Santorini Caesars

by Jeffrey Siger

  “Maybe she was just speaking in rough numbers?” said Francesco.

  Petro shook his head. “I don’t think so. She said she was given a list of assigned seats. Restaurateurs count seats.”

  “That’s good news,” said Dimos. “With that list and you working the table, we can plant our equipment close to the most likely coup-planning candidates.”

  “And who would they be?” said Petro.

  Dimos shrugged. “That’s why we have a chief. We’ll let him make the call.”

  “Good idea, but make it fast because we’ve got to get lover boy to a hotel for a shower,” said Francesco.

  Petro shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “I thought we resolved all that in our talk with the chief?”

  “We did, but Sappho told me I could take a shower at the taverna.”

  Francesco’s face lit up.

  “Don’t even think of saying what I know is on your mind,” said Petro.

  Francesco, put up his hands. “Hey, I admire what you’re doing for our country. I’m just worried you might be martyred in action.”

  “How’s that going to happen taking a shower?”

  “Showers are known to be dangerous places. Just be careful who hands you the soap.”

  Dimos nodded and forced a serious expression. “Especially if there happens to be a father with a shotgun nearby.”

  “That’s not martyrdom,” said Francesco. “That’s marriage.”

  ***

  There were a lot more vehicles on the roads than Petro expected for the off-season, but then again it was an unusually warm Friday night and unlike most places in Greece, locals on Santorini had money to spend. Drivers didn’t seem as unpredictable here as in wild party places like Mykonos during tourist season or in Athens at any time of year, so he drove without fear of triggering a macho reaction in those he flew up behind, then passed. His only concern was an unlikely run-in with a cop for ignoring just about every speeding and no-passing law on the books.

  Getting stopped wasn’t what concerned Petro. He worried he’d need to identify himself to avoid arrest, and that risked word getting out that a special-crimes unit cop was on the island. If the military brass he was supposed to be serving tonight should happen to get wind of that, and bother to pull his photo, for sure he’d be recognized from the taverna. Still, Petro saw getting to the taverna ASAP as his primary concern. Dimos and Francesco left in the van at the same time he did, but they didn’t have to hurry. They had plenty of time to find a spot close by the taverna and set up the equipment. But Petro had a lot to do beyond taking a shower.

  He hadn’t worked in a restaurant for years but, like riding a bike, it wasn’t something he’d forgotten. He just had to come up with a believable background story for himself in case one of the customers, or more likely, their security folks quizzed him. Plus he’d have to coordinate his answers with what Sappho, her father, and mother might say.

  ***

  “Right on time,” said Sappho looking at her phone as Petro came through the front door carrying a small gym bag and heading straight for her. “I like employees like that.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m early.” He stopped a foot in front of her.

  She nodded. “So you are.” She leaned forward and kissed him on both cheeks.

  “That’s it?”

  “We’ve work to do.”

  “What about my shower?”

  “Later. You’ve got more sweating to do to earn it.”

  Petro shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

  “More words to quicken a lady’s heart.” She smacked Petro lightly on his belly with the back of her hand. “What’s in the bag?”

  “A change of clothes and a razor.”

  She nodded. “If you know how to set up a table, the plates, glasses, and silverware are in the big cabinet behind me next to the kitchen door. Salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, and napkins are on trays just inside the kitchen. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I think I’ll cry.”

  “Don’t worry, I can handle it.”

  “Finally, my knight has arrived.”

  “Which table?”

  She pointed. “The long one set up in the middle of the room. The linen is already on it. They want only chairs, no banquettes. Twelve on the side facing into the room, thirteen on the side facing the banquettes.”

  “No settings at the heads of the table?”

  Sappho gestured no. “That’s how they wanted it, that’s how they’ll get it.”

  “Okay, let me get to it.” Petro walked to the banquette closest to the table and laid his gym bag on it. He walked back to the cabinet behind Sappho and began quietly shuttling piles of dinner and bread plates to the table.

  Sappho watched him with a smile on her face. “I see you like to concentrate on your work.”

  “I figure the sooner I get done with this the faster I can start flirting with the cashier.”

  “So, you have worked in restaurants before.”

  Petro smiled but didn’t reply and started arranging plates on the table.

  Sappho walked behind her desk, picked up an envelope and a sheet of paper, and held them out to Petro. “Here, now that I see you’re an experienced table setter, I’m promoting you to card placer. There are place cards inside the envelope. Put them on the table in precisely the order set out on this seating chart.” She waved the paper.

  Petro walked over and took them from her. He bowed. “Thank you for your confidence in me.”

  She nodded. “Don’t mention it. I’ll be in the kitchen helping my mother. Just yell if you need me.”

  “Maybe I should say hello to her.”

  Sappho held up her hand. “Later. I know she’s sweet on you, but she’s really busy. Even has my father cooking. I’ll give them your regards.”

  Petro watched her walk into the kitchen. She sashayed through the doorway the same as she had the night he met her, but this time she threw no wisecrack over her shoulder. Maybe she needed an audience. Or maybe something else.

