by Alex A King
He was crazy. He'd rationalized the whole thing, painted himself as some kind of Spartan, hellbent on ridding Greece of the Persians. I understood wanting to end crime, but this was my family.
"Does it change things if I tell you I have no desire to join the Family business, let alone take over? I already told my grandmother 'No.' "
"You say that now but you will fall. Slowly, slowly, you will become one of them, and you will not know it until it has happened and you are the one handing out orders."
"I think you've seen The Godfather one too many times. I'm no Michael Corleone."
"You will be."
I still didn't get it: the vendetta. Why my family, why so much hate for my father? When I asked, Dina raised her hand. "Oh, oh, I know the answer to this question."
"Skasmos!" he barked. "You know nothing."
Hands on hips. "Oh really? You forget I was in school with you both. I remember. When Michail and I were together, he used to laugh about you."
"Not helping," I said.
She slumped back against the wall. "If you were my daughter you would have better manners."
"If you were my mother I'd be crazy, too."
Pistof threw his hands in the air. "Women!"
"She has a gun in her boot." She gave me a so-there smirk.
Aunt Rita was wrong about Dina: she wasn't a mouni, she was an asshole. My entire pull-out-a-gun-and-shoot-him-in-the-leg plan went up in smoke.
His expression turned deadly. Those black eyes of his gleamed with something more than anger—decades of resentment turned septic.
"You little skeela, you try to get clever on me, eh? The gun. Now. On the floor. Kick it to me."
I bent down, retrieved the gun, laid it on the floor. Then I kicked it across the room with all the force I could muster. It flew. Hit the wall with a thud that sounded like a bird hitting glass. Then it fell to the floor with a sad, little clank.
"Huh," I said. "I kind of expected it to go bang."
"New guns," he said, picking it up. "They have a firing pin block."
Over in her corner, Dina began to cry harder. Pistof, a.k.a. the Baptist stalked across the room, backhanded her so hard her head bounced off the wall. She made a noise like an angry cat. He grabbed her around the neck, shoved her head into the trough. Water slopped over the edges. Her arms flailed.
I stood there helplessly, wishing I knew one of those cool neck-snapping tricks, or maybe that throat ripping thing from Roadhouse.
"Let her go," I said. "Your business is with me. She's nothing to me or my father."
He dragged her out of the trough, cast her onto the floor like dirty laundry. I rushed over to help her back to the wall, and even though she'd filled my aunt's helmet with crap, and she had a disturbing obsession with my father, I put my arm around her shoulders.
"You totally fail at being the good guy," I told Pistof. "You should look into remedial classes."
He reached for the light switch, plunging us into darkness with one tiny snick. The door open and closed. A moment later something scrambled up the side of this dump and settled on the roof.
"What is he doing?" Dina asked me.
Good question. I thought about it.
"We're the bait, he's the trap. He's moving to higher ground to give himself the advantage if my father comes."
"Are we going to die?"
"Probably."
"Why won't Michail come?" Her voice was tearstained. "He loves me. I know it in my heart."
I knew a lot of things in my heart. That we were going to die, mostly. "That was a really long time ago. You need to move on."
She did that little tst and jerked her head up. "He still loves me. He said so."
My heart stopped. "When did he say so?"
"In my dream."
Jeez. My heart returned to its regular beating. "He won't be coming," I said. "If he could, he'd be here already. Wherever he is it's someplace bad and he can't escape. As soon as that weirdo on the roof realizes it, we're both dead."
There was a longish pause as the gravity of the situation sank in. "So what will we do?"
"We sit. We wait. We see who comes—if anyone." There was something unsettling about my ability to be calm, under the circumstances. It was as though I had dark, dusty corners in my personality that had been hidden, thus far. Know thyself, read the Delphic maxim carved upon Apollo's temple, and originating with God knew who. The saying had been attributed to most of the Greek philosophers, at one point in history or another. I thought I knew myself, but in Greece I was discovering myself and I were only good acquaintances. Like Shrek I was turning out to be an onion: I had layers.
