Coluzzi nodded in approval and turned to talk to his fellow, which was when he spotted Tony. Tony knew it the moment it happened, his gut told him before his two eyes did, and across the wildly cheering piazza, the two men locked glares; the farmer and the Fascist, in love with the same woman. The second knight spurred his horse leaping to a gallop and they thundered across the cobblestones, but neither Tony nor Coluzzi broke his gaze. The lance missed its target, to the disappointed aahs of the crowd, but Tony would not look away, nor would Coluzzi. The third knight was already off and racing flat-out toward the Saracen, and his lance struck boldly, making a dervish of the wooden target, obscuring Coluzzi from Tony’s view, and when the knight had passed, reveling in the crowd’s affection, Coluzzi had gone.
Good riddance. Coward. Pig. Filth. Tony thought Coluzzi was like the false Saracen, a hollow soldier waiting to be knocked down. How could Silvana see anything in such a poppet? Women apparently liked men who had strut and power, who wore confidence as thin as a uniform with epaulets. Though Tony had told her that Coluzzi had beaten the chemist, she had insisted that the chemist must have done wrong. Tony searched the crowd for her at the same time that the fourth knight was charging the Saracen, his lance raised, and this target struck the shield. A shout went up, and Tony felt hands suddenly clamped all over him and his neck yanked back by his collar.
“Come?” he said, not understanding at first, but Tony’s words were choked from his throat and the next thing he knew he was surrounded by black wool and strong hands were grabbing his arms and muscling him from the piazza. He cried out in alarm but a swift punch to the cheek brought blood bubbling to his mouth, and the next fist, expertly delivered, set pain arcing through his jaw and knocking him almost senseless.
There must have been ten Blackshirts and they hauled him off by his arms, his toes dragging on the cobblestones as the shouts of hundreds went up, cheering for the knights and drowning out the gurgling from his throat. Tony had to save himself. Nobody else would help him. He saw what had happened to the chemist.
He torqued in their grip but they hit him again and he was in such agony and shock that he was almost insensate as they dragged him back along the processional route, littered now with bottles and drunks retching on the sidewalk. The cobblestones rubbed off his farmer’s boots and flayed the skin from his bare feet as the streets grew quiet and they left the piazza, where celebrants could have borne witness.
They rushed him twisting and turning through streets as narrow as corridors, and Tony knew from their grunts and curses that they were loving this business, which sickened him to his stomach. He didn’t know where he was, or where or even why they were taking him, and the medieval streets all looked the same, each one like the next, which for some reason scared him more than the beating.
Then the rushing stopped and they began hitting him in earnest, raining blows everywhere on him all at once, to his back, his head, his gut, and he tried to raise his arms and cry out but they socked him in the stomach so hard he couldn’t breathe, and he crumpled to the ground, where they began kicking him with hard boots in his ribs, his legs, and his kidneys, so that he was thrashing and rolling in agony on the hot and gritty cobblestones. The hope of the Abruzzese lifted in his chest until more kicks came and Tony realized all that screaming was coming from him, and then even he began to lose hope, his limbs fighting back no longer. He barely remained conscious and gathered with peaceful resignation that he would die at their hands.
But just then the kicking came to an abrupt stop and everything went completely still. The air felt suddenly cool as a balm. Tony thought surely this was his death. His body had gone numb. He felt no pain. He didn’t think he could move, nor did he care to. It was so calm and nice lying here, like being in the hills under the trees where he and Silvana would have lunch. There was no sound. Tony opened his eyes to see at last the full glory of God.
Above him stood the outline of a helmet, shoulders with epaulets, and a chin like a dictator’s. The sun shone behind the outline, casting its long shadow on Tony. It wasn’t God, it was the Devil himself. Angelo Coluzzi.
“Congratulations, my friend,” Coluzzi said, laughing softly, but Tony didn’t understand.
“Che?” he croaked out incomprehensibly.
“I have excellent news for you, farmer. You would never guess it in a million years. Let us play a game, a guessing game. Can you guess my news?”
Tony was too weak to speak, and Coluzzi dealt him a swift kick in the hip, which sent agony through his spine.
