The Vendetta Defense

think he did.”

“But my grandfather takes it as gospel, and for all I know, he may be right. You have to look at it his way, if it’s his state of mind you’re talking about, don’t you?” Frank’s eyes searched hers with an openness Judy found disarming, but her legal training resisted his words.

“People can’t go around killing each other. That’s what a system of laws is designed to prevent.”

“But they do, in my grandfather’s world, go around killing each other. That’s what happened to him. And now the ones who wronged him have been punished.” Frank shook his head, and a shadow from the long branches of the oak tree above flickered over his pained features. “What good would it do to punish my grandfather? He’s not going to hurt anybody else.”

“That’s not the point.”

“No?” Frank looked at the miniature American flags fluttering when a breeze came along. His gaze rested on a monument that read CIARDI, behind a spray of tall, lavender irises, some of their flowers shriveled to brown and curling at the edges. “The man is seventy-nine. This is what’s next for him—old flowers and gravestones. This cemetery. Next to his son.”

Judy couldn’t suppress her sympathy, then forced herself to think like a lawyer, without a trace of human emotion. “None of this will help me defend him.”

“Are you sure?” Frank turned suddenly. “I was thinking maybe you could try an insanity defense or something like that.”

“The legal standard for insanity is too high.” Judy shook her head. “God knows what evidence they have against your grandfather, but if this is his story, it doesn’t provide any defense at all. There’s no legal excuse for murder that fits here.”

“Not even a broken heart?” Frank asked, and he looked at Judy as if it were more than rhetorical.

“Not even that.”

“So where’s the justice, in the law?”

Judy didn’t know how to answer. Her only certainty was that she wanted to take the case.

All she had to do was convince the boss.

Chapter 6

“You did what?” Bennie shouted, and Judy had a deja vu. Either that or Bennie had said the same thing to her 3,462,430 times before. Judy fleetingly considered putting You did what? on a T-shirt, but then she’d get fired for sure. Bennie was that angry. “You went to the Roundhouse? You had no right to do that!”

Judy faced Bennie Rosato in the boss’s office, sitting across from a large desk that was almost as cluttered as Judy’s. Bennie’s office was the same size as an associate’s, evidence of her egalitarian ethic, and her bookshelves were stuffed with casebooks, law reviews, and black binders of speeches and articles. Awards from civil rights organizations and First Amendment groups covered the walls. In a far corner sat a pile of running clothes and Sauconys, their rubber-soled toes curled up from wear. In short, it could have been Judy’s office. She didn’t get it. She and Bennie were more alike than they were different, so why did they fight so much?

“You met with the defendant’s family? You went to a grave site? You told him you’d take the case, at his parents’ grave? And you don’t have a single detail of the crime or the evidence against this man!”

Judy swallowed hard. “Bennie, I swear, I made it very clear that the firm hasn’t filed an entry of appearance.”

“Oh, please! It’s just technical whether you entered an appearance. You were there. You appeared.” Bennie’s blue eyes flared, and she yanked off a khaki suit jacket and smoothed it out before she jammed the neck down onto a coatrack behind her leather chair.

“I told the cops it was only temporary.”

“Which means nothing. Besides, it’s not just the cops, it’s the client. It’s the grandson. You went to a grave?” Bennie ran a hand through a tangle of light hair that fell to shoulders sagging in disappointment under a linen shirt. “We’re blocked in. You don’t appear and then disappear. At least I don’t. How do you think a law firm gets any credibility? Our integrity’s on the line. My integrity.”

“Look, it’s me on the line, not you. I got us into this, and I’ll get us out. I want to represent Pigeon Tony.” Judy felt good taking a stand, but Bennie looked underwhelmed.

“Oh, you do?” Bennie paced beside her chair, too aggravated to stay still. At six feet tall, a muscular ex-rower and all-around tough-as-nails trial lawyer, Bennie Rosato intimidated associates, opposing counsel, and major felons. Everybody except Judy, who had yet to figure out why she wasn’t as scared as she should be. Maybe after a childhood filled with lieutenant colonels, she could handle a pissed-off lawyer.

“Ask me if I care what you want,” Bennie continued. “I own this firm. I employ you. That means you’ll represent who I tell you to represent.”

“You said you wanted us to develop our own clients,” Judy argued, though she knew she’d be better shutting up, like Ali letting Foreman punch himself out. Yet she couldn’t help but swing. Maybe it was the boxing lessons she’d taken. “I would think you’d welcome some initiative. Most firms think it’s a basis for partnership decisions.”

“In my firm, you bring in the client, then you take it to me, and I decide if you can take it. You don’t decide on your own.” Bennie glared. “And were you thinking about making partner when you took the case? Is that what you’re trying to sell me?”

Judy felt her face flush. What was the matter with her? Why was she making such a bogus argument? “Not really.”

“Then don’t argue what you don’t believe in. Rule number one, in law and in life.” Bennie’s voice went brittle as ice. Arms akimbo, her hands clutched her hips, wrinkling her skirt. “Now, why did you go down to the Roundhouse? And why do you want to represent Lucia?”

Judy tried to collect her thoughts. This was serious stuff. She had never asked to represent a client before, especially one who was guilty. It felt like the onset of adulthood, but maybe growing up didn’t mean automatically resisting everything Bennie said. Judy flashed on her first image of Pigeon Tony, so small in the overlarge prison jumpsuit. Then the granite memorial to the Lucias, so eloquent in its dark silence. And finally Frank’s grief at the site.

“Well?”

Judy took a deep breath. “If what they tell me is true, then there is an injustice here, and I think I want to help Pigeon Tony. I mean, if it’s true, he’s an old man who had a lifelong heartache. He tried to set it aside, and that effort ended up in the death of his own son and daughter-in-law. He chose peace, and all he got was war. Most people who kill are bad men. Instead, Pigeon Tony seems like a good man, who killed someone.” Judy heard herself, and only then did she realize that that was how she felt. Insight wasn’t her strong suit, but she was learning, and a new certainty steeled her. “Even if you fire me, I’ll still take the case.”

“You would?”

“Yes.”

Bennie stood stock-still. The crease in her forehead relaxed, and the angry redness ebbed from her cheeks. Judy hoped it wasn’t the peace that comes over bosses before they shitcan you.

“Please don’t fire me, by the way. I couldn’t find another firm that would let me dress as funny.”

Bennie laughed softly and sat down in her deep chair. “Oh, well.”

“Does this mean I can keep him?”

Bennie didn’t answer but picked up a coffee mug from her desk, which read I CAN SMELL FEAR. Judy was pretty sure it was a joke. Bennie tilted it to peek inside. “Empty. What else can go wrong?”

“I’ll take care of him. I’ll walk him every day.”

Bennie half smiled, gazing into the empty mug as if coffee would materialize through an act of sheer will. “Can Lucia afford us?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“I’ll find out, if you let me keep him.”