by Alex A King
“Sure, lots of times. Normally they’re running and shooting back. I’ve never shot anyone standing still ...” He glanced up at the painted ceiling, the stained glass windows, the religious icons that were inescapable in a Greek church. “... or in a church where God was watching over my shoulder the whole time. Say, you think I’m gonna go to hell for this?”
“Not if you’re Greek Orthodox. They don’t do hell as a fire-and-brimstone destination afterlife.”
“I’m Southern Baptist.”
“Oh yeah, you’re going to burn.”
“Shit,” he said. “We should do this outside.”
“God is like Santa Claus: He’s always watching.”
“Aw, man.” He stomped his foot on the marble floor. “Why’d you have to go and bring Santa into this? We were good until that part.”
“Good? You were going to tie me up!”
“Changed my mind. I’m gonna shoot you for the Santa crack.” To prove his point he fired.
I flung myself on the floor. A bullet went whizzing over my head, buried itself in the door. Someone had Christmas issues.
“Jesus!” Bishop cried out. “Can’t you stand still?”
There was a noise at the window, a faint, high squeal. Someone was trying to open the window. Bishop whirled around, fired three more shots at the colored glass. One of the apostles shattered. Muffled outrage emanated from ground level as Father Harry tipped forward. He scooted toward Bishop like a very fat, no-longer-hungry caterpillar.
Behind me there was a soft scrape as the door opened and a pair of hands reached out and grabbed me.
I yelped.
Bishop fired at the door. The hands let me go. I used the opportunity to scramble toward the sand-filled candle stand, where worshipers lit their candles for people who were dead or otherwise absent. On the table next to it sat a wooden box with a slit for donations of the cash kind, although I supposed they took checks, too, even if there was a good chance they’d bounce higher than a tennis ball. Bishop whipped around to where Father Harry was crawling toward the shards of his beloved windows. He raised his gun again.
I seized the collection box, swung it upwards, catching Bishop’s hand. The gun soared across the church. It hit the floor with a dull, metallic thunk.
“You broke my hand!” Bishop cried. “Bitch!”
There wasn’t time to play nurse. I pitched the box at his head, bolted to the back of the church, and began the hunt for Bishop’s gun.
The gun was in Donk’s hand.
Chapter 19
The church doors opened, and Marika rolled through.
“Vlakas!” She backhanded Bishop. “You ripped my one and only bodyguard shirt when you shot the door. Now I have to buy another one.” She peered past him to where I was unpicking Donk’s fingers from around the gun’s grip. “Katerina, translate for this idiot. I want him to know he is stupid.”
“Did he shoot you?” I called out.
“No, I caught it on the door handle. Tell him he’s stupid and I will make him pay.”
“Not now, Marika,” I said. “We’ve got a situation here.” Donk finally let go. Eek! What was I supposed to do with the thing? I held it two-fingered, like a banana peel.
“I know. That is why I came. Next time, do not leave without your bodyguard, eh?”
“How did you know where I was?”
“The church is bugged. I was maybe eavesdropping when Takis got the call that you had left.”
I’d forgotten Saint Catherine’s had a little intrusive secret.
Bishop rallied. With one hand down, all he had left to fight with was a lone fist. He swung it at Marika. A second window shattered. This time the bullet was incoming. It buried itself in Bishop’s good arm. Blood squirted out of him like he was a bottle of ketchup. There was a primal roar as Takis came barreling through the church doors, weapon raised.
“Hit my wife again, the next one will be in your throat,” he said in English.
Bishop flopped down on the ground, cross-legged, cradling his arm. “Greece sucks,” he cried.
“Pretty sure Greece hates you right back,” I told him.
Behind Takis, Xander, Stavros, Elias, and a dozen other cousins swept in. They got to work helping the hostages. Xander relieved me of Bishop’s gun, shoved it down the back of his cargo pants. He looked me over to make sure I was in one unbroken piece. My shell was fine; it was the interior that was shattered.
