Target: Tinos

by Jeffrey Siger

  “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help but there are hundreds of families on Tinos with an ancestor somehow tied into the Society. Any more questions?”

  “Only one,” said Andreas. “If you were going to steal the most valuable thing on this island, how would you go about doing it?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Kouros was on Tinos early enough in the afternoon to have spoken to what seemed every taxi driver on the island before finding one who said he recognized the Greek hookers.

  The driver was about fifty and stood next to his cab staring at the picture of the two coming out of the bar. “Better believe I recognize them. I still think of them every time I do it with my wife.”

  “How did you meet them?”

  “They called my dispatcher looking for a taxi to take them to a bar.”

  “What bar?”

  “Some piece of shit tsigani hangout.”

  “Have an address?”

  “It’s not the kind of place that has an address.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “They had a piece of paper with directions on it.”

  “Anything else on the paper?”

  “Yeah, directions to where I picked them up.”

  “How’d you know where to find them?”

  “They read the directions to my dispatcher. It was simple. I took a left off the highway just past the first cutoff to Volax and kept going until I saw a house. Never knew one was there. People build in the damnedest places these days.”

  “Any idea who owns the place?”

  “Not a clue, but there was a ‘for rent’ sign on the front door. Looked like one of those places Germans build in the hope of retiring there some day. Probably rent it out whenever they can to cover expenses.”

  “Was there a phone number on the sign?”

  “Don’t remember, but there must have been.”

  Kouros muttered, “damn” under his breath. “What are those directions again?”

  The driver smiled. “Hop in, I’ll give you a good rate.”

  The ride to the house took twenty minutes, during which Kouros heard in exhausting detail every word the driver had said to the women between picking them up at the house and dropping them off at the bar. Despite Herculean efforts on the driver’s part to convince them they would have a much better time partying with him and his friends than going to that bar, the women did not say a single word to him the entire trip. They talked between themselves as if he weren’t even there. Kouros almost felt sorry enough for the guy to tell him not to take it personally, it wasn’t about him; the women were on a mission.

  The house was just where the driver said it would be, and virtually invisible from any road but the one they were on. There was a car parked by the front door and Kouros had the driver honk so as not to alarm whoever was inside. It turned out to belong to the owners. Not Germans, but a French couple. The driver had guessed right about the rental part though. They’d rented out the house for the week the two Greek hookers stayed there.

  A woman had phoned them in France and said that she saw the sign on their house while trekking along a trail that ran by it. She wanted to rent it for a week, starting immediately. The rent was paid in advance through a cash deposit made directly into a bank account the couple maintained on Tinos. They didn’t know the woman but said she spoke French with a decided Greek accent. Her name was a strange sounding one, and the husband couldn’t remember it. The wife said she thought she’d marked it down somewhere and found it in her calendar. She showed the name to Kouros: Manto Mavrogenous.

  It was a name known to every Greek. She was their country’s legendary female hero of the War of Independence; her father was a member of Filiki Eteria and her fiancé the brother of Filiki Eteria’s leader, Alexander Ypsilantis. Manto Mavrogenous was aristocratic, highly educated, wealthy, beautiful, and dedicated to freedom for Greece. She had risked not just her life but her entire fortune for that cause. She also was among the first of Greece’s war heroes to pay homage to the Megalochari and, though her family’s roots were on Mykonos, for a while she’d made her home on Tinos.

  This time on the taxi ride in from the house it was Kouros who said not a word to the driver.

  ***

  “This is getting freakier by the minute,” said Tassos. “Now we’ve got male and female war heroes giving us grief.”

  Kouros pointed across the taverna table at a bottle of water. “By the way, neither of them was born in Greece,” said Kouros.

  “And Mavrogenous’ life didn’t have a fairy tale ending,” said Tassos. “Her home was destroyed by fire, her remaining fortune stolen, and her engagement broken off. She was never able to get the Greek government to reimburse her for all she’d contributed to the war effort and died penniless and in oblivion at fifty-four on Tinos’ neighboring island of Paros.” Tassos pointed due south in the direction of that Cycladic island.

  Andreas put down his fork and handed Kouros the bottle. “Not sure what any of that means.”

  Kouros took the bottle. “And just what part of all this are you sure of?”

  “Good point.”

  Tassos said, “I’ll get someone at the bank to see if there’s a way of finding out who put the money in the French couple’s account, but my guess is the odds of getting any where with that are between slim and none.”

  “Looks like we’re back to trying to catch up with those two Polish girls,” said Andreas.

  “After what happened to the Pakistani they might have taken off,” said Kouros.

  “That would have been the smart move,” said Tassos. “But if they did, they didn’t take anything with them. The Tinos’ cops checked their place and everything seemed to be there, including their clothes.”

  “I’ll take that as a sign that we have a shot at finding them tonight…” Andreas threw an open palm gesture at the ground, “or that Shepherd already has.”

