by Alex A King
Probably she was right, but I was worried about the kind of person who would stick a fake bomb under my car. What was the point—to scare me? When the question made it out of my mouth, Marika said, “It was probably that little bastard, Donk. He planted the fake bomb and left.”
“Why?” That didn’t sound like Donk. Although I hadn’t expected him to take a summer job as a wannabe assassin, either. For all I knew someone slipped him a few bucks to slap the contraption in place. Donk was a kid. A few bucks would be a small fortune. He was probably at a strip club right now, wedging single euro bills in a stripper’s crack.
Everyone looked at me, horrified.
“Heh,” I said. “I thought I was just thinking that.”
“You must think loud because we all heard you,” Stavros said. He started up the van, checked the mirror and did a quick U-turn. He blasted his horn at a donkey and its owner, walking the wrong way on the road. “You want to take your car?”
I eyed the Beetle. “Is it safe?”
“The guys checked the whole vehicle. No problems.”
“Then I’ll take the car. Marika, Elias, you guys coming to the hospital?”
“If he is going, I am going,” Marika said. “My reflexes are dynamite. Pew, pew.”
I leaned forward to talk to Stavros. “Sorry about the van. If Baboulas asks, blame it on me. She’s less likely to cut off my head and roll the leftovers into a ditch.”
“I hope you are right,” he said.
~ ~ ~
Middle of the afternoon meant easy pickings in the hospital parking lot. We were parked and basking in the air conditioning two minutes after I swung into the hospital’s driveway.
“I will wait for you here,” Marika said, parking herself in one of the plastic lobby chairs. “This way if anyone suspicious walks in I can shoot them.”
“No—no shooting!”
The woman at the reception desk eyed us.
“What is she looking at?” Marika said.
“You.”
Marika waved. “It is okay, I am a professional bodyguard,” she called out. “I get a paycheck and benefits.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Benefits?”
“Baboulas said I could have whatever I wanted.”
“Baboulas wasn’t herself when she said that.”
“What do you mean?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. We’re going upstairs. I’ll call if there’s any trouble.”
“If you hear shooting, that is just me taking out the bad guys.” She scowled at Reception Lady, whose hand was inching toward the phone. The woman was this close to calling for reinforcements. “I need a badge, something that tells people I have a right to shoot things.”
“My Virgin Mary,” Elias muttered.
“That’s called a police badge,” I told Marika.
“Hmm,” she said. “Baboulas would not like it if I joined the police.”
That was an understatement.
We left Marika in the lobby exchanging dirty looks with the receptionist and rode the elevator up to the ICU. The Family was still on duty, parked outside the ward and fake-Melas’s room. His mother was inside, talking with a tall blonde in skinny jeans. She was built like a beautiful broom: lots of hair; slim from the neck down. When she turned around my eyes hooked on the small fortune of stones dangling between a pair of high, round boobs. If there was a God those were fake—the cleavage and the jewels.
“Fake,” Elias said.
“Did I think out loud again?”
“No. But I know fake breasts when I see them.” He went into long, laborious, uncomfortable details about the difference. Finally, the blonde came swishing out the door and he shut up. She glanced at me briefly, then took off on those stupid long legs of hers, bound for wherever perfect people go when they’re not hanging out with the rest of us slobs. Probably one of those swanky places from American Psycho.
Inside the room, Kyria Mela wagged her finger for us to come in.
“How is he?” I said, eyeing the bandage-wrapped figure on the bed. He was Melas’s approximate size and shape, but it wouldn’t fool anyone who knew him well ... or who had fantasized about seeing him naked.
“Eh, as well as can be expected after being shot full of holes,” she said darkly. Her voice dropped. “You know, of course.”
“I know. Can I ...?” I indicated the chair at his side. The dragon stepped back and allowed me to enter the sanctum. A dragon doesn’t mind you checking out its fake gold. I plopped down in the roomy faux leather seat. It farted. Nobody looked at me. They must have been used to the chairs around here. “Hey,” I said to the guy in bandages. “It’s me, Katerina. You asked me to get your phone, so here I am getting your phone. I’m going to slide my hand into the drawer nice and easy and—”
Kyria Mela dropped a cellphone into my lap.
