“No, thanks, I had lunch on the way over. A hot dog.”
“So? This is dessert.”
“At lunch?”
“People have rights.”
Judy blinked. “No thanks.”
He paused. “Well, if you ain’t eatin’, can I have my cigar?”
“No.” Judy stood up and went to the front of the conference room, while Mr. D and The Tonys munched away, poured coffee, and slid sugar packs around like bumper cars. The atmosphere was more family wedding than case conference, but Judy knew that would disappear when she started talking. She stood near the easel at the front of the room, which supported her delusion that, except for the pastry part, she was controlling this meeting. “Okay, here’s the problem,” she began. “Our firm has a great investigator, but he’s away and—”
“You want coffee?” Mr. DiNunzio was holding the pot in the air.
Feet nodded, his mouth full of mystery pastry. “We made fresh. The girl showed us how.”
“Feet, you’re not supposed to say ‘girl’ anymore,” Mr. DiNunzio said, placing his pastry carefully on his sheet of legal paper.
“Why not?” Feet shrugged. “Whatsa matter with ‘girl’? I like girls.”
“You don’t call them girls anymore. They’re women.”
“Hey, if she’s got her own teeth, she’s a girl.” Feet shoved his pastry into his mouth, and Judy cleared her throat as effectively as a substitute teacher.
“Gentlemen, listen up. We were just in court and we heard lots of testimony. Who can tell me the most interesting thing we heard this morning?” Mr. D’s hand shot up, and Judy smiled. Every teacher needs a pet. “Mr. D?”
“I didn’t know that Fat Jimmy heard Pigeon Tony say, ‘I’m gonna kill you.’”
Judy nodded. “Very good, but it’s not the answer I’m looking for. Tell me why that was interesting to you, Mr. D. Did you hear Pigeon Tony say that?”
“Of course. We all heard it, didn’t we?” Mr. DiNunzio looked at the other two for verification and they nodded, sure. “I was just surprised that Fat Jimmy heard it. He never looks like he hears anything. I guess it was really loud.”
Judy sighed. Case was going down the tubes. That made four— count ’em, four—witnesses to a murder threat by the client, who was, by the way, guilty as charged. “Did any of you hear anything that Coluzzi said, while they were both in there?”
“No,” Mr. DiNunzio said, and the others shook their heads, no.
“Why?” Feet asked. “Did he say something we shoulda heard?” He half-smiled in an encouraging way, but as much as she wanted to, Judy wasn’t writing scripts for witnesses.
“No, you heard what you heard. Okay, anybody else find anything interesting in the testimony today?”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block raised an unlit cigar. “I thought it was interesting that Fat Jimmy broke up with Marlene. Musta just happened, because I didn’t hear nothin’ about it. She’s a number, that Marlene. She makes a buck, too.”
“Not what I was looking for, but that’s very interesting.”
“It’s what
“I thought you had that girl, on the Internet. In Florida.”
“She thinks I’m twenty-five. And anyway, I need a real girlfriend. I need Marlene. She’s got red hair.”
Feet wiped his mouth. “Her hair ain’t real.”
“So?” Tony-From-Down-The-Block sipped his coffee. “I got a bum ear and a prostate the size of Trenton. I’m gonna throw stones?”
Judy wished for a pointer and something to tap it on. “In any event, Feet, what did you learn in court today?”
“I heard something interesting.” Feet rubbed his hands over his legal pad, so that sugar crumbs fell like snow all over the table. “I heard Fat Jimmy say he only got paid fifteen large for blowing Angelo Coluzzi.”
Mr. DiNunzio’s head snapped angrily around. “Don’t say blowing.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block scowled. “Not in front of a girl.”
Judy winced. “True, it wouldn’t be the way I’d put it, but that’s close to what I was looking for. Fat Jimmy said he’d worked for Angelo for over thirty years. That’s a long time. What did he do for Coluzzi, besides the aforementioned? Mr. D? Do you know?”
“Not really. I wasn’t in the racing club, like these guys. I just know Pigeon Tony.”
Feet thought a minute. “Fat Jimmy was with Angelo all the time. He drove him around, went to the clubhouse with him. Showed up at all the races with him.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block was nodding. “He had to take Angelo’s shit, that’s what. Angelo bossed him around all the time.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough,” Feet said, and Mr. DiNunzio shook his head.
“Me neither.”
But Judy had stopped listening. She took a seat at the head of the table. “We all know that Pigeon Tony’s son and daughter-in-law were killed in a truck accident last year, and that Pigeon Tony thought Angelo Coluzzi was responsible for it. Tell me what happened with the accident, like where it was.”
Mr. DiNunzio looked up. “It was at the ramp off of I-95, you know where it goes high to get back into the city, like an overpass. It’s a sin.” He shook his head slowly. “They think Frank lost control of the car, maybe he was tired, and the car went over the side and crashed underneath.”
Judy tried to visualize it. “Did it hit anybody when it fell?”
“No. That time a night, there was no traffic. They say the Lucias, they died when the truck crashed. They didn’t suffer, which was good.”
“They were good people,” Feet said. “Frank, he’d give you the shirt offa his back. Did free brick work for me and my cousin. And Gemma, my wife loved her.” His silver tooth disappeared behind the sad downturn to his mouth, and Judy realized they were all still grieving over the loss of the Lucias, despite their bravado. “They didn’t deserve to go like that.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block was shaking his head. “Nobody does, ’cept my ex-wife.” Feet laughed, and even Mr. DiNunzio smiled, which broke the grim mood that had fallen in the room.
Judy leaned over. “Well, if that wasn’t an accident, but was murder, and we can prove it at trial, maybe we can get Pigeon Tony’s charge reduced. And if Coluzzi was responsible for it, I’m betting that Fat Jimmy was involved.”
Mr. DiNunzio set his coffee cup down quietly. “Judy, I don’t think so. It had to be an accident, didn’t it? Maybe Angelo Coluzzi could get away with murder in the old country, in the old days. But here, in Philly? Nowadays?”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block chewed his unlit cigar. “They put a bomb under Judy’s car, for Christ’s sake. I wouldn’t put it past the Coluzzis, not at all. That scum was capable of anything, and he coulda made it look like it was an accident, since it was on the expressway and all.”
Only Feet looked grave. “I always thought Coluzzi did it. Always.”
“Why?” Judy asked.
“Just because. Coluzzi hated Pigeon Tony. He wanted to ruin him. Coluzzi was an evil bastard, and you know what? The next person Coluzzi woulda killed was Frankie. Frank.”
Judy shuddered. “So we have our work cut out for us. I want you all to help, but you gotta make me one promise before I give you your assignment.”
“What?” asked Mr. DiNunzio.
“Nobody tells Frank,” she said. “Agreed?”
Around the table, each of the old men nodded. Conspirators, covered with confectioner’s sugar.
Chapter 30
As soon as Marlene Bello answered the screen door of her brick rowhouse, Judy could see what Tony-From- Down-The-Block had meant. She was wreathed in the scent of a spicy perfume, her dark red hair was wrapped into