“I’m okay,” I said. My chattering teeth said otherwise.
His eyebrows rose in disbelief. The man’s bullshit meter was good. He rubbed my arm, and then moved on. I stood there dazed, for a moment.
Penka was, unsurprisingly, furious. She made threats against Bishop’s manhood in two languages—three if I counted the creative sign language. Donk, he just shook.
I moved over to his side, slung my arm around his shoulder.
“Are you hitting on me?” he wanted to know.
“No.”
“Because I can feel your breast pushing—”
Marika reached out, slapped the back of his head on my behalf.
When Melas stepped into the church it was with a half dozen other cops on his tail. He scanned the holy space until his gaze landed on me. He closed the distance between us in an instant.
“You’re not faking it anymore?” I asked him.
“Harder to do my job if I’m not doing my job,” he said with a tight, grim smile. “You okay?”
Good question. I nodded because at least I was alive. “At least Portland’s not-even-close-to-finest won’t be stalking me anymore, so that’s something. Any word on the missing German?”
“Nothing yet. Eventually he’ll surface.”
“Or he’ll vanish forever.” Because that was the world I was standing in now, one where the players had the power to clap their hands and go, Ala peanut butter sandwiches, and wipe people off the board permanently.
Melas’s gaze traveled over me—up, down, back up again. Not a sexual thing this time, he was checking to make sure my pieces were intact. It was nice that he cared. “I’d vanish if I were him, too. Something tells me none of this played out the way it was supposed to, which means someone needs to take the fall.”
I nodded over to where Pappas and a constable were helping Detective Eugene Bishop into a pair of cuffs. “Isn’t he the scapegoat?”
“I guess we’ll find out. But I think he and his friend were just glorified messenger boys. Disposable. Use them and they’re done.”
There was a sudden commotion outside. Raised voices. Then in walked Hera and her cheerless band of black-clad goons. She took in the scene, then smiled like she was the only shopper at a ninety-percent-off sale at Whores R Us.
Hips swaying, she sauntered over to where we were standing while her men took custody of Bishop.
“Hey,” I said. “You can’t take him!”
“Wow, you keep the gifts coming, don’t you? I like having you here, Katerina. You make my job easy. Follow you around, swoop in and pick up whatever treasure you uncover ... I love it.” She winked at Melas, then swished out, putting extra swing in her tail feathers.
“Skank,” I said in English. Melas looked to me for an explanation, so I told him.
“She’s not that bad.”
“I have a feeling she’s worse.”
He shook his head. “Women.”
“Ugh, this isn’t about you. She’s walked away with two people who could potentially help me find my father.”
“I do understand.”
“I doubt that,” I told him. “You know where your parents are.”
He opened his mouth to speak but I walked away, trying not to shake.
We all gave our statements. Donk had been whisked away by Lopez and Bishop while he was waiting in my car. They’d appealed to his inner and outer teenage boy by asking for directions to a strip club, then played dumb tourists who no-understandee. Overeager Donk had offered to show them the way. With Penka they had played the po
lice card and put her under false arrest in a country where they had no jurisdiction. Father Harry had hurried to the church this evening, believing someone in the Family needed spiritual guidance. He was more a victim of circumstance than calculated abduction. Bishop had never been missing. He’d been playing babysitter, while Lopez slunk around in my shadow.
Eventually, Melas and I gravitated toward each other again.
“Why would this Winkler think you would side with the Germans?” Melas asked me.
“I don’t know.”
“You sure the name doesn’t mean anything to you?”
The thing about betrayal is that it comes in different sizes. You’ve got your big betrayals, your middle-sized betrayals, and the tiny snippets, like the one I this close to throwing down. But who would I really be betraying? Dad had betrayed me with his lies, but I suspected he had intended for them to be the white variety, to keep me safe. To drag him back to safety I needed to tell the whole, white truth. Well maybe not the whole truth—just the pertinent parts. So I told Melas about Dad’s workplace that didn’t exist and Schmitz squatting on the land with his army of portable toilets.
