Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (4 page)

In hindsight, his boogeyman wasn't a closet-dweller, but a person. And that person looked nothing like my grandmother. Every kid knew the boogeyman wasn't a black-clad Oompa Loompa. Even now, looking at her I couldn't help wondering if she was going to break into song and dance, warning me about my character flaws.

"Maybe he did." My forehead scrunched. "I'm not sure."

"Like anybody, I am in the business of making money, Katerina. Maintaining and expanding the business my husband—your grandfather—and I worked so hard for. Now he is no longer with us, except in a container I keep the kitchen."

"Why the kitchen?"

"The kitchen is where I do business. People come to talk with me, to ask for favors and blessings, and maybe eat a little of my
baklava
. Yiannis said it was the best in Greece—even better than his mother's, and that woman …
po-po
, that was a woman who could cook."

"What kind of business?"

"A little of this, a little of that. Same as any good businessperson."

Very specific, my grandmother.

"That way." Takis nodded to the arch cut into the cement-rendered house. He took the vanguard position, while Stavros took the rear. Between them, Grandma and I were the sandwich fillings. Possibly they were making sure I didn't run away.

Which wasn't happening while these people—family or not—could potentially point me towards Dad. I was going home, but not until I'd squeezed every ounce of information out of them. As soon as twenty-four hours were up, I was calling the Portland Police Bureau, then the feds, ransom demand or not.

The arch opened into a huge courtyard. Now I could see that the front of the house was just one side of a square. Not so much a house as it was a massive compound, a giant palace of a place, with gardens and a conservatory and fountains. The only thing missing was an elaborate hedge maze.

Everything looked amazing, until my eyes snagged on the dive that sat dead center of the courtyard, the fly in the sugar-riffic cake frosting.

The rickety square box had been renovated sometime in the past to tack on a dog's hind leg. The main building itself was white stucco; the addition, neatly stacked stones, mortar slapped between them to hold the whole thing together. Someone had tacked a metal fence around the whole mess. Probably it was a hazardous zone. An optimist would call it a house. A pessimist would call it a Godforsaken dump. Me, I was just a guest here—I wasn't calling it anything until I knew what it was, for sure.

"That is my house …" Grandma said.

Oh.

"… and you will stay there with me."

Yeah, no. That thing couldn't be up to code. It was already on the verge of condemnation. What happened when the Earth got to shaking the way Earth does here? Greece was Earthquake Central.

"Uh …" I started.

"My house is the safest place in the country. Nobody uninvited can get in there without a swift death."

Well, that was vampires taken care of, but what about people? One fat sparrow and that roof was going bye-bye.

"Goodnight," Takis said. Stavros waved for both of them.

"Where are you guys going?" I asked.

Takis smirked. "Heh. We are going home."

"Where's home?"

He pointed to the far left corner on the top floor. "Here, of course. Me, my fat wife, and our children. Stavros lives down there."

Bottom floor.

"Bachelors' quarters," Stavros said glumly.

Then the bastards deserted me.

Grandma led me to her house of straw and sticks. "This is the house your great-great-grandparents bought when they were first married."

I nodded, hoping the noise I made was a polite one.

"After your grandfather and I married, your great-grandparents moved into the big house so we could live here."

Very generous of them. What did they do to the kids they hated?

"It is a tradition," she continued. "The eldest child lives here, and then their eldest child."

Chilled water began a slow pour through my veins. "Who's your eldest child?"

She looked at me. "Your father has told you nothing about your family?"

"He told me about Baboulas. Does that count?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, that he told you. Very indiscreet."

"I was a kid."

"And now, as a woman, you still remember his stories."

I nodded.

"Like I said," she continued, "indiscreet."

She pushed through the metal gate. The fence sat atop a concrete footing about six inches tall. Inside the fence the ground was smooth concrete. Plants everywhere, all in pots painted red. Not a subtle red, but an
IN YOUR FACE BECAUSE I AM RED
shade of red.

The front door wasn't locked.

"Nobody locks their doors here," she told me

"Well, it's not like a stranger could just walk in here, right?"

