Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (14 page)

My silent bodyguard grabbed the point of my elbow, steering me toward the store with bikini-clad sheets of cardboard crowded together in the window display. Not a headless mannequin in sight.

A bell let the cat out of the bag about our arrival in the dimly lit shop. Not that I was shooting for stealth, but Greek salespeople were an unknown quantity at this point. Would they leave me to shop in peace, or hover by my elbow like judgmental ghosts with verbal diarrhea?

Dust motes drifted through the air, tiny jellyfish searching for sinuses to invade. The interior was marginally cleaner than its exterior, but the stock looked nice enough. Not one to straddle the sharp, bleeding edge of fashion, I knew enough to know the styles were current and I probably couldn't go too wrong with many of the swimsuits.

The salesgirl lifted her head from her cell phone. I smiled and waved, but her face didn't budge. It was stuck in the
whatever
position. Perfect. Behind her, a black curtain spanned the width of a doorway.

Xander snatched up a one-piece designed to cover the essentials, the non-essentials, and my ankles.

"Seriously—no." I plucked it out of his hands, stuck it back on its hook. "Not unless we time travel to back to 1914—and maybe not even then."

The salesgirl snorted.

I zeroed in on something considered modest by Brazilian standards, and mildly risqué on American beaches. Two red triangles held together with thin strings and two larger triangles that tied at the sides. I waved them in the air.

"Can I try these on?"

"No changing room," Miss Congeniality told me.

"How about if I try it on over my clothes?"

"Sure," she said. "You could do that."

I shimmied into the bottoms, tied the top, inspected myself from every angle in a mirror better suited to a carnival. I couldn't gauge if my ass was that big or if my head was really that small.

"What do you think?" I asked Xander. He held up the suit I'd discarded for violating time travel laws and raised an eyebrow.

What was with this guy?

I stepped out of the red bottoms, yanked off the red top, carried them up to the counter. Before I had a chance to whip out my credit card, dealing it a fatal blow, Xander dropped a sleek, black metal card into my hand. Nothing on it except numbers and a magnetic strip.

I might have drooled a little. And I wasn't the only one. Miss Congeniality put the phone down slowly, eyes on the card.

"Tell me you're not wearing that to the beach," she said, scoping out my jeans and T-shirt with a critical eye.

"That was kind of the plan."

"You'll look like a tourist."

"I think I am," I said, trying to look less lame than I felt.

"Give me ten minutes and your boyfriend's credit card and you'll look like you belong." She eyed my complete lack of a tan. "More or less."

"Not my boyfriend," I muttered.

"Who cares? He's standing here with a black credit card."

"Is it your money?" I asked him.

He jerk his head up once. No.

"Grandma's?"

A nod.

Spending Xander's money was a no-go, but Grandma's? A whole different fairy tale.

"Okay," I said to the salesgirl. "Do your worst."

She grabbed my hand, snatched up the card, pulled me through the curtain behind her. What I expected what a storeroom. What I got was slightly smaller than a warehouse. You name it—if it was clothing, it was in this room. Everything was designer-labelled, and way out of my price range, but not Grandma's, judging from the way Xander found a wall to lean on so he could fiddle with his phone.

"I can't afford too much," I said. "I have to pay it back. And I lost my job because of a fire."

"Don't worry. Most of it's cheap."

I squinted at a rack of Chanel suits. "Really?"

"Of course," she assured me. "Everything falls off the back of a truck, and my boss is the guy who's there to pick it up when it does."

"Enterprising," I said.

"Isn't it?" She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, gaze scanning the racks and shelves and the hundreds of boxes stacked high. "What are you, size thirty-six?"

I gulped. "That sounds …" Tent-sized. "… big."

"European sizing. What size are you in America?"

"Hard to say. It changes from store to store. We have vanity sizing."

"We don't do that," she said. "If you're fat in Europe the numbers won't lie to you." She disappeared between the racks, and when she returned she'd transformed into my fairy godmother.

W
aves had
no power in the Pagasetic Gulf. The beaches were pebbles and the tide rose and fell, but the water licked the shore with an untrusting tongue, not sure if it liked the flavor or not. Swimmers hauled themselves aboard moored vessels they didn't own. Seaweed stuck itself to limbs, shooting unsuspecting swimmers out of the water, screaming about sea monsters.

