Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (9 page)

"You will never find Michail knocking on doors," Grandma said. "Our enemies are smart. Maybe they will answer questions, but they will not tell the truth. They have no honor." Because the head of one of Greece's organized crime syndicates is a reliable moral barometer. "For now you must be patient. Whoever has him, they will make their demands soon."

"And if they don't?"

"The
skordalia
is ready." She poured the garlic goop into a bowl, sealed it with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge. "Tomorrow I will fry fish."

What else could I do? I wasn't exactly bad-guy material, despite the distinctive bend on one side of the family tree. Threats and torture weren't my way. At work my catchphrase was, "Can you pay this past-due bill at this time?" not, "Pony up the goods or die." Although I have heard stories about people in my line of work who stoop.
Can't pay the three cents you owe? No problem. We'll come over and snatch your firstborn this afternoon
.

As soon as she shuffled outside to crochet and gab with the wives, I grabbed the phone and called the only non-Family—capital F—member I knew in Greece.

Detective Melas picked up. "Are you calling on the home phone again?"

"Yes. Don't hang up—please!"

Big sigh. "What do you want?"

"Information." I told him about my visit to Dad's ex's house, told him what Grandma had said about her enemies and knocking on doors. Then I begged him to give me something—anything."

"No," he said. "Forget it. I'm the good guy. What kind of good guy would I be if I helped you get yourself killed? You want my help? Let me drive you to the airport."

"No. Staying. Even if I had a passport I'd stay."

"Lady, you've got a death wish."

"
La la la
. I can't hear you. Does that sound familiar?"

His voice dropped to an agitated whisper. "Your father isn't one of the good guys, Katerina. When he lived here he did bad things. I'm not telling you anything else. It isn't worth my life or my job. But the offer for a ride to the airport is always open. We can stop by the US Embassy in Athens and get you a passport."

I dumped the phone in its cradle, then went in search of my cell phone. Thirty minutes—and a minor skirmish with a customer service rep that I, by some miracle, won—later, I called him back.

"Melas," the detective said.

"It's Katerina."

"Ready to go to the airport?"

"Not going. I'm calling you on my cell phone. It's safe. Talk."

"Jesus," he said, "You're gonna get me killed. Okay. Jesus." He went silent for minute. "They say your father did wet work for your grandmother. You know what that is?"

"Who said?"

"Everyone. Old cops. Retired and dead."

I wondered how dead cops could say anything, but I didn't ask in case there was a blindingly obvious answer. "What's wet work?" It didn't sound good, whatever it was.

"What's wet?" he asked me.

"Water."

"Blood," he said. "Blood is wet. Wet work is murder. Assassination. Anything where blood is spilled. That's what your father did."

The room spun. My ears went all buzzy. "He's a truck driver."

Through the sudden static in my head Melas said, "Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But he wasn't always a truck driver."

"Oh boy." Where the ceiling used to be there were now hundreds of black spots zinging into each other the way bumper cars do when they're being steered by drunks. "When you said he was Grandma's right fist I assumed you meant he did paperwork."

"That's Rita's job."

I chewed on my lip while I did some fast thinking. Whatever Dad used to do, he was still Dad. "Doesn't matter. I'm not going home until I find him."

"There's no record of his entry. He might not even be in Greece."

"If not Greece, then where?"

"He could still be in America. Why is your family so sure he's here?"

"Wait—how do you know there's no record?"

"Your grandmother had us check."

"Isn't that against some kind of good-guy code or something?"

"Just because we're on opposite teams, doesn't mean we don't sometimes borrow a cup of sugar."

"What about the ex girlfriend?"

"Dina? Forget her," he said. "She's a fruit."

I considered the angles—all two of them. "Maybe he went into protective custody. A witness protection thing."

"You believe that you'll believe anything." There was a pause. I pictured him scratching his head. "You're taking this well."

"Window dressing. On the inside I'm totally crazy."

"You give good window." He sounded dubious.

"So what do you think? Give me something, Detective Melas. Anything."

