The Vendetta Defense

The engine to the backhoe stopped suddenly. “Yo, Judy!” Frank grinned and called to her from the cab as he stood up and slipped into a white Nike T-shirt that hung beside him on the console. Now there really was no reason to stick around.

“Where’s your grandfather?” she called back.

“Behind the rocks!” He pointed past the rubble pile, and Judy took off. She didn’t look back, telegraphing that this was a business call, and after a minute she heard the backhoe engine restart. She tramped in the mud around the rock pile, where she found Pigeon Tony.

He was bent over the rocks, apparently sorting them, in dark baggy pants and a wide-brimmed straw hat that had a makeshift cotton string for a chin strap. A red bandanna was knotted around his neck and a madras shirt hung like a rag from his belt; he toiled as shirtless as his grandson, to a much different effect. His shoulders were skinny and his breasts small and slack, the nipples flat and shriveled against the soft, almost womanish skin. Except for Angelo Coluzzi on the slab, Judy had never seen such an old man so bare. Her throat caught unaccountably, watching him bend over to pick up a rock, setting a golden crucifix around his neck swinging.

The crucifix brought Judy back to her senses. She remembered the crucifix tattooed on Angelo Coluzzi’s arm and the skinniness of his gray chest on the steel tray, under the harsh fluorescent lighting. The chilly morgue was a world from this sunlit meadow, but it had a death grip on her, and she couldn’t shake its reach. How lucky Pigeon Tony was to be alive in this lovely place and how privileged to be drawing breath today. It was a privilege he hadn’t afforded Angelo Coluzzi.

Judy looked at her client with cold eyes. He was examining the rock carefully, turning it over and over like a tumbler, then setting it down in the far pile with a tiny grunt. Judging from the size of the three piles before him, which Judy would have classified as rocks, rocks, and more rocks, Pigeon Tony had been making meaningless distinctions between rocks all morning. When he bent over for the next rock, he spotted her standing there and broke into a welcoming smile.

“Judy!” He straightened up, and his hand went automatically to the back of his belt. He pulled his shirt out and slipped into it as quickly as Frank had, leaving it unbuttoned. “You come!”

“I need to talk to you, Pigeon Tony.” Judy shielded her eyes from the sun. “Can you take a break?”

“Sure,” he said, which came out like shhhh, and he set the rock down gently. He slipped his hat from his head, so that it hung on its cotton string, revealing that his smile had vanished. “Whatsa matter?”

“Follow me,” she said sternly, and led him to the shade of the oak trees.

Chapter 15

Sun peeked through the leaves of the oak tree, falling dappled on the tall grass, and a cool breeze wafted through the shady grove. Judy was too angry to sit down but Pigeon Tony perched on the thickly knotted root of a tree in his bumpy madras shirt and baggy pants, next to a Hefty garbage bag he had insisted on fetching from the truck. He had untied his red bandanna and smoothed it out on the grass, then began unpacking the Hefty bag, placing on the red cloth items that were wrapped with what looked like men’s undershirts. Judy had no idea what they were or why they were bundled with laundry.

“Pigeon Tony, I need you to listen to me.”

“Si, si, I listen.” With difficulty he untied the tiny knot in the first item and unfolded it to reveal a generous sandwich on crusty Italian bread—buffalo mozzarella with roasted red peppers. It looked delicious even in underwear, but Judy tried not to notice.

“I want you to look at me when we talk. This is important.”

“Okay, okay. Gotta eat.” Pigeon Tony nodded, his fresh sunburn obvious now that his straw hat was off, hanging down his back on its cotton string. He unwrapped the next shirt to find a pile of black olives, their rich oil soaked into the soft cotton. “Alla people gotta eat. Work, eat. Work again.”

“Fine.” Judy sighed. “Can you eat while I talk?”

Pigeon Tony shook his head, no. The next shirt contained a perfect red apple, then Pigeon Tony rummaged in the Hefty bag again and produced a thick jelly glass and a half-full bottle of Chianti. Old-fashioned basket-weaving covered the bottom of the bottle and made a loop at its neck.

“Well, too bad. You have to.” Judy lowered herself to the grass, tucking her feet under her. “I just came from the morgue. You know what that is, a morgue?”

“Che?” Pigeon Tony twisted the cork from the Chianti bottle, poured it gurgling into the jelly glass, and offered it to Judy. “Drink.”

“No thanks,” she said, waving it off, but he set it down in front of her anyway. “A morgue is where they keep dead people.”

“Ah, si, si.” Pigeon Tony picked up the mozzarella-and-pepper sandwich and handed it to her. “Eat.”

“I don’t want your lunch.”

“Not my, is for you. Work, then eat.” Pigeon Tony thrust the sandwich at her again. “I make, for you. You work, eat. Work again.”

“This isn’t your lunch?” Judy didn’t understand. She didn’t want to understand. She was prepared to ream him out, to call him to account. She had just seen his victim. Pigeon Tony was a murderer.

“No, no, not my. I eat, before.” He gestured to the apple and the slick olives. “Alla, for you.”

Judy didn’t want the sandwich. She set it back down on the undershirt. “Pigeon Tony, I saw Angelo Coluzzi in the morgue. I want you to tell me how you came to kill him. Do you understand?”

“Si.” Pigeon Tony frowned, his forehead buckling into leathery wrinkles. “You no eat, Judy?”

“No, now let’s talk. Tell me everything. Who else was there, how you found him—everything.”

“Talk, then eat?”

“Talk, then eat.” Judy sighed. The man could negotiate with the best of them. She imagined him back in Italy, getting the best prices for whatever he grew. Tomatoes, olives, whatever. “But we’re going to talk first. Talk now.”

Pigeon Tony appeared to think a minute, then his face darkened. “I see Coluzzi at the club, you know? The club?”

Judy nodded. The pigeon-racing club. “What time of day, exactly?”

“Ah, inna mornin’. Friday, eight o’clock inna mornin’.” Pigeon Tony nodded, his small mouth tight. “Alla loft, they come to the clubhouse. The birds, they get the bands. Onna legs. Before race. You understand?”

Judy nodded. She was the one who spoke English. She understood. “Who else was there, in the clubhouse?”

“Alla people—Tony, Feet, alla inna club. Me, Pigeon Tony, I go to back, inna back, to get bands and bom”—Pigeon Tony’s eyes glittered—“I see Coluzzi!”

“In the back? What back?”

“Inna room, inna back. They play cards. You know.”

Judy didn’t know, but she could guess. “Why were you going in the back room?”

“To get bands, for birds. They have at club. They count, so no cheating. Everybody get bands before race.”

“Fine.” Judy nodded. Whatever. “Was anybody else in the back room?”

“Coluzzi.”

Judy persisted. “I meant anybody besides Coluzzi and you?”

“No.”

“So it was just you and him, in the back room.” Judy tried to visualize it. She would have to get to the crime scene soon. When would she find the time? What about her other cases? “How big is the back room?”

“Little. Is little room.”

“What’s in it besides bands?”

“Alla things. Alla for birds.”

“Supplies for the birds?”

“Si, si.”

Judy could make only a mental note. She’d been so pissed when she got here, she’d left her backpack in the car. “Okay, so you go in the back room, and there he is. What happens next?”

“I see Coluzzi and I hate him. Hate!” Pigeon Tony’s face colored and he clenched his small hands. “I hate him, in here. Inside.” He thumped a fist on his chest. “Inna my heart I hate him. You know, hate?”

“Yes, I know,” Judy said, though she doubted that anybody whose first language was English knew the hate he was talking about.

“And I kill him.”

The words made Judy shudder. “So you just start hating him, and you kill him?” It sounded like spontaneous combustion, but she couldn’t begin to translate. “Just like that?”

Pigeon Tony’s eyes clouded with apparent confusion.

“I’m trying to understand why you killed him. I saw his body and his neck. It was broken very badly. It was awful to see. I don’t know how you could do such a thing.”

“Si, si.” Pigeon Tony nodded. “I say you before. I kill him. He kill my wife. I say, before.”

Judy wiped her brow. If this weren’t a privileged conversation, she’d get Frank to translate. Shirtless. “I’m trying to make sense of this. I’m asking, did you just see Coluzzi and then run at him and break his neck?”

“Si, si, we make a fight and I break his neck. You know.”

Judy did a double take. “What do you mean, you made a fight?”

“Si, si, we make a fight.” Pigeon Tony cocked his head. “Come se dice, make a fight?”

“No, wait a minute.” She would have to hire a fully dressed translator. It would be less fun but she could do her job. “We say fight, too, but you didn’t tell me you two had a fight. What did you fight about?”

“What he say.”

“What did he say?”

Pigeon Tony’s dark eyes fluttered. “He say . . . thing.”

“Yes, but what?” Judy couldn’t keep anger from her tone. “Did he call you a name? What?”

Pigeon Tony didn’t answer, his gaze focused on a splotch of sun outside the oak grove. Birds chirped in the meadow but he wasn’t listening to them either.

“Pigeon Tony, tell me what he said. You understand more than you let on. You don’t fool me.”

Pigeon Tony’s head moved slowly to face Judy and he seemed to wait a moment until his eyes focused. “He say he kill my son.”

Judy felt stricken. “Your son? He admitted it?”

“My Frank. And wife, Gemma. Inna truck.”

“You mean, the truck accident?”

“No accident! He do it. He kill my son. He kill my wife. He say me, he say me! He say he destroy me, because Silvana want me! He say he destroy Frankie. Alla my family.” His voice broke slightly and tears sprang to his dark eyes, but Judy was struggling for clarity.

“So he told you he killed your son? He said he’d kill Frank, too? Your grandson Frank?”

“Si! Si!” Pigeon Tony was looking at her, but lost in the memory. Wetness brimmed in his eyes, refusing to budge. “When he say this, I go bom! I hate him, I hate him! I run and push him and break his neck! I kill him, for my son! For my wife! For my Frankie! With my hands I do it!”

Judy understood. She could almost imagine him, blind with pain and rage, avenging so many murders and saving Frank. “You killed him right then, after he said that?”

“Si, si! I kill him and he fall onna floor and they come, from the room. Alla people, come then. Tony, Feet. They see.”

Judy found herself thinking like a defense lawyer again. “Did he say he’d kill you?”

“No, no. He no kill me. He destroy me.”

Judy understood. The knowledge would make Pigeon Tony’s life a living hell. She tried another tack. “When he said this, was it loud? Did the other people hear him?”

“No, not loud. Soft. He make a laugh.” Pigeon Tony wiped tears that wouldn’t come, and Judy winced.

“Are you sure?” Couldn’t one person have heard it? She needed a witness to the conversation. “Was there a door to the room?”

“Si, si.”

“Was it closed or open?”

“Close.”

Judy considered it. No witnesses, and such a bombshell. “Why didn’t I know this? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Ogni ver non è ben detto.”

“What?”

“Alla truths not be told.”

“What?” Judy hoped she hadn’t heard him right. “You tell me everything. You want me to represent you, you be honest with me! You have to tell me.”

“Perchè?” Pigeon Tony said, and Judy translated from the challenging flash to his eyes.

“Because I said so, that’s why!”

“You tell judge?”

“No, of course not.”

“Pfft!” Pigeon Tony made a noise that accompanied a twist of his hand in the country air, and Judy figured it meant what’s-the-difference. Unfortunately, she couldn’t immediately think what the difference was legally, but she still wanted to know.

“Is there anything else you didn’t tell me?”

“No, no.”

Judy’s eyes narrowed. “Promise?”

Pigeon Tony crossed himself, which Judy decided was an acceptable substitute.

Then she remembered something. The conversation with Frank at his parents’ gravesite. Frank had said Pigeon Tony suspected it wasn’t an accident, not that he was told. Why hadn’t Frank told her? Maybe he hadn’t had a chance to talk with his grandfather after his arrest. But why hadn’t Frank told her since then? Picked up the phone? “Why didn’t Frank tell me?”

“I no tell Frank.”

Judy’s mouth opened slightly. “Why not?”

Pigeon Tony made a quick wave. “Not for him.”

“What? It’s his family. It’s his mother and father.”

“You no tell. Understand? No tell!” Suddenly Pigeon Tony pointed at Judy so sternly she was taken aback.

“I don’t tell him anything you tell me. I can’t. But why didn’t you tell him?”

“No! I no tell! Why I’m gonna tell? Break his heart?”

Judy agreed. It would hurt Frank, that much was true. Still. “But doesn’t he have a right to know?”

“Che?”

“A right. He has a right to know.” Judy fumbled for a synonym. How could she explain the concept of a legal right to someone who didn’t believe in the law? Or a moral right to someone who thought he was justified in killing? “Frank is entitled to know. He should know. It’s his business.”

“No! Is for me, not Frankie. I make vendetta, not him!” The gloom vanished from Pigeon Tony’s face as he scrambled to his feet with a tiny grunt and motioned to Judy to get up. “Come. Andiamo!”

“What?” she asked, confused, but Pigeon Tony grabbed her wrist with surprising strength, yanked her to her feet, and tugged her from the oak trees into the sun. Intrigued, she let herself be led like a child, even though Pigeon Tony was so short he reached only to her shoulder.

They passed the rock piles and stopped when they got to the edge of the muddy construction site, still hand in hand. The yellow backhoe stood at the center of the mud, its huge arm rattling and creaking, toeing the earth among the pale butterflies. Frank was at the controls, absorbed in his work.

“See!” Pigeon Tony pointed at the backhoe with his free hand. “Is sign. See?”

“The sign?” Judy didn’t see any signs. She looked around and found a painted strip on the window of the backhoe’s cab. LUCIA STONE. “The company sign?”

“Si, si! È vero! È Frankie. Alla Frankie. La macchina, l’auto-mobile, alla. Alla Frank. Alla Lucia Stone.” Pigeon Tony’s eyes were bright with emotion and his hand squeezed Judy’s tight. “See? Frankie, he make—come se dice—he make a—che?” He turned to Judy to supply the English word.

“A company?”

“No. No.” Pigeon Tony let go of her hand and waved his impatiently, freeing them. “Frankie make a—”

“A building?”

“No! No!”

“He make a wall?”

“No! No!” Pigeon Tony faced the backhoe and threw his arms up in frustration. “You no see? Judy, whatsa matter you, you no see?”

“I don’t know what he’s making!” she answered, equally frustrated, but Pigeon Tony turned her bodily to face the construction site.

“See, Judy! See, la macchina. See sign, see alla!”

“I see, I see!”

“Frankie, he make futuro! Capisce? Futuro?”

Judy understood then. It wasn’t a company, or a wall. LUCIA STONE. “A future.”

“Si, si!” Pigeon Tony almost exploded with relief. “Futuro! Frankie make futuro. Here, for his children. For alla who come.”

“I see.” Judy’s throat caught unaccountably, but Pigeon Tony was wagging a finger at her.

“Understand? No you tell Frankie. About father, my son. Or no futuro for Frankie. Only vendetta. Only murder. Only morte. Capisce?”

Judy nodded.

“Promise?”

Judy couldn’t help but smile. She had created an Italian monster. “Yes.”

“Bene.” Pigeon Tony nodded curtly, then turned to the noisy backhoe, calm coming over him as he watched Frank make his future.

Judy watched, too, the sun warming her back, and after a time, without knowing why, she reached for her client’s small, withered hand.

Fifteen minutes later they had piled into two cars, Judy into the green Bug and Frank and Pigeon Tony leading the way in the white pickup, as they snaked from the countryside back to the highway. Judy had replaced her wilted daisy on the console with a fresh spray of blue forget-me-nots, but she wasn’t completely sorry to leave the country sights and smells. Now that she had a client again, she had a defense to stage. Not that she had resolved everything.

She hit the gas, whizzing past sunny open country that became cloudy housing developments, but Judy was lost in thought. Images of Angelo Coluzzi in death ran through the back of her mind, but the situation wasn’t black and white anymore. As an artist, she knew there were shades of gray and had always counted herself lucky for that. Dark gray underlined a stormy sky in her landscapes; light gray hollowed a human cheekbone in her portraits. So why couldn’t there be shades of gray in a murder defense? She was painter and lawyer both; art and a defense were both her creations. So she could take responsibility for the colors in her cases. She liked the notion.

Judy took a bite of her lunch, crunching through the crusty bread and sinking her teeth into the spongy-soft mozzarella, and she became convinced the sandwich was helping her think. Mozzarella had superpowers. She followed Frank’s big truck as it climbed onto the expressway, watching him talk animatedly with his grandfather as they drove. They both used their hands when they talked, and Judy wondered briefly if Italians had more traffic accidents than normal people.

Frank’s big hands chopped the air, and she flashed on their conversation at his parents’ grave. So they had been murdered. She had been touched by Pigeon Tony’s keeping that from Frank, and though she understood his reasons for it, the knowledge burdened her. Judy had grown up in an American family, as patriotic as a military family could be, and she had been trained in law, a code of rights and responsibilities. In her view, Frank had a right to know how his parents had died; it was a truth that shouldn’t be hidden from him. And why did Pigeon Tony think it was okay to hide one truth—the way they died—and not the other—the way Angelo Coluzzi died? This case had more cultural conflicts than legal ones, and more ethical conflicts than both. She needed emergency mozzarella.

Judy took another bite. If she ate enough of it, she could figure out how to do all the work she had been ignoring this weekend. She remembered the unfinished article on her laptop; she would have to get to it tonight. Sunday wouldn’t be enough time, and she didn’t want to face Bennie on Monday. Judy glanced out the window, and the sky was tinged with gray.

She couldn’t help but think it was appropriate.

Chapter 16

CONGRATULATIONS, SOUTH PHILLY COMBINE! read a white plastic banner that hung from the flat roof of the clubhouse, oddly parallel with the yellow plastic crime-scene tape that sagged across the front door. The clubhouse, a brick rowhouse used for the purpose, stood by itself on the city block, because the other houses had been leveled and the lots strewn with brick and mortar rubble, bottles, and other debris. Judy climbed out of the truck, and Frank helped Pigeon Tony to the curb. “See that guy on the corner?” Frank asked, and Judy looked over. A heavyset man sat in a black Cadillac at the far end of the street, apparently reading a newspaper. “That’s Fat Jimmy Bello, works for the Coluzzis.” “So?” “So I told you, I don’t like it. He’s watching the clubhouse. You sure you gotta go in there?” “Yes,” Judy said. “I have to see it.” “We can’t come back another time?” “No, I have the D.A.’s permission to do it now, and it’s best to see the crime scene as soon as possible.” Frank glanced again at the corner. The man was still sitting in the driver’s seat, reading a newspaper. “That means you have five minutes in there.” “Why?” “Because I’m not taking any chances. Hurry. I’ll wait here. Go!” NO BEER OUTSIDE, read a handmade sign on the wall of the small room, which would have been the living room of the original rowhouse. The floors were of lime green and white linoleum, and the walls were lined with chicken wire cages, twelve on a side, their doors double-fastened with plastic clothespins. A makeshift wooden bar sat against the far wall, stocked with cases of beer and soda, with forks and spoons stuck in a chipped mug. Steel folding chairs sat in rows facing a table at the front of the room, as if for a meeting. On all of the walls, like a border atop the cages, hung a line of framed black-and-white photographs, one of men in suits and women in fancy dresses, seated at a roomful of banquet tables, and others in groups. Judy caught one of the handwritten captions as they hurried by. South Philly Pigeon Racing Club, June 14, 1948.

She went into the back room, with Pigeon Tony ahead of her. She glanced around and realized it had once been the dining room of the rowhouse. “Where was he when you came into the room?”she asked when they were inside.

“There.” Pigeon Tony pointed. “Near shelf.”

Judy looked where the bookshelves were leaning against the plywood wall and at the supplies and vitamin jugs scattered on the floor. She knew how they’d look in crime-lab photos and blown up as Exhibit B. “Okay, he was standing in front of the bookshelves?”

“Si, si.”

“You open the door and you see him. What happens next?”

“I kill him.”

Judy winced. “Slow down. Remember the fight you told me about. How exactly did it start? Who spoke first?”

“He.”

“How loud was his voice?”

“I say you, no loud. Whisper.”

Judy nodded. “Okay, what did he say, exactly?”

“He laugh. He say, in Italian, ‘Look who come in. A buffoon. A weakling. A coward.’”

