Athenian Blues

by Pol Koutsakis

  “It’s lovely to see you again,” Sam said, hugging me at the door. Unlike her sister, who had inherited the Mediterranean characteristics of their Greek mother, Sam had her father’s pale complexion, which always made her seem vulnerable.

  “Are you still working out?” she asked as she touched my arm, but before I could reply she led me into the living room, where cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits and chocolates were waiting.

  “How’s Jackie?” I asked, more because I knew it was the right thing to say than because I really cared.

  “In her own words, she’s never had more fun. That’s what she emailed last week from China. I really don’t know just what she enjoys in that job of hers.”

  I wasn’t sure that she knew exactly what her sister’s job was. Jackie swore that she didn’t, because she’d only worry all the time. So I changed the subject.

  “I see you’ve made a few changes to the place.”

  She laughed.

  “That’s a hell of an understatement,” she said.

  She had turned the two-bedroom apartment into a professional hair salon.

  “You still working for TV and movies?” I asked.

  “When there’s a job. Which becomes rarer and rarer. I’ve only got one TV series now, and I’m lucky to get even that. You know most TV stations will be forced to close, now that only four public channels are allowed in the whole country.”

  I nodded.

  “And movies were always an extreme sport in Greece. So here I am.”

  She opened her hands as if to embrace the apartment.

  “Nice,” I said, though I wasn’t being entirely sincere.

  Our knees were touching and there was something in the way she kept looking at me and had grabbed my arm… The memories from the apartment were giving me ideas I shouldn’t have.

  “Not really nice, but it was the best I could do. I don’t pay any rent, as the apartment is mine, or any tax – I’m supposedly only living here. I’m not going to pay those bastards two thirds of my income to get nothing back for my taxes.”

  “Still, if someone tells on you…”

  “I’ll find a way to sue them for misconduct and the case will be in the courts for a decade. But you aren’t here to talk about me and tax evasion, are you?”

  “No.”

  She moved a little away from me and crossed her legs.

  “As I told you on the phone, I’m helping out a friend who’s looking into the Aliki Stylianou case,” I said.

  Jackie had mentioned to Sam that I was working in private law enforcement. Which was close to the truth if you substituted “justice” for “law”.

  “That can’t be fun,” she said. “I’ve been following the news, like, hourly. Poor Elsa… and everyone’s speculating about Aliki and her husband… What’s really going on?”

  “I’ll be glad to tell you when I find out myself. I know from Hermes Peppas that you were the hair stylist to both Aliki and Elsa, and they loved your work.”

  “Well… I’m good, if I say so myself,” she smiled.

  Her smile lit up her face and made her nose seem less pointed.

  “Anything weird that you might have noticed in their behaviour?”

  “You mean towards each other?”

  “And on their own.”

  “I’d seldom see them speak to each other; they barely said ‘hi’. I’d go as far as saying they deliberately ignored each other – but that’s common in TV, actresses often act weird around one another.”

  Unless they’re lovers and want to hide it from everybody.

  “But it’s not like they met often. Elsa kept getting bigger and bigger scenes to play and was in her trailer with her acting coach, or talking to Regoudis, her sugar daddy. Aliki just comes for a few takes, does her scenes and leaves. Other than that, what else can I tell you…? They had different attitudes. Aliki doesn’t really care much about how she’ll appear on screen; whatever I do with her hair she knows she’ll look like a goddess, so she’s all about the acting, she loves it even if it’s a one-minute scene.”

  “Elsa didn’t enjoy it?”

  “Not that much. I think she loved being in the spotlight more. She had to be perfectly groomed before even leaving her trailer. Wasn’t too difficult, of course, the way she looked, but she was more peculiar… God, I’m saying ‘was’ and I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “Did you like them?”

  “As clients?”

  “As people.”

  “Reasonably. Didn’t have any problems with them, but didn’t become friends either.”

  “Anything peculiar that you may have noticed? Some phone call that you happened to overhear, something they said?”

  “Not really.”

  “Someone you saw them with and seemed strange, who had no reason to be there? Like this guy?” I showed her the photo of Linesman.

  “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “How about this one? He worked as Aliki’s bodyguard,” I said, and showed her a picture of Makis.

  “He’s the one…”

  She meant “the one that was murdered”. I nodded.

  “I’d seen him waiting for her, a few times. She was very friendly towards him.”

  “Perhaps too friendly?”

  “You mean… I don’t know, I’m not sure about that. Aliki has a very flirtatious manner, the way she talks anyone might think she’s coming on to them, but she isn’t, it’s just her way of speaking, moving…”

  I knew what she meant.

  “It doesn’t mean she’s sleeping with everyone she’s friendly with,” Sam said.

  I wasn’t too sure about that, based on the information I’d recently gathered.

  “For example, she wasn’t more friendly with him than with her other bodyguard,” Sam continued.

  “What other bodyguard?”

  “There were two of them, the one you showed me and a very good-looking one. Some days one would come to get her, some days the other.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “No, I never spoke to him, or heard him speak. I once tried to attract his attention, but no luck, he was all business,” she said, and smiled mischievously.

