”

  He grinned. It was a toothless thing; except for a flash of gold he’d probably stolen from a frightened dentist. “Okay, boss.”

  The third hood—and he had to be a hood; the shiny suit said so, even if he was just wearing the bottom half, jacket draped over the back of the chair—didn’t seem to have a name, and since nobody acted like they were about to introduce me any time soon, I figured I’d pretend he wasn’t there. He was mid-fifties with a face like an old shoe and hair worn in the slicked-back position.

  “He’s been undercover.”

  “Undercover?”

  “You did tell me to keep an eye on him, so I put him to work.”

  Baby Dimitri hiked his eyebrows another fraction of an inch. “He tried to kill you.”

  “Technically no, he never tried. Mostly he just kept the gun holstered and talked big.” Donk’s shoulders slumped as Baby Dimitri’s joy-o-meter rose. “But,” I said quickly, “I’m sure he would have if the opportunity had presented itself.”

  Baby Dimitri made an unimpressed face. “If I wanted you dead you would be dead. But here you are, alive and yapping like a woman. If my nephew had killed you there would have been war between our families. I don’t like war. It’s bad for business.”

  “Unless it is your idea,” Laki said.

  Baby Dimitri chuckled. “Unless it is my idea.”

  I thought fast. “Then it’s a good thing he showed sound judgment by not assassinating me.”

  “She’s good,” the third man said.

  “She is the son her grandmother should have had.” Baby Dimitri spat on the ground.

  The third wheel laughed.

  Baby Dimitri ignored him. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  “I was just in the area.”

  “Are we friends now?”

  “It’s good to have friends.”

  “It’s good to have friends,” he repeated. “Just like Katerina.”

  Laki grinned. “Just like Katerina.”

  It was getting repetitive here, so I cut to the chase. “Know anything about that gunfight in Agria between some Germans and the police?”

  The Godfather of the Shoes and Dusty Window Displays’ face went blank. His gaze fixed itself to the beach, where the summer body count was still at its peak. “I read about it in the newspaper, like everybody else. Other than that, I know nothing.”

  Chapter 8

  Did I believe him? Ha-ha-ha—no. As fast as his face had shut down and his mouth clamped shut, I knew he was hiding something. Baby Dimitri was—in my admittedly limited experience—a mouthy kind of guy. If he knew something he enjoyed swinging it around, dancing it in front of me so I’d leap around and do undignified stuff. To him I was a circus monkey.

  “I heard they shoot that one cop,” Laki said. “The Melas boy.”

  Baby Dimitri folded his arms, crossed his legs. “You heard nothing. You can’t even hear yourself fart.”

  Laki lifted his legs, let one loose. We all heard it ... then the smell hit. Garbage mingled with sewage. Sewage rubbed elbows with death. Death wadded up the whole mess and pitched it at Satan’s sweaty crack. And we the unfortunate were left gasping for fresh air. Thank the gods we were outside.

  “I heard that,” Laki said, grinning.

  Hand shielding my nose from the deadly radiation, I said, “Melas is in the hospital. He’s in bad shape. One German is dead. One is in the lockup. The other one ran away.”

  Baby Dimitri snorted. Laki laughed. The third guy was smiling the dim smile of an innumerate who was slowly counting their marbles, trying to decide if several were missing.

  “Ran away where?” Donk wanted to know.

  “Doesn’t matter,” his uncle snapped. “Not our business.” Laki unleashed his death gas again. It sounded like a gunshot. “Laki, go for a walk, eh? Get it all out.”

  “My car,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “No fire, okay?”

  Laki grinned and nodded, which was only marginally comforting. Gray pants flapping around his legs, he sauntered along the sidewalk, darting across the road when there was a brief lull in traffic. For the walking dead he could sure move.

  Semi confident he wouldn’t blow up my car, I turned back to Baby Dimitri. He was picking at his teeth with his pinkie. “I talked to the guy in jail. He was less than helpful. Also, he accused me of harpooning whales.”

  Baby Dimitri’s attention wandered off to do some babe watching. There was a lot of flesh on display across the street, although some had seen more summers than others. More than one handbag was stretched out on a rattan mat, working on that patina.

  “Why don’t you go for a swim?” I said to the Godfather of Floridian Bad Taste.

  He slapped the air, one-handed. “Bah! Swimming is for the young.”

  “Mama says Theo Dimitri is scared of the water,” Donk said.

  “Your mother talks too much.” Baby Dimitri pointed at him. “She needs to learn to shut her mouth or I will cut off her allowance.”

&
nbsp; Then something went BOOM.

  Laki. It had to be. No one else around here was a pyromaniac, although it seemed like he got his kicks from the explosion. Was there a word for that? Seemed like there should be. There was a word for everything else—and I was pulling from two languages.

  Sure enough, an SUV parked further down the promenade was ablaze. Smoke was climbing that stairway to heaven. The blast had blown the windows out, and now the fire was using the space to poke its tongues out at the crowd starting to form.

  “Gamo tin putana,” the third man muttered. “That’s my car!” He stormed off in the direction of the blast.

  “Not anymore,” Baby Dimitri muttered. “Nobody can destroy a vehicle like Laki.”

  I nodded to the retreating third guy. “Who is he?”

  “Nobody you want to know,” the godfather told me.

  In the distance, fire trucks wailed. And it seemed to me like there was a note of boredom in the sound. Laki blew up something again? Yawn. What a surprise.

  Baby Dimitri seized my arm, dragged me inside his shop. Elias made a move but I stopped him. “It’s okay,” I told him. Or at least I thought it was. I’d find out eventually.

  The godfather turned me to face him, held my shoulders. His face was serious, bordering on grim. “Listen to me, Katerina Makris-with-an-S. Stay away from the Germans. This could get you killed ... and I like you, even if you are not always the pointiest pencil on the desk.”

  A second explosion struck. I hit the floor, arms over my head. Elias leaped through the open door. “It’s just another car. Those two American vlakas who have been following you.”

  Baby Dimitri quirked an eyebrow in my direction.

  “American cops,” I said. “They think I know something about something I know nothing about.”

  He nodded like he knew. “That is always the way. Now get out of here ... and take my idiot nephew with you. Don’t come back for a while.”

  If pushed to slap an adjective on it, I’d say he was scared. Normally Baby Dimitri didn’t come across as a man who knew fear intimately. Thoughts rolled through my head, bound up in loose bundles; tumbleweeds constructed from words, pictures, and the occasional memory of something ridiculous I did years ago. One perfect comeback popped into my head, a pink soap bubble of a thing, five years too late. Thanks for nothing, brain.