The man mumbled out four names. Tassos wrote them down.
“And where can I find those friends of yours?” said Andreas.
“I don’t know.”
“Like I said, ‘stop fucking with us.’ Where do they hang out when they’re not working?”
He looked at his feet, then up at Andreas. “Promise me you won’t tell them I told you.”
Andreas smiled. “Why, of course.”
He gave the name of a bar that he said was not far from the port. “We meet there after work.”
“You mean at three in the afternoon?” said Tassos.
“No, after they’re done at work. They don’t work construction. They work at hotels and tavernas in town. I meet them around eleven at night.”
“And what do you do between now and then?” said Andreas.
“Sleep, get something to eat.”
“How can you afford to hangout in a bar every night?” said Tassos.
“I don’t understand?”
“What do you do for money? You sure as hell can’t afford it on what you make doing this sort of work.”
“I make good money. Like I said, that’s why I came here. All I had to do was find an ‘honest job,’ and no matter what my employer pays, as long as I ‘behave’ I get enough extra cash each week to bring my earnings to nine hundred euros a month.” He nodded back at the Romanians. “They have the same deal.”
Andreas hoped his jaw hadn’t dropped. A new cop only made eight hundred a month and, after ten years on the force, twelve hundred.
“Who’s paying all that money?” said Andreas.
The man shook his head. “Don’t know. All I know is I’m in charge of paying the brothers on my crew and every Friday a package arrives at my place with envelopes for each of them. I just turn over the envelopes.”
“I bet you do,” said Tassos.
“Better believe it. A few who tried stealing from their brothers are no longer on the island. That sort of thing isn’t tolerated.”
That’s the second time he used the word “brothers,” thought Andreas.
“What happened to them?” said Tassos.
The man shrugged. “I never asked. But everyone got the message.”
“From whom?” said Andreas.
“Like I said, I don’t know.”
“Does mister ‘I don’t know’ have a name?” said Tassos.
“I never heard one.”
“What have you heard?” said Andreas.
The man looked back down at his feet. “Some tsigani were talking on a job I had when I first came here, before I hooked up with these guys, and they didn’t know I understood their language.”
“Are you now going to conveniently tell me they’re the ones who were murdered?” said Andreas.
The man looked up. His eyes were twitching. He gestured no. “But they were from the same clan, and they were talking about someone who’d come to their camp the night before to meet with their clan leader.”
“And?” said Andreas.
His voice was weak. “They talked about the visitor as ‘the money man behind everything.’”
He glanced back at the two Romanians, leaned in toward Andreas, and whispered, “They called him the ‘Shepherd.’”
“I have to call Lila and tell her I won’t be making it back to Mykonos tonight.” Andreas smacked the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand. “When I tell her I have to spend the night in a bar she’s going to kill me.”
“Wait to call until we’re back in town. We’re almost there,” said Tassos.
“Are you worried about me driving while talking on my mobile?”
“No, I’m worried about the potential nuclear fallout streaming through your phone.”
Andreas glanced at the sea. “I wish I had a handle on what’s going on. Those three guys at the dovecote weren’t churchgoers, but nor were their arrest records for violent crime.”
“Yeah, they’re more the sort I wouldn’t trust around my ya-ya’s silver than killers.”
“Your grandmother’s still alive? She must be a hundred-fifty.”
Tassos placed his open palm in Andreas’ face, a slightly less endearing gesture than the middle finger. “I’m sure they’d steal anything they were told to take.”
“Then why are they so well-behaved?”
“The easiest answer is that they’re waiting to be told what to do,” said Tassos.
“But why make everything so goddamned complicated? Someone who calls himself a ‘priest’ recruits the Pakistani out of the closest place we have in Athens to hell, and once the guy’s here he keeps his ‘brothers’ in line by delivering them envelopes of cash without skimming a single euro.”
“That last part probably qualifies as a true miracle,” said Tassos.
“And who the hell is this ‘shepherd’?” said Andreas.
“All very good questions, which is precisely why tonight will be a late one.”
Andreas pulled up in front of the police station.
Tassos opened his door. “I’ll find us a place to stay in town. Say ‘Hi’ to Lila. And tell her that for sure I’ll be there on Sunday.”
This time it was Andreas who flashed an open palm.
Chapter Eleven
Every town has places where its dirty work gets done. The more elegant communities may try to keep them out of sight, the less so may not care, but they all have them. It’s where one goes to find the materials and labor necessary to keep a town running and to dispose of what is no longer desired.
It’s also where you’re most likely to find the grittiest metanastes bars. Tinos was no exception. The bar the Pakistani described was off a road winding up from the port, tucked behind a trucking company warehouse yard filled with broken pallets and an electrical supply depot filled with giant, empty, wooden cable spools.
Tassos and Andreas were sitting in a car parked across from the bar and alongside a chain link fence enclosing the depot. The bar looked as if in another life it might have been a two-bay gas station.
“We’re going to fit right in there,” said Andreas.
“Yeah, sort of makes me wonder why we bothered to switch to an unmarked car. It would take a blind man not to spot us,” said Tassos.
“Not even sure he’d miss us.”
“Maybe they’ll think we’re just two lonely guys out looking for companionship?” Tassos smiled.
“Only a madman with terrific long term health insurance goes into a strange metanastes bar to hit on their women.”
“Kill joy. But this place might be different. It looks pretty mixed, ethnically.”
“I still doubt that two Greek cops asking for identity cards will fit their welcome profile.”
“Look on the bright side. At least Lila still loves you.”
“Not so sure about that either. When I told her I wouldn’t be making it back to Mykonos tonight all she said was, ‘Fine, see you Sunday.’”
“That was it?”
“No, there was the distinct ‘click’ of the call being terminated.”
“Ouch.”
“The good news is that it prepared me for the sort of welcome we’ll likely get in there.”
Three men walked past their car, staring in at them as they did, and went inside the bar.
“Well, for sure now everyone in the bar knows we’re out here.” Andreas looked at his watch. “It’s almost
