The Vendetta Defense

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Why? What?”

  “Our regular receptionist, Marshall. Just do it!” Judy called over her shoulder, and took off for the reception area. “Where’s that temp?” she shouted, but the reception desk was empty.

  “You just missed her,” one of the associates said, waving a brief. “But don’t use her, she’s terrible. She’s been trying to go home all morning, but I needed her to type something for me. Look at it! She types worse than I do.”

  But Judy was already hustling for the elevator. The steel doors were sealed closed but she heard the cab ping downstairs as it landed on the ground floor. She couldn’t wait for it to return. She ran for the staircase next to the elevator, banged open the fire door, and ran down the concrete steps, her clogs clumping on the steel tread of each step. She wound down the one flight, then hit the fire door and slammed into it, banging it open.

  “Where’d that woman go, with the braid?” she called to the alarmed security guard, who pointed to the service entrance of the building.

  “Out the back. Said she wanted to avoid the press. Is there a problem?”

  Judy was off and running, down a short corridor, past a green time clock with white cards in slots underneath, and out the back exit, which dumped her into an alley. She looked down the street just in time to see the receptionist’s dark braid flying around the corner.

  Judy darted up the alley after her and found herself on a hot sidewalk crowded with businesspeople coming back from lunch. She looked left. The dark braid wasn’t in sight. She looked right. Up ahead, running now against the current of the crowd, sprinted the woman with the dark braid. She was tall enough that her head bobbed above the crowd.

  Judy barreled through the crowd, keeping a bead on her. The temp had on running shoes, but they were no match for clogs. Judy could do anything in clogs. She could leap tall buildings. Running down a fake temp was a no-brainer.

  Her heart beat faster. She sweated through her days-old suit. Questions flew through her brain. How had they known about the tapes? Had they been watching her? Who had sent this woman? Judy kept her eye on the dark braid, who swerved around a corner toward Chestnut Street, heading into the heart of the business district, clearly hoping to lose Judy in the crowd.

  Judy put on the afterburners, becoming breathless, and the dark braid picked up her pace, too, tearing down the street. Startled passersby jumped out of the way and looked on curiously. The distance between Judy and the woman was widening. The crowd thickened. Judy was losing her. Clogs were stupid. Then Judy got an idea. If the dark braid could use the crowd, so could she.

  “Stop that woman, she took my purse!” Judy called out, dimly aware that Bennie had tried that trick once, with success. But nobody stopped. They just let the woman run by. Damn. Judy charged ahead and got another idea.

  “Stop that woman, she took my baby!” Judy shouted, louder, but nobody stopped the woman with the dark braid, who tore down the street, slipped through traffic and made it to the next curb, and took off. So much for the City of Brotherly Love. Judy got another idea.

  “Stop that woman—it’s Cher!” she screamed, but this time a ripple of excitement went through the passersby and they stopped and stared at the woman with too much makeup and a long black braid. One thrust a pen and paper at her for an autograph, and a young man started chasing after her. Bingo! “Hey, everybody!” Judy hollered at the top of her lungs, to anyone who would listen. “That’s CHER!”

  In no time a small crowd was running after the tall woman with the dark braid, and Judy trailed them by a furlong. They chased the woman into an alley, where they cornered her and had her backed against the brick wall, panting like a dog. Judy peered over their heads, blocked the alley, and waited for the inevitable.

  “That’s not Cher!” “She’s not Cher!” “You don’t even look like Cher!” “Wannabe!” “Poser!” called the crowd, and after some commotion they dispersed, filing disappointed out of the alley, leaving Judy and the temp alone.

  Judy went to the back of the alley and faced the woman, who didn’t even try to run past her but looked plainly exhausted, her head to one side, as if she were nodding out. She didn’t even move as Judy approached, and up close Judy could see that the woman was just a girl, with heavy black eyeliner, greasy from exertion, and her hair dyed black as midnight. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or weighed more than a hundred pounds in tight Guess jeans and a thin white sweater. Her skin was pale, her cheekbones too prominent to be healthy, and her pupils pinpoints. It wasn’t because of the sun.

