Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

C
opyright
© 2015 by Alex A. King

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

F
or Dad
, who—as far as I know—is really just a baker.

W
hen I was eight
, I was one of those little girls whose heart belonged to Daddy. But for safekeeping, he said, he kept it in my chest instead of a mason jar in the freezer.

"Don't listen to him," Mom said when she saw the horror buttering my cute pixie face. "He's got all the dangly man parts, but your father's a weirdo drama queen."

In those days, my dad was over-the-top. Melodramatic.
Greek
. He announced every bathroom visit, passed gas like he was competing for a prize, and sported a six-pack when other dads had long passed the age where they cared about sucking in their guts.

In contrast, Mom was a solid American gal. A down-to-earth, easy-going, pancake-making realist. She had a face like a beauty queen, but she shunned blowouts for ponytails, heels for hiking boots, cosmetics for Chapstick. Her idea of high drama was cursing when she hooked a little toe on the coffee table, something that would drive even a saint to go foraging for f-bombs.

Somehow my folks had made marriage work, and the place they made it work for twenty years—before a bitch called cancer snatched Mom out of our lives and stuffed her in an early grave—was Portland, Oregon, a city where there's a coffee shop on every corner and rain in the forecast nine months out of twelve. In late spring, Portland won a brief reprieve when the rain packed its sodden bags and went to Florida to wait on hurricane season.

"Greece is paradise," Dad used to tell Mom, when she made fun of his Greek melodrama. "Portland is like a witch's
mouni
. Always wet, always cold. I don't know why I stay here."

Their conversation always played out the same way. My mother's reply, by my eighth year, was as canned as a sitcom's laugh track. "So go home."

He would heave out a whale-sized, theatrical sigh. "How can I go home when I have the two of you tied to my ankle, making my life miserable?" He always topped it with a wink so I'd know he was kidding. If we were an anchor, he was moored someplace that made him happy.

"It's just his way," Mom told me. "The problem is that Greece has the longest umbilical cord in history, and instead of nutrients it pumps delusions into your father's head. To him, Greece will always be paradise. Beautiful, virginal women. Perfect beaches. The best food in the world. No crime."

After a brief moment of panic on her part when I asked her to define
virginal
(she went with 'untouched'), I moved on to my real question.

"They don't have crime?"

Now there was a concept completely alien to an American kid. Crime was something we did better than anybody, except maybe the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

Mom, being a straight-shooter, said, "There
is
crime—that's the point. As much crime as anyplace else. But your father keeps Greece up on a pedestal. If he went back he'd die of culture shock."

When I went to my father later and asked him about crime in Greece, he scoffed. "There is no crime in Greece because we are Greek. We are civilized. We know better."

To eight-year-old me it sounded boring. I mean … what did they do for news? Even at that age I was aware we lived in a country that thrived on disaster. Advertisers counted on our addiction to atrocity. When I said it out loud, he laughed. "Greece is not boring. Come sit, I will tell you a story."

I remembered standing there for a moment, trying to decide whether to sit or not. Dad's stories had a way of turning horrifying and weird. Most of them featured a creature known as Baboulas, the Greek boogeyman. Baboulas was a terrible creature, one with a small army of lesser boogeymen who did its bidding. They would traipse out into the night, silencing anyone they considered a threat to their boogeyman way of life. There were only two ways to escape Baboulas, the way he told it: death or the Witness Protection Program—and the second one was kind of iffy.

In the end, I sat there wide-eyed, chin resting on my fists, as he spun the tale of Baboulas riding Pegasus into the Cyclades to collect gold from a medicine man, who had vanished with the gold and the medicine. Baboulas, upon discovering the medicine man's whereabouts, took the gold, swiped the medicine, and pushed the man off Pegasus's back into the Aegean Sea.

When he was done I said, "But you said there's no crime in Greece."

"That is not crime," he told me. "That is life."

Approximately twenty years later I'd discover he was wrong. It was both.

S
ummer in Portland
. Day thirty-something without rain. The air crackled like empty chip bags, and the grass lay panting on top of dry dirt. Around the area trees were still green. They were used to Portland's annual mood swings, so they knew to dig their roots deep. This kind of weather brought the convertibles out, their drivers white-haired and hellbent on using the roads their taxes paid for any way they pleased.

