The Vendetta Defense

by Lisa Scottoline

  She sat at her desk finishing a motion in the Lucia case. The office was empty. The window behind her was a square of black. The only sound was the clicking of her keyboard. She’d had the idea for the motion on the way back; she had decided to ask the court for an expedited trial in the Lucia case, in view of the string of lethal events directed at her and her client. It seemed the only thing Judy could do legally that had any chance of success, and she had been enthused about it when she’d started.

  But as she reread the finished product, her mind grew restless and her bare foot tapped constantly. She couldn’t remember when she’d eaten last. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days. She was too antsy even for coffee, and Penny, sensing her mood, watched her alertly, her head between her paws, at the threshold to Judy’s office. Judy thought of returning Frank’s many calls to her cell phone, but she didn’t want to talk to him yet, not in her present mood, and she didn’t want him to know what had happened at her apartment. Bennie was unreachable and had left a message she would be at her client’s until midnight, in settlement negotiations. Judy considered calling Mary but didn’t want to worry her either. Even Murphy wasn’t around. It left Judy feeling isolated, cut off, and more homeless than usual.

  She tried to focus on the brief and read: As the attached affidavit will show, it is undisputed that since leaving his preliminary arraignment, Mr. Anthony Lucia and his family have been the target of a riot at the Criminal Justice Center and an attempted murder in the form of a shooting and high-speed pursuit through the streets of South Philadelphia. Mr. Lucia’s home and property have been completely . . .

  Judy shifted in the chair. The more she read, the angrier she got. It had barely been a week since she took his case and already there had been a litany of violence against Pigeon Tony, Frank, and her. The cops couldn’t do anything until they were all dead. The situation was insane. Out of control. Which was close to the way Judy felt. Beneath the veneer of professionalism, she was off the reservation. Slightly deranged. She realized now that it had been brewing all day, since she’d seen her self-portrait smeared with blood. A hunting knife between her legs.

  Judy stopped reading, shot up from her seat, and began to pace. Penny watched from between her paws, her large brown eyes rolling back and forth. The office was small and there wasn’t far to pace; even that frustrated her. Her own defense could barely get off the ground, the accident reconstructionist was telling her she couldn’t prove murder against Angelo Coluzzi, and the tapes had been incinerated. Jimmy Bello would be testifying that he had heard Pigeon Tony say, “I’m going to kill you.” All of it was going down the toilet in a hurry. And the violence against her could end only one way, inevitably, on a case she refused to quit.

  Judy paced this way, then that, in endless motion, like the proverbial loose cannon, rolling back and forth on a ship’s deck. She paced forward. Wishing she could see her car again. Back. Wishing she could go home again. Forward. Wishing she could do something—anything—more effective against the Coluzzis than filing lawsuits and briefs. It may have gotten them angry, it may have distracted them, it may have pitched one against the other, but it wasn’t making them stop.

  Then Judy came to an abrupt stop. She wiped her brow, suddenly damp. Penny lifted her head, sensing something new.

  It struck Judy that there was something she could do. Something she hadn’t tried yet. It was undoubtedly a little crazy, it was equally dangerous, but it sure beat writing briefs. She ran to her computer and sent an explanatory e-mail to Bennie, then resolved to do it. She had a rented Saturn. She had a golden retriever. She felt her sense of humor returning. What else did a girl need?

  Judy grabbed her backpack and the dog, caught the elevator downstairs, took the back entrance to her waiting Saturn, and drove off, her eyes on the rearview mirror. Penny sat in the passenger seat, very upright and looking straight through the windshield, the way she always did. Judy always thought of it as the date position, but tonight it felt different. Tonight Penny was riding shotgun.

  Judy pointed the Saturn in the usual direction and in no time was threading her way through the streets of South Philly like a professional Italian, instead of an amateur. Like a native she didn’t notice the illegal double-parking, the little shops, or the cool brick colors. Girl and puppy were on a mission.

  She took a right on McKean Street, traveled down the number street, then took a turn on Ritner. The traffic was slight. The beach chairs were empty. The Phillies were playing a doubleheader, but South Philly watched it on TV. The seats were better and the beer was cheaper. It actually made sense to Judy, now that she had changed citizenship. After all, these were the people who gave the world Michelangelo and Mike Piazza. Maybe they knew what they were doing.

  Judy took another left and cruised down the street until she saw the sign. This was the place. The offices were red brick, with slitted anti-burglary windows on either side of plate-glass doors. She could see the large outline of a security guard through the glass, but the guards and crowd of the morning had died down. The coup of Coluzzi had been accomplished.

