Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (21 page)

I went from bottle to souvlaki, peeling back the paper before sinking my teeth into the top. Flavor exploded in my mouth, a perfect storm of pita bread, lamb, tangy onions, sweet tomatoes, and a swirl of
tzaztiki
and feta.

"Oh my God," I said, violating Mom's Number One rule at the dinner table. I figured she'd forgive me, given that there wasn't a table in sight, and also because it's hard to enforce rules when you're dead. In a foreign country it felt slightly decadent and exotic to talk with my mouth full.

We ate in silence until I couldn't take it any more. Mouth still stuffed, I said, "You know who he is, don't you? the Baptist, I mean."

He shrugged and kept on chewing. Probably his mother had the same rule about talking and eating. Given that she was still living, and Greek, she'd probably magically know if he scribbled in her rulebook, and turn his life into a living hell.

Eventually the food ran out. He drained his bottle, leaving him with no choice but to answer my question. "I know who he is."

"Who?"

"It's a 'need to know thing'. You don't need to know. What you need is to go home."

"Tried that. Didn't like it." I folded my arms, planted myself in front of him. The donkey lover was inches from his right ear.

He groaned. "You're a pain in my ass."

"Pegging's not really my style."

He looked confused, so I explained it to him, using the politician and his donkey as reference material. Confusion turned to fear. "There's something wrong with you," he said. "Go away."

Wheels turned in my head. Nerve cells flung neurotransmitters across my synapses. I did the math and came up with an awful number.

"Is he a cop?"

Twitch. "No."

I stabbed the air with a finger. "Liar. He is too a cop. Not just any cop—he's one of yours."

"No, he's not."

"Yes, he is."

"Not."

This was turning kindergarten, fast. "Okay," I conceded. "Let me extrapolate further. the Baptist is a
former
cop. He
used
to be one of yours."

Silence. His jaw ticked.

"He's a former cop," I repeated. Dread blossomed inside my chest, elbowing my heart and lungs to the side so it had room to expand. "Shit." I might have grabbed my hair and paced a bit. When I stopped I said, "The people he kills, they're
all
bad guys, aren't they? None of them are contracts. They're his own personal hit list. He thinks he's taking out the trash."

He shrugged, but it was the kind of shrug that was intended to be a nod.

It's easy to fall into the sort of magical thinking where you're the good guy, and where the other guy—the one hellbent on detaching your head from its body—is the bad guy. I'd been one of the good guys all my life. Never got a parking ticket, a speeding ticket, a library fine. My record was a blank, squeaky clean page. Then along came Greece. Hellas was all out of paper in its outhouse, so it had wiped its butt on me. By default, because I was a Makris, I was part of the criminal class, one of the bad guys. There's no being good around here when you family name is bad—Dad was adamant about that. Steal one chicken, the entire line is contaminated for centuries. As far as the Baptist and people like him were concerned, I was a ticking bomb. I could go full supervillain at any moment. I was Tony Soprano waiting to happen. For all they knew I was a Michael Corleone; he started out as one of the good guys, too.

The Baptist was just taking protective measures.

Something mewled. I suspected it was me.

"Why did you tell me Grandma hired him to kill Cookie?"

"I didn't. I told you that was the story going around."

"Was it really?"

"There's always a story. That was one—just not one of ours. Go home," Melas said. "There you can have a life. Here you'll always be watching your back, waiting on a bullet to come out of nowhere."

Gulp
.

Ordinarily I'd have gone like a good little sheep, but Dad was still out there. Until he turned up there was no backing down. If a bullet—or the Baptist—found me before then at least I'd die honorably, doing what mattered most.

"Is there another way off the naughty list?"

He shook his head.

"Then I'll take my chances. Dad's worth it."

"He'd be the first one to send you home."

"How would you know? You know nothing about him—or me."

"I'm a father, remember? I'd be furious if I was him. A parent is supposed to lie their life down for a child."

"Yeah, well, I'm not every child. I'm doing this my way. Are you going to help me or what?"

"Forget it."

"Give me something. Anything. A picture so I can ask around."

"You want to find him?"

