by Alex A King
“Ai so dialo,” he swore. “Somebody get him down from there. The last thing we need is the American Embassy riding us for detaining one of their policemen.”
My mouth hung open.
Pappas snorted. “I’m joking. No one will care. But we have to get him down anyway; fewer traps to reset. We like to leave that tile loose on purpose.” He looked apologetic and slightly pathetic. “We don’t have much entertainment around here. That thing you did on Melas’s desk was exciting by our standards.”
Ten minutes later, a sorry-looking Lopez slid through the original hole, back into the cell. “Fuck tha police,” he said. “That’s what Gene would say. He’s into that rap shit. Ask me, the c in rap is silent.”
“Bishop is the police. So are you.”
“Vice cop. There’s a difference.”
I didn’t see one.
Pappas had vanished. He came back in, looking marginally happier. “You can go. The owner of the building vouched for you, said you had a right to be there.”
“Really? Who’s the owner?”
He pushed the door open with his finger. In walked Xander. Did I say walk? I meant swaggered. Definitely swaggered. It went with the amused glint in his eyes. For a guy who didn’t speak he could sure say a lot.
Oh boy.
“Grandma owns Penka’s apartment building? Did you know this?” I asked Marika.
“Baboulas owns a lot of things. It is very difficult to keep track. Maybe only your Aunt Rita knows all the places, seeing as she is the Family accountant.”
Xander drove us back to the compound. The wretch made Marika and I sit in the back while the chunky cop got to sit up front. I wanted to blame sexism but I knew it was because I hated Xander’s music and tried to change the station one freakin’ time. As soon Xander cut the engine outside the archway, I hopped out. Lopez climbed out, too.
“Someone want to give me a ride back to my moped? It’s outside your dealer friend’s apartment building.”
Xander nodded in the direction of the garage. While we were wasting away in jail, someone had brought our vehicles back to the compound. They’d even scored a complementary wash. Which was probably a bad idea—the only thing holding the moped together had been dirt and metal memory.
“Well,” Lopez said, “I’d like to say it’s been fun, but it’s been a lot of things and fun ain’t one of ‘em. And we’re still not any closer to finding Gene. So what’s the next move?”
“I don’t know that there is one,” I told him. “Not for me. You need the police. I’m just a kid from Portland, Oregon.”
He stared at me thoughtfully. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s all you are. You got some kind of weird woo-woo power around here. You and your whole family. Say, are you royalty?”
I laughed out loud.
“Well, I’ll see you around,” he said. “Let me know if your friend and that kid show up. Maybe Gene is with them. And who knows, maybe he hopped a ferry to Mykonos.”
Except Lopez wasn’t going anywhere. Xander stepped in front of him, barring the way with his beefcake.
Holy hamburgers, Batman!
Takis swaggered out from the cool shade of the arch. “Excuse us, Mr. Po-lees-man,” he said in English. “But the family matriarch is inviting you to be our guest for a little while longer.”
“Guest?” Lopez scratched the back of his neck. “The way you’re saying it that don’t sound voluntary.”
“Oh heck,” I groaned. I shifted back to Greek. “You’re not putting him in the dungeon, are you? Say you’re not putting him in dungeon.”
Takis shrugged. “Where else you want to put him? In the main house? Baboulas would have a fit.”
“What’s the problem?” I eyed the cop’s round gut and the Hawaiian shirt tented over his middle. “I mean he’s a creep, but is that a crime?”
“Baboulas has a feeling about this one.”
“What sort of feeling?”
“You want to get me killed, eh? Let Xander and me do our jobs. You got a problem with this, take it to Baboulas.”
Lopez’s head was doing the tennis match thing, back and forth. “What’s this ‘Baboulas’? You keep saying it over and over.”
“It means Boogeyman,” I said. “It’s a nickname.”
He pulled out his phone. “Sounds suspicious to me. I’m gonna look that one up.” A moment later: “Huh. It’s a nickname all right. Did you know there’s a mob boss in Greece they call Baboulas?”
