Devil of Delphi: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery (20 page)

“I wonder if she’d be interested in picking horses for us at the track.”

“She doesn’t gamble.”

“So you tried.”

“Uh-huh,” nodded Tassos drumming his fingers on the dash. “So what’s the plan?”

“You should know better than to think I have one.”

“That’s what I thought. It’s also why I’m carrying two guns.”

“Wise decision.”

“As opposed to the one I made that has me in this car with you at three in the morning.”

“Stop complaining, I know you love a good time.”

“Yeah, this should be real fun, a hippie and a Bolshevik arriving in anarchist party central at just about the time of the night when antiestablishment types are drunk, high, and angry at their lot in life that has them sweltering in Athens summer heat while capitalist lackeys are off enjoying the sea, islands, and mountains.”

“Hey, man, it’s the price we gotta pay for the revolution.”

“Somehow that fails to comfort me.”

“Stop with the sarcasm and let me concentrate. It’s almost show time.”

“Great. I always wondered what it would be like to die on stage.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Tassos walked into the taverna alone and headed straight for the bar. Customers, mostly young men, huddled over drinks at four tables, a young woman in bring-on-the-revolution garb with complementing facial piercings and tattoos sat next to a fat man at the bar. Every eye in the place fixed on Tassos as he sat on a barstool three stools down from the fat man and ordered a beer from a Heracles size bartender sporting a King Leonidas-style beard.

As Tassos patiently waited for his beer, he glanced into the mirror running behind the bar, making eye contact with no one. He nodded thanks to the bartender, lifted the bottle to his lips, doing a quick scan of the room in the mirror as he did. He noticed only one table, possibly two, still paying him any attention.

He reached for a copy of the newspaper
Avriani
on the bar and began reading it. As he turned the page he glanced in the mirror again. No one was looking at him now.

Ten minutes later, Andreas strolled in. He looked at the faces at each table as he made his way toward the bar. He stopped a few paces away from the fat man sitting by Tassos and waved. “Jacobi, how are you, my friend?”

Jacobi studied Andreas’ face until a look of recognition came across his own. “I am definitely not your friend.”

“Of course you are, you just don’t realize it yet.”

Jacobi glared. “I’m tired of being pushed around by you fascist fucking cops.”

“Easy now, or your friends here might not realize just how buddy-buddy we are.”

“
Malaka
,” said the girl, spitting at Andreas but not quite reaching him.

“Honey, you need some practice with the spitting. But don’t do it in front of your boyfriend here, because he might get jealous at how freely you share your bodily fluids with total strangers.”

She lunged off the stool at him, but tangled her feet together, tripping, and falling at Jacobi’s feet.

“But first you ought to learn to walk.” Andreas pointed at the girl and said to Jacobi, “I think you ought to help your girlfriend up off the floor.”

Jacobi smiled. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s his.” He nodded toward the bartender coming up behind Andreas, a lead pipe in his right hand.

Andreas’ raised his hands in front of his face. “Whoa there, big fellow. Not a good idea.”

The bartender paused but Jacobi growled, “Break the asshole up bad.”

The bartender lifted the pipe above his head and drove it diagonally across his body toward Andreas’ head, but in the instant it took to bring the pipe down, Andreas slid off to his left and the bartender stumbled forward, tripping over his girlfriend.

“You two should produce wonderfully coordinated children together,” said Andreas.

The bartender regained his balance with the help of the bar stool next to Tassos, lead pipe still in hand, and came up facing Tassos.

Tassos smiled, his semiautomatic service pistol pointed squarely at the middle of the bartender’s forehead. “Uh-uh, play nice.”

The bartender turned his head to look at Jacobi.

“What are you looking at him for? I’m the one who’s going to put a bullet in your head if you don’t drop the fucking pipe.” Tassos jammed the barrel of the gun against the side of the bartender’s head. “
Now
.”

All heard the distinct clunk of a lead pipe hitting the floor.

“Good decision. Now pick up your girlfriend and take her over to that table against the wall. And don’t either of you dare move from there until I tell you to.”

Tassos watched the bartender carry his girlfriend to the table. “Terrific. I love young people who listen.”

Tassos reached down to his ankle, pulled out a second gun, and waved it at the people still at the other tables. “As for the rest of you folks, two choices. Leave now with whatever bill you’ve run up on the house, courtesy of your host.” He pointed the first gun in Jacobi’s direction. “Or stay put and be a part of whatever additional unpleasantries are yet to come. Ten seconds to decide.”

