Outta Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel Read online

  Outta Crime

  A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

  Alex A. King

  Copyright © 2017 by Alex A. King

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For Bill and Corinne, who make life good.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Also by Alex A. King

  Chapter One

  When I was eighteen, my mother died. Afterward, when she was in the ground and our lives as we knew them—especially hers—were over, Dad turned to me and said, “Now Baboulas will snatch me.”

  “Snatch you?”

  My mother was dead. Her death had stunted my verbal prowess.

  “Your mother was like the blanket children hide under so the boogeyman will not rip them out of their beds and gnaw off their heads.”

  “You’re saying Mom was bedding?”

  “High quality bedding, made with Kevlar.”

  Grief-stricken me wasn’t sure where this was going. The Baboulas stories were a staple of my childhood, strange and terrible fairy tales about Greece’s version of the boogeyman, who, for reasons I didn’t understand, had it in for my dad. What the Greek boogeyman wanted with a truck driver was a mystery. At the time I figured losing Mom at the end of a long battle with cancer was more than he could take, so he’d seized on mythology from happier times.

  I went along with it; I needed his stories, too.

  “I’ll be your Kevlar blankie,” I said.

  He put his arm around my shoulder and hugged me gently, like I was glass.

  “You are the best daughter anybody in this world could hope for. Everyone else, I feel sorry for them because they do not have you.”

  We were in the kitchen, and we had coffee, but it was cooling faster than we could drink it. I remembered thinking it was the emptiest this room had ever been.

  “Tell me a story,” I said.

  Dad nodded his head slowly, as though it was encased in concrete. He lifted his cup to his mouth then sat it back down without drinking. We were a pair of robots, going through the motions.

  “Once upon a time there was a little boy who was a big malakas—I can use that word now because your mother is not here to yell at me—who ran away from home—”

  “Was the boy you?” I’d asked him.

  “Do I look like a malakas to you?”

  I shook my head. “Where did he go?”

  “You would already know if you had not interrupted me,” he said, ruffling my hair. “The boy found a cave—a magical cave, he soon discovered, because not just anybody could come in and out of this cave as they pleased, especially if they wanted to do bad things to somebody like kill them execution-style.”

  “The USA is the cave, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes a cave is just a cave, and sometimes a cave is a magical cave. Creatures like Baboulas cannot get into magical caves, even if they have regrets and want to become less evil. In this story the boy who was definitely not me went into this magical cave because he had overheard Baboulas talking about how the cave had strong magics—magics that could turn a person into a god.”

  “Did it work? Did the boy turn into a god.”

  “Eh, beware of caves bearing gifts. The boy became a god but he could not show off and tell people he was a god. He had to keep his power under his clothes, like Superman.”

  “Did Baboulas discover he was a god?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Where do you think the magic came from?”

  The nice thing about my funeral was that no one expected me to go. They were counting on it, in fact. Which meant, guess who didn’t have to waste time trying to decide what to wear?

  That would be me, Katerina Makris, the woman whose life ended at twenty-eight but whose mouth kept working anyway.

  Lucky me, I got to watch the shenanigans from the privacy of the bunker beneath Grandma’s shitty shack. For a fake funeral, Grandma and the rest of the Makris family (and Family) went all out. Yesterday they’d given me a wake to remember. Casket open. Everyone I’d ever met in Greece—and hundreds I hadn’t—traipsed past my fancy death-box and laid a serious amount of smooches on my cheeks—my scarlet cheeks. Aunt Rita was responsible for my hair, outfit, and makeup. Grandma petitioned for a more sedate and somber look, but Aunt Rita insisted that a woman shouldn’t stop turning heads just because she was dead, so there I was all decked out in a red bandage dress with matching heels and enough cosmetics plastered on my skin to qualify for a job on any of the world’s best street corners.

  I squinted at the big screen.

  This was morbid, but being dead was really working for me. Dead Kat looked downright svelte. The widest part of Dead Kat was her long, dark hair. Aunt Rita was a sorceress when it came to makeovers.

  Today, Father Harry was presiding over my funeral. All those people who’d kissed my cheeks in the Makris family compound piled in to Ayia Aikaterini—Saint Catherine—on this September day, when the sun was still whacking Greece with its cattle prod. When the formal service was over, the six pallbearers hoisted me on their shoulders and began the short, slow walk to the nearby graveyard. Xander and Detective Nikos Melas. Takis, my cousin’s cousin’s cousin. My cousin Stavros. Aunt Rita in Rita Hayworth’s black gown from Gilda, with gloves to match. Number Six was—

  My eyes bugged out. “Donk? Are you kidding me? Donk is one of my pallbearers?”

  Marika helped herself to the popcorn bowl on my lap. “Takis looks good in a suit. Do you think he looks good in a suit?”

