Jeffrey Siger: Target: Tinos

Something in Lila’s voice told him this wouldn’t be easy. “Uhh, sorry. Things just sort of got out of hand.”

“Tell me about it. Remember how cute we thought it was watching Tassaki trying to walk? Well, today he’s decided to become a 24/7 sprinter.”

Their son was named Tassos, after Andreas deceased father, but when a well-meaning American friend of Lila’s added “aki” to the engraving on the silver frame of a baby photo-thinking Tassaki meant “little Tassos”-the laughs it generated sealed his fate. Greeks were in love with nicknames and little Tassos was now affectionately known by the Greek word for “ashtray.” Andreas tried convincing Lila it could have been worse; one of Andreas’ sister’s boys was called kremidhas the other skordho, a combination of “onions” and “garlic.” Lila still didn’t like it, but had come to accept the inevitable.

“What has him so wound up?”

“I think he’s waiting for his daddy to come home.”

Andreas took that as a warning: MINE FIELD AHEAD.

“I’ll try to get home as soon as I can.”

“Wrong answer.”

“I know. But something’s come up and-”

“In other words you can’t make it to the meeting.”

Andreas prayed for sudden loss of phone service. “Sorry.”

There was a seemingly eternal pause.

“Andreas Kaldis, we’re getting married in six days no matter how hard you try to convince me otherwise. All I want to know is whether your son and I can expect to see you on Mykonos next Sunday afternoon?”

Andreas swallowed. “I’ll try to be home before Tassaki goes to sleep.”

“Much better answer. Love you, bye.”

It wasn’t going to be a big wedding, at least not by Greek standards. Only a few hundred guests. Mykonos was where they fell in love and Lila’s family had a home large enough to accommodate the reception. But deciding to hold it on Greece’s most celebrated party island only ninety miles from Athens during the peak of the summer had turned it into one of the most anticipated social events of the season. Still, Lila wanted to keep it simple. At least as much as possible.

Andreas remembered Lila’s exact words: “We don’t need anything else to make it perfect.” But now she wanted the bridegroom showing up. Women. Always wanting more from a man than they said. He was smiling at his own stupid joke when a bull of a man about a head shorter than Andreas opened the door.

“Is now a good time?”

“Yeah, Yianni, come in.” Andreas pointed to the chair closest to his desk. The men met when detective Yianni Kouros was a brash, young rookie and Andreas the new police chief on Mykonos. They’d been together ever since.

“I had the pleasure of a drop-in visit today from our minister. This just arrived from his office.” He patted the pile of folders Maggie had put on his desk. “It’s on those two Tinos murders.”

“I thought that was your friend’s case?”

“No more. Our minister wants us to close it out ASAP based upon what’s in the file. He asked me to get Tassos to sign off on it. But no way I’m going to raise that with Tassos until I know what’s in here.”

“In other words, until I tell you what’s in there.”

“Smart thinking, detective. Get back to me by this afternoon.” Andreas handed him the folders.

“Any ideas?”

“Yeah, let’s try not to be as narrow-minded in our thinking as our dear minister.”

“Huh?”

“The dead are tsigani. Somehow he thinks that’s the answer to everything and a reason for closing the case. Understand?”

Kouros nodded and stood up. “So what else is new? Since when haven’t tsigani, metanastes, or for that matter, foreigners in general not been our politicians’ fall guys of choice?” He gave a casual salute and left.

Andreas turned his head and stared out the window. There had always been refugees fleeing despots and turmoil in Greece’s region of the world, but when Greece joined the E.U. in 1981 it was essentially a homogeneous land of less than ten million. With financial prosperity came Filipinos to serve in domestic jobs no longer done by Greeks and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 brought a wave of Eastern European immigrants seeking better lives, but it was after 2002 and the confluence of the euro currency launch, America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Greece’s all-out building boom for the 2004 Athens Olympics, that the floodgates opened.

Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Poles came to put their much needed construction skills to work for pay far greater than any they could dream of back home, and Greece’s porous island and mainland borders became an irresistible magnet for those fleeing Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and what at times seemed all of struggling Africa. They were the metanastes — the foreigners who came to work or simply escape a life in chaos elsewhere.

Greece’s population was now almost eleven and a half million of which ten percent were estimated to be immigrants. No one knew exactly how many more were living hidden lives within the country, but with the abrupt change in Greece’s financial fortunes virtually every lost job or criminal act now seemed somehow blamed on the metanastes or tsigani. No one had to tell Andreas how ugly the anger was brewing-on all sides.

Maggie’s voice came over the intercom. “Yianni’s here. He said to tell you he’s read the file.”

“Send him in.”

Kouros walked in and sat in a chair across the desk from Andreas.

Andreas looked at his watch. “That was quick. Just a little more than an hour.”

“A lot of paper but not much to read. No one saw or heard a thing except for smoke just before dawn. The victims were brothers, one twenty-two and the other eighteen. They were from a tsigani camp set up on the southeast part of the island near the port and far away from where the bodies were found. They left the camp the day before they were found. Their family began to worry when they heard about the murders and the two hadn’t returned for three nights. The victims were preliminarily identified from jewelry found on their bodies, later confirmed by DNA testing. The Tinos police chief personally interviewed everyone in the camp and came up with nothing. No one had any idea of who might have wanted to kill either brother or of a possible motive. The most anyone had to say was that this was ‘not the tsigani way’ of settling scores.”

“What did forensics come up with?”

Kouros leaned in and rested his elbow on the desk. “That’s where things get interesting. The victims died of asphyxiation before the fire.”

“They were dead before they burned?”

“Looks like it.”

“How did they suffocate?”

“Can’t be sure, but forensics thinks it might be gas.”

“Carbon monoxide poisoning?”

Kouros gestured no. “Nitrous oxide.”

“Nitrous oxide?”

“Yes, laughing gas.”

“That’s the sort of stuff my dentist uses.”

“And some use it as a recreational drug. Makes you euphoric, happy. You feel no pain.” Kouros shook his head. “They think that’s what it was because they found a nitrous oxide cylinder in the back of the van behind the bodies.”

“That’s not what tsigani are known to traffic.” Big time drug dealing by some tsigani was another mark borne by the many.

“Like I said, it makes things interesting.”

Andreas picked up a pencil and tapped it on his desk. “Check to see where you can find laughing gas on Tinos.”

Kouros shook his head. “The Tinos police already did. No luck there. It’s available just about everywhere, on and off the island. And it’s not just used by dentists. Hospitals use it in surgery, motor racers use it to boost engine power, and restaurants use it to puff up whipped cream.”