“Don’t know that either,” said Tassos.
Andreas shrugged. “Which means our best chance at finding a clue is likely in this briefcase.”
“Sounds like you have an exciting evening ahead of you,” said Tassos.
“Just a long one. The characters on these videos aren’t exactly movie star quality,” said Andreas.
“They even make you look good, Tassos,” said Kouros.
“Says the kitten to the tiger,” said Maggie.
“That’s my girl. You tell him.”
“Have the Polish police talked to the boyfriend?” said Andreas.
“Not yet. They can’t find him. They went to the address in Bialystok he gave when released from prison but the person living there said he never showed up. They think by now he’s out of the country.”
“Then they have him on a parole violation,” said Kouros.
“Nope. He served his full sentence. His debt to society is paid in full. And there’s an application underway to expunge his record of the conviction based on newly discovered exculpatory evidence showing he was framed for the drug bust by a competitor.”
“Why does that not make me feel comfortable?” said Andreas.
Maggie answered. “Because you’re a cop. You know better.”
“If the Polish police identify the dead girl’s two companions, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll turn up somewhere they can be arrested,” said Kouros.
“If you’re into wishing, don’t forget to have the boyfriend with them. He’s the one I’d like to get my hands on,” said Andreas.
“Careful what you wish for,” said Maggie. “Sounds like a cold-blooded bastard to me.”
“I’m not looking to make him my next-door neighbor, Maggie. I want to find out what the hell is going on.”
“I’ll just be happy to nail the two bastards who murdered Christos,” said Tassos. “The rest of this is far too stressful for a man of my advanced years.”
“In other words, you think it’s a political hot potato,” said Andreas.
“More like radioactive.”
“Are you suggesting we end it with catching the two and forget about the boyfriend?”
“Would you listen if I did?” said Tassos.
“No.”
“Good, we need cops like you to keep cops like me from corrupting Yianni with ideas like self-preservation.”
“I love you.”
“I assume that was Maggie.”
“Yes, dear, and now if you’ll excuse us we have a lot of hard work left to do tonight.”
Kouros smiled. “Not so hard from what I’ve seen so far on the videos.”
Maggie smacked him twice more.
***
It was after three in the morning when Andreas crept into the bedroom. He’d showered in a guest bathroom at the other end of the apartment, and left his clothes outside the bedroom door. The room was pitch black but he dared not turn on a light. Gently, he pulled back the covers on his side of the bed and carefully slid in on his back next to his wife.
“You’re getting better at this, but still need some work on the cover pulling part.”
“Sorry, I tried not to wake you.”
“I’m just a light sleeper. I guess I’ve become a cop-wife. Always worried until her man is safely home.”
Images of that afternoon’s gunfight flashed though Andreas’ mind. He rolled onto his side and kissed Lila on the cheek.
“Is that all I get for such a moment of life-realizing clarity?” said Lila.
“Put it on my account.”
“You still owe me for the last time you said that.”
He laughed.
Lila ran her hand along his belly, stopping to feather her fingers just below his navel before sliding down to grip his testicles gently with her fingers and wrap her thumb around the base of his penis. She drew her fingers up and around to join her thumb and began firmly pulling up and down.
Ten seconds later she stopped, dropping her hand as she did. “Am I doing something wrong? Do you want me to go down on you?”
Andreas stretched toward his nightstand and turned on the lamp.
“Sorry. It has nothing to do with you. I just spent the afternoon and most of the night looking at some of the kinkiest pornographic videos you could imagine.”
“Are you telling me you spent all day surrounded by sex so you’d prefer not to get into it at home? When we agreed you should ‘leave your work at the office,’ that’s not the part I meant.”
“Trust me, if you saw what I saw you’d be off sex for a week. I’m just screwed up in the head tonight. But…”
Andreas rolled onto his side and slid his hand down under the sheet to between Lila’s thighs. She squirmed for an instant, but relaxed as his fingers began moving in rhythm to her breathing. He knew where she liked to be touched. Andreas kissed first one, then the other breast, taking care to flick at her nipples with his tongue, all in time with the stroking of his fingers and Lila’s moans. He slid his mouth down along her belly, and when he sensed she could stand no more his lips replaced his fingers between her thighs. She jerked at the sudden shift in pressure, but moaned again and again as he brought her to orgasm.
A minute passed. Andreas had not moved from between Lila’s legs or stopped his caressing.
“How do you always know just what to do to me?”
Andreas slid up onto Lila’s body and kissed her on the lips. “I can ask you the same question.” He spread her legs with his knee and searched between them with his erection until he found where his mouth had just been. He moved his hips to enter her and she pushed hers up to take him. He moved slowly at first, but Lila put her hands upon the cheeks of his ass and pulled at him to move faster. He wrapped an arm around her back, and with his other hand squeezed her ass and pulled her up toward him.
Andreas thrust in pace with Lila’s hands upon at his ass, and when she slid her hands down onto her own thighs, pulling them wider apart while urging him to drive harder and faster, he did until burying his face in her hair and moaning her name in his own release of rushing heat.
