“Imelda, she’s just an old friend. This isn’t personal, it’s professional… and please recall that her husband asked for me.”
Without replying to that point, she asked, “You heard who the prosecutor is?”
“Golden. So what?”
“You takin’ this case ’cause you hot for the wife of the accused traitor, and you goin’ up against Golden, in something you don’t know shit about. And now you askin’ me so what?”
Imelda has a maddening habit of developing her own opinions, which can be annoying, but then I have my annoying habits, too, so it all balances out. I replied, “I’m not hot for Mary. And regarding Eddie, I’ll blow him out of the courtroom.” Getting back to the business at hand, I added, “I’ll look into hiring an associate, and I need you to arrange a satellite office at Leavenworth.”
“You better find a damned good one… You gonna need it.”
“Thank you for your confidence in my abilities.”
“Didn’t say I was confident in your abilities.”
She was right, however, and I next placed a call to the JAG personnel officer and asked him to run a computer search for all the Army lawyers who spoke Russian.
He called back a few minutes later with two names, one being Captain Karen Zbrovnia, previously committed. And a guy named Jankowski, whose Polish was flawless, but whose Russian was rated just shy of marginal.
This wouldn’t do; I needed someone who could speed-read a Tolstoy novel in Russian without missing a single fractured nuance, assuming the Russians have such things. I therefore called an old law school chum who practiced criminal law in the District of Columbia. Harry Zinster is his name, and he is the Hedda Hopper of Washington law; sadly, what he isn’t, is an even halfway competent lawyer.
He answered himself, as he definitely can’t afford a secretary. I said, “Hey, Harry, Drummond here. I need a favor.”
“Whatever. You got a friend who needs good representation? I’ve got a busy calendar but I’ll see if I can squeeze him in.”
Nice try-Harry hadn’t seen a busy calendar since law school, leave aside that I’d never commit a friend to his feeble hands. I said, “Actually, I’m looking for an attorney who speaks Russian, and speaks it really well. Know any?”
“A few.”
“I also need it to be someone who either has, or can get, a security clearance. Have I just made the problem too hard?”
“Nope. Katrina Mazorski… she used to have some kind of government job. She works out of her home in the District, doing criminal stuff mostly.”
“You know her, or of her?”
“Know her, Sean, but only vaguely. She hangs out sometimes at the Fourteenth Street precinct, scrounging scraps off what the night shift drags in. We’ve shared a few late-night cups of coffee.”
One of the things I love about Army law is that my clients fall into my lap off a conveyer belt. Spending all night in police stations begging pimps and whores and muggers for work is a part of the profession law schools don’t advertise. Funny thing, huh?
I asked Harry, “Would you happen to have her number?”
“Somewhere…” He began opening and slamming drawers. This lasted awhile, as organizational skills were another of Harry’s weaknesses. “Found it,” he finally mumbled.
I thanked him, jammed in another seventy-five cents, and she answered on the first ring. I said, “Katrina Mazorski?”
“Yeah.”
“My name’s Drummond. Harry Zinster gave me your name.”
“I know Harry.”
“Well, uh, Harry told me you speak Russian. Is that speak it like you can order a beer and hot dog or like you could have a long, frank discussion with a Russian rocket scientist?”
There was a quick, harsh chuckle. “Look, I couldn’t have a long, frank discussion with a rocket scientist in any language. If you mean, am I a native-quality speaker, yeah.”
I noted that she had an interesting voice-deeper than most female voices, husky even. A picture formed inside my head of a woman of about thirty, elegant, mysterious, seductive. It would be too much to try to add a physical description to that picture, although one can always hope.
I asked, “How’d you learn it?”
“From my parents.”
“How’d they learn it?”
“From their parents. I hope there’s a point to this discussion.”
“There’s a point. I’m a JAG officer, assigned a case that requires me to have a Russian-speaking co- counsel.”
“I see. And you’re thinking of me?”
“Harry also said you used to have a government job. What did you do?”
“I was a translations clerk at State.”
“Did you have a clearance?”
“Yes. A Top Secret.”
This was sounding too good to be true. I asked, “Can you drop everything and come meet me?”
“I, uh… is this an interview?”
“It’s only a temporary job, maybe a few months, and it’ll involve some travel. That satisfactory with you?”
“Maybe.”
I gave her the address for my office and then raced back to get ready. Imelda awarded me a testy frown, hrummphed a few times, and threw a stack of yellow phone message slips at me. She was very unhappy with me. Granted, she was being subtle, but I could tell. I killed time returning calls.
Then came a knock at the door and Imelda stuck her puzzled face in. “Some lady here… says she’s supposed to interview with you.”
“Katrina Mazorski?”
“Same one. She ain’t an attorney, is she?”
“Why?”
Imelda’s eyebrows merged with her hairline, and a moment later Katrina Mazorski stepped through the portal. I had stood up to shake, only my arm froze-call it a momentary paralysis. She had on skintight, hip-hugging, black leather pants, a halter top with a black bra peeking out, maroonish lipstick, a silver bead in her left nostril, and a silver hoop poking out of her naked navel. Her hair was dark and hung straight, and her eyes were brown, or possibly green. She had wide shoulders, no waist to speak of, long, slender legs, and she was pretty-and yes, okay, sexy, too, just not in the way I’m used to girls being pretty… or sexy. Along the lines of Sandra Bullock pretty, only clownishly made up, with a few bangles punched through her skin.
“You’re, uh, you’re Miss Mazorski?”
She slid into the chair in front of my desk. “My friends call me Kate, but you’re not my friend yet, so Katrina will do fine. What do I call you?”
“Sean Drummond’s my name. Of course my friends call me Sean. Why don’t you call me Major?”
She tipped back on the chair, grinned, and replied, “That’s cool. What’s the gig?”
“Gig?”
“Y’know, the case?”
We stared at each other a moment. I finally said, “I’d like to ask the questions. Silly as that might sound, I read a management book once and it said that’s the way these interview things are supposed to work.”
“Fire away,” she said. “That’s how you guys talk, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“When’d you graduate from law school?”
“Two years ago. Maryland… night school.”