I peeled off one of my new sundresses, then flopped down on the beach mat I'd just unrolled. Xander shunned the offer of a towel or the edge of my mat, choosing to park his butt on the pebbles. I figured it was his funeral; a more adventurous eater than me could fry an egg on those things. His phone was in his hand, but his attention was everywhere else. Slipping away wasn't going to be easy, but I'd give it my Yankee best. It was no coincidence that I'd deposited us in amidst a smallish sea of similar red bikinis. Safety—and invisibility—in numbers.

As the sun sneered overhead, I kicked part one of my plan into action.

"Wow," I said, looking longingly at an ice cream walking past. "I can't remember the last time I had ice cream. It sure looks good."

Xander's sunglass lenses were pitch black, not a flicker behind them. All I could see was a miniature me reflected in their shine. Red bikini. White skin. Basically, I was Canada's flag.

Ice creams and drinks were marching double-time from a pavilion set into the sidewalk. Besides the obvious refreshments, it sold magazines, newspapers, cigarettes, and gum. The line was thirty bodies long.

"Want one? Because I want one—maybe even two."

No change. I moved to stand but he pulled me back down.

"One of us has to go," I said. "And there are only two of us here. We're surrounded by people, how dangerous can it be? Nobody is going to abduct, kill, or maim me on a crowded beach. It never happens. Or almost never." I wasn't sure. But I was pretty convinced it wouldn't be happening to me, because I was leaving the second his back was turned and his front was busy buying ice cream.

He gave me a pained look and stood.

"Something with a cone," I said. "Preferably chocolate with the hard chocolatey shell. Please."

He began working his way across the beach, glancing back occasionally, until he realized looking back led to trampling on other sunbathers. I waited until he was in line and hidden behind the racks of magazines and papers. In a flash, I pulled a different dress out of my new beach bag and shimmied into it, tags and all.

Then I hoofed it across the pebbles, away from where Xander was waiting on ice cream.

Bad idea? Probably. But I've had worse.

There was always yesterday.

C
hristos Koulouris
—also known as Cookie, on account of how his last name was derived from
koulouri
, a snack somewhere between a cookie and a pretzel—lived in a grand house set back about a quarter mile from the road. Zoning didn't seem to be a thing in this village, so his neighbors were a church and a dump of a house that was losing a war with the elements. Who could blame it? The sun was bad tempered around here. That had to get old after fifty or so years. My body was already thinking shedding its skin and melting into a greasy puddle on the uneven sidewalk was a decent coping strategy, in this weather. Cookie might have been one of the Family's biggest adversaries, but unlike Grandma he wasn't tucked inside a fortress. No gate, no guards, no guard dogs, no security cameras that I could see. He did have a fountain, though. Very nice. Its centerpiece was a marble dude springing a leak in the water. The driveway was wide and paved with bricks. The house itself was three stories of pale cream paint on stucco, topped with a red slate roof.

A woman answered the door. She was in her early sixties, but had trudged a long, hard road getting there. She wore a black blouse tucked into a black skirt, both straining at the seams. Her sandals were black, flat, and framed yellowing, toenails. Behind her, the house was bright and clean. The air smelled of lemons formulated in a factory and pine that had sprouted in a test tube.

I wished her a good morning, gave her my first name, and asked for the man who was second on my family's list of enemies.

Her passive face hardened. "I suppose you are one of his
putanas
. What do you want—money?"

Confusion set in. "No. I have a job. Or at least I did." Until Grandma blew my workplace sky high.

She rolled her eyes. "That is new, a whore with a job. Congratulations."

"Wait—I'm not a whore! I never even met your—"

"Brother," she said. "Christos was my brother, and now he is dead."

"That's been happening a lot lately," I said, thinking about Kefalas.

"This happened yesterday."

Just like Kefalas.

I gave her my heartfelt apologies, but she shrugged them off.

"It was his own fault," she said. "When you lie down with shit, you will be covered with shit when you stand up again—guaranteed."

Oookay … "What kind of shit?"

