The Vendetta Defense (45 page)

Santoro stood on tiptoe. “Your Honor, I mentioned it but I haven’t called a single witness regarding the accident. It wasn’t important whether it was an accident or not, only that the defendant thought it wasn’t an accident. If Ms. Carrier goes forward with this point, I’ll be forced to bring in a witness to refute these allegations and prove that it was indeed, an accident.”

“So do it,” Judy said, but Judge Vaughn was nodding slowly.

“I’ll have to overrule the objection, for the time being. You did open the door, counsel.” Then he glanced at Judy. “But don’t travel too far afield, Ms. Carrier. No frolics and detours.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said. She returned to the podium as Santoro took his seat and started tapping on his laptop, trying to act casual, which wasn’t working. Judy felt a little nervous herself. She couldn’t get any guilt-stricken admissions from Bello, but she could rattle his cage. Because Bello didn’t know what she knew, or what she could prove, and therefore would only overestimate both. It would set up her defense, and it was all she had.

“Mr. Bello, do you recall where you were at midnight, the night Anthony Lucia’s son and daughter-in-law were killed in an alleged truck accident?”

“No.” Bello’s lips set firmly, as did Santoro’s, opposite him.

“Do you recall if you were with Angelo Coluzzi on that night?”

“No.”

“Even though you were with him, as you testified, 24-7?”

“No.”

“Do you keep any calendar, datebook, or the like that would remind you of where you were that evening?”

“No.”

“Mr. Bello, you are aware, aren’t you, that your telephone conversations from your home, including conversations with Angelo Coluzzi, were being taped at that time?”

“Objection!” Santoro erupted. “Irrelevant and prejudicial!”

Judy’s eyes were trained on Bello, whose upper lip twitched slightly. The jury was watching him, intrigued. They would remember it. He would remember it. And he wouldn’t be sure what was on the tape, especially after the opening questions, and could only assume it incriminated him. Judy figured it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”

“I demand that the record be stricken, Your Honor!” Santoro shouted. “This is a bald attempt to smear a completely credible witness and confuse the jury!”

Judge Vaughn waved him into silence. “Relax, Mr. Santoro. I’ll sustain your objection, but we’re not striking the record over it.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Judy said, grabbing her exhibit. She felt flushed and happy until she headed back to counsel table and caught sight of Frank, in the front row of the gallery.

His skin had gone gray and he focused on Bello with fresh anguish. He had just found out that it had been Bello on the telephone with Coluzzi that night. He believed he was looking at his parents’ murderer. And his dark eyes told Judy, in that moment, that he was capable of murder himself.

She sat down at counsel table, and she was shaking.

44

I
t was after six o’clock at night by the time they got back to the office, and almost everyone had gone home. Judy had just gotten Bennie and Pigeon Tony into the war room at Rosato & Associates when Frank put a gentle but insistent hand on her suit sleeve.

“Can I see that file now?” he asked, his voice quiet. He had been silent all the way back from the courthouse, stuck in the cab with one security guard and Judy.

“Sure.” Judy wasn’t surprised, and set her briefcase and purse down on the polished walnut table. She opened her briefcase and retrieved the complete file, including the police file and the report of the accident reconstructionist. It would be awful for him to read. Judy couldn’t get its gruesome conclusion out of her mind, and the Lucias weren’t even her parents. “You sure you want to read this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Judy stacked the computer-animated videotape on top of the report. It had convinced her, and she hoped it would convince Frank. “You can read in the other conference room, which also has a TV with a VCR in it. It’s down the hall and to the left. You probably don’t want me to send you in dinner, do you?”

“Thanks, but no.” Frank met her eye, but his gaze was disconnected, and Judy suppressed comment. It made sense he’d feel distant.

“You go ahead,” she said. “I want to talk to your grandfather anyway, explain to him what we’ll be doing tomorrow.”

“Okay, thanks.” Frank palmed the files and tape and left, closing the door behind him, as Judy settled Pigeon Tony at the table and Bennie went to the credenza at the far end of the room, picked up the phone, and began checking her voicemail.

“Frankie okay?” Pigeon Tony said, and Judy shrugged.

“I hope so.”

“I no like.” Pigeon Tony hung his head. “Not good. Not good for Frankie.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Pigeon Tony looked up, his eyes dark and sad. “No, not. Not a good day for him.”

