by Joseph Badal
“You must have really hit him,” Hans said.
“Not that hard,” Josef responded. “He’s probably faking.” Josef pulled his pistol from his shoulder holster under his jacket and pressed its muzzle hard against the old man’s forehead. “Hey, asshole,” he hissed, “wake up.”
“Oh good, Josef, put a bullet in his brain,” Hans said. “That ought to get us the information we need.”
Josef turned and stepped close to Hans so that their chests were mere inches apart. “I don’t see you doing anything. I’m sick and—”
The old fisherman suddenly erupted off the bench and drove his compact, powerful body into the two younger men. Although more than a foot shorter than his assailants, the old man hit them like a bowling ball strikes bowling pins. Hans flew backward toward the opposite wall, thudded heavily into two large wooden barrels, and crashed to the alley floor. Josef was knocked to the ground, too. When his right arm collided with the alley’s uneven stone surface, his trigger finger jerked and discharged his weapon. Vangelos turned, ran from the alley, and disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER SIX
By the time John had finished his meal, he was the last customer in the taverna and he relished the quiet. Most of the establishments visible along the quay had shut down by then. The night was quiet except for the creaking sounds of the fishing boats that tugged at their lines and sea water that lapped against the seawall.
After he paid his bill, he walked along the street across from the sea and then turned uphill toward his hotel. The air had cooled even further, so he put on his sweater. The road he followed paralleled the coast, then became steeper and turned sharply to the left on a semi-circular spit of land that protruded toward the bay. At the point where the road turned to the right, he saw a five-tiered, marble staircase that climbed to the top of a hill. The full moon showed between clouds and illuminated the steps as though they were floodlit. Although steeper than the road grade, the steps appeared to offer a more direct path to his hotel. When he started the climb up the first tier of steps, a scudding cloud hid the moon again and threw the steps into murky darkness. The white-walled walls of the flat-roofed houses on either side of the steps, with their barely discernible, colorfully painted doors and shutters, were silent and unlit.
Narrow cross streets, wide enough only for pedestrians or small vehicles, separated the tiers of steps.
John whistled as he relished the dark and the quiet. He felt at peace. John passed the second cross street and moved forward to climb the third tier of steps. The scent of flowers came to him as he considered his options for the next day—perhaps he’d find a secluded beach. Suddenly, a rattling, choking sound startled him. His heart seemed to stop, and then beat so fast he thought it would burst. He jumped sideways, away from the noise.
His eyes, by this time, were more accustomed to the dark, but he didn’t notice any movement. He felt foolish; thought he’d overreacted to some cat on its nocturnal rounds. He took a deep breath and put one foot on a step, intent on his ascent, when his heart did a somersault in his chest. A man lurched out of the shadows and wrapped his arms around him. John smelled the odors of fish and sweat on the man while he struggled to break free from his grasp.
The stranger hung on; the rattling sound again burst from his throat. Then his grasp loosened. The man slid to the ground and fell backward onto the marble-paved cross street. A gurgling sound again escaped his lips. The moon suddenly escaped from behind a cloud and highlighted the man’s face. Light-colored red foam bubbled from his mouth and his gray-stubbled face looked waxen and stiff.
John bent closer to the man to see if he was still breathing. The man grasped the front of John’s sweater and pulled him down toward him. Their faces were only inches apart and John smelled the coppery odor of blood. Pain showed in the man’s eyes. He cried out when John put a hand on the man’s stomach. John felt wetness on his hands. The man held on to John’s sweater, then cried out again as he raised his head off the ground. He coughed and sprayed John’s face with a fine mist. Finally he managed to say, “Eepotheema . . . hartees.” The effort to say the two words seemed to be almost too much for him. But after a moment he spoke again: “Pythagorio . . . evpalin . . . .” He coughed violently again and blood spurted from his mouth. John lifted the man’s shoulders off the ground to ease his breathing. The man sucked in air and spoke again. “Ee eekoyenya mou. Ee zoë mou.” A long venting of air burst from his lungs and blood flowed from his mouth. His head fell back and his eyes rolled upward. John checked for a pulse. There was none.
John understood some of the man’s words. The first meant “boot” and the second “map.” “Ee eekoyenya mou” meant “My family,” and “Ee zoë mou” meant “My life.” He tried to figure out the other two words—“Pythagorio” and “evpalin”—when the sound of footsteps startled him.
Two very large men approached along the narrow cross street. They spoke in low, guttural tones that sounded like German. They were about thirty yards away. John guessed they were tourists off the cruise ship in the harbor and was about to call to them for help. But then he noticed moonlight glint off something in one man’s hand. A pistol. His heart pounded even faster.
John checked the dead man’s pants pockets. He removed a wallet and slid it into his own pants pocket. Then he moved on hands and knees to the man’s feet. His socks and boots were bloodstained. White paper protruded a quarter of an inch above the top of the right ankle-high boot. He gripped the edge of the paper and slipped it from the man’s boot.