"I mean in this part of Greece. In the city, yes, but in the villages? Not unless a person is very paranoid. And I am not paranoid about my front door."

Doors … maybe not. But I had the stomach-sinking, throat-gripping feeling that Grandma was super-duper paranoid about other things. More dangerous things. Come on, this was a woman nicknamed after the boogeyman. We're not talking complete sanity here. I really hoped it wasn't a dominant gene.

Grandma's place was a dump, inside and out. A clean dump—but a dump is a dump is a dump. The grand tour lasted fifteen seconds. Bedroom (hers), bedroom (mine—allegedly), a big cupboard between bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and two-thirds of a bathroom.

I scratched my head, wondering where she'd stashed the missing piece of the puzzle. "Where's the toilet?"

"Outside."

"Outside?"

"Outside."

I stalked over to the kitchen window, flung the shutters open, shoved my head outside. Sure enough, the toilet was outside. In an outhouse.

An
outhouse
.

"No indoor toilet?"

"What for? I have a good toilet."

Good was subjective.

I fell into one of the kitchen chairs to contemplate the situation. Right now every angle looked the same shade of bad.

The kitchen was marginally less awful than the rest of the place. A generous counter, an archaic oven with a pipe running overhead, all the way to the outside wall, and a big slab of a table with six chairs. The refrigerator was pre war—though I wasn't sure which war. One of the early ones. It had a lift-and-pull handle. I squinted at the bottles lined up on the windowsill.

"Which one is Granddad?"

She pointed out an olive oil tin with a photograph taped to the front. The subject was a middle-aged male with a lush black pelt on his head. He was wearing a three-piece suit and his eyes were shut.

"Aww," I said. "He's sleeping."

"The photographer took that at his funeral. That is not his real hair."

Yikes.

When I recovered I said, "Why the toupee?"

"He wanted to look his best for God."

Was a sit-down with the Big Kahuna a sure thing for any member of this family? It was looking a whole lot like,
No
.

"You want coffee?" Grandma asked.

"At this time of night?" She gave me one of those looks reserved for annoying grandkids and other pains in the ass. "Okay, just one cup. Please."

She heaped finely ground coffee into a tiny long-handled pot. Then she lit a match, touching it to one of those gas cookers people take camping. The coffee was done when the pot started to boil and the foam rushed to top. She divided the coffee between two cups that belonged in a dollhouse. I knew coffee, and that was barely enough for a minor caffeine tingle.

"Something to eat, eh? A little something sweet?"

Now she was speaking my language. "Yes, please!" I might have whimpered.

At my sudden burst of enthusiasm she chuckled and lifted the glass dome lid on a cake stand sitting on the counter.

Baklava
. I'd know that nut and pastry confection anywhere. The layers of phyllo start out crispy, and then slowly drown as the honey syrup seeps in.

"You like the syrup, eh?"

"It's the best part."

Another chuckle as she spooned a diabetes-inducing waterfall of syrup over the diamond-shaped slice, with a single clove stuck in its center. "That is the best part."

The
baklava
was otherworldly, but the Greek coffee kicked my butt back to Earth. So much for a minor buzz—this stuff could punch Starbucks in the throat.

"Why did you send Takis and Stavros to get my father?"

"My reasons are my own," she said. "But trust me, they are very good reasons."

Oh. Well. That changed everything, didn't it? "Where's my father?"

"If I knew that he would be here."

"Why am I here? Takis and Stavros brought the wrong Makris. You could have made them send me home."

"I want you here so I can protect you."

"From?"

"Whoever is responsible for your father's abduction."

"Our next-door neighbor saw them. He said they looked like mobsters."

She scoffed. "Everybody in the abduction business looks like a mobster. What else would they look like?"

I thought about it for a moment. "I guess I'd try to look like I fit in."

"Good idea," she said. "I will consider that."

Things were looking shadier by the minute. "Who do you think took him?"

She shrugged, but it was no casual move. There was a weight on her shoulders, and that's when I remembered my father was her child; she had to be worried sick, even if she had a face like an Easter Island moai.

