Devil of Delphi: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery (4 page)

“So how do you connect with a
bomba
supplier?” asked Kouros.

“They come in to see me, many sell it right out of whatever they’re driving. Up to now it’s been a pretty competitive business. Sometimes things got a bit nasty when I played one competitor off against another, but it kept the prices in line.”

“What do you mean, ‘up to now’?” said Kouros.

“Like I said, that stuff you pulled out from behind the bar comes from a new supplier. My other guys haven’t been around for a while. And I’m not too happy about that.”

“Why?”

“No competition means the price to me is bound to go up.”

“Has it?” said Petro.

“Not yet, but any day now I expect to get that message.”

“From whom?”

“The new guy.”

“When’s he due here next?” said Kouros.

“Thursday, in time for the weekend.”

“What’s he look like?” said Petro.

Aleko put his elbows on the bar, ran his fingers through his hair, and looked up at Petro. “I don’t know. A normal liquor salesman. Late thirties, dark hair, paunchy. Like any number of us trying to get by in these troubled times.”

“Does Mr. Just-Like-Us have a name?” said Kouros.

“He says it’s George, but who knows if it’s real? All I want is the booze to be real.”

“Real
bomba
,” said Kouros.

“Yeah, but the good stuff.”

Kouros nodded, took a knife from behind the bar and began opening the five vodka bottles.

“Hey, what are you doing to my stock?”

“Don’t worry, I just want to make sure this shit isn’t poison.”

“I told you, I only go for the good stuff.”

Kouros nodded, poured a shot from the first glass, smelled it, tasted a bit with his tongue, and said, “It ain’t great, but it’s vodka.”

“See, I told you. Only the good stuff for my place.”

Kouros did the same thing with the second bottle. Same result.

He tasted the third shot without smelling it and immediately spit it out. “Bingo.” He spit a half dozen more times. “I don’t know what’s in there, but it isn’t just vodka.” He held up the bottle to the light and saw white sediment on the bottom. “It’s been diluted with tap water.” He smelled the bottle. “And probably nail polish. Maybe even bleach.” He spit some more.

“That can’t be,” said Aleko getting off the stool and grabbing the bottle from the bar. He smelled it and looked at Kouros. “You’re right, the son of a bitch cheated me.”

Kouros smiled. “Like you do your customers?”

“Hey, my customers have a great time. I run a well-known place here. Sure, the booze may be watered down a bit and sometimes I serve cheaper stuff than what the customers think they’re getting, but I’m not poisoning them. If word of that got around it would kill my business. No way I’m going to destroy this place just to make a little more selling poison. Besides, two shots of this shit and you’re out of it. I make my money selling booze, not quick highs.” Aleko looked away from the bottle and sniffled. “No way I’d ever sell this stuff.”

“Then I suggest you check out every bottle you bought from your new supplier.”

“Damn straight, I will, and I’m gonna shove every one of them up his ass on Thursday.”

Kouros gestured no. “Not this Thursday, you won’t. Maybe the next one.”

“Why?”

“Because we want to follow him.”

“So I’m supposed to do what? Buy more of his shit?”

Kouros shrugged.

“But I don’t want to buy any more of his poison.”

“Then don’t.”

“But he’ll be suspicious.”

“Then do.”

Aleko looked to be considering his options.

Kouros put his hands on the bar and leaned in toward Aleko. “I want this poison out of here today. But on Thursday you’re going to act normal and put in your regular order. Consider it a fine for all the shit you have in here. You’re getting off light. We could shut you down and you know it. I doubt you’ll have to worry about that salesman after Thursday, but when we stop back to say hello and, trust me, we will, if we find that same sort of shit in here, all bets are off on what will happen to you and your place.”

“Believe me, that stuff will be gone by tonight. I run a reputable place.”

“Which reminds me. That girl you hired to start working tonight.”

Aleko stared at Kouros. “Yeah?”

“When we come back, be sure she’s still working here.” Kouros patted Aleko on the arm. “After that interview you put her through, I don’t want to find out that you broke your promise to hire her.”

Aleko looked at Petro. “Are we through now?”

“I think so.”

Kouros nodded.

