Sons of Sparta: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery (10 page)

That didn’t sound like someone “grateful” for what Uncle had done for him. It was more like a man bearing a deep grudge. For six years Babis had run a taverna on the ass end of the Peloponnese, far away from the action he was used to up north. And every day of those six years he’d had to serve coffee to the guy who put him there. Babis would have been better off serving his time in prison. With prison overcrowding what it was, he’d probably be out by now, even with a twenty-year sentence.

Babis certainly had reason for a grudge. But was it a big enough one to risk murdering his protector? Babis was full of shit about Uncle’s death ending the Pirgos family’s desire to come after him for their father’s death. They’d go after him the moment they knew he’d lost Uncle’ s protection. Maybe Babis was banking on Mangas’ protection? Could be. He’d likely honor his father’s commitments. But if the autopsy showed Uncle was murdered, that family up north would be the least of Babis’ problems. He’d spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder worrying whether one of Uncle’s children might someday think Babis had something to do with their father’s murder. And why the death threat notes? Kouros smacked the steering wheel.

Something’s
definitely
not right
.

Chapter Ten

Maggie opened the door to Andreas’ office. “Chief?”

Andreas looked at his watch. “Why are you still here?”

“Curiosity.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Curious about what?”

She walked over to his desk and handed him a large flat envelope. “It’s our techies’ take on the autopsy of Yianni’s uncle. They called to tell me it was on the way, so I waited.”

“That was fast.”

She smiled. “Someone lit a fire under them and they did the same to the local guy who performed the autopsy.”

“So, what’s it say?”

“Chief, I don’t open your mail.”

“Right. I forgot. It arrives that way from the mail room.”

Maggie shrugged.

Andreas unwound a string holding the cover flap closed, slid out a document, leaned back in his chair, and began to read.

Maggie sat across from him.

The first page recited all the customary exculpatory language to the effect that the author’s conclusions were based solely upon data provided by someone else so that if the data were in error the conclusions might change.

He slid the first page across the desk to Maggie and started reading the second. Halfway down the page he sat up in his chair. “Jesus.”

“What is it?”

Andreas held up the page and pointed with a pencil to four words. CONCLUSION: DEATH BY POISON.

“My God. Yianni was right. His uncle
was
murdered.”

Andreas went back to reading the report. He finished and slid the pages across the desk to Maggie.

“This technical stuff is all Chinese to me, Chief. What does it mean?”

Andreas tapped his pencil on his desk. “If the report is correct, his uncle died from exposure to an exotic poison lethal to the touch that rapidly brings on a massive heart attack in an otherwise healthy individual. According to the victim’s medical history, his heart was sound and asymptomatic for heart disease or any other suspect cause for such a natural death.”

Andreas leaned forward and with the eraser end of the pencil drew the report back to him. He looked at the second page. “According to a blood analysis done by the local coroner, there were traces of markers to the poison. Not of the poison itself, because it breaks down rapidly, but of the byproducts of its disintegration. We got a break with a quick autopsy, otherwise all evidence of the poison would have disappeared.”

“Doesn’t sound like the local coroner was involved in a cover-up.”

Andreas nodded. “My guess is once he found signs of a massive heart attack, he took that for the cause and didn’t bother to look any further. But even if he had, picking up on this poison would require sophisticated forensics skills I doubt he had. Even our guys couldn’t tell how the poison was administered.”

“So, how can they say it was death by poison?”

“It’s the old ‘within a reasonable degree of medical certainty’ routine. In other words, they’re pretty sure he was murdered, but it’s up to us to find out how.”

“Was it something he swallowed at the taverna?”

Andreas gestured no. “That would have killed him on the spot,” said Andreas.

“What about a needle?”

“Not as far as they could tell. It’s possible bruises and cuts sustained in the crash covered up a needle mark, but that would mean whoever planned it to look like an accident left to blind luck whether the injection site would be discovered on an autopsy. I don’t see whoever’s behind this as being the sort to take that kind of risk. This was planned as a ‘no comebacks murder.’” Andreas emphasized “no comebacks” with finger quotes. “A simple, obvious heart attack with no links back to the killer.”

