5
“Some family trees bear fruit, some nuts. Take a wild guess about ours.”
Kostas Karacis, youngest third of the Karacrobats to his non-folk girlfriend, who lasted all of a week
If I was going to acknowledge Circe’s and Apollo’s existence on any level—and, despite myself, it seemed I already had—it was time to pull out the big guns. I found myself a nice, casual sidewalk café, chose a shady trellis table off to the side, ordered an iced latte and a scone from a hovering waiter and whipped out my cell phone.
I suppose it was a testament to my lack of a social life that Yiayia was number one on my speed dial. I couldn’t remember where the circus was supposed to be this week, but it hardly mattered what time zone they were in. If there were two things Yiayia rarely did, they were sleep and shave. Shave because, well, it’s pretty much antithetical to the whole bearded-lady gig. The beard? One of the more blatant demonstrations of the family’s Gorgon blood I’d managed to ignore all these years.
According to “myth,” the Gorgons not only had beards and serpents for hair, they had tusks as well. By all accounts a lovely bunch. Thankfully, tusks seemed to be recessive. Not a single freak growth in living memory—discounting my cousin Tina’s really aggressive overbite.
The whole insomniac thing was a little more complicated and a lot more lucrative. It stemmed from the fact that Yiayia was constitutionally unable to transition to sleep mode. It goes like this:
1. Yiayia’s brain had developed without a shutoff valve.
2. She’s paranoid about medication—not to mention inorganic food, vaccinations and anything with too many legs, but those are another matter—and refuses to take sleeping pills.
3. She has a particular obsession with the lives, past and present, of the Greco-Roman pantheon.
4. She is not exactly in danger of becoming independently wealthy or even garnering a decent pension plan working for the circus, and …
5. Ever since Pappous passed away—the strong man with the weak heart—Yiayia had needed a hobby.
She’d managed to turn her obsession and all that dead time into a fiscally rewarding, Internet-based sideline business called Mythography. Oh, she wasn’t silly enough to give away the current whereabouts of the various gods and goddesses. No one wanted to get on the wrong side of, say, the god of war, and Hera’s hissy fits were legendary. But everyone liked to be related to someone famous. What Yiayia did was family trees and histories leading back in some way to a Greco-Roman god, goddess or hero. The way they all went nuts with their begetting, it wasn’t too tough to do. If a family had any Mediterranean blood whatsoever, chances were she could find an “illustrious” forebearer. There was no telling how seriously the clients took the whole thing. I’d always thought it a load of crap, but Yiayia treated it as a mission.
Which was a really long way of saying that my grandmother pretty much had the goods on everybody. If I was looking for old blood, Yiayia was my one-stop shopping center for a suspect list with current whereabouts. Plus, she was one of the few members of the family still speaking to me.
She answered on the first ring. “Sweetie, honey, bubbelah—you don’t call, you don’t write.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yiayia, I keep telling you, nobody really talks like that out here. And we spoke last week.”
She spat out an obscenity in Greek that roughly translated to “bow-legged sheep lover.” “That was before the great witchy-woman crashed and burned. And you, my own flesh and blood, who I nursed through scrapes, stitches and broken hearts, didn’t even call to give your dear Yiayia the scoop.”
Uh oh, she was talking about herself in the third person. I was in for it. “I’m calling now,” I pointed out.
“Yes? Out of the goodness of your heart and to give me all of the dirt?” she asked facetiously.
“Sounds like someone already gave you the dirt. I swear, you’ve got a better network of informants than I do.” Not that that was saying much.
“It is true,” she announced smugly. “So, you called to pump me for information then? It will cost you. When do you come visit?”
“When pigs fly,” I muttered.
“What is this?”
“As soon as Lenny Rialto retires,” I amended.
“Agape, that is water under the bridge.”
“So he no longer spits when he hears my name?”
“Well—”
“I rest my case.”
“You will come when we are on hiatus. Or I will come to you,” she threatened.
And that was only the upfront fee. The hidden cost was that I had to go through my story three times—until Yiayia could repeat it virtually verbatim—before the wily old bat would dish her own dirt. My cell phone was down to the last bar before I finally got the skinny on all area ancients. Who knew that Aphrodite had become the new Mayflower Madam or that Hephaestus now went by the name of Hiero Cholas, the reigning wunderkind of ILM?
Once Yiayia finally worked her way around to the fish-folk rumored to be in the area, I got more than I bargained for. I was hoping for something along the lines of Poseidon spotted completely knackered in some dive on Venice Beach ranting about how Circe’d done him wrong. Instead, I got an earful. It turned out a whole pod of Oceanids and Nereids had recently been spotted in the area, apparently having come to see the filming of a new mermaid movie. I knew vaguely of the film because Christie had been bummed that the timing of her Clairol commercial conflicted with the film’s casting call.
