The Devil Takes Half

by Leta Serafim

  Patronas remembered Kifissia fondly as a place with towering plane trees and tourists riding in horse drawn carriages. There’d been water everywhere in those days, running along the road in little canals. It was an oasis in the sun washed plains of Attica. Now Kifissia was an overbuilt, expensive suburb with cars parked everywhere and stores selling designer goods, Gucci and the like. Patronas paid the cab driver and pushed open the glass door of the hospital. The doctor had said Papa Michalis was housed in the new wing. A modern, seven story building, this portion of KAT had been built as part of the preparations for the Olympic Games. Thousands worked here now, and it was a confusing labyrinth, the biggest medical facility Patronas had ever seen.

  “The man from Chios is in the Intensive Care Unit,” a Filipino nurse told Patronas. “He’s very weak. You can’t stay long.”

  Papa Michalis was lying in a hospital bed, apparently asleep. He had wires hooked up to the side of his neck, IVs attached to both of his hands, and a bag of yellowish solution dripping into one arm. His head was swathed with bandages and his skin was mottled, covered with purple bruises. Patronas couldn’t tell if the bruises were the result of the attack or of the doctors’ efforts to save him.

  “Papa Michalis?”

  The priest stirred when he heard his name and opened his eyes. He tried to sit up, but the effort cost him and he fell back on the bed. He looked a hundred years old.

  Patronas kept his eyes focused on the old man’s face, trying to block out the machines, the bag of blood hanging up next to the bed, the bag of blood draining beneath it. “Did you see the man who did this to you?”

  The curtains were drawn, and it was too dark to read the priest’s expression, the only light in the room the green readings of the monitors. Patronas felt as if he were underwater. As if there was no air. He longed for a cigarette. He hated hospitals.

  “We found footprints leading away from where you fell. Whoever did it walked through your blood without realizing it.”

  “Did you take an impression?” Forensics again. Even though he was broken in two, the priest wanted to play detective. Patronas found this unbearably sad.

  “No. The cobblestones were too uneven. There was one interesting thing, though. They didn’t lead anywhere. They just stopped.”

  “A ghost, you think?” The smile was feeble, but it was there.

  “No, Papa Michalis, I don’t think it was a ghost. I think it was a grave robber. That’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it? You and whoever did this to you. You’ve been looting the site. That’s why Eleni and Petros were killed. They were involved in it, too, which makes you an accessory to murder.”

  The priest turned away. “It’s not my fault what happened to them.”

  “What I don’t understand is how you, a priest, could hide something like that and go on hiding it after what happened.” Patronas fought to keep his voice down, surprised at how angry he was. “How you, a man of God, could shield a murderer.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” the priest whimpered. “You don’t understand.”

  “I found everything, Father, everything. In a church of all places—the gold, the jewelry. Museum quality, all of it.” The monitors were flickering. Patronas thought he probably had another minute before the nurse appeared. “Question is: how did it get there? How did it find its way into the crypt, behind a padlocked door?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “As soon as I get back to Chios, I’m going to bring in the experts and we’re going to dust everything in that room for prints, and I’ll bet money we won’t just find yours, Father. No, my guess is we’ll find Eleni’s or Petros’. One of them was smuggling and you were helping them. Now I want to know which one it was.”

  “What difference does it make now?” The priest fidgeted with his blanket. “They’re both dead. You can donate everything to a university.”

  “Father, tell me.”

  He shook his head. “It is better to lose an eye than one’s good name.”

  “Father, whoever killed them isn’t done. He’ll keep killing until he gets what he wants. Until he finds that crypt and empties it.”

  “ ‘Him’ again. It’s always ‘him’ with you. I told you before: You have no evidence it’s a he.” His voice grew faint and he began slurring his words as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

  * * *

  Patronas spent the night in a plastic chair outside the priest’s room, sharing the space with the family of a car accident victim. The women in the group cried for hours.