He stood there a moment with a jaw of stone, processing.
“Your father works for a company that doesn’t exist. Did you check his tax records? His paycheck has to be coming from somewhere.”
I shook my head. “Probably a shell corporation, if my thousands of hours of TV-watching is correct.”
His smile was wry. “You miss it?”
“Watching TV and being in a comfortable relationship with the couch? Who wouldn’t? Here people shoot at me.” Tears crowded into my eyes. I looked away so he wouldn’t notice I was on the edge. “That’s when they’re not trying to turn me to the dark side. I’m Luke Skywalker, and everyone around me is Darth Vader or Jar Jar Binks.”
“Just so we’re clear, which of those am I?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
He nodded to Marika, who was fingering the hole in her shirt, scowling. “Just between us, she’s C3PO.”
The smile was in there somewhere, but I couldn’t quite make it happen.
“You should go get some rest,” he said. “We’ve lost the two Americans but we’ve still got a man on the run out there.” He nodded to someone behind me, and then Xander was at my side. “Take her home.” Xander placed his hand on my lower back, steered me out of the church.
The streets in Makria were narrow and cobbled, completely unsuitable for cars. But Xander had brought his motorcycle. He lifted me onto the back, buckled his helmet on my head, then took his place up front. It felt good to have someone to hold, even if it was under the guise of motorcycle safety. I curled my arms around his waist, closed my eyes, rested my head on his back.
A moment later, he lifted me off the motorcycle and carried me home to Grandma’s house.
It was late, but at this time Grandma was usually still up. Tonight the kitchen was empty and her bed was unmade.
“Where’s Grandma?” I asked him.
He shrugged and held up a finger, which I interpreted as, Wait here, I’ll go check out the secret hidey-holes.
My body was tired all the way through to my bones. Now that it was no longer required to fight or run, all it wanted to do was sleep. Tomorrow I’d let my mind process; tonight it wasn’t fit for anything except a long reboot and some wacko dreams. I scoffed a pastry parcel stuffed with feta, onions, and spinach, brushed my teeth, then opened my bedroom door. The shutters were open, and the third German was sitting on my bed, gun resting on his lap. Inches away, gnawing on a luggage tag, stood my goat. He was oblivious to the gunman.
The German lifted a finger to his lips. “Scream and I will shoot the goat,” he said.
“Shoot the goat and I’ll scream.”
“Then I will shoot you, too.”
He had me there. “I’ll be quiet.”
“Good.”
“Where’s my grandmother?”
He smiled, the psycho. “In the hospital.”
My heart and stomach lurched. “Is she okay?”
“Do I look like a doctor? I don’t care about the old woman. She is on the way out, and soon. They say you are the future of this family.” He glanced around the room. “Gott, this place is a ... scheißhaus ... a shit house.”
“Family heirloom. What do you want?”
“To change the future.”
“You’re going kill me.”
He shrugged, made a face. “If that is what it takes—yes.”
There was something about him, something familiar, like a snippet of a song, a whiff of cologne. I’d seen pieces of his face on someone else, before those pieces splattered on a wall.
“The woman with the bomb, you’re related to her aren’t you?”
Where there was darkness there was me, swinging a metaphorical stick at what I hoped was a piñata and not my own dense skull.
“Winkler’s children,” he said. “Loyal. Winkler sent three of us here to begin a new business partnership. But you Greeks are proving to be ... difficult.”
“Greece has had a lot of experience with invading forces.”
“Winkler would prefer a profitable partnership, and to extend that opportunity to you, as the future leader of the Makris Family.”
Where was Xander?
“Grandma’s not dead yet, and I don’t want the job. I’m going blue in the face telling people.”
“You think you have a choice.” He chuckled. “That is ... how do you say ... cute.”
“I’m still an American citizen, and I’m here for one reason, to find my father. As soon as I find him we’re going home. I’m going to find a new job, get my own place, and watch a lot of Netflix. I’ve missed a lot while I’ve been here! I have no plans or desire to take over the family business!”