  Judy parked the Saturn across the street from the offices of Coluzzi Construction, cut the ignition, and turned off the lights. She inhaled deeply to slow her breathing and calm her nerves. She was sweating profusely, odd for her, and she pushed clammy bangs from her forehead. She scanned the street, up and down.

  It was dark, with only one of the four mercury vapor streetlights working. It made a purplish halo in the humid night air. The street was typically narrow, with room for parking on only one side. There were no residences in this part of South Philly. Small businesses, closed at this hour, lined the street, their lights off and their buildings empty. Nobody was out, but a light was on inside Coluzzi Construction. Given the events of the day, Marco and his people had to be working late. Judy had hoped as much.

  “This is it, Penny,” she said aloud, and the puppy looked over and shifted closer to Judy, the better to lean into her shoulder. Penny was the Lean Machine in the car, but Judy never pushed her away, despite the traffic hazard. And tonight she could use the comfort, however furry.

  Judy was supposed to be getting up and going inside, but she was having second thoughts. Why had she come here? She’d been planning to go in and confront Marco Coluzzi. Tell him to call off the dogs. Convince him to let the jury decide the case. Explain to him that if they got her off the case, or killed her, another lawyer would take her place. God, there were hundreds of them, everybody knew that.

  Judy set her jaw. She had intended to look the man in the eye and confront him. If Bennie was negotiating a settlement, so could Judy. Lawyers convinced. Cajoled. Compromised. Wheedled and manipulated. And she had a bargaining chip. In return for Marco’s stopping the violence, Judy would withdraw her lawsuit. It was costing the Coluzzis big money, and the loss of the waterfront project was only the beginning. She could make that end. The bleeding would stop on both sides. And if anything happened to her, her laptop would tell everybody where she had gone and who had done it.

  Cold comfort. Very cold. Judy flashed on the morgue and felt the chill of refrigeration wreathing the black body bags.

  It seemed like a crazy plan now that it had become real, and she sat in the car in front of the building, reconsidering. Judy was unarmed; Marco was not. She had a fuzzy puppy; he had uniformed guards. He may have been a Wharton grad, but he could still shoot her and dump her in the concrete foundation of a shopping center. She could be a Blockbuster Video by morning. And that was the best-case scenario. There was always the hunting knife. Eeek.

  Judy scratched Penny behind the left ear, where her fur had matted in clumps, and told herself she wasn’t stalling. Puppies needed quality time. It was so quiet she heard the digital clock tick to 11:50 and she sighed deeply. She should go back to the office, erase the last will and testament on her laptop, and talk to Bennie, who would be back soon. She would file her motion for an expedited trial, find a hotel room, and feel better in t
he morning.

  Judy had no business here. It wasn’t just a crazy idea, it was a stupid idea. She’d be lucky to get the hell out of here with her life. She reached for the ignition and was about to switch it on when the skinny street filled with light. The bright high beams of a dark sedan, which was roaring suddenly down the street.

  Judy frowned in confusion. The car would crash at that speed. It was barreling her way. She reached for the dog in shock.

  The sedan screeched to a stop in front of Coluzzi Construction. Reflexively Judy looked for the license plate, but there wasn’t one. The car was big and dark. Its four doors sprang open simultaneously and four men in ski masks jumped out, carrying huge assault rifles. Judy’s lips parted in horror. Her heart pounded in her ears.

  Suddenly the front doors of the construction office exploded. The sound was deafening and thundered in Judy’s chest. Orange flame flared to the sky. Smoke clouded the entrance. Plate glass fell to the sidewalk in a shattered sheet. It looked like a movie scene but Judy could smell the burning in the air. Penny yelped in fear and began barking. Judy grabbed the dog’s muzzle to silence her. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  The four men charged through the smoke and rushed over the broken glass of the office entrance. The lights blinked twice, then went off inside, plunging the place into darkness. Rapid pop-pop- pops like firecrackers sounded from inside the building. Gunshots, a fusillade of them, all coming at once.

  Judy could only imagine what was happening inside. Had they come to kill Marco? Was John in one of the ski masks? Would John go so far as to kill his own brother? Judy knew they were bad guys, but this was true evil. She had to do something.

  She dived to the car floor for her backpack, dug inside for her cell phone, found it, and hit the 911 button. She shoved Penny down so the dog wouldn’t get shot. Judy’s eyes were glued to the entrance, which was still smoking when three men ran out through the fog and jumped back into the sedan, which took off with a scream.

  The operator picked up but Judy couldn’t wait for the may-I-help-you or whatever they said. “Please, come quick! The offices of Coluzzi Construction, in South Philly. There’s been an explosion! A shooting! Hurry!”

