Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (6 page)

"Who," he said, inspecting me, "are you? You must be a Makri, because that is one of the Makri dogs you brought with you. But I do not know your face. Which one are you married to?"

"Katerina Makris," I said, keeping a death-grip on my s. "And I'm not married to anyone. I'm looking for Baby Dimitri."

"You found him. Katerina Makri, eh?" He shot his buddies a curious glance. They had nothing for him but blank shrugs. "Where did the old woman get a granddaughter?" The question was for Xander, not me.

I rolled my eyes at the ceiling. "Do I need to explain how reproduction works? A man puts his—"

The Godfather of the Night and Souvenirs laughed big and loud. "I know how babies are made. I have made quite a few myself—sons and daughters. But until today I did not know your grandmother had a granddaughter."

"Surprise," I said. "I've been in America."

"America?" The three men swapped glances. "You are Michail's daughter then, eh?"

"That's right. And I'm here looking for him."

Astonishment plastered his face. But was it real or fake? "Why would you come here to look for your father? I have not seen the man in thirty or more years. Not since he ran away like a gypsy dog, with his tail tucked between his legs."

It kind of, maybe, a little bit, sounded like he knew my father. Dad always seemed like he was hiding out in America, and he did get out of Greece in a big hurry. But he wasn't a coward.

Was he?

Knowing what I already knew about my family, I couldn't blame him for hiding under America's bed all these years. I kind of wanted to hide there, too.

"I'm asking everyone if they've seen him." Not true, but if Baby Dimitri didn't pan out I planned to knock on every door in Greece if need be.

"Oh? Who else?"

Think fast. "Uh, you're the first." Rats, not fast enough. "But there are others."

The men exchanged more glances. Laughed. Not a friendly kind of laugh, but the psychotic titter of hyenas as they considered an easy meal heading their way.

"So, do you have him?"

"What happened to your father?" Baby Dimitri asked me.

"Some men took him."

"Very interesting. Some men in America and took him. Took him where? Did you see these men?"

I glanced at Xander to see what he was doing about backup, but he was standing outside, fiddling with his cell phone. Very helpful guy. Didn't talk, didn't help. Stood around with a gun and a phone and looked good.

"Not exactly." I straightened my spine. "But someone described them to me."

"Someone reliable?"

The neighborhood perv, but I wasn't about to tell them that. What if someone decided to silence the old guy? I wasn't crazy about the former judge, but he was harmless as long as you didn't look when he said,
Hey, look
!

"Reliable enough. If you know anything, I'd be grateful for any help."

"This one has nice manners," he said to his decrepit buddies.

Baby Dimitri got up out of his chair, moved about the shop with the same precision a satellite orbits the Earth when its trajectory is beginning to decay. Round and round he went, until he was one foul puff of air away. Seriously, the guy needed to brush with something other than garlic and raw fish eggs. He sucked saliva between his teeth then said, "I haven't seen your father. My men have not seen your father, nor have they been to America lately. Tell your grandmother that. Was this her idea?"

I stood my ground. "Mine. I figured it was nicer to ask politely what a person might want in return for my father. I was raised in America. Greeks might have invented democracy, but we rock at diplomacy." Well, sort of. There were times when America completely sucked at diplomacy, but maybe Baby Dimitri didn't watch the news or read the papers.

He nodded to one of his cronies. The old guy rose from his chair slowly, like someone was using a jack under his backside. He grinned on the way past. One gold tooth. Not a sign of enamel in his mouth. An overabundance of gum space. I'd say he needed a dentist, but the time for dental care was long past.

"Where's he going?"

Baby Dimitri grinned. "So you are a diplomat, eh?"

"Trying to be. Is it working?"

"Eh." A one-shouldered shrug. "I will let you know. What did these men who took your father look like?"

"Foreign. The witness said they looked like mobsters."

The look he gave me was blank. "What else would kidnappers look like?"

Here we go again
. "I'd try to blend—"

A deafening boom shook the shop and the world went up in big puffball of flames. The store window shattered and a body landed on top of me, crushing me into the concrete floor.

