Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (20 page)

Nope.

Splat
! That was the sound of me flopping facedown on the floor.

Detective Melas had somehow calculated the precise distance from the pole to the chair, adding an inch or so for good luck. His good luck—mine was all bad. There was no physical way I could reach that chair, and I was pretty sure I was fresh out of telekinesis and other woo-woo talents.

I was, to put it bluntly, screwed. And not in a good way.

What I needed was that moussaka, and I needed it now. I could die of starvation, cuffed to the pole. Obviously Melas hadn't thought that one through. How would it look?
Volos Policeman Found with Mobster's Dead Granddaughter
.

Bad. Very bad.

Grandma would flip. She sent me away, yeah, but not so some cop could kill me slowly, through cruelty and neglect. Probably he'd wake up with a whole dead horse in his bed.

If only I could call someone—someone with a hacksaw or a key.

A light popped on in my head, small but intrusive like the dreaded Check Engine light. I had a phone, didn't I? Right now it was wedged between my hip and the floor, which explained the bone-deep ache.

But who could I call?

Grandma?
Fuggedaboudit
. She'd export me ASAP.

Takis and Stavros were out of the question. They had their lips surgically attached to my grandmother's butt—especially Takis.

Xander? I'd never live it down. He and Melas both got their kicks out of torturing me, so he'd be on Team Melas for this war.

Which left Aunt Rita.

Now that I thought about it, that wasn't such a bad idea. She was a mobster's kid, so I was confident she was in possession of skills that veered into shady territory.

She picked up on three. "
Ela
."

That's the way most Greeks answer the phone. No "Hi" or "Hello" for them. They go with "Come."

"Aunt Rita?"

"Katerina?"

"The one and only," I said. "I need some help."

There was a long pause, filled with the whoosh of a smallish tornado. She was doing her nails. "Anything, my love, unless you need help coming back to Greece. Mama would kill me if I helped you back into the country—and that's not a figure of speech."

Didn't I know it? "Too late," I said cheerfully. "I'm handcuffed to a pole in Detective Melas's house."

She sucked in her breath. "
Oh-la-la
, that delicious cop has a pole in his house? Wait—what are you doing in his house?" Her voice rose an octave. "What are you doing in Greece?"

I winced as her voice went falsetto. "Do I really have to tell you?"

"No," she muttered. "I guess I know. How did you wind up on the pole?"

On the pole, like this was a career move.

"Could be I broke into his house."

She laughed. "He wasn't happy about that, eh?"

"Not at first. But then I think he kind of liked it—after he cuffed me and ate moussaka in front of me."

"He ate in front of you without giving you food?" She was horrified. "What kind of Greek is he? I can kill him if you want. Or we can have someone else do it."

"No, no," I said quickly. "I just need out of these cuffs. Can you help me, please?"

She asked for his address, so I reeled off the details from the phone, then I got down to the serious business of waiting.

G
unshot jerked
me out of my daydream. Metal blasting metal.

Oh my God, somebody was breaking into Melas's house, and I was stuck to the stupid pole. Because of him, I was going to die at the hands of a crazed gunman.

Despite not being overly religious, I crossed myself Greek-style and begged for an intervention. I'm one of those lousy Christians, one of people who only remember God when I need something. When Mom was dying I almost talked His ear off, but he tuned me out and let her die anyway, because he was busy catapulting Kardashians into the spotlight. I guess mankind really did something to piss Him off.

Anyway, I needed Him again.

Downstairs, the back door burst open.

"Katerina?"

Aunt Rita. Relief washed over me. My knees went spongey.

Never mind, God. As You were
.

"Up here!"

A moment later, she appeared at the top of the stairs. She was a sight in knee high boots, pink fishnets, and a skirt that used to be somebody's belt. No wig today; her hair was her own: buzz cut, dark brown. A Greek Grace Jones. Her top half—between head and waist—was hiding behind a huge gun. I didn't know what kind—I was gun illiterate—but I knew it could spit bullets and kill a lot of people in a very short amount of time.

Or it could open a metal door—fast.

"I kind of love you right now," I said. Then I looked from the cannon she was toting to my manacled wrist. "You're not going to shoot these off, are you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know how to pick a lock."

What kind of mobster couldn't pick a lock? Even I could do it with the aid of the internet, and I'd never committed a crime.

