by Alex A King
I wandered out to where the American cops were watching their car burn.
“Huh,” I said. “That’s some bad luck.”
Lopez scratched his head. He was sunburned and he smelled like the wrong end of a goat. Bishop wasn’t faring much better. His sagging clothes were limp. That face of his looked sad enough to convert from hip-hop to country.
“Wasn’t bad luck,” Lopez said. “It was a demon. We saw him. He looked us right in the eyes.” He pointed to his face with two fingers. “Right in the eyes. Didn’t we, Gene?”
“Right in the eyes,” Bishop confirmed.
“He had gold teeth and he wouldn’t stop grinning. Then he threw a burning bottle into the fuckin’ rental car. How the fuck am I gonna get the deposit back now? Look.” Lopez pointed. “There he is. There’s the demon. You can see him, right? Tell me you can see him.”
It was Laki—of course. He sauntered up to me, grinning.
“They bothering you?”
“On and off,” I said. “They’re like fleas.”
“I figured. I tried to smoke them out for you but here they are. They were following you. Creeps. Always somebody seems to be following you. Good thing you bring them to Laki.” He winked and off he went, back to his favorite chair.
Not too far away, the third member of Baby Dimitri’s posse was tapping frantically on his phone. He pressed the phone to his ear, then swaggered in the opposite direction, away from his burning vehicle. By the time the fire truck showed up, sirens mumbling, he was gone.
“I don’t trust that one,” Elias said. “I know a criminal when I see one.”
“My whole family are criminals,” I said.
“Yes, but there are levels. Your family has manners and class.”
“Have you met Stavros and Takis?”
He shrugged. “Stavros cooked lunch for me the other day, then we watched a movie. He’s an okay guy.”
Stavros was shaping up to be one of my favorite family members. Under the criminal skin he was a good guy who enjoyed whipping up gourmet food. He’d swap the mob lifestyle for fatherhood in an instant if the right woman came along. Unfortunately, knowing Stavros, she was liable to be cloven footed.
“Did the movie have sheep or goats?”
He looked at me. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“Just curious.”
~ ~ ~
Back at the compound, the Family was winding down for the big nap, which should be mandatory anywhere the thermometer creeps over eighty degrees. Naps for all mankind. That was a cause I could get behind.
Elias wandered off to do whatever bodyguards do when they’re not guarding bodies. Lift weights, trim his toenails, squash spiders. On the way through the courtyard, Donk got caught up with some of my teenage cousins. Maybe they could knock some of whatever he needed into him.
Aunt Rita must have been reading my mind—which was currently clamoring for food of the sugar-drenched kind—because we collided at Grandma’s front gate.
“Food?” she said.
“Food.”
She threaded her arm through mine and dragged me into the heap that was Grandma’s home. I wandered through the tiny house, with its doglegged addition and checked the windows were open, the shutters were latched, and that there were no killers who weren’t Family hiding under the beds. Back in the kitchen, Aunt Rita was grabbing plates and napkins.
“Oooh,” she said, diving into the koulourakia container. “Mama’s koulourakia are the best.” She inspected it closely. “What are the green bits?”
We stared at it together.
“Spinach?” I guessed.
“Who puts spinach in koulourakia?”
“Back home we make pumpkin pie and zucchini bread.”
“That is different. We make pumpkin pie with nuts and phyllo.” Her nose wrinkled up. Her forehead didn’t move. A second dose of Botox must have fallen off the back of the truck at last. Now her forehead was even, a wide, smooth expanse. “And we make it into preserves as a spoon sweet.”
“We put it pumpkin-flavored syrup in coffee, too, in autumn.”
“I don’t know what is wrong with Americans. Very strange people.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I grabbed my own koulouraki and began to chew. “Whatever it is, it tastes fine. Doesn’t taste like spinach though.”
There was a wolf whistle outside, and then the gate squeaked open. Papou rolled into the kitchen a moment later, yellowing eyes on the koulourakia. Aunt Rita and I stood there chewing for a moment.
