Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel (28 page)

More footsteps. Two sets, both heavy and male. Melas walked in with Xander on his heels. Neither man looked happy.

"Nikos," Grandma said, still kneading the new dough. "Come stand over here beside me." She indicated with her eyes exactly where he should go. He did as she asked, then she said, "Look at Katerina. What do you see?"

Our gazes clashed, then his moved slightly to the right. "
Gamo tin mana sou
," he swore.

"Her mother is dead, so you cannot do that to her," Grandma said in a calm voice. "And today Katerina could have been dead, too."

"When?" he demanded. "How?"

Xander crouched beside me. With a distractingly warm hand he moved my chin this way and that. Then he went to the freezer, pulled out a chunk of frozen mystery meat. I hoped it was animal and not former foe.

"I already used rubbing alcohol," Grandma told him. "She will be fine."

The silent man ignored her. He pulled up a chair and sat beside me, holding the steak to my black and purple bits. The cold seeped in. The throbbing in my face and head dulled. I tried to express my gratitude by smiling, but it hurt.

"Your mother wants her plate back," I told Melas.

"That's what I told you." He turned to my grandmother. "What happened?"

"Ask Katerina. She is sitting right there. Katerina, tell him."

So I did. His expression darkened as the story went along. He had that look on his face guys get when they want to punch a wall. I wound down with a description of how I went after the Baptist with the slingshot, but he got away despite my stellar shooting.

"Sorry," I said when I was done.

"What for? I messed up. I put you in danger then left you there." He pushed a hand through his hair. Grandma went, "
Tsk
!" and he moved away from where she was molding the dough into a smooth ball. "He must know we're following you. I had to go to the bathroom, and that's when he pounced."

"Next time piss in your car," Grandma said.

"Too bad I didn't need to
ouro
."

Papou laughed. Phlegm rattled in his chest. "He got you there, old woman."

She ignored him. "Now the problem is I do not know what to do with you. I wanted to have you relocated to the worst village in Greece, far away from here, and Rita wants to send you to Turkey. But I think my granddaughter wants you to stay. And because there will come a time when this Family is hers to run, I think I will listen to her. But you only get a pass one time. After this …"

"Are you threatening me?"

"No." She stopped for a moment to look at him. "That was a promise."

I raised my hand. "I'm not running the Family, so you don't have to listen to me if you don't want to. It was just … a serving suggestion." Now that the ice was working its magic my mood was plummeting further. I was feeling somewhere between PMS and Medusa, and getting bitchier by the second. If Xander moved the meat my head might start spinning and spitting pea soup.

"Don't I get a say?" Melas asked.

"No," Grandma said.

"Okay." He raised both hands, careful not to show his flat palms to the room. "Just checking. You know I could arrest you all, right? For something, I'm sure."

"Not for long," Grandma reminded him.

"No
pithani aitia
," Papou said. No probable cause.

Melas blew out a long sigh. "I need a time machine."

Tell me about it. "Your plan isn't going to work," I said. "He's watching you watching me. He knows all the tricks because they used to be his tricks, too. We've got an old dog. What we need new tricks." Everybody looked at me. "We've got a saying back home:
Den boreís na didáxete éna gérikos skylos néa kólpa
." You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

"We say you cannot catch an old fox in a fox trap," Grandma said.

I nodded as best I could with meat stuck to my face. "We've got an old fox. We need a trap for something other than foxes."

Grandma stopped. Her face went grim. "I know what you are thinking."

"No, you don't," I said.

"You are thinking of letting him take you so Nikos can catch him."

I was only totally lying out my butt when I said, "No."

"Good. Because that will never happen. Nikos," she said. "It ends here. You want to find the man, use different bait. Katerina is off-limits."

Everyone in this kitchen wanted to roll me in bubble wrap and cotton balls, and stick me in a padded room until trouble passed. But in this Family there would always be trouble heavy breathing around the next corner, waiting to expose itself.

"It's not your decision to make," I told her. "I decide for myself."

The way she slid the second bowl aside made me shudder. No aggression in the movement, just cold, methodical calm. The bowl went exactly where she wanted, how she wanted. There was no question of it defying her. When she spoke, it was softly, dangerously, and the walls trembled. They knew about her big stick. God knows how many times this room had seen the thing.

"Remember the conversation we had in this room, Katerina. Remember that."

How could I forget her 'It puts the lotion on its skin' conversation? It wasn't just my head that remembered, my body had perfect recall, too. Currently it was pairing Grandma's quiet threat with the image of her going full Rambo with her shotgun, and it was saying,
Hey, Kat? Maybe Granny's got a point. She's smaller than you—and older than dirt—but she could cut off your head and bury you in a stolen grave.

My face was throbbing. In fact, it and my heart were involved in a beat-off, which wasn't nearly as dirty as it sounded. My face was a fraction of a second behind my heart, irritating me with its inability to keep up. It was a lot like listening to a garage band, and my own body was the unfortunate garage. Inside my mouth, my molars began slow grinding.

I stood.

"Where are you going?" Grandma asked.

"To hang out with my goat."

