by Alex A King
He made a face like he was considering the possibility. “Who can I trust up there?”
“Me. Your parents. Do you have a partner? Probably your partner. Unless you can’t. About fifty percent of the time the partner turns out to be one of the bad guys.”
“No partner. I work with whoever when I need to.”
“Who are you closest to?”
“Pappas.”
“Police Sergeant Pappas? Big guy, wears a food stain right about here?” I pointed to my chest.
He laughed. “That’s Pappas. The food isn’t his fault, though. It’s his wife. She likes to snack while she’s doing the ironing. He doesn’t have the heart or balls to get her to wash his clothes again, so he wears them.”
“Because he loves her? That’s sweet ... even if it is messy.”
“Because he’s scared of her. That’s how Greek men are. We’re scared of our women.”
“Greek women can be scary,” I said, thinking of his mother.
“It’s not that. We can go to war, fight, take bullets, but the only thing that can really hurt us is the loss of a good woman. Guys don’t handle losing love well. So we stay scared.”
“You don’t seem like a guy who is scared of anything.”
He hooked his finger in the neck of my dress, reeled me in until we were hip to hip. “I might be getting that way.” He lowered his lips to my forehead and stamped a warm kiss on my skin. A hundred butterflies began bashing each other in my stomach, battling for whatever it was butterflies battled for. An extra day on earth? Whatever, they were going at it Fox in Socks style, beetles battling beetles in a bottle. I was the bottle.
“When tweedle beetles battle,” I muttered.
“I’m not even going to pretend to understand.”
“I don’t think Seuss translates anyway. We’re the worst idea ever, you and me. It can’t happen.”
“Which is why it’s scary. If not for your family we could be perfect.”
I pulled back. “If not for your job we could be a great idea.”
He looked affronted. “My job? What’s wrong with my job?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You’re a policeman.”
“It’s a good job—an honorable job. And I have work when a lot of Greeks don’t.”
“You and me, we’re the Jets and the Sharks. And we can pretend we’re Tony and Maria but look what happened to them.”
His face was blank. “What are you talking about?”
“West Side Story.”
He tilted his chin up slowly. The down trip was even slower. He had no idea.
“It’s kind of a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet—with dancing and singing.”
He winced. “Sounds terrible.”
“There’s a place for us,” I said. “And maybe a time. But it’s not now and it’s not Greece. Not while I’m a Capulet and you’re a Montague.”
“I don’t know what they are.” His face was moving into mystified territory.
“They’re us,” I said. “Now let’s go see Aunt Rita about a disguise.”
“Can’t,” he said.
“Then I’ll bring her down here.”
He let out a long, pained sigh. “I can’t wait.” But his face said he definitely could.
~ ~ ~
Aunt Rita clapped her hands together in one of those little girlish moves. “A disguise! I love disguises. Sometimes I put on a disguise and pretend to be a man.”
My mind boggled. “That’s ... uh ... I bet you’re good at it.”
“My ex-wife insists on it when I visit my sons. Come, come. You want coffee?”
I’d never been in Aunt Rita’s apartment before. What I had envisioned was something massive with a closet to rival Oprah’s. A garish palace with a fading sort of glamor, a bit like my aunt herself. Instead, she had a modest apartment on the second floor. The only real decorations were dozens of framed photographs of her sons. On the shelves stood a picture of an attractive young man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Dad, alongside his bride. They wore stefana—wedding crowns, simple loops of flowers and ribbons—and while they were smiling for the camera, their eyes were the what-have-we-done kind of crazy.
Aunt Rita before she was Aunt Rita, alongside the former Kyria Makri.
“Thanks, but I’m fine.” I gestured to the photo. “She’s beautiful.”
My aunt shrugged. “Then. Now ... she’s still beautiful, the witch.”
“I was talking about you,” I said. “Look at those cheekbones.”
“This is why you are my favorite niece.”
“I’m your only niece.”