  As soon as Sappho was gone, Petro’s eyes raced over the chart. His eyes fixed on one entry. That would be my pick. He walked over to the table and with his back to the kitchen took a picture of the chart with his phone and sent it off to the chief and Dimos. He went back to setting the table as he waited for a response.

  He’d just about finished when he felt the buzz of his phone in his pocket.

  It was a message from Andreas. BE SURE TO COVER THE ONE NAMED “GUEST,” AND EVERYONE BESIDE AND ACROSS FROM GUEST.

  It was his pick too. Petro smiled at the message.

  “Is your wife wondering where you are?”

  Petro didn’t even look up. “Nah, she wants to know what I’ve done with our dozen children.”

  Sappho didn’t move from the kitchen doorway. “Are you married?”

  He looked up. “No. Are you?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Kids?”

  She gestured no. “He was an asshole. He’d drive me to work, hang around here long enough to pick up tourist girls he could take down to the beach by the airport to fuck, and be back in time to take me home.”

  “Ouch. How long have you been divorced?”

  “Six months.”

  “I hear it takes about two years to get back to where you were before.”

  “Why would I want to get back there? I want nothing more to do with the life that got me into that mess in the first place.”

  “I hear ya.”

  “You seem like a nice guy.”

  Petro held up his right hand. “Cross my heart, I am.” He dropped his hand back to his side. “But that doesn’t mean I’m perfect. Far from it.”

  “If both of us were perfect that would be a problem.”

  “Well, I
hear opposites attract.”

  Sappho nodded. “Yeah, the trouble with that is, when they separate it’s an explosion.”

  Petro laughed.

  She waved her hand off into the air. “Just keep setting the table and don’t try to figure out what’s going on in this screwed-up bitch’s mind.”

  Petro smiled. “Whatever you say, Boss.”

  She feigned a slap, followed by a wink, and turned back to the kitchen.

  Petro stared at the empty doorway for a couple of seconds before looking at the chart. The word GUEST appeared in the seventh position on the thirteen-seat side of the table. No name, just a seat in the very center of the action.

  He took his bag from the banquette and set it on a chair shielded from the kitchen by the table. He unzipped it and took out seven thin, shiny metal clamps, each looking vaguely like a square-shaped question mark. They were the classic form of clamp used in virtually every taverna in Greece to hold tablecloths in place.

  But these clamps were special. Dimos had developed them as his go-to mikes for on-the-run surveillance. You could quickly switch them for the real clamps, and only someone looking very closely at one might notice a mottled rather than smooth pattern on the side facing up.

  Petro had to hand it Dimos. The guy probably could actually hide an elephant under a tablecloth. With microphones hidden in the tablecloth for good measure.

  Petro staggered the new clamps in among the old in a zig-zag pattern, starting on the twelve-seat side with new clamps placed between seats two and three, six and seven, and ten and eleven, and on the thirteen-seat side between seats four and five, eight and nine, and twelve and thirteen. The final clamp he tucked to the immediate left of “Guest,” between seats six and seven.

  Dimos had come up with that pattern for giving them maximum coverage for their equipment in that table arrangement. He’d given Petro several patterns, each for a different table configuration. Dimos said it was like designing football plays to counter anticipated defenses. He liked doing that sort of thing.

  Petro had just slipped the clamps taken off the table into his bag when he heard, “Are you finished yet?”

  “Almost. I just have to bring out what’s on the trays from the kitchen and put them on the table.”

  “Plus the bread.”

  “Will do.”

  “Hurry up. I’ll get the hot water started for your shower.”

  Petro cocked his head at her.

  Sappho turned and walked three meters to the left of the kitchen entrance to a door marked PRIVATE.

  She smiled at him. “It’s down here in the basement. But don’t worry, handsome, the soap’s all yours. I don’t need a hot shower.”

  She opened the door. “But fair warning. Mother’s angling to bring you the towel.”

  ***

  It took Petro fifteen minutes to shower, shave, dress in dark pants and a white shirt, and be back in the dining room. Sappho stood by her desk wearing a tight fitting, knee-length black skirt and snug white cotton blouse in the deeply plunging décolletage style so favored by Greek women. Perfectly centered between her breasts hung a heavy gold and emerald cross on a black lanyard.

  “You clean up nicely,” she said.

  He tried not to stare at Sappho’s breasts. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

  She adjusted her neckline. “I figured if I dressed like this, they’d pay less attention to you.”

  He watched as she finished. “That’s very considerate of you.”

  “It’s to protect us. We don’t want our guests discovering there’s a stranger among us since we promised it would be only family.”

  “So, who should I say I am?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Athens.”

  “I mean before that. Where’s your family from?”

  “Argolis.”

  “In the Peloponnese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. You’re my father’s godson and the son of my father’s best friend. What’s your father’s name?”

  “Ilias. But that still doesn’t make us family.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re a godson, which makes you more than family. He had no choice with me, but with you he did.”

