The Vendetta Defense

“No, Your Honor,” Santoro interrupted. “The Commonwealth will not stipulate. I think the jury should hear this from the horse’s mouth.”

Judge Vaughn sighed. “Go ahead, Mr. Santoro, but restrain yourself shortly. You’ve made your point, and Ms. Carrier’s made hers.”

Judy sat down and scribbled for the sake of scribbling, but she was too stressed to write any jokes in capital letters. Pigeon Tony’s life was at stake and yet another neighbor was taking the stand. As much as Pigeon Tony warmed to see his old friends, she knew each one was driving a nail into his coffin. She considered asking them if they thought Coluzzi had committed the past murders, but she knew she’d draw a legitimate objection. Neither lawyer could prove or disprove the truth of the past murders, but Santoro was using them to advantage. She vowed to do the same before the case was over.

They sat through the testimony of Mr. Ralph Bergetti, Mrs. Josephine DiGiuseppe, Mr. Tessio Castello, Miss Lucille Buoniconti and, oddly, an Anne Foster, before Judge Vaughn granted Judy’s objections. Santoro asked all the same questions and got all the same answers, as did Judy on cross. But she was concerned. The jury would remember these witnesses, whose demeanor was so credible and whose testimony was undisputed. It would lighten Santoro’s burden on proving reasonable doubt. By lunch recess, Judy had serious doubts.

She had to turn it around, or Pigeon Tony was a dead man.

Chapter 39

“That was the worst thing Santoro could have done, for us,”

Judy said as she, Pigeon Tony, Frank, and Bennie sat at the round table in the courthouse conference room. It was a small white room, dominated by a fake chestnut table and ringed with four black leather swivel chairs. Right now the table was covered with a large pizza box, filled with leftover crusts.

“Agreed,” Bennie said. Her unruly hair had been swept back into a ponytail, which looked professional with her trademark khaki suit. Her face was pale, the result of hard work and worry; she had backstopped Judy on trial prep as if she were Judy’s associate and not the other way around. “You know what he’s doing, don’t you? Setting up the physical evidence.”

“I know. How’d I do, on cross?”

“Fine. You know what they say. When you have the facts, pound the facts. When you have the law, pound the law. When you don’t have either, pound the table.”

Judy grinned. “Got it. I’ll just keep pounding and hold up until it’s our turn.”

Pigeon Tony set down his half-eaten pizza crust. “Then I talk to judge?”

Judy shook her head. They had discussed this only about twelve hundred times before the trial began. “No. Then we put on our witnesses. I thought we agreed, you should not testify. It wouldn’t help your case. They have no good proof of what happened in that room except through you.”

Pigeon Tony’s face went red. “But they lie! They say Coluzzi no murder Silvana. Or my Frank. And Gemma! I hear! I know! Lies!”

“If you got up on the stand, you would tell the truth. You would say that Coluzzi did all those things, but we couldn’t prove any of it, which would make you look just like the man they say you are. An angry old man, full of hate. Legally, it’s your decision, but I am telling you not to go up there and let me handle it.”

“I tell truth! Millie tell truth! Sebastiano and Paul! They all say truth!” Pigeon Tony went red in the face, waving a finger. “I hate Coluzzi! He kill my family! That is truth!”

Frank started to explain to him, but Judy held up a hand. This was between lawyer and client, since the decision to testify in his own defense was strictly the client’s.

“Pigeon Tony, listen to me. All they can show is that you meant to kill Coluzzi, or even that you wanted to kill Coluzzi. But what they have to prove is that you did it. You don’t go to jail in this country because you want to kill somebody.”

“But I kill Coluzzi! I do it!”

Judy winced. It was still hard to hear. Plus it might not help the defense if he screamed it throughout the courthouse. “But they have to prove that you did, and that’s a lot harder. If they can’t prove it, you win. If you get up there, they can prove it easy, and you lose. Understand?”

Pigeon Tony’s features went rigid, his mouth an unfamiliarly unhappy line, and Frank put a reassuring hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. “Pop, Judy knows what she’s doing. She’s the lawyer, and she cares about us. She knows what’s best for you. Let her do her job, okay?”

Pigeon Tony blinked in response. His mouth stayed set, giving a new meaning to Italian marble.

Judy locked eyes with Frank and she didn’t have to tell him what she was thinking. They had become lovers the night she’d gone to him, but since then the relationship hadn’t had a chance to blossom into a warm, rich, full-blown love affair. The law was a jealous mister.

Frank squeezed Pigeon Tony’s shoulder. “Pop, she’s right. She’s trying to save your life here. Tell her you agree.”

Pigeon Tony sighed shallowly, his concave chest rising and sinking with resignation. “Si,” he said quickly.

“Thank you.” Judy patted Pigeon Tony’s other shoulder, skinny even in shoulder pads. “Now let’s go back in. And remember, it’s gonna get worse before it gets better. Nobody feels good during the other side’s case.”

“Amen,” Bennie said, but Pigeon Tony was losing his religion.

Detective Sam Wilkins made a professional counterpoint to the down-home ragtagginess of Pigeon Tony’s neighbors. His dark eyes were alert and grave, and he was dressed in a neat blue suit with a cop-issue patterned tie. Wilkins didn’t so much sit behind the microphone as address the courtroom, and his demeanor was natural and professional. Judy knew the jury would respect him. He reeked of integrity, which she valued in everyone but the opposition.

“Now that we have your background, Detective Wilkins,” Santoro continued, “please tell us what you did the morning of April seventeenth.” Santoro stood taller than he had before. Like most D.A.s, he sucked up to real live cops but wouldn’t ever be one himself. Guns were involved, and somebody could get hurt.

“I was on the day tour and was called to seven-twelve Cotner Street, at eight-thirteen in the morning. About.” Wilkins smiled, and so did the jury. The only person who didn’t was Pigeon Tony. Judy remembered he no like police, and he was baring his dentures.

“Is that the address of a pigeon-racing club?”

“Yes, it is. The South Philly Pigeon Racing Club.”

“What did you do and see there?”

“I was directed to the back room, where I found the body of the deceased, Angelo Coluzzi.”

“Could you describe exactly what you saw, for the jury?”

“Mr. Coluzzi was partly underneath a bookshelf that held various veterinary supplies. I knelt beside him and determined that he had no pulse. It was clear to me his neck had been broken, and—”

“Objection,” Judy said. “Detective Wilkins is not a medical expert, Your Honor.”

“Sustained,” Judge Vaughn said, and Judy felt vaguely satisfied. She didn’t know if she had accomplished anything, but it didn’t hurt to remind the jury that Detective Wilkins wasn’t Superman. Again, Pigeon Tony was the only one who didn’t need the reminder. He glared at the detective so fiercely that Judy clamped her hand on his arm. Oddly, he seemed angrier than he had during Santoro’s opening and resisted her soothing.

Santoro nodded. “Perhaps you could explain what you saw, Detective.”

“Mr. Coluzzi’s neck was lying to the left, loosely, at a skewed, unnatural angle. He lay on the floor near a bookshelf, which was partly on top of him, and many of the items on the shelves had spilled out. The room showed signs of a struggle, but I concluded it was a brief one. From my investigation it appeared that the defendant had entered the room and attacked the deceased.”

Suddenly Pigeon Tony jumped to his feet. “Scum! Coluzzi kill my wife! Coluzzi kill my son! You do nothing! You know he kill him! I spit on you! Pig! Dog!”

“Pigeon Tony, no!” Judy leaped up and grabbed Pigeon Tony as the judge’s gavel started pounding. This outburst could get him killed. The jury was with Detective Wilkins, and Pigeon Tony was going berserk on the man.

Crak! Crak! Crak! “Order!” Judge Vaughn shouted. “Order in the Court! Ms. Carrier, get your client in control.”

“Liar! Scum!” Pigeon Tony kept screaming, and then he segued into Italian. Struggling with him, Judy understood only the word Coluzzi, screamed at least five times at an only mildly surprised Detective Wilkins.

“Order! Order!” Judge Vaughn roared, banging the gavel again and again. The bailiff and courtroom security rushed over. The gallery rose to its feet. Frank looked anguished. All hell was breaking loose.

Judy wrestled Pigeon Tony into his chair and caught sight of the jury. Even though they didn’t understand Pigeon Tony’s words, they understood his meaning, and he looked every inch the angry, violent man Santoro had told them about in his opening. Judy dug her nails into Pigeon Tony’s shoulder and forced him to stay in his seat, but he was still yelling in Italian.

“Your Honor, may we conference?” she shouted, over him.

Crak! Crak! Crak! “We damn well better!” Judge Vaughn thundered. “Bailiff, dismiss the jury! Officers, subdue the defendant! Counsel, into my chambers! Right now!”

Judge Vaughn was so furious he didn’t bother to take off his robes but swept into his huge leather desk chair and let them billow around him like the silken mantle of a king. His large chambers were elegantly appointed, with a polished walnut desk, which was faced by navy leather chairs so large they made even Judy look small. Santoro’s Italian loafers barely grazed the sapphire-and-ruby-patterned carpet, and hunter green volumes of Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes Annotated lined the walls of the chamber, as well as tan-and-red volumes of the Pennsylvania reporters and an entire shelf of detective fiction. It didn’t bode well for the defense.

“Ms. Carrier,” Judge Vaughn said, his tone exasperated and his face ruddier than usual. “What the hell is going on out there?”

“Your Honor, I apologize—”

“My courtroom is a zoo! The gallery is the Hatfields and the McCoys! I have double the usual number of men on security. We’re already taking from the Williamson case upstairs.” The judge gestured wildly, his sleeves flying out like an eagle’s wings. “How am I going to explain this to the court administrator? What the hell is the problem with your client?”

“Your Honor, I apologize, but let me explain. My client—”

“Do. Please. Now.” Vaughn simmered while Judy hatched a plan. She could still get Pigeon Tony out of the mess he’d gotten himself into.

“First, I am really sorry.”

“Really sorry?” Judge Vaughn ripped off his glasses and held them poised beside his face. “Really sorry? Can’t we do better than really sorry?”

“Very sorry. Extremely sorry. So very sorry.” Was this a game? Judy stopped guessing. “The problem, as you can see, is that my client is very emotional about this matter and is obviously under a great deal of strain. I apologize for his outburst, especially coming as it did, in front of the jury.”

“Disrupting my trial!” Judge Vaughn said, snatching a tissue from a box on his desk and wiping his forehead with it.

“Exactly, which brings me to my point.” Judy cleared her throat. “The fact that it occurred in front of the jury makes me concerned that prejudice has occurred, and I doubt the ability of this jury to fairly evaluate the facts of the case. Because the incident occurred so early in the trial, it would not be so great an imposition of the judicial system if the Court were to grant a mistrial at this point, and the defense so moves.”

Judge Vaughn’s blue eyes widened and a thick vein expanded in his neck. “Are you crazy?”

Judy hoped it was rhetorical. “Your Honor, I’m as unhappy about it as you are, but I see no alternative, given the outburst.”

Santoro fairly waved his hand. “Your Honor, the Commonwealth opposes any such mistrial. It is a terrible waste of resources. I have ten murder cases back at the office, and here we are, already on trial in this one, after it took almost two weeks to pick a death-qualified jury. In addition, Your Honor, I think defense counsel has incredible nerve, making this request after her own client acted out. How could there be any prejudice, when her client did most of his screaming in Italian? The jury has a right to evaluate this man for what he is, and he’s obviously not shy about his conduct.”

Judge Vaughn was shaking his head, and Judy knew it would be the fastest ruling in judicial history. “There will be no mistrial in this matter, and the defense request is denied. The defendant brought this on himself and he won’t benefit by it.” The judge pointed directly at Judy, his robe slipping back to reveal a white French cuff with a gold cufflink. “Ms. Carrier, tell your client to straighten up and fly right. I’ll give him the night to cool down, and we’re back in session at nine on Tuesday morning. Get your act together. Capisce?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Judy said. She capisced just fine.

But would Pigeon Tony?

Chapter 40

“I go to judge, I tell him police do nothing! Nothing! Pigs! Scum!

Bullies!” Pigeon Tony wasn’t any calmer three hours and two cartons of take-out lo mein later, and Judy wasn’t completely surprised. Bennie had gone back to her office, leaving Judy and an unusually quiet Frank in the main conference room at Rosato & Associates, which Judy had claimed as her war room. An expanse of windows, now black with night, reflected her agitated client.

“Why judge mad at me? I tell truth! I know truth!” Pigeon Tony’s face was still red with emotion. He couldn’t sit still in his tan swivel chair, in front of an oak credenza stuffed with accordion files for the Lucia case, mounds of legal research, and Judy’s notes. None of it had proved any help in the face of an Italian client. It was the English common law, after all, and had stood only for centuries.

“Pigeon Tony, please.” Judy glared at her client across the table. “You keep up what you did today, and that jury will turn against you. You’re playing with fire. The judge is already very unhappy with you, and the jury can sense that too.”

“Lies! All liars! No can believe!” Pigeon Tony’s eyes had gone bloodshot and he began to get winded. Judy was worried he’d have a stroke and passed him a can of Coke across the table.

“Take a sip. Please. Calm down.”

Pigeon Tony ignored her. “You tell judge. I tell judge! Liars! You hear what they say? All lies! He kill my son! My daughter-in-law!”

Judy’s stomach tensed as she watched Frank’s reaction. He was standing behind his grandfather, his forehead buckled with strain at the mention of his parents’ death. Judy had had enough. She stood up and folded her arms. “Pigeon Tony, quiet! Enough! Stop!”

Pigeon Tony startled, evidently accustomed to being the only temper tantrum in the room.

“We’ll go to court tomorrow and you will shut up! I almost got killed for you. You owe me.”

Pigeon Tony opened his mouth, then shut it.

“Now do I have your attention?”

Pigeon Tony fell silent, his leathery skin mottled. He hadn’t lost his tan from months of working outdoors with Frank, building a wall. Judy wished for just one rock.

“I promise you. The next peep outta you in that courtroom, you don’t have to worry about the jury. I’ll kill you myself.”

Pigeon Tony stopped fussing in his chair.

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good.” Judy glanced at Frank, who forced a smile. She knew him well enough to know he was concerned by what had happened in court. “Now, time for you to go home.” She checked her watch. “It’s almost ten. You both need some sleep for tomorrow, and I have work to do, to prepare.”

Frank touched his grandfather’s shoulder. “Come on, Pop, she’s right.”

“S’allright,” Pigeon Tony said, rising as if he were suddenly weary, and Frank helped him to his feet, then stopped.

“Pop, gimme a minute alone with my girl, would you?” he asked softly, and Pigeon Tony nodded. Frank walked him out of the conference-room door, undoubtedly left him with the security guards, then came back in and closed the door behind him. When he returned, Frank’s brown eyes looked washed out, not with fatigue, but with something Judy couldn’t identify.

“What’s the matter?” Judy asked. “Besides the obvious?”

“Siddown a minute,” Frank said, but he didn’t meet her eye. He took a seat on one side of the table, and Judy sat across from him.

She watched him loosen his tie, tugging it from one side to the next.

“Are we having sex again? I really liked it the first and only time.” Judy smiled, but Frank didn’t.

“No.” He rubbed his chin, running his finger pads over his dark stubble. “But this is hard to talk about.”

Judy didn’t feel like joking, which left her speechless. “What?”

“My grandfather, today in court. He yelled at the detective.”

“Right.”

“First he yelled in English, then in Italian. You didn’t understand the Italian, did you?”

Judy felt a wrench in her chest. Suddenly she sensed where this was going. “No,” she said, but it wasn’t an answer. It was a wish.

“In Italian, what he yelled at the detective was ‘Coluzzi told me he killed my son, and that’s why I killed him. But you did nothing.’” Frank’s voice sounded soft, almost hoarse, as if the very words choked him. “At least that’s what I think I heard. I may be mistaken. The microphones to the gallery distorted his voice. And he was facing away from me. And my Italian isn’t that good.”

Judy didn’t breathe. “So then it probably isn’t what he said.”

“But it could be.”

Judy wanted this conversation to be over. “You know your grandfather thinks it was murder. You told me that.”

“But now he’s saying that Coluzzi confessed to it. Admitted it, that morning.” Frank looked at Judy directly, his dark eyes boring into her, making the connection between them real, reminding her again of their lovemaking. It mattered to her. “Do you know what he was talking about?”

Her thoughts raced. She didn’t want to hurt Frank but she didn’t want to lie to him either, and she had kept so much from him. Finding the junked truck. The accident expert. The useless report. If the truck accident was murder, it couldn’t be proved. It could only drive Frank crazy, for the rest of his life. He would become another Pigeon Tony, haunted by sorrow and rage. But she owed Frank an honest answer, so she gave it to him.

“I told you when we first met that I was your grandfather’s lawyer. The fact that I am now your lover doesn’t change that. If you want the answer to your question, you have to ask him.”

Frank nodded, but it was a jerky movement, almost a spasm, as if the very notion that it could be true was a shock to his senses. “If it’s true, I have a right to know.”

“You should talk to him.”

“But I’m talking to you. They were my parents, not his. And not yours either.” Frank’s tone went bitter, and Judy could taste the sourness in her own mouth, like a kiss at the end of an affair.

She rose, her knees weak, because if she stayed sitting a moment longer she would tell him. And she didn’t want them to end before they had even started. “You really should go, Frank. Your grandfather needs to sleep.”

Frank stood up and straightened with some difficulty, and Judy could tell from the way he moved that he knew he had heard right, that Coluzzi had killed his parents.

“Frank—” she said, but she caught herself before she finished the sentence. Because she both did and didn’t want to tell.

“Judy, my love,” Frank said, but his tone wasn’t loving. He walked to the conference room door, then paused. “Someday it won’t be about my grandfather anymore, or about his case. Someday it will be about you and me. And I hope we’re still together when that happens.”

Judy was left standing, jelly-kneed, long after he had gone.

Judy spent her last few hours of alertness at the office laying out her cross-examination of the Commonwealth’s witnesses, then working on her own defense case. Her strategy taxed her brain and her talk with Frank tugged at her heart, and long after coffee had stopped working, fear wasn’t even doing the trick. The security guards rested in the firm’s reception area, awake because they were the night shift, and protecting her and Bennie. She checked her watch.

