When Dead in Greece (14 page)

We went in through the side entrance, walked past the stairs, stepped into the cafe. Esau’s door was open. The light was on. He was sitting there tapping on his keyboard. He looked worn down and distraught.

I stepped to the door, knocked on it.

Esau looked up. The monitor splashed blue light over his face. Shadows formed where lines etched his face. The skin under his eyes was dark and puffy.

He got up halfway out of his seat. “Where is she?”

I shook my head as my voice caught in my throat.

Alik spoke for me. “We need to talk with you, Esau.”

Settling back into his office chair, he motioned us in. He avoided our stares. Instead, his gaze swept over his desk. He shuffled loose papers from either end into a hectic stack, then picked it up and banged it against his desk until they were as uniform as they were going to get. He spun and placed them on a low shelf, then turned back toward us slowly. His eyes lingered on his monitor, then shifted down toward his keyboard. He straightened it then picked up the mouse and set it next to the number pad.

“Did you see her?” he asked quietly, still avoiding our eyes.

“I did,” I said.

“And?”

“She’s well. They’ve treated her fine. She…” I didn’t know how much to tell him. Isadora saw nothing wrong with what she had done since it was in response to Esau’s transgressions. But Esau would look at it as betrayal. “She had a small scratch on her face. Told me it was from falling because she tripped over her feet.”

A slight smile formed on Esau’s lips. “She’s always been a klutz.”

I said nothing. Neither did Alik. We breathed in rhythm, waiting for Esau to build the courage to ask the next question.

After a few minutes, he did. “So, if she’s not here, does that mean Kostas rejected my offer?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded note. Held it up and waved it. “He countered.”

Esau reached for the note. I lowered it out of view.

“What?” he said.

“I need you to level with me, Esau.”

“What is it?”

“What did you do with the money Kostas gave you?”

“I told you, I paid for my wife’s botched surgery.”

“Botched?”

“It failed. Didn’t work. Wasted all that money and she died anyway.”

Alik said, “What really happened?”

Esau said, “What do you mean? I just told you.”

“You tried to spoon feed us bullshit.”

Esau’s face reddened and his eyes opened wide and his nostrils flared out. “What are you saying to me?”

I said, “Just want you to be straight with us, Esau.”

The veins on the side of his head and neck stood out. He slammed his hands open-palm on the desktop. The keyboard rattled and the mouse jumped an inch to the right.

“Why don’t you just come out and call me a liar?”

For a few moments the only sound in the room was his ragged breath, fast and erratic, drawing in and expelling out.

“You’re a liar, Esau,” I said.

He lunged forward, but stopped. Whether of his own accord or because his knees hit the desk, I don’t know. Slowly he settled into his chair. His hands rose toward his face. He cupped them over his cheeks and eyes. Pulled down with his fingers pressed tight, drawing his lower eyelids down and revealing the pink flesh underneath. His hands slipped further down his cheeks. He tucked his chin to his chest and stared down at the keyboard.

“What do you know?” he asked.

I said, “That your wife never received the operation.”

“How do you know this?”

I had to craft my words so that I remained a step ahead. Once I informed him that Isadora told me, he’d question why.

“Your niece found all the paperwork. She called the doctor’s office. They told her that your wife never had the surgery.”

Esau nodded slowly. Looked up. First at Alik, then me. “And why did she tell you this?”

“I told you Kostas and his men are being good to her, but she’s still being held against her will. They had guns on both of us when I handed them a bag that contained a fifth of what you’d borrowed. I knew they weren’t going to do anything. She was scared, though. I guess she thought she was buying us time by telling them you never spent the money.”

Esau said nothing.

“My question is why didn’t she know this from the beginning? She was here, right? She would have known your wife never had the surgery.”

Esau shook his head. “We sent her away. I told her Eleni insisted on it. That she didn’t want to burden the girl post-op. She said we were bringing in help. So I arranged a month away for Isa. Time to relax and be a young woman. By the time she returned, my wife had slipped so far she didn’t talk anymore. I made sure the nurse was always at her side to keep my niece from prying around.”

By now he looked like a defeated man. Slumped in his chair. Elbows on the chair arms, supporting his torso. He propped his head up with one hand. Balled the other into a fist.