“What kind of hostess are you?” he said. “Offer a man a koulouraki, otherwise Zeus will strike you down.”
“Ask me, Zeus is a douche bag,” I said. “Most of the bad stuff in mythology happened because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
“ ‘Douche bag’?” Papou said. “What is ‘douche bag’? And hand over a koulouraki or I will feed you to my eagle.”
I grabbed a plate out of the cupboard, dropped a Greek cookie on it. “How is Yiorgos?”
“I think he is sick.” He snatched the plate out of my hand. “All he does is sit around, looking sad.”
“How can you tell? Don’t eagles have just one facial expression?”
He stared at me, chewing. “What do you know about eagles? Nothing, that is what.”
“What do you know about eagles?” I asked him.
“More than you because I have an eagle. What are these green bits? Did the old bat drop them in the garden?”
“Spinach,” I said. Then I giggled. Spinach in cookies was funny. Apparently Aunt Rita thought so, too, because she began giggling, too, only her giggle was filtered through an Adam’s apple, which made it sound like it had been raked over gravel and glass. I laughed harder.
“You sound like a man,” I said between outbursts.
“It’s the balls,” she said.
Papou’s gaze swung between us like a pendulum. “The Virgin Mary’s mouni, what is wrong with you two?”
“It’s not me,” I said, “It’s Aunt Rita. She sounds funny.”
He sniffed. “I was hoping one of you could help me, but I guess you are too busy eating.”
“Maybe you should get out of that chair and walk, you old malakas,” Aunt Rita said. She rocked back in her chair, cackling, while Papou flipped her off.
“What do you need help with?” I said. “Charm school?”
“You are lucky I cannot walk or I would walk over there and make you eat wood. You are not too old to spank. I need help with my eagle—what else?”
Aunt Rita made an attempt at wiggling her eyebrows, but the Botox wouldn’t let them move much. “Spanking can be fun, if it is not some dirty old man doing the spanking. My eyebrows aren’t moving, are they?”
I shook my head—very American of me. “Nope.”
We dissolved into a fresh round of giggles.
“Get me another koulouraki,” Papou barked. “These are good. Even better than Baboulas’s usual batch. Must be whatever these green bits are. Oregano? Basil?”
“Then they would taste like pizza.” Aunt Rita wrinkled her nose as much as she could. “They don’t taste like pizza.”
“Not pizza,” I agreed. “Maybe it’s some kind of Greek herb. What do Greeks grow?”
“In Mama’s garden?” My aunt helped herself to another cookie. “Could be anything. Maybe it’s nettles.”
“Nettles, really? Wouldn’t that sting?”
“I don’t know. What do I look like, a chef?”
If chefs dressed like a 1980’s Dolly Parton, then sure. “I guess not,” I said.
The gate squeaked again. This time Donk’s stick figure sloped through the yard. Baby Dimitri’s nephew had been born without manners, and he hadn’t picked any on his short journey through life. He flung the screen door open without knocking and helped himself to a chair.
“Duuuuude,” he said in the worst English ever. Which was all his English. He was the kind of kid who spray-painted FACK on an underpass, and pronoun
ced it the same way. “Marijuana koulourakia.” Then he snatched one up, crammed it into his mouth.
What?
Slowly, it sank in. We were chowing down on Grandma’s version of pot brownies, but without the chocolatey goodness. Still, the koulourakia were pretty great ...
I leaped across the table, slapped it out of his mouth, slipped, crashed onto the floor, and rolled toward the door. The doorjamb leaped out to smack me on the forehead. It was the only thing preventing me from tumbling into the garden.
Nice doorjamb. Maybe I’d see about getting it some fresh paint.
I giggled. This was the most fun I’d had since Lopez mistook Laki for a demon.
Then I stopped. I was staring at boots. Big, heavy, military-style boots. My gaze traveled up a pair of long, muscular cargo-pants legs in the blackest shade of black their wearer could find. Maybe it was the pot, but the colors were richer. Outside, Grandma’s garden was something out of Wonderland.
“Uh-oh,” Aunt Rita said in a sad voice. “No more fun for us.”
