The Devil Takes Half (39 page)

Patronas had excused himself after dinner and gone outside to call her daughter in Athens from his cellphone. He'd suggested that she return to Chios to be with her mother, to help her now. Voula Athanassiou refused. “I can't, Chief Officer. Surely you understand. Seeing my mother in jail? It would be too hard on me.”

He had hung up without saying good-bye.
Who would put flowers on the old woman's grave when the time came?
he wondered. Her situation filled him with pity.
What a life she'd had.

“
You said you kept some stones,” he asked gently. “Where are they?”

She hobbled to the back door and opened it. “Out there,” she said, pointing to the chicken coop. “Everything's in there. No one goes there but me. Too delicate, all of them. Too clean and fresh and sweet-smelling.” There was spittle on her face. Her eyes were alive. Some spark alight now. When he'd started the interview, she'd been listless, whining and resentful. Proud, yes, but her pride had been misplaced. She anticipated humiliation. Saw it when it wasn't there. Apologized for her china, the poor quality of the coffee. “I am poor.” Her statement thrown down like a gauntlet. Now she was different.

There were few things in the coop. A handful of
galapetras
, nothing more. Slipping on his gloves, Patronas turned on his flashlight and poked through them with a finger. Petros had been holding out on his grandmother. Even little Petros had betrayed her. Leaving the most valuable artifacts with the priest at Profitis Ilias instead of bringing them home. Probably McLean had been helping him, selling the jewelry and figurines for the boy and splitting the money with him. Or maybe he'd been holding them for a future time when he could salt an undiscovered site and claim it as his.

It smelled terrible inside the coop, the ammonia from the droppings so powerful it stung his eyes. The droppings clung to his shoes, covering them up to the laces. The dirt on the old woman's skirt had to have come from here. The chickens were wearing some sort of harness to keep them in place, their feathers worn away where the metal rubbed against their necks.
Prisoners,
Patronas thought.
Everywhere prisoners.
He stepped back outside.

The old woman was standing in her garden, waiting for him. “I couldn't wait,” she said. “I'm too old. I wanted it settled.” He realized she was talking about Kleftis. “I couldn't wait for justice.”

* * *

Papa Michalis was still up when Patronas got home, padding around the house in his bathrobe. “I couldn't sleep,” he said. “Too much, all of this. Too much for an old man.”

After pouring himself a drink, Patronas told him about the death of Kleftis, the role the grandmother had played in the whole affair. “I didn't take her in. I probably should have, but I didn't have the heart, at least not tonight.”

“
What did you do with her?”

“
Left Tembelos with her at the house, told him to keep an eye on her. We'll jail her in the morning.”

“
What did she say about Kleftis?”

“
She admitted killing him. ‘He was a rabid dog,' she told me. ‘You kill rabid dogs.' Very matter of fact, she was. No remorse, no tears, nothing.”

He took a sip of his drink. “A real Spartan lady. She's not from Chios. She was born in the mountains of Peloponnese, Kalavrita.”

“
Was she there during the war?”

Patronas nodded. “A victim from the day she was born.”

“
What are you going to do with her?”

“
Charge her with murder in the first degree. I don't care how old she is or what she went through. Nothing gives you a license to kill.”

“
Where she's from, it does. Kleftis killed her grandson and she avenged him. That's how they do things in those mountains. The people there, they don't need law enforcement. They settle things themselves. To her this is like the war, when we killed all the collaborators. No one cared what happened to them. No one bothered with due process. You just shot your enemies. The ones who'd sold you out to the Germans. That's what she did.”

“
She confessed,” Patronas said. “I can't ignore it. It's not enough that my prisoner dies in custody. Now you want me to let a killer go? I can't. You know that. I'm sworn to uphold the constitution.”

“
Can't you find a legal way to absolve her?”

“
Absolve her? That's your domain, Father, not mine.”

I am not yet dead, but they have lit my candles.

—
Greek folk saying

T
he call from the Prefecture of Chios came the next morning. Patronas was relieved of his duties until further notice. His second-in-command, Evangelos Demos, was to take his place as Interim Chief Officer until a successor could be appointed by the Ministry of Justice in Athens.

The Prefecture had been quite specific about Patronas' inadequacies when he'd fired him: the poisoning of the suspect, Manos Kleftis, while under lock and key at the local jail, the failure to follow proper procedure with respect to Kleftis' murderer, the elderly widow, Calliope Athanassiou, who remained at home in spite of confessing to the crime, the lack of police oversight at Profitis Ilias on August fifteenth, which had resulted in the death of Marina Papoulis, the refusal to permit the suspect, Devon McLean, to use the bathroom in a timely fashion, resulting in a formal complaint filed against the Chios Police Department by the British Consul.

“
Needless and wanton destruction of life and property under your administration,” the Prefecture intoned. Patronas thought he probably could have survived had it not been for the British Consul's scathing letter, which had been sent to the Ministry of Justice in Athens. The Prefecture had read it out loud to him at the start of the phone call, his voice pained. To be shamed by a foreigner and to have your colleagues in Athens witness your shame. No wonder he'd been sacked.

“
Your conduct throughout this investigation has been highly unprofessional,” the Prefecture went on. “While Manos Kleftis was dying on the floor of his jail cell, you were seen drinking by countless witnesses at a taverna in Langhada. Evangelos Demos testified that you ordered him to chase
bats
at Profitis Ilias,
bats,
mind you, and this in spite of his most fervent objections, his legitimate fear that he might injure himself in their pursuit. He also stated that when he was assaulted there one night and the opportunity arose to seize Manos Kleftis, you gunned down, not Kleftis, but two goats, which subsequently died of their injuries.”

“
Testified? You had a trial.”

“
A hearing.”