“So where is it?” Alik said.

Esau said nothing.

“Where are you hiding the rest of the money?” Alik said.

Esau looked away and still said nothing.

Alik stood and leaned over the desk. He grabbed Esau by the wisps of hair on his head and forced him to look up. “You fool. Your niece is in danger of losing her life. Where are you hiding the fucking money?”

“The money’s gone!” Esau shouted. “Gone! I don’t have it anymore!”

Chapter 27

ALIK RELEASED THE OLD GUY and stepped back, kicking his chair. It tipped over and banged against the wall. He looked down at me, held out his hands, shrugged like he’d been defeated.

I leaned forward and placed my arms on the desk. “Esau? What do you mean the money’s gone? What’d you do with it?”

He coughed as he wiped tears from his cheeks and eyes. The redness faded from his skin. “I had a lead. A good one, you see.”

“A lead on what?” I said.

“I couldn’t lose this time. I’d sat out when so many other opportunities came. But I tracked each one, and they were all winners. I knew that the time was right.”

“What are you talking about, old man?” Alik righted his chair and lowered himself onto it.

“The time was right, yes it was.” Esau swiveled ninety degrees and pulled open a drawer. He was muttering in Greek as he rifled through it, then another, and finally the bottom one. He pulled out a slip of paper that looked like it had been folded, dropped in mud, sprayed with water, and trampled on by a pack of wild animals. “Ah, here it is.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I had the money for about a week or two. Eleni didn’t know about it. I never told Isadora about it. Not like she knew of our finances anyway. Maybe what her mother had told her, but that information would come from my wife, and she didn’t really know
everything
. So I had the money, got the tip, spent a couple thousand to ship Isa off for a month.”

Alik and I glanced at each other. Said nothing.

“The day of, I told my wife that I was headed to see a new doctor about a procedure. She wanted to go, of course. But I told her she was too weak. If everything went well, we’d have the doctor come here to take a look at her.”

“Day of what?” Alik said.

Esau took a deep breath. His gaze darted between the two of us. He smiled for a couple seconds, wider than I’d ever seen, revealing teeth brown near his red gums.

“I couldn’t lose,” he said.

“Lose?”

“At the track,” Esau said. “It was a sure thing. My source had been right fifty out of fifty times. And this time, it was on a forty to one longshot.”

I leaned back in my chair, dumbfounded at what Esau had said. “You bet the money you borrowed for your wife’s surgery on a horse?”

He shook his head. “Not just any horse. A true lock to win. At those odds, I couldn’t pass it up. It would have solved all our problems.”

“How’d that turn out?”

His excitement and his gaze both fell a notch. He lifted his hand and separated his thumb and index finger a couple inches. “Lost by a nose.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. I risked my neck and you risked your niece’s life over money you lost at the track?”

Esau said nothing, which only served to intensify my anger.

I stood and kicked my chair back and kicked the desk toward him. His knees were underneath, leaving nothing but his arms and chest to stop the desk from colliding with the wall. He flung himself backward, but not in time. The edge smashed into his stomach. He bowed forward with his mouth twisted in a soundless scream.

Alik jumped up and positioned himself between me and Esau. “Not now, Jack. Not like this.”

“Like what then?”

Alik pushed me toward the door. I held up my hands in retreat.

“It’s OK. I’m cool.”

“OK.” Alik backed off.

Esau was waving his hands over his head. His face had turned beet red. He’d either get a breath to his lungs, or have a stroke. Couldn’t tell which. After a few more seconds, he gulped air in with a horrid sound. He took a few more breaths, each a little less grating than the one prior.

A few more seconds passed and he spoke. “I’m sorry, my friend, but it had to be done.”

“How the hell can you rationalize this? Huh? You just a regular degenerate?”

He swung his head side to side. “No, not at all. I had the money Kostas had lent me, but it wasn’t enough. It is true that I spoke to that doctor. And I was going to see him. But I asked how much the surgery would cost and I wasn’t even close. I thought maybe there’d be help, but it was considered radical and progressive and no one would help fund it. You see, I had no choice.”

“The house?” Alik said. “How much equity?”