Without my phone I couldn't tell the time, but the night was thick and growing thicker. The clouds parted briefly then, fluffing the covers, they hid the narrow fingernail of moon again. Every so often, the psycho on the roof shifted, and the whole shack would protest quietly.
"Nobody is coming," I told Dina. "If we want to be saved we have to do it ourselves."
"How?"
I closed my eyes, tried to recall everything that was in the room. The trough, my broken phone, the bedroll, and the empty soda bottles.
"Bottle caps. I need a few." I could have used the marbles in my pocket, but I was saving those in case I had a chance to go Biblical on the guy.
I had to hand it to her, Dina jumped to it. She began unscrewing bottles with a kind of fever, and soon we had a loose pile of bottle tops on the windowsill.
Next, I needed to get that door open without the psycho upstairs hearing. I crouched by the door, and inch by quiet inch, I opened it enough to fit my hand and the slingshot. I loaded up the first bottle cap, pulled back on the rubber, and aimed at a patch of black slightly deeper than the rest.
It didn't have the whip-cracking effect of a pebble or stone, but its landing was audible. I held my breath. The weight on the roof shifted. Pistof had heard it and his interest was piqued.
Good doggie.
I waited for him to settle into his new position, then I fired off a second bottle top with a calm that was starting to fracture. Stick me in an MRI machine, my brain would be a Ming vase.
The third bottle top was the lucky one. His boots hit the ground. If it had been daytime I'd have seen a thin sepia cloud around his ankles. But in the night there was nothing but black-on-black shapes. He stood there for a moment, going nowhere in a hurry.
Go, you bastard. Eat my bait.
If he moved away from the shack, Dina and I would be able to slip out and hide in the undergrowth or climb a tree or something, until we could get to my car.
He whirled around and reached through the door, fingers clamping my throat. One-handed, he lifted me off the ground and my soul began to tear at its seams.
"You think you're clever, you little skeela?"
I shook my head as much as I could—which wasn't much. I couldn't scream, couldn't breathe, couldn't think. My lights were dimming fast.
He shook me. My brain rattled in my head.
Then something whispered past my ankles. I hoped it was Dina running for help.
Pistof yelped. He twisted away and I fell.
"You bit me, you fucking putana!" he yelled.
Dina shoved something into my hand. When the Baptist turned back to resume his strangulation project, a surprise was waiting. Dina might be a loon but she was also one smart cookie: she'd relieved him of my gun. Now it was back in my hands. Two-handed, I shoved the muzzle into the hollow where his head met his neck.
He laughed. There was madness in the sound, but that wasn't the frightening part. No, it was the sanity behind it that scared the dickens out of me.
"Shoot me and you'll cross the line. There's no going back after you pull that trigger. Your family is shit," he said. "But you don't have to be."
"Yeah," I rasped. "They're shit. But they're my family."
The little gun clicked in my hand. Nothing happened. No booms, no bangs, no muzzle flash to light up the night.
&
nbsp; But his head exploded anyway.
Chapter 23
MY SAVIOR'S name was Xander, and he wasn't alone. Four musketeers came to our rescue: Xander, Melas, Stavros, and Takis. All four in black, all four prepared for war.
I was covered in blood and bone and brains that weren't mine. But they could have been, and my knees knew it even if my mind hadn't caught up yet. They buckled and I fell, but not far. Xander caught me on the way down.
"How did you know?" I asked them.
Takis hooked his thumb at Stavros. "What, you think this vlakas can keep his mouth shut? As soon as you left he came running to me."
Stavros grinned. "Lies. I walked."
"I know a run when I see one," Takis said, goading him. "You were running like the time you shi—"
"Kaka Vrakas," I said, recalling the night Grandma met us at the airstrip in the limo.