No convertible for me. I was a faithful driver, sticking with my aging Jeep, through mud and dust and the occasional snow. We'd been together ten years, since my eighteenth birthday, and I wasn't sure who I'd be without my same-old wheels. I didn't even throw a longing glance in the direction of those topless cars. Air conditioning trumped warm, carbon monoxide-laden air.

Okay, so it was a vanity thing, too. My long, dark hair was being uncharacteristically well-behaved. For once, it was laying flat on my back, exhausted after a butt-kicking from the straightening iron. Zipping away in a convertible would have been like tossing a toddler into a candy-filled pit. Behind black shades my eyes were brown. I wore sunglasses all year round, out of habit mostly. But in summer they were a necessity. The sun wanted to gouge out my eyes, I just knew it.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was on my way back home to pick up Dad for our weekly father-daughter eat out. Butterflies were breakdancing in my stomach, but my hands and chest felt as though I'd plunged them into ice water. I felt a happy kind of sad. Unbeknownst to Dad, I had an announcement of the life-changing kind, and the plan was to dish the big news over food someone else had cooked.

Tonight it was Chinese, a new place we'd never tried. "What do I want to eat Chinaman's food for, eh?" Dad had said when I picked the place off a flyer someone left swinging on the front doorknob. "All they eat is rice, rice, rice. If they were smart they would foreclose on America and take her
patates
.
Patates
are good, hearty. They make you strong."

There were a lot of things on Dad's list of Popeye-worthy foods—most of them with Greek names.

We took turns choosing, and never the same place twice. Dad's idea. Good thing Portland—like most cities—had a never-ending crop of eateries opening and closing, when they failed to make moolah. "I never know who could be following me," he often muttered.

"Maybe Baboulas?" I would ask, remembering those childhood stories.

"Heh. Yes, maybe Baboulas. And I do not want Baboulas to find me."

I pulled into the driveway, swearing when I spotted Reggie Tubbs sitting out on his porch wearing his robe. Like a garden gnome, our next-door neighbor was a permanent fixture. He was always there, always in the same blue-and-white robe. The guy was eighty—at least—but he never missed an opportunity to fling open his cotton curtains and show me what he was made of.

Mostly what he was made of was a sausage casing with the goop scraped out.

The house I grew up in was off-white paint slapped on wide planks. The lawn was neat and weed-free. Three bedrooms, two-point-five bathrooms, and a deck stuck to the back that we all built together the year I turned ten. It was a solid house in a good neighborhood. The perfect place to scar kids for life.

"Hey, Kat," Reggie called out, his voice high and excited.

Kat. Short for Katerina Makris. If I'd been raised in Greece I'd be Katerina Makri—no s. But in America everyone is created more or less equal—including women, at least most of the time—so I get to keep the s.

"Hey," I said without glancing over.

Never make eye contact with a weenie waver. It only encourages them.

"How's Mike doing?"

Mike was what Dad had been calling himself since he hopped on an America-bound boat thirty or so years ago. I guessed it was easier to swallow than Michail, which was the complicated way Greeks pronounce Michael.

"Fine. See you, Mr. Tubbs."

Hopefully just his face, next time.

After scuttling around the side of the house, I beelined for the back door. It was hard to look at the place without remembering I was down to one parent. Mom had died nine years ago this November. After her funeral, I ditched college and bounced from job to job, until I landed in a cubicle at a debt collecting agency. Harassing occasionally respectable people for a living wasn't my idea of fun, so I smothered my sorrows in junk food and television on a nightly basis, and made promises to myself that—so far—I'd never kept. Go more places. See more stuff. Probably I was going to die in my cubicle, trying to squeeze green blood from an unemployed stone. Before I turned thirty, I planned to invest in cats.

Dad wasn't at the door. Normally, when he wasn't working, he whipped it open before I had a chance to pull out my key. This time not only did I have ample time to isolate the key on my keyring, but I stuck it in and turned without hearing him on the other side.

God, what if he'd fallen and smashed a hip? He was only fifty-five but it could happen—couldn't it?