I picked it up. “Is this ...?”
“My son’s phone. I did not want to risk anyone taking it, so I have been keeping it on me, at all times.”
“He needs it. He asked me to get it for him.”
“Of course he did. You would not dare come here and take it if he did not ask it of you.” Her dark eyes searched my face for signs of lies and weakness. Fortunately, Melas really had asked me to get his phone, so the truth was on my side—this time. “Do not bother snooping. He has a password.” She flashed me a guilty look. I stifled my laugh, but she caught me. “It is not what you think. I was looking out for his best interests.”
Using the age-old art of snooping, of course.
“How many passwords did you try?”
“Eh, a few,” she said, easing her hip onto the bed. “Now let me ask you: How is he?”
“Tough. Two of the Germans are dead now, and the other one broke out of jail.”
“Po-po,” she said. “Those idiots. They chose toilet paper over security. Who does that?”
I didn’t tell her I probably would. Once you’ve wiped with newspaper or single ply, you’ll give up just about anything for soft and quilted.
Elias was by the window. “Look,” he said, nodding.
On the sidewalk below, Lopez and Bishop were climbing out of a cab. The two cops were relentless.
Kyria Mela joined us at the window. Her nose wrinkled up.
“What is this? Who is this fat man? Look how fat he is. Is that real or is he wearing one of those fat suits?”
“I think that’s his real fat,” I told Kyria Mela.
“Po-po ... Can you imagine how much he eats?” She made a face. “I hope he does not use a Greek toilet while he is here—he will block the whole system. And this one.” She was talking about Bishop. “Why is he dressed like a unfashionable teenager? Does he think it makes him look younger? It only makes him look like one of those sad, pathetic men who reaches fifty and buys a sports car so women will not notice he has no hair and a pocket of blue pills. What are these two doing? How do you know them?” Her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but try telling my sudden attack of guilt that. “Are they your ... friends?”
“Not friends. They’re American cops. They followed me here.”
“Why?”
“It’s possible they think I had something to do with their dead colleague.”
“Did you?”
“No! I was wrestling a killer in a basement here in Greece when it happened.”
A moment passed while she did something thinking. “Maybe you would make a good wife for my Nikos. You can handle murderers well. But you also attract crazy people and problems, so you cannot marry him.”
“I don’t want to marry him.”
“You will. All the women want to marry him. He has a good job and he is a good-looking boy. And he is built like his father, if you know what I mean.” Then she winked. Or she had something in her eye. I desperately wanted it to be the second one.
“Uh, okay ...”
“Not okay.” She shook her finger at me. “No Nikos for you. I wish I did not like you,
but I like you. Life is full of complications, remember that.”
As if I could forget. I was tripping over complications all over the place. I couldn’t walk from my bedroom to Grandma’s kitchen without complications, especially if my feet were bare.
“Come sit with me if you like,” she said, settling into one of the chairs at fake-Melas’s bedside. Her words said I had a choice. Her tone said no—no choice. I could sit or she could sit me. It must have been fun growing up in the Melas household, although Melas probably had an easier time of it than his siblings. He was the dark-haired golden boy of the family.
“Uh, thank you,” I said and followed her finger to one of the vacant farting chairs.
“Not your friends, though, if they make it up this far. No Greek hospitality for stalkers. Instead, I will show them Turkish hospitality.”
I wasn’t sure the Turks were that cold or frightening, although there was a high probability that they had their own Kyria Mela types. Every culture had them.
“They’re not my friends, I swear.”
Her head turned slowly. I suspected she was about to shoot lasers at me with her eyes. “So you say.”
I mumbled my goodbyes and bolted into the hallway, where I could breathe again.
“She scares me,” Elias said. “Did you see her eyes? I bet she sacrificed something to the gods.”
