Mykonos After Midnight

by Jeffrey Siger

  Framed in the glow of a cigarette lighter stood a boy of no more than nineteen in a black tank top. He smiled at Sergey.

  “I wouldn’t stand there too long unless you’re looking for action,” said Wacki coming up beside Sergey. “For as long as I’ve been on the island this area’s been the place to come for anonymous gay sex. Though it’s toned down somewhat from the old days.”

  Wacki stared at the boy still holding the lighter and smiling. “My guess is that’s because there’s a lot more foot traffic through here these nights. Straights and gays on their way down to the new clubs along the harbor on the other side of this hill.

  “Most people coming through here these days aren’t looking for action.” Wacki smiled. “Unless they stop.”

  Sergey turned and walked past the boy to the top of the hill. He heard music coming from a street in front of him. But the buildings were dark and beyond them stood a long, solid concrete wall. He thought the music must come from the buildings along the harbor below.

  Past the church they turned left toward a twenty-yard patch of badly poured concrete that dropped abruptly from a height of two stories to sea level. The drop began at the entrance to a patio off to the right enclosed by a low stone wall. To the left a boulder-strewn jut of land reached out and down to the sea.

  As they made their way down the hill between the patio and boulders, Wacki waved his hand off to the right. “One of those buildings next to the patio is the Folklore Museum. Care to imagine the sort of shit the ya-yas with brooms find around here every morning?”

  “Doesn’t ya-ya mean grandmother?”

  “Yeah. Maybe what they find turns them on.” Wacki practically cackled.

  “I’m certain if anyone would know what turns a grandmother on it’s you.”

  Wacki seemed unsure whether or not to take the comment as a compliment.

  Sergey was not surprised.

  At the bottom of the hill they turned right toward a mass of people crowded in front of three bars. Bodies were packed onto virtually every inch of the thirty feet of concrete running between the front of the bars and a low stone wall marking the edge of the sea wall.

  “The wind’s not blowing hard tonight so there’s a big crowd outside. They’d all be pounded with seawater if the wind were up.” Wacki pointed at the middle bar. “In there. The one with the white doors is the place I was talking about. It’s the new king of late night in town.”

  They squeezed in between a small stage the size of a narrow desktop on the right, and the edge of a bar on the left running the length of the place. They’d just about made it around the corner of the bar when a blaring whistle and a sudden change of music made Wacki tug on Sergey’s arm.

  “We’re never going to make it back there. The show is about to start. Just stay where you are. It will be over in five minutes.”

  The lights went out except for a spotlight focused on the stage. Into it stepped the drag world’s personification of a mature Eva Peron, all aglitter in a sleeveless red sequin gown and doing his/her lip synching bawdy interpretation of a song from Evita.

  The audience went wild, but by far the most fascinated were the women. They hooted and hollered louder than the men. Sergey studied the crowd, a mixed bag of partiers sharing one significant trait: Virtually all had spent serious money trying to look fashionably understated.

  When the song ended, Wacki gestured toward the back. Sergey shook his head no, and pushed toward the front door. Outside, he turned right and walked past the public toilets on the left toward a sign marked, BOATS TO DELOS HERE. He stared across the harbor at his hotel on the other side.

  Wacki ran to catch up with him. “I wanted you to see the upstairs, they did a great job.”

  “No need to. I can tell their crowd has a lot of money to spend. That’s all I needed to see. So, are we done?”

  “Not yet, I’ve been saving the big money-making operations for last. One’s in town, two others are on a beach about fifteen minutes away by taxi. We’ll take the backstreets, it’s faster.”

  They walked behind the town hall and passed by a small square shared by two bars of the same name. Wacki called it the island’s “meat market” for young straights. After the square, they wove through a maze of four- and five-foot-wide, virtually deserted lanes. There was barely a sound. It was as if they’d gone back in time.

  Or to a different island.

  They popped back into the crowds on the same street as they’d taken into Little Venice, but this time headed in the opposite direction. As they passed a schoolyard on the left, the street opened into a large square.

  “That’s it on the left.”

  Wacki pointed at a psychedelic pink marquee looming above a long red carpet, cordoned in half lengthwise by silver-color metal stanchions and a red velvet rope. The carpet ran from the square up to a large grey metal door.

  On a Cycladic island long known for its simple, tasteful architecture, Sergey thought the entrance a comic self-parody of what must lay inside. But two massive bouncers by the door, and enticingly clad women collecting euros from a long line of twenty-somethings queued up to get in, made it clear that this was anything but funny. It was a serious, highly profitable business capitalizing on arousing the fantasies that drew so many to Mykonos.

  Thirty yards or so beyond the entrance, the square faded off into an outdoor basketball court and playground. Men milled around in the shadows at the far end.

  Sergey nodded in their direction. “Is that this side of town’s equivalent of Paraportiani?”

  Wacki laughed. “The police station used to be in this square. Today it’s where you come if you want to do business with the Albanian mob. It’s their hangout.”

  Sergey pointed at a group of provocatively dressed young women and men outside the entrance to the club hustling passersby to come inside. “What’s with them?”

