The Vendetta Defense

shelves.

Tony prided himself on the neatness of his loft. He dusted the sills, cleaned the windows with the bright blue Windex, and scraped the floor of the cages twice a day, not once. It was important to the health of his birds. He whitewashed the loft interior each spring, before the old bird season; he had done it last week, experiencing a familiar pang—the chalky smell of the whitewash and its brightness reminded him of the white liquid shoe polish he used to paint over the scuffs on Frank’s baby shoes, when his son had started to walk. Tony remembered the shoe polish—they didn’t make it anymore—he would paint it on the stiff baby shoes with the cotton they gave you, stuck on a stick inside the cap like a white ball of dandelion seeds. Even though it dripped it worked okay.

Tony shook his head, thinking of it now, the chalky smell filling his nose like the fragrance of a rose. The bottle of polish had a blue paper label and a little circle picture of a blond-haired, blue-eyed baby who didn’t look anything like baby Frank, with his jet black curls and his big brown eyes. Somehow Tony had the idea that if he painted the watery polish on Frank’s baby shoes, his son would look like all the American babies and one day come to be one, even though Frank had the black hair and no mother. And when it actually happened and Frank grew up to take his place in this country, Tony was just superstitious enough to think that maybe it was the shoe polish.

Tony had to stop thinking about his son, though he couldn’t help it, not this morning, of all mornings, and he tried to concentrate on the first cage of doves, appraising with failing eyes their condition. The doves were settling down, roosting again, and they looked good, no big fights during the night. Tony worried about the fights; the birds were territorial and always bickering about something, and the white birds bruised easily. He wanted them to look especially nice and stay healthy. For Frank.

Tony shuffled down the aisle to the second and third cages, which held the multicolored birds, mostly Meulemans with their reddish-brown feathers, and Janssens. There were other breeds in shades of gray and brown, and the common slateys; a slate gray, their eyes generally the same dark brown. Tony liked the nonwhite breeds, too, the ordinariness of their plumage reminding him of himself; he wasn’t a flashy man, not a braggadocio. He didn’t have the strut that some men had, going about like cocks. It had been his ruin, but now that he was old, it didn’t matter anymore. It had stopped mattering a long time ago. Sixty years, to be exact.

His thoughts elsewhere, Tony watched the Janssens cooing and stirring without really seeing them. The breed name came from the Janssen family who had bred them, and the other names from the other families who had bred them; Tony had always dreamed that his family would produce its own strain of birds, but he wouldn’t name it after himself. He knew who he would name it after, but he didn’t get the chance. Many of the best breed stock came from Belgium and France. Italian pigeons also made good racers, but Tony wouldn’t have much to do with them, especially the so-called Mussolini birds. Anybody who had lived during Mussolini wouldn’t want anything to do with a Mussolini bird. Chi ha poca vergogna, tutto il mondo e suo. He who is without shame, all the world is his. Mussolini birds!

Tony was an old man with old memories. He wished he could spit on the loft floor, but he didn’t want to dirty it. Instead he stood trembling until the anger left him, except for the bitterness in his mouth. Shaken, he idly inspected the Meulemans, and they seemed fine, too. Only Tony had had the terrible morning. An awful morning; the worst he’d had in a long time, but not the worst he’d had in his life. The worst he’d had in his life was sixty years ago. That morning then, and this morning now. Today. Tony had thought he would feel better after, but he didn’t. He felt worse; he had committed an act against God. He knew that his judgment would come in heaven, and he would accept it.

His thoughts were interrupted by the Meulemans, cooing loudly, wanting to be fed, and his dark eyes went, as always, to his favorite bird of all, a Meuleman he had named The Old Man. The Old Man and Tony went back eighteen years; The Old Man was the oldest of Tony’s pigeons, and to look at him, Tony wasn’t sure who was the Old Man, him or the bird. The Old Man roosted peacefully in his corner perch in the second cage, his strong head held characteristically erect, his eyes clear and alert, and his broad breast a still robust curve covering his feet. Tony remembered the day the chick hatched, an otherwise typical slatey, apparently unremarkable at birth except for his eye sign. Eye sign, or the look in a pigeon’s eye, spoke to Tony, and The Old Man’s eyes told Tony that the bird would be fast and smart. And he had been the best, in his day.