He looked at his watch. “Nine, eight…”

The place was empty by three.

“So, with that, back to you, maestro.”

Andreas nodded. “Thank you.” He bent down and picked the lead pipe up off the floor.

Holding it in his right hand and slapping it against his left he fixed his eyes on Jacobi’s. “‘Break the asshole up bad.’ So, that’s what you think of our relationship, huh?”

Andreas smiled, Jacobi forced a grin, and Andreas drove a butt end of the pipe hard enough into Jacobi’s solar plexus to take him off the stool and double him over on the floor, struggling to breathe.

“That’s just so you remember there are consequences for ordering someone to attack a police officer. But that’s not why I’m here in the middle of the night. I came to give you the opportunity of choosing between living and dying.”

Jacobi wheezed for air. “You’re not going to kill me. No way.”

Andreas lifted Jacobi’s chin up off the floor with the pipe. “I never said I’d be the one to kill you. But how I decide to play what I’m about to tell you will definitely determine whether you live or die. So, are you ready to listen?”

“Can I sit down?”

“Sure, pick a table, any table, the place is yours.”

Jacobi crawled to the nearest table and pulled himself up onto a chair facing the door.

“Nope, other side. I face the door.”

Jacobi struggled to stand and move to the other side of the table. “You hurt me bad.”

“File a complaint.” Andreas sat down, putting the pipe on the tabletop.

Jacobi coughed and leaned forward, head down. “What do you want from me now?”

“The last time we met, you mentioned the name of a certain lady.”

Jacobi lifted his head. “Go ahead, beat me to death with that pipe. That’ll be nothing compared to what she’ll do to me if she finds out I talked to cops about her.”

“Good, I’m glad we understand each other, because that’s precisely what she’s going to do to you if you don’t pass along what I’m here to tell you, and she learns that the bad stuff about to happen to her only went down because you didn’t warn her when you had the chance.”

“You do know you’re fucking crazy.”

“Yep,” nodded Andreas.

“I don’t even know how to begin to get a message to her, let alone convince her I have a warning from cops trying to help her.”

“That falls into the category of not my problem.”

Jacobi dropped his head and banged it lightly on the table. “So, what is it you want me to pass along?”

“All we know is that somebody is setting up a hit intended to send a message to Teacher.”

Jacobi lifted his head and smirked. “Someone put out a hit on Teacher? Say good-bye to whatever idiot did that and all his nearest and dearest.”

“I didn’t say ‘a hit on Teacher.’ It’s on someone in Greece close enough to Teacher to get her attention.”

Jacobi’s eyes widened. “Do you have a name on the target?”

“No, nor on the person placing the hit. If we did we wouldn’t be here asking you for answers.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“What about your friend? Maybe he could help you.”

“What friend?”

Andreas cocked his head. “Jacobi
mou
. Are we going to play that game again?”

“Oh,
that
friend.”

“That’s right. Kharon.”

“No, he wouldn’t know.”

“Are you sure, because if somebody close to Teacher dies who would have lived had you cooperated, I can assure you that message will get out there too.”

“You made that point before.”

Andreas shrugged. “Repetition is good.”

“So, why are Greek cops so interested in preventing someone close to Teacher from getting whacked?”

“You already know why. If she gets angry, a lot of innocents are going to die on Greek soil. And we Greek cops don’t want that happening here.”

Jacobi stared at Andreas. “How about I say I’ll see what I can do? When’s this maybe hit supposed to take place?”

Andreas looked at his watch. “Anytime from five minutes ago to who-the-fuck-knows. I’m here at four fucking o’clock in the morning dodging lead pipes, and you’re asking me for an appointment time on a hit.” Andreas shook his head. “If I were you, I’d be on the phone the moment you see me waving good-bye.”

Andreas stood, nodded to Tassos, and the two cops headed toward the front door. Andreas stopped at the doorway, waited until he caught Jacobi’s eye in the mirror, and waved.

***

The pain where the bastard cop hit him with the pipe still throbbed, but at least he could breathe. Jacobi stared in the mirror at the spot where the asshole had stood and waved to him.

“
Malaka
,” he said aloud, still looking in the mirror. He noticed the bartender and his girlfriend hunched over the table against the wall.
There’s a real
malaka
. Can’t even swing a lead pipe
.

“Close up the place and get the hell out of here,” shouted Jacobi. He bent his head over the table and shut his eyes.

How can I get to Teacher?

