“Who’s acting? No, really. I’ve decided. I like you, Christof. I like you a lot. You’re not like Greek men. There’s a lot more to you than what’s floating around on the surface. They’re all so shallow. You’re—interesting.”
“Of course I am, sugar. I was Scab Professor of Philosophy and Mind at Himmler University from 1945 to 1950. Then president of the Diogenes Society until someone stole my barrel. You should read my book sometime about my work for nuclear disarmament.”
“I’m serious, you idiot.” And then she kissed me like William Wyler was watching us from a hydraulic camera dolly. “Just don’t ask me why. I can’t explain it to myself.” She gave me an excited squeeze. “That’s Manos Hatzidakis. Radio EIR. The best music station in Athens. Maybe that’s the reason.”
“Must be a Greek in there,” I said, suddenly aware of how much I hated Greek music.
“Or maybe that’s all a German could find on the dial.”
In front of the same shabby double-height door was the dark red Triumph Speed Twin with the stuffing coming out of the single saddle, as accurately described by Garlopis’s aunt Aspasia. I touched the engine block and discovered that it was still warm. She touched it, too, and said some more crazy stuff about how she was just as warm on me. We walked on a bit, shared a cigarette in another doorway, and then walked back. It seemed quiet enough. I looked at my watch; we’d already been ten minutes. In another thirty minutes or less Garlopis would leave in the Rover. It was time to close, as the insurance salesmen were fond of saying. The evil eye in the bough of the olive tree was giving it some extra focus in the moonlight and, for a moment, I had a bad feeling about what was going to happen. I suppose that was the point of it. I steered Elli through the wrought-iron gate and onto the flight of stone steps that led up the side of the house. It smelled vaguely of cat piss.
“You stay here, sugar,” I said. “When I figure it’s safe, I’ll come and get you.”
“Be careful, Christof,” she said. “I’m not much of a rescue squad.”
I missed being Bernie sometimes, but it seemed like a small price to pay compared with missing my liberty. I walked to the top of the steps and was about to climb over the wall, as I’d done before, but then I tried the wooden door and discovered it wasn’t bolted. In the yard the cat was nowhere to be seen and everything had been cleaned up: the cracked terra-cotta pots and the rusted motorcycle were gone and even the fossilized grapes had been taken off the vine. There were no lights in the basement but on the upper floor the back bedroom was brightly lit—enough to illuminate the whole yard—and the window was open with a net curtain billowing gently out like a ghost that couldn’t quite make up its mind whether to haunt the place. I walked down the steps to the French windows, pushed them open, and stepped into the squalid room where Witzel had met his death.
On the floor was a kit bag full of some very dirty laundry and a copy of Gynaika magazine with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the front cover. A British Webley .38 revolver lay on the table next to a pair of old binoculars, some stale bread, and a plate of tzatziki. There were also some keys, and one of these had a little brass ship’s wheel, around the edge of which was engraved the name Δώρης. It was the same type of fob that I’d seen on Witzel’s key chain when I’d met him for the first time in the office on Stadiou and my new knowledge of the Greek alphabet was just about enough for me to have a vague idea that the name in Greek was “Doris.”
I picked up the clunky gun and broke open the top to check if it was loaded, and found it chambered with the same anemic .38-caliber rounds that had almost cost the British the last war—I could never figure out why they made a Great War showstopper like the Webley .45 into a .38—but the smaller revolver could still do plenty of damage. I didn’t take the gun along on my passage through the house because now that I was an insurance man I thought I should avoid as many risks as possible and all the actuarial tables prove that when you carry a gun people get shot, even the people holding them. So I emptied the six rounds into my hand and pocketed them, just in case.
I headed upstairs, tiptoeing toward the source of the Greek music and what looked like a seaman’s peacoat that had been left lying across the banister. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do but I didn’t think shouting hello to the house was an intelligent option; I suppose I wanted to assess the risk, as Dumbo would have said, which meant finding out exactly who I was dealing with before announcing my uninvited presence. When I got to the top of the stairs I saw the bedroom door was half-open. A Greek wearing a vest was lying on a single bed; he had his back to the door and didn’t see me. He was a strong-looking man maybe in his forties, with a sea serpent tattooed on his bare shoulder. I knew he was Greek because he was reading a Greek newspaper and because he was even smellier than his laundry. He was wearing a blue seaman’s cap; what with the novelty key fob downstairs and perhaps because he was smoking the same kind of revolting menthol cigarette that Witzel had smoked, I thought I was probably looking at the captain of the Doris.
“I’m guessing your name is Spiros Reppas,” I said.
“Who the fuck are you, malaka?”
He tossed the