“Come sta?” Tony asked The Old Man. How are you? But The Old Man knew exactly what he meant, and it wasn’t, “How are you?”

The Old Man regarded the old man for a long time then. Tony couldn’t help but feel that the old bird knew what he had done that morning, what had been so important as to keep Tony from feeding his birds on time. The Old Man knew why Tony had to do what he had done, even after all this time. And Tony knew that The Old Man approved.

It was then that Tony heard cars pulling up outside his house and in the alley right behind the loft, on the other side of the cinderblock wall. There was the slamming of heavy car doors, and Tony knew that they were police cars.

He had been expecting them.

But the birds startled at the sudden sound, taking flight in their cages, and even though Tony knew that the police were coming, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, as it used to so long ago. He froze beside the cages as the police shouted English words he didn’t bother to translate, though he could, then they broke down the old wood door in the backyard wall, one, two, three pushes and it splintered and gave way to their shoulders and they burst into his yard, trampling his basil and tomatoes.

They were coming for him.

Tony didn’t run from them, he wouldn’t have anyway, but he remembered he had yet to feed his birds. He would have to hurry to finish before the police took him away. He shuffled to the feed room even as he caught sight of the police drawing their black guns silently, pointing instructions to each other, and two of them sneaking to the back door of his house like the cowards they were, little men hiding behind black shirts and shiny badges.

Tony’s gut churned with bile, and it struck him with astonishment that the deepest hate could rage like a fire for so many years, never burning itself up.

Dwelling with perfect comfort alongside the deepest love.

Chapter 2

“Come on, it’s lunchtime! Let’s go,” Judy Carrier heard the other associates saying as they grabbed their light coats and bags. It was the first day of real warmth after a long winter, and evidently spring fever struck lawyers, too. Everybody at the Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates, except Judy, was escaping. She remained at her desk trying to draft an antitrust article, though the sun obliterated the legal citations on her computer screen and the chatter in the hall kept distracting her. It was hard to work when you were eavesdropping.

Suddenly Anne Murphy, who called herself only Murphy, popped her head in Judy’s open doorway. She was one of the new associates, her lipsticked lips expertly lined and her dark hair tied back into its typically fashionable knot. “You wanna go to lunch?” she asked.

“No thanks,” Judy answered. She usually gave others the benefit of the doubt, but she was hard-pressed to respect women who drew lines around their lips, like coloring books. Judy wore no makeup herself, and a daily shower was her idea of fashionable. “I ate already.”

“So what? Come on, you haven’t taken lunch in weeks.” Murphy smiled in a friendly way, though Judy suspected it was the lipliner. “It’s gorgeous out. Walk around with us.”

“Can’t, thanks. Got an article to do, on the Simmons case.”

“You can’t even take a walk? It’s Friday, for God’s sake.”

“No time for a walk. I really can’t,” Judy said, knowing that the walk part was bullshit. Murphy didn’t walk, she shopped, and shopping made Judy want to kill indiscriminately. What was the matter with these baby lawyers? Judy didn’t like any of them. Graduates of the Ally McBeal School of Law, they thought being a lawyer meant wearing skirts that met the legal definition of indecent exposure. They weren’t serious about the law, which is the only thing Judy was serious about. She thought of them as Murphy’s Lawyers.

“Oh. Okay. Well, don’t work too hard.” Murphy gave the white molding a good-bye pat and wisely disappeared, and Judy listened to the familiar sounds of the office emptying out, the gossip trailing off toward the elevator banks. The elevator cabs chimed as they left, bearing lawyers into the sun. Rosato & Associates was