Neither moved for several minutes.
“Your account is now current.”
Andreas’ head lay buried in her hair. “Trust me, I’m laughing on the inside. There’s just no energy left to show emotion on the outside.”
Andreas pressed his hand on the mattress and rolled over onto his back. “Thank you for making me forget my day at the office.”
“Any time.” Lila patted his belly. “So what’s with all the porn?”
Andreas had long ago given up keeping secrets from his wife. Initially he’d refused to talk about his cases, arguing that a decision to involve her in one almost cost Lila her life. But with the birth of their son it was clear Lila had no interest in putting both of Tassaki’s parents at risk to bad guys.
And so he told her of his night watching decades of Athens’ most prestigious and influential folks dangle their peccadilloes and other things in every which way and place imaginable.
“Sounds like stuff for an avant garde film festival,” said Lila.
“More like outtakes from that American horror picture, Night of the Living Dead.”
Lila laughed. “Did you find anything that might help you solve Christos’ murder?”
“Anyone who knew what Christos had on them would qualify as a suspect. But there was nothing in the videos or on anything else in the safe that made one any more suspect than any other.
“We’ve got an open and shut case of murder against the now dead girlfriend and her two companions. What we don’t know is whether anyone else was involved and, if so, why? I don’t see how we’ll ever get answers to those questions if we can’t find her companions. And even if we do, I’d be surprised if they could finger anyone other than the dead gir
l’s Russian boyfriend.”
Andreas flicked his finger at one of Lila’s nipples. She gave a light smack to his hand and pulled the sheet up over her breast.
Andreas kissed her cheek. “If it is someone on the videos, why now? There’s nothing to indicate that Christos was using the videos to blackmail anyone for anything more than the same sort of protection he’d been getting for his business for years. Besides, having Christos killed before guaranteeing you’d get your hands on the incriminating evidence would be taking a hell of a risk.”
“Yes, it might fall into the hands of the police,” said Lila.
“Or worse.”
“There’s worse?”
“I see you’re not quite yet a true ‘cop-wife.’”
Lila shrugged. “Okay, so if what Tassos found in the safe threatened everyone involved to the point where each had a motive for murder, unless we’re talking about some Agatha Christie they-all-did-it mystery, I’d say the likely culprit is someone who would benefit from having all that dirt on all those people.”
Andreas smiled. “Very good. Tassos and I thought the same thing and we talked about interviewing everyone tied into what was in the safe to see if any of them might be that person. But we decided the most likely thing we’d learn from that exercise would be that our careers were over. After all, we’d be grilling the country’s movers and shakers over things outside the apparent scope of solving a murder that has the actual killers virtually caught on video. We’d be hung out to dry if we tried to take it further.”
“But shouldn’t they be warned?”
“Warned of what? That there are videos out there showing them in compromising positions and that if someday someone gets their hands on them they might use them for blackmail? It would sound as if we were the ones looking for a payoff. After all, it’s not as if anyone but us knows what’s on those videos.
“The bottom line is, until whoever wanted what was in the safe makes a move, we have absolutely no idea who it might be. Assuming there is such a person. And the question isn’t who could use all that information to their advantage, it’s who couldn’t?”
“So, what do you plan on doing?”
“Press Europol to find the girl’s two companions and her boyfriend. We might get a different angle on things from one of them.”
“How likely is it they’ll be caught?”
Andreas shrugged. “If I were them, I’d be as far away from Greece and Poland as I could get, and stay there.”
“Sounds like you have some time on your hands.”
Andreas rolled over and turned off the light. “Yep.”
Pause.
“Oh, no, not again…”
Chapter Eight
Sergey looked at his watch. He’d been waiting in the taverna for half an hour. Be cool, he thought to himself. It’s just a test. She was like that. Always testing to see how you reacted under pressure. She couldn’t help herself.
He ordered another coffee and looked just beyond the parking lot in front of the taverna at the section of harbor filled with small pleasure boats and a few larger fishing boats. A pier jutting straight out to sea on his left separated that side of the port from the larger part of the harbor filled with ferry boats waiting to load their cargoes of passengers and vehicles.
She’d told him to come here, to the port of Rafina east of Athens, to catch a high-speed catamaran to Mykonos, saying that she would meet him here thirty minutes ago. He had twenty-five minutes left until his boat left from that pier.
She’s cutting it close, he thought. Relax. She’s the one making everything possible. He’d let her play her games. He’d done all that she’d asked. She said to learn Greek and he was. She said to dispose of Christos and he did. She saw Anna as a problem and he resolved it. There was nothing she’d asked that he hadn’t––
“Sergey. Come here.” It came in a whisper from behind him, in Greek.
He turned and saw a dark-haired woman in mask-size sunglasses nodding at him as she sipped a coffee. She wore a black linen pantsuit and a high-neck, long sleeve, white silk blouse. He picked up his coffee, walked over to her table, and sat down. The woman’s hair drew back in a tight bun and she wore no makeup. Or at least she appeared not to be.
