Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (16 page)

"She's not a woman. She's a man with—" He jiggled two cupped hands on his chest. "Instead of—" Those same hands grabbed his crotch.

"Do it again." I folded my arms. "I didn't quite get it."

He grabbed his chest first, then his goobers. Behind him, Stavros grinned.

"Again," I said.

One more time. When he stopped, he narrowed his eyes. "Are you recording this?"

"No," I said. "But they were." I nodded to a couple of laughing tourists, their phones held out to capture the moment.

Not caring too much that the car was filled with beads of broken safety glass, I slid behind the wheel of Xander's car. I started it up, gave Stavros a smile and Takis a little wave. "See you on YouTube. Would you hurry up and move?"

I
strode
into Grandma's house like I hadn't just boosted a car and gone—as far as she was concerned—sort of missing. Sort of, because she'd known where I was all along.

"Hey," I said, reaching for one of her twisty cookies. This time she didn't slap my hand. The knife in her hand was too busy slicing paper-thin pastry into slender strings. "What are you making?"

"Pastry for
kataifi
." She didn't look up. "It is like baklava, but hairy."

"I had a piece the other day. I could eat more."

"Did you get clothes?"

"I did."

"Show me."

I pulled the dress out of its bag, held up to me so she could get a general idea, then showed her my lethal shoes.

She made an approving noise. "You could kill a man with those shoes."

That was the idea, if need be. "Insurance policy."

She nodded, kept on cutting. "Go get cleaned up. This evening we are going to pay our respects to the dead. I think you know who."

My jaw fell several inches. She was taking me to Cookie's funeral? Really?

"Katerina, my love, you look like a fish. You will never catch a man if you make that face."

I closed my mouth, but only because a hyperextended jaw gets uncomfortable after a while—just ask my ex.

"Someone told me Koulouris was Dad's best friend."

"Who told you?"

"A bird."

"Hmm," she said. "It is true, they were close."

"I also heard he's faked his death before."

She slid the long knife blade under the pastry strips, set them to dry on a wooden rack. "Sometimes it is necessary to play dead."

"Why?"

"A rat only sneaks out when it thinks the cat has crossed the river to Hades. It is not enough for the cat to go on a vacation—rats are clever. Some more than others."

"He's really dead this time," I said. "Detective Melas said so."

"Is he? We will see."

W
e were a joke
. One old Greek widow, one cross-dresser—or however Aunt Rita classified herself—one fossil in a wheelchair, one mute henchman, and a newly minted car thief walked into funeral. Grandma had brought backup, but she ordered them to stay outside with the other Families' flunkies. The bartender—a.k.a. the grieving sister I'd met this morning—hurled herself at us as we stepped inside. Her eyes were wet and red. This morning, when the news was fresher, they'd been dry.

Nobody loves theater more than Greeks. That's why ancient Athenians invented it.

"My little brother is dead, I cannot believe it," she wailed. She dabbed at her eyes with a black handkerchief, carefully avoiding the damp bits. No salt this time—she didn't seem to recognize me.

My grandmother said all the right words on our behalf, then after the sister took her show on the road again, Grandma muttered, "
Zoi se mas
."

Life to us.

The air was clogged with flowers and incense. A priest was here somewhere, waving his thurible like this was a Grateful Dead concert. Cookie was hanging out in the living room in his coffin, lid wide open. White pedestals—Ionic—surrounded the gleaming wood box. Atop every one of them a sat huge arrangement of white lilies. A long line of mourners slowly shuffled past the dead man. One at a time they kissed his cheek, then moved on.

I wondered how many were here just to see if he was really dead this time. Not me—I believed Melas. If he said the guy was dead, the guy was dead. What I was here for was information.

"I'm not kissing a dead guy," I said.

"It's not so bad," Aunt Rita told me. "At least they don't try to slip you the tongue."

Grandma glared at her. "Show some respect for the maybe-dead."

We took our places at the end of the line. When it was our turn to say our goodbyes, my aunt squinted at him.

"He looks dead." She nudged me with her elbow. "Does he look dead to you?"

Grandma gave her the stink-eye, then moved on, leaving us to contemplate the remains of Cookie.

I wasn't sure exactly what dead looked like, but this seemed like a convincing approximation of how death was depicted on TV. The remains of my father's once-best friend were waxy and well-dressed in one of those shiny suits mobsters were attracted to. It had to be tied to the criminal gene somehow, and I thought the cops were stupid for not using it to their advantage. Hold up a shiny suit in a roomful of suspects, cuff the guy who gravitates toward the hanger. Voila!

For what it's worth, I'd never seen Dad in a crook suit, so maybe my theory needed tweaking. I still wasn't comfortable with the idea of my father shaking down store owners for protection money, kneecapping, peddling drugs, or sticking his finger in any of the soggy Family pies. But to his credit, the man had escaped. And as far as I knew he really was a plain ol' vanilla truck driver. I'd believe that until someone showed me his secret stash of guns, money, and alternate identities.

