The Devil Takes Half (34 page)

“
Get a doctor and see that Kleftis' burns are tended to. We'll get in trouble if we don't go by the books. It's early but you can probably find somebody at the hospital. Be careful when you remove his wet suit. Take another man in with you and keep your gun on him the whole time. Kleftis is a maniac.
He'd kill a flea for jumping
.”

“
What do I do with the wetsuit?”

“
Send it to Athens. Same as the knives. Have them go over them for hair, prints, blood.” He hesitated. “Semen.”

Patronas examined the wetsuit again before Tembelos sent it off. The fabric was unlike any he'd ever seen, as heavy as rubber, yet pliant, flexible. He was sure that it, like the knives and the strange goggles, was military issue. Some new kind of neoprene, self-extinguishing. No wonder it hadn't burned.

They interrogated Kleftis later that morning. Dressed in prison garb, he looked smaller than he had in the cave. His feet were heavily bandaged and he moved as if they hurt him.

Patronas chained him to the floor and read him his rights. He had never questioned a suspect in a homicide before. At Papa Michalis' behest, he'd begun watching detective shows on television, thinking to hone his skills, and he had even gone so far as to take notes once or twice during the more pertinent parts. They knew what they were doing, those big city policemen on TV, and he was relying on them to guide him through this moment. The detectives were laconic for the most part, making statements in an unemotional manner, which was what Patronas did now, listing the crimes Kleftis would be charged with and asking him who else was involved.

Kleftis smirked. “Accomplice? What do I need an accomplice for?”

In Scotland Yard, they played verbal chess with suspects. Americans smacked them around. Looking at Kleftis across the table, Patronas fervently wished he was American. “We know you murdered Eleni Argentis, Petros Athanassiou, and Marina Papoulis.”

He feigned surprised. “Is that what this is about? Those murders up at the monastery?”

“
Yes. This is a serious matter, Kleftis. It will go better for you if you cooperate with us.” He opened his notebook and made a show of reviewing what was written there. “Was Voula Athanassiou helping you loot the site?”

“
No. She never went up there. The only thing Voula likes to do is fuck.”

After three hours of questioning, he finally admitted he'd been working with Devon McLean. Kleftis referred to the Englishman, not by name but by expletives, ‘cunt' being the kindest. The other expressions shocked Patronas. They described the act itself and he'd never heard them used before to identify a homosexual.

“
He sold what I gave him. Being a poor, native born Greek, I lacked the contacts necessary to sell our nation's heritage. The
poustis
, he knew people who would buy what we found and not ask questions.”

“
How did you recruit him?”

“
I didn't. He was helping Petros. I inherited him.”

“
Why did you kill Petros?”

“
Who says I did? You found me in the cave. There was no corpse in there with me. No blood, no body parts.” He drew out the last two words, keeping his eyes on Patronas.

“
You're a dangerous man, Kleftis. You nearly cut my head off.”

“
Wish that I had,” Kleftis said in a low voice. “Wish I had cut your head off and drank your fucking blood.”

In spite of himself, Patronas felt a twinge of fear. He wished he'd asked Tembelos to sit in on the interrogation with him. He fought to keep his voice steady. “You're guilty, Kleftis. Don't pretend you're not.”

“
Is that why you set me on fire? Because you thought I was guilty? You held your own little trial there in the cave and decided to execute me? Seems a strange kind of law enforcement. One the Ministry of Justice might be interested in, not to mention the newspapers.” He chuckled. He knew he had him. “Throwing that lantern at me was hardly due process.”

“
Shut up.”

“
You're no cop. You're a one-man lynch mob.”

Patronas continued to question him, but Kleftis proved to be a shrewd and manipulative opponent, far more intelligent than he had originally assumed. He deftly refuted every allegation, knew his rights and could quote the law verbatim. He'd have a field day in court.

His story was an old one: the son of an illiterate workman from Epirus and a prostitute from Asia Minor, he'd been born in the slums of Athens and sent to live with his grandmother in a village so small ‘it wasn't on the map.' She couldn't control him and when he was fifteen, he'd run away. He'd served as a mercenary in Sudan for five years, his specialty being night raids and hand-to-hand combat. Patronas wondered if that was where it had all begun—Kleftis' taste for blood, the sophisticated equipment, the knives.

“
Who'd you work for in Africa?” he asked.

“
Anyone who'd pay me. If I was fighting for one group of rebels and another offered me more, I switched sides. Didn't matter to me.” He said he'd bummed around Greece after his return, ‘living off women mostly.'

Patronas would have been convinced he was what he said he was, one of those Greek males who see every woman as an opportunity
,
save for the chilling way he turned himself off and on, the gleeful way he described his role in Burundi and Mozambique. He has a strange sort of charisma, Patronas thought, a way of seducing you. Kleftis could charm the birds from the trees if he wanted to, birds both feathered and human. But then, so could Charlie Manson.

* * *

“
That's what they do, psychopaths,” he told Tembelos. “They charm you. Then bite your head off.”

“
You think he's a psychopath?” Tembelos asked.

Patronas nodded.

“
How did it go this morning when you questioned him?”

“
He threw ashes in my eyes
. He isn't going to confess, that's for sure, and without a confession, we've got nothing tying him to Marina and the other two—no witnesses, no fingerprints, nothing.”

“
What about the knives?”

“
I'm sure the only blood on them will be mine. He's a cool one, our Mr. Kleftis. Served time and knows the drill. Being locked up doesn't bother him.”

“
Shit. He cut you up pretty bad. Can't you charge him with that?”