We all looked at him.
“How about that,” I said.
Lopez’s eyes cut from his phone to the compound’s fancy fountain, to the massive garage, to the guardhouse. “Huh. How’d you say your family made money again?”
“Business.”
“What sort of business would that be then?”
“Okay.” Takis clapped his hands. “Time to go, fat man.”
Lopez got all huffy. “Who you calling fat?”
Takis looked like he was done negotiating. “You can walk or I will make you walk.”
Lopez took a step back. “Touch me and you’re gonna be sorry! I’m carrying.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, your phone. It’s not exactly a lethal weapon.”
“You don’t know that,” he said. “Could be it doubles as a stun gun. There’s an app for everything. I could fry you where you stand.”
“You’d have to come through them first.” I waved a hand at Takis, Xander, Marika, and the dozen or so other Family members who had wandered over to see if there really was a stun gun app for an Android phone.
“Your family sucks!” Lopez said. “I hate Greece. I’m not going anywhere with any of you crazy people.” He lurched at me with his phone. I snatched it out of his hand.
“Your app doesn’t work,” I said.
He snatched the phone back. “I knew I should’ve bought the full version. But ninety-nine cents is ninety-nine cents. They don’t pay us enough for that shit.”
Takis grabbed at him. Lopez clobbered him with his phone. “Don’t touch me, you Greece-ball.” He turned to bolt.
I stuck out my foot, and the cop tripped. The phone shot out of his hand, hit the flagstones, shattering into its original, separate parts. “My phone,” he mewled. He scrambled to pick up the pieces, and then flung them in my face.
“Dude, you’re making it worse,” I said, dodging.
“How can it be worse? It’s ruined. And I didn’t pay for insurance because I’m a cheap fuck.”
“Insurance is a racket,” Takis agreed.
“This is all your fault,” Lopez growled, surging at me. He knocked me down like a skittle, crushed me on the stones. With him being close to double my weight, I wasn’t going anywhere. Xander and Takis leaped forward and began trying to yank him off me. Marika shot out a string of curse words; very colorful but ultimately not helpful. I managed to pull my arm free and jammed a finger into Lopez’s eye.
“My fucking eye! You bitch!” He squealed and fell sideways.
Partially free now, I scrambled out the rest of the way and yanked his hair good and hard. He cried out as I pulled on those fine hairs on his nape. Tears squirted out of his eyes.
Takis winced. “Remind me never to fight with you. You fight dirty, like a girl.”
“I am a girl!”
Lopez hauled himself to his knees with Xander on his back. Xander was built like a warship, but the vice cop was a fat, sweaty kraken. He launched himself at my ankles. For a moment I thought I’d make it. I wobbled this way and that, and then gravity reached out and pulled me closer for a hot stone kiss.
Oof!
I lay there, sprawling on the flagstones, feeling around for a weapon, trying to catch my breath.
“Ha-ha!” Lopez said. “I win.”
“You’re a dick,” I panted.
He raised his head. “Don’t care, as long as I won.”
Xander airlifted him off the ground, with the help of Takis and some of the other cousins.
“Yeah, looks l
ike you won for sure,” I said.
Lopez’s eye was watering where I’d poked it. His Hawaiian shirt had popped a button, revealing an ocean of sweaty skin with a riptide of dark hairs. He stabbed the air with his pointed finger. “It’s on like Donkey Kong.”
“It’s going down like Chinatown,” I lobbed back.
Marika and one of the cousins helped me up off the ground. My back hurt and my hip needed replacing. Maybe they’d give me something bionic.
“You’re a psycho,” Lopez said. “That’s what you are. Crazy bitch.”
“I’m crazy? You threw yourself at me!”
“All women are crazy,” Takis said in English.
“Say it a little louder,” I told him. “I don’t think your wife heard you.”
He shot her a nervous sideways glance, but Marika was oblivious. “That one is the queen of crazy,” he muttered.