  Judy grabbed the girl’s skinny arm and pinned her against the wall with ease. “Where are my tapes?”

  “Don’t hurt me. I put them in the incinerator, in the basement. They’re gone.” The girl’s eyelids fluttered and her green eyes filled with tears of fear, which disarmed Judy. She had never acted this way before. Nobody was afraid of her. She could barely housebreak a golden. Nevertheless she tightened her grip. Her tapes, gone.

  “Why’d you burn the tapes?”

  “Because they made me. They said they’d beat me up if I didn’t. Please don’t turn me in. Please lemme go.”

  “Who said they’d beat you up? One of the Coluzzis?”

  The girl pursed her lips, as if to resist Judy’s prying out the answer, so Judy tried hardball.

  “You destroyed critical evidence in a murder case. That’s obstruction of justice. If I call the cops to arrest you right now, that’s federal time. Who made you do it? Was it Coluzzi? Jimmy Bello?”

  “I can’t say.” The girl shook her head, jittery against the rough brick. “I’d rather do the time than end up dead.”

  “You think they’d kill you?”

  “I know they would.”

  Judy shuddered, thinking about Marshall. “Did they hurt our receptionist?”

  “No, they said they’d detain her is all.”

  “Did they hurt Marlene Bello?”

  “Nobody hurts Marlene.” The girl grinned crookedly. “Lemme go, please. I didn’t have a choice.”

  Judy considered it. There weren’t a lot of alternatives. She felt too sorry for the girl to turn her in. If the girl told the police who’d sent her, she’d be in danger herself. Judy flashed on Theresa McRea, who had to flee the country in fear. Judy was suddenly tired of causing so much pain, even in the name of justice. She was becoming her enemy and that she couldn’t stand. Let the bad guys do the bad things from now on. If Judy was a good guy, she had to do the good things. Her karma reserves were already in the red zone, from the scrapyard.

  Judy released the girl’s arm. “Go. Run. Get clean. Learn to type. But do me one favor. Tell them you think I copied the tapes.”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed with street savvy. “You didn’t make copies.”

  “You’re not Cher, but those people thought you were. And look what happened.”

  The girl giggled, and then the laughter disappeared as quickly as it had come. “They’re trying to kill you, whoever you are. Lawyer with a dog.”

  “I know, the car bomb gave them away,” Judy said, forcing a smile she didn’t feel. The threat by the Coluzzis was a constant now, gnawing at her stomach. “But why didn’t they send you to do it? You could have killed me as easily as burned my tapes.”

  “Me?” The girl put up her palms. “Oh no, I don’t go there. Not me. No. Besides, they do that themselves.”

  Even Judy’s fraudulent smile vanished. “Better go now. Before I change my mind.”

  The girl broke free and ran off, without looking back.

  “Hey, kids,” Judy said, rushing into the reception area at the office, worrying about Marshall and Marlene Bello. Murphy and the secretaries were standing around the front desk talking. Judy gauged the scene instantly and relaxed. They wouldn’t have been loafing if the receptionist were in trouble. “I gather Marshall is okay?”

  Murphy nodded. “She got stuck in an elevator. It broke, they think. She’s on her way in.”

  “Great.” Judy
smiled with relief. The Coluzzis were killing only when necessary. They must have been off their game. “I gotta go make some calls. Thanks for your help.”

  “You didn’t catch the temp?” Murphy asked, surprised, but Judy shook her head.

  “Bennie woulda caught her, but I couldn’t.”

  “Damn!” Murphy turned to Letisha, one of the secretaries. “I owe you a tenner.”

  Judy laughed, on her way to her office. She was liking Murphy more and more. She reached her office, shut the door, and punched in Marlene Bello’s number, holding her breath while the phone rang one, two, three, and finally four times before Marlene picked up. “You’re alive!” Judy said.

  “Last time I checked.” Marlene laughed in her throaty, smoke-cured way. “Very alive, in fact.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, you want to talk to Tony?”

  Judy raised an eyebrow. “Tony? Tony who?”

