The Vendetta Defense (48 page)

“Me!
I
said! I
did
! But no
é
murder!”

Judy wanted to kill him, in English. “But they can’t prove that, and they haven’t. They
lost
. I bet you ten to one that the jury is going to come back for you, Pigeon Tony.”

“I tell judge! I tell them! I tell about Silvana! And tomatoes! And kiss!”

Judy’s head began to throb. Tomatoes and kisses wouldn’t do it, in a court of law. Maybe if she explained more. “I am going to argue to the jury in my closing that it’s just as likely that you pushed Angelo Coluzzi in self-defense as that you attacked him. That is demonstrably true.”

“What means mons—?”

Judy was losing patience. “It’s true, leave it at that. In addition, we have also proved, fairly conclusively, that Angelo Coluzzi and Jimmy Bello killed your son and daughter-in-law by throwing a Molotov cocktail in their truck, which set fire to their cab and caused what everybody thought was an accident.” Judy knew she was talking too fast for Pigeon Tony to follow, but she couldn’t stop herself. He was threatening to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Never mind that he could end up dead. “And if the jury thinks Coluzzi really killed your son, and not just that you believe it for no reason, then they will feel less sympathetic for him and less inclined to convict you for his murder. Don’t you get it? Shut up and win!”

Frank had gone white, his hands on his grandfather’s shoulders. “Judy, you’re hollering at him.”

“I have every right to holler at him! I’m trying to save his fucking life!” Judy shouted, and realized she had lost it. She didn’t need the expression on Bennie’s face to tell her, but it was there just the same.

Bennie was holding up her hand, like a stop sign. “Judy, enough. You’re upset. Get a grip.” She turned to Frank, almost formally. “Frank, does your grandfather understand what Judy is saying? Because she’s right.”

“I know he does. He understands more than people think.”

“I don’t want to take any chances. His life is at stake, and my liability. I want you to explain to him everything Judy just said, in Italian. And tell him if he chooses to testify, tell him he does so against his attorney’s advice.”

“Fair enough,” Frank said. “But I’m telling you. He understands fine. He just doesn’t agree.”

“I no agree!” Pigeon Tony chorused.

Frank began speaking to Pigeon Tony in rapid Italian, and Judy watched, feeling utterly helpless. She couldn’t believe it was happening. Her emotions went from complete frustration to stone cold fear. She looked at Frank and Pigeon Tony, then to Bennie. Was Bennie going to let this happen? “Bennie, they could kill him! They could give him the death penalty!”

“I know that.” Bennie was calm, which only made Judy crazier.

“We can’t just let him walk into it!” In the background was the sound of Italian, too musical for the grim occasion.

“We have to, if that’s what he wants.”

Frank looked up, grimly, his hands on his grandfather’s arm. “He wants to do it. He wants to tell the truth. He wants his day in court. He says he’s innocent, and he wants the jury to find that he’s innocent.”

“What’s the difference?” Judy exploded at Pigeon Tony, but Frank answered for him.

“You know what it is. He doesn’t want to think he got away with murder, because to him, it’s not murder. It’s not just that he’s not guilty—he’s innocent.”

“Then it’s done,” Bennie said simply, cutting Judy off with a chop and checking her watch. “We have two minutes until we go in.”

Judy couldn’t stop shaking her head. She grabbed Pigeon Tony by both of his hands. “Pigeon Tony, do you understand that after you testify, Mr. Santoro can ask you questions? All sorts of questions?”

“
Si, si
.” Pigeon Tony nodded, unfazed.

“Mr. Santoro will not be nice to you, he will be very mean. He will try to make you look like a very bad man. He will ask you, ‘How did you murder him?’ He will say, ‘Tell the jury exactly how you broke poor Angelo Coluzzi’s neck.’ ”

“I tell. I kill. No murder.”

“It will be awful! Santoro will tear you apart! He can keep you up there for days! You hardly even speak the language!” Judy wanted to cry, but she had to keep a tenuous grip or she couldn’t save him. “The jury won’t like what you say! They will say, ‘This man is a killer. Let’s give him the death penalty. Put him to death!’ ”

“
Si, si.
” Pigeon Tony half smiled, and his eyes, hooded with age, met Judy’s with a sort of serenity. Behind them Judy saw a strength she hadn’t noticed before, but also a folly. The bravest men got themselves killed. The pioneer was the one with the arrows in his chest.

“Pigeon Tony, please don’t.” If she had to beg, she would. “I am begging you.”

