“Yes, I am the judge. Excellent, Mr. Lucia.” The bail commissioner looked over his glasses at the prosecutor’s table. “Is the Commonwealth opposing bail in this matter?”
“We are, Your Honor,” answered the prosecutor. Judging from his spiky haircut and black suit, he was a recent law school graduate who had drawn the rotating duty of arraignment court. “As you know, murder is not typically a bailable offense in the county, and this was a particularly heinous murder of an eighty-year-old man. The Commonwealth argues that bail should not be granted.”
Pigeon Tony’s mouth opened as if he were going to speak.
“Your Honor,” Judy said quickly, moving her hand to the phone, “the defense argues that Mr. Lucia is certainly entitled to bail. His criminal record is spotless, and he obviously poses no risk to the population of the city. Nor does he, at almost eighty years of age, pose any flight risk at all.”
“Does he have any roots in the city, Ms. Carrier?” the commissioner asked, from the standard checklist for determining whether bail was appropriate.
“He has significant roots in the city, including his grandson, Frank Lucia, who is fully prepared to meet his bail.” Judy gestured for emphasis at the right side of the gallery, and they started waving back so wildly she wondered if they thought they were on camera, like a studio audience on The Jerry Springer Show. “As you can see, his entire extended family and all his friends support him and are here for this proceeding. He isn’t going anywhere, Judge.”
“Judge? Where judge?” Pigeon Tony began to fidget in his chair, leaning to the side and peering behind the camera. “Judge, you see me?” He tried to get up out of his chair, exposing the handcuffs that locked him there, and Judy couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed the black telephone.
“Mr. Lucia, this is Judy speaking. Pick up the telephone. Answer the telephone,” she said quickly into the receiver. The phone should have been ringing in the special cell, and a second later she heard it, then the hollow sound of the turnkey telling Pigeon Tony to pick up.
“Come?” he asked in confusion, turning off screen to the guard, who finally gave up telling him to pick up and reached across to the ringing phone and picked it up himself. The courtroom TV screen showed a sleeve of tan uniform thrusting a black receiver at Pigeon Tony, and he recoiled as if it were a cobra. With prodding, he reached for the telephone cautiously, only partly because of his handcuffs, and answered it as if he had never answered one before. “Si? Chi è?” he said, keeping his distance from the receiver, and Judy translated immediately. It did sound like Latin!
“This is Judy, Mr. Lucia. Remember me, Judy? Your lawyer?” She had to get them out of court, even TV court, fast. The arraignment had already lasted too long. “Listen to me carefully. Please stay in your seat and answer only the questions the judge asks you.”
“Judy?” Pigeon Tony burst into a grin of recognition. “Is Judy, with big mouth?”
“Yes! Right!” It was the first time she was happy to admit it, and she could see that the gallery was laughing.
The bail commissioner banged his gavel and addressed the prosecutor. “Counsel, given Mr. Lucia’s trouble with the common telephone, I find it hard to believe that he could negotiate the flight schedules of the Philadelphia airport. I find he poses no risk of flight and order bail to be set at twenty-five thousand dollars.” The commissioner faced the camera. “Mr. Lucia, you will be free as soon as your bail is paid. You must come back and appear at your preliminary hearing. Please sign the subpoena regarding your next court appearance. It’s a paper in front of you. Now, get—”
“Judge? Is judge?” Pigeon Tony started saying into his telephone receiver, and Judy went into action, doing what she did best. Talking.
“That’s enough, Mr. Lucia. It’s time to go home. Hang up the phone and you can go home.”
“Judy? Where judge? Now we talk to judge?” Pigeon Tony asked, and Judy’s heart stopped. She was about to start filibustering when the bail commissioner banged his gavel again.
“Mr. Lucia, you and I have done enough talking for one day, and we have a lot of cases to get to. This concludes your arraignment. Please sign the paper in front of you before you go back to your cell. Ask the turnkey to help you if need be, sir.”
Suddenly Pigeon Tony’s face vanished from the screen, which went black, and Judy almost cried with relief. She hung up the phone, grabbed her briefcase, and turned to leave as another defendant materialized on the screen and the public defender reclaimed his desk. She hadn’t been so glad to see a TV show end since Happy Days. And she had won. Pigeon Tony would be set free. The Lucia side of the gallery was on its feet, hugging each other with happiness.
Judy felt almost high as she opened the door in the plastic divider, and Frank, Mr. DiNunzio, the fragrant Tony-From-Down-The-Block LoMonaco, and glasses-wearing Tony Two Feet Pensiera rushed to sweep her up, thanking, hugging, and congratulating her. She had never experienced such emotion, such total love coming from complete strangers, and she found herself caught up in it, laughing with delight, forgetting every last doubt about the case.
Until the shouting began.
And the first punch was thrown.
Chapter 8
Judy had never witnessed such a scene in any of the conference rooms at Rosato & Associates before, or in any other law firm, for that matter. Seated around the sleek, polished walnut table were a trio of bruised and battered Italian octogenarians, slumping in rumpled and bloodied shirts behind medicinal cups of coffee. Fresh legal pads lay unnoticed in the center of the table with sharpened pencils piled in a ready-for-business logjam, and the state-of-the-art gray conferencing phone went untouched. A huge bank of glistening picture windows showed off a modern skyline of granite skyscrapers and mirrored glass columns, and though it was the best view in the city, the old men around the table hurt too much to be impressed.
Judy surveyed the damage as she doled out Tylenol Extra Strength. At least no one had to go to the hospital. Mr. DiNunzio had taken a mean uppercut to the chin, which swelled unhappily, but he didn’t need stitches and had given as good as he got. Tony-From-Down-The-Block had shown surprising agility despite his weight, being the first to respond to the Coluzzi clan’s attack, especially aggravated when someone called him a “fat bastard.”
Frank sustained a gash over his right eye—luckily the bleeding had stopped—and had been the most effective fighter, largely because he was so tall and muscular, in addition to being the only male under age seventy. He had almost knocked out the more heavyweight John Coluzzi when a combined army of courthouse security and uniformed cops appeared in the courtroom, summoned by a hysterical bail commissioner. The cops broke up the fight, separating the warring tribes and threatening hard time until they dispersed to their separate corners of South Philadelphia. No Lucia had gone to jail only because they had a fairly mouthy blonde on retainer, whose listing to the right was barely detectable.
Judy snapped closed the Tylenol jug and watched Frank apply a butterfly Band-Aid to the bald noggin of Tony Two Feet, who had proved, not surprisingly, to excel at kicking Coluzzis in the shins. Unfortunately, his Mr. Potatohead-eyeglasses had been knocked off in the brawl and nestled broken in his shirt pocket, their dark frames showing through the thin fabric.