Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (11 page)

N
o booms
, no bangs, no fireballs.

I peeled myself off the ground and picked up the package. It was wrapped in the same plain brown paper as the puzzle box. I brushed myself off. “I thought you said it was a bomb.”

“Bomb detection is not an exact science,” Elias said, checking the label. “I think this is for you.”

It wasn’t for me. Once again, it was for Katerina Makri—no s.

“Grandma,” I said, and began ripping into the paper.

“You cannot open someone else’s mail, infidel!” Mo said.

“It’s not technically mail if it fell out of the sky,” I told him.

“Carrier eagle is what they used to use in my country in the old days.”

“In your country it’s still the old days,” Lefty said.

Mo turned on him. “Shut up, Cypriot pig. Are you Greek, are you Turkish, who knows?”

“Could be worse.” Lefty spat on the ground. “Could be Persian.”

“You wish you were Persian. We are the chosen people!”

“Chosen by who? Garbage collectors?”

The two men went round in circles until Marika cut in. “I thought Jews were the chosen people.”

“Nobody listen to the woman,” Mo said. “She is unclean. All women do is bleed and steal a man’s money.”

Chuck a handful of wheat into my mouth I could grind it to flour between my teeth, thanks to this mob—no pun intended.

“Enough!” Under the paper was another box, this one square, where the other was rectangular. Set into the front was an identical combination wheel.

“Here we go again,” I muttered.

“Here we go where?” Mo glanced around. “Where are we going?”

“The last one had a
poutsa
inside,” Donk shouted from the backseat of my Beetle.

“A
poutsa
?” Lefty asked.

I nodded. My heart was flipping out as I speculated what was hiding in this box. Once again, the combination was eight letters. I spelled out B-a-b-o-u-l-a-s hoping for a pattern, but the lock wouldn’t budge.

“Of course it did,” Mo said. “What else would you send a Yankee whore? Everybody knows you all collect dicks and stick them to your walls.”

A long, pained sigh escaped my throat. “Do you think we should wait to see if Eagle Guy comes back down?”

“I have to do laundry,” she said.

That was that. I got in my car. Dumped the box in Marika’s lap. Turned the key. If the others wanted to follow, they could.

“This was a good adventure,” Marika said. “What are we doing next?”

“Is it me or does he look pale?”

“Imagine if we were really gangsters,” I told Marika.

We were back at the compound, watching Donk wobble away on his scooter. The assassins and Cleopatra had installed themselves at the mouth of the compound, outside the gates. The guard ducked out and exchanged words with them, then they all rolled back toward the trees. Grandma couldn’t have assassins clogging the works—not if they weren’t hers.

Cleopatra rolled down her window, stuck out her big flashy ‘do. “Are you going out tonight? Because if you’re not I’m going home.”

“Say the word and I’ll shoot up her car,” Marika told me.

“What would Takis have to say about that?”

“Nothing, if he knows what is good for him.”

“I don’t think Takis knows what’s good for him,” I said.

I
didn’t waste
time telling Grandma about the box. Instead, I went straight to the guy who could open the thing. Litsa wasn’t around, but Tomas was at the pool with his brothers and cousins. He waved when he saw me, and raced over when he spotted the box in my hands. The five-year-old was dry by the time he reached me, pool water sucked up by the great wet-vac in the sky.

“Is that for me?”

“Just the puzzle part,” I said.

“Did you try
Baboulas
?”

“Yes.”

He flopped into a deck chair, box in his lap, legs dangling.

“Can I look inside this time?”

“Probably not.”

Five years old, yet he took it like a cheerful, fully-grown man. “Okay.” He twiddled the knobs. “Have you ever been to the dentist?”

“Lots of times. Why?”

“Mama says I have to go to the dentist. I’ve only been once before and I don’t really remember it. Were you scared?”

“Maybe the first time, but not since then. They gave me a bumblebee made of dental cotton.”

He nodded as he worked the puzzle. “That’s a good strategy. Maybe they’ll give me some stickers or something. Can you come with me?”

“Isn’t your mother taking you?”

“She has a thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

“I don’t know. She said a thing. So you can you take me?” His little face was pinched, his eyes hopeful. Saying ‘No’ would be like kicking a kitten.

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I said.