Midnight.

As tired as Judy was, there was something she liked about being at work at this hour. The city was so still outside, the night so dense it was hard to believe it would ever fade to light, setting cars cruising onto highways, coffee dripping into glass pots, and jurors coming to court to decide if another human being should live or die.

She got up, stretched, and made her way to Bennie’s office. She took it as a measure of some sort of personal growth that she had stopped thinking of Bennie as the boss. The only boss Judy had ever known was her father, and she suspected that every boss after that was just a stand-in for him. But at some point, when she wasn’t looking, Judy had become her own boss. Maybe it happened when someone had entrusted his life to her.

“Hey,” Judy said from the threshold, and Bennie looked up from the brief she was editing, her hair falling across one eye. She pushed it away.

“Hey back at you.”

“I forget what my dog looks like. Do you remember?” Judy sat down in the cushy chair across from Bennie’s desk.

“It’s yellow. That’s why they call them goldens. Is your puppy still with Tony Two Feet?”

“Si, si. The hotel isn’t having her.” Judy sighed. “Boy, do I feel sorry for myself tonight. My case is in trouble, my client freaked in open court, and I just lost a boyfriend I didn’t have.”

“Count your blessings. Your best friend is alive and well.”

“But still not back at work”

“You’ve survived the Coluzzis.”

“Only so far.”

“You’re suing the Coluzzis.”

“We’re bogged down in paper.”

“Also you know your client is innocent, even though he did it. Which is a neat trick.”

“The neatest.” Judy nodded in agreement. “I am Cleopatra, queen of denial.”

Bennie sipped undoubtedly cold coffee. “Also you can win this case.”

Judy blinked. Had she heard her right? It was late. Her Italian was poor. “What did you say?”

“Or more accurately, you can win this case if you figure out how.”

“What do you mean? Why do you say that?” Judy edged forward, and Bennie leaned back in her chair, which creaked in the silent office.

“I’ve tried lots of murder cases, back in the day, as you know. And there’s one thing that I have learned, and every criminal defense lawyer should know it.”

“Hit me.” It reminded Judy of Santoro. Every murder case is a simple story. If Judy were going to try murder cases for a living, she had to get a generalization of her own.

“Every murder case is about two questions.” Bennie held up an index finger. “One, did the guy who got killed deserve to die?” She added another finger. “And two, was the defendant the man for the job? If the answer to both questions is yes, then the defense has a shot. Which is the most you can ask, especially in this case.”

Judy blinked. It was a helluva theory. Better than Santoro’s. But so was Bennie.

“In this case, the answer to both questions is yes, but you have to give the jury something to go on. Hand them a defense they can talk themselves into believing. You’re all set up for it. You did a great job with the neighbors today. The jury will go for you if you just give them the chance.”

Judy frowned. “Think I can do it?”

“I know you can.”

“Think I can fail?”

“Of course.”

Judy blinked. “Ouch.”

“I’m a lawyer, not a cheerleader,” Bennie said, but Judy couldn’t manage a smile.

Chapter 41

“No comment!” Judy shouted, putting her head down and plowing through the press outside the Criminal Justice Center. Two musclemen in suits flanked her, serving double duty against bad guys and reporters. Umbrellas covered the TV anchors, and video cameras whirred through thick plastic bags. Despite the rain, there were more reporters than yesterday, attracted by Pigeon Tony’s courtroom tarantella. The morning headlines had made her shudder: TONY’S TIRADE. ITALIAN CURSES COP. GRUMPY OLD MAN. THE DIATRIBE AND THE DETECTIVE.

“Ms. Carrier, just one picture!” “Ms. Carrier, you gonna put him on the stand?” “Judy, any comment on Judge Vaughn’s ruling against you?” “Ms. Carrier, what happened in chambers? Did he read you the riot act?”

Judy ignored them and climbed the slick curb to the courthouse entrance, almost tripping over wet TV cables that snaked along like pythons. If the Coluzzis didn’t kill her, the press would. The newspapers had reported Pigeon Tony’s outburst, but nobody could translate it, and the courtroom stenographer hadn’t transcribed the Italian. Judy could only hope that Frank remained as uncertain as everybody else. He hadn’t called to say good night last night and wasn’t answering his cell phone. She’d be meeting them upstairs in court, since they entered through the secured entrance.

“Judy, what are you gonna do to Jimmy Bello on the stand?” shouted one of the reporters just as Judy reached the revolving door, where she stopped.

“Best question of the morning,” she called back, and entered the courthouse.

Judge Vaughn was wearing a light blue shirt under his robes, with a dark blue tie whose knot peeked through the V at the neck, and he spent most of Detective Wilkins’s routine testimony glaring at Pigeon Tony from the dais, which worked for Judy. Pigeon Tony fidgeted a little but, as promised, didn’t make a peep, so Judy didn’t have to kill him. The courtroom was over-air-conditioned, to keep the humidity low on this rainy day, and Judy felt chilled even in her navy blazer and skirt. Or maybe it was the way Frank had looked this morning that left her cold. She glanced back at the gallery through the bulletproof shield.

Frank met her eye only briefly, then focused again on the witness. His face was pale beneath his fresh shave, and there were circles under his large eyes, emphasized by the darkness of his corduroy suit and knit tie. He kept stealing looks at John Coluzzi. Obviously Pigeon Tony had told Frank about his parents. Judy didn’t know what would happen next, but she had to put him out of her mind. She was trying to save his grandfather’s life. She returned to the testimony, taking notes while Detective Wilkins spoke, but it concluded quickly, with Santoro taking his seat at counsel table.

“Ms. Carrier, your witness.” Judge Vaughn shifted his icy gaze from Pigeon Tony to Judy, and she stood up and went to the podium.

“Thank you, Your Honor.” She faced Detective Wilkins, who eyed her with remoteness. If he remembered that day in her apartment, when he was so nice to her, it didn’t show. Today they were adversaries and they both knew it. “Detective Wilkins, we have met, haven’t we?”

“Yes, we have, Ms. Carrier.” The detective’s blue-eyed gaze met Judy’s levelly, and his demeanor remained steady. He even wore the same suit as yesterday; the jury would like that, Judy knew. And they’d already be on his side, after Pigeon Tony’s display. She had to defuse it.

“Detective, you have my client’s apologies for his conduct yesterday, as well as my own apology,” she said, meaning it, even though she could see two jurors in the front row smile.

Detective Wilkins nodded graciously. “All in a day’s work.”

Judy laughed. Touché. Maybe it would help put the incident behind them. “Now, as you have testified, you were the detective on the scene the morning Angelo Coluzzi was killed, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you were called to the pigeon-racing club?”

“Yes.”

“And you examined the back room carefully, where the killing occurred?”

“Yes.”

“And you testified there were signs of only a brief struggle?”

“I did.”

“Excuse me a moment.” Judy turned to counsel table, grabbed the exhibit mounted on foamcore, brought it to the witness stand, and placed it on a metal easel. The jury looked at the exhibit while she moved it into evidence, without objection. “Let the record show that the exhibit is a black-line diagram of the first floor of the pigeon-racing club, including the back room.” Judy had reconstructed it from her memory and with the help of The Two Tonys. “Detective Wilkins, does this depict the first floor as you remember it, including the back room and the furniture?”

Detective Wilkins scanned the exhibit. “It does.”

“The exhibit shows a large entrance room, let’s call it, with a bar on the west side of the room, the left-hand side. The entrance to the back room is on the north wall, through a wooden door. Correct?”

The detective nodded. “Yes.”

“The back room contained a blue card table in the middle of the room, with four chairs around it. Referring again to brief signs of a struggle, didn’t you notice that the table had been out of square?”

Detective Wilkins thought about it. “I did.”

“So the table had been moved,” Judy summarized for the jury’s benefit. “Would you say it was clearly out of square?”

“Slightly.” Detective Wilkins knew just where Judy was going, and he wasn’t going with her, which was to be expected.

“But clearly, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Thank you.” Judy pointed to the black-line chair in the diagram. She could have proved this easily through use of police photos, but they showed Angelo Coluzzi dead in the center of the picture. “Now, Detective Wilkins, there were four chairs around the table, all of which are brown metal folding chairs. Do you recall them?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it true that the chair on the east side of the table was knocked over?”

“Yes, but it was on the path of travel, from the door to the bookshelves.”

Judy held up a firm hand. “I’m not asking why or how you think it was knocked over, only that it had been knocked over. And it had, hadn’t it?”

“Yes.” Detective Wilkins’s mouth became a hard line.

Judy pointed to the exhibit again. “Now, the metal shelves we have been talking about that you said had been pulled down, they had been standing against the east side of the room, opposite the table, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And they had been pulled down. To the floor, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And the contents, which were pigeon supplies, had fallen to the ground. Had bottles broken?”

“Yes.”

“Pills spilled out?”

“Yes.”

“Bands for pigeons’ legs had fallen from their boxes?”

Detective Wilkins thought a minute. “Yes.”

Judy collected her thoughts. She had almost accomplished what she needed to, setting up her closing. She couldn’t get much more out of a hostile witness. But she needed to make her point. “Detective Wilkins, your credentials are very impressive, your having worked for twenty-three years as a homicide detective. How many crime scenes do you think you have examined in that time?”

Detective Wilkins sighed. “Thousands, unfortunately.”

Judy let it be. There were roughly two hundred murders in the city in a year, and she didn’t want to do the grisly multiplication either. “I would gather that most of those murders involve a weapon—a knife or a gun—am I correct?”

“For the most part, yes. That is the typical situation.”

“So you are very familiar with the signs of a struggle that occur in such situations?”

“Yes.”

Judy took a breath—and a risk. “Have you ever investigated a killing that took place without a weapon, between two men over the age of seventy-five?”

Surprised, Detective Wilkins reacted with a short laugh. “No.”

“So how much of a struggle do you want?” she asked with a throwaway smile, and Wilkins smiled, too. “Thank you, I have no further questions.” Judy grabbed her exhibit and sat down before Santoro could object. That had gone as well as it could, and Santoro stood up and approached the podium.

“Your Honor, I have redirect,” Santoro called out, but Judge Vaughn was already nodding over his half-glasses. Santoro addressed his witness. “Detective Wilkins, you said you have investigated thousands of murder scenes, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you have a set of skills and experiences that you bring to bear in every murder scene you investigate, is that right?”

“I like to think so.”

“And so you can be presented with a new situation in a murder scene and you can bring to bear your skills, experience, and instincts, honed over twenty-three years?”

Judy thought about objecting but let it go. The jury could see how self-serving it was, and she wouldn’t get points by tearing down Detective Wilkins.

Detective Wilkins nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so.”

Santoro rocked on his loafers a minute, evidently thinking about pressing it, and Judy shifted in her chair. If he went too far, she would object and she would have to be sustained. It was the lawyer’s equivalent of the cowboy’s hand hovering at his hip holster. Santoro made a decision. “I have no further questions. Thank you very much, Detective,” he said, and sat down.

It was always high noon in a murder trial, but only one man took the risk of getting dead.

Santoro’s next witness was a woman from Mobile Crime, a tall brunette with a black suit, a severe ponytail, and thick glasses, who testified that she had collected fibers from the clothes of Angelo Coluzzi that came from Pigeon Tony’s clothes. She was absolutely credible, and Judy barely objected, since it wasn’t inconsistent with her case for the defense. And her thoughts were elsewhere, as she tried to figure out what Santoro was doing and ways she could meet whatever it was in her case.

It was clearly the morning for police testimony, because his next witness was another crime tech, a red-haired young man who had taken photographs of the scene. Santoro’s only purpose was to show the photographs of Coluzzi’s body to the jury, over Judy’s objection. She could do little but watch them as they looked uncomfortably at the grim photos, which Santoro had enlarged on a projection screen in the front of the courtroom. They swallowed hard at the sad sight, and Coluzzi looked horrible in photo after photo, his dark eyes sunken, his body as small and frail as Judy had remembered. The slides weren’t bloody, but somehow their very ordinariness spoke with a more subtle eloquence. Two jurors looked away, and even Pigeon Tony blinked.

But Judy was suddenly grateful for the bulletproof sheet muting the reaction of the gallery. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Coluzzi’s widow crying and John Coluzzi holding her as she sobbed. The entire Coluzzi side of the courtroom was red-faced and teary, but the Lucia side remained still. Sketch artists drew madly, kept busy not only by the scene in the courtroom but by the one in the gallery, and the reporters scribbled their squiggles of old-fashioned shorthand. The Tonys had no reaction, and Frank kept eyeing the Coluzzis. Judy would have to talk to him at the noon recess and find out what he knew.

For the first time in her life, she wasn’t looking forward to lunch.

Chapter 42

The courthouse conference room suddenly felt smaller than Judy remembered, but maybe that was because she was facing off against her lover. She stood on one side of the table and Frank on the other. The fluorescent lights were harsh and glaring. An uneaten pizza sat steaming in its box on the table. In two swivel chairs sat Pigeon Tony and Bennie, reduced to a captive audience.

“You didn’t tell me, Judy,” Frank said, his tone an accusation and his mouth tight with hurt. Pain filled his eyes, which looked bloodshot from a night without sleep. “You knew Coluzzi killed my parents and you didn’t tell me.”

Judy felt her face flush. “Your grandfather told you what Coluzzi said.”

“Yes. He didn’t want to, but he did.”

Pigeon Tony was shaking his head with regret. “Sorry, Judy. He no stop. He ask, ask, ask, ask. He scream and yell. He no give up. Like father.”

But Frank ignored him. “He also told me about my parents’ truck, which you found, and have, incredibly enough—and the report you got from an expert who examined the wreck. You know more about my parents’ death than I do, Judy. You knew all along. And you didn’t tell me!”

“I couldn’t. It was privileged.”

“Bullshit!” Frank raised his voice, then glanced nervously at the conference room door. “You could have told me! I don’t want to hear about this privilege shit!” Frank caught himself and lowered his voice. “You’re not my lawyer. You’re supposed to be my lover. My friend. Everything. I took that seriously, but evidently you didn’t.”

Judy went hot with embarrassment. She didn’t want to be having this conversation in a courthouse, in front of other people, much less Bennie, so she said as much.

“This is the time and place, Judy, and you didn’t tell me about my parents’ murder because you were afraid I’d retaliate. You both were!” Frank cast a scornful glance that managed to encompass both Judy and Pigeon Tony. “That’s why you two kept your mouth shut. You both decided what my reaction should be, and it wasn’t the one you wanted, so you didn’t tell me. But that wasn’t for either of you to decide. They were my parents! I am their only son! I had a right to know they were murdered.”

“But we don’t know that they were!” Judy couldn’t help but shout. “Think logically. Coluzzi told your grandfather he killed them, and I didn’t tell you that. Granted. But before you go off half-cocked, you should understand that there’s no proof that Coluzzi was telling the truth. I don’t think he did it.”

Pigeon Tony was nodding. “He did it.”

“He did it!” Frank agreed.

“You don’t know that,” Judy said. “In fact, I have, or had, tapes of Coluzzi discussing the night your parents had the accident. There’s not a word on them about the murder or your parents. Nothing.”

“Tapes, from where?” Frank demanded, and even Pigeon Tony looked over. She hadn’t mentioned the tapes to either of them. “What tapes? Videotapes?”

“Phone tapes.”

“Phone tapes? Of Coluzzi? Who was he discussing it with?”

Judy thought better of it. She didn’t want Frank attacking Jimmy Bello, not before she had her chance with him on cross-examination. “It doesn’t matter. But I had them, and they said nothing. And the expert I hired said the accident was only an accident, as did the cops. They can’t all be wrong, Frank. Use your head, not your heart.”

But Frank’s anger became unfocused. “Who was Coluzzi on the phone with? Who? And where did you get the tapes?”

“I’m not telling you that, and you have to trust me. They don’t prove anything. Nothing proves anything. I think it was an accident. I didn’t think it before that accident expert, but now I do.”

“I don’t need proof. Coluzzi admitted it.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Think about it.”

Frank threw up his hands. “Why would he say it if he didn’t do it?”

“To drive your grandfather crazy. To make him nuts. To take credit for something he didn’t do, with false bravado.” Judy felt calmer. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. “There are a million explanations, Frank. Coluzzi was a sadist.”

“He did it!”

“He did it,” Pigeon Tony echoed, and Bennie shot him a dirty look.

Judy got fed up. “Look, Frank, I’m in the middle of a murder trial right now. So this isn’t about you or your parents, as sorry as I am for their deaths. Right now it’s about your grandfather, who is charged with murder, and it doesn’t look so good for the good guys. Or the bad guys. Whoever we are.” It was a little confusing.

Frank swallowed, visibly dry-mouthed, and Judy saw her opening and went for it, as much as it hurt her to shut him down.

“You want to know the truth, Frank? You can read it. I’ll give you the files tonight. My file, the police file, the whole thing. You want to, you can even talk to the expert. He’s completely impartial. He said the guardrail was too low to be safe and there was no foul play. But right now I have a client to defend and you are not helping him—or me—in the least.”

Frank’s features went stiff and he looked down at Pigeon Tony, whose tiny face sagged between his hands. Frank stood still for a minute, then his sigh was audible. “Fine. We’ll discuss it later.”

Judy figured it was the closest an Italian man could come to an apology. “And you won’t get crazy until we do.”

“I didn’t promise that.”

“It wasn’t a question,” Judy said, and let it drop. Frank wasn’t nuts enough to be thinking about murder, was he? And who would he kill? Angelo Coluzzi was already dead. “Now let’s get back to court, where all I have to fight with is the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” Judy glanced at Bennie. “You have anything to tell me before we go back in there?”

“Nope. You’re the boss, boss,” Bennie said, with a relieved smile, and Judy breathed in the encouragement.

“Then let’s go kick some ass.”

On the witness stand in a three-piece suit of light gray wool, Dr. Patel made the same professional picture Judy remembered from the medical examiner’s office. Glossy black hair, large brown eyes behind glasses, a pleasant smile, and a British accent that enhanced the impressiveness of his qualifications. He could have ordered a cheese pizza and sounded smart.

