My Father Sold Me to His Oldest Enemy to Play House, and the Old Man Bought the Only Witness Against Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Coffee

Costa pours her coffee, Eleni says Aris plays his dead son's voicemail for the dog, and in the boathouse Thalia tells him once, flat, what her father made her.

Thalia's POV

The old man looked at the pistol on the plank for a long time.

He did not pick it up.

"I did not buy you to use it," Aris Pallis said.

"Then why did you buy me?"

"Coffee first," he said. "Eleni will have it on."

He turned and went up the pier with his bad leg and the boat hook.

He left my gun on his dock.

I stood there.

Then I picked it up, because I do not leave a loaded pistol on a plank, and I followed him.

The kitchen was warm and smelled of oranges and burnt sugar.

The old woman stood at the stove with a long-handled brass pot.

Costa Pallis sat at the table in the chair against the wall.

He rose when I came in and pulled out the chair on the other side, the one nearest the door.

"Thalia," he said. "I'll pour."

He took a small cup from the shelf and filled it from the brass pot, slowly, so the foam came up even.

"Metrio," he said. "Medium sweet. Am I right?"

It was how I take it.

I had not told anyone in this house.

"Who told you?" I said.

"Nobody had to," Costa said, smiling. "Your father drinks it that way. Daughters learn."

It was a reasonable answer.

I sat with my coat on, facing the open door.

I noticed that the only chair in the room with a wall behind it was his.

He sat down again and folded his hands.

An old dog lay under the table with its chin on the old man's boot.

The old man took the chair at the head and drank his coffee black without looking at anyone.

On his left wrist he wore a heavy steel dive watch with a scratched face.

Eleni brought him bread.

He ate it.

At no point did he look at the watch, though a clock hung on the wall over the stove.

"What do you do all day, Miss Mavrakis?" Costa asked. "In the ordinary run of things."

"I'm told I pour coffee," I said.

Eleni laughed once, sharp, and covered it with her cough.

Aris Pallis put down his cup.

"Costa. The yard."

"Of course, Uncle."

Costa took his cup to the sink himself and rinsed it.

On his way out he touched my shoulder with two fingers, lightly.

The old man waited until the screen door slapped.

"Boathouse," he said to me. "Ten minutes."

I went down at ten.

The loft was one long room over the boats.

It held a chart table, a cot, a woodstove and tall windows over the river.

A photograph hung on the far wall in a plain frame, but I did not look at it yet.

I stood by the door.

He sat on the cot with his leg out straight and watched me.

"You have a look of a person with something to say," he said.

"I do."

"Then say it."

I had planned this on the drive.

"You should know what you bought," I said.

"I know what I bought."

"You know what I did at the christening," I said. "You don't know the rest."

"So I'll say it once," I said. "After this I won't say it again, and you won't ask."

He did not answer.

He folded his hands on his knee.

"My father started me at seven," I said.

"At eleven he had me hold men still while they were told what they owed," I said. "At thirteen I did the telling."

My voice came out flat.

It always does.

"When I got it wrong he hurt me," I said. "He had a belt and he had other things."

"He called it raising me right."

The river went by under the floor.

"At fourteen a man he owed money put his hands on me in the back of a car," I said.

"My father said it was the price of the job," I said. "He drove us home."

Aris Pallis did not move.

"That's all," I said. "I have done what he asked ever since, and I've been good at it."

"I put four men in the water for him that you know of and six you don't," I said.

I made myself look at his face.

It was a hard face, weathered and exact, and there was nothing in it I had to defend against.

No pity.

I would have known pity.

"Is it settled?" he said finally. "The account."

"No."

"No," he said. "It wouldn't be."

Then he put a hand on the cot and began to stand, and the knee caught.

It was a small thing.

A hitch in the left side, a breath held a half second too long.

I crossed the room before I decided to.

I went down on one knee in front of him.

I put my hand flat over the brace under the cloth of his trousers.

He went very still.

"You shift to your right when you load it," I said.

"Anyone who comes at you from your left puts you in the water," I said.

"I know."

"You know," I said. "But you favor it on the pier, in the wet, and you let people stand behind you."

"It is my pier."

"It's a pier," I said.

He made a sound I had not heard from him yet.

It was a low, hard laugh, and it surprised us both.

"Take your hand off my knee, Miss Mavrakis," he said, "before I forget what I bought you for."

I took it off.

My palm stayed warm.

I got up and he got up, and neither of us said anything.

Eleni was waiting at the foot of the loft stairs with a laundry basket on her hip.

She watched the old man go past her down the pier, limping, and then she looked at me.

"There is a dog in that kitchen," she said, "that has not slept in a bed since last January."

"I saw him."

"Dimitri's voicemail is still on the old man's phone," Eleni said.

She shifted the basket.

"He plays it for the dog."

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