Judy felt a twinge. It was clear Pigeon Tony wasn’t talking only about Frank. She told herself to slow down. Dialed herself back a little. “You want some coffee, Pigeon Tony?”

“Got Chianti?”

Judy laughed. “No. But you won’t need it. You want water?”

“
Si
,
si
.”

“No problem.” Judy got up and grabbed the pitcher of water from the back of the credenza, where Bennie was still on the phone. The woman must have 2,543 phone messages. Judy brought the pitcher back to the table, poured Pigeon Tony some in a Styrofoam cup, and handed it to him. “Here, handsome.”

“
Grazie,
Judy
.
” Pigeon Tony took a sip, and Judy watched his knobby Adam’s apple travel up and down, as if it had been hard to swallow. “My wife, Silvana. You know?”

Judy nodded, wondering where this was coming from. But she had noticed that when Pigeon Tony got tired or stressed, he became confused or talked more about the past. Judy could only guess at what memories this case was dredging up for him. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to live through a war, or to lose people you loved. She poured herself a cup of water, kicked off her pumps, and eased back to let him talk.

“Silvana, she gotta hard head. Baby Frank, he gotta hard head. Me, I’ma no hard head.” He smiled, and Judy smiled with him.

“No, not you. You’re a piece of cake.”

Pigeon Tony laughed then, a little
heh-heh-heh
that fit his size perfectly, a custom-made laugh. He finished his thought, shaking his head. “Silvana, she beautiful!”

“I’m sure she was.”

“I tella judge how beautiful!”

Judy sipped her water as Pigeon Tony’s eyes began to shine, his thoughts transported to another place and time. Judy had seen her grandmother do this, without the depth of feeling. Or maybe Judy had never given her grandmother the chance to talk over a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm water. She should have, and now it was too late.

“I tell judge when I first see Silvana, I meet Silvana, onna road with Coluzzi, atta race. How beautiful she is! Onna cart! She wear”—Pigeon Tony’s small hand went to his lips and he patted them, fumbling for the word—“she wear, you know.
Rossetto per le labbra
.
You
wear, when I see you, at jail.”

“Lipstick?” Judy offered.

“Si, si!”

Judy smiled. And here she thought she didn’t speak lipstick.

“Red, like
wine
she wear! Onna
mouth
! How we kiss!”

“Ooh!” Judy laughed. “Can’t tell that in court!”

Pigeon Tony held up a finger. “No! No! We kiss with a
tomato
!
Si, si!
Yes! A tomato!”

Judy didn’t get it, but Pigeon Tony was too wrapped up to stop and explain.

“So many tomato! Many,
many
tomato! Until she love me! Alla my tomato!” Pigeon Tony went
heh-heh-heh
. “Alla time, my mama, she say, ‘Where my tomato? I no have tomato, for make salad! Why I no have tomato?’ I laugh and laugh.”

Judy smiled, her throat unaccountably tight. She didn’t know exactly what Pigeon Tony was talking about, but she could get the gist. And somehow the feeling.

“Then Silvana, she eat lunch, make picnic, with me. You know, make picnic?” Pigeon Tony looked at Judy for verification, and she nodded. “In woods. Alla time. We talk and talk and we kiss.”

“No tomato?”

“No tomato. Kiss!
Kiss
a woman!
La bella femmina!
Ha! Aha! So sweet!” Pigeon Tony clapped his hands together once, his face alive with the memory. “Such a kiss! Such a woman!
Sweeter
than tomato! I say to myself, Tony, you marry these woman! You be happy
forever
!”

Judy smiled, forgetting for a minute the way it had all turned out, but Pigeon Tony leaned over and touched her hand.

“I tell judge, I tell him how she marry me, and choose me, he will see.” Pigeon Tony’s voice grew urgent, and deep. “Alla Coluzzi, I tell judge, how Coluzzi beat chemist, beat
me
, in street, at
Torneo
. You know,
Torneo
?”

“No,” Judy said. It sounded like tornado.

“I tell judge, he know. I tell people—how you say,
jury
—they know. I tell, I make them see how Coluzzi murder,
murder
my Silvana.
Murder
my baby Frank.
Murder
Gemma, his wife. I make them see!”

