Free The Vendetta Defense by Lisa Scottoline Page A

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.