high.
Judy plowed in her navy suit and lucky pumps through the press outside the Criminal Justice Center, with Pigeon Tony wedged between her and Frank. For the first time, she not only tolerated the reporters, she welcomed them. She felt safer for all of them with 384 witnesses on the scene, and the media was key to Judy’s new and improved plan.
“Ms. Carrier, any comment about Kevin McRea’s disappearance?” “Judy, over here! What do you say to reports that Marco Coluzzi was trying to buy McRea Excavation?” “Ms. Carrier, do you believe Kevin McRea has met with foul play?”
“No comment,” she shouted. She threaded her way to the courthouse entrance, putting on a professional mask to hide her glee at their questions. Obviously her late-night telephone calls, placed anonymously to any newspaper that would pick up, had worked like a charm. She had planted the story about Marco Coluzzi’s attempted purchase of McRea Excavation, and eager reporters had investigated the facts and gotten sources to confirm. It had been a year or two since a Philly paper had won a Pulitzer and nobody was forgetting it.
“Ms. Carrier, do you care to comment on Marco Coluzzi’s expansion into the concrete and quarry business?” “Judy, who you gonna call now that Kevin McRea’s out of the picture?” “Ms. Carrier, what goes into a $130,000 driveway anyway? Gold?”
Judy didn’t break a smile. Headlines on the morning newspapers had read DEFENDANT DISAPPEARS, with sidebars like “Marco Coluzzi’s Expanding Business Empire,” and Judy couldn’t have written them better herself. Reporters had interviewed the McReas’ landlady and, more important, had unearthed Marco’s tax records and SEC filings, which showed an increasing concentration of power in the construction industry, much of it through shell companies that disguised their true ownership. Judy was hoping the acquisitions had been hidden from John Coluzzi as well, and that he would feel surprised and threatened by Marco’s growing might.
She looked quickly around, wondering when and how the Coluzzis would arrive. Together or apart? At peace or at war? She couldn’t stay to find out, because she had a murder case to defend.
“Ms. Carrier, come on, cut us a break!” “Ms. Carrier, is Pigeon Tony gonna get off?” “Ms. Carrier, did he do it or not?” “Judy, did you hire a bodyguard yet?” “Judy, how’s your car?”
Judy exchanged glances with Frank, who grinned, his teeth white and even against his freshly shaved olive skin. He looked handsome dressed up in a white oxford shirt, casual rep tie, and light tweed jacket he’d bought during a trip to the King of Prussia mall, when he was supposed to be calling his lawyer. But Judy could forgive men their shopping. They loved it so.
“Did I tell you how much I liked your phone message last night?” Frank whispered in her ear before he went through the revolving door.
“No comment,” Judy said, because it was time for work, not love. These Italians would never get it straight. She took Pigeon Tony by the hand and tucked him inside the courthouse.
The courtroom, though modern, was one of the smallest in the new Criminal Justice Center, and its size contributed to the uneasy hostility that filled the room, as if the tigers and the lions had been mistakenly placed in the same tiny cage. The Coluzzi family and friends sat on the Commonwealth’s side of the courtroom, with Marco and John sitting unhappily together, and the Lucia family sat on the right, with Frank, Mr. DiNunzio, Feet, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block in the front pew behind a sleek black panel. The scene was an unfortunate carbon copy of the arraignment, except that it was staffed by double the blue-shirted court officers, for security. Judy wished for the National Guard and a bumper sticker that read MY ITALIANS CAN BEAT UP YOUR ITALIANS.
She put the drama in the gallery behind her and took a seat at the counsel table next to Pigeon Tony. He seemed unusually quiet, but it could have been discomfort in the new striped tie and brown jacket that Frank had made him wear, over protest. They’d come from the boys’ department at Macy’s because Pigeon Tony was so small, and Judy, sitting next to him, felt more baby-sitter than lawyer. And she had wanted to get him a translator for court, but he had adamantly refused. Judy wondered if Pigeon Tony was turning into a problem child, in a clip-on tie.