“Why did he say that? What did he mean?”

“I no avenge Silvana. I run away, to America.”

Judy didn’t understand. “That was wrong?”

“Si, si.” Pigeon Tony’s face reddened, even under his fresh sunburn. “If I honor vendetta, my son be alive.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know. Coluzzi know.”

“But if you had killed Coluzzi, his son would have come after your son. Isn’t that how it works? An eye for an eye?”

Pigeon Tony paused. “No matter. I must honor vendetta, like man. Coluzzi come after my son alla way. He come after Frankie.”

Judy didn’t want to get into it. She had an idea. “Now tell me. He says this to you and what do you do? Besides hate him.”

“I hate him and I make a fight.”

“Show me.”

Pigeon Tony’s eyes widened. “You want me to make a fight with you? A woman?”

“Si, si,” she said, a close-to-perfect impression, and he smiled.

“Okay,” he began, his impression not as good as hers, to her ear. Suddenly his face darkened, as it had back at the oak grove. “I say to Coluzzi, ‘You are pig. You are scum. You are worse coward than me, for you kill defenseless woman.’”

Judy wondered how Silvana had died but said nothing. She didn’t want to interrupt his story.

“And he laugh, and he say to me, ‘You are a stupid fool, you are too dumb to know I destroy you. I kill your son, too, and his wife. I kill them in truck and soon I kill Frank and you will have nothing.’” Pigeon Tony trembled with pain, and though Judy’s heart went out to him, she had to keep him on track.

“Then what did you say?”

“I no say nothing. I no can believe. My heart, is full with odio. So much hate.”

“Did you do something?”

“Si, si.”

“Show me what you did.”

Pigeon Tony thought a minute. “I run and I push him.”

“Pretend I’m Coluzzi. Push me how you pushed him.”

Pigeon Tony hesitated, then took a step toward her slowly, then another. “I run at him, fast. I no think, I run.”

Judy nodded. “I understand.”

“And I come to him”—at this Pigeon Tony gripped her arms, reaching only to her elbow—“and I push him, I shove at him. I no can believe how hard!”

Judy’s idea took shape. “And then he fell back? Against the shelves?”

“Si, si. And shelf, is metal, is tin, it falls down. And I make noise, I no can believe it come, and alla people come in—Tony, Feet, alla club. I break his neck!”

“How do you know that?”

Pigeon Tony looked at her like she was crazy. “His neck”—he gestured to the floor—“all crazy, all crooked. Alla people say, ‘You broke neck.’”

Judy considered it. This could work. And it was consistent with what the coroner would say. “Then what did you do?”

“I no do nothing. I look at him. I no can believe Coluzzi dead. Tony, Feet, they take me out, they make me go home. Coluzzi’s friend in club, Jimmy, he shout at me. He make a fight to me. He call police. Tony, Feet, they get me, and I go to home. I feed birds and police come.”

“So the one push broke Coluzzi’s neck.” Judy remembered what Dr. Patel, the medical examiner, had said. Pigeon Tony’s story would be consistent with it. “His neck snapped?”

“Si, si.”

“You didn’t touch him again after that?”

“No.”

Judy’s heart lifted. She had a defense, and it was perfect. One last detail. “How long would you say you were in the room?”

“Che? How long?”

“I’m wondering about the time. How many minutes were you in the room before you pushed Coluzzi?”

Pigeon Tony snapped his fingers. “Two, three minute. No time.”

Judy tried out her theory. “So maybe you didn’t mean to kill him. Maybe you just meant to fight with him, or hurt him, and he fell back and broke his neck.”

Pigeon Tony frowned. “No, I want to kill him. I try to kill him.”

“Did you? Are you sure?”

“Si, si! I want to kill him. For Silvana. For Frank. For Frankie. You no capisce?”

Judy capisced just fine, but she was visualizing her opening argument. “But nobody will know that you wanted to kill him, from the way it happened. From the way it happened, from what everybody will say, even the prosecution witnesses, you went in the room and you were only in there a few minutes. All you did was you push him, and he fell back and broke his neck. That’s not murder.”

Pigeon Tony broke into a grin of recognition. “Bravissima, Judy! Is no murder! I say you, before. Is no murder! Coluzzi kill my wife. And my son!”

Judy shook her head. “No, it’s not murder because you didn’t mean to kill him.”

“No! No!” Pigeon Tony bristled. “I kill him! I want to!”

“The jury won’t know that.”

Pigeon Tony cocked his head. “What means jury?”

“Jury. It’s the people who sit at your trial and decide if you’re guilty of murder.”

“Si, si. I tell jury. I tell judge. I say I kill him but no è murder.”

Judy stilled him with her hands. They were back to square uno. “No, you don’t say anything. Listen to me. In the law, the prosecutor, or the district attorney, has to prove you intended, or wanted, to kill Coluzzi when you pushed him. In fact, they have to prove you were lying in wait to kill him, for murder in the first degree. They can’t prove you meant to kill him from the facts they have. And they can’t prove it from the physical evidence.” Judy touched Pigeon Tony’s skinny shoulder, her excitement growing. “It may be manslaughter, but they didn’t charge you with manslaughter. They overcharged, like they always do. They charged you with murder. We’re gonna win! You’ll go free.”

Pigeon Tony looked at her in wonderment. “But, Judy, I want to kill him. Is truth.”

The simple words stung, and Judy felt her face flush. It was the truth, and she was preparing to hide it, to get her client off. How do you explain that to someone like Pigeon Tony? Whose morals were supposedly inferior to hers? Was he guilty or not? What had she decided? They didn’t agree on the rationale, but they both thought it wasn’t murder. Did it matter? Judy couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

But Pigeon Tony was shaking his head. “When I run to him, I say to him, ‘I kill you, I kill you, you pig!’”

“What?”

“I say this when I push him. I run at him and say it.”

Judy cut him off with a wave. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“I forget.”

“How loud did you say that?”

“Loud. I scream. How you say ‘scream’?”

“We say ‘scream.’” Judy’s heart sank. There could be witnesses who heard it through the door, but then again, maybe there weren’t. “Who exactly was there that morning? Tony, Feet, who else from your club?”

“Nobody.”

“Good.” Judy hoped they didn’t hear it. “Who from Coluzzi’s club?”

Pigeon Tony shook his head. “Only Fat Jimmy. He always with Angelo Coluzzi.”

“Fat Jimmy. What’s his last name again?”

“Bello.”

Suddenly there was a knock, and Frank peeked through the open door. His mouth looked tight. “We need to go!”

“For real?”Judy asked.

“John Coluzzi’s on his way.”

Chapter 17

“You want me to leave my car, in this neighborhood?” Judy asked. She hadn’t counted on that. Her little bug beckoned from its parking space. Fahrvergnügen, it said to her, which she had learned was Italian for high monthly payments.

“Go, go, go! Judy, get in the truck.” Frank was hoisting his grandfather into the backseat of his big F-250, his eyes riveted down the street. “Coluzzi’s man made a cell call two minutes ago and just got picked up in a black Caddy. My guess is Coluzzi, he’ll show up any minute.”

Judy looked down the street, too. There was nobody in sight except a boxy SEPTA bus. Gray clouds gathered overhead and a young woman smoking a cigarette hurried along, pushing a baby in a plaid umbrella stroller. “Okay, but why can’t I take my car?”

“I want you with me. Get in the truck.” Frank turned to her and grabbed her arm. His grip was strong, his expression worried. “We’ll come back for the goddamn car.”

“Promise?”

“No.” Suddenly Frank lifted Judy by the waist and hoisted her into the front seat before she could protest. “Any other questions?” he asked, but Judy gathered it was rhetorical, since he slammed the door behind her. She sat slightly stunned. Nobody had ever picked her up before; she didn’t know it was possible. She half liked the idea. And half hated it.

“He’s bossy, isn’t he?” Judy said with an embarrassed laugh, and Pigeon Tony cackled from the backseat.

“My Frankie, he likes you,” he said, and Judy couldn’t help but blush, wondering if it was true. And surprised that she cared enough to wonder.

Frank jumped into the truck, cranked the ignition, and hit the gas. “Let’s get outta here,” he said, and the huge engine roared into action. They took off, the truck’s wide tires screeching.

Judy’s face was still warm as she glanced in the large side mirror mounted outside her window. The SEPTA bus disappeared into the distance. “Nobody back there.”

Frank glanced at the rearview mirror. “Not yet.” He looked over his shoulder. “Pop, do me a favor and lie down.”

“Here?” Pigeon Tony asked. “Inna seat?”

“Yes, just do it, okay? Judy, you, too.” Frank’s eyes glittered as they accelerated around the corner, whizzing by rowhouse after rowhouse. People on the street turned and stared. A woman walking her poodle shook her fist. Frank gripped the wheel, controlling the truck with grim determination. Rocks thundered in the back bed, rolling back and forth. “Both of you, lie down!”

Pigeon Tony obeyed in silence but Judy had never obeyed anything, in silence or otherwise. She gripped the handrail in front of her window, steadying herself as the pickup squealed around the corner. She was starting to believe that Italians shouldn’t be issued driver’s licenses. Next thing they’d want the vote. “Watch out, Frank! Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“Lie down!” he shouted, just as an earsplitting crack sounded behind them.

Judy jumped. Was that a gunshot? It wasn’t possible. It was broad daylight. “What was that?” she said, turning reflexively.

A black sedan was bearing down on them. A man hung out of the passenger window with a handgun. Holy God. Judy stiffened with fright. Where had the car come from?

Crak! Another shot rang out, louder than the first. People on the street were throwing themselves onto the sidewalk.

“Get down!” Frank yelled. He palmed Judy’s head, shoved it into her lap, and held it there. The truck surged forward. “Pop, stay down! They’re shooting at us!”

“They’re shooting at us?” Judy’s voice got lost in her skirt. She couldn’t believe it. Adrenaline dumped into her system. She tried to stay calm and think. She had no idea where her seat belt was.

This was attempted murder. She should call the police. Her cell phone was in her backpack, jostling near her feet on the carpeted floor of the truck. She reached for it with a trembling hand.

Crak! Another blast went off, closer this time. The sound shot through her body, shocking her senses. Her backpack slid out of reach when the truck careened around another corner. Her heart pumped wildly. People on the street shouted and cursed them.

“Goddamn it! I can’t lose these assholes!” Frank said through gritted teeth. “Hold on!” He wrenched the steering wheel to the right. The tires squealed hideously. Rocks slammed against the truck bed. The truck swerved around the next corner.

Judy was thrown against Frank’s side, jolting her upright. She grabbed the console for support. The truck scraped a line of parked cars as it barreled forward. Sparks flew past the truck window like firecracker debris.

Judy glanced back at the dark car. It was only a block away. Close enough for a good shot. “No!” she heard herself screaming. She twisted forward. The truck was racing toward the intersection straight ahead. The traffic light was red. A Mayflower moving van was already nosing into the grid. In a second they would get trapped between the Coluzzis and the van. They would die unless they could beat the van. In a split second Judy read Frank’s mind. “Do it!” she hollered, and Frank floored the gas.

The truck leaped forward like a runaway bull and thundered toward the intersection. Frank threw an arm over Judy’s body, holding her back like a seat belt. “I got you,” he said, but his words vanished in the blare of the van’s horn, blowing like a Klaxon.

The truck zoomed toward the van. The van was almost all the way into the intersection. Judy was close enough to see the driver’s horrified face as he tried to stop the van. His brakes screeched. Black smoke came from his tires. His momentum was too great. The opening was narrowing. They wouldn’t make it. Judy’s heart jumped in her chest.

Frank cut the steering wheel back with a violent jerk. The truck swerved wildly around the van’s monstrous hood, then shot past. Its rear end fishtailed as it bounced onto the sidewalk but Frank yanked the wheel back. Judy reached instinctively for Frank’s arm across her body. The truck crashed into the parked cars on the opposite side of the narrow street.

“Fuck!” Frank torqued the wheel, regained control of the truck, and tore down the street. The expressway on-ramp lay just ahead. They zoomed toward it.

Judy almost cried with happiness. Safe! Tires skidded and metal crashed on the other side of the van behind them. She looked back. The van blocked the intersection completely, its driver moving and unhurt in the cab. What about the Coluzzis? Were they dead? Judy hoped so. They were killers.

“We did it!” Frank shouted as the truck swerved down the street, ran another red light, and flew onto the ramp for the expressway, eating up the fast lane out of the city. He drove with an eye on the rearview mirror and shifted quickly in his seat to get a view of the back. “Pop, you okay back there?”

“Si, si!” Pigeon Tony squeaked from the backseat, and they both laughed.

“Good!” Frank checked the rearview mirror again. He turned to Judy, his brown eyes bright, and broke into a grin. “How about you?”

“I’m alive,” she said, and it felt wonderful. Relief flooded her system. Her breathing eased. Her blood pressure returned to normal, for a lawyer. She wanted to call the police. Frank’s arm felt good against her side and he showed no inclination to remove it, now that its purpose had been served. “You gonna move that arm?” she asked with a smile.

“Not unless you tell me to.”

“Since when do you listen to me anyway?”

He laughed, and they took off.

The truck traveled away from the city under a cloud-covered sky, turning to a dark, muggy evening. Pigeon Tony snoozed in the small backseat, which fit him perfectly, and Frank drove with his arm resting across Judy’s body, making her entire left side feel warm and good. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt like this, when someone’s simple touch could set her tingling, and in any event, she had never met a man like Frank. She slid out from behind his arm only to retrieve her cell phone and call the police.

This time Judy bypassed 911 and called Detective Wilkins directly, since he had made the mistake of giving her his card. Lucky for him he was in. “Detective,” she said, “I want to report an attempted murder. Of my client, of his grandson, and of a lawyer I like a lot.”

“We’re on it.” His voice sounded flat. “South Philly, right?”

“Yes. We were at the crime scene and were chased several blocks by the Coluzzis. John, we think, and a man named Jimmy Bello, who used to work for his father. They shot at us three times. They tried to kill us.”

“We have impounded the vehicle, which crashed into the van. It’s totaled. Unfortunately the perpetrators got away. How do you know it was John Coluzzi? Did you see him?”

“Wait a minute. They got away?” Judy shook her head, and Frank looked over from behind the wheel. Concrete highway walls were a blur in the background, the slabs darkened with earlier rain. “How did they get away?”

“I’m already looking into that. We moved quickly once we got the call. Residents called nine-one-one, dispatch got eleven calls, and we were at the scene not five minutes after the collision. The perpetrators had already fled the scene.”

Judy frowned. The scenery whizzed by. Frank looked pissed at the wheel. His arm was long gone. Their second fight. She couldn’t give up. “But you know who the car was registered to. You can trace that and arrest Coluzzi, right? Or at least Bello?”

“No so fast. It was a stolen car, owned by a rabbi in Melrose Park. Got pinched three months ago. Why do you keep saying it was John Coluzzi? Can you identify him?”

“I saw them,” Judy said, suddenly flashing on the man in the passenger seat with the gun. “At least one of them.”

“Was it John Coluzzi?”

She closed her eyes as the truck barreled down the highway. She couldn’t remember more. She had seen John Coluzzi only at the courthouse. It had happened so fast. “Not for sure, not yet. I saw a white male. With hair.”

“What color hair?” Detective Wilkins asked.

“Brown.”

“Anything else?”

Judy thought hard. “No,” she had to admit. “Didn’t anyone see them run away?”

“The only ID is two white males, one heavyset, but we have no suspects as yet. We have uniformed officers canvassing the neighborhood.”

“‘Nobody knows nothin’?’ Are you buying that, Detective?”

“What do you want from my life, Ms. Carrier? We’re on it. These are major crimes. We’re there. We’ll call you when we pick up the perps.” Detective Wilkins didn’t sound unconcerned, and Judy softened. He wasn’t the enemy. The policeman was your friend, right? She turned to Frank.

“Can you identify them? Did you see anything?” she asked.

“Sure. Gimme the phone.” Frank took the cell phone from Judy. It looked small in his hand. “Detective, here’s my description. Got a pen?” Frank paused a minute. “The two shooters, one was John Coluzzi and one was his man, Jimmy Bello, because Marco don’t have the balls. You go see John, you’ll see a couple guys that look even worse than usual. Those are the bad guys.” Frank handed the phone back to Judy with a smile. “Thanks, counselor.”

Judy took the phone but couldn’t manage a smile. “Detective, what if I could come down to the Roundhouse and look at some mug shots. Wouldn’t that help identify them?”

Frank shook his head over the steering wheel. “No, you’re not doing that.”

The detective was saying, “We do have some shots of members of the Coluzzi family and some associates. It would help if you came down, but I’m not promising anything.”

Judy said, “I’ll do it.”

Frank was shaking his head. “No you won’t.”

The detective was still talking. “When do you want to come down? I’m on night tour this week. I’m here all night.”

“I’ll call you later,” she said, because Frank was already reaching for the cell phone. He took it from her hand, snapped it closed, and tossed it onto the dash.

“You’re not going down there.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll get yourself killed.”

“They’re not after me. I’m just the lawyer.”

Frank snorted, resting a finely muscled forearm on the steering wheel. The truck sped west. “Those bullets they were shooting, were they going around you?”

“They were trying to hit Pigeon Tony,” Judy said, but she was barely convincing herself. “Besides, if I go down to the Roundhouse, I’d go alone. They wouldn’t come after me alone.”

“Of course they would. You don’t get it, do you? What do you think is happening to your car right now?”

Judy’s heart jumped. “You think they’ll hurt it?”

“No. I think they’re too nice to hurt it.” Frank laughed, but Judy wasn’t kidding.

“What will they do to it?”

“To your Bug? After they pull its little legs off or before?”

“If they so much as touch that car, I’ll—”

“Watch it.” Frank raised a finger in mock admonishment. “Of course, if they do anything to your car, you will be free to pursue all appropriate legal remedies.”

Judy still wasn’t laughing. “Now I’m really mad,” she said, and meant it.

Chapter 18

When Frank’s truck finally came to a stop, it was twilight, the stars just beginning to shine in the country sky, winking behind a thin veneer of dusk. They were back in Chester County, parked in thick grass in front of an abandoned springhouse, painted white. It was on the same property as the construction site, on the far side of the meadow. It had rained here, stirring up the gnats, which flew in dizzy knots outside a windshield dotted with raindrops. Birds chirped loudly, filling the damp air with sound, none of which woke up Pigeon Tony, who snoozed in the backseat.

Judy pushed the button to roll down the truck window. “You think he’ll be safe here?”

“No doubt.” Frank put on the emergency brake and wiped dark hair from his forehead. “This is a seventy-five-acre property, and the springhouse is in the middle of it, if you look on a topo. A topographic map.”

Judy looked around. Not a handgun in sight. They seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, if not paradise. “But where is the house? I mean, don’t springhouses provide water to houses?”

Frank pointed past her. “It used to be over there, about fifty yards, but the owners tore it down. They’re building a new house on the far side of the meadow. Come on, I’ll show you.” He climbed out of the truck and closed the door softly enough not to wake his grandfather. Judy followed suit, feeling finally safe again when her clogs hit the grass.

“This is better than people shooting at you,” she said, and Frank moved toward her, extending a large hand.

“Am I fun or what? Here, step into my office. It’s the best part of my job.” He took her hand with confidence, and Judy let him. Her hand nestled happily in his, and she liked the simple connection to him as they walked across the grass. It was long enough to tickle her bare ankles and drench the toe of her clogs, but she felt too good to mind. She didn’t know exactly when all the hand-holding and leg-pressing had started, but she was sure that bullets were flying at the time. Frank gestured to the oak trees on their left. “Hope you like what I’ve done with the place. I don’t mean to brag, but those trees over there, they’re two hundred years old. And green is my favorite color.”

Judy smiled. “I was guessing mauve.”

“Nuh-uh. Mauve is for bricklayers.”

“My office has law books.”

“Too bad.” Frank moved easily through the grass, eyeing a tan fieldstone as they passed. “At least they burn easy.”

“It also has bookshelves and accordion files and a credenza.”

“A credenza! Wow.” Frank nodded. “Mine only has the sun.”

Judy was enjoying being somebody’s straight man for a change. “Plus I have e-mail, voicemail, and two phone lines, right on my desk.”

