Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (8 page)

I wasn’t sure relations with a monkey weren’t illegal in Greece. There was that whole alleged “monkey bite” that supposedly killed King Alexander in the early 1900s, so I didn’t comment on the first part.

“You can’t steal a car!”

His forehead scrunched. “Why not? Other assassins do it.”

“Why don’t you rent one?”

“I don’t have a license. The plan was to get one after Fatmir paid me for killing you.”

A thought crept across my mind. “Wait—I’m your first contract?”

He nodded.

Shit.

Damn it.

I felt sorry for the guy. I rubbed a hand across my forehead. A headache was coming, I knew it.

“You want to ride back to the compound with me?”

“What for?”

“Maybe Grandma will let you borrow one of our cars.”

He brightened. “You think she’d be okay with that?”

“As long as you don’t kill me.”

He thought about it. “Okay.”

M
y grandmother was standing
by the fountain when we eased up to the compound gates. With her was Xander, dressed down in baggy cargo shorts and a T-shirt. A third person was with them, a face I didn’t recognize. In her hands the woman held a handkerchief. They worked constantly, twisting the cotton, wringing its wretched neck. Her face was stricken, her posture desperate and defeated. I put her in her mid sixties, not a widow judging from the colorful geometric print dress she wore. Her heels hung slightly over the backs of her sandals.

I pulled through the gates, parked. Grandma waved me over.

“Wait there,” I told Elias, nodding to the garage. I couldn’t leave him sitting in the sun.

“This is my granddaughter,” Grandma was saying as I walked over. “Katerina, this is Kyria Koufo. She has come to me with a problem.” She gestured for her guest to speak. “Tell Katerina what you have told me.”

“But she’s a girl—“

“She is my granddaughter,” Grandma said, a steel blade under the velvet cushion of her words.

The other woman didn’t look convinced. Her eyes darted from Grandma to me, and back again, as though seeking a loophole. If there had been one I’d have tossed it to her. Something about her demeanor suggested that her story wasn’t only sad, but humiliating.

“It is my husband,” she said, lying down under Grandma’s steamroller. “He sleeps with my friend. Both of them betraying me, those snakes. That I could have lived with, but yesterday I discovered they have concocted a plan to kill me. My husband will inherit everything, and he and my friend will live a pretty life together while I rot in the ground with worms gnawing on my lips.”

I wasn’t sure worms gnawed, but what did I know about worm physiology?

“He cannot be allowed to get away with this,” she went on.

“Kyria Koufo is a woman of considerable wealth,” Grandma said. “Wealth she has earned. We have known each other for many years.”

The scorned woman bobbed her fashionably coiffed head. “I know your grandmother is wise in these matters, so I have come to her for counsel.”

Grandma looked up at me. “I want to know, Katerina, what would you do?”

My brain blew a gasket. “Excuse me?”

“How would you handle this problem?”

‘
I don’t know’
probably wasn’t the answer Grandma was looking for, or one she’d accept. I chewed on the inside of my cheek while I considered the angles.

“What outcome do you want?” I asked Kyria Koufo. “Do you want to keep your husband? Divorce him?”

“I told her not to marry him,” Grandma said. “I knew he would be a problem. Is that not true?”

Kyria Koufo bowed her head. “I was weak. Blind.”

“Love has a funny way of making you its bitch,” I said. They looked at me blankly. “It’s an American saying. It means love can make you do what it wants.”

“I never loved him,” Kyria Koufo said. “But he is hung like a bull.”

Yikes. There was a visual I didn’t need. “So … what do you want to do?”

“He is my husband, she cannot have him.”

“You want to keep him?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I want her not to have him.”

That seemed fair-ish. “If you tell them you know about their plan, they’ll deny it. If you try to end it first, he’ll … uh …
talk
you out of it—if it’s the money he wants.” Think, think, think. “How did you find out?”

Grandma spoke. “They tried to hire a contractor.”

That was a pretty way of saying the couple tried to hire a hitman.

“One you know, I presume?” I asked her.

Grandma gave a one-shouldered shrug.

