Disorganized Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel Read Online Free Page A

even mine.
    "Do you know anything about my father's potential kidnapping?"
    Her gaze flicked to the rearview mirror and the reflection of the penitent men in the seat behind us. "What did you tell her?"
    "Nothing," Takis said.
    "Almost nothing," Stavros added.
    "Which was it? Nothing, or almost nothing? Because those are two very different things."
    Smart woman, my grandmother.
    "Nothing," Takis affirmed.
    "Almost," I said.
    Granny glided to a stop. She turned around, shot eye-daggers into the limo's backseat.
    Takis held up both hands. "We said maybe the family had some ideas where he was, and this is all, I swear."
    My grandmother looked at me. I nodded. Her deadly stink-eye went back into hiding. With a head-snapping jerk, the limo was on the move again. A sharp, acrid odor wafted over to my quarter of the limo. Smelled like the backside of one of those sad bars where all the customers are live-ins.
    "Virgin Mary, help me," Stavros said, eyes closed. "I pissed my pants."
    Takis scooted towards the door.
    The old woman patted my leg. "He does that all the time."
    "It's true," Takis said, head bobbing like a parrot. "All the time. Once we were fighting with drug dealers and he shit his pants."
    Stavros threw a punch at his arm. " Kolotripa !"
    The universal translator in my head—okay, it only worked with Greek and a few words of Spanish, including, but not limited to, food products—ground the insult into palatable English for me. Kolos was a butt, tripa was a hole.
    "Boys." She shook her head. "That is a true story. We tell that one every time the family gets together. Even the drug dealers laugh now when they see Stavros. They call him Kaka Vrakas ."
    Poopy Pants.
    Fights with drug dealers? Crapping pants? What I wanted was a saw so I could cut myself out of the family tree. No wonder Dad bolted from these crazies. And I had a horrible, gnawing sort of feeling that this was one of those 'you ain't seen nothing yet' situations.
    We were on the move again, limo slicing down the road, tires blistering the blacktop. I'd spent so much time gawking at my idiot cousins that I'd barely had a chance to look outside.
    Darkness. More darkness.
    And look at that: more darkness. Night had hastily thrown a blanket over the country. This part of Greece, so far, was very dark. But an ancient kind of darkness. That kind that could hide insane gods and bizarro mythical creatures. The way my day was going, I half expected a minotaur to leap out of the bushes and Hulk smash the limo. The headlights revealed a short stretch of road that looked like something from a horror movie. Gnarled and grumpy trees along the sides reached for us. A faded line marked the center of the road, barely keeping us on course. The road's edges suggested something inhuman had been gnawing on the blacktop.
    Then my grandmother said, "Uh-oh, it is the police."

Chapter 3
    S ure enough , the back window was filled with dancing red, white, and blue lights. It was disco central up in here.
    Grandma jerked to a neck-snapping stop. "No license," she said. "Quick, swap seats."
    The person she said it to was me.
    Me .
    "I don't have a Greek license."
    "But you have a license, yes?"
    "Yes."
    "Okay," she said. "It is good. Move."
    No, not good. In what way was this anything except bad? My driving record was virginal, untouched by parking tickets, speeding tickets, and DUIs. One of those little voices inside me often liked to lip off about how traffic violations were a gateway drug to more serious crimes.
    But I slid over anyway, because I remembered Grandma's deadly glare. Family ties seemed to be fastened in loose bows around here, not tight knots. She could kill me with a withering gaze and not even miss me. I knew her about as well as any random religious proselytizer who came banging on my door.
    For the record, I was always nice to them. Partly because I believe in stacking the deck in my favor. While I'm not tight with God—or even sure He's (or She's) a thing—it