Doing Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel Read online

  DOING CRIME

  A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel #3

  Alex A. King

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Also by Alex A. King

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  The End

  For my sister, who is all of the good adjectives and none of the bad ones

  Also by Alex A. King

  Disorganized Crime

  Trueish Crime

  Seven Days of Friday

  One and Only Sunday

  Freedom the Impossible

  Light is the Shadow

  Pride and All This Prejudice

  Paint: A Short Love Story

  Lambs (as Alex King)

  Copyright © 2015 by Alex A. King

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  The year I turned ten I watched Dad punch a hole in the bathroom wall with a hammer. It looked like fun. I really wanted a turn with that hammer. Dad being Dad, he hogged the hammer and tossed me one of his stories about Baboulas, the Greek boogeyman. Baboulas, he said, dug holes in the earth to hide treasure. Nowhere else was safe enough.

  My eyes widened; I forgot about the hammer. “What kind of treasure?”

  “What kind of treasure do you think a monster keeps, eh?”

  “A collection of frozen heads?”

  He tipped back his head and laughed. “What kind of treasure is a frozen head?”

  “Not very good treasure,” I admitted. In my defense, stories about Baboulas usually followed a dark bloody road, so I wasn’t exactly stabbing in the dark with an icepick.

  “You are close. Gold and jewels were not the only thing Baboulas kept underground. People were also valuable, especially if they were the family of enemies or they kept a vault filled with special knowledge in their heads.” He quit hammering for a moment to tap a finger on his temple. “Baboulas would hide them underground until it was time to extract the information.”

  “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How did Baboulas extract the information?”

  He held up the hammer. “Sometimes with a hammer. Sometimes with drugs. But most of the time, all Baboulas would have to do is appear and they would talk.” He swung at the wall again.

  “Does Mom know you’re knocking down the wall?”

  “I know.” Her voice floated down the hall. The rest of her was in the kitchen making granola bars. She was going through one of those phases where she was determined to overhaul our already mostly-healthy diet and replace ten percent more healthy with twenty percent less flavor.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said, “we already had that fight.”

  Down in the kitchen, Mom laughed.

  “Why are you smashing the wall?”

  “Not the whole wall, just this part of it. I’m putting in a safe.”

  “A safe? Like rich people have?”

  He laughed. “Yes, like a safe for rich people, but smaller, for not-so rich people.” He winked at me before taking another swing. ”If a thief stops to look in the medicine cabinet,” he said, “what he wants is drugs. He won’t pull the medicine cabinet off the wall, searching for a safe.”

  “What if it’s a girl thief?”

  “A girl thief is even better. She will be too busy cleaning the bathroom to find the safe.”

  Oinking noises emanated from behind us. Mom had abandoned the granola bars for the fun of watching Dad swing a hammer.

  “You know I’m joking,” he said.

  “No,” she said lightly, “you’re not.”

  I was more interested in Dad’s project than their banter. ”Why do we need a safe?”

  “To keep things safe,” Dad said.

  “Like what?”

  We had birth certificates, mortgage papers, insurance policies, and the other usual middle-ish class assortment of flammable burdens that were a pain in the butt to replace if the worst-case scenario happened. But some of those lived in a safety deposit box at the bank, and the rest were tucked away in a fireproof box under my parents’ bed. What did we need a safe for?

  He set aside the hammer, balancing it carefully on the bath’s ceramic ledge, and crouched in front of me. “Secrets, Katerina.”

  “What kind of secrets?”

  “Dangerous ones,” he said mysteriously. He waggled his eyebrows.

  Mom scoffed. “Some cash for emergencies and my good jewelry.”

  I eyed them, wary. ”In case of the zombie apocalypse?”

  “Zombie apocalypse?” Dad muttered. “Where does she get these things?”

  Mom and I looked at each other. “You’re the one who tells her horror stories,” she said.

  “Are you hiding things from Baboulas?” I wanted to know.

  Dad picked up the safe, sat it in the wall. “Nobody has secrets from Baboulas. Not for long.”

  ~ ~ ~

  I couldn’t kick off my boots. Every time I tried to sneak my heel out the jerk next to me said, “Baboulas will know if you take off your shoes. You want people on this plane to think you are poor? I don’t think so.”

  Until a few weeks ago, Baboulas was the monster featured in all of Dad’s bedtime stories. Then after Dad went missing—presumed kidnapped, on account of how dodgy-looking dudes escorted him out of our Portland home—I’d discovered Greece’s Boogeyman was my paternal grandmother.

  We’d been in the air for too many hours. I was slowly devolving into a psychotic rage beast. The sensation of impending doom was beginning to make my muscles suffer from periodic weak spells—when they weren’t twitching from bottled-up stress. I wanted to stomp up and down the aisle, waving my arms, smashing champagne glasses, slapping the cutesy sleep masks off the sleeping passengers’ faces. But mostly, I wanted to seize my neighbor’s ankles and heave him out the Emergency Exit, for the crime of being an annoying shitweasel.