Kyria Koufo closed her eyes. “If he had come to me like a man and asked for a divorce, I would have been fair. He was a good, attentive husband, until this. Five percent of my fortune could have been his.”

Five percent, eh? The epitome of generosity.

“Why don’t you ask him for a divorce and offer him that five percent settlement?”

“And let her have him?” She stabbed her chest with one finger. “Never!”

What was I supposed to suggest? The woman was the architect of her own problems.

“You could push her down some stairs,” I said, joking.

Kyria Koufo looked at Grandma. “Clever girl. That idea I like.”

“I was joking,” I yelped. “For the record, it wasn’t a suggestion.”

She stuck a hand in her pocket and pulled out an old-fashioned change purse, stiff satin with a silver clasp. She snapped it open, retrieved some coins, pressed them into my hand, folding my fingers around the cool metal. “Buy yourself something nice, eh?”

“You can go now, Katerina,” Grandma said.

When I looked back, Kyria Koufo was spitting out words in a thick stream, while Grandma stared at some distant point, far beyond the iron gates.

I
t still didn’t seem
possible that I, Katerina Makris, who had never been anywhere outside of the United States, was in Greece. At home, places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone were old, but they lacked a certain weathering that crossed the line between old and ancient. Greece was a heap of ancient things built on top of something antediluvian, stacked on the very beginning of time itself. Greece felt like God’s starting point and, at times, His first draft.

What was Meteora if it wasn’t a blip in the blueprint, the result of a hand not yet used to the drafting pencil?

The sandstone towers stood isolated between the Pindos Mountains and the Plain of Thessaly. The towers that were still occupied by monasteries and their religious guardians were often speckled with tourists traipsing up the hundreds of steps thoughtfully cut into the steps, now that hauling people up via basket or rope was considered a safety issue.

T
he next morning
I was loading up my car for a road trip I hadn’t told Grandma about, when Donk rolled up to the gatehouse on his scooter.

“Yiorgos,” I said.

His mouth drooped. “Donk. I don’t get why I’m stuck with you.”

“You misunderstood. I’m stuck with you.”

“Are you kanksta?”

“No.”

“You got a gun?”

I retrieved Dad’s old slingshot from my bag. “This is so much better than a gun.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

His gaze wiped itself across my Beetle. “This is a girl’s car.”

“Don’t like it? You can ride in the trunk.”

Soft chuffing broke out behind me. I whirled around to see Xander laughing. He was soaping up his motorcycle. It was big and black and he rode it hard.

“He’s a gangster,” I said to the brat. “You should go with him.”

Xander’s laughter died suddenly. Donk had that effect on people.

“Can’t,” Donk said. “My uncle said I’ve got to go with you or he’s going to cut my mother’s allowance.”

“Your mother gets an allowance?”

“She doesn’t work.”

“Why not?”

He gave me a look like I was clearly Greece’s biggest idiot. I wasn’t—not while Greek Eminem was standing in front of me in his saggy pants. “Because she’s a mobster’s sister,” he said. Then he looked me up and down. It made me feel like slapping him. “I’m the nephew of a powerful man. You want to give me
tsibouki
?”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen. I heard you old ladies like them young. Coukar.”

“I’m twenty-eight and I’m too old for your crap,” I said. “Get in the car.”

“Where are we going?”

“Road trip.”

It was ninety or so miles to Meteora. We could be there and back in a day—easy—me and my sidekick, Donk. Too bad the idea of being alone with this schmuck made me want to barf. I needed company, solidarity, someone who knew how to wear pants.

“What if I don’t want to go on a road trip?” he said.

“It’s not optional.”

“I don’t have a permission slip.”

“Do I look like I care?” I trotted over to Xander, who was busy with a sponge. “Is Stavros around?”

He shook his head.

Damn. I didn’t want to go it alone with Snoop Amoeba here.

“Come on,” I said. Donk rolled his eyes, muttered something under his breath. But he followed me through the arch, into the courtyard.

He blew out a whistle. “Cool creeb,” he said in English, doing a hatchet job on my mother tongue. “What’s with the crack house in the middle?”