“She freaks me out, too.”
He pushed the elevator button to go down. “She looks at you like she wants to toss you into an active volcano.”
“Do we have any of those around here?”
“Santorini.”
“Could she throw me that far, do you think?”
“If she asks you to get on a boat with her, say no.”
Good advice—advice I planned to take. Kyria Mela liked me but she didn’t approve of me, which was the same thing but not quite.
The elevator pinged. The doors opened and we got in. This time I pushed the button.
Elias took a deep breath. “About Marika ...”
“It’s a phase,” I said. “Takis has kept her cooped up for years with their kids, and now she’s getting a taste of freedom. She’ll move onto something else soon.”
The elevator pinged again and the doors opened. We stepped into the lobby and I began to scan for Marika, who was conspicuously absent.
“Christ on a cat,” I muttered. I trotted over to reception, where the same rock-faced woman sat hunched over her keyboard. She looked up. Recognition flickered in her eyes.
“Oh. It’s you.”
“Have you seen my friend?”
“She said she was a bodyguard.”
“It’s complicated,” I said. “Where is she?”
The woman pointed.
My eyes followed her finger, through the lobby, out the door. Marika was outside, cuffed to the wheelchair ramp’s railing. She was in the starfish position, trying to hook her shoulder bag’s strap with her foot. Someone had dumped it in the garden, just out of her reach.
“What happened?” I asked the receptionist.
“She did.”
The receptionist’s attention slid back to her keyboard and screen. I was dismissed. Feeling like a naughty schoolchild, I hunched my shoulders and crept outside. At least Elias seemed mostly normal. He hadn’t fired any guns near my head or gotten himself bounced from a hospital. So what if he’d started his career trying to kill me.
“Oh boy,” I said, surveying the damage that was my cousin’s, cousin’s, cousin’s wife.
“Don’t just stand there,” Marika said. “Get my bag.”
I bobbed down and shimmied between the rails, stretching until I managed to snag the strap and pull. It landed at her feet with a plop and an ominous dull clank.
“Guns,” she said matter-of-factly.
“How many do you need?”
“Different guns for different situations. The submachine gun for when I have to shoot a lot of people fast, like an army. A middle size gun for shooting at people one at a time. The smaller gun with a silencer, for when I need to be stealthy. And a tiny gun to strap to the inside of my thigh when we go to fancy places.”
I looked at her skirt. “Why is that one in the bag?”
“Have you ever strapped a gun to your leg? Very uncomfortable. I don’t know how those women on TV do it.”
“Actresses get paid a lot of money.”
“I probably would not mind so much either if Baboulas paid me more.”
My gaze cut to Elias, who was staring into the distance, looking like he was praying silently for a swift death. For his sake and mine, I hoped Marika’s bodyguard phase would pass—and soon.
I assessed the cuffs while Marika poked around inside her bag, one-handed. “I don’t suppose Security left the keys?” I said.
“I will ask.” Elias looked like he’d take any excuse to get away from Marika.
I could get these open easy enough with a piece of wire. Popping handcuffs was something I’d practiced alone Grandma’s guest room with Melas’s cuffs and the help of a YouTube video. The more I thought about it the sadder that sounded.
“I can—” I started.
BANG!
Elias threw himself at me, knocking me to the ground. I shoved him off me and brushed myself off. Marika was frowning into the gun barrel.
“Huh,” Marika mouthed. “That always works on TV.” She aimed at the handcuffs' short chain and fired again. And a third time. My eardrums packed their bags and bailed, stuffing my ears with tiny bells before they exited. My thoughts were accompanied by a small ding-a-ling.
The hospital’s doors burst open, silently. A big, burly Security guard with a gun strapped to his hip and a dead ferret taped under his nose glared out at us.
The dead ferret twitched and jerked.
I held out my hand. “Keys,” I whispered.
