by Alex A King
“Come on,” Beaver said, appealing to his fellow bozo. “What kind of men are we if we steal from the mentally disabled?”
“What are they saying now?” Marika wanted to know.
“I’m getting us out of trouble,” I told her in Greek. I skipped the part where I was letting them think she had special needs beyond cake.
“Okay, fine,” Baked Potato said in a tone that said he wasn’t fine with it at all. “We can still steal from the other one, yes?”
Beaver thought about it a moment. “Sure. Okay. Her we can rob.”
Great. This day was getting better with each tick of the clock’s little hand. “But I don’t have anything!”
Baked Potato wasn’t buying it. “No money, no phone, no jewelry? What kind of tourist are you?”
Not a tourist at all. I showed them my empty hands and complete absence of a handbag. “See? Nothing.”
“Not even a credit card in your underwear?”
Eww. I’ve never been the kind to stuff cash or cards in my bra. My mother explained early on that no one wants to touch sweaty boob money. And a good thing, too, because apparently petty criminals knew all about that hiding place.
“Nope, sorry.” What the heck was I doing apologizing to someone who was trying to rob me? Clearly Mom had gone overboard with the good manners thing. In a moment I’d be all ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ then ‘excuse me’ after he got my blood on his knife.
Baked Potato looked at Beaver. “This is a problem. We cannot rob someone and leave with nothing.” He turned back to me. “You don’t have anything of value?”
“My cute shoes?”
My shoes were cute ... and cheap. Baby Dimitri had given me a good discount on an already inexpensive pair of espadrilles.
“We should teach her a lesson,” Baked Potato said.
I raised my hand. “I finished school years ago. No new lessons for this old dog.”
They carried on their conversation without me. There was a lot of hand waving involved—even more than Greeks conversing. It made me wonder if the Italian people, rather than birds, were inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine.
“I think we should cut her. This knife is—” Baked Potato held up his weapon, a curbed blade with ugly teeth. It looked like something you’d use if you were the kind of loser who enjoyed gutting exotic animals. If he knew about my lineage he might consider me exotic, and I really didn’t want to wind up on the pointy end of his knife. He switched back to Italian, and the two bozos carried on their conversation.
Meanwhile Marika and I stood there watching them. We had nowhere to go, nowhere to run. Dead-end alley at our backs. A bum behind us doing God knows what. I didn’t want to glance back to check out the homeless guy situation; the urine stench was strong with that one.
“We should do something,” I said.
Marika stared back at me. Neither of us was experiencing a light bulb moment.
“We could scream,” I said. “Are you good at screaming?”
“I have sons.”
I took that as a yes.
“But if we scream they might cut us,” she continued. “Takis would.”
“Takis is a real criminal, not a petty hood.”
“This is true,” she said proudly.
Beaver snapped his fingers at us. “What are you two talking about? Look at me. We have decided what to do. This time we will let you go, but make sure you tell people we were very scary.”
“Very scary,” I said, relieved. “Got it.”
“He means it,” Baked Potato said. He pocketed his knife and got to rearranging the gold around his neck. Then he grinned. “That was a little joke. We decided to kill you, okay?”
Yikes! “No, that’s not okay! Not even a little bit okay.”
“What is it you say in America?” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Too bad, bitch.” He whipped out his knife, and things got ugly after that. It all started when I panicked and slapped the knife out of his hand. The blade hit the brick wall and bounced several feet away.
We both stared at it, Baked Potato and I, wide-eyed.
To paraphrase the old quote: see a knife, pick it up, all day long you probably won’t wind up stabbed. I also remembered that other warning about how you should never wield a weapon that can be used against you. But animal instincts quickly shot that idea down. I ducked, snatched up Baked Potato’s knife. He launched himself at me, so I tossed the knife to Marika, who stood there blinking at it.
“I only know guns,” she said. “This is not a gun.”
“Stab him,” I said through gritted teeth.
“How?”
“Stick the pointy end in him. How hard can it be? He looks like a potato!”
BANG!
Marika and I dropped to the ground in the holy-hell-a-nuclear-bomb-went-off position, arms wrapped protectively around our heads. Footsteps retreated. I peeked out just in time to see the two bozos running for their lives.
My emotions flip flopped. We were alive ... but someone nearby had a gun. But ... the bozos were gone. Meanwhile there was someone nearby with a gun—someone scary enough to shoo away the bozos. Even they knew gun trumped knife.
“What happened?” Marika’s shout was muffled by her arms and the concrete. Gunshots in a tight space were hell on the eardrums.
I raised periscope for a moment, took another look. “They left,” I shouted back at her.
Then I blinked and saw our savior.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said.
CHAPTER 3
“What?” Donk grinned at us. “You don’t sound happy to see the Donk.”
Donk is Baby Dimitri’s teenage nephew. He’s a hundred pounds with his pockets stuffed with electronics, and he dresses like a white reject from a B movie about the ‘hood. Today was more of the same: sagging denim shorts, Calvin Klein boxers gawking over the waistband, tank top that revealed his concave muscles, and a backwards ball cap. He’d been a pain in my butt since his uncle decided I should give him some kind of internship to learn about the ins and outs of organized crime. But I felt sorry for the kid, too. No one in his family seemed to have a lot of time for him.
