Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) (9 page)

Meers had written the name of a beach –
Ka
ki
Tha
lassa
– on the piece of paper he’d given them. They arrived there early, at 6:45 a.m. The beach was deserted. Bob and George got out of the car and looked around. A strong wind blowing off the water whipped the sand into a stinging frenzy. They retreated to the car and wiped the sand from their eyes.

“Damn! The wind must be blowing forty miles an hour,” Bob said. “My face feels like it got hit by a cactus.”

The ticking of the car’s clock sounded louder and louder with each passing minute.

“Do you think he’ll show?” Liz asked.

“He’ll be here,” George answered. “He’s got too much to lose if he doesn’t.”

Meers finally drove up, twenty minutes late, with a passenger seated in the back of his black Volvo.

“Wait here,” George ordered.

Using his hand to shield his eyes from the blowing sand, George walked to Meers’ car. He opened the right rear door and slid onto the backseat, pulling the door shut behind him. Meers looked back at George. “I’ll leave you guys alone,” he said. Meers then turned and left the car.

The stranger across from him looked straight ahead, not acknowledging George in any way.

“Thank you for coming,” George said, extending his right hand.

The man didn’t take the hand, but did finally turn his head to look at George.

George withdrew his hand and brushed his windblown hair off his forehead while taking the measure of the other man. He could tell from his features the man was a Gypsy. He had a curved white scar running down the left side of his face, from his cheekbone to the rim of his jaw. The scar seemed to shine against his mahogany skin. The man’s eyes were ebony-colored.

“I take it you don’t like being here,” George said in Greek.

Leering at George with a “you must be stupid” look on his face, the man said, “If it ever gets back to the
Rom
I helped you, my own clan will kill me. Let’s get this over with.”

“All right. Who’s behind the kidnappings of children in Greece?”

“Why the fuck should I tell you?” the Gypsy said, his mouth twisting into a cruel slash.

He wants money, George thought. He glared at the Gypsy, who leaned back against the car seat and smiled smugly. George leaped at the man and grabbed his throat. “You’re going to tell me everything,” he said in a dead-calm voice. “If you hesitate once, if you lie to me, I will rip your throat out.”

Croaking through compressed vocal chords, the man raised a hand in submission. “Okay! Ease up.”

George released him, all the while watching his eyes. They seemed to have turned even blacker. He watched the man massage his throat. “We know Gypsies have done at least some of the kidnappings,” George said. “Who are they?”

“It’s not
Gypsies
. You say it as if all of
Rom
is behind the kidnappings. It’s only a small band of renegades.”

“Who’s their leader?”

“A mean sonofabitch,” the man answered. “Guy named Radko, Stefan Radko. His own
kumpan
i
a
won’t have anything to do with him. Been working with the Bulgarians, kidnapping kids for over twenty years. He’s in his forties now. In tight with the Bulgarian Secret Police.”

“How do you know so much about Radko?”

“Radko’s a
Rom
legend. Gypsy mothers tell their children he’s the bogeyman. The clan leaders are afraid if it ever gets out that a Gypsy has been kidnapping Greek children, there’ll be a massacre of Gypsies all over the country.”

George rubbed his face with his hands and focused on the sound of the sand blowing against the car. After a moment, he looked over at the Gypsy and asked, “Where can I find Radko?”

“I don’t know. I heard he has a cousin or nephew, last name Milatko, living in Athens. I can’t remember his first name.”

“Where are the kidnapped children being taken?” George asked.

“Somewhere in Bulgaria.”

“Does Petrich sound familiar?”

“That’s it!” the Gypsy exclaimed. “How did you know?”

Nothing’s changed, George thought.

“Okay, one last question,” George said, while he pulled the handle to open the door. “Since you’re working for the Americans, why didn’t you give them this information before?”

“No one asked,” the Gypsy replied, laughing.

