The Vendetta Defense Read online

  Judy felt an intuitive tingle of fear. It struck her that Angelo Coluzzi’s death could mean retaliation, as deadly as if the courtroom had been transported to Sicily. And the surviving sons, John and Marco, were very much alive; Marco, in a sharp suit and tie, looked like the more intelligent of the two, and Judy was guessing it was he who ran the business. But it was John’s meaty arm that encircled a very old woman in a black dress, dabbing at her aged, red eyes with a balled-up Kleenex. She had to be his mother, Angelo Coluzzi’s widow. He broke my father’s neck, Miss Carrier. Snapped it like it was one of his birds. Judy looked away, her thoughts racing, but Mr. DiNunzio was tugging at her sleeve.

  “And this young man here is my friend Tony Pensiera,” Mr. DiNunzio was saying. “We call him Tony Two Feet, but you can call him Feet for short.” He laughed, as did the man sitting next to him, a thin man who wore glasses with frames like Mr. Potatohead. His feet looked normal to Judy.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Feet,” she said, drawing a smile from Mr. DiNunzio, as well as from Feet himself and her eavesdropping fans.

  “Mr. Feet. I like that. Mr. Feet.” Feet grinned, showing a silver tooth in front, which led Judy to wonder briefly why they didn’t call him Tooth. The remaining old men in the row edged forward, shaky hands extended with arthritic fingers, trying to meet her, but she begged off with a quick apology.

  “I’d like to meet you, but I have to get to the office. We’ll talk later, if that’s okay.” They withdrew their hands and eased back into the sleek pews, nodding with approval. She could clearly do no wrong. They were a brown-pumps kind of crowd. With a quick glance at Frank, she took her leave and buzzed herself into the door in the plastic divider, standing with her back to it until the last case concluded.

  Pigeon Tony’s face popped onto the screen five minutes later, his appearance giving Judy a start. The close-up magnified every line in his tan face, turning wrinkles into fissures in the brown earth of his skin. The confusion furrowing his brow made him look like Methuselah. His round eyes darted back and forth; he was obviously unsure about whether to look into the camera lens, and disoriented and frightened by the procedure. It was impossible to square the helpless image with someone who would intentionally break the neck of another man. She remembered Frank’s words, You know, he can’t even cull out his own pigeons, he won’t kill any of them. But there was no time to puzzle it out now.

  Judy moved to counsel table as the public defender stepped deferentially aside. “Your Honor, my name is Judy Carrier and I represent the defendant in this matter, Anthony Lucia,” she said, then sat down.

  “So Mr. Lucia has private counsel,” the bail commissioner said noncommittally as he shifted stacks of docket sheets on the dais. Bail commissioners weren’t judges, though this one wore judicial robes, a tie with a collar pin, and the harassed expression of a man who presided over 150 bail cases a day. His light blue eyes looked beleaguered behind tortoiseshell reading glasses. “We’re ready to go, Bailiff. Where’s defendant Anthony Lucia?”

  As if on cue, the TV sound burst to life with a crackle, and Pigeon Tony was whispering, “ ’Allo? ’Allo?”

  Judy worried that he couldn’t understand what was happening, and a ripple of unrest ran through the courtroom gallery as soon as they heard his trembling voice over the microphones; the Lucia side of the courtroom stricken at seeing Pigeon Tony in jail, the Coluzzi side furious at seeing him alive. Judy’s mouth went dry.

  The bail commissioner remained insulated on his side of the bulletproof plastic. “This is Commonwealth versus Lucia,” he began, reciting the docket number, then looking at the camera facing him, which would transmit his image to a television in Pigeon Tony’s cell. “Mr. Lucia, you have been charged on a general charge of murder, do you understand?”

  “ ’Allo? Who is?” Pigeon Tony kept whispering, squinting at the camera lens.

  “Mr. Lucia, this is the bail commissioner speaking to you. I am the judge. Look directly into the camera.” The bail commissioner glared into his camera, posing for a fairly cranky photo op. “Mr. Lucia, do you need an interpreter? We have a Spanish interpreter at your location, I believe.”

  Judy shook her head. “Your Honor, he’s Italian. A member of his family could translate if there’s no translator available.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be kosher. Let’s see if he gets it. Mr. Lucia,” the bail commissioner said loudly, as if that would help. “Do you understand that you have been charged with murder?”

