Judy turned again to her laptop, logged on to the Internet, and ran a Google search for McRea Excavation and Paving. Sure enough, it had a website, since everybody had a website now. Judy was hoping that www.sexwithanitalian.com was still up for grabs. She clicked the link, and onto the screen popped an amateurish but effective piece of brochureware. There were pictures of backhoes and front-end loaders, ghosted over a clunky MCREA logo. The copy was badly written, but Judy was a lawyer, not a critic. She read:
McRea Excavation and Paving is a complete, full-service company meeting the excavating and paving needs of numerous residents and commercial businesses in the tristate area for the past twenty years, with annual revenues of two million dollars. Kevin McRea is the CEO and sole proprietor of the company, and he supervises a workforce of 63 full-time employees, many of whom have been with the company for all of its 21 years in business. McRea never loses time on your construction job because of faulty or leased equipment. McRea owns all of its own equipment, and with it and its able workforce, McRea can meet any and all of your excavation and paving needs.
McRea’s business was a going concern, with a very healthy income stream. Kevin couldn’t leave it forever, could he? Then Judy remembered something Theresa had said, through her tears. That the Coluzzis had wanted to buy his business. McRea Excavation was a $2 million company, so that would be a major corporate decision, not a routine expenditure. Judy stopped to think, her gaze coming to rest on the photos tacked up in front of her. Why would they be talking about buying a new business with the leadership of the company thrown into doubt? Or, more to the point, who would be talking about buying a new business?
Judy’s eyes ran restlessly over the photos. Marco and John. John and Marco. It was Marco who came to greet Kevin, not John. It was Marco who got Kevin’s driveway, not John. What if Marco was the one who had tried to buy McRea Excavation, not John? And then Judy noticed something about the photos. In none of them did John Coluzzi appear with Marco or was he even shown speaking to him. They had arrived in separate limos. Their families weren’t speaking, even on the sidewalk. Or beside their father’s coffin. It was obvious there was a rift, and if the newspaper accounts were correct, it had to be over succession of the company. What else would divide two Italian princes but the kingdom?
Something Judy had heard recently came to mind. There really is no honor among thieves. They’ll eat each other alive. She remembered Roser had said it, talking about the subcontractors. But didn’t the same truth apply to John and Marco Coluzzi? Would their rift turn into war? And could Judy do anything to make that happen? It could be a weapon more potent than any lawsuit. It would turn brother against brother, blood against blood. It was so, well, Italian.
Judy picked up the phone. She was hoping you could still make trouble for bad guys, even from behind a desk.
Chapter 27
The sun shone bright Tuesday morning, in an almost impossible run of good weather in Philly, but Judy was too psyched to care. She couldn’t see the blue sky for the TV and still cameras, tape recorders held high, and klieg lights. She couldn’t breathe the fresh air for the reporters exhaling coffee in her face. It was a Starbucks contact high.
Judy plowed in her navy suit and lucky pumps through the press outside the Criminal Justice Center, with Pigeon Tony wedged between her and Frank. For the first time, she not only tolerated the reporters, she welcomed them. She felt safer for all of them with 384 witnesses on the scene, and the media was key to Judy’s new and improved plan.
“Ms. Carrier, any comment about Kevin McRea’s disappearance?” “Judy, over here! What do you say to reports that Marco Coluzzi was trying to buy McRea Excavation?” “Ms. Carrier, do you believe Kevin McRea has met with foul play?”
“No comment,” she shouted. She threaded her way to the courthouse entrance, putting on a professional mask to hide her glee at their questions. Obviously her late-night telephone calls, placed anonymously to any newspaper that would pick up, had worked like a charm. She had planted the story about Marco Coluzzi’s attempted purchase of McRea Excavation, and eager reporters had investigated the facts and gotten sources to confirm. It had been a year or two since a Philly paper had won a Pulitzer and nobody was forgetting it.
“Ms. Carrier, do you care to comment on Marco Coluzzi’s expansion into the concrete and quarry business?” “Judy, who you gonna call now that Kevin McRea’s out of the picture?” “Ms. Carrier, what goes into a $130,000 driveway anyway? Gold?”
Judy didn’t break a smile. Headlines on the morning newspapers had read DEFENDANT DISAPPEARS, with sidebars like “Marco Coluzzi’s Expanding Business Empire,” and Judy couldn’t have written them better herself. Reporters had interviewed the McReas’ landlady and, more important, had unearthed Marco’s tax records and SEC filings, which showed an increasing concentration of power in the construction industry, much of it through shell companies that disguised their true ownership. Judy was hoping the acquisitions had been hidden from John Coluzzi as well, and that he would feel surprised and threatened by Marco’s growing might.
She looked quickly around, wondering when and how the Coluzzis would arrive. Together or apart? At peace or at war? She couldn’t stay to find out, because she had a murder case to defend.
“Ms. Carrier, come on, cut us a break!” “Ms. Carrier, is Pigeon Tony gonna get off?” “Ms. Carrier, did he do it or not?” “Judy, did you hire a bodyguard yet?” “Judy, how’s your car?”
Judy exchanged glances with Frank, who grinned, his teeth white and even against his freshly shaved olive skin. He looked handsome dressed up in a white oxford shirt, casual rep tie, and light tweed jacket he’d bought during a trip to the King of Prussia mall, when he was supposed to be calling his lawyer. But Judy could forgive men their shopping. They loved it so.
“Did I tell you how much I liked your phone message last night?” Frank whispered in her ear before he went through the revolving door.
“No comment,” Judy said, because it was time for work, not love. These Italians would never get it straight. She took Pigeon Tony by the hand and tucked him inside the courthouse.
The courtroom, though modern, was one of the smallest in the new Criminal Justice Center, and its size contributed to the uneasy hostility that filled the room, as if the tigers and the lions had been mistakenly placed in the same tiny cage. The Coluzzi family and friends sat on the Commonwealth’s side of the courtroom, with Marco and John sitting unhappily together, and the Lucia family sat on the right, with Frank, Mr. DiNunzio, Feet, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block in the front pew behind a sleek black panel. The scene was an unfortunate carbon copy of the arraignment, except that it was staffed by double the blue-shirted court officers, for security. Judy wished for the National Guard and a bumper sticker that read MY ITALIANS CAN BEAT UP YOUR ITALIANS.
She put the drama in the gallery behind her and took a seat at the counsel table next to Pigeon Tony. He seemed unusually quiet, but it could have been discomfort in the new striped tie and brown jacket that Frank had made him wear, over protest. They’d come from the boys’ department at Macy’s because Pigeon Tony was so small, and Judy, sitting next to him, felt more baby-sitter than lawyer. And she had wanted to get him a translator for court, but he had adamantly refused. Judy wondered if Pigeon Tony was turning into a problem child, in a clip-on tie.