John rose to a crouch and moved away from the corpse, toward the steps. Once shielded by the corner of a building, he sprinted—two steps at a time—hardly breathing while he raced upward. He slipped when a piece of marble stone broke loose from a step. John caught his balance and heard the solitary stone tumble away. In the dead night-quiet of that small seaside town, the stone sounded like an avalanche. Still a dozen steps from the top, he realized, with a sinking feeling, he must be perfectly silhouetted against the now moonlit sky.
“Halte!” someone screamed. A pistol roared as John reached the top step. He ran like a madman, dodged around parked cars, and raced up dark alleys and narrow, ancient streets. Propelled by a surge of adrenaline, he ran all the way to the Soula Hotel.
He dashed through the hotel’s front door, hurried through the empty lobby, and climbed to his second-floor room. After he tossed the wallet and paper he’d taken from the dead man into the bathroom sink, he turned on the light and bent over to look in the mirror. Dried blood spotted his face and streaked his hands. Dark red blotches and spots covered his sweater, shirt collar, and pants. His fingers felt sticky. He stepped out of his shoes and into the shower. The spray of cold water washed blood off his clothes, hands, and face, swirling it around the bottom of the shower and down the drain. His body trembled as he undressed and left his clothes in the shower pan.
Hans had sprinted up the marble steps, pistol in hand. He’d caught a glimpse of the man he’d fired at just before the bastard raced around the corner of a building. He slapped his thigh with his free hand, then slipped his pistol back into his shoulder holster. The guy had too much of a headstart. He mumbled curses as he reversed direction and descended the steps to the alley where his partner knelt and searched Petros Vangelos’s body.
“Eh, Josef,” he said. “Find anything?”
“Nothing. Whoever that guy was, he even took Vangelos’s wallet. And if the old man had the map on him, well . . . .” He let the thought hover. “Did you see where the man ran to?”
“In the direction of the hotels that border the water on the far side of the hill. But there are houses down there, too. Hell, we don’t know if the guy’s a tourist or a local resident.”
Josef nodded and expelled his frustrations on a loud stream of air. “What do you want to do with the body?” he asked.
“Go get the car. We’ll take it back to the boat and du
mp it out at sea. No point in leaving evidence for the police.”
While Josef ran off to retrieve their rental car, Hans dragged the fisherman’s body further into the shadows. He tried to put himself in the place of the man he’d shot at. What would he do, whether he was a tourist or local, if he came across a dead man and then got shot at? A smile came to his face. Any law-abiding citizen in a democracy, once his heart rate had returned to normal and he’d changed his underwear, would call the police, of course.
CHAPTER SEVEN
While he put on clean clothes, John dialed the local operator and asked to be connected to the police. The phone rang for nearly a minute. He was tempted to hang up, to forget the whole thing. Why get involved? A voice finally came on the other end of the line.
“Embros.”
“Hello!” John said. “Do you speak English?”
“Of course.” The man sounded sleepy. “How can I help you?”
“My name is John Hammond. I am a tourist and was on the way to my hotel when I found a man who was badly hurt. He died before I could call for help.”
Pause. “Where are you located at this moment, Mister Hammond?” the voice asked, suddenly alert and agitated.
“The Soula Hotel. Room eight.”
“And where is the body?” the man asked.
“Halfway up the steep marble steps going down into Vathi. You know where . . .?”
“I know where you mean, Mister Hammond. Stay where you are. The inspector will come to your hotel. Understand?”
John understood all right. The policeman’s suspicious tone made it clear he’d identified at least one suspect. A stupid American tourist named John Hammond.
He retrieved the wallet and the bloodstained document from the bathroom sink, put the document on a towel he’d spread out on the bed, and turned the wallet over in his hands. Although dried blood spotted the outside of the wallet, none had seeped inside. He found a photograph of an older man surrounded by people he assumed to be the man’s family. The man in the picture looked like the one who had died in his arms. In the photo, the man stood next to a woman of about sixty. Two other men and a woman who all appeared to be in their thirties, stood behind the couple. Each of the people in the photo smiled. A Greek driver’s license in the wallet told John the dead man’s name was Petros Vangelos.
He replaced the photo and drivers license in the wallet and put it on the towel. Then he picked up the document, a folded piece of 8 1/2 by 11 plain white paper, spotted and smeared with blood from John’s hand. When fully opened, it appeared to be a carefully drawn map of what looked like a portion of coastline—the word “thalassa” indicated the sea. No place names, reference points, or roads were marked. Three small circles were drawn on the land and one on the sea. Straight lines connected the three circles on the land into what looked like a right triangle about the size of a common protractor. A dotted line connected the circle on the sea with the apex of the triangle. Without a scale present on the map, John couldn’t tell how far apart the circles were. Nothing on the map explained the meaning of the lines, the small circles, or the triangle they formed. He carefully turned the map over and found words handwritten in Greek on the back: An kovo sta dio ena orthogonio, tha eho theeo trigona. Kai otan pandrevoun theeo trigona, eho ena orthogonio. Themase pos O Pythagoros eenay o filos sou.
