An attendant pointed to the two men Dama and Tess had taken down, both now awake and moaning in agony. “What about them?”
“We’ll get them to the clinic in police cars.”
“The police won’t be here for a while,” said the attendant. “They’re all down in that valley trying to get their buddies out of the pickup truck. More ambulances are on the way.”
“Are they okay?” asked Andreas.
“They’re pretty badly beaten up, but the driver somehow managed to keep the truck on four wheels most of the way down, and they were all wearing helmets and ballistic protection when they went off the road. The cement mixer guy wasn’t so lucky.”
“I’ll follow Toni on the motorcycle,” said Yianni.
“First, let’s straighten out the mess we have here.” Andreas looked at Lila. “What happened?”
She told the story as if reliving it in a trance.
As she finished, Telly and another cop showed up.
“How are your men?” asked Andreas.
“They’re all alive and the ambulances found a goat path to follow down to them. I thought I’d come by to see how things are going here, and to make sure you’re taking good care of the bastard who tried to kill my guys.” He pointed at Boy-pimp.
The instant Boy-pimp saw Telly, his demeanor changed from cowering to cocky. As if his rescuer had arrived.
“Chief, thank God you’re here. I wish to file a complaint against these self-entitled rich Athenians who think they can do whatever they please on our island. My friends and I came to spend the afternoon in this lovely cove, where your good friend my father and his father used to swim and fish, but they tried to scare us away, claiming it’s private property. Their private property.” Warming to his performance, he added, “When we refused to leave, they sent a crazy woman to assault us with deadly force, and I had no choice but to defend my friends and myself with my licensed firearm.”
Telly turned to Andreas. “Well, you’ve heard his defense.”
Andreas’ eyes narrowed. He looked at Lila. “You ought to check on the children.” He turned to Telly. “Why don’t you, your officer, and I step inside the house to discuss the situation? Detective Kouros will stay out here to keep an eye on the prisoners.” He stared at Yianni. “Understand?”
Yianni nodded.
Andreas led them to a room far away from the scene of the attack. They stood around talking football, while, outside, Yianni gave an up-close-and-personal demonstration to Boy-pimp of some of the finer points of the kicking and penalty-card aspects of the sport.
“Do you hear screaming?” said the cop with Telly.
Telly held his hand to his ear. “Nope, sounds like the wind to me.”
“The winds can get downright nasty out here,” said Andreas.
A few minutes later, Lila walked into the room. “The children are fine, thank God. Yianni’s left for the hospital. He said to tell you the Karavakis kid is really clumsy. He tripped and bounced down our rocky hillside all the way to the beach.”
Telly shook his head. “Accidents do happen.” He stood. “Don’t worry, we’ll collect him and his buddies and deliver them to where they belong.” He smiled at Lila. “Good work.”
“Thank you.”
“And thank you,” said Andreas, turning to hug Telly goodbye.
After Telly left, Lila put her arms around Andreas and rested her head against his chest. “I hope Toni’s okay.”
“We all do.” Andreas kissed her on the forehead.
“If not for Toni, Dama, and Tess, I don’t know what would have happened to us. To the children…” She held back a sob.
“From what I heard, you and your shotgun made half of the attackers back off. I’d say that was a pretty good contribution to the war effort.”
“But that was only because of Toni.”
“Whatever the reason, I agree with Telly that it was very good work. I’m proud of you.” He smiled and kissed Lila again on the forehead. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”
“For sure.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Lila forced a smile. “We did it without taking out two walls, the garden, and our only means of family transportation.”
Andreas had to laugh. “True enough.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“How’s the patient doing?” asked Andreas.
“Terrific.” Lila moved the phone away from her ear to glance at Toni lying on the sunbed next to her. “She’s still complaining about my insisting she recuperate here, but I told her it’s only been a week since the attack, and no way I’m letting her out on her own until she’s a hundred percent.”
“Hmm, some women can be hard-headed. In her case, it saved her life.”
She sighed at his humor. “So, how are things back in Athens?”
“Same messes, same people, same aggravations.”
“Sounds like you’re ready to return to Mykonos.”
“Yianni and I are coming on Friday, God and criminals willing.”
“An interesting mix.”
“But sadly true.”
“Maybe Tassos and Maggie can make it, too,” said Lila. “I felt badly about cancelling our plans last weekend with them.”
“They understood. Hell, you were on TV. It’s not every day that ‘the Magnificent Quartet’ repels a marauding horde.”
“Well, I’m here to tell you, it wasn’t as magnificent as the media portrayed it.”
“I very much doubt that,” said Andreas.
“In any case…I just had the strangest call from Mrs. Despotiko. It’s why I called you.”
“What did she have to say?”
“That she’d been meaning to call me since first hearing what had happened but was too embarrassed. She couldn’t believe her husband was in business with people like the Karavakises.”
“How sweet.”
“No need for sarcasm, dear, I understood where she was coming from. She feared I’d turn Athens society against her. And to be honest, she sounded as if she’d been drinking.” Lila paused. “Wait a minute, let me put this on speakerphone so Toni can hear.”