“What are you doing here?” I yelped. “You’re not supposed to be here. We’re not even supposed to be here.”
Two palms up. “What? I was following you. You are here, so I am here. That’s what following means.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“For what? It looks to me like the real learning is here.” He folded his arms, chucked his chin at me. “How am I doing? Rate me out of ten.”
I shook away the stupid. “How did you get here?”
“The same plane as you. Did you know that NIS babe had them put you in with the cargo? Right between two dog cages. Do you think she would fack me?”
Fack is one of those typos spray-painted on walls and underpasses all over Greece. I wasn’t about to correct Donk’s pronunciation or spelling.
“If you mean the dogs, yes. But I’d bring peanut butter if I were you.”
“Jesus,” he said looking horrified. “What is wrong with you? I mean the NIS honey. She looks like she wants to be spanked by the Donk.” He made an overly enthusiastic butt-slapping hand gesture that made me wonder if that was something he’d picked up on one of his mother’s movie sets, aka: his living room. Donk’s mother was in the porn business. Or rather, the porn business was something that happened in her. She’d offered me a job. I declined. No one in Greece wanted to hire me to do anything decent. It was all death, drugs, or sex.
“Trust me,” I said, “Hera doesn’t want you to spank her. She’s Detective Melas’ ex-girlfriend.”
“So? I am a major criminal’s nephew.”
“Think about that for a moment. Imagine all the ways it wouldn’t be possible.”
Was I talking about him and Hera or me and Melas?
He squinted at me. “Are you saying she is old?”
“No!”
>
“Because I would fack you and you are older than her.”
Marika’s hand snapped out and clipped his ear. “Have some respect for your elders.”
He yelped, clutching the side of his head. “I respect her. I respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-K.” He chased his atrocious spelling with a verse of Aretha Franklin’s hit.
“Keep it up and you will call every cat in Naples to you.”
Donk’s eyes lit up. “We’re in Italy?”
As Scooby Doo said: Ruh roh.
“I hear the women here are the best. Italian. Veeeery sexy.” Using his hands he drew curves in the air, too busty to be real.
I rolled my eyes. “Where did you get the gun?”
He looked confused. “What gun?”
I glanced around. Homeless Guy had vanished.
#
We abandoned the idea of Vatican City in favor of going to the police. Or rather I did. Marika and Donk were still down for a trip to see il Papa. I gave them two choices: come with me or go their own way. I was relieved when they glumly decided I was the less fun, but more sensible, option. Traversing Italy alone, penniless and without clean underwear, wasn’t on my bucket list.
I stopped someone who looked respectable this time, a young professional woman who spoke an abundant amount of English and was happy to test it all on me. She quickly sketched directions on the back of my hand, and we were off.
Italy, the woman had told me, had what sounded like a dozen or so kinds of police. What I wanted was a regular ol’ policeman with the Great and Terrible Oz’s powers, real or fake. A hot air balloon was fine if it could get us back to Greece.
We trotted up the street. The police building was right where the woman said it would be, in flowery, hesitant English, delivered with a side of descriptive hand waving. Up some steps, down some steps, past crumbling arches painted with exhaust grime, under sagging strings of laundry. Along the way we were almost struck by three cars and seven mopeds. In Italy motor vehicles were people, too. At least at home we only had to contend with corporations looking in the mirror, pretending to be We the People.
Naples’ government had wedged the police building between a cafe and a record store. Graffiti artists had gone wild everywhere except the police building’s smooth face. The entire block was four stories high, with shallow balconies jutting their ornate steel lips at the view.
“I will stay out here,” Donk said. Easy to see where his priorities lay. Across the street a group of scantily clad women were plying their wares to potential customers.
Snorting, I pushed my way through the door, followed by Marika. A weather system of cigarette smoke descended upon us. I raised my eyebrows at Marika.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to be in here.”
“Why not?”
“Because of the baby.”
“What baby?”
I shook my head and fought my way through the smog to the front desk. Within seconds I’d ascertained that the policeman spoke English and that Italy had strict antismoking laws, but they were the police so who was going to spank them? Nobody, that was who.
“Do you know there are prostitutes across the street?”
He leaned sideways, looked at the working girls, leaned back. “Where else would they go? That is where they work.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” I didn’t care if women wanted to sell sex, as long as it was their choice. Grandma refused to deal in prostitution. She believed women were capable of more—just look at her. I was just surprised to see sex for sale in the streets during daylight hours, openly and nearly nakedly.
“No. Only pimps and brothels are illegal. If the women work for themselves ...” He shrugged. “No problem.”
Europe: it was the old world, and boy could it be different.
When I made the same comment to Marika in Greek she said, “It is not illegal in Greece either if you are registered and have a medical card that must be updated every two weeks. But most prostitutes there are Albanian and illegal. The Albanians take all our jobs.”
The cop glanced from Marika to me, and back again. “How can I help you today, eh? Are you in trouble?”