"Bah." Stavros chopped two hands at his groin. "I will be there when you are old and you need a diaper. We will see who is Kaka Vrakas then."
Monkey see, monkey do, I copied his hand signal. My cousins laughed. Takis slapped Stavros on the arm. "You tell her what it means. I have to take care of …" He nodded to Pistof's body.
"I am not going to tell her that," Stavros said, but he led me away from the scene of the crime. Which is exactly what it was. My brain caught up with my body. I started to shiver and shake.
"It's okay," he said. "The first one is always the worst."
Is that what this was, the first? First and last. Never again.
"Where's Melas?" I asked.
"He went to get the car."
Sure enough, it wasn't long before an SUV crunched toward us. The light was harsh and almost acidic. I wanted to shrivel up like a salted slug. He left the motor running, jumped out. His mouth was grim and the rest of his face didn't look any happier. Behind me, an argument was breaking out.
"I know," I said as his mouth opened to shoot admonishments at me. "What the hell was I doing—right?" May as well beat him to it.
His shoulders slumped. The storm on his face retreated. "Something like that. You okay?"
"Better than him." I glanced back to check out the commotion behind me. Takis had an axe and Dina was trying to wrestle it out of his hands. When it was obvious she wasn't going to win, Dina settled for kicking Pistof's body.
I knew how she felt. I wanted to kick it, too. The only thing stopping me was that the whole death thing had put a damper on his ability to feel pain.
"Jesus," Melas said.
"She's crazy, but she's not all bad." Even if she had filled Aunt Rita's motorcycle helmet with poop. "How did you end up with them?"
"As soon as they went into panic mode, I was on my way."
"They called you?"
Big, wide, self-satisfied smile. "Something like that."
I thought about it for a moment. "You bugged Grandma's place?" Sneaky. Very sneaky. "The flowers?"
The smile spread. "Sometimes flowers are just flowers." He looked down at the ground, shook his head, laughed. "The GPS on your phone. I knew you'd left the compound, so I drove out to see what was happening."
"What happens to him now?"
Serious again. "He disappears. There's no other way. Someone finds his body there are going to be questions, and the answers will get me fired—or worse." He grabbed my shoulders, held me still. "Don't look behind you."
An axe fell. Funny how something with a blade that sharp could sound so dull. My teeth began to chatter, my body shook. The warm, sticky night was turning cold fast.
"Shock," Melas said, rubbing the goosebumps that had sprouted on my arms. "It's okay. You're safe now."
Was I? I didn't feel safe—not with Dad still missing.
A moment later, Takis marched past me with a sack in his hand. He threw it into the back of the SUV.
"What's in the bag?" I asked.
"Eh, better you don't know."
Four men to the rescue. Only two of them were blood, but to me they all felt like family.
* * *
Sleep wasn't happening any time soon, so I sat in the kitchen and shivered while Grandma fixed hot cocoa and plied me with pastries. She had shooed everyone else away while I was in the shower, hot water blasting the night away. Although the sight of the blood and bits of Pistof sluicing down the drain made me want to pray to the porcelain outhouse, I had refused to close my eyes. I didn't want to forget. Something would have been lost if I had—humanity, perhaps.
When I was done, and the water ran clear, I had started the shower over again.
Now here I was at the kitchen table, sinking my teeth into soggy laters of phyllo pastry and sweet custard. Galaktobouriko. It was just what I needed. Life doesn't happen while you're eating cookies and cakes and candy. Time stands still, watches you eat, then it jogs to catch up when you're done.
Our talk was all small, which suited me.
Until Grandma smacked me out of left field.
"I saw you once when you were a little girl, you know."
I didn't know, and when I said so she nodded. "Your father did not know, but your mother, she knew."
"Mom knew?" My world was suddenly tilting on its axis. The poles were shifting. This was seriously apocalyptic.
She settled in the chair across from me. She looked frail and almost transparent, and I wondered if Pistof had told me the truth about the cancer.