It was one thing for me to insult Grandma’s dilapidated shack. It was quite another for someone with droopy drawers and a stick-on tattoo of knuckle-dusters on his … I was going to say bicep, but it looked more like his arm swallowed a mouse. Anyway, this kid wasn’t going to insult Grandma’s hovel. The end.

I stopped. Looked him dead in the eye. “That’s where the wicked witch lives. She eats disobedient children.”

“Are you on your period?”

“Don’t make me hurt you, Yiorgos.”

He winced. “Okay, okay. Don’t have to be a bitch about it.”

It was all I could do not to grab him by the ear and drag him upstairs. I settled for stomping. Stomping was for angry people and giants—and I was no giant.

I knocked on Marika and Takis’ front door. It flew open a moment later.

“Katerina!” She looked past me to the scowling Donk, lurking in my shadow. “Who is this?”

“Yiorgos. He’s Baby Dimitri’s nephew. I’m giving him lessons.”

“Don’t say that name,” Donk said.

Marika shot him a warning glance. “What kind of lessons?”

“He’s learning how not to be a
kolotripos
.” I mouthed the last word, which was Greek for asshole, in case her kids were within earshot.

“Donk,” the boy said. “My name is Donk.”

She squelched a smile. “Come in, eat, drink. Are you hungry? You look hungry.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I was kind of hoping you might want to go for a drive.”

“A drive?”

“In my car.”

“On …” Her eyes lit up. “… An adventure?”

“On a small adventure.” I held up my fingers to show her how small. My finger and thumb weren’t even an inch apart. But Marika didn’t look like she minded. An adventure was an adventure was an adventure.

“Takis never takes me on adventures, only Walt Disney World. And that was not an adventure. He ate and drank and looked at girls while I dealt with the boys.”

“So you deserve an adventure.”

“I think,” she said slowly, “I would like an adventure.”

“It might be dangerous,” I warned her.

“No problem. I will bring supplies.”

F
ifteen minutes later
, Marika was done mustering supplies. She had changed from her housedress into another nearly identical flowery dress. Her hair was like mine, up in a no-nonsense ponytail. She was carrying a cooler in one hand and a big, black handbag over one shoulder.

No food necessary, I’d told her before Donk and I had come downstairs to wait, and her eyes widened. “You mean we are going to … eat out?”

“Scout’s honor,” I said, although I’d never been a Boy Scout and Marika had no idea what I was talking about anyway. All she knew was that it was a solemn promise, and that we were going to eat food she didn’t have to cook. I was going to have words with Takis when he and Aunt Rita returned from their powwow with Fatmir the Poor. There was no actual law about taking your wife out for dinner once in a while, but it was bad manners not to.

So Marika had forgone the food, but she brought out a cooler anyway.

“What’s in the cooler?”

“Insurance,” she said. She handed it to Donk.

He folded his arms. “Homie don’t carry nothink,” he said in mangled English.

“Carry the cooler,” I said.

“No. You can’t make me.”

I looked at Marika.

“I have got this,” she said, and clobbered his ear.

“Ow!” he wailed. He snatched up the cooler and trudged to the Beetle.

“Put it in the backseat,” she called out.

Xander was still sponging down his motorcycle.

“We’ll be back tonight,” I told him.

He gave me a look like I was supposed to tell him where I was going, and I gave him a look right back that said no way, wasn’t happening. Grandma wasn’t the FTA; I wasn’t required to file a flight plan. Anyway, I was sure they had a transmitter on my car.

“What are you doing?” I asked Donk. He’d tossed the cooler in the backseat and grabbed shotgun for himself.

“Nobody puts Donk in the backseat.”

Marika slapped the back of his head. “Get in the back,” she said.

“What’s wrong with you?” he howled.

I grinned. “She’s got a bunch of sons and her husband’s a henchman. She’s not about to tolerate bad manners from Snoop Pipsqueak.”

His head tilted, shaving several points off his IQ. “What is ‘pipsqueak’?”

“Google it,” I said.

Marika and I fastened our seat belts and blasted out of the compound.