  Takis, Marika’s husband, had the face and physique of a skinned weasel. The only thing that would look good on Takis was an extra thirty pounds. He and Marika were textbook opposites. Marika was built like a comfortable couch, normally covered in flowery damask. She’s my age, or thereabouts, and she and Takis have a cage of wild monkeys they made themselves. They’ve got another one on the way, most likely of the same species.

  “Donk?” I squeaked. “Really?” I reached for the popcorn but Marika had a death grip. Who knew she’d feel so strongly about extra butter?

  “It makes sense,” Marika said. “Donk is your apprentice.”

  “Donk isn’t my apprentice! He’s just a kid who follows me around.”

  And the reason the misguided teenager followed me around was because his uncle, Baby Dimitri, a renowned mobster, wanted him to learn the business. But on the afternoon I died, Donk had proudly announced his decision to turn to the dark side. After high school was over, he planned to join the National Intelligence Service—NIS—Greece’s version of the CIA.

  Speaking of Baby Dimitri, he was at the gravesite, too, dressed in a pastel blue seersucker suit. His sidekick Laki was with him, trimming his fingernails with a paring knife. Laki was explosive fire’s biggest fan. BOOM was his favorite word.

  “Think of this as a dress rehearsal,” Marika said. “When you die for real you can choose your own pallbearer
s.”

  “Well that’s just great,” I muttered. My gaze skittered to some of the other, smaller screens. There was a whole bank of them, with eyes and ears in strategic locations, one of which is the local police department where Detective Melas works. He’d flip if he knew, so I haven’t let him in on Grandma’s little secret. You’re wrong if you don’t think I struggle with that.

  Poor Melas, he didn’t look happy. Nobody did. Apart from Grandma, Aunt Rita, Xander, Takis, and Marika, none of them knew I was alive. As far as they were concerned I was shot down by an assassin, who had, as of yet, to be apprehended. In reality I was shot in the chest with a heavy tranquilizer, the doohickey equipped with a blood capsule so that everyone would see a flash of blood before I was whisked away to die. All I remembered about the incident was an insane laugh, arms lifting me, and someone whispering, “It’s going to be okay,” as they crammed me into a body bag.

  Why the elaborate hoax?

  Good question.

  So far Grandma had been dodging the question. Too busy planning what had shaped up to be a nice funeral, she insisted. I’d asked her if the police had launched a manhunt to find my killer, because that’s what police do when a person is murdered and they’re not in on the joke.

  “No,” Grandma had told me. “No manhunt.”

  “I don’t get a manhunt?”

  “The police have left it to the Family to investigate. They do not have the budget for manhunts when I can do a better job. They did offer to put up flyers though.”

  “Flyers,” I’d said weakly. “I’m like a missing pet.”

  Marika nudged me. “Here comes the good part.”

  This wasn’t my first Greek funeral. There’s always a melodramatic moment graveside where the womenfolk hurl themselves at the coffin and howl. She who wails and weeps hardest loved the deceased most. It didn’t matter if that was true or not, only that it looked true. Greeks are big on appearances. They can hide almost anything underneath a decorative rug—especially the truth.

  Grandma and Aunt Rita stood alongside the coffin. Aunt Rita looked at Grandma and Grandma looked back. They both knew I was alive, so the whole grief thing wasn’t exactly coming naturally to them.

  Buttery fingers patted my arm. “Do not feel bad, Baboulas never cries.”

  “Still,” I said, “you’d think someone would cry.”

  Marika gestured at the screen. “Look. Papou is crying.”

  Despite his nickname, Papou isn’t anyone’s grandfather—not that I know of, anyway. Papou is Grandma’s advisor, what the Mafia calls a consigliere. He’s older than sin and has a face like a billion years of seismic activity. And he has two things most people don’t: a death wish and an eagle. Lately the death wish was on hold because his eagle was refusing to do normal eagle stuff. The bird had a difficult upbringing, and wound up doing hard time because of the company it kept. Yiorgos the eagle had seen things no bird should have to see.

  Sure enough, Papou was crying, but there were extenuating circumstances that had nothing to do with my alleged demise.

  “He’s not crying,” I muttered, “he’s laughing.”

  Marika squinted at the screen. “Oh. My mistake.”

  Grandma and Aunt Rita seemed to come to a consensus. Grandma waved her hand and Xander stepped forward to help Aunt Rita kneel by my coffin. It was a nice coffin. Shiny. Black. It must have cost a fortune. I hoped Grandma could get her money back. Unless, of course, she kept coffins around as a contingency plan. In the Makris family I could see where it would be useful to buy in bulk and make advance purchases while sales were on.

  My father’s mother is Greece’s most notorious crime lord. The reigning queen of Greek mafia, she rules with an iron fist and delectable baked goods. Everyone calls her Baboulas—the boogeyman—behind her back, and she is my only living grandparent. I didn’t know she existed until my father was kidnapped from our Portland, Oregon home this summer. Then she had her goons—Takis and Stavros—haul me to Greece. I would have gone kicking and screaming, but they drugged me.