He flashed me a grin. “I like you.” He handed me the box. “It’s unlocked, but I didn’t open it because you said not to.”

The kid was something else. My ovaries gave me a poke, said, ‘
Tick tock. You could have a few like him if you could hurry up and find a man who doesn’t prefer penis
.’

“You’re a genius,” I said.

“I know.” No gloating about the fact, only serene honesty.

“Let me know about the dentist, okay?”

He nodded.

I
hoofed
it back to Grandma’s hovel. She wasn’t around, but the yard was occupied. Xander and Papou were playing a game of backgammon. Xander’s gaze latched onto me and didn’t let up until I was standing beside them.

“Who’s losing?” I asked, trying to stay cool. Xander’s intensity could crush a woman.

Papou flipped his hand at Xander. “Even when he wins, this
malaka
loses.” He nodded to my hand. “What’s in the box?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t looked.”

“If it is another
poutsa
this one is smaller.”

I set the box on the table, taking care not to disturb the board.

“Go make us some
frappe
,” he said, “then we will look in the box.”

The feminist movement took one step back as I turned on one heel, but it rebounded, and then some, when Xander’s hand curled around my wrist and reeled me back in. He sat me down in his chair, then disappeared inside, presumably, to make the iced coffee.

“Xander is not nice to anyone unless he feels they deserve it, or he wants to do
nee-noo nee-noo
with them.” The old man gave me a pointed look.

“I deserve it,” I said. “I am pretty awesome.”

He snorted. “I am sure that is it.”

Five minutes later, Xander was back and all three of us were peering into the box. Inside, on a bed of black satin, was a heart. A potentially human love muscle.

“Whoever this person is, he is a romantic,” Papou said.

Couldn’t be romantic. Romance usually gave me butterflies; the only things circling in my stomach were sharks.

“Oh boy,” I said, feeling nauseated. “Aunt Rita said they found Fatmir the Poor dead, and someone had cut out his heart. That could be it.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Papou had gone back to his game. Obviously internal organs didn’t bother him too much.

“Why not? How many guys do you know who are missing a heart right now?”

“In politics and crime? All of them. I only know I have one because the doctor tells me it’s no good.”

“I think it’s Fatmir’s heart.”

Grandma chose that moment to waddle back into her yard, dirt sprinkled on her knees. She’d been tending to the compound’s gardens. “What have you three got there?”

“A heart,” I called out.

“A real one?” She took a gander at the box’s contents. “Human,” she said. “Maybe it belongs to Fatmir the Poor.”

Rocky-style, I raised my hands above my head. “That’s what I said.”

Grandma looked up at me. Somehow she always managed to make it feel like looking down. “Where did you get this?”

“An eagle.”

“An eagle?”

“Hooked beak, big talons, goes squawk-squawk.”

Papou cupped a hand to his ear. “How does it go?”

“Squawk-squawk.”

“What?”

“Can I push him in the swimming pool?” I asked my grandmother.

She was too busy frowning to answer. Whatever she was thinking she was working hard at it. The gears were really grinding.

“A bird … it gave you this? It fell out of the sky?”

“That’s pretty much exactly how it happened. I was standing there with Marika, Donk, and my three assassins and—“

“Three assassins?”

This was going to take a while if she kept asking obvious questions. “Elias, who is now on my payroll on account of how Fatmir is dead. He’s making sure Mo doesn’t kill me. And Mo’s making sure Lefty doesn’t sneak a bullet in first.”

“Which one is Lefty?” Papou asked.

“He’s a freelancer. He’s from Cyprus.”

Grandma looked at Xander, who nodded.

“What is a Donk?” Grandma asked.

“Baby Dimitri’s nephew,” I explained.

They looked at me.

Grandma shook her hands at the sky. “I am afraid to ask.”

“It’s kind of like an internship,” I said. “Baby Dimitri had him out with one of his dealers, but that wasn’t ‘gangsta’ enough for the boy.”

Grandma said, “Take him nowhere. Show him nothing.”

“I didn’t.” Except that I took him to Meteora, but it wasn’t like I’d had a choice. It was take him with me or leave him to roam the compound.

She wagged a finger at the box. “This does not look like nothing.”

“Didn’t open it until he was gone.”