  Periodically, he’d get up and check on the priest. Papa Michalis slept fitfully, crying out in his sleep. Though Patronas tried, he couldn’t make out what the priest was saying. He was too drugged, whatever he was shouting impossible to understand.

  He seemed better the next morning, sitting up in bed while a young aide washed his face. The bandage on his head was smaller and he was breathing without oxygen.

  He still refused to cooperate.

  “Don’t you want us to catch him, the person who did this to you?” Patronas asked. “Don’t you want him punished?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I am a Christian priest, and one of the tenets of Christianity is that when a wrong is done to you, even a great wrong, you turn the other cheek. That’s what I intend to do. To turn the other cheek.”

  “Father, if you don’t start cooperating, I’m going to lock you up. I swear it. I’ll throw you in jail, IVs, heart monitors and all.”

  “Go ahead. The newspapers will have a field day. You’ll lose your job. They’ll talk about you on television.”

  The story came out in fits and starts. “They were Petros’ things,” the priest finally admitted. “I was holding them for him in my room in that armoire you saw, the one against the wall. I didn’t know what to do with them after he died. I was afraid to leave them. Suppose you or one of your men stumbled across them? I would have been—how do the Americans say?—‘busted.’ So I bought a padlock and moved it all into the crypt. I thought it was a good place. I hadn’t shown the crypt to you and nobody else knew about it. These days no one goes to church. Soon, my brethren and I, we will be obsolete.”

  “You moved everything yourself?”

  The priest nodded. “It wasn’t easy. I had to take the bones out and move them separately. It took me most of the night.”

  “When was this?”

  “The night I was attacked. I’d just finished.”

  “You were in town during the day. Do you think someone followed you into the monastery?” That would solve the puzzle of the locked door.

  “No. I was nervous. I bolted the door as soon as I got there. I kept looking over my shoulder. It was still light then. I would have seen. There was no one in the courtyard. No one anywhere near me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I had a feeling someone was watching me at the laiki, but only for a moment. At the time, I thought it was God, angry at me for desecrating his house.” He closed his eyes, leaned back on the pillow. “Now, of course, I know better.”

  “How about the tunnel? Are you sure it was locked?”

  “Yes. I was afraid. It was getting dark and I’m an old man.”

  “When you were moving the artifacts, did you hear anything?”

  “Mice. Perhaps an owl. Creatures of the night.”

  Patronas was taking everything down in his notebook. “You yourself didn’t take the artifacts from the dig site. Petros was the thief.”

  “Petros was a boy who wanted a motorcycle. A poor boy, who wanted to ride through town with a pretty girl, to rev his engine and make a big noise. When he found those things ….” The priest hesitated. “Of course he was tempted. The truth is, I never knew exactly what he was storing in the armoire. He came and went as he pleased. Once or twice I saw him bring in gold. Other times, pottery, a scrap of metal. He kept it to himself. We agreed it was better that way.”

  “When did all this start?”


  “Around the end of June, I think it was. He told me there was so much down there, no one would miss it. A little pilfering, that’s all. A little selling off of the less significant items.”

  “Father, there’s enough there for a museum. That ivory statue? That’s hardly a ‘less significant item.’ What else had he dug up? The Nike of Samothrace? The Rosetta Stone?”

  “I don’t know. He never said. He said it would be dangerous for me, that I shouldn’t get involved. So I left him alone. I didn’t know what was in there and I was happy in my ignorance. I was as surprised as anyone when I saw what he’d collected.”

  “You knew what he was doing was illegal.”

  “Petros said he’d use the money to help his grandmother. But the truth was, all he cared about was motorcycles, the bigger the better. He was a boy. That was his dream. So he stole a little. He meant no harm.”

  “Who did he sell the artifacts to?”

  “I don’t know. I was just a stop on the underground railroad, as it were, a way station.”

  “The loot couldn’t have come from the dig site. There’s nothing there. So where did he get it?”

  The machines began to flicker and an alarm bell sounded. The nurse came in and checked the priest’s vital signs. “You have to leave,” she told the chief officer. “He needs to rest.”