W
e ran out of city
, then we ran out of villages, and soon we were on a thin road to the middle of Nowhere, Greece. Nowhere, Greece is somehow more charming and picturesque than Nowhere, USA. Pockets of wildflowers had spilled onto hillsides. The silver-green olive trees snarled at beeches, both of them wrestling for the same thimble of water. In places, the road seemed to be on the endangered species list: its edges had giant bite marks where the earth had been shaken away, leaving the blacktop nothing to sit on.

“This is boring,” Donk said from the backseat, where he was slouched with one arm draped over the door. “You bitches are boring. I want to stop at a strip club. Are there strip clubs wherever we’re going?”

“Sure,” I said. “They dress up like nuns.”

“I plowed a nun once. That’s how good I am. Even a nun wanted a piece of the Donk.”

This one was an eye-roll a minute.

“Kid,” I said, “I don’t even know how you can say that with a straight face.”

“You don’t believe me? Who wouldn’t want a piece of this?”

I made the mistake of glancing back. He was manhandling his mortadella—with enthusiasm and vigor.

Oh, God. “You’ll go blind,” I said.

“You’ll go blind when I shoot it in your eye.”

Marika peered in the rearview mirror. “That? My youngest was bigger than that when he was born.”

Mr. Happy got a sudden sad-on. “Bitches,” Donk said. “Always keeping men down.”

“You are not a man,” Marika told him. The kid sank into the backseat like punched dough.

I grinned at her. “You’re good.”

“He’s nothing compared to Takis.”

“Who’s Takis?” Donk asked.

“My husband. And he does bad things.”

Donk unclipped his seatbelt, scooted closer. “What sort of bad things?”

“I do not ask, but I pray. Every day I go to church to pray for him.”

Takis was a weasel but he got the job done. I was about ninety-nine percent certain he chopped off the Baptist’s head with an axe and stuffed it in a jute sack after Xander blasted the former cop’s cerebellum out of his skull. But I wasn’t about to tell his wife or the kid in the backseat. Takis didn’t seem like he was down with the whole caring and sharing thing. Mobsters, in their own way, were like cops. There were parts of the job they couldn’t take home.

“Prayer.” The kid scoffed.

For a moment I thought Marika was going to reach back and slap his head again, but she settled into the seat.

After a while she said, “There’s someone following us in one of Baboulas’ cars.”

“That’s Elias, my assassin. Grandma let him have one of ours.”

Donk scooted forward again. “You’ve got an assassin? What does he want?”

“Not too bright this one,” Marika said.

“To kill me, mostly.”

“Why doesn’t he shoot your tires out or something?”

“Because he’s not going to kill me. He’s following me around, making it look like he wants to kill me.”

“Why?”

“To placate his boss while negotiators talk him out of the contract.”

“He’s a double-agent?” The kid flopped back. “Cool,” he said in English.

Marika’s head swiveled on its stalk, in my direction. “Who did Baboulas send to negotiate?”

My brain stuttered. I couldn’t
not
tell her the truth, could I? Marika and I were on our way to being friends. We were on an adventure together—an adventure that might be dangerous. You have to be honest when you’re on a dangerous adventure together. It’s in the unofficial rulebook.

“Aunt Rita,” I said.

“Who else?”

“Maybe Grandma sent Takis, too.”

“To negotiate? My Virgin Mary! He can’t even discipline our children, how can he negotiate for your life?”

“I kind of wondered the same thing,” I said. “He’s not exactly subtle.”

“He is as subtle as an avalanche of minotaurs.”

“As subtle as a swimming pool filled with spiders.”

“As a bag of Zeus’s thunderbolts,” she said.

Donk tossed his two cents in. “As subtle as triple-D tits.”

“Nobody asked you,” I said.

“You’re boring. Even that fat Bulgarian drug dealer was more fun.”

“Going on an adventure is good.” Marika adjusted her sunglasses and rested her arm on the open window. We had the top down, breeze blowing back our hair. “It’s about time someone else in my family had some fun. This is a new beginning, I can feel it.”

The village of Kalabaka was a white and red rug thrown over Meteora’s feet. It was quaint, charming, and all of those adjectives that suggested this was a place that liked to look good on a postcard but hated unwed mothers. Towering over the village, a pudgy gargoyle on its stone perch, was the Monastery of the Holy Trinity.

