face, which suggested quite a different sort of person. Wide generous mouth and, behind steel-framed eyeglasses, very blue eyes: lively eyes. He had dry black hair which, despite being combed with water in the morning, was tousled by the time he reached the office and fell down on his forehead and made him look younger, and softer, than he was. All in all, an expressive face, rarely still-when you spoke to him you could always see what he thought about whatever you said, amusement or sympathy or curiosity, but always something. So, maybe a tough guy, but your friend the tough guy. The policeman. And, in his black suit and soft gray shirt, tie knot always pulled down and the collar button of the shirt open, a rather gentle version of the breed. On purpose, of course.
He’d certainly never meant to be a cop. And-once he fell into being a cop-never a detective, and-once promoted to that position-never what he was now. He’d never even known such a job existed. Neither of his parents had been educated beyond the first six years; his grandmother could neither read nor write, his mother doing so only with difficulty. His father had worked his way into half ownership of a florist shop in the good part of Salonika, so the family was never poor; they managed, pretty much like everyone else he knew. Zannis wasn’t much of a student, which didn’t matter because in time he’d work in the shop. And, until 1912, Salonika had remained a part of the Ottoman Empire-Athens and the western part of the nation having fought free of the Turks in 1832-so to be Greek was to know your place and the sort of ambition that drew attention wasn’t such a good idea.
By age twelve, as the Greek army marched in to end the Second Balkan War, Zannis’s private dreams had mostly involved escape; foreign places called to him, so maybe work on a ship or a train. Not unusual. His mother’s brother had emigrated to America, to a mysterious place called Altoona, in the state of Pennsylvania, from whence postal cards arrived showing the main street or the railway station. Until 1912, at times when the money ran out, the Zannis family considered joining him, working in his diner, a silvery building with rounded corners. Yes, maybe they should go there; they’d have to talk about it. Soon.
And, six years later, they did leave, but they didn’t go to Altoona. In 1917, as Anglo-French and Greek forces fought the Bulgarians in Macedonia, a sideshow to the war in France, Salonika burned, in what came to be known as the Great Fire. The Zannis house, up in the heights by the ancient battlements, survived, but the florist shop did not, and there was no money to rebuild. Now what?
It was his father’s brother who saved the day. He had, as a young man, involved himself in fighting the Turks, with a pistol, and the day came when, threatened with life in a Turkish prison, he had to run away. He ran to Paris, mostly walking or riding trains without a ticket until they threw him off, but in time he got there.
And, with luck and determination, with playing cards for money, and with the advent of a jolly French widow of a certain age, he had managed to buy a stall in the flea market in Clignancourt, in the well-visited section known as Serpette. “Forget Alteena,” he wrote in a letter to his brother. “I need you here.” A little money was sent and the Zannis family, parents and grandmother, Costa and his younger brother-an older sister had earlier married an electrician and emigrated to Argentina-got on a fruit ship and worked their way to Le Havre. And there, waving up at them from the wharf, was the benevolent uncle and his jolly wife. On the train, Zannis’s heart rose with every beat of the rails.
Two hours later, he’d found his destiny: Paris. The girls adored him-soon enough he fell in love-and he had a lot of money for a seventeen-year-old boy from Greece. He worked for his uncle as an
The happiest time of his life, those twelve years.
At least, he thought later, it lasted that long. In 1929, as the markets crashed, Zannis’s father went to bed with what seemed like a bad cold then died a day later of influenza, while they were still waiting for the doctor. Bravely, Zannis’s mother insisted they stay where they were-Costa was doing so well. By then he spoke good French-the lingua franca of Salonika-and he’d taken courses in German and learned to speak it well: some day the stall would be his, he’d met a woman, Laurette, a few years older than he and raising two children, and he was enchanted with her. A year earlier they’d started living together in Saint-Ouen, home to the Clignancourt market. But, as winter turned to spring, his mother’s grief did not subside and she wanted to go home. Back to where she could see her family and gossip with friends.
She never said it aloud but Zannis, now head of the household, knew what she felt and so they went home. Laurette could not, or would not, leave with him, would not take her children to a foreign place, so her heart was broken. As was his. But family was family.
Back in Salonika, and urgently needing to make a living, he took a job as a policeman. He didn’t much care for it, but he worked hard and did well. In a city where the quarter known as the Bara held the largest red-light district in eastern Europe, in a city of waterfront dives and sailors of every nation, there was always plenty of work for a policeman. Especially the tolerant sort of policeman who settled matters before they got out of hand and never took money.
By 1934 he was promoted to detective and, three years later, to, technically, the rank of sub-commander, though nobody ever used that title. This advancement did not just happen by itself. An old and honored expression, from the time of the Turkish occupation, said that it was most fortunate to have a
Was the Belgian consul being blackmailed by a prostitute? Call Zannis.
Had the son of an Athenian politician taken a diamond ring from a jeweler and “forgotten” to pay for it? Call Zannis.
Did a German civilian arrive “unofficially” in Salonika on the freighter of a neutral nation?
When Zannis walked back to the foot of the pier he found his assistant, Gabriel-Gabi-Saltiel, waiting for him, smoking a cigarette, leaning back in the driver’s seat. Saltiel loved his car, a hard-sprung black Skoda 420, built by the Czechs for Balkan roads. “Pull over behind the wall, Gabi,” Zannis said. “Out of sight, where we can just see the pier.”
Saltiel pushed the ignition button, the engine rumbled to life, and he swung the car around and headed for the customshouse. A gray fifty-five, Saltiel, tall and shambling, slump-shouldered and myopic, who viewed the world, with a mixture of patience and cynicism, through thick-framed eyeglasses. A Sephardic Jew, from the large community in Salonika, he’d somehow become a policeman and prospered at the job because he was intelligent, sharp, very smart about people-who they really were-and persistent: a courteous, diffident bulldog. On the day that Vangelis offered Zannis the new job, saying, “And find somebody you can work with,” he had telephoned Gabi Saltiel, explained what he’d be doing, and asked Saltiel to join him. “What’s it called, this department?” Saltiel said. “It doesn’t need a name,” Zannis answered. Ten seconds passed, a long time on the telephone. Finally, Saltiel said, “When do I start?”
Now Zannis headed for the taxi, gave the driver some money, thanked him, and sent him home. When Zannis slid into the passenger seat of the Skoda, Saltiel said, “So, what’s going on?”
Zannis repeated the port captain’s story, then said, “As long as he doesn’t enter the city, we leave him alone. We’ll give him a few hours to do something, then, if he’s still holed up in the ship, I’ll get some detectives to replace us.”
“What if he waits until morning, strolls down here and shows a passport to the control officer?”
“Follow him,” Zannis said. “I don’t want him running loose in the city.”
“German, you said.”
“Reads a German newspaper, who knows what he is.”