The body was Xander. He was big, heavy, and … God, I was going to die, my insides squished out like a jelly donut.

Maybe not. Evidently satisfied (more or less) that my life wasn't in immediate danger, he rolled off me and pulled me up by both hands. I leaned past him, looking for the source of the bang.

"Ohmigod, ohmigod!"

Flames had engulfed Xander's bike, turning it into a decent-sized bonfire. Bits of metal that had shot into the sky landed with a tinny clink.

Baby Dimitri laughed. "Looks like your motorcycle had a small accident. Was it made in China?"

"Ohmigod." I wheeled around to gape at the wannabe Floridian. "Did you just blow up Xander's motorcycle?"

He shrugged, two palms up. "Not me. But him?" He nodded toward the new ventilation system that had previously been a window. "Maybe."

His gold-toothed buddy was currently standing across the street by the water, rolling a cigarette. Goon number two was still in his chair, only now he was scraping the tip of a scary looking dagger under each nail, curls of gunk spiraling to the floor. This was one of those classy establishments. I wondered if every pair of shoes came with a complimentary dose of foot fungus? Up until that moment I'd been too freaked out to move. Now I had to get outside in case I caught scabies or pinworms.

Spectators had gathered around the burning motorcycle, and the crowd was growing. One kid had shoved a newspaper into the fire and now he was running up and down the street, pretending to bear the Olympic flame. Onlookers were holding their phones up in the air, capturing the moment for YouTube and Vine. I pushed to the front, where Xander was watching silently.

My hands grabbed my head and scrunched, digging into my scalp. This couldn't be happening. People don't just go around blowing up stuff. It wasn't … nice. Or legal.

A cop car pulled up. I did a double-take when Officer Friendly from last night got out. He nodded to Xander, who lobbed the nod back.

Good to see it wasn't just me who got the silent treatment.

"Nice fire," Officer Friendly said to no one in particular.

"There's a motorcycle under the fire," someone told him.

"Not for long."

It was true, the fire was gulping its lunch.

I looked at Xander. "I hope you're insured."

Could be yes, could be no, if his non-reaction was any indication.

"We meet again, Katerina Makri." Officer Friendly checked me out hard. He performed the approving body-scan thing with his eyes. Smooth.

Okay, so I wouldn't pretend I wasn't doing the same thing. In harsh daylight he had a few tiny lines huddled around his eyes, but that injected some humanity into the Photoshopped poster he'd presented last night.

"Officer Friendly," I said.

"Detective Melas. Nikos Melas."

"Stop looking at my boobs, Detective Melas."

"You're a doll," he said, grinning.

"Greece is full of pretty women." At least that's what the view along the waterfront was telling me, and I was bundled up like a snowman compared to most of them.

"Always room for one more."

My gaze slid sideways to see what Xander was making of this conversation, but he was too busy punching letters into a cellphone to care about Detective Nikos Melas and his idea of small talk.

"Whose motorcycle?" he asked.

I nodded to Xander. "His."

"How did it happen?"

Baby Dimitri was inside his shop, sawing a toothy line across his neck with one bony finger. Yikes. For the lie that came next I blamed a mixture of fear and the desire to not burn bridges. Maybe if he heard something about Dad, the Godfather of the Night and Shoes would contact me.

"Spontaneous combustion," I told the cop.

He snorted. "I don't believe you." He looked at the burning bike. "Your grandmother's not going to be happy."

"Do you know my family well?"

"Too well." He checked me out again. "And suddenly not well enough."

"What can you tell me about them?"

He shrugged. "Nothing your grandmother would be happy about."

Ooooookay
. "What are my cousins like?"

"Ugly. They're all men."

"All of them?"

Hands on hips, he shrugged. "You're the first female Makris since your grandmother. Bet she's got some big plans for you."

Yeah, and with luck they involved sending me home so I could talk to law enforcement.

"What about Aunt Rita?"

His eye twitched. "What about her?" Then he wandered off to talk to the firefighters who had just pulled up in their red truck. After some very Greek handwaving and chatter, they all turned around and looked at me.

I waved. No harm in being friendly—right?

