Good thing Angela had watched so much Oprah over the years. Finally that shite was coming in handy.
But either the woman wasn’t an Oprah fan or she suddenly remembered what she’d come here for, because her dark eyes narrowed again and she said, “If you see Georgios, tell him when he comes home his wife is going to kill him.”
Tempted to say, Mission accomplished, Angela went with, “I’ll do that.”
The woman left and the door slammed shut.
Whew, that was close. Angela watched through the window, making sure the woman was gone, then got back to work, scrubbing the floor. Where the hell was Sebastian, that fuck-up? The useless fool been gone at least an hour. The stores were less than five minutes away by moped, was it possible he had gotten lost?
When another hour went by and there was still no sign of him it set in that the stuffy Brit had ditched her. It wasn’t exactly unexpected; she knew the wimp wouldn’t be able to stand up to the heat, which was why she’d cleaned him out. The spineless bastard! She hoped he drove off a cliff, was feeding the fish like Georgios.
She got the room as clean as it was going to get. She didn’t see any blood and even if she’d left some she figured they probably didn’t know their DNA from their drachmas on this backward fucking island. She packed her suitcase and hit the road.
Walking to the village, she passed the old woman, and of course got the evil eye. Jeez, the woman was creepy, like some kind of witch. It occurred to Angela that she should have waited until night and left when she couldn’t be seen. So, okay, she’d panicked, made one slip-up, what did you expect? She hadn’t had a drink in, what, twelve hours? How was a girl supposed to think straight without a little ouzo flowing through her system?
She took a cab to the port on the other, flatter side of the island. She didn’t want to have to ride the fecking donkeys down to the docks, but she also wanted to get as far away from the villa and Giorgios’ wife as possible. See, her thinking wasn’t entirely clouded.
During the ride, the cab driver – he was bald, overweight, with a thick mustache; reminded her of the uncle who’d once molested her – was staring at her in the rearview, literally licking his lips. What was it with these men? At a deserted area where there were lots of dunes and nothing else he pulled over, leaned back, and seemed to be unbuckling his belt.
Angela went Irish, said, “Drive this car right now, or you’ll get what yeh deserve, yah fookin’ bastard.”
The guy had probably never met a woman like Angela before. He recognized that this was the voice of a woman who did not fuck around and with a look of sheer terror he buckled his belt and put the car back in drive.
Then he got a call on his cell, and started looking at Angela in the rearview again. Later, she’d realize that this was another mistake, that she should’ve gotten out of that car and run like hell.
At the port, Angela found out there was a ferry to Lesbos leaving in a few minutes. She chuckled, thinking, after her recent experiences with men, maybe Lesbos wasn’t such a bad idea.
At dusk, the ferry arrived at the Lesbos port and she beelined for the closest taverna, right across from the docks. Finally, ouzo. Jaysus wept, she downed two shots, asked for a third. When the bartender gave her the drink she noticed the two cops. They were standing near the door, looking right at her. She was going to make a run for it, but knew it was pointless. She chugged the last shot, figuring, Might as well go out with a bang.
Six
“He turned on the TV but he lay on his bed with his back to it because it was a liar. It held up pictures and said you could be like them but it didn’t tell you how easily everything fell to pieces.”
Sino wasn’t buying Max Fisher’s bullshit, everybody sayin’ he’d cut off a man’s dick. Sino knew the only thing that white puta businessman ever cut into was his goddamn steak at Smith amp; Wollensky. Lying maricon.
Yeah, Sino knew lots of bandajo s like Max Fisher. He grew up in the South Bronx, by Yankee Stadium. Shit, this was eighties and early nineties, bro, the glory days when crack was king and the Bronx wasn’t burning, the shit was already burned. You were growing up in the Bronx then, you needed some money to get high, the Stadium was the place to go. Scalping tickets, man, Sino didn’t waste his time with that mierda . Serious pesos was in protection. All those suit-and-tie bitches would come up to the games in the summer, be in their Mercedes and BMWs and shit, parking in the cheap lots, like five blocks away from the stadium. Now come on, man, what’s up with that loco shit? Man has millions of dollars, lives in some damn mansion somewhere, down on Fifth Avenue, and he can’t even pay for stadium parking? Puta deserve to get his pesos taken.
