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Angela was tempted to say, Atlantis, but went with, “Haven’t seen him in a few days.” She was very calm, but no surprise there. She was used to this, her experiences in New York and Dublin, lying to the cops, were coming in handy.

The woman’s eyes were trying to look past Angela, into the house. Jesus, why had she gone and opened the door without checking first? It was that fecking Sebastian, screwing with her brain.

But one slip-up – shit, she was still holding the rag, the rag with Georgios’ blood. She managed to hide it behind her back and didn’t think the woman had noticed.

The woman said, “If you’re fucking my husband, I kill you.”

Husband? It surprised Angela, but only for a second. These Greeks, they always had wives.

Angela checked to make sure the woman wasn’t holding a meat cleaver, then said, “I beg your pardon. I mean, I never…”

Sounding seriously miffed.

“Yesterday, he tell me he go here to fix sink,” the woman said, “then he don’t come home. I know he like you, blondie. Every day he talk about the sexy girl from Ireland.”

Squeezing the rag tightly behind her back, Angela said, “First of all, I have a boyfriend, Sebastian, he looks exactly like Lee Child.”

The woman was lost.

Angela added, “Secondly, I have no idea where your husband is, but if you want some advice, you should seriously think about divorcing that guy. I’ve heard stories about him.”

She let it hang there.

The woman glared, said, “Stories? What stories?”

Angela exhaled, as if it were killing her to have to say this, then said, “At the taverna. They’re saying your husband’s with a new woman every night. He cruises the clubs for American girls or some shite. I was appalled, if you want to know the truth. I don’t want to put any ideas in your head, but maybe your husband only told you he was coming to fix my sink. Maybe he was really out picking up a girl at a club. You ever think about that?”

The woman was thinking about it now.

Angela continued, “I don’t know if you Greeks do divorce, but you should seriously think about ditching that guy. You’re a beautiful woman, you can do so much better.”

Actually the woman was as fugly as they come, but the compliment seemed to have an effect, at least momentarily. She stood a little straighter, her chin up, said proudly, “Do you really think so?”

“I know so,” Angela said, suddenly sounding like a life coach. “Get your hair done, sweetie, buy some new clothes, get a makeover, and start doing things for you. You’ve been doing things for him for way too long.”

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.”

MATTHEW STOKOE, Cows

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.