“So, how do we figure out how he was poisoned?”

He smiled. “Push the techies harder. That’s your job. Starting first thing tomorrow morning.”

Andreas resumed tapping his pencil on the desk. “The big question for me is, why did they work so hard to make it look like an accident?”

“They didn’t want to trigger a war in the Mani?”

“Death threats tied to an old vendetta don’t make sense if you’re trying to make a murder look like an accident so as
not
to start a war.”

“So, which of us passes the news on to Yianni?”

“I’ll do it,” said Andreas. “And let’s keep this to ourselves for now. The last thing we need is a bunch of crazy Maniots running around the Peloponnese chasing after suspects. That sort of paranoia runs up the body count pretty quickly.”

Andreas picked up the phone. “I sure wish Yianni had been wrong.”

***

“Poison!”

“Yes, a rare sophisticated one. Not something you’d find in a gardening shed or local pharmacy.” Andreas picked up the report. “It says here that ‘depending on the method of administration, the onset of a heart attack would be in two to ten minutes.’”

“That meant he was poisoned just before leaving the taverna,” said Kouros.

“Or inside his car.”

“But that would require some way of administering the poison inside the car. A needle, gas canister, or some other device, and that sort of thing should have turned up in the examination of the car after the accident.”

“Maggie will push the techies to take a closer look for needle marks and ask them if the poison could have been administered as a gas. You better check out the car just to make sure no one missed something.”

“I hear the taverna’s pretty busy in the mornings, so anyone tampering with his car there would have been taking a hell of a risk. But if it happened inside the car, it could have been set up somewhere else and rigged to go off when he drove away from the taverna.”

“Just to be sure, you ought to verify how busy that taverna actually is in the mornings.”

“I’m beginning to become a regular there.”

“Look at it as your chance to bond with your sparring partner from this morning.”

“You mean my
numero uno
choice as my uncle’s killer?” Kouros told him of his afternoon conversation with Babis.

“Sure sounds like he had a reason for disliking your uncle. Just not sure it’s enough of one to murder him. And why now? From the threats your uncle received, his murder seems more likely related to his hotel project, and I don’t see anything linking Babis to that.”

“I was wondering the same thing.”

“What about the girl? She might know something. Ask around, but be careful. We don’t want your kinfolk thinking we suspect murder.”

“The one I’m worried about thinking that way is Mangas. Once he gets that into his head, there will be no stopping him.”

“Isn’t he who asked you to make sure it was an accident?”

“Yes, to get his sister off his back. That’s my explanation for why I’m asking all these questions. But he’s pressing me for my take on the autopsy report and I don’t want him thinking I’m hiding something.”

“How much longer can you stall him?”

“I told him I’d send the report on to Athens this morning but that they needed additional information from the coroner. Between that and what I assume he shares with the rest of Greeks as a universally low opinion of the work habits of our public employees, I should be able to stall him for another two days, three at most.”

“I hope we have our killer by them.”

“I don’t want to think about it if we don’t. I wish I could lie and tell him it was an accident. Not telling him what we know is as far as I’m prepared to go. After all, he is family.”

“Sounds like the priorities on your moral compass are still in working order.”

“Yeah, but I’m beginning to worry about my other parts.”

Andreas laughed. “Just be careful. Bye.”

Andreas put his feet up on his desk and stared out the window. Kouros’ cousin should lose his patience with the Greek police’s official investigation into his father’s death at just about the same time subpoenas started flying all over Crete, Orestes started flying all over Spiros, and Spiros all over Andreas. The elements of a proverbial perfect shit storm massing in Greece’s two most violent-tempered parts just waiting for the perfect moment to come together in the middle of Andreas’ desk.

Andreas decided to follow his own moral compass. He took his feet off his desk and went home to his family.

