by Alex A King
His mouth opened, closed, opened. He muttered something about “ ‘Murica” before shuffling away.
I looked down at my dress, then Marika’s similar outfit. She looked like a sofa, which meant I probably resembled a loveseat. “I guess we overdressed.”
“They said long skirts, we bought long skirts.”
The other female tourists were in mid-calf-length skirts that didn’t make them look like they were part of a technology-free society or religious cult.
“Looks like long means mid-calf, not scraping the ground.”
“I like it,” Marika said. “I feel pretty.”
Not me. I felt like I was this close to snapping an ankle.
* * *
WE WERE STANDING in front of a skull case. Interesting choice in decor. Personally, I would have gone for books, but maybe the monks were phrenologists.
Marika leaned sideways into my personal space. “There is somebody following us, and it is not your assassin.” She pushed the words out of the corner of her mouth.
I went to turn around.
“Do not turn around!” She dived into her bag and pulled out her cell phone. One push of the button later, she flipped the camera and pulled me into a cheek squeezing hug. “Selfie. Smile!” Then she let me go. “See?” She tapped the screen, zooming in on a woman two bodies back.
“Never seen her before. You?”
Marika jerked her head up. “No.”
In the photograph the woman’s gaze was stuck to the back of my head. Her hair was big, terrorized recently by a fine-toothed comb. Her makeup was inspired by 1980s MTV. She was sin—the cheap kind, found at the bottom of a bottle of Keystone Light.
“Okay,” I whispered to Marika. “We’re going to back out of here and see the rest of the monastery. Let’s see if she follows.”
Sure enough, the woman followed, always several bodies back. She was in a modest dress that was in direct conflict with her head and knee-high boots. The boots were black, flat-heeled, and laced, like combat boots that forgot to quit growing.
That’s when I spotted the man with the eagle on his shoulder. Not a tattoo, but a real eagle, its talons biting into the man’s leather vest. He was inside the monastery gates, gaze scanning the thin crowd. I grabbed Marika and pulled her into an alcove.
“What is it?”
“A man with an eagle.”
“A real eagle?”
“It’s on his shoulder, like a pirate with a parrot.”
She peered out. “That is the short-toed snake eagle.”
“You know birds?”
“Who do you think does my boys’ homework? You think they do it? No, I do it. And now I know my eagles.”
I was impressed and I told her so. She beamed, but it dimmed quickly.
“What are you thinking?” she asked me.
“That could be the Eagle.”
The man was so shady he probably cast a shadow on a moonless night. There are two kinds of men who wear leather vests. One discards his clothes for money; the other one takes money and keeps the clothes on. Both types are known for zooming away on motorcycles, often with your belongings. He was tall and a hungry kind of thin. His mirrored sunglasses were shooting lasers at passersby. The bird moved its head this way and that, missing nothing except, hopefully, us.
“Shouldn’t it be wearing one of those hoods?”
“Maybe,” she said. “My boys didn’t get to that part, yet.”
Cleopatra moved into the frame. I watched to see if her gaze snagged on Eagle Guy, but the transition from left to right seemed smooth. She turned around, hands on hips, mouth like a murder scene.
“Keep an eye on them both,” I said. I zoomed in on the selfie again, cropped her face, and texted it to Aunt Rita.
Five seconds later, my phone shivered.
Who is that?
I was hoping you knew.
No, but I want that lipstick. If you get a chance, ask her.
My aunt had priorities. Lipstick was one of them.
“Maybe she’s another assassin,” Marika said. “You do seem to be collecting them.”
“I wonder what happens when I get the whole set? I wouldn’t mind exchanging them for a cool prize.”
We got lucky. That’s all I could say about what happened next. Latex Lucy flubbed her super-stealthy tailing moves and backed up to the alcove. Marika grabbed her in a headlock and dragged her in. The woman was quicker than a cobra. Takis’ wife had mad skills.
