Sons of Sparta: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery (9 page)

Babis was out cold. Kouros bent over and groaned.

“Are you okay?” Stella said.

“No. Definitely not okay.”

“What do you want?”

“Ice in a towel.”

“Maybe heat would be better?”

“A lot of things would be better, but for now just the ice.”

Kouros stayed bent over, struggling not to puke. It could have been a lot worse, he thought. He stared at Babis laid out on the floor. “You miserable cocksucker. I should kick the shit out of you.”

Stella returned with the ice in a towel. Kouros put it on the back of his head.

“I thought you wanted it for down there.” She pointed at his groin.

“I’d rather not talk about that at the moment.” He drew in and let out a deep breath. “Does he always behave this way?”

“Not for a very long time.”

“Why now?”

“He’s always been jealous. But…”

“But what?”

“He’s not hit me since…” She shook her head and stopped talking.

“Look, Stella, your boyfriend, boss, whatever, just kicked me in the nuts for no apparent reason, and if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on here, I might just forget what I said before about you and immigration.”

She studied Babis’ body as if making sure he couldn’t hear her. “Not since your uncle warned him not to lay a hand on me.”

Kouros stared at Babis. “So he didn’t like my uncle?”

“He was afraid of your uncle.”

“He’s not as dumb as he seems.”

Babis started to stir. Kouros picked up the coffeepot and emptied the contents across Babis’ face.

Babis smacked at his face, trying to rub off the coffee. “
You burned my face!
”

Kouros put the towel filled with ice on the table and straightened up. “Get up, asshole.”

“I can’t.”

Kouros stomped the heel of his shoe down on one of Babis’ hands. “I said get up.”

Babis struggled to his feet.

Kouros punched him hard in the stomach, sending him back onto the floor.

“Get up.”

“I can’t.”

Again Kouros stepped on Babis’ hand. “I said get up.”

Babis pulled himself up, but stayed bent over trying to protect himself from another punch. Kouros feigned a jab at Babis’ head, getting him to raise his hands, then faked another to Babis’ midsection getting him to bend again and drop his hands, giving Kouros the perfect opportunity for landing two quick slaps across each side of Babis’ face.

“Just messing with you, asshole.” Kouros grabbed Babis and pulled him down into a chair.

“Let me tell you the new rules, asshole. From now on you’ll always be known to me as ‘asshole,’ so unless you want your customers to hear me calling you that to your face, you better keep your ugly face away from me whenever I’m around. Do you understand rule number one?”

Babis stared at the floor.

Kouros reached down, grabbed Babis’ chin, lifted it up, and stared him in the eyes. “I said, ‘Do you understand rule number one?’”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Kouros waved for Stella to come over. She hesitated. He gestured again and she came.

“Asshole, if I ever hear of you laying a hand on her, you better get used to walking without kneecaps.” Kouros reached down and squeezed Babis’ cheeks between his thumb and index finger. “Understand?”

Babis said nothing.

Kouros shook his head hard from side to side. “I said, ‘Understand?’”

Babis mumbled, “Yes, I understand.”

“And if you don’t see me around here for while, don’t think I’ve forgotten about our little deal. My cousins will be keeping an eye on her for me.”

Kouros did a quick thrust of his fist toward Babis’ nose, but stopped just before making contact. It didn’t matter, the thought of what was coming had Babis falling backwards off the chair and striking his head on the stone wall. Kouros picked up the ice-filled towel and threw it at him. “Here, you’ll need this.”

Kouros headed toward the door, but Stella called for him to stop.

“Thank you,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “You’re as kind as your uncle.”

Kouros nodded. “My suggestion is that you get yourself another boss. And quick. I don’t see much of a future for you here.”

Outside, Kouros leaned against the hood of his car. He should have known better than to get in the literal middle of a domestic dispute. The girl’s asshole boyfriend had a hell of a bad temper, one likely simmering near the boiling point for a very long time over Uncle telling him how to treat his woman.
Just my luck to remind him I was his nemesis’ nephew
.