“Speak, cur! Ask me what is my news!”
But Tony couldn’t, so Coluzzi kicked him again and again until he cried out in pain, but not for mercy. That he would not do.
“Good dog!” Coluzzi exclaimed. “Here is my news. Our whore has chosen you.”
What? Tony couldn’t believe his ears. Silvana had chosen him? Silvana had chosen him! The knowledge tasted like the most succulent of fruits. And then Tony closed his eyes, realizing that the taste on his tongue was his own warm, salty blood, and that this, the sweetest moment of his life, was also the bitterest. For in that moment he understood that if Silvana had chosen him, Angelo Coluzzi would not let her live. Tony should have foreseen this, but he hadn’t. He wouldn’t have courted her if he had realized. And now it was too late. Tears for Silvana sprang to Tony’s eyes, and his heart burst with fear, and with his last breath before he lost consciousness he screamed:
“No!”
“No!” Pigeon Tony struggled in the strong arms of the guards, his heart beating wildly and his breath coming only in short bursts, but the guards held him tighter. There must have been ten of them.
“Pop! Pop!” Frankie cried. “What’s the matter, Pop?”
“No! No!” Pigeon Tony kept shouting, screaming in Italian, panicking, surrounded by police in uniform. “No!”
“Let him go, you’re scaring him!” Frank shouted. “Let him go!”
Suddenly the grip released and Pigeon Tony felt the guards pushed aside and his grandson Frank holding him, talking to him in his ear, whispering in Italian like music, his voice as soft as his father Frank’s used to be, as a boy. The lullaby reached Tony’s heart and soothed him from the inside out, relaxing every muscle in his body, easing even the deepest grief within him, so that he allowed himself to be cradled as unashamedly as a child, and he dreamed in that moment that his own son Frank was still alive, as was his Silvana, and Frank’s wife, too.
And he dreamed that all of them lived together in eternal sweetness, as a family, whole again and full of love.
Chapter 29
After the prelim, Judy hit the office running, with a lot of work to do. The trial was a few months away, but she had learned something at the prelim and there was no time to waste. Also she had other cases she’d been neglecting, not to mention a general counsel who would fire her any day now. Judy stopped at the reception desk in the entrance room of the firm.
“They in there?” she asked the receptionist, as she picked up her correspondence and thumbed through her phone messages. There were twenty in all. The Daily News, the Inquirer, the New York Times. The Coluzzi story was white-hot. She’d return the calls later on the cell phone, to keep the Coluzzis’ feet to the fire.
“Sure, they arrived about ten minutes ago.”
“Will you tell ’em I’ll be right in? I want to drop this stuff at my office.” “Sure.” “Thanks.” Judy tucked her things under her arm with her briefcase, powered past associates and secretaries to her office, only to find Murphy sitting behind her desk.
“Huh?” Judy said, and Murphy shot up self-consciously. Her dark hair was slicked back, her lips properly lined, and she wore a white silk T-shirt with a yellow skirt the size of a Post-it. Murphy looked wrong, not to mention naked, behind Judy’s desk. “What are you doing in my office?”
“I wasn’t snooping or anything.” Murphy stepped away from the desk quickly. “I was leaving you something.” “What?” Judy dumped her stuff on he
r already cluttered desk and walked around it. Next to a leftover coffee cup and some old correspondence sat the fresh draft of an article. It looked like Judy’s article, but it was finished. “That’s mine,” Judy said, reading her own mind.
“Yes. But I knew you’d be too busy to finish it, given the car bomb and all. I picked up the file and drafted it for you.”
Judy skimmed the top page of the brief. A one-paragraph introduction, a statement of the legal issues, a crisp analysis of the law. It was really good. “Where did you get this?” she asked, but Murphy thought she was joking.
“Make any corrections you want and pass it back to me. I’ll make Bennie a copy, and if she likes it, I’ll submit it.”
Then Judy got it. Murphy was trying to make her look bad in front of Bennie. Judy turned to the last page of the article. The proof would be on the signature line. Judy was just about to shout Aha! when she read it. It was her name on the papers, not Murphy’s.