  “Yes,” he told her, “just one moment.” To the priest, he said, “Petros had to be digging somewhere else. Tell me where.”

  “I wish I knew,” the priest said. The nurse gave him an injection and his head lolled back. He muttered something before he slept. “The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the Lord is upon many waters.”

  * * *

  Patronas visited the priest once more before returning to Chios. Papa Michalis had said something important the last time they’d been together, but he couldn’t pin down what it was. He was surprised to find the priest chatting with a young nurse, who was spoon feeding him pistachio ice cream. Some color had returned to his cheeks, and he gave a little wave when he saw Patronas.

  “Chief Officer!”

  Perhaps he’d been wrong, Patronas thought, and the priest would survive after all. His heart was beating, steadily if erratically. As for the rest, the concussion, the stitched up skull, it probably wouldn’t have any long-term effects. God knows, he was arteriosklirotikos, hard-headed enough.

  “You’ve been here for almost a week,” Papa Michalis said. “Your wife will be glad to see you when you get home.”

  “Sure she will. She’ll greet me with open arms the way a hawk does a field mouse.”

  “Come, come. I’ve met your wife. She’s not as bad as all that.” He winked at the nurse. “Show her a little kindness and she’ll come around. That woman of yours, she’ll bloom like a rose.” He motioned for the nurse to give him more ice cream.

  “A rose? My Dimitra?” Patronas looked at the IVs with interest, wondering what they were pumping into the old man besides ice cream. Opiates? No, impossible. It must be hallucinogenics. “No offense, Father, but you’re a priest. What do you know of women?”

  “I know women. I had a mother.”

  “Trust me, Father. Wives and mothers, they’re not the same.”

  As weak as he was, Papa Michalis was unwilling to concede the point. “St. Paul said, ‘I understand all mysteries and all knowledge and I can move mountains, yet without love I am nothing ….’ ”

  “St. Paul was celibate, Father. He had no wife.” He patted his pockets for his cigarettes. “I’ve got to go. If you need anything, call me. I left the number of my cellphone at the nursing station.”

  “Wait. Before you go, there’s something I must tell you.” Papa Michalis reached for Patronas and pulled him closer. “Those questions you asked me? The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know where Petros was digging or who he was selling to. I thought what he was doing, what we were doing, was harmless. I’m a stupid old man. You were right. I should have come to you in the beginning. If I’d come to you, the two of them, they’d still be alive.”

  There were tears in the old man’s eyes. Patronas got a tissue and gently wiped Papa Michalis’ wrinkled face. “Let it go, Father. What’s done is done. For God’s sake, let it go.”

  Chapter 18

  From the devil’s farm, neither kids, nor lambs.

  —Greek proverb

  Surrounded by a barbed wire fence, the Chios airport consisted of a single runway in a field of grass. The winds of August had started, and dust stung Patronas’ eyes as he crossed the tarmac. A crowd of Greek-Americans were in the terminal, talking to their relatives from Chios while they waited for their suitcases. The two groups were uncomfortable with one another, the kissing of the cheeks perfunctory, the ritualized greetings stiff. “Geia sou, paidi mou,” the natives said as they looked the new arrivals over, taking in the tight jeans on a middle-aged woman, the tattoo on the arm of her son.

  The Chinese called those who lived abroad ‘overseas Chinese’ and mocked them. They were not considered real Chinese, but rather an unfortunate hybrid, damaged by their association with the outside world and the strange ideas and customs they picked up there. Judging by the interplay between the Chiots and the Greek-Americans, there were ‘overseas Greeks’ as well, and they, too, were considered inferior by the native-born. The new arrivals were Greeks … but not quite. Greeks … well, sort of. Watching them, Patronas felt sorry for the new arrivals. Their need to belong, so obvious it was almost palpable.