"Your mother used to write and send photos. One time I came to America and we played at the playground together while your mother watched. Ask Xander. He was there, too. He is a little older than you, but he took good care of you at that playground."
The punch-shaped surprises kept on coming.
"Xander, who is he?" There was a coldness in my gut, a creeping feeling she was about to reveal him as my father's secret baby or something. "Is he my half brother?"
She laughed. The table shook. It sounded like a cool joke—I wanted in. "No, he is not our blood. He is the son of a very old enemy. One who is long dead."
"Did you kill his father?"
The laughter died. Remorse jumped into its place, but only for a moment. She quickly pulled a sack over the runaway emotion. "His father, his mother, his whole family. Only Xander was left. He was a baby, an innocent. The women—including his mother—were not to be touched, but something went very wrong that night."
"Does he know?"
When she nodded it was with a heavy head. "He knows. I never kept it from him. It is his truth. His story. Everybody has a right to their own history. I gave him everything that belonged to his family, things that were rightfully his, so he will always know where he came from and who he is."
"Aren't you worried he'll turn on you?" Because I knew how these things went, thanks to cable and Netflix and books. Dishes were best served cold, sometimes decades later.
"No. Xander and I, we have always been one-hundred-percent honest with each other. If he wanted retribution he would tell me, and I would give it to him. He knows this." She fell silent for a moment. Then: "Family is not always blood, Katerina. Blood is not always family."
Maybe it was her candidness that pushed the words off my tongue, maybe it was the night itself. It was a watershed night.
"There's a leak in the Family. Pistof … said some things. I think he had someone inside."
She reached across the table, palm up. An invitation. When I put my hand in hers, I found it warm, papery, but with a core of steel.
"I know. There are always leaks and informants. Always somebody who wants to climb the ladder or climb a different ladder. Some people get greedy and some people get scared. Sometimes those people are those we love, people who we trust with our lives."
A big lump sat itself down in my throat. Shoving the question past its bulk wasn't easy, but it had to be asked. "What happens to them?"
"They know what they are doing when they betray us. They accept the consequences of their actions."
Gulp. That … didn't sound good. So I said the only thing I cou
ld say, under the circumstances.
"Dad is still missing."
"We will find him." She clutched her black-covered heart. "I swear it."
I believed her.
She left me sitting at the table to open her baking cupboard. It was three in morning, but this was her thing, her coping mechanism.
"Later I will have a room fixed up for you in the main house."
I took in the shabby kitchen, the peeling paint on the molding, the worn floor. I examined the woman with the sugar sack in her arms—a woman who had made the effort to know Mom and me, even though I couldn't recall the incident. My father's mother. My grandmother.
All these years I'd mistaken myself for someone who had almost no one.
"It's okay," I said. "I think I'd rather stay here."
She said nothing.
She baked.
And me, I watched. Until I finally I said, "Can you teach me how you do that?"
* * *
I hid in the shade, moving whenever the sun made a grab for me. Fortunately, the courtyard had several tables with comfortable outdoor chairs and generous umbrellas. I was armed with a spray bottle of vinegar and cold tea—both folk remedies for my tragic sunburn. Takis's wife Marika kept me company, until her boys started a fire in the dumpster out back, using a magnifying glass and more patience and diligence than I'd witnessed in most adults.
"Boys will be boys," I said, to no one in particular as Marika hauled two of her sons across the flagstones, back to their second-floor apartment. An apartment could have been mine, too. But a gear had slipped in my brain and I'd committed to living with Grandma—at least until we found Dad. He was still out there somewhere. God knows where. God knows with whom. And that same God—if He existed—probably knew why. But not me; all this sun and I was still playing mushroom in the dark.
Nearby, my goat was chewing hay. Grandma said she was fattening him up for a feast, but I suspected she liked the way he failed to give a rat's hiney about her rules. Could be that's what she liked about me, too.