Security Guy rolled his eyes and unhooked a key ring. He jammed a tiny key into the cuffs, popping them open. The ferret jiggled around again. I couldn’t hear a word the man was saying, but from his expression I guessed it was rude, threatening, and obscenity-laden. Marika mouthed something about his mother, and he grabbed her by the elbow and marched her to the bottom of the ramp. She clubbed his ear with her tiny gun. He stomped on her foot and made a hasty retreat while she was hopping around, gripping her shoe.
It was official: we were the Stooges.
Elias and I each grabbed one of Marika’s elbows. We steered her along the sidewalk, headed toward the car.
Something grabbed my arm.
“Argh!” My ears were still closed for business, but the sudden rawness in my throat said I’d screamed. I whipped around. Lopez was there, palms up, mouth moving. “Tell someone who can hear you,” I might have said.
~ ~ ~
My hearing returned just in time for the yelling: Takis vs. Marika. I ducked my head and bolted, stopping to pet my goat when he jumped out in front of me. After a quick head-butt and some scratching, he trotted back to his peeps—the compound’s canine collection. I was pretty sure he thought he was one of them, although he probably wondered why he couldn’t lick his own butt.
Grandma was taking a nap, but she called out to me as I snuck past.
“What is that noise?”
“Marika and Takis.”
“What are they fighting about?”
“About that ... Did you give Marika a job as my bodyguard?”
She looked at me, bleary-eyed. She had the face of a basset hound and the body of an orangutan. I wished I’d known her before time hammered her like a set of bongos.
“I thought I dreamed that.”
“No,” I said. “Not a dream.”
She said a word I didn’t know she knew. Mind you, she was possibly around at its inception. Someone saw a young Grandma marching towards them with a gun and spat the word out.
“I don’t think Marika and Takis are going to be doing that for a while,” I said.
“No, but you should before you get too much older. I would
like to know my great-grandchildren before I die, even though immortality is my plan ...”
Not that she was pressuring me or anything.
“ ... In fact, a man is coming here tonight I want you to meet.”
“Grandma ...”
“Just meet him. You might like him. And if you do not ... marry him and maybe get to like him, eh?”
Joke was on her—I wouldn’t be here tonight. I’d already promised Pappas I’d show up at his place for drinks. So I said, “Okay, Grandma.”
~ ~ ~
Elias and I parked at the bottom of the street and panted under a dimming sun that wanted to take one last punch. Why couldn’t it just go away? My lungs were tired of huffing furnace-heated air. The hill rose up ahead of us. From here it looked like a giant finger, flipping the bird. Probably it was my mindset, which was skewed at best. Someone had stuck a fake bomb to my car; that really twists a woman.
Marika had wanted to come, but while we were at the hospital, her boys had spent the afternoon conducting medical experiments on each other, using her kitchen appliances. Now she had to mop up bodily fluids and rush to church to light candles so that her sons wouldn’t become serial killers. I didn’t mention that serial killing was an asset in the Makris family. So now I was climbing a merciless hill with Elias for company. He was dressed for the job in black cargo pants, boots, and a black T-shirt. He wore a gun on his hip and black glasses covering his eyes.
“Have you been taking fashion tips from Xander?”
“No. Why?”
I shook my head. “No reason.”
“Do I look okay?”
“Totally fine.”
“Are you sure? Because Stavros said it suited me, but I don’t know ...”
“If there’s one thing Stavros knows it’s cooking,” I said. Not fashion. Definitely not fashion.
He looked at me, face uncertain. “Okay ...”
Why did everyone have to live on a hill? Probably because Greece was made of shifting land, and shifting land had nowhere to go but up.
We were halfway up to the Pappas house when I noticed a moped following us. It was trying to climb the incline but the motor was having existential issues; if it quit ticking would it remain a moped or would it become a bicycle? Perched on its back were Lopez and Bishop. Bishop was at the rear, holding on like he wasn’t gay—nope, not him. I desperately wanted Lopez to be wearing one of those shirts that read, If you can read this, the bitch fell off. But alas, he was in the same Hawaiian shirt he’d been in earlier. Some things changed, but his wardrobe wasn’t one of them.