Kouros shook his head and let out a sigh. If Babis’ kick to the nuts had been more effective, the crazed man might have beaten him to death. Kouros’ balls hurt, but nowhere nearly as much as they would have if he’d not listened to Andreas’ advice and been wearing that American designed holster that fit around his hips, under his pants and held his backup gun flat against his testicles. Kouros reached down and touched what lay sore but protected beneath the holster.

“Thanks, Chief. You saved them again.”

Chapter Nine

Kouros drove from the taverna up toward Vathia. He doubted the minimarket owner would know anything about the message written in Uncle’s newspaper, but he still had to talk to him. Besides, in a small town gossip was currency, and where better to exchange it than at the place where you came for news about the rest of the world?

He’d just passed the path leading to the cemetery when his mobile rang.

“Hi, Maggie. Did you get the autopsy materials I sent you?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m calling. I sent it all off to our techies, but they just called to say they needed more information. They need the raw info. Photos, recorded media, blood and tissue samples, etcetera.”

“If we start asking for that, the whole of the Mani will be saying GADA thinks it wasn’t an accident.”

“Don’t worry, I told the techies to call the coroner and tell him new procedures required that a copy of all material relating to any official autopsy be stored centrally in Athens.”

“You’re a genius, Maggie.”

“I know. But thank you, anyway.”

“Is the chief around?”

“I’ll get him for you.”

Kouros pulled off the road just above a renovated, centuries-old, four-story tower. A large, modern wooden deck at the rear of the stone tower overlooked the sea. Traditionalists must have gone wild, but whoever built the place had obviously turned a wreck into a home, and brought new blood—and money—to the Mani. That’s what things were all about these days. He turned off the motor and waited.

“Yianni, how are you?”

“Alive, but barely.”

“What’s up?”

Yianni told Andreas about his cousin’s request for a second look at the autopsy, the cast of characters he’d met yesterday, and his run-in with Babis.

“Aren’t you the lucky bastard to be in the wrong place at the right time?” said Andreas. “I sure hope your little flirtation was worth it.”

“I’ll let you know when I can feel my balls again.”

Andreas laughed. “Do you still think your uncle was murdered?”

“Don’t know yet. If the autopsy doesn’t find something, I’ll be heading home. No reason to stir up my cousins on a hunch.”

“What about the death threats in his newspaper and that phone text?”

Kouros shook his head. “I know it’s hard to believe it was all coincidence, but without any proof of foul play, what else could it be?”

“Mani voodoo? What about the guy you just tangled with? Sounds like he had a motive.”

“I have the feeling I’m not the first guy in the taverna to hold hands with his girlfriend. He could be angry with a whole lot of people. I’ll have Maggie run him through the computer and see what she comes up with.”

“Well, do what you have to do. No need to hurry back on my account. That Crete thing with Orestes is now on wait-and-see status.”

“What happened?”

Andreas told him.

“He’s going to be pissed when he finds out about the subpoenas.”

“I certainly hope so. All that thought and effort deserves some reward.”

Kouros laughed. “Could you patch me back to Maggie? I want to give her that guy’s name.”

“Just tell me, and I’ll get her to cut through all the red tape for you.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

“No problem. Your balls have been busted enough for one day.”

***

Andreas personally passed along Kouros’ request for a STAT criminal background check on the taverna owner. He also called GADA’s techies and pressed them to expedite their review of Uncle’s autopsy, though he knew Maggie’s calls likely carried more weight. Certainly more fear. If you crossed Maggie, her network of strategically placed support staff would make your life miserable. Pathologically disorganized desk jockeys found their haystacks of paper scrupulously organized into neat piles impossible for them to fathom, and the neat found clutter mysteriously accumulating in every corner. And that was just for starters.

“Chief?”

Andreas pressed the intercom button. “Yes, Maggie?”

“Your friend, Petro, stopped by. He said to tell you that Orestes never showed up at the club last night.”

He paused. “The next time Petro stops by, send him in to see me.”

“Do you want me to find him?”

“No. Not necessary.” At least not yet, he thought. But if Orestes starts making himself scarce, it would call for new tactics. Andreas needed to know what the bastard was up to.

Especially after it started raining subpoenas on Crete.