He sighed again. I'd pushed the guy into using up his yearly allotment of exasperation. "I think someone wants something and they're going to use him to get it. And I think he's in Greece, but he came in via a backdoor, same as you."

"Who can do that?"

"Money can cut a gordian knot faster than a sword."

"So whoever did this has a lot money?"

"Maybe even more than your family. If we can't find him and your grandmother can't either, then we're talking a lot of power. Wherever he is, they're hiding him well, and they'll keep doing that until they can use him. But from the stories I've heard about your father, I bet he's doing everything he can to escape. He's a resourceful man. Now do yourself a favor and go home."

"Never give up, never surrender," I said, and after thanking him, I punched END.

Now what?

With my phone at my disposal, I had a link to the outside world that didn't take a detour through my family.

Where to start? Where it all began, of course: With my Family—capital F—and whoever was their numero uno enemy.

I flopped back on my borrowed bed and got busy scouring the internet.

T
he internet turned
out to be a real know-it-all when it came to organized crime. I typed in what I wanted to know, and it coughed up the name of Grandma's biggest local nemesis. His name was George Kefalas, and he—among other things—was one of the country's biggest producers of table olives and olive oil. Kefalas Olives's main factory was nearby, in one of the city's beachside suburbs. An image search showed him to be a well-preserved mid-seventies man who enjoyed shaking hands with important-looking people.

His grudge against Grandma originated with a political dispute. About what, the internet didn't say. But the two families were enemies—sworn enemies, as far as Kefalas was concerned. Grandma didn't strike me as someone who divided enemies into sworn and not-sworn piles.

My first stop was going to be Kefalas Olives, but not until tomorrow. Jet lag was gunning for me, and it was coming on fast.

F
or a moment
the world was cotton candy-filled, chocolate-scented, and I had my own pony I'd named Delilah. Then the sun snuck into the bedroom and punched me in the eyes. I'd fallen asleep with the shutters open, and now I was paying the price. Something had crawled into my mouth to die during the night. It was currently decomposing on my tongue. Ugh.

The house was deserted again, so I made coffee, ate a piece of the hairy baklava on the counter, then cleaned up after myself. Fed and freshly caffeinated, I hit the shower and planned Operation Kefalas.

Grandma wasn't going to just let me have a car—not to go schmoozing with her enemies— so I rented one of my own online, with GPS and enough insurance to cover another Baby Dimitri molotov cocktail.

Walking through the gate was bound to come with a serving of uncomfortable questions, and maybe orders to sit and stay. So erring on the side of caution, I snuck out of the house and scaled the compound wall. They made it easy for me: lots of finger and footholds.

After a short hike through the orchards surrounding the property, I caught the bus to Volos, riding alongside an old woman with a bag of live chickens. Every so often they'd jostle about in the bag, their clucking bewildered. Probably they'd heard horror stories about soup and pie back in the yard, and now they were thinking this soup thing didn't seem so bad. Poor, stupid chickens.

A half hour—and a stack of paperwork later—the tiny Toyota Yaris was mine-ish, and I was wending my way along the Pagasetic Gulf's beachside road, bound for Agria, a small village that had been recently gulped down by the city.

Pretty place. Very touristy. Lots of semi-naked people strolling around, collecting rays. Just a wild guess, but the tanned bodies were locals, while the white and red had to be out-of-towners, here to cultivate their very own melanomas.

The talking map—which I'd silenced with the stab of a button—told me to hike left at the next corner. So, seeing no reason to get all creative and disobey it, I took the next left and found myself on a street without all the spit polish of the promenade. This one was a mixture of warehouses and smallish factories, most of them with sad, graffitied faces. The place stunk like Brooklyn in early August. Garbage, or something like it. The Kefalas Olive factory was hogging the corner, giant wood door raised halfway, like it couldn't figure out if it was closed or open for business.

I parked at the curb, under the pathetic shade of a wannabe tree, jogged across the street, stuck my head under the door.

"Hello?"

This was the source of the stink. The factory was pouring an olive brine river into the street, where the hot road and sun were rotting it fast. The place looked empty, what I could see of it.