  “Tony-From-Down-The-Block. He’s paying me a visit, for lunch. He says to tell you hi.”

  Judy smiled. So he hadn’t been as tired as she’d thought. She filled Marlene in on the story of the tapes and told her to watch her back.

  “Don’t you worry about me, sugar. I keep a Beretta in my purse.”

  “Great, I guess.” Judy wondered fleetingly how many Mary Kay reps carried concealed. “You didn’t make copies of those tapes by any chance, did you?”

  “No way.”

  “You think the PI you hired did?”

  “Doubt it. He died anyway, three months ago.”

  Judy paused, suspicious. “How’d he die?”

  “Kidney failure.” Marlene put a hand over the phone, then came back on the line. “Hold on. Tony’s buggin’ me for the phone. He wants to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “First, he says, ‘Don’t be mad.’ ”

  Judy knew instantly what he meant. “Damn him! Put him on!”

  34

  The detective at the front desk was on the phone, but Judy wasn’t waiting for him to get off. She passed the desk and entered the squad room, where most of the Homicide Division looked up without surprise. Their ties loosened and their jackets off, they’d been eating lunch and waiting for jobs. Yellow Blimpie’s cups dotted the messy desks and the oily papers left over from take-out hoagies remained, many with a pile of shredded onions scenting the air. The detectives had undoubtedly been alerted to Judy’s visit, since she’d called Wilkins before she came, and she wondered if they’d been taking bets on whether she’d come bare-legged or not. She had. No pantyhose could withstand the way she lawyered.

  “Miss Carrier,” Detective Wilkins said, standing and hitching up his slacks on slim hips. His white shirtsleeves were rolled up and his tie was on and knotted tight. “You came to file another complaint.”

  “Let’s review. A bomb on my car, my apartment broken into, and now a fake temp in my office. Call me crazy, but I think someone’s trying to kill me.”

  Detective Wilkins smiled without mirth. “We don’t think you’re crazy. We take all of your calls and complaints very seriously, and I’m glad you came down to talk to us about it.”

  It sounded like the policeman-is-your-friend lecture they gave in third grade. Evidently Judy couldn’t have this conversation in an open squad room. “Is there someplace we could talk in private?”

  “I’ll do you one better,” he said, lifting his jacket from behind his chair. “Come with me.”

  Ten minutes later she was sitting in the beat-up passenger seat of Detective Wilkins’s ancient blue Crown Victoria, telling him everything that had happened over the past two days, with the exception of that silly little felony at the scrapyard. She felt vaguely hypocritical, seeking police protection after she’d conspired to boost a junker. In the law, this was known as “unclean hands.” Judy tried to put it out of her mind. In the law, this was known as “denial.”

  There was almost no traffic, it being the lull between the lunch and the evening rush hours, but Detective Wilkins drove as if there were, rushing even to red lights and gunning the engine when they turned green. They were heading toward her apartment in Society Hill, and Judy was glad it wasn’t far.

  “So we’re checking out my apartment?” she asked, and he nodded. He kept his gaze straight ahead and his hands loosely on the wheel. His eyes were flinty in the sun coming through the windshield.

  “I heard your message when I came in. You said your apartment door was open, but so was the front door downstairs. You said there were no signs of a break-in or forced entry of any kind.”

  “There wasn’t, but someone got in there. I’m not imagining this, Detective.”

  “I didn’t say you were. But isn’t it possible that you left your apartment door open?” The Crown Vic lurched to a red light.

  “I didn’t. I never leave my door open. And the front door wasn’t open when I left yesterday. I had to unlock it to get in last night.”

  “We’ll do a walk-through together when we get there and you’ll tell me if anything is wrong.”

  “Okay.” Judy thought a minute. “What about the guys who were shooting at us and then wrecked? Is there anything new on that?”

  “No new leads. We’re still canvassing the neighborhood. Talking to the neighbors. Trying to get a description of whoever stole the car. So far, nothin’.”

  Judy sighed. “What about the bomb on my car bumper? What did they say about it?” It was like a laundry list of calamities.