Marika clutched her chest. “Meteora! When we were courting Takis promised to bring me here, but we never came. The minute we were married—bam!—the babies came and the romance was dead.”

“There was romance?”

“In the beginning. He used to steal flowers from Baboulas’ garden, until she threatened to chop off his hand for stealing.”

We cruised through the streets of Kalabaka. I’d come here with nothing but a vague reference to a place that may or may not exist.

“How are we going to find this place?” I mumbled.

“You’re worse than boring,” Donk said. “You’re a boring idiot.”

I stopped the car. Beside us, dozens of pairs of shoes were lined up on the sidewalk. Alongside them, on metal racks, cute handmade bags and jewelry caught the sunlight and flung it in my eyes. A wrinkled leather sack in a black dress zoomed in on us.

“You want new shoes? For you, cheap!”

“Thank you,” I called out, “but I don’t need new shoes.”

“Everybody needs new shoes,” the old woman said.

“Except me.”

“What about them?” She nodded to my passengers. “They look like they need new shoes.”

“They don’t need new shoes either, but thank you.”

“Take your ‘thank you’ to the devil! And move that car before I call the police.”

“Wow, you really know how to make friends,” Donk said from the backseat.

I hooked a thumb in his direction. “He needs new shoes.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “I don’t want some old goat’s shoes! I wear Air Chordans.”

The old woman slammed her hands down on her hips. Her chin and chest went into defense mode. “What’s wrong with my shoes, eh? You don’t like?”

“Your shoes stink. They’re for girls and
poustis
.” Girls and gays.

“What you say?”

Aaaaand … the old woman went straight from defense to offense in under five seconds. She hefted the whiskbroom leaning against the rack.

“Donk,” I said.

The kid didn’t know a warning when he heard one.

“I said your shoes smell like ass, old lady. Do I look like a
pousti
?” Mr. Puniverse beat both fists on his chest. “I’m the Donk! I’m all about the
mouni
!” He stood as best he could in the backseat of the Beetle and grabbed his crotch. I didn’t have the heart, or the inclination, to tell him that he had his reproductive organs mixed up.

“
Mouni
, eh? Who teach you to talk like that?” She looked at me.

“Hey!” I squeaked. “He’s not mine. Or hers.”

“No,” Marika assured her, “he does not belong to either of us.”

The old woman’s scowl sagged another inch. “Disgusting! What is wrong with you women? Why can’t you find a man your own age, eh?”

Marika elbowed me. I hit the gas.

“I could have taken her,” Donk said. He was puffed up like a twig.

“She’s an old woman.”

“So?”

“Respect your elders.”

“Old people,” he muttered and slouched back down. “What’s in the cooler?” He tapped his fingers on the lid. “Any snacks?”

“Nothing for you,” Marika said.

“Stop somewhere, eh? I’m hungry.”

What the heck, I needed directions anyway. My cellphone connection kept flaking out and there was no public Wi-Fi that I could find. So I pulled over outside a row of shops and darted into a souvenir shop for a map of the nature-made towers.

W
e drove a while
. The pillars seemed close on a map but the proximity was a lie. And I couldn’t get a bead on which one was this Eagle character’s home base. Asking around the village hadn’t helped.

I said, “I didn’t expect them to be so spread out. They look more … clustered in photographs.”

We drove some more.

“Are we there yet?” Donk asked.

“No,” Marika and I said at the same time. We both scrambled to grab the first red thing. Only we were all out of red things.

“Great,” Marika said. “Now we will fight. Do you think we should do it now to get it out of the way?”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

“What should we fight about?”

We mulled it over and came up empty-handed.

“Got any food?” Donk asked.

“Are you hungry again?” I said, incredulous. The kid was a walking garbage can.

“What do you mean again? That was an hour ago!”

Damn it, the little weasel was right. We were driving and driving and getting nowhere, except lost and confused.

I pulled over. Turned in my seat to look at Donk. “Call your uncle. I need to know where I’m going.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’ll buy you lunch if you do.”

He made faces as he crunched the data and worked his way toward a decision.

“Okay. Deal. But I want a
xambookar
.”

