To learn about bomba, find a bar notorious for the wild life. A place where most patrons come for the action and hardly notice what they’re drinking as long as it brings on a buzz.
During the summer, the place for Athens area nightlife action lay southeast of the city in the western seacoast towns along the road to the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion. Big-time nightspots in the center of Athens generally closed for the summer or followed their clientele out to the islands. Some of Athens’ chicest neighborhoods lay out this way, as did its most popular summer clubs.
That’s why Kouros and Petro were in Vouliagmeni, knocking on the door of a club owned by a Greek-Cypriot Petro knew from his time as a bouncer in Athens nightclubs. A lot of cops did that sort of work. It was one of the honest ways to supplement their meager paychecks.
“What makes you think he’ll talk to us?” said Kouros.
“He owes me favors. Besides, I told him we’re not going to bust him for what he tells us.” Petro looked at Kouros with concern. “That was okay to say, right?”
Kouros nodded. “As long as he isn’t a bootlegger or selling stuff that can kill his customers.”
“I don’t think he’d do that. But he’s cagey, so I’m sure he’s selling counterfeit to beat taxes.”
Petro pounded on the door. “Aleko, open up. It’s Petro. I know you’re in there.”
They heard the sound of chair legs screeching against a wooden floor. “Just a minute.”
Two locks clicked and the door swung in. A gaunt, unshaven bald figure in his mid-thirties leaned against the doorframe. He was shoeless and darkly tanned, and his runny red eyes made him the perfect poster child for a rehab program.
He fixed his eyes on Petro. “Hey, man, what are you doing here?”
“I called you a couple of hours ago and told you I’d be over with a friend to talk to you about something we needed your help with.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, I did. By the way, your zipper’s down.”
Petro didn’t wait to be invited inside. He stepped through the doorway and headed straight for the bar area. It smelled of disinfectant almost strong enough to cover the stale beer and cigarette smells. A dark-haired woman barely out of her teens stood off by the bar. She looked afraid.
“Are you okay, miss?” said Kouros.
She looked at Aleko then back at Kouros. “Yes.”
“Who’s she?” asked Petro.
“I don’t know,” said Aleko looking at the floor. “She came in here about an hour ago looking for a job. I was interviewing her when you started banging on the door.”
The girl also looked at the floor.
“Why don’t you run along, miss? I’m sure you have the job,” said Kouros. He looked at Aleko. “Isn’t that right?”
Aleko shrugged. “Yeah, sure. She starts tonight.”
Kouros saw her out, not bothering to tell her to fix the misaligned buttons on the front of her dress. She was embarrassed enough already.
“Hard finding good help?” said Kouros.
Aleko shrugged again. “Did you guys come here to bust my balls?”
“No,” said Petro. “We came to talk about bomba.”
“Bomba? I never touch the stuff. It’s illegal.”
Petro put a big paw on Aleko’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. We’re not after you. I’ve come to you as a friend for a little background on the industry.” He gave Aleko’s shoulder a painful squeeze. “I don’t know who you think you’re kidding by playing dumb. All you’re doing is embarrassing me in front of my buddy. I told him you’re the man in the know.”
Aleko winced and twisted away from the squeeze. “Sorry, but I can’t help you.”
Kouros shrugged. “No problem. We’ll just take a look behind the bar and see what we can find that might refresh your memory.” He headed toward the bar.
“Hey!” Aleko said weakly. “You have no right to be in my place.”
“Of course we do,” said Kouros without stopping. “We heard a young girl screaming…really sounded more like screeching…and came in to find you forcing yourself upon an innocent young woman who’d come to you seeking employment. Trust me, Aleko, talking to us about bomba on a strictly anonymous basis will be a lot less risky to you than facing a female prosecutor on the charges I’ll get that girl to bring against you.”
Kouros reached down behind the bar and pulled out five bottles of identically labeled, expensive vodka.
Aleko said nothing.