Well, I'd never committed a crime before Greece.

I nodded to my bag, told her I could do it if she gave me my bag.

Bag in hand, I rifled around, hunting for my lock picks. Predictably, the way of all women's bags, they'd sunk to the bottom. One of those laws of the universe that—so far—no one has attempted to explain. Picks finally in hand, I began Googling my way out of the cuffs. Everything is on the internet if you know where to look.

Aunt Rita was eyeing the food still sitting on the chair and on the bed. "What happened to this moussaka?"

"Microwave."

She poked at it with the pointy end of the gun. "And he calls us criminals."

"He's a monster." Okay, so I broke into his house, but he'd started the war by cuffing me to a pole then leaving food almost within reach.

Payback was going to be vicious.

"You know what would be funny?" Aunt Rita moved from the food to Melas's dresser. When I looked up from the cuffs she had a pair of his boxer briefs in her hand. "Trophy," she said.

"Stealing underwear? That sounds like something Takis and Stavros would do."

"Ick. You're right." She dropped her prize on the bed, peppered it with a few holes. When we recovered from the noise she said, "What would be funny is if we made a fire and burned his house down."

Uh … "That's a bit drastic."

"He cuffed you to a pole. You want the police to think they can push you around? If they disrespect you now, it could be a problem later."

I looked at the underwear and the unfortunate mattress. "I think he'll get the message."

"Hmm," she said. "I guess it's an overreaction. It's the estrogen pills. They make me bitchy."

A second later, the lock clicked and the cuffs popped open. I held up my hands in victory, Rocky Balboa-style, then I stuffed Melas's shiny bracelets into my bag. Finders, keepers.

In the end we left the house in one piece, although I couldn't stop my aunt firing a few dozen rounds into the microwave.

"Let him eat cold leftovers," she said.

I didn't argue. Also, I didn't leave the moussaka behind. I grabbed the fork, the plate, and we left.

Aunt Rita had come charging to my rescue in her pink convertible. The top was down, the radio was blaring, keys swinging from the ignition. She threw my bags into the trunk.

I leaped into the passenger seat, wishing I had a convertible. My Jeep was nice, but this was pink.

M
y sense
of direction wasn't stellar, especially in a new country, but I was pretty sure we were going the wrong way.

"Isn't Volos back there?"

"I can't just take you to Mama's place."

"Oh," I said. "I guess not. So where are we going?"

"A little place I keep."

"For?"

"Nieces who aren't supposed to be in the country."

Fair enough. "What's everyone saying about me? Did Grandma tell them she sent me home?"

"Mama told them nothing. Only Takis and Stavros know you went back to America. Everyone else has their own ideas."

"Like what?"

She shrugged one cheetah-print shoulder. "That Mama had you killed. That Xander locked you away as his mistress. That you look down on the family, so you left on your own. That the Baptist got you."

Sadly, that all sounded reasonable with a family like mine. Then my eye twitched. "Wait—they think I'm Xander's mistress?"

"Only the stupid ones."

"Stupid?"

"I know his mistress, and it's not you."

"Who is she?"

"Nobody. His hand."

A laugh kicked its way out of my throat. "Is he a monk?"

"Close." She shook her head. "A man like that? If he's single it's a crime. He's a god."

"He kind of is," I agreed. "So no women, like, ever?"

"Not that I've heard about—and I hear everything. People who are too scared to talk to Mama, they come to me and I go to Mama."

"Maybe he's a virgin," I said.

"I remember when I was a virgin," she said wistfully. "In those days we used to do anal instead."

I blinked. I was pretty sure that was one way to squash virginity, but who was I to argue with the country that probably invented butt sex?

"If everyone thinks I'm gone, then maybe the Baptist thinks I'm gone, too. That's good—right?"

"He could be transatlantic. Probably he's standing on your front doorstep in Portland right now."

Probably. And I bet he had a latte. "Why is he hunting me? I didn't do anything."

"Maybe somebody paid him. Or maybe it's one of those pro bono things."

I wasn't sure which was worse: that idea that someone wanted me dead badly enough to hire a hitman, or that a hitman hated me enough to kill me in his own time, for funsies.

What would Grandma do if he was hunting her?

Probably something proactive.

I should do that. Be proactive.

Too bad I felt like digging a hole, burying myself inside until this all blew over and Dad was back home, where he belonged. Where we belonged.