  “Si, si. Murder. Judge? Is judge?” Pigeon Tony still didn’t look at the camera, and Judy’s anxiety segued into fear. If Pigeon Tony understood it was the judge, he might blurt out the truth. Anything he said in open court would be admissible at trial. An admission now could kill him.

  Oh, no. Judy’s hand crept toward the black telephone on counsel table, which would connect her directly to Pigeon Tony. She wouldn’t use it unless she had to, since everybody and his dog would hear everything. Pigeon Tony couldn’t be counted on to get any hidden messages, and please don’t confess might tip off the Commonwealth.

  “Yes, I am the judge. Excellent, Mr. Lucia.” The bail commissioner looked over his glasses at the prosecutor’s table. “Is the Commonwealth opposing bail in this matter?”

  “We are, Your Honor,” answered the prosecutor. Judging from his spiky haircut and black suit, he was a recent law school graduate who had drawn the rotating duty of arraignment court. “As you know, murder is not typically a bailable offense in the county, and this was a particularly heinous murder of an eighty-year-old man. The Commonwealth argues that bail should not be granted.”

  Pigeon Tony’s mouth opened as if he were going to speak.

  “Your Honor,” Judy said quickly, moving her hand to the phone, “the defense argues that Mr. Lucia is certainly entitled to bail. His criminal record is spotless, and he obviously poses no risk to the population of the city. Nor does he, at almost eighty years of age, pose any flight risk at all.”

  “Does he have any roots in the city, Ms. Carrier?” the commissioner asked, from the standard checklist for determining whether bail was appropriate.

  “He has significant roots in the city, including his grandson, Frank Lucia, who is fully prepared to meet his bail.” Judy gestured for emphasis at the right side of the gallery, and they started waving back so wildly she wondered if they thought they were on camera, like a studio audience on The Jerry Springer Show. “As you can see, his entire extended family and all his friends support him and are here for this proceeding. He isn’t going anywhere, Judge.”

  “Judge? Where judge?” Pigeon Tony began to fidget in his chair, leaning to the side and peering behind the camera. “Judge, you see me?” He tried to get up out of his chair, exposing the handcuffs that locked him there, and Judy couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed the black telephone.

  “Mr. Lucia, this is Judy speaking. Pick up the telephone. Answer the telephone,” she said quickly into the receiver. The phone should have been ringing in the special cell, and a second later she heard it, then the hollow sound of the turnkey telling Pigeon Tony to pick up.

  “Come?” he asked in confusion, turning offscreen to the guard, who finally gave up telling him to pick up and reached across to the ringing phone and picked it up himself. The courtroom TV screen showed a sleeve of tan uniform thrusting a black receiver at Pigeon Tony, and he recoiled as if it were a cobra. With prodding, he reached for the telephone cautiously, only partly because of his handcuffs, and answered it as if he had never answered one before. “Si? Chi è?” he said, keeping his distance from the receiver, and Judy translated immediately. It did sound like Latin!

  “This is Judy, Mr. Lucia. Remember me, Judy? Your lawyer?” She had to get them out of court, even TV court, fast. The arraignment had already lasted too long. “Listen to me carefully. Please stay in your seat and answer only the questions the judge asks you.”

  “Judy?” Pigeon Tony burst into a grin of recognition. “Is Judy, with big mouth
?”

  “Yes! Right!” It was the first time she was happy to admit it, and she could see that the gallery was laughing.

  The bail commissioner banged his gavel and addressed the prosecutor. “Counsel, given Mr. Lucia’s trouble with the common telephone, I find it hard to believe that he could negotiate the flight schedules of the Philadelphia airport. I find he poses no risk of flight and order bail to be set at twenty-five thousand dollars.” The commissioner faced the camera. “Mr. Lucia, you will be free as soon as your bail is paid. You must come back and appear at your preliminary hearing. Please sign the subpoena regarding your next court appearance. It’s a paper in front of you. Now, get—”

  “Judge? Is judge?” Pigeon Tony started saying into his telephone receiver, and Judy went into action, doing what she did best. Talking.

  “That’s enough, Mr. Lucia. It’s time to go home. Hang up the phone and you can go home.”

  “Judy? Where judge? Now we talk to judge?” Pigeon Tony asked, and Judy’s heart stopped. She was about to start filibustering when the bail commissioner banged his gavel again.

