Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

sixteenth of a soldier in its four stomachs. That’s without armor. Even a goat would balk at bronze. He was brown-and-white, and so far he’d decided to stick around. Who could blame him? The menu here was varied and plentiful. He had quickly bonded with the compound’s pack of dogs, primarily lurchers, with a penchant for long naps, dropped food, and cuddles.
    He nuzzled my hand, looking for crumbs, and then went to work on a nearby bush.
    “Does it have a name?” Elias called out.
    I shook my head. “No name.”
    “You should give it a name. Everybody will be less inclined to cook him if he has a name.”
    “Really?”
    “Sure. It’s always harder to kill someone you know by name.”
    He would know. “I’ll think about,” I said.
    He saluted me and went back to his mime.
    I slumped on the table, both eyes on the box. It mocked me silently.
    “Know what I would do if I were you?”
    Elias again.
    “About what?”
    “The box.”
    “What would you do?”
    “Kids,” he said. “They can open anything, even if it doesn’t want to be opened.”
    His thought was in the right place, but he was stabbing it from the wrong angle. Kids can open anything, especially if it doesn’t want to be opened.

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    I t seemed impossible that Takis had caught Marika and conned her finger all the way into a gold ring. On the outside they were a mismatched pair, and probably on the inside, too. If he was a tool, she was a soft, comfortable sofa in flowery prints. They occupied the roomy apartment on the top left corner of the compound.
    Takis’ wife had long hair she normally kept caged in a tight bun. It was black with a natural hint of blue. When she rushed toward me, it brought to mind the inevitability an oncoming train, when your shoe is caught in the tracks and you’ve had ten swigs too many from the Boone’s Farm bottle.
    “Katerina!” she said, pulling me into her arms. We exchanged hugs and continental kisses, as was customary around these parts. All the kissing Greeks did, they’d be the first to fall if there was a worldwide pandemic.
    Marika was a woman who sprinkled her sentences with exclamation points. She used up her yearly quota in every conversation. “You have come to visit! Let me make coffee!”
    My mission would be temporarily interrupted if I let her navigate me into the living room. One didn’t drink coffee and go; there would be food, there would be gossip, there would be two hours gone.
    “I’d love to sit here and drink coffee with you, but I can’t.” I held up the puzzle box. “It’s a clue about Dad. I think. I was wondering if your kids might be able to work it out.”
    Marika looked dubious. “My boys?” She and Takis had a handful of boys, semi-wild, part simian, with a dash of mad professor. They were good-natured kids who’d either rule the universe some day, or lay waste to the whole shebang. “The way they open a box is with fire or an axe.”
    I was afraid of that.
    “You should ask Litsa.” Her hands engaged in a simple form of flagless semaphores. “Her Tomas can break into anything. He has a bright career ahead of him as a safecracker.”
    In some families—decent ones—that would be considered a minus, but in this one it was a huge plus. The criminal gene was filtering down through the generations. The other genes didn’t stand a chance—not when they were mugged and supplanted in utero.
    I tried to smile, but my face got stuck on the way there.
    “It will be okay,” Marika said, beaming. “This family … it takes time to get used to how they are. No one in my family has ever committed a crime. Not so much as a stolen piece of fruit, yet look what I married. You get used to it. Here.” She reached into her apron pocket, retrieved what looked like a Twinkie’s Greek cousin, pushed the plastic-wrapped cake into my hand. “Don’t tell Baboulas I gave you a store-bought cake, okay? She would flip.”
    Her secret was safe with me, and I told her so. After