“Tell me how you found it, Mr. D.”
“Well, we figgered that the truck that they died in, Frank and Gemma, was totaled. I mean, the way it went over the overpass, and the fire, it couldn’t not be.” Mr. DiNunzio swallowed at the memory, his eyes, behind his bifocals, still puffy from lack of sleep. He had a fresh shave, a new brown cardigan, a white shirt, and baggy pants. It was a given that he smelled like mothballs.
“So we knew it had to be sold for junk, and the junkyards everybody uses in South Philly are the ones on Passyunk Avenue, because it’s close.”
Feet nodded eagerly. “Also that’s where you get the best deal. They got five or six there, and you can bargain. You can—”
Judy interrupted him with a wave. “Don’t say ‘Jew ’em down,’ okay, Feet?”
Feet’s lips parted in offense. “I wasn’t going to say ‘Jew ’em down.’ I never say ‘Jew ’em down.’ I’m Jewish.”
Judy closed her eyes, mortified. “Sorry. I don’t use that expression either. I never say it. I just know that some people do.”
Mr. DiNunzio cleared his throat. “There are Italian Jews, Judy. Many people don’t realize that. They assume all Italians are Catholic, but they are incorrect.”
Feet resettled his T-shirt huffily. “Well, I hope you don’t use that term, Judy. It’s not nice.”
“I don’t, I swear.” Judy crossed herself, backward. This religion thing was so confusing. Maybe she should get one. She turned to Mr. DiNunzio. “Anyway, you were saying, Mr. D.”
“So we asked all the junkyard dealers ’til we found the one they brought it to, named Wreck-A-Mend. Ain’t that a stupid name? Anyway, the guy’s name is Dom and he had a record of the title and he said that he sold it to these guys for scrap, right after they were killed, which was on January twenty-fifth. I know because I still got the Mass card. He said if they didn’t scrap it yet, or whatever they do, then the car should still be here.”
“Great work, gentlemen!” Judy said, excited. It was more than she’d hoped when she gave them the assignment, yesterday in the conference room. But her bomb theory wasn’t panning out. “Did the junk dealer really say the truck was still whole, though?”
“Yes. He said he had enough to sell. Got two hundred and fifty bucks for it, which ain’t bad.”
“Tullio’s car ain’t worth that now,” Feet said, but Judy was thinking ahead.
“So they couldn’t have planted a bomb on it, or there wouldn’t be anything left. But if they tampered with it somehow, there should be some evidence of it. Or what’s left of it.”
Mr. DiNunzio sipped his coffee reflectively. “I still don’t unnerstan’ why the cops didn’t think that, if it’s really a murder.”
Feet looked over. “They weren’t lookin’ for it. They thought it was an accident. It’s possible that it wasn’t, and we’ll know when we find it, like Judy said. She said she’d get it tested, like from a professional car tester guy. Right, Judy?”
“Right. A car tester guy.” She nodded, relieved that Feet had apparently forgiven her gaffe. “Way to go, gentlemen.” Judy felt a cool nose under her hand and petted the dog, who apparently felt left out of the praise. “So where are the junked cars?” Feet pointed to the left, and Judy looked over with a start. On the far side of the scrapyard, behind piles of dark, shredded metal and bales of crushed aluminum cans, sat junked cars stacked as high as skyscrapers. Judy almost dropped her coffee. “Are you serious? There have