"No, not at all," Marlene said. "Any friend or former teammate of Butch Karp is a friend of mine. I insist…Ron. It's nothing much. I'm just trying to find out what I can about a former inmate named Igor Kaminsky, who was apparently stabbed by another inmate named Lonnie Lynd."
"Oh, yes," Jendry sighed. "Terrible business, these gangs. So much violence, most of it traceable back to their dysfunctional families and growing up without male role models in the ghetto. Such a hard pattern to change."
Gag me, Marlene thought. Rehashed sixties psycho-pablum. She doubted Butch would have had much to do with this former teammate. "I'm sure you're making a real difference," she said.
"Well, I'm trying, but to be honest, some days I just want to throw my hands up and go work for McDonald's," Jendry said with a great theatrical sigh. "The ones like Lynd and Svetlov…they're incorrigible. Lynd's dead, you know. Svetlov broke his neck like you'd snap a pencil, and Lynd was a big guy."
"What started the fight?" Marlene asked.
"That's just it, who knows? One minute they're playing a game of basketball, the next there's a riot with the Bloods and Russians going at it like a pack of wild dogs."
"Bloods? The gang?"
"Yes, yes. The Bloods gang. Hard-core gangbangers, but the Russians are just as rough and better organized. Anyway, Lynd gets his hand on a knife of some sort, but Svetlov, a hulking brute if I've ever seen one, just sort of grabbed him and pop, Lynd's dead."
"Svetlov say what started it?" Marlene asked.
"Nope. The snitches we have in the general population are saying that it was planned retaliation for the attack on Kaminsky. He seemed to have some sort of pull with the Russian mob. But Sergei's not talking, except to note, correctly, that Lynd pulled a knife on him. Self-defense, he says. But we got him in lockdown anyway."
"So what do you think my chances are of getting Svetlov to talk to me?"
"None and none," Jendry replied. "He's a stone-cold killer. The Russian mob's main muscle, and absolutely loyal to his bosses. He doesn't say anything they don't tell him to say."
Marlene hung up. Well, won't hurt to ask, she thought. Several hours later, she wasn't so sure when, with a buzz and a metallic snap, hidden bolts slid into place and the steel bars of the gate in front of her slid open. "Please step forward," said a monotone male voice whose owner she assumed was behind the dark window of the control booth. She did as told, stepping into what amounted to a cage large enough for one and fought a momentary urge to retreat before the gate slid home behind her.
Silly, she thought as the gate closed, they have to let you out. She thought of the "release from liability" form she'd had to sign just to get this far, especially the part that said if she was taken hostage by the inmates, the Department of Corrections would not negotiate for her release. She'd be on her own.
There was more buzzing and metallic clicks, and the next gate in front of her slid open. "Step forward, please," the voice said again. Ever since she'd been escorted beyond the waiting room, which at least made an attempt at softening the scenery with a few magazines, a television set to CNN, and a motley collection of children's toys in a corner, every sound seemed magnified, as if unable to find anything to absorb its energy in all that steel and cement. God, I'd go insane if I was locked up, she thought. A good reminder to stay on the straight and narrow, Ciampi.
As soon as she stepped into the hall beyond the cage, she was met by a hard-eyed, square-jawed corrections officer. He handed her a Visitor badge. "Place this somewhere visible and keep it on you at all times," he instructed. "Follow me." Without waiting for a reply, he turned and led the way down a long, brightly lit hallway of gray-painted cinder blocks.
Reaching a row of doors, each marked with a letter of the alphabet, he opened the one marked B. She looked inside and saw that it was a tiny interview room with a single mushroom-shaped metal stool bolted to the floor in front of a window she was sure was probably capable of stopping an automobile. This was max at Auburn State Prison-not the most hard-line in New York's prison system but no joke, either.
"Have a seat, he'll be here in a minute," the guard said and closed the door behind her.
Marlene sat down on the stool and picked up the telephone receiver from its place on the wall to listen. Nothing but a slight buzzing noise. The walls were white and glossy; there were no nooks and crannies, no place to hide anything, even if they hadn't confiscated her purse and searched her before letting her proceed. A horrible place. Then again, she thought, it's designed to secure and punish pretty horrible people. She looked up and saw the eyes of a camera gazing down at her. Nothing would go unnoticed, not that she had any intention of trying.
A door in the room opposite her opened and the largest human being Marlene had ever seen shuffled in. His massive wrists were cuffed to a chain that ran around his belly and between his legs. She assumed the shuffling was because he was shackled. He stood blinking in the bright light, looking at her as a guard unlocked the fastener holding the handcuffs to the belly chain while two more guards looked on. He waited for them to back out of the room before he took a seat on the stool.
Marlene picked up the telephone. When he made no move to do the same, she indicated he should do so with her head. He gave her a bored look but reached up and plucked the telephone off the wall with his manacled hands.
"Da?" the big man said.
"Sergei Svetlov?" Marlene asked.
"Depends. Who vants to know this?" His baritone voice seemed to rumble up out of some deep dark well.
"Marlene Ciampi…I'm a private investigator working for Corporation Counsel in New York."
Svetlov shrugged. "Means na-think to me."
"It does to me," Marlene replied. Jendry was right-Svetlov wasn't likely to be very helpful. But it couldn't hurt to ask. "I was wondering if you could help me find Igor Kaminsky?"
Svetlov pursed his lips and said, "I don't know this man."
Marlene tried a different tack. "He's not in any trouble with the law. In fact, his life might be in danger, and I might be able to help."
"I tell you, I don't know this man," Svetlov said again.
"But you killed the man who tried to kill him," Marlene said. "Those people might try to kill him again."
Svetlov, whose big, round, scarred head reminded her of a jack-o'-lantern, shrugged and said, "I killed the shitty man who tried to stab me…is self-defense."
Marlene looked at the man, who looked impassively back at her. "Well, thank you, Mr. Svetlov, for agreeing to meet with me," she said. "If you remember anything that might help me, you can contact Dr. Jendry and he'll be able to reach me."
Svetlov smiled, and she was surprised how pleasant it made his face. "Is not often I have visit from a beautiful woman. This pleasure is mine."
Hmm, a ladies' man; maybe a little of the old Ciampi sex kitten will turn the trick, Marlene thought. She smiled shyly and brushed a strand of her hair from in front of her eyes. "If you remember something important about Igor Kaminsky, I could come back up and talk to you again."
"Perhaps," Svetlov said in a way that let her know that he was on to her game and had, in fact, expected it. "But unfortunately, I do not know this man."
Ten minutes later, Marlene stepped outside the prison, relieved just to be beyond the clanging doors and metallic voices. It was only sixty miles down the road to the next stop in her Department of Corrections tour but a world of difference in attitude. The Roxbury Prison Farm was considered a model of humane and progressive incarceration for model prisoners. There were a few lifers at the farm, who for one reason or another had managed to get transferred there, but most were inmates who were expected to return to society as changed men.