“Good. Glad I could help the police. But do me a favor, would you? If either of you ever calls me again for help and I happen to say, ‘yes,’ believe me, it means either I’m too fucked up to think straight or someone has a gun to my head.”

Petro smiled, shook his head, and joined Kouros in heading toward the door. “Frankly, old friend, from where your life appears headed, I’m sad to say it’s most likely to be both.”

Chapter Four

Kharon always thought of the two-hour drive northwest from the heart of commercial, modern Athens to the ancient world’s pastoral center of the earth at Delphi as a surrealistic passage through sharply contrasting value systems. His journey always began the same way, enduring traffic-clogged, graffiti-laden, gritty neighborhoods on the way to National Road A-1 and the fifty-mile highway run to his exit.

The six- and at times eight-lane highway skirted Athens’ affluent northern suburbs. It ran a gauntlet of businesses serving the desires of Greater Athens before passing through a mix of corporate headquarters and light industry. Just beyond an Army base where Kharon had once served, the road rose up through a steep pass lined with pines, gorse, and myrtle growing nearly to the crest of gray limestone hilltops. From there, the highway gradually dropped down onto broad plains dotted with facilities catering more to the needs of modern agriculture than the wants of urban life.

Ten miles before his exit it narrowed down to four lanes and the land turned decidedly to farmland. But modern times had made their way here, too, in huge pond-like patches amid fields close by the road, and in barcode-style brandings of once virginal hillsides. A new type of farming had sprouted up in distinctive air force-blue and shiny silver: photovoltaic solar panels, a far less demanding and more profitable cash crop for many than any gained by toiling upon the land.

At the exit marked Thiva, Kharon headed south for four miles before turning west for the final fifty-five miles to Delphi. Here the road turned to two lanes and passed through fields of planted cotton, olives in silvered shades of green, and more silver and blue panels—all leading off toward mountains dressed in shades of brown soil, deep-green treetops, and gray stone peaks.

Kharon wondered whether farmland lost to solar power-production sapped more from those used to working the land than they could ever hope to earn for abandoning their traditional life. Farming meant creating life, and made one self-sufficient, with success dependent solely upon your own hard work—and the fickle will of the weather gods.

Kharon couldn’t imagine giving up the freedom he’d found in farm work—laboring in Delphi’s mountains, valleys, and boundless olive groves amid an omnipresent spiritual essence far greater than himself. He’d first felt its influence on a rare public school trip away from his hassled life in poorest urban Athens. That memory of Delphi is what drew him back there when he sought to establish a life far away from his city past.

Nor could he imagine how anyone who truly loved the land could be party to its systematic aesthetic mutilation. To him, solar panels tore the spirit from the natural beauty of the land, much as their siblings—turbine windmills haunting random mountaintops—destroyed the sense of peace a soul drew from gazing at an endless, undisturbed horizon. He hated those who’d wreaked such thoughtless havoc on the land. But then he’d pass through a town of architectural disasters and be reminded that aesthetic planning in modern Greece far too rarely was entrusted to descendants of the creators of the Parthenon.

Halfway to Delphi he stopped in Livadia, the capital city of a mountainous farming region known for its
souvlaki
and grilled meats. It served as a must-stop place for hungry skiers on visits to the nearby mountain village of Arachova, Greece’s evergreen-draped wintertime equivalent of America’s aspen, and a first-class example of how Greeks could preserve great beauty when they tried.

Kharon sat alone at a table facing the front door with his back to the wall. He ate only at this place in Livadia. He didn’t have to order; the waitress brought him “the usual.” As a rule, he avoided routine, for routine meant predictability and predictability too often proved deadly for someone in his line of work. But no one in Livadia knew his name or where he lived, much less when he’d stop for a meal. The only thing this restaurant knew was his preference for a beer and pork
souvlaki
with tomato, onion,
tzaziki
, and paprika all wrapped up in a pita. Hold the french fries.

The town never appealed to him; it was aesthetically neutral, but he sensed the hard moral edge and dedicated commitment required of those who struggled to survive on the land, principles lacking in those who saw the pursuit of quick money as the be-all and end-all of life.

Nothing in excess
ran through his mind. He smiled. His Delphic state of mind must be returning, for that phrase stood along with two others—“Know thyself” and “Make a pledge and mischief is nigh”—carved upon Delphi’s most celebrated site: the Temple of Apollo. A venerated place, dedicated to its patron God of Light, son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother to Artemis, and home to the Delphic Oracle and its prophetic visions.

