Jake Needham - Killing Plato

I’ll bet, I thought to myself. And I wonder exactly how much that is costing him.

“Please excuse my husband, Mr. Karsarkis.” Anita tossed a hard look in my direction. “He’s a terrible bore sometimes.”

“Please, Anita. It’s Plato.”

Anita fidgeted. She shot me another hard look and I thought I saw unease in her eyes.

“Fine. Plato then.”

“I don’t mind the professor here saying whatever he wants to, Anita. He’s a smart guy. Smart guys think a lot.”

Karsarkis shifted his eyes back to mine and reached out and tapped me on the forearm with one finger.

“But don’t believe everything you’ve heard about me, Professor. You just keep asking questions and listening to the answers and maybe you’ll learn some things that will surprise you.”

After that Karsarkis led us around and introduced us to the rest of his guests as if we’d just had a brief conversation no more awkward than a chat about the weather. The man had self-confidence out the butt, I’d give him that.

The distinguished Thai in the dark suit turned out to be a former prime minister, a man named Sakda who had resigned suddenly a few years back under somewhat cloudy circumstances. He was now married to a blonde Australian at least six inches taller than he was, a woman who looked to me like she must have played the trombone in her high school band. I wondered if she was part of the punishment meted out to Sakda for whatever he was supposed to have done. Regardless, I figured him SI f if for the dark Mercedes.

Next there was a short, middle-aged Englishman with bad teeth and a bad complexion who was accompanied by an attractive Thai woman with good everything. She didn’t appear to like him all that much, it seemed to me, but perhaps that was just my imagination. I made the Englishman for the four-wheel drive.

And then there was a bland, pear-shaped man who I thought looked generically European. He was wearing a rumpled suit without a tie and had a Russian-sounding nickname. Karsarkis called him Yuri, which seemed about right when I looked at him closely, but he also had an American accent, which didn’t. Like the Englishman he was accompanied by an Asian woman, although after a brief inspection I decided Yuri’s companion was probably Chinese rather than Thai. That left them as the white Suzuki.

“And this is my wife,” Karsarkis finally said, leading us over to a tall woman with long, dark hair. She had her back to us and was talking animatedly with Mike O’Connell, the man Karsarkis had sent into the Boathouse the night before to invite us to dinner.

“Baby,” he said putting his hand on her shoulder. “I’d like you to meet Jack and Anita Shepherd.”

The woman turned with a smile that startled me with its unexpected warmth. While she may not have been a blonde, other than that I had nailed her cold. I tried to catch Anita’s eye, but she wouldn’t look at me.

“I’m Mia,” Karsarkis’ wife said, shaking hands with Anita first, and then me. “We’re so glad you could come. It’s nice to see some other Americans for a change.”

“Actually, I’m not American.” Anita said.

“You’re not?” Mia looked a little puzzled.

“No, I’m Italian.”

“You don’t look Italian,” Karsarkis observed, although I wasn’t absolutely sure what he meant by that. Maybe he thought if Anita was really Italian that she ought to be wearing a long black dress with a white apron over it, black stockings, and a pair of little black shoes.

“My mother was Italian,” Anita said. “My father was English, but mi considero Italiano .”

“Most people who marry Americans seem to want to become American citizens,” Mia said.

She was replying to Anita, but I noticed she was looking at me when she spoke, almost as if it was somehow my fault Anita was still Italian.

“Not me,” Anita said cheerfully. “Sono fiero di essere Italiano!”

“E bello essere fiere di cio che si e,” Karsarkis responded.

Anita inclined her head appreciatively at his apparent fluency in the language.

“E meglio di essere Francese,” she said.

“Could we get back to a language I speak?” I asked.

“Why?” Anita asked. “Is there someone here you haven’t insulted yet?”

Karsarkis laughed loudly, but Mia sensed something unpleasant might be happening and quickly changed the subject.

Turning toward me and conjuring up a pleasantly inconsequential tone of voice, she asked, “Are all those things I’ve been hearing about you true, Mr. Shepherd?”

“I wouldn’ SwouAre t doubt it a bit,” I replied, looking straight at Anita.

I knew it was an ungracious response to a woman who was only trying to keep the conversation light, but I was still smarting from Anita’s dig and Karsarkis’ appreciative response to it so to hell with them all.

Showing the reflexes of a battle-hardened hostess, Mia realized she needed to do something to defuse whatever that burning smell in the air might be.

“Now that everyone is here,” she asked the room at large, “shall we go in to dinner?” She phrased it as a question, but her tone said it wasn’t a question at all.

Then, just to make sure than no one had missed her point, Mia started walking toward the dining room without bothering to wait for anyone to answer her.

The dining room was high ceilinged and windowless except for the wall that faced the courtyard, which was all glass. A thick clump of banana trees and several pieces of modern sculpture were set in a rock garden just outside the glass and the deep blue light from the swimming pool was a glowing presence in the room. At the center was a long, narrow table with a black marble top. It was covered in candles and set for ten.

Mia took a seat at one end of the table and directed the former prime minister to sit on one side of her and me on the other. Karsarkis sat at the opposite end between Anita and the prime minister’s Australian wife.

Everyone stuck largely to murmuring about the weather and such while a small army of servants came and went, pouring wine and serving food. The first course was a local dish I didn’t recognize, but no one else asked what it was and I didn’t want to make an ass of myself so I didn’t ask either. The second course put me onto safer ground. I knew it was a mango salad of some kind, and it was pretty good.

The Englishman prattled on and on while the rest of us ate, but I hardly registered anything he said, tuning him out in favor of studying the other guests more closely.

Yuri didn’t appear to have much to say for himself, which disappointed me since I was hugely curious about him and was hoping he would drop a hint or two as to who he really was and what his connection with Karsarkis might be. Neither Yuri’s companion nor the Englishman’s companion said anything at all. I thought the Chinese-looking girl with Yuri seemed genuinely puzzled as to who all these people were and what they were talking about. She appeared so uncomfortably out of place I felt a little sorry for her.

The Thai woman who was with the Englishman, however, was quite another matter. A tortoiseshell band pinned back her long black hair, there was just a touch of a suntan on her face, and whatever make-up she wore was imperceptible. If the woman had been English, I would have described her as horsy, but as she was manifestly Thai the term just didn’t seem to sit right on her. Still, it was hard to come up with a better one. She had a high forehead and a bit of rosy flush that looked healthy and seemed to speak of outdoor living and riding mannishly. The only things about her that didn’t fit were the obviously very fine and very expensive diamond ear clips she wore.