Sino and his boy would be hanging out in the lots, going up to the cheap motherfuckers saying, “Want me to watch your car for you during the game? Cost fifty dollars.”
Yeah, see what the stingy bandajo ’s gonna do then. They wanna go to Stadium parking and pay twenty dollars and miss part the game or they wanna pay Sino to not get their car fucked up? Most gringos paid the man, no problema, jefe, but sometimes a man got cheap, wouldn’t pay, or said they were gonna call a cop. Wrong answer, my man. Yeah, if motherfuckers got cheap, they didn’t wanna pay, they were gonna pay anyway. Sino and his boy would fuck up the windshield, pop the tires, shit like that. But if they said they was gonna call a cop, shit, that was when the real fun started. Then they got to fuck the guy up, break some bones, see some blood.
This one time, a rich maricon from Manhattan, kinda looked like Max Fisher, said he wouldn’t pay the money. The puta just walked away, laughing, the maricon was fuckin’ laughing, disrespecting Sino’s whole crew and shit. So Sino and his boy took their bats and played some ball, Bronx style. They fucked up that car so bad the junkyard wouldn’t even take it.
Later that night, Sino and his was boys were doing some reefer, chilling, corner 153rd and Gerard. Somehow the maricon found him out there, was probably going around the neighborhood, looking. He went up to Sino and said, “You’re paying to get my car fixed, motherfucker.”
Motherfucker. Saying that shit through his nose, sounding like the rich Park Avenue motherfucker he was. And the way he was standing, with his hands on his hips, like he was trying to be bad-ass, calling him out and shit in front of his crew. The stupid maricon was in Sino’s face, like didn’t he know who he was messing with.
Sino’s boys, man, they started laughing, tears coming out their eyes. Sino knew they were laughing at the maricon, not him, but he didn’t like it. Then his boy Paco said, still laughing, “Man, you gonna take that shit?”
Sino wasn’t.
First he shot Paco in the head, send a message to the rest of his crew, you laugh at Sino, you gonna get popped. Didn’t matter that he and Paco knew each other eighteen years, their madres came over from Panama together. Had to set the shit straight with somebody and Sino was sending the message, I pop my best friend, I can pop all you, so, chingate, you better watch your laughin’ asses.
Shooting Paco shut up the rest his crew real quick. Then the bandajo that started it all, the white guy, turned, tried to run. Sino put four in the maricon ’s back. He had one shot left, went up to the guy. He was still on the ground, trying to move, but he couldn’t. He was still alive though. He was making noises in his throat and blood was coming out of his mouth. Now that shit was funny.
Sino laughed, said to the maricon, “Say you sorry, papi. Say you sorry and I won’t pop you no more.”
The maricon was trying to talk, making sounds like, “S… sah… sah… sar… sar… sah.”
“Can’t hear you,” Sino said and popped him in the head and walked away.
Yeah, Sino, wished he was on the street right now, had a nine on him. He’d put six in Fisher’s back real quick. Listen to him beg and shit first, then put one in his head. Or, nah, would be more fun to kill Fisher with his manos, squeeze that little-ass neck till he die. He wouldn’t mind fucking Fisher too. Maricon got a big flabby ass, just the kind Sino liked. Maybe he’d fuck him first then kill him, or kill him then fuck him. Depends what kinda mood he was in.
Max was settling in all right. Already he had the rep, a priceless commodity, and he had fresh-pressed denims every day and it looked like the library gig was as good as his. And they’d be stupid not to give it to him – come on, who knew more about books than The… A.X.? He’d taken a little spin around the library the other day, told one of
