by Joseph Badal
Zoë said she had to call her mother and left the room to find a phone. When she was gone, Christo began to half-dance, half-walk around the room, singing a little tune. “Oh Zoë, I love you very much. You make my heart melt like ice in the hot sun. You put the lead in my pencil. La, la, la.”
“Asshole!” John muttered.
“What’s the matter, John? You won’t thank me for bringing the love of your life to visit you?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Christo snorted. “What do you think, I’m some kind of kolokeethas? I look like an eggplant to you? You got that look about you all men get when they’ve lost their minds. You got it good. And you know what else? I don’t blame you. Zoë Vangelos is one hell of a woman. So don’t play stupid with me. You got the bug, buddy, and you got it bad.”
John stared at the little Greek cop as he stood in that ugly yellow room and laughed his butt off. Finally he said, “No, I don’t think you’re an eggplant. You’re a royal pain in the ass.”
“Now that’s something I will admit to, my friend. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”
APRIL 30
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
John developed an infection on his third night in the hospital; his temperature climbed to 103 degrees. Doctor Pappas ordered a regimen of heavy duty antibiotics. The drugs worked, but the ordeal delayed his release from the hospital. Zoë showed up every one of the seven days of his confinement, even on the afternoon of the day her father had been buried.
On the day of John’s release, Christo picked Zoë up at her mother’s house before they drove to the hospital. John was still terribly weak and had to be helped to the car. Just a week in the hospital and he felt ninety years old.
Instead of taking the road to John’s hotel in Vathi, Christo drove over the top of the island toward Mytilini. He pulled around behind the Bacchus Taverna and honked his horn. Pericles instantly appeared at the back door and swiftly stepped to the car.
“Welcome to our home, my friend,” he said to John after he opened the car door.
John glanced quizzically at Christo.
“Let’s go inside and I’ll explain everything to you,” Christo said.
When they were all settled around a table in the taverna’s dining room, Christo said, “I’m concerned that whoever attacked you may still be a danger. You can’t return to your hotel. Also, your doctor wants you watched over for another couple of days. Pericles and Marika have agreed to put you up. Marika will make sure you get plenty of good food and rest. If anyone is after you, this is probably the last place they’ll look.”
“I thought you said the bad guys probably think they killed me,” John said.
“Probably, but not absolutely,” Christo answered.
About to protest, John judiciously shut up when Zoë added, “Besides, Mytilini is close to Kokkari, so it will be quite easy for me to visit every day.”
It was about five o’clock in the afternoon and the taverna had not yet opened for the evening. John detected cooking odors. He sighed with something close to ecstasy when Pericles and Marika brought platters of hors d’oeuvres, horiatiki salads, and a stew—youvetsakia—into the dining room. He was again confirmed in his opinion that the food in Greece is reason enough to travel there.
“Christo told me what happened to you in your hotel,” Pericles said. “I’d love to get my hands on the bastards that attacked you.”
John smiled in appreciation of the sentiment, but he was so worn out he couldn’t muster the energy to say anything. The place in his scalp where the stitches had been now itched like crazy. But he couldn’t stand the pain every time he started to scratch the itch. And he seemed to have a perpetual headache. He’d barely begun to sample the meal when fatigue overcame him.
Every time he looked at Zoë, he found her staring back at him. Worry lines etched her forehead and the corners of her eyes. She whispered something to Marika, who immediately left the room. Zoë came around to his place at the table. “I think it’s time we put you to bed.”
John offered no resistance and, while Zoë held his arm, he walked to the spare bedroom in the quarters behind the taverna. Zoë gently nudged him toward the bed. He stretched out on the cool, clean sheets and immediately fell asleep.
MAY 1
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The next day John awoke to the strong smell of Turkish coffee. After he washed and dressed, he walked outside where he found Pericles, Marika, and Zoë seated in the courtyard behind the taverna.
“Sleeping Beauty has awakened,” Pericles said. “How do you feel this morning?”
“Not bad,” John replied.
“For a while there we thought you had died,” Pericles said with a laugh. “It’s not often a guest sleeps for fifteen hours.”
“What . . . fifteen hours. You’re kidding! I haven’t done that since I was a teenager.”
“You needed it,” Marika said in a mock-scolding tone. “You are here to get better. Would you like to have some breakfast?”
“Actually, I’m starving,” John said. “I’m sorry about all the trouble I’ve caused you; but, if it’s no trouble, I’d love to eat something.”
Marika tsked-tsked at him and scowled, making him feel that he’d insulted her. There wasn’t much more that was important in Greek culture than the obligation they assume for the care of a guest. Marika left her chair, patted John’s arm when she passed him, and went toward the kitchen. He thought again how wondrous Greek hospitality can be.
After John finished eating, Zoë suggested they take a short walk to the beach. They walked at a snail’s pace down the narrow street through the village toward the sea. Other than a woman who swept the walk in front of her home, the village seemed deserted. The street descended gradually to the water and John stared at the sea sparkling before him. Marika’s food, the sea air, and Zoë at his side all combined to give him a feeling of well being. While they walked the half-mile to the beach, they talked freely about not much of consequence.