***

It started out innocently enough. Andreas returned home at a reasonable hour, something quite unreasonable for him, but he’d forgotten Lila was at a charity event with her mother. He toyed with the idea of catching a movie,
souvlaki
, and beer at the open-air theater in the park just across the street from their apartment but decided instead on what he thought a much better idea: a “whatever you want to do” good time with his son.

“Finger painting” was not among the answers Andreas expected, but a deal was a deal, especially with a three-year-old. So, after changing into jeans and a white t-shirt, and covering the laundry room floor-to-ceiling in plastic, Andreas plopped Tassaki amid a sea of glossy finger paint paper and surrounded him with an array of brightly colored paint jars.

Andreas looked down at his handiwork and said, “Let’s do it!”

It was a peaceful beginning. Tassaki carefully opened one jar, dipped in one finger, brought it out, and showed a blood red fingertip to his father.

“Terrific start. Now rub it on the paper to make a picture.”

Andreas watched with a smile as his son carefully selected and began rubbing his finger on one particular piece of paper.

Tassaki looked at his father and held up his finger. “It’s all gone.”

“That’s okay. Dip your finger into the jar to get more.”

Tassaki dipped his finger and with studied care went back to his painting. Five minutes later, Andreas smiling through every second of it, Tassaki held up the paper. It was a circle, with dots inside and out, and three relatively straight lines roughly intersecting the circle.

“It’s beautiful,” smiled Andreas.

“It’s you.”

“Me?”

Tassaki nodded.

Andreas leaned over and kissed him. “Thank you. Now, I think you should make one of Mommy.”

“But I need more colors.”

Andreas wasn’t quite sure how to take that, so he just said, “Fine,” and opened two more jars of paint.

“All of them.”

“You want all of them open?”

“Yes, it’s for Mommy.”

Andreas had started down this road, so there was no going back.

Andreas opened the remaining jars one by one and placed all ten in front of his son.

Tassaki pulled a clean sheet of paper in front of him. Very carefully he dipped a separate finger into each jar before proudly holding up ten different colored fingertips to his father.

“Now what?” smiled Andreas.

Tassaki placed his fingertips at the top edge of the paper and carefully brought each hand out, down, and around to form two five-ring, rainbow semicircles roughly joined together at the top and bottom. He finished by pulling his fingers straight down and off the paper in ten nearly parallel lines.

All Andreas could think of to say was, “Wow.”

“Mommy.”

Andreas pulled Tassaki to his chest, hugged, and kissed him. “Yes, your mommy is very beautiful.”

Tassaki pulled back and pointed at the front of Andreas’ t-shirt, now bearing the handprints of a three-year-old Picasso. “You’re shirt is dirty, Daddy.”

Andreas nodded and dipped his fingertip into a jar of blue paint. He stared at it for a moment, considering the ramifications of his intended act. “And so is your nose,” drawing a blue line straight down the center of it.

Ten minutes later Lila returned home to the sounds of giggles and laughter in her laundry room. Inside she found her husband and son rolling around on the floor in what looked to be a psychedelic Jackson Pollock painting come to life.

When the two rainbow bodies rolling around on the floor realized Lila was standing in the doorway, the room went suddenly quiet.

Lila cleared her throat. “Darling, remind me to make a point of sending a drum set to the child whose parents gave Tassaki those finger paints for his birthday.”

Chapter Eleven

By 8:45 the next morning, Kouros sat parked on the road to Cape Tenaro looking down on the taverna about a quarter-mile away. From here he had an unobstructed view of the front of the taverna and for the next hour and a half watched a seemingly endless flow of fishermen, farmers, tradesmen, retirees, and local business types flow in and out of the taverna. Just before ten-thirty he put down his binoculars and drove to the taverna. Anyone hoping to tinker unnoticed with a car parked in front of that place during its morning hours had a far better chance of winning the lottery.

He got out and went inside. The moment he stepped through the door, his uncle’s hotelier friend Panos yelled out from a table, “Ahh, finally, you decided to join us. We’ve been wondering how long it would take you.”

“Practically everyone walking in here since we got here wanted to know who’s the guy sitting up there on the hill watching us,” smiled Stelios.

Make that the mega-millions lottery, thought Kouros.