“Judy, no worry.” Pigeon Tony squeezed her hands. “You ask questions, inna court?
Si?
”

Judy blinked back tears. She couldn’t imagine it. She would have to take him through it on direct examination. “Yes,” she said, but her eyes filled up anyway. She didn’t want to see him dead, or even in prison. She didn’t know it until now, but she loved him.

“Ask me, I tell Silvana. Ask baby Frank. Ask tomato. Ask how Silvana die, inna stable. I tell. Like before, yesterday. I tell.”

Judy remembered. She had been transported by his stories. But she wasn’t a jury. And nothing had been at stake, least of all Pigeon Tony’s life. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she let go of his hand to brush it away.

“Everything okay, you see, Judy. Judge see. Jury see. Alla people see. Say me, how you see Silvana, Pigeon Tony?”

Judy’s lips trembled and she couldn’t speak. Bennie had fallen silent.

Frank sighed audibly. “Juries can do whatever they want, can’t they, Judy?” he asked.

Judy wasn’t holding any false hope. “At least they can’t kill him twice.”

Bennie shot her a disapproving look. “Yes, Frank. Your counsel should be telling you that there is something called jury nullification, which means the jury simply ignores the law and does what it thinks is just. It happened first a long time ago in the Old South, where white juries wouldn’t convict white men who lynched black men. Since then it has occurred, only rarely, in mercy killing and domestic abuse cases. But it is very rare.”

“
Very
rare,” Judy echoed. “Like winning-the-lottery rare.”

“Andiamo!”
cried Pigeon Tony abruptly, clapping his hands together in excitement. His eyes were shining and his face was bright, and for a minute he looked positively victorious.

Judy knew it couldn’t last.

47

“
P
ardon me, Ms. Carrier?” Judge Vaughn asked, trying to hide his astonishment as court resumed after the recess. Even the judge’s eyebrows curled like question marks. Tugging at his robes, he leaned over the dais, as if he had heard Judy wrong. “
What
did you say, counsel?”

“The defense calls Anthony Lucia to the stand, Your Honor,” Judy repeated, and Judge Vaughn blinked in surprise. Judicial decorum prevented his commenting,
That’s what I thought you said, bozo
.

Santoro wasn’t half as polite. At the prosecutor’s table he didn’t bother to hide his glee. He was smiling and alert, rejuvenated after the melee with Jimmy Bello. Santoro had gone from the nadir to the zenith faster than you can say vocabulary words. If he took fake notes he could write, WHAT ARE YOU, STUPID?

Pigeon Tony rose next to Judy at counsel table, and she helped him to the witness stand, where he sat down behind the Bible and was sworn in by a rather startled clerk. Judy returned to the podium, holding her head high and trying to regain her professionalism after the waterworks in the conference room. If Pigeon Tony was determined to do this, she was determined to mitigate the damage, even if this murder trial had become an assisted suicide.

Judy took the podium, gripped the edges, and found herself face-to-face with the tiny man who looked like a bird, in the cage that was the witness box. Her throat caught at the sight and she remembered the day she had first met him. How cute he was. How little. She prayed the jury would see him that way. It was almost all he had going for him, and she started feeling emotional again.

“Judy?” Pigeon Tony whispered from the witness stand, and the jury reacted with soft laughter. Even the court personnel were smiling.

Only Judy was on the verge of tears, looking at him. Nobody would tell him it was against the rules to talk to your lawyer from the box. He was on his own now. His fate was his own, and his karma. Judy believed in it, and it gave her heart. If anybody’s past could redeem his future, it was Pigeon Tony’s. But his lawyer still couldn’t chase the tears from her eyes.

“Ms. Carrier?” Judge Vaughn said, moving his hand from underneath his chin.

“Sorry, Your Honor.” Judy wiped her eyes and bit her lips to control their tremor. God! What an idiot! She was a lawyer! In a courtroom! Ask a question, dufus! “Mr. Lucia, please tell the jury where you are from, originally,” she blurted out, then realized it was only the stupidest question in the world.

Pigeon Tony turned slightly toward the jury, as relaxed as if he were conversing over Cynar in a piazza café. “I am from Italy,” he said. “Abruzzo, Italy. You know, Italy?” He pronounced it Eeetaly, his accent flavoring his words as strongly as sweet basil, and the front row of the jury smiled collectively. One juror, an older schoolteacher in the front, even nodded. Judy remembered she was Italian and had family that were Abruzzese. Most of the Italians in South Philly were Abruzzese.