"If I say names they will be guesses. I cannot do anything with a guess."

A long sigh escaped me. "Then I have to go home."

"And do what?"

"Call the police, the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security. Whoever it takes to find Dad. Then after he's found, go to sleep in my new apartment, and get up and go to work."

A funny shadow tiptoed across her face.

Uh-oh. "What?"

"It was a terrible accident. Okay, two terrible accidents. Very coincidental. First your work burned down, then your boss fell down some stairs and broke his legs."

"Both those things?"

"Yes."

"What a coincidence."

"Yes. But your boss is a little bit of a criminal, and not a successful one at that."

"Huh. They say stuff like that comes in threes. Anything else you want to tell me?"

She shrugged. "Maybe your apartment building burned down, too."

My breath was coming out in short huffs. My brain was screaming,
FOR GOD'S SAKE WOMAN, RUN
.

"Maybe my apartment building burned down? I hadn't even moved in yet! What about the people who live there? What about my deposit?"

"How much?"

When I told her she left the table and reached into one of the kitchen drawers, pulling out a thick roll of euros. She peeled off several notes, pushed them to my side of the table.

"The people are all fine. Nobody was hurt."

No crime, I thought, remembering my father's words. Which was funny, because it was looking a whole lot like my family
was
crime around here.

"Thanks," I said.

She came around to my side of the table, kissed me on both cheeks. "Get some sleep, Katerina. We will talk more tomorrow."

W
hen I woke
up during the night, nothing had changed. I was in my grandmother's second bedroom, with its rustic furniture and shuttered windows. The curtains were sheer, the sheets were white, and the walls were a gag-a-rrific shade of green. One single bed, two bedside tables that started life as crates, and a lamp with a naked bulb to complete the picture. I needed to pee, and if I didn't want to pop, the place I had to pee was outside, in a wood hut. Like a civilized savage.

Using my super-stealth skills, I tiptoed down the narrow hall and tried to avoid a sudden onslaught of claustrophobia.

I've never been claustrophobic (or any kind of phobic, unless you count spiders, snakes, ringworm, Ebola, head lice, venereal diseases, hornets, and—for some weird reason—geese) but I was developing a case of it here in the dark. By the time I burst outside, I was covered in a thin layer of cold sweat.

Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber had packed a bag, yeah, but the essentials were missing. No pajamas. No nightgown. The only thing they had for me to sleep in was a
Keep Portland Weird
T-shirt and packet of underwear I won in a Secret Santa three Christmases ago. My size, but they were dotted with cats and cutesy phrases about pussy. So that's what I was wearing to my middle-of-the-night sojourn.

The stars were strangers here. Configurations altered just a hair, brighter shine. Back home we were so busy shining our own lights in their eyes that they'd become duller over time—when they were there at all. But here on Mount Pelion they had gathered to watch me sneak to the outhouse.
Check out the American chick in the cat undies.
This should be hil-a-ri-ous
, I imagined them whispering.

Yes, very funny. I'd jumped from indoor plumbing and air-conditioning to something slightly more current than a cave, with suitable bushes near the entrance. A bush would be better, in some ways. With a bush there's no pretense. An outhouse is just a bunch of bushes with ambition but no real skill.

The air was warm and lightly scented with something I didn't recognize. Some kind of flower. Delicate, slightly sweet. Candy. My stomach grumbled. There was a hint of chlorine, too. Somewhere nearby there was a swimming pool.

I held my breath for a moment. Listened. Heard the faint slosh, slosh of someone cutting through the pool water's surface.

Someone else was up.

My burning desire to pee subsided. Bathroom performance anxiety; what if the swimmer heard me tinkle?

I crept along the side of the house, past the wretched outhouse. Potted bushes and trees obscured the view, but I had hands, didn't I? Yes, and they did a half-assed job of pushing the slender branches aside. Those things might have looked thin, but they were made of some kind of semi-bendy steel. They bit and slapped at my arms. I fought back—and hard. Triffids would never get the best of me.