B
y early evening
I'd swapped rubbing alcohol and ice for vinegar. My sunburn was going supernova. Grandma, Aunt Rita, Papou, Xander, and I were in the yard, watching the sun swagger slowly home. It had really kicked my butt—but it was my own fault. Not far away, on the other side of the metal fence, the kids were kicking balls and splashing in the pool. Their mothers were reading, knitting, needlepointing, and occasionally, screeching. Their fathers were sipping beers and swapping bullshit stories. From the outside it probably looked peaceful, relaxing, but there was an awareness, a thin, bright wire of tension threaded through us all.

Sooner or later, something was going to happen, and everyone knew the person it would happen to, like it or not, was me.

I was the duck and I was sitting while they waited. I don't think it mattered one bit that Grandma had put the kibosh on Melas's plan to catch the Baptist, or that she'd gone Godzilla on my willingness to be the chunk of cheese in the trap.

My chair was inches from the secret underground entrance.

Some things you never forget. They're plastered on the psyche with indelible spray paint. During my thirteenth year, my period arrived for its inaugural visit, without warning. It was late, late August, the harsh beginning of the new school year. I was in white shorts and Backstreet Boys T-shirt. I was cute, I was cool, I was suddenly bleeding all over my eighth grade biology class. Ms. Fletcher, the biology teacher, flipped out when I quietly asked to be excused, drawing every eye in the room to my Aunt Flo's unannounced arrival. The biology teacher had immediately launched into a monologue, pointing out that what was happening to me was completely normal, that no one was to make fun of me or they'd spend the rest of their lives in detention. She said this while my uterus slowly bled out beside her.

"Lady," I'd said, slicing into her sermon. "If you think the threat of detention is gonna stop them, you're a freakin' nutpie."

The only person who scored detention that day was me. And—go figure—nobody made fun of me. At least not to my face.

Mom picked me up. She bleached those shorts, taking the color white to Antarctic extremes. But I refused to wear them again. All I could see when I looked at them was my first ride on the cotton pony.

Grandma's yard was like those shorts. Whoever put the secret door in did a perfect job. It was all but seamless. But now I knew where it was it stuck out like the crimson tide.

"I hurt all over," I said. "I'm going to sleep this off."

Grandma watched me spoon out cheek kisses, then offered her own. As I pulled away she caught my face between her hands.

"One day you will understand," she said.

Yeah, right. They didn't call her Baboulas for nothing.

Back in my room I flopped down on the bed. Yelped. Jumped up. Then tried it again slowly. Not a yelp this time—more like a thin whine.

This much stinging, there way no way I was going to fall asl—

W
hen I was
a little girl I had one of those baby dolls with eyes that opened and closed. Stick her in a doll's bed, her eyes flicked shut. Sit her up, her plastic eyelids rolled back into her head.

I was like that doll. I sat up. My eyelids popped open.

Something had woken me.

The right side of my face still felt like I'd been playing the part of the mole in a whack-a-mole game, but my headache was down to a dull roar. I held my breath. Listened. If anyone was in the room with me they were dead or not human. My heart skipped a few beats then hurried to catch up to itself before my brain realized it had slacked off on the job.

I flicked on the lamp.

What the
—

On the beside table were two new things that hadn't been there when I crash landed on the mattress and pillow. One was a handgun. The other was a slip of paper with a string of numbers.

Great. Somebody wanted me to do math. Clearly they didn't know me.

Oh. Wait. It had letters, too.

Not math. GPS coordinates.

For a few moments I sat there and tried to process, then I tapped the numbers into my phone and watched the virtual map stick a pin in the middle of nowhere.

The Baptist's location or Dad's?

Warm invitation or a terrible warning?

Only a nut would follow these breadcrumbs to their destination. The gun, the coordinates, they were fitting too neatly into my plan, which meant they were automatically suspect. Who had left them here? Were they a good witch or a bad witch?

This was, I was afraid, one of those times where there would be no answers unless I did something really dumb, like drive out to the middle of nowhere. I could feel myself making the decision to be one of those women, the obligatory idiot in a horror movie, who goes down to the basement when the basement is obviously where the big, bad evil is waiting in the thickest shadow, licking his lips, thinking,
Thank God for stupid people, otherwise I'd starve and there'd be no movie.

The thing was, if what was waiting at the dot on the map was Dad or the Baptist, then it was my idea of a jackpot.

Down my short list of options I scrolled, looking over my alternatives to going alone. They were pretty pathetic.

I could wake Grandma and show her the note and gun. Then she'd confiscate the weapon, commandeer the coordinates, and send her own idea of a cavalry charging into the night. Possibly Takis and Stavros. They seemed to be her first choice when it came to lackeys. But I would be absolutely forbidden to take part.

Melas. Calling him was another option. He was, after all, the law. He'd also seize control of the situation, sitting me on the sideline with a patronizing head pat.

Aunt Rita? No, she'd be getting her beauty sleep. I just knew she was one of those women who went all out, sleep mask, a thick layer of gluey moisturizer over her sprouting stubble.

Then there was Xander. It was possible I could enlist his help, get him to shadow me, and hope he didn't run squealing to Grandma first.