"Who is he?"

"The Baptist?" She shrugged. "Who knows? There are rumors about his identity. But you are the only living person I know who has admitted to seeing his face."

Something clicked in my head. Pieces locked into place. My life had become such a shitstorm circus since Dad was kidnapped that the merely weird had no choice but to bounce off me like a rubber ball.

And it
was
weird that Detective Melas knew I'd gotten a good look at the Baptist, yet he never asked me to mosey on down to the precinct house, or police station, or whatever they called it here, to flip through mugshots or describe the guy to a police artist.

Which meant he knew the Baptist's identity.

A
unt Rita's
idea of a safe house was what is known as a crack house back home. I had decided not to point out the similarity, figuring something would get lost in translation, when she said, "I scored it in a card game. The former owner was a Russian
sisa
dealer."

"Sisa?"

"Greek meth. The cocaine of the poor, they call it."

"I didn't realize Greece had a meth problem."

"Oh yes," she said. "Greece has all the problems."

The house was a small square cakebox. It used to be white all over, but now it was bare stone with chronic dandruff. Tufts of grass sprouted from the rocky earth, but had given up when they realized the trees were hogging all the sunlight. The porch was crooked (kind of like my family), the patio had cracked and was bleeding weeds, and there was a stone basin with a red hand pump slightly to the left of center.

"No running water?"

Aunt Rita nodded to the pump. "Yes, but you have to chase it."

No quite what I meant. "Toilet?"

"Outhouse. It's not so bad."

"How do you stand it?"

She scratched her nose with one glossy red nail. "Must be the leftover testosterone."

That probably did it. Men never seemed to care much where they pooped.

"Inside is nicer," she said.

Not that I doubted the veracity of her words, but I didn't believe her.

We were on the edge of nowhere, which turned out to be not too far from Agria. The house was hidden by scores of olive trees, fighting dirty in their battle to see the sun. They'd brought jagged branches, and by the looks of things they knew how to use them—albeit slowly. The ground was sticks and stones, things that were known for breaking bones. Somewhere nearby there were goats. The jangling of their bells and their happy bleats were a giveaway.

My phone rang.

"Hello?" I still did it American-style, with an actual greeting instead of a demand.

"What happened to my bed and microwave?"

Melas.

"I didn't do it."

"Somebody did it. You know who?"

"Um," I said vaguely. "I think I have jet lag-induced amnesia."

"Doesn't exist."

"Google it." I hung up.

Two minutes later it rang again. "Like I said: Doesn't exist."

"What do you want, Melas?"

"I want to know which one of your crazy family members shot up my place so I know where to send the bill."

I sighed hard enough to strain something. "Send it to me."

"What about my cuffs?"

"Keeping them. Never know when I might want to cuff someone."

"That a threat or a promise?"

Because I was still cobbling together a plan, I didn't mention the Baptist. When I came out it was going to be swinging. Melas was going to lose an eye, or maybe just some of his dignity. I wanted to be the kind of surprise he never saw coming.

"You'll never know."

I hung up. Technically I ended the call, but hanging up sounds much more dramatic and final.

My aunt was in the bedroom, blinking into the mirror. Its edges had lost paint, and there were remnants of white powder in places. There was a bed in the corner, a double with a cheap metal frame. The room was otherwise deserted.

"Ever hear of Latisse? I'm thinking of getting some. Supposed to be a drug for glaucoma, but all these people slowly going blind grew crazy long, thick lashes, so now it's a beauty product. I could use crazy long, thick lashes. Falsies look like caterpillars crawled onto my eyelids and died."

I leaned against the jamb. "Sounds like Thalidomide. First they gave it to pregnant women for nausea, until they realized it was a teratogen. Now it's a cancer drug."

"I swear, every time you pop an aspirin it's a lottery."

I held up my phone. "Melas called. He wanted to know who shot up his bed and microwave."

"You tell him?"

"Not in this lifetime. What do you know about him?"

"Detective Melas? He's from Makria. His family still lives there. Wishes he could make history by eliminating organized crime. Never going to happen. People are always going to want what the good guys can't give them, and he knows it."

That sounded like people. As a kid I always wanted what my folks weren't dishing up for dinner. Fast food wasn't illegal, but turned out there was a good reason it was a banned substance at our kitchen table.