“Now, Dr. Patel, you were the assistant medical examiner who examined the body of Angelo Coluzzi, were you not?” Santoro asked.

“Yes.”

“And you prepared a report of that postmortem examination, did you not?”

“I did.”

Santoro approached the witness stand. “May I approach, Your Honor?” he said needlessly, as Vaughn nodded. “I am showing you a copy of your report on the examination of Angelo Coluzzi, and I ask you to identify it, Dr. Patel.”

“It is mine.”

Santoro moved the report into evidence without objection and addressed the witness. “Please describe briefly for the jury your examination, in layman’s terms, if you would.”

“Briefly, the first step in an autopsy is the external examination,” Dr. Patel began, then described in detail the procedure that Judy had witnessed at the morgue, beginning with the inspection of the deceased’s clothes, and ending with the weighing and sectioning of the internal organs. It sounded even more revolting in description, with the imagination working its wizardry. By the time Dr. Patel was finished, Santoro was pulling out autopsy photos like a proud father.

Judy half rose. “Objection, Your Honor, as to prejudice.”

“Overruled,” Judge Vaughn said. It was by now established law that the Commonwealth had the right to gross out the jury.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Santoro said, and he moved the exhibits into evidence without further objection. He set the first one before Dr. Patel and broadcast it on the overhead projector. “Dr. Patel, you see before you Commonwealth Exhibit Ten. Is this, in fact, the body of the deceased, Angelo Coluzzi?”

“It is.”

“Dr. Patel, did you form an opinion, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, as to the cause of death of Angelo Coluzzi?”

“I did.”

“What was your opinion, Doctor?”

“I found that it was homicide, and that the cause of death was a fracture to the spinal column, at C3, in the cervical vertebra.”

“And how did you determine this, Doctor?”

“By inspection and by X ray.”

Santoro looked grave, and Judy had the sense that he’d practiced. “What was the mechanism of death, sir?”

“Death resulted from a blunt-force injury, that is, a rapid forward snap that broke the neck. Death was instantaneous.”

Santoro nodded. “Dr. Patel, just so the jury understands, when is this type of injury often seen?”

“This injury is similar to the whiplash type of injury one sees in auto accidents, when a car is struck from behind, or even in child abuse cases, with so-called Shaken Baby Syndrome. In this family of injury, undue stresses are placed on the cervical spine, and it ruptures, as it did in the case of the deceased.”

Judy made a note. She should have objected but she hadn’t seen it coming. She didn’t want Angelo Coluzzi equated with a baby in the jury’s mind.

Santoro changed to a slide of the top half of Angelo Coluzzi’s body, showing the neck and shoulders. The head was hideously askew. The jury reacted instantly. “Dr. Patel, I show you Commonwealth Exhibit Eleven. What does this view tell us?”

“It shows the looseness of the neck, which is clearly at an abnormal angle, as it is now severed from the shoulders. A broken neck can be difficult to detect. There is often little bruising, so X rays are indicated to confirm the conclusion.”

Santoro showed the slide of an X ray, which he moved into evidence, and Judy didn’t object, as repetitive as it was. She would lose anyway, and in fact the X ray was abstract in a way the photographs weren’t, reducing the whole human being to a black-and-white segment. If anything, it was a relief from the autopsy photos, and the jury returned to the fold. Judy bet Santoro wouldn’t have it up there long.

“Dr. Patel, I now show you Commonwealth Exhibit Twelve. What does this teach us?”

Dr. Patel shifted around and lifted a steel pointer from the witness stand. “As you can see, the human vertebrae interlock almost like a thick chain, except that one of the links has been broken.” He pointed to a break in the chain. “It determines positively that the spinal column has been broken.”

“Thank you.” Santoro nodded. “I have no further questions.”

Judy stood up, armed with notes and a report from an expert osteopath she had worked with in preparation for trial. “Good afternoon, Dr. Patel. My name is Judy Carrier, and if you recall, I was present at the postmortem of Mr. Coluzzi.”

“Yes, hello, Ms. Carrier.” Dr. Patel smiled.

“I have only a few questions for you. Dr. Patel, do you recall the age of Angelo Coluzzi at the time of his death?”

Dr. Patel nodded. “He was eighty, I believe.”

“In your opinion, how are the bones of an eighty-year-old man different from those of, let’s say, a thirty-year-old man?”

“Well, the bone mass of older people is, in general, markedly different from that of younger people. Bones become more brittle as we age. They lose mass and resiliency.” Dr. Patel cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his chair when he looked in Santoro’s direction. Judy could guess that the D.A. wasn’t happy with the lecture, but Dr. Patel was his own man, a dangerous thing in an expert.

“Specifically, how is the spine of an eighty-year-old man different from that of, let’s say, a thirty-year-old man?”

“Like other bones, the spine weakens with age in general, becoming more fragile. This is because the vertebrae lose some of their mineral content, making each bone thinner. Also, between each pair of vertebrae, the inter-vertebral disk, a gel-like cushion, loses fluid gradually, making these thinner as well. The spinal column therefore becomes curved and compressed. In addition, as we age, the likelihood of arthritis and osteoarthritis increases.”

Bingo. Judy paused. She had hired an expert of her own, a gerontologist she hoped she didn’t have to call, if she could get the evidence now. “And is it true that Angelo Coluzzi’s cervical vertebrae shows these typical signs of aging?”

“It is.”

“And isn’t it also true that he had signs of osteoarthritis in his cervical spine?”

“He did. The deceased had signs of arthritis in his neck and also signs of osteoarthritis, which is not uncommon in that age group. By age sixty-five, most people experience pain and stiffness in their joints. Osteoarthritis occurs with equal frequency in men and women. The hands and knees are more commonly involved in women and the hips in men. But it can exist in the neck, too, as in Mr. Coluzzi’s case.”

“And isn’t it true that these conditions—his age, his arthritis, and his osteoarthritis—would make it easier to break his neck than the neck of a younger, healthier, man?”

Santoro was on his feet. “Objection, relevance,” he said, but Judge Vaughn was already shaking his head over his papers at the dais.

“Overruled.” The judge returned to listening to the testimony, his chin in his large hand.

Judy nodded at Dr. Patel. “You may answer.”

“Yes, Mr. Coluzzi’s age and his osteoarthritis would render his neck fairly susceptible to such an injury.”

Judy decided to press it. “Before, Dr. Patel, you testified that his injury was like a whiplash injury from a car accident or Shaken Baby Syndrome from child abuse. Did I hear you correctly?”

“Yes.”

“But, just so the jury isn’t confused, isn’t it true that it would take far less than both of these examples to break the neck of Angelo Coluzzi, especially given his ailments and his age?”

“Yes, of course.” Dr. Patel turned to address the jury directly, as Judy was praying he would. “I didn’t mean to confuse anyone. I only meant to say this was in the same family of types of injury, not that it was caused the same way. The injury to the deceased could occur with very little force or violence, and it could happen in an instant.”

“As if, in a scuffle?” Judy offered, but Santoro was on his loafers.

“Objection, Your Honor, as to relevance.”

“Overruled,” Judge Vaughn said wearily, and Santoro sat down. It was more than Judy had hoped for. Her karma banks were kicking in. It must have been the pantyhose. Anybody who had to wear pantyhose every day deserved a break from the cosmos.

“You were saying, Dr. Patel. Could this type of injury, on an eighty-year-old man with osteoarthritis and arthritis, have occurred in a scuffle?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Dr. Patel,” Judy said, and meant it. She wouldn’t even need to call her own expert later. She had gotten what she needed from the Commonwealth’s. “No further questions.” Judy grabbed her notes and sat down as Santoro got up hastily and commanded the podium.

“Dr. Patel,” he asked, “could this injury also be caused by a violent push from the front, as in an attack?”

Judy let it lie. She knew the answer. It was what had happened, but it wasn’t the only thing that could have happened, which was all that mattered for reasonable doubt.

Dr. Patel thought a moment. “Yes, this injury could also have occurred from a violent push from the front, as in an attack.”

Santoro exhaled, obviously pleased. “Thank you, Dr. Patel.”

But Judy was pleased, too. She could be on her way to saving Pigeon Tony, if she could put a hurt on Jimmy Bello, who undoubtedly would come next.

Chapter 43

Jimmy Bello wore a dark silk tie, a bright white shirt, and a shiny gray suit for trial, which looked remarkably like Santoro’s. Judy assumed it wasn’t the thug aspiring to be a lawyer, but the other way around, and she hoped that everyone would stop wanting to be mobsters soon. She was completely over Mafia chic and was considering boycotting The Sopranos.

“Now, Mr. Bello,” Santoro was saying, “you have worked for the Coluzzi family for thirty-five years, correct?”

“Yeh.”

“And while Angelo Coluzzi was alive and running the construction company, you worked directly for him?” “Yeh.” “You knew him well?” “Very.” “He was a friend?” “Yeh.” Judy smiled to herself. If Santoro was trying to wring some emotion out of Fat Jimmy, he’d have to wring harder.

Santoro twisted his neck to free it from his tight collar. “Now, moving directly to the events on the morning of April seventeenth, you were with Angelo Coluzzi that morning, correct?”

“Yeh.”

“It was just the two of you, by the way?”

“Yeh.”

“Where did you go?”

“I drove Angelo to the club, ’cause he needed to get some bands.”

“Bands, what are they?”

“Steel bands, for his birds. His pigeons. For the next race. They’re numbered, like that, so you can’t cheat at the races.”

Judy noticed two of the jurors chuckling, and Santoro decided to move on, with good reason.

Santoro continued, “Mr. Bello, please tell the jury what happened at the pigeon club that morning.”

“Well, me and Angelo opened the place and Angelo went in the back room while I went to make some coffee. Instant, at the bar. That’s right near the back room. They got like a coil, you know. You plug it in and stick it in the mug, with the water.”

Santoro sighed, almost audibly. “Then what did you do?”

“I went to the bathroom while the water was gonna boil.”

“Then what happened?”

“When I came out I seen Tony Pensiera and Tony LoMonaco standing there and the water boiling in the mug. So they see me and they say, what are you doin’ here, and I say what are you doin’ here, and we both figure out that Pigeon Tony, I mean Tony Lucia, went in the back room to get his bands, where Angelo already was.”

Santoro raised a hand. “Did you hear anything at that point?”

“I heard Tony Lucia yell, ‘I’m gonna kill you,’ in Italian.”

Judy eyed the jury, which reacted instantly. A juror in the front row gasped; a homemaker, from Chestnut Hill. Judy prayed she didn’t end up as foreperson.

Santoro nodded. “And then what did you hear, Mr. Bello?”

“A big crash and then like a scream, a real bad scream. And then we ran in the back room and there was Angelo lying there dead near the shelves, and they were spilled onna floor.”

“What was defendant Lucia doing?”

“Tony Lucia was standing over Angelo, and then his friends got him outta there and then I called the cops.”

Judy glanced again at the jury, and several in the back looked upset. But out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed her client, and to her surprise, there were tears shining in his eyes. His lashes fluttered in embarrassment, then he focused quickly elsewhere.

Judy’s mouth went dry. So Pigeon Tony felt remorse at the killing. She should have expected as much. She tried to reach for his hand, but he pulled it away and blinked his eyes clear. Judy would never understand this little man. He wasn’t ashamed to tell her that he killed Coluzzi, but he was ashamed to let her see him crying about it.

“Ms. Carrier,” Judge Vaughn was saying, “your witness.”

Judy looked up at the dais to find Santoro sitting down at counsel table, the court personnel staring at her expectantly, and Jimmy Bello examining his fingernails. She was on deck. She grabbed her pad and her exhibit and went to the podium.

“Mr. Bello, you testified that you worked for Mr. Coluzzi for thirty-five years, is that right?”

“Yeh.”

“You were his personal assistant, isn’t that right?’

“Yeh.”

“So you were with him, performing tasks for him?”

“Yeh.”

“How much of the time where you with him?”

“24-7.”

Judy lifted her legal pad so Bello could see that she was reading from her notes. In time he would figure out that they were her notes of the phone tapes. Bello had to know the tapes had been destroyed by the fake temp, but he couldn’t be sure Judy hadn’t made copies of them. Lawyers who planned better would have. Boring lawyers, who liked pumps. “Let’s briefly go through those types of tasks you performed. You drove him around, right?”

“Yeh.”

“He would tell you when to pick him up and even items to bring, right?”

“Yeh.”

“If he needed, let’s say, 20,000 square feet of plywood, builder’s grade, you would bring that, right?”

Bello blinked. “Uh, yeh.”

“If he needed extra groceries, like the Cento clam sauce his wife liked, you would bring them, right?”

“Yeh.” Bello glanced at the gallery, but Judy couldn’t afford to turn and see the reaction of Coluzzi’s widow.

“If he needed malathion and baby oil, so his pigeons didn’t get mites, you would bring it?”’

“Yeh.”

“If you got him the wrong thing, let’s say, normal peanuts to feed the pigeons instead of the raw Spanish peanuts, not roasted, no salt, you would go and get the right kind?”

“Yeh.”

“If he wanted you to bring him a Coke when you picked him up, you did that, too, am I right?”

“Objection,” Santoro said mildly, not bothering to rise. “Asked and answered, Your Honor.”

“I’ll move on,” Judy said quickly. Santoro wouldn’t understand the significance of the questions, but Bello would. He was already shifting in his chair. Judy checked her notes, which had run out of tapes and read, I’M SLEEPY. “So, Mr. Bello, since you were a friend of Mr. Coluzzi’s, you probably know a lot about who he liked and disliked, isn’t that right?”

“Yeh.”

“Isn’t it true that Mr. Coluzzi hated Tony Lucia, because Mr. Lucia’s wife had chosen to marry him instead of Mr. Coluzzi?”

“Objection!” Santoro shouted, jumping to his loafers. “Assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Your Honor,” Judy said, “it’s cross-examination.”

Judge Vaughn was shaking his head. “Sustained. There’s no foundation, counsel.”

Judy nodded. She didn’t need the foundation, she had just laid one. As the law books said, you couldn’t unring the bell. “Thank you, Your Honor, I’ll rephrase. Mr. Bello, isn’t it true that Mr. Coluzzi hated Tony Lucia?”

Bello ran a tongue over his thick lips. “Well, uh, yeh.”

“Mr. Bello, you testified that when you came out of the bathroom, Mr. Pensiera and Mr. LoMonaco were standing there, and then you heard the yell, is that right?”

“Right?”

“Would you say that five minutes passed while you were standing there but before you heard the yell?”

“I dunno.”

Judy paused. “Let’s figure it out. You testified that you came out of the bathroom, and they said, ‘What are you doing here,’ and then you said, ‘What are you doing here?’ It would take less than a minute for this to happen, wouldn’t it?”

“Okay, right.”

“And then you heard your water boiling, is that right?”

“Yeh.”

“It takes about two minutes for an immersion coil to boil water, doesn’t it?”

“Uh, yeh.”

“So that’s two minutes for sure.” Judy paused. “And you had to go around the counter to unplug the immersion coil, is that right?”

“Yeh.”

Judy reached for her exhibit and placed it on the easel. “Mr. Bello, I show you Defense Exhibit One, a diagram of the first floor of the club. The counter is here, approximately fifteen feet long. Please show the jury, where is the plug you used for the coil?”

“At the far end.” He pointed, and Judy nodded. She knew the answer from The Two Tonys, who had told her it was the only outlet at the club that worked.

“Let the record show that the witness is pointing to the west end of the bar. Doesn’t that mean that you had to go the length of the bar twice to unplug the coil?”

“Uh, yeh.”

“Wouldn’t it take you another two minutes to go around the counter, unplug the coil, come back again to where you were?” Judy didn’t refer to his weight. She didn’t need to.

“Yeh, prolly. I don’t move that fast, ever. And I wasn’t in no rush.” He laughed shortly, but the jury didn’t. They were listening, which gave Judy heart.

“So that’s four minutes, at least. Then how much after you came back from unplugging the coil did you hear the yell?”

“Right then.”

Judy paused. “So the two men were in the back room together for at least four minutes, maybe five.”

“Objection, that’s not what the witness said,” Santoro said, half rising.

“Overruled.” Judge Vaughn frowned.

“I’ll move on, Your Honor,” Judy said, as if it were a concession. She was on a roll. She had just proven that two men who hated each other had spent almost five minutes in a small room together. Who could say for sure who pushed whom first? It was Judy’s best hope for saving Pigeon Tony. The slender reed of reasonable doubt. But there was a big problem, and she went for it. “Mr. Bello, didn’t you testify that you were standing at the bar when you heard Mr. Lucia allegedly yell, ‘I’m gonna kill you,’ in Italian?”

“Yeh.”

Judy paused. “Mr. Bello, have you ever spoken to Mr. Lucia?”

“No.”

“Have you ever even heard him speak?”

“Uh, no.”

Judy could see one of the jurors reacting with a half smile in the back row. He was the electrician from Kensington and he got her point. If she pushed it further she’d lose it. “Mr. Bello, I’d like to move back in time for a moment, to the night of January twenty-fifth. That is the night that Tony Lucia’s son and daughter-in-law were killed in their truck, in an alleged truck accident. Do you recall where you were—”

“Objection, relevance!” Santoro said, rising, but Judy was already addressing Judge Vaughn.

“Your Honor, may we approach the bench?” She didn’t wait for him to nod his approval, though he did, and both lawyers went to the dais. “Your Honor,” Judy jumped in, “I know these questions seem unrelated but I have to ask the Court for some latitude, particularly in view of the fact that my client is on trial for his life. If I am permitted just a few questions to follow up, I think I can show the Court the relevance of the questions.”

Santoro was beside himself. “Your Honor, the defense is trying to muddy the waters here and distract the jury!”

Judy almost laughed. “Your Honor, the Commonwealth opened the door. Mr. Santoro is the one who raised the issue of the defendant’s belief about his son’s alleged accident, in the prosecution’s opening argument.”