“I have a backhoe, a pickup, and a grandfather. And that used to be all. Now I have something far greater.” Frank squeezed her hand, and Judy didn’t ask him what he meant, though she had a guess. She didn’t want to make a horse’s ass of herself or go too fast. She liked him too much. She was in definite like. She glanced at him, hoping for some meaningful interlocking of eyes, but he was looking down at the grass. “See?” he asked, and pointed.

“What?” All Judy saw was wet grass.

“That’s the footing wall.” Frank nosed the grass with the toe of his big boot, lifting the damp sod and exposing a tan stone. “Valley Forge fieldstone, indigenous to this area of Pennsylvania. This is where the old farmhouse was. See how the grass is lighter, in a line, all around? You can still see the footprint of the house. The stone stays put.” He pointed in a line that made a square, and Judy followed his arm, only slightly distracted by the biceps revealed by his polo shirt. It was so pleasant to be standing here, their hands linked loosely, listening to his voice. Its richness told her he loved what he was talking about.

“The farmhouse was built in 1780,” he continued. “I saw it last year, before they tore it down. White stucco over centuries-old fieldstone. The foundation was thicker than any I’ve seen. The windowsills were deep enough to hold two men. The house would have stood forever. It fought to stay up, I swear.” Regret tinged his tone, and she understood.

“Why did they tear it down?”

“It didn’t have a family room. Or a weight room. Or a place for a spa.”

Judy was appalled. “It was historic.”

“I’m a professional. I’ve learned not to judge my clients. How about you?”

Judy laughed. “Enough said.”

“History doesn’t matter to some people. They want media rooms, hollow doors, and a three-car garage.” Frank shrugged. “Anyway, I like their taste in walls. They went to Ireland, and they liked the walls there. Ireland has all dry-laid—they use them for sheep—and England, that’s the place where it started. They’re the same everywhere and they have been for hundreds of years. And the only ingredients are stone and gravity. They’re fun to build. Amazing to build, actually.”

“How so?”

Frank paused. “They clear the head, at the same time they engage it completely. Any wall has that effect. Winston Churchill, every chance he got during the war, retired to his country house to build a brick-and-mortar wall, did you know that?”

“No.”

“It’s true. But it’s not always a hobby. In Italy, which of course has the best stonework, the farmers learned to make stone walls for fencing because there weren’t enough trees around. Italian masons, when they came to America, built half the dry stone walls in New England and New York. I’ll take you out to Westchester County someday. The walls there match the ones you see in Italy.”

“Have you been?”

“To Italy? Twice. I went through the hill towns, built almost entirely of stone. Castlenuovo, Spoleto, Pontito, Calascio, Ostuni.”

It sounded like a menu, but Judy didn’t say so. She was thinking about the Lucia family, and the past. “Did you go to the town where your grandfather came from?”

“Of course I went to the village. It’s right outside Veramo, in Abruzzo. I met all my cousins, they’re still there. It was great.”

“It must have been.” But Judy was wondering about the case, and a missing piece. She hadn’t wanted to interrupt Pigeon Tony at the clubhouse. “I have to ask you something, about your grandmother, Silvana. About her murder.”

“Whatever you need,” Frank said, and his hand closed on hers.

“How did she die?”

“I told you, Coluzzi killed her because she chose my grandfather over him.”

“I know, but how did she die?”

“They still talk about it, over there.” Frank cleared his throat. “She was found at the farm, as if she had fallen from a hayloft. Her neck was broken.”

Judy startled. “Like Coluzzi’s.”

“I guess, but there’s no connection.”

“The jury will think there is, if it comes into evidence.” Judy’s thoughts hurried on. It would make Pigeon Tony’s act look more like payback, strengthening the intent argument for the Commonwealth. She’d have to keep it out, but she had more questions. “How did they know it was murder? I mean, what if she simply fell out of the hayloft?”

Frank shook his head. “The way my grandfather tells it, my grandmother never went near the hayloft. She was probably killed, then taken there to make it look like an accident.”

Judy thought a minute. “So how do you know it was Coluzzi?”

“He was seen in town that night, which was strange enough, since he lived in Mascoli, which is in Marche province, and never came into Veramo, in Abruzzo. It’s like being on the wrong block in South Philly. You don’t belong. You stand out. Coluzzi was on Lucia turf, and people noticed.” Frank’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to say that it’s circumstantial evidence.”

“Exactly. That wouldn’t be enough to charge Angelo Coluzzi with murder in this country.” Judy nodded, and felt his hand slip from hers. Their third fight. Maybe they were water and olive oil. “It doesn’t prove anything.”

“But you saw those guys, Judy. They were shooting at you.”

“Be analytical, Frank. They weren’t the same guys. They’re not Angelo Coluzzi. The guys who shot at us were his grandsons, his cousins, whoever.”

“They’re Coluzzis.” Frank’s eyes darkened. “It’s in their blood, Judy. They’re crazy. They’re all about hate.”

“You can’t generalize about people as a family.”

“Why not? Of course I can. History is filled with families who are murderous, or just plain sick. Whether it’s nature or nurture, it just is. What about the Borgias? What about the Gambino crime family? Violence is a way of life for them. It’s a family value.” Frank spread his palms in appeal. “Judy, you didn’t know my father, but I’m not very different from him. And how different am I from my grandfather? I’m taller, younger, with more change in my pocket, but that’s it.”

Judy couldn’t disagree, but Frank was too urgent for her to get a word in edgewise.

“Jeez, isn’t that what women are always afraid of? Turning into their mothers? It’s the same thing.”

Judy thought of her mother, a scholar so proud of her erudition she insisted on being called doctor. Even by waiters. Eeeek.

“Everybody knows Angelo Coluzzi killed Silvana, and he did. I guarantee he thought he was right to do it. And all of the Coluzzis would agree.”

Judy focused on Silvana then, the woman who had inadvertently started it all, and felt her loss. If Frank was right, Silvana was a woman who chose her love and paid for it with her life. Judy couldn’t imagine not being free to love whom she chose, until she thought of many places in the world outside her own. In the Middle East, Fundamentalist parents chose whom their daughters married. In much of India, women didn’t choose their husbands and they still practiced suttee, or widow-burning. So this stuff really happened, even today. How could it be? Could she do anything to set it right? She didn’t have any answers, but Frank was taking her hands in his.

“Judy, this is our war, not yours. Our way, not yours. After what happened today, I want to find my grandfather another lawyer. I want you out of harm’s way. I never should have brought you into it in the first place.” Frank’s hands squeezed hers, but this time it was Judy who broke the connection.

“No, I can do it. I want to.”

“I know you can, but it’s dangerous. You could have been shot to death.”

“This is my case, and I’ll handle it.”

“I don’t think—”

“I don’t care. This is my case and I’m keeping it. End of discussion. If I need protection, I’ll get it.”

“Oh, really?” Frank’s eyes softened, and his crow’s-feet wrinkled. He nudged a strand of Judy’s blond hair from her face. “I thought I was your protection.”

“I haven’t had a man protect me, ever.”

Frank laughed. “Funny, I protected you pretty good this afternoon.”

Shit. “Well. You protected me pretty well.” It was her mother talking.

“Good, well, whatever. Remember? The truck, the van? The guy in the driver’s seat next to you?” Frank thudded on his broad chest with a knuckle. “That was me.”

Judy sniffed. “That was then, this is now. I was unprepared. It won’t happen again. And I’m the lawyer. I do the protecting around here. That’s why they call it defense.”

“You don’t get it, do you, cowgirl? If you want to protect me, that’s okay. But please don’t get in the way while I’m protecting you.” Frank leaned over, and Judy became aware of how close to her he was standing, how near his face was to hers. He didn’t have onion breath anymore, but even that she wouldn’t have minded, now that that protection crap was out of the way.

“I don’t need you to protect me. The most I’ll agree to is our protecting each other.”

“I’m not negotiating,” he said, and his hand moved to cup her face, his finger pads rough on her cheek. “It’s not an exchange. I’m a protecting kind of guy. You hang around me, you get protected. You want that or not?”

Judy didn’t know. It was too hard to think at the moment. She felt strong and good, the muscles in her body tensed and straining toward him. She could have been on tiptoe but she wasn’t sure. She wondered how long she’d have to wait for him to kiss her, then decided waiting wasn’t her strong suit. “I don’t need to be protected, I need to be kissed,” she said.

And so he kissed her.

BOOK THREE

Forte e Gentile.

Strong and gentle.

—The motto of the province of Abruzzo

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers which they dare not dismount.

—WINSTON CHURCHILL, While England Slept (1936)

Chapter 19

Back in the truck, Pigeon Tony had awakened and sat watching Frank and Judy, kissing in the meadow. He had known they would make their way to each other. Pigeon Tony’s heart felt happy and full. Frankie had seen so much sadness, too much for such a young man, and it was time for him to stop working so hard, get married, and have sons of his own. Daughters would be okay, too, if they turned out like Judy. Even though she wasn’t Italian, Pigeon Tony liked her, and he was realistic enough to know that times were changing.

He looked away from the lovers with a little sigh and eased back into the soft seat of the truck. In a minute his eyes were closed with an image of a kiss, which became a memory he recalled so vividly he could have been experiencing it in that moment, though it had occurred longer than sixty years ago. Pigeon Tony prevented himself from falling back asleep so his memories didn’t become dreams and therefore run from his control. Because what he wanted to do now was remember the first time he kissed Silvana.

It had been a night not unlike this, and also in the countryside. The Abruzzese countryside was different from the American, drier and sun-baked, its rocky earth farmed over centuries, its scant nutrients spent. It took a certain quality of man to farm in Abruzzo and many had given up and gone to America, where the soil was said to be like everything else in America; plentiful, rich, and fertile, guaranteeing a life of ease. But Tony and his father remained in the land they loved, on the land they loved, and Tony saw his loyalty returned a thousandfold, for the hard earth of Abruzzo had taught him hope, and it was this single virtue that had won him Silvana.

From the night Tony had met Silvana on the road with Coluzzi, he could think of nothing but her, though when he got home his father had scolded him over the loss of the race and the damage to the wooden cages. But the next race of the old bird season was two weeks away, and Tony worked the field and scraped the floor of the tiny loft with a new energy, his mind contriving to see Silvana again at the next shipping. He would not be idle in the meantime.

The very morning after he met Silvana, Tony devised a way to see her again. First he had to learn where she lived. Her manner and dress were those of a city woman, northern, sophisticated, and that meant she was from Mascoli. Also she had been with Angelo Coluzzi, who was from there. Tony rarely went to Mascoli, he had no reason to and had much work at home. He couldn’t ask about her in town, for he feared to expose such a personal matter, especially where Angelo Coluzzi was involved. Tony’s best hope of finding her was the route he least wanted to take.

That morning Tony repaired the battered cages as quickly as he could, watched only by the pigeons roosting and cooing in the loft, and when he was sure his father had gone to market, he washed his face and hands and rode his chubby brown pony north across the provincial border and into the main street of Mas-coli, the Via Dante Alighieri. Mascoli was a medieval city spiked with towers of local travertine, and Tony couldn’t help but stare skyward at the sharp peak of the massive Duomo, so tall it seemed to pierce the blue of heaven. The close-together buildings, the shouting and auto horns, and the swarms of city people put him on edge but not in the extreme, since he had once faced down a runaway bull in the olive groves and nothing compared to that.

The only thing that truly worried Tony were the Blackshirts, and so he wasn’t surprised that he started to sweat when he turned right onto the Via Barberia. He traveled past the majestic Palazzo Capitani and the Piazza del Popolo, crowded with students who barely seemed to notice the singular beauty of the huge piazza and its sixteenth-century porticos. It seemed to Tony almost obscene that the Fascist headquarters were so nearby, in the office of a leftist newspaper the Blackshirts had put out of business. Tony drew within its sight. Coluzzi would be inside.

Tony urged his pony on, his legs swinging on either side of its rotund belly, and the animal sweating lather in the noonday sun. Automobiles honked behind him, one even driven by a woman, which he found shocking, but the pony was too tired to bother hurrying along. At a distance from the Fascist office Tony dismounted and stood behind the pony, not bothering to find anything to hitch him to. Only a barn fire would get the animal to move again today.

Businessmen hurried back and forth down the street, with their fancy suits and their groomed mustaches, and Tony pulled his sweaty straw hat down over his eyes and pretended to read a discarded newspaper against his pony’s damp back, though he couldn’t read. He kept an eye on the entrance of the building, seeing the Blackshirts come and go in laughing groups, as if they were factory workers in uniform and not thugs in costume. Their influence was unchallenged. Tony had heard they were now making the schoolchildren dress in little black shirts and do gymnastic exercises, even in the heat, in the schoolyards before class.

He spit on the cobblestones. He shared his father’s views that the arrogant Il Duce, his womanizing son-in-law Ciano, and the Blackshirts were a plague of black flies feeding on his country, and, as with flies, only God knew where they came from and only God knew when they’d leave. But Tony and his father kept these views to themselves, as they had to be the only family in Abruzzo who felt this way. The region was friendly to the Fascists, given the vast difference between the aristocracy and the farmers there, and Tony didn’t think the black flies were leaving Abruzzo anytime soon, much less Italy. Mussolini had of late joined with the German dictator, and no good would come of it.

Suddenly Tony saw a shiny black car pull up and Angelo Coluzzi emerge from the office, be saluted, and disappear into the back of the car. Tony’s mouth went dry. A car! He hadn’t thought of that. Idiota! He had imagined Coluzzi walking to see Silvana, or at most driving a cart. What had he been thinking? Mascoli was a big place, not a village like his own! Everything was too far to walk, and men drove cars, not carts! He was a bumpkin, it was true! The car was driving away.

Tony had to hurry. He brushed the newspaper off the pony’s back but the sweat held the last page in place. Madonna! He scrambled onto the pony’s back anyway and started kicking him to trot, the newspaper saddle flapping around his legs. The pony didn’t budge, hanging his large head low as if in slumber. “Andiamo!” Tony called to the pony, who had no name, and a child on the street laughed at the ridiculous spectacle. Tony’s face reddened. He had hoped to be unobtrusive, to blend into the city. He should have known. Stupido!

Coluzzi’s car drove off down the street, heading toward the river, negotiating the heavy traffic. Tony kicked wildly. The pony took root. The car was getting away, down the street. Tony clucked and snapped the rope halter, but the pony stood still. Coluzzi’s car turned the corner, onto the Via Maggiore. It was getting away!

Tony had to go. He slid off the pony and left it by the roadside, where it fell immediately asleep, and Tony ran off after the car, holding on to his hat. The businesspeople dismissed him as a country bumpkin, and he picked up his pace and kept his head down. The car was long gone. The corner where it had turned lay straight ahead. Tony sprinted for it, and when he reached it, stopped and clung panting to a building. Unfortunately it wasn’t as busy as the main street, and the car was making smooth progress. Tony hurried on, his droopy leather boots soft on the sidewalk. Where was Coluzzi going? Was he going to see Silvana? He had to, didn’t he? Sooner or later?

The car turned another corner, and Tony ran after it, keeping his stride even on the crowded sidewalk. It drove down the street, speeding up when it reached its end and turning again, right this time. Tony lost track of the streets but still ran after it. He was getting lost. His feet began to hurt and the sun beat down on him. He whipped off his hat, too far from the car to worry about being recognized. The automobiles clogging the streets made the city hot, and the smoke they spit from their tailpipes filled Tony’s lungs. Still he kept running.

The car came to an abrupt stop in front of an older building with a painted sign out front. Tony slowed his pace to catch his breath as he saw Angelo Coluzzi and three other Blackshirts spring from the car and run inside. Tony didn’t understand. What could be so urgent inside? Did Silvana work there? Maybe her father owned it? In a minute Tony got his answer.

The Blackshirts burst from the storefront holding a little chemist between them. His white coat was splattered with blood and his head hung low. A woman on the street fled the scene just as Angelo Coluzzi ran from the shop and began punching the unconscious chemist in the face. The chemist’s head popped back with each blow and his spectacles flew to the pavement.

Tony couldn’t believe his eyes and without a second thought ran down the block to help the man. Four against one wasn’t a fair fight; any man could see that. The chemist crumpled to the pavement, and Coluzzi started kicking him in the ribs with his black boots.

“Stop!” Tony shouted, running, but Coluzzi was too far to hear. The fourth Blackshirt ran out of the shop, grabbed Coluzzi, and all of them leaped into the car, which took off.

“Hoodlums!” Tony screamed after them but the car sped down the street. He reached the man’s side and cradled him on the sidewalk. One eye was already swollen shut, fresh blood bubbled from his broken nose, and his cheeks were a pulp that repulsed even Tony, who had birthed breeched calves.

“Sir, wait here while I get you a doctor!” Tony looked frantically around the street, bewildered. A pole for a barbershop. A store with Borsalinos in the window. Offices with signs he couldn’t read. He didn’t even know where he was. How could he find a doctor? “We need a doctor!” he cried out, but the crowd was dispersing.

“No, no, go away,” the chemist said weakly.

Tony assumed the man was delirious. “But surely, you need medical help!”

“No, forget it, go away, bumpkin! It’s none of your business!” The chemist struggled from a stunned Tony’s arms and managed to pull himself onto all fours on the pavement, crawling off like a beaten cur. “Leave me alone, boy!”

“Sir, you need help!” Tony shouted as the chemist labored to his feet and staggered inside his shop, slamming the shattered front door closed behind him. Leaving Tony on the street alone, his hands covered in blood, thinking but a single thought: Dove parlano tamburi, tacciono le leggi. Where drums beat, laws are silent.

An hour later it was a dazed Tony who found his way back to his sleeping pony, feeling like an adult, seeing the city around him with grown-up eyes. Life went on as if nobody had been beaten senseless on the street. The sun was low in the sky, the business day winding down, and the traffic clogged the streets. Tony’s world was the farm, and he hadn’t seen what was happening around him, to the land he loved, to his very country. He didn’t understand how Italy had gotten to this point, where thugs ran free. Oddly, even the horrifying scene with the chemist couldn’t chase Silvana from Tony’s thoughts. On the contrary, his attraction to her had grown, for now he was afraid for her safety.

Under his straw hat, Tony kept his eyes trained on the Fascist headquarters. Blackshirts began to leave the office in small groups, walking off to cars and motorcycles, and at the sight of them Tony heard himself growl like a dog. His pony glanced back at the muttering, waking up only briefly. Finally Angelo Coluzzi came out, talking with a fellow Blackshirt, his clothes neatly pressed and his face washed clean of blood. Tony couldn’t hear what they were saying, but his senses told him something had changed. Angelo Coluzzi had the look of a rooster, strutting about. He was a man going to court a woman. Silvana.

Tony’s blood felt hot as Coluzzi walked toward a car that pulled up from the curb and was slapped on the back by his fellow as he went around the front and took the wheel. Tony mounted his pony, who roused. The day’s rest had done him good and Tony wasn’t taking no for an answer, not anymore. He gave a little kick, and the pony trotted on, keeping to the side of the road.

Tony tracked the car with ease, as the traffic was so congested, the horses, carts, and cars making a slow-moving mess. The car threaded its way through the city and to the suburbs, where the cars mixed with farm traffic. Coluzzi honked his car horn, but it was of no interest to the goats, sheep, and chickens that blocked the road. Tony smiled for the first time that afternoon. Even goats had the sense to ignore the Fascists.

The car slowed to a stop, and Tony’s heartbeat quickened. Maybe this was near Silvana’s house, maybe this was her street. The car stopped at a stone house, which was as neat and clean as the others, though humbler. Tony halted the pony, who didn’t need to be told twice. Tony couldn’t read the number in the twilight, but he didn’t have to. If it were Silvana’s house, he would never forget it.

After a minute Coluzzi cut the engine, got out of his car, and rang the doorbell beside an arched door. Neighbors making a passeggiata admired the modern automobile and noticed the Blackshirt who emerged from it like a conquering hero. Coluzzi nodded to them as if he knew them, making Tony wonder how long Coluzzi had been coming here. In another minute the front door opened wide.

It was Silvana. Her lovely form appeared in the arch, which made a perfect frame, lighting her from behind. Her waist narrowed above small hips, modestly concealed by the flare of a fancy dress. Her shoulders were narrow, not strong enough for a country girl, but that was a small matter. Silvana wasn’t made to carry water or anything heavy. Tony would do all of that for her, and gladly.

