Only Tzitzilis was unaffected by her wiles. He heard the snap of her high heels at the front door and her smell burned his nostrils. It was, he thought, the smell of a woman of the world, who knew how to open her legs, to move her hips expertly. He knew her kind inside and out, her tricks had no effect on him, he’d laid his hands on his fair share of society women. He wasn’t interested in silk slips and perfumed armpits, he knew what a girl like that had under her skirts. Tzitzilis was more interested in whores, working girls who washed with clean towels. Smiling and obedient, grateful for a customer who finished quickly, particularly if he might tip.
Zouzou was full of dreams and caprices. How tiresome, Tzitzilis thought every time he had to question her. Only an American would get involved with her, or an over-educated dupe. Though he had to admit, the girl had spunk. Sure, her eyelashes fluttered like butterflies in spring — but on the inside she was sharp as a razor. She cut right through you, never bowed her head. The police chief quickly realized that the hypothesis of a crime of passion wouldn’t hold water, either. He needed to look somewhere else.
So he turned his suspicions on Antrikos. Everyone knew that journalists were jealous and competitive. They would tear one another to pieces for a scoop, and were always trying to get the upper hand. Antrikos was a Greek reporter, which meant he lived in Jack’s shadow. There wasn’t much to be done about it, he’d simply had the misfortune to be born in a weak country, and would thus never have his moment in the sun. Whereas everything had been handed to the American, ever since he was a child.
This theory seemed to hold up, but Antrikos was related to the prime minister — yes, the same prime minister who had taken personal responsibility for the case — an inconvenient fact that created significant obstacles for anyone wanting to pursue that line of inquiry. Tzitzilis called him down for questioning several times, and Antrikos was always unbearably specific and unremittingly precise. Almost insolent. He surely sensed where Tzitzilis was heading, and didn’t leave him the slightest margin. He answered questions with questions, lit cigarettes without asking permission, showed that he knew perfectly well who had the upper hand. Tzitzilis soon realized he was wasting his time.
Antrikos had joined forces with Zouzou, and together they bombarded the Ministry of Public Order with complaints. Back in Athens, when she saw the reporters swooping down like vultures to pick apart her daughter’s reputation, the widow’s mother grabbed them by the collar and dragged them into the house, straight into her bedroom.
— Look, she told them. This is the girl you’re ringing doorbells and loitering around on sidewalks for.
Zouzou was silently crying. She wasn’t the worldly widow they’d been hearing about, she was just a child, a little girl sobbing in her mother’s bed. She looked more like an orphan than anything else, a tiny, bird-like body, all bones.
Meanwhile, Thomas Tzitzilis was starting to worry. Every theory he’d come up with had crumbled before his eyes. The witnesses were unwilling to cooperate, no one wanted to get involved, most of them refused to open their mouths. But he had promised God and his superiors that he would solve the case. And so he would close the file. The Americans would get their perpetrator, his head served to them on a silver platter.
And if we don’t have a perpetrator, well, some Greek will have to sacrifice himself for the cause. It wouldn’t be a terrible blow, if it meant saving the rest of the country. Those were the kinds of thoughts that ran through his mind, though he didn’t admit them to anyone else, even if he knew he was right in his thinking. The case had taken on greater dimensions. The Americans kept forming committees, poking their noses into everything, sending generals and judges to the embattled country. Congress was up in arms, newspapers and radios buzzed in New York and Washington. U.S. taxpayers weren’t going to keep sending money to these barbarians if they were going to respond by murdering American citizens.
And so they threw the blame on the Greek government. Even the kindly disposed, who openly supported the Greeks for having declared a holy war against the communists within their own borders, expressed reservations.
Amid the chaos, with everyone beating his own drum yet cursing the government in unison — and the Greek police even more — for stalling and possibly covering up its own sins, Tzitzilis steadily sought the guilty party. The inhabitants of the city saw him in the churches of Agia Sophia and Agios Dimitrios, patron saint of Salonica, and in the Church of the Virgin Acheiropoiitos, praying with damp eyes to the All-Powerful, seeking the enlightenment he needed in order to overcome American insults and Greek idiocy alike. To find a solution that would prove acceptable to all.
An American general was dispatched by Congress. He barged into Tzitzilis’s office without knocking and let forth a stream of sailor’s curses, as he might have cursed a lackey or an underling, not a Major of the Gendarmerie and head of the Security Police. The American had no sense of protocol, that’s precisely why they’d sent him to bare his teeth, to tell Tzitzilis how things stood, without fancy prologues or arguments. Officer to officer, brass to brass. The American knew that when it came down to it, the Greek was his subordinate. So he treated him as such. And Tzitzilis swallowed the insult.
The General insisted that the crime had been committed by that hussy, Jack’s widow, who had been seen dancing in jazz clubs in Athens a month after the unfortunate event. He’d heard that Tzitzilis had abandoned that obvious solution and begun to investigate the case as a political murder. Tzitzilis had in fact called a meeting behind closed doors with his most trusted men, though the possibility that it had been a political crime had been raised even before that. It suited the government, would shut up opponents, offered a ready explanation. To Tzitzilis it was clear as day that the commies wanted to discredit Greece, to bring the country’s leaders down and drag them through the mud, to pressure the Americans to pack up and go home. But the investigation was still in its infancy, the evidence still a confused mess. All the different pieces would have to be brought into line if they were to convince anyone.
The General huffed.
— Your department is not doing its job, he said, pounding his fist on Tzitzilis’s desk. The American people demand you find the guilty party. And in a matter of days, he ordered, and left without saying goodbye.
Whoever seeks will find.
A reporter who spoke English, former member of the communist insurgency. The last person to see Talas alive, according to witnesses. Of course the meeting only lasted five minutes, but no one cared about such details. A communist plot was an acceptable solution.
Gris had no police record. He was a calm, quiet man, almost suspiciously so. He took care of his mother and supported his sisters. He didn’t spend money on things he didn’t need, apart from his four packs of cigarettes a day. Sometimes he forgot and lit a new one with the old one still burning. He would hold both between two fingers and inhale them together. As tough as they come, though he didn’t look it.
Tzitzilis had no intention of wasting time on preliminary questioning, corroboration, modification. This version would stick, and it was high time they were through with the case, for the good of the country.
All those who expressed doubt and distrust of the hurried proceedings — suspicious characters, the lot of them, and anti-Greek, in Tzitzilis’s estimation — quickly learned to hold their tongues. Military tribunals took place even on weekends. Blood flowed freely. Everyone on both sides of the political spectrum had seen enough death.