“You don’t have to use it if you don’t like it.”
“Well, jeez, thank you.” Judy felt touched. Only Mary did things this nice, and she was a saint. Judy picked it up and put it in her briefcase. “I’ll look at it first chance I get.”
“Good.” Murphy moved to the door. “Anything else I can do?”
“Uh, no, thanks.”
“Thank me over lunch,” Murphy said, and she left.
Seated around the walnut table in the conference room, still in their best going-to-court polyester, were Tony-From-Down-The-Block LoMonaco, Tony Two Feet Pensiera, and Mr. DiNunzio. They sat behind Styrofoam cups of office coffee, heat curling from each cup, and among the pencils and legal pads in the middle of the table sat a white bakery box the size of a briefcase. On the top it said, in script, Capaciello’s. “What’s that?” Judy asked, and Mr. DiNunzio smiled.
“Just a little something to thank you for what you’re doin’ for Tony.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block nodded. “You think we’d come over empty-handed? That ain’t right.”
Feet looked cranky. “Open it already. We all got our coffee here. We been waitin’.”
“I’m on it, Coach,” Judy said. She pulled the box to her, broke the light string, and opened the lid, releasing a sweet smell. The box was stuffed with pastries, but she didn’t recognize any of them. Some large pastries were shaped like flowers of dough, some looked like clams with fruit embedded in them, and others were long slices of flaky cake. God knew what these were. Judy’s family ate doughnuts and brownies. “How nice of you. Thanks, gentlemen.”
“Hand me a sfogatelle, will ya, Jude?” Feet asked, and Mr. DiNunzio shifted forward on his chair.
“I’ll take the pastaciotti, please.”
“Gimme a crostata,” said Tony-From-Down-The-Block.
Judy looked bewildered at the box. “Is this a test? There’s not even a cannoli, so I could go by process of elimination.”
“No cannoli, sorry.” Feet frowned behind his Band-Aid bridge, which Judy was getting used to. In fact, she was starting to like it. Some glasses, Band-Aids could improve. “They didn’t have the chocolate chip. They don’t have the chocolate chip, I don’t buy cannoli.”
“Not all Italians like cannoli,” added Mr. DiNunzio. “People think we do, but we don’t.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block rubbed his ample tummy. “Cannoli’s too heavy. If I eat one, I feel like I’m gonna blow up.”
Judy wanted to get on with it. “Okay, gentlemen, which one’s the what-you-said?”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block pointed, as did Mr. DiNunzio and Feet, but their wires kept getting crossed so Judy gave up and slid the box across the table. “You’re on your own. I called you here for a reason.”
“You got dishes?” Feet asked, pastry in hand.
“It’s a law firm, not a restaurant.” Judy grabbed a legal pad from the center of the table, ripped off the top three pages, and passed them out like plates. “Use these. Now to business—”
“Ain’t you eatin’, Judy?” It was Tony-From-Down-The-Block.
“No, thanks, I had lunch on the way over. A hot dog.”
“So? This is dessert.”
“At lunch?”
“People have rights.”
Judy blinked. “No thanks.”
He paused. “Well, if you ain’t eatin’, can I have my cigar?”
“No.” Judy stood up and went to the front of the conference room, while Mr. D and The Tonys munched away, poured coffee, and slid sugar packs around like bumper cars. The atmosphere was more family wedding than case conference, but Judy knew that would disappear when she started talking. She stood near the easel at the front of the room, which supported her delusion that, except for the pastry part, she was controlling this meeting. “Okay, here’s the problem,” she began. “Our firm has a great investigator, but he’s away and—”
“You want coffee?” Mr. DiNunzio was holding the pot in the air.
Feet nodded, his mouth full of mystery pastry. “We made fresh. The girl showed us how.”
“Feet, you’re not supposed to say ‘girl’ anymore,” Mr. DiNunzio said, placing his pastry carefully on his sheet of legal paper.
“Why not?” Feet shrugged. “Whatsa matter with ‘girl’? I like girls.”
“You don’t call them girls anymore. They’re women.”
