The Vendetta Defense

by Lisa Scottoline

  Judy struggled to understand the mentality of people who would do this. They acted like common thugs, their destruction mindless, their rage spending itself. The only remotely valuable items, a TV and a small radio, were destroyed and not taken. It hardly seemed real, but Judy experienced the same feeling she’d had at the melee in the courtroom. It was real; her eyes couldn’t deny the scene.

  For some reason she went to the faucet and twisted it off. The silence permitted her to hear Frank’s voice somewhere out back. There must have been a backyard. Judy remembered Pigeon Tony’s concern about his birds. She headed for the back door, afraid of what she might find.

  12

  It was dark outside but Judy could see the lighted ruins of a little white house that took up almost all of Pigeon Tony’s backyard. It must have been the house in which Pigeon Tony kept his birds, but it was unhappily silent. The night was still, except for the city sounds of traffic and a faraway siren. Cinderblock enclosed the yard, which was a small rectangle.

  She walked through the darkness to the pigeon house. Judy swallowed hard as she took in the sight. The panels of plywood that made up the bottom of the building had been chopped away from the inside at the far end, so that the end of the house had collapsed onto its foundation, which appeared to be supported by stilts. Judy figured that the stilts would have been chopped away, bringing the whole house down, but the vandals had apparently gone inside the pigeon house and started hacking away, then escaped out the front door. The lights within shone through the openings made by an ax or a baseball bat. Judy could see through the torn and missing screens that Pigeon Tony and Frank were inside.

  She picked her way between broken slats of plywood in the yard to what used to be wooden steps that led to an open threshold, the front door dismantled and tossed aside. She stepped inside but neither man looked up. They were kneeling over, absorbed in a common task, and she looked around, appalled. Everything inside the pigeon house had been broken, as if smashed by a baseball bat; cages, perches, chicken wire, wooden frames—all of it had been demolished. A medicine chest at the end of the aisle had been overturned, the medicines spilled. Trash cans that held feed had been dumped and bashed in. Birdseed lay scattered on the floor.

  Judy got the impression that as many pigeons as could be caught were killed, brutally. She had no idea how many pigeons Pigeon Tony kept, but she counted seven dead. Some had their necks wrung; some had had been stomped to death, a gruesome sight. One slate-gray pigeon had had its head sadistically pulled off, exposing a bloody section of delicate backbone. Sickened, Judy took a step and almost tripped over the lifeless body of a white bird. Its head was a pulpy mass of blood, and it lay on its back, its feet curled in death. A silver band on its pink legs had slid back against the downy feathers of its underbelly. Its blood stained the whitewashed floor. It smelled raw and wasted. Judy felt her gorge rising.

  “You okay?” Frank asked, looking at her quickly. He squatted on the floor, helping his grandfather care for a large gray pigeon, mercifully still alive. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Judy shook her head no, afraid to speak until her nausea passed. Frank returned to his task, cradling the pigeon expertly in his cupped hands, so that the body of the bird nestled in his palms and his hands gripped underneath its wings. Pigeon Tony deftly wrapped a thin bandage around the top of its left wing, which he had extended. Neither man spoke, but their expressions and their brown Lucia eyes were almost identically strained.

  Judy watched and began to feel a little better. She concentrated on the live pigeon. She had never seen one so close up, mainly because she had never bothered to look at them pecking at trash in Washington Square or waddling fast down the street, like Olympic walkers. The injured bird was alert, and its golden eye, with a black pupil like a punctuation mark, darted this way and that. Whitish, wrinkly folds around its eye provided an odd sort of ring, and Judy wondered what it was for. She was surprised at the bird’s wingspan, a full twenty inches, with ten pinfeathers at the front of the wing clearly longer than those closer to the body. She wished she had paid more attention in science when they talked about drag and lift, but she assumed that it all made the birds fly better. She didn’t really care. She just wanted the pigeon to live.

  “Is it going to be okay?” she asked, and Frank looked up.

  “Hope so.” He managed a grim smile. “There’s only the one break. He’s young and strong, so I don’t think he’ll die.”

  “Good. It’s so . . . awful about the house, and the birds.”

  “We had to destroy two, to put them out of their pain.” His mouth tightened. “But most got away. We figure thirty survived, including Jimbo here.”