Coluzzi swept off his black hat, bowed slightly from the hip, and made a great show of kissing Silvana’s hand. Tony watched in amazement. How could a man so brutal put on such a fine show? Dog! Cur! Bully! Had Coluzzi deceived her so completely? Could she possibly love him, if she knew? Tony would have to save her from him.

The arched door closed as Silvana took Coluzzi inside. Tony wanted to cry out in protest, but he remained silent. Coluzzi didn’t deserve such a woman, and he could not keep her. Tony wouldn’t let him. He would win Silvana from him, and she would be his, and they would be happy forever after, as in a children’s story. Now was the time for him to begin.

He slid off the pony, which grunted in gratitude, and ignoring the glances of farmers and goats, Tony reached into his pocket to withdraw his prize. It was wrapped in a white handkerchief he had received as a confirmation gift from his parents, and he hoped it wasn’t sacrilegious to put it to such use. He dropped the rope halter, walked quickly across the road, and left the package by the door, so it wouldn’t get stepped on by Coluzzi’s hateful black boot. Then he hurried back to his pony and remounted, imagining Silvana’s surprise when she opened the package the next morning. The image sustained him back through the city and all the way home. And when he arrived home and tried to discuss the Blackshirts with his parents, he was lovingly smacked for worrying them with his disappearance and sent off to bed without any nougat.

The next day, Tony raced to finish all his chores, and then at night, when his parents thought he was asleep, he sneaked out, haltered his pony, and rode out to Mascoli, then through the city and all the way to Silvana’s house beyond. Coluzzi’s car was nowhere in sight, and all the lights were off. Tony, having no handkerchief save the one he had already sacrificed, pulled the new package from his pocket, wrapped this time in a dishtowel he hoped his mother wouldn’t miss. He tiptoed across the road and was about to leave the package when he noticed something.

A small white square sat beside Silvana’s front door, where he had left the gift last night. Tony heard himself gasp. It was his confirmation handkerchief, neatly folded and laundered. He picked up the cloth and held it to his nose. It smelled of soap and water and a hot iron. It was the sweetest thing Tony had ever smelled, sweeter even than basil. He held it to his chest, wanting to cherish it, but thought better of it. If Silvana had left it, she was telling him something. So Tony would tell her something back. Quickly he unwrapped his gift, rewrapped it in the handkerchief, and placed it where he had the night before, in the same spot. Then he hurried back to his pony, climbed on, and they trotted home.

Tony couldn’t sleep the whole night for thinking about it, and the next day he performed all his chores like a man possessed, pleasing his parents, who told him not to bring up the subject of politics again, that a boy could get shot for it, especially when his mind was supposed to be on feeding himself, his animals, and his family. That night Tony traveled to Silvana’s, trotting all the way, and the handkerchief was there, laundered and sweet, as it was the night after that, and the one after that, too. And every night Tony opened the fresh handkerchief and placed inside it the most perfect tomato he had grown that day.

Tony did this for fourteen nights, the same gift every night, until the next shipping of the pigeons, when he loaded his cart for the trip to Mascoli, on the road he knew by now by heart. His brown pony had lost a considerable amount of weight, a condition Tony’s parents mistakenly attributed to worms, and trotted with vigor despite the loaded cart. In fact, the pony had grown so well muscled that Tony climbed up on the cart himself and drove him as gentlemen do. For the trip he wore his finest; a clean white shirt, brown pants with a leather belt, and his best shoes. A fedora had replaced his straw hat, because his father had courted his mother in one, and Tony, being so skinny and little, needed all the help he could get.

Tony and his lively pony trotted up to the clubhouse, but Tony didn’t see Coluzzi’s fine cart and matched horses among the humbler ones that waited outside. Perhaps Tony and his very fit pony had beaten them here. Perhaps Coluzzi and Silvana weren’t coming. Tony felt uneasy as he pulled up and hitched his pony to a rail next to the others. That night all twenty lofts in the combine were at the shipping, and it was the usual state of chaos, the pigeoners being enthusiastic but not well organized. Tony got down from his cart and went inside the tiny clubhouse.

Men and their birds filled the small room of the house, which was owned by one of the members; it had an earthen floor and walls of chipped stucco, and behind was another room with a single bed and a sink. Tony’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, because there was no money in the combine’s treasury for electricity, and he scanned the scene for Coluzzi and Silvana. They were nowhere in sight. One group of men banded flapping birds, another counted lire for entry fees, and a third scribbled the names of the entries on master lists. Where was Coluzzi?

“Tony, we’re ready for you,” the bander shouted over the crowd, and Tony came over.

“Is the D’Amico loft entered?” Tony asked, though he didn’t care. It was a ruse.

The bander skimmed the master lists. A schoolteacher, he wore glasses and was one of the few who could read. “Yes, they are coming.”

Tony nodded. “How about Coluzzi loft?”

“They, too. Now get your birds, boy.”

Tony unloaded his birds, carting his pigeons in cage by cage for banding, barely paying attention. Before a three-hundred-kilometer race he would usually be very nervous, but this time his nerves were for Silvana. It was almost worse knowing she would be here. When would she come? Did she know the tomatoes were for her? And from him? He held the first bird so it didn’t struggle while the man slipped a band on his leg.

They made quick work of banding the others, then Tony loaded them on the big cart to be taken to the release. Outside he kept looking around. All the carts were there, the horses grazing and pawing the earth impatiently, but none were Coluzzi’s. Where were they? If Coluzzi didn’t get here soon he would be disqualified. Almost all the birds were loaded onto the big cart. The drivers were preparing to leave. The sun had almost set. Sundown was the official close of entries, because nobody could see anything in the clubhouse in the dark and the entry fees had a way of getting lost.

Tony stood dismayed as the president of the combine came out of the clubhouse, holding a strongbox with the entry fees. The vice president tucked the master lists under his arm. Now that the hard work was over, the club members laughed and joked, making side bets and having cigarettes and Chianti before the ride back to their homes. Tony felt the weight of disappointment.

“I thought Coluzzi had entered,” he said to the president when he passed by.

The president shrugged. “He didn’t show up, I guess. You be the one to scold him,” he added, and the other men laughed loudly.

After a time the members trailed to their carts, mounted up, and clucked to their horses to trot. Night had fallen, and the air was cool and sweet. Tony waited until the last one had left, busying himself with false adjustments to his cart and the pony’s halter, hoping Coluzzi and Silvana would arrive. He was worried about Silvana. What if she was sick? Or hurt? What if Coluzzi had found out about his gifts? Was she in danger?

Tony had to know. It was late and his father would worry, but he climbed aboard the cart and they trotted off, the pony knowing the way without being told. They arrived in Mascoli, clip-clopped their way through the city at night, then climbed the dirt roads to Silvana’s house. Tony had no gift, having expected to see Silvana at the shipping, but he was too worried to bother about it. He didn’t know what he would do when he got to her house; he would decide then. He was driven to make sure she was okay.

Tony slowed his pony to a halt in front of her house, and from his vantage point atop the cart he could see into its second floor. A light was on, shining through sheer lace curtains, and inside he could see the form of Silvana, appearing through a doorway and entering the room.

His heart leaped up at the sight. She was well. She was fine. Her outline was gauzy with lace but he could see her slipping a scarf from her lovely dark hair, as if she had been out that night, and his heart sank. She had been with Coluzzi, to dinner at a restaurant perhaps. Tony heard they did such things in cities.

He looked away from the window. Another man would have thrown pebbles at her window to speak to her. Another man would have pounded the doorbell, demanding to see her. Another man would have made himself known, but Tony did none of these things. He shook his head, hating himself. He would never have her. He didn’t deserve her. His gifts were stupid. Only a bumpkin would leave tomatoes on a woman’s doorstep.

Tony turned the pony around and they walked home, both downcast. The night was black and starless, so the full moon shone down on them, lighting their way out of pity. The mountain breeze blew cool and sweet, but Tony barely noticed. Moon, man, and cart traveled down the road; the creak of the wheels and the soft thumping of the pony’s wide hooves were the only sound. Tony would apologize profusely to his parents when he got home, and on Sunday he would make yet another confession for his disobedience. In the meantime he wouldn’t give up on Silvana. Perhaps he needed to leave a fancier gift on her doorstep. Fresh olives perhaps, or a hard wedge of locatelli. Women loved locatelli. At least his mother did.

Tony reached his farm, unhitched the pony, and turned him out into the field with a pat on the rump, then walked to the house. His mother had left a lamp on for him, and he could see both his parents inside, sleeping in their chairs, waiting for his return. His heart softened with guilt and he opened the door. He was just about to go inside when he saw it. There, slightly to the left of the door, was a bright spot in the moonlight. It looked like a small white package.

Tony blinked. Was it true? Was it a wish? He knelt down and looked at it. It was his confirmation handkerchief!

Tony reached for it, though his hand was trembling with excitement. Silvana had put it there. Found his house and left it there. She had done this, for him! Here was where she had been tonight. Not the opera, not the cinema. Here! This very spot.

Tony plopped down on the doorstep and unwrapped the handkerchief. Inside was the most perfect tomato he had ever seen. He marveled at it, turning it this way and that, and the shine of its thin skin caught the light from the window. If Silvana had bought it, she was more talented than he knew. If she had grown it, she was a genius. Silvana had given it to him, a gift of love, and so there was only one thing to do with it, which was what he had imagined she had done with hers.

Tony took a big bite of Silvana’s tomato, letting its juice and slippery seeds squirt from the sides of his mouth, unmindful that he looked like a complete fool, so besotted was he with its source. He chewed it slowly, savoring the tomato as if he hadn’t eaten one before, its taste so wonderful it needed neither salt nor pepper. He gobbled the whole fruit in one sitting, the water running through his fingers in rivulets, and when he was finished, Tony understood that Silvana’s tomato was truly one thing and one thing only:

Their first kiss.

Chapter 20

Judy, still warm from Frank’s kiss, couldn’t fight the feeling that they were playing house as Frank gave her a hand through a broken and weather-beaten door in the back of the springhouse to its second floor. “I’ll fix the steps tomorrow,” he said.

“I was expecting to be carried over the threshold.”

“Don’t make me call your bluff,” he warned, and Judy felt an unaccountable thrill. She loved how direct he was, and his kiss had been like eating something delicious. Only prudence had stopped her from a full-blown make-out session, that and the nagging worry that her client could be watching. As it was, Pigeon Tony was beaming at her from the springhouse, holding a Coleman lantern aloft like a stumpy Statue of Liberty. Judy didn’t need to ask how much he had witnessed; from his expression, he was already picking out a china pattern. She looked away, embarrassed. Her tongue had breached several ethical canons and was contemplating more.

The lantern from Frank’s truck cast a bright ellipsis of light. The room had no electricity but Frank was already talking about running a wire from a small fuse box downstairs. Judy could see that the second floor was a single room, large and rectangular, with walls of chipped white stucco that gave off a pleasant chill despite the humid night. They seemed to hold the dampness from the first floor of the springhouse, which had contained a reservoir of stagnant water and two tanks on a cement bed. The side walls of the room had two mullioned windows on louvers, which Judy found charming, and she couldn’t help but cross to open one. The floorboards creaked under her heavy clogs.

“This’ll do, for a time,” Frank said, his voice echoing in the empty space. “I’ll work the job here and supervise my other jobs from the truck. I don’t need to go home for a while. My whole office is on wheels. Don’t you like it, Judy?”

“Sure. I think it’s perfect.” She cranked open the window, brushed away the cobwebs, and let the night air waft inside. There was a full moon, and the wind rustled through the pin oaks around the springhouse. Frank and Pigeon Tony would be safe from the Coluzzis here, a fact she liked for more than professional reasons. “It seems safe, and you can’t beat the commute. How long will you stay?”

“I don’t know yet. When’s the trial?”

“Six months from now, maybe. But the subpoena said the preliminary hearing is Tuesday, and he’ll have to appear at that.”

Frank nodded. “I’ll get him there and get him back here, right after. I’ll talk to the client and see if they’ll let me pay something for the use of the place until we can find an apartment.” Frank glanced at Pigeon Tony. “What do you think of the new place, Pop?”

“I like.”

“Good.”

“One night we stay.”

Frank’s head snapped around. “What did you say, Pop?”

“One night. Then we go home. I no hide. My birds.”

“Pop, that’s not happening,” Frank said firmly. “We’re staying here until it’s safe for us to go. I’ll talk to the owner about it. I bet he won’t mind.”

“I go home. I feed my birds. They come home.”

“Goddamn it, Pop! Don’t be so goddamn stubborn!” Frank threw up his hands. “You gotta cut this out! This is life or death here! Forget about the birds!”

“No can forget,” Pigeon Tony said quietly, unfazed by his grandson’s temper.

Judy couldn’t believe it. “Pigeon Tony, they want to kill you. They’ll kill you if you leave here.”

The old man’s eyes went flinty in the lamplight. “I no leave birds.”

Judy had an idea. “Fine. I’ll get the birds. Then will you stay?”

“You no get birds!” Pigeon Tony exclaimed, shaking his head, and Frank pointed at her angrily.

“You’re not getting the frigging birds, Judy. You don’t know the first thing about them, and it’s dangerous. The Coluzzis will be watching that house. I don’t want you anywhere near that neighborhood.”

“I have to get my car. I’ll get the birds, too, and bring them here. I’ll do it tonight, when it’s dark. I’ll get help if I need it. If I need cops, I’ll call them.”

Frank’s dark eyes flashed in the lamplight. “They’ll kill you!”

Judy had had it. The discussion was academic. It was late. Her adrenaline was pumping. Frank’s truck was parked outside with the keys in the ignition. Suddenly she turned on her heels, ran for the open door, and jumped out. “Geronimo!” she yelled, but she could hear Frank’s heavy feet on the floorboards after her.

“Judy, stop!” he shouted.

She landed on the soft grass outside and sprinted for the truck. It made a large white silhouette in the moonlight, like a toy left in a suburban backyard.

“Shit!” Frank cursed behind her, and then Judy heard a large crash. He must have hit something going out the door. “Fuck! My ankle!”

She raced for the truck, flung open the door, climbed inside, and locked the door immediately, the way she did in the city. Only this time she was protecting herself from a charging Italian. She found the ignition and twisted it on just as Frank reached the truck and grabbed for the door handle.

“Judy, no!” His hands clawed the door but lost purchase when she hit the ignition, switched on the headlights, and yanked up the emergency brake on the fly.

“Sorry, babe,” she said. The truck leaped forward with a kick she hadn’t felt since a certain kiss, and she was off, careering through the wildflowers and grasses of the meadow, setting the swallows into panicked flight and the gnats dancing in the high beams, then finally heading for the open road.

Judy checked the digital clock on the truck. It was 2:14 in the morning. The DiNunzios must have known she was coming, because all the lights were on in their brick rowhouse in South Philly. She felt terrible that they were awake at this hour, then realized why. Frank must have called them from his cell phone. She wondered if his ankle was okay and worried fleetingly that auto theft wasn’t the best way to begin a relationship.

Judy passed the DiNunzio house, circling the block as a precaution, and when she didn’t see any black Caddys or guys with broken noses, double-parked the truck at the end of the street. No harm in playing it safe. She hurried down the street toward the lighted house with the scrollwork D on the screen door and was about to knock when it opened.

“Judy!” Mr. DiNunzio said. His few wisps of hair had gone awry and he was wrapped in his plaid bathrobe like a fat homemade cigar. “Come inside!”

“Thank you,” she told him, and meant it, as he tugged her into the living room, gave her a warm hug, and led her by the hand past the unused living and dining rooms and into the tiny kitchen, which was the only room the DiNunzios spent time in.

Judy could see why. She loved it, too. It was as close as she had to home. It was warm and clean, with white Formica counters that cracked at the corners and refaced cabinets that reminded Judy of Pigeon Tony’s. Easter palm aged behind a black switch-plate, and a prominent photograph of Pope John hung on the wall, so colorized it looked like Maxfield Parrish had been in charge of Vatican PR. A photo of Pope Paul hung next to him in a lesser frame, and Pope John Paul didn’t even rate a photo op. Apparently, Pope John had been a tough act to follow.

“Judy, come in!” Mrs. DiNunzio called from the kitchen. She shuffled in plastic slip-ons to meet Judy at the threshold. She had thick glasses with clear plastic frames and teased white hair, which looked undeniably like cotton candy because of her puffy pink hair-net. She hugged Judy warmly despite her frailty, and the aromas of her kitchen—brewing coffee and frying peppers—clung even to her thin flowered housedress. Judy realized she hadn’t eaten all day, which made her Guest of Honor at the DiNunzios.

“I’m hungry, Mrs. D!” Judy said, smiling as she broke their embrace. “Feed me, quick! I could starve if you don’t!”

Mrs. DiNunzio laughed and patted her arm. “Come, sit, you! Come!” She pulled Judy by the hand into the kitchen, where Mary sat at the table in her chenille bathrobe, improbably awake before a fresh cup of percolated coffee. She was sitting up, a big step in her recuperation.

“Jude, you’re just in time to eat!” Mary said. “What a surprise! We always eat at two in the morning!” Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was wearing her glasses instead of contacts. Behind them her brown eyes looked bright. If Mary was in pain, she was hiding it well, and Judy hated seeing her like that. She went over and gave her a careful hug.

“Hugging and eating,” Judy said. “It’s round-the-clock, which is why we love it here. Sorry to get you all up so late.”

“No problem.” Mary looked at her with concern. “I hear you were dodging bullets. This is not a good thing.”

“I tried to play nice.” Judy pulled up her chair next to Mary, so her friend wouldn’t have to talk loudly. “How’d you hear about it? Frank, right?”

“Among others. The news, the cops, our boss, and your new boyfriend. I love a man with a cell phone.”

Judy smiled, though her face felt hot. “Wonder how he knew I’d come here.”

“He knows you like to eat.”

Judy thought about it. “He’s smart, you know.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s a genius. He invented fire. So, you enjoying your work?”

“What a great case. It stimulates me like no other.”

Mary snorted. “Really fascinated by the legal issues, huh?”

“Hubba hubba.” Judy laughed, while Mr. DiNunzio set a fresh cup of coffee before her, on a mismatched saucer, and Mrs. Di-Nunzio brought her silverware and a plate heavy with green peppers, sliced potatoes, sweet onions, and scrambled eggs, all fried and mixed together. The first time Judy saw this combo, she thought a dog had thrown up on the plate. Now she loved it. Presentation was highly overrated.

“Eat, Judy!” Mrs. DiNunzio said, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll force myself. Thank you, the D family,” she said, grabbing an oversize fork and digging in. “Why didn’t you tell me about Frank?” she asked Mary, with her mouth full. “I would have shaved my legs.”

“Why? Is it Sunday?”

“For him I’d make an exception.”

Mary smiled. “You like little Frankie? I didn’t think he was your type.”

“What, are you blind?”

“Despite his physical charms, I mean. He won’t let you push him around.”

“I know. He’ll get over it.” Judy ate hungrily. The green peppers were limp with olive oil, the sliced potatoes were limp with olive oil, the sweet onions were limp with olive oil. Nothing could kill the eggs. In short, it was the perfect meal. “He wants to protect me.”

Mary laughed. “Lotsa luck, Frank.”

“Can you imagine?”

“No. I don’t even want to feed you.”

“Your mother does.”

“She feeds all strays.”

“Good! Good for Frankie!” announced Mrs. DiNunzio, sitting down across from Judy at the circular table of gold-speckled Formica. Mrs. DiNunzio’s English was only slightly less impressionistic than Pigeon Tony’s, and Judy remembered that the Di-Nunzios were almost as old as he was, because they had had Mary and her twin sister, Angie, so late in life. Mary always said they were an accident, but her mother preferred Gifts from God. “We know Frankie when he was baby,” Mrs. DiNunzio went on. “Judy, you could have a good man protect you!”

“I protect me!” Judy said, for the record, but Mary was waving her off.

“Don’t go so fast. You may need the reinforcements. Bennie called three times today.”

“She’s a witch!” Mrs. DiNunzio said, raising an arthritic finger, and Judy stifled a smile. The DiNunzios blamed Bennie Rosato for all the trouble she and Mary got into, and Judy had failed to disabuse her of that notion. Last thing Judy had heard, Mrs. DiNunzio had put the evil eye on their boss. Judy could only hope it worked.