Santoro stood on tiptoe. “Your Honor, I mentioned it but I haven’t called a single witness regarding the accident. It wasn’t important whether it was an accident or not, only that the defendant thought it wasn’t an accident. If Ms. Carrier goes forward with this point, I’ll be forced to bring in a witness to refute these allegations and prove that it was indeed, an accident.”

“So do it,” Judy said, but Judge Vaughn was nodding slowly.

“I’ll have to overrule the objection, for the time being. You did open the door, counsel.” Then he glanced at Judy. “But don’t travel too far afield, Ms. Carrier. No frolics and detours.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said. She returned to the podium as Santoro took his seat and started tapping on his laptop, trying to act casual, which wasn’t working. Judy felt a little nervous herself. She couldn’t get any guilt-stricken admissions from Bello, but she could rattle his cage. Because Bello didn’t know what she knew, or what she could prove, and therefore would only overestimate both. It would set up her defense, and it was all she had.

“Mr. Bello, do you recall where you were at midnight, the night Anthony Lucia’s son and daughter-in-law were killed in an alleged truck accident?”

“No.” Bello’s lips set firmly, as did Santoro’s, opposite him.

“Do you recall if you were with Angelo Coluzzi on that night?”

“No.”

“Even though you were with him, as you testified, 24-7?”

“No.”

“Do you keep any calendar, datebook, or the like that would remind you of where you were that evening?”

“No.”

“Mr. Bello, you are aware, aren’t you, that your telephone conversations from your home, including conversations with Angelo Coluzzi, were being taped at that time?”

“Objection!” Santoro erupted. “Irrelevant and prejudicial!”

Judy’s eyes were trained on Bello, whose upper lip twitched slightly. The jury was watching him, intrigued. They would remember it. He would remember it. And he wouldn’t be sure what was on the tape, especially after the opening questions, and could only assume it incriminated him. Judy figured it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

“I demand that the record be stricken, Your Honor!” Santoro shouted. “This is a bald attempt to smear a completely credible witness and confuse the jury!”

Judge Vaughn waved him into silence. “Relax, Mr. Santoro. I’ll sustain your objection, but we’re not striking the record over it.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Judy said, grabbing her exhibit. She felt flushed and happy until she headed back to counsel table and caught sight of Frank, in the front row of the gallery.

His skin had gone gray and he focused on Bello with fresh anguish. He had just found out that it had been Bello on the telephone with Coluzzi that night. He believed he was looking at his parents’ murderer. And his dark eyes told Judy, in that moment, that he was capable of murder himself.

She sat down at counsel table, and she was shaking.

Chapter 44

It was after six o’clock at night by the time they got back to the office, and almost everyone had gone home. Judy had just gotten Bennie and Pigeon Tony into the war room at Rosato & Associates when Frank put a gentle but insistent hand on her suit sleeve.

“Can I see that file now?” he asked, his voice quiet. He had been silent all the way back from the courthouse, stuck in the cab with one security guard and Judy.

“Sure.” Judy wasn’t surprised, and set her briefcase and purse down on the polished walnut table. She opened her briefcase and retrieved the complete file, including the police file and the report of the accident reconstructionist. It would be awful for him to read. Judy couldn’t get its gruesome conclusion out of her mind, and the Lucias weren’t even her parents. “You sure you want to read this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Judy stacked the computer-animated videotape on top of the report. It had convinced her, and she hoped it would convince Frank. “You can read in the other conference room, which also has a TV with a VCR in it. It’s down the hall and to the left. You probably don’t want me to send you in dinner, do you?”

“Thanks, but no.” Frank met her eye, but his gaze was disconnected, and Judy suppressed comment. It made sense he’d feel distant.

“You go ahead,” she said. “I want to talk to your grandfather anyway, explain to him what we’ll be doing tomorrow.”

“Okay, thanks.” Frank palmed the files and tape and left, closing the door behind him, as Judy settled Pigeon Tony at the table and Bennie went to the credenza at the far end of the room, picked up the phone, and began checking her voicemail.

“Frankie okay?” Pigeon Tony said, and Judy shrugged.

“I hope so.”

“I no like.” Pigeon Tony hung his head. “Not good. Not good for Frankie.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Pigeon Tony looked up, his eyes dark and sad. “No, not. Not a good day for him.”

Judy felt a twinge. It was clear Pigeon Tony wasn’t talking only about Frank. She told herself to slow down. Dialed herself back a little. “You want some coffee, Pigeon Tony?”

“Got Chianti?”

Judy laughed. “No. But you won’t need it. You want water?”

“Si, si.”

“No problem.” Judy got up and grabbed the pitcher of water from the back of the credenza, where Bennie was still on the phone. The woman must have 2,543 phone messages. Judy brought the pitcher back to the table, poured Pigeon Tony some in a Styrofoam cup, and handed it to him. “Here, handsome.”

“Grazie, Judy.” Pigeon Tony took a sip, and Judy watched his knobby Adam’s apple travel up and down, as if it had been hard to swallow. “My wife, Silvana. You know?”

Judy nodded, wondering where this was coming from. But she had noticed that when Pigeon Tony got tired or stressed, he became confused or talked more about the past. Judy could only guess at what memories this case was dredging up for him. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to live through a war, or to lose people you loved. She poured herself a cup of water, kicked off her pumps, and eased back to let him talk.

“Silvana, she gotta hard head. Baby Frank, he gotta hard head. Me, I’ma no hard head.” He smiled, and Judy smiled with him.

“No, not you. You’re a piece of cake.”

Pigeon Tony laughed then, a little heh-heh-heh that fit his size perfectly, a custom-made laugh. He finished his thought, shaking his head. “Silvana, she beautiful!”

“I’m sure she was.”

“I tella judge how beautiful!”

Judy sipped her water as Pigeon Tony’s eyes began to shine, his thoughts transported to another place and time. Judy had seen her grandmother do this, without the depth of feeling. Or maybe Judy had never given her grandmother the chance to talk over a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm water. She should have, and now it was too late.

“I tell judge when I first see Silvana, I meet Silvana, onna road with Coluzzi, atta race. How beautiful she is! Onna cart! She wear”—Pigeon Tony’s small hand went to his lips and he patted them, fumbling for the word—“she wear, you know. Rossetto per le labbra. You wear, when I see you, at jail.”

“Lipstick?” Judy offered.

“Si, si!”

Judy smiled. And here she thought she didn’t speak lipstick.

“Red, like wine she wear! Onna mouth! How we kiss!”

“Ooh!” Judy laughed. “Can’t tell that in court!”

Pigeon Tony held up a finger. “No! No! We kiss with a tomato! Si, si! Yes! A tomato!”

Judy didn’t get it, but Pigeon Tony was too wrapped up to stop and explain.

“So many tomato! Many, many tomato! Until she love me! Alla my tomato!” Pigeon Tony went heh-heh-heh. “Alla time, my mama, she say, ‘Where my tomato? I no have tomato, for make salad! Why I no have tomato?’ I laugh and laugh.”

Judy smiled, her throat unaccountably tight. She didn’t know exactly what Pigeon Tony was talking about, but she could get the gist. And somehow the feeling.

“Then Silvana, she eat lunch, make picnic, with me. You know, make picnic?” Pigeon Tony looked at Judy for verification, and she nodded. “In woods. Alla time. We talk and talk and we kiss.”

“No tomato?”

“No tomato. Kiss! Kiss a woman! La bella femmina! Ha! Aha! So sweet!” Pigeon Tony clapped his hands together once, his face alive with the memory. “Such a kiss! Such a woman! Sweeter than tomato! I say to myself, Tony, you marry these woman! You be happy forever!”

Judy smiled, forgetting for a minute the way it had all turned out, but Pigeon Tony leaned over and touched her hand.

“I tell judge, I tell him how she marry me, and choose me, he will see.” Pigeon Tony’s voice grew urgent, and deep. “Alla Coluzzi, I tell judge, how Coluzzi beat chemist, beat me, in street, at Torneo. You know, Torneo?”

“No,” Judy said. It sounded like tornado.

“I tell judge, he know. I tell people—how you say, jury—they know. I tell, I make them see how Coluzzi murder, murder my Silvana. Murder my baby Frank. Murder Gemma, his wife. I make them see!”

Judy shook her head. He wanted to testify so much, she couldn’t reason with him. “Pigeon Tony, you’ll tell them all about Silvana and how wonderful she was, and then you’ll tell them all about Coluzzi and how terrible he was—”

“Si, si! And how he kill her, how I find her, inna stable, with baby Frank.” Pigeon Tony’s breathing began to quicken. “Baby Frank see his mama! Like that!” Pigeon Tony’s eyes filled with tears, and Judy jostled his hand, trying to bring him back to the present day, to a different country.

“And then you’ll tell the judge and the jury what? How you went into the back room at the clubhouse and Coluzzi told you he killed Frank and Gemma and then how you ran at him and broke his neck?”

“Si!” Pigeon Tony nodded. “I tell! I do it! I make them see no is murder!”

“But it is! It is, here! If you tell them that, they will lock you up. Don’t you see?” Judy heard herself shouting in frustration, and she became aware that Bennie had hung up the telephone and was staring at her with disapproval. Judy stopped and looked over. “Uh, hi?”

“Uh, no.” Bennie managed a smile. “You might want to stop screaming at your client.”

Judy relaxed back in the chair. “Good point.”

Pigeon Tony glanced from one lawyer to the other as Bennie came over, pad in hand, sat on the edge of the conference table, and looked down at him.

“Mr. Lucia,” she said, “you and I haven’t talked much during this case because Judy is your lawyer. She is doing a wonderful job for you. She has a defense that the jury can understand and believe in. Depending on what she does tomorrow, she may win this case for you, which is a very difficult thing to do. She is advising you not to testify, and I would listen to her if I were you. You should also know that in the United States very few defendants like you take the stand and testify. I have defended many murder cases and never had a defendant on the stand.”

“Si, si.”

“But as she told you, it is your right to testify if you want to. So here’s what I think. Tonight you sleep on it.” Bennie caught herself in the idiom when Pigeon Tony’s forehead crinkled. “You rest tonight and you can decide tomorrow. If you still want to testify tomorrow, then you and Judy can discuss it again. Okay?”

“Si!” Pigeon Tony said quickly, pumping his head with vigor.

“Judy will discuss it as much as you want to, because it is a very important decision. It is the single most important decision in every defense. And it is your decision. Understand?”

“Si, si.” Pigeon Tony seemed to back down.

Judy exhaled. “Okay, I agree.”

Bennie shot her a look. “It doesn’t matter whether you agree.”

Uh, oh. Judy smiled. “But it’s a good thing that I do, huh? Makes it nicer, all around.”

Bennie rolled her eyes and smiled at Pigeon Tony. “Mr. Lucia, you see, Judy gets a little excited, and she cares about you. Also she’s young. Not like you and me.”

Pigeon Tony burst into laughter. “You young woman, Benedetta!”

“I’m forty-five, sir. I stopped being young forty years ago.” Bennie hopped off the table and nodded at Judy. “Maybe you should order your client some dinner before you start talking business.”

“Okay, sure.” Judy reminded herself she had to do better in the care-and-feeding department. She had even lost custody of her puppy, she was such a bad mother. “Pigeon Tony, you want me to order dinner before we talk?”

“Dinner, si.”

“You want Chinese? You had the plain lo mein.”

Pigeon Tony wrinkled his tan nose. “Bad pasta.”

Judy smiled. “Want pizza?”

“Si, si.”

Judy nodded. It was only the 3,847th time they’d had pizza delivered in the past week. “Okay, pizza it is.” She went to the phone to order when the conference room door opened suddenly, and everybody looked up.

Frank came in and tossed the file on the table, where it slid across the smooth surface. His face was grim but oddly relieved. “My parents were murdered in their truck that night,” he said simply.

Judy’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean? Didn’t you read the expert’s report?”

“I did. That’s what proves it to me.”

“How? The expert found it was an accident.”

Frank managed a half smile. “But I know something he didn’t.”

Judy put the phone back down in surprise.

Chapter 45

“You may sit down,” Judge Vaughn said as he entered the courtroom and ascended the dais. His manner telegraphed that he was ready to move along, which was just how Judy felt. She couldn’t wait to put on her case, now that she believed she had a winner. But a lot depended on what happened with the Commonwealth’s last witness.

Judy shifted forward on her seat. It had occurred to her, as she worked through last night preparing questions and making phone calls, that the tables had turned in this case. Until this morning it had been Pigeon Tony on trial, but from now on it was Angelo Coluzzi’s turn to be tried for murder. And Judy didn’t want him to get away with it, even in death, though she still didn’t know if she could convict him with the evidence she had. But she had a better chance than before Frank’s discovery. And Judy was glad that it was Frank who had found the key. It was fitting.

She glanced over at Pigeon Tony, who looked intent now that the truth would finally come out about his son’s death. In the front row of the gallery, Frank was on the edge of the pew. The rest of the gallery settled down, with only the reporters and courtroom artists working away. The judge had seated himself and cleared a stack of pleadings from the center of the dais.

“Good morning, Ms. Carrier, Mr. Santoro. Mr. Santoro, you may call your first witness.”

Santoro rose, in a new dark suit with deep vent. “Good morning, Your Honor. The Commonwealth calls Calvin DeWitt to the stand.”

Judy looked back as the door to the courtroom opened and the bailiff escorted in a middle-aged African-American man with a little goatee and rimless glasses. He wore a neatly pressed suit and carried himself with confidence as he walked to the stand, was sworn in, and sat down.

Santoro took his place at the podium. “Mr. DeWitt, please identity yourself for the jury.”

“I am an officer with the Accident Investigation Division, or AID, of the Philadelphia Police Department. I have been with AID for fifteen years, during which time I have investigated over five thousand traffic accidents in Philadelphia County. Basically our mission is to determine how a traffic fatality occurred.”

“Officer DeWitt, what is your training to perform such a complex task?”

“We are schooled in the most modern methods and technology of accident reconstruction, including courses in physics, crash investigation, bridge and highway construction, human anatomy, drug and alcohol impairment in the driver, and computer-animated graphics.”

Santoro nodded. “And do you receive accreditations, sir?”

“We do. We may be certified by ACTAR, which is the Accreditation Commission for Traffic Accident Reconstruction. I am so certified.”

Santoro flipped a page in his legal pad. “Your Honor, I move to have Officer DeWitt qualified as an expert.”

Judy nodded. She needed his testimony, too. “No objection.”

“Granted,” Judge Vaughn said, and Judy cast a glance at the jury. They appeared to be listening quietly, and she hoped they were anticipating the testimony about the accident, after yesterday with Jimmy Bello. Judy had subpoenaed him so he’d be in court today, and he sat coolly near John Coluzzi, who was himself stern-faced.

Santoro addressed the witness. “Officer DeWitt, are you the AID officer who investigated the traffic accident that occurred on January twenty-fifth, involving the deaths of Frank and Gemma Lucia, of Philadelphia?”

“I am.”

“And please describe briefly what you did to investigate that accident?”

Officer DeWitt looked up. “May I refer to my report?”

“Of course.” Santoro located a paper in his stack and distributed copies to Judy and the court personnel, who gave one to the judge. “Your Honor, I wish to move into evidence Commonwealth Exhibit Twenty-three, which is Officer DeWitt’s report of the accident in question.”

“No objection,” Judy said. She set the report aside to signal to the jury that she had seen it already. In fact, she’d memorized it last night, but there was no way she could signal that, as much as she wanted the extra credit.

Officer DeWitt thumbed through his report. “This refreshes my recollection. I visited the accident that night at one o’clock in the morning, less than one hour after it occurred. I examined the truck involved, a VW pickup. I also examined the guardrail on the overpass where the truck went over, as well as the point of impact on the underpass beneath.”

“Could you briefly describe how the accident occurred?”

“Yes. The truck, a light, old-model pickup, was traveling west on the double-lane overpass when it skidded on a patch of ice, due to driver error and road conditions. The truck collided with the guardrail, tipped over the side of the overpass, and landed upside down on the underpass below, where the fuel tank ruptured and burst into flame. The occupants would have been killed on impact, if not by the fire that consumed the vehicle’s passenger cab, though their bodies had been removed by the M.E.’s office by the time I arrived at the scene.”

“So it is your expert opinion, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that the crash of the truck was an accident, pure and simple?”

“Yes.” Then DeWitt added, “Though no accident that involves loss of life is simple. But yes, it was an accident.”

“I stand corrected. You are quite right.” Santoro nodded. “Officer DeWitt, I take it from your explanation of how the accident occurred that no other vehicles were involved?”

“No other vehicles.”

“And there were no other fatalities as a result of the accident?”

“No.”

“As a result of your conclusion that it was an accident, no charges of any kind were issued by the police, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And the case was considered closed by the Philadelphia Police Department?”

“Yes, it was and is.”

“No further questions,” Santoro said. He returned to his seat as Judy stood up, went to the podium with her papers, and introduced herself before her first question.

“Officer DeWitt, you said you examined the Lucias’ truck an hour after the accident and that it had caught fire. What caused that fire, in your opinion?”

“The fuel line ruptured and the tank was compromised when the truck overturned. The interior of the vehicle was filled with fuel and then consumed by fire.”

Judy hoped Frank wasn’t visualizing this. “Officer DeWitt, did you perform any tests to determine the residue left by the fire on the interior or exterior of the truck?”

“No, there was no reason to.”

Judy made a note. THAT’S WHAT YOU THINK, SMARTYPANTS. “In your opinion, Officer DeWitt, what caused the fuel to ignite?”

“Many things commonly cause such fires, such as sparks from an electrical connection, the heat of an engine in contact with fuel, and often when steel and concrete collide, sparks result.”

“So it’s your testimony that the Lucias’ pickup truck left the overpass because of the ice and driver error, rolled over the guardrail, and crashed onto an underpass, and that the impact of the crash or the fire from the ruptured fuel tank killed the Lucias?”

“Yes.”

Judy didn’t pause. “What kind of fuel was it?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Do you recall the type of fuel it was that ignited, in the cab?”

“Diesel.”

Judy made a fake note. EUREKA! She asked the question she needed the answer to: “How do you know that it was diesel fuel, if you performed no tests on the residue left behind?”

