Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel by Alex A. King Read Free Book Online Page A

voice in the front of my head began hammering on about how it wasn’t like me to go running off to a prison, demanding answers from inmates. I mean, look at The Silence of the Lambs . Things almost ended Very Badly for Clarice Starling, and she was a professional. Me, I was a former bill collector. Former because Grandma razed my workplace and broke my boss’s legs. Now he was being eyed for arson and investigated for tax issues—the issue being that he hadn’t paid them properly. This is no way qualified me to waltz into a prison with empty pockets and a mouthful of questions.
    My stomach churned audibly.
    “Hey!”
    Melas. He was stuck on the wrong side of the gate. Oops.
    “Can I come in?” He seemed so sad standing there, gripping the bars, handsome face smushed between them.
    I looked at the guard. The guard looked at me, request poised on his lips.
    “No,” I said.
    “Katerina …”
    “Go home, Melas.” I blew him a kiss and trotted under the arch into the courtyard. As always, it was like walking into Eden—minus the serpent and the naked people. Grandma had fountains, fig trees, a conservatory, an enormous pool where Xander did late-night laps, and pockets of gardens arranged in pretty patterns.
    Papou still owed me a name. Now it was time to pony up the goods.
    But first I scooped up every last cigarette butt, stashing them in a paper bag I’d rustled up in Grandma’s kitchen, and took them with me.
    His apartment was on the second floor at the far right end of the compound, Stavros had told me, facing the family orchard.
    Papou hollered, “Come!” when I knocked. The door was unlocked, so I went right in.
    “Why aren’t you on the ground floor?” I asked.
    “Nobody expects the cripple to live on the second floor.”
    He didn’t explain further. To my ears it sounded like a Zen saying. Only the hand that erases can write the true thing; it is the power of the mind to be unconquerable; do not seek for the truth, only stop having an opinion; nobody expects the cripple to live on the second floor .
    I nodded because what else could I do? He sounded like a legit Greek philosopher, and I knew my Greek philosophers. After my mother died I quit looking to God for answers and took up philosophy instead. Regular history had a better track record than biblical history. They say there’s wisdom in the Bible, but it’s a long slog through the begetting and incest.
    The old man’s apartment was cluttered in an orderly way. The living room walls were barely visible behind the shelves, each of them filled with an arrangement of doohickeys and figurines and books. The hall closet was open, but I couldn’t see inside from where I stood.
    “I was a collector of life’s mysteries,” he said. “I am waiting now to collect the final one, but the delivery man is late, that malakas .”
    “Before he gets here do you suppose you could tell me who sent Grandma the box?”
    He rolled over to the closet door, pushed it shut. “I was trying to go out like that guy from Kung Fu , but I couldn’t find rope or a blue pill, so here I am talking to you. The man you want, they call him Rabbit.”
    A hot, invisible needle shoved itself in my eye. An old memory was the hand behind the needle. It wanted to be remembered, and it wanted to be remembered now.
    I winced. “Why do they call him Rabbit?”
    “Because he has a hundred children. What’s wrong with your eye?”
    “Nothing’s wrong with my eye. Does he have a real name?”
    “Stelios Dogas is his name. There’s something wrong with your eye or your head.”
    “I’m fine—really. Where have they got him locked up?”
    “Larissa’s prison. It’s a big yellow building, the color of piss.” He chuckled. “You are going to see him, aren’t you? Before you do, see about that eye or they will keep you there.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with my eye. Someone has to talk to him. Grandma isn’t here. He sent a clue and I have to find out what it