The Vendetta Defense

by Lisa Scottoline

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

  “What?” All Judy saw was wet grass.

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

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

  “Why did they tear it down?”

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

  Judy was appalled. “It was historic.”

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

  Judy laughed. “Enough said.”

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

  “How so?”

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

  “No.”

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

  “Have you been?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “How did she die?”

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

  “I know, but how did she die?”

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

  Judy startled. “Like Coluzzi’s.”

  “I guess, but there’s no connection.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “No, I can do it. I want to.”

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

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

  “I don’t think—”

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

  “Oh, really?” Frank’s eyes softened, and his crow’s-feet wrinkled. He nudged a strand of Judy’s blond hair from her face. “I t
hought I was your protection.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  And so he kissed her.

  BOOK THREE

  Forte e Gentile.

  Strong and gentle.

  —The motto of the province of Abruzzo

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

  —WINSTON CHURCHILL,

  While England Slept (1936)

  19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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