Completely unprepared for the possibility of having to bury another parent, I went room to room, hunting for Dad. No mess. Nothing out of place. No sign of a struggle or a death. Car in the garage. But no Dad. He was simply … gone.

Aliens. It had to be aliens. There was no other logical explanation.

I trotted outside, calm on the outside, a Jackson Pollock painting splattered on the inside.

"Hey, Mr. Tubbs." Sunglasses firmly in place, I cut my eyes to the sky and hoped he wouldn't notice. "Have you seen Dad today?"

"What day is it?"

"Sunday."

He thought about it for a moment. "Maybe. If you look at Reggie Junior I'll tell you know what I know."

"Not fair."

"Life isn't fair. And I'm kind of an asshole."

Kind of? I should call the police, make them squeeze him like a tube of toothpaste, but old Reggie Tubbs was a former judge. The police wouldn't touch—or look—at him.

"Just a quick glance," I said, trying to bargain with the wrinkled devil.

He zipped his lips, threw away the key. Very mature.

"How long?"

He shrugged. "Until I say stop."

"How long's that going to be?"

"You're cute," he said. "It's going to be a while."

Eww
. "Can I close one eye?"

"No. Both eyes open. Sunglasses off."

Nightmares. Years and years of nightmares ahead. Probably I'd need therapy.

"Okay," I said. "Get it over with."

His face fell. "Where's the enthusiasm, the love? I don't show it to just anyone."

Oh, I doubted that. "Just hurry up and show me."

"Women," he said. "Always telling a man what to do. Next thing you'll be cutting off my balls, making yourself a change purse out of the sack." He tied the robe, sat back down in his chair. "I don't want to show you now."

Christ on a cracker. "What about my father?"

The old judge shrugged. "Some guys came and took him away. He didn't look happy."

"Who were they? The police? Internal Revenue Service?" I thought about it and came up empty. Dad was a law-abiding citizen. Bills were paid on time. Taxes filed before the April 15 deadline. He bought Girl Scout Cookies, and he worshipped at the nearest Greek Orthodox church, when he wasn't out with the truck. He drove all over the country for a company that made packing peanuts and bubble wrap.

"Do I look like I know? I mind my own business when it comes to men who look like that."

"Like what?"

"A pair of old-school guidos. Like they walked straight off a plane from Sicily and drove right here. Every time I've seen men like that, they've been on the guilty side of the courtroom."

"Are you saying …" My brain crunched the numbers while I blinked stupidly. "… mobsters took my father?" Portland did weird better than anyone, except maybe New York, but we didn't do organized crime of the Italian-American variety. That I knew of.

He held up both hands. "I'm not saying anything that can be used against me in a court of law."

"Should I call the police?"

"He's your father."

"Would you call the police?"

"I don't think they can help you," he said. "Go inside and wait. That's what I'd do. Ten bucks says you'll be hearing from those guys soon. Then you can call the feds."

D
id I wait
? Ha. No. I got on the phone pronto, called the police. They asked a few questions then blew me off because being hauled out of the house by
Godfather
wannabes wasn't a big deal unless he'd gone kicking and screaming. Until he'd been missing twenty-four hours, or someone demanded ransom, they wouldn't do squat. So I sat on Mom and Dad's couch, ordered a pizza, and waited for something to happen.

Going home was out of the question.

About that …

As of today, I was officially the renter of a one-bedroom cell in a sad apartment building, where hope went to grow old and die. My new neighbors were old people waiting to qualify for a slot in a nursing home, and young women waiting for the boyfriend of the week to propose.

Dad was going to hate it.

I got it, though. He was lonely. I was lonely, too, since we lost Mom. She went to the great hiking trail in the sky long before her parenting shift was over. Tonight I had planned to tell Dad I was moving out. If I'd done it sooner, before signing the lease, he'd have guilt-tripped me into staying, with a combination of puppy-dog-eyes and lectures about
philotimo
.
Philotimo
is the concept Greek parents trot out when it suits them. It's a bundle of virtues shoehorned into one box. Do good, be good, love and respect your elders—okay, it's basically the ten commandments, but without the religious angle. It's a philosophy. Anyway, anytime the mountain—me—rumbled and made noises about moving out, Dad launched into his
philotimo
speech.