“I told them not to worry, he’ll come inside,” said Panos.

“You cost me fifty euros,” said Konstantin. “I bet Mihalis you were just waiting for us to leave so you’d have Stella all to yourself.”

Everyone in the place laughed.

Babis came out of the kitchen, glanced at Kouros but said nothing. Instead he began bantering with a table full of farmers and fishermen, making them laugh.

“Come, sit with us,” said Konstantin to Kouros.

“Aren’t you missing one of your crew?”

Panos nodded. “Alexander had business in Athens yesterday and won’t be back for a couple of days.”

“Yeah, monkey business,” said Mihalis. “Our political friend is getting laid.”

“Better he’s busy screwing his girlfriend than our country,” said Panos.

“Even his wife would agree with that,” said Stelios.

Panos poured Kouros a cup of coffee from a pot on the table. “So, tell us why you were sitting out there for so long?”

“I wanted to get an idea of how busy the place is.”

“To see if anyone had the opportunity to screw around with your uncle’s car?” said Mihalis.

“What makes you think that?”

Stella came out of the kitchen, saw Kouros, and smiled.

“I was an ex-cop, remember. As I see it, you had one of two reasons. You’re either the good nephew making sure your uncle’s death was an accident, or you really are here because of Stella. But since alternative two would get my friend his fifty euros back, I’m all for number one.” Mihalis waved at Stella, “
Svenaki
for all.”

“It’s a bit early for me for shots of whiskey,” said Kouros.

“Not to toast your uncle it isn’t.”

Stella went around to the other tables setting down trays of shot glasses filled with a clear liquid, but at Kouros’ table she handed each man a separate shot glass.

Kouros braced himself for what it might be:
ouzo
,
tsipouro
, vodka, or tequila. He needed a clear head and this definitely was not in keeping with that program. But he had no choice, so he shouted, “
Theos singhorese ton,”
and downed the toast in a gulp. The taste startled him. It wasn’t anything close to what he expected: it was water.

He looked at Stella and she smiled.

He laughed.

“Mihalis, I want my fifty back. Or at least half of it,” said Konstantin. “Look at those two.”

Stelios said, “Another round.”

“Not for me, thanks. One’s enough.” Having downed one, no one pressed Kouros to do another.

After two more
svenaki
shots, Panos leaned over to Kouros and said, “We could have told you no one could get to your uncle’s car while he was in here. Nobody had balls that big. Besides, he was careful where he parked. Always at the same spot right in front, locked, with the alarm on.”

“Was he always that careful?”

“With his car, sure. He used to say he’d done so much to other people’s cars in his time that he wasn’t about to make it easy for anyone to get at him. And everybody knew it. No one even leaned on your uncle’s car.”

Kouros nodded. Another likely dead end. He caught himself staring at Stella and stopped. No reason to piss Babis off any more than he already had. He might just take it out on her despite Kouros’ warning.

Besides, all Kouros saw in starting something up with Stella were a few “slam, bam, thank you ma’am” moments. And even those were getting complicated these days. Everybody’s looking for a way out to a better place. No telling what’s on a woman’s mind these days. He looked at Babis. Or a man’s.

Babis stood with his back to Kouros, holding court at another table, telling jokes, patting men on the back, lightly smacking the backs of their heads, and pinching the backs of their necks. He was playing the quintessential Greek taverna owner, as if lifted straight out of a Greek National Tourist Office promotional film.

Whatever else Kouros thought about Babis, he had to give him credit. The man knew his customers.

The question was, did he know them well enough to kill them and make it look like an accident?

***

Uncle’s buddies kept Kouros penned up inside the taverna until nearly noon. They had far too many stories to share of their friend’s exploits to stick to their out-by-ten-thirty routine. Kouros actually enjoyed the stories; though most seemed more the fantasies of old men living vicariously through another’s imagined talent with the ladies than real life. Still, if only a tenth of the tales were true, Kouros’ aunt truly must have had the qualities of a saint.

