The Vendetta Defense

“You have hated him because you believe he took your wife from you and the mother from your child!”

“Yes.”

Judy bit her lip not to object. Her client was being berated before her eyes, all of it legally. She could see that it was wearing Pigeon Tony down. She didn’t know how much more he could take. She had to suppress her best instinct as a lawyer to protect her client. She picked up her pencil to take fake notes, but couldn’t write anything remotely funny.

“Mr. Lucia, isn’t it true, haven’t you wished, for every day of the past sixty years, that you could kill Angelo Coluzzi?”

Pigeon Tony thought a minute. “Yes.”

“You thought Angelo Coluzzi deserved to die?”

“Yes.”

Santoro leaned over the podium, his fingers tight on its veneer edges. “Mr. Lucia, please move forward in time to the present day, if you can. With reference to the murder at issue here, which you have admitted committing—”

“Objection,” Judy said, half rising. “Your Honor, again, whether Pigeon Tony’s act constitutes murder is for the jury, not Mr. Santoro, to decide. Pigeon Tony’s state of mind is relevant, not Mr. Santoro’s.”

Santoro’s brown eyes widened in personal offense. “He did it, Your Honor! An intentional killing! He admitted as much!”

Judge Vaughn motioned to both lawyers to come toward the bench. “No speaking objections, counsel. Please approach, now,” he said gravely, and they complied. He addressed only Judy, the full weight of his blue-eyed intelligence boring into her. “Ms. Carrier, I am going to overrule Mr. Santoro’s objection, for the time being, because your analysis is legally correct.”

Santoro scoffed under his breath, but it didn’t stop Judge Vaughn.

“But I warn you, Ms. Carrier,” the judge continued, pointing a finger like a gun at her, “if you are going for a jury nullification here, be forewarned. If you make one improper reference in a question, objection, or closing argument, which suggests in any way that these jurors ignore the law, I will hold you in contempt, dismiss this jury, and declare a mistrial. So watch your step. For your sake, and for your client’s.”

“Yes, sir.” Judy didn’t want a mistrial. She didn’t know if Pigeon Tony could go through another trial. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Santoro said quickly, and he returned to his podium while Judy walked to counsel table. It was one of the longest walks she’d ever taken. Her knees felt weak again. She wobbled in her pumps. Had they moved the table when she turned her back? She took her seat and pushed her pad away. She should have prevented this from happening. She should never have let Pigeon Tony take the stand.

Santoro cleared his throat. “Mr. Lucia, please answer yes or no to the following questions, as before. Do you understand!”

“Yes.”

“Now, there came a time, on April seventeenth of this year, when you went to the pigeon-racing club and opened the door to the back room, isn’t that right!”

“Yes.”

“And isn’t it true that you rushed at Angelo Coluzzi and grabbed him by the shoulders and whipped his back with such violent force as to break his neck from his very shoulders!”

“Yes.”

Santoro didn’t break stride. “When you ran at him, you intended to kill him, did you not!”

“Yes.”

“You knew you were going to kill him!”

“Yes.”

“You wanted to kill him!”

“Yes.”

“You hoped you could kill him!”

“Yes.”

“You had wanted to kill him for sixty years!”

“Yes.”

Santoro stopped suddenly. The courtroom was utterly quiet. Judy, the judge, and the jury all waited for the next question. “Well, you did,” Santoro said, very quietly.

Judy rose to object, then shut her mouth. It would look heartless. But she finished rising and went to the podium. If Santoro was finished, it was time for redirect.

Judge Vaughn seemed to come out of a reverie, and, like everybody, he was visualizing the awful scene in the back room and looking at Pigeon Tony with new, cold eyes. “Mr. Santoro, do you have any further questions?” the judge asked crisply.

“No, Your Honor,” Santoro answered, and Judy went forward.

“I have a single question on redirect, Your Honor,” she said.

“Good,” Judge Vaughn replied grimly, which Judy took as a bad sign. Santoro’s cross had hit home. He had emphasized all the worst parts of Pigeon Tony’s story. The jury looked restless and unhappy. She couldn’t hope to bring them back to the warmth they’d felt for him when he started testifying. There was only one thing she could do, but it needed to be done, and she didn’t know if she could get it from Pigeon Tony.

She cleared her throat. “Pigeon Tony, I have one question for you.”

On the stand, Pigeon Tony raised his small chin, but his eyes remained opaque.

“Pigeon Tony, are you sorry that Angelo Coluzzi is dead?”

Pigeon Tony breathed shallowly, his concave chest rising once, then twice. His mouth moved into a firm, tiny line, and he blinked once, then twice. “Yes, I am sorry,” he said softly.

Judy permitted the word a hang time, as she had with Angelo Coluzzi’s death, and her gaze met Pigeon Tony’s. She locked eyes with him for a minute, keeping him in that moment, remembering the day he’d welled up in court, and his eyes grew shiny again, with remorse restrained enough to ring true. Then she said, “I have no further questions, Your Honor,” and returned to counsel table.

But Santoro was stalking to the podium. “Likewise, I have only one question on recross, Your Honor,” he said, but didn’t wait for Judge Vaughn to nod him on. He reached the podium and fixed a glare at the witness stand. “Mr. Lucia, are you sorry you killed Angelo Coluzzi?”

Pigeon Tony paused only a second. “No.”

“Thank you,” Santoro said quickly and went back to counsel table.

Judy kept an eye on the jury. A juror in the back row looked shocked. Another juror, next to her, had knitted her brow in confusion. Judy considered going up to the podium to mitigate the damage, but she knew Pigeon Tony would tell only the truth: He was sorry Angelo Coluzzi was dead, but he wasn’t sorry he had killed him. Whoever said that the truth, while plain, was easy? Or that human behavior was ever black and white? It gave her an idea.

“Ms. Carrier?” Judge Vaughn asked, cocking a questioning eyebrow, but Judy had arrived at a decision and held her head high, with a confidence she didn’t feel.

“The defense rests, Your Honor,” she said.

They were the hardest words she had ever said, and also something of a lie. Because she was already hatching another plan.

Chapter 48

Judy stood at the head of the table in the courthouse conference room, pitching Plan B to her client. “Pigeon Tony, listen to me. We can still save your life. You know you are charged with murder in the first degree, which is the worst kind of murder there is.”

“Si, si,” he answered wearily, almost slumping in the chair across from Judy. He was clearly exhausted from testifying, and the grind of the trial had taken its toll. Frank sat next to him, his expression tense, with an arm around the back of his grandfather’s chair. Bennie listened as she stood with folded arms against the side wall. She had given Judy her blessing for this last-ditch effort.