Jeffrey Siger - Target - Tinos

“How can you be so sure?”

Trelos picked up his iPod and earphones. “Because it’s already happened.” He put on his earphones. “I have no more to say.” And began to dance as Kouros and Tassos came through the front door.

“We didn’t find a thing, Chief.”

Trelos did a quick pirouette, ending with a wink that only Andreas could see.

“That’s one smart son-of-a-bitch. He made sure to put you in a ‘your word against his’ situation over a supposed conversation between you and a notorious whackjob who never talks,” said Tassos.

“And how the hell do you scramble a recorder?” said Kouros from the backseat of the cruiser heading toward town.

“You’re asking me?” said Andreas. “I’m still trying to remember what he said.”

“You remembered enough for me to have a chat with my niece. Unless one of us talked where we shouldn’t have, Eleni’s the only other person who knew about the robbery.”

“And what was all that about the robbery having ‘already happened’?” said Kouros.

“Another question for Eleni,” said Andreas.

Kouros shook his head. “What I don’t get is why does everybody in the sister’s family think she needs protection? She’s the one going face-to-face every night in that bar with the hard-ass customers her brother is trying to save. And from the way she got away from us last night, she just might have the biggest balls in her family.”

“I think Trelos has a pretty good size pair,” said Andreas. “Let’s not forget he’s been playing chicken with the Albanians.”

“I’d say leaving dead bodies all over Greece qualifies as more than a game of chicken,” said Kouros.

“But who’s doing it, and why?” said Andreas.

“Isn’t Trelos the obvious ‘who’?” said Tassos. “I can’t see him personally doing that sort of heavy-lifting dirty work, but for sure there’s a hell of a lot of guys in his brotherhood who could. Like he said, that’s why the Albanians don’t want to mess with his ‘army.’”

“Great, so what’s the ‘why’ answer?” said Andreas.

“He’s sending a simple message. ‘This is what happens to anyone who tries to fuck with me,’” said Kouros.

Andreas gestured no. “No, not ‘fuck with me.’ That can’t be the message. As far as we can tell the only threat the victims posed to Trelos was to expose him as the Shepherd.”

“Sounds like a difference without a distinction to me,” said Tassos. “Once he’s exposed, the Albanians would do the fucking.”

Andreas nodded. “Which is precisely why it makes no sense that, if he’s responsible for eliminating those he thought posed a threat to exposing him, he simply out of the blue decided to announce to me who he was.”

“Like he said, he thought you’d find out sooner or later, so he’s trying to con you with misdirection,” said Kouros.

“Bullshit. If he was behind the intricate planning that went into arranging the murders of those five men, plus getting that package to me, and his reason for doing all that was to keep his identity a secret, I can’t imagine that less than an hour of my busting his balls would break him. He knew that even if I suspected who he was there was no way I could prove it. All he had to do was keep playing dumb and wait for the chance to take me out.

“No, we’re definitely still missing the ‘why.’”

“Aren’t you forgetting the ‘robbery’? He could have said what he did to distract you from discovering what he’s planned?” said Kouros.

“Only if the robbery hasn’t already happened. For if it has, even the murders make no sense.”

“Which is precisely why we’re seeing my niece.”

Andreas pulled into the lot behind the Foundation’s offices. “Who gets to play bad cop this time?”

“She’s my niece, my turn.”

“What do you mean you have good news and bad news to tell me, uncle?”

“The good news is, we understand from a reliable source that your church won’t be robbed. At least not this week.”

“That is good news, but I never really thought anything like that was possible.”

“The bad news is, you’ve already been robbed.”

“ What? That cannot be. Who told you that?”

“No, the question is, ‘Whom did you talk to about a possible robbery?’”

“No one.”

“You’re the only one on the island other than the three of us who knew.”

“Honest, I didn’t tell anyone at the Foundation. I kept my word.”

Andreas raised his hand. “Excuse me, but possibly you mentioned something in passing about it to a girlfriend, a boyfriend or-”

“I’m not a gossip.” Her tone was sharp.

“Enough already with that dismissive tone of voice of yours. I don’t like it and it’s not working. I want to know who you told and I want to know now.” Tassos was shouting.

“Stop, uncle, you’re making a scene.”

“Not nearly as big a one as I’ll make if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

“Okay, okay. After we met at the taverna, Dad called to ask why the private meeting. I think he was hurt that you hadn’t included him. I told him it was ‘police business.’ That made him worry I was in some sort of trouble, so I told him it wasn’t about me, but the possibility of someone planning to rob a church on Tinos. But I swore him to secrecy before telling him.”

Tassos smacked his hands on his thighs. “Swearing your father to secrecy is about as good as telling a hungry kid not to touch the cookies. God knows how many he told.”

“And considering the source of the information, it wouldn’t take much guesswork to figure out the church was the Foundation’s,” said Kouros.

“Well, at least we have our answer to that part of the puzzle. Now on to the grand prize question,” said Andreas. “When was the last time the Foundation was robbed?”

“And we’re not interested in one-hundred-seventy-year-old stories,” said Tassos.

“We’ve never been robbed.”

“Is that your final answer?” said Andreas.

“Yes.”

“Good, where’s your boss’ office?”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Of course not. It’s just obvious you’re not included in the Foundation’s ‘we’ve-been-robbed’ loop. There’s no doubt in my mind that over the last one-hundred-seventy-years the Foundation’s been robbed. The only question is when and how much was taken.”

“My boss will not see you.”

“Yes he will. I’m Chief Inspector of Special Crimes for GADA, and I’ve reason to believe a robbery has occurred at the Foundation, an institution under the direct supervision of two government ministries. If your boss refuses to see me I’ll be duty bound to present a full report to the appropriate ministers. And by the way, if that’s not enough to convince your boss to see me, suggest that he begin preparing to accommodate all the media that will be joining the pilgrims and tsigani camped out around the Foundation. In my experience, government ministers have a harder time keeping juicy secrets from the press than daughters do from fathers.”

Eleni swallowed hard. “I’ll be right back.”

As soon as she left the room Tassos said, “I thought I was supposed to be the bad cop.”

“Sorry, force of habit.”

“What do we do now?” said Kouros.

“Wait,” said Tassos.

Andreas looked at a photograph on a bookshelf behind Eleni’s desk. It was of Eleni with her father and probably her mother. “Yianni, did that cop you talked to about the accident that killed Trelos’ parents remember anything squirrelly about it?”

“No, he said it was straightforward. The father fell asleep at the wheel.”