“Hi, Andreas.”
“Hi, Toni, happy to hear you’re doing so well.”
“What choice do I have? With all the attention Lila’s giving me, and a half-dozen calls a day from Yianni, I don’t dare disappoint them by not getting better.”
“She’s doing fine,” Lila cut in. “So let me tell you what Mrs. Despotiko had to say.” She took a sip of water from a refillable thermos. “She said her husband was shocked and appalled at Karavakis’ son’s attack on our family.”
“Yeah,” said Andreas, “killing cop families is a bad business plan.”
“Let me finish, please.”
“Please do.”
“She wanted you and me to know that her husband had severed all ties with the father and is no longer doing business with him. I asked what that meant, and she said he’s no longer in that hotel casino project with the father.”
“Damn, if Despotiko’s pulled out, that means Karavakis owns the whole thing.” The sound of Andreas slamming his hand on his desk came vibrating through the speaker. “I guess having a kid who targets cop families isn’t bad for business after all.”
Toni jumped in. “Wait. I assumed Pepe’s brother would be out of the deal now. Did Mrs. Despotiko say the hotel chain’s still interested in the project?”
“It’s Mykonos,” said Andreas. “If big money can be made, business will find a way, and damn everything else.”
Lila shouted, “Stop. Will you two please let me finish? You’re jumping to conclusions before you’ve heard the facts.” She exhaled. “What she said was that her husband is now the sole owner of the project. Karavakis is out, not Despotiko.”
�
�Why would Karavakis do that?” said Toni. “Everyone agreed he had nothing to do with any of the murders or the attack on us.”
“I haven’t a clue,” said Lila.
Silence.
“May I speak now?”
“Yes, dear, you may,” grinned Lila.
“I think I have the answer to your Karvakis question. The prosecutor on the son’s case told me that the son’s about to confess to his role in three murders. Apparently, his father told him he had no choice.”
“Do you really think the son had the brains to pull all of this off?” asked Toni. “Maybe someone was manipulating him to get at the father?”
Andreas paused. “From the way things turned out, I’d say it had all the hallmarks of the son’s brainpower. Of course, there are those on the island who did not want the father’s project to go forward, but for the record, the son’s saying it was all his doing.”
“What’s his story?” said Lila.
“One of straightforward delusional narcissism at work. He said he convinced Pepe that the only chance he had at getting the club he wanted on Mykonos was to team up with him on bringing down his father.
“The first step was to get rid of the Colonel in a way that made it look like his father had set up Despotiko to take the fall for the assassination. So the son used his Bulgarian thug to pull it off, and that’s about the only step that went as planned.
“The idea was to spark a war between Despotiko and his father. One in which the son could ultimately emerge as peacemaker and broker a deal with Despotiko, sending his father into retirement and giving the son the Colonel’s protection business—with appropriate tribute paid regularly to Despotiko. He planned on using the Colonel’s business model to squeeze every vulnerable club owner off the island and extract at least a piece of the action from the rest. Pepe’s reward was to have his pick of whatever club he wanted.”
“That sounds insane,” said Lila.
“Sure does,” said Toni, “but it’s not that far off from what’s happening on the island today.”
Andreas continued. “The plan started off fine. The son had arranged for Pepe to talk to his father about security for Pepe’s new club at a time when he knew Mrs. Despotiko would be at The Beach Club. That gave Pepe the opportunity to tell Mrs. Despotiko he was approaching her at Angelo Karavakis’ suggestion, looking for a security recommendation from her husband. But Despotiko’s wife never told her husband what Boy-pimp assumed she would. So Despotiko never got to thinking Karavakis had set him up for the Colonel’s assassination.
“That’s when the son had Pepe turn informer and take his made-up story to Interpol about the Colonel being assassinated over the threat he posed to powerful interests on the island. He thought for sure an Interpol investigation into the Colonel’s assassination would expose his father’s role in implicating Despotiko. What he hadn’t counted on was how slowly Interpol worked.
“With nothing happening on the Despotiko front, and Yianni and me poking around, the son panicked and sent the same guy he’d used to take out the Colonel to take us out. When that failed, he used Pepe and Flora to ‘take care of things’ in the hospital, and that’s when the wheels really started coming off. My guess is Pepe bribed the cop scheduled for hospital guard duty to call in sick. I also wouldn’t bet against Pepe having bribed the local chief to assign the rookie to take the sick cop’s shift. We’ll never know for sure, now that Pepe’s dead, because neither cop is going to admit to anything.”
“What about Flora?” said Lila.
“The son doubts she even knew what was in the injection.”
“No, I mean, has she turned up?”
“No. Boy-pimp claims he has no idea what happened to her, that she just disappeared.”
“Likely trafficked,” said Toni, shaking her head.
“As for Pepe, it’s just as Yianni and I thought. After we dropped him off in Ano Mera, he called the son, who insisted they meet on his boat. The son was furious that we’d figured out he’d bugged the table at the taverna in Ano Mera. He made Pepe repeat everything he could remember we’d spoken about, then called him an idiot for admitting he knew the motorcyclist.
