"No," Vladimir said and smiled. "Perhaps not to the general public. But the park police are poorly paid and they sometimes can be persuaded to let an old man visit when the crowds are not so large. Now please, I suggest you get down out of the wind. The ride over can be quite chilly."
The Ellis Island boat dock was empty when they arrived, but waiting on the steps leading into the museum was a tall, gray-haired man whose face had been scarred by fire. "Yvgeny Karchovski," Marlene said. "How nice to see you again. Karchovski-I take it you and Butch's uncle are related."
"He is my son," Vladimir said, turning to Karp. "Which makes him your father's first cousin. I get confused after that but you are cousins of some extraction."
"I don't understand," Karp said. "I've never quite understood the family's connections." He stepped forward and shook Yvgeny's hand. The two men were of almost the same height and build.
They could be brothers, Marlene thought. Although if I remember Alexis Michalik's comments, they would be oil and water, a gangster and a prosecutor.
"I'll tell you the story," Vladimir said. "But let us go inside. I'm, as the young say, freezing my ass off."
As they walked into the building and up the stairs to the great hall where millions of immigrant families had waited to be processed for entry into the United States, Vladimir told the story of another family. "It begins with two brothers, Yakov and Yusef, who were part of a large Jewish family living in the Galicia area of Poland when Imperial Russian Cossacks embarked on one of their periodic pogroms to terrorize and murder Jews.
"Yakov and Yusef survived because they were gone from the village that day, hunting. However, they returned to find their family slaughtered and their home burned to the ground. With many tears, they decided to split up. Yusef was tired of the old hatreds of Europe and dreamed of starting fresh in America, where even a Jew might hope to accomplish great things. He arrived on a ship filled with many other desperate people and waited in this very hall, where they changed his name to Karp for simplicity's sake and set him free to pursue his dreams.
"Meanwhile, Yakov burned with a desire for revenge, fighting first with the Germans against the Russians when World War I broke out; then when the Bolsheviks rebelled, he signed on to fight against the forces of Czar Nicholas. It wasn't so much that he believed in socialism, he just wanted to kill Cossacks. He met Lena, another revolutionary, who in 1918 bore him a son, Vladimir, who you see standing before you now.
"Unfortunately, my mother did not survive the Revolution and was killed outside of Yekaterinburg. An even more embittered Yakov fought on heroically, received the Red Star-the Soviet equivalent of the U.S. Medal of Honor-and was promoted to colonel, both relatively rare occurrences for a Jew, even in Lenin's new world order."
Vladimir took a seat as he continued his story about how he'd joined the Red Army, too, and fought at Stalingrad against the Germans in 1940. "I met a beautiful woman, Katrina, who also delivered to me a son, Yvgeny here. But I was captured on the front a year later and sent to a slave labor camp. The war ended, but those of us who survived the camps, we learned we were considered traitors in our Mother Country and I was not allowed back in, or to send for my wife and son, who believed me to be dead."
So he had joined the masses of displaced people wandering Europe at the end of the war. The fact that he was also Jewish did not help. "But I got a job working for the Americans as an interpreter-it seems that me and my great-great-niece Lucy share a gift for languages. Through them, I was able to contact my Uncle Yusef who sponsored my entry into this country. I, too, arrived like so many before me and waited here-frightened, not knowing what to expect."
With the help of Yvgeny, the old man rose to his feet and began to walk to the far end of the hall. "I have walked this path many times since," he said. "But that is the one I will remember." They reached the end of the hall. "Because at the bottom of these stairs there is a smaller room, called the 'kissing post,' due to the fact that this is where families were reunited after their long trips. Waiting for me was your grandfather, Yusef. And waiting for you now is someone you want to meet."
"Why all of this?" Karp asked.
"Because this man you seek, if he goes with you tonight, he could very well lose the thing those of us who have immigrated here treasure the most…freedom," he said. "You spend your life putting bad men in prison, taking their freedom, and that is as it should be. But I wanted you to understand the sacrifice this man is making tonight."
Vladimir looked at his son. "At first, my son did not want to assist with this, though he is not as hard as he sometimes gives the impression. You may recall that it was a man with a Russian accent who told your reporter friend Ariadne Stupenagel about a certain meeting taking place at the Sagamore Hotel."
Karp glanced at Vladimir, who nodded his head slightly. "This was mostly a trade-off for Marlene's efforts to assist his half-brother, Alexis Michalik. But in the process he has learned a thing or two about the better attributes of the American justice system, which may not always be perfect, but in the end, it tends to balance itself out…thanks in large part to people like his cousin. So when it came time to talk to this man you seek about your needs at this trial to keep those monsters from profiting by what they did to that poor woman, you had an ally."
The old man led the way down the stairs. "But do not forget the efforts some people make to secure their freedom…even if they are not always the best of citizens. Isn't that right, Igor Kaminsky?"
A young, one-armed man stepped from the shadows. "I am ready to go with you, Mr. Karp," he said. "I ask only one thing before I am deported."
"What's that?" Karp said, wondering what deal he might have to strike.
"That I am allowed to testify against the man who murdered my brother. Jayshon Sykes."
Karp held out his hand. "You can count on it," he said as they shook.
The appearance of Igor Kaminsky didn't work out quite in the manner Karp had envisioned. Villalobos had cracked, as he hoped, and started blubbering about how "Sykes and his gang, the Bloods, forced me to confess. They were the ones who attacked the woman and raped her. I raped her after they were through."
Once again, the courtroom had turned into a circus of reporters rushing for the door and shouting questions as Klinger banged away helplessly with her gavel. Kaminsky stood and pointed at Sykes, shouting, "That's the bastard who killed my brother Ivan. I demand revenge!"
Sykes seized the moment to strike the distracted bailiff and take his gun. He turned and fired first at Villalobos, the bullet striking him between the eyes and spraying Judge Klinger with blood and brain. He next turned the gun toward Karp but was bumped by a panicked Hugh Louis, and the bullet instead struck the Times reporter Harriman in the stomach.
Stunned by the pandemonium of his own making, Karp stood still as Sykes re-aimed to shoot him. He was pulling the trigger when a bullet spun him around, knocking the weapon from his hand. He looked up and into the eyes of the shooter, Liz Tyler.
Tyler had secreted the gun in her purse that morning. The police officers who escorted her past the lines at the security screening had not even considered checking to see if she had a weapon. She'd intended to kill Sykes and then herself.
"Fuck you," Sykes screamed at her. "You shot me, you dumb…" He never finished the sentence as the next bullet caught him in the mouth and exited out the back of his skull.
Before the monster of her nightmares hit the floor, Tyler pumped two more rounds into his chest. "Liar," she said, and dropped the gun.
An hour later, Karp sat in the nearly empty courtroom still trying to sort it all out. Only Clay Fulton remained, mostly to keep him company. His thoughts were interrupted by someone behind him clearing her throat. He looked over his shoulder and saw Verene Fischer, the judge's clerk.