That drove George over the edge. The years of bottled-up anger and sadness overflowed. He leaned toward the Gypsy. “If Meers hadn’t brought you here, I’d slit your throat. You’re slime of the worst kind.” Then he spat at the man’s feet and turned to open the car door.

The Gypsy lunged – something flashed in his hand. George felt a hot sensation just below his left armpit. He fell through the open door onto the sand. The Gypsy scrambled across the seat after him. “You bastard!” he screamed. “You fucking put your filthy hands on me! You call me slime!”

George rolled on his back and kicked at the door, slamming it against the man’s knife arm. The knife fell to the sand. The Gypsy pushed the door open, tumbled out of the car, and lunged for the weapon. George grabbed the Gypsy’s wrist as the man wrapped his fingers around the knife handle. They wrestled in the sand, rolling over and over, gouging and hitting each other with their free hands, fighting for control of the knife. George felt blood running from the wound in his side. The Gypsy managed to roll on top of him and press his weight behind the knife – the blade quivering just inches above George’s heart.

George got both hands on the man’s wrist and pushed up, fighting to raise the point of the blade higher. The two men matched one another’s strength, George pushing upward, the Gypsy pressing down. George suddenly changed tactics. Instead of pushing upward, he turned his wrists outward, twisting the other man’s hands and the knife back at the man’s chest. George pushed, driving the blade into the other man’s chest. The Gypsy groaned and then cursed George.

George rolled the man off him at the moment Meers ran up.

“Sonofabitch!” Meers shouted. “What the hell happened?”

“He pulled a knife.”

Meers knelt next to the now-still Gypsy. He pressed two fingers against the side of the man’s throat. “Damn!,” he said.

“We’ve got to get rid of the body,” George said, as Bob and Liz ran up.

“Oh my God,” Liz said breathlessly. “George, what happened?”

George ignored her.

Meers looked down at the Gypsy again. “Shit, shit, shit. How the hell am I going to explain this to my boss?”

“It seems to me,” George said in a weakening voice, “that you’d be better off not explaining anything to your boss. Just dump the body and claim you never heard from him again.”

Bob glanced at George who was pale and perspiring profusely.

Meers suddenly blurted, “Help me put the body in my car. Then I want you all out of here.”

Bob and Meers lifted the Gypsy’s body into the trunk of Meer’s car. Meers ran around the car and opened the driver side door. He yelled across the car roof, shielding his eyes from the blowing sand. “What are you waiting for? Get the hell out of here. I’ll call you at your house later.” He then got behind the wheel and drove off the beach toward the road.

Bob started for his car when George groaned and sagged to the sand.

“My God, he’s hurt,” Liz said. “He’s bleeding.”

“Wait here; I’ll get our car,” Bob told her.

When Bob returned and got out of his car, he and Liz helped George get up and into the back seat. After telling Liz to get the first-aid kit from the trunk, Bob removed George’s jacket. He tore a strip of cloth from George’s shirt to wipe blood away from the upper left side of his chest.

“How bad is it?” George asked weakly.

“Pretty clean wound,” Bob said. “I think we’ll be able to stop the bleeding with a pressure bandage.”

Liz opened the other rear door and got in next to George. She opened the first-aid kit and went to work on him.

Bob watched Liz patch up George. “Are you okay?” he asked George.

“I’ll be fine if you can find me a couple of pain killers and a bottle of Ouzo as a chaser.”

“It sounds like he’ll live,” Liz said, smiling at George.

“We’d better get him back to our place,” Bob said.

“He should see a doctor,” Liz suggested.

“Call Meers when we get to your place,” George said. “He’s sure to know a doctor who will keep his mouth shut.”

While Liz sat with George in the backseat, Bob got behind the wheel and floored the accelerator, sending sand shooting off the spinning rear tires. He glanced at Liz in the rearview mirror. She was sitting quietly next to George. My innocent little wife is getting tougher by the minute, Bob thought. It gave him no pleasure.