"Not really." Maybe I was nuts, but I wasn't crazy. "I need to talk to him, though. Reason with him. Maybe he'll leave me alone."

He tilted his head back and laughed. "Baby, he's not somebody you bargain with. He's a psycho. He'll listen and then he'll kill you."

I stood there for a moment, hands on hips, squinting through the doily that was my plan. "Okay, so I haven't thought this whole plan through yet."

"The plan is: go home and leave it to the police."

"Because that's working out
so
well."

"I'm not helping you find him. So don't ask."

"How about his real name?"

His eyes dropped to my chest. When they came back to my face they were all warm and gooey. "You look good. Do you know how irresistible you are? You make me wish I wasn't a cop, or that you weren't a Makris."

My heart kicked itself in the butt, sped up to a moderate jog. Lust shot me with an arrow, right in the v-spot.

"I'm immune to rotten bastards."

"I liked seeing you in my handcuffs," he said, deep and low. "Ever let a man tie you up before?"

"You're a pig." My mouth was dry. I wanted him to keep talking, and I wanted him to shut the hell up. First world problems.

Somehow we'd switched places. Now my back was against the wall and Melas was dangerously close.

"Oink," he said. He slid one hand behind my neck, fitting his hand to the smooth curve. Then he kissed me.

I've been kissed plenty, but that kiss? Magic. I was glad the wall was there to catch me when he deepened the kiss and my knees began to wobble. Down in my underwear a party was starting. The world desaturated around us. Only Melas and I were in bold, bright colors, and I was no longer sure if we were one object or two.

He pulled away a split second before I curled a leg around him and embarrassed myself by dry humping a man in public.

"Go home," he said.

"Go fuck yourself."

He looked me up and down, grinned. "Maybe later." Then the smile died as the gravity of the situation swallowed him up. "You need a ride?"

I wasn't sure if he meant the kind with wheels or bed springs. Truth is I needed both, but for decency's sake I went with wheels. "I've got a vehicle."

"Stolen?"

"Borrowed."

"Borrowed, borrowed or stolen, borrowed?"

"The first one," I said.

"Where'd you park? I'll walk you back."

Yeah, right. He wanted to run the tags, see if I was telling the truth. To be honest, I was kind of curious what they'd turn up if he did.

"It's more scooter, less car."

We rounded the corner, to where I'd parked my aunt's scooter on the sidewalk.

"And it's pink," he said. "Something smells like …" He glanced around, looking for the dog.

The dog was long gone. "Poop," I said. "It smells like poop."

Together we looked for the source.

After a moment, Melas started to laugh. "You're not going to like this."

My eyes followed the path his had already burned, all the way to my borrowed helmet. It was still Barbie pink, but now the inside was brown. There was no way my head was going in there. For one thing, it wouldn't fit.

"Jesus," I said, nose clamped between my fingers. "Must have been a big dog."

"Several dogs, I'd say."

"Maybe not even dogs."

I considered the options. Dog, human, or bear, that thing had to die. Preferably in a bonfire. I picked it up by one strap, dumped it in Melas's arms.

"Can you get rid of this?"

He recoiled in horror. "You can't ride that thing without a helmet."

I swung my leg over, started the engine. "Of course I can."

"It's illegal. I'll have to give you a ticket."

In an increasingly shitty mood, I gave the gas all the hell I could muster, then kicked off. "You'll have to catch me first."

Certain of my victory, I fist-pumped the air.

He caught up to me three blocks away, scribbled a ticket, stuck it to my forehead when he was done.

"That's what you get," he told me, before speeding away in his cop car.

I
was going places
. In circles, mostly. I couldn't remember exactly where my aunt had stashed her safe house, so I called her. It was that or get lost in the olive grove. The Mount Pelion region was a jungle of olive trees; pinpointing her slice was nigh on impossible.

"Sorry about your helmet," I said when she showed up in the pink convertible. Along the way she'd picked up a wig. Stick straight. Blunt bangs. Looked like it had been dyed by Heinz.

"What happened?"

I told her. Instead of laughing, her face grew increasingly grim. It was late afternoon and she had a five o'clock shadow sprouting up under her foundation.

