“Is it going to be okay?” she asked, and Frank looked up.
“Hope so.” He managed a grim smile. “There’s only the one break. He’s young and strong, so I don’t think he’ll die.”
“Good. It’s so . . . awful about the house, and the birds.”
“We had to destroy two, to put them out of their pain.” His mouth tightened. “But most got away. We figure thirty survived, including Jimbo here.”
Judy smiled, relieved. “Will they come back, to the house?”
“Loft. After something like this, there’s no way to tell.” Frank focused again on the bird. Pigeon Tony, almost finished taping its wing, cut the bandage with a bent surgical scissors. “Instinct will tell them to stay away, especially if they left with their mates, which all of them did, except two.”
“Which two?”
“One whose mate was killed, a cock named Nino, and The Old Man. His mate died a long time ago.”
Pigeon Tony said nothing as he gentled the snipped end of the tape closed, and the pigeon took an ungrateful peck at his finger. A tiny bulb of blood appeared on Pigeon Tony’s weathered hand, and he gave an indulgent heh-heh-heh when he noticed it, then wiped it on his baggy pants.
Frank laughed, too. “He feels better, Pop.”
“Si, si. Va bene.” Pigeon Tony smiled, but Judy could see his dark eyes aching with the loss of his birds. He cradled the bird against his sweater, curling his body protectively around it, then rose to his knees, with Frank supporting his elbow. Pigeon Tony nodded and, holding the bird, walked through the debris down the aisle.
Frank gave Judy the high sign, then called after his grandfather, “Pop, we have to get out of here now. Judy thinks so, too.”
Pigeon Tony shuffled off, but Judy knew he was only apparently oblivious to them, and she said her line.
“I agree with Frank, Tony. It’s not a good idea for you to stay here any longer. You both go, and I’ll wait for the police.”
“Police!” Pigeon Tony shook his head querulously, picking through the mess in the feed room, righting jugs of veterinary medicines and unused syringes with his free hand. “No like police! Police do nothing! Nothing!”
Judy sighed. She kept forgetting that the Lucias lived in Palermo, not Philadelphia. “I had to call the police, I had to report it. What was done here, to your house, to your pigeon house, to your birds, it’s a crime. Breaking and entering. Animal cruelty. Malicious mischief. The police will do something about it when they get here.”
“Nothing!” Pigeon Tony repeated, but he was preoccupied, pulling a green cardboard box from the wreckage. It read PERONI in bright red and green, and Judy assumed it was a special pigeoner’s term until she translated the BIRRA part. Beer, from the Latin, Budweiser. Pigeon Tony opened the lid of the cardboard box, placed the bird carefully inside, then closed the top flap loosely. “I no go. I no go nowhere.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“No.” Pigeon Tony slid the scissors from his pocket and poked it into the box top, making an airhole. “I no go.”
Frank waved Judy off. “Thanks, but let me try again. This is really a family matter.” He turned to his grandfather. “Pop, you have to go with me. The Coluzzis will come back, and you know it. We’ll go to my house or a hotel. It’s dangerous to stay here.”
“I no go.” Pigeon Tony made another airhole. “The birds, they come home. The Old Man, he come home.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know, I know.” Pigeon Tony made a third airhole in the box, and the injured pigeon popped his head through the loose top. The bird watched, making no effort to escape, as Pigeon Tony punctured the top again. “Alla time, he come home.”
“But you don’t know when, Pop. You can’t stay here. We shouldn’t be here now.”
“I no leave.” Pigeon Tony kept making airholes for his audience of one. “My birds. My house. My loft. Alla mine.”
“Pop, it’s not safe.” Frank raised his voice, his face reddening with frustration. “I’m not going to fight with you about this.”
“I no leave,” Pigeon Tony shouted. “Basta, Frankie!”
“Pop, you can’t stay here!” Frank shouted back, and Pigeon Tony looked up from his airholes. The pigeon’s head wheeled around.
“I no leave!” Pigeon Tony waved the scissors for emphasis, and Judy knew he had won. An Italian with a sharp object always won, except for World War II.
Suddenly she heard a commotion outside the loft and looked through the torn screen. Two uniformed police were looking around the kitchen. The cavalry had arrived.
Finally.
The five of them—Judy, Frank, Pigeon Tony, and two heavyset, older cops—crowded into the wrecked kitchen. Judy kept Pigeon Tony behind her, so he wouldn’t bite, as she talked to the police. He remained unhappily still, clutching his Peroni box, which cooed throughout her account of the events. One cop, whose black nameplate read McDADE, listened critically while the other, named O’NEILL, took careful notes on his white Incident Report pad. Judy knew they wouldn’t really understand this situation. Even the Irish were pikers in the grudge department, comparatively. Vendetta was an Italian word for a reason.
Officer McDade flipped his pad closed. “So I have my report, and we’ll get right on it. Thanks.”
Judy looked around. “When will the mobile techs arrive?”
“Mobile techs?”
“You know, for the crime scene. I see them at murder cases all the time. They dust for fingerprints, photograph everything—”
“We do that for a homicide, but not a B and E.”
Judy blinked, vaguely aware of Frank’s impatience at her side. “It’s still a crime scene.”
“We don’t have the resources to dust every B and E.”
“But this B and E is part of a homicide case,” Judy argued, echoing Frank’s words from earlier that day. “My client, Mr. Lucia, was charged this afternoon with the murder of the elder Coluzzi, and this is in retaliation.”
“I’ve already told Mr. Lucia here”—he nodded at Frank—“that we’ll question the Coluzzi family.” Officer McDade shifted restlessly on his shiny black shoes, and his partner started toward the kitchen door. “We’ll start with John, the son he mentioned.”
“But this is a warning. The Coluzzis are waging war on my client.” Judy knew she was pushing it, but pushing it was what advocates were supposed to do. She couldn’t leave Pigeon Tony unprotected. The law would take care of him, wouldn’t it? “I want whoever did this behind bars. It’s the only way Mr. Lucia will be safe.”
The cop’s blue eyes flared. “No attempt has been made on his life.”
“Not yet, but one could be.”
“We’ll look into it, Ms. Carrier.” The officer glanced after his partner, who was leaving. “Now we do have to be getting along.”
“But the issue is what happens to him tonight. If you don’t believe there’s a threat, you can still catch the eleven o’clock news. I’m sure the film of the fight at the courthouse is all over it.”