At the beach, they rested on a two-foot high wall that separated the sand from the street. The beach extended no more than forty or fifty feet from the wall to the water. This part of the village wrapped around a jade-colored cove three hundred yards wide and perhaps a half-mile’s distance from the shore to where the mouth of the cove met the Aegean. The coast curved in a semi-circle to the left. There were houses in that direction that looked down at the water from the tops of steep hills. There is something restful about watching the sea, John thought. He stared at it as though hypnotized, lost in his own thoughts.
Zoë broke the silence first. “Did my father suffer . . . was he in much pain when you found him?”
Holding Petros Vangelos in his arms, his groans, the difficulty he had breathing, all cycled through John’s memory. He knew he couldn’t lie to her, but he decided to say only as much as necessary. “Zoë, your father died within seconds after I first found him. He couldn’t have been in pain for very long.” His answer clearly did not satisfy her. She looked skeptical—arched eyebrows and an almost challenging look in her eyes.
“Your father was very brave,” he added, “and his last thoughts were about his family.”
“That’s all my father ever thought about—his family. He worked hard his entire life so my brothers and I could get the formal education he never had.”
John nodded. “With his last breath, he said, ‘My family’ and ‘My life.’ He also spoke a couple of words I didn’t understand.”
“The inspector mentioned that you gave him my father’s wallet and a map.”
“It seemed he wanted me to look in his pockets and in his boot,” John said. “I had no idea the paper I pulled from your father’s boot was a map until I returned to my hotel room that night. I wish I still had a copy of it to show you. On my way to Christo’s office the next morning, after I found y
our father, I had a copy of the map made for your family. Unfortunately, Christo now has the original and the copy.”
“Can you remember the words my father spoke that you didn’t understand?”
“Actually, I do recall the first one. ‘Pythagorio’ . . . like the name of the town. The other word meant nothing to me and still doesn’t. It reminded me of a wine I used to drink when I lived in Greece before. It was called Pallini. Except your father said ‘palin’ . . . no, no, ‘evpalin,’ or something like that.”
Zoë had been staring out to sea again while John talked. But she abruptly turned toward him now. “You’re sure that’s what he said?”
“As sure as I can be. Why? Does it mean something to you?”
“It just may, John. But I need more information. Can you recall anything about the map?”
“Now that was strange. The map had no street names, no identifying marks indicating a village or building, no scale, no nothing. But there were three small circles on the map that formed the corners of a right triangle. The three circles were on land. There was a fourth circle that lay out to sea. There was nothing else on the map, except for some gibberish written on the back.”
“What gibberish?” she asked.
“I can’t recall all of the words, but they sounded like a nursery rhyme. Christo thought the same.”
“Interesting,” she replied.
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know, but as soon as I figure it out, I’ll tell you. You said Christo has the map. I think maybe I should call on the inspector.”
“When do you want to do that?” John asked. “I’d like to join you.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to tire yourself out. Besides, you’re supposed to be in hiding. Why don’t you stay here in Mytilini? I’ll come back here after I meet with Christo and tell you what I learned.”
“Like hell you’ll leave me here. This business has become very personal for me. I’m in it until the end. Besides, the men who attacked me are probably long gone.”
She smiled her glorious smile. “I would welcome the company. I’ll pick you up here at eight in the morning.”
Despite the fact he felt much better than he had the previous day, the walk back up to the taverna sapped his energy. He spent the next hour in Pericles’ hammock, alternately sleeping, thinking about the Vangelos map, and trying to figure out what was so important about it that someone would try to kill him for it. And had murdered Zoë’s father for it. Assuming it was the map they were after.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
By 8:20 p.m., John felt rested and stronger. He found the taverna busy with local customers and drifted into the kitchen. “Need a hand?” he asked.
Marika shot him a confused look. Pericles laughed and explained the American colloquialism to her.
“Oh, I understand,” she said, then gave John a grateful look and pointed at a wooden table where a large bowl filled with lettuce and several smaller bowls holding olives, capers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta cheese sat. “Do you think you could make two horiatiki salads?” she asked.
“I’ve eaten enough of them. I should be able to whip up something pretty close to the real thing.”
Marika smiled. “I hope this whip up is a good thing.”
John laughed and reminded himself that he would have to be careful with American slang around her. Her English was good, but not that good.
While he worked on the salads and Pericles made frenetic round trips from kitchen to dining room, John once again thanked Marika for putting him up in her home.
“It is no trouble,” she answered. “We enjoy you to be with us. Besides, we would do anything for Christo.”
“Have you been friends for long?”