His English made me wish for an icepick to drive through my eardrum.

“Make the call.”

B
aby Dimitri came
to the rescue. He knew a guy who knew a guy who thought he knew which tower was the eagle’s nest. The Godfather of the Night and Espadrilles made sure I knew I owed him. My intangible debts were racking up.

Anyway, we were on the move again, this time toward a definite blip on the map. It wasn’t long before I was parking at the foot of the shortest tower. You’d never know it from the bottom. It rose into the air like a giant wiener. This was where Greece overcompensated for being a smallish country.

We emptied out of the car.

Hand shielding my eyes, I stated the obvious. “I don’t see any steps. Do you see any steps?”

“No steps,” Marika said. “Footholds, yes, but no steps.”

“Aren’t there supposed to be steps?”

“Maybe the monastery was abandoned before they built steps.”

Probably that was it.

I stood there scratching my head. “There has to be a way up.”

Marika said, “If only we had a helicopter.”

“Grandma has a helicopter. We should have brought that.”

“Whoa,” Donk said, clearly impressed. “You’ve got a helicopter?”

“My grandmother does.”

“That’s kanksta. You should see this,” he said, wrestling with his phone. “There was a prison break yesterday. They used a helicopter.”

Crap … “Huh. Interesting.”

“It’s amazing. Watch.” He thrust the phone under my nose. Marika and I stood there and watched Grandma maneuver the bird into position over the prison roof.

“You know it is funny,” she said, eyeing me sideways, “that sounds like Stavros.”

“You think so?”

“And the woman, she sounds like you.”

“She sounds like a woman.”

“And the car is yellow.”

“Huh.”

“The same yellow as your car. And you and Stavros were gone yesterday afternoon.”

“We were at the beach.”

“Then where is your sunburn?”

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe we were there.”

“And that man on the ladder, he looks like Xander.”

“That’s what Detective Melas said.”

“You were at the Larissa prison?” Donk asked.

“Only if you’re not recording this,” I said.

He raised his hand. “Xi fife!”

Marika smacked his head. “Put your hand down. You know better than that.”

“But it’s an American thing. Xi fife!”

“This is Greece,” she said. “No
moutsa
!”

The
mousta
was one of the Greece’s favorite obscene hand signals. The flat palm, fingers spread, the upright hand, all combined that meant either you were rubbing poop in the recipient’s face, or calling them a frequent visitor to Rosie Palmer’s house to pay a sticky visit to her five daughters.

“What were you doing at the prison?” Donk asked. “Visiting all your friends?”

“Checking out your future home,” I said. “Animal control won’t take you.”

“Really?”

“No. I was following up on a clue.”

“What clue?”

I looked him in the eye. “A severed penis.”

He turned white, passed out on the dusty ground.

“Detective Melas did the same thing.” I nudged him with my foot.

Marika scrunched up her nose. “Men are weak. Imagine if they had to push babies out.”

We stood there contemplating the horrifying logistics while Donk groaned on the ground. “I need a drink,” he said.

I popped the cooler open, expecting to find drinks, then slammed the lid back down. “There’s no drinks in there,” I said.

Marika had packed supplies, all right, but not the food and beverage kind. All the Greek necessities: jackets, in case it got cold—in July!—slippers, in case we lost our shoes, various icons of saints I couldn’t name, and guns.

Did I say guns? I meant submachine guns or assault rifles—I didn’t know the difference. Those small, wonky, T-shaped weapons that spit projectiles and had the ability to kill a lot of people, and fast.

Drinks, though? Nope.

I tried not to whimper.

“Figures,” he said. “Good thing I scored some from the Bulgarian. She gave me a dozen bottles.” He waved a bottle at me and popped the lid before taking a long swallow.

“Jesus,” I said. “You sure you want to drink that?”

He looked at the plastic bottle. “Why?”

My head shook. “No reason.”

Ten seconds later he keeled over a second time.

This time Marika nudged him. “What’s wrong with him?”

“A Bulgarian drug dealer happened to him.”

“What did she give him?”

“I don’t know. Something Bulgarian?”

“My Virgin Mary!”

“He’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s nothing he can’t sleep off.”