Huge pin oak trees towered in a shady grove beside the meadow, and in front of it Judy spotted Frank’s white truck and other construction vehicles. They circled the only scar in the perfect landscape: a site that was a large, cleared patch of land the size of a private airstrip. Lush grass had been peeled away like pieces of an orange rind and tons of topsoil surrounded the strip, mounded in triangles smoothed by a bulldozer. Judy aimed for Frank’s truck, her VW tires slip-sliding on the wet grass, and as she pulled up she could see that the strip housed a deep trench that ran its length.
The VW bounced off the grass and hit the wet dirt, which clotted Judy’s car tires immediately, and Judy wished for four-wheel drive so she could yell at her client sooner. How come they hadn’t mentioned that at the VW dealership? She added the car salesman to her shit list, cut the ignition, and climbed out of the car.
Her feet landed in dirt but her clogs felt completely at home. Brown-orange mud lay everywhere and little white butterflies flitted between the wet patches, looking for moisture. Judy couldn’t have cared less. She stalked over to Frank’s pickup, parked at the far side of the muddy strip, next to a six-foot mountain of rubble. The sun glared off the truck window, and she couldn’t tell if anyone was in it at first; when she got closer, she could see that it was empty. She didn’t see Frank or Pigeon Tony. A big yellow backhoe was running, but no one was around except a man shoveling more gravel into the trench. Judy thought about yelling at him, but she didn’t represent him.
She hurried on, her clogs collecting mud until they looked like snowshoes. It slowed her but didn’t stop her. Nothing could. At the far end of the patch roared the John Deere backhoe, big as a dinosaur and equally incongruous, making ferocious grinding and rattling noises. The hoe was engaged, toeing the earth between two hydraulic braces on either side. Judy looked up at the glass cab and there was Frank.
Frowning in concentration, he sat shirtless in jeans, straddling a black console with two black-knobbed levers. He had a palm on each stick, working them independently, so that the immense claw of the hoe feathered the topsoil, extending the trench line. Judy couldn’t help but eye Frank’s chest, lightly covered with fine black hair and muscular enough to make even his farmer’s tan look damn good. She watched him pull the levers expertly, then warned herself not to be distracted by the fact that Frank could operate heavy machinery while naked. Judy’s attraction to him confused her, especially since the morgue. She looked around for Pigeon Tony. She hoped the Coluzzis hadn’t gotten to him before she could.
The engine to the backhoe stopped suddenly. “Yo, Judy!” Frank grinned and called to her from the cab as he stood up and slipped into a white Nike T-shirt that hung beside him on the console. Now there really was no reason to stick around.
“Where’s your grandfather?” she called back.
“Behind the rocks!” He pointed past the rubble pile, and Judy took off. She didn’t look back, telegraphing that this was a business call, and after a minute she heard the backhoe engine restart. She tramped in the mud around the rock pile, where she found Pigeon Tony.
He was bent over the rocks, apparently sorting them, in dark baggy pants and a wide-brimmed straw hat that had a makeshift cotton string for a chin strap. A red bandanna was knotted around his neck and a madras shirt hung like a rag from his belt; he toiled as shirtless as his grandson, to a much different effect. His shoulders were skinny and his breasts small and slack, the nipples flat and shriveled against the soft, almost womanish skin. Except for Angelo Coluzzi on the slab, Judy had never seen such an old man so bare. Her throat caught unaccountably, watching him bend over to pick up a rock, setting a golden crucifix around his neck swinging.
The crucifix brought Judy back to her senses. She remembered the crucifix tattooed on Angelo Coluzzi’s arm and the skinniness of his gray chest on the steel tray, under the harsh fluorescent lighting. The chilly morgue was a world from this sunlit meadow, but it had a death grip on her, and she couldn’t shake its reach. How lucky Pigeon Tony was to be alive in this lovely place and how privileged to be drawing breath today. It was a privilege he hadn’t afforded Angelo Coluzzi.
Judy looked at her client with cold eyes. He was examining the rock carefully, turning it over and over like a tumbler, then setting it down in the far pile with a tiny grunt. Judging from the size of the three piles before him, which Judy would have classified as rocks, rocks, and more rocks, Pigeon Tony had been making meaningless distinctions between rocks all morning. When he bent over for the next rock, he spotted her standing there and broke into a welcoming smile.
“Judy!” He straightened up, and his hand went automatically to the back of his belt. He pulled his shirt out and slipped into it as quickly as Frank had, leaving it unbuttoned. “You come!”
“I need to talk to you, Pigeon Tony.” Judy shielded her eyes from the sun. “Can you take a break?”
“Sure,” he said, which came out like
“Follow me,” she said sternly, and led him to the shade of the oak trees.
Chapter 15
Sun peeked through the leaves of the oak tree, falling dappled on the tall grass, and a cool breeze wafted through the shady grove. Judy was too angry to sit down but Pigeon Tony perched on the thickly knotted root of a tree in his bumpy madras shirt and baggy pants, next to a Hefty garbage bag he had insisted on fetching from the truck. He had untied his red bandanna and smoothed it out on the grass, then began unpacking the Hefty bag, placing on the red cloth items that were wrapped with what looked like men’s undershirts. Judy had no idea what they were or why they were bundled with laundry.
“Pigeon Tony, I need you to listen to me.”
“
“I want you to look at me when we talk. This is important.”
“Okay, okay. Gotta eat.” Pigeon Tony nodded, his fresh sunburn obvious now that his straw hat was off, hanging down his back on its cotton string. He unwrapped the next shirt to find a pile of black olives, their rich oil soaked into the soft cotton. “Alla people gotta eat. Work, eat. Work again.”
“Fine.” Judy sighed. “Can you eat while I talk?”
Pigeon Tony shook his head, no. The next shirt contained a perfect red apple, then Pigeon Tony rummaged in the Hefty bag again and produced a thick jelly glass and a half-full bottle of Chianti. Old-fashioned basket-weaving covered the bottom of the bottle and made a loop at its neck.
“Well, too bad. You have to.” Judy lowered herself to the grass, tucking her feet under her. “I just came from the morgue. You know what that is, a morgue?”
“No thanks,” she said, waving it off, but he set it down in front of her anyway. “A morgue is where they keep dead people.”
“Ah,
“I don’t want your lunch.”
“Not my, is for you. Work, then eat.” Pigeon Tony thrust the sandwich at her again. “I make, for you. You work, eat. Work again.”
“This isn’t your lunch?” Judy didn’t understand. She didn’t want to understand. She was prepared to ream him out, to call him to account. She had just seen his victim. Pigeon Tony was a murderer.
“No, no, not my. I eat, before.” He gestured to the apple and the slick olives. “Alla, for you.”
Judy didn’t want the sandwich. She set it back down on the undershirt. “Pigeon Tony, I saw Angelo Coluzzi in the morgue. I want you to tell me how you came to kill him. Do you understand?”
“No, now let’s talk. Tell me everything. Who else was there, how you found him—everything.”
“Talk, then eat?”
“Talk, then eat.” Judy sighed. The man could negotiate with the best of them. She imagined him back in Italy,