  “All the big clubs have hot looking tourist kids running around passing out handbills and chatting up whoever they can to fill up the places. It’s all about body count, and the kids shill for the clubs by sticking ads on cars parked at the beaches during the day and pounding out their messages in town at night until the last bus leaves for the out-of-town clubs.”

  “What do they get paid?”

  “Five euros or so an hour, plus free admission and a drink.”

  As soon as the bouncers saw Wacki coming toward them they nodded and one opened the door. Inside the place was ablaze with noise and lights and music. The downstairs was one big dance floor and bar, pumped along by very hot-looking women perched strategically above the crowd in places where they could perform their craft, colloquially known as pole dancing.

  Overlooking it all was a balcony circling most of the dance floor and filled with more people, some sitting at tables.

  “Up there is for VIPs. It’s a more refined crowd.”

  From what Sergey could see of the crowd, by “refined” he assumed Wacki was referring to their choice of stimulants.

  “Let’s go. I’ve seen enough.”

  Outside Wacki pointed at a taxi waiting in front of the club. “Hop in. Only two more places to see, they’re at the same beach.”

  It took the taxi five minutes to crawl the two hundred yards up from the club to the bus station. Getting through the crowds was like swimming head-on through a frenzied rush of hot-to-spawn salmon.

  At the bus station Wacki pointed to a long line of young people boarding two municipal buses. “We’re all headed to the same place. They’ll have a lot of catching up to do when they get there. By now the clubs are packed with wild ones from the beach tavernas who’ve been going at the same crazy pace since late afternoon.”

  The drive took longer than Wacki said it would. Mainly because the taxi driver kept slowing down to avoid motorbikes flying up and down the road to the beach.

  The driver said, “I thin
k they call this ‘the road to Paradise’ not because of the beach, but because that’s where crazy tourists who drive like that are likely to end up. If they can, locals avoid this road like the plague between dark and a few hours after sunrise.”

  “If locals are afraid to drive on their own roads, why don’t the cops do something about it?” asked Sergey.

  The driver laughed. “The cops don’t care. The only ones who care are the club owners. And they don’t want anyone messing with the image of Mykonos as a place where you can do anything you want and be protected by the gods of Delos from harm. Which includes arrest.

  “You should see the medical clinic the morning after a busy night. Looks like a combat zone, but you’ll never hear a word about any of that. All’s always perfect on this island.”

  And looking to be more so every moment, thought Sergey.

  At the beach the taxi turned left, climbed up onto a rise, and stopped by a large stone building overlooking the sea.

  “Here we are.”

  Again a long line at the door, money changing hands, and Wacki waved in through a VIP entrance, this one on the left. This club was much bigger than the first, but just as packed and looked like it could handle five thousand customers. They entered past a bar onto the dance floor. In front of them was the VIP section, and off to the right a pool. The place packed in thousands of celebrants of every imaginable shape, size, color, sex, and dress, all pumping along in rhythm to the music and lights, accompanied by stimulants of their choice, and all aiming to make it through to watching the sunrise over the sea.

  The last club on Wacki’s tour sat on the beach and was smaller than the one above it. A massive glass wall separated the place from the sand. Here, too, the bar was the first thing you saw, next came a pool with the dance floor beyond it, and a VIP section farther along terracing up a hillside. The music and light show seemed a bit more sophisticated, and the place looked to attract a slightly older, somewhat more upscale crowd than the others, but to Sergey its bottom line was the same: Do whatever it takes to bring in the bodies and make the money.

  It was a philosophy he knew well.

  He’d run these kinds of clubs before. Smaller, yes, but the crowds were the same and so were the problems.

  He doubted any of them had the proper licenses, but they obviously had the juice to stay in business, and that was all that mattered.

  In the taxi on the way back to town Wacki said, “Now that you’ve seen our magical island at night, what’s next?”

  “I want to meet your mayor.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sun came up the same as it always did, though for late night partiers with shuttered windows it wasn’t that big a deal. But Andreas liked to sleep with his windows open when on the island. He loved the smells of wild rosemary and thyme scented by sea breezes. There was nothing like that in air conditioned Athens where he slept behind rolled down steel shutters. None of that here. At least not yet.

  Andreas’ in-laws were in Athens so he stayed at their summer place on Mykonos’ north central coast. It was a rare location, having its own cove. Though by law no beach was private, since Lila’s family owned the land surrounding the cove, for all practical purposes the beach was theirs alone to share with the sea.

  Mykonos was a different island out there away from the craziness of the season. A true paradise.

  Lila loved sitting on the beach in the morning as Aegean sunlight danced upon the water casting the sea in hues of silver, rose, and gold, popped distant islands into sight, and bounced shades of blue across the sky to fire up a splash of green along a light brown hillside, a shot of pink amid oleander green, a beige lizard against a gray wall, or a cresting wave of white against a deep blue sea.

  Andreas’ favorite time of day was late afternoon, watching light range across fields of ochre, gray, and black––framed in the stones and shadows of ancient walls lumbering up onto hillsides or sliding down toward the sea. For Andreas, those tranquil moments eased away his memories of places forever lost to modern times; and led him to wonder how akin his own thoughts might be to those of ancients who looked out upon those same hills, seas, and sunsets so many thousands of years before.