  A restless people since the dawn of time, Greeks had journeyed forth to seek their fortunes. Once it had been Troy, now it was the United States. These voyages had become a cornerstone of the Greek experience, the agony of leaving and joy of return, a theme in the culture since the time of Homer. There was even a song about it, “Paloma,” they played in Piareaus for the immigrants on the big boats bound for America. Whatever they’d been seeking, they hadn’t found it, those itinerant Greeks, judging by the ones who returned summer after summer, seeking the remembered paradise of their childhoods, a way of life that had long since vanished. For them, life was a constant journey home. Like Lot’s wife, they were incapable of going forward, of fully living anywhere else, because they were so busy looking back, grieving for what they’d left behind.

  Giorgos Tembelos met him at the airport. “How is the priest?”

  “Holding steady.”

  “He say anything about who did it?”

  “He didn’t remember much. Only that when he tried to grab him, he couldn’t get a grip, that he was ‘slippery.’ ”

  “Slippery, eh?” Tembelos started the car and backed out of the parking lot.

  “Did you interview Titina Argentis and Petros’ grandmother, find out what they were fighting about?”

  Tembelos nodded. “Seems Eleni Argentis had a box of stuff that belonged to Petros. A wristwatch he’d broken at the dig, some CDs, that kind of thing. Grandma wanted it back.”

  “Anything of value in the box?”

  “No. Kid had nothing.”

  “How about Manos Kleftis? Did you check him out with the police on Mykonos?”

  “Yes. No police record.”

  “How about the boy’s mother?”

  “Voula? Has stayed at her mother’s side since you left. Boyfriend, on the other hand, he’s been busy, took a day trip to Turkey and came back with a trunk full of cheap jewelry. Spent time at the beach, too. Swimming and talking to the foreign women. Partial to Swedes, that one—blondes.”

  “I ran the archeologists’ passports, too. They’re who they say they are. I would have called England and the United States, to run background checks, but my English ....” He shrugged.

  “Ach,” Patronas muttered. That meant he’d have to do it.

  * * *

  According to the police logbook, there’d been a second altercation between Titina Argentis and Petros’ grandmother, in addition to the one at the laiki. The police had been summoned and asked to escort the old woman off the Argentis’ e
state.

  Thinking that Titina Argentis’ son, Antonis, might be more forthcoming than his mother, Patronas drove to the shipyard to see him.

  It was a busy place. A vast oil tanker was tied up at the dock—rainbows of petroleum glinting on the oily surface of the water—and a second tanker was waiting to enter.

  Argentis was standing outside, deep in conversation with a female employee. She was the kind Patronas thought all too common now in Greece—common being the operative word—tottering around on shoes with three and a half inch heels. They must be to give her extra height, the shoes, Patronas decided, inspecting her. It was difficult to look as if you came off a catwalk when you were five feet tall and had an ass like hers, the ass of a mare.

  “Ah, Chief Officer,” Argentis said, hailing Patronas. “What can I do for you?”

  Patronas dispensed with the usual pleasantries. “I just wanted to tell you that I’ve started the process to declare your stepsister legally dead. Based on our findings, she was murdered within the same 24-hour period as her assistant, Petros Athanassiou.” He described the discovery of the hand, the lacerated thigh on the beach.

  Antonis Argentis closed his eyes. “What happened? Was it a robbery? Is that why they were killed?”

  “My guess is, one of them found something at Profitis Ilias.”

  “Eleni would have told me. We talked nearly every day.”

  “Your mother said you never saw her.”

  “My mother didn’t know.”

  Patronas got out his notebook. He hadn’t expected this.

  “I communicated with Eleni every day, either by cellphone or email. I visited her at the dig site. Harvard, too, when she was there.” He shook his head, the youth gone from his face. “Eleni, she meant the world to me.”

  He watched the activity in the harbor for few minutes, fighting to control himself. “My mother … suffice to say, it was difficult being a child in my mother’s house. I had no one to play with, no one to talk to. Oh, we had staff, of course. But they were there to be ordered about and do my mother’s bidding, not to entertain me. Everything changed when my mother married Eleni’s father and she came to live with us. I finally had someone to play with, a friend.” His eyes filled with tears. “I loved her, Chief Officer,” he said. “I loved my sister.”