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

sounded disappointed. He brightened up. “What’s inside? Is it chocolate?”
    I lifted the lid and peeked inside. “YOWZA!” I slammed it shut. “Definitely not chocolate.”

Chapter 3
    “ T hat’s not a finger ,” Papou said.
    “Usually they send a finger,” Stavros said. He had joined Papou in his smoking nook, but he wasn’t smoking. He was sitting on the ground cross-legged, doing cross-stitch. It was an eerily accurate recreation of Theophanes the Greek’s Transfiguration of Jesus … in teeny, tiny x’s.
    “It’s definitely not a finger,” I said. I wadded up my fear and nausea, shunted them to the side. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quit glancing sideways at the emotional mess. If what was in the box was part of Dad, I was going to implode. There would be a burst of tears, a loud pop , then I’d vanish. “Grandma told me you guys don’t send body parts.”
    “As proof of life.” Papou scraped a match on the wall. It burst into flame. Greeks didn’t believe in safety matches. They figured they went to the trouble of stealing fire from the gods, so why take the red phosphorus out of matches and stick it on the side of the box? Fire, they believed, shouldn’t be smothered with rules. “But we’ll send anything as proof of death.”
    “I remember one time we sent an ear,” Stavros added.
    “That’s no ear,” I said.
    Papou cackled around the damp end of his cigarette. “I know what it is, eh? I have one myself.” He made a V with his hands, pointed at his crotch. It was an obscene Greek hand gesture that he’d toned down to merely informative. “And like this one, it doesn’t work.”
    I pulled out my phone, dialed Aunt Rita, who was on her way to Athens with Takis.
    “Ela,” she said, answering the phone the way Greeks did, with a ‘Come’ instead of a ‘Hello.’
    “I have a penis,” I said.
    “Me too,” she answered.
    “This one’s in a wooden box.”
    There was a long pause, but not a silent one. Music and howling stuffed itself into the gap in our conversation. Wherever she was, someone was in pain.
    “Jesus,” I said, “is that Takis?”
    She made an affirmative noise. “He calls that singing. I would threaten to shoot him in the face but he’s driving.”
    A death sentence for both of them, for sure, if she fired. Greeks don’t know the meaning of drive slowly . They hurtle from one location to the next, pictures of saints propped up on the dashboard, crucifix dangling from the rearview mirror. God is their insurance company.
    “He’ll have to stop eventually,” I said.
    The baying quit abruptly. “I heard that!”
    “Is the poutsa in the puzzle box?” my aunt asked.
    “Yeah, in the puzzle box. Litsa’s youngest opened it for me.”
    “That boy is going places,” she said. “With luck none of them will be prison.”
    “I doubt they’d be able to keep him inside for long.”
    I could feel her nodding. “Whose is it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Is it Michail’s?”
    Papou was looking at me. Stavros was looking at me. Although there were miles between us, I could feel my aunt looking at me.
    “How should I know?” I squeaked. “He’s my father. I shouldn’t know what his Oscar Meyer Wiener looks like!”
    “What is an Oscar Meyer Wiener?” Stavros asked.
    “It’s a sausage,” I explained. “A hot dog.”
    “Ah, a xot donk ! We have those here, too.”
    My stomach growled. The two men looked at me in horror.
    “My belly is stupid,” I said. “All it heard was ‘hot dog.’ “
    I moved past the hunger. An idea was beginning to unfurl in my head. “There’s someone who might know,” I said slowly.
    “Who?” Papou asked.
    “Dina,” Aunt Rita and I said at the same time.
    She gasped. “Touch red!” There was a squeal of tires, and Takis yelled, “ Gamo ti putana , you stupid skeela!”
    Which loosely translated to: Engage in intercourse with a woman of negotiable affections, you stupid she-dog .
    I closed my eyes. “What did you