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"Be careful," he said.
"Huh?"
"Be careful," he said. "Your brother-in-law came looking for you at
three in the morning."
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"Oh," Dina said. He had no idea what he was dealing with. Was this
man some friend of Kosta's? Was it some sort of trick?
"He calls her, you know," the black man said.
"Who?"
"Deidre," the man said. "He calls Deidre."
During this time theories about who wanted to kill Lisa were not hard
to come by. There was, of course, the Teja theory. There was a
theory, put forth by one of the newscasters who haunted the hospital
corridors, that someone high up at the Marriott was trying to kill
Lisa, the same theory that Kosta had spouted to Lisa on the drive to
Edgewater. It was an absurd idea, but not as absurd as the one that
Kosta put to Dina in the hospital on Monday morning.
A few weeks before the shooting there had been a meeting at which a
local political appointee by the name of George McGee stood up and made
disparaging remarks about Greeks. Specifically, he accused the Greek
gift shop owners of having no taste. Their gift shops, he said, were
too cluttered. "That's how Greeks are," he said. "I been to Greece
and it's the same thing, everything is cluttered."
The comment had caused a small uproar in the Greek community, and days
later McGee was obliged to publicly apologize. Lisa led the lobbying
to make McGee apologize.
Now, on the Monday mornIng after the shooting, November 6, Kosta came
up to Dina in a corridor at the Halifax memorial Hospital and said, "I
know who is behind this."
"You do?" Dina said, thinking, I'll just bet you do. Dina was trying
to get out of the building, but he didn't want to stir Kosta's
curiosity about where he was going, because he had an appointment to
see a private detective.
"It's not just me who thinks this," Kosta said. "A lot of people are
thinking the same thing."
"Who?"
"George McGee," Kosta said.
Dina couldn't believe what he was hearing. The idea was so
preposterous that he was embarrassed for Kosta for even saying it.
"George McGee?" Dina shouted. "George McGee?" All his rage he'd been
holding in now erupted. "Kosta, what the fuck is the matter with
you?
What do you think, McGee tried to kill my sister because her gift shop
is too cluttered?
George McGee."
Kosta said nothing. Dina kept shouting. "It wasn't George McGee,
goddamnit, and it wasn't the Marriott and wasn't Teja. We know who it
was, don't we? We know."
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Jaw he was screaming and shaking his fists and crying all once.
"I'm getting out of here," he said. He headed for the door. Then he
turned and shook a fist at his brother-in-law. "I want you out of my
house by tonight. Take all our stuff and your goddamn guns and just
.
. just get out." He wanted to walk back and lunge at Kosta and just
beat the hell out of him for trying to kill Lisa. But there was
another more prudent part of him thinking, Watch it, mo, this guy's a
fucking psycho, he carries a gun. "Just leave us alone," Dina said and
he stormed out of the hospital.
By eleven o'clock Dina was in the office of a private detective. "I
want Kosta watched," he told the PI, thinking that if he'd hired a
detective on Thursday when he wanted to, by now Fotomart could have
processed a dozen glossy double prints of Kosta meeting Bryan Chase and
maybe even handing him a gun or something. The private detective told
Dina to save his money. The police were on it, he said, and they will
solve it. "But if I had to bet money," he said, before Dina left his
office, "I'd bet that Kosta is behind this and he's hired other people
through Deidre to keep himself clean."
From there Dina went to the bank, where he had Kosta's name removed
from the company accounts, so that Kosta couldn't cash a check and fly
to Greece. Dina also changed his will, taking Kosta's name off of
it.
During these days Dina's closest confidant was his friend Timmy
Kostidakis. Timmy had known Dina forever. They used to play
basketball together. In more recent times Timmy had been part of a
crowd of Paspalakis cousins, both real and nominal, who would get
together on Friday evenings and play small stakes poker. Kosta would
join in these sessions, too, but Timmy had never found him sociable.
Dina had turned to Timmy for advice as early as Thursday, after his
visit to the lawyer. He had met Timmy that night and told him what was
going on. Timmy, like Dina, was anxious to give Kosta the benefit of
the doubt, but it did not look good. On Saturday morning after the
shooting, Timmy was the first person Dina had called, and he came right
over. Throughout Saturday and Sunday it was Timmy that Dina called
constantly to hold himself together.
After that first harrowing night in the house, sleeping in his mother's
room with the loaded gun, Dina started sleeping in Lisa's guarded room
at the hospital. He slept there on Sunday night and Monday night.
On Tuesday night Dina met at the police station with police and
investigators from the state attorney's office.
Surrounded by law enforcement officers he again told everything he knew
and suspected. He told them about Kosta and Deidre's affair, about
Teja being Lori's boyfriend, and Lori being Deidre's girlfriend. He
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