My gaze snapped back to the legs and followed them all the way up to an acre of Xander’s chest. He was wearing a skintight black T-shirt and an expression that said he was considering putting this on YouTube. Only the potential wrath of Grandma was holding him back.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re really big.”
Aunt Rita slipped off her chair, shaking with fresh gales of laughter. Her platinum nest of curls lurched to one side but she didn’t seem to care.
“I’m not talking about that,” I said, digging a deeper hole. “I mean he’s big all over. Tall—I mean tall. And ... broad. Do you even have body fat? I don’t think this guy has body fat. How can you swim? Don’t you just ... sink?”
He picked me up like I was preschooler and dumped me back on my chair. Then he relieved us all of our snacks, dropped them back in the container, and left.
With the container.
“That clown is the fun police,” Papou said. Then he snickered. “I have an eagle. Who wants to see my eagle?”
“A real eagle?” Donk said.
“No, a fake one. It sits on my shoulder and says nothing because it’s dead. Of course a real eagle. What kind of idiot brags about anything else?”
“Uh ...” Donk’s expression was a mixture of uncertainty and alarm.
“I have been trying to teach him a trick. I lie down in a bathtub with mice and I wait for the eagle to cut my throat open with his talons to get to the mice.”
All three of us gawked at him in horror.
“You ... get in the bath with mice?” my aunt said.
“What? I am doing the family a favor! Think how easy the cleanup will be when they find me. Spray, spray, rinse.” He threw his hands in the air. “I am a prince. Who else would be so considerate? Everything I do is for the Family. And what do I get? Some clown in army boots steals the koulouraki right out of my hand.”
“I can’t laugh now,” my aunt said. “My laugh-maker is broken. Thank you, old man for killing my laugh.”
“Grandma made other desserts,” I said.
“Bah! It’s not the same,” Papou said. “I like the green bits.”
~ ~ ~
Between the time I closed my eyes and the time I opened them three hours later, the warm, fuzzy high had worn off. My tiny borrowed room was a fake kind of dark, thanks to the shutters. The heat was a dull toothache that I knew wouldn’t quit until the sun fell down the other side of the sky. On the far side of the room—although far was a major exaggeration—the outline of the generously endowed statue Baby Dimitri had given me a few weeks ago was distinct. The Godfather of Hookers and Shoe Polish hadn’t been himself this morning, which worried me. Everyone I’d met in Greece so far seemed steeped in confidence. They were who they were—take it or get out of Greece. They made no apologies for the way they were, good or bad. Now one of the pillars had turned out to be made of sand, not whatever Greek pillars were usually made of. Marble, I supposed.
The third guy, who was he? Someone who had Baby Dimitri over a barrel? Whoever he was, the godfather had been zipped up tight until Laki lobbed his firebombs. Laki’s idea or Baby Dimitri’s—I really wanted to know. But not as much as I wanted to know the identity of that third guy.
Now that the head fog was lifting, I was cursing myself for not hauling my laptop to Greece. I had my phone, yeah, but it was a replacement phone, paid for by the Family. Even if I could trust Grandma—and I wasn’t convinced yet that I could—there were small leaks, informants, people who might give away my secrets if I Googled the wrong thing and it showed up in records somewhere.
I sniffed my pits, declared them good enough, and then went back to the broom closet to find Melas.
“What news from under the heavens?” Melas said, his voice tinged with desperation. Being cooped up didn’t suit him. Being cooped up and cut off from his precious police department suited him even less.
“No news, just heat.” The drop in temperature below ground was bliss. I sighed, happy that my pores could take a break from all the sweating. “How goes it in the underworld, Hades?"
“There’s only so much Solitaire one man can play. But I can think of some games for two.”
“What about your friend?” I nodded to the far end of the short hallway.
“He won’t come out. No fun playing poker with a guy when you can’t see his face.”
“What about charades?” I said it with a straight face.
He laughed, shook his head. “Let’s discuss one of those games I want to play with you. It involves a pack of cards and you losing all your clothes while I enjoy the win.”
