Free Trueish Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel by Alex A. King

“Oh, well, that is different. An equal favor.”
    “I did what I thought had to be done to find Dad. If it was the wrong thing … sorry, but you weren’t there. It was my call to make.”
    “”There is nobody named the Eagle that I know of—not in this business. And I know the people Stelios Dogas knows. We go all the way back to the beginning, Rabbit and I.”
    “Could be someone new.”
    “No.”
    “Could be someone old with a new name.”
    “No.”
    “Why would he give me that name then?”
    She smiled. Grandma was a little old lady, but that smile make my innards wobble.
    “It is a dangerous thing to owe a favor. The people who come to me to ask for my help, they know this. Never do a favor unless you are certain of the other person’s loyalty. A gift is different.” She shrugged over the bowl as her hand worked. “You can give anybody a gift. If they choose to repay you someday … then it is a good surprise. If not, then you are not disappointed. But favors … favors are dangerous. You asked for a name and promised an equal payment in return, and now I will have to take that favor upon myself to fulfill, when he asks it of me.”
    “I didn’t ask you to—“ I started.
    “It is my responsibility as the head of this Family and as your grandmother.”
    I inched toward the screen door that separated the kitchen from the front yard. Outside held fresh air, and freedom, and also the outhouse. In here there was a grouchy munchkin-sized ogre with a compulsion to bake.
    “I’m going to check on my goat.”
    She looked up from the bowl. “Before you go, what was in the box?”
    “You don’t know?”
    She shrugged. “Why else would I ask?”
    “I figured you’d opened it before leaving.”
    “No.”
    “It was … uh … a man’s penis.”
    “Not a woman’s?”
    Oh God, was she kidding? I checked. There it was, the twinkle in her eyes.
    “It wasn’t Aunt Rita’s,” I said carefully, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
    The pause that followed was so long that I couldn’t be sure it was technically a pause. For all I knew the conversation had ended, and on a deadly note.
    Well done, Kat. Insult the Godmother’s youngest child, the one she’s sore about anyway.
    “It wasn’t Dad’s,” I said, eager to wedge something other than my own foot into the silence. “I figured you’d want to know.”
    “I do not want to know how you know.”
    “Dina,” I said. “She identified it for us. She kept pictures.”
    We both made faces.
    “That woman …” she said

----
    I wanted to hunt down the name Rabbit had given me, but finding out there was no such person had lopped off that plan’s head. The twerp had tricked me.
    I left Grandma’s house and trotted over to one of the courtyard’s tables, with Googling on my mind. I pulled up the Crooked Noses Message Board, a forum dedicated to organized crime of every flavor. The top thread in the Greek Mafia sub forum was all about Rabbit’s prison breakout. Stavros’s video had gone viral. He’d killed the original but the Internet’s memory was long.
    The Crooked Nosers were filled with speculation, most of it about who had shot the video. They had managed to uncover the news about my visit with Rabbit, and now they were pooping out a million and one scenarios about what I could have been doing there.
    It’s got to be connected to her father’s disappearance, they said.
    Stelios Dogas has been in prison fifteen years. What would she want with him ?
    Child support , someone suggested.
    My mouth fell open. Where did they get this stuff? I couldn’t even defend myself without leaping out of the virtual closet.
    I was checking my email—I’d won the Irish lottery again—when Detective Melas swaggered through the archway. His face was hard and grim. Whatever was scheduled to come out of his mouth, I didn’t want to hear it.
    “I didn’t do it,” I said as he planted himself in front of me like a statue. All that was missing from