His lips curled back, revealing a row of sharklike teeth that made me itch for an air tank and a gun.
“Winkler can give you choices. Without Winkler, you only have one: bow down to the old woman’s plan. Winkler is freedom. You can’t trust somebody who is out of options; they’ll hunt for more, even if it kills them. Winkler gives you options up front so you can choose.”
“Provided I do what Winkler wants me to do, right? Which makes him Grandma, without the excellent cooking skills. What is it exactly he wants from me?”
“Loyalty. Cooperation. Freedom to do business in Greece, for a modest share of profit.”
“Translation: Distribute drugs and fake-o money.”
“Among other things. How did you find out about the money?”
He was high if he thought I would give up the butcher’s name. I pulled a story out of a tight, dark place. “I’m a savant,” I said. “I can spot inconsistencies in paper a mile away.”
His forehead scrunched up like wax paper. “How far is a mile?”
“Um ... I can’t do basic math when I’m freaking out.”
He opened his mouth. There was a soft pop. His eyes widened, then blood squirted out the side of his head and he slumped sideways.
Relief and horror poured through me.
I ran to the window and looked out. There was nobody around that I could see, no sound but the annual song of the cicada and the soft bubbling of the fountains.
“Too soon?” a voice called out from a nearby rooftop. It was my cousin (second or third) the sniper.
“Too soon!”
He cursed variety of saints and their long-dead mothers, then yelled, “I’m working on my timing.”
I gave him two thumbs up. One of these days he’d get it—I had faith in him.
The bedroom door burst open, courtesy of Xander’s foot. He was holding a gun and it was aimed at the air above the dead German.
“Too late,” I said, voice wobbling. I crouched down and threw my arms around my goat. “He overdosed on Pop Rocks. I did warn him.”
Xander holstered the gun. Probably he wanted to ask if I was okay but he couldn’t. Instead, he inspected me so closely I
began to feel like fruit.
“I’m okay,” I said. “But you should see the other guy.” The words were meant to be light but they came out cracked. Xander took my hand, led me into the kitchen, which was a corpse-free zone. “Is Grandma okay?” I said. He looked at me, curious. “Winkler Junior said she was in the hospital.”
Chin tilt.
More relief washed over me. Wherever Grandma was it wasn’t the hospital.
“Where is she? Did you find her?”
He nodded to the door, indicated for me to follow. As we were going out, family was flooding in.
“Don’t touch the body,” I said to them. “Message Detective Melas.”
Xander stopped, looked down at me, his eyes black in the courtyard’s low light. I couldn’t read him but I stabbed around in the dark, hoping I’d strike.
“I’m sure you all usually keep this kind of thing—murder—in-house. Normally maybe you’d bury him an unmarked grave or a new speed bump—does Greece even have speed bumps? Never mind. This is one of the guys who tried to kill Melas. Think of it as an act of goodwill bringing him in on this.”
But the truth was, despite not calling the police back home when there was a dead man in my house, I wanted to do the right thing. Grandma might not call the police, but I wasn’t Grandma. And I never would be. It was time everyone got used to that.
Melas was already pulling up to the front gates by the time we reached the guardhouse. He can’t have been too far away. The guard waved him through. He parked by the arch and swaggered over to where we were standing. His swagger was tired though, his shoulders drooping. I wondered when he’d last slept, last ate a proper meal at a table that wasn’t his steering wheel. He was back in his police car now. Somewhere along the way the family must have reclaimed the vehicle he’d ‘borrowed’ from me. Around here, things moved like clockwork. The Makris Family was the Disney World of crime.
He nodded to me on the way past. It was a curt move, but his eyes stayed on me until his neck reached its snapping point.
Grandma was sitting on the fountain’s stone rim, watching the gates open and close. I sat down beside her.
“Watch,” she told me before I could say a word about the German. “We are about to have company.”