“The truck had a diesel engine.” Officer DeWitt glanced at his report. “I examined the engine of the vehicle and contacted Harrisburg to determine its registration. It was a 1.6-liter diesel engine. Fifty-two horsepower.”

Judy thought a minute. Had to cover all the bases. “So is it your testimony that the ruptured fuel tank in the pickup was the only fuel container in the pickup?”

The witness cocked his head. “What other kind of fuel container could there be?”

“Well, was there a lawn mower in the truck, or a chain saw, or just a spare gas can?”

Officer DeWitt reflected on it, then shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. The back bed was empty, as was the cab, except for minor debris and some broken glass.”

“If you had seen something like that, you would have noted it, would you not?”

“Yes. I take careful notes.”

“And does your report contain any such notation?”

Officer DeWitt thumbed through the exhibit. “No.”

“Thank you,” Judy said, and remained at the podium, as the witness stepped down. She was halfway home. And she was saving the best for last.

“No redirect, Your Honor,” Santoro said, rising at his seat. “The Commonwealth rests.”

On the dais Judge Vaughn nodded smartly. “Ms. Carrier, looks like you’re up, for the defense.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. The defense calls Dr. William Wold to the stand.” Judy looked expectantly toward the double doors, feeling oddly like a groom awaiting a bride. Dr. Wold strode past the bar of court in a dark suit, walked to the witness stand, and was sworn in. “Dr. Wold,” she began, “please tell the jury who you are and what you do.”

“I am an accident reconstruction expert. I was an officer with the Accident Investigation Division of the Philadelphia Police for thirty-two years until my retirement, and now I consult full-time. I determine how a traffic accident occurred in order to testify at trials, like this one.”

“Dr. Wold, what is your training to perform such a complex task?”

“I teach courses in accident reconstruction, including courses in crash investigation, guardrail construction and renovation, bridge and highway construction, anatomy, drinking and driving, physics, the sleep-deprived and drugged driver, forensic sciences,

and computer-animated graphics.”

“And are you an accredited accident reconstructionist?”

“Yes, by ACTAR, as well as by agencies in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.”

Judy looked at the judge, who was skimming papers on his desk. “Your Honor, I move to have Dr. Wold qualified as an expert.”

Santoro nodded. “No objection,” he said, and Judge Vaughn nodded.

“Granted,” he ruled. “Please continue, Ms. Carrier.”

Judy smiled to herself. Santoro was stuck. He didn’t dare object in front of the jury, not after he’d opened the door with the AID man. Judy had hoped he’d go for it, after Jimmy Bello, and he had. She deserved extra-extra credit. “Dr. Wold, did there come a time when you examined the wreck of the Lucias’ pickup?”

“Yes, about four months ago, at your request. You asked me to determine how the accident had occurred.”

Santoro was on his loafers. “Objection, Your Honor. Where’s the chain of custody for the vehicle? How do we know he examined the right vehicle?”

“Your Honor,” Judy said, waving the papers, “I was just about to introduce these documents into evidence. They are the bill of sale and the receipt for the Lucias’ truck. The VIN, or Vehicle Identification Number, matches the wreck that Dr. Wold examined at my request.”

Judge Vaughn motioned for the papers, and Judy handed them to the bailiff, who brought them to the judge. She held her breath while the judge read the documents, hoping he wouldn’t wonder where the junkyard release was, since all she could offer into evidence was a wire cutter and a couple of senior citizens.

Judge Vaughn handed the documents back with a grunt. “Go for it, counsel.”

“I move these document into evidence as Defense Exhibits Twenty and Twenty-one,” she said, handing Santoro the copies, and he read them quickly.

“No objection,” he said, and Judy returned to the witness.

“Now, Dr. Wold, more paperwork. Did you prepare a report in connection with your findings?”

“I did.” Judy located the copies of the report and distributed one each to Santoro, the judge, and the bailiff. “Your Honor, I move this report into evidence as Defense Exhibit Twenty-three.”

Santoro, reading, put up a hand. “No objection,” he said after a moment, but he kept reading.

“It’s admitted,” Judge Vaughn ruled, and went back to skimming his papers.

Judy paused so the jury could focus. “Dr. Wold, please tell the jury what you investigated to determine how the accident occurred.”

“I examined the wreck, measured it, researched the make and model of truck, which was a 1981 VW Rabbit. I visited the scene, obtained the AID report from the police, and also ran a number of residue tests on the exterior of the vehicle and the interior of the passenger cab.”

“What were the results of those residue tests?”

“Well, I found a number of residues in the burned wreck, primarily residue of burning plastic, residue of burned and partially burned diesel fuel, and residue of gasoline.”

Judy noted it. RESIDUE CITY. “Were these residues—diesel, oil, and gasoline—found in equal amounts?”

“No, not at all. By far the greatest amount of residue, particularly in the passenger cab, was residue of gasoline. Both unburned gasoline and gasoline-impregnated ash were all over the interior of the passenger cab.”

Judy made a note. YOU GO, GIRL. “Dr. Wold, what is the significance of that gasoline residue in the passenger cab?”

“It is extremely significant. It tells us that it was a gasoline fire that engulfed the passenger cab.”

“I see.” Judy paused. “Dr. Wold, is there any reasonable explanation for the gasoline inside that cab?”

“Yes, of course. As I said in my report, it is very common for construction vehicles to be carrying all sorts of fuel, even in their cabs. In fact, I assumed that the Lucias’ truck was, since it was a working truck. In addition, if the truck was carrying gas cans, a lawn mower, a chain saw, or the like, gasoline could come from there.”

Judy nodded. “But what if the truck wasn’t carrying any of those things?”

“What do you mean?”

Judy sighed. The toughest expert she ever met. Biting the hand that feeds him. She could only hope it increased his credibility, because he was busting her chops. “I mean, do you have an explanation for a diesel-powered truck, carrying no container of gasoline, to be engulfed in a gasoline fire during a crash?”

“No.”

“Nothing in your examination could explain why a diesel truck with no gasoline in it had a gasoline fire?”

“That’s what I just said.”

Judy made a note. I AM NOT PAYING YOU, NO MATTER WHAT. “Dr. Wold, I direct you to the conclusion of your report. Could you please read it to the jury?”

“Certainly.” Dr. Wold flipped to the last page of his report. “I concluded that ‘negligent driving, poor weather conditions, and a substandard guardrail resulted in the fatal accident involving Mr. and Mrs. Lucia on January twenty-fifth.’I also noted that ‘petroleum residues included engine oil, diesel fuel, and gasoline, not unusual in a construction vehicle crash.’”

Judy paused. Was it insane to refute the conclusion of your own expert in a death case? Not when it was this expert. It was a pleasure to prove him wrong. “Dr. Wold, is it possible that the gasoline fire caused the crash, instead of the crash causing the gasoline fire?”

Dr. Wold cleared his throat. “I never looked at it that way, but it’s possible. And if the truck was not carrying gasoline, then the presence of the gasoline remains unexplained.”

“So I ask you, do you still agree with the conclusion in your report?”

Dr. Wold thought for a long time. “I don’t know.”

“I have no further questions,” Judy said, and she walked to counsel table and sat down next to Pigeon Tony. She didn’t dare look at him or Frank, who was the one who had known the truck had a diesel, not a gasoline, engine. It was good stuff, and she didn’t want to jinx anything.

Santoro was already at the podium, his expression tense. “Dr. Wold, didn’t you in fact conclude that the Lucias’deaths were the result of driver error, bad weather, and a low guardrail?”

“That’s what I concluded, yes.”

“Thank you.” Santoro stormed to his chair and sat down, and Judy hid her satisfaction.

“No redirect, Your Honor,” she said. Her stomach was a knot. She thought she was making headway, but she was too focused to have any perspective. On the dais, Judge Vaughn was making notes, probably I LOOK GOOD IN BLACK. She glanced at the jury, which remained impassive, watching Dr. Wold step down and leave the courtroom.

It was time for Judy’s last witness.

Chapter 46

“The defense calls Marlene Bello to the stand,” Judy called out.

She turned to face the double doors, and the gallery was craning their necks to see, particularly on the Coluzzi side of the aisle. Jimmy Bello’s mouth had dropped open, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block looked like a man in love. He had been Judy’s secret weapon, though Marlene was such a class act, she didn’t need to be convinced to testify.

Judy smiled at her as she entered the courtroom, and she smiled back, sashaying down the aisle in a red knit dress that caressed every curve, with matching red pumps. She even made pantyhose look like a damn good time. Marlene took the witness stand as if she owned it, was sworn in, sat down, and crossed a great pair of legs.

Judy was at the podium. “Please tell the jury who you are, Ms. Bello.”

“My name is Marlene Bello and I used to be married to Jimmy Bello.” She pointed a crimson-lacquered nail at him. “Right there.”

“How long were you married to Mr. Bello?”

“With time off for good behavior?” she asked, and the jury laughed. “Almost thirty-two years.”

“And when were you divorced?”

“Cut him loose about a year and a half ago, almost two.”

“Now, Ms. Bello, did there come a time when you began tapping your own telephone, without your husband’s knowledge?”

Santoro shot up. “Objection, relevance, Your Honor.”

“May we approach?” Judy asked, and Judge Vaughn gave them the go-ahead. Judy reached the dais first. “Judge, as you will see in just a few questions, Ms. Bello is here to make statements against her own interest, which bear directly on the matter at hand.”

Santoro was shaking his head. “Your Honor, the matter at hand is the murder of Angelo Coluzzi. If she doesn’t speak to that, she has no business testifying. She’s just the ex-wife of a prosecution witness!”

“Your Honor,” Judy said. “Again, the Commonwealth opened the door on the deaths of Frank and Gemma Lucia.”

Judge Vaughn sighed. “I overrule the objection, but keep the questions in control, or I will.” Santoro went back to counsel table and Judy to the podium.

“You may answer the question, Ms. Bello.”

“I did tap my own phone. I hired a private detective to do it.”

“And why did you do this?”

“To see if that pig was cheatin’ on me, which he was.”

“Objection, relevance, and prejudicial, Your Honor!” Santoro shouted, but Judge Vaughn waved him off.

“And did the time period you tapped cover last year, commencing on January first?”

“Yes. It was my New Year’s resolution. Throw the bum out.”

“So I take it you were tapping your own phone through January twenty-fifth of that year, the date on which Frank and Gemma Lucia were killed?”

Santoro simmered but evidently thought better of objecting, since even Judge Vaughn was listening intently to Marlene. Judy almost managed to relax, but she was still a lawyer and it proved impossible.

“Yeah, I was tapping our phone on the twenty-fifth.”

“Ms. Bello, did you also overhear some of these conversations, as well as having them recorded?”

“Yes, because we taped all calls, even legit ones and ones when I was there. Half the tapes is me talking to my psychic.” Marlene turned to the jury. “Talk about a rip-off.” The jury laughed.

“Did you ever overhear any conversations Mr. Bello had with Angelo Coluzzi?”

“Puh-lenty.” Marlene chuckled. “Jimmy was on the phone with Angelo all the time, taking orders.”

“Do you recall that Mr. Bello had a conversation with Mr. Coluzzi on the evening of January twenty-fifth, the evening that Frank and Gemma Lucia were killed in their truck?”

“I do.”

“And where were you when this conversation occurred?”

“I was in the kitchen doin’ my reports for my business, and he was on the kitchen phone.”

Judy flipped her legal pad to her notes of the tapes. After she had found out about the gasoline in the truck fire last night, she had gone back to her notes of the tapes. Then she had called Marlene and told her about the note and the gasoline fire. Only one thing could explain both, and only Marlene could explain that one thing. “And what did you hear Mr. Bello say?”

“Objection, hearsay,” Santoro said, but Judy would have begged if she had to.

“Your Honor, it’s coming in for the fact that he said it, so it’s not hearsay.”

“Overruled,” Judge Vaughn said, motioning Santoro into his seat at counsel table.

Judy skimmed her notes. “You may answer, Ms. Bello. What did you hear Mr. Bello say to Mr. Coluzzi on the night of January twenty-fifth?”

“It sounded like they were making a date for Jimmy to pick Angelo up, since he was his driver, and I heard Jimmy say to Angelo, ‘I’ll bring the Coke.’”

“And what did that mean to you?”

“It was like code they used, the two of ’em.”

“Code for what?”

“It meant, ‘I’ll bring a Molotov cocktail.’”

“Objection!” Santoro bolted out of his chair. “Relevance and extremely prejudicial! Your Honor!”

Judy was desperate. She needed this one piece of evidence. “Your Honor, this is absolutely relevant to the death of the defendant’s son and daughter in-law.”

“But it has nothing to do with the death of Angelo Coluzzi, Your Honor!”

Judge Vaughn shifted forward on the dais, his expression concerned. “I want to hear what this witness has to say, Mr. Santoro,” he announced, and Judy knew from his tone it had nothing to do with Marlene’s charms. He turned to her. “Ms. Bello, it is incumbent upon the Court to warn you that you may be making a statement which could incriminate you, since tapping a telephone conversation without a party’s knowledge and consent is unlawful in this Commonwealth. Are you represented by counsel at this proceeding?”

Marlene smiled shakily. “I already talked to a lawyer. He’s sittin’ in the back, and I’m ready to deal with whatever they do to me. I lived with Jimmy Bello, I can live with prison.”

Judge Vaughn hid his smile with a respectful nod. “Fine, Ms. Bello.” He pointed at Judy. “Ms. Carrier, do go on.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Judy said, then stole a glance at the jury out of the corner of her eye. Each one was listening, many leaning forward urgently. Judy turned to Marlene. “Ms. Bello, what is a Molotov cocktail, by the way?”

Santoro threw up his arms. “Your Honor, is the witness a qualified expert on incendiary devices now?”

On the stand Marlene burst into laughter. “I’m from South Philly, pal. You think I don’t know from Molotov cocktails?”

“Overruled,” Judge Vaughn said, glaring Santoro into his chair. “Please answer the question, Ms. Bello.”

“Sure thing.” Marlene brushed a sprayed curl from her eye. “A Molotov cocktail’s a bottle with gasoline in it, and you put a rag in it and light it. Then you throw the bottle and it breaks and makes a gasoline fire.”

Bingo. Judy would have felt happy, but the words “gasoline fire” made her shudder. The Lucias had been burned alive. What a way to die. And what must Frank be feeling? She couldn’t look at him and stayed focused on Marlene. “Ms. Bello, what time did Mr. Bello leave the house that night?”

“I know it was late, maybe about nine-thirty at night.”

“Did he tell you where he was going?”

“No, just that he was going to pick up Angelo.”

“And did he bring the Coke with him when he left?”

Marlene wet her glossy lips. “I’ll tell you what I saw him do that night, after they talked. He took a Coke out of the fridge, in one of those glass bottles he always bought. Then he emptied it out in the sink. The whole bottle. Without even sippin’ it.”

Judy paused as the jury reacted. “Did he leave the house with the empty bottle, Ms. Bello?”

“Yeh.” Marlene bit her lip. “I didn’t say anything, but I should have. I knew he was up to no good but I didn’t think he’d kill somebody with it, least of all the Lucias.”

Suddenly Judy felt for her, for the Lucias, for Frank and Pigeon Tony, even for Jimmy Bello and the Coluzzis. So much death, so much killing. She gripped the side of the podium. “Ms. Bello, why didn’t you come forward to the police with this information before now?”

“I didn’t put it together until you called last night and told me about the gasoline, in the diesel truck. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” Marlene turned directly to Frank and Pigeon Tony, her eyes glistening. “I really am so sorry.”

Judy held back her emotion. She was almost home free. She had done it. Proved who murdered the Lucias. Raised reasonable doubt about the Coluzzi murder. She felt her knees go weak, from exhaustion and relief and sheer joy.

Crak! Crak! Crak! banged the gavel suddenly, and Judge Vaughn began shouting, his eyes filled with alarm at the gallery. “Order! Order! Stop that man!”

Judy stood stunned. Pigeon Tony grabbed her arm in surprise. Santoro was on his feet, his face a mask of dismay. The bailiff reached for a telephone. The court stenographer cried, “Holy God!”

The gallery had erupted behind the bulletproof divide. Jimmy Bello was making a break for it, barreling full steam toward the exit doors. Frank was running after him, his tie flying. A cadre of court security charged behind them both. Spectators leaped out of the way in fear. Reporters scribbled like mad. Artists couldn’t sketch fast enough. Behind the bulletproof plastic, the scene was an action movie on mute.

Crak! Crak! Crak! Judge Vaughn kept banging the gavel. “Security! Security! Bailiff, call downstairs!”

Bello hit the double door at speed, with Frank and court security right on his heels. There was no way he would get out of the courthouse. There were layers of cops, police personnel, and courthouse security between him and the elevators, much less the exit downstairs. Bello’s only hope was that the cops got him.

Before Frank did.

The judge had declared a lunch recess, but nobody in the courthouse conference room was interested in food. Judy held Frank close, unembarrassed even in front of Bennie and Pigeon Tony. She breathed in the smells of him, the sweat from the dash after Jimmy Bello, and the fresh grief at his parents’ death. His corduroy jacket was soft in her arms, though his sleeve had been ripped in the melee. Judy hung on until Frank broke the embrace and wiped his bruised cheek. “At least we got Bello,” Frank said, his voice soft.

“We sure did.” Judy grinned. “One of the cops told me they’ll hold him for questioning. I turned over copies of my file and asked the expert to send the wreck over to police impoundment, so they have something to go on.”

“Think they’ll charge him?”

“We won’t let ’em rest until they do, will we?” Judy peered at Frank’s bruise. “How’s that feel?”

“Okay. After I tackled him, he kicked out. But I got a few good licks in.” Frank straightened up and actually broke into a smile. “The bailiff let me be the one to bring him down.”

“Good,” Judy said, meaning it. “What better use for my tax dollars?”

Frank smiled, then hugged Pigeon Tony, rocking him slightly. The little old man seemed to burrow into Frank’s broad chest, and Frank flashed Judy a grin over his grandfather’s bald head. “You and Bennie can hug now. I think we won.”