“Just since Pericles returned to Samos from the United States.” She said this with a far away look in her eyes and seemed to suddenly lose herself in her own thoughts. John had the feeling she’d retreated into the past and there was something in her look that told him it was a troubling past. He felt uncomfortable for intruding into something apparently very personal. Pericles entered the kitchen at that moment and must have noticed the storm cloud that had become his wife’s expression.
“Tee trekhee?” he said as he snatched two platters off the serving counter.
Marika shook her head as though to clear it of its sudden fog, and smiled at her husband. “Teepota, agapee mou,” she said. “Nothing, my love. I was just day thinking,” she said in English.
Pericles spun around and moved toward the door to the dining room. He cast a toothy grin at Marika. “Day dreaming, my sweet. Not day thinking.”
“I must try better to understand these American sayings,” she said and grimaced at John. “I do not want Pericles to think I am stupid.”
John had seen the way Pericles looked at Marika, the way he treated her. The furthest thought from Pericles’ mind about his wife had to do with her being stupid. It was obvious he adored the woman. John shot a surreptitious glance at Marika to see if her gray mood had passed. At least her color was back as she hummed. He’d already decided not to pursue any further the subject of the Vlacopoulos’ relationship with Christo, when Marika abruptly looked at him and caught his furtive glance. There was a flinty look to her eyes now and John thought she had gone from depressed to angry.
Marika brushed her arm across her forehead to rearrange a few errant strands of hair. “I want you to know what it means to have Christo for a friend,” she said.
“You don’t need to—”
She waved a hand at him, stopped him. She took a deep breath; her chest heaved, then fell. “Shortly after we opened the taverna—it was our first summer—two men broke into our house just as the sun came up. They barged through the back door and, before we could even get out of bed, they were upon us. Pericles struggled with one man while the other one held me. The man who Pericles fought was many years younger than my husband and was very strong. But Pericles was . . . .” She gave John an anguished look. “Conquesting him?”
“Beating him,” John said.
“Yes, beating him,” Marika said with a smile. “But the second man hit Pericles in the back of his head with a pipe. Then the other one kicked him many times.”
Marika’s eyes watered and her voice broke. “The man kicked him and kicked him. I screamed at him; begged him to stop. But, even after Pericles was unconscious, he still kicked him until I thought he had killed him. Then he turned on me. He demanded cash. I told him we had very little money around. We had just opened and all our money was either in the bank or had been invested in the taverna.
“This made him very angry. On top of everything else, my English was not so good then and he spoke with a very rough British accent. He got even angrier when I could not understand everything he said. But there was one thing he said that I understood very well. He said to the man holding me, ‘Well, we’re not leaving here empty-handed.’ Then he walked over to me and ripped my nightgown off. I was so scared and ashamed.”
Marika’s chin trembled and she dabbed her eyes with her apron. “He hit me in the face and the two men tied my hands and feet to the bed posts. Then the one who had kicked Pericles got . . . got on top of me. That is when Christo came into the room. Both of the men were looking at me, so I saw Christo walk in before they did.”
Pericles suddenly rushed into the kitchen. “I need three more orders of the kalamaria and two more salads.” He looked somewhat quizzically at John who still worked on the two salad bowls. “You’ll need to speed up if you want a job around here,” he said. He spooned feta cheese on top of each salad, grabbed them from in front of John, and raced toward the door again. He looked over his shoulder, smiled at John, and said, “Not so much lettuce, and go easy on the capers.”
The interruption cleared the air of some of the tension caused by Marika’s story. John didn’
t have the heart or the nerve to ask her to continue—even though he was anxious to hear what happened after Christo entered the bedroom. For the next couple of hours, Pericles ran back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen and placed orders and picked up plates and bowls. John felt good to be helping his hosts.
Just after 11:00 p.m., Pericles announced, “Looks like we’re about done for the evening. The Stavrogiannis want some coffee, and old man Arvatis wants a Metaxa. That should be about it.” He walked up behind Marika and rubbed her shoulders. She leaned back against him and moaned with pleasure.
John felt suddenly melancholy. He couldn’t remember one time when someone could have seen Sonya and him together and have gotten the same impression of deep mutual affection he got from watching Marika and Pericles.
After Pericles left to take the coffees and brandy out to the dining room, Marika, busying herself with cleanup, said, “I think I’d better finish my story, otherwise you will not be able to sleep tonight.” She chuckled and gave John a wink.
“Only if it has a happy ending.”
“You can be the judge of that. Without a word, Christo shot one man in the leg. When that man screamed, Christo calmly walked over and clubbed him on the head with his pistol. Then he dragged the other one—this giant man—off the bed and threw him on the floor. I do not know how he did it—the man seemed twice as big as Christo.” She coughed an embarrassed laugh. “Almost everyone I know is twice as big as Christo.” She gave John an apologetic look and blushed. “But size made no difference,” she continued. “The second man begged Christo not to shoot him. You know what Christo did?” Marika put her finger to her lips and showed John how Christo had said, “Shh,” to tell the man to be quiet. “Then,” she said, “Christo shot him in the leg, too.