Judy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She had to get it together. “And Pigeon Tony—wait, can I call him Pigeon Tony?” Judy wondered aloud, but didn’t wait for the judge to rule. Why the hell not? Her motto had always been, Don’t ask permission, apologize later. She was making up her own rules as she went along. After all, she had already called an expert witness whose conclusion she disagreed with. It was a slippery slope.

“Sure,” Pigeon Tony answered with a grin. “Alla people, alla people here calla me Pigeon Tony.” He looked up at Judge Vaughn, who had been peering at him from behind his knuckles with a mixture of bewilderment and delight, neither of which Pigeon Tony noticed. “I have pigeons. Birds, you know, birds? They race, my birds. The Old Man, he come back. Soon. This, I know.”

“That’s nice,” Judge Vaughn said politely, then hunched toward Pigeon Tony. “Mr. Lucia—”

“Calla me Pigeon Tony! Alla people calla me Pigeon Tony! Even judge!”

Judge Vaughn laughed. “Okay, Pigeon Tony, I heard you say that you are from Italy. Do you feel the need for a translator? We can have one brought in here very quickly.”

“No, Judge. I no need. I know. I hear. I unnerstand.” Pigeon Tony pointed to his temple. Judy wanted to cover her face with her hands, but the jury burst into laughter.

“Uh, Pigeon Tony,” Judy said, but when she had his attention, was too upset to think of a question. Talk about a slow start. She tried to remember her client’s coaching in the conference room. Every lawyer needs a smart client, to give them advice.
Everything okay, you see, Judy. Alla people see. Say me, how you see Silvana, Pigeon Tony?
Judy translated. “Pigeon Tony, please tell the jury how you met your wife, Silvana.”

Pigeon Tony swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving like an elevator. “I was young, but a man, I go to race. In Mascoli, with birds. You know, Mascoli?” He paused, and only when one of the jurors shook his head no, did he respond. “Is city, near Veramo, where Pigeon Tony live. Mascoli big city.” He spread his arms wide, which for his wingspan meant three feet. “
Rich
city. Not like Veramo. Veramo small, very small city. Alla farmer, in Veramo. You know, farmer?”

The front row nodded and smiled. Yes, they knew farmer. Santoro was frowning. Judy made a real note on her legal pad, trying to recall the stories Pigeon Tony had told her the other day, and at other times. FIRST KISS, WITH TOMATOES. PICNIC IN THE WOODS. FIRST REAL KISS. THE DAY AT THE TORNADO.

On the stand, Pigeon Tony was saying, “I see Silvana, onna cart, and her hair, it
shines
. Shines in the sun! Only dark, brown. Soft. Like earth.
Rich
.” He rubbed his fingers together, crumbling imaginary soil in his hands. “So beautiful. A woman, like
earth
she is beautiful!”

Judy noticed that the front row of the jury, five of them older women, were engrossed in what Pigeon Tony was saying. Santoro’s frown had grown deeper. It got Judy thinking. If Santoro was hating it, maybe it was good. Maybe there was hope. She made another note. THE DAY PIGEON TONY KILLED ANGELO COLUZZI.

Then again, maybe not.

After three hours of direct testimony of Pigeon Tony, Judy was down to her least favorite story. The others had gone in beautifully, but this one couldn’t. She straightened at the podium and let it rip. “Pigeon Tony, let’s begin with you walking into the back room of the pigeon-racing club on the morning of April seventeenth. Where was Angelo Coluzzi when you came into the room?”

“Near shelf.”

Judy didn’t bother to fetch the exhibit. They were beyond exhibits now. Beyond laws. “Did you know Mr. Coluzzi was in the room when you opened the door?”

“No.”

“So you were surprised to see him?”

“Si, si.”

“You mean, yes?”

“Yes.” The word sounded strange coming from Pigeon Tony’s mouth, and he managed to stretch it to two syllables, like Yays-a.

Judy thought about the best way to couch the story. “You opened the door, and Mr. Coluzzi said something to you, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“What did Mr. Coluzzi say to you?”

“He laugh. He say, ‘Look who come in! A buffoon! A weakling! A coward!’ ”

On the dais, Judge Vaughn was listening alertly. The court personnel, who usually did paperwork while court was in session, were listening, too. Santoro was taking rapid notes. Judy didn’t have to see the gallery to know what it looked like. She kept her focus on Pigeon Tony.

“Please explain to the jury why he said that, Pigeon Tony.”