She shrugged, fixating on a point somewhere beyond my left ear. "Drugs, whores, guns, gambling. My brother never made one honest euro or drachma in his life. Even as a boy he was a criminal. He was a pimp when he was in high school. Who does that? Shit, that is who."

"I'm sorry your brother was shit."

She reached out, slapped my head. "Show some respect. He was my baby brother. I don't know how I will go on without him." She dabbed at Sahara-dry eyes.

"How did he die?"

"He drowned."

My knees went wobbly, my face cold. That was too the Baptist-like for me. "Drowned where?"

"In the toilet, can you believe it? Who does that? He was a successful businessman—a criminal, yes, but crime is still a business—and now he will be known as the man who drowned in a toilet. Oh well, at least he did it at his apartment in Volos and not here."

"So it was a murder?"

"What else would it be? My brother would not kill himself. Suicide is for other people."

"Do the police have any suspects?" Listen to me, all private eye and stuff. If I wasn't sweat-soaked and dehydrating, I'd be pretty cool right now.

She snorted. "It will be like hunting for a single grain of rice in Asia." She squinted at me, as though it suddenly dawned on her that my being there was weird. "Who are you? And why are you asking all these questions?"

I shook my head. "No reason. I don't suppose your brother kidnapped anyone recently, like, say, from America?" I pulled my phone out of my pocket, scrolled to a selfie Dad and I snapped the last time we ate out. "Does he look familiar?"

"Kidnapped! What are you talking about? Why would my brother kidnap anyone?" She squinted at the picture. "Him I never saw in my life. Who is he?"

"My father."

She gasped. "You are one of those Makris?"

Hang on a minute … "Wait. How—" She'd obviously recognized Dad, the rotten liar.

She slammed the door. "Go away."

"Please, I need your help."

Nothing.

I stood there for a moment on the front porch, hand shading my eyes, and thought about taking a quick swim in the fountain.

Behind me, there was a small click. The door had opened enough for Cookie's sister to fling a handful of sprinkles at me. I touched my finger to one of the white grains on my arm and tasted. Salt. She'd hit me with a Greek superstition. Want a guest to leave? Why ask them to go when you can hurl salt? Crazy.

I tossed a few grains over my shoulder, in case the devil was hanging around, with nothing better to do with his time. Then I trotted back down the long driveway, trying to figure out my next move. The sister had mentioned an apartment in Volos. How the heck was I going to find that? Getting directions was as easy as pie in the smaller villages where everybody was used to minding their neighbors' business. But in the city?

I'd need a miracle.

Or—incoming thunderbolt!— an internet connection. Good thing I had one on my phone.

A quick glance at my phone showed it was closing in on lunchtime. Before long, Greece would be shutting down for the afternoon. People would take to the shade, either in their beds or coffee shops, where the seating was all outdoors but every table had a broad umbrella.

I tramped back to the promenade. Buses allegedly slouched past every fifteen minutes, all of them Volos-bound. My plan was to be on the next one that rolled to a stop outside this produce store.

Was Xander going crazy looking for me?

And did I really care?

Let's take those two questions one at a time.

Most certainly. And nope.

Okay, maybe a bit.

That I was on a psychopath's hit list aside, I wasn't a kid in need of a sitter. A bodyguard was fine, and I would have welcomed that, but Xander—at the behest of my grandmother—was trying to dictate my every move. Not cool. Having to do this the underhanded way stunk; I hated to be all emo teenager and bratty about it, but the two of them had left me no choice.

I bought a
Sokofreta
bar at a
periptero
—one of the postage stamp-sized square pavilions (a smaller cousin of the beachside pavilion where I'd ditched Xander) that dotted Greece and sold cigarettes, candy, magazines, newspapers, fizzy drinks, and ice cream—snarfing down the sweet cardboard wafer while I watched Greece slowly grind to a four-hour halt. Women hurried home with their groceries stuffed into nylon mesh bags. Greeks fled the beach, leaving the red and white bodies to crisp under the boiler. Mine would be one of them if I wasn't careful. I had the usual Greek dosage of melanin in my skin, but Portland was more Easy Bake Oven than blast furnace, so I was only a shade or two darker than milk.