  A second bodyguard. If Vassilis was the killer, he must have had help, both for Elsa’s murder – as he was highly unlikely to shoot someone in the middle of the road – and for hanging Makis on the chandelier.

  A second bodyguard, which Vassilis had neglected to mention, just like he had neglected to tell us about his affair with Elsa. I ate a couple of cocoa- and hazelnut-filled wafers. I thought that maybe I should stay there, spend my time eating biscuits and letting Sam stroke my arm. Maybe inertia was the secret of a happy life.

  If it was, I wasn’t yet ready to embrace it.

  35

  I called Drag, gave him Sam’s number and told him she was expecting his call if he thought she should see a police sketch artist to describe the second bodyguard. The description she gave me could fit thousands of Athenians.

  Drag had some news from his end.

  “Remember Tolis?” he asked me.

  Tolis was a computer whiz who Drag had wanted to hire for his team for quite a while. He had gone to his boss and said he should create a job for Tolis immediately, as there was no one who was anywhere near as smart in their IT department. The chief of police had asked the minister of citizen protection, who had asked the minister of administrative reform, who has asked the minister of finance, who had asked the prime minister, who had asked the representatives of the Quartet. But before Tolis’ salary became a matter for endless negotiation between the European Central Bank, the IMF, the European Commission and the European Stability Mechanism, Drag found a millionaire whose name he’d once cleared to fund the new post.

  “I remember Tolis,” I said.

  “He managed to find who had posted the photo Maria came up with, with Elsa, Aliki and Linesman.”

  “And?”

  “We’ve got him he
re, at headquarters. Fifties, gay-hater, lives with his mother. Says he can’t remember when he took the photo but he recalls that Elsa and Aliki were all but fucking each other and the guy who was with them in that bar.”

  “Linesman?”

  “Nope. He can’t even remember if Linesman was in Aliki’s company that night. I showed him photos of Vassilis, Makis, Regoudis, Peppas and Vrettos. Again nothing. I tried with photos of the actors from the TV series Aliki and Elsa were in. Nada. It was another guy. And our photographer can’t remember the guy’s features, said it was dark and all his attention was on the girls.”

  “If you get a decent sketch from Sam’s description, show it to him and see if that jogs his memory. There’s one man we’re missing in every step of this story. If Vassilis is still our main suspect, we need to find the guy who must have helped him. He could be the key to everything.”

  Drag agreed, and in return pointed me towards the place Takis Vrettos was in rehab.

  “Rehabilitation clinic”. Maybe you have an image of inmates locked up in white rooms, howling like wolves as they endure the symptoms of withdrawal. Maybe you think of hollow-eyed young women dressed in rags, sweating and screaming and clawing at the walls as they go cold turkey. The place Takis was in was nothing like that.

  The drive was choked with Porsches and Ferraris. Bodyguards surrounded a well-known young actor who was entwined with his girlfriend, screaming with laughter, both coked up to the eyeballs. The place looked and felt like a luxury hotel, and the staff and security dressed and behaved appropriately, treating their clients with the utmost politeness. Only someone who attempted to disturb their guests’ privacy would be regarded as an unwelcome intruder.

  A short, stout man with thick, black, curly hair hurried over to me, all smiles. The name-sign on his lapel read “Zissis”. “Is someone looking after you, Mr…?”

  “Louridis. Labis Louridis.”

  “Mr Louridis, how can I be of service to you?”

  “I want to speak to Mr Vrettos.”

  “And you are…?”

  “A colleague.”

  “Unfortunately we have strict instructions not to allow anyone to disturb him.”

  “He will want to see me, Zissis.”

  His smile never faltered as he sized me up, trying to decide whether or not to believe me. I smiled back.

  “Just a minute…” he said.

  I had passed the first test. He tapped at his computer to find Takis’ room number, but he kept the screen hidden from me. If I’d known his room number I might have been able to make a sprint for the stairs behind the lift, which seemed to be unguarded, but I didn’t want to make a scene, and I certainly didn’t want another police sketch of me doing the rounds in the media, even if this one had a beard. I looked around for inspiration, taking in the deep-pile, crimson carpets, the huge marble fireplace, the tasteful sculptures and paintings on the walls, the signs for the heated swimming pool, the billiard room and the squash courts. None of them sparked an idea of how I might get to Takis if he refused to see me. Zissis was talking to him in a low voice.

  “Did you say Louridis?” he asked, glancing up at me.

  “Louridis, yes. I’m Hermes Peppas’ manager. I want to talk to Mr Vrettos about an ad for Omikron that my client would like to direct.”

  Zissis conveyed my message word-for-word. Then he said “yes” several times and put the phone down. “You can go up to room 603 in ten minutes. In the meantime, if you would like to wait in our café, I’ll arrange for somebody to escort you.”