I gave him the facts, stripped down to bare bones with basically no information on them. A dastardly organization had kidnapped us and dumped us in Greece with no identification, no money, no phones.
“We did have that gyro,” Marika said in Greek. “Too bad I had to throw it away. It was a good gyro.”
The cop shook his head. “That is Greeks for you. They think they invented pizza.”
Ol’ eagle ears Marika was all over that. “What did he say about pizza?” I told her and she puffed up like a thick, deep-dish crust. “Greeks invented pizza. Italians invented bad pizza.”
“Italian pizza is pretty good,” I said in Italy’s defense, not mentioning I’d only ever consumed its American incarnation.
Marika leaned on the counter—hard. “You tell him this: Who was Hitler’s friend during World War II, eh? Italy, that is who. Not Greece—Italy. They sneaked, sneaked, sneaked through Albania and came into Greece.” Her fingers tippy-toed across the hard surface.
Thanks to the miracle of Marika’s intermittent English skills, she spat the words out in a language we could all understand. Fabulous. Marika had just Godwin’s Law-ed our best shot at getting out of Italy.
The cop kept his eyes on her and slowly reached for his pen and paper. “What did you say your names were?”
My brain froze. My real name wanted to come out. This is why my parents had drilled my name and address into me when I was little—so that if I was lost I’d be able to tell a policeman who I was and where I lived.
“This is Zeus, and I’m Cedar.”
Sweet relief. I didn’t screw up the lie.
He put down the pen. “Cedar and Zeus?”
“Like Cher and Madonna,” I told him.
“And you say some organization abducted you and left you in Greece with no documentation? In effect, you entered Italy illegally?”
It sounded bad when he put it like that. “Yes, but it wasn’t our fault.”
“Just one moment, please.” He vacated his chair, scurried toward the end cubicle, where a plainclothesman sat hunched over his desk, coffee in one hand, cigarette balanced on his lip. The uniform’s mouth shot out a streamer of words, then both men looked up at us.
I grabbed Marika by the elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Funny, I was thinking the same thing. You cannot trust Italians. Look at Mussolini, Berlusconi, and that Chef Boyardee.”
“Chef Boyardee?”
“When we went to America Takis said he wanted to try the famous Chef Boyardee. Turns out Chef Boyardee is a lie.”
We hurried out, causing only a minor traffic jam at the door. I shoved Marika through and whistled for Donk. “We’ve got to run.”
“You go,” he said. “Big Donk wants to play.” He stepped off the curb. My hand shot out, yanked him back.
“Those are prostitutes.”
“So?”
“How are you planning to pay them?”
“The Donk doesn’t pay for sex. If he tries, the girls refuse to take his money.”
“Trust me, these ones want money. How are you planning to pay them?”
He whipped out his wallet, shoved a platinum credit card in my face. “The Donk has Ben-ja-mins, yo.”
Mood soaring, I snatched it out of his hand. If he had money we could get home ... or call for help. “A Benjamin is a hundred dollar bill. This is a credit card. Is it good?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I bought it from a guy I know.”
My eyebrows took a hike. “A stolen credit card?”
“Hey, it’s not like I’ve ever used it. I just carry it around so women think I’ve got money, yo.”
Hopes dashed, I thunked him on the forehead with the plastic. “An Italian prostitute doesn’t want your fake plastic. She wants cash—euros—just like
the working girls in Greece. What else is in your pocket? Phone?” I glanced back through the door of the police building. Uniform and Plainclothes were headed our way. “Yikes. Let’s go.”
We bolted down the street, Marika clutching her bountiful chest with one arm, keeping her dress from flying up with the other. Donk loped ahead of us. We followed. I figured he was only a few years past his peak Hide and Seek years, so he probably knew what he was doing.
The nice thing about Naples was that it was twisty and turny, making it easy to get lost—or lose someone. At a fast walk, we rounded a corner, took some more stairs, and found ourselves near the water. Like the buildings with their clashing paint colors, the boats were attention seekers, too. Italy looked a lot like Greece, really. Lots of reds, yellows, and blues. I glanced back.
We’d lost the police escort.
“My Virgin Mary,” Marika muttered, hand shielding her eyes from a slowly retreating sun. Naples had a more familiar view of the sun’s path; Portland was also on the west coast. Volos and the village of Makria faced east.
“What is it?” I asked her.
Stupid question. This was Marika. What she saw was food. Restaurants, cafes, and street vendors sizzling meats on the waterfront. A baker was hawking loaves piled high on a table. Italian bread, warm, fresh, crusty.
My mouth watered. My stomach made growly noises.
Donk followed my gaze all the way to the table. “You hungry?”
“If I do not eat I will die,” Marika said.
“If you do not eat you will lose weight,” Donk told her.
Marika gasped. It was a sharp, dangerous sound, like the sound of knives flying towards your face. I jumped in between them, arms outstretched.
“Back to your corners.”
“The child called me fat.”
“The fatty called me a child. I’m the Donk.”
For the record, Donk’s real name was Yiorgos—George—a name he shunned like it was well-fitting jeans.