Finally, Kouros left the taverna and drove north through Vathia. Five miles later he passed the turnoff to Gerolimenas. Fifteen miles ahead, along a two-lane road winding through the heart of ancient Mani, lay Aeropoli. Twenty-five miles further north sat the seaside village of Kardamyli, home to famed British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. Beyond the Mani, another twenty-five miles would have brought Kouros to the bustling port city of Kalamata. Famous for plump, pungent olives of the same name, Kalamata stood second in population on the Peloponnese only to Patras.

But Kouros stopped in Aeropoli. Mangas had shipped Uncle’s car there, to the only body shop in the region with a chance of repairing it. Luckily, work hadn’t started on it. Unluckily, Kouros found nothing suspicious. No hidden needles, gas canisters, or evidence of any tinkering with the air-conditioning, heating, or any other part of the ventilation system. Everything checked out just as in the original report.

Kouros left the body shop and started walking to his car. But he paused and looked back toward Aeropoli’s town square a few blocks away. “Why not?” he said to himself and headed for it.

A statue of the Mani’s most famous citizen, Petros Mavromichalis, legendary Nyklian hero of Greece’s War of Independence and the Mani’s last Ottoman-appointed chieftain, dominated the marble and limestone square. Sadly, the immediately surrounding area had lost much of the charm Kouros remembered from his childhood, succumbing to the ill-fated belief of so many tourist-driven communities that tourism must be served, no matter what the cost. But just off the square, in the old town proper, a different sort of civic wisdom had prevailed and classic two-story, honey and gray fieldstone homes lined meandering flagstone streets in testament to preservation meticulously executed with care and good taste.

Kouros bought a
souvlaki
and bottle of water, sat down on a bench under a mulberry tree next to the statue, pulled out his mobile, and called Andreas.

The first words he heard were, “Any luck?”

“Everything checked out. No surprises.”

“Between that and what you told me on the drive up about your morning in the taverna, I’d say your uncle was poisoned in the taverna.”

“Everyone with him at the table that morning had a possible motive, but my money’s on Babis,” said Kouros.

“Aren’t you forgetting someone?”

“Who?”

“The girl.”

“But he helped her.”

“I know, and it doesn’t seem likely, but what do we know about her?”

“Not much. And the only person who would know about Stella is Babis. I doubt he’ll talk to me about her.”

“What about that immigration guy, the one who threatened to arrest her but your uncle chased away? He might know something.”

“How the hell am I going to find him?”

“You’re in Aeropoli, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Try the port police in Gytheio. That office covers your uncle’s part of the Mani and they deal with immigration all the time. Maybe they know something about her or who might have come looking for her in the taverna. After all, the story about him being run off by your uncle is funny. It’s the kind cops like to repeat.”

“Not when it’s about themselves. If I were that guy, I’d never breathe a word of it to anyone.”

“What the hell, you’re already there.”

“Already there? Gytheio’s all the way over on the Mani’s east coast.”

“Stop complaining. It’s only a half-hour drive and think of all that beautiful mountain scenery you’ll get to see.”

“Fine, but the gas is going on my expense report.”

“Good luck with that. Let me know what happens. Got to run.” The line went dead.

Kouros shut off his phone, ate his
souvlaki
, and walked back to his car. It seemed a long shot, but Andreas was right about the drive. Gytheio lay across the mountains, a picture perfect harbor town nestled up against the Laconian Gulf in the northeast corner of the Mani. It was the largest town in the Mani, the municipal seat of East Mani, the seaport of ancient Sparta, and a thriving export center during Roman times. A massive earthquake had leveled the place in the fourth century, and it remained a small village until the early nineteenth century when refugees escaping from Greece’s War of Independence got the population growing again. Gytheio returned to glory in the 1960s with its new port.

But Kouros wasn’t going on holiday. He somehow had to find the guy run off by his uncle. As a general rule the best chance at getting dicey information from another service was to put the request on a cop-to-cop, off-the-record basis. Then again, from his experience with cops in this part of the country, he suspected he’d get a warmer reception introducing himself as his uncle’s nephew.