The Vendetta Defense

by Lisa Scottoline

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

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

  “It’s against the law, nowadays?”

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

  Feet shrugged. “So I won’t tell ’em.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You never know what?”

  “It could be a trap.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What do you mean?” Judy asked.

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

  22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  THE KING IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE KING!

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

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

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

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

  “You survived a car bomb and the press?” asked a voice, and Judy jumped.

  It was Bennie, but that was still a cause for alarm. Judy straightened up in her chair. “I was just reading about the case.”

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

  “I’m boycotting.”

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

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

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

  “I don’t need to call.”

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

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

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

  Judy blinked. “Am I off the case?”

  “Do you want to be?”

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

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

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

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

  “Why?”

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

  “From the beginning?”

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

  “Murphy should mind her own business.”

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

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

  “No, it’s just bone-headed.”

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

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

  “I do, I just told you.”

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

  “Against who?”

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

  “What should I do?”

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

  “Nothing. It’s chaos.”

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

  “Right.”

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

  “Right.” Judy had to agree.

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

  Judy got a little excited. “Right!”

  “It even depresses us, I see.”

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

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

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

  “The law, of course!”

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

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