Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (32 page)

The steps had other plans. The first one sang out as I lowered my weight onto its head, the little crybaby. I crunched down on my lip to keep the curse words in the paddock.

Too late. Periphas’ head swiveled first, followed by the rest of him. His gaze latched onto mine, and for a moment we stood there, each of us a deer, watching an oncoming train.

We both lunged: me up the stairs, him toward me. My chin slammed one of the higher steps as he grabbed my ankle and pulled.

I went mule, kicking and bucking, desperately trying to land an incapacitating blow. The gun was still in my hand but I was facedown and in danger of shooting myself in the ass, literally, if I reached back and fired.

The hyenas laughed harder. They’d stopped tussling to enjoy the death match.

Some match. I was a former bill collector, whose hobbies included television, eating, and naps. His interests lay with the ancient arts of murder and organ removal. There was no “match” about it.

How do you fight batshit crazy?

I couldn’t do anything on my belly. I had to roll, so that’s what I did. As I twisted I trapped his head between my knees and squeezed. He grabbed my shins and jerked, but his left arm was weaker, which gave me an opening. I pulled my knee high and tight against my stomach, then kicked the snot out of his shoulder.

He gasped. Stumbled backwards.

When he recovered a split second later my other foot was waiting for his face. Something made a satisfying and gross
crunch
. I was too frightened to gloat. Like a four-legged spider, I attempted to scramble up the stairs.

“Run and I’ll kill you,
mouni
!” he shouted behind me, because using the Greek equivalent of the c-word is always the way to attract a woman.

He grabbed both my ankles, yanked me back down the steps, obliterating what little progress I’d made. Then his right hand circled my neck. The left gripped my ponytail and pulled until hot tears flooded my eyes. I lifted my hand to shoot. He let go of my hair to slap it away. The gun clattered on the basement floor.

My mouth formed a word. “Help!”

I meant for it to be less croak, more primal yell.

There was one more tool in my arsenal. It required cozying up to the enemy. My arm curled around his neck and lured him closer. His grip on my neck loosened. He thought I was submitting to his loony fantasy. My mouth bypassed his lips. I sank my teeth into the tip of his nose.

Periphas Dogas shrieked, flailed. His feet scrambled on the basement floor but couldn’t get a grip. I didn’t let go.

The women laughed harder.

I wasn’t letting go—ever, if that’s what it took to survive.

Then I felt hands on my shoulders that didn’t belong to the crazy guy.

“Jesus,” Melas said. “It’s okay, we’ve got it from here.”

“What’s she biting?” a voice I didn’t recognize asked.

“His nose, I think,” someone else said.

“Harsh.”

But they both sounded mildly impressed.

Finally, I let go. I looked up to see Melas, Stained Shirt, and a cop I didn’t know crowding the steps.

“If you think I will marry you now, you’re crazy!” Periphas howled.

Melas raised an eyebrow. “Something you’re not telling me?”

“The organs. They were love offerings.”

“Jesus.”

T
he other puzzles
pieces fell into place during questioning, but I didn’t hear about them until long after I’d buried myself under a pile of Grandma’s pastries and attempted to eat my way out. Now that she was home, she’d taken up baking with a vengeance. Xander and I sat in the kitchen, quietly watching her empty sacks of flour and sugar into mixing bowls. Every so often Xander glanced at me, a silent question in his eyes.

What do you think, is she okay
?

I gave him a tiny shrug, because I couldn’t tell. She was my grandmother but he knew her better than I did. What toll does it take being locked away, losing a long-term friend to greed?

A
fter I’d eaten
my weight in Greek cookies, and Grandma had gone to bed, I wandered out to the courtyard. I couldn’t sleep. My mind was too cluttered. I dragged myself to the pool, sat on its tiled edge, swished my purpling legs through its cool water. Yeah, I could throw on a swimsuit, but I didn’t want to commit. This was all I needed, to know that the water was there. A couple of the resident dogs loped over, tongues lolling as I petted them. When I stopped, they flopped on the ground nearby, in case I needed something to hug.