Grandma was on the far side of the room, deep in conversation with a raisin and a prune. Given the company we were currently keeping, I had no doubt the two old men were fundamentally heinous people.

"He looks pretty dead," I said, hoping my answer was the right one.

Papou scoffed. "What do either of you know about death? I know a dead body when I see one." He stabbed his chest with a finger. "I know."

Aunt Rita stepped aside, swished her arm with a magician's flourish. She was shooting for Sophia Loren, with a black veil over her eyes and a black pencil skirt with a peplum jacket. The cleavage was all fake, but it was impressive. Need a turkey stuffed? Aunt Rita was your woman. When she was done you'd never know the turkey came with a gaping hole in its egg maker.

"Go ahead, see for yourself," she said.

"How can I see him? He is all the way up there! What were they thinking putting the coffin up so high? Prejudiced is what it is. They hate the disabled. They look down on us."

His chair was kind of low to the ground, but that's how wheelchairs are. Raising the center of gravity was begging for trouble.

"I guess I could take a picture with my phone," I said, not really committed to the idea.

He shook both hands at the ceiling. "At least there is one person here with a brain. Probably it is not you, though. Go on, take a picture."

I looked at Aunt Rita—for a way out mostly. She shrugged. Very helpful.

"Okay." I glanced around, hoping no one was watching us too closely. With my back to the coffin, I reached behind me, phone in hand and pressed what I hoped was the red button.

The flash went supernova.

"That's good," Papou said. "The more light the better. Did he blink?"

Nobody noticed—or if they did they were doing it discreetly.

"I don't think so."

He grunted. "Still not conclusive. Let me see the photograph." He snatched the phone out of my hand, fiddled with it a moment then said, "
Gamo ti mana sou
, your phone is
skata
!"

"You can't talk like that at a wake," Aunt Rita hissed.

"Who says? Cookie had a mouth like a toilet. He would be the last one to complain."

"Give me that." I grabbed my phone and peered into the screen. The photo was gone. "Oh well, too bad. I guess we'll never know."

"Do it again," the old man barked.

"Do what again?" came a new voice.

Uh-oh. Detective Melas.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. He looked good in a dark suit and tie. I was being all cool, trying not to notice, but my hormones were ogling him. Estrogen was stupid.

The way he was looking at me, testosterone was stupid, too.

"I should ask the same thing. Taking pictures of the dead man?
Tsk.
"

Did he just
tsk
me? "At least it wasn't a selfie," I said in my defense.

"Organized crime wakes and funerals are good." He glanced around the room, taking stock of the guest list. "All the bad guys in one place. I always come to Cookie's wakes."

"To arrest people?"

He held up the small crystal dish in his hand. On it was a chunk of what looked like biscotti. "For the food."

"You come to a wake for the food? There's something seriously wrong with you."

"Okay, so the wake isn't that great, but stick around for the
makaria
after the funeral tomorrow. Cookie's sister makes the best
koliva
. She's had a lot of practice."

A
makaria
being the meal after the funeral.

Melas made the boiled wheat dish sound appetizing, but come on, it was boiled wheat. How good could it be?

"I'll take your word for it." A quick glance behind me showed Papou was still holding up the line of mourners, trying to haul himself up by the coffin's brass rail. None of them looked worried; they were chatting among themselves. Aunt Rita was fake-grinning into her cell phone, checking her teeth for strays bits of food. And Grandma had moved on. Now she was knee-deep in conversation with a fossil with more rings around his trunk than the previous pair. His ears hung low and his nose had eclipsed the rest of his face.

Where was Xander? I hadn't seen him since we walked into Cookie's house. No doubt he had blended in with the other sculptures—and there were myriad. Either Cookie or his sister—or both—were serious art collectors. With their taste I expected to see a velvet Elvis at any moment.

"How many times has Cookie faked his own death?" I asked Melas.

"At least a dozen. This is the sixth time he's taken it this far. When he does, he shows up not long after the burial. One time he coughed during the funeral."

I tried not to laugh. "What happened?"

"Nothing. He climbed out of the coffin, shot his cuffs, and told everybody they were having a party at his place to celebrate life."

"And people were okay with that?"

"More than okay. Cookie throws legendary parties."

I shot a quick glance at some of the other faces, but they were all strangers to me. "So who is who?"

"I keep forgetting you're new in town and you don't know all the players."

"So help me out."

"Forget it, honey." He looked me up and down. "You're safer not knowing this crowd. Want my advice—go home and forget you were ever here."

All his repetition about going home was starting to rub some of the shine off his spectacular looks.

Just kidding—no it wasn't.

"Not happening. Which of these guys were my father's friends?"

"You're not giving up, are you?"

"Not in this lifetime."