“Bennie called, here?” Judy asked. “What’d you tell her, Mare?”

“That I don’t know you.”

“She believe it?”

“No. I think she may actually be concerned for your health and welfare.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Also she said something about the antitrust article.”

“Bingo.”

“Hnph!” Mrs. DiNunzio said, which Judy knew was Italian for she-should-burn-in-hell. She was shaking her head, which trembled with age. “She no care about you, Judy. She no care about nobody but her!”

“I know, Mrs. D.” Judy kept eating. “She expects me to work for my paycheck. She’s evil and mean.”

“Yes!” Mrs. DiNunzio pounded the table with a hand that wasn’t as delicate as it looked. “Yes! She’s evil. Evil!”

Judy finished the last of her eggs and hoped for seconds. She knew from experience that the thought alone would transmit an instant telepathic message to all Italian mothers in the universe, and one of their representatives would materialize any moment with plates of steaming food. Who needed e-mail? “Bennie just wants to talk to me so she can fire me.”

“No,” Mary said. “That’s not it. She gave me her proxy. You’re fired. And stop getting my mother riled up.”

“Why? I want her to get her voodoo in high gear. Stick pins in something. Light candles and cast spells. I need an extension of time for that dopey article.” Judy smiled, but Mrs. DiNunzio was in the zone.

“That witch, she’s lucky to have you girls work for her. Lucky! I go to her! I tell her!” Mrs. DiNunzio picked up a serving fork and jabbed the air for emphasis. Judy, who had seen her in action only with her wooden spoon, was properly intimidated. Extreme situations called for extreme utensils.

“You smart girls!” she went on, brandishing the fork. “Very smart girls! You work like dogs! You sacrifice for her! My Maria, a bullet they shot at her!”

Mary looked sideways at her mother. “Ma, please put down the fork. And Bennie’s not that bad.”

“She’s a devil!” Mrs. DiNunzio said, quivering with emotion, and Mr. DiNunzio patted her arm heavily.

“S’allright, Vita. S’allright.” His eyes were soft with worry.

“Mary’s gonna be okay. Judy, she’s gonna be okay, too. Right,

Judy?”

“Right.”

Mr. DiNunzio sighed. “I don’t know if you should stay on Pigeon Tony’s case, Judy. Me, I’m responsible. I asked you to do it. Now look what’s happening.”

“Mr. D, I would have done it anyway. I wanted to do it.” Judy reached across the table and pressed his arm, and he grabbed her hand. He looked like he was about to burst into tears, and Judy panicked. She was way over her emotion quota for the year, in only one day. “Don’t cry, Mr. D. It’s going to be all right, like you said.”

Mary smiled. “Don’t worry, Judy. He cries when the Phillies lose. He likes to cry. He’s not happy unless he’s crying.” She turned to her father. “Pop, get a grip. You’re upsetting Judy. She’s not used to people like us. She’s normal.”

Mr. DiNunzio laughed hoarsely. “I’m allright, I’m allright. But I’m gonna help you, Judy. I heard about the pigeons, and I got it all figgered out.”

“What do you mean?” Judy asked in surprise, and there was a soft knock at the door.

“You’ll see,” he said, and got up to get the door, just as a second helping of eggs, peppers, and onions appeared on the table in front of Judy.

Message received. Over and out.

Chapter 21

The full moon shone on an unlikely caravan threading its way through the city blocks. Old Chryslers, Toyotas, Hondas, and a battered Ford Fiesta snaked along in a line that lasted ten cars. If it wasn’t Raid on Entebbe, it was Raid on South Philly, and it went a good deal slower because it was staffed by septuagenarians, whose night driving wasn’t the best. Judy, in the lead, inched Frank’s truck down the skinny street, with Mr. DiNunzio navigating in the passenger seat and Tony-From-Down-The-Block and Tony Two Feet in the back.

“Slow down, Jude, you’ll lose Tullio,” Feet warned, leaning forward. His glasses had been repaired at the bridge with a thick Band-Aid, which couldn’t have helped much with visibility.

“Turn left on Ritner,” Mr. DiNunzio said, pointing. Judy turned slowly and braked to five miles an hour, the truck’s huge engine grinding in protest. It felt like walking a tiger on a leash.

“Tullio’s still fallin’ behind,” Tony-From-Down-The-Block said, chewing on a half-smoked cigar that Judy had insisted he put out. Even unlit, it reeked. “It’s that friggin’ Fiesta he drives. I tol’ him to get rid of it. It’s a piece a shit.”

“He don’t listen to nobody,” Feet agreed, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block nodded.

“He breaks down, I ain’t helpin’ him.”

“Me neither. He can walk, for all I care. I tol’ him the same thing. He’s a cheap bastard.” “God forbid he should pick up a check.” Feet clucked. “Never happen.”

“Never happen.” Tony-From-Down-The-Block cleared his sinuses noisily. “You remember, he didn’t chip in for the judge’s gift at the Newark Futurity. You believe that? For the goddamn judge. God forbid he should open his friggin’ wallet.”

“Never happen.”

“Never happen. For the judge, even. So you tell me. How’s his loft gonna do the next race? You tell me. You think he’ll ever win a friggin’ race?”

Feet clucked again. “You think that judge is gonna go out of his way?”

“You think that judge is gonna forget the jamoke that didn’t chip in? Who didn’t even know what the present was? Never.”

“Never happen.”

“Never happen.”

Judy rolled her eyes in silence. She had lost track of who was talking and she didn’t even care. “Is Tullio still with us, gentlemen?”

Feet laughed. “He’s still alive, if that’s what you mean, Jude. In this crowd, you don’t take nothin’ for granted.”

Tony-From-Down-The-Block snorted. “He’s movin’ now. Musta taken his Viagra.” He burst into phlegmy laughter, as did Feet.

Mr. DiNunzio pointed right as they turned onto Ritner. “Stay on this for two blocks,” he said, and Judy nodded. On her own she would be lost. South Philly was a warren of rowhouses, beauty parlors, and bakeries. If you weren’t Italian, you had to drive around with them. “How long until we’re there, Mr. D?”

Mr. DiNunzio looked over. “At this rate, three days.”

Judy smiled, watching the Fiesta puttering in the rearview, and even so hardly delaying the rest of the caravan. Still she couldn’t fault them, even with their blocked nasal passages. They were members of the pigeon-racing club, each with his own loft, and they had volunteered to rescue Pigeon Tony’s birds in the middle of the night. They even had a chart that divided the birds equally among them, keeping them in their own lofts until Pigeon Tony could reclaim them. Judy felt confident the Coluzzis wouldn’t attack them in number, and the old men were all cooperating. The Bar Association should have this much collegiality.

“I tol’ him,” Feet was saying, “sell the friggin’ car, on the Internet. They got eBay, it’s free! You don’t even hafta put an ad in the paper. My kid told me—eBay, it’s called.”

“You’re shittin’ me. You can sell a car on it?”

“Goddamn right. And I tol’ him, it’s free for nothin’, Tullio, you cheap bastard.”

“But he don’t have a computer.”

“No way does he have a computer! They cost money, computers. They ain’t givin’ those babies away.”

“You think he’s gonna buy one?”

Never happen, Judy wanted to say, but didn’t. She checked the rearview mirror. The Fiesta now trailed three car lengths behind. She braked again, with a sigh. “If this keeps up, Feet, I want you to take the wheel from Tullio.”

“Gotcha, Jude. We’ll do like a Chinese fire drill.”

Judy winced. “You’re not allowed to say that anymore, Feet.”

“It’s against the law, nowadays?”

“In a way.” She watched the rearview. The Fiesta might as well have been in reverse. The pigeons could die of old age before the cavalry got there. “Chinese people don’t like it.”

Feet shrugged. “So I won’t tell ’em.”

“I don’t even know any Chinese people,” said Tony-From-Down-The-Block, and they all cruised forward under the moon.

It was almost four in the morning by the time the last of Pigeon Tony’s birds had been stuffed flapping into cages, and the cages were stowed in the ancient cars. It wasn’t an effortless fit. The old men crammed birdcages on Honda floors, on the consoles of Chryslers, and even on the dashboard of Tullio’s Fiesta. The pigeons panicked the whole time, beating their wings and giving Judy an education on just how loud a pigeon could squawk.

The noise and commotion woke up many of the neighbors, who came in pajamas to their windows and doors to watch the spectacle. None of them said anything, nor did any help, and one of them clapped as the old men shuffled out of a demolished row-house bearing pigeon cages, green sacks of pigeon feed, cardboard boxes of pigeon vitamins, and empty spray bottles for disinfecting lofts. The Old Man, which Judy had been told was Pigeon Tony’s special bird, hadn’t shown up and at this point wasn’t expected to. Five more birds had returned. Judy hoped Pigeon Tony would be happy.

She stood outside the front door at the curb and kept an uneasy watch on the dark and quiet street. She was armed with her cell phone, ready to call 911 on speed dial and have the cops arrive an hour later. She had to admit that the authorities weren’t exactly on the case. Thirty-odd old men had just emptied a house of its contents, and nobody had said boo.

Short of petty larceny on the part of some very old men, absolutely nothing went wrong. No Coluzzis, no guns, no baseball bats. Not even a rolling pin. Still Judy began to breathe easy only when the last car door slammed and the two Tonys and Mr. DiNunzio climbed into the truck and flashed her a thumbs-up. Judy flipped the StarTAC closed and hoisted herself into the driver’s seat after them. After all, they had only accomplished the first leg of their daring night raid. The second leg was of her devising, and they had agreed. In fact, at Frank’s instigation, they had insisted.

Judy started the F-250’s engine, which roared in hope but ended up idling in disappointment. She fed it only the slightest bit of gas, and it crept forward, the caravan crawling behind them like a sleepy caterpillar.

Judy’s heart leaped up at the sight. Her green VW Bug sat under a streetlight, parked outside the combine’s clubhouse, and it had remained untouched. She’d expected to find it the victim of a Louisville Slugger, but it looked as shiny and new as when she bought it. “Wow! Will you look at that!” she exclaimed. Every time she saw the car, she got happy. She couldn’t help it.

“It looks okay,” Mr. DiNunzio said, surprised.

“Okay? It looks beautiful!” Judy cut the truck engine and opened the door, but Mr. DiNunzio stopped her.

“Wait a minute,” he said, his hand on her arm. “You never know.”

“You never know what?”

“It could be a trap.”

“A trap? Mr. D, it’s only a Bug!” Judy said. She was thinking this secret-agent thing had gone too far.

“He’s right, Jude,” Feet said, in the backseat, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block nodded.

“You can’t trust the Coluzzis, Judy. Could be a bomb in it.”

Judy’s mouth dropped open. “Never happen,” she said, but nobody laughed.

“Lemme see, first,” Mr. DiNunzio said. He opened his door and eased down onto the black running board and out of the truck with difficulty. Ford F-250s were hardly the vehicle of choice for seniors.

“No, wait, Mr. D.”Judy grabbed her backpack and jumped out the driver’s side. The Two Tonys struggled out of their half-doors in the back, and they all stood staring at the green Bug from a distance, as if it were radioactive. The caravan had double-parked in a line down the street and the old men were getting out of their cars, the night filled with the slamming of Ford Fiesta doors. Judy thought the whole thing was silly. “It doesn’t have a bomb or anything.”

“Why not? A bomb’s easy to make,” said Tony-From-Down-The-Block, and Feet nodded.

“You can find out on the Internet, just like it was a recipe for gnocchi. My kid tol’ me. They prolly have it on eBay.”

Judy scoffed. The Bug gleamed like an emerald in the streetlight. It was impossible for her to imagine it exploding. Then she remembered that the Coluzzis had killed Frank’s parents in their truck and Pigeon Tony’s car had been firebombed in Italy. Still, she wasn’t worried, really. “But it’s not me they’re after. It wasn’t me they were shooting at. I’m just the lawyer.”

“Oh, yeah. Everybody loves lawyers,” said Tony-From-Down-The-Block. The old men left their cars and gathered behind him, Feet and Mr. DiNunzio leading an ocean of bifocals, flat caps, and black socks.

Feet pushed up his glasses by their Band-Aid bridge. “I don’t like it, Jude.”

Mr. DiNunzio was shaking his head. “Don’t do it, Judy. Frank said, ‘If the car looks fine, tell Judy I said she can’t get in it. It could be a trap.’”

Judy looked over. “Frank said to tell me I can’t?”

“Yeah, but not in a bad way. I mean, he was worried about you.”

Hmmm. Once again there was no point in discussing it. Judy tossed her backpack on her shoulder and strode to the car. She was tired and she wanted to go home to bed. She had a dog to walk. She had a life to live. Her life.

“Judy!” Mr. DiNunzio shouted, running after her, but she kept going. She reached the car and dug in her backpack for her keys.

“Don’t worry, Mr. D.” She rummaged around in her backpack. Given the state of her messy bag, it would take her only about an hour to find the keys. Unfortunately, it gave Mr. DiNunzio enough time to reach her, hustling almost out of breath in his Bermuda shorts and white V-neck T-shirt.

“Judy, we should call the police.” Mr. DiNunzio ran a hand over his bald pate, which looked damp. “They have a bomb squad. They could check it out first. Make sure it’s okay.”

“Mr. D, don’t be silly. Everything’s fine. It’s just a car, and I don’t want to wait forever for them to get here. The cops haven’t been paying us much attention so far, have they?”

“Leave the car alone, Judy. You don’t know it’s fine for sure.” Mr. DiNunzio’s mouth set firmly. In the meantime Tony-From-Down-The-Block had hurried after him, with Feet huffing and puffing at his side. The other old men filled in behind them, encircling the car like a determined Roman phalanx. Mr. DiNunzio looked around in satisfaction and pushed up his glasses. “See, we’re all here. If you blow yourself up, you’ll blow all of us up.”

“Mr. D, you’re making too much of this!” Judy felt touched, but the situation had gotten way out of hand. She finally found the car key. All this protection was driving her nuts. “The Coluzzis don’t want to kill me.”

“Oh yeah?” A voice called out from the back of the car, and everybody’s head turned. It was Tullio, rising on rickety knees from the rear bumper.

“What do you mean?” Judy asked.

Tullio frowned. “If they ain’t tryin’ to kill you, then why they got a pipe bomb on your exhaust?”

Chapter 22

Sunday morning, Judy closed her office curtains against the press that thronged on the sidewalk outside the building, for the first time grateful for windows that didn’t open. They sealed out the sound of the First Amendment at work. The sun struggled through the weave in the polyester fabric, and Judy blinked against even that brightness.

She collapsed into the chair behind her cluttered desk, exhausted. She had barely gotten to bed at all last night; there hadn’t been more than an hour to conk out and shower before work. And even so she had been too rattled to sleep well. After they’d found the bomb under her car, she’d called 911, but the press, who listened to police scanners all the time, arrived well before the cops. Neither Judy nor any of the men had talked to the reporters, but they’d managed to get photos and videotape of the two uniformed cops who filled out an incident report and the squad that removed the bomb. They had impounded Judy’s car for evidence, though she had little confidence it would reveal anything. The Coluzzis were too smart to leave fingerprints, and the crime lab was preoccupied with murder cases on the weekends. An almost-homicide equaled a purse-snatching.

Judy peeled the plastic lid off a cup of Starbucks and let it cool on her desk while she assessed the situation. She was under siege by people armed with pencils and cameras. She had almost succeeded in detonating her best friend’s father and an entire parish of wonderful senior citizens. Powerful people were trying to kill her and her client. Plus she had an angry boss who would be in any minute, an antitrust article to finish, and no car to drive for the foreseeable future. Her puppy had forgotten who she was. On the up side, Frank was a great kisser.

Judy sipped her coffee. Her open laptop nagged her about her antitrust article, which seemed so irrelevant now. She idly scanned the introduction, which was all she had written so far: Section I of the Sherman Act prohibits every contract, combination, or conspiracy in the restraint of trade, and it is a per se violation of the Act to engage in price-fixing. The purpose of this article is to examine the economic implications of vertical price-fixing agreements among competitors and specifically to determine whether conspiracies among oligopolists. . . .

Judy’s eyes glazed over with fatigue and anxiety. She had watched her back on the way into the office this morning and welcomed the sight of the usually cranky security guard in the lobby. Judy had made him promise not to let anyone up with a gun, including her boss, and he had agreed. She even felt uneasy in the quiet office this morning. She had hoped some other associates would be here, but it was a sunny Sunday and nobody but Bennie would be in today. It was both the good and bad news.

Judy’s gaze fell on the stacks of correspondence that had accumulated on her desk when she had been out, including the notice of Pigeon Tony’s preliminary hearing, set for Tuesday. When would she find the time to prepare? She was too busy ducking bullets. Next to the notice were stacked paperback advance sheets and The Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper delivered to all the associates every business day. Judy wondered what it had been saying about the Lucia case and reached for the top newspaper, which was Friday’s edition.

BLOOD FEUD, read the headline, and Judy cringed. The first part of the article concerned the basics, the time of Pigeon Tony’s arrest, and that he was being represented by the women-only law firm of Rosato & Associates, a fact the papers always seemed to pick up on. Other than that, the story seized on the “bad blood” between the Lucias and the Coluzzis but contained none of the details of its history, such as Silvana Lucia’s murder, or any speculation on the deaths of Frank’s parents, Frank and Gemma. Good. So the neighbors weren’t talking to the papers. But they would soon. Judy dreaded to think what today’s papers looked like, with the photos of her Bug being towed away by the bomb squad. Then her eye caught the sidebar, a feature about the Coluzzi family:

THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING!

With the sudden and violent demise of construction king Angelo Coluzzi, speculation is rampant about who will succeed him as president and CEO of Coluzzi Construction, reportedly a $65 million business, with headquarters in South Philadelphia. Angelo Coluzzi was reportedly unwilling to designate a successor, but the contest is clearly between his only children, sons John and Marco.

The older son, John Coluzzi, 45, is chief operations officer of the company and known for his hands-on experience in the construction trades. He supervises the building of strip mall projects that are the main source of the company’s revenue. But it is the younger son, Marco Coluzzi, 40, who insiders say will ascend the throne. Marco, a graduate of Penn State and the Wharton School of Business, serves as chief financial officer and is said to exert a great influence over the company’s extensive business affairs.

Insiders report that this family feud will have to be resolved soon, with Coluzzi Construction’s $11 million bid for a new waterfront mall hanging in the balance.

Judy considered it. This must have been the feature article that Frank had mentioned to her. She hadn’t noticed any rivalry between the brothers at the arraignment, but her assessment of their personalities wasn’t far off. Marco was the brains, and John was the brawn. Judging from how vicious John could be, Judy was betting on him to become president. Murder was a good way to succeed in business. She skimmed the rest of the article.

“You survived a car bomb and the press?” asked a voice, and Judy jumped. It was Bennie, but that was still a cause for alarm. Judy straightened up in her chair. “I was just reading about the case.”

“Me, too.” Bennie entered the office with a pile of newspapers and took the seat across from Judy’s desk. She was dressed in jeans and a casual white cotton sweater, but her features were anything but relaxed. Her blue eyes crackled with intensity, and her manner was alert and energized. Her long, usually unruly hair was wrapped in a knot and tamed by an oversized tortoiseshell barrette. “Did you see today’s paper?”

“I’m boycotting.”

“Don’t. You’d be surprised what you can learn about your own case from the paper. And what you can plant there.” Bennie plopped the stack on Judy’s desk, almost catapulting her coffee cup. “The car bomb’s the lead story. Did you call your parents? They’re in California, right?”

Judy had to think about it. “No, they’re on sabbatical, in France.”

“You can still call them. They have phones in France. Snotty phones, but phones just the same.”

“I don’t need to call.”

“Wrong again,” Bennie said firmly. “If you don’t, I will. They’re your parents.”

“Okay.” Judy knew Bennie’s mother had passed away recently and she’d never met her father, so she didn’t make any parent jokes. She picked up the newspaper on top, which was a tabloid. BOMBS AWAY! screamed the block headline. She set it aside. “So, am I fired?”

Bennie looked surprised. “Of course not. Why would I fire you? It’s not your fault somebody wants you dead.”