I wasn’t the only one ground down to a dense powder by the day. It wasn’t long before I heard the familiar hum of Melas’s car, followed by his footsteps. They were slow, even, economical. He stopped somewhere behind me, shucked his shoes, and when he sat down beside me he’d rolled his jeans up to his knees. The dogs lifted their heads briefly before resuming their snooze.

“Long day,” he said, after a while.

“You got your man, your woman, and your other woman.”

“Triple bonus.” He nudged me with his elbow. “You okay?”

“It’s not every day a lunatic declares his love for you with severed body parts.” I put on a fake-excited teen girl voice. “I can’t wait to tell all my friends!”

Melas chuckled. It was a warm, comforting sound.

“He sang like a bird once we got him to the hospital. Wouldn’t shut up about how much he’d loved you and how you’d betrayed him.”

“Betrayed him. Ha!”

“He admitted that he’d been planning to kill Kyria Koufo anyway, despite their deal. Said he was going to box up her tongue for you as a wedding gift.”

“Wow, does he know how to charm the ladies or what?”

He laughed. “We’re letting the other woman go.”

“Cleopatra? Why?”

“Her name’s Cleopatra Katsika.”

My head jerked up. “Wife, daughter, distant cousin?”

“She’s Tony’s niece.”

“Incestuous bunch.”

He nodded. “She told us she was following you as a favor to her uncle. Tony believed your father hadn’t been kidnapped. He thought it was a game your father cooked up.”

“Why?”

But I knew why—because that’s what Dad and Cookie did when someone wanted them to take a test. Tony had believed there was test in play, a game afoot. My brain boxed up that thought and carried it to a dark corner for closer inspection some other time.

“Apart from following you around and sleeping with a drug distributor and killer, she didn’t commit any crime,” Melas explained. “She claimed she was trying to free your grandmother in that basement.” He looked to me for confirmation.

“I guess,” I muttered.

“We can’t get a word out of Varvara Koufo. She won’t say who pushed her husband’s girlfriend down the stairs, or who killed her husband.”

I raised my hand. “She told me she killed her husband. The Russian assassin, Vlad, he was on her payroll. Probably he pushed the girlfriend down the stairs.”

“We’ll round him up. Your entourage seems to have dissipated.”

I nodded. “All except Elias. Grandma is hiring him for protective detail. She’s impressed with the way he stopped the others from killing me. I’m surprised they didn’t follow me to Kyria Koufo’s place.”

“You can blame me for that,” he said. “I know I do. At the airstrip, I told them if they followed I’d lock them up.”

A door opened. Then was the scuffing sound of slippers on concrete. Grandma was making a midnight trip to the outhouse. There was a pause, then: “Katerina, my love, why are your feet bare? Put on some shoes. You, too, Nikos. And keep your hands where the sniper can see them.”

“Sniper?” He sounded worried.

“There’s no sniper.” I thought about it for a moment. “Okay, maybe there’s a sniper, but you should be fine. You being here isn’t going to help with the bet, though, that’s for sure.”

“I knew there was a bet! What are they betting on?”

I groaned. “The Family is betting on us sleeping together.”

He tilted his head back, laughed. When he stopped laughing his face was stained with a wicked grin. “Is that right? Who’s running the book?”

“Why?”

“Maybe I want to place a bet.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Sure I would.” He winked. “I’ve got inside information.”

I jumped up, shoved my wet feet back into the sandals I’d kicked off. “Don’t you have a home to go to?”

He laughed. “Come on, I’ve got something for you in the car.”

“What is it?” I asked suspiciously.

“A surprise.”

T
here are always
casualties in war. Fallen soldiers who leave behind orphans, widows, and other hearts that bleed for them.