  ***

  As far as the cops sweltering in the rented van could tell, the heat of the day hadn’t realized how close it was to midnight and the Cycladic winds that generally made mid-August bearable had taken the night off. They were parked down the road from the turnoff to Petros’ metanastes bar in a spot that gave them a view of its entrance. They watched a man in a blue tee shirt park his beat-up motorbike as close to the front door of the bar as he could get it. He was wearing standard metanastes dress: tee shirt, jeans, and work boots. The man went into the bar and the cops put down their binoculars.

  A fat man was sitting at a table just inside the doorway and an old-looking woman in a housecoat and slippers was doing something behind the bar. He walked past them and stood in the doorway to another room. His eyes moved from table to table. He turned and went back to sit on one of the stools in front of the bar.

  “You looking for someone?” said Petros.

  The man in the blue tee shirt gestured no.

  “Do you want something?”

  The man pointed at a beer bottle.

  “You don’t talk much do you?”

  The man gestured no.

  “Get him a beer,” said Petros to the woman. “But make sure he pays first.”

  The man placed two euros and a cell phone on the bar.

  The woman put a bottle in front of him and shuffled off into the other room. Petros went back to doing whatever he was doing. The man took a sip of his beer, put it down, and sat as still as a stray cat hoping for dinner to pass by.

  Thirty minutes passed and the man had taken no more than three sips of his beer. He’d glanced at everyone coming through the door but hadn’t moved from his stool.

  Two blond Polish women, one tall and one short, walked through the door, passed the man at the bar, and went into the other room.

  The two said hello to some men at other tables before sitting down at a table in the middle of the room. The man in the blue tee shirt pressed a button on his phone before putting it into his pocket, picked up his beer in his left hand, and walked toward the wo
men. He reached behind his back with his right hand as he stopped at their table. The women didn’t seem to notice him until that moment but immediately gave him their best smiles. The smiles vanished the instant he brought his right hand around from behind his back.

  “My badge ladies. Detective Yianni Kouros at your service.” Kouros sat down and put his beer on the table “Don’t mind me, I’m just your baby sitter. My friends will be here any minute.”

  Thirty seconds later, Andreas came through the front door headed straight toward Kouros. Tassos was right behind him.

  Petros stood up. “What’s this?”

  Tassos pointed at Petros’ chest. “Sit down and shut up.”

  Petros paused for a second and sat.

  “Smart move. Now send a round of beers over to that table.” He pointed to Kouros. “Understand?”

  Petros nodded.

  “Good.” Tassos patted Petros on the shoulder and went to join Kouros and Andreas. They sat where each could cover the other’s back.

  “Sorry about the drama, ladies,” said Andreas. “But since we couldn’t seem to find you to make an appointment, and didn’t want any of your friends in here who might recognize us calling you to suggest you’d be better off not showing up tonight, we thought we’d give you the chance to meet detective Kouros.”

  Kouros nodded. “Ladies.”

  “Yeah, but your grand entrance just fucked us,” said the tall woman.

  “Such language,” said Tassos.

  “Now everyone on Tinos will be saying we’re working with cops.”

  “Does that have you worried?” said Andreas.

  “The Pakistani is dead!”

  “One of many,” said Tassos.

  “I told you we should have left the island,” said the short one.

  The tall one said something to her in Polish.

  “Uhh, uhh, ladies. Remember the ground rules. Only Greek,” said Andreas.

  “Or what? That you’ll arrest us? That would be safer than being loose on this island,” said the short one. “Why do you think we haven’t been back to our place? It’s too dangerous.”

  “But you still come here,” said Tassos.

  “We have to work,” said the short one.

  The tall one said something again in Polish. Kouros shot out his hand and gripped it firmly over her mouth. “Perhaps you didn’t hear the man. ‘Only Greek.’ Prosze.” After he’d said “please” in Polish, Kouros took away his hand.

  Andreas nodded. “Ladies, you’re right. You do have a very serious problem. Whoever killed your Pakistani friend and your two tsigani friends must be very nervous over what you might be telling us at this very moment. But, it’s too late to change all that. The only way things can get better for you now is if you help us find whoever killed your friends.”

  Andreas paused, but neither woman said a word. “And I’m the one cop in Greece who can actually help you when he says that he can. You do know that I’m GADA’s Chief of Special Crimes? I gave you my card, didn’t I?”

  The tall one said, “Yes.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “No way. We left it on the table,” said the short one. “If we took it with us anyone who saw you give it to us might think we intended to call you, and God knows what rumors that would start.”

  Andreas stared at the short girl. She had street smarts. And she was right. He turned his head and looked around the room. All eyes were on their table except for when his were on theirs. That was to be expected. This was where you came to learn your community’s gossip. The Greeks had their kafeneions for morning coffee, the metanastes their after work places for beers. Andreas wished he could hear what they were saying at their tables.

  He watched the sister in her slippers shuffle toward them with a tray of beers. One by one she put a bottle down in front of each of them, taking care as she did. He waited until she’d left.

  “Do you remember when you told me about the two Carausii brothers talking about their ‘big break’ and that guy they called ‘the shepherd’?”

  “‘Cioban,’ yes.”

  “Did they ever talk about that in here?”

  “No, they never came in here,” said the tall one.