From what Kharon knew of the gods’ carryings on, it seemed unlikely that Apollo or any other god had much to do with those carvings.

In the time of the gods, the Delphic Oracle was presided over by the goddess Themis—a bride of Zeus, divine instructor of mankind in the laws of justice and morality, and mother of the Fates. Delphi’s more modern origins dated back to Neolithic times, and though the Oracle held importance in pre-classical Greece—certainly as the nearby Gulf of Corinth grew in commercial importance—it was after the rededication of the Temple to Apollo in the fourth century BCE that the Oracle attained true prominence in the classical Greek world and beyond. The temple was ultimately destroyed and its Oracle silenced in 390 CE, but Kharon doubted whether an educated soul in the world had not heard of Delphi or its Oracle.

Many myths surrounded Apollo and Delphi, but they all flowed from the same premise: ancient Delphi represented the navel of the mother of Earth, personified in the god Gaia. Apollo had slain Python, the son of Gaia, while standing guard over his mother’s navel.

The version Kharon liked best had Apollo killing Python for trying to rape Apollo’s mother while he and his sister lay in their mother’s womb. The slain Python then fell into a fissure, and vapors released from his decomposing body found their way into the sanctuary of Apollo, intoxicating Pythia—the name given the priestess attending the Oracle—thereby allowing Apollo to convey his prophesies through her.

Kharon preferred that story because he saw the killing as a righteous deed, plus in the years of penance that Apollo was forced to serve for that act by an angry Gaia, Kharon saw a parallel to his own life.

Now Kharon, as Apollo once had, called Delphi home. But unlike Apollo’s majestic temple on the Sacred Way—standing high along the southwest slope of Mount Parnassos and overlooking the Pleistos River Valley’s seemingly endless olives, myrtle, pines, almonds, and thyme—Kharon made his home a bit west, on the outskirts of modern Delphi, living as anonymously as possible among two thousand, non-godlike souls struggling to survive very different times.

There, Kharon lived a simple life of
nothing in excess
and was content.
Not that he’d ever had a chance at a grander life, or expected to, for he took great care to avoid secular temptations, preferring to entrust his fortune to the Fates.

***

Andreas was away from his office when Kouros and Petro arrived at work the next morning, and by the time they got around to briefing him on their meeting with Aleko it was midafternoon.

When they’d finished, Andreas asked, “So tell me, what parts of his story did you actually believe?”

“That he makes his money selling booze, not blinding his customers with
bomba
,” said Kouros. “But he’s definitely passing off counterfeit as real. Didn’t even try to hide it.”

Petro nodded. “He’d be wasting his time telling me he didn’t fool around with his booze. Back when we worked together, he was the only bartender in the place, and I caught him adding water to liquor bottles. I’m sure that wasn’t the only time because he offered to cut me in on his action if I gave him a pass on telling the boss.”

“His action?” said Andreas. “How was he making money watering the booze if he wasn’t the owner?”

“Owners estimate receipts based upon a fixed number of drinks per bottle. By adding water, bartenders get to pour extra drinks out of a bottle and pocket the cash by never running the extra sales through the register.”

“Sort of like running your own bar on the owner’s inventory,” said Andreas. “Fair-minded guys, bartenders like that. They cheat the customers and owners equally.”

“That’s why owners like those new plastic pourer inserts Greek law requires in every liquor bottle,” said Petro. “You can’t add water through the insert unless you break it. It eliminates one way for bar staff to rob their owners. But guys like Aleko still steal from their customers by buying counterfeit booze in bottles that come with inserts, or if they tend their own bars, by ripping them out.”

Andreas chuckled. “I’m sure someone will find a way to get around the pourers and stick it to the owners. You almost have to admire the ingenuity of thieves. They always find a way. Sort of like salmon driven to swim upstream, overcoming one obstacle after another.”

“The customer still gets screwed,” said Petro.

“Always has, always will,” said Kouros.

“But it’s not our job to buy into that,” said Andreas. “Look at it this way. If Aleko’s supplier shows up on Thursday and you follow him around for a week, even if you never get any farther up the supply chain than the guy you’re following, you’ll still end up with a list of places dealing in untaxed liquor to pass on to the tax boys.”