Yeah, no.

Truth was, I didn't want them involved. I didn't fully trust a one of them. Not to mention—although here I was mentioning it—each one of them was a candidate for the role of benefactor. There was a limit to who could walk into this room while I was sleeping.

I was going. Alone. Do or die. Preferably no die.

My skin screeched when I eased my lower half into jeans and boots. Yeah, I could have done myself a favor, gone easy on myself with a dress, but a dress has fewer hiding places—and I had a feeling I'd need more than one. So I stuck with what I wore best: jeans, boots, a fitted T-shirt. I felt like a badass as I shoved the gun down the back of my pants—I barely winced at all—and the slingshot in my boot. The marbles I stashed in my pocket. I bunched up my hair in a ponytail, and I was ready to rock 'n' gently roll.

I took the alternate exit—the window—landing on Grandma's gardenias. There was a dark object hiding in a shadowy corner of the yard, but I recognized Xander's shape immediately. No one else around here was built like a sexy tank.

My breath caught. He'd turn me in to Grandma, for sure.

Doomed before I even reached the gate.

"Are you going to stop me?"

No response.

"Did you leave something on my bedside table?"

Nothing.

I held up the map on my phone. "What am I going to find if I go here?"

He kept staring straight ahead. I could have been a ghost, for all the attention he was paying me.

"Why not give it to Melas?"

He mumbled a name—Sofia—and began to snore.

Sweet zombie Jesus, the poor guy was asleep. Who could blame him? He'd been watching me almost around the clock, a bit like my own personal Greyfriars Bobby. I felt bad for the man. He was the one who'd bear the brunt of Grandma's anger when she realized I'd escaped her coop.

Unfortunately for Xander, my sympathy didn't outweigh my curiosity. So I climbed the fence, and dropped almost silently to the other side.

Suddenly, I froze.

Delayed reaction.

Maybe he didn't—or couldn't— speak when he was awake, but Xander had definitely spoken in his sleep, and the word he'd spoken was a woman's name. The mysteries were stacking up around here. It was beginning to look like the warehouse at the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
.

When I recovered from that revelation, I resumed the sneaking. The dogs ignored me—they knew I was friend, not foe. The cats ignored everyone, unless they were in need of a lap. My goat was decimating a decorative bush. The night was one of the darkest I'd seen so far, with only a hint of moon. During daylight hours Greece wore perfect blue skies, but tonight she was a widow.

Out front Stavros was watching over my car.

"Katerina!" he hissed. "What are you doing?"

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

"Escaping Baboula's protection."

Huh. He had me there. "That's pretty much true."

"You can't do that!"

I felt around under my car for the transmitter. When I found it, I tossed it to Stavros. "I need you to stay here and hold this. Or I can shoot you."

"You don't have a gun."

Every inch of me hurt but I managed to lift my shirt at the back to show him. "Say hello to my little friend," I said, sounding like Pacino on Helium.

"Virgin Mary, Katerina, you cannot just run away. Baboulas will kill me."

"Am I a hostage?"

"No, you are family."

"So she won't kill you. Worst case she'll revoke your internet privileges for a while."

"What will I do for fun?"

"Get a girlfriend."

"I can't afford a girlfriend."

I wasn't sure we were having the same conversation. That happened a lot around here. "Got to go."

The guard stopped me at the gate. He was on the outside and I was stuck on the inside. His name was Spiros, and he'd inherited a jumbo-sized version of the family nose. "Sorry, Katerina. I can't let you leave."

I leaned out the window and showed him my gun.

He showed me his.

His was much bigger—damn it—so I put mine away.

The gates loomed. They seemed taller at night, giant iron guardians that wouldn't let anybody pass, unless they were in possession of a good riddle or a super-secret password. I didn't know any riddles or passwords—except
password, 123
, my birth date, and
God
—which left me with threats.

"If you don't open the gate I'll ram it with my car."

He winced. "If you do that Baboulas will kick my
kolos
."

"So, open the gate and tell her I threatened to shoot you."

He pointed to the security camera that had captured the other guard's ding dong in solitary action. "She'll know I'm lying."

"Damn it." I chewed on a hangnail. "She thinks of everything."

His shoulders slumped in defeat. "Tell me about it."

"Okay, let me think." I sat there chewing while he waited, then I had a bright idea. I got out of the car, peered into the guardhouse. Nothing fancy inside. A smallish television, a computer, a wastebasket filled with takeout wrappers and today's paper. There was a smaller gate next to the big gates—one for foot traffic—and it wasn't locked. So in a jiffy I was on the other side of the gates. No car, but it was a starting point.

"Do you smoke?" I asked.

"When I want to look cool."

We'd have to talk later, Spiros and I. But right now I needed his lighter. When I asked for it he ponied up the plastic safety lighter. I flicked the flame on and tossed it into the wastebasket. Then I hit the button that opened the gates, raced back through the small gate, and jumped into my car.

Good guy Spiros was too busy kicking the flaming wastebasket onto the driveway to stop me. His primitive animal brain took over, and to a primitive animal brain fire trumps runaway cousin.

I'd make it up to him later.

If I made it back.