Judy laughed. “I think so, too.”

Bennie looked over. “No hugging, though. Lawyers don’t hug.”

“Agreed,” Judy said. She was too happy to stop smiling. She felt great. It was a miracle. She had to have been a galley slave in a former life to cash in on this karmic payload.

Then Pigeon Tony emerged from Frank’s arms, his brown eyes bright. “I talk to judge now,” he said, and Judy’s good mood vanished.

“You don’t have to. It’s over.”

Pigeon Tony turned slowly, shaking his head. “No. I talk to judge. I talk to judge now.” A surprised Frank stood behind him, but Judy was aghast. He couldn’t mean it. This wasn’t happening.

“Pigeon Tony, we’re ready to go to the jury now, just as it is.”

“No! You say, today I say. I say. I go to judge. I tell truth!”

Judy wasn’t hearing this. Maybe he didn’t understand, even though she’d explained it 236,345 times. “Let me explain. Again. I have proved that Angelo Coluzzi hated you, and that you and he were in a small room together for maybe five minutes. During this time Angelo Coluzzi’s neck got broken, but I proved that that could have happened easily in a man his age, in even a scuffle.”

“I broke! I did!”

Judy checked her urge to grab Pigeon Tony by his scrawny little neck and shake some sense into him. “But the only proof they have that you started the fight and not Coluzzi is that somebody who never heard you speak heard you yell, ‘I’m gonna kill you,’ in Italian.”

“Me! I said! I did! But no é murder!”

Judy wanted to kill him, in English. “But they can’t prove that, and they haven’t. They lost. I bet you ten to one that the jury is going to come back for you, Pigeon Tony.”

“I tell judge! I tell them! I tell about Silvana! And tomatoes! And kiss!”

Judy’s head began to throb. Tomatoes and kisses wouldn’t do it, in a court of law. Maybe if she explained more. “I am going to argue to the jury in my closing that it’s just as likely that you pushed Angelo Coluzzi in self-defense as that you attacked him. That is demonstrably true.”

“What means mons—?”

Judy was losing patience. “It’s true, leave it at that. In addition, we have also proved, fairly conclusively, that Angelo Coluzzi and Jimmy Bello killed your son and daughter-in-law by throwing a Molotov cocktail in their truck, which set fire to their cab and caused what everybody thought was an accident.” Judy knew she was talking too fast for Pigeon Tony to follow, but she couldn’t stop herself. He was threatening to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Never mind that he could end up dead. “And if the jury thinks Coluzzi really killed your son, and not just that you believe it for no reason, then they will feel less sympathetic for him and less inclined to convict you for his murder. Don’t you get it? Shut up and win!”

Frank had gone white, his hands on his grandfather’s shoulders. “Judy, you’re hollering at him.”

“I have every right to holler at him! I’m trying to save his fucking life!” Judy shouted, and realized she had lost it. She didn’t need the expression on Bennie’s face to tell her, but it was there just the same.

Bennie was holding up her hand, like a stop sign. “Judy, enough. You’re upset. Get a grip.” She turned to Frank, almost formally. “Frank, does your grandfather understand what Judy is saying? Because she’s right.”

“I know he does. He understands more than people think.”

“I don’t want to take any chances. His life is at stake, and my liability. I want you to explain to him everything Judy just said, in Italian. And tell him if he chooses to testify, tell him he does so against his attorney’s advice.”

“Fair enough,” Frank said. “But I’m telling you. He understands fine. He just doesn’t agree.”

“I no agree!” Pigeon Tony chorused.

Frank began speaking to Pigeon Tony in rapid Italian, and Judy watched, feeling utterly helpless. She couldn’t believe it was happening. Her emotions went from complete frustration to stone cold fear. She looked at Frank and Pigeon Tony, then to Bennie. Was Bennie going to let this happen? “Bennie, they could kill him! They could give him the death penalty!”

“I know that.” Bennie was calm, which only made Judy crazier.

“We can’t just let him walk into it!” In the background was the sound of Italian, too musical for the grim occasion.

“We have to, if that’s what he wants.”

Frank looked up, grimly, his hands on his grandfather’s arm. “He wants to do it. He wants to tell the truth. He wants his day in court. He says he’s innocent, and he wants the jury to find that he’s innocent.”

“What’s the difference?” Judy exploded at Pigeon Tony, but Frank answered for him.

“You know what it is. He doesn’t want to think he got away with murder, because to him, it’s not murder. It’s not just that he’s not guilty—he’s innocent.”

“Then it’s done,” Bennie said simply, cutting Judy off with a chop and checking her watch. “We have two minutes until we go in.”

Judy couldn’t stop shaking her head. She grabbed Pigeon Tony by both of his hands. “Pigeon Tony, do you understand that after you testify, Mr. Santoro can ask you questions? All sorts of questions?”

“Si, si.” Pigeon Tony nodded, unfazed.

“Mr. Santoro will not be nice to you, he will be very mean. He will try to make you look like a very bad man. He will ask you, ‘How did you murder him?’ He will say, ‘Tell the jury exactly how you broke poor Angelo Coluzzi’s neck.’”

“I tell. I kill. No murder.”

“It will be awful! Santoro will tear you apart! He can keep you up there for days! You hardly even speak the language!” Judy wanted to cry, but she had to keep a tenuous grip or she couldn’t save him. “The jury won’t like what you say! They will say, ‘This man is a killer. Let’s give him the death penalty. Put him to death!’”

“Si, si.” Pigeon Tony half smiled, and his eyes, hooded with age, met Judy’s with a sort of serenity. Behind them Judy saw a strength she hadn’t noticed before, but also a folly. The bravest men got themselves killed. The pioneer was the one with the arrows in his chest.

“Pigeon Tony, please don’t.” If she had to beg, she would. “I am begging you.”

“Judy, no worry.” Pigeon Tony squeezed her hands. “You ask questions, inna court? Si?”

Judy blinked back tears. She couldn’t imagine it. She would have to take him through it on direct examination. “Yes,” she said, but her eyes filled up anyway. She didn’t want to see him dead, or even in prison. She didn’t know it until now, but she loved him.

“Ask me, I tell Silvana. Ask baby Frank. Ask tomato. Ask how Silvana die, inna stable. I tell. Like before, yesterday. I tell.”

Judy remembered. She had been transported by his stories. But she wasn’t a jury. And nothing had been at stake, least of all Pigeon Tony’s life. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she let go of his hand to brush it away.

“Everything okay, you see, Judy. Judge see. Jury see. Alla people see. Say me, how you see Silvana, Pigeon Tony?”

Judy’s lips trembled and she couldn’t speak. Bennie had fallen silent.

Frank sighed audibly. “Juries can do whatever they want, can’t they, Judy?” he asked.

Judy wasn’t holding any false hope. “At least they can’t kill him twice.”

Bennie shot her a disapproving look. “Yes, Frank. Your counsel should be telling you that there is something called jury nullification, which means the jury simply ignores the law and does what it thinks is just. It happened first a long time ago in the Old South, where white juries wouldn’t convict white men who lynched black men. Since then it has occurred, only rarely, in mercy killing and domestic abuse cases. But it is very rare.”

“Very rare,” Judy echoed. “Like winning-the-lottery rare.”

“Andiamo!” cried Pigeon Tony abruptly, clapping his hands together in excitement. His eyes were shining and his face was bright, and for a minute he looked positively victorious.

Judy knew it couldn’t last.

Chapter 47

“Pardon me, Ms. Carrier?” Judge Vaughn asked, trying to hide his astonishment as court resumed after the recess. Even the judge’s eyebrows curled like question marks. Tugging at his robes, he leaned over the dais, as if he had heard Judy wrong. “What did you say, counsel?”

“The defense calls Anthony Lucia to the stand, Your Honor,” Judy repeated, and Judge Vaughn blinked in surprise. Judicial decorum prevented his commenting, That’s what I thought you said, bozo.

Santoro wasn’t half as polite. At the prosecutor’s table he didn’t bother to hide his glee. He was smiling and alert, rejuvenated after the melee with Jimmy Bello. Santoro had gone from the nadir to the zenith faster than you can say vocabulary words. If he took fake notes he could write, WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID?

Pigeon Tony rose next to Judy at counsel table, and she helped him to the witness stand, where he sat down behind the Bible and was sworn in by a rather startled clerk. Judy returned to the podium, holding her head high and trying to regain her professionalism after the waterworks in the conference room. If Pigeon Tony was determined to do this, she was determined to mitigate the damage, even if this murder trial had become an assisted suicide.

Judy took the podium, gripped the edges, and found herself face-to-face with the tiny man who looked like a bird, in the cage that was the witness box. Her throat caught at the sight and she remembered the day she had first met him. How cute he was.

How little. She prayed the jury would see him that way. It was almost all he had going for him, and she started feeling emotional again.

“Judy?” Pigeon Tony whispered from the witness stand, and the jury reacted with soft laughter. Even the court personnel were smiling.

Only Judy was on the verge of tears, looking at him. Nobody would tell him it was against the rules to talk to your lawyer from the box. He was on his own now. His fate was his own, and his karma. Judy believed in it, and it gave her heart. If anybody’s past could redeem his future, it was Pigeon Tony’s. But his lawyer still couldn’t chase the tears from her eyes.

“Ms. Carrier?” Judge Vaughn said, moving his hand from underneath his chin.

“Sorry, Your Honor.” Judy wiped her eyes and bit her lips to control their tremor. God! What an idiot! She was a lawyer! In a courtroom! Ask a question, dufus! “Mr. Lucia, please tell the jury where you are from, originally,” she blurted out, then realized it was only the stupidest question in the world.

Pigeon Tony turned slightly toward the jury, as relaxed as if he were conversing over Cynar in a piazza café. “I am from Italy,” he said. “Abruzzo, Italy. You know, Italy?” He pronounced it Eeetaly, his accent flavoring his words as strongly as sweet basil, and the front row of the jury smiled collectively. One juror, an older schoolteacher in the front, even nodded. Judy remembered she was Italian and had family that were Abruzzese. Most of the Italians in South Philly were Abruzzese.

Judy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She had to get it together. “And Pigeon Tony—wait, can I call him Pigeon Tony?” Judy wondered aloud, but didn’t wait for the judge to rule. Why the hell not? Her motto had always been, Don’t ask permission, apologize later. She was making up her own rules as she went along. After all, she had already called an expert witness whose conclusion she disagreed with. It was a slippery slope.

“Sure,” Pigeon Tony answered with a grin. “Alla people, alla people here calla me Pigeon Tony.” He looked up at Judge Vaughn, who had been peering at him from behind his knuckles with a mixture of bewilderment and delight, neither of which Pigeon Tony noticed. “I have pigeons. Birds, you know, birds?

They race, my birds. The Old Man, he come back. Soon. This, I know.”

“That’s nice,” Judge Vaughn said politely, then hunched toward Pigeon Tony. “Mr. Lucia—”

“Calla me Pigeon Tony! Alla people calla me Pigeon Tony! Even judge!”

Judge Vaughn laughed. “Okay, Pigeon Tony, I heard you say that you are from Italy. Do you feel the need for a translator? We can have one brought in here very quickly.”

“No, Judge. I no need. I know. I hear. I unnerstand.” Pigeon Tony pointed to his temple. Judy wanted to cover her face with her hands, but the jury burst into laughter.

“Uh, Pigeon Tony,” Judy said, but when she had his attention, was too upset to think of a question. Talk about a slow start. She tried to remember her client’s coaching in the conference room. Every lawyer needs a smart client, to give them advice. Everything okay, you see, Judy. Alla people see. Say me, how you see Silvana, Pigeon Tony? Judy translated. “Pigeon Tony, please tell the jury how you met your wife, Silvana.”

Pigeon Tony swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving like an elevator. “I was young, but a man, I go to race. In Mascoli, with birds. You know, Mascoli?” He paused, and only when one of the jurors shook his head no, did he respond. “Is city, near Veramo, where Pigeon Tony live. Mascoli big city.” He spread his arms wide, which for his wingspan meant three feet. “Rich city. Not like Veramo. Veramo small, very small city. Alla farmer, in Veramo. You know, farmer?”

The front row nodded and smiled. Yes, they knew farmer. Santoro was frowning. Judy made a real note on her legal pad, trying to recall the stories Pigeon Tony had told her the other day, and at other times. FIRST KISS, WITH TOMATOES. PICNIC IN THE WOODS. FIRST REAL KISS. THE DAY AT THE TORNADO.

On the stand, Pigeon Tony was saying, “I see Silvana, onna cart, and her hair, it shines. Shines in the sun! Only dark, brown. Soft. Like earth. Rich.” He rubbed his fingers together, crumbling imaginary soil in his hands. “So beautiful. A woman, like earth she is beautiful!”

Judy noticed that the front row of the jury, five of them older women, were engrossed in what Pigeon Tony was saying. Santoro’s frown had grown deeper. It got Judy thinking. If Santoro was hating it, maybe it was good. Maybe there was hope. She made another note. THE DAY PIGEON TONY KILLED ANGELO COLUZZI.

Then again, maybe not.

After three hours of direct testimony of Pigeon Tony, Judy was down to her least favorite story. The others had gone in beautifully, but this one couldn’t. She straightened at the podium and let it rip. “Pigeon Tony, let’s begin with you walking into the back room of the pigeon-racing club on the morning of April seventeenth. Where was Angelo Coluzzi when you came into the room?”

“Near shelf.”

Judy didn’t bother to fetch the exhibit. They were beyond exhibits now. Beyond laws. “Did you know Mr. Coluzzi was in the room when you opened the door?”

“No.”

“So you were surprised to see him?”

“Si, si.”

“You mean, yes?”

“Yes.” The word sounded strange coming from Pigeon Tony’s mouth, and he managed to stretch it to two syllables, like Yays-a.

Judy thought about the best way to couch the story. “You opened the door, and Mr. Coluzzi said something to you, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“What did Mr. Coluzzi say to you?”

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

On the dais, Judge Vaughn was listening alertly. The court personnel, who usually did paperwork while court was in session, were listening, too. Santoro was taking rapid notes. Judy didn’t have to see the gallery to know what it looked like. She kept her focus on Pigeon Tony.

“Please explain to the jury why he said that, Pigeon Tony.”

His face flushed. “I no avenge Silvana. I go to America. I no make vendetta.”

Judy thought it might be time for the short course. Vendettas 101. “What was wrong with that?” “Man must honor vendetta, must take eye for eye.” The schoolteacher on the jury gave a slight nod, and Judy knew she had at least one vote. Maybe the schoolteacher would be foreperson, please God. Judy kept an eye on the jury as she asked the next question. “Pigeon Tony, why didn’t you honor the vendetta? Why didn’t you take an eye for an eye?”

“I no want to kill,” he answered, after a moment. “I no want to kill nobody, never.” He turned to jury. “I grow olives, in Italy. Tomatoes. Zucchini. I no want to kill. I grow.”

Judy breathed a relieved sigh. “What did you do next, after Mr. Coluzzi called you a coward?”

“I say to Coluzzi, you pig. You scum. You worse coward than me, for you kill defenseless woman.” Pigeon Tony turned to the jury. “My wife, Silvana,” he said, needlessly. Judy knew the jurors would never forget his account of the day he found Silvana in the stable, with his little son standing behind him. Two in the front row had wept openly.

“Then what did Mr. Coluzzi say to you?”

“He say, ‘You are a stupid, you are too dumb to see I destroy you. I kill your son and his wife, too. I kill them in truck and soon I kill Frank and you will have nothing.’” Pigeon Tony trembled, newly anguished, and several of the jurors gasped. The schoolteacher’s eyes narrowed with Abruzzese anger. Even Judge Vaughn shifted in his leather chair.

“Then what happened?”

“My heart is so full, and I say, ‘I kill you,’and I run and I push him. I run at him, fast. I no think, I run, and I push, I shove. I no can believe how hard! He falls and shelf fall, and I make noise, and alla things offa shelves.”

Judy focused on something she hadn’t before. “So, the scream was you, and not Mr. Coluzzi?”

“Si, si. Yes, and alla people come in—Tony, Feet, Fat Jimmy. They say, ‘You break his neck,’and I see, é vero, I break his neck!”

Judy paused. It was death, after all, and it deserved its moment. It wouldn’t serve Pigeon Tony to gloss over it, and he looked stricken on the stand. The jurors’faces were uniformly grave and several of them were looking toward the gallery. Nobody had to tell Judy that Coluzzi’s widow and family would be crying. She had to deal with it.

“Pigeon Tony, are you saying, in open court, that you broke Mr. Coluzzi’s neck?”

“Yes.”

“In your opinion, was that murder?”

Santoro was on his feet. “Objection! Your Honor, the witness is not a lawyer. His opinion about whether his act constitutes murder is a conclusion of law, irrelevant and prejudicial!”

Judy shook her head. “Your Honor, the defendant is entitled to state his own personal belief about his own actions. His state of mind is always at issue in a criminal case.”

Judge Vaughn mulled it over, looking from one lawyer to the next, then returning to Judy. “You may proceed. Objection overruled.”

“Pigeon Tony,” Judy said, facing him directly. “Is it murder?”

“No! Is killing, no is murder. Is no murder because Coluzzi kill my wife, Silvana. And my son and his wife, Gemma.”

Judy watched the jury, but they didn’t react one way or the other. There was nothing left to tell. That was it. Pigeon Tony had told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. She hoped to God it didn’t kill him. But a detail was nagging at her.

“Pigeon Tony, I have one last question. In the back room, after you pushed Mr. Coluzzi, why did you scream?”

Pigeon Tony blinked. “I no know,” he answered quietly.

But Judy did. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

Judy let it go, for now. “I have no further questions. Thank you, Pigeon Tony.”

“Prego, Judy,” he said with a polite nod, but this time the jury remained unsmiling.

She left the podium only reluctantly, aching inside as she took her seat at counsel table. She had done the best she could, and so had Pigeon Tony. There was no way she could predict what the jury would do. It would depend on how Pigeon Tony held up on cross-examination. Santoro was already on his feet with his notes and stalking to the podium, filled with the righteous anger that was regulation-issue to prosecutors. But this time, even Judy thought it was justified.

