Far from the sweat-room I’d described the day before, the weather was delightful, the temperature in the mid-seventies, the breeze steady enough to lure a mini-fleet of sailboats onto the Hudson River. Sister Kassia turned out to be a good companion. She didn’t complain as the hours dragged by, or when I treated her to a lunch of hot dogs and sodas. Instead, she questioned me closely about life on the job, her curiosity genuine. I limited my responses to a few amusing anecdotes, including a story about a stoned burglar who’d been apprehended six blocks from the scene of the crime because he’d sat on a peanut butter sandwich, and another about an alcoholic cop fighter named Elvira Menendez. A legend in the Three-Four, Elvira had once been a professional wrestler in the Dominican Republic. I told Sister Kassia my partner’s joke, too, the one about Ole asking God why he made Lena so dumb. She laughed even louder than Hansen. When I turned the tables after lunch and a trip to the restroom, Sister Kassia was straightforward, even admitting that she had doubts about the whole business of illegal immigration.