So, I had a plethora of suspects with no current whereabouts, since they’d dispersed when the filming moved on from the waterfront. The land-based gods, Yiayia informed me, were so much easier to track, but until someone tagged the Oceanids … I wasn’t completely sure she was joking.
By the time we wound down, my latte was nothing but ice, my scone was mere crumbs, and the waiter, who must have heard enough to brand me a loon, was giving me sidelong glances.
“Okay,” I said, playing to my audience, “I’ll input those changes and have the revised script to you next week.”
Yiayia had a good laugh at my expense. “Maybe I should write a screenplay. Make it very juicy and let all the gods and godlings pay me to suppress it. I might finally have enough to retire.”
“Yeah, or you might find yourself turned into a shrubbery. Anyway, in order to blackmail someone, they have to have shame. Guessing that’s not real big with this bunch.”
Her sigh came through loud and clear. “Perhaps not then.”
“Yiayia, this contact of yours—who is it? Anyone that clued in might prove a valuable contact on this case.”
I didn’t expect the loaded silence that greeted me. “I can’t tell you.”
“What? Who’re you talking to—Deep Throat?”
“Don’t get smart with me, missy. I’ll ask him myself if he knows anything, but you’re on their radar now. If he’s discovered talking to you, well, I don’t think the others would be any too happy. I can’t ask him to expose himself. He wouldn’t even be speaking with me if not—”
I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or intrigued. “If not what?”
“If not for our history,” she said, as if I’d dragged it out of her. “There, you happy? I said it.”
Yiayia had a history? She couldn’t mean … No, no, I just had a dirty mind. Dealing with the gods would do that to a person. She’d known Grandpa since she was a teenager. Didn’t mean she’d never had any wild oats to sow, my troublesome inner voice chimed in. Eww! I responded, hopefully not out loud.
“Okay, let me get this straight. Your contact is one of them—with a capital ‘T.’ This sinister They to which group Apollo, who’s not only spoken to but hired me, belongs would get medieval on this guy’s ass if he talks to me? Have you started back on your soap operas? Been dipping your beak into Pappous’s bourbon stash? I don’t understand all the secrecy. You’d think They’d make some sort of flashy announcement, throw a parade complete with banners: ‘We’re here, steer clear, turn over all your beer.’”
“Egona,” she barked. “Show some respect. Anyway, I’m not so sure nothing is afoot, which is why my, um, friend has to be careful.”
Hmm, very interesting.
I sighed heavily. “Fine, have it your way. Just promise me that your guy is not green and scaly.”
“He’s not,” she answered stiffly.
“Would you ask him for any scuttlebutt involving the fish-folk who had a beef with Circe?”
“Yes, if you agree not to try to hunt him down. I know how you are.” I winced. “But now, my public awaits. We are in New York through Monday, but call me anytime you have gossip. The next time I have to hear about you on the news, I will put on you the Spyropoulous hex.”
I snorted. It was a good trick for psyching people out over cards, but somehow, I didn’t think I had much to fear. “Yes, Yiayia,” I said anyway. “I will call.”
We rang off and I found that not only had my check arrived, but my waiter’s card had come with. No doubt he hoped to be remembered when it came time to cast my fictitious script.
As I stared down at the card, inspiration struck. I had my very own Hollywood reference library on salary.
I flipped open my phone again as I reached for my wallet, then halted the latter impulse. If I wanted to foster the idea that I was a wheeler and dealer, I’d need to exude a sense of entitlement, not comfort the waitstaff that yes, I really did intend to move on someday and leave my table to someone willing to shell out for more than a scone and a latte. Certainly, the image would do well for me service-wise if I dropped by in the future, which, given the proximity to the cop show, seemed likely.
Jesus picked up on the second ring—always—said it gave the impression of too little to do to pick up on the first and too much to wait until the third.
“Good morning, Karacis Investigations,” he said pleasantly.
“Hey, Jesus. I need your expertise. Would you get on the ’net and look up everything you can about the mermaid flick that’s been filming out at Venice Beach? Cross-reference the cast list against Circe Holland’s name. See what you can come up with.”
“Oh hey,” he responded, dropping the energized voice for his regular ennui. It just wasn’t worth the effort for little old me. “You mean investigate.”
I didn’t need the Sight to figure out where he was headed—big client, money influx—Jesus was thinking raise. Ever the realist, I wasn’t ready to count my chickens before they were fully grown.
“I mean assist in an investigation, yes.”
He gave me a raspberry. “Spoilsport.”
“Diva,” I countered.
“That’s aspiring diva to you. Speaking of which, I’ll be out Friday; I have an audition.” He followed up with a dramatic sigh. “I’ll have everything on your desk when you return. You are coming back, right? You haven’t run off with your studmuffin? You still have time for us little people?”
“And you are?” I asked.
He very properly hung up on me.
My waiter’s eyes glowed as I pocketed his card and placed my money in the leatherette bill folder. He thanked me without even looking inside. I envied him the optimism of youth.