Jeffrey Siger: Mykonos After Midnight

The man kept pressing on the doorbell. He’d come this far and was not about to leave without speaking to his friend. Maybe he’d been wrong to call Christos an “old fool,” but that was no reason for ending a fifty-year friendship. For two days in a row Christos had been missing from morning coffee in the harbor. That wasn’t like him.

They’d been friends since practically the day Christos got off the boat to open his nightclub here. And what a club it was. They all came: Brigitte Bardot, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, Jackie Onassis, Yul Brynner, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck. Christos’ place had changed Mykonos forever. The times and crowds were different now, but the club still prospered from its perch above the old port following Christos’ indefatigable philosophy: “I try to spend every day doing what others dream of doing just once in their lives.”

Trouble was, Christos’ approach to life had him falling for a twenty year-old Ukrainian pole dancer.

The man started pounding on the door with his fist. “Come on, Christos, it’s Ted. Open up.”

Ted had never actually called Christos an “old fool.” His exact words were, “The trouble with Viagra is it fucks up an old man’s mind a hell of a lot more than it ever gets up his prick.”

No answer.

Ted turned right and followed a narrow, blue-gray flagstone path toward a white gate just beyond the edge of the house. The gate was of solid steel, a foot taller than Ted, and the only interruption in an eight-foot high natural stone wall surrounding Christos’ property.

He tried the gate handle, but it was locked. He looked down a row of weather-beaten, terra-cotta pots neatly spaced along the base of the wall, walked over to an amphora filled with bright red geraniums, stooped down, dug his fingers into the soil, and came out with a key.

“At least you’re not so pissed off at me that you changed the hiding place.”

On the other side of the gate the flagstone path tripled in size, its left border lined the side of the house and its right sat perpendicular to a dozen parallel rows of grapevine plantings running up to the stone wall on the property line sixty feet away.

As Ted reached the back of the house, he yelled, “Christos, it’s Ted. Ready or not here I come.”

No answer.

He carefully peered around the corner. Behind the house, flagstone covered all open ground except for a ten-foot soil perimeter abutting the rear wall and bursting with pink and white oleander, pomegranate, lemon, olive, and fig trees. It was Mykonos’ blue and white version of the Playboy Mansion, complete with outdoor kitchen, bamboo-covered beach bar, marble dining table for thirty, sixty-foot-long heated pool, hot tub for ten, and linen-draped outdoor beds.

“Hello, anybody home?”

Still no answer.

He wondered whether he should leave and come back later. Christos had a quick temper, and showing up unexpectedly could set him off big time. And when Christos took offense, his stubborn side kept the anger boiling well beyond his recollection of what had set it off in the first place.

Ted stared west at the sea beyond the treetops. He had to give his friend credit: Christos knew how to pick locations. This place was unlike any other on the island. It sat a little more than a half mile from the old harbor, yet despite all the development pressing upon his property, when you looked west all you saw were rolling hills, the blue Aegean, and magnificent sunsets.

He turned his head and glanced around the backyard. Everything looked normal. “Probably out with the dog,” a yellow Labrador Christos had saved from starvation a dozen winters before, one of the many pets tragically abandoned at the end of each summer by self-indulgent, uncaring seasonal residents.

Yes, it’s Sunday, they must be out. Otherwise, the mutt would be barking up a storm at me.

He thought to take a peek in the windows but decided it wiser to leave. If Christos was inside and ignoring his shouts, he was in no mood to be disturbed.

***

The next morning the maid found Christos Vasilakis bludgeoned to death in his living room. Next to him lay his dog, killed the same way. She called the police and when they arrived she was sitting calmly next to the bloodied bodies, her eyes fixed on a sliding glass door opening to the backyard. Flies were everywhere.

One young cop almost lost his lunch at the sight. Another at the smell. A third cop, a sergeant, asked her, “Why are you sitting here? It’s a mess. His head is cracked wide open.”

She didn’t move her eyes. “I am from Kosovo. I have seen many dead bodies. Mister Christos was very good to me. I am honoring him by remaining with him.”

The sergeant bit his lip. “Sorry, but you’ll have to wait outside with us until the homicide unit gets here from Syros.”

Syros, home to the Cycladic islands’ central police headquarters, was the capital island of the Cyclades and forty-five minutes away by fast boat in good weather. That’s where the homicide cops were based and those were the rules.

The sergeant stared at the body as the maid walked past him toward the door.

What happened from this point on was someone else’s problem.

She wished it had ended differently. It was all her fault. She was certain of that. If only she hadn’t worn the fancy clothes and jewelry to surprise Sergey on his release from prison. He never said so, but he had to know she couldn’t afford those things on what she made as a dancer. It was obvious she was fucking someone special.

She gazed out the train compartment window at the farmland. It seemed to be passing by so quickly. Just like the weeks since their first visit. She yawned. If she’d stuck to turning tricks during the two years Sergey was away, none of this would have happened. He would have expected that. After all, it’s what she was doing when he caught her hustling johns without his permission in that strip club he managed in Bialystok.

She was seventeen then, a runaway from the poverty of the Ukrainian countryside. He was an educated Russian almost twice her age. He didn’t hurt her, just made her screw him in his office for free. They kept up that arrangement for about a week until one night her pimp showed up at the club and threatened Sergey to burn it down to the ground if he kept “messing” with his “property.” She never found out what happened to her pimp, but within a week she was living with Sergey and working his side of the nightlife business as the go-to person for whatever drugs the customers wanted.

For about a year her life was steady and predictable, more so than she could ever remember. Then a rival club owner arranged for Sergey to get arrested in a major drug bust. With Sergey no longer around to protect her, the only thing she could be certain of was that staying in Poland wouldn’t be good for her.

So she took off for Greece and ended up on Mykonos. At five-feet-ten, with busty Grace Kelly looks, getting a job was easy, and the most difficult part of finding someone to take care of her was weeding out the competing offers.

Christos Vasilakis was the obvious choice. He was her boss, he knew everyone, he was rich, he didn’t mind if she screwed around as long as she slept at home, and his sexual appetites were far less demanding than a younger man’s. That arrangement also made it easier for her to still think of herself as Sergey’s girl.

But why did she feel that way? She shut her eyes and tried to think of an answer.