Periphas Dogas left his eagle. Maybe the bird missed him—who could tell? It was an eagle, for crying out loud. They’re known for patriotism and performing feats of dog snatching in urban legends.

Anyway, Periphas Dogas had a bird, and now the bird didn’t have Periphas Dogas. Melas was giving me a look like I knew what to do with an abandoned eagle.

“Forget it,” I said. “I already have a goat.”

“And now you have an eagle. You’re like Dr. Doolittle.”

“Can’t Periphas take it to prison with him?”

“No. It was a problem last time. Kept eating the rats.”

I didn’t see how that was a problem until I squinted between the lines. The eagle had been stealing potential food from hungry men, in a country that didn’t have the cash to feed its prisoners properly.

“Fine,” I said, rolling my eyes so he knew it was a major hardship. “I’ll take the damn bird.”

He hooked his finger into the top of my dress. “Want me to tell you how I’m going to win that bet?”

“You’re not winning anything. I’m going to make sure you lose.”

He grinned. “Honey, if I win, we both win.”

O
ffloading
the eagle turned out to be easy. Papou took one look at the eagle the next morning and claimed Sam Eagle for himself.

“I will love him and squeeze him and call him Yiorgos.” He looked sideways at the caged bird, which was glaring at Grandma’s potted saplings. “Okay, maybe not squeeze him or he will tear out my throat.” He nodded to me. “Where are you going?”

My body had taking a beating on the basement steps, but I didn’t care enough to cover them up. Battle bruises. I’d pulled on a sundress, flats, and sunglasses. Now, I was Makria-bound.

I dropped my bag over my head, pulled it into position. “I have to see a man about some meat.”

“Get some for the bird, eh? What do eagles eat?”

“Mice. Vermin.” Not something in large supply at the compound. The family kept cats. Or, more accurately, the cats kept the family around so they’d have servants. The way things had worked out, I never did get to chat to the local bird nerd. Maybe I’d have to now that there was an eagle in the family. Sam Eagle had to eat. Eventually, he’d need healthcare.

“See if they have some lamb, eh?”

One lone car waited on the dirt outside the compound’s gates. On the hood sat Lefty, gun in hand, looking his normal, bland self. He was everyman. He was nobody.

“We’ve still got a problem, you and I,” he called out. “A conflict of interest.”

Behind me, Elias tensed. Cotton whispered to nylon polymer as he eased his gun from its hidden holster. The security guard stepped out the guardhouse, rifle raised.

My voice wobbled out. “You planning to shoot me?”

The beige man made a face. “You seem like a nice girl.” He patted his flat belly. “But I like to eat.”

“Your employer is still alive?”

He chuckled at the punch line of an inaudible joke. “I’m still here.”

Surprise yanked my eyebrows northwards. “Working for yourself?”

The bullet stepped out of the sky, buried itself in Lefty’s forehead, the way a projectile does when flung by an accurate pitcher.

Lefty slumped right. His gun tumbled onto the dirt road, followed by his body.

“Meep,” I said, heart flailing its hands Kermit-style in my chest.

I whirled around, hand shading my eyes. The sniper on the main building’s roof waved. Naturally, as it was around here, he was one of my second or third cousins.

“Too soon?” he yelled.

“Too soon!”

“I’m working on my timing!”

I gave him a thumbs-up, out of shock, mostly. My feelings were gloppy and a messy sort of mixed. Lefty had wanted to kill me. I wanted to live. But I was the kind of deranged optimist who wanted to live without other people dying.

Apparently I couldn’t always have both. Somehow, for now, I had to make peace with that so I wouldn’t completely lose my shit and wind up in the psych ward.

Once I found Dad, I could safely crack.

Footsteps came to check on the dead man. And in the distance, sirens began their approach.

I didn’t stick around; I had somewhere to be.