  Judy smiled, relieved. “Will they come back, to the house?”

  “Loft. After something like this, there’s no way to tell.” Frank focused again on the bird. Pigeon Tony, almost finished taping its wing, cut the bandage with a bent surgical scissors. “Instinct will tell them to stay away, especially if they left with their mates, which all of them did, except two.”

  “Which two?”

  “One whose mate was killed, a cock named Nino, and The Old Man. His mate died a long time ago.”

  Pigeon Tony said nothing as he gentled the snipped end of the tape closed, and the pigeon took an ungrateful peck at his finger. A tiny bulb of blood appeared on Pigeon Tony’s weathered hand, and he gave an indulgent heh-heh-heh when he noticed it, then wiped it on his baggy pants.

  Frank laughed, too. “He feels better, Pop.”

  “Si, si. Va bene.” Pigeon Tony smiled, but Judy could see his dark eyes aching with the loss of his birds. He cradled the bird against his sweater, curling his body protectively around it, then rose to his knees, with Frank supporting his elbow. Pigeon Tony nodded and, holding the bird, walked through the debris down the aisle.

  Frank gave Judy the high sign, then called after his grandfather, “Pop, we have to get out of here now. Judy thinks so, too.”

  Pigeon Tony shuffled off, but Judy knew he was only apparently oblivious to them, and she said her line.

  “I agree with Frank, Tony. It’s not a good idea for you to stay here any longer. You both go, and I’ll wait for the police.”

  “Police!” Pigeon Tony shook his head querulously, picking through the mess in the feed room, righting jugs of veterinary medicines and unused syringes with his free hand. “No like police! Police do nothing! Nothing!”

  Judy sighed. She kept forgetting that the Lucias lived in Palermo, not Philadelphia. “I had to call the police, I had to report it. What was done here, to your house, to your pigeon house, to your birds, it’s a crime. Breaking and entering. Animal cruelty. Malicious mischief. The police will do something about it when they get here.”

  “Nothing!” Pigeon Tony repeated, but he was preoccupied, pulling a green cardboard box from the wreckage. It read PERONI in bright red and green, and Judy assumed it was a special pigeoner’s term until she translated the BIRRA part. Beer, from the Latin, Budweiser. Pigeon Tony opened the lid of the cardboard box, placed the bird carefully inside, then closed the top flap loosely. “I no go. I no go nowhere.”

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “No.” Pigeon Tony slid the scissors from his pocket and poked it into the box top, making an airhole. “I no go.”

  Frank waved Judy off. “Thanks, but let me try again. This is really a family matter.” He turned to his grandfather. “Pop, you have to go with me. The Coluzzis will come back, and you know it. We’ll go to my house or a hotel. It’s dangerous to stay here.”

  “I no go.” Pigeon Tony made another airhole. “The birds, they come home. The Old Man, he come home.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know, I know.” Pigeon Tony made a third airhole in the box, and the injured pigeon popped his head through the loose top. The bird watched, making no effort to escape, as Pigeon Tony punctured the top again. “Alla time, he come home.”

  “But you don’t know when,
Pop. You can’t stay here. We shouldn’t be here now.”

  “I no leave.” Pigeon Tony kept making airholes for his audience of one. “My birds. My house. My loft. Alla mine.”

  “Pop, it’s not safe.” Frank raised his voice, his face reddening with frustration. “I’m not going to fight with you about this.”

  “I no leave,” Pigeon Tony shouted. “Basta, Frankie!”

  “Pop, you can’t stay here!” Frank shouted back, and Pigeon Tony looked up from his airholes. The pigeon’s head wheeled around.

  “I no leave!” Pigeon Tony waved the scissors for emphasis, and Judy knew he had won. An Italian with a sharp object always won, except for World War II.

  Suddenly she heard a commotion outside the loft and looked through the torn screen. Two uniformed police were looking around the kitchen. The cavalry had arrived.

  Finally.