"So he's against the Family?"

"Yes and no. I don't think he knows. Mama has done good things for his family and for Makria. Now he's a policeman and he wants to uphold the law, but … Greeks remember. We're like elephants, except when we want to forget something. Then we're more like goldfish."

"Huh," I said. "Where exactly does he work?"

"Why?"

I held up the empty plate. "Plate."

"Keep the plate."

"I think it's his mother's."

She shuddered, then she ponied up the directions. I filed it away in the box in my head marked Dangerous Plans.

After a brief, horrifying tour, my aunt threw me a key.

"House key?" I figured this place was its own security system. No one in their right mind would raid the house for valuables.

"Scooter. It's in the shed out back." She kissed me on both cheeks. "Careful, my love. Mama has eyes everywhere."

A
fter an hour
or two wrestling with the kapok-stuffed mattress, I felt ready to take on the world, provided the world could be easily conquered with baseless threats and very little effort on my part. I pumped a bucket of water to take to the outhouse. And when I was done weeping over the state of Greek plumbing, I washed up with cold, sweet spring water and went to check out the scooter. Like my aunt's car it was a violent shade of pink and came with a matching helmet. I felt like Barbie as I fired it up and navigated the bumps until I hit road.

Destination: Volos. The plan was to hurl rocks at Detective Melas's head.

T
he Volos Police Department
was housed in a nice steel and glass behemoth downtown. Detective Nikos Melas didn't work there. He belonged to an offshoot that dealt with crime up in Mount Pelion's villages. The digs were less fancy. A single layer of hastily cobbled-together brick, with a few windows plugging the holes. Three steps connected the front doors to the sidewalk, not a ramp in sight. This wasn't a building that coddled anyone. Those who couldn't walk simply had to avoid crime, or die trying.

I trudged through the wall of heat only to fall face first into a humid sweat pool. Greece's austerity measures meant these cops didn't get air conditioning. The police building reeked of despair, aggravation, and cheap-o coffee. The windows were open, the breeze non-existent. Someone had propped the front doors open with a couple of bricks. Guess nobody was worried they'd left potential weapons on their front doorstep.

Inside, they'd spared every expense. The desks were metal, the chairs flimsy, and the computers …

Okay, computer. They had one. But it was a dinosaur from the mid-2000s. Push down hard enough on the keyboard and it would shoot crude.

The cop behind the reception desk was barely out of high school. He was sporting a crop of fresh pimples and baby fuzz. I asked for Melas, and he asked me what I wanted, and I said, "Just get Detective Melas." Then I felt bad, so I tacked on a rushed "Please."

"Wait there."

He pointed to a bench against the wall. It looked like one of those prisoner benches I'd only ever seen on TV. Wood slats and a bar that ran along the front, perfect for cuffing the guilty—and probably the innocent—while the cops chugged coffee and
loukoumades
(donut holes soaked in syrup) and bitched about paperwork.

One woman sat there alone, her expression set to bored. She looked like she was bored a lot—maybe even professionally. Her cheekbones were high and sharp enough to slice hard cheese. Her hair was butter blonde, its black roots leaving no doubts about its authenticity. She wore jelly sandals, a denim skirt that showed a mile of dimpled leg, and a top with all the stretch torn out. Could be she was in the wrong place, because these guys didn't look like the fashion police.

Her chin jutted out as I plonked myself down on the bench. She let her peripheral vision do all the staring.

"
Kalispera
," I said politely, wishing her a good afternoon, because I was trying to make amends with the universe for barking at the itty, bitty baby cop. I didn't nod to her cuffs. As a recently cuffed person myself, it seemed rude. "How are you?"

She answered in a Slavic drawl. "Terrible. This is the worst day ever since my last worst day ever."

"Why?"

"I sell drugs. They caught me."

"Really? I've never met a drug dealer before."

"Congratulations. Now you have met one."

"What kind of drugs?" It was a question more suited to an alleyway or a smokey corner at a party, but I was working with what we had. It never hurt to be polite, unless the other party didn't know or care about good manners.

"Medicine. Pills. Drugs for classy addicts."

"My family's kind of in drugs, too," I told her, searching for common ground. "But I think they have people who sell for them. I don't think they do classy drugs, though. Just regular drugs."

"Who is your family?"

I told her. "Do you know them?"

