And for Judy’s part in the battle, she had found herself relegated to the sidelines, apparently viewed as Switzerland by the Coluzzis. After she’d lost one of Bennie’s brown pumps in the fussing, which was no great loss, she helped the cops bring the mess to a close. Pigeon Tony was unscathed only because he hadn’t been at the fistfight and had still been trapped in TV custody. Judy was at present rethinking her position on televised arraignments. They were an excellent idea where Italians were involved.
She stood at the head of the table. “Here comes the lecture. First of all, we’re damn lucky that the judge didn’t revoke Pigeon Tony’s bail, and I hope all of you know it. You have to understand right here and right now that we are not going to run this case this way. I may be a slow learner, but I’m getting the idea. The Lucias hate the Coluzzis, and the Coluzzis hate the Lucias. But right now that doesn’t matter. I cannot and will not defend Pigeon Tony in this case if you people can’t control yourselves.” Judy wasn’t used to being so dictatorial, but she was starting to like the power femme thing, even though her version of it sounded like a gym teacher. She wished for a whistle on a gimp lanyard, in school colors. “You people have to think a lot more long-term than you have been. You can’t be so emotional all the time.”
Pigeon Tony blinked. Mr. DiNunzio looked grave. Tony Two Feet hung his head.
Frank smiled, despite a goose egg rising on his right cheekbone. He stood at the opposite end of the table, resting his hands on the back of Pigeon Tony’s chair. “Need I remind you that we come by it honestly?”
“Need I remind you that your grandfather’s life is at stake?” Judy watched his smile fade. “Get over yourselves. Being Italian is no excuse for bad behavior any longer. In any event, not with this lawyer. From now on we do this my way, every step of the way, or Pigeon Tony finds somebody else to represent him.”
Pigeon Tony stopped blinking and the corners of his mouth went south.
“Pigeon Tony, listen to me.” Judy softened her tone, since even gym teachers had a heart. “Do you understand what I’m saying here?”
“Judy, we no start fight. Coluzzis start fight.” He made a bony fist with his hand and waved it in the air. “They hit, then we hit.”
Tony Two Feet nodded in agreement, as did Tony-From-Down-The-Block, and Judy realized she had a fairly tough row to hoe.
“Tonys. Gentlemen. Please. I really don’t want to hear ‘they started it’ from eighty-year-olds. You’re grown men, not little boys. You should all know better than that, and you’re still not getting it.” Judy heard herself and wondered when dodgeball was starting. “This isn’t a schoolyard game, or a fight, or even a war. It’s a legal case. A matter of law.”
“In a war,” Frank said coolly, sipping his coffee, and Judy bore down.
“Maybe so. But I run this war or I’m outta here.” She picked up her briefcase and walked to the door of the conference room, in case Pigeon Tony missed the point. The fact that it was her own conference room seemed a detail compared with the drama of the demonstration. If she kept this up, she’d be promoted to health teacher and could draw fallopian tubes shaped like moose antlers on the blackboard. “We do it my way, or I’m gone.”
“No! Judy!” Pigeon Tony exclaimed, his voice thin with anxiety, and she turned at the door, pivoting on one pump, which was a neat trick in itself.
“You want me to be your lawyer?” she demanded, and his sunburned head went up and down.
“Si, si!”
“You gonna be good?”
“Si, si!”
“No more fighting?”
“Si, si!”
“You promise, like before? I was wondering about that promise, back in the courtroom.”
Pigeon Tony kept nodding. “È vero. I promise.”
“And all the Lucias have to understand the rules, Pigeon Tony. All the people in the gallery today, in the courtroom. All the neighborhood, the whole damn village, the home team. Got it? No more fighting! Or I go.”
“Si, si!”
Mr. DiNunzio rose, upset. “Don’t go, Judy. You’re right, everything you said. I’ll make sure there’s no more fighting. I swear it, God as my witness.”
The leftover Tonys looked properly contrite. “Okay, you win. No more fighting,” Tony Two Feet said, blinking unhappily without his glasses, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block gave a grudging wave.
Judy looked at Frank, who was still sipping his coffee. “Well?”
“Well what?” Frank set his Styrofoam cup down on the table. “Will I promise not to fight when they come after my grandfather? The answer is no.”
“Are you nuts?” Judy dropped her briefcase in frustration. “You’re not in Naples anymore. It was 1900 a long time ago. You’re in Philadelphia, in the new millennium. We have the Internet now, and e-books, and boy bands. Microsoft and Britney Spears. Nobody has to go to the well for water in this town, or pound their socks with rocks. If somebody comes after your grandfather, we’ll call the friggin’ police!”
“No like police!” Pigeon Tony shouted, banging the table with his hard little fist. “Io non sono Napoletano!”
Judy couldn’t translate. “What did he say?” she asked Frank.
Frank smiled at the outburst, this time with mirth. “He’s insulted that you said he was from Naples. He thinks they’re all thieves.”
Judy groaned. “Is that all you got from what I said?”
“No, but I don’t agree with you,” Frank said, his tone carrying no accusation. “You say this is a legal case, but when I said it takes place in a war, I meant it. You believe there are rules and law, but a vendetta exists apart from the law. It doesn’t care about space and time, and it didn’t stop in 1900. It’s as current as the memories of the Coluzzis and the Lucias, who grew up in another time, in another country, and whose way of living is very much alive, to them, their sons, and their grandsons.”
“Are you defending vendettas?”
“No, I’m explaining them. This one, anyway. You have to understand the way it is, before you can represent my grandfather.”
Judy fell momentarily speechless. Frank was turning the tables on her, and she didn’t like it much. His voice carried authority and weight, and she couldn’t let him win, for Pigeon Tony’s sake or her own. Frank’s words attacked the law she had been trained in, believed in, and had even come to love. Judy’s speechlessness stretched into two moments, which worried her.
“John and Marco Coluzzi are not about to let this pass, Judy. They’ll come looking for him. That’s what sure as hell is going to happen next. What would you have me do then? He’s my grandfather. And your client.”
Judy threw up her hands. “If that’s true, then why did I just get him out on bail? Why didn’t we leave him in jail?”
“No, we did the right thing. He’d be in more danger in jail. On the outside I can protect him, and it’s my job to protect him. Your laws are going to be useless.”
“Why?”
“Because the Coluzzis are too smart for your laws. They have been so far. They have money and power, and they’ll get to him if we let them. Your laws can’t arrest anybody until after they murder somebody, and sometimes not even then.”
Pigeon Tony nodded sadly. “È vero,” he said, and Judy translated. It sounded like the Latin noun veritas. Truth. Both men fell equally grave, their mouths set in identical determination and their Lucia eyes glowing darkly. Grandfather and grandson looked so much alike, because of the way similarities of feature and gesture skip generations, that Judy was taken aback. Maybe it was true, what they were saying. She never would have believed it if she hadn’t seen the melee in the courtroom with her own eyes. And if all of this vendetta craziness was true, Pigeon Tony would get killed long before she could get him to trial.