  Marika pointed. “Look at Hera. She is crying.”

  Hera. The Barbie doll NIS agent who used to share Melas’s bed. These days she was banging Melas lookalikes. In his house. In his bed.

  “Also laughing.”

  “Kyria Mela?”

  Detective Melas’s mother is a helmet-haired bird with the power to disembowel a grown man with the sheer force of her personality. Apparently she likes me, just not anywhere near her son. Big problem, because her son likes being around me.

  “Smiling,” I said.

  “At least she is not laughing.”

  “Probably she only laughs when she’s torturing people.”

  “I could see that.” She nudged me. “Look, that one is crying.”

  At last—one legitimate weeper. Irini Pappas is married to Detective Melas’s best friend and fellow cop. She’s also Hera’s sister, although there seems to be no love between them for reasons that are immediately understandable when you meet Hera.

  Like everyone else, Irini was all decked out in black, and she wore it well. She looked downright elegant as she flung herself across my coffin, ugly-crying. She threw back her head and pleaded with God to give me back and take someone else instead.

  “Choose any of these people,” she howled. “Preferably my sister. If You won’t take my sister, I made a list!”

  “It is a good list,” her husband said to no one in particular.

  Melas’s eye twitched. Did he have any clue I was a half-kilometer away, buried underground? Xander knew, for sure. He’s Grandma’s right hand man, and also her left, and sometimes both legs. Xander is a lot of man, most of it muscle. He has bronze skin, a Greek god’s cheekbones, and a waterfall of scars that run the length of his back. I don’t know where they came from, but I know Melas has the same scars.

  Marika drained the rest of the popcorn bowl into her mouth then heaved herself out of the chair. She was barely pregnant but she was acting like delivery was days away.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “The party is starting soon. I want to make sure nobody else eats all the food.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Party?”

  “Funeral party. It is a tradition.”

  I’d already been to one Greek funeral. A member of Dad’s childhood posse had a penchant for faking his own deaths. Eventually life—and a serial killing ex-cop— caught up with him and put him in the ground for good. His career as a performance artist came to a damp end in Grandma’s swimming pool—the same pool that was above my head and to the right somewhere. The funeral I’d attended was one of the fake ones, and there had been a get-together afterwards where people ate, drank, and told tales about the not-quite deceased. But I wouldn’t call it a party, per se. Parties implied fun.

  My eyes narrowed. “Will there be fun?”

  “No,” Marika said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Everybody thinks you are dead. Everyone except those of us who know you are okay. Now that I think about it, I bet that Hera will have fun. She looks like the kind of person who enjoys funerals.”

  “It’s not fair. She gets to have fun and eat while I’m stuck down here.”

  By ‘eat and have fun’ I meant that without me around she’d definitely forge straight ahead on Operation Bone Melas. She made no secret of the fact that she intended to bump and grind her way back into his bed.

  Not that Nikos and I had a chance anyway. He was on the side of goodness and light. And me, although my intentions were good my family tree definitely leaned toward the dark side. The trunk was basically flat on the ground, and I was the only branch pointing up.

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t lust after him. We’d kissed, and he’d handcuffed me to the fireman’s pole in his house and forced me to watch him eat moussaka.

  “I will keep my eyes on her,” Marika said. “You are dead, yes, but that does not mean I am not your bodyguard.”

  Technically Ma
rika was no longer my bodyguard, on account of how I’d been shot right in front of her. It was just an excuse because my real bodyguard Elias hadn’t taken a hit to the paycheck. Takis wanted his wife off the job now that she was expecting, and I suspected he’d gone to Grandma to plead his case.

  “Okay. Go if you have to.” I eyed her with a hopeful, puppy dog look. “Do you think you could bring me a plate?”

  Confusion shone all over her face. “A plate? What for do you want a plate? A plate for smashing?”

  “A plate of food. It’s an American thing, I guess.”

  “What do you want? A bite of everything?”

  “I was hoping for more of a feast, and no kokoretsi or taramasalata.”

  She gave me a wounded look. “No kokoretsi or taramasalata. Sometimes it is like you are not Greek.”

  “And plenty of bread, please.”

  “Okay, maybe you are Greek enough.”

  She kissed me on both cheeks, then the blood drained out of her face and her limbs wobbled.

  “Marika?”

  I jumped up to steady her, sat her down in my chair. She closed her eyes tight, stuck her finger in her ear and wiggled it.

  “Marika?”

  I clicked my fingers in front of her face.

  “I am fine, I am fine.” The color came back. “I think the baby just gave me a message!”

  “A message?”

  “A psychic message.”

  “Has this … happened before?” And was she on any medication, like, say, anti-psychotics?

  Not that I didn’t believe her, but where I come from—Portland, Oregon—people don’t walk around having visions. If they do there are clinics for that. There’s one not far from Voodoo Doughnuts, so you can get your sugar and methadone fix on the same block.