  In the café I ordered some kind of sweet from the long list on the menu, more out of curiosity than anything, because each one cost as much as a whole meal in a normal restaurant. What arrived on my table within a few minutes wasn’t enough to satisfy a half-starved sparrow, but the taste was extraordinary. It reminded me of Luisa, a work colleague of Teri’s, who never stayed with a client for more than an hour. However much money she was offered for more time to enjoy her talents, her standard reply was “Next time. I’m better in small portions.”

  After ten minutes I returned to the reception desk. Zissis gestured to one of the security staff who was about my size, but maybe heavier. We eyed each other as he escorted me to the lift, and went up to the sixth floor in complete silence. When I knocked at room 603, the door opened but the face that met me was certainly not that of Takis Vrettos.

  “Mr Louridis…” said the face.

  “Good day.”

  “We’ve never met, but I’ve heard about you. You seem… different from the descriptions.”

  “Better in the flesh, I hope.”

  “Vanessa Ferri. I’m Takis’ advisor,” she said briskly, thrusting out a cool hand.

  Vanessa. Advisor. She was barely twenty. Well, at least he had taste. She was tall, graceful, with huge brown eyes and blond hair tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing a designer-label suit, which failed to make her look more mature and serious.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The suite consisted of three large rooms, the door to one of which was closed. I saw a jumble of clothes thrown on a bed as I followed Vanessa into the lounge and sat on a large sofa. Maybe she needed the ten minutes to decide what to wear.

  Vanessa sat in a rocking chair, tucked one long leg under the other and started to rock herself.

  “I’m listening.”

  She’d probably seen a film with managers in it and was trying to mimic their behaviour. “I would prefer Takis to be present.”

  “Takis is resting. He’s come here for some peace and quiet and he’s not seeing anyone. I only convey what’s absolutely necessary. He is one of the most successful businessmen in this country, and we have to protect talent. You certainly understand that, having Peppas as a client.”

  “Mr Peppas told me to speak only with Takis. My understanding was that, because of their friendship, Takis would agree.”

  “Tell him to come in person, if they are such good friends. As his manager you are only entitled to speak with me. Understood?”

  For a twenty-year-old she had an extremely sharp tongue. So sharp she might cut herself.

  I stood up.

  “Mr Peppas wants to make an ad that will completely change the image people have of banks in Greece. Everyone despises banks now, no one trusts them. We can change this. We will change this. If you’re not interested, we’ll go elsewhere… Good day.”

  “Hey, baby!”

  Takis appeared. Thin, medium height, greying hair spiked with gel, small dark eyes, and an earring in his left ear. Close up he seemed much older than the photos all over the media. His timing was so perfect I assumed he’d been eavesdropping, but one glance was enough to disprove that: apart from a glittering tiara he was stark naked and seemed to be spaced out of his mind. “Baby! Where you been all this time? I’m waiting for you!”

  Vanessa looked uneasy. This obviously wasn’t what she’d planned. “Takis, I’m talking to Mr Louridis, who’s the manager of…”

  “Baby, I told you, I’m waiting. I want you now. Tell the jerk to phone later.”

  It took him a few seconds to focus his eyes and realize that I was actually there.

  “You’re Loumidis?”

  “Louridis.”

  “Whatever. What do you want?”

  “To talk about some beautiful memories.”

  I stepped up close to him and took out the photo that Peppas had given me. Comparing it with the naked man in front of me I saw that his belly had got much smaller. It wasn’t his only small anatomical feature.

  “What are you talking about? What’s this?” Vanessa demanded, trying to see the photograph.

  The brain can do amazing things. Takis’ seemed to clear as soon as he saw the photograph. He’d sobered up enough to hide it behind his back, tell his girlfriend not to stick her nose in and send her off so that we could be alone.

  “But where can I go?” she asked plaintively.

  “Anywhere you like. Have a massage or
something. Off you go!”

  She left, slamming the door as hard as she could. Takis didn’t even wince. He sat down in the rocking chair and was looking at the photograph. He was still wearing the tiara.

  “Whose manager did you say you were?” he asked.

  “My own.”

  There was no reason to keep up the charade.

  “Of course. And the only person who could have given you this is Hermes Peppas. Strange. I don’t remember it being taken. Maybe I had popped one too many that evening. The question is, why Hermes gave it to you. I thought we were friends – unless you stole it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who gave it to me or why.”

  “Right. If these things don’t matter to you, let’s talk about something that does. Like how much you’re asking for it. This and any copies you’ve made. And whether you can persuade me that you haven’t scanned and stored it electronically, because otherwise you’re not getting a cent out of me. Start with how much.”

  “I don’t want money.”

  “I’ll bet,” he sniggered.

  I stared at him.

  “I don’t want money,” I repeated.

  The second time I was perhaps more convincing, because he fell quiet for a while, his eyes fixed on me.

  “What do you want?”

  “Information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “About Aliki Stylianou’s disappearance. And anything you can say to help me find out where she is.”

  “What makes you think I know any more than Hermes?”

  “I’m asking if you do.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “I want you to try and remember. From what I’ve been told you and Aliki were together for some time.”

  “We were never seen in public. We never appeared together, we just fucked. I’m going to have a drink, what about you?”

  “No.”