“Interesting bottles here, Aleko. I’ve seen the sort before. And the tax stamps look even more interesting.”
“Okay, okay. What do you want to know? You’re not going to tell anyone it’s me who told you, right?”
Petro nodded and pushed him toward the bar. “Right.”
Aleko plopped onto a stool, shook his head, and let out a deep breath.
“What can I tell you that you don’t already know?”
“Let’s start with this stuff behind the bar.”
“It’s from a new supplier. And it’s all good stuff. I only buy the good stuff. The other shit out there could poison you.”
“And how’s the cost of this ‘good stuff’ compare to the price of the vodka it’s supposed to be?” said Kouros.
“If I normally paid twenty a bottle, then that stuff would cost me from five to seven, depending on how many cases I buy.”
“So, if you get twenty-two shots out of a liter bottle, at two euros a shot you’re making roughly six to nine times your money,” said Petro.
“Yes, but for big spenders who want the high-end brands that cost me about the same as what I’m using for shots, we can easily make thirty times our cost. And I’m talking just on the price of the booze. They have to pay extra if they want a table to sit at.”
“So how do you connect with a bomba supplier?” asked Kouros.
“They come in to see me, many sell it right out of whatever they’re driving. Up to now it’s been a pretty competitive business. Sometimes things got a bit nasty when I played one competitor off against another, but it kept the prices in line.”
“What do you mean, ‘up to now’?” said Kouros.
“Like I said, that stuff you pulled out from behind the bar comes from a new supplier. My other guys haven’t been around for a while. And I’m not too happy about that.”
“Why?”
“No competition means the price to me is bound to go up.”
“Has it?” said Petro.
“Not yet, but any day now I expect to get that message.”
“From whom?”
“The new guy.”
“When’s he due here next?” said Kouros.
“Thursday, in time for the weekend.”
“What’s he look like?” said Petro.
Aleko put his elbows on the bar, ran his fingers through his hair, and looked up at Petro. “I don’t know. A normal liquor salesman. Late thirties, dark hair, paunchy. Like any number of us trying to get by in these troubled times.”
“Does Mr. Just-Like-Us have a name?” said Kouros.
“He says it’s George, but who knows if it’s real? All I want is the booze to be real.”
“Real bomba,” said Kouros.
“Yeah, but the good stuff.”
Kouros nodded, took a knife from behind the bar and began opening the five vodka bottles.
“Hey, what are you doing to my stock?”
“Don’t worry, I just want to make sure this shit isn’t poison.”
“I told you, I only go for the good stuff.”
Kouros nodded, poured a shot from the first glass, smelled it, tasted a bit with his tongue, and said, “It ain’t great, but it’s vodka.”
“See, I told you. Only the good stuff for my place.”
Kouros did the same thing with the second bot
tle. Same result.
He tasted the third shot without smelling it and immediately spit it out. “Bingo.” He spit a half dozen more times. “I don’t know what’s in there, but it isn’t just vodka.” He held up the bottle to the light and saw white sediment on the bottom. “It’s been diluted with tap water.” He smelled the bottle. “And probably nail polish. Maybe even bleach.” He spit some more.
“That can’t be,” said Aleko getting off the stool and grabbing the bottle from the bar. He smelled it and looked at Kouros. “You’re right, the son of a bitch cheated me.”
Kouros smiled. “Like you do your customers?”
“Hey, my customers have a great time. I run a well-known place here. Sure, the booze may be watered down a bit and sometimes I serve cheaper stuff than what the customers think they’re getting, but I’m not poisoning them. If word of that got around it would kill my business. No way I’m going to destroy this place just to make a little more selling poison. Besides, two shots of this shit and you’re out of it. I make my money selling booze, not quick highs.” Aleko looked away from the bottle and sniffled. “No way I’d ever sell this stuff.”
“Then I suggest you check out every bottle you bought from your new supplier.”
“Damn straight, I will, and I’m gonna shove every one of them up his ass on Thursday.”