"It's that
mouni
."

What was her name again—Dad's ex. "Dina?"

"When your father first ran away she did that all the time.
Kaka
in our cars,
kaka
in the mailbox. I don't know where she got it all from. She must have been collecting donations."

Bile lurched up my esophagus. I kicked it back down with a big gulp. "I guess she really missed Dad."

She scoffed at that. "Before your father, her
mouni
was like a train station. Men came, men went. She let them ride the choo-choo for free. She didn't find chastity until she met Michail. Now she's a born-again virgin."

"So you think she did this?"

"Who else? She knows the scooter. She must have mistaken you for me."

The list of people I knew in Greece was short. The list of fecal freaks I knew in Greece—or anywhere on earth—was even shorter.

"Let's go see her," I said.

We jumped into the Peptomobile. Somewhere along the beach I recognized one of the Family's fleet of cars behind us.

"Do you know we're being followed?"

"Yes."

"Is it Takis and Stavros?"

"Yes."

"So does Grandma know I'm back?"

"Yes."

"How?"

She tapped a manicured fingernail on her temple. "Mama is like God. She knows everything. If there is something she doesn't know, she beats it out of the person who does know."

"She doesn't know where Dad is."

"She's beating a lot of people lately."

Well, that was both proactive and disturbing. "I thought she wasn't doing anything."

"She had us clean up the dungeon, just in case."

"We have a dungeon?"

"Under the tennis court out back."

Strange place to put a dungeon, but what did I know? My experience with dungeons was limited to one date—a date that, up until that point—had shown promise. Rod Fisher had his own hair, a job, and he didn't live in his parents' basement. These days, dating a guy under thirty was risky. There were a lot of closet basement dwellers out there. They'd walk you through the back door, take the staircase leading down instead of staying on the first floor, where the living room should be. Rod seemed aboveboard until he said, "Wanna come see where the fun happens?"

Fun was good, so the three screwdrivers I'd consumed said, "Yes."

He walked me down to a fully stocked sex dungeon—not that I'd ever been in one, but hey, you
see
things when you spend enough time on the internet. Once I saw a guy do things with a liter-sized bottle of Sprite that didn't seem like they'd be physically possible. It's amazing what you can achieve with the American can-do spirit and a tub of coconut oil.

But a bonafide dungeon for prisoners and torture? Nope, I had never seen one outside of a movie. And I hoped I never would.

"Yikes," I said.

"Don't worry, it's only other bad people who end up in there. Mama has rules and standards. No women, unless they are criminals. No children. No civilians. Only the bad guys."

I thought about the Baptist and how he was a former cop. "You kind of are the bad guys." Did I say
kind of
? I meant
totally
.

"There are levels."

"Sounds like a video game."

"Sometimes it feels that way."

We parked at the open end of Dina's street and hoofed it up to her cakebox home. No sign of her in the front yard. Maybe she was still hiding behind her locked door.

Aunt Rita folded her arms on the top of the gate. "Dina!" After a lengthy pause she hollered the woman's name again.

Nothing.

"Come," she said, and pushed through the gate. The front door was unlocked, but my aunt told me that was nothing unusual around here. Nobody ever broke into anyone's house.

"Aren't we breaking in?"

"The door was unlocked."

Her circular logic made a deranged kind of sense, so I followed her inside.

Dina's house didn't want sane visitors, and it said so with an overabundance of red paint, yards of white lace, and photographs of Dad. A vaguely familiar perfume haunted the shadows, and below that, the smell of an unflushed toilet.

I sniffed and wished I hadn't. "What is that?"

She stopped rummaging through Dina's mail to inhale. "Love's Baby Soft."

"They still make that?"

"That or she hoarded."

Aunt Rita vanished into the living room. I lingered in the hall, where Dad was all over the walls. Pictures from the old days, before he became uncool, the way all parents do. This was a Dad I didn't know. A motorcycle-riding Dad with acid-wash jeans and a fauxhawk. Dad with a mullet. Dad with his arm around Dina, his attention on something beyond the camera's scope.