“
I'd lose my job if it went to trial and the press heard what went on in the cave. No, Giorgos. That part's done. Kleftis and me? We're even.”

He took a sip of his soup, chicken
avgolemono
. His mother's remedy, it always made him feel better. “The only thing we've got is the smuggling. Kleftis claims he just ‘stumbled across the artifacts' when I ‘encountered him in the cave.' He could claim he was planning to donate them to the National Archeological Museum and get away with it. Tell the judge I manhandled him, tried to burn him alive.”

“
What are you going to do?”

“
Come at him from a different direction. He implicated the Englishman. Said he fenced the stuff he gave him. I'll lean on McLean, see what he has to say and confront Kleftis with it.”

“
How long can we hold him?”

“
I don't know. As you know, this is my first homicide.”

“
Shit,” Tembelos said again.

“
I'll eat the others first,” the Cyclops told Ulysses, “and save you for last.”

—
The Odyssey

P
atronas and his men were leaning against the fender of the squad car, watching Devon McLean and eating gyros.

The Englishman was across the street, drinking wine at one of the better tavernas. He was outfitted like a college student in jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt, Mick Jagger's leering face stretched tight across his paunch.

Like Kleftis, McLean did not go quietly.

“
Get your hands off of me!” he yelled, scuffling when Patronas and Tembelos seized him. “I'm English. You have no authority over me!”

They drove him to an army base at the northern part of the island, thinking he'd be safer there. “We arrested Manos Kleftis last night and charged him with murder,” Patronas said. “You're the only witness to his crimes and he knows it. If we put you in jail with him, he'll kill you. He likes to kill people, Kleftis does, but then you know that.”

The parking lot in front of the stockade was edged with whitewashed rocks.
Ah, the military,
thought Patronas, remembering how he'd painted rocks as an enlisted man. His commander had been crazy for them. It had been peace time and shellacking them had kept everyone busy. As soon as they finished one coat, he'd order them to do another. It had been almost existential, that rock painting.

Patronas put McLean in a cell and locked himself in with him. He'd noticed how the Englishman had quieted down at the mention of Kleftis' name, and he thought he could probably use it as leverage if he refused to talk. “How did it start?”

At first the Englishman was hostile and demanded to speak to a lawyer. “I'm a foreign national. You can't treat me this way.”

When he continued, Patronas exploded.
“
What do you want, man with ringworm? A pearl cap?
If you don't talk, I'm going to have to turn Kleftis loose tomorrow. He's a dangerous man, Kleftis. Might even be a serial killer. It won't matter where you go, he'll find you. He won't rest until you're dead.”

McLean walked over to the window and stood there for a long time, looking through the bars at the sleeping army base. The street lights cast a yellow glow over the room.

“
Petros Athanassiou brought me in,” he said quietly, all his bravado gone. “He was helping his grandmother at my hotel during my last trip to Chios. She was working in room service and brought the boy along and we got to know each other. He was a bright lad, interested in the dig I was involved with. He turned up three or four times that summer with shards he'd found. I paid him handsomely for them. Far more than they were worth and I suppose he never forgot it. When I left, I gave him my address and told him if he ever was in England to look me up, that sort of thing, the nonsense people always say when they leave a place, not meaning a word of it. I'd completely forgotten about him, to tell the truth, when I received a letter in which he described this site he'd found. Minoan, he said, a secret town. He called it the ‘city of ghosts.' ”

“
When was this?”

“
May, I believe.” With a sigh, he turned away from the window.

“
What happened then?”

“
I was planning to return to Cyprus anyway, so I thought to myself,
Why not a trip to Chios?
But when I arrived here, Petros refused to show me the site. He was very cautious. We met in an empty lot near his grandmother's house. He bicycled there with the relics wrapped up in a towel, if you can believe it, and laid them out on the ground. As soon as I saw them, I knew. They were simply amazing, Minoan, no doubt about it, and judging by the workmanship, from the apex of their civilization. Fourteen hundred BC or thereabouts, give or take fifty years. An altogether extraordinary find. I pressed Petros to bring me more, thinking I'd start to catalogue them, to claim the site as mine as an archeologist, but he wanted money, a lot of money. With the advent of the Internet, he'd been able to look things up, and he knew what he had.” McLean's tone was regretful.

“
Go on,” Patronas said.

“
I knew a collector who might be willing to purchase the artifacts if they were fine enough and who would prefer to do so ‘under the table,' so to speak. We agreed on the asking price for the lot. I persuaded Petros to let me set up a bank account and he, the collector, transferred the money there. As soon as I received it, I gave Petros his share in cash. Our customer was happy with the arrangement. He avoided difficulties inherent in removing antiquities from Greece, the paperwork and customs duties, not to mention the time consuming task of proving actual provenance.”

“
You didn't take a cut?”

“
Yes. A small one.”

“
How much?”

“
I don't remember. Shouldn't you wait until I secure a lawyer before you interrogate me? Don't I have the right to counsel?”

“
Not in a capital crime.”

“
A capital crime?”

Patronas held up three fingers. “Actually three. Three capital crimes.”

“
I didn't kill anyone.”

“
If you cooperate, I'll recommend you be charged separately. Otherwise, you and Kleftis will go down together.”

“
How did you know I was involved?” McLean asked.

“
Your boat. You anchored it at Volissos, didn't you?”

Something seemed to go out of him. “Yes. About a week after the smuggling started. I thought it would be easier to offload the artifacts at sea and then move them out of the country. Some of the amphorae were quite large. I didn't want to risk storing them in the hotel or a rental car. I stayed well away from the crowds. Figured I'd be safer if I anchored on the other side of the island.”