“Okay,” Marika said, pushing her catch against the wall. “Tell us what you know.”
“That was pretty good,” I said. “Takis give you some tips?”
She scoffed. “This is how I get the truth out of the boys.”
Latex Lucy’s face twisted. She made a sound like a cat about to hawk up a dead mouse. Then she spat in Marika’s face. The clear mass stuck to Marika’s forehead, then began a slow slide down her nose.
Marika gasped. Her tan skin flashed red.
“Tell me this vromoskeela did not spit on me.”
Vromoskeela was right. Spitting in someone’s face makes you a dirty female dog. Even I knew that.
“It could have been bird poop, but I don’t think so.”
“Bird kaka would be better, because the bird doesn’t know what it is doing.”
Latex Lucy’s head swiveled. Her gaze latched onto Marika’s. “You must be a terrible wife. I feel sorry for your children that they have to tolerate you.”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“Cleopatra.”
Marika’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”
I touched her arm, the one pinning Cleopatra’s neck to the ancient wall. If I didn’t diffuse the situation it was entirely possible she’d send Cleopatra to the afterlife without all the proper burial customs. What if the monastery didn’t have enough bandages?
“Before you kill her, let’s find out what she wants, okay?”
“What I want,” the wannabe Queen of the Nile said, “is for this donkey to let me go.”
“Her name is Marika,” I said. “She’s with me. And my name is Katerina Makris.”
“I know who you are,” she said, “and I know what that is.”
Marika said, “Let me kill her.”
“We still don’t know who you are,” I said. “But so you know, in my head I’m calling you Latex Lucy.”
“My real name is a queen’s name.”
“Yeah, she was a queen. Right up until she got dead. Why are you following us?”
“I’m not following you, I’m walking behind you. That’s not a crime.”
I thought about that a moment. “Probably it is somewhere. Maybe North Korea. Who are you?”
She flashed an expensive smile. She looked cheap but her dental work was top dollar. “Nobody.”
Marika stepped on her foot.
“Okay, okay, I’m following you.”
“Why?” I rolled my eyes. “Oh, God, are you trying to kill me, too? Because I have to say, that’s getting old.”
The real Cleopatra’s low-rent sister shrugged. “We’re looking for the same person. I can’t find him but I found you. I figured I’d stick close, see what you dig up.”
“Who? My father?”
“Why should I tell you? My boss thinks you’re stupid, and I’m inclined to agree, but you’re all we’ve got.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
Her lips pressed together. They were morbidly fascinating, like slugs this close to exploding.
“Fine,” I said. “Get out of here and stop following me.”
“I can if I want to.” She winked and slithered away.
Eagle Guy was sitting on a bench with his bird. He was giving me the willies.
“Are you going to talk to him?” Marika wanted to know.
Was I? Emotions swam around inside me. Eagle Guy’s whole package was intimidating enough without the bird. The eagle was hard liquor icing on a moonshine cake. But I’d come to Meteora for a good reason. I
wasn’t about to walk away from a lead, no matter how sharp its talons were. This could be Dad’s life or death.
“On it,” I said.
As I trotted over, I tried to look like I wasn’t recruiting for a cult. Without looking at me he stood and began to wander away, headed toward the monastery gardens. Even the bird was ignoring me.
“Excuse me,” I said.
He didn’t stop.
I picked up the pace. So did he. I followed him down a short flight of steps, lined with shrubs potted in terra cotta, then he jagged right and vanished through an arched doorway. I hoisted my skirt up several inches and slipped through, plunging into darkness. The light behind me was close to useless. Most of it had been filtered out by a giant fig tree, its limbs leaning over the small courtyard. So my pupils had to pick up the slack and dilate, but they were moving slowly.
By the time I could see I was out of luck. Eagle Guy was gone.
I hiked back to where Marika was waiting, eyeing postcards in the tiny souvenir shop.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Marika.