“I told you before,” Esau said. “None.”

“And the cafe?”

“A bit, but not enough to pay back the debt. And it doesn’t make enough money to tempt Kostas. I tried that before.”

I opened the paper Chris had handed me. “The original debt is what he’ll take, minus the twenty percent you already paid.”

“I don’t have it,” Esau said. “I don’t have that kind of money. What you took was all there was.”

I stepped forward. Alik moved to block my path. I held out my arm and nodded at him. “It’s OK.” Then I looked at Esau. “I don’t know what to do for you now. Kostas stated his case clearly. If you don’t pay up, then you and Isadora are dead. And I’m guessing he’s gonna make you watch her die, and then he’ll drag your death out for as long as he can. Old friends or not, he’s not someone you mess with.”

I spun and left the office. Stepped into the cafe and climbed the stairs. The echoes of Esau’s wails followed me to the apartment.

Chapter 28

I STOOD IN FRONT OF the open window, staring out at the darkness. The waves rolled and crashed and the wind carried the salt spray into the apartment. It pelted my face like tiny raindrops. I closed my eyes and remained there while my thoughts drifted, recalling scenes throughout the past couple days.

Nothing Isadora had said or done had directly implicated her involvement in this. I couldn’t find any evidence that she sought Kostas to initiate the downfall of her uncle. But it was clear that she had some idea what they were going to do. Maybe she thought she was helping by telling Kostas what she had discovered. She had pushed back against my help. Every look she had given me said
stay away
. I thought it was because of how weak I was from my recovery. Kostas must have instructed her to keep outside involvement to nothing. Could the reason she was being held be due to my insisting I could help?

I figured Kostas’s men saw us snooping around that old house where we found her blouse. They must’ve known we’d end up there. Why else stage it the way they had? Made it more convincing, that’s for sure. Maybe if we hadn’t gone, they’d have told Esau to go out there. Seeing her torn clothing on the cellar floor would have been enough to get him to step it up and deliver on his debt. At least, they could hope so.

The thing that pissed me off was that Isadora had an idea of who Alik and I were. She knew we were the kind of men who could help her. I felt betrayed that she didn’t bring us in on what was going on.

I understood her position, though. And I couldn’t help but think that there was another reason behind her decision. Something she couldn’t say to me while I stood in Kostas’s office. Maybe she had some crazy idea planned out. Or perhaps it was something simple.

The door rattled and I opened my eyes and stood in place. The wind rushed in through the temporary tunnel. The sound of the waves grew louder. I licked my lips. Tasted the salt.

“You say anything else to him?” I asked.

“No.” Alik crossed the room and stopped next to me. He folded his arms across his chest. He took a few deep breaths, started to speak, stopped.

“What is it?”

“I think I should call Frank.”

“No.”

“What do you propose then, Jack? We go in there armed with pistols and take on an organized crime boss and all his thugs? Hell, you couldn’t stand up to them here in the cafe. Imagine what will happen when we are there and they can use their weapons. We won’t get past the front door.”

“I know where the place is. I’ve got an idea of the layout of the property. We can go in under the cover of night. Or in the middle of day. Doesn’t make much of a difference to me. I just want to get her out of there.”

“And let’s say hypothetically that we pull off this mission. What then? What next for Isadora and Esau? My God, Jack, it’ll never end. They’ll come after them. And they’ll come after us. You can forget about our cover, or whatever it is we’ve got going on here. Kostas will take that security footage and start showing it to his contacts. Won’t be long until the wrong people learn our whereabouts. Have you thought about that?”

I stared at the faint whitecaps streaming toward shore and said nothing.

“Have you? Have you considered what would happen if Ivanov learned of our location? Who do you think can have someone here sooner? Frank, or a Russian General?”

“Frank’s got contacts everywhere. I’ve got contacts from the CIA.”

He shook his head. “Don’t bullshit me. I know all about you. No one in the CIA likes you. You were a pain in the ass when you were attached and you exposed a rogue operative. And even if there was someone out there who thought enough of you to help, all it would take is one look at your file to see all the shit you’ve done the past five years. They’d sell you out in a heartbeat. They’d just as soon see you die at Ivanov’s hand.”