Jeffrey Siger - Target - Tinos

“Yeah, they’re more the sort I wouldn’t trust around my ya-ya’s silver than killers.”

“Your grandmother’s still alive? She must be a hundred-fifty.”

Tassos placed his open palm in Andreas’ face, a slightly less endearing gesture than the middle finger. “I’m sure they’d steal anything they were told to take.”

“Then why are they so well-behaved?”

“The easiest answer is that they’re waiting to be told what to do,” said Tassos.

“But why make everything so goddamned complicated? Someone who calls himself a ‘priest’ recruits the Pakistani out of the closest place we have in Athens to hell, and once the guy’s here he keeps his ‘brothers’ in line by delivering them envelopes of cash without skimming a single euro.”

“That last part probably qualifies as a true miracle,” said Tassos.

“And who the hell is this ‘shepherd’?” said Andreas.

“All very good questions, which is precisely why tonight will be a late one.”

Andreas pulled up in front of the police station.

Tassos opened his door. “I’ll find us a place to stay in town. Say ‘Hi’ to Lila. And tell her that for sure I’ll be there on Sunday.”

This time it was Andreas who flashed an open palm.

Every town has places where its dirty work gets done. The more elegant communities may try to keep them out of sight, the less so may not care, but they all have them. It’s where one goes to find the materials and labor necessary to keep a town running and to dispose of what is no longer desired.

It’s also where you’re most likely to find the grittiest metanastes bars. Tinos was no exception. The bar the Pakistani described was off a road winding up from the port, tucked behind a trucking company warehouse yard filled with broken pallets and an electrical supply depot filled with giant, empty, wooden cable spools.

Tassos and Andreas were sitting in a car parked across from the bar and alongside a chain link fence enclosing the depot. The bar looked as if in another life it might have been a two-bay gas station.

“We’re going to fit right in there,” said Andreas.

“Yeah, sort of makes me wonder why we bothered to switch to an unmarked car. It would take a blind man not to spot us,” said Tassos.

“Not even sure he’d miss us.”

“Maybe they’ll think we’re just two lonely guys out looking for companionship?” Tassos smiled.

“Only a madman with terrific long term health insurance goes into a strange metanastes bar to hit on their women.”

“Kill joy. But this place might be different. It looks pretty mixed, ethnically.”

“I still doubt that two Greek cops asking for identity cards will fit their welcome profile.”

“Look on the bright side. At least Lila still loves you.”

“Not so sure about that either. When I told her I wouldn’t be making it back to Mykonos tonight all she said was, ‘Fine, see you Sunday.’”

“That was it?”

“No, there was the distinct ‘click’ of the call being terminated.”

“Ouch.”

“The good news is that it prepared me for the sort of welcome we’ll likely get in there.”

Three men walked past their car, staring in at them as they did, and went inside the bar.

“Well, for sure now everyone in the bar knows we’re out here.” Andreas looked at his watch. “It’s almost midnight, might as well go in.”

Tassos was the first to reach the front door. Two men in a hurry brushed past him coming out of the bar. It was the Romanians from that afternoon.

Andreas put his hand on the chest of the taller of the two. Both men stopped. “What’s the hurry?”

The man looked frightened. “No understand.”

“Where’s your friend, the interpreter?”

“No understand.”

Andreas dropped his hand from the man’s chest and waved him on. “A waste of time talking to them.”

“Even if we could understand them,” said Tassos.

Inside, the place was pretty much as it had seemed from the outside. The front door opened into a tiny room with a badly stained marble-top bar to the right. In front of the bar were three empty metal bar stools, and behind it a cash register, a top sliding beer cooler, a loudly humming refrigerator, and a decade old television angled for whoever worked behind the bar, not the customers. A fat, clean-shaven, middle-age man in jeans and a crisply ironed work shirt sat alone at the only table. There was no one else in the front room.

Past the bar was a larger room filled with beat-up taverna chairs tossed together around a dozen cheap, round-top plastic tables. More light seemed to be coming into that room from the moon through the windowed garage doors on the left than from two dim ceiling fixtures along the wall to the right.

The word that came to mind was dive. But there were people at every table. And all of them were staring at the two new arrivals.

Andreas stopped next to the fat man’s table. “What’s the matter, you anti-social?”

He looked up. “I prefer not to mix with my customers.” He spoke perfect Greek.

“You own this place?”

“Yes.”

“Nice place,” said Andreas.

“It’s a shit hole,” said the man. “But it makes more than it ever did as a garage.”

A wiry, middle-age woman, with more salt than pepper hair and dressed in black except for dirty blue bedroom slippers, shuffled out of the big room carrying a tray filled with empty beer bottles. She squeezed by Tassos and went behind the bar.

“Are you two going to order anything?” said the guy at the table.

“Two beers,” said Tassos. “Mind if we sit with you?”

The man raised two fingers to the woman and pointed at Tassos and Andreas.

“Like I said, ‘I prefer not to mix with my customers.’”

Andreas pulled up a chair and sat down. “We’re not customers, we’re cops.”

“No wonder those two guys ran out of here so fast.”

“Where were they sitting?”

He pointed at a table with two women.

“Are they regulars?”

“The women are, the guys just started coming in a couple of weeks ago.”

“What’s your name?” said Tassos.

“Petros.”

“You’re Greek?” said Tassos.

“Born and raised on the island. Just like my great, great, great, great-grandparents and all my family since then.”

The woman put two beers on the table and walked away. No glasses were offered.

“You get quite a mixed bag of customers in here,” said Tassos.

“Everyone but the Greeks.”

“Business looks good,” said Andreas.

Petros shrugged. “Not complaining.”

“Those two who left. Do they hang out with anybody in particular?” said Andreas.

“Some Pakistani.” Petros looked around. “I don’t see him.” He looked at his watch. “He’s usually here by now.”

Guess he figured we’d show up tonight and decided to pass, thought Andreas. “Did those murdered tsigani brothers ever come here?”

Petros gestured no. “So, that’s why you’re here. Lucky me you’re not interested in any of my live customers.”

“ Tsigani come here?” said Tassos.

“Not many.”

“Where do they go?” said Tassos.

The man shrugged. “No idea. But you might ask those two.” He nodded toward the same two women. “They were in here the night after the two dead ones were identified, chattering away about how they’d ‘partied together with the brothers.’ In case you haven’t guessed, they’re working girls.”

“Thanks.” Andreas stood up and picked his beer off the table. He looked at Tassos. “I’ll be right back.”

“Knock yourself out, Romeo,” smiled Tassos.

The women were at a table in the center of the room. One was decidedly taller than the other, but both were blond, blue-eyed and chubby. Probably Polish, and definitely not smiling at Andreas.