“Showing you why my grandfather killed Angelo Coluzzi.”
Frank walked before Judy and stood at the front of the grave with his head bowed for a minute. Judy looked past him to the black granite monument, which sat flush with the grassy carpet:
LUCIA FRANK GEMMA
United in life, united in death.
It took Judy a minute to understand what she was seeing. The graves of Frank’s father and mother. The day etched into the glossy granite was a single one, January 25, and the date was last year’s. Judy’s heart went still. Frank had lost both of his parents. Had Pigeon Tony lost a son?
Frank lifted his head and turned. Pain softened his rugged features, but his eyes remained dry. “Come forward, it’s okay,” he said, motioning, and Judy stepped toward him.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. But that’s not why I brought you here.” Frank cleared his throat but his voice sounded predictably hoarse. “My parents died last year, in an accident. The truck, it was my dad’s old truck, flipped over an overpass on the expressway. It happened late at night. The truck turned into a fireball. They were coming home late from a wedding in Jersey, and the cops think my father fell asleep at the wheel.”
Judy remained silent. She didn’t know what to say. The breeze was so gentle, the air so fresh. The only sound was Frank’s quiet voice, his account continuing tersely.
“Either that or he had a heart attack at the wheel, I don’t know exactly. It doesn’t matter. I had them cremated, which was . . . well, a necessity. Only that turned out to be a problem, at least as far as my grandfather is concerned.”
“Why?”
“See, my grandfather, he didn’t believe it was an accident. He thought my parents were murdered. An autopsy might have proved they weren’t. And he blamed himself for their death.”
Judy shook her head. “Who would murder your parents?”
“Angelo Coluzzi.” Frank scanned the oak trees in the distance, then a sun-dappled lawn that stretched over a small hill. “This goes back so many years, decades, to Italy. My grandfather told you about Coluzzi, didn’t he?”
Judy paused. “What your grandfather told me is privileged. It wouldn’t be ethical to reveal anything, even to you.”
“I respect that.” Frank nodded, with a half smile, turning to her. His eyes were an earth brown and the amused crinkling at the corners told Judy he was older than she’d thought at first, maybe forty. “Does this mean you’re a lawyer, but with ethics?”
“It happens.”
“No it doesn’t.” Frank laughed, a deep, masculine sound that Judy liked. She always thought you could tell a lot about a man by his laugh, but all she could tell by Frank’s laugh was that she hadn’t dated anyone in a long time.
“I’m an ethical lawyer, and as an ethical matter, you can tell me stuff. And I can listen. Ethically, of course.”
“I talk and you listen? Can women do that?”
Judy laughed, then sobered at the thought they were flirting, graveside. At least she suspected she was flirting, though she hadn’t meant to. In legal terms, she didn’t have the intent to flirt; it had sneaked up on her. She realized she’d liked Frank from the moment he tried to deck the cop. “How about you talk, I’ll listen? We’ll leave the politics out of it.”
“Excellent.” Frank turned again to his parents’ grave, when his smile faded. “Maybe we should take a walk.”
“Good idea,” she said, and fell into step beside Frank as he strolled down the grassy row between the graves toward a gravel road. He seemed to breathe a little easier.
“My grandfather’s wife—my grandmother—was killed by Angelo Coluzzi, in Italy. My grandmother had been seeing Coluzzi when she met my grandfather, and she accepted my grandfather’s marriage proposal over Coluzzi’s. Coluzzi could never live it down. He lost face. He hated my grandfather for it. And he killed her. Everybody in the neighborhood knows it.”
“What neighborhood?”
“Our block of South Philly. It’s one of the most solidly Italian blocks in South Philly, still. The Korean and the Vietnamese, they’re right next door, but this block is so solid that everybody came from the same region in Italy, from Abruzzo. All the families knew each other over there and everybody knew the Coluzzis, a wealthy family. A powerful family. Fascists.”
“I see,” Judy said, hearing an echo of his grandfather’s contempt in Frank’s voice.
“There was no prosecution of the murder. The Coluzzis had the juice to keep a lid on it. Their power was increasing, and when war broke out, my grandmother, she just got lost in the shuffle.” His voice trailed off for a moment, and Judy suppressed the urge to ask him for details. They walked down the gravel footpath as it wound past low-lying hostas, sharp fronds of tiger lilies yet to bloom, and purple alyssum that crept over rocks at the borders. The air under the trees they passed was cool. Frank’s Timberlands crunched on the gravel, and Judy was glad for the first time today that she’d worn clogs.
After a time Frank said, “It was a different world then, and another time. My grandfather tried to get her murder prosecuted and almost lost his own life in the process.”
“How?”
“They threatened him. Vandalized his house. Fire-bombed his car.”
“Who did?”
“Angelo Coluzzi, or men who worked for him. Blackshirts.”
“How do you know? Were they caught?”
“Of course not. We just know. Everybody knows, even today.”
Judy raised an eyebrow. It sounded like assumption piled on assumption, but this wasn’t the time to argue it. She needed information. “So what did your grandfather do about it?”
“He just moved. He didn’t retaliate, even when they bombed his car. He left the country with his son—my father, Frank Sr.— who was two at the time. They settled here. Gave up farming, started laying brick, like lots of immigrants from the region. My grandfather tried to accept what had happened to his wife. He went on and raised his son, and his birds.”
“Birds?”
“He keeps pigeons. Homing pigeons, but they race. He’s amazing at it. You should see. He spends all his time outside with them, teaching them, exercising them, tossing them—”
“Tossing?”
“It means letting them out on training runs, so they learn how to find their way back to the loft. He spends hours sitting with them outside, watching them fly.” Frank brightened at the thought, but it wasn’t the type of detail Judy needed right now.
“You were saying, about when he immigrated.” They walked down the path into the sun, and Frank winced at the sudden light.
“Then there was the accident. My father, my mother. I know it was just an accident but my grandfather, he believed Angelo Coluzzi did it. You must have heard of the family. Angelo, and his two sons, John and Marco. They own a big construction company in South Philly. They build strip malls and have houses in the Estates. Have you heard of them?”
Judy shook her head. She knew next to nothing about construction.
“They’re a sick, sick family.” Frank was still wincing, and Judy realized it wasn’t the sunlight. Duh. “My grandfather believes Angelo Coluzzi bombed my parents’ truck, like they had with his car, in Italy. And after they died, he just went downhill. He said it never would have happened if he’d retaliated for my grandmother. He thinks if he’d honored the vendetta, his son would be alive today.”
“Vendetta? What vendetta?” Judy had heard of it from the movies but couldn’t believe it had any application today.
“It’s a blood feud. A vindication of your rights, of your family’s rights. An eye for an eye. It grew up in a country where the law was of no help, not to the little guy like my grandfather. He doesn’t look to the law to save him, or to punish him. A vendetta has to be honored, in my culture, his culture.”