“Pepe got offended and told him the hospital hit only worked because of his thorough hospital reconnaissance. That’s when Boy-pimp literally went ballistic, screaming at Pepe for being so stupid as to have done the recon himself, and without a disguise. He grabbed a shotgun he kept onboard, blasted Pepe, panicked, stripped off Pepe’s pants, and dumped his body overboard.”
Andreas swallowed. “Your decision to rescue Adina and Ino had unexpected consequences. He’d just blown away his last remaining collaborator on his crazy scheme for ruling the island. That put him in full-paranoia mode. Then came Ino’s call admitting that she and Adina had just spent hours being pumped for information by the two of you. What sent his panic level off the charts was when Ino said they’d given you Flora’s photograph. Until then, he thought Flora was the only person on earth who could bring him down. But now you knew too much, plus you were going to try to find Flora. That’s when he decided to come after the two of you, and use his now-dead buddy in the concrete mixer to protect his flank.”
“So the solution was to kill all of us?”
“Hard to know how that kind thinks. He’s a narcissistic psycho, and they always need someone other than themselves to blame when things go wrong with their grand plans. His story to the prosecutor is that he was just trying to frighten you away from the girls.”
“That’s quite a tale he had to tell,” said Toni.
Andreas sighed. “A combination of brilliant planning and utter stupidity in execution. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.”
“But how does that explain why Karavakis turned over his interest in the hotel project to Despotiko?” said Lila.
“A father’s love.”
“Huh?” said Toni.
“I’m guessing Despotiko made it clear to Karavakis that what his son did was unforgivable, and being in business together with the father would stain Despotiko irreparably. Karavakis knew what that meant: whether free on the streets or tucked away in prison, his son was a dead man walking. So, Karavakis made a deal. He gave up his interest in the project in exchange for his son’s life.”
“Hmm,” said Toni. “I never knew cold, hard cash removed stains.”
Andreas laughed.
“Apparently it wasn’t money that drove Despotiko to take over the project,” said Lila.
“Why do you say that?” asked Toni.
“Because his wife told me that her husband has decided not to build the project, but leave the land as it is. Undeveloped.”
“He’s discovered a conscience?” asked Toni.
“I doubt that,” said Lila. “More likely he realized his personal life would be unbearable if the project went ahead and his wife became queen of the new playground on Mykonos for billionaires. I can’t even begin to imagine how much farther off the rails that sort of life would send her.”
Toni nodded. “As a consolation prize she gets to claim that she and her husband are acting selflessly to preserve the island.”
“Yes. Her husband knows what makes his wife tick,” said Lila. “That sort of approach scores big points among island society.”
“What about Karavakis?” asked Toni. “What will happen to him and all his dirty businesses?”
“Likely nothing,” said Andreas. “If it isn’t Karavakis, it would be someone else. The island wants his type, and as long as it does, his sort will flourish there.”
“I get it,” said Toni. “Supply and demand. Same as it ever was.”
Lila shrugged. “I guess that as long as there are people chasing after vices, if you’re willing to be the place on this earth where providers and a clientele can come together to freely do their business, you’ll always make money, and family valu
es be damned.”
“If you’re looking for a just ending, don’t give up hope,” said Andreas. “But also don’t count on it being of the legal sort. In my experience these guys carry blood grudges, so I wouldn’t be surprised if someday soon one of them whacks the other.”
“I guess I should be happy that I confine my business dealings to thieves,” said Toni.
“They can be dangerous, too.”
“I’m sure, but I know of at least one thief who looks out for me.”
“What’s that mean?” said Andreas.
“He thought I was taking too many risks looking into Boy-pimp’s activities, so he arranged for a guy with a motorcycle to keep an eye on me whenever—as he said—‘Your cop boyfriend’s not around.’”
“What a world,” said Lila.
“On that observation, please allow me to hang up and get back to saving my small part of it. I’ll speak to you ladies later.”
“You’re excused, my love. Bye.”
“My, oh my, wasn’t that enlightening?” said Toni.
Lila sighed. “Maybe this counseling idea isn’t such a good idea after all. Perhaps being a mom is good enough.”
Toni shrugged. “That’s purely your call, but you really do have a natural talent for this sort of thing.”
“But what sort of a difference did I really make? Ino turned on me the moment she left, and poor Flora…who knows what happened to her?”
“Two disappointing cases, for sure, but as the old Hank Williams Junior lyric goes, ‘one out of three ain’t bad.’”
“I thought that was Meat Loaf.”
“No, he was, ‘two out of three.’ I guess Hank was more of an optimist. But the real point is, you did help Adina.”
“Are you sure about that? We haven’t heard from her. Who knows what she’s doing?”
“I do.”
“How do you know?”
“Her father came to visit me at the medical clinic. He wanted to pay me for helping his daughter. I refused. He persisted and I had to threaten to have him arrested if he didn’t stop. That’s when he told me about Adina. He said she’s home, behaving, and psyched up about starting school. Then he handed me a letter.” Toni reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a folded envelope. “I’ve been saving it for the right moment to show to you. I think that moment’s now.”
The Mykonos Mob Page 31