Kouros tried thinking of some gracious way to escape the owner’s clutches when a message came through on his mobile from Maggie: CHIEF TOLD ME WHAT HAPPENED. HERE’S BALL BUSTER’S RAP SHEET. HOPE YOU’RE FEELING BETTER…OR AT LEAST FEELING SOMETHING:-)
I’ll never hear the end of this, Kouros thought. As he waited for the document to download, he pointed at the phone, smiled at the owner, and said, “Sorry, I have to take this.”
The man nodded and quickly pounced on another customer.
Kouros wandered over to his car. It took a minute for the document to show up on his screen. It was a three-page report dealing with crimes of the sort that gave Babis’ hometown a bad name throughout the rest of Greece. From childhood, he’d been in trouble. First for breaking into tourists’ hotel rooms, and later for robbing them face-to-face. By the time he was old enough to qualify for adult jail time, he’d gone into a different line of work, capitalizing on his hometown area’s fertile cropland. Not as an agricultural laborer, but as a supervisor, or more appropriately for how he was expected to treat those under his watch, slave overseer.
Immigrants worked for slave wages harvesting by hand backbreaking crops like strawberries, and when a supervisor could steal from them he would. Babis’ job in that line of work made his rap sheet because he’d been one of several supervisors suspected-but never proven-to have shotgunned a group of Pakistani laborers protesting over six months of unpaid back wages.
In his personal life, twice he’d been arrested for badly beating up a Polish girlfriend who’d left him. The first time, she refused to press charges. The second time she did but never appeared at his trial to testify. And no one had seen her since.
Nice guy, thought Kouros. I should have kicked the shit out of him when I had the chance.
The last entry was an arrest six years ago for growing marijuana hidden among rows of spinach-like horta. In that part of Greece and a few other places, that sort of cash crop farming practice wasn’t uncommon, and viewed much like “moonshining” in the United States. Babis’ drug charges were dropped and from that point on he had a clean record.
Not so much as a parking ticket since he’d relocated to the Mani.
***
Kouros walked through the front door of the taverna, past a startled Stella, and stopped just outside the kitchen. “Babis, come out here. Don’t worry, all is forgiven. I’m not even calling you ‘asshole.’”
There wasn’t a sound in the kitchen. Kouros turned to Stella and mouthed, “Is he in there?”
She nodded.
“Babis come out. I only want to talk. Now play nice.”
He heard metal against metal, and saw Babis wiping his hands on an apron as he walked toward him. “I have cooking to do.”
“It won’t take long.” He turned to Stella. “Would you excuse us, please?”
Babis jerked his head in the direction of the front door. “Outside.” He sat down.
Kouros sat across from him. “I’ve seen your rap sheet-”
“That’s all in the past. I’m clean.”
Kouros nodded. “I know, but I want to know how you found religion?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You went from bad boy to model citizen overnight. Why?”
“I grew up.”
“I think you mean you were scared shitless.”
Babis shifted in his chair.
“You faced a long stretch in prison on your last arrest. Yet you walked. Must have been divine intervention that saved your ass.”
Babis shrugged. “Think what you want.”
“I checked. You walked on your last arrest, but the owner of the property didn’t. He got six years.”
Babis shrugged again. “He deserved it.”
Kouros shook his finger at him. “I’m not so sure about that, my friend. You see, that property owner was a very prominent piece of garbage in your hometown. He had his finger in just about every illegal scheme in the northwest Peloponnese. His farms were used to launder money, not make it. Everybody knew that, but no one could prove it. He was too smart and too cagey.”
Babis looked at the floor.
“Hard to imagine that this same guy would be growing hash in the middle of a field owned in his real name. The DEA would have had to be blind not to find it in a flyover. He was practically inviting the DEA to catch him.”
Kouros leaned in to within six inches of Babis’ face. “You know what I think? I think there’s no way an operator like that would ever be stupid enough to grow that shit on his own property.” Kouros paused. “No way.”
Babis shrugged.
Kouros sat back in his chair. “My guess is he was set up. I doubt he even knew there was grass growing out in the middle of all that horta. But you did. Probably even planted it. And when DEA found it, you made a deal to give them the owner. They got to nail a bad guy they’d wanted for years, and you got to walk away clean. Everyone’s happy, except of course for the guy who went to prison. Does he still call you on your name day?”
“He’s dead. Died of a heart attack, two years ago in prison.”
Kouros nodded. “Convenient. What about his family? Have they forgotten about what you did to their father?”
Babis stared at the floor.
“Somehow I don’t see you hanging around this place because you think they don’t know you’re here. If I’d crossed someone as powerful as that guy, I’d have moved to some place like China long ago.” Kouros shook his head. “So, tell me, Babis, what keeps you here?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to that question. I just want to know why. And if you don’t tell me, I might just have to visit your old stomping grounds and start poking around for answers. I’d hate to open old wounds, but you’re leaving me no choice.”
Babis started running his hands through his hair, but abruptly switched to rubbing them furiously on his thighs. The textbook example of a suspect about to turn violent.
“Uh, uh,” said Kouros. “Don’t go there. Just answer my question so we can end this interview and you can get back to going about your business. But if you go crazy on me again, I promise you’ll be back in jail. After you get out of the hospital.”
Babis took his hands off his thighs to hold his head, elbows on the table. “The DEA guys gave me no choice. They had me cold on the drug charge and a whole lot of other things that could put me away for twenty years.” He got up, went over to a cooler, pulled out a beer, and snapped it open.
“What choice did I have?”
“What happened?”
Babis chugged the beer, took another from the cooler, and came back to the table. “I testified, the DEA got its conviction, the owner went away, and I moved here. End of story.”
“So why are you still breathing?”
“You already guessed it. Your uncle had me under his protection.”
“Which leads to my ‘why’ question.”
“He felt he owed me.”
“Owed you?”
Babis popped opened the second beer. “I was growing the grass for him.”
Son of a bitch, thought Kouros. Uncle was lying when he said he was out of the business.
“You can’t grow grass around here and your uncle offered me a lot of money to do it for him up there.”