Judy blinked. “Am I off the case?”

“Do you want to be?”

Judy didn’t have to think twice. The Coluzzis had tried to kill her car. “No way.”

“Good. Then it’s still your case. You know the client and you’re much too smart. But I’m on the case with you.”

Judy wasn’t sure she liked the sound of it. “You mean, you want to work the case with me?”

“Yep.” Bennie nodded. “I’m your associate. For one time only.”

“Why?”

“Simple. I don’t want you to get hurt, Carrier.” Bennie got up abruptly and clapped her hands together with finality. “Now, let’s get in gear. I got the gist of the case from the papers, but why don’t you fill me in?”

“From the beginning?”

“Yes, and don’t leave out the grandson. Murphy told me all about him.” Bennie smiled crookedly, but Judy didn’t.

“Murphy should mind her own business.”

“It’s my business, remember? And I’m not in love with your new love affair with the client’s grandson.”

“There’s no love affair, for God’s sake. And it’s not unethical or anything.”

“No, it’s just bone-headed.”

“You’re getting way ahead of the facts, Bennie,” Judy said, so she filled her boss in on the details of the case since the arraignment, including the fact that she was attracted to Frank. Bennie scowled at the obvious imprudence of the situation, leaning against Judy’s doorjamb with her arms folded. By the time Judy finished, Bennie looked positively cross. “Are you pissed because of Frank?” Judy asked her.

“No, Frank is a distraction. I’m pissed because of the way you talk about this case. You want to work it or not?”

“I do, I just told you.”

“Then wake up! You’re acting like a victim, which is the best way to make sure you become one. Get it together! Fight back!”

“Against who?”

“The Coluzzis, who else?” Bennie put her hand on her hips. “Haven’t you been listening?”

“What should I do?”

“What should we do. We’ll think of something.” Bennie began to pace back and forth, her step lively even in the small office. Judy figured it was because she wore running shoes, not clogs, and considered getting herself a pair. Suddenly Bennie stopped pacing. “I’m hearing a lot about bombs and car chases and guns. What does that have to do with law?”

“Nothing. It’s chaos.”

“Clearly.” Bennie’s jaw set in determination. “The Coluzzis are outlaws. Their weapons are nonlegal. They destroy property. They kill people.”

“Right.”

“And we are distinctly out of our element in the nonlegal world, right?”

“Right.” Judy had to agree.

“It knocks us off balance, and scares us, right?”

Judy got a little excited. “Right!”

“It even depresses us, I see.”

“Okay, enough.” Judy smiled, and so did Bennie.

“Well, it’s no different from any other conflict, even litigation. We have to stop playing their game. We have to bring this battle onto our turf. We have to fight with our weapons.”

“Which are?” All Judy had was a red editing pencil. It wasn’t even good lipliner.

“The law, of course!”

Judy deflated instantly. “The cops aren’t doing anything—”

“I didn’t say the cops. You’re a lawyer, Carrier.” Bennie leaned over the desk. “Strike fear! Create a scene! Bust some chops! And if they holler, don’t let ’em go. Twist ’em, baby!”

Judy was thinking maybe Mrs. D had been right, that Bennie was the devil. “How?”

“Sue the bastards!”

“For what?” she asked, bewildered.

“For what? Think, Carrier. They planted a car bomb on you!”

“The cops say they can’t prove anything.”

“As a criminal matter, they can’t. But the same circumstantial evidence can be used in a civil suit, and the standard of proof is lower. Sue ’em civilly, for tort!”

Judy nodded. It was possible.

“They destroyed your client’s home! You just gonna take that? What kind of lawyer are you? Sue ’em civilly for the damages! We’ll subpoena the whole goddamn neighborhood. That’ll make a stink. Make them take the time to fight you, and get your profile higher, so they’ll be less inclined to strike again. Fight them on all fronts. What else you got?”

Judy took heart. “They killed those pigeons. I’m sure there’s an animal cruelty statute in Pennsylvania. It might even be criminal, and the press would be terrible.”

“There you go! It ain’t a home run, but it’s all good. Nobody likes bird-killers. Remember those jerks who killed the flamingos at the zoo?” Bennie’s eyes glittered. “Now. The Coluzzis are also businesspeople. Coluzzi is one of the biggest builders in the construction industry.”

“A sixty-five-million-dollar company.” Judy was remembering the newspaper article.

“They build strip malls, mainly.” Bennie nodded, obviously thinking aloud. “I’ve heard of them. They did the one in West Philly, they got the contract over a minority business, and they did one also in Ardmore, I think I read recently. I wonder how many they do a year.”

Judy fetched the newspaper from her desk. “They have the contract on a mall at the waterfront pending.”

Bennie snapped her fingers. “That’s right! So they’re politically well connected. They’d have to be to get that big a city contract.” She thought a minute. “They must have labor work, tax work, all sorts of business advice. I think they’re represented by Schiavo and Schiavo.”

Judy would have no reason to doubt it. Bennie knew most of the lawyers in town. The Philadelphia legal community was small, so if you screwed somebody, they could screw you back, and sooner than you thought. It encouraged good lawyer karma.

Bennie faced Judy directly. “Carrier, if we can’t make some trouble for a major business like that, we should burn our law degrees.”

Judy tried to think. Her gaze fell on the article on her laptop. “At this point I’m only an expert on price-fixing.”

“Okay, start there!” Bennie grinned. “These jokers are in the construction business and they get an awful lot of contracts. It’s an extremely competitive business. The economy is good, and everybody’s building, including the city. I wonder how they do so well.”

“You think they rig bids?”

“Anything is possible. They could pay off Licenses and Inspections. They could excavate pools free for union officials. They could inflate their T and E expenses for the IRS. Pour too much sand in the concrete foundations. Keep their mistresses on the payroll. Have mob connections.” Bennie’s eyes glinted evilly. “Somebody really should investigate these matters. A lawyer, for example.”

Judy laughed, delighted. “But what about Rule Eleven? You have to have a factual basis for filing a lawsuit in federal court.”

“So get one! You gonna tell me the building trades are clean?” Bennie walked to the open door. “I’ll handle the torts suits and the animal cruelty. Get busy. We have work to do.”

“We have to file soon, huh?”

“No.” Bennie paused at the door. “We have to file tomorrow. Lock and load. Any questions?”

Judy thought about it. “How do I thank you?”

Bennie smiled and left, and Judy watched her bounce off in her sneakers. Then she cleared her desk and set to work. She worked all morning and afternoon, breaking only for hoagies they had sent in and for more coffee; Bennie’s was even stronger than Star-bucks. Judy researched cases on the construction industry, discovering the typical patterns of misconduct that gave rise to damages. It was an education.

Bennie had been right. The construction industry wasn’t the cleanest, and Judy’s online factual research discovered a number of websites devoted to encouraging contractors to report suspected bid-rigging, fraud, and kickbacks, guaranteeing their anonymity. So there was a clear potential for abuse, but that didn’t mean Judy had a sufficient factual basis to sue Coluzzi. A complaint had to be true and specific, especially if it was going to have the maximum terroristic effect on the Coluzzis. For that Judy would need facts, from an insider’s perspective.

She checked her Swatch watch. It was almost seven o’clock at night. She didn’t have any time to lose.

And she knew just who to call. Or as her mother would remind her, whom.

An hour later Judy was barreling down the expressway in a rented Saturn. She had left Frank’s truck parked near the office; she hadn’t wanted to risk taking it in case the Coluzzis had wired it for sound, and she also wanted to avoid being spotted by the press. Their numbers had grown outside the office building as the day had progressed, on the correct assumption that Judy would have to come out sooner or later. It had been all she could do to get out of the building through a service entrance in the back, while Bennie gave a diversionary press conference on the sidewalk out front. Bennie could give nonanswers to their questions forever. She was a great lawyer.

Judy hit the gas. She was heading back out toward Chester County. Judy didn’t know much about Philadelphia suburbs, but she was learning that all the rich people lived in Chester County and none of them seemed to mind sitting forever on Route 202 South. Judy had finally gotten free of that mess and could breathe again. She was almost there. Frank had agreed to help her, and Judy had to admit to herself she wouldn’t mind kissing him again.

Make that seeing. She meant seeing him again.

Chapter 23

It was dark by the time Judy found the address, or more accurately the mailbox, since the house couldn’t be seen for the hedge and trees that blocked it from the road. She turned onto an unpaved drive next to a verdigris mailbox embossed with running horses, and when she saw the white sign that read HIGH RIDGE FARM, Judy knew she wasn’t in South Philly anymore.

The Saturn’s tires rumbled down a gravel road lined with trees and ending in a circular driveway in front of a huge fieldstone mansion. Judy cruised to a stop in front of the house, which reached three stories and had two wings, one at either end, its banks of windows framed by black shutters. The night was cool and filled with the chirping of crickets. The setting was lovely but Judy was too preoccupied to notice. Where was Frank? How was he getting here, since he was truckless? The springhouse wasn’t far on country roads, but it was too far to walk. She cut the Saturn’s ignition and climbed out, which is when she got her answer.

Parked in the circular driveway were a midnight-blue Bentley, a champagne-colored Jaguar sedan, and a faded John Deere tractor. Frank was walking toward her with a grin. “Hey, lady,” he said softly, reaching to hug her, and Judy wasn’t objecting.

“Hey back at you.” She let herself be enfolded in his arms and pressed against the warmth of his chest, inside the same thin gray T-shirt he had on yesterday. It smelled faintly of sweat but she secretly liked that; it was a distinctly male scent and at least it wasn’t onion. Judy felt her body relax unashamedly in his embrace. It seemed like days since she’d felt this comforted. “If I

didn’t have to sue somebody, I’d stay here forever.”

“You won’t get any argument from me.”

Judy held him tighter. “How’d you get here? Found a tractor and drove it over?”

“Hell, no. Dan picked me up in the Bentley.”

Suddenly the front door opened, and a tall, thin man appeared on the threshold. “Frank, that you out here?” he called, and it broke their embrace.

Frank turned. “Here we come, Dan,” he called back. He gave Judy a quick kiss on the cheek and took her hand.

Soft light emanated from a Waterford lamp with a cut-glass pineapple for a base, glowing expensively on Judy, Frank, and Dan Roser as they sat on leather-covered chairs in his book-lined study. Built-in cherrywood shelves ringed the room, while a flat-screen TV, a compact stereo, and a large-screen computer sat recessed in a custom entertainment center, and a wet bar with gleaming nickel fixtures waited to lubricate everybody. It would wait forever. Nobody was in a partying mood, Judy least of all.

A fresh legal pad rested on her lap. “Mr. Roser, tell me something about yourself.”

“Please, call me Dan.” Roser, in Gucci loafers and pressed suit pants, with a white tailored shirt worn tieless, crossed his legs. Judy judged him to be about fifty-five years old, though he looked younger, with a golfer’s tan setting off hazel eyes and light brown hair, worn fashionably long. “If Frank gets away with it, you can.”

Frank snorted, and Judy smiled. “Okay, Dan. Gimme the summary.”

“Well, I’m a real estate developer,” he said, with the easy confidence of the highly successful. “I develop shopping centers, or strip malls if you prefer, in Chester County, Montgomery County, and other Philadelphia and Wilmington-area suburbs. My company does about two billion a year. I ain’t Rouse, but I’m getting there.”

“So you’re not in the construction business, per se.”

“God, no.” Roser brushed off the thought as if it were lint on his pants. “I hire builders to build my shopping centers. Frank gave me a call because he knew that I hired Coluzzi to build a center for us recently, in South Philly, and it’s been nothing but a nightmare.”

Judy’s pen was poised. “Tell me why.”

“The project has been a comedy of errors from start to finish. All along the subs weren’t performing—”

“Subs?”

“Subcontractors. See, Coluzzi is the general contractor, and he hires the subs to do the electrical, HVAC, plumbing, and the like. Also site prep, that is, excavation and compaction to receive foundations.”

“Compaction?”

“Soil compaction. If the soil isn’t compacted properly, it’ll fail over time, due to superimposed loads on the foundation.” Roser caught himself. “In other words, it’ll fall down someday. And in this South Philly shopping center we had an environmental issue, too, because it was on city-owned land, right near the waterfront. Delaware Avenue, or whatever they renamed it to. Soil runoff during construction had to be controlled or the EPA would be all over us.”

Judy made a note. “So this was a public contract.”

“Yes. It was our first contract with Philly and I hoped to do more, since Rendell and Cohen turned the city around. This was supposed to get me in good with the city. Get my foot in the door. Instead it ended up in my mouth.”

“How?”

“I hired Coluzzi because their bid came in lowest, but they didn’t lowball me, and I knew they had connections in South Philly.”

“Connections?”

“If you mean mob, I’m not goin’ there. I got no proof of that.” Roser patted his hair back quickly. “But I can and will talk to you about what I know, which is what they did to me. Because I got proof out the wazoo. My tenants are screaming their heads off.”

“Like what?”

“Major structural problems.” Roser leaned forward and started counting with an outstretched thumb. “The walls crack in the dry cleaners, the floors buckle in the Japanese restaurant, the joints are twisted in the entrance area. The shopping center looks

like a fuckin’ cartoon. Excuse me.”

“No problem.” Judy hurried to write it all down.

“The windows were installed improperly, so a breeze goes through the Szechuan restaurant, around table five. The support stairs sag in Blockbuster Video, and an employee fell down last week and broke his leg. The ceilings for all of the tenants—there are fifteen businesses who lease from me—leaked almost from the beginning. We’re already on our third roof.” Roser picked up a leather portfolio from beside his wing chair and slid from it a thick manila folder. “This is the file I keep of complaints. Hefty, huh? Quite a way to make a reputation with the city.” He handed it to Judy, and she opened it up.

NOTICE OF NON-RENEWAL, it said at the top, and Judy skimmed the document. It was a written notice by a tenant, given pursuant to a lease agreement. “The tenants are bailing, huh?”

“Correction.” Roser pointed at the top. “The anchor tenant, Philcor drugstore, is bailing. Now they’ll all jump ship. That is, if I’m lucky. If I’m not, I’ve got the sequel to Society Hilltop on my hands, and it all comes tumbling down.”

Judy closed the folder, deep in thought. By Society Hilltop, Roser was referring to a dance club on the waterfront that had collapsed, killing ten people. It had been reported that the tragedy was caused by structural failure. Only one problem. Although what Roser was telling her was terrible, it didn’t help her. Shoddy workmanship was only breach of contract, and a contract suit didn’t have the counterpunch she needed. But there was still one thing Judy didn’t get.

“If the Coluzzis do such lousy work, how do they make so much money?” she asked.

Roser shot Frank a how-naïve-is-your-girl look, then faced Judy. “They’re dirty, dear. I looked into those subs they hired, and no way were they qualified to build for us. They got the job because they kicked back to Coluzzi and his sons. Then in order to make any profit on the job at all, they had to cut corners in the construction of my center. They didn’t build according to plans and specs. I got left holding the bag.”

Judy brightened. Kickbacks trumped breach of contract. She tried to sound more savvy. “What’s up with the inspectors? Are they paid off as well?”

“Have to be.” Roser nodded. “In any construction project, there are two levels of inspectors. City inspectors, who know what they’re doing but don’t care, and bank inspectors, who care but don’t know what they’re doing.”

Judy didn’t ask if he was kidding.

“Bottom line, Coluzzi pays off the city inspectors at least. The bank inspectors are only a possibility.”

Judy was too excited to make any more notes. The city was involved, and major banks. “How do you know this?”

“One of the subs, McRea, who paved the parking lot, just built Marco Coluzzi a new driveway in his house down the shore, in Longport. I heard about it from a friend of mine, so I drove by and saw it. It’s got storm drains and all. That’s a $130,000 driveway. Now, when I hear it’s my sub, who’s doing a shit job for me, I put two and two together. The Coluzzis won’t hire Irish or black unless they have to. McRea’s been ignoring my calls all week.”

“You’re calling him?”

“Goddamn right I am. But I’ll get him, and he’ll give. Crooks are like that. Lean on any one of ’em and they’ll flip on Coluzzi. There really is no honor among thieves. They’ll eat each other alive.”

Judy set down her pen. Time to close the deal. Do or die, literally. “Well, Dan, I’ll be honest with you. I can think of several major causes of action you could bring against the Coluzzis based on these facts. The most effective would be a suit under RICO, the federal racketeering statute, for bribery, kickbacks, and other offenses. It carries major damages and penalties. I can represent you, and I’d love to. But I can’t bring the suit unless you give me the green light.”

Roser eased back in his cushy chair and tented thick fingers, then sighed and looked at Frank. “Sorry, pal,” he said after a moment. “I know this matters to you, and you almost convinced me on the phone. We’ve known each other a long time, but the Coluzzis are tough customers.”

“I can handle them,” Judy blurted out, and Roser looked over in surprise.

“You can.”

“I can.”

Roser smiled in a condescending way. “Why should I sue the Coluzzis? I took a bath, but I’ll write all of it off and I could use the deductions. What do I get out of suing?”

It was an excellent question. Judy scanned Roser’s leather-bound books, the brass fastenings on the classy chairs, the costly palette of an oil landscape on the paneled wall. Money damages wouldn’t motivate Dan Roser. “There is one thing,” she said, and the developer cocked his head.

“Which is?”

“Justice,” she answered, and Frank looked over.

“And if justice doesn’t do it for you,” he added, “how about revenge?”

Baccarat champagne flutes clinked expensively as they met in the center of a merry group that included Judy, Frank, Dan Roser, and his gorgeous trophy wife, Trish. Judy was pretty sure Trish was a recent Student Council member, but didn’t say so. She was in too good a mood to let it bother her anyway. Trish was old enough to be out of orthodonture, and love was a good thing wherever you found it. Even with a client’s grandson. She raised her flute. “To the law.”

Frank raised his. “To Judy.”

Roser laughed. “To Trish.”

Trish said, “Chugalug!”

Judy even managed a laugh, but didn’t take another sip of her champagne. She had to get to work on the complaint. Roser had a file of documents that would be exhibits attached to the complaint, and he had given her the phone numbers and addresses of the subcontractors. She had a sheaf of subpoenas to prepare, not including John and Marco Coluzzi’s. She glanced at the polished brass ship’s clock on the mantel of the gas-powered fireplace. Eleven o’clock.

“You have to get back?” Frank said to her, and Judy nodded.

“I have tons of work to do. Plus, my boss is working on the same case.” Judy thought of Bennie, but it felt different from before. She couldn’t leave Bennie in the lurch. “She’ll be there all night, too, if we want to file the complaints in the morning.”

“Oh, no.” Trish buckled her pouty lower lip. “It’s such a long drive back to the city. Dan and I hoped you’d stay over in our guest cottage. It’s out back, and so romantic. The bedroom ceiling is one big skylight. It’s just like sleeping under the stars. You two can have it all to yourself.”

Frank was smiling, and Judy thought Trish had been reading her fantasies. A night with Frank? In a romantic little guest cottage?

Dan Roser nodded in agreement. “Take it for a night, why don’t you? It’s a beautiful cottage. Trish and I go over there sometimes, just for the Jacuzzi.”

Judy’s lips parted. Jacuzzi? Did somebody say Jacuzzi?

Frank looked over, his dark eyes cautious. “It’s really up to Judy,” he said, and she knew she had a choice: love or work?

Judy considered it. Sigmund Freud had said that both love and work were necessary to human happiness, but he never specified the order of priority.

Nobody ever wants to answer the hard questions.

Chapter 24

The conference room at Rosato & Associates had never been so full, especially on a Monday morning. Black microphones clustered under Judy’s chin and twenty-odd camera lenses were pointed at her face, focusing. Photographers loaded film, TV anchors yapped on cell phones, and reporters tested the batteries of black Dictaphones. Stringers hovered over the table of cheese Danish, bagels, and hot coffee at the back of the room. Judy waited at the podium in a crabby mood while the WCAU-TV reporter got something he needed.

She tried to suppress her crankiness. She had never held a press conference before but knew it would have gone more smoothly if she had had sex with an Italian last night. Sex with an Italian would have made everything perfect, especially the next morning, when its magic hadn’t worn off. The residual pixie dust would have unlocked Judy’s inner power and unblocked her nasal passages. Given its obvious benefits, some of which were possibly permanent if not everlasting, who would pass up sex with an Italian in favor of a night of hard work? Only an idiot. Or a lawyer. The cameraman gave Judy a quick thumbs-up, so she tried to stop thinking about almost-sex and cleared her throat.

“Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming,” she said, and tugged her navy suit into place. She wore it with a white silk shirt and Bennie’s brown pumps, which had been repaired with packing tape from the mailroom. Her pantyhose fit like a chastity belt, which, Judy reflected, was redundant on her anyway. She couldn’t be more chaste if she had wrapped herself in packing tape. Damn! What had she been thinking? No, Frank, I have to work? She couldn’t stop thinking about her stupidity, even with all the freshly shaved and made-up faces staring back at her. They must all have had sex with Italians the night before, accounting for their excellent color, mental alertness, and overall happiness. But she digressed.

“We called you here to announce that this morning, this office filed three separate lawsuits against Coluzzi Construction Company and against John and Marco Coluzzi individually. The first suit is a federal case brought against the Coluzzis for violations of RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, 18 U.S.C. Sections 1961 through 1968.” Judy let the legalese sink in, and it sobered even her up, chasing images of bulging muscles and V-shaped backs from her brain. Law could kill anyone’s mood.

“The lawsuit will be brought by Dan Roser, who developed the Philly Court strip mall located on the waterfront, and who alleges that John and Marco Coluzzi and other officials of Coluzzi Construction, McRea Paving and Excavation, and an array of other subcontractors engaged in a complex scheme of fraud, bribery, kickbacks, intimidation, and other unlawful and corrupt practices in connection with the construction of the shopping center.”

Judy took a breath, to let the reporters catch up. “Also named as defendants are the City of Philadelphia and several of its agencies, including but not limited to Licenses and Inspections officials, as well as the two lending institutions on the shopping center, Marshallton Bank and ConstruBank. Subpoenas will be filed and served today against all defendants. In case you missed any of this, you should all have picked up a courtesy copy of the complaints on the back table. They are all public record. Please let me know if you need another.”

The reporters started raising their hands and shouting questions, but Judy held up a palm like a traffic cop. She had to stay on message, since she wanted the Coluzzis to get every word of what she was saying.

“We’ll take questions after the statement, please,” she said, and noticed Bennie slip into the back of the crowded room. They had agreed Judy would run the show, with Bennie joining her to answer questions. Judy welcomed Bennie’s confidence in her, as much as she was surprised by it. It was Bennie’s drawing power that got the crowd this morning. In a way, Bennie was putting her life on the line, too.

“I am also filing, on my behalf, a lawsuit in state court against John and Marco Coluzzi, as well as members of their family, for torts against me, including but not limited to attempted murder by incendiary device . . .”

Judy went on to describe briefly the particulars of the state law claims, holding her head high. She felt less and less afraid of the Coluzzis the more she went on, empowered by the law itself. She was upping the ante, she could almost feel it, and as risky as it felt, it was exciting. When Judy finished her statement, Bennie came and stood beside her, and they faced the press, the TV cameras, and the Coluzzis, in identical brown pumps.

“Any questions?” Judy asked, and the barrage commenced. One tall reporter in the front was waving wildly. “Yes?” Judy said, since that’s the way they did it on TV.

“Ms. Carrier, isn’t this really some kind of retaliation, or revenge?”

Judy gritted her teeth. “The suits are valid and are being brought to vindicate legal wrongs, under both federal and state law. This office will continue to vindicate any and all legal wrongs which may be perpetrated against me in the future.”

The reporter scribbled quickly. “Aren’t you trying to send a message to the Coluzzis?”

Judy hesitated only a minute. “You’re damn right I am.”

After the reporters had gone, empty Styrofoam coffee cups dotted the conference room table, and spare copies of the federal and state court complaints were scattered about. A leftover newspaper lay on the table, next to Judy’s bare feet, propped up there. The show was over, so she had kicked off her pumps and molted her pantyhose like a garden snake.

“Well, that was about as good as it gets,” Judy said, and Bennie crossed to the small white Sony television on the credenza near the telephone. “Lotsa questions, huh?”

“Plenty, and we handled them well. We’re making noise with this thing, I promise you. If we don’t make the twelve o’clock news, I’m losing my touch.” Bennie switched on the TV, and the Action News logo popped onto the screen. “Here we go.” Bennie sat on the edge of the table as a pretty African-American anchorwoman appeared on the screen, her foundation sculpting her face into beautiful curves and her mouth glossy with blackberry-colored lipstick.

The anchor said, “The top story on Action News is the continuing vendetta between South Philadelphia’s Lucia and Coluzzi families. The police have charged no suspects in the attempted murder of criminal lawyer Judy Carrier and her client, defendant Anthony Lucia, and so it seems the attorney has taken the law into her own hands, filing a series of powerhouse complaints in retaliation.”

“Retaliation?” Judy groaned as the footage from the conference began to roll, with her looking fairly stiff in her navy suit, but Bennie waved her into quiet. In the next second, the screen had changed, and a reporter was interviewing an assistant city solicitor, a bright-looking young man with short hair, who appeared on the screen with an expression of official concern.

He was saying, “We will be investigating the allegations of the complaints immediately, beginning with the Bureau of Licenses and Inspections. Any wrongdoing there will be met with termination and possible suits for damages. The city wants to reassure the citizens of Philadelphia and our friends in the business community of the integrity and fairness of its construction contracts.”

Judy grinned. “They’re worried.”

Bennie nodded. “They should be. They’re exposed, big-time.”

Next on the screen was a well-dressed businessman, wearing a three-piece suit and sitting behind a huge glass desk. Crystal awards were reflected in its gleaming surface. Judy clicked up the audio and heard the businessman saying, “As one of the city’s largest construction lenders, we at ConstruBank are reacting to these allegations with a great deal of concern, and we will investigate them fully.”

Bennie smiled. “Now they’ll begin to separate themselves from Coluzzi. The deniability defense is about to begin. The shit is hitting the fan.” She raised her hand for a high-five, and Judy slapped it decisively.

“We did it!” she said, her crabbiness lifting. Maybe litigation was better than sex? Nah.

“Way to go. You worked hard and it paid off.”

“You too, Coach.”

“Hey, look,” Bennie said, pointing happily at the TV. “Enemy territory.”

Judy watched. The last shot was of the anchorwoman, standing on the sidewalk outside a modest brick building squeezed behind a sandwich shop and a bakery in South Philly. An old painted sign read COLUZZI CONSTRUCTION, but it was draped in black crepe. The anchorwoman held the bubble mike to her glossy mouth. “We tried to reach officials of Coluzzi Construction for comment, but they did not return our calls. Their offices were closed today, in observance of the services in the death of their founder, Angelo Coluzzi.”

Bennie’s eyes widened an incredulous blue. “No! What services? Is there a funeral today? I didn’t know about that, did you?”

“No, but we couldn’t have delayed anything. We had to react fast, like you said.”

“Goddamn it!” Bennie tossed her empty Styrofoam cup at the wastebasket so hard it had to miss. “They’re at their father’s viewing at the same time we file suit?”

Judy didn’t understand Bennie’s reaction. “Okay, so it doesn’t look that good—”

“It’s not about how it looks!”

“We didn’t have a lot of choice, Bennie. The Coluzzis were shooting at me when they should have been picking out caskets.”

Bennie stood up. “You know, you’re right. We had to file first thing Monday, but I don’t feel good about it. And, God forbid, when you bury your parents, you won’t either.” She walked to the discarded coffee cup and tossed it into the waste can. “Did you call them, by the way?”

“My parents? Not yet.”

“Do it,” Bennie said, and strode unhappily from the conference room.

Judy watched the remainder of the broadcast, distracted as the news segued into labor strikes and warehouse fires and an early summer boating accident. She felt they’d done right in filing the lawsuits. Did it really make a difference that the service was today? These people were killers. They had put a bomb under her car. Judy sighed. Her gaze fell on the newspaper near her bare toes, which had been squeezed unfortunately into little flesh blocks by being shoved into wooden shoes all the time.

Her mood was going downhill again. She had passed up sex with an Italian, now for no reason. Was there really a funeral today? She reached the leftover newspaper with her bare foot and slid it toward her hand. She opened it, turned to the obituaries, and found Angelo Coluzzi’s.

Loving father, it began, which got Judy right there because she had never had one. She imagined her father’s obit. Stern father. Militaristic father. Bad father, but really good lieutenant colonel. She decided on the spot against making the phone call that Bennie had ordered. If the Colonel hadn’t read that his daughter had been fired upon and almost killed, she wouldn’t ruin his roast-beef-and-butter sandwich.

Judy skimmed the rest of the tiny print but felt no guilt. How could they say all these nice things about such a rotten person? How could the surviving sons be bereft when they spent their spare time using little old men for target practice? The last line said that donations may be made to Our Lady of Sorrows Church, and a viewing would be held at Bondi Funeral Home in South Philly, with a funeral mass there today.

It gave Judy an idea.

Chapter 25

The Bondi Funeral Home was one of several that lined South Broad Street, the main thoroughfare of the city, and Judy stood in the midst of the growing crowd across the street. Dressed in a black silk scarf, oversized sunglasses, and black raincoat from the spy wardrobe in the office closet, Judy looked more like Boris’s Natasha than a mourner, but at least she didn’t look like the lawyer suing the bereaved. She might not be welcome at the viewing.

Cigarette smoke blew past her face, and the man standing next to her swilled wine from a bottle inside a bag. Two old women behind her were gossiping about a neighbor, but a couple of students who had stopped on their way to the College of Art were talking about the car bomb. Judy flipped up her raincoat collar. No doubt that the morning’s press coverage had attracted residents, onlookers, and the press to the viewing, which wasn’t set to begin until three o’clock, according to the obit. Judy checked her watch. It was only two, and uniformed cops were already arriving to control the crowd.

“Back it up, folks,” called out one of the cops, stepping out of a squad car and signaling to a slow-moving municipal truck that followed. He and a cadre of other policemen hurried to unload blue-and-white sawhorses from the tailgate of the truck and set them up in front of the curb to prevent the crowd from spilling onto Broad Street and getting hit by cars. Judy could never understand the South Philly tradition of locating funeral homes on the busiest street in town, ensuring either congested traffic or dead mourners, or both, but there was much about South Philly she didn’t understand. Twirling your spaghetti and attempted murder, for starters.

“Yo, back it up, sports fans,” the cop said again. The art students edged back, leaving Judy standing next to them at the opening between two sawhorses, giving her a clear view of the entrance to the funeral home. She was hoping to see the Coluzzis, to get a bead on how John and Marco were getting along, and also to learn anything else she could. She didn’t know what could happen, and even attending a viewing was better than calling her parents.

A murmur ran through the crowd, and Judy followed the heads turning south down the street. From the oohs and aaahs she would have expected the Mummers Parade, but it was an inky line of shiny black limos snaking their way to the funeral home. Judy stood on wobbly tiptoe. It had to be the Coluzzis. Her pulse quickened.

Gray-jacketed men from the funeral home scurried down the marble steps and took stations at the bottom of the stairs as a limo pulled up, a triple stretch with curved smoked glass more suited to Elvis than a contractor. Its mammoth engine idled at the curb awaiting the others, which pulled up slowly behind it, inadvertently building interest in the crowd. Press cameras flashed, and one of the students next to Judy giggled as she raised a disposable Kodak camera.

Judy looked over. That could come in handy. “I’ll give you twenty bucks for the camera,” she said to the student. The woman had a cartilage pierce, a nostril pierce, and a lower lip pierce, and Judy, who had considered herself counterculture until this moment, felt very sorry for her.

“It cost twenty bucks,” the art student retorted, but Judy was reaching into her backpack for her wallet.

“You can punch a lot of holes with this.” Judy opened her wallet, extracted a fifty, and handed it to her.

“Whoa,” the student said, and she and her friend left.

Judy raised the camera just as the doors of the first limo opened and John Coluzzi stepped out, his stocky frame encased in an expensive suit, and reached a hand out to help his mother, wearing a black dress and a shawl like Judy’s, and then his wife, a petite woman in a trim black suit with a black lace doily pinned to the top of her stop-time bouffant hairdo. Judy snapped a picture, and only a half second later another limo arrived. The smaller Marco Coluzzi climbed out with his wife, a corporate version of John’s wife with normal hair and two young boys in Holy Communion suits holding on to each of her manicured hands.

Judy took another picture, remembering the newspaper feature about who would be king of Coluzzi Construction. You didn’t have to be Italian to know that the son with the sons would make a better successor, since the royal line would be assured. Judy took another photo.

The third limo pulled up and a group of men and women Judy didn’t recognize got out. She snapped a few photos on the assumption they were named defendants, and then the limos started coming down Broad, fast and furious as string bands. Judy shot all of them, at least in profile, and got lots of photos as mourners arrived in a black river that moved as slowly as tar through the crowd and traffic.

But as the mourners went inside, she began to feel sidelined, even as she snapped away and finished the entire roll in the camera. The viewing was open to the public, and Judy could go in if she wanted to. It was risky, going into the belly of the beast you were suing blind, but she hadn’t been recognized so far, even by the art students, who had read about the car bomb. And if she got inside, maybe she could overhear something. Judy slipped the camera into her raincoat pocket, ducked through the sawhorses, and hurried across the street.

Her heart beat faster as she ascended the marble steps to the funeral home, under a gray plastic awning whose scalloped edges flapped in the wind whipping down Broad Street. Mourners filed up the stairs next to her, meeting a bottleneck at the top as people greeted each other, talking and plunging cigarettes into tall ceramic urns filled with sand. Judy waited for the crowd to move, her eyes on the cigarette butts that stuck like a nightmare forest from the sand. She had never been to a viewing before, much less an Italian viewing, and told herself to stay cool and go with the flow. When in Rome and all.

The crowd edged inside and when it hit the thick red carpet, filed to the left. Judy couldn’t see ahead of the burly man in front of her. A surreptitious scan of the male mourners revealed a collection of rough-hewn faces weathered from outside work and large, hammy hands bearing high school rings. The men looked even less accustomed to their stiff suits than Judy was to hers, and her stomach tensed as she realized that they had to be subcontractors on the Philly Court strip mall and other Coluzzi projects. Unless she missed her guess, they would be very jumpy today, looking to the Coluzzis to protect them. It could be a lawyer’s gold mine. She tried to keep her head down, her ears open, and her eyes attuned to detail. The first detail she noticed was that nobody around her was crying.

The line flowed slowly into a room on the left, and Judy took it in quickly. It was a huge room filled with folding chairs that faced toward the front, which she couldn’t see for all the people milling around, clapping each other on the back and laughing. The metal folding chairs were covered with slipcovers of ivory plastic, matching the ivory-colored walls of the room, which were flocked with curlicues of gold velveteen. The air was thick with the scent of refrigerated flowers and Shalimar knock-off. Judy tried not to breathe.

The line edged forward, and she could hear snippets of conversation from the seated areas. “Yo, Tommy, I only see you at wakes and weddings.” “So, Jimmy, you back on the Atkins shit?” “I tol’ him, the Eagles don’t get themselves a new RB, they’re fucked.” “They never shoulda got ridda Reggie.” “She’s a real nice girl, real nice. Goin’ to Villanova inna fall.”

Judy kept listening, but so far it wasn’t promising. Maybe nobody was going to chat about confessing today. The line shifted forward along the fuzzy wall. It was almost at the front of the room, and Judy peeked up. A gleaming bronze casket with chrome handles sat on a massive dais of roses, freesia, gladiola, and white carnations spray-dyed rainbow colors. To the left of the casket in front of a similar floral backdrop stood a somber John and Marco Coluzzi, stiff as bookends that didn’t match. They didn’t say a word to each other, nor did they stand close, but Judy was suddenly too preoccupied to notice more about their body language. The line of mourners flowed directly to the casket, and the people were kneeling in front on a padded knee rest and making the sign of the cross on their chests, then moving on to speak with the Coluzzi brothers.

Judy’s eyes went as wide as her sunglasses. She was in a receiving line! She didn’t want to kneel in front of Coluzzi’s casket. She didn’t even know how to cross herself. If she didn’t get out of the line fast, she’d be shaking hands with the men who were trying to kill her.

She looked around wildly. There was nowhere to go but the seats on the left and moving there at this point would be dangerously obvious. Nobody in the line was breaking ranks before paying proper respect to the dead. And anybody who had seen The Godfather knew that respect counted in this crowd.

The line shifted forward two rows, bringing Judy only twenty feet from the front of the room. She didn’t know what to do. She thought fast. Only one excuse was acceptable on this occasion. “Excuse me,” she said loudly. “Does anybody know where the ladies’ room is?”

An older woman two couples up turned around and pointed right with a slim finger. “Other side of the hall,” she said sympathetically, and Judy nodded.

But the only exits were back the way she came, or to the right of the casket. Only one way to go. If Judy acted suspicious, the Coluzzis would suspect her. She held her stomach as if she’d had a sudden attack of dysentery and hurried to the front of the room, took a quick right at the red gladiolus, and looked for signs to the ladies’ room.

LOUNGE, read one softly lighted sign, and she followed the euphemism to the ladies’ room. But when she opened the door, it wasn’t a bathroom at all but a large, gold-flecked room ringed with covered folding chairs, supplied with prominent boxes of Kleenex, and occupied completely by crying women. One group sat in one corner weeping theatrically and clutching soggy tissues, and the other sat in the other corner sobbing even louder. Judy looked from one to the other and wondered fleetingly if it was an Italian Battle of the Bands.

“Oops, sorry,” Judy said, but nobody took notice except a strawberry-blond woman with bright blue eyes. Tall and very pregnant in a black linen maternity dress, she stood alone by the door, examining the bad prints.

“You needn’t be sorry,” the woman said, with a heavy Irish accent. A light sprinkling of freckles covered her nose, and her skin was a poreless pale pink.

“I was looking for the ladies’ room.”

“It’s down the hall.” The woman leaned over, her blue eyes dancing with mischief. “I made the same mistake. You’re not Italian either, are you?”

“How could you tell?” Judy smiled, nervous that the Irish woman would recognize her.

“Why, you’re nice and tall, too, and I can see under your scarf that you’re a blonde.”

Renewed sobbing surged loudly from the groups of women in the corners, like tears in stereo. Judy considered leaving the room, but the woman was so obviously alone, a clear outsider. Judy leaned to her and whispered, “We’re the only women in here not crying. I think it’s the price of admission.”

The woman laughed softly. “Now that’s the difference between the Italians and Irish. We Irish know how to throw a grand wake. Everybody has a good time. The whole point is not to cry.” Her eyes lit up. “Wakes last for days in Ireland. County Galway, where my family’s from. Do you know it?”

“No,” Judy told her, counting it as a measure of the woman’s naïveté that she would expect an American to be familiar with Ireland’s counties. Judy had always felt guilty she knew no geography but America’s own.

“It’s a lovely place, lovely. I’m from a town called Loughrea. I came over only two years ago, after I met my husband, Kevin. I’m Theresa, by the way.”

“Great to meet you,” Judy said simply, and got away without supplying her own name, in Theresa’s enthusiasm for someone to talk to.

“Well, my husband, Kevin, he’s American. He came to town on holiday, and he was looking for the ATM machine. You know, the MAC machine, you call it? And I told him it was right in front of him, pretty as you please, on Dublin Road. We fell in love right there.”

“‘Where’s the MAC?’ Quite a pickup line,” Judy said with a smile, and Theresa laughed warmly.

“It was. We got married and now we’re having the baby, and it’s been grand.” She paused, uneasy. “Not that it hasn’t taken some getting used to, a new marriage and all, and the way things are over here. Of course I’d read so much about America, we have all your TV shows and movies and your books, and I thought I knew what to expect. But then again, you can never tell what turn your life will take, can you?” The woman shook her head as if in a memory, and a sudden wetness sprang to her eyes.

“You want to sit down?” Judy asked, taken aback, and helped the pregnant woman to a shaky seat near the door.

“I’m sorry, I’m being so silly. It must be my hormones.”

“No, that’s okay.” Judy yanked for a Kleenex from a box left on the seats and handed it to her. “You’re in the crying room. You might as well cry.”