  “We’re in first class. No one thinks I’m poor.” I pushed the words out through a tense jaw and gritted teeth.

  First class was Grandma’s idea of a compromise. So was the bonehead clogging up the seat beside me. His name was Takis and he was my cousin’s cousin’s cousin. He had the personality of a mosquito and the physique of a sock puppet. To top it off, he’d dressed for the trip in a slightly oversized gray pinstripe suit with a criminal sheen. Not me—I’d shot for comfort. Boots, favorite broken-in jeans, fitted T-shirt with a hoodie thrown over the top, once the airplane began blasting frigid air. The absence of humidity had soothed my long, dark, mildly frizzy hair to sleep.

  I had insisted on taking a commercial flight back to the states, shunning Grandma’s offer to have Takis fly me home in her private jet so I could ‘take ca
re of business’. It wasn’t until I arrived at Athens International and checked in that I realized anything was afoot. My seat had been magically upgraded to first class, and there was some sort of fast-talking concierge who whisked me away to a VIP area to wait with people who looked like they could afford to pay first class prices. I couldn’t. My bank account was topped up with money I’d borrowed from Dad’s safe—money that may or may not have been dirty.

  This week, some German tourists had passed counterfeit euros in Makria’s meat market, and I’d taken the information and gone digging. Word on the street—and by street I meant Internet (more specifically a message board called The Crooked Noses) was that my uncle in Germany—a man I’d never met, nor knew existed until three weeks ago—had an unhealthy interest in printing his own fortune. He’d apparently sent one of his men to the Naples area, where counterfeiting was an artistic skill passed from father to son to the occasional affluent criminal. And it just so happened that inside Dad’s safe was an Italian passport with Dad’s face and some other sucker’s name that said he’d been in Italy not long ago, when he was supposed to be hauling bubble wrap and packing peanuts across state lines. My whole life Dad had been a truck driver for Winkler’s Packing Goods ... or so I thought.

  I needed another look inside that safe in my parents' bathroom. That’s why I was trapped in a comfortable seat, watching champagne and high-end snacks roll past.

  Grandma had kept Takis a secret until I was flipping through the inflight magazine, wondering if I could swap my ticket for a permanent vacation to the Maldives’ white beaches. I was debating changing my name, going native. Takis had swung into the adjoining seat, slapped his pancake butt down, and turned his oily grin in my direction.

  That was several hellish hours ago.

  Now Takis said, “Look at that poor girl with that dashing and generous man, they will say. He must have taken pity on the homeless.”

  “Keep it up, I’ll tell Marika.”

  Marika was his wife and my—sometimes—sidekick. She had a heart of blown sugar and a body like a comfortable sofa. She was also sitting several rows back in coach. Takis had been so busy trying to outsmart me on Grandma’s command that I’d managed to outmaneuver him without realizing it.

  “You do that ... after we land and you can turn on your phone.” Takis settled his head back on the headrest, closed his eyes. “After we land in another country, while she is at home with our children. Where she belongs.”

  I jabbed him with my elbow. “Move.”

  “What for?”

  “Bathroom.”

  He tucked his legs under his seat so I could shimmy out. First class was nice, but basically it was a larger sardine can. I smiled at the flight attendant, pushed through the dark blue curtain dividing haves and haves-but-less-of-it, worked my way back to where Marika was blasting her neighbors with chatter. She’d dressed for comfort, too, in a chartreuse warm-up suit that make her rustle like a paper bag every time she twitched a muscle. The couple next to her were red-skinned and pink-eyed. I wasn’t sure they even spoke Greek; with their freshly burned skin and their dazed stares I guessed not. After we filed off the plane they’d probably run to the nearest travel site and whip up a review about how the airline trapped them onboard with a crazy Greek woman.

  “I’m here to rescue you,” I told them in English.

  “It’s okay,” the woman said. “We don’t mind.” Her gaze screamed, HELP US.

  I crouched beside the big Greek woman. “Takis is being Takis. You want to go up there?”

  Marika's eyes widened. To her it was Christmas, and I was waving candy under her nose. “To first class?”

  “To first class.”

  “Do they have champagne?”

  “They have champagne.”

  “And those hot towels?”

  “I haven’t seen them yet, but I bet they do.”

  It was like watching a bowling ball thrown by an expert hand, the way she rolled up the aisle to first class. I stood there marveling at her zeal. Marika tackled life the way chocoholics tackled the Easter Bunny. She vanished through the curtain.

  A moment later, Takis shrieked, high, girlish, and bloodcurdling. I winced as he yelled, “Get it away from me!”

  “Is that any way to speak to your wife, eh?”

  “What are you doing here? Where are the children?”

  “With Stavros. He offered to babysit.”

  “Katerina, I am going to kill you!” he screamed.