“If I had fifty you would still be my favorite.”
Funnily enough, I believed her. I wished I’d known her my whole life. And I hoped like hell that she was really, truly on my side and wouldn’t stab me in the back ala Brutus.
“So what are we going to do with Melas?”
“It is too bad he won’t let us dress him as a woman. I have an auburn wig ... oh-la-la ... he could be Jane Fonda in Barbarella, or Raquel Welch in everything. He has good bones for cross-dressing, at least in the face. The rest of him ... all man.”
Didn’t I know it. “So what are you thinking?”
Her ruby red lips curved upwards. Melas was going to hate this. Which meant I would love it.
Chapter 9
We were in the dungeon looking Melas over. He wasn’t smiling. I think I would have been worried if he was.
“You’re lucky I’m the law,” he said, “and we usually don’t like killing people. All that paperwork ...”
“Come to the dark side,” Aunt Rita said. “We don’t have paperwork, but we do have Baboulas’s special koulourakia. Well, we did, until Xander took them.” She held out a jacket for him to shrug into. He winced. His side was still giving him trouble. Getting shot will do that.
“Koulourakia? What kind of koulourakia?”
“Moving on,” I said quickly. “Those pants are really working for you.”
“No, no, no.” He straightened the jacket and made a face. “I want to hear about the koulourakia. Why didn’t you bring me any of those?”
“I love leather pants on a man,” my aunt said, changing the subject. “All men should wear them.”
We considered that possibility for a moment, until we presumably struck the Takises and the Papous of the world.
“Ugh,” we said at the same time.
Melas couldn’t look much better, at least from the waist down. He had Captain America’s butt and muscular, but not overgrown, legs. He ran regularly and it showed. The leather was just icing on the delicious cake. Above the hips is where it all went wrong—but that was the point. Or at least I thought it was. Aunt Rita had decked him out like a reject from an 80s hair band. Heavy on the eyeliner. (She couldn’t help herself—men were just screaming for guyliner, she insisted.) A nest of straw-blond hair was hanging around his shoulders, waiting on a family of rats to show up and make themselves at home. The leather jacket had time traveled directly from whichever year shoulder pads had peaked, and they’d hauled a Van Halen T-shirt along with them. Actually, the T-shirt wasn’t so bad. I had one just like it. I mean, who didn’t like Van Halen?
Melas looked dubious. “The idea was to not attract attention.”
“Forget it,” Aunt Rita said. “Have you looked in a mirror ever? Put a sack over your head like a chicken and people will still look. You are too pretty. So we are forced to hide you in plain sight. People will still look, but now because you look like a weirdo.”
He grinned. “I can’t help it if the gods gave me a double helping of good looks.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost sprained something. “I see they swapped that for your modesty.”
“This could all be yours,” he said.
I eyed the jacket, the hair, the eyeliner. “Not even if you put a bow on it.”
His grin spread. “You say that now, but you haven’t seen the bow.”
My aunt was fluffing
Melas’s fake-o hair and backcombing in places. “Katerina if I were you I would wait until you see the bow. Then you can decide, eh?”
“Smart woman, your aunt,” Melas said.
She blew him a kiss.
Kindness was one of his best traits. If he thought my aunt was weird he never said so. He treated her how she wanted to be treated: like a lady.
“Only one problem with this outfit,” he said, “besides everything. I’m not sure I can sit in these pants.”
Aunt Rita had the perfect solution. “So do not sit. I have a leather mini skirt I never sit in. It’s for standing only, at parties and clubs. Not that I go to clubs so much anymore. Sit in leather or move too much and it stretches. Then it is ruined, unless you know a good tailor or seamstress who can sometimes redo the seams.”
“How am I supposed to get around?” Melas wanted to know.
“The farm has a truck, I am sure. You can lie in the back and Katerina can drive.”