  “Did you see the shooter, miss? Can you give me any description?”

  “There were four of them. They wore masks. Hurry! Come. Send an ambulance!”

  “How many did you say?” asked the dispatcher, but Judy held the phone to her ear and leaped from the Saturn. Maybe she could do some good. She didn’t know CPR, but the dispatcher could talk her through it.

  She raced across the street, put her hand up to screen the smoke, and ran over the broken glass. She fell once on the slippery shards, then got up and darted inside the building. She found herself in a darkened and destroyed reception area that had been intact only seconds earlier. All she could see was that the front counter was splintered and smoldering from the blast. A huge framed picture on the wall had been blown to smithereens.

  “Don’t shoot! I’m here to help!” Judy screamed, but realized in the next second that it wasn’t necessary. The reception area was deadly silent. The smoke on the tile floor was lifting. Judy felt something at her feet and looked down.

  It was a security guard, his stilled eyes staring wide in death. Gunshot wounds strafed his chest, shredding his blue uniform in a soaked red line. Judy’s hand flew to cover her mouth and she forced herself to move on.

  Ahead lay a dark, smoke-filled corridor, and she ran a hand along the wall for guidance. In her path lay two more bodies, in uniform. Guards. Judy scrambled from one to the next, pushing up their tight cuffs and feeling for a pulse. Their wrists were still warm with life, but their pulses had ebbed away. Three men dead. How could this be? It was awful. Judy felt her gorge rise but willed it back down. She couldn’t lose control now.

  “Marco!” she shouted through the smoke, without knowing why. Yesterday she had wished him dead. Today she wanted to save his life. She ran down the corridor and heard moaning when she reached an office at the end of the hall.

  It was large, dark, windowless. Judy couldn’t see anything but she guessed the desk would be on the back wall, with Marco behind it. A moan confirmed it and she ran in its direction, then fell to her knees and fumbled for the body lying on the floor. The outline of Marco Coluzzi was faintly visible. But it had stopped moaning. Wetness gurgled dark from the corner of his mouth. Judy could feel it hot under her fingers. Blood.

  She went into autopilot, tucking the cell phone under her ear and pressing rhythmically on Marco’s chest. “Tell me what to do!” she called to the 911 dispatcher, but the connection was breaking up. She pumped frantically up and down. A siren blared nearby, joined by another. They were on the way. They had gotten her message.

  “Marco, Marco!” she called out, but no sounds came from the body on the floor. She leaned on his chest with all her might, let off, then did it again. He still wore a knotted tie, even at this hour, and somehow that touched her. But he wasn’t coming around. She couldn’t save him.

  “Operator, what do I do?” she called, panicky, but the dispatcher’s voice vanished into static.

  “No!” Judy dropped the cell phone and gathered Marco in her arms. His head fell back instantly, and Judy could see the glistening black blood staining his neck. His shirt was soaked. He had lost so much blood. He was bleeding to death. It was her fault. She had pitted one brother against the other. She never realized it would come to this. She should have known.

  “Help!” Judy shrieked, cradling her enemy in her arms, but she knew they would come too late. He was already gone and she couldn’t do anything but hold him.

  “No! Please! Stop! This has to stop!” she heard herself cry out and she didn’t know if she was talking about the blood or the killing or the vendetta. And Judy was relieved when she felt the warm tears fill her eyes and stream down her face, because they told her she was still a human being, with a heart, a conscience, and a soul, and nobody could take that away from her, least of all the poor man who was dying in her very arms.

  The next hours blurred paramedics and gurneys and uniformed police asking her questions. There were Mobile Crime techs in jumpsuits and booties and Dr. Patel from the coroner’s office, acknowledging her with a grim nod, and then there was yellow crime-scene tape and bodies being carried out in bags. Then came TV cameras and klieg lights and anchorpeople in orange makeup and Judy’s cell phone ringing nonstop.

  She said “no comment” to anybody who didn’t wear a badge, and she must have said it at least a hundred times. Someone handed her a paper towel, and she wiped her face with it. When she pulled it away, it was streaked with blood redder than any oil paint.

  Judy bore up under all of it and answered the police questions numbly, describing to Detective Wilkins, who came later, what she had seen and why she had been there, racking her brain for details of the sedan and the men and anything that could help him prove who did it, though they both knew it had to be John Coluzzi. He didn’t make her go down to the Roundhouse because Bennie arrived and scared him and the press off, scooping Judy up like a lost child and hurrying her back to the Saturn and sitting her in the driver’s seat next to a completely agitated Penny, who became frantic sniffing the blood on Judy’s clothes.

  “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.