“You do not want to play poker with me.” I said it like a warning, hoping he’d think I was a poker rock star. Fact is, I was so bad at poker other players thought it was an act, right up until I fell facedown on the table, crying. Go Fish was more my style. Even that was risky if I was playing for money.
Melas saw right thought my bluff. Grinned. “It’s okay if you’re bad at poker. Better than okay.”
“I’m not here to play poker.”
“Well you’re not carrying food and you’re not naked, so I’m guessing this is a business call.”
I nodded, briefly outlined the morning’s events, including the two burning cars. Melas shook his head slowly, barely contained amusement on his face.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or be scared for you. I’m going to go with both.”
“Both is good.”
He leaned against the counter, folded his arms, boosting his biceps up to dangerous. “So what is it you want from me?”
“You still haven’t shaved.”
“Take off your clothes and I’ll shave.”
Yowza. “Who are Baby Dimitri’s”—I hunted around for the phrase they used on CSI and NCIS—“known associates?”
He blew out a sigh. “What did he look like? Did anyone use his name or a nickname?”
“No names. Average height, average build. Shiny suit, so I knew he was a criminal.”
Melas tilted his head. “Shiny suit?”
I explained my theory about suits with the criminal sheen and he laughed.
“You are something else,” he said. “I have a suit like that. My mother bought it for me.”
Of course she did. But I wasn’t about to tell him his mother was part criminal and kept a box with tools of the torture trade. Kyria Mela scared me. A Twin Peaks moment flashed before my eyes, of her crouching at the end of my bed with a pair of pliers in her hand.
I was fresh out of witty comebacks, so I finished describing the third guy and waited for Melas’s memory banks to spit out his identity. But Melas jerked his head up and went, Tst. “Impossible to say. He sounds like half the guys in the business. Hell, he sounds like half the guys in Greece and the Balkans. Accent?”
“Greek, I think. I’m not a native speaker, remember.”
“You speak Greek with a mostly Greek accent.”
“It’s getting easier.”<
br />
His face turned serious. “Do you like it here?”
Did I? Undecided. I liked things about Greece; others, I loved. But there was an over-abundance of lining, and it wasn’t silver. Mostly it was bloody.
“When people aren’t trying to kill me or people I like.”
“That won’t go away. Not in the business your family is in.”
“I know.” And I did. It was a harsh reality but it was the only one I had. The Family’s luxurious compound, the nice cars, the private planes, the influence, those were all paid for with dirty money. And Grandma was planning to dump it all in my lap. If that happened, maybe I could turn the Family straight. Scrape off the filth and make this an honest business.
Maybe donkeys could strap on wings and fly.
“Just about everyone in the business is a known associate,” Melas told me. “Organized crime in Greece is incestuous. Everyone knows everyone, does business with everyone, sooner or later. Even enemies do business. Sometimes business is how they became enemies. Who your guy was ... I don’t know. I can’t even begin to guess. But Baby Dimitri gave you a hint; it’s up to you if you want to follow it. I’d prefer it if you didn’t, whatever Baboulas has you doing. She’s a businesswoman—a good businesswoman—which means she’s doing what is best for her business.”
I ignored the bit about Grandma, mostly because he was bumping up against my own reservations. I had never had anybody except Mom and Dad; after Mom died, it was Dad and me against those annoying religious proselytizers who came banging on the door. Then he vanished and I discovered a whole family I hadn’t known existed. I wanted—maybe even needed—them to be on Team Kat. But what if they weren’t. Who did I have then?
“He was tight-lipped about the Germany thing ... right up until the third man left.”
He nodded. “My guess is the guy has something to do with the Germans. And now I’m curious, too. But there’s nothing I can do down here.”
“Can’t you ... I don’t know ... wear a disguise? I bet Aunt Rita’s got something.”
His eyes narrowed. “Please be joking.”
I held up a thumb and finger, a half-inch apart. A centimeter, if we were talking metric system. “Maybe a bit. But a disguise isn’t a bad idea.”