“
Why wasn't I invited? Given a chance to defend myself?” To be tried and convicted, not by a jury of one's peers, but by Evangelos Demos.

“
It wouldn't have mattered. Your dismissal was a foregone conclusion.” The Prefecture instructed Patronas to clean out his desk by the end of the day and hung up without saying good-bye.

Patronas set the phone back on its cradle. He wanted to die, to run the Citroen in a closed garage until he was no more, drink hemlock like Socrates. Fired for incompetence. Fired for stupidity.
Ach, fired on the word of Evangelos Demos.

He sat at his desk for a long time with his head in his hands. He ached all over. His wounds from the cave hadn't healed and now he had new ones. What was he going to do? Go home to Dimitra? He wished he'd let Kleftis kill him.

At the end of the day, he did as he was told. He gathered up his files and personal belongings and shoved them in cardboard boxes and carried them out to the car. His men stood around awkwardly.

“
Prefecture's a fool,” Tembelos said.

* * *

Ironic how things work out.
At one point during the murder investigation, Patronas had wanted nothing more than to join the people in the
ouzerias
and coffee shops that lined the quay, to sit and watch the boats. Now that he had joined them, drinking endless Nescafé frappés among the hordes of German and Danish tourists, he hated it.

In the days immediately following his dismissal, Dimitra alone had called and pledged her support. Not her love, Patronas noted sourly. Her support.

Against his better judgment, he called her back.

“
Hello, Yiannis,” she said, speaking carefully, enunciating her words with just a hint of regret like a doctor about to give a patient the bad news. And bad news it was. “I've been thinking over what you said. You know, about my being jealous of Marina, the fact that she had children and I didn't.”

“
What about it?” Patronas asked impatiently.

“
I never told you this, but after we were married and the children didn't come, I went to the doctor and got myself checked out. Took the plane to Athens. I told you I was going to see my cousin, but I wasn't. I was going to see a specialist there. A man who'd trained in England. It made me embarrassed the questions he asked. The doctor, he said I was all right, that it was you. Probably the mumps you had when you were a boy, the ones that messed up your ear. I didn't tell you. I thought, Yiannis, he's a man and men, they worry about making children, their man parts, so I kept silent. I let you go on thinking it was me, that I was one to blame, when all the time it was you.”

My cup runneth over,
Patronas thought to himself.
It isn't enough she made my life hell and sent Marina to her death. It isn't enough that I botched the case and lost my job. Now even my manhood is suspect.

“
Thank you for clarifying that, Dimitra.” He slammed the phone down. What did she know?
Her word isn't worth the fart of a donkey.

* * *

The Citroen quit in the rain that afternoon. Just stopped where it was and ceased to function. No amount of coaxing would get it to start. He kicked one of the tires
. All others with pebbles and thou with stones.
Fortunately, the car was light and he could roll it to the side of the road, out of harm's way. When he finished, he was thoroughly soaked. He fiddled with the heater, hoping to get warm, while he waited for the rain to stop. No luck there, either. The rain continued to pour down, rivers forming on either side of the road. A huge bolt of lightning split a cypress tree less than a mile away. The Citroen was elderly, arthritic in its elements, and Patronas knew he'd pushed it unmercifully over the last four months, driving back and forth to Profitis Ilias. Still, why did it have to choose today of all days to die? Why not give up the ghost when the sun was out, instead of in this cataclysm of water? The Citroen's canvas roof was worn in places and the rain quickly found its way in, trickling down his forehead and along the back of his neck. The heat failed completely a few minutes later. The windshield wipers proved to be worthless too, going back and forth every fifteen minutes and then only if the car was running. Patronas knew; he timed them.

“
That's the way these old cars were designed,” the mechanic told Patronas when he arrived with his tow truck. “The windshield wipers, they're linked like an umbilical cord to your engine.”

“
Can you fix it?” The mechanic studied the Citroen, listing beside the road, taking in its rusting fenders, dented in many places, the makeshift antenna Patronas had fashioned out of a metal clothes hanger after he lost the original, the front bumper held on with duct tape.

“
I'd have to send to Athens for the parts. A geriatric model like this one, you'd be better off selling it to me for scrap and getting yourself a new car.”

The mechanic gave Patronas a ride home in his tow truck. Patronas felt terrible, watching the man drive away, dragging the Citroen behind him, its taped-up bumper working its way loose as he rounded the corner. It had been his first and only car, a friend almost. He sighed.
This must be how people feel when a horse breaks its leg and they have to shoot it.
He had no money to replace the Citroen now. No money to eat.

* * *

Tembelos called two days later and asked if they could get together. He made a point of calling Patronas ‘Chief Officer' on the phone and treating him like he was still in charge. They agreed to meet at an ouzeria near the house when Tembelos got off work.

“
How you doing?” Tembelos asked when he saw him. “On the mend? Wounds healing all right?”

Patronas didn't trust himself to answer. He just shrugged.

“
How about the job? You okay with that?”

I tell him I'm a eunuch and he asks how many children I have
,
he thought. “Oh, yeah, Giorgio. I'm great. Having the time of my life.”

“
Things are moving apiece with the case,” Tembelos offered, seeking to mollify him. “We arrested Petros' grandmother. Evangelos' orders, said we had to handcuff her and take her to jail. I don't know what the old dame thought, that we were Nazis probably, but she just went crazy. Me and the others, we just stood by. If Evangelos wants to arrest old ladies, he can do it by himself. He wrestles her into the car and about halfway to the station she starts complaining of chest pains, palpitations. So off to the hospital we go. Hospital staff took pictures of her injuries, black and blue marks on her arms where he'd manhandled her, the welt on her face where he'd elbowed her by mistake, wrestling to get the cuffs on.”