  “Mr. Lucia, you and I have done enough talking for one day, and we have a lot of cases to get to. This concludes your arraignment. Please sign the paper in front of you before you go back to your cell. Ask the turnkey to help you if need be, sir.”

  Suddenly Pigeon Tony’s face vanished from the screen, which went black, and Judy almost cried with relief. She hung up the phone, grabbed her briefcase, and turned to leave as another defendant materialized on the screen and the public defender reclaimed his desk. She hadn’t been so glad to see a TV show end since Happy Days. And she had won. Pigeon Tony would be set free. The Lucia side of the gallery was on its feet, hugging each other with happiness.

  Judy felt almost high as she opened the door in the plastic divider, and Frank, Mr. DiNunzio, the fragrant Tony-From-Down-The-Block LoMonaco, and glasses-wearing Tony Two Feet Pensiera rushed to sweep her up, thanking, hugging, and congratulating her. She had never experienced such emotion, such total love coming from complete strangers, and she found herself caught up in it, laughing with delight, forgetting every last doubt about the case.

  Until the shouting began.

  And the first punch was thrown.

  8

  Judy had never witnessed such a scene in any of the conference rooms at Rosato & Associates before, or in any other law firm, for that matter. Seated around the sleek, polished walnut table were a trio of bruised and battered Italian octogenarians, slumping in rumpled and bloodied shirts behind medicinal cups of coffee. Fresh legal pads lay unnoticed in the center of the table with sharpened pencils piled in a ready-for-business logjam, and the state-of-the-art gray conferencing phone went untouched. A huge bank of glistening picture windows showed off a modern skyline of granite skyscrapers and mirrored glass columns, and though it was the best view in the city, the old men around the table hurt too much to be impressed.

  Judy surveyed the damage as she doled out Tylenol Extra Strength. At least no one had to go to the hospital. Mr. DiNunzio had taken a mean uppercut to the chin, which swelled unhappily, but he didn’t need stitches and had given as good as he got. Tony-From-Down-The-Block had shown surprising agility despite his weight, being the first to respond to the Coluzzi clan’s attack, especially aggravated when someone called him a “fat bastard.”

  Frank sustained a gash over his right eye—luckily the bleeding had stopped—and had been the most effective fighter, largely because he was so tall and muscular, in addition to being the only male under age seventy. He had almost knocked out the more heavyweight John Coluzzi when a combined army of courthouse security and uniformed cops appeared in the courtroom, summoned by a hysterical bail commissioner. The cops broke up the fight, separating the warring tribes and threatening hard time until they dispersed to their separate corners of South Philadelphia. No Lucia had gone to jail only because they had a fairly mouthy blonde on retainer, whose listing to the right was barely detectable.

  Judy snapped closed the Tylenol jug and watched Frank apply a butterfly Band-Aid to the bald noggin of Tony Two Feet, who had proved, not surprisingly, to excel at kicking Coluzzis in the shins. Unfortunately, his Mr. Potatohead-eyeglasses had been knocked off in the brawl and nestled broken in his shirt pocket, their dark frames showing through the thin fabric.

  And for Judy’s part in the battle, she had found herself relegated to the sidelines, apparently viewed as Switzerland by the Coluzzis. After she’d lost one of Bennie’s brown pumps in the fussing, which was no great loss, she helped the cops bring the mess to a close. Pigeon Tony was unscathed only because he hadn’t been at the fistfight and had still been trapped in TV custody. Judy was at present rethinking her position on televised arraignments. They were an excellent idea where Italians were involved.

  She stood at the head of the table. “Here comes the lecture. First of all, we’re damn lucky that the judge didn’t revoke Pigeon Tony’s bail, and I hope all of you know it. You have to understand right here and right now that we are not going to run this case this way. I may be a slow learner, but I’m getting the idea. The Lucias hate the Coluzzis, and the Coluzzis hate the Lucias. But right now that doesn’t matter. I cannot and will not defend Pigeon Tony in this case if you people can’t control yourselves.” Judy wasn’t used to being so dictatorial, but she was starting to like the power femme thing, even though her version of it sounded like a gym teacher. She wished for a whistle on a gimp lanyard, in school colors. “You people have to think a lot more long-term than you have been. You can’t be so emotional all the time.”