"Everybody knows them," she said. "What do you do?"

"Debt collector."

"Is good money?"

I thought about how my workplace burned to the ground. "Not anymore."

The bench shook as she changed position. "What you do here?"

"Came to bust a corrupt cop."

Could have been respect I saw in her eyes, could have been allergies. "Bad weather can get better; bad man—never. What he do?"

"More like what didn't he do."

"Before you tell me you debt collector, I would have guess maybe he didn't pay you for sex."

Yikes. Had past twenty-four hours tap-danced on my face that hard?

"He did cuff me to a pole," I admitted. "But there wasn't any sex. He just ate moussaka in front of me while I watched."

She nodded like she knew. "That is a fetish, you know. People pay good money. You should tell him that. Ask him for money or make him gets kicks somewhere else."

Seemed pointless to explain it wasn't like that. Anyway, here was Melas, big shit-eating grin on his face, until he spotted me wasting the afternoon on his police bench.

"Good," he said. "You can pay for what you did my bed and microwave right now."

I pulled out my trump card, my 'Gotcha.' It was early in the game but he had swung first and I had face to save. Also, I was operating this mouth with a shortage of sleep and an overabundance of indignation.

"I'll pay for your bed as soon as you tell me why you didn't ask me to describe the Baptist. It occurs to me now that maybe you already know who he is, you … you … dirty cop!"

I said it big, said it loud. Said it Greek, basically. I even planted my hands on my hips so they'd know I meant business.

And guess what?

Nobody gave a damn.

They kept on doing what they were doing—eating, drinking, grudgingly scratching info on paperwork—without a single blip in their cop radars.

"Huh," I said, puzzled. "That didn't go the way I planned."

Melas looked at me. "How did you plan it?"

"More indignation on your part. Maybe some crying. Lots of time in interrogation for you, followed by a few years in a damp, chilly cell."

"You aim too high."

A big cop ambled over, keys in hand. He had ham hock hands and a white stain on his shirt. Given that he also reeked of garlic, I was guessing
tzatziki
.

"Come on, Penka," he said to my new friend.

My stomach growled. Three sets of eyes swiveled my way.

I nodded to the human barrel unlocking Penka's cuffs. "The yogurt sauce on his shirt made me hungry."

"Great timing," Melas said. "You can buy me dinner. You shot up my microwave."

"Wasn't me," I told him truthfully.

His buddy rolled the dealer away. She seemed personable enough. Hopefully they'd go easy on her, and she'd be back on her stoop or wherever soon, peddling pills to insomniacs and the jittery.

Melas steered me through the open double doors. His hand was clamped around my upper arm, and I was hoping he didn't drive a car the way he was driving me. Just saying. I almost tripped down the steps, and at once point he came
this
close to walking me into a parked car. Guess Greek cops didn't know about serving and protecting. He marched me three blocks down, shoved me into a souvlaki shop where it was standing room only in one of Hades' smaller closets. So many bodies squeezed in there it could have been a mosh pit, if not for the sharp bark of "Come!" every thirty seconds as the souvlaki guy beckoned the next starving customer, and the mouthwatering aroma of sizzling onions and meat.

The crowd moved swiftly, and soon it was our turn. Melas ordered; I paid. That didn't seem fair, but when I complained about it (hey, if I'm paying, I should be able to order for myself), he said, "A lot of women would love to buy me souvlaki," totally missing my point.

Was that a metaphor, or did women just wanted to feed the guy?

When our food was up he grabbed both paper-wrapped rolls and skedaddled, leaving me to carry the drinks.

Lucky for Melas, and lucky for me, he didn't go far. He commandeered a patch of shade from a couple of teenagers who had been using the sheltered wall to draw pretty pictures with a magic marker. He leaned his back flat against the FACK, leaving me to admire the picture of what seemed to be a deity violating a donkey.

"Zeus?" I asked.

He looked. "The Prime Minister."

Showed how little I knew about Greek politics.

Melas swapped a souvlaki for a drink. Even trade. The lemonade was sweet, lemony, and nothing like any lemonade I'd ever tasted in my life. Heaven in a glass bottle.

"The Epsa factory sits on top of a spring," Melas told me. "That's what they use to make the drinks."

Interesting, but I hoped a biography of the meat wasn't next. As far as I was concerned, meat comes from a supermarket.