“All this old stuff is creepy anyway,” she said. “I thought it would be different.”
“Different how?”
“Not so old.”
* * *
ON SOLID GROUND there was another new guy. He had the kind of face that was easy to forget and difficult to describe to a police sketch artist. He was what they had in mind when they invented the word beige.
“This is Lefty,” Elias said. Somewhere along the way he’d found a bag of sunflower seeds. He chewed, spat, tossed another seed into his mouth. “He says he’s here from Cyprus to kill you.”
“Of course he is,” I said. I nodded to the new guy, whose real name was probably Lefteris. “Join the club. Who’s your employer?”
“I freelance,” he told me. “It changes. This job is for some asshole from Delphi.”
“How do you do taxes on something like that?”
“Private contractor.”
“Okay, well, Elias is in charge of you two—“ I swung my finger from Lefty to Mo. “—not killing me until my family’s had a sit down with your employers. Can you handle that?”
Lefty’s face said he couldn’t. “Don’t kill the target, don’t get paid. I like getting paid.”
“And I like being alive.”
He planted himself on the ground, legs apart, arms folded. “I’m here to get paid.”
My eyes rolled so hard I came this close to spraining something. I turned to Mo. His loose hinges were about to become useful. “Are you going to let him scam you out of your paycheck?”
“Never! Cypriot pig!” Then he dropped his carpet on the ground, followed it down there. “Allah, a million apologies, I did not mean to speak to the unclean Yankee woman.”
Who watches the watchers? The other watchers, of course.
Speaking of …
I pulled out my phone, opened the selfie Marika snapped, and showed it to the men. Elias and Lefty shook their heads. Donk’s eyeballs popped out of his skull, then he hoofed it back to the car, hands clasped in front of his groin.
“I cannot look at that,” Mo said. “She is unclean. That woman wants men to do perversions upon her.” He opened one eye and took a good gander. “Is it too much to ask that she is a virgin?”
I know we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, but I was sure Cleopatra had hopped onto the train to Pound Town years ago.
“Probably she’s still a virgin at something,” I said.
“Like reading,” Marika said, then she pointed. “What is that?” It was veering into late afternoon and the sun was gearing up for one obnoxious last gasp before conceding its throne. There was a speck falling out of the sky, and it was coming right for us.
“Eagle,” Mo said. “When I was a child we had one as a pet. It would hunt rats for our breakfast.”
He was right: It was an eagle. An eagle that looked suspiciously like the one on Eagle Guy’s shoulder. And it was holding something in its talons.
It swooped past, and as it did it dropped its payload.
“Bomb,” Elias hollered. I threw myself onto the package.
Everyone else scattered.
Chapter 10
NO BOOMS, no bangs, no fireballs.
I peeled myself off the ground and picked up the package. It was wrapped in the same plain brown paper as the puzzle box. I brushed myself off. “I thought you said it was a bomb.”
“Bomb detection is not an exact science,” Elias said, checking the label. “I think this is for you.”
It wasn’t for me. Once again, it was for Katerina Makri—no s.
“Grandma,” I said, and began ripping into the paper.
“You cannot open someone else’s mail, infidel!” Mo said.
“It’s not technically mail if it fell out of the sky,” I told him.
“Carrier eagle is what they used to use in my country in the old days.”
“In your country it’s still the old days,” Lefty said.
Mo turned on him. “Shut up, Cypriot pig. Are you Greek, are you Turkish, who knows?”
“Could be worse.” Lefty spat on the ground. “Could be Persian.”
“You wish you were Persian. We are the chosen people!”
“Chosen by who? Garbage collectors?”
The two men went round in circles until Marika cut in. “I thought Jews were the chosen people.”
“Nobody listen to the woman,” Mo said. “She is unclean. All women do is bleed and steal a man’s money.”
Chuck a handful of wheat into my mouth I could grind it to flour between my teeth, thanks to this mob—no pun intended.