  But today was not one for musing about the beach or ancient times. Tassos and Kouros had crashed in the guest bedroom and there was a busy day ahead. Andreas pushed himself out of bed, went to the bathroom, threw some water on his face, and headed for the kitchen to start the coffee.

  Tassos and Kouros were already there, cups in hand.

  “Morning, Chief. Sleep well?”

  “Are you trying to impress me? I can’t remember the last morning I saw you in the office on time.”

  Kouros smiled. “That’s because I spend my first waking hours at home doing paperwork, and sometimes I get so distracted I forget what time it is.”

  Andreas held out his left arm and used his right hand to feign playing a violin.

  “Well, for this morning at least I can vouch that the boy has been working.” Tassos poured a cup of coffee and handed it to Andreas.

  “Thanks. On what? Too early to be his suntan.”

  Kouros handed Andreas a half-dozen sheets of paper. “It’s everything the agencies had on Sergey Tishchenko. Aside from the arrest in Poland that put him away for two years, he has no criminal record. That might be because up until he moved to Poland he was in the Russian military. One report said he was thought to be part of a military drug and sex trafficking operation that got its start during the first Chechen War in 1994, and kept up at it until they lost their patron’s protection. That fits time-wise, because the ring fell apart about the time Sergey left Russia for Poland.”

  “Where was he born? How old is he?” said Andreas.

  “Not sure. Records say he was an orphan, but nothing about when, where, or how. He gave a birthdate when he joined the military that made him old enough to enlist. That would make him around thirty-seven, today. He listed his parents as deceased, that he didn’t know their names, and had no next of kin.”

  “Sounds like someone trying to hide from something,” said Andreas.

  “Or escape. Possibly from a foster home or orphanage,” said Tassos.

  “Maybe. What else do you have on him?”

  “He was heavily decorated in the military and went from enlisted man to major. The military even sent him to university.”

  “He’s a man who knew how to please his superiors,” said Tassos.

  “And, if I recall correctly, pleasing one’s superiors in Chechnya meant doing some pretty nasty things,” said Andreas.

  “Like drowning your girlfriend in a bathtub?” said Kouros.

  “How was he in prison?” said Andreas.

  “A model prisoner. So much so that they let him grow his hair as a reward for good behavior. Only incident even mentioning him was the suicide of a cellmate. And Sergey was nowhere around when it went down.”

  “What happened?” said Tassos.

  “The report says a guard found the cellmate alone in his cell hanging by his neck from shoe laces tied to the railing at the foot of the upper bunk. He’d made a noose on one end and let his knees drop until he passed out. He suffocated.”

  “Christ, he could have stood up anytime to save himself,” said Kouros.

  “You really have to hate your life to end it that way,” said Tassos.

  Andreas picked up his coffee and took a sip. “Or be a lot more afraid of living it.”

  “Do you think Sergey might have driven him to it?” said Kouros.

  Andreas shrugged. “We’ll never know.” He took another sip. “If what’s in those records is the true story of Sergey’s life, I don’t see how he has the money to buy a hotel on Mykonos.”

  “Perhaps he’s back in business with his old Russian military buddies?” said Tassos.

  “But why a hotel on
Mykonos? All their connections are in Russia,” said Kouros.

  “The island is getting a lot more Russian tourists. Maybe they want their own hotel?” said Tassos.

  “That would make a lot of Mykonian hoteliers and their guests very happy,” said Kouros.

  Andreas put down his cup. “I think it’s time we introduce ourselves to Mister Tishchenko.”

  ***

  The mayor’s office was on the second floor of the late eighteenth century, two-and-a-half-story municipal building at the south edge of the old harbor. It was the only structure on the harbor with terra-cotta roof tiles.

  The place had seen a lot of changes over the centuries, most recently a new mayor. The old one had been in power for two decades and likely would have remained so for another two had he not surprised everyone by abruptly resigning in midterm as ruinous financial crises loomed on the horizon.

  The office of Mykonos’ mayor controlled virtually everything that happened on the island. If the mayor was not pleased, he could shut you down in a heartbeat. The island’s new mayor was of short stature, mustache, and hair, but long on charm and political instincts. He’d been in local politics his entire adult life and knew how things worked on his island: money talked.

  So, when Wacki called him to say big Russian money wanted to see him ASAP, the mayor passed on his usual early morning coffee in the port with cronies to meet with Sergey in his office.

  When Sergey and Wacki walked into his office the mayor jumped up from behind his desk, came around to the other side, and, with arms spread wide open and a broad smile across his face, said in Russian, “Welcome home!”

  Sergey was surprised. “You speak Russian?” he said in Russian.

  The mayor said in Greek, “I have no idea what you just said, my friend, because I just exhausted my knowledge of Russian in welcoming you home, but please, sit.” Wacki translated into English as the mayor shook each man’s hand and pointed to three chairs at a small round conference table next to a window overlooking the harbor. Once his guests were seated, the mayor took the empty chair.