“Hmm,” she said in a judgmental tone that suggested I was to blame for something, but she didn’t know what yet.

I said, “Why isn’t anybody asking
why
some sicko is sending us body parts?”

“They are not sending
us
anything,” she said. “They are sending them to me.”

“The eagle gave
me
the package.”

“And whose name was on the wrapping, eh?”

“Yours.” And mine-ish. But I’d be pushing my luck off a cliff if I said that.

“It is a message,” Grandma said.

“So I figured. But what’s the message? I thought you said it was a message about Dad.”

“I like to chop up people,” Papou said.

I glanced at him. “The sad part is that I’m not sure if that’s the message or if you like chopping up people.”

Grandma’s face twisted. Between the wrinkles and the slow grinding of her facial muscles she was downright igneous. She was a woman struggling. She didn’t want to admit she didn’t know. At least that’s how I read it. I could have been wrong, but I suspected any minute now she’d go to the mixing bowls.

“We will find out in time,” she said.

“Let’s look at the facts,” I said, pulling over a chair and helping myself to its wooden comfort. “We have a penis that’s not Dad’s, but no body missing a penis.”

“That’s called a woman,” Papou said. Grandma shot him in the face with her stink-eye.

I went on. “And we have a heart, and there’s a dead mobster out there with a hole in his chest.” I did some math. It wasn’t pretty. “Maybe Harry Harry the Pontic Greek is missing a penis.”

Grandma raised an eyebrow. Good thing she’d never been Botoxed because she raised her eyebrow at me a lot. “Tell me you have not met Harry Harry.”

“That’s who Mo works for. He’s one of the other assassins. Skinny little Persian guy? Carries a rug around with him? Calls me a Yankee pig?”

“That’s all Persians,” Papou said.

“Harry Harry, too.” Grandma shook her head. “A lot of people want you gone, my girl.”

As previously mentioned, seeing as she was Greek, what she said was
girl my
. But that’s not the sort of thing you can put in a story without confusing people.

My hands did one of those magicians’ flourishes. “That’s why I’ve got the assassins watching the assassins.”

“That’s not too bad,” Papou said. “This one can think on her feet.”

“I do think better lying down,” I admitted.

“Everybody thinks better lying down, but usually about embarrassing things that happened decades ago. When I can’t sleep my brain always wanders back to the time when I was eight and my mama caught me making love to a chicken.” He looked at us, shrugged, not a shred of shame or regret on his face. “It was in the icebox, dead. I was sleep-walking, okay?”

I winced. Grandma stared at him. Xander was busy studying the heart. Maybe he was thinking about shifting from organized crime to medicine. Maybe, like me, he was trying not to think about the old guy in a compromising position with a future entrée.

Grandma spoke up. “These assassins are not my men, I cannot trust them. So from now on I want you here in the compound.”

Here we go again
. “No. We’ve been through this before, and the answer is no.”

“I am trying to keep you alive.”

“And I’m trying to find my father.”

“So am I.”

It was a stare-off. She’d had almost a century longer to practice, so the odds were against me, but I couldn’t not try.

She heaved a massive sigh. “At least let me give you a bodyguard. One of my men.”

“Marika’s a pretty great bodyguard.” Except for the bit where she’d flipped out at the top of the rock. But we’ve all got our quirks and fears.

“Marika is Takis’ wife and the mother of his sons. She cannot be your bodyguard.”

That was probably for the best. “Who?”

Her head swiveled to Xander.

“No,” I said quickly. Then I felt bad. “It’s not that you’re not a fantastic bodyguard, but I’m a problem you don’t need.” Plus, there was the part where he was Grandma’s snitch. “And you need Xander,” I told Grandma.

Xander leaned back in his chair, folded his muscle-roped arms. My thoughts flashed to the waterfall of silver and gold scars down his back. The man lived a life of danger, and something inside me didn’t want to dunk him in more.

My phone pinged. Text message from Aunt Rita.

Harry Harry is dead.

Is he missing a penis?

No, both eyes. Why?

I quickly texted and told her about the heart.

Coming home
, she wrote.

“Aunt Rita and Takis are on their way back. The bad news is that Harry Harry can’t see as well as he used to. The good news is that he’s dead, so the vision thing won’t be a problem.”