“Enough!” Under the paper was another box, this one square, where the other was rectangular. Set into the front was an identical combination wheel.
“Here we go again,” I muttered.
“Here we go where?” Mo glanced around. “Where are we going?”
“The last one had a poutsa inside,” Donk shouted from the backseat of my Beetle.
“A poutsa?” Lefty asked.
I nodded. My heart was flipping out as I speculated what was hiding in this box. Once again, the combination was eight letters. I spelled out B-a-b-o-u-l-a-s hoping for a pattern, but the lock wouldn’t budge.
“Of course it did,” Mo said. “What else would you send a Yankee whore? Everybody knows you all collect dicks and stick them to your walls.”
A long, pained sigh escaped my throat. “Do you think we should wait to see if Eagle Guy comes back down?”
“I have to do laundry,” she said.
That was that. I got in my car. Dumped the box in Marika’s lap. Turned the key. If the others wanted to follow, they could.
“This was a good adventure,” Marika said. “What are we doing next?”
“Is it me or does he look pale?”
“Imagine if we were really gangsters,” I told Marika.
We were back at the compound, watching Donk wobble away on his scooter. The assassins and Cleopatra had installed themselves at the mouth of the compound, outside the gates. The guard ducked out and exchanged words with them, then they all rolled back toward the trees. Grandma couldn’t have assassins clogging the works—not if they weren’t hers.
Cleopatra rolled down her window, stuck out her big flashy ‘do. “Are you going out tonight? Because if you’re not I’m going home.”
“Say the word and I’ll shoot up her car,” Marika told me.
“What would Takis have to say about that?”
“Nothing, if he knows what is good for him.”
“I don’t think Takis knows what’s good for him,” I said.
* * *
I DIDN’T WASTE time telling Grandma about the box. Instead, I went straight to the guy who could open the thing. Litsa wasn’t around, but Tomas was at the pool with his brothers and cousins. He waved when he saw me, and raced over when he spotted the box in my hands. The five-year-old was dry by the time he
reached me, pool water sucked up by the great wet-vac in the sky.
“Is that for me?”
“Just the puzzle part,” I said.
“Did you try Baboulas?”
“Yes.”
He flopped into a deck chair, box in his lap, legs dangling.
“Can I look inside this time?”
“Probably not.”
Five years old, yet he took it like a cheerful, fully-grown man. “Okay.” He twiddled the knobs. “Have you ever been to the dentist?”
“Lots of times. Why?”
“Mama says I have to go to the dentist. I’ve only been once before and I don’t really remember it. Were you scared?”
“Maybe the first time, but not since then. They gave me a bumblebee made of dental cotton.”
He nodded as he worked the puzzle. “That’s a good strategy. Maybe they’ll give me some stickers or something. Can you come with me?”
“Isn’t your mother taking you?”
“She has a thing.”
“What kind of thing?”
“I don’t know. She said a thing. So you can you take me?” His little face was pinched, his eyes hopeful. Saying ‘No’ would be like kicking a kitten.
“Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I said.
He flashed me a grin. “I like you.” He handed me the box. “It’s unlocked, but I didn’t open it because you said not to.”
The kid was something else. My ovaries gave me a poke, said, ‘Tick tock. You could have a few like him if you could hurry up and find a man who doesn’t prefer penis.’
“You’re a genius,” I said.
“I know.” No gloating about the fact, only serene honesty.
“Let me know about the dentist, okay?”
He nodded.
* * *
I HOOFED it back to Grandma’s hovel. She wasn’t around, but the yard was occupied. Xander and Papou were playing a game of backgammon. Xander’s gaze latched onto me and didn’t let up until I was standing beside them.
“Who’s losing?” I asked, trying to stay cool. Xander’s intensity could crush a woman.
Papou flipped his hand at Xander. “Even when he wins, this malaka loses.” He nodded to my hand. “What’s in the box?”