The Vendetta Defense (38 page)

“How are you?” Bennie asked, kneeling down in front of the open door on the driver’s side, so that she was eye level with Judy. “Do you want to go to a hospital?”

“No, not at all. I’m fine. I really am fine.” Saying it seemed to make it so, and Judy could feel herself coming back to herself, in a way. Penny scrambled over and licked her face. Judy laughed, despite the situation. “Dogs are good.”

“Dogs are essential.” Bennie grinned. “Now, I want you to get out of here. Do you want to stay at my place tonight?”

“No, I have a hotel reservation and everything. I’m fine. I really am fine.”

“A hotel? You want me to take the dog? She can play with mine. Have a sleepover.”

Judy considered it. It only made sense. It was in the best interests of the golden. “No. I want her with me.”

Bennie laughed. “Meet me in the office at nine. We’ll talk then. Take the back way in. I’m hiring two new guards downstairs and two upstairs, every day until this trial is over.”

“Good. Thanks.”

“Now get out of here. Here comes the press.” Bennie peered over the hood of the Saturn. Anchorpeople were advancing, with bubble microphones and whirring videocameras, and Bennie fended them off like a mother grizzly. Her concern remained with Judy. “Are you okay to drive?”

“Okay enough to lose those clowns,” Judy said, and Penny assumed the shotgun position.

“Then go, girl!” Bennie stood, rising to meet the press, as Judy gunned the Saturn’s engine, backed out of the space, and took off, leaving the orange makeup, the blue uniforms, the yellow tape, and all the other colors behind.

Judy had lost the last of the two press cars twenty minutes later, mainly because their pursuit was only half-hearted. She switched on the radio news, KYW 1060, and it was all Coluzzis, all the time. The big story was at the crime scene and apparently the home of Marco Coluzzi. Judy sympathized with Marco’s wife and small children. John Coluzzi couldn’t be reached for comment.

Judy felt a wave of guilt. She should have foreseen this. She had underestimated John’s ruthlessness. Killing his own brother. Three other men dead. Innocent men. Their blood stained her hands and clothes. Judy stopped at a red light but didn’t notice when it changed. A van driver honked her into motion, and she cruised down Broad Street toward the hotel. Exhaustion was catching up with her, as was sadness. Would the killing end now? Would it only get worse? Would John assume power? The questions bewildered her.

She cruised to another traffic light, barely concentrating on her driving, letting her thoughts run free, and they brought her to an insight. The Coluzzis had waged a war against her and had pushed her to the extremes of irrational behavior, namely driving over to the Coluzzi offices to confront Marco. So she was no different from Pigeon Tony. If they had pushed her as far as they had pushed him, killing someone she loved, would she have killed in return? It was at least conceivable, but she hadn’t known that before. It made her understand what she had been wondering about from the beginning of the case. Bennie had asked her to decide whether Pigeon Tony was innocent or guilty.

Well, she had decided.

He was innocent.

The knowledge, or at least the certainty, brought Judy a sort of peace. The events of the day, as heinous as they were, ebbed away. She rolled down the windows and drove through the quiet city in the dark of night. In time the air cooled and a light rain blew up, dotting the windshield, and she drove to the sound of the beating wipers, gliding past the hotel. She didn’t think twice. Didn’t stop to go back.

Judy took a left onto the expressway and put on the cruise control. There was no traffic at this hour. The decorative lights outlining the boathouses on Boathouse Row reflected in wiggly lines on the Schuylkill River, its onyx surface disturbed by the shower. Judy turned smoothly on the curve past the West River Drive, heading out of the city.

It was a straight shot out the expressway to Route 202 and off at Route 401, winding through cool, forested streets. She slowed to permit a herd of deer to leap nimbly over a post-and-rail fence and smiled at Penny’s astonished reaction. In time the streets turned into lonely country roads without stoplights or streetlights. There was nothing to guide Judy but the stars and she couldn’t navigate by them at all, though her father had tried to teach her. But the Saturn found its way through Chester County to the abandoned springhouse, navigating by something much more reliable than the stars, though an equally natural phenomenon.

The human heart.

Judy pulled up on the wet grass, but Frank was already there to meet her, rushing toward the car and lifting her into his arms, warm and so powerful. She didn’t have to say a word because he was kissing the blood and pain from her face and soul, and when she asked him finally if she could spend the night, he said:

“I thought you’d never ask.”