  “It’s a pipe bomb. Homemade, nothing fancy.”

  “That’s a relief. I wouldn’t want a fancy bomb.”

  Detective Wilkins’s eyes went flintier. “We don’t have enough to charge anybody for it. We dusted the car bumper for prints and got nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No matches to any known felons. No matches to anybody with a history of arrests for making bombs or incendiary devices. No matches to any of the Coluzzi family members or even their associates. That enough for you?”

  Judy remembered what the fake temp had said, about the Coluzzis liking to commit their own murders. It gave new meaning to the term do-it-yourselfers. “Does John or Marco Coluzzi have a criminal record?”

  “Not your business. But no.”

  “So you have no record of their prints?”

  “No.” The Crown Vic sped past the new federal prison, rising like a grim, gray nail next to the huge, red brick United States Courthouse, and Judy gazed out the window in frustration.

  “All this law and order, and it’s not protecting anybody.”

  “Yo, enough of that. I don’t do this for everyone, you know. I’m not even on this tour. I got ten uncleared cases on my desk right now. My partner’s in court for four days. I’m doing it because of the car bomb and the case you’re involved in. The department has done more than its part for you. There’s no flies on us, dear.”

  “But I’m no safer. That temp could have killed me today. I’m a defense lawyer, and I spend all my time defending myself.”

  “Well, you don’t make it easy, do you?” Detective Wilkins’s tone sounded testy, and he fed the big engine more gas. “Filing lawsuits. Holding press conferences. Thumbin’ your nose. What did you think was gonna happen?”

  Judy’s head snapped around. “You saying that makes it right?”

  “I’m saying that you gotta expect that. You can’t have it both ways, lady.”

  The argument had some force, but she still had a problem. “Did you question the Coluzzis about any of this? The car chase? The bomb? The apartment?”

  “I paid them a visit this morning, but I couldn’t find Big John. Marco was otherwise occupied, and his secretary said he’d call me back.”

  “Can he just say that? That he’s too busy to see the police?”

  “When he’s in the middle of a riot, I cut him some slack. He’s not a suspect, not officially, and you don’t know what those offices were like today, after he took over. It coulda been a riot. We put twenty
uniforms on it just to keep the peace.” The Crown Vic zoomed down Sixth Street, with Independence Mall on their left. A dappled draft horse, sluggish in the heat, carted tourists past the Constitution Hall, with its ivory spire and cupola.

  “So what should I do? Should I hire protection?”

  “You could do that. But if I were you, I’d get off the Lucia case.”

  “No,” Judy said reflexively, but something made her stop. She had a fleeting suspicion that Wilkins could be involved with the Coluzzis, but dismissed it as paranoia. Maybe. “Why do you think I should get off the case?” she asked, fishing.

  “Your client’s going down, and I don’t think a killer’s worth gettin’ killed for.”

  “Do you know the Coluzzis?”

  “No.” The Crown Vic shot down Market Street, past the Greek restaurants, gentrified coffeehouses, and junky storefronts of Old City selling men’s clothes, gold jewelry, and Liberty Bell thermometers.

  “You never met John or Marco?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You never had any dealing with them?”

  “No, and I don’t care to be cross-examined, counselor.”

  Judy reddened. She never was good at fishing. She didn’t know how to be anything but blunt, so she went with that. “I’m not accusing you, Detective, but you can’t blame a girl for asking.”

  “Yes I can.” Clenched teeth strained his voice, but Judy wasn’t sorry.

  “Gimme a break, Detective. My life is on the line, as is my client’s, and the police don’t do anything. My client’s house has been trashed, he’s in hiding, and the police don’t do anything. At some point, you start to wonder, and it’s not out of the question, with the Coluzzis. They bribed half of L and I, not to mention whoever gives out the construction contracts at City Hall. The Philly cops haven’t been immune from corruption in the past.” She didn’t give him the particulars, because the Crown Vic was already screeching to an extremely pissed-off stop in the middle of Market Street, blocking a full SEPTA bus, with no red light in sight.