Sergey took the sunglasses as a good sign. Her eyes commanded attention. Fiery and black, they were hard to avoid and when she took off her sunglasses things tended to get serious. “How long have you been here?” he said in Greek.
She answered in Russian. “Speak Russian, your Greek needs a lot of work.”
He looked at his watch.
“Don’t worry, you won’t miss your boat.”
“‘Your boat?’ Aren’t you coming with me?”
“I have no interest in visiting Mykonos. That’s why I have you. I’ve made arrangements with friends. There will be people there to assist you with whatever you might need. And since your Greek is not yet good enough to transact the business that must be conducted, I have arranged for you to have a personal assistant who will be available to you twenty-four hours a day.”
My keeper, he thought. “A he or a she?”
“Don’t be cute, Sergey. This is serious business. If we don’t take advantage of this opportunity quickly others will. We must establish ourselves on the island, now. No time for childish silliness.”
“I know. I’m the one who brought the opportunity to you.”
“People bring me opportunities all the time. I am well known in Eastern European prisons.”
Legend would be the more appropriate word, he thought. If you had a big score and needed help to make it happen, the prison grapevine said, “Go to Teacher.”
“What you brought to me was a gamble. I have no need to gamble. But I am making an exception. Because I see promise in you. On Mykonos you are to act as if I do not exist. Everyone is to believe that you are the boss, that you are responsible to no one. There is only one person who will know the truth.”
She reached across the table with her right hand and patted his. With her left hand she removed her sunglasses and stared into Sergey’s eyes. “You. Do not forget that. Ever.”
Sergey forced his most relaxed smiled. “Don’t worry, Teacher, I shall forever be your student.”
“Good, then we shall never have a problem.” She put her sunglasses back on and nodded toward the port. “You better hurry, your boat is about to sail.”
***
Teacher didn’t move from the table. She watched the catamaran maneuver away from the pier, make a deliberate 180-degree turn, and sail out of sight.
I shouldn’t be involved in this. The man’s an arrogant sociopath. Thinks he can con anyone. He probably thinks I’m attracted to him.
Then again, she was. But not in the way he thought. She looked down and studied her empty coffee cup. Perhaps growing older had her fixating on things out of a past that never was…at least not for long.
She thought she knew better than to imagine things differently than they were.
“Obviously not,” she said aloud in Greek as she pushed herself up from the table and walked out the door without paying for her coffee. A burly man at an adjoining table wearing a gray tee-shirt, blue jeans, and a large black fanny pack immediately stood and followed her out the door, dropping a twenty euro note on her table as he passed by.
An all-black Range Rover pulled up to the curb in front of the taverna and the burly man pulled opened the rear door. As soon as Teacher stepped inside he closed the door and jumped in front next to the driver. The SUV moved quickly away from the curb.
“Back to the airport. And call ahead to make sure the plane is ready.” She slid her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to where she could stare over them through the deeply tinted windows. She saw tired commercial buildings filled with FOR RENT signs lining cramped, working-class streets. Other signs proclaimed, GR
EECE IS FOR GREEKS, offering free food to those who could prove their Greek lineage. Such ethnic hatred she’d seen before. It had fueled much of her success, driving the threatened into her arms. A lot was at play in Greece at the moment.
She smiled.Which is why a sociopath is perfect for what I have in mind.
***
At the north end of Mykonos’ old harbor a concrete pier jutted two-hundred yards out to sea. Close to shore the pier offered stern-first, long-term docking for large private yachts with the appropriate connections, and its far end provided parallel docking facilities for commercial catamarans loading and unloading passengers. Locals referred to the pier as “the old port.” Between the pier and the old town was a parking lot used by Mykonians with special parking privileges and buses shuttling cruise boat passengers to and from ships anchored in the new port one mile away. To the north, on the other side of the pier, was the town’s brand new municipal parking lot, most often used only by those who could not find more convenient illegal parking elsewhere.
Sergey was one of the first off the catamaran. He carried only a small backpack slung over one shoulder. Teacher told him there would be new clothes waiting for him on Mykonos and that he should bring nothing from his past. Even his conviction would be expunged. It would be a new beginning.
He walked along the pier between the boat and a stone wall toward a crowd of people waiting just beyond the end of the pier. He had no idea who would be meeting him. As he entered the crowd, someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind.
“Sergey?”
He turned toward the voice and saw a pockmarked sallow face, narrow angular nose, misaligned teeth, and greasy, gray-brown mid-length hair. Rat immediately came to mind. “Yes?”
The man flashed a toothy smile in a way undoubtedly thought by the man to be charming, but which only exaggerated his resemblance to a rodent. He was a head shorter than Sergey, gangly, and dressed in colors intended to draw attention.
Like a pimp, thought Sergey.
“Our mutual friend told me to take care of you. Follow me.” He turned and walked toward a silver Mercedes taxi parked on the pier next to a private yacht. The man had spoken in Russian but not introduced himself, not offered to take Sergey’s bag, nor said “please.”
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