“Yippee,” said Kouros.

“Hey, be happy with whatever little fishes you catch. You could starve waiting for a big one to bite.”

Kouros gave Andreas a puzzled look. “What’s with you and all these fish references?”

“Like I said, Lila has me on a diet. So I’m thinking fish. Would you prefer, ‘A bird in the hand is worth more than trampling through a field full of bullshit chasing ghosts’?”

Petro wrinkled his brow. “Am I missing something?”

Kouros nodded. “Yeah, a twisted sense of humor. But don’t worry there’s no known vaccine against it for cops. It will come to you, too, in time.”

“Why don’t you guys come over for dinner tonight? Lila would love to have you.”

“What’s the matter, you hoping if we come to dinner Lila might relent and let you eat
our
kind of food?” said Kouros.

“Hope springs eternal, but I doubt she’d fall for that. I just thought it would be nice to introduce Petro to Lila and Tassaki.”

“Thank you, Chief, I’d love to come,” said Petro.

Kouros turned and stared at Petro. “I’m going to have to teach you how to handle these situations. Rule one. Don’t rush in. We could have held out for the right to bring our own chocolate cake. Now we’re at diet man’s mercy.”

“Out of here, both of you.” Kouros and Petro headed for the door. “And no chocolate cake. You’ve got to be subtle if you want any chance at getting by the pastry-detector. Go with chocolate chip cookies. See you at nine.”

***

Petro craned his neck up and out the car window. “The chief lives here?”

“Yep.” Kouros eased the police car over a curb onto the cobblestones separating the roadway from the sidewalk running alongside the National Gardens toward the old Olympic Stadium at the end of the street. “That’s why I drove a blue and white. We couldn’t park here otherwise. With November 17-like terrorist crazies back in business, internal security won’t let just anyone park so close to the Presidential Palace.”

“Close? He lives right next door.”

“At 30 Irodou Atikou, to be precise.”

It was arguably the most exclusive street in Athens. Only a few blocks long and filled with money.

“Wow.”

“I had the same reaction the first time I came here. Chief’s wife comes from one of Greece’s oldest, most prominent families.”

“Isn’t her last name Vardi? I didn’t know that was a big-time Greek family name.”

“It isn’t. That was her late husband’s name. He made his money in shipping.”

Petro shook his head. “The rich always seem to marry the rich.”

Kouros smiled. “Though some do manage to marry a second-generation cop and find true happiness.”

“I guess there’s hope for us working class stiffs.”

“Not here, my friend. I already asked. She has no sisters.” Kouros opened the car door. “Don’t forget the cookies. You carry them. Lila doesn’t know you, and she’s too much of a lady to tear you a new asshole for bringing them. But if I brought them…” Kouros waved his hand in the air as he got out of the car. “Don’t worry, man. She’s not what you might expect.”

They walked across the street into the immaculately maintained lobby of a six-story, pre-World War II Athens apartment building. The doorman directed them to an elevator, and the operator took them to the sixth floor.

The elevator opened directly into a large entry foyer. Kouros stepped out and led the way toward a pair of French doors at the far end. He pointed, “There’s a bell to the right.”

Before either had the chance to press the bell, the doors opened and a young woman dressed in a black maid’s uniform and starched white apron stood smiling at them. “Good evening, Detective Kouros. The doorman said you were on your way up.”

“Hi, Marietta. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“This is Officer Petro. He works with us.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Officer.” She pointed at the box in Petro’s hand. “I’ll take that, thank you.”

“No need to,” said Kouros.

Marietta smiled. “Missus Vardi told me to tell you that under no circumstances was I to allow you, or whoever you were with, to smuggle pastries into the house.”

“She actually said that?”

“She also said to tell you, ‘Nice try.’”

Kouros looked at Petro. “Like I said, not what you might expect. It’s all right. Turn over the cookies.”

Marietta led them through a series of rooms filled with antiques and paintings. Andreas and Lila stood in a room lined with windows offering an unobstructed view of the Acropolis lit up at night.

Petro stared out the windows as Kouros kissed Lila on both cheeks and turned to introduce him.