  Petro smiled. “You sure do have a strange way of looking at things.”

  “And you’ve been working with us for the past three summers.”

  “What if they check your records?”

  She smiled. “Off the books, of course.”

  “But what if they don’t believe my story?”

  She touched the buttons on her blouse. “I’ll undo another one. Or two. Don’t worry. Just don’t talk. Let my father and me be the life of the party.”

  Before he could answer, the taverna’s front door swung open and a line of straight-backed men in casual dress began parading through it.

  Petro swallowed hard.

  Showtime.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nearly an hour passed and not one of the men had sat down. They stood in small groups, drinking, talking, and grabbing meze off the table almost as quickly as Petro brought more appetizers out from the kitchen. Sappho spent the time circulating among the men, plying them with drinks and flirting up a storm in a theater-in-the-round troubadour performance worthy of an Academy Award—and making it highly unlikely that anyone would sit anytime soon near a microphone.

  The operation had jumped off the tracks headed straight for the realm of FUBAR. The only good thing Petro could think of to say about the way the evening had gone so far was that Sappho’s performance had made him invisible. Everyone acted as if he weren’t in the room.

  He’d been able to match every face to photographs taken of the men staying at the hotel. That meant twenty-four men. He counted heads to confirm. No number twenty-five yet, no unrecognized face, no mysterious guest.

  A loud voice rose up from one of the groups. “Gentlemen, it’s time to take our seats for dinner. I assume no one as yet has had so much to drink that he won’t be able to find his way to his own name at the table. I emphasize as yet.”

  Amid courteous laughter everyone promptly moved to his assigned seat.

  “A good beginning,” said the same man after everyone had sat. He was a swarthy, buzz-cut fellow in his early fifties who likely hadn’t missed a meal in a very long time. “We all made it safely to the table.” He looked to his right and paused. “Except for one. But we’re not going to wait for the straggler.”

  He waved at Petro and pointed to the empty chair and place setting next to him. “Take all this away.” He leaned over and looked at the place card. “If Mister Guest is not here on time, he doesn’t get to eat with us.”

  Petro nodded and quickly removed the setting and chair to another table. Who the hell was number twenty-five? He shook his head. This now was officially Fucked Up Beyond All Repair, he thought.

  “Hey, Petro. Get it in gear, man. We’ve got a lot of hungry people to feed.” Sappho stood with her hand on the shoulder of the man who’d ordered him to remove the place setting. “And be sure to start with our host, dear friend, and savior of Santorini skies from the Turks, our beloved air marshal.” She patted Buzz-Cut on the shoulder.

  The air marshal waved dismissively but his face beamed at the praise.

  Petro forced a smile and headed into the kitchen. For the next forty minutes he did nothing but shuffle back and forth from the kitchen, holding plates of food in each hand and more plates lined up along his right forearm. Whenever he caught a glimpse of Sappho she’d be reaching over one man or another pouring wine. More than once he heard her laughingly tell someone that she only poured wine, so he’d have to service himself with his other requests.

  He watched Sappho’s father work his way around the table, smiling and joking with his guests, all the while taking orders for their next
course.

  Sappho’s mother and her three female Bulgarian assistants remained in the kitchen, quietly working away, though all smiled at Petro each time any one of them caught his eye.

  He’d done his best to eavesdrop on the conversations at the table, but nothing he heard was much different from what he’d expect to hear in any other group of guys out for the night. Sports, new clubs, vacation plans, women and—of course—Sappho’s tits. What they didn’t talk about is what caught Petro’s attention. Not one word about politics, an unheard of situation in a gathering of Greek men out for the night. It was as if they’d been ordered not to discuss the subject in public.

  Petro stood at the kitchen counter, avoiding eye contact with the women while he waited for more food to carry to the table. He wondered why, despite how badly this evening had gone for his unit’s surveillance operation, he was having such a great time. He really enjoyed helping this family do its thing.

  Perhaps tonight’s undercover disaster was meant as God’s way of suggesting to him that police service might not be the best career path. Yes, the Lord surely did work in mysterious ways. Perhaps even in a kitchen.

  One of the women smiled at him.

  Perhaps as a Bulgarian cook.

  On that thought, he allowed himself a wide smile, blew all the women kisses, and laden with plates, walked back out to the table.

  He caught a glimpse of someone standing by the front door. “Sappho, you’ve got company at the door.”

  She yelled over to the man, “Sir, may I help you?”

  Everyone turned to see whom she’d called to.

  The man walked toward her. “Sorry to be late, but my plane was delayed in Athens.”

  The air marshal jumped to his feet. “Ah. So you’re our surprise guest. Why didn’t your office tell me instead of keeping it a secret?”

  The man shrugged. “You know how things are these days. I’d rather keep my agenda to myself.” He looked to be in his mid-forties, slim, of less-than-average height, and most likely not military.

  The air marshal nodded. He pointed at Petro. “You. Set a place for my friend at my right hand.” He patted the man on his back and helped him off with his coat. “Come, sit. We have a lot to talk about.”