  My backside dropped into Marika’s vacated seat. I hunched down, hoping no one would look at me. Too late—most heads were spinning in my direction. Oh boy. I should have stayed in my seat but I couldn’t handle another moment of sharing air with Takis. Marika could handle it. She slept next to Takis every night—by choice.

  Across the aisle there was movement. A wiry, everyman type of guy squeezed out of his seat. He eyed me sideways, and then began working his way forward. At first I figured he was headed to the bathroom, but then something silver in his back pocket winked at me as he reached back.

  Federal air marshal. Yikes!

  I slumped down further, pulled my hoodie up, tried not to look like a criminal—which I wasn’t, despite my family being one hundred percent Greek mafia on Dad’s side.

  The air marshal vanished through the dark blue curtain.

  “Family,” I said to the people beside me, who still seemed on edge. “I only recently met them.” They blinked at me.

  “Who is a-yelling?” Takis had switched to his idea of English. “I’m not a-yelling. What is your problem, man?”

  From back here I couldn’t hear anything but a low hum of voices trying to reason with a crazy Greek.

  “What is that? I can’t understand you,” Takis went on. “Try talking from a hole that is not between your ass cheeks, eh?”

  There was a loud thud, then Takis yelped. Everything went silent. Not a word from the passengers.

  That lasted thirty seconds before everybody began chattering. A few nosy souls—to be honest, they looked Greek—scurried to the curtain to peek.

  “He’s hogtied in the aisle,” one of them announced to the rest of us. “Looks like he took a Taser to the keister.” Okay, so maybe Greek-American, like me.

  Half of coach cheered. Not the couple next to me. They were still recovering from the Marika-thon they’d endured from Athens to wherever we were. They took turns shooting frightened glances at me the rest of the way to JFK.

  “Good morning, folks. We’ve begun our descent into New York, where it’s an already balmy seventy-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The sun is shining. Gonna be a beautiful day ...”

  A beautiful day. I was off to a great start. The backup I didn’t want was hogtied in first class. We’d managed to break the law before stepping foot in the country. First order of business was going to be springing Takis out of Sing Sing, Attica, or possibly even Gitmo. Not the sort of places where Grandma and Xander could swoop in with a helicopter they’d bought from the local cops—something I’d watched them do just days ago. I’d miss my connecting flight to PDX, for sure.

  Out the oval window, New York appeared—eight-point-five million shades of gray. Up ahead, the blue curtain heaved like an angry sea. Marika broke through, engines at full steam. She slammed to a stop beside me.

  “Go back to your seat. I don’t want to look at my husband.”

  The woman beside me whimpered. I knew how she felt.

  ~ ~ ~

  Predictably, an assortment of cops was waiting for us. They shoved their way onto the plane the moment the jet bridge clanked into place, and dragged Takis away.

  He threw a handful of Greek words at us on the way past. ”Don’t call Baboulas. She will kill me.” It wasn’t a metaphor or an exaggeration. Takis was one of Grandma’s best henchmen, and he was blood, but that didn’t mean Grandma wouldn’t stuff him in a speed bump.

  “Do you know him?”

  The curious mouth belonged to a plainclothes cop of some f
lavor. He flipped open a leather wallet, flashed some ID, but I was too rattled to make a note of his name or which department he worked for. His face was grim and he looked overdue for a gallon of coffee and early retirement.

  “Kind of,” I said, wondering where I was supposed to draw the line in the sand. Tell him Takis was a cousin’s cousin’s cousin? A henchman? That I suspected Takis had cut off a serial killer’s head and stuffed it in a jute sack a couple of weeks ago? “Am I in trouble?”

  “You?” He shook his head. “No. The Air Marshal told me he made a death threat.”

  I laughed and hoped it didn’t sound fake-o. “He does that all the time. Family. Can’t live with them—“

  “Can’t kill them?”

  The laugh died a swift, bloodless death in my mouth. In my Family you could kill them ... and occasionally did.

  “I could definitely live without him. But he’s harmless.”

  He shot a glance toward the rear of the plane. Most of the other passengers had cleared out, but a few were still stumbling toward the light, heads bowed over the portable extensions of their brains. “You’ll probably get him back. We just want to ask him a few questions, put the fear of waterboarding into him.”

  I watched, open-mouthed, as Marika tried to sneak out the plane’s arched door. She bustled through, conspicuously inconspicuous. Not five seconds later, she reappeared, bustling in reverse. The air marshal was back and he knew Marika was mixed up in this ... misunderstanding. Which was why he was herding her back into the plane. She fell into line beside me, face like a dog who’d left something special in its owner’s shoe.

  “I do not think we can take them all,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “But maybe we can take one down with us.”

  “We’re not taking anyone down!” I hissed. “They’ll throw us in prison, no questions asked.”

  “Okay, so that was not one of my better ideas. What is your plan?”

  “I was going to go with cooperating.”

  “That is a good plan. I wish I had thought of that.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “I might cut off all my hair,” Marika said. “What do you think?”

  “I think you should wait before making any snap decisions.”