A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (10 page)

When she looked around her, at Mykonos town itself, her initial impression was that the decade and more that had passed since her last visit had produced little change. The look of the city (cubical white houses, narrow, bewildering alleys, bustling streets, the famous, much-photographed row of the six squat, blindingly white windmills on the hill) and its smells (bougainvillea and frying fish) were much as they’d been before. But within seconds the changes started jumping out at her. The shops were as tiny as she remembered, virtual miniatures, but they’d changed from grocery stores and cheap souvenir shops into posh designer boutiques. And the people on the streets were different as well. The last time, there had been a dazzling jumble of clothes and lifestyles: elderly black-clad women hauling baskets of live chickens or rabbits or vegetables; men in traditional outfits of vests, sashes, ballooning knee breeches, and tasseled red fezzes; grungy backpackers and bicyclists; and even the occasional businessman or government worker wearing a suit and tie. Here and there a few wary tourists, usually in groups trailing behind an upraised red or yellow umbrella. Now the streets were no less lively, but the people had changed. Not a fez in sight, let alone a chicken, but plenty of baseball caps, tank tops, shorts, sneakers, and sandals. And a penetrating new smell too: sunscreen. The Age of the Cruise Ship had arrived in Mykonos, big time. Only the wandering backpackers seemed to have survived and even increased in number. Wherever the jet-setting fashionistas who were supposed to hang out on Mykonos were, they seemed to be hiding out till after dark, when the cruise line day-trippers were safely gone.

Everybody seemed to be eating something as they walked or browsed, too—gyros, souvlaki, ice cream—and Alix’s stomach, despite having gotten
more than its fair share of good French food on the flight, started raising a fuss. She stopped at the sidewalk window of a taverna, where a vertical rotisserie was slowly roasting a cone-shaped column of sliced pork, and asked for a gyros.

“You want American gyros or Greek gyros?” the chef-hatted, white-aproned counterman asked.

Alix hadn’t known there was a difference. “Greek,” she said.

He approved. “Good. Greek is better.”

The chief difference, it appeared, when she got her order, was that a serving of French fries, which sometimes came on the side back home, went right into the pita wrap along with the meat, tomato, onion, and
tzatziki
sauce. She couldn’t really say that she preferred the potato in there getting soggy, but it hit the spot and she downed it with pleasure, along with a Coke, as she walked toward the boat dock.

With two months to prepare for the cruise, she’d boned up on more than the art and artists that would be in the collection. She’d researched Papadakis the man, megayachts in general, and the
Artemis
in particular, which had an entire long chapter to itself in a coffee-table book of photographic essays:
Amazing Yachts.
At 239 feet, it missed being in the list of the world’s hundred largest yachts by only seven feet. When it was built in 1989 (for a Saudi prince; Papadakis had bought and refurbished it in 2006), it had squeaked in at number eighty-eight, and it was one of the first to boast a helicopter pad along with its own helicopter to go with it, but the big yachts were being built bigger every year, and grander too. Nowadays, in addition to the usual launches and tenders, they carried an abundance of high-tech gadgets with no purpose but to provide a few hours of fun: one-person devices that hovered just over the water, or flew a few feet above the surface, or skimmed just underneath it; high-speed boats (often two or three of them); even full-fledged, multipassenger submarines. In the language of yachting magazines and web sites, Alix had learned, these enormously expensive devices were universally referred to as “toys,” which
seemed to her a not-so-attractive example of coyly disingenuous modesty by the superrich.

When she was a block from the pier, she saw that there were only two boats larger than rowboats that were pulled up to it: a boxy teak launch and a low, sleek cigarette boat, the kind of vessel that was sometimes called a “go-fast boat” and, once upon a time, for good reason, a “rum-runner’s boat.” At the sight of it, there was a catch in her throat. She’d always had a weakness for speed and would have given her eyeteeth for a spin in such a thing (she’d have thrown in a couple of molars as well, if a turn at the wheel were part of the deal). And now it looked as if she was going to get her chance and still keep her teeth. According to
Amazing Yachts,
a high-powered, thirty-foot cigarette boat capable of planing over the water at more than fifty knots was one of the
Artemis
’s toys, and, what do you know, here it was, sent especially to fetch her.

The closer she came to it the more beautiful it got, a gleaming white hull with an arching red slash from front to back, so beautifully graceful and close to the water that even standing still it looked as if it were moving. As she came up to it, a man, his back to her, emerged into the open cockpit from the storage area in the boat’s covered bow and folded back into place the steps that led down to it. He’d probably just deposited her luggage, brought by the limo driver.

“Hi, there,” she said.

He turned. “Well, hello to you.” The accent was Italian and elegant and the man himself looked as if he might have been made—manufactured—just to go with this boat. He was beautiful in the same way the boat was: handsome, smooth-skinned, ideally proportioned, and maybe a little (but only a little) too perfect.

“I’m Alix London,” she said.

“And I—” He put a hand to his chest. “I am Michelangelo Benedetti.” He smiled. Perfect teeth too, white and even and strong. At first she thought it was a clothing-store mannequin he reminded her of, but then she
realized it was a doll, a doll she’d had as a child—Barbie’s boyfriend Ken. He was even dressed like Ken in his yachtsman’s phase: red-and-white striped polo shirt, sky-blue windbreaker and trousers, white deck shoes, captain’s cap. The thought made her laugh, but he took it as the return of his own friendly smile. “And this,” he said with pride, “this is
La Bella Vita
—in English,
The Beautiful Life
. Would you like to come aboard? I am about to take her out for a run, perhaps around Delos. You know Delos? I would have you back in an hour. It would be very exhilarating. So?” He offered a confident hand to help her on.

She stayed put. “Uh… you’re not from the
Artemis
, are you?”