"Jesus," he said. "Over there." He nodded to a tight cluster of shifty-looking men, all around Dad's age, standing by a sculpture of some mythological dude or another grabbing his junk. "The one on the left is Dimitri Vrakas. They call him Jimmy Pants."

"Why?"

"The whole gang liked to Anglicize their names. It was the cool thing to do in the 70s."

"What did they call my father?"

"Mikey Far."

"Could be worse," I said. "The rest of them?"

"Johnny Deadly, Fish, and Tony Goats. Your father and Cookie rounded out the team."

"They don't look upset."

"They know Cookie."

I smoothed my dress, flipped my hair, set my eyes on the prizes on the middle shelf. Dad was at the top; to get to him I'd have to work my way through the lower racks.

"What are you doing?" Melas asked me.

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"Looks to me like you're on your way to offer them a date of the professional kind."

"You need to get your eyes checked. I'm going to talk to them. Want to come with me?"

"Forget it," he said. "I'm the last person they want to see sniffing around Mikey Far's daughter."

"Is that what you're doing, sniffing?"

"If you weren't his daughter I'd be doing more than sniffing."

Flirting with the hot cop wasn't going to get me any answers, even if my hormones were having a blast. I gave him what I hoped was a mysterious smile and prepared for infiltration. I was going in cold. My plan was to wing it. I'd done some improv in high school and hoped it was like riding a bike or falling off a log. I put on a smile, but not a big one. Fake or not, this was still a wake. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grandma tracking me. I couldn't tell if this was on her list of approved activities, but her plan and my plan weren't necessarily the same damn plan.

Dad's cronies quit talking as I approached. They looked cool, calm, and completely criminal.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Katerina Makris, Mikey Far's daughter."

"Katerina!" Jimmy Pants said. Then he hugged me like a long-lost friend and kissed me on both cheeks. They passed me round like a joint. "Where's Mikey been keeping you all these years?"

Jimmy was built like a stick figure. He had a knuckle for a nose and it leaned left. He looked like a guy comfortable with knifing a gut.

"America," I said. "I heard you guys were his best friends in the old days."

"You heard right. What's with you and the cop?" That was Fish—no first name that I knew of. He was short, round, could have body-doubled for Santa Claus.

"You know how cops are," I said, keeping it vague.

They all nodded like they knew.

"What's Mikey doing with himself these days?" Jimmy asked. "Long time no hear. He left and that was it."

"Normally he's a truck driver. But now he's just, you know, kidnapped." I focused on the details, tried to catch them in an unguarded moment, but either these guys knew nothing or they were used to playing their roles twenty-four-seven.

"Truck driving must be dangerous work in America," Jimmy said. "Did the kidnapper ask for anything?"

"Not yet."

"Strange." Tony Goats rubbed his chin. "Why kidnap somebody unless you want something in return?"

"What do you know?" Fish asked him. "You're a dentist."

"A dentist," I blurted. "Is that a code?"

They laughed. They laughed big, loud, and completely inappropriately for a funeral. And the person they were laughing at was me.

"It's a code for nothing. He's a dentist," Jimmy Pants said.

"Pediatric," Tony Goats added.

Jimmy Pants went round the circle. "Goats is a dentist, Fish is an accountant, Deadly sells mattresses …"

"You need a new bed, you come to me, eh? I can give you a good price." Johnny Deadly winked at me. Maybe he sold mattresses, but did he buy them first? Undecided.

"… and I teach high school Physical Education."

"He's a monster," Fish said.

Jimmy Pants shrugged. "I have high standards for my students. No fatties." He looked me up and down. "Do you exercise?"

"All the time."

Try never.

Genetics kept my weight mostly in the green zone. Neither of my parents had carried any real excess. If Dad sprouted the beginnings of a pot all he had to do was cut back for a week and he'd be back to his flat state. I was pretty much the same way, under certain conditions. PMS time was a danger zone. Those progesterone spikes turn me into an eating machine. Breakups had a similar effect. When I caught Todd munching a wiener, I dropped a guillotine blade on the relationship and immediately launched a sordid love affair with sugar and sodium. I kicked their butts out when my jeans refused to button or zip. Or slide over my hips.

A familiar face strolled past. Yianni Papagalos, the guy Grandma had invited to lunch. He stopped to gawk at me.

"You're still alive!" he said, registering surprise. Then he skittered away. Across the room, Papou was making parrot sounds, and he was still trying to get a good view of the coffin's contents.

"What's that about?" Jimmy Pants wanted to know.

I played the whole thing down. I didn't want Dad's buddies bolting when they knew I was a dead woman walking. "Nothing. Some guy wants to kill me, that's all." Casual. Like people took out contracts on my head all the time.

They exchanged looks. "What guy?" Jimmy asked.

"Nobody. Just a guy. Calls himself the Baptist. Have you heard of him?"

Johnny Deadly, mattress salesman, nodded. "We know the name."

"He's bad news," Fish added.