Judy shook her head. He wanted to testify so much, she couldn’t reason with him. “Pigeon Tony, you’ll tell them all about Silvana and how wonderful she was, and then you’ll tell them all about Coluzzi and how terrible he was—”

“
Si, si!
And how he kill her, how I find her, inna stable, with baby Frank.” Pigeon Tony’s breathing began to quicken. “Baby Frank
see
his mama! Like
that
!” Pigeon Tony’s eyes filled with tears, and Judy jostled his hand, trying to bring him back to the present day, to a different country.

“And then you’ll tell the judge and the jury what? How you went into the back room at the clubhouse and Coluzzi told you he killed Frank and Gemma and then how you ran at him and broke his neck?”

“Si!”
Pigeon Tony nodded. “I tell! I do it! I make them see no is
murder
!”

“But it is! It is, here! If you tell them that, they will lock you up. Don’t you see?” Judy heard herself shouting in frustration, and she became aware that Bennie had hung up the telephone and was staring at her with disapproval. Judy stopped and looked over. “Uh, hi?”

“Uh, no.” Bennie managed a smile. “You might want to stop screaming at your client.”

Judy relaxed back in the chair. “Good point.”

Pigeon Tony glanced from one lawyer to the other as Bennie came over, pad in hand, sat on the edge of the conference table, and looked down at him.

“Mr. Lucia,” she said, “you and I haven’t talked much during this case because Judy is your lawyer. She is doing a wonderful job for you. She has a defense that the jury can understand and believe in. Depending on what she does tomorrow, she may win this case for you, which is a very difficult thing to do. She is advising you not to testify, and I would listen to her if I were you. You should also know that in the United States very few defendants like you take the stand and testify. I have defended many murder cases and never had a defendant on the stand.”

“
Si, si
.”

“But as she told you, it is your right to testify if you want to. So here’s what I think. Tonight you sleep on it.” Bennie caught herself in the idiom when Pigeon Tony’s forehead crinkled. “You rest tonight and you can decide tomorrow. If you still want to testify tomorrow, then you and Judy can discuss it again. Okay?”

“
Si!
” Pigeon Tony said quickly, pumping his head with vigor.

“Judy will discuss it as much as you want to, because it is a very important decision. It is the single most important decision in every defense. And it is your decision. Understand?”

“
Si, si.
” Pigeon Tony seemed to back down.

Judy exhaled. “Okay, I agree.”

Bennie shot her a look. “It doesn’t matter whether you agree.”

Uh, oh. Judy smiled. “But it’s a good thing that I do, huh? Makes it nicer, all around.”

Bennie rolled her eyes and smiled at Pigeon Tony. “Mr. Lucia, you see, Judy gets a little excited, and she cares about you. Also she’s young. Not like you and me.”

Pigeon Tony burst into laughter. “
You
young woman, Benedetta!”

“I’m forty-five, sir. I stopped being young forty years ago.” Bennie hopped off the table and nodded at Judy. “Maybe you should order your client some dinner before you start talking business.”

“Okay, sure.” Judy reminded herself she had to do better in the care-and-feeding department. She had even lost custody of her puppy, she was such a bad mother. “Pigeon Tony, you want me to order dinner before we talk?”

“Dinner,
si
.”

“You want Chinese? You had the plain lo mein.”

Pigeon Tony wrinkled his tan nose. “Bad pasta.”

Judy smiled. “Want pizza?”

“Si, si.”

Judy nodded. It was only the 3,847th time they’d had pizza delivered in the past week. “Okay, pizza it is.” She went to the phone to order when the conference room door opened suddenly, and everybody looked up.

Frank came in and tossed the file on the table, where it slid across the smooth surface. His face was grim but oddly relieved. “My parents
were
murdered in their truck that night,” he said simply.

Judy’s mouth dropped open. “What do you mean? Didn’t you read the expert’s report?”

“I did. That’s what proves it to me.”

“How? The expert found it was an accident.”

Frank managed a half smile. “But I know something he didn’t.”

Judy put the phone back down in surprise.

45

“
Y
ou may sit down,” Judge Vaughn said as he entered the courtroom and ascended the dais. His manner telegraphed that he was ready to move along, which was just how Judy felt. She couldn’t wait to put on her case, now that she believed she had a winner. But a lot depended on what happened with the Commonwealth’s last witness.