She tried to relax in her chair. The only thing harder than assisting a suicide was watching one.

In slow motion.

Santoro glared from the podium at Pigeon Tony. “Mr. Lucia, is it your testimony that you believe Angelo Coluzzi killed your wife?”

“Si, si.” Pigeon Tony straightened in his chair, which still brought him only six inches over the microphone. “Yes.”

“Did you report this to the Italian authorities?”

“Yes.”

“Did they bring charges against Angelo Coluzzi for this alleged murder?”

“No. No do nothing.”

Santoro raised a warning finger. “Confine your answers to yes or a no, Mr. Lucia, do you understand?”

“Sure.” Pigeon Tony nodded, and Santoro clenched his teeth.

“So the Italian police brought no charges against Angelo Coluzzi?”

“Coluzzi the police.”

“Mr. Lucia!” Santoro shouted so loudly that Pigeon Tony startled at the witness stand. “Only yes or no is proper! Do you understand me?”

Pigeon Tony fell silent.

“Do you understand me? Answer the question!”

“Yes.”

“Do you want a translator? Yes or no, Mr. Lucia!”

“No.”

On the dais Judge Vaughn shifted in his leather chair, and Judy considered objecting but made herself stop when she saw the jury’s reaction. A few eased back in their seats, which she read— she hoped correctly—as distancing themselves from the scene. If Santoro was going to yell at Pigeon Tony, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing for the jury to see. For the jurors who liked him, it would increase their sympathy. For the jurors who hated him, at least they see him get some comeuppance. It was in Pigeon

Tony’s interests for Judy to shut up, so she did.

“I’ll ask again, Mr. Lucia, you do understand me, don’t you!”

“Yes.” Pigeon Tony’s face fell, deep parentheses around a mouth that loved a smile, fissures on a forehead remarkably unfurrowed most of the time. The browbeating changed Pigeon Tony’s demeanor on the stand, and to Judy’s eye he seemed to shrink, his shoulders sloping, his eyes becoming opaque and guarded. Pigeon Tony knuckled under on the spot, and Judy wondered if it was an ingrained response, from growing up under Fascist rule.

If anything, it encouraged Santoro. “Now, I’ll ask this again,” he said, his tone stern. “The Italian authorities ruled your wife’s death an accident, did they not?”

“Yes,” Pigeon Tony answered quietly.

“They came to your house and investigated her death, did they not!”

“Yes.”

“And they decided that it was an accident, did they not!”

“Yes.”

“They decided that she fell from the hayloft, didn’t they!”

“Yes.”

Santoro’s fingers tightened around the podium. “Now, your wife died sixty years ago, isn’t that right!”

“Yes.”

“And you loved your wife very much!”

Pigeon Tony’s eyes fluttered. “Yes.”

“And you thought she was a wonderful mother!”

“Yes.”

“And for sixty years, you have hated Angelo Coluzzi, because you believe he killed your wife, isn’t that true!”

“Yes.”

“You have hated him because you believe he took your wife from you and the mother from your child!”

“Yes.”

Judy bit her lip not to object. Her client was being berated before her eyes, all of it legally. She could see that it was wearing Pigeon Tony down. She didn’t know how much more he could take. She had to suppress her best instinct as a lawyer to protect her client. She picked up her pencil to take fake notes, but couldn’t write anything remotely funny.

“Mr. Lucia, isn’t it true, haven’t you wished, for every day of the past sixty years, that you could kill Angelo Coluzzi?”

Pigeon Tony thought a minute. “Yes.”

“You thought Angelo Coluzzi deserved to die?”

“Yes.”

Santoro leaned over the podium, his fingers tight on its veneer edges. “Mr. Lucia, please move forward in time to the present day, if you can. With reference to the murder at issue here, which you have admitted committing—”

“Objection,” Judy said, half rising. “Your Honor, again, whether Pigeon Tony’s act constitutes murder is for the jury, not Mr. Santoro, to decide. Pigeon Tony’s state of mind is relevant, not Mr. Santoro’s.”

Santoro’s brown eyes widened in personal offense. “He did it, Your Honor! An intentional killing! He admitted as much!”

Judge Vaughn motioned to both lawyers to come toward the bench. “No speaking objections, counsel. Please approach, now,” he said gravely, and they complied. He addressed only Judy, the full weight of his blue-eyed intelligence boring into her. “Ms. Carrier, I am going to overrule Mr. Santoro’s objection, for the time being, because your analysis is legally correct.”

Santoro scoffed under his breath, but it didn’t stop Judge Vaughn.

“But I warn you, Ms. Carrier,” the judge continued, pointing a finger like a gun at her, “if you are going for a jury nullification here, be forewarned. If you make one improper reference in a question, objection, or closing argument, which suggests in any way that these jurors ignore the law, I will hold you in contempt, dismiss this jury, and declare a mistrial. So watch your step. For your sake, and for your client’s.”

“Yes, sir.” Judy didn’t want a mistrial. She didn’t know if Pigeon Tony could go through another trial. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Santoro said quickly, and he returned to his podium while Judy walked to counsel table. It was one of the longest walks she’d ever taken. Her knees felt weak again. She wobbled in her pumps. Had they moved the table when she turned her back? She took her seat and pushed her pad away. She should have prevented this from happening. She should never have let Pigeon Tony take the stand.

Santoro cleared his throat. “Mr. Lucia, please answer yes or no to the following questions, as before. Do you understand!”

“Yes.”

“Now, there came a time, on April seventeenth of this year, when you went to the pigeon-racing club and opened the door to the back room, isn’t that right!”

“Yes.”

“And isn’t it true that you rushed at Angelo Coluzzi and grabbed him by the shoulders and whipped his back with such violent force as to break his neck from his very shoulders!”

“Yes.”

Santoro didn’t break stride. “When you ran at him, you intended to kill him, did you not!”

“Yes.”

“You knew you were going to kill him!”

“Yes.”

“You wanted to kill him!”

“Yes.”

“You hoped you could kill him!”

“Yes.”

“You had wanted to kill him for sixty years!”

“Yes.”

Santoro stopped suddenly. The courtroom was utterly quiet. Judy, the judge, and the jury all waited for the next question. “Well, you did,” Santoro said, very quietly.

Judy rose to object, then shut her mouth. It would look heartless. But she finished rising and went to the podium. If Santoro was finished, it was time for redirect.

Judge Vaughn seemed to come out of a reverie, and, like everybody, he was visualizing the awful scene in the back room and looking at Pigeon Tony with new, cold eyes. “Mr. Santoro, do you have any further questions?” the judge asked crisply.

“No, Your Honor,” Santoro answered, and Judy went forward.

“I have a single question on redirect, Your Honor,” she said.

“Good,” Judge Vaughn replied grimly, which Judy took as a bad sign. Santoro’s cross had hit home. He had emphasized all the worst parts of Pigeon Tony’s story. The jury looked restless and unhappy. She couldn’t hope to bring them back to the warmth they’d felt for him when he started testifying. There was only one thing she could do, but it needed to be done, and she didn’t know if she could get it from Pigeon Tony.

She cleared her throat. “Pigeon Tony, I have one question for you.”

On the stand, Pigeon Tony raised his small chin, but his eyes remained opaque.

“Pigeon Tony, are you sorry that Angelo Coluzzi is dead?”

Pigeon Tony breathed shallowly, his concave chest rising once, then twice. His mouth moved into a firm, tiny line, and he blinked once, then twice. “Yes, I am sorry,” he said softly.

Judy permitted the word a hang time, as she had with Angelo Coluzzi’s death, and her gaze met Pigeon Tony’s. She locked eyes with him for a minute, keeping him in that moment, remembering the day he’d welled up in court, and his eyes grew shiny again, with remorse restrained enough to ring true. Then she said, “I have no further questions, Your Honor,” and returned to counsel table.

But Santoro was stalking to the podium. “Likewise, I have only one question on recross, Your Honor,” he said, but didn’t wait for Judge Vaughn to nod him on. He reached the podium and fixed a glare at the witness stand. “Mr. Lucia, are you sorry you killed Angelo Coluzzi?”

Pigeon Tony paused only a second. “No.”

“Thank you,” Santoro said quickly and went back to counsel table.

Judy kept an eye on the jury. A juror in the back row looked shocked. Another juror, next to her, had knitted her brow in confusion. Judy considered going up to the podium to mitigate the damage, but she knew Pigeon Tony would tell only the truth: He was sorry Angelo Coluzzi was dead, but he wasn’t sorry he had killed him. Whoever said that the truth, while plain, was easy? Or that human behavior was ever black and white? It gave her an idea.

“Ms. Carrier?” Judge Vaughn asked, cocking a questioning eyebrow, but Judy had arrived at a decision and held her head high, with a confidence she didn’t feel.

“The defense rests, Your Honor,” she said.

They were the hardest words she had ever said, and also something of a lie. Because she was already hatching another plan.

Chapter 48

Judy stood at the head of the table in the courthouse conference room, pitching Plan B to her client. “Pigeon Tony, listen to me. We can still save your life. You know you are charged with murder in the first degree, which is the worst kind of murder there is.”

“Si, si,” he answered wearily, almost slumping in the chair across from Judy. He was clearly exhausted from testifying, and the grind of the trial had taken its toll. Frank sat next to him, his expression tense, with an arm around the back of his grandfather’s chair. Bennie listened as she stood with folded arms against the side wall. She had given Judy her blessing for this last-ditch effort.

“We can move the Court—ask the Court—to charge you on a lesser crime. For example, murder in the third degree. I have the definition right here. Murder in the third degree is when someone kills someone else”—Judy read from her pad—“‘without a lawful justification, but acts with a sudden and intense passion, resulting from serious provocation.’”

“What means voca—?” Pigeon Tony asked. “It’s like when Coluzzi told you he killed your son and his wife. He provoked you.” “Provocare,” Frank translated, and Pigeon Tony nodded, seeming to perk up.

“Coluzzi provoke me, è vero.”

Judy nodded, encouraged. “He did provoke you, and you did kill him with a sudden and intense passion. It fits! Now is the time the Court charges the jury, or tells them what the law is. If we ask the Court to charge the jury on murder in the third degree, I think they won’t convict you on murder in the first degree.”

Frank brightened. “What’s the difference, Judy?”

“One big difference. No death penalty. The mandatory minimum for third-degree murder is ten to twenty years.”

“Hmm.” Frank shook his head. “That might as well be life in prison for him. But at least it’s not death.”

“Exactly,” Judy said, heartened. “It gives the jury a compromise. They want to punish him, they can convict on the lesser crime. It’s not all black and white.”

Frank nodded. “I like it.”

“So do I,” added Bennie, still leaning against the wall.

Judy felt relieved. “It’s your choice, Pigeon Tony, but I advise that you let me do it.” She checked her watch. “I meet with the judge in five minutes to go over the charge, and after that we have our closing arguments. Then he charges the jury and they go out to deliberate. You have to decide now. Say yes.”

Pigeon Tony blinked, his lids slower than usual. “Say again.”

“Say what?”

“Say what you say before.” He motioned at Judy’s legal pad. “What you read.”

Judy looked at her pad. The definition of third-degree murder. “Killing someone without lawful justifi—”

“What means?”

“It means the killing wasn’t legal. There was no legal reason for it.”

Pigeon Tony’s eyes flared open. “Is no murder! No! No! No!”

“Pigeon Tony—”

“No!” he erupted.

It was over. Judy knew she could move Mount Vesuvius sooner. There was no Plan C. And it was time to go.

At the podium, Judy stood for a moment before the jury, thinking of what to say in her closing argument. Events had obviously mooted her neatly outlined reasonable-doubt closing, with Points A through F. She was on her own.

She looked up and eyed the jury, and they looked refreshed and eager. The schoolteacher smiled at her, but Judy had to speak to the back row, which had already decided that Pigeon Tony was guilty. She had thought that once, too. Maybe it was a good starting point.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. You have heard something extraordinary in this courtroom, in Pigeon Tony’s testimony. I heard it for the first time myself, when I met my client. You all heard him tell you, because he insisted on taking the witness stand to talk to you and tell you the truth. He didn’t hide behind me, an expert, or even his rights under the Constitution. But when Pigeon Tony told me that story of what happened in the back room, the same way he told it to you today, I was appalled. I didn’t know if I should represent him. After all, he had killed someone. In my mind then, he was guilty.”

Judy paused, thinking aloud. “But I came to know him, and to hear about his life, much as you did through the stories he told you when he testified today. I began to understand what he had gone through. First, his wife murdered in a stable, on his young son’s birthday, and then his son and his wife burned alive in a truck that went flaming off a highway overpass. Pigeon Tony Lucia is a man who has had his entire family taken from him.” Judy was choosing her words carefully, because Santoro was on the edge of his seat, waiting to object. She couldn’t say Angelo Coluzzi had committed the murders because he hadn’t been convicted, but she didn’t have to, she hoped.

“And as time went on, I began to understand what would happen to a normal person, if pushed to that length. What would happen to me, or to you. And if I, or you, were provoked the way Pigeon Tony was, had lost the people we loved, wouldn’t we behave the same way, in that one instant when we are taunted, teased, and provoked, with the source of our greatest pain? Remember Angelo Coluzzi’s words: I killed your son and—”

“Objection, irrelevant!” Santoro said, and Judy’s head snapped around. Most lawyers would never interrupt another’s closing, especially with an objection that lame.

“Your Honor,” Judy said. “That was Pigeon Tony’s testimony, and I’m entitled to argue it.”

“Overruled.” Judge Vaughn looked askance at Santoro, who sat down.

Judy paused to collect her thoughts. If Santoro was trying to break her stride, she wouldn’t let him. “And hearing that, Pigeon Tony flew at Angelo Coluzzi and pushed him, breaking his neck. And after that he screamed. At the horror of what he had done. You heard him say he was sorry that Coluzzi was dead. He was, and is, sorry.”

Judy drew herself up. “But you are here to judge Pigeon Tony, and Judge Vaughn will charge you on the law, and he will tell you that you are the ultimate finder of the facts in this case. You alone will decide what is truth. You alone will decide whether Pigeon Tony committed murder when he killed Angelo Coluzzi.”

Judy paused, eyeing each juror. “Your best guide in that deliberations room will be this question: What is justice? Because it is justice that brings the lawyers here, and the court personnel, Judge Vaughn, and the Lucias and the Coluzzis and all of the spectators, the reporters, and most of all, each of you. Juries are convened for one purpose only: to do justice. Justice is the reason for this system, and for objections, and for opening and closing arguments. Justice is, in fact, the entire point of the law.”

Judy thought about it, clarifying her own thoughts as she spoke. “Pigeon Tony has never had justice in his life, and he is seventy-nine years old. He grew up under Fascism, in prewar Italy, and he doesn’t expect justice. He has learned not to expect justice. But he remains hopeful. It is time for him to have justice now.” Judy paused. “Show him what this country was built on. Teach him what we are all about. Grant him, finally, justice. And find him not guilty of murder. In so doing, you will not be ignoring the law. You will be fulfilling its highest and best purpose.”

“Thank you.” Judy nodded at the jury, then made her way to her seat. She didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead as Santoro hurried to the podium and slapped his legal pad on it with a resounding thwap.

“I cannot believe what I just heard,” Santoro said angrily, eyeing the jury. “I had expected that the defense would play on your sympathy, but I never thought I would hear her call upon justice.

Is it justice to kill an innocent man, in cold blood, while he is doing nothing but practicing his hobby? How can that possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, be called justice?”

Santoro held up a finger. “Ms. Carrier told you that the point of the law is justice. She is correct. But the law that governs this matter has already been decided and the law on this subject is clear. Please listen while I read it to you.” He picked up his pad. “‘A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the first degree when it is committed by an intentional killing.’” Santoro slapped the pad down again, startling the jurors in the front row. “That is the law of this Commonwealth. And if you follow the law, as you must, you can only find defendant Lucia guilty of murder in the first degree.”

Santoro didn’t break stride. “The defendant admitted he killed Angelo Coluzzi. The defendant admitted he intended to kill Angelo Coluzzi. The defendant admitted he hoped he could kill Angelo Coluzzi. And semantics aside, the defendant isn’t sorry that he killed Angelo Coluzzi. Which means to me, he’d do it again if he had the chance. Ms. Carrier wants you to imagine yourselves as Mr. Lucia, but on the contrary, please imagine yourselves as Angelo Coluzzi. Because that’s who you would be if we permitted people to kill each other for reasons they think are valid but that have no basis in reality. To kill for imagined slights. To kill for unsubstantiated revenge. To kill because they think they have the right to. To kill because of an ancient grudge. To kill for their cultural beliefs.”

Santoro paused. “Ms. Carrier spoke personally, and so will I. I am an Italian-American, and I must tell you, I am absolutely offended by this defendant. Because this is not prewar Italy; this is America. This is not a time of war and disorder; this is a time of peace, and order. We in America are not about tyranny, we are about democracy and the law. We Americans all must abide by the law, for the safety and good of the whole. When the defendant came to this country from Italy, as did my own grandfather, he took on the responsibility to accept our laws. Just as he accepts our benefits and our riches.”

Santoro eyed the jury, the front row and then the back. “In the beginning of this case, I told you that every murder case is a story. Now we are at the end of this one. All of us are here to hear it and witness it, except for one man. Angelo Coluzzi. The law will guide you, and Judge Vaughn will charge you on it. And when you follow it, you will be doing justice, not only for all of us, but for Angelo Coluzzi.

“Thank you,” he said, and left the podium.

Judy couldn’t ease the tightness in her stomach as Judge Vaughn began reading the law to the jury, taking them through the early paragraphs of the charge, regarding the jury as the ultimate fact finder. Though the boilerplate had always sounded like a bar-review course before, it took on a special significance now. Pigeon Tony listened to every word, sitting upright in his chair, and Judy was sure that Judge Vaughn was reading more slowly so he could understand it. Until the judge had heard Pigeon Tony’s admission on the stand, he had liked him. Judy hoped the jury wouldn’t feel the same way.