Something bit my ass. I yelped and jumped in the same moment, bashing my head on the sliding door.

My survival instincts told me to hit first, ask questions when it was too late and I was already in handcuffs, but my customer service training kicked in, limiting my reaction to a primal yell. Two young guys swaggered to a stop as I roared. They blew me kisses, wolf whistled. Barely out of middle school, the two of them.

"Jesus Christ," I muttered.

Both kids had music video hair, gelled into fauxhawks. The one closest to me smirked as he dragged his gaze up and down my body like he was painting a fence. "You don't have to call me Jesus Christ in public. Save it for when you're on my dick."

"Where are your mothers?" I shouted.

The other kid looked at his buddy. "My sister's a bitch when she's bleeding, too."

I launched into them, describing in great detail what I'd do if I was truly my grandmother's granddaughter. By the time they started moving again, their grins were dead and they'd lost some of that swagger.

Did I feel guilty?

Yep.

Must have been the good Greek girl buried inside me. The one buried inside the gangster's kid. Concealed under the all-American slick of makeup. A regular Russian nesting doll. Just two days ago, I'd been the average slightly lower than middle class American woman. Today I was one of the Corleone grandkids. Which made my father one of the Corleone kids. Hopefully not Sonny or Fredo. Spoiler alert: Nothing good happened to those poor saps.

On the other side of the door, inside the olive factory, something moved. More of a feeling than a sound. Someone—or something—knew I'd come calling. Which wasn't exactly a surprise. It's why I'd called out. I wasn't exactly shooting for stealth. Still, now I was wishing I'd brought a flamethrower, because I couldn't help thinking about—of all places—Japan.

When people's minds turn to horrifying, deadly creatures, usually the first place that pops into their heads is Australia. Okay, Australia
is
filled with snakes, spiders, and jellyfish that want to murder you, but they're working slowly. New Zealand is shipping over fresh meat faster than the wildlife can whack 'em.

But me, my first thought is always Japan. Because they have the hornet to end all hornets (and other living creatures): the Japanese giant hornet, or as they call it in their home country, the giant sparrow bee. It can be the length of a finger and as thick as two. It will puncture you with its stinger. It will holler for all its hornet buddies. And together they will kill you. Why? Because why not? Unless you're a Japanese honey bee, and you've got five hundred or so Japanese honey bee buddies to cook and suffocate the hornet to death, you don't stand a chance.

I was thinking about it now because the that noise, that movement in the factory, was exactly how I imagined a massive Japanese giant hornet attack would start. Given that I was thousands of miles away from Asia, my common sense knew it couldn't possibly be Japanese giant hornets. But my base self—the part that, after all that evolution, still had only one food out of the primordial ooze and one foot in because it wasn't convinced it was safe out here—told me those hornets might have European cousins.

What a sissy, right?

I ducked under the door, trying not to smash my skull this time. Light painted part of a pale square on the concrete floor, then quit before finishing the job.

"Hello?" I called out again, fully expecting to be ignored a second time.

But I wasn't. Whatever had moved in here had suddenly found its voice, which crossed European giant hornets off my list.

"What do you want?"

I shoved away the bowl of cowardly custard wobbling inside my chest. "I'm looking for George Kefalas."

"Dead."

Poof
! That was the sound of my lead evaporating. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry that
poutsokleftis
is dead?"

A shadow stepped into the thin light. A big shadow. A freighter of a man. Small, mean eyes, thin lips, vocal cords that had been tossed into a rock tumbler along with a handful of glass. Skin the color of a gingerbread man. Face that could take a week-long beating without looking worse. Dark blue overalls covered him from neck to boots. Didn't look like he moved fast, but when he did move it was with calculated, deadly precision. My brainstem fired a warning shot, but I was trying to decide if his calling George Kefalas a
dick thief
was literal or figurative.

"What do you want with George Kefalas?" he went on.

I planted myself on the concrete—hard—and tried not to look like a dull roar could blow me away. My hand I offered without wincing. "Katerina Makris."