  Andreas looked around the room as he said, “Did either of you ever talk to someone in here about the brothers or their big break?”

  “Before they died?” said the short one.

  “Yes.”

  “No, we kept all that to ourselves.”

  Andreas focused his eyes first on one, then on the other of the girls. “Did you ever talk in here between yourselves about what they told you?”

  “Of course,” said the tall one.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” said the short one. “It was the only interesting thing going on in our lives.”

  The woman returned with a tray of glasses and began putting them down separately in front of each person at the table.

  Andreas reached over to a nearby table and dragged an empty chair up next to him. “Kiria. Please, come join us.” He’d used the respectful title for a woman and stood to pull the chair out for her.

  The woman kept putting down the glasses as if she’d not heard him. He reached over and touched her arm. “Please, sit.”

  She mumbled something and shuffled off toward the bar.

  “I said sit.” Andreas said it so loudly that two men getting up from a nearby table immediately sat down. But the woman kept walking toward the doorway.

  “Yianni, bring her back.”

  Kouros lurched out of his chair after her as she went through the doorway into the bar, but Petros stepped into the doorway with his arms spread out above his head, hands on the frame, blocking Kouros’ way.

  “Please move, sir. We want to speak to the lady.”

  “She’s my sister. Nobody talks to her.”

  “Move or be moved.”

  Petros swung his right hand down from the doorframe at Kouros’ face. Kouros didn’t duck. He leaned in and drove his forehead into Petros’ chest, knocking the fat man off-balance, as he grabbed Petros’ testicles in his right hand and squeezed the screaming man back into his chair in the bar.

  “Stay,” said Kouros. He spun around to find the woman but she wasn’t there. He ran out the front door. She wasn’t there either. He heard a motorbike starting up behind the building and raced to the back just in time to catch a glimpse of a taillight disappearing behind a neighboring building.

  “Damnit.” Kouros turned and looked at the wall. “How the hell did she get out there so fast?” The back of the building was solid. She could only have come out the front door. He went back inside to where Andreas was sitting.

  “Sorry, Chief. She got away.”

  “How the hell did she do that?” said Tassos.

  “That’s just what I was wondering. There’s no back door.”

  “Ladies, if you’ll excuse us.” Andreas stood. “By the way, if I were you I’d continue keeping myself scarce. At least for the time being.”

  Andreas walked into the bar, followed by Tassos and Kouros. He put his hands on Petros’ table and leaned in until he was nose-to-nose with him. “Where did she go?”

  “No idea.”

  “Yianni, take him outside. Around to the back.”

  This time Kouros didn’t ask Petros to move. He grabbed him in a wristlock, twisted hard and dragged him from the table out the door.

  Tassos had been watching the main room, just in case someone might get the idea of being a hero. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience and understanding. On behalf of the management I’m happy to say that all drinks this evening are on the house. Enjoy yourselves.” He left the bar to the sound of clinking bottles and shouts of foreign language equivalents for yamas.

  Behind the building Kouros had Petros’ face pinned against the bar’s concrete wall.

  Andreas leaned in and whispered in Petros’ ear. “Like I said, ‘where did she go?’”

  “Fuck you.”

&
nbsp; “You threatened to kill my son and now have the balls to say ‘fuck you’ to me?” Andreas drove his right and left fists into Petros’ kidneys.

  Above Petros’ scream Andreas said, “You have no friends, no one is going to come out here to help you. It’s just going to be you and me and big pain until you tell me what I want to know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never threatened anyone.”

  “You threatened me, asshole,” said Kouros bringing Petros’ face off the cement just far enough to bang it back against the wall.

  “But you were going after my sister. She’s not right. I had to protect her.”

  “If I were you, I’d start worrying about who’s going to protect you from me,” said Andreas.

  “Please, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Fine, if you want Meerna’s address I’ll give it to you. Everyone knows it anyway.” He blurted out an address. “But I don’t know where she is now. Honest.”

  “Pretty smart,” said Andreas. “Getting her to eavesdrop on your customers. I wouldn’t have picked up on it if she hadn’t taken such time and care in putting down first the bottles and later the glasses. A hell of an improvement in service from the last time we were here. What’s the matter, you don’t speak your customers’ languages, and so you make your sister do your dirty work?”

  “She never talks to anyone. Barely to me. I don’t know what she does or doesn’t understand. All she does is listen. It’s her life. She has nothing else but this place and me.”

  “What about Trelos? Does your sister talk to him?” said Andreas.

  “I don’t like you calling my brother that name. His name is Pandeleis.”

  “Just answer my question.”

  “He talks even less than she does, and the voices he listens to aren’t even live. It’s whatever comes through his iPod. But they’re my only brother and sister, and with our parents dead, it’s up to me to protect and take care of them. Even though they only say a goddamned word to me when they need something. Welcome to my life.”

  Andreas motioned for Kouros to let him loose. “So, why did you stop us from questioning your sister?”

  Petros turned around, leaned back against the wall, and rubbed at his left wrist and elbow. “I didn’t know what you wanted her for. All I saw was that look of fear in her eyes, and I had to do something.”