Now that Lopez was off the ground and back in the upright position (his tray wasn’t going anywhere without diet and exercise) Xander and company steered him through the arch. I limped along behind them. If they were going to lock him up, I wanted to watch. Marika fell into step beside me.
I glanced sideways at her. “Where were your guns?”
“I did not want Takis to know I have them.”
“Marika ... where did you get them?”
“Maybe from the armory.”
“You’ve been in the armory?”
“Only one.”
“There’s more than one?”
“I know two. Wait.” She looked at me. “How many do you know about?”
“One.”
“I should not have said anything.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” I chewed on that a moment. The armory I’d seen was a small, dusty root cellar of a place. Unimpressive. Nothing like the movies. I’d expected superhero-level stuff, with bright lights, white walls, and cool gadgets handed out by a Greek Morgan Freeman. “So ... now that I know, where is it?”
“Which one do you know about?”
I told her about the room beneath the conservatory, and she grinned. “That old place with the crates? You know what is in those crates?”
“Warheads, missiles, weapons of mass destruction?”
She laughed at my naïveté, but kindly, the way you laugh at old people, small children, and foreigners. “Bulbs. Baboulas stores them in the crates until she is ready to plant them.”
“And the guns I saw there?”
“Old. All the shiny, new things are in the main armory.”
“Which is ... where?”
“The farm.”
I hadn’t seen the farm yet. I knew the meat and vegetables originated on the family farm, but it’s hard to get excited about farm animals once you’re over the age of twelve. Especially farm animals you know you might eventually meet again on the plate. I couldn’t eat anything I’d fed or cuddled.
I rubbed my hands together. “So when are we going?”
Sharp intake of breath. “We are not going there.”
“You went.”
We were almost at the cupboard that lead to the dungeon. “I have to go,” Marika said. “The laundry will not do itself. Text me if you go out again.”
She flipped the domestic switch and hurried off to do grown-up stuff, while I stepped into the closet behind the menfolk and their captive. Yeah, Lopez was a dick but I didn’t approve of them stuffing him in a cell—even one of Grandma’s cushy accommodations.
“You can’t do this,” Lopez said. “I’m an American citizen and a cop. You can’t lock me up. Fuck. Twice in one day?”
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You’re a pain in the ass but I’m going to sort this out.”
“What are you gonna do—ask the Godfather for a favor? Somebody getting hitched today?”
“Godmother.”
He chewed on that as we rode the escalator down. “That old lady, your grandmother is Greece’s Don Corleone? But she’s a woman!”
Takis grinned. It wasn’t a nice grin. “You should see what Baboulas can do with a melon baller.”
Lopez gulped. The color drained out of his skin as Takis and Xander marched him past the old cells. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “What are you people?”
“The real dungeon is pretty nice,” I told him.
He whimpered.
Xander unlocked the inner door.
“Hey, Katerina, is that you?” The voice belonged to the dungeon’s permanent resident.
“It’s me.”
“You got that loukoumi, yet?”
“No, uh ...” Crap. “I’m working on it.”
There was a pause. “Well, okay. But I sure would appreciate it.”
Xander and Takis escorted the cop to his new—hopefully temporary—living quarters.
“I gotta get out of here,” Lopez said. “I wanna go home. Greece sucks. Everything's old and you people are crazy.”
~ ~ ~
Grandma was in her yard watching the jungle of potted plants grow. None of the other gardens were temporary, moveable green LEGO blocks. When I asked Grandma about it, she laughed.
“It was that old skeela’s idea, your great-great-grandmother. She hated gardening, so she had them pour all this concrete. It is a condition of living here that the concrete cannot be dug up. Remember that when all this is yours.”
“You didn’t like her?” Grandma had just called the woman a bitch.
She wagged a finger. “I did not say that. I learned many things from that woman, including that baklava recipe you like so much.”
“It is good baklava,” I admitted.