  The five of them—Judy, Frank, Pigeon Tony, and two heavyset, older cops—crowded into the wrecked kitchen. Judy kept Pigeon Tony behind her, so he wouldn’t bite, as she talked to the police. He remained unhappily still, clutching his Peroni box, which cooed throughout her account of the events. One cop, whose black nameplate read McDADE, listened critically while the other, named O’NEILL, took careful notes on his white Incident Report pad. Judy knew they wouldn’t really understand this situation. Even the Irish were pikers in the grudge department, comparatively. Vendetta was an Italian word for a reason.

  Officer McDade flipped his pad closed. “So I have my report, and we’ll get right on it. Thanks.”

  Judy looked around. “When will the mobile techs arrive?”

  “Mobile techs?”

  “You know, for the crime scene. I see them at murder cases all the time. They dust for fingerprints, photograph everything—”

  “We do that for a homicide, but not a B and E.”

  Judy blinked, vaguely aware of Frank’s impatience at her side. “It’s still a crime scene.”

  “We don’t have the resources to dust every B and E.”

  “But this B and E is part of a homicide case,” Judy argued, echoing Frank’s words from earlier that day. “My client, Mr. Lucia, was charged this afternoon with the murder of the elder Coluzzi, and this is in retaliation.”

  “I’ve already told Mr. Lucia here”—he nodded at Frank—“that we’ll question the Coluzzi family.” Officer McDade shifted restlessly on his shiny black shoes, and his partner started toward the kitchen door. “We’ll start with John, the son he mentioned.”

  “But this is a warning. The Coluzzis are waging war on my client.” Judy knew she was pushing it, but pushing it was what advocates were supposed to do. She couldn’t leave Pigeon Tony unprotected. The law would take care of him, wouldn’t it? “I want whoever did this behind bars. It’s the only way Mr. Lucia will be safe.”

  The cop’s blue eyes flared. “No attempt has been made on his life.”

  “Not yet, but one could be.”

  “We’ll look into it, Ms. Carrier.” The officer glanced after his partner, who was leaving. “Now we do have to be getting along.”

  “But the issue is what happens to him tonight. If you don’t believe there’s a threat, you can still catch the eleven o’clock news. I’m sure the film of the fight at the courthouse is all over it.”

  “We have twelve other B and E’s to deal with tonight. It’s a Friday and a full moon. The whole city is going nuts. We looked upstairs and down. Nothing is missing. Your guy—your client—didn’t even lose anything valuable.”

  “Only his home, and birds he loves,” Frank interjected, and Officer McDade turned to him.

  “I meant no disrespect to your grandfather, Mr. Lucia, but I just came from an apartment on Moore, near Fifth. That guy’s home is a wreck and they took everything he owned.” Officer McDade touched the patent bill of his cap, a modern-day doffing. “We’re doing our best. You’ll hear from us as soon as we know something.”

  Judy couldn’t let it go. “So you’ll pick up John Coluzzi?”

  “Pick up? I didn’t say that. I said we’d talk to him and we will.”

  “Can’t you question him at the Roundhouse? Isn’t he a suspect?”

  “Not legally.” Officer McDade frowned. “We have no evidence, only your suspicion. We’ll question him, like I said, but we don’t have probable cause for arrest. Not on these facts.”

  “If you talk to the neighbors—”

  “We did that already. Nobody saw anything.”

  “They’re just afraid.”

  “Possibly, but we can’t manufacture witnesses, Ms. Carrier. Between us, me and my partner”—at this he nodded in the direction of his now-absent colleague—“have forty-something years of experience in talking to witnesses. We know how to handle this.”

  Judy fished in her purse, dug for her wallet, and found a business card. She handed it to the cop. “I’ll let you know if any of them call me. Will you do the same?”

  “Sure, that’s standard procedure.” The cop stuck her card in his back pocket with his white pad, reminding Judy uncomfortably of a booklet of traffic tickets.

  “Thanks,” she said anyway, her hopes sinking. Officer McDade shook her hand and Frank’s and nodded to Pigeon Tony, who gripped his Peroni box. The cops had been gone only a minute when Judy answered Frank’s unsaid argument, “It’s a process, Frank. It takes time.”

  “I understand. I really didn’t expect more.” Frank didn’t look angry to Judy, or even frightened. His brown eyes were concerned, and the stubble on his chin had grown darker. He turned to his grandfather. “Pop, I can’t get you to go, so I’m staying.”

