Marlene looked at her father. He was a stubborn man; he'd ignored the prejudices and conquered the obstacles and built a good life for himself and his family. But that stubbornness could be hard to deal with at times, too.
"Okay, Pops, we leave it alone for now," she said. "But you can't let your frustrations get to you so that you end up hurting or yelling at Mom. She's already afraid of a world that is closing in on her; she needs your love and support, even when she's not all there. When the day comes when you can't deal with it anymore, you have to promise me that you'll tell me so that we can find a place. Promise me?"
The old man nodded and hugged her. "Yeah, yeah. Like I said, I don't know what came over me. I've never hit your mother in sixty-six years of marriage. So now it looks like I'll have to go have another talk with the priest."
Marlene kissed her father's cheek and patted him on the back. "You do that," she said. "But don't be too hard on yourself. You've been the best husband a woman could ever wish for…and the best dad."
That evening, Marlene was grateful when Butch and the boys got back home, and he told her about the note Guma had found in the file. "Regards some letter from a guy named Kaminsky about Villalobos that Breman apparently received and passed on to Judge Klinger." What made that even more interesting was that "an old friend" told him that he should pass on the name Igor Kaminsky to her as the former cellmate of Enrique Villalobos.
Marlene knew that more murderers had probably been caught because they opened their big mouths than because of all the detective work ever attempted. Prisoners were notorious for boasting about their crimes, if for no other reason than to make themselves seem tougher and meaner, so that maybe they wouldn't have to prove it physically. But their "friends" and cellmates were equally notorious for ratting them out to the authorities, hoping to work out some sort of deal in exchange for information.
The next morning, Marlene called a friend with the Department of Corrections, who told her yes, Igor Kaminsky had served time at Auburn and yes, Igor Kaminsky had been kept in a cell with Enrique Villalobos for a short time that past spring. "But he's not there now," said the friend, a middle-aged black woman she'd once helped protect from her abusive husband. "In fact, there seems to have been a screwup. He was paroled and let go but was supposed to be handed over to the INS to deport back to Russia. Instead, they just gave him some bus money, a suit, and let him go-we have no idea where. But a start might be Brooklyn; that's where he got arrested on the robbery charge that planted his ass in the pen. If they catch him, it'll be good-bye New York, hello Moscow. Hey, that's funny…"
"What's funny?"
"Well, there's a federal BOLO for him. 'Consider armed and dangerous.' Pretty heavy-duty for a one-armed-"
"He's got one arm?"
"Yep, just like the bad dude in The Fugitive. Makes sense, don't it. Anyway, someone got a federal judge to issue a bench warrant for his arrest. They must want him back pretty damn bad for a one-armed, small-time crook who, according to his dossier, was so bad at his job that he let a Korean shopkeeper take his gun and nearly blow his ass away."
"Not exactly Public Enemy Number One, eh?"
"Not exactly."
"Who was the judge?"
"Let's see…Marci Klinger. Hey, ain't she the one presiding over the Coney Island case?" There was silence from the other end of the line. "Marlene? You there?"
"Yeah, I'm here. Just…writing this down. Um…I don't suppose there's anything else in that file of interest-like maybe Igor was the second shooter on the grassy knoll in Dallas? Igor's Russian, right? Maybe Oswald was working with the Soviets."
"Too young," her friend said with a laugh. "But as a matter of fact, I was just about to tell you…your Kennedy assassin was almost assassinated himself. Shortly before his parole, he got stabbed in the stomach by another inmate named Lonnie Lynd. And that's even more interesting because-this part ain't in Kaminsky's file 'cause it happened after he left, just four days ago as a matter of fact-if I'm remembering this right, I saw a report that an inmate named Lonnie Lynd got his neck snapped by some Russian dude named Svetlov."
"Snapped his neck?"
"That's what it says, but there ain't a lot of detail. Just that they were playing basketball."
"Full-contact sport."
"Yep. You might talk to Dr. Ron Jendry; he's the gang counselor at Auburn. This gang ball project is his pet. He probably knew both guys."
"Anything else?"
"Nope. That's pretty much it. Oh, one last thing…it says here that he listed his brother, same DOB, as his next of kin in case anything happened to him in prison. The brother's name is Ivan. Igor and Ivan, the Russian twins."
"Any address for Ivan?"
"No. But it says to contact Ivan through a Father Stefan Sarandinaki with the Russian Orthodox Church in Brighton Beach, and I suppose that's a start."
"It is indeed," Marlene said. "Thanks, I got to run, but I owe you big."
"How about we go dutch for lunch next time I'm in the city?"
"Nope. Like I said, I owe you. I'm paying or don't bother to call."
"Okay, okay," the woman said with a laugh. "You're paying. See you soon, honey."
Marlene hung up and whistled. When her friend named Marci Klinger as the judge who'd signed off on the bench warrant, Marlene's hesitation to respond had a lot more to do with shock than because she was writing something down.
She knew from Butch that some sort of message or letter had apparently gone from Kaminsky, a potential material witness, to Breman to Klinger. Yet nothing had been said about the letter to Corporation Counsel.
So what is up with the judge? Marlene wondered. Did Breman receive the information and, not knowing what to make of it, went to the judge for guidance? The Kings County DA had just announced that her office would be settling with the defendants for an undisclosed amount-believed by the press, who'd probably been tipped off by Louis, to be in the neighborhood of twenty million dollars. But that wasn't even a tenth of what Louis was suing the city of New York for, and he'd filed the papers intending to go after the ADAs and cops individually.
Breman must have made a sweetheart deal, she thought. Louis never even tried to squeeze that turnip for any more than he got.
After talking to her friend, Marlene had hung up and immediately called Auburn and asked to speak to Jendry. The man answered his telephone but was reluctant to say anything until she mentioned that she was the wife of the district attorney of New York.
"Butch Karp?" Jendry perked up. "He probably won't remember me, but I was a freshman on the Brooklyn High basketball team when he was a senior… Terrible what happened to his mother that year… But man, could he post up and drain the bucket. I'd hoped to follow his career in the NBA, but at least I've been able to keep track of him at the DA's office. He's not exactly flying under the radar down there, is he?"
"No, Butch is pretty much flying where everybody can launch missiles at him," Marlene said, amused at the man's still-evident hero worship.
"It's funny they still call him Butch," the psychologist said. "Tell him hi from Birdlegs Jendry."
"I certainly will, and if you're ever in the city, you ought to look him up," Marlene said. "He loves to talk about the good old days with old friends." Actually, Butch rarely talked about the "good old days"; he wasn't one to live in the past, but the thought of Birdlegs Jendry, whom he'd never mentioned, dropping in on him unexpectedly was too rich for her to miss the opportunity to set him up.
"I will," Jendry said, sounding extremely pleased. "Wow! Now, that's what I call serendipity. So, what was it you needed, Marlene? I hope you don't mind me calling you Marlene, but I feel as if I know you."