B
OOK
F
IVE

La massima giustizia è la massima ingiustizia.
Extreme justice is often extreme injustice.

—Italian proverb

Justice must follow its regular course.

—BENITO MUSSOLINI,
to a journalist, December 10, 1943

“Calm down, old man! You will see, it will be nothing at all.”

—A member of the firing squad to one of the Fascists he would execute on January 11, 1944, among them Mussolini’s son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano

37

T
he piazza in Tony’s village was small, a single square of gray cobblestones bordered by the church, a bakery, and a butcher shop. Beside the butcher’s on the corner squatted a tiny coffee shop where Tony took his little son Frank every Friday at four o’clock, early so as not to ruin his dinner, as Silvana had asked. Tony didn’t mind occasionally being bossed around by his wife, especially as it concerned their child. Silvana was a devoted mother, tempering her rules with tenderness, and for that reason Tony felt especially guilty that he was sitting outside the coffee shop having an espresso with a two-year-old.

“Espresso is not good for young children,” Tony whispered, as if Silvana would hear him, even with the house kilometers away. His guilt didn’t stop him from his practice, however, and, weather permitting, father and son occupied the front table, sipping their coffees and watching the townspeople walk by. “Take little sips, son.”

“
Si
, Papa.” Frank nodded, held the tiny white demitasse in two sets of chubby child’s fingers, and concentrated mightily to bring the cup to his little lips. Tony watched his son with pride and pleasure in even this small act, taking in the soft fringe of Frank’s black eyelashes as he looked down, the rosiness of his cheeks, and the pinkness of his lips. The summer sun, low in the sky now that the farmer’s work was done, shone on Frank’s coal-black hair, finding strands of earth brown and even dark gold. Tony marveled that he never grew tired of looking at his son, drinking in all the details of him, even when Frank made the face he always did at his first taste of the hot coffee.

“Is hot, Papa,” Frank said, lowering the cup partway to his saucer.

“What do we do then?” Tony asked, for he was teaching Frank the manners of gentlemen in society.

“Watch, Papa.” Frank formed a little circle with his lips, not easy for him, and blew across the surface of the hot espresso. “See?”

“Yes. I see. Very good. Just like the wind. Pretend you are setting a boat sailing across a large, blue ocean,” Tony said. He had never seen a boat, much less a large blue ocean, but he hoped his son would someday leave the farm and see the ocean, for it wasn’t very far away. Unlike his own father, Tony wanted his son to grow up better than he, to go to school, to learn to read and write, and associate with city people without feeling like their servant. “Very good job, son.”

“See, Papa.” Frank blew so hard he made ripples in the tin cup. “Do you? See?”

“Very good. Blow gentler, son,” Tony said, keeping the harshness from his tone, for he knew children needed praise more than they needed lessons on coffee drinking or good manners.

Frank stopped blowing, his face now quite red. “Can I drink?”

“Yes, yes. Good job.”

Just then Signora Milito walked by, carrying her brasciole from the butcher shop in a cloth bag on one arm and her heavy purse of needlepoint in the other arm. She was a wealthy woman, with her face made up and expensively powdered, but she was kind, and she paused at the table and smiled at Tony and Frank. “Good day, gentlemen,” she said, which was what she always said.

“Good day to you, Signora Milito,” Tony replied, and both adults waited while Frank lowered his demitasse slowly to his saucer. It was a long descent for a two-year-old, and only after the cup had been nestled in place did Frank look up eagerly.

“Good day, Signora Milito,” he said in perfect imitation of his father, and Signora Milito nodded with approval.

“No
biscotti
today, for such a good boy?” she asked, and Tony smiled.

“Not today. Today is Frank’s birthday, and Silvana has a special dinner planned, with cake. We mustn’t ruin his appetite.”

“A birthday!” Signora Milito’s purse slipped down her arm as she reached over and pinched Frank’s soft cheek. “Happy birthday, little one!”

“Thank you,” Frank said, pleasing Tony.

Signora Milito was equally delighted. “And what a lucky boy you are, to have a cake on your birthday. Your mother must have saved her sugar rations.”

