The Vendetta Defense

supposedly killed another old man, also from Italy. I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on when you called.”

Judy’s eyes flared in surprise. She felt awake for the first time in months. “Does Pigeon Tony have a lawyer?”

“Wait a minute. You sound interested. You’re not allowed to be interested.”

“Why not?” Judy inched forward on her horrible chair. Murder trumped antitrust. Spring had sprung. Her other phone line rang but she ignored it. Ignoring phones got easier with practice. “I can be interested. I have a First Amendment right to be interested.”

“My father wanted me to call you, but I don’t think you should take the case.”

“Your dad wants me to?” Judy’s pulse quickened. She would do anything to help Mary’s father, especially something she already wanted to do.

“Yes, but I don’t, and I don’t have time to fight about it. It’s La Traviata over here. I gotta go.”

“Put your dad on the phone, Mare.”

“No. Remember the last murder case we took? Gunfire ensued. Hot lead whizzing around. Lawyers are ill prepared for such things. Stick to the Sherman Act. Besides, I told my father Bennie won’t allow it.”

“Why wouldn’t she? We take murder cases now, and besides, the boss is at a deposition. I’ll apologize later if she won’t let me take it. Don’t make me whine. Put him on!”

“No.” The ruckus in the background started again, and Judy could hear Mary’s father closer to the phone.

“Now, Mare! Lemme talk to your father.” There was a sudden silence on the phone, and Judy could picture Mary’s hand covering the receiver, muting the arguing of the men and the softer voice of Mariano DiNunzio. “Mr. D, is that you?” Judy asked, shouting through Mary’s hand, as if it were possible. “What’s the matter, Mr. D?”

“Judy, thank God you called!” Mr. DiNunzio said. He came onto the line abruptly, and Judy assumed he had taken the phone from Mary. “The police, they have my friend downtown. They took him away, in handcuffs.” Mr. DiNunzio’s voice was choked with emotion, and Judy’s heart went out to him, the gravity of the situation striking home.

“What happened?”

“They say he killed a man, but he would never. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.” Mr. DiNunzio cleared his throat, and Judy could hear him collect himself. “I would never ask such a thing, a favor, for me. For myself. You know this. But for my friend, my compare, he’s in trouble.”

“Whatever you need, you got it, Mr. D.”

“I know you, you’re a good girl. A smart lawyer. You know all the ins and outs. You work hard, like my Mary. Will you be his lawyer, Judy? Please?”

“Of course I will, Mr. D,” Judy answered, and the words weren’t out of her mouth before she was reaching for her briefcase.

And slipping her bare feet into a pair of clunky yellow clogs.

Chapter 3

Pigeon Tony struck Judy as the cutest defendant ever, and she wanted to rescue the little old man the moment she saw him in the interview room of the Roundhouse, Philadelphia’s police administration building. He was only five foot four, probably a hundred and thirty pounds, and he startled as Judy burst into the interview room, lost in a white paper jumpsuit that was way too large for his scrawny neck and narrow chest. His withered arms stuck like twigs from short sleeves, and his knobby wrists were pinched by steel handcuffs. His sunburned pate was dotted with liver spots and streaked by only a few filaments of silvery hair. His peeling nose was small and hooked; his eyes a round, dark brown, almost black, under a short brow. Judy couldn’t explain his superb tan, but she gathered he was called Pigeon because he looked like one.

“Mr. Lucia, I’m a lawyer,” she said, briefcase in hand. “My name is Judy Carrier and I was sent by the DiNunzios. They asked me to come and help you.”

The old man’s only response was to squint at her, and Judy didn’t understand why. Maybe he didn’t speak English. Maybe he didn’t want a lawyer. Maybe she should have worn pantyhose.

“I’m a friend of Mary DiNunzio.” Judy took a seat in the orange bucket chair on the lawyer’s side of the counter. Five ratty interview carrels sat side by side. The interview room was otherwise empty, not for want of felons but for want of lawyers. Few attorneys bothered to come to the bowels of the Roundhouse, preferring to meet their clients where the floor didn’t crawl. “You know Mary DiNunzio, don’t you?”

The old man, still squinting, slowly raised his arm and pointed at Judy with a finger that, though crooked at the knuckle, did not waver. His sleeve slid up his arm when he pointed, revealing a surprisingly wiry knot of biceps and a tattooed crucifix that had gone a blurry blue. But Judy still didn’t understand what he was pointing at.

“Mr. Lucia? What is it?”

“Your, eh, your face,” he said, his Italian accent as thick as tomato sauce. “Your mouth. Is bleeding?”

Judy reddened. The lipliner. The editing pencil. No wonder the cops had recoiled at the sight of her. And she thought it was because she was a lawyer. “No, it’s not bleeding. I’m sorry.” She wiped her mouth quickly, rouging the back of her hand. “Despite appearances, I’m not a clown but a lawyer, and a fairly good one, Mr. Lucia.”

“Mariano tell me. I call him, and he tell me you come. I thank you.” The old man nodded, in a courtly way. “Also you calla me Pigeon Tony. Everybody calla me Pigeon Tony.”

“Well, then, Pigeon Tony, you’re welcome, and I’m happy to represent you,” Judy said, then remembered she could get fired for taking on a nice client. Lately she had been representing corporations, ill-mannered entities by charter. “I’ll have to make sure that my boss says my firm can take your case. I just came down today to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself.”

Pigeon Tony’s brow furrowed in confusion.

Judy reminded herself to edit her words. Her only experience with broken English had been in the legal aid clinic in law school, and Latin hadn’t helped there either. “I mean, hurt your case. Say the wrong thing to the police. You didn’t talk to the police, did you?”

“I no talk. Mariano tell me.”

“Did the police ask you questions about the murder?” She flipped open the latch of her messy briefcase, wrested a legal pad from the debris, and located a Pilot pen strictly by sheer good luck. So what if her briefcase was a little full? Sometimes you had to carry your nest around. Nobody knew better than a military brat how to pitch a tent.

“Si, si, they ask questions.”

“What questions?” Judy was wondering if the cops had tried an end-run around the Miranda warnings, as they still did. Taking advantage of a little old man, an immigrant even. They should be

ashamed. “Lots of questions?”

“I no answer.”

“Good.”

“I no like.”

Judy was getting the hang of the accent thing. “You no like what?”

“Police.”

She smiled as she uncapped the pen and flipped through the pad for a clean slate. “Now what else did the police do?”

“Take me to here, take my hands”—Pigeon Tony held up two small palms so that Judy could see the ink on each finger pad— “take me a picture. Take alla clothes, alla shoes, alla socks. Take blood. Take everything. Everything. No can believe!” His dark eyes rounded with amazement, and Judy gathered he didn’t get out much.

“They took your clothes and your blood for evidence. They always do that. It’s procedure.”

“Evidence?” Pigeon Tony repeated, rolling the unfamiliar word around in his mouth. “What means evidence?”