Jeffrey Siger - Mykonos After Midnight

Tassos walked over to the fireplace and began tugging at the tiles. When a section of them shifted, he pulled harder, and the tiles swung open just as the maid said they would.

“Bingo.” Inside was a closed safe door twice as large as the one upstairs. “Care to bet whether the killers ever found this one?”

Costas gestured no with his head. “But I still don’t understand what could be in it worth dying for.”

“Me either, but our answer might be inside. Besides, if you’re right about the first blow taking him out, Christos may not have had a chance to change his mind and give them what they wanted.”

Costas shook his head. “Poor bastard.”

“Can any of your boys open a safe?”

“Professionally?”

“No jokes. I need someone who can do it and keep his mouth shut. Too many loose lips among the local police.”

“One of my guys has done that sort of thing before, though he might be reluctant without a court order.”

“Just get it done.”

Costas nodded.

Tassos turned and pointed to a bookcase in the far corner of the room by the door leading to the backyard. “Did you see that?”

“If you mean the camera? Yes. It’s pretty well hidden but I saw it. One of your men found where the recorder used to be.”

“Used to be?”

“Yes, everything’s gone. Whatever was recorded is no more.”

“Sounds like whoever did this really knew the house.”

“You think so, huh? No wonder you’re chief homicide investigator.”

Tassos shot him the middle finger as he shouted, “Adonis, where are you?”

Ten seconds later a lanky, dark-haired uniformed cop in his early twenties stuck his head through the doorway out to the backyard. “I’m out here, Chief, looking for footprints.”

“Forget about that for now. I want you to check out every house that has a sight line on this place. See if any of them have security cameras aimed in this direction. If you find any, get everything they have going back a week. And I mean everything.”

“Yes, sir, right away.” He disappeared.

Tassos said, “Good kid.”

“Why, because he listens to your every word? And don’t bother giving me the finger this time. I’m too busy concentrating on my work to notice.”

Tassos gave him the finger anyway.

***

Anna lay stretched out on her side across the foot of the bed. The apartment’s windows faced front, across a busy commercial street three stories below, and the little light still in the sky came from behind the building. She fell asleep to the din of the traffic.

She awoke in the dark and slid off the bed to make her way to the bathroom next to the front door. She turned on the light, did her business, and stepped back into the room making up the rest of the apartment. That’s when she saw the men asleep with their heads resting across their forearms on the kitchen table over by one of the windows.

From the number of empty beer bottles on the table, Anna guessed that she’d had the company of her two traveling companions for quite some time. They must have tired of waiting outside the apartment and come in to pass the time drinking and whispering to each other about what they’d like to do to her as she slept on the bed. But she knew all they’d dare do was fantasize. After all, she was Sergey’s girlfriend.

Where is he? She’d spent six miserable days with these degenerates getting to Mykonos and back on schedule, and Sergey couldn’t bother to be here waiting for her? Bastard. In addition to maids, Anna had become used to better treatment from her men.

The whole trip would have taken two days, three at most, had they flown. But that would involve closely checked identification at security checkpoints. Boats, buses, and trains were a pain in the ass to travel between Bialystok and Mykonos but that was the way Sergey wanted it done. It was his plan and they’d stuck to it faithfully-except for the part about what happened to Christos.

Bang!

Anna jumped up and spun around to face the door.

Bang, bang, bang.

Someone was hammering away at the door with a fist.

“Who is it?” she said.

“Your happiness and joy.”

“Sergey!” She hurried to the door, undid the bolt, and swung open the door.

A tall, broad-shouldered man with Romanesque features stepped inside, arms spread wide and smiling as if he were a kid on Christmas morning. Fair-skinned, with pale blue eyes and shoulder-length, bright white hair, he seemed almost albino, except that his eyebrows and lashes were jet black.

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard on the lips.

Sergey brought his arms in toward her body and gave a sort of a hug with his elbows.

She pulled back, her hands still around his neck. “Is this how you show how happy you are to see me?”

He waved with one hand to the two men at the table. They waved back, smiling.

“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for hours,” she said.

Sergey leaned in and kissed her quickly on the lips. “My darling, I’ve been buying vodka to celebrate.” He pulled back from her grip and brought his hands around to show a plastic grocery bag in each hand.

“Here, put them on the table so we can share with our friends.” He handed her the packages and started walking toward the men.

“What’s the matter, you couldn’t carry them over to the table yourself?”

He paused for an instant, but said nothing and kept going.

The two men stood up and embraced Sergey.

“You did it, my friends. Congratulations. Well done.” Sergey slapped both men on the back.

Anna hadn’t moved. “‘Well done’? These imbeciles beat him to death before we had the chance to find where he’d hidden what we were looking for. They ruined everything. Destroyed our plan.”

Sergey turned and walked back to Anna. He took the packages from her hands. “Relax, it was an accident.”

“Accident? You weren’t there. They never gave him a chance to tell us where it was. I did just as you said. I told him the two had kidnapped me and wanted money to let me go. That’s when he took us upstairs and opened the safe.”

“But what we wanted wasn’t in there,” said the shorter of the two men.

“There were other ways to get him to tell us,” she said.

“We tried,” said the tall man.

“Throwing him down the stairs wasn’t what I meant.”

The tall man shrugged.

Anna nodded toward the short man. “That asshole never gave me a chance to get him to talk. He just started beating Christos with a statuette until his head split open, while you did the same thing to the dog.” She pointed at the tall man.

“The fucker bit me,” said the tall man waving a bandaged hand.

Sergey sighed. “There’s nothing we can do about it, my love. Let’s just move on.” He kissed her on the forehead, took the packages to the table, and gestured for the men to open them.

“How can we move on? I can never go back to Mykonos. I’m no longer a kidnap victim, I’m part of a murder.”

“We took all the videos,” said the tall man.

She shook her head. “It’s still too big a chance for me to take. I’ll always be a suspect.”

Sergey nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid you’re right about that. But look at the bigger picture. Christos is no longer. The king of Mykonos nightlife is gone. Hail the new king.” He pointed to his chest.

“Are you crazy? You’re not Greek, let alone Mykonian, and you’ve never even been to Mykonos.”

He smiled. “Details, my love, details.”

“You are crazy! What about all those things he bragged about to me? The things you said we must have for the plan to work?”

He shrugged. “I assume the police will find all of that and we’ll be able to buy what we need from them. If not, we shall find other ways.”