She didn’t know him from Adam. And if he figured out how to reach her, it wasn’t likely to end well for him, no matter how important she found the cop’s message. The odds were she’d assume him an informant carrying messages for cops, an informant who knew how to find her. What reason would someone like Teacher have for keeping someone like him breathing?

No, he’d go directly to Kharon and warn him. The idiot cops didn’t realize Kharon was the likely target. It all must tie into that job he did for Teacher up in Thessaloniki. No doubt in his mind Kharon had done it. And probably Tank’s family had ordered the hit. Stupid cops. They couldn’t find their dicks in the dark. All they knew was their hardball, beat-the-proletariat-with-lead-pipes routine. No brains in those fascists.

Yes, he’d call Kharon and avoid the whole Teacher play.

He opened his eyes. But what would he say if Kharon asked how the cops knew to come to him to get to Teacher? Not
if
he asked that question,
when
he asked it.

Jacobi shuddered so hard he had to shake the table to steady himself. He could hear the cold, flat tone of Kharon’s voice as he asked that question. Like a hangman inquiring of the soon to be deceased’s weight as he tied the noose around the subject’s throat.

If he told Kharon the truth, that the cops came to Jacobi already knowing both Kharon’s name and that he’d killed Tank’s sister, and that he gave the cops Teacher’s name to take the heat off himself, Kharon would say, “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

Or maybe he’d say nothing at all, for once Kharon doubted his loyalty, Jacobi knew he’d be just as dead as if Teacher wanted him that way.

I’m boxed in
.

He saw three choices. Reach out to Teacher as the cops wanted, warn Kharon, or simply ignore everything and pray nothing happened. The first two choices put him in direct, immediate grave danger. The third presented the least risk to his life, but the greatest to his childhood friend’s.

Fuck.

***

Too wound up to go back to sleep, and too wired to jump straight into an evaluation of their confrontation with Jacobi, Andreas and Tassos stopped at an all-night bar close to Maggie’s apartment. It had the sort of subdued, working class crowd feel perfect for bringing adrenaline levels back down to normal.

Each man ordered a beer and a shot of vodka. They clinked shot glasses and chugged their
sfinakis,
and slowly sipped their beers.

“I was worried when I saw the gorilla bartender coming at you with the pipe,” said Tassos.

“So was I.”

“You had to know things might get rough, so why didn’t you yank one of your young tough guys out of bed in the middle of the night instead of me?”

“I thought of that, but Jacobi would recognize Yianni and Petro, and I needed someone he didn’t know who could slip in ahead of me to watch my back.”

“I thought of shooting the gorilla with the lead pipe but figured your head was hard enough to take the hit.”

Andreas lifted his bottle and clinked it against Tassos’ glass. “Good thing he was about as coordinated as Tassaki’s Slinky.”

“Slinky?”

“It’s a toy. Hard to find in Greece, but a friend of Lila’s sent us one for Tassaki from America. It’s a flexible spring you can get to walk down steps, all in
very predictable movements
.” He took a chug of his beer. “Thank God.”

Tassos laughed. “It really was a funny scene. I mean Little Miss Spitter and her boyfriend made quite a team.”

Andreas grinned. “Yeah, they did.”

The two men clinked again.

“So, do you think he’ll run to Kharon?” said Tassos.

“That’s a better bet for him than getting Teacher’s attention. But who knows? He might decide to do nothing.”

“That’s probably his safest play.”

“Is that how you’d play it if I were the target?” said Andreas

“You mean not tell you? Hell, I’ve done that a hundred times already. Maggie threatens to kill you almost every day.” Tassos took a sip of his beer.

Andreas smiled. “Jacobi not telling Kharon could most definitely get Kharon killed.”

“Who cares? They’re all bad guys.”

Andreas drained his bottle and placed ten euros on the bar. “Let’s go, I’m exhausted.”

Tassos finished his beer, tipped his hat to the barman, and said to Andreas as they slid off their bar stools. “It’s always nice to know what’s waiting for you at home.”

“Yeah, but I’d sure like to know what’s out there waiting for Kharon.”

Tassos patted him on the shoulder. “Soon, my friend, soon.”

***

Kharon’s phone rang. “Hello.”

“I have the money.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because your two days end today. Do you have a pencil?”

“For what?”

“The wire transfer instructions.”

“No way,” said Tank’s father.

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t expect me to simply wire transfer fifty million euros.”

“That much in cash would amount to one hell of a heavy suitcase, even in five-hundred euro notes.”