Jeffrey Siger - Target - Tinos

“Hi ladies, mind if I sit down?” Andreas sat without waiting for an answer. “So, come here often?” He flashed a smile.

The women said nothing.

“Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Andreas Kaldis, GADA’s Chief of Special Crimes. But you probably already know that. I’ve been telling that to a lot of people these days. In fact, I told something like that to a friend of your two friends who just ran out of here.”

The tall woman said something to the other in Polish.

“Uhh, uhh,” said Andreas. “Ladies, you’re in Greece and courtesy requires that you speak Greek. If you don’t I’m going to have to take you to a place where someone will speak to you in Polish. But it may take a day or two to find a police officer that does. Don’t worry, the state will provide you with a place to stay until then.” He smiled.

The tall woman said something else in Polish.

Andreas smiled. “That you can say. I know ‘fuck you’ in Polish. So, do we have an understanding?”

The women looked at each other. “Yes.”

“Good. Now tell me what happened just before your two friends hurried out of here.”

The short woman said, “Three men came in and went around telling everyone two cops were sitting in a car out by the fence. That’s when the two guys said something to each other and left.”

“What did they say?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t speak Polish and I don’t understand Romanian,” said the short woman.

“Then how did you understand the three men who said there were cops outside?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did they speak in Polish?”

“No, Greek.”

Andreas smiled and turned to the tall one. “So, you’re the one who speaks Romanian.”

She stared at the tabletop.

“Remember what I said before about arranging housing for you until I find a colleague who speaks Polish. Would you like me to do that for you now?”

She looked up. “How did you know I spoke Romanian?”

“Because your two friends who left don’t speak Greek. Someone had to translate for them. Now, what did they say?” Andreas did not smile.

The woman swallowed. “That the two cops outside had to be the same ones who were trying to question them that afternoon about the murdered tsigani brothers. They said the Pakistani they worked with ‘must have told the cops about the bar.’”

“What else did they say?”

“Something about not wanting to be here if you and your partner were looking for some farmer the Pakistani told them about. Then they got up and left. Didn’t even pay for our beers.”

As if on cue the woman in the slippers was at the table and pointing at the ladies’ nearly empty bottles. Andreas nodded, “Yeah, another round. ‘Farmer?’ What the hell were they talking about?”

“I don’t know,” said the tall woman.

“Me either,” said the other.

Andreas took a sip of his beer. “So, tell me about the Carausii brothers.”

“What do you want to know?” said the short one.

“Oh, for starters how about who killed them and why?”

“No idea.”

“I’m shocked,” said Andreas. “So, let’s take a different approach. When and where did you first meet them?”

“About a month ago through tsigani friends at another bar.” The short one gave Andreas the name of the bar and said it was close to the brothers’ tsigani camp. “They were nice boys. Close to our age, too.”

“Yeah, not like the other ones,” said the tall one.

Andreas took that to mean their johns. “So, the four of you partied together?” He used the street word for their business.

“Yeah, a couple of times,” said the tall one. “Like I said, they weren’t like the others.”

“Did they pay?”

The tall girl looked down. “Yes.”

“But not as much as the others,” said the short one.

“What did you talk about?”

The women took turns talking about things completely irrelevant to Andreas but obviously very relevant to them. Things like how none of the four felt accepted by the larger world, how lucky they were to still be alive doing what they had to do to survive, and their doubts at any future beyond today.

“And just when things seemed to be getting better for them, look what happened. We’re all cursed,” said the tall one.

“What do you mean ‘better’?” said Andreas.

The short one answered. “They said something about getting their big break. That some ‘major guys’ in their old Athens neighborhood would owe them ‘big time.’”

“For what?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“Someone on this island was of great interest to people back in Menidi.”

“Ever hear a name or a description?”

“Only once, but nothing I understood. They made some sort of toast to a foreign sounding name. I thought it was Romanian. A lot of tsigani speak Romanian.”

The tall one said, “I don’t remember them saying a name in Romanian.”

“Never?” said Andreas.

She shrugged. “Not that I remember. And they stopped seeing us right after telling us about their ‘big break.’”

“Why did they stop seeing you?” said Andreas?

“They found new girls,” said the short one. “Greek girls. Tall, skinny, model types but with big tits. The kind men fantasize about.”

“We can’t compete with that type,” said the tall one.

“No offense intended, but I’m surprised those girls would be interested in tsigani,” said Andreas.

“We thought the same thing, especially since the girls looked the expensive type, way out of the brothers’ price range,” said the tall one.

“Were they pros?”

“Is there a difference between doing it for cash or for an expensive dinner and clothes?” said the short one.

Andreas smiled. “Where’d they meet?”

“No idea. But one night we showed up at that tsigani bar to meet them and a friend told us they’d just left with two girls. We saw them there the next night with the girls, but they didn’t talk to us. And then they were dead.”

“Do you have names for the girls?”

Tall one gestured no. “As if they would be real if we did.”

Andreas nodded. He asked them all sorts of other questions through two more rounds of beers but no answers yielded more information than they’d already told him.

“Thanks, ladies, and if you think of anything else, please let me know.” He handed the tall one his card. “Like any more about that ‘farmer’ your Romanian friends were talking about.” He smiled because he’d used the Polish word for farmer.

“What do you mean?” said the tall woman.

“You told me that the Romanians said I was asking about some ‘farmer.’” This time Andreas used the Greek word for farmer. The same one the tall woman had used.

She shook her head, “No, if that’s what that Greek word means in Polish I didn’t mean that. What I meant was a word for something different.” She looked at the short girl and said a word in Polish.

The short girl said, “Sheep farmer.”

“Shepherd?” said Andreas.

“Yes,” said the tall girl. That’s what the Romanians meant when they said you were looking for a cioban.”

The short girl’s eyes widened. “Wait a minute, that’s the name the tsigani brothers were toasting the last night they were with us. Don’t you remember, they said, ‘To the cioban,’ because something they knew about him was about to make them ‘very rich.’ You and I talked about it later. We even toasted to him.”

The tall girl picked up her beer and took a swig. “Yeah, I do. So what. Instead they’re dead. Life sucks.”

Andreas had nothing to add.

“Did you get anything from the fat guy while I was talking to the ladies?”