An old woman hobbled over from the sidelines. She was about the same vintage as the ruins at the Parthenon. Face cobbled together with rocks. Black knee-high stockings with her slippers. Another widow.

"Are you Katerina Makri, Katerina Makri?"

It's Greek convention to ask if you belong to so-and-so. I tried not to wince. Not even in the country twenty-four hours and already people knew my name. That couldn't be good. "Yes?"

"Does your grandmother know you are making fire in the streets? When I see her I will tell her. She deserves to know that her granddaughter is a delinquent."

"Hey!" I started, but the old woman was already shuffling away, spitting as she went, warding away the evil eye … or me—if I was following.

Which I wasn't. The spitting was a fabulous deterrent. All kinds of diseases spread via bodily fluids. Who knew if there was some kind of weird Greek Ebola?

There could be, for all I knew, and I didn't want to catch it.

Detective Melas came back for round two. He pulled a card out of his shirt pocket, laid it on my palm, curled my fingers around the pliant paper. "Need anything, call me."

I looked at my hand, then up at him. "What would I need?"

"Coffee, company, maybe some fun." He winked. "See you, Cookie," he said in perfect English, then he got back into his cop car and did a U-turn.

Baby Dimitri sauntered out. He shook his head at dying fire.

"Go home, Katerina Makris with an s. There are monsters here, and some of them are your blood. If you stay, you will find only trouble and sadness—or it will find you."

"
W
here are we going
?"

Xander pointed up—up at the sky.

"Back to the house?"

He nodded.

"And we're walking?"

Another nod.

"All the way there?"

He stopped, looked at me. Nodded.

"Wow. That's a long way."

Now his expression was semi-pissed, like this was my fault. Which it kind of was. If I hadn't had the bright idea of knocking on the equivalent of a kingpin's front door, his crony wouldn't have firebombed Xander's motorcycle, and I'd be admiring Greece from the back of a very fast, very nice motorcycle.

"Isn't there—I don't know—a bus or something?"

He stopped again, looked at me like I was busting his balls. How far could I push him before he snapped? Maybe he'd just shoot me, stash my body in these bushes.

The village was behind us. The only thing ahead of us was a lot of mountain and a steep, winding road occasionally punctuated by a car or a bus or—

"Bus!"

I leaped into the middle of the twisty road, waving my arms. The bus—loaded down with tourists, by the looks of their sunburn and the manic curiosity in their eyes—didn't slow down. It lurched to one side, dodging the crazy woman in the middle of the road, waving her arms. A dozen hands shoved a dozen cell phones out the window. Great. Now I was destined to wind up on YouTube, twice in one day.

"I hate Greece," I said, hanging my head. "And it hates me right back."

Xander turned back, marched to the middle of the road. With one smooth move, he threw me over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.

"You can't do that!" I squeaked.

But apparently he could, because he already had.

I
t was a long walk home
, especially for Xander. For me it wasn't so bad. The view alternated between Xander's abs and Xander's butt, both of which had been lovingly crafted, one dumbbell at a time.

Grandma was waiting just inside the gates when we arrived, along with what should have been our cavalry. Looked like they were enjoying the show a little bit too much, if you ask me.

"Katerina, Xander, how did it go?" Grandma hollered through cupped hands. "Where is your father, Katerina? Is he catching a taxi cab?"

"Good news," I called out, waving. "Baby Dimitri doesn't have him."

"Oh? How do you know?"

"He said so."

"He said so. Good," she said. "Because you can always trust the word of a criminal."

This from the woman who had obviously never heard the one about the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe they didn't have that saying here.

The whole family wasn't standing out front with Grandma—but close, by the looks of it. Every one of them grinning. Good to know they found me entertaining. The two amigos, Takis and Stavros, were there for the show, too. Stavros looked contrite, but not Takis—he was laughing his fool head off.

I patted Xander on the hip. "Can you put me down?" Nobody was taking me seriously, and I was starting to think maybe the whole being carried thing was part of the reason. Xander let me down easy. Good guy, he didn't just dump me on the ground like I was potatoes—or
patates
, as my father always called them.