John’s hands began to shake. He recognized the symptoms. He’d experienced them more than once before. It happened whenever he came down from an adrenaline high. There was nothing like finding a dead man in a darkened alley and getting shot at to bring on a surge of adrenaline.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked himself. “First, I find an injured man who dies in my arms; then I get shot at; now I’ve got nursery rhymes.” He glanced back down at the words on the map. They made no sense. The ramblings of an old man? When I cut a rectangle in two, I will have two triangles. When two triangles marry I have a rectangle. Remember that Pythagoras is your friend.
A knock startled him. He moved toward the door, but remembered the map in his hand and dropped it on the shelf in the open closet by the door.
A short, thin, stern-faced man dressed in a poorly tailored black suit, a soiled tie, and badly scuffed brown shoes stared up at John with coal-black eyes. His carefully trimmed hair and waxed mustache contrasted with his unkempt appearance.
Without waiting to be asked in, the man pushed past John and announced, “I am Inspector Christoforos Alexandros Panagoulakos.” He said this in perfect, only slightly accented American English.
It crossed John’s mind it was a lot of name for a man not much more than five feet five inches tall.
Panagoulakos walked over to the bed, picked up the wallet from the towel, and checked the ID inside. Then he replaced the wallet on the towel.
He surveyed the room, then moved to the bathroom, where John had left the pile of bloodstained clothes in the shower. John trailed the man and watched him pick up the soiled clothes, inspect them, then drop them back on the shower floor. John had to quickly backtrack when the man turned and walked out of the bathroom.
“Sit down in that chair,” Panagoulakos said gruffly. He sounded like someone used to giving orders and having them obeyed. Panagoulakos glared at John. “Your passport!” he demanded.
John reached for his passport on the dresser and handed it to the inspector before he took a seat. Panagoulakos looked at each page. He slipped the passport into a jacket pocket, and pulled out a small notebook and pen.
“Mister Hammond, I warn you it is imperative to hold nothing back. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Inspector, it’s clear,” John responded. “I assure you I have no reason to hold anything back. What I experienced tonight was shocking and I want to help you in every way I can.”
“Humph!” he said. “What’s your full name?”
“John Andrew Hammond.” John almost added, “Just like it says in my passport,” but decided this was not the time to be a smartass.
More questions followed, rapid-fire.
Where are you from? Why are you in Samos? Where did you say you saw the dead man? What were you doing at that location at such a late hour? Did you see any weapons at the scene? Was Mister Vangelos dead when you arrived on the scene? Did he say anything to you before he died? Did you see anyone else in the area? Do you know who killed this man you say died in your arms?
John answered all of them as completely as he could. Then he asked, “Inspector, does any of this make sense to you?”
He skewered John with his stare and ignored the question.
John shrugged. The little guy was really starting to piss him off.
“Why did you take the man’s wallet and then leave the scene of the crime?” Panagoulakos asked.
“I took his wallet because I assumed from his words he wanted me to get something out of his pocket. I might have returned the wallet to his pocket if those two other men hadn’t shown up and shot at me.”
“Tell me about those two men,” Panagoulakos said, his eyes widening just a bit.
“I’ve no idea who they were. I heard them talking to one another—in German, I think—before they saw me. However, I can’t be sure because they were about thirty yards away and they spoke softly. They must have heard me run away. I just didn’t have time to do anything but run like hell.” Then John had an afterthought. “I can tell you they looked enormous.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “Not that they were so tall. They looked like bodybuilders.”
“Why did you run away when you first saw these two men? What did they do to frighten you?”
“Inspector, I ran because, as I said before, I saw that at least one of them had a pistol.” John tried to control his anger, but he did so with only limited success. His voice rose in volume as he said, “What would you do if you were kneeling next to a dead man who had bled all over you, you were unarmed, and armed men
approached you?”
“After you ran off, what happened? After you were supposedly shot at.”
John felt his face go hot as he said, “Let’s get one thing straight. I wasn’t supposedly shot at. They shot at me.”
Panagoulakos narrowed his black eyes, put a balled-up hand to his mouth and bit down on one of his fingers while he appeared to think. He fixed his shark-like eyes on the wall above and behind John and did not respond for about ten seconds. Finally, he laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but John welcomed it.
“All right, Mister Hammond, I thank you for your time and cooperation.” He looked at his wristwatch. “I want you to come into the station at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. I’ll have a written statement typed out for your signature. Here’s my card.”
Panagoulakos did an about face. He walked over to the bed, folded the wallet in the hotel towel, stripped the pillowcase from one of the pillows on the bed, and walked into the bathroom. He picked up John’s sopping-wet clothes and placed them in the pillowcase.
John followed Panagoulakos to the door. When the cop opened the door, John said, “Inspector, may I ask you something?”
Panagoulakos turned, looked at John, and smiled. “Of course, Mister Hammond.”
“May I have my passport back?”
“No, Mister Hammond, you may not,” he said, still smiling. “Any other questions?”
John paused for a second, then said, “Did you find anything on Mister Vangelos’s body that might lead you to the murderers?”
The smile left the cop’s face. “No, Mister Hammond. No clues, no murder weapon—and no body either.”
CHAPTER EIGHT