“Thank God. Thank you. And my wife, she says to tell you hello. She stayed home today, with Mary.” He sounded apologetic and seemed not to realize that the spectators in the gallery were craning their necks to overhear their conversation. “She wished she could be here, you know that. They both do. But Judy, you understand.”
“Of course I do, my goodness. And thanks for taking such wonderful care of my best friend.” Out of the corner of her eye Judy checked the television monitor, but it wasn’t showing Pigeon Tony yet. The face of a young black woman filled the screen, and she was tearful. Her lawyer, a public defender, argued her case for bail on the other side of the plastic divider, his mouth moving like a TV on mute.
“I want you to meet my friends, Judy,” Mr. DiNunzio said, turning to his right. Beside him sat a row of men easily his age or in their eighties. They were dressed remarkably like him, with sweaters over white shirts and thin ties left over from a working life in a different era. Mr. DiNunzio waved a wrinkled hand at the man closest to him, who was shaped like a friendly meatball. “This here is my friend Tony LoMonaco from down the block. He knows Pigeon Tony from the club.”
“The club?” Judy doubted it was the kind of club her parents meant when they said “the club.”
“The pigeon-racing club, you know,” Mr. DiNunzio said, and Judy remembered.
“Of course. Happy to meet you, Mr. LoMonaco.” She shook his hand, catching a whiff of the cigar smoke that clung to his clothes, and surmised that he was Tony-From-Down-The-Block of cigar-buying fame.
Judy itched to finish the pleasantries. She had an arraignment to prepare for, at least mentally, and an unusual case of courtroom jitters. The encounter with John Coluzzi had rattled her, and her peripheral vision had found him sitting in the front row of the gallery on the left side of the courtroom. A shorter man sitting next to him struck a similarly hostile pose, and Judy figured he must be John’s brother, Marco, whom Frank had told her about. The two men, John the heavier of the two, anchored the grim-faced crowd around them, with whom she was obviously unpopular. If the right side of the courtroom was the Lucia cheering section, the left was the Coluzzi clan, sitting side by side with only a carpeted courtroom aisle between them, like a modern-day Maginot Line.
Judy felt an intuitive tingle of fear. It struck her that Angelo Coluzzi’s death could mean retaliation, as deadly as if the courtroom had been transported to Sicily. And the surviving sons, John and Marco, were very much alive; Marco, in a sharp suit and tie, looked like the more intelligent of the two, and Judy was guessing it was he who ran the business. But it was John’s meaty arm that encircled a very old woman in a black dress, dabbing at her aged, red eyes with a balled-up Kleenex. She had to be his mother, Angelo Coluzzi’s widow. He broke my father’s neck, Miss Carrier. Snapped it like it was one of his birds. Judy looked away, her thoughts racing, but Mr. DiNunzio was tugging at her sleeve.
“And this young man here is my friend Tony Pensiera,” Mr. DiNunzio was saying. “We call him Tony Two Feet, but you can call him Feet for short.” He laughed, as did the man sitting next to him, a thin man who wore glasses with frames like Mr. Potato-head. His feet looked normal to Judy.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Feet,” she said, drawing a smile from Mr. DiNunzio, as well as from Feet himself and her eavesdropping fans.
“Mr. Feet. I like that. Mr. Feet.” Feet grinned, showing a silver tooth in front, which led Judy to wonder briefly why they didn’t call him Tooth. The remaining old men in the row edged forward, shaky hands extended with arthritic fingers, trying to meet her, but she begged off with a quick apology.
“I’d like to meet you, but I have to get to the office. We’ll talk later, if that’s okay.” They withdrew their hands and eased back into the sleek pews, nodding with approval. She could clearly do no wrong. They were a brown-pumps kind of crowd. With a quick glance at Frank, she took her leave and buzzed herself into the door in the plastic divider, standing with her back to it until the last case concluded.
Pigeon Tony’s face popped onto the screen five minutes later, his appearance giving Judy a start. The close-up magnified every line in his tan face, turning wrinkles into fissures in the brown earth of his skin. The confusion furrowing his brow made him look like Methuselah. His round eyes darted back and forth; he was obviously unsure about whether to look into the camera lens, and disoriented and frightened by the procedure. It was impossible to square the helpless image with someone who would intentionally break the neck of another man. She remembered Frank’s words, You know, he can’t even cull out his own pigeons, he won’t kill any of them. But there was no time to puzzle it out now.
Judy moved to counsel table as the public defender stepped deferentially aside. “Your Honor, my name is Judy Carrier and I represent the defendant in this matter, Anthony Lucia,” she said, then sat down.
“So Mr. Lucia has private counsel,” the bail commissioner said noncommittally as he shifted stacks of docket sheets on the dais. Bail commissioners weren’t judges, though this one wore judicial robes, a tie with a collar pin, and the harassed expression of a man who presided over 150 bail cases a day. His light blue eyes looked beleaguered behind tortoiseshell reading glasses. “We’re ready to go, Bailiff. Where’s defendant Anthony Lucia?”
As if on cue, the TV sound burst to life with a crackle, and Pigeon Tony was whispering, “’Allo? ’Allo?”
Judy worried that he couldn’t understand what was happening, and a ripple of unrest ran through the courtroom gallery as soon as they heard his trembling voice over the microphones; the Lucia side of the courtroom stricken at seeing Pigeon Tony in jail, the Coluzzi side furious at seeing him alive. Judy’s mouth went dry.
The bail commissioner remained insulated on his side of the bulletproof plastic. “This is Commonwealth versus Lucia,” he began, reciting the docket number, then looking at the camera facing him, which would transmit his image to a television in Pigeon Tony’s cell. “Mr. Lucia, you have been charged on a general charge of murder, do you understand?”
“’Allo? Who is?” Pigeon Tony kept whispering, squinting at the camera lens.
“Mr. Lucia, this is the bail commissioner speaking to you. I am the judge. Look directly into the camera.” The bail commissioner glared into his camera, posing for a fairly cranky photo op. “Mr. Lucia, do you need an interpreter? We have a Spanish interpreter at your location, I believe.”
Judy shook her head. “Your Honor, he’s Italian. A member of his family could translate if there’s no translator available.”
“No, that wouldn’t be kosher. Let’s see if he gets it. Mr. Lucia,” the bail commissioner said loudly, as if that would help. “Do you understand that you have been charged with murder?”
“Si, si. Murder. Judge? Is judge?” Pigeon Tony still didn’t look at the camera, and Judy’s anxiety segued into fear. If Pigeon Tony understood it was the judge, he might blurt out the truth. Anything he said in open court would be admissible at trial. An admission now could kill him.
Oh, no. Judy’s hand crept toward the black telephone on counsel table, which would connect her directly to Pigeon Tony. She wouldn’t use it unless she had to, since everybody and his dog would hear everything. Pigeon Tony couldn’t be counted on to get any hidden messages, and please don’t confess might tip off the Commonwealth.