***

Kouros’ conversation with the minimarket owner was akin to having one with a radio. All Kouros got to say was, “Hello,” and the owner was off and running. He said he recognized Kouros from the funeral and spent the next fifteen minutes raving about how much he’d admired his uncle and considered it his honor to drop off Uncle’s newspaper each morning at the taverna “fresh out of the stack of papers” he picked up each morning from the distributor. At least that nailed down one point for Kouros: The death threat must have been put into the paper at the taverna. No one up to that point knew which paper in the stack would end up in front of Uncle. Yes, it was possible the minimarket guy did it, but that seemed even more unlikely than someone putting the same message into every newspaper in the stack.

Kouros tried thinking of some gracious way to escape the owner’s clutches when a message came through on his mobile from Maggie: CHIEF TOLD ME WHAT HAPPENED. HERE’S BALL BUSTER’S RAP SHEET. HOPE YOU’RE FEELING BETTER…OR AT LEAST FEELING SOMETHING :-)

I’ll never hear the end of this, Kouros thought. As he waited for the document to download, he pointed at the phone, smiled at the owner, and said, “Sorry, I have to take this.”

The man nodded and quickly pounced on another customer.

Kouros wandered over to his car. It took a minute for the document to show up on his screen. It was a three-page report dealing with crimes of the sort that gave Babis’ hometown a bad name throughout the rest of Greece. From childhood, he’d been in trouble. First for breaking into tourists’ hotel rooms, and later for robbing them face-to-face. By the time he was old enough to qualify for adult jail time, he’d gone into a different line of work, capitalizing on his hometown area’s fertile cropland. Not as an agricultural laborer, but as a supervisor, or more appropriately for how he was expected to treat those under his watch, slave overseer.

Immigrants worked for slave wages harvesting by hand backbreaking crops like strawberries, and when a supervisor could steal from them he would. Babis’ job in that line of work made his rap sheet because he’d been one of several supervisors suspected—but never proven—to have shotgunned a group of Pakistani laborers protesting over six months of unpaid back wages.

In his personal life, twice he’d been arrested for badly beating up a Polish girlfriend who’d left him. The first time, she refused to press charges. The second time she did but never appeared at his trial to testify. And no one had seen her since.

Nice guy, thought Kouros.
I should have kicked the shit out of him when I had the chance
.

The last entry was an arrest six years ago for growing marijuana hidden among rows of spinach-like
horta
. In that part of Greece and a few other places, that sort of cash crop farming practice wasn’t uncommon, and viewed much like “moonshining” in the United States. Babis’ drug charges were dropped and from that point on he had a clean record.

Not so much as a parking ticket since he’d relocated to the Mani.

***

Kouros walked through the front door of the taverna, past a startled Stella, and stopped just outside the kitchen. “Babis, come out here. Don’t worry, all is forgiven. I’m not even calling you ‘asshole.’”

There wasn’t a sound in the kitchen. Kouros turned to Stella and mouthed, “Is he in there?”

She nodded.

“Babis come out. I only want to talk. Now play nice.”

He heard metal against metal, and saw Babis wiping his hands on an apron as he walked toward him. “I have cooking to do.”

“It won’t take long.” He turned to Stella. “Would you excuse us, please?”

Babis jerked his head in the direction of the front door. “Outside.” He sat down.

Kouros sat across from him. “I’ve seen your rap sheet—”

“That’s all in the past. I’m clean.”

Kouros nodded. “I know, but I want to know how you found religion?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You went from bad boy to model citizen overnight. Why?”

“I grew up.”

“I think you mean you were scared shitless.”

Babis shifted in his chair.

“You faced a long stretch in prison on your last arrest. Yet you walked. Must have been divine intervention that saved your ass.”

Babis shrugged. “Think what you want.”

“I checked. You walked on your last arrest, but the owner of the property didn’t. He got six years.”

Babis shrugged again. “He deserved it.”

Kouros shook his finger at him. “I’m not so sure about that, my friend. You see, that property owner was a very prominent piece of garbage in your hometown. He had his finger in just about every illegal scheme in the northwest Peloponnese. His farms were used to launder money, not make it. Everybody knew that, but no one could prove it. He was too smart and too cagey.”

Babis looked at the floor.

“Hard to imagine that this same guy would be growing hash in the middle of a field owned in his real name. The DEA would have had to be blind not to find it in a flyover. He was practically inviting the DEA to catch him.”