“She did,” Tony said. The whole family had saved for the cake, for with Italy entering the war, so many things had been impossible to get. The coffee shops produced only the watered-down coffee they now drank and NO COFFEE signs hung on many espresso machines. Gasoline was short, and in the city a special permit was required for use of the cars. Meat could be sold only on Thursdays and Fridays. Farmers like Tony often had no electric light or running water. The telephone worked only when it wanted to. Everybody said soap, fats, rice, bread, and pasta were next to be restricted. Tony couldn’t imagine it. Italy without pasta?

“Have you read the notice, posted on the kiosk near the church?” Signora Milito asked, but Tony shook his head, no. He didn’t add that he couldn’t read, though part of him suspected Signora Milito knew as much and was saving his face by informing him. “It says
Il Duce
needs our copper, from our houses. Pans, pots, tools, whatever you have. They need it for the war effort.”

“Then we must turn it over,” Tony said, in case anyone was listening. You could never be sure. The Blackshirts held absolute power, and those who spoke against the regime were as good as dead, the massacre of partisans well known. Tony, who hadn’t been conscripted because of his feet, thought Italy was fighting only to serve Mussolini’s vainglorious needs and abhorred the war. Nevertheless he said, “We will do what is necessary according to
Il Duce
.”

“We must.” Signora Milito nodded without enthusiasm, and Tony knew from their encoded conversations that she loathed the Blackshirts as much as he did. Signora Milito and her family had been prominent in Veramo for generations before the Fascists came. Everything that went on in Veramo, she knew. “Well, I must be on my way. Don’t let the boy drink too much coffee.”

“I won’t. Don’t tell Silvana, should you see her.”

“It’s our secret,” Signora Milito said, and with a wink, hobbled away on her dark shoes.

“
Ciao
, Signora Milito,” Tony called after her, and didn’t add that it was not only their secret, but a secret many of the townspeople shared, a vast but benevolent conspiracy.

The piazza began to fill with townspeople, strolling to this store or that, or hurrying home to change into their best clothes for the
passeggiata
. A group of Blackshirts rushed by, black tassels on their corded caps jumping with each step, their leather boots clattering across the cobblestones. Fascist presence was conspicuous in Abruzzo, with war wounded and party officials returning from the Ethiopian and Russian fronts. One of the passing Blackshirts caught Tony’s eye, then quickly looked away.

It gave Tony a start. Who was that man? Tony knew him from somewhere. Then he remembered, with a bolt of fear.

The day Tony was beaten, the day of the Torneo. The man was one of his assailants. He had been on the dais, whispering into Coluzzi’s ear. He was Coluzzi’s lieutenant. Tony found himself rising to his feet at the table, his eyes trained on the Blackshirt, and he felt as if he were back on the narrow vias of Mascoli, writhing like a whipped dog.

“Papa?” Frank asked. “Papa?”

Tony looked down and the sight of the child brought him back to the present. He had a son; he had won Silvana. But his thoughts raced ahead. If Coluzzi’s right-hand man had returned, had Coluzzi himself? It was likely. Holy God. Coluzzi was still a threat. Bad things had happened to the Lucias when Coluzzi was home; directly after Tony and Silvana’s engagement, but before Coluzzi had gone to the war in Ethiopia, Tony had found his beloved pony gutted in the pasture one morning, and his first car had been set afire one night. Tony knew that Coluzzi had done these criminal deeds, but he was too terrified to tell the police, who were all good Fascists. The crimes had stopped when Coluzzi had gone. But was he back? Reassigned? In Mascoli? In
Veramo
?
Here?

“Papa?” asked the child, his round brown eyes clouded with worry, and as much as Tony wanted to, he couldn’t dismiss his anxiety. Suddenly it filled him, setting him trembling.

“We must go, son.” Tony reached for his wallet, pulled out the lira, and left it crumpled on the table. “Come, now. We go.”

“But Papa, my coffee. Is not all gone.”

“We’ll have coffee at home.” Tony came around the table and took Frank’s hand as the child slid obediently out of the chair. “Special for your birthday.”

“At home?” the boy asked, bewildered. “Mama says no coffee.” Frank raised his arms to be lifted from the seat, and Tony grabbed him more quickly than usual. The mention of Silvana’s name had reached his heart.
At home?
Could Coluzzi be back? The fear in Tony’s stomach was undeniable.