Suddenly the lounge door opened, and Judy froze. John Coluzzi stuck his head inside, as if he were looking for someone. He hovered right over Judy’s shoulder, so close she could smell his heavy aftershave. Was he looking for her? She could be dead if he found her. She threw her arm around Theresa and quickly yanked her close, comforting her. Judy hoped they’d look like more crying women in the crying room.

Coluzzi lingered a minute more, but Theresa only cried harder, and Judy hugged her tight. Then Judy heard the door close behind her back. Coluzzi must have gone, leaving behind the faint scent of Calvin Klein.

Theresa was saying, through her tears, “You’re so nice. It’s so nice . . . to make a friend here. Americans . . . or maybe Philadelphians, I don’t know . . . they’re not always so friendly to new people.”

“I know what you mean,” Judy said, and she did. She had made only one friend in Philly, Mary, but she had always blamed herself. Maybe she should start blaming other people, which would be easier.

“Everything’s going so wrong, just when it should be . . . so right. We’re under so much strain now, and my hormones, the doctor said . . . they’re going crazy.”

“I’m sure things will get better.” Judy held Theresa while her shoulders shook with sobs, her heart going out to her, especially because Theresa had just saved her life. “And soon you’ll have a new baby.”

“But we’re in trouble . . . with money, I mean. Things are so expensive here. Not like at home. I think I’m just so . . . what do you call it? Homesick.”

This feeling Judy didn’t know. “I’m sure it’ll pass.”

“We’re just building our new house . . . and my husband’s business was going so well. He was doing work for the Coluzzis . . . and we were finally going to get out of the apartment . . . and we need, you know, a nursery.” Theresa heaved a mighty sob. “They were even talking . . . about buying his company. They wanted to . . . expand or something, and they wanted to pay so much. But then . . . Angelo Coluzzi got killed and now there’s . . . a lawsuit against the company and I don’t know what’s going to happen. We could lose everything.”

Judy felt stricken. Theresa must be the wife of one of the subcontractors. Judy had caused all this pain, to a pregnant woman. She didn’t focus on the fact that making the Coluzzis’ life a living hell meant making a living hell of lives like Theresa’s. “I’m so sorry,” Judy said, meaning it.

“Kevin says not to worry, but I can’t help it. We can’t lose the new house, not with the baby on the way.”

Judy’s thoughts raced ahead. As bad as she felt for Theresa, maybe this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. What was it Roser had said? Coluzzi won’t hire Irish or black unless they have to. Was Theresa the wife of McRea, the paving contractor? Judy couldn’t remember his first name from the complaint. “It must be so frightening for you,” she said.

“It is awful . . . and it couldn’t come at a worse time. I don’t dare tell my parents for fear they’ll tell me . . . to leave Kevin and come right home. I want to go home, but I don’t want . . . to lose my marriage.”

Judy grabbed the entire box of Kleenex, hating that now she had an ulterior motive. But she had a job to do, and lives were at stake. “Please stay calm, but I have to tell you something surprising. I think I can help you and your husband.”

“What . . . did you say?”

“I’m a lawyer, and I can help you. I know about the lawsuit, and your husband isn’t the target.” Judy handed her a fresh tissue, and Theresa dabbed at her eyes.

“Of course he isn’t. He can’t be. He hardly knows . . . the Coluzzi family. We don’t know . . . any of these people here. He never worked for them before.”

“I figured that.”

Theresa blinked her puzzled eyes free of tears. “But however do you know that?”

“My name is Judy Carrier, and I’m the lawyer who filed the suit.”

Theresa gasped, but the sound got lost in the wailing broadcasted in Dolby sound from the two far corners of the room. Theresa began to open her mouth, as if to yell or call someone for help, but Judy grabbed her hand and held on to it.

“No! Please don’t betray me. These people will kill me.”

“What?” Theresa’s eyes searched Judy’s, even through the sunglasses. “What are you talking about?”

“They’re killers. They’re dangerous people. They’re not what they seem, to you anyway.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Theresa looked at Judy as if she were crazy, which was a distinct possibility.

“I was hoping to get to your husband or one of the other subs. Your husband, is he Kevin McRea?”

Theresa nodded in teary shock, and Judy kept her grip on her soft hands.

“Listen to me. Kevin’s in trouble as long as he stays with the Coluzzis. I know he built them a driveway in return for getting the excavation and paving contract for Philly Court.”

“I don’t know anything about Kevin’s business.”

“I’m not saying you knew, but what he did was against our law.” Judy felt a twinge of guilt at terrorizing her, but it was all true. “I don’t want to go after Kevin, or you.” She lowered her voice so as not to be heard by the other sobbing women. “The Coluzzis are the bad guys here and they won’t help Kevin when push comes to shove, believe me. They’re dangerous people and they stick together. They’ll hang you all out to dry.”

Theresa’s eyes brimmed with new tears, but Judy couldn’t stop now.

“You can reach me at my office in town, anytime. I promise you that if you talk to me and get Kevin to cooperate with me, I’ll let him out of the lawsuit. I’ll drop him, just like that, and your troubles will be over. I won’t tell anyone that he called until we have to go to trial. I don’t want to take your baby’s nursery, okay? Will you do it?”

Tears clouded Theresa’s eyes, and she withdrew her hands. “You don’t care about my baby. You’re just trying to use Kevin, to help your case against him!”

“No, I do care, but that doesn’t matter. Given what Kevin has done, I’m the best chance he has of getting out of trouble. Tell him we spoke. It’s his only chance, and yours.”

But before Theresa could answer or expose her, Judy rose and left through the lounge door. She wanted to get out of the funeral home, fast. She had accomplished more than she’d hoped to. As the lawyers say, when you win, shut up and get out of the courtroom.

She found herself in a hallway filled with Coluzzi mourners, talking, laughing, and filing outside for cigarette breaks. Judy wedged her way through the broad backs and thick necks and had almost made it through the entrance hall when she felt a pair of eyes on her, from a heavyset man beside her. She looked over, shielded by the big sunglasses.

She had seen him before. It was Jimmy Bello, John Coluzzi’s man, who had been on the corner watching the clubhouse the other day. He was surrounded by mourners, but he was looking right at her. Did he recognize her? Judy wasn’t waiting to see.

She hustled toward the open entrance and ran out the door.

Chapter 26

“You did what?” Bennie said, and Judy decided she was definitely ordering her boss that T-shirt. They were back at the firm, and the only difference between this and their last you did what conversation was that this time they were sitting in Judy’s office and the good guys were finally winning.

“So it was a little risky, Bennie. So what?”

“What do you mean, ‘so what’?” Bennie was shouting, but Judy felt too good to even be bothered.

“Look what we got out of it! The woman was McRea’s wife. I live right, don’t I?”

“Keep it up and you won’t be living long.” Bennie’s mouth was tight, her blue eyes washed out with fatigue, and her khaki suit rumpled from a long day. On the other side of the closed door, the business day was winding down. “Don’t ever do anything like that again, Carrier. Going to their viewing? It was insane.”

“I know, but—”

“You don’t go to somebody’s family viewing.”

Judy didn’t get this quirk of Bennie’s. She’d drag somebody out of bed to depose them. What was the difference with a viewing? “The FBI does it all the time. They were probably at this one, too.”

“You’re not the FBI. They have guns. Don’t antagonize the Coluzzis.”

Judy laughed abruptly. “We’re suing the shit out of them!”

“Suing them is one thing, crashing their viewing is another. These people are killers!”

“I had it in control. I was careful!”

Bennie leaned forward on Judy’s messy desk. “You say John Coluzzi may have seen you, and this Jimmy Bello.”

“I got out in time. I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, really. Tough talk. Can you take care of that woman, the one you liked so much? McRea’s wife?”

“What do you mean?”

Bennie cocked an eyebrow. “Coluzzi may figure out that it was you McRea was talking to in the lounge. He knows he’s exposed on the driveway. It’s in the complaint, and it’s the only example of a kickback we have the specifics on. So what do you think Coluzzi will do to the McReas, if he thinks they’re talking with you? At best, he’ll squeeze the shit out of them not to talk. That’s the best-case scenario. Can you guess the worst?”

Judy’s mouth went dry. The truth struck horribly home. She had placed the McReas in the line of fire. Having first sued them, Judy had just made it worse. She fell quiet. Her face went hot.

“I see I’ve made my point. Let’s hope the McReas call us before the Coluzzis call them.” Bennie sighed and stood up, crossing her arms. “Meantime, the GC in Huartzer really wants to talk to you. I’ll cut you some slack on the antitrust article, because we can make the next issue, but you have other cases. If you hadn’t been running around funeral homes, you could have been doing your job.”

Judy felt a headache coming on. She hadn’t eaten in hours. She hadn’t slept in days. She hadn’t had sex in a year. She’d never had sex with an Italian, and it was looking like she never would.

“Also. You have a preliminary hearing tomorrow in Lucia and you have to get ready for it. Did you call your parents?”

“No.”

“Do it now. And tell me if McRea calls you. I want to be in on it. And don’t forget your parents! They’re first!” Bennie barked, and left the office.

Judy flipped open her Filofax, found the number, and punched it in. It was the number her parents had left on their itinerary, which they had e-mailed to the kids before they left; Judy had a brother teaching law in Boston and a sister in the Sydney office of a brokerage house. If it weren’t for e-mail, they’d never see each other.

An answering machine picked up the call. As much as Judy wouldn’t have minded hearing her mother’s voice on the machine, even recorded, it was one of those mechanical samplings offered by the phone company. She waited for the beep. “It’s me, Judy. Just wanted to say hi and that everything’s fine. Take care. Love you.” That about covered it, she thought, and hung up the phone.

Judy’s second call was to the general counsel in Huartzer, and she got voicemail. “Rick, this is Judy Carrier. Sorry I haven’t returned your call, but I haven’t been in. Feel free to call anytime and I’ll get back to you right away.”

Her last call was the only one she wanted to make. She pressed the numbers with anticipation, envisioning Frank on the other end of the line, stacking stone in the sun with his shirt off, the long muscles of his back slick with sweat. His cell phone would be ringing in his pocket. He would feel its telltale vibration, a tingle that told him love was calling. Judy heard a click on the line. “Is that a cell phone in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” she said.

But it was only Bell Atlantic. “The cell phone customer you have called is unavailable. Please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

Disappointed, Judy waited for the tone and thought of a good message. How about I filed our lawsuit, but I may have jeopardized our best witness? Or I’m sorry I turned you down last night, but at least it was in front of your friends? Or best yet, Everything’s fine except that your grandfather has to come to court tomorrow, exposing him to life-threatening danger?

Beep, went the tone, and Judy spoke from the heart:

“Call me. I think of you every minute,” she said, and hung up.

It was dark outside Judy’s office window, and the law firm was quiet. The receptionist and secretaries had gone home, as had all of the lawyers except Judy. Bennie had gone to give a speech to the local ACLU chapter, but said she’d be calling to check in. Judy knew she was worried about her safety, which was a nice feeling, since Judy was worried about her safety, too. She’d taken the scissors from her office drawer and set them conveniently on her desk, just in case she had to make paper dolls of a crazed contractor. Between makeup and her personal defense, Judy was finding whole new vistas for office supplies.

She slurped the last of her take-out lo mein out from a white carton and put out of her mind that nobody she was lusting after or suing had called her back. The phone hadn’t rung for hours, but she was going to stop thinking about it. That resolved, Judy scrutinized the thirty-two photos tacked to the corkboard on an easel in front of her.

It was an array of the photos she’d taken in front of the funeral home this afternoon, which she’d had one-hour-developed across the street. She’d posted them in the order in which she’d taken them, and they made a story in still pictures of the people arriving at the Coluzzi viewing. Judy finished eating as her gaze went from one shot to the next. It was dinner theater for lawyers.

She set down her pull-apart chopsticks and got up. The first shots were of the Coluzzis, John and Marco, and their wives, then, evidently, other family, then mourners arriving in cars and on foot. There were shots of mourners parking in the lot beside the funeral home and on the median on Broad Street. There were crowd scenes on the sidewalk, and many more of them mounting the long marble stairway to the entrance or gathering in groups out front or at the top of the stairs. Interestingly, the camera had recorded much more than Judy had realized she had seen. It was the power of the art, and it was working for her.

Judy scanned the dark images. She didn’t know the faces, but by the end of the case she would. She walked back and forth before the photos, trying to fix each image in her mind. She’d already had the full set scanned and e-mailed to Dan Roser, who would be able to identify many of them, hopefully subs on the Philly Court project. She’d put in two calls to Roser but he hadn’t gotten back to her yet. Not that she’d sit on her hands in the meantime. She shoved them into her skirt pockets and stopped before the fifteenth photo.

A flash of strawberry-blond hair appeared in the photo, an unusually bright spot in a canvas of dark hair and black suits, apparently of men at the top of the stairs to the funeral home.

Judy leaned over and squinted at it. The awning cast a shadow that obscured the people, and the image was way too small to make out. Judy couldn’t see it well enough and she didn’t have a magnifying glass. But she did have a computer.

She hurried back to her desk, logged on to her e-mail, and called up the scanned computer photos she’d sent Roser, pausing at the fifteenth. There was the tiny strawberry swatch. Then Judy opened the Photoshop program, marqueed that section of the photo, and enlarged it once, then again. The strawberry head filled up half the screen. It was Theresa McRea, as Judy had suspected. But who was Theresa with?

Judy moved the photo to the man beside her and clicked the magnifying-glass icon to enlarge the image. The pixels went blocky on her and she stepped it down. A dark-haired man held Theresa’s hand. He had to be her husband Kevin. She clicked the icon again. His forehead was wrinkled, and his head close to another man’s, as if in confidence. Then Judy rotated the image to see who they were talking to. Only his profile was visible to the camera’s eye. Judy clicked the icon, and the image grew into itself, like the child to the man.

The man was Marco Coluzzi. Judy eased back in her chair. She had a shot of Kevin McRea talking to Marco the day the complaint was filed against them. And Marco had evidently come out of the viewing to greet him. Judy moved the image down and spotted a white line at the bottom. A cigarette, in Marco’s hand. He had wanted a smoke, but he was also, in the vernacular, showing McRea respect.

McRea had built the driveway for one of the Coluzzis, but Judy couldn’t remember which brother; she’d been so tired when she drafted the complaint. She closed Photoshop, opened Microsoft Word, and found their complaint, then skimmed down to allegation 55: It is alleged that the above-named defendant Kevin McRea did excavate, construct, and pave a driveway for the defendant Marco Coluzzi, at an estimated value of $130,000, in return for . . .

So it had been Marco, not John, who got the fancy driveway. Judy reasoned it out. It made sense that Marco had the alliance with Kevin McRea, not John. After all, John apparently hadn’t recognized Theresa as Kevin’s wife when he stuck his head into the lounge, or he might have wondered why the wife of one of his subs was so broken up over his father’s death. Or maybe he had and didn’t want to show his hand. Judy had no way of knowing, which made her worry for Theresa.

Judy glanced at the phone. Theresa hadn’t called. Judy was worried that she wouldn’t and equally worried that she would. What had she gotten the McReas into? Judy squirmed in her seat. She didn’t like waiting for witnesses to call any more than she liked waiting for men to call. Not that she was waiting for a man to call. Damn!

Judy scrolled to the top of the complaint, to the caption naming the parties. There was Kevin McRea’s name, right over his address. He lived in Glenolden, Delaware County, which wasn’t that far from the city. She considered going there, but Bennie would kill her if the Coluzzis didn’t. Judy opted for the safer and more boring approach. She picked up the phone, called information, got the McReas’ phone number, and called it.

Her heart was pounding as a woman picked up, but she didn’t have an Irish accent. Judy paused. “Hello, may I speak to Theresa or Kevin McRea?”

“They’re gone,” the woman said flatly, and Judy started.

“Gone? Gone? What do you mean?”

“They just moved out. Right this afternoon. I thought their new house mighta been finished early but it ain’t. They left all of a sudden.”

Judy felt only slightly relieved. “They moved out? I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it, baby. I’m the landlady, and I’m just as surprised as you.”

“But Theresa’s a good friend of mine. I just saw her today. She didn’t say she was moving.”

“Well, she’s gone. They came home together this afternoon, packed their clothes, and left. Paid off the whole year lease plus the security deposit, and I got no complaint with that. They were in a real big hurry. Left all their furniture and kitchen stuff, and they’re payin’ me two hundred bucks to pack it up and put it in storage.”

Judy tried to think. Theresa must have told Kevin that Judy had approached her at the viewing, and they got the hell out of Dodge. He didn’t want to get caught between the Coluzzis and the lawsuit. “Did they leave you a forwarding address, or a phone number where they can be reached?”

“Nothin’. Said they’d call later. Now, no offense, I got to get back to work here. Theresa kept a real neat house, but she had knickknacks out the wazoo. Shamrocks. Linen tea towels. Leprechauns carved outta Connemara marble, whatever that is.”

Judy thanked the landlady and hung up, thinking about leprechauns and shamrocks. Unless she missed her guess, Theresa and Kevin were halfway to Ireland by now. Judy smiled in spite of her lawyerly instincts. The McReas were out of harm’s way, and she’d find another way to win her suit. She sat motionless with her hand on the phone, trying to process this new information. It made sense they’d take off, because a baby was portable, but how about a business? How could Kevin McRea leave his business? And for how long?

Judy turned again to her laptop, logged on to the Internet, and ran a Google search for McRea Excavation and Paving. Sure enough, it had a website, since everybody had a website now. Judy was hoping that www.sexwithanitalian.com was still up for grabs. She clicked the link, and onto the screen popped an amateurish but effective piece of brochureware. There were pictures of backhoes and front-end loaders, ghosted over a clunky MCREA logo. The copy was badly written, but Judy was a lawyer, not a critic. She read:

McRea Excavation and Paving is a complete, full-service company meeting the excavating and paving needs of numerous residents and commercial businesses in the tristate area for the past twenty years, with annual revenues of two million dollars. Kevin McRea is the CEO and sole proprietor of the company, and he supervises a workforce of 63 full-time employees, many of whom have been with the company for all of its 21 years in business. McRea never loses time on your construction job because of faulty or leased equipment. McRea owns all of its own equipment, and with it and its able workforce, McRea can meet any and all of your excavation and paving needs.

McRea’s business was a going concern, with a very healthy income stream. Kevin couldn’t leave it forever, could he? Then Judy remembered something Theresa had said, through her tears. That the Coluzzis had wanted to buy his business. McRea Excavation was a $2 million company, so that would be a major corporate decision, not a routine expenditure. Judy stopped to think, her gaze coming to rest on the photos tacked up in front of her. Why would they be talking about buying a new business with the leadership of the company thrown into doubt? Or, more to the point, who would be talking about buying a new business?

Judy’s eyes ran restlessly over the photos. Marco and John. John and Marco. It was Marco who came to greet Kevin, not John. It was Marco who got Kevin’s driveway, not John. What if Marco was the one who had tried to buy McRea Excavation, not John? And then Judy noticed something about the photos. In none of them did John Coluzzi appear with Marco or was he even shown speaking to him. They had arrived in separate limos. Their families weren’t speaking, even on the sidewalk. Or beside their father’s coffin. It was obvious there was a rift, and if the newspaper accounts were correct, it had to be over succession of the company. What else would divide two Italian princes but the kingdom?

Something Judy had heard recently came to mind. There really is no honor among thieves. They’ll eat each other alive. She remembered Roser had said it, talking about the subcontractors. But didn’t the same truth apply to John and Marco Coluzzi? Would their rift turn into war? And could Judy do anything to make that happen? It could be a weapon more potent than any lawsuit. It would turn brother against brother, blood against blood. It was so, well, Italian.

Judy picked up the phone. She was hoping you could still make trouble for bad guys, even from behind a desk.

Chapter 27

The sun shone bright Tuesday morning, in an almost impossible run of good weather in Philly, but Judy was too psyched to care. She couldn’t see the blue sky for the TV and still cameras, tape recorders held high, and klieg lights. She couldn’t breathe the fresh air for the reporters exhaling coffee in her face. It was a Starbucks contact high.

Judy plowed in her navy suit and lucky pumps through the press outside the Criminal Justice Center, with Pigeon Tony wedged between her and Frank. For the first time, she not only tolerated the reporters, she welcomed them. She felt safer for all of them with 384 witnesses on the scene, and the media was key to Judy’s new and improved plan.