Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel

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

Book: Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel by Alex A. King Read Free Book Online
Authors: Alex A. King
means.”
    “I think you are mental.” He drew little air circles on one temple. “Going there is the worst thing you could do. If you think it’s a clever idea you have problems.”
    No, I knew it was stupid. Worse than stupid. It was totally stupid. Sometimes a woman needed an adverb to underscore how idiotic something was. This was one of those times.
    “Sometimes clever and right are the same thing, sometimes they’re not.”
    “That’s a good answer. I didn’t think you were capable of it.”
    I grinned at him, but it was window dressing. Inside, my nerves were firing off messages. Can you believe this chick ? All balls and no brain. Rabbit … Rabbit … Rabbit … “I got lucky.”
    “Must be your grandmother’s genes.”
    I asked him something I hadn’t had a chance to ask anyone else yet. “What was my grandfather like?”
    “Yiannis?” He shrugged. “Imagine a rock sitting on the ground, doing nothing. That was your grandfather.”
    That was … unexpected. “How did he die?”
    “He walked into an ambush. He was looking for a sofa so he could sit.”
    “My other grandfather died when a dog crapped on his lawn.” Mom’s dad had famously blown an artery screaming at the neighbor’s Great Dane.
    “Must have been some crap.”
    “It was on his newspaper.”
    He nodded like he knew about dog crap and newspapers. I guess some things were universal.
    “You go to see Rabbit, you be careful. He has charmed the pants off virgins, nuns, married women, and the occasional Turk.”
    “He’s in prison.”
    “Bah! Bars mean nothing to a man like that. If there is a crack he will fill it. Don’t show him anything he can put his poutsa in.”
    Suddenly, the earth vanished beneath my feet. That sharp, pointy memory had conjured up a battering ram. It slammed into the barrier between past and present, flooding my head with an old tune Dad used to sing.
    “ I Left Her Foot in a Box and Carried With Me Her Shoe … ” I sang.
    “That is a song we used to sing about Rabbit,” he said sharply. “Where did you hear it?”
    “In a kitchen.”
    “We used to sing it the bar and at parties. Always there was ouzo involved. Rivers of ouzo.”
    “There wasn’t any ouzo when I heard it, just Greek salad.” And the cold tolling of an early warning bell that none of us had recognized as the beginning of an end.
    “Things have really changed if that song was served with salad.”
    “I hate change,” I said.
    “Funny, because that is all you have done since you got here. And there is more coming—an avalanche of change, I think.” He rolled over to the shelves on the north-facing wall, grabbed a leather and metal contraption that looked like ancient horse-wear. He tossed it to me. “Put this on before you go.”
    “What is it?”
    “A chastity belt.”
    I threw it back, trying not to let the “Ewww” escape. “It’s a maximum security prison.”
    “That doesn’t mean the security is good. All it means is that it has the maximum security the prison can afford.”

----
    A s Papou said , Larissa’s prison building was the color of stale morning urine. With its razor wire hairdo atop the fence, it was impossible to mistake the prison for anything other than a correctional facility. What it was correcting I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t look like it could make honest men out of anything, let alone crooked human beings.
    “Want me to come with you?”
    That was Stavros. He’d tagged along for the forty-five minute drive, after I told him where I was headed. Elias was with us, too, discreetly parked several spaces away.
    “I should be fine,” I told him. “How hard can it be?”
    “When my friend Rikki was in here I used to bring muffins every month. He really liked muffins.”
    “Is he still here?”
    Stavros lifted his chin then lowered it. That’s what passed for a headshake around here. “Someone shanked him for the muffins. They were good muffins.”
    “What kind?”
    “Apple

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