‘The village where, as we know, vendettas are a speciality. It certainly needs to be checked out. Let’s get back to the Heavenly Blue and talk to the less-than-talkative Maria.’
‘I thought she’d started speaking again.’
‘Not much.’
Mikis applied full lock and turned the Jeep back the way they’d come.
In the hotel, Mavros ran up to his room and booted up his laptop. A search for ‘Kondoyannis USA’ brought up numerous references, though not as many as ‘Kondos USA’. Cross-referencing them would be a long job. He was about to give up and go in search of Maria when a newspaper headline caught his eye — ‘Florida Mobster Kondoyannis Jailed’. Maybe the surname hadn’t been changed, after all. The article was dated January 17th 2003 and described the end of the trial of Michael ‘the Bat’ Kondoyannis, fifty-seven, boss of one of northern Florida’s ‘most vicious’ criminal organizations. Born in Tallahassee, ‘the Bat’, so named for his use of a metal alloy baseball bat to deal with his enemies, had risen to the top of a gang run by Greek immigrants, originally from the island of Crete. Initially, they had been involved in illegal gambling and robberies, but in the last twenty years had controlled a significant part of the drugs trade in the South. Scrolling down, Mavros found a photograph of the mobster, a bull-chested man with short black curly hair. His features, including heavy rings beneath the eyes, were certainly Greek. He had been convicted of heroin, marijuana and hashish trafficking, using shipping containers supposedly full of olive oil, and of two murders. It was suspected he had links with organized crime in Sicily and other parts of the Mediterranean. Then there was another photo, this time of ‘the Bat’ with his family before his arrest. Next to a short, plump woman stood a figure with long black hair — his daughter Maria. There was no doubt that she was Cara Parks’ assistant. Presumably she had changed her name when she went to Hollywood. That was one of several things he needed urgently to ask her.
Before he could get out of the door, his phone rang.
‘Alex, it’s Cara.’
‘Oh, hi. Is your assistant with you?’
‘That’s just it. I expected she’d be in my suite when I came back from the shoot — she stayed there to handle the backlog of fan mail — but she wasn’t. I still have a card to her suite, so I checked. She isn’t there. I’ve asked at reception and no one has seen her, even though she’s still in that wheelchair. Apparently the shift changed. They’re contacting the people who were on duty, but no news yet.’
‘Here we go again. Tell me, did you know that Maria’s father is a recently jailed Florida mobster of Cretan stock?’
‘What? You must be joking.’ The actress sounded genuinely surprised.
‘No, I’m not. The question is, was she involved in the family business?’
‘That’s ridiculous, Alex. She wouldn’t have time. .’
‘Really? Might only take a few phone calls a day to ensure the drugs were running into LA smoothly.’
There was a pause. ‘And that mountain village she was in grows dope, doesn’t it?’
‘Kornaria? Oh, yes, in a big way. And guess what — David Waggoner’s got a house up there. Are you sure you never saw them in conversation?’
This time there was a longer silence. ‘I don’t know. Maybe when we were preparing for the Galatsi battle scenes.’
‘Any raised voices?’
‘I. . I don’t know. I don’t remember.’
‘All right.’
‘Alex, you will find Maria, won’t you? You will finish the case?’
He said he would try and hung up. It looked like all roads led to Kornaria, where the locals would shoot him before saying ‘Kali mera’.
SIXTEEN
Before going any further, Mavros called Niki. She sounded tired.
‘What is it, my love?’
‘The job, of course,’ she said sharply, then, ‘I’m sorry, Alex. Sometimes it’s too much, the endless stream of people coming to Greece, thinking their lives will improve overnight. There’s a limit to the jobs I can find them.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, when are you coming home?’
He’d been expecting the question. ‘You’re not going to believe this — the woman I found has disappeared again.’
‘And there I was thinking you’d got yourself involved in the Rudolf Kersten death. Some of the news bulletins are hinting there was foul play.’
Mavros had been hoping Niki wouldn’t have seen the news — she didn’t always watch it as she thought most journalists were liars.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The cops here are saying it was probably suicide.’
‘So you are involved?’
‘Well, the widow has asked me to help find the killer — if there was one.’
There was a pause as she filled her lungs. ‘Get back here, Alex Mavro. You know how these cases end — with you facing death and your bill unpaid. Come back tomorrow. Tonight, if they’ll give you their stupid Learjet.’
‘That’s not going to happen, Niki,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ve got to let me do my job.’
‘Oh, fine. And what am I supposed to do? Sit here waiting to hear that some lunatic Cretan villagers have chopped you to pieces?’
He gave a weak laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not like that down here on the coastal strip.’
‘Alex, please. Come back home. I miss you.’
‘I’ll get back as soon as I can. Promise. I’ve got to run now. Love you.’ He cut the connection, disturbed by how close Niki’s imagination was to reality. All he’d done was buy himself some time — she’d be back on his case tomorrow.
He rang the Fat Man.
‘I see the German’s dead,’ Yiorgos said, after they’d exchanged unpleasantries. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be involved in that case too, would you?’
Mavros filled him in.
‘Sounds to me like you’ve got too much on your plate. Maybe I should come down.’
The idea of the Fat Man stomping around antagonizing people in the luxury resort wasn’t appealing, though he might have been useful in Kornaria.
‘No, thanks.’ He told him about Michael ‘the Bat’ Kondoyannis. ‘See if you can dig up anything about him and Crete. His family came from Kornaria.’
‘He was a drug dealer and he came from Afghanistan, Crete? It wouldn’t take a genius to work out where he got his supplies.’
‘Some of them, at least. But I want more than deductions, Fat Man. See if you can dig up something concrete about him.’
‘Concrete, as in the stuff the mob puts on people’s feet before chucking them overboard?’
‘Very funny. I found out something else.’ He told Yiorgos what Mikis had told him about his father when he had been known as Kanellos, and the lie told by Waggoner.
‘So an agent of the imperial power sets up a Communist. How unusual. I take it you’ll be having words with the shit-head.’
‘Soon enough. In the meantime, I’ve got a rendezvous with a Hollywood starlet.’
‘Screw you,’ the Fat Man said harshly. ‘Then again, if she does that, Niki will hang your intestines from your mother’s balcony.’
‘Over and out,’ Mavros said, heading for the door.
The man on the other side was wearing black clothes and a matching balaclava. Only the long knife in his right hand provided any contrast. Its point pierced Mavros’s T-shirt before he walked rapidly backwards into his room.
From The Descent of Icarus:
I came round in another field hospital, this one in the grounds of a Cretan prison. The inmates were all gone, most of them, I learned, killed when they joined the locals in the battles against the mountain troops who had flooded the west of the island from Maleme. My head was pounding and every movement provoked worse pain. I slid my hand up slowly and felt a bandage swathing my skull.
‘Ah, the brave paratrooper has woken up,’ said a sardonic voice.
I looked up at the doctor who was standing by my bed. His white hair was cut short at the sides and he wore a moustache like Himmler’s — clearly the kind of martinet who wished he was in the SS but had been deemed too old. The army was less choosy.