Kouros gestured no. “Not this Thursday, you won’t. Maybe the next one.”
“Why?”
“Because we want to follow him.”
“So I’m supposed to do what? Buy more of his shit?”
Kouros shrugged.
“But I don’t want to buy any more of his poison.”
“Then don’t.”
“But he’ll be suspicious.”
“Then do.”
Aleko looked to be considering his options.
Kouros put his hands on the bar and leaned in toward Aleko. “I want this poison out of here today. But on Thursday you’re going to act normal and put in your regular order. Consider it a fine for all the shit you have in here. You’re getting off light. We could shut you down and you know it. I doubt you’ll have to worry about that salesman after Thursday, but when we stop back to say hello and, trust me, we will, if we find that same sort of shit in here, all bets are off on what will happen to you and your place.”
“Believe me, that stuff will be gone by tonight. I run a reputable place.”
“Which reminds me. That girl you hired to start working tonight.”
Aleko stared at Kouros. “Yeah?”
“When we come back, be sure she’s still working here.” Kouros patted Aleko on the arm. “After that interview you put her through, I don’t want to find out that you broke your promise to hire her.”
Aleko looked at Petro. “Are we through now?”
“I think so.”
Kouros nodded.
“Good. Glad I could help the police. But do me a favor, would you? If either of you ever calls me again for help and I happen to say, ‘yes,’ believe me, it means either I’m too fucked up to think straight or someone has a gun to my head.”
Petro smiled, shook his head, and joined Kouros in heading toward the door. “Frankly, old friend, from where your life appears headed, I’m sad to say it’s most likely to be both.”
Chapter Four
Kharon always thought of the two-hour drive northwest from the heart of commercial, modern Athens to the ancient world’s pastoral center of the earth at Delphi as a surrealistic passage through sharply contrasting value systems. His journey always began the same way, enduring traffic-clogged, graffiti-laden, gritty neighborhoods on the way to National Road A-1 and the fifty-mile highway run to his exit.
The six- and at times eight-lane highway skirted Athens’ affluent northern suburbs. It ran a gauntlet of businesses serving the desires of Greater Athens before passing through a mix of corporate headquarters and light industry. Just beyond an Army base where Kharon had once served, the road rose up through a steep pass lined with pines, gorse, and myrtle growing nearly to the crest of gray limestone hilltops. From there, the highway gradually dropped down onto broad plains dotted with facilities catering more to the needs of modern agriculture than the wants of urban life.
Ten miles before his exit it narrowed down to four lanes and the land turned decidedly to farmland. But modern times had made their way here, too, in huge pond-like patches amid fields close by the road, and in barcode-style brandings of once virginal hillsides. A new type of farming had sprouted up in distinctive air force-blue and shiny silver: photovoltaic solar panels, a far less demanding and more profitable cash crop for many than any gained by toiling upon the land.
At the exit marked Thiva, Kharon headed south for four miles before turning west for the final fifty-five miles to Delphi. Here the road turned to two lanes and passed through fields of planted cotton, olives in silvered shades of green, and more silver and blue panels—all leading off toward mountains dressed in shades of brown soil, deep-green treetops, and gray stone peaks.
Kharon wondered whether farmland lost to solar power-production sapped more from those used to working the land than they could ever hope to earn for abandoning their traditional life. Farming meant creating life, and made one self-sufficient, with success dependent solely upon your own hard work—and the fickle will of the weather gods.
Kharon couldn’t imagine giving up the freedom he’d found in farm work—laboring in Delphi’s mountains, valleys, and boundless olive groves amid an omnipresent spiritual essence far greater than himself. He’d first felt its influence on a rare public school trip away from his hassled life in poorest urban Athens. That memory of Delphi is what drew him back there when he sought to establish a life far away from his city past.