“Christ,” Melas said. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
“I can’t believe it either,” I mumbled. And I couldn’t. He must really want to get to the bottom of this German counterfeiting business. Probably I’d go crazy too if I was hiding in Grandma’s dungeon, no matter how swanky the accommodations. “Are you ready?”
“No.”
I grabbed my cross body bag, threw the strap over my head and settled the bag on my hip. “Then let’s go.”
~ ~ ~
I needed an invisibility cloak. People were staring. Not at me—at the 80s freak show in the passenger seat. Melas shunned the truck, saying there was no way he’d lie in the back while I ferried him around, so we were in the Beetle. Originally he had squeaked his way into the driver’s seat but couldn’t work the peddles without working up to it. Finally, Aunt Rita had suggested she redo the outfit and put him in one of her dresses and maybe a little fuchsia lipstick. I’d never seen a man move faster—and in skintight leather pants, too.
Now we were cruising along the promenade. We had a few minutes before the barriers—a collection of barrels and wooden structures—sealed off the ends of the waterfront road, but masses of people were still clogging the sidewalks, caught up in that twilight gap between day and night. Some were early for the nightly party. Others were pulling seaweed out of their swim bottoms and glowing like stop lights. Tourists never knew when to quit the sun. They staggered onto the trains, planes, and boats that carried them home, shedding skin, vowing they’d take it easier next time their vacations rolled around.
“They’re looking at me, aren’t they?” Melas was staring straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact with the crowd.
“Well, to be fair they haven’t anything like you since the 80s. Some of them weren’t even born then, so they’ve never seen anything like you except in photographs. You’re probably on YouTube now. Definitely on Reddit.”
“This is supposed to be a disguise.”
“And it is,” I said. “No one knows it’s you. Which way?”
He might have looked dubious; it was hard to tell under the war paint. “Next right.”
I followed his directions inland, to a steep, narrow street that had enough room for my car and maybe a bicycle or an underfed donkey to pass each other. The houses were sporting the common unfinished look, whether they were single, double or triple-storied.
“Why are there so many unfinished houses in Greece?”
“Lower taxes,” Melas said. “As soon as a house is complete the property taxes shoot up, so most people avoid the expense by leaving something left undone.”
Huh. Greeks had all kinds of creative ways of dodging taxes. In America we just formed our own religions and claimed non-profit status ... or became wildly wealthy so we could take advantage of loopholes. When I told Melas this he just stared at me and shook his head. I think we were too weird for him.
Police Sergeant Pappas’ house was two-story, white bumpy stucco, with dull red shutters that looked recently painted. In a place where most houses were suffering from sunstroke, this one was downright perky. The yard was a tangle of potted plants and vine that clambered over everything like a pack of wild monkeys. It was straight out of The Jungle Book. Before I followed Melas into the yard I glanced around for tigers and bears singing about bare necessities.
Normally Greek protocol, at least in this part of the country, was to stand outside someone’s gate and yell their name until they called you in or turned the hose on you. If you were family you could holler as you walked through the yard to the door. If you made your way to the front door without making a sound, you were probably Romany and therefore undesirable company. The partially nomadic people sent small bundles of people—usually a woman or two and a flock of their cutest children—door-to-door, begging for money and spitting out curses if you shooed them away. I’d only witnessed the ritual from a distance; no one came begging at Grandma’s place, unless they were begging for their life. Melas wasn’t family and he wasn’t Romany. He was a neon sign. Half the neighborhood poured into the street to gawk at the funny man. Greeks weren’t big on discretion; and anyway, everyone else was doing it, so why not?
I didn’t point any of this out to him. The force of his glare might blast me off my feet, and I’d already witnessed two explosions today. He stomped up to the screen door in ignorance. Better that way.
He rapped on the frame. “Pappas, you there?”
There was movement inside, then the police sergeant rolled in front of the open door like a massive boulder in search of lower ground and something to crush. His eyes were wide, his mouth hanging slowly open. He snapped it shut when a fly buzzed too close. Then a swat came out of nowhere and slapped that thing out of the sky, leaving a small black stain on the stucco.