Kouros leaned in to within six inches of Babis’ face. “You know what I think? I think there’s no way an operator like that would ever be stupid enough to grow that shit on his own property.” Kouros paused. “
No way
.”

Babis shrugged.

Kouros sat back in his chair. “My guess is he was set up. I doubt he even knew there was grass growing out in the middle of all that
horta
. But you did. Probably even planted it. And when DEA found it, you made a deal to give them the owner. They got to nail a bad guy they’d wanted for years, and you got to walk away clean. Everyone’s happy, except of course for the guy who went to prison. Does he still call you on your name day?”

“He’s dead. Died of a heart attack, two years ago in prison.”

Kouros nodded. “Convenient. What about his family? Have they forgotten about what you did to their father?”

Babis stared at the floor.

“Somehow I don’t see you hanging around this place because you think they don’t know you’re here. If I’d crossed someone as powerful as that guy, I’d have moved to some place like China long ago.” Kouros shook his head. “So, tell me, Babis, what keeps you here?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to that question. I just want to know why. And if you don’t tell me, I might just have to visit your old stomping grounds and start poking around for answers. I’d hate to open old wounds, but you’re leaving me no choice.”

Babis started running his hands through his hair, but abruptly switched to rubbing them furiously on his thighs. The textbook example of a suspect about to turn violent.

“Uh, uh,” said Kouros. “Don’t go there. Just answer my question so we can end this interview and you can get back to going about your business. But if you go crazy on me again, I promise you’ll be back in jail. After you get out of the hospital.”

Babis took his hands off his thighs to hold his head, elbows on the table. “The DEA guys gave me no choice. They had me cold on the drug charge and a whole lot of other things that could put me away for twenty years.” He got up, went over to a cooler, pulled out a beer, and snapped it open.

“What choice did I have?”

“What happened?”

Babis chugged the beer, took another from the cooler, and came back to the table. “I testified, the DEA got its conviction, the owner went away, and I moved here. End of story.”

“So why are you still breathing?”

“You already guessed it. Your uncle had me under his protection.”

“Which leads to my ‘why’ question.”

“He felt he owed me.”

“Owed you?”

Babis popped opened the second beer. “I was growing the grass for him.”

Son of a bitch, thought Kouros.
Uncle was lying when he said he was out of the business
.

“You can’t grow grass around here and your uncle offered me a lot of money to do it for him up there.”

“But why did you pick that guy’s property?”

Babis’ took a sip of the beer. “That’s where your uncle told me to grow it. I told him there were a lot safer places to do it, but he insisted I grow it there.”

“Any idea why he made you do it there?”

“Not when he asked me, but I pretty much figured all that out later. He had a hard-on for the guy. The owner double-crossed your uncle in some business deal years before and your uncle never forgave him. I don’t think your uncle ever intended to take delivery of the grass. He just wanted to fuck the landowner. And did he ever. I’m sure he’s the one who tipped off the DEA, too.”

Son of a bitch, thought Kouros suppressing a smile. Uncle was just settling a score.
Never cross a Maniot.
“But he fucked you, too.”

Babis shrugged. “He paid me what he promised, and protected me ever since. Even set me up in this business. I’m very grateful for all your uncle did for me.”

“I come back to what I said before, now that my uncle’s dead, what’s to prevent the landowner’s family from coming after you?”

“They’re not vendetta-crazy like you people from the Mani. Your uncle’s dead. He’s the one who set everybody up. That should end it.”

“Sounds like you’re praying.”

Babis drained the rest of the beer. “I have to prepare for my lunch customers. Are we done?”

“For now.” Kouros stood and headed toward the door, passing Stella coming back inside.

“Hurry back,” she whispered.

He sensed she was right about that.

***

Something’s not right.
Kouros left the taverna and drove south toward Cape Tenaro along a winding mountain road filled with hundreds of domesticated goats herded by a single dog, all of them acting as if the road were theirs alone. But his mind wasn’t on the goats, the dog, or the scenery. He had to think. Kouros squeezed the steering wheel and gritted his teeth. “
He’s the one who set everybody up,”
kept running through his mind.