She stole a glance at them as the judge read. Each face was grave, and from time to time many of them glanced over at Pigeon Tony and Judy, then at Santoro and back again, as if trying to reach a decision visually. Judy took a mental head count. The Abruzzese schoolteacher would vote for Pigeon Tony, and maybe the older woman next to her. Everyone else was against, and the back row wanted him drawn and quartered—with his lawyer. Judy stopped counting. It was a guessing game anyway.

Her head began to throb, as the judge segued into reading the jury the definition of first-degree murder. It would be the only degree of guilt that went to the jury, on Pigeon Tony’s insistence, even though Judge Vaughn had raised a question about it during their earlier conference. Judy had told him this was her client’s wish, and he’d acceded to it. Legally the judge couldn’t add a lesser degree of guilt to the charge without a request from the defense or the Commonwealth. It had been obvious at the conference that Santoro was too confident of victory on murder one to do so. The case would go to the jury as all or nothing.

It set Judy’s teeth on edge. She blamed herself, she blamed Pigeon Tony, then she blamed Italy and Mussolini, and then came back to herself again. She glanced over at Pigeon Tony, but he was listening to the charge. It was impossible for her to keep a professional mask for the jury, so she looked away.

In the front row of the gallery, beyond the bulletproof divider, sat Frank, his eyes as worried as Judy’s. He caught her glance and forced a tense smile, but Judy couldn’t find one. She could only imagine how Frank would react when his grandfather was sentenced to death, or life in prison. Or what would happen between them, when Judy became the lawyer who had put him there. She faced the front of the courtroom, where Judge Vaughn was finishing the charge and dismissing the jury to deliberate.

“I am giving the bailiff a verdict sheet for you to take with you into your deliberations,” the judge said, handing several pieces of paper to the bailiff. The bailiff then brought one sheet to the jury, walked to the Commonwealth’s table and handed one to Santoro, and finally carried one to Judy, leaving it on counsel table in front of her. “Thank you in advance for your time and your best efforts. Court is now adjourned.” He banged the gavel as the jury rose and filed out of the pocket door beside the dais.

Only then did Judy’s gaze fall to the verdict sheet, which contained but a single interrogatory:

Murder (1st degree)—Guilty or Not Guilty?

Chapter 49

Judy sat with Bennie in the courthouse conference room. The small room was dead quiet. The lighting was harsh. Nobody was talking. They were all talked out. They had spent the first two hours of the jurors’ deliberations psyching them out, comparing notes on the raise of an eyebrow or a sniff of contempt. Extrapolating from stereotype and anecdote and sheer guesswork which way they would go. Who would be the foreperson? Who the holdout? How long would they be out? Would they come back with a question? Or worse, an answer?

Judy checked her watch. 6:30. The jury had gone out at 3:13, but who was counting? When would they come back? How would they decide? Judy’s anxious gaze roved over a table cluttered with briefcases, papers, newspapers, and a copy of the charge, which she had explained to Pigeon Tony, just for something to do. He hadn’t seemed all that interested, and truth to tell, neither was she. They had rolled the dice and were waiting for them to stop.

Judy checked her watch. It was 6:31. Pigeon Tony looked down at his lap, silent but not dozing. He couldn’t even if he wanted to, because Frank, sitting next to him, had an arm around him and was rubbing his back, jiggling Pigeon Tony with each stroke. They had been doing this for so long, Judy wondered if Frank would wear a hole in Pigeon Tony’s new jacket, but she didn’t say anything. Nobody acted normal when a jury was out, least of all the client, whose life, or money, was at stake. And for the lawyers it was a limbo of the worst sort. Because whatever happened, they would be responsible for it, and the words of that closing would be a refrain of sleepless nights to come, causing a cringe of regret, or even a tear, in a dark bedroom.

Judy sighed inwardly. Looked nowhere and everywhere. Tried not to think about it but failed. Every profession had its moments, moments only insiders experienced, and lawyering was no different. But for all the highs and lows of being a trial lawyer, Judy thought this was the most incredible moment the law had to offer. A moment that turned a job into a profession, and a profession into a love. A moment when life hung in the balance. A moment when human beings struggled together to govern themselves, to make sense of conflicting facts, and to discover and determine the most elusive of ideals. Justice. Truth. Fairness. Law. Morality. A moment to fix and define ideas that refused to be charted, that defied definition.

Judy marveled at it, truly, anytime any jury went out, but in this case realized something for the first time. The law really wasn’t found in the green casebooks that contained the Pennsylvania Statutes or the pebbled maroon books that spelled out the United States Code. It lived in this moment, in the hearts and minds of the jurors who decided it day by day, in courtrooms big and small, everywhere across the country, under a system of law that had become a model for nations around the world. And even though it dealt with such lofty ideals, it always came down to one thing—

A knock at a conference room door, a startled lawyer jumping up to open it, and a solemn bailiff standing at the threshold.

“They’re back,” he said simply.

In the courtroom the jurors filed from the pocket door into the jury box. Judy struggled to read each face, but they were all looking down as they found their seats. Courtroom lore held that it was bad news when the jury didn’t look happy, but Judy never got that. All verdicts were bad news for one side. She prayed it wasn’t her side, this time. Pigeon Tony’s side.

She watched, almost breathless while the foreperson, a reserved older man in the front row that nobody had bet on, handed the verdict sheet to the bailiff, who delivered it folded to Judge Vaughn.

Judge Vaughn was collecting himself behind the dais, his features falling into somber lines and his dark robes drawn about him. He reached over and accepted the verdict sheet, opened it slowly, then closed it and handed it back to the bailiff without reaction. Judy almost burst with frustration. Didn’t these people have any emotions? Wasn’t there an Italian among them? Pigeon Tony fidgeted in his seat. She didn’t dare look at Frank, in the gallery. Or Bennie, The Tonys, and Mr. DiNunzio. The bailiff gave the verdict sheet back to the foreperson, who nodded as he took it, seated.

The bailiff addressed the jury. “Mr. Foreperson, would you please rise?”

It was time for the verdict to be read. Judy found herself reaching for Pigeon Tony’s hand. He would need the support. She would need the support. They would get through this together.

The bailiff spoke again. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, on the charge of murder in the first degree in the matter of Commonwealth versus Lucia, how do you find?”

The foreperson cleared his throat. “We find the defendant not guilty.”

Judy thought she’d heard it wrong. Pigeon Tony closed his eyes in thankful prayer.

An outraged Santoro jumped to his feet. “Your Honor, please poll the jury!” he demanded, and Judge Vaughn stoically complied, asking each juror what was his verdict, guilty or not guilty.

Judy remained stunned as each juror repeated “not guilty,” and it took twelve “not guilty”s for her to believe it was really true, and that they had really won, and that Pigeon Tony had finally gotten justice for all he had suffered, and that nobody could take it away from him.

And then her tears came.

Once Judy and Pigeon Tony were outside the bulletproof barrier, courtroom security took over and ushered the Coluzzis out, but nobody could easily restrain the Lucias. Bennie, Frank, The Tonys, and Mr. DiNunzio surged joyously toward Judy and Pigeon Tony, enveloping them both in their embrace and crowding with them out the courthouse doors, clapping and shouting.

Judy was almost out the door when she caught sight of a woman in the back of the gallery. She did a double-take when she recognized her. Strawberry-blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a big Irish grin. It was Theresa McRea, sitting next to her husband Kevin, the subcontractor. If they were here, it must mean he would testify against the Coluzzis.

Judy saluted them, with karma to spare.

Chapter 50

It would have been nice to take off for Bermuda after the trial, but Chester County was looking good to Judy right now, as she zipped under the cool oak trees covering the wooded country road, in the cutest lime-green VW Bug ever made. Penny occupied the passenger seat, characteristically erect, her brown eyes focused out the windshield. A girl, her dog, and her car. It was good to be reunited.

Judy drove with the windows open, and the wind fluttered through her hair, levitated Penny’s raggy ears, and ruffled the newspapers on the backseat of the car. Judy turned right and downshifted as she pulled onto the property, headed for Frank’s construction site, and parked near his tool bag, of worn sailcloth. She cut the ignition and opened the door, and Penny bounded onto her lap and jumped out of the car into the mud. Judy retrieved the newspapers and got out of the car. Good thing one of them could retrieve.

Penny sprinted for Frank, who looked up from the wall-in-progress and caught the golden as she plastered muddy paws on his khaki shorts. Rocks lay in piles around his Timberlands, which were fringed with orangey mud, and Penny deserted Frank to sniff each one, her tail wagging. Moths fluttered from her in confusion, disturbed in their wandering from one dirty puddle to the next, where the topsoil lay soaking from last night’s rain. This morning had dawned muggy and hot, atypical for spring, and Judy had gotten out of the office as soon as she could, to bring the news in person.

Penny darted off to get into trouble, and Judy walked over to the wall, watching a shirtless Frank pick up a large tan stone, brace it against the thick cotton of his shorts, then strike it with the long tip of a rock hammer, making an almost musical chink. The impact sent fine dust blowing into the air, setting the breeze aglitter in the summer sun.

Judy was in no hurry to rush the moment. She sat down on a rock with the newspaper. “How do you know where to hit it?” she asked, curious.

“Rock has a grain, like wood. Particularly sandstone does. Look for the cleft, find the grain, and smack it so it breaks with the grain.”

“Of course.” Judy had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. She liked the sound of his deep voice and the movement of his shoulder muscles under a thin veneer of perspiration. She tried not to leer, so Frank didn’t think he had become a sex object, which would have been a completely reasonable assumption given the last few days.

“The old guys, like my father, they could tell you exactly how the rock would pop. He could even send the chip where he wanted it to go.” A chunk of the rock fell to the ground, and then Frank holstered the hammer and wedged the smaller piece under the end of the rock, filling in a space Judy hadn’t seen.

“Why do you do that?”

“Shim it? Supports the foundation. The little ones do most of the work. It’s just that the big ones get all the credit.” Frank grinned and wiped his brow, leaving dark streaks on his forehead. “As in life.”

Judy scanned the wall, which curved sinuously across the top of the gentle hill. It was almost seventy-five feet long and made only of tan, gray, and iron-streaked fieldstones. No mortar at all, in the rural style of a dry retaining wall. “It looks wonderful.”

“Thanks.” Frank paused. “I own it now, you know. Settlement is next month, before it gets too cold to break ground.”

Judy didn’t get it. “Wait. What do you own? The wall?”

Frank nodded, with a grin. “I bought this property as of yesterday, from my client. Ten acres, most of it uncleared, but it’s still land.”

“You’re kidding!”

“So now it’s my wall.” Frank turned and pointed behind him, to lower ground. “The house will be there.”

“House?”

“I can build it.”

“By yourself?”

“Nah.” Frank turned and pointed toward the oak grove, where Pigeon Tony began the long trek toward them. “I got the little stones to help, like that one.”

Judy smiled. “Jeez! And I thought I had news.”

Frank cocked his head. “What’s your news?”

Judy opened the newspaper, held it up, and showed him the headline. She knew what it said. JOHN COLUZZI ARRESTED FOR MURDER OF BROTHER MARCO.

“They announced today, huh?” Frank set down his hammer and accepted the paper.

“The proverbial good news and bad news.” Judy winced. “Jimmy Bello turns on John Coluzzi in return for a lighter sentence on your parents’ murder. Bello even produced the ski masks and bloody clothes, which he was supposed to stash after they killed Marco. The D.A. said he has John nailed.”

Frank’s lips parted as he read the story, and Judy waited for his reaction. In the background she could see Pigeon Tony getting closer, in his baggy pants and blousy white shirt. After a minute Frank looked up from the paper. “They don’t say how light the sentence will be,” he said, dry-mouthed.

“It won’t be that light, they told me, and it’ll run consecutively, so he’s locked up for a good, long time.”

“I can meet with the judge when the time comes, as victims’ family, right?”

“Right. I’ll go with you.”

“Good.” Frank squinted against the sun. His broad chest heaved up and down with a deep sigh. “Not the worst thing in the world. Justice, in a way.”

“In a way. And Dan Roser’s lawsuit goes forward, against John and the company. With Kevin McRea’s testimony, Coluzzi Construction is out of business.”

Frank handed her back the newspaper. “Sometimes that’s the best the law can do,” he said quietly. “Maybe it’s time to end all this, huh?”

“You mean the hate part? The hostility and the war?”

Frank smiled. “The vendetta.”

“So the vendetta ends. Excellent. From now on there will be only peace, stone walls, and houses in the country.”

“And love,” Frank said. He leaned over and kissed Judy gently, without her even asking.

“Judy!” came a shout, and Judy managed to unlock her lips. Behind Frank, Pigeon Tony was walking, with Penny dancing circles at his side. He carried a Hefty bag, and Judy knew it had to be full of lunch and laundry. But Pigeon Tony’s straw hat was tilted at an unusual angle, and something she couldn’t see clearly was on his shoulder.

“How do you think he’ll take the news?” she asked, shielding her eyes to see Pigeon Tony better. Something appeared to be sitting on his shoulder, and Penny kept jumping up to get it.

“I told him we’d have to make the deal, and he’s okay with it. He’s stronger than both of us and this wall put together.” Frank turned and waved at his grandfather. “He’s already talking about rebuilding his loft, at home, so he can get ready for race season this summer. He loves you forever for saving his birds.”

“I didn’t do it. The Tonys did.” Judy stood up and waved as Pigeon Tony approached, swinging his Hefty bag, and when he got close enough she could see what was driving the dog nuts. Perched on Pigeon Tony’s shoulder, riding happily under the brim of his hat, perched a slate-gray pigeon. Judy burst into laughter. “Is that a pigeon on his shoulder?”

“That’s no ordinary pigeon. That’s The Old Man.”

“He came back?”

“Naturally, to South Philly. Where else can he get fresh mozzarella?”

Judy laughed. “So what’s he doing here?”

“Tony-From-Down-The-Block brought him, and my grandfather won’t let the bird out of his sight. They’re both single, and they go everywhere together now.”

“Judy!” Pigeon Tony was pumping his hand with a familiar vigor. “Thank you, Judy. Thank you! Look! See! He come back!”

The motion unsettled the bird, which began fluttering its wings, and suddenly Penny leaped into the air at the pigeon.

Judy was about to shout in warning, but the aged pigeon, who had survived dangers greater than mere puppies, took easy flight, flapping its wings in a gentle rhythm, swooping in unhurried spirals into the cloudless blue sky. The bird climbed higher and higher as they all watched from the meadow, until finally it soared into the light of the sun, safe and free.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I know something about the law and about golden retrievers, but that’s about it. For this novel I had to understand homing pigeons and prewar Italy, so I was, in at least two areas, flat out of luck. Also the writing part never comes easy, but that’s another story. This is where I say thank you for the help, and kindly forgive my length. I’m a big fan of thank you. People should say it more often. Only goldens are exempt.

First thanks to my agent Molly Friedrich and my editor Carolyn Marino, for their guidance, support, and good humor during the writing and editing process. Thank you to HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, who watches over me, my books, and even their covers, and to Cathy Hemming, who is the best publisher in town. Thank you to Michael Morrison, for his expertise and kindness, and to Richard Rohrer, for all of the above, plus great taste in wine. Thank you to the Amazing Paul Cirone and to Erica Johanson, for everything. Special thanks to Laura Leonard and Tara Brown, for putting up with me.

Thank you to my wonderful family, The Flying Scottolines, here and in Italy, who let me mine them and their memories relentlessly. Thank you to my compare Rinaldo Celli and his family, who helped me understand something about life under Mussolini. Also helpful in this regard were several excellent works: Mussolini, My Rise and Fall (Da Capo, 1998); Moseley, Mussolini’s Shadow (Yale University Press, 1995); Whittam, Fascist Italy (Manchester University Press, 1995). For background, see Juliani, Building Little Italy; Philadelphia’s Italians Before Migration (Penn State University Press, 1998), and Mangione, Mount Allegro (Syracuse University Press, 1998). Like most Italian-Americans, I grew up in a proverb-spouting household, but I hear that not everybody learns what goes around, comes around or the ever-cryptic I cry, or you cry at age three. Those of you who escaped childhood without this experience, or even those of you who survived it, may want to read Mertvago, ed., Dictionary of Italian Proverbs (Hippocrene, 1997). Thanks to my friend, Carolyn Romano.

Thank you to Anthony and Rocco LaSalle and his family, who invited me into their home, loft, and friendship. I am forever grateful. Thank you to the members of a certain local pigeon racing club, for letting this rookie attend. For further reading about pideon racing, see Rotondo, Rotondo on Racing Pigeons (Mattacchione, 1987) and Bodio, Aloft (Pruett, 1990). Thank you to Wil Durham, for his expertise and kindness, and to Marty Keeley, Sebastian Pistritto, and Chris Molitor.

Thank you to Paul Davis, friend and master stonemason, for answering countless questions and for letting me watch him pick up rocks and put them down again. Fot the zen of dry-laid walls, see Allport, Sermons in Stone (Norton, 1990) and Vivian, Building Stone Walls (Storey, 1976). Thank you to Dr. Anthony Giangrasso, for his forensic expertise and kindness. Thank you to my dear friends criminal defense lawyer Glenn Gilman and detective/whiz Art Mee of the Office of the District Attorney of Philadelphia.

Most of all, thank you to my readers, who have been so supportive to me and my books over the years. I think of you every sentence, and am grateful for the time you spend to read me and even write to me. I am both honored and cheered by your very kind letters and e-mail.

Finally, a personal thank you to my husband and family, for their love and support, and to three goldens I know, for just being you.

About the Author

Lisa Scottoline writes bestselling legal thrillers that draw on her experience as a criminal lawyer at a prestigious Philadelphia law firm and also her clerkships in the state and federal systems of jus-tice. She is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and its law school, where she was associate editor of the Law Review. Scottoline won the premier award in suspense fiction, the Edgar Award, for her second legal thriller, Final Appeal. Her books are used by bar associations for the issues of legal ethics they pre-sent, and she has lectured on the subject at law schools around the country. Scottoline’s books have been translated into more than twenty languages. A native Philadelphian, she lives with her family in the Philadelphia area and welcomes mail at www.scottoline.com.