“Melas? Is that you?”
Melas looked down at himself. “Oh yeah, it’s my disguise.” He hooked his thumb in my direction, dumping all the blame on me.
“How ... Why aren’t you in the hospital?”
Melas glanced around. “Can we come in?”
“Sure, sure.” Pappas stepped back, so we could file through. “You want coffee? Irini, coffee! Wait—have you met Despinida Makris?” he called out. “I remembered the S,” he said to me.
“Just Katerina is fine,” I said. It was a respect thing—and Greeks were big on respect, at least to your face, so they didn’t look bad—but tacking on the Greek form of Miss made me feel like a spinster landowner in the 1800s.
His eyes went shifty, as though he was trying to figure out if I was pulling his leg, waiting for him to screw up so I could have someone in my family punch holes in him with bullets. His struggle was real.
“Just Katerina, I promise,” I said.
“Uh ... yeah ... sure,” he said vaguely.
A tiny blonde kewpie doll appeared at his elbow. Big, round green eyes. Lips the color of strawberry shower gel. She was twenty-something and one of the most adorable women I’d ever seen in person. I wanted to crawl into a dumpster, where I belonged.
This was the police sergeant’s wife?
She came at me like a pretty bullet. “Katerina! I would know you anywhere. I saw you in the newspaper and knew instantly we could be best friends, if ever we met.” There were hugs, there were continental kisses, and then there were more hugs of the anaconda kind. By the time she released me I felt like I’d been standing on a train in Tokyo for seven days straight. “I’m Irini,” she chirped. “You want coffee? You can have all you can drink.” She looked at Melas and sniffed. “I suppose you can have some, too.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged. What was that all about? Usually women loved Melas. Even Grandma, who regularly threatened to cut off his limbs for standing too close to me, had never tried to kill him.
“We can’t stay,” Melas said.
Irini aimed a disappointed sniff in my direction.
“You want to explain to me why you’re not in the hospital?” Pappas said. “Don’t misunderstand�
�I’m glad. Really glad. But ... I don’t get it.”
Melas gave him the Cliff’s Notes. The police sergeant’s face was thoughtful, grim, the way it always was. I wasn’t sure he did smiling. When Melas was done the big guy clapped him on the padded shoulder.
“Whatever you need,” he said. “We will catch these malakes.”
“Pictures,” Melas said. “I need Katerina to identify the third man at Baby Dimitri’s shop.”
Pappas nodded. “Come see me tomorrow at work,” he said to me.
“Can’t you just ask him his name?” Irini Pappas said. “That’s what I do if I want to know who someone is.”
The men stared at her. They were this close to rolling their eyes. So I stepped in to prevent them from going patronizing cop on her for what was a reasonable question.
“We don’t know for sure which team Baby Dimitri is on or what his connection is to this man. Talking to the police, or me, might put him in a difficult position.”
I didn’t say deadly position, but that’s what I meant. If Baby Dimitri sang it could get him killed. One man was already dead. The lower the body count the better.
~ ~ ~
On the way back to the car, I verbally tackled Melas.
“What’s with you and Irini Pappas?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing—ha. She really doesn’t like you. There has to be a reason.”
“No reason,” he said. “She’s crazy.”
“Crazy how?”
“She’s a woman.”
“Tell me you didn’t just call all women crazy.”
“All women are crazy, in their own way. They’re not like men.”
“Yes, they don’t lobotomize us at birth.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No ...”
“You’re complicated. Men are simple. When we’re angry with another man we fight and then it’s over. You women hold grudges forever.”
My stomach collapsed. “Oh boy, you dated her?”
“I dated her sister. We broke up. The end.”
Now things were getting less hazy. “Oh.”
“See? You’re acting weird now. That’s what I was trying to avoid.”