“I have excellent news for you, farmer. You would never guess it in a million years. Let us play a game, a guessing game. Can you guess my news?”
Tony was too weak to speak, and Coluzzi dealt him a swift kick in the hip, which sent agony through his spine.
“Speak, cur! Ask me what is my news!”
But Tony couldn’t, so Coluzzi kicked him again and again until he cried out in pain, but not for mercy. That he would not do.
“Good dog!” Coluzzi exclaimed. “Here is my news. Our whore has chosen you.”
What? Tony couldn’t believe his ears. Silvana had chosen him? Silvana had chosen him! The knowledge tasted like the most succulent of fruits. And then Tony closed his eyes, realizing that the taste on his tongue was his own warm, salty blood, and that this, the sweetest moment of his life, was also the bitterest. For in that moment he understood that if Silvana had chosen him, Angelo Coluzzi would not let her live. Tony should have foreseen this, but he hadn’t. He wouldn’t have courted her if he had realized. And now it was too late. Tears for Silvana sprang to Tony’s eyes, and his heart burst with fear, and with his last breath before he lost consciousness he screamed:
“No!”
“No!” Pigeon Tony struggled in the strong arms of the guards, his heart beating wildly and his breath coming only in short bursts, but the guards held him tighter. There must have been ten of them.
“Pop! Pop!” Frankie cried. “What’s the matter, Pop?”
“No! No!” Pigeon Tony kept shouting, screaming in Italian, panicking, surrounded by police in uniform. “No!”
“Let him go, you’re scaring him!” Frank shouted. “Let him go!”
Suddenly the grip released and Pigeon Tony felt the guards pushed aside and his grandson Frank holding him, talking to him in his ear, whispering in Italian like music, his voice as soft as his father Frank’s used to be, as a boy. The lullaby reached Tony’s heart and soothed him from the inside out, relaxing every muscle in his body, easing even the deepest grief within him, so that he allowed himself to be cradled as unashamedly as a child, and he dreamed in that moment that his own son Frank was still alive, as was his Silvana, and Frank’s wife, too.
And he dreamed that all of them lived together in eternal sweetness, as a family, whole again and full of love.
Chapter 29
After the prelim, Judy hit the office running, with a lot of work to do. The trial was a few months away, but she had learned something at the prelim and there was no time to waste. Also she had other cases she’d been neglecting, not to mention a general counsel who would fire her any day now. Judy stopped at the reception desk in the entrance room of the firm.
“They in there?” she asked the receptionist, as she picked up her correspondence and thumbed through her phone messages. There were twenty in all.
“Sure, they arrived about ten minutes ago.”
“Will you tell ’em I’ll be right in? I want to drop this stuff at my office.” “Sure.” “Thanks.” Judy tucked her things under her arm with her briefcase, powered past associates and secretaries to her office, only to find Murphy sitting behind her desk.
“Huh?” Judy said, and Murphy shot up self-consciously. Her dark hair was slicked back, her lips properly lined, and she wore a white silk T-shirt with a yellow skirt the size of a Post-it. Murphy looked wrong, not to mention naked, behind Judy’s desk. “What are you doing in my office?”
“I wasn’t snooping or anything.” Murphy stepped away from the desk quickly. “I was leaving you something.” “What?” Judy dumped her stuff on her already cluttered desk and walked around it. Next to a leftover coffee cup and some old correspondence sat the fresh draft of an article. It looked like Judy’s article, but it was finished. “That’s mine,” Judy said, reading her own mind.
“Yes. But I knew you’d be too busy to finish it, given the car bomb and all. I picked up the file and drafted it for you.”
Judy skimmed the top page of the brief. A one-paragraph introduction, a statement of the legal issues, a crisp analysis of the law. It was really good. “Where did you get this?” she asked, but Murphy thought she was joking.
“Make any corrections you want and pass it back to me. I’ll make Bennie a copy, and if she likes it, I’ll submit it.”
Then Judy got it. Murphy was trying to make her look bad in front of Bennie. Judy turned to the last page of the article. The proof would be on the signature line. Judy was just about to shout Aha! when she read it. It was her name on the papers, not Murphy’s.
“You don’t have to use it if you don’t like it.”
“Well, jeez, thank you.” Judy felt touched. Only Mary did things this nice, and she was a saint. Judy picked it up and put it in her briefcase. “I’ll look at it first chance I get.”
“Good.” Murphy moved to the door. “Anything else I can do?”
“Uh, no, thanks.”
“Thank me over lunch,” Murphy said, and she left.
Seated around the walnut table in the conference room, still in their best going-to-court polyester, were Tony-From-Down-The-Block LoMonaco, Tony Two Feet Pensiera, and Mr. DiNunzio. They sat behind Styrofoam cups of office coffee, heat curling from each cup, and among the pencils and legal pads in the middle of the table sat a white bakery box the size of a briefcase. On the top it said, in script,
“Just a little something to thank you for what you’re doin’ for Tony.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block nodded. “You think we’d come over empty-handed? That ain’t right.”
Feet looked cranky. “Open it already. We all got our coffee here. We been waitin’.”
“I’m on it, Coach,” Judy said. She pulled the box to her, broke the light string, and opened the lid, releasing a sweet smell. The box was stuffed with pastries, but she didn’t recognize any of them. Some large pastries were shaped like flowers of dough, some looked like clams with fruit embedded in them, and others were long slices of flaky cake. God knew what these were. Judy’s family ate doughnuts and brownies. “How nice of you. Thanks, gentlemen.”
“Hand me a
“I’ll take the
“Gimme a
Judy looked bewildered at the box. “Is this a test? There’s not even a cannoli, so I could go by process of elimination.”
“No cannoli, sorry.” Feet frowned behind his Band-Aid bridge, which Judy was getting used to. In fact, she was starting to like it. Some glasses, Band-Aids could improve. “They didn’t have the chocolate chip. They don’t have the chocolate chip, I don’t buy cannoli.”
“Not all Italians like cannoli,” added Mr. DiNunzio. “People think we do, but we don’t.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block rubbed his ample tummy. “Cannoli’s too heavy. If I eat one, I feel like I’m gonna blow up.”
Judy wanted to get on with it. “Okay, gentlemen, which one’s the what-you-said?”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block pointed, as did Mr. DiNunzio and Feet, but their wires kept getting crossed so Judy gave up and slid the box across the table. “You’re on your own. I called you here for a reason.”
“You got dishes?” Feet asked, pastry in hand.
“It’s a law firm, not a restaurant.” Judy grabbed a legal pad from the center of the table, ripped off the top three pages, and passed them out like plates. “Use these. Now to business—”
“Ain’t you eatin’, Judy?” It was Tony-From-Down-The-Block.