T
he sun flogged
me half-heartedly as I walked to Makria. Despite its name it wasn’t even close to being Far, Far Away. Elias followed at a discreet distance. Behind the wheel of a black Mini Cooper he was bound to attract more attention than me. Greeks didn’t drive slow, and Elias was crawling. A huffing, puffing bus on the brink of extinction overtook him. The driver waved the second, smaller, less well-known Greek flag: a raised middle digit.

When I arrived at the village, the former assassin parked and followed me on foot. I didn’t mind so much. Grandma paid him, but he was new to the Family, like me. We were muddling along, figuring things out.

Spiros the Butcher
was hacking the head off a pig when I stepped through his open door. A blowfly was doing laps, working up an appetite before it settled on a cut of meat.

“
Despinida
Katerina!” he said, beaming. Miss Katerina.

“Just Katerina is fine, I promise.”

He jerked his head up. “It would not be proper. How can I help you today? You need meat?”

I told him about the eagle and he suggested lamb. He got to work with his cleaver, making chunks out of what had once been a perfectly serviceable leg.

“What did you come to see me about yesterday? We were interrupted and I never got a chance to find out.”

He didn’t look up, but there was a funny expression on his face, as if he wasn’t sure whether to go on or not. Finally, he must have decided I was okay, because he said, “Those people who came here, the tourists, do you remember?”

The Germans who had asked about a butcher’s shop. “I remember.”

“There was something strange about their money.”

“How do you mean?”

“Wait, I will show you.” He wiped his hands on his apron, then from beneath the counter he rustled up a lockbox, which he opened with a key he kept on a string around his neck. He plucked a handful of euro bills from inside, dumped them on the counter in front of me.

I picked them up one at a time. This wasn’t my money; I wasn’t familiar enough with it yet to know its quirks and secrets.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I admitted.

“That money feels wrong,” he said. “And I know money. First I knew drachmas, now I know euros, and these are not real euros.”

“They look real enough.”

He shrugged. “They are very good copies. Whoever did this was a master because he fooled even me at first.” He tapped a thick finger on the side of his head. “But I am not stupid. As soon as I counted the money for the day, I knew it. When I took the money from them I had gloves on. But with bare hands?” He picked up one of the notes, rubbed the corner between his fingers. “This is fake.”

“Counterfeit …” I murmured.

Was counterfeiting something the Family did? No idea. Nobody had given me a cheat sheet.

“Let me think for a second,” I said. “Have you told anyone else?”

“Who am I going to tell? The police?” He laughed. “This is why I came to Kyria Katerina. She knows what to do about these things.”

Someone came to this village—Grandma’s village—and passed counterfeit money off as the real thing. Even if that were the Family’s bailiwick, she wouldn’t do that to her people. She and Makria, they had each other’s backs.

I poked around in my bag, pulled out my purse, counted out an equivalent number of notes. “Here. I’ll swap you real money for your fake money.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“You are a generous girl.” He beamed. “You have much of your grandmother in you.”

He meant it as a blessing, but I couldn’t see it as anything but mixed.

G
randma was still baking
, with Xander for company. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight, except for trips to the outhouse. I didn’t want to mess with her coping mechanism, so I sat at the kitchen table quietly and sought out the occasionally misguided wisdom of the Crooked Noses. Counterfeiting was a widespread problem, the board’s archives told me, but success stories were rare. The euro was difficult to duplicate, yet in a small Italian town named Giuliano, an organization called the Napoli Group had developed a reputation for producing almost flawless copies. In the Naples area counterfeiting was an art form passed from father to son. Scam artists from all over the world gravitated to Giuliano to beg for moneymaking lessons. There was a strong rumor that Kostas Makris, a Greek-German crime lord had sent one of his own to Italy to bone up on counterfeiting skills.

My blood chilled. My hands suddenly had all the rigidity of a rubber chicken. I suspected the rest of my body was in a similar state, which was why I maintained the sitting position. If I moved I’d wind up in an untidy heap on the kitchen floor.