  “You? Inna house? No. No!” Pigeon Tony scowled, his brow creasing with concern, but Frank put up his hand like a crossing guard.

  “Yes, and no more fighting. That’s it. I’m sleeping on the couch, Pop.”

  Pigeon Tony nodded only reluctantly, though the Peroni box cooed in happy response.

  Home in her apartment, Judy tried to sleep but couldn’t. She flopped back and forth in bed because her Patagonia surfer T-shirt, the same blue one she’d worn to bed for the past three nights, had become suddenly bunchy. She yanked it off over her head, then tossed it at the foot of the bed and slid nude under the coverlet, feeling suddenly cold. She refused to put the T-shirt back on, which would involve not only getting out of bed but also admitting defeat, so she leaned over and switched on the electric blanket, at which point she became suddenly hot. Even a pillow cave didn’t help. She had a lot on her mind.

  Pigeon Tony was across town in his ruined house, in danger. Frank was with him, protecting them both with only a portable copier. The police were changing shifts and proving her faith in them misplaced. She had a murder case to defend and the guy actually did it. Plus she liked the murderer and was developing a crush on his grandson. The thought made her smile, almost, but it faded when she focused on the predicament they were in, then the visions of the smashed house. The slaughtered birds. The pain on Pigeon Tony’s face.

  She fluffed up her pillow and snuggled deeper into bed, which was queen-size but seemed small. The room was large and messy, with two IKEA bureaus on the far wall, their drawers open and overstuffed, and between them an old rocking chair with sweat clothes piled on it. Her bicycle, a yellow Cannondale, leaned against the wall; her boxing gear sat piled in the corner. She could clean up but that wouldn’t improve her mood. She could work the case but she was too distracted. She turned over, facing the opposite wall.

  Moonlight streamed through the window, a tall one with mullioned panes, typical of the architecture in this part of town. Judy had moved to Society Hill, the oldest section of the city, as part of her never-ending quest for The Perfect Apartment. The possibilities had narrowed since she got Penny, now a healthy nine-month-old golden retriever, who snored happily at the foot of the bed. No rentals wanted pets and even the largest security deposit didn’t help. She’d ended up in this place, her nicest so far and the fanciest, only because she bartered free
legal services to the landlord for a year. He had a tricky boiler in one of his other buildings, but like her other clients, he’d have to wait. She had forgotten to call the GC at Huartzer during business hours and left a message only when she’d finally gotten home. And her antitrust article awaited her at the office. The deadline loomed on Tuesday. Her boss loomed constantly.

  Judy sat up in bed. She couldn’t relax. If she did drugs she’d do them now, but she stayed away from that stuff. She was already addicted to M&M’s, a monkey on her back. She could drink a nice chilled glass of pink Zinfandel but that would make her want to dance, not sleep. She had nothing good to read, though the stack of hardcovers on the bedside table threatened to topple. She resolved instantly to buy only books she wanted to read, not books that she should read, and felt suddenly free. Free! She switched on the ginger-jar lamp next to the books and jumped out of bed. Waking, the puppy lifted her head from her oversize paws and put it back down again, knowing where Judy was going and deciding it wasn’t worth the trouble to follow.

  She padded out of her bedroom and headed for her studio in the adjoining room, where she flicked on the lights. Like her bedroom, it was large and empty, painted white, but there the similarity ended. It contained no furniture but was filled with multilayered wooden trays of acrylic paints in tubes, jars of sable paintbrushes in all sizes, and large-format canvases, most of which were finished, propped against the walls.

  Bright, bold paintings of natural landscapes dominated her work, painted from memories and photographs of places she had lived. There were mountains she had hiked in Big Sur from when her father was commissioned at Stanford, and rocks she had climbed in Virginia, near the basic-training facility at Quantico; and green, tropical trails through which she had mountain-biked, outside of Pensacola, where they had moved so he could teach initial flight training. The painting resting on the easel showed a secret stream she had discovered curling through the marsh on the way to the Everglades. She surveyed the verdant greens, dense cobalt blues, and hot orange of the painting without the usual satisfaction. What was wrong with it? Judy confronted her art with new eyes in the still apartment. The dark window across the room reflected the naked form of a tall, athletic woman with tousled blond hair.