Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

Marlene chatted briefly with Kipman and Guma after they arrived on the eighth floor. The men then preceded down the hallway toward the appeals bureau, while Marlene walked into the reception room outside of Butch’s office and found Mrs. Milquetost blocking the way.

“I’m here to see my husband.”

“Is he expecting you?”

Marlene stared at the woman dumbfounded. “Well, yes, now may I go in?”

“Let me see if he’s available,” Mrs. Milquetost said, giving her a look that said “stay where you are” while she walked around her desk and pressed the intercom button.

“Yes, Mrs. Mil-kay-tossed?”

“Your wife is here to see you, Mr. Karp?”

That was too much for Marlene, who threw her legs into gear and breezed past the the receptionist, who responded by grabbing for her, too late, and an angrily squawking, “You can’t-”

Marlene burst through the door nearly knocking Gilbert Murrow off his feet. “Well hello, Gilbert,” she said. “Are you the reason my husband has the gendarme-”

“Don’t hurt me,” Murrow squeaked, only half in jest, and scooted past her.

Marlene slammed the door on the still protesting Mrs. Milquetost. “The next time that woman tries to stop me, I’m going to scratch her eyes out,” she told her husband.

“What if I was having sex with my mistress and you burst in like that?” Karp teased as she reached up to place her arms around his neck.

“I’d have to kill you to avenge my Italian honor.”

“But you wouldn’t know if you didn’t barge past Mrs. Milquetost and had waited in the reception area like a good wife until my mistress had enough time to get her clothes back on. Ow!”

Karp rubbed at his lip where she’d bitten him hard enough to draw blood. “Oh, I’d know, buster,” she hissed and kissed him again, gently on the wound. “The woman always knows…even if she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. Now, are you ready to go to dinner? Oh, by the way, it’s the street workers.”

“What street workers?” Karp replied.

“The spooks,” Marlene said rolling her eyes. “The guys watching the loft.”

“What made you change your mind?” Just the night before she’d guessed the poodle people as they lay in bed playing Guess the Spooks. They aren’t really old and that’s probably a bomb-sniffing poodle…yaps and pees all over itself when it finds one, she’d said. Isn’t that right, Gilgamesh?

The huge Presa Canario who camped at the foot of the bed responded with a mumbled “woof” and shifted his enormous head from one paw to the next, hoping that would be the end of it. The couple in the bed had been keeping him awake with their sexual antics, and he was tired. It took a lot of energy to haul his 150-pound frame around all day. He, too, was trained to sniff for bombs, as well as dismember human threats upon the appropriate command. But mostly he just wanted to go for walks, eat, and nap.

“What makes you so sure it’s the street workers?” Karp asked.

“Well, when I came out of the building tonight to walk over here,” she said, “I went right by those guys-both of them clean-cut Ivy League sorts and neither one of them whistled, or yelled, ‘Hey baby, hubba hubba,’ or asked me for a date. And I’m wearing my tightest jeans. You tell me how many street workers in New York would ignore this cute little tush? It’s just not normal.”

“You have a point,” Karp said. She did look hot in the tight jeans that molded to her still perky rear end. The compliment got him another kiss and he was feeling a bit distracted by the feeling of her body pressing up against his. “Can’t we just go home?”

Marlene kissed him again but broke the embrace and fended off his attempts to reengage. “No,” she said. “Now, calm down, tiger. The boys will be home anyway, so it’s hours before you would be able to act on that notion anyway. And Uncle Vladimir said it’s important.”

“So now he’s ‘uncle Vladimir’?” Karp inquired as their cabdriver wove his way down Centre and turned onto the Brooklyn Bridge for the ride over to Brighton Beach.

Karp wasn’t sure how he felt about her adopting his “other” family. “Uncle Vladimir” was actually his great-uncle Vladimir Karchovski, his paternal grandfather’s brother and, of greater concern, a power in the Russian mob over in Brighton Beach.

He did not know the man well. He’d always been a distant relative, seen rarely on childhood visits to his grandfather’s house. Back then he’d just been a nice old man who liked to lift him up to eye level, ask if he’d been a good boy, and when he responded in the affirmative, gave him pieces of licorice candy he kept individually wrapped in his coat pockets.

Only when Karp had grown older, probably about the time he entered law school, did his father spill the beans and tell him the truth about his uncle “the gangster.” The announcement had stunned him. His dream was to become a prosecutor with the New York District Attorney’s Office and somehow “gangster” and “prosecutor” didn’t seem to mix well. But his father had assured him that “that” side of the family had always kept their affairs to themselves, and after Karp got on with the DAO, it had been understood that so long as no laws were broken in the County of New York, there would be no cause for family strife.

Other than the rare birthday card, a present of Russian crystal wine goblets for his and Marlene’s wedding, and gifts of Russian nesting dolls when the children were born, there’d been very little contact between Karp and the Brooklyn Karchovskis. That was until that past fall when Vladimir Karchovski asked his son, Yvgeny, heir to his father’s criminal empire, to arrange a meeting with Karp and Marlene on Ellis Island to pass on information that had helped Karp unravel the Coney Island Four case.

A short time later, the Karchovski family crossed paths again with the family Karp. Yvgeny Karchovski’s half brother, Alexis Michalik, an NYU professor, was accused of raping student Sarah Ryder. Ryder had been the one to stick Harry “Hotspur” Kipman with the scissors when Marlene had proved she was a liar out to get Michalik.

The case had gone a long way in getting Yvgeny, a former colonel in the Soviet Red Army who’d illegally immigrated to the United States to join his father, to acknowledge that the legal system in America could and did work. But after that, Karp and his Brooklyn relations had gone back to their respective turfs.

That distance, however, had not included all the members of Karp’s immediate family. Marlene, who’d met the older man and been charmed by his Old World manner and kindness, surprised her husband one evening by announcing that she’d been painting over on the boardwalk at Brighton Beach and decided to stop by that afternoon to see Vladimir at his St. Petersburg Tea Room restaurant. She’d been greeted by both the old man and his son like a long-lost daughter and sister, respectively. Her money had been no good as they dined on honey cakes, cabbage pies, and pickled tomatoes, washed down with lemon kvas and green tea, while they talked about their lives and families.

Vladimir would like to see the twins again, Marlene had said that night.

Now, we’re arranging family visits? Karp had sighed in response.

To be sure, he was curious about his family’s history. They’d all belonged to a Jewish community in the Galicia region of Poland. But Cossacks had burned the village, murdering Jews of all ages and genders. His father’s side of the family had immigrated to the United States; the other side had escaped into Russia where they’d eventually joined the Bolshevik Revolution and became heroes of the Red Army. He knew that Yvgeny had served in Afghanistan until his tank had been struck by a rocket, leaving a portion of his face and upper body scarred.