  Pigeon Tony blinked. Mr. DiNunzio looked grave. Tony Two Feet hung his head.

  Frank smiled, despite a goose egg rising on his right cheekbone. He stood at the opposite end of the table, resting his hands on the back of Pigeon Tony’s chair. “Need I remind you that we come by it honestly?”

  “Need I remind you that your grandfather’s life is at stake?” Judy watched his smile fade. “Get over yourselves. Being Italian is no excuse for bad behavior any longer. In any event, not with this lawyer. From now on we do this my way, every step of the way, or Pigeon Tony finds somebody else to represent him.”

  Pigeon Tony stopped blinking and the corners of his mouth went south.

  “Pigeon Tony, listen to me.” Judy softened her tone, since even gym teachers had a heart. “Do you understand what I’m saying here?”

  “Judy, we no start fight. Coluzzis start fight.” He made a bony fist with his hand and waved it in the air. “They hit, then we hit.”

  Tony Two Feet nodded in agreement, as did Tony-From-Down-The-Block, and Judy realized she had a fairly tough row to hoe.

  “Tonys. Gentlemen. Please. I really don’t want to hear ‘they started it’ from eighty-year-olds. You’re grown men, not little boys. You should all know better than that, and you’re still not getting it.” Judy heard herself and wondered when dodgeball was starting. “This isn’t a schoolyard game, or a fight, or even a war. It’s a legal case. A matter of law.”

  “In a war,” Frank said coolly, sipping his coffee, and Judy bore down.

  “Maybe so. But I run this war or I’m outta here.” She picked up her briefcase and walked to the door of the conference room, in case Pigeon Tony missed the point. The fact that it was her own conference room seemed a detail compared with the drama of the demonstration. If she kept this up, she’d be promoted to health teacher and could draw fallopian tubes shaped like moose antlers on the blackboard. “We do it my way, or I’m gone.”

  “No! Judy!” Pigeon Tony exclaimed, his voice thin with anxiety, and she turned at the door, pivoting on one pump, which was a neat trick in itself.

  “You want me to be your lawyer?” she demanded, and his sunburned head went up and down.

  “Si, si!”

  “You gonna be good?”

  “Si, si!”

  “No more fighting?”

  “Si, si!”

  “You promise, like b
efore? I was wondering about that promise, back in the courtroom.”

  Pigeon Tony kept nodding. “È vero. I promise.”

  “And all the Lucias have to understand the rules, Pigeon Tony. All the people in the gallery today, in the courtroom. All the neighborhood, the whole damn village, the home team. Got it? No more fighting! Or I go.”

  “Si, si!”

  Mr. DiNunzio rose, upset. “Don’t go, Judy. You’re right, everything you said. I’ll make sure there’s no more fighting. I swear it, God as my witness.”

  The leftover Tonys looked properly contrite. “Okay, you win. No more fighting,” Tony Two Feet said, blinking unhappily without his glasses, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block gave a grudging wave.

  Judy looked at Frank, who was still sipping his coffee. “Well?”

  “Well what?” Frank set his Styrofoam cup down on the table. “Will I promise not to fight when they come after my grandfather? The answer is no.”

  “Are you nuts?” Judy dropped her briefcase in frustration. “You’re not in Naples anymore. It was 1900 a long time ago. You’re in Philadelphia, in the new millennium. We have the Internet now, and e-books, and boy bands. Microsoft and Britney Spears. Nobody has to go to the well for water in this town, or pound their socks with rocks. If somebody comes after your grandfather, we’ll call the friggin’ police!”

  “No like police!” Pigeon Tony shouted, banging the table with his hard little fist. “Io non sono Napoletano!”

  Judy couldn’t translate. “What did he say?” she asked Frank.

  Frank smiled at the outburst, this time with mirth. “He’s insulted that you said he was from Naples. He thinks they’re all thieves.”

  Judy groaned. “Is that all you got from what I said?”

  “No, but I don’t agree with you,” Frank said, his tone carrying no accusation. “You say this is a legal case, but when I said it takes place in a war, I meant it. You believe there are rules and law, but a vendetta exists apart from the law. It doesn’t care about space and time, and it didn’t stop in 1900. It’s as current as the memories of the Coluzzis and the Lucias, who grew up in another time, in another country, and whose way of living is very much alive, to them, their sons, and their grandsons.”