She settled back in her chair. Her mind wandered off for a moment. When it came back it was story time. “That woman ... always she called me by a different name, never my own. On the outside she did not approve of my marriage to her grandson, your grandfather.”
“Why not?”
“The only marriage that would have appeased her was a marriage to royalty or family.” She made a face, hopefully at the idea of incest. “I was neither. One day she slipped though and called me Katerina. It was when she was teaching me to throw grenades, blindfolded, with one arm tied behind my back.”
I blinked. This wasn’t normal. None of this was normal. My family was crazy-cakes with a side of nuts.
“Was she running some sort of training camp?”
Grandma laughed. “In this family it pays to have a variety of skills. Even she knew your grandfather was not a leader, so she raised me to be one. Without her, I would have been just another Greek housewife.”
I snorted at the idea. “You?”
“I was nobody once, Katerina. We all start out that way, even kings. Eh, in my old age I find old memories floating to surface again. Some of them I am not even sure are mine.”
While I was working my way up to asking her why Lopez was currently in the dungeon, my brain was doing some light chores in the background, forging connections that should have been made hours ago; my neurons had become sloppy and slow under the oppressive regime that is a Greek August. I had to speak to Lopez—now.
Mentally, I slapped my forehead. “I have to go, but I’ll be right back. I really want to hear more about my great-great-grandmother.”
“Go, go. I will be here. What else do I have to do? Wait—there is something inside for you. On the kitchen table.”
I stuck my head in the kitchen. Sure enough, there was a flat box on the table. I grabbed the package, took it back outside.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.”
“Who said it was from me?”
All incoming packages were checked for explosives, so I knew it wouldn’t blow up in my face. I popped the box open. Nestled inside was a woolen sweater with a sheep decal on the front. It was big, it was chunky, it was hideous. It was amazing. This sweater, I decided, would become my Netflix-and-chill sweater.
Grandma craned her neck to get a look at the sweater. “It is from those two sheep fuckers you helped the other we
ek.”
“Technically only one of them was a sheep fucker. The other one was a sheep lover. And I’m not sure I helped them. It went bad fast when I mentioned souvlaki.”
“And you think you do not belong here. Even I did not know there was a difference.”
“Oh sure, there’s a difference. One of them is gross and weird, and the other one is just weird.”
I carried the sweater into my room, then off I trotted, back down to the dungeon. This time there was a little boy down there, sitting cross-legged outside Homeless Guy’s room. In front of him a small chessboard was set up. A game was in progress.
The boy looked up. “Thea Katerina!” he squealed. Aunt Katerina—wasn’t that sweet? Technically I wasn’t his aunt, but it was that whole Greek respect thing. I was older and I was family, therefore ... aunt. Tomas was the youngest of four zoo animals, belonging to one of my cousins and his wife Litsa. Litsa dressed like a reject from The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Her implants were dollar-store deals, stuffed into her chest by Captain Obvious. Her parenting style was less tiger, more rabbit; she ran past occasionally to fling food at her offspring, then she was gone again.
“Who’s winning?” I asked him.
His face settled back into its serious mask. “Nobody yet. But I think this time I will win.”
I believed him. Tomas was only halfway to ten but he had the mind of an adult safecracker. Apparently he could open anything, solve any puzzle, and clean his plate. The dungeon breaking wasn’t new to Tomas—he came down here all the time. Now I knew why.
“We will see,” Homeless Guy said cryptically.
I made my way to Lopez’s cell and knocked.
“He’s not there,” Tomas said absently, his attention on the game.
“Did someone move him?” That was fast.
“No. He walked out that way.” He hooked his miniature thumb at the main door—the only door in or out of this place. “He was sneaking.”
“You mean he was ... escaping?”
“I asked him if he was playing Edmond Dantés, but he didn’t answer.”
“He’s American,” I said, “so he wouldn’t have understood you.”
“I know. I asked him in English.”
“You speak English?”
“I learned it last week.”