Nor could he imagine how anyone who truly loved the land could be party to its systematic aesthetic mutilation. To him, solar panels tore the spirit from the natural beauty of the land, much as their siblings—turbine windmills haunting random mountaintops—destroyed the sense of peace a soul drew from gazing at an endless, undisturbed horizon. He hated those who’d wreaked such thoughtless havoc on the land. But then he’d pass through a town of architectural disasters and be reminded that aesthetic planning in modern Greece far too rarely was entrusted to descendants of the creators of the Parthenon.
Halfway to Delphi he stopped in Livadia, the capital city of a mountainous farming region known for its souvlaki and grilled meats. It served as a must-stop place for hungry skiers on visits to the nearby mountain village of Arachova, Greece’s evergreen-draped wintertime equivalent of America’s aspen, and a first-class example of how Greeks could preserve great beauty when they tried.
Kharon sat alone at a table facing the front door with his back to the wall. He ate only at this place in Livadia. He didn’t have to order; the waitress brought him “the usual.” As a rule, he avoided routine, for routine meant predictability and predictability too often proved deadly for someone in his line of work. But no one in Livadia knew his name or where he lived, much less when he’d stop for a meal. The only thing this restaurant knew was his preference for a beer and pork souvlaki with tomato, onion, tzaziki, and paprika all wrapped up in a pita. Hold the french fries.
The town never appealed to him; it was aesthetically neutral, but he sensed the hard moral edge and dedicated commitment required of those who struggled to survive on the land, principles lacking in those who saw the pursuit of quick money as the be-all and end-all of life.
Nothing in excess ran through his mind. He smiled. His Delphic state of mind must be returning, for that phrase stood along with two others—“Know thyself” and “Make a pledge and mischief is nigh”—carved upon Delphi’s most celebrated site: the Temple of Apollo. A venerated place, dedicated to its patron God of Light, son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother to Artemis, and home to the Delphic Oracle and its prophetic visions.
&
nbsp; From what Kharon knew of the gods’ carryings on, it seemed unlikely that Apollo or any other god had much to do with those carvings.
In the time of the gods, the Delphic Oracle was presided over by the goddess Themis—a bride of Zeus, divine instructor of mankind in the laws of justice and morality, and mother of the Fates. Delphi’s more modern origins dated back to Neolithic times, and though the Oracle held importance in pre-classical Greece—certainly as the nearby Gulf of Corinth grew in commercial importance—it was after the rededication of the Temple to Apollo in the fourth century BCE that the Oracle attained true prominence in the classical Greek world and beyond. The temple was ultimately destroyed and its Oracle silenced in 390 CE, but Kharon doubted whether an educated soul in the world had not heard of Delphi or its Oracle.
Many myths surrounded Apollo and Delphi, but they all flowed from the same premise: ancient Delphi represented the navel of the mother of Earth, personified in the god Gaia. Apollo had slain Python, the son of Gaia, while standing guard over his mother’s navel.
The version Kharon liked best had Apollo killing Python for trying to rape Apollo’s mother while he and his sister lay in their mother’s womb. The slain Python then fell into a fissure, and vapors released from his decomposing body found their way into the sanctuary of Apollo, intoxicating Pythia—the name given the priestess attending the Oracle—thereby allowing Apollo to convey his prophesies through her.
Kharon preferred that story because he saw the killing as a righteous deed, plus in the years of penance that Apollo was forced to serve for that act by an angry Gaia, Kharon saw a parallel to his own life.
Now Kharon, as Apollo once had, called Delphi home. But unlike Apollo’s majestic temple on the Sacred Way—standing high along the southwest slope of Mount Parnassos and overlooking the Pleistos River Valley’s seemingly endless olives, myrtle, pines, almonds, and thyme—Kharon made his home a bit west, on the outskirts of modern Delphi, living as anonymously as possible among two thousand, non-godlike souls struggling to survive very different times.
There, Kharon lived a simple life of nothing in excess and was content. Not that he’d ever had a chance at a grander life, or expected to, for he took great care to avoid secular temptations, preferring to entrust his fortune to the Fates.
Devil of Delphi: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery Page 3