“Let’s begin, people,” Judge Maniloff said, from the sleek, modern dais with a gray marble front. Judge Randy Maniloff, a middle-aged gold-spectacled judge, had been picked by computer for the hearing, but Judy preferred to think it was her lawyer karma at work. Maniloff was one of the smartest judges on the municipal court bench, which heard preliminary hearings on murder cases and held misdemeanor trials. He wouldn’t be the ultimate trial judge, but he’d be fair at this level. “We have a crowded docket today for a change, and we can’t waste any time.” He banged a gavel loosely. “This is the matter of Commonwealth versus Lucia. Who’s here for the Commonwealth?”
“Joseph Santoro for the Commonwealth, Your Honor,” said the district attorney, and he stood up. He was on the short side but powerfully built, with dark wavy hair and a black walrusy mustache. Santoro was the top assistant in the D.A.’s office, which was undoubtedly why he was picked for this high-profile case. His Italian surname wouldn’t hurt either. Judy resigned herself to being a minority for the duration.
Judge Maniloff acknowledged Judy, swiveling in his black leather chair. “I see we have Ms. Carrier here for defendant Anthony Lucia. Welcome, Ms. Carrier.” He smiled pleasantly, and Judy stood up briefly.
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
“Now that we’re all friends, Mr. Santoro, call your first witness,” Judge Maniloff said. He turned his attention to some papers on the dais, as Santoro stood up again.
“The Commonwealth will present just two witnesses today, Your Honor, and we would first call James Bello to the stand,” he said, and in the front row the heavyset man from the funeral home wedged himself from the right side of John Coluzzi, moved with difficulty down the pew, and came before the bar of court. He took the witness stand heavily and was sworn in as the D.A. took the fake walnut podium between counsel tables.
“Mr. Bello,” Santoro said, “please state your name and address for the record.”
“My name’s James Bello, but they call me Fat Jimmy,” he said matter-of-factly, though Judy wasn’t sure it was what Santoro had been looking for.
“And your address?”
He rattled it off.
“Fine, Mr. Bello. Let’s move directly to the morning of Friday, April seventeenth. Were you present at about eight twenty-three
A.M. at 712 Cotner Street in South Philadelphia?”
“Yeh.” Bello wore a black knit shirt with suit pants, and his thick wrist bore a gold Rolex. His lips were puffy, his nose a pockmarked bulb, and his eyes large, round, and unforgettable if they were glaring at you in a funeral home. If he recognized Judy, it didn’t show.
“And that address is a clubhouse for a pigeon-racing combine, correct?”
“Yeh.”
Judy opened her legal pad to a fresh page and shifted forward on her seat. At a preliminary hearing the Commonwealth had to prove only a prima facie case of murder, and the D.A. would have more than enough in this case. The hardest punches at a prelim were thrown beneath the surface, because the Commonwealth was trying to reveal as little as possible about its case, and the defense was trying to find out as much as possible. It was a legal fistfight, and only apparently civilized.
“Mr. Bello, please tell the court who else was present in the clubhouse on the day in question.”
“Mr. Tony LoMonaco, Mr. Tony Pensiera. Angelo Coluzzi was in the back room, and Mr. Tony Lucia, the defendant, went in there, too.”
“Was anybody else in the back room except for Mr. Coluzzi and Mr. Lucia?”
“No, Angelo and me opened the place that morning. He was the only one back there until Tony went in.”
Santoro nodded. “Mr. Bello, please tell the court what happened next, if you would.”
“Sure, yeh.” Bello cleared his throat of smoker’s phlegm. “Mr. Lucia went in the back room and there was a scream, and then we heard like a crash. And we went in and there was Angelo dead on the floor and Tony, Mr. Lucia, was standing over him, all worked up.”
Judy held her breath to know what Bello had heard, or what he’d claim he heard.
Santoro shifted closer to the microphone at the podium. “Mr. Bello, you said you heard yelling. What did you hear?”
“I heard yelling, in English and Italian.”
“Do you know who was doing the yelling?”