“Hey, if she’s got her own teeth, she’s a girl.” Feet shoved his pastry into his mouth, and Judy cleared her throat as effectively as a substitute teacher.
“Gentlemen, listen up. We were just in court and we heard lots of testimony. Who can tell me the most interesting thing we heard this morning?” Mr. D’s hand shot up, and Judy smiled. Every teacher needs a pet. “Mr. D?”
“I didn’t know that Fat Jimmy heard Pigeon Tony say, ‘I’m gonna kill you.’”
Judy nodded. “Very good, but it’s not the answer I’m looking for. Tell me why that was interesting to you, Mr. D. Did you hear Pigeon Tony say that?”
“Of course. We all heard it, didn’t we?” Mr. DiNunzio looked at the other two for verification and they nodded, sure. “I was just surprised that Fat Jimmy heard it. He never looks like he hears anything. I guess it was really loud.”
Judy sighed. Case was going down the tubes. That made four— count ’em, four—witnesses to a murder threat by the client, who was, by the way, guilty as charged. “Did any of you hear anything that Coluzzi said, while they were both in there?”
“No,” Mr. DiNunzio said, and the others shook their heads, no.
“Why?” Feet asked. “Did he say something we shoulda heard?” He half-smiled in an encouraging way, but as much as she wanted to, Judy wasn’t writing scripts for witnesses.
“No, you heard what you heard. Okay, anybody else find anything interesting in the testimony today?”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block raised an unlit cigar. “I thought it was interesting that Fat Jimmy broke up with Marlene. Musta just happened, because I didn’t hear nothin’ about it. She’s a number, that Marlene. She makes a buck, too.”
“Not what I was looking for, but that’s very interesting.”
“It’s what I’m looking for,” Tony-From-Down-The-Block said with a snort, and Mr. DiNunzio gave him a solid shove.
“I thought you had that girl, on the Internet. In Florida.”
“She thinks I’m twenty-five. And anyway, I need a real girlfriend. I need Marlene. She’s got red hair.”
Feet wiped his mouth. “Her hair ain’t real.”
“So?” Tony-From-Down-The-Block sipped his coffee. “I got a bum ear and a prostate the size of Trenton. I’m gonna throw stones?”
Judy wished for a pointer and something to tap it on. “In any event, Feet, what did you learn in court today?”
“I heard something interesting.” Feet rubbed his hands over his legal pad, so that sugar crumbs fell like snow all over the table. “I heard Fat Jimmy say he only got paid fifteen large for blowing Angelo Coluzzi.”
Mr. DiNunzio’s head snapped angr
ily around. “Don’t say blowing.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block scowled. “Not in front of a girl.”
Judy winced. “True, it wouldn’t be the way I’d put it, but that’s close to what I was looking for. Fat Jimmy said he’d worked for Angelo for over thirty years. That’s a long time. What did he do for Coluzzi, besides the aforementioned? Mr. D? Do you know?”
“Not really. I wasn’t in the racing club, like these guys. I just know Pigeon Tony.”
Feet thought a minute. “Fat Jimmy was with Angelo all the time. He drove him around, went to the clubhouse with him. Showed up at all the races with him.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block was nodding. “He had to take Angelo’s shit, that’s what. Angelo bossed him around all the time.”
“You couldn’t pay me enough,” Feet said, and Mr. DiNunzio shook his head.
“Me neither.”
But Judy had stopped listening. She took a seat at the head of the table. “We all know that Pigeon Tony’s son and daughter-in-law were killed in a truck accident last year, and that Pigeon Tony thought Angelo Coluzzi was responsible for it. Tell me what happened with the accident, like where it was.”
Mr. DiNunzio looked up. “It was at the ramp off of I-95, you know where it goes high to get back into the city, like an overpass. It’s a sin.” He shook his head slowly. “They think Frank lost control of the car, maybe he was tired, and the car went over the side and crashed underneath.”
Judy tried to visualize it. “Did it hit anybody when it fell?”
“No. That time a night, there was no traffic. They say the Lucias, they died when the truck crashed. They didn’t suffer, which was good.”
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