“
Artemis
? No, I am—”

“Madame, you are looking for
Artemis
?”

She turned. The voice came from the boxy launch, and the speaker was a slightly younger man, dark, lean, and fit—handsome, but in a wolfish way—in what she took to be a yachting crew uniform, spotless and crisp: white, short-sleeved, collared shirt with colorful epaulettes and a blue logo on the side of his chest that she couldn’t read, and sharply creased white trousers.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m Alix London. Are you here for me?” Her heart fell as she spoke. The launch, despite its shipshape condition, had more in common with the
African Queen
than with
La Bella Vita
.

“I come to bring you for the yacht, yes. I am purser of the
Artemis
.” He pointed to the logo:
Artemis,
she saw now. “My name, Dionysodaurus Kyriakoulopoulos.”

Gamely, she gave it a try. “Dio… Donosaur…”

He laughed. “Mostly, I am called Donny.”

He took a step forward to help her over the gunwale, but, with a wry glance at Benedetti, she hopped onto the boat on her own. There was a bench around three sides, and she took a seat near the front. Donny deftly untied the mooring ropes, got behind the wheel, and gunned the engine.

Michelangelo Benedetti looked on with a smile both sad and ironic. “Does this mean you won’t be coming with me?”

“I guess not. Sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am, signorina.”

“That’s what you think,” she called back as the launch began to move out. That broadened his smile, but he would have been surprised to learn that it was the cigarette boat she was thinking of and not him.

The launch was anything but sleek, but nobody could complain about the furnishings. Alix was pleasurably surprised by how deeply she sank into the buttery white leather that cushioned the bench. She slipped on her sunglasses, tilted her head up to the sun, and stretched out her legs. She was wearing a simple, pale green linen sundress and sandals, and, with a sigh, she gave herself up to the caress of the warm Aegean sunlight—Apollo’s gift to humankind—on her skin. With what struck her as a pro forma glance at her legs, almost as if he were simply doing what was expected of him, Donny started up the engine and began pulling away from the dock. Now the salt-laden breeze riffled her hair too.

Heaven.

She was startled out of a near doze by a sudden lurch of the boat. Her eyes popped open. “What—”

“
Figlio di puttana
!”

The oath came from Michelangelo Benedetti, to whose cigarette boat Donny had veered much too close. The furious Benedetti was leaning over the side and shoving on the launch’s stern to keep it from swinging into his boat.

With a showily nonchalant spin of the wheel, Donny stopped the launch’s forward momentum and sent it out of harm’s way. “
Ante gamisou!
” he yelled back.

Alix had spent seven years in Italy, so she knew that Benedetti had called him a son of a whore, but Greek was a mystery to her. She had no idea what
ante gamisou
meant (other than being pretty sure it wasn’t complimentary), and she had no desire to ask for a translation.

Benedetti just glared at Donny in response, then looked over at Alix with an expression that beautifully conveyed his sympathy over her being required to go off with this baboon in his bathtub of a boat, considering what might have been hers instead. With the launch safely out of reach and gaining speed, Donny raised his hand high without turning around and offered his farewell in the form of an extended middle finger, surely the world’s most universally understood gesture.

Alix shook her head. She was going to have to get herself used to the various forms of Mediterranean machismo that she’d become acquainted with during her eight-year apprenticeship in Italy. They had struck her as flattering at first (for all of two days or so), then annoying, and finally boring. The never-ending flirting and strutting; the chest-puffing; the unsubtle hitting on any female who made the mistake of responding to a greeting; the strange sense of obligation, of duty, that seemed to require so many males to convince any passing woman younger than sixty (and often older if no young ones were available) that she had astounded them with her irresistible beauty. It was basically all showmanship. There was never any question that it didn’t really have as much to do with
you
as it did with
him. Look at me,
he was saying,
how handsome I am, how manl
y.
Have you ever seen such a smile, such a profile as this?
The whole boring routine was just plain silly, tiresome but essentially harmless.

Inside of five minutes, both Benedetti and Donny had demonstrated their inclinations in that direction. Benedetti had some things going for him—an attractive guy with an appealing, breezy charm (to say nothing of
La Bella Vita
)—but Donny gave her the creeps. It wasn’t just that hungry, slinking air of his, either, or a simple absence of chemistry, although that was there too. Donny manifested another predilection of many males in this part of the world, and this one definitely made her want to steer clear of him. To men like Donny, every interaction with an unknown male was a challenge to his own manhood. It was necessary to demonstrate to anyone within range that he was tougher, or stronger, or more reckless, or more “connected,” or more anything.

“You think that cigarette boat there was nice?” he asked contemptuously as they wove between the small craft that dotted the harbor. “Why, you like fast boats, huh? Wait, you see ours, the
Hermes
. Hermes, he was god of speed,” he added for her instruction.

“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” Alix said politely.

“Not only it’s beautiful. Fifty knots, she supposed to go? Me, I know how to get her up to seventy-five.”

He seemed to expect a reply, so she said, “Really?”

“You bet, really. I drive her all the time. I am always taking out Mr. and Mrs. Papadakis. I’m only one he lets. He and me, we are good cousins, and I can drive it any time I want.” He cleared his throat to make sure he had her full attention. “Pocahontas, she always likes for me to take her out two, three times when she comes.”

“I’m sorry… you said—?”

He looked at her in surprise. “You don’t know Pocahontas? The singer?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You never hear of Pocahontas?” He couldn’t believe his ears. “ ‘I Need It Now’? ‘I’ll Take It Either Way’? ‘Rub Me the Wrong Way’?”

“Sorry.”

“Come on, you know. ‘I Gotta Get Me More’?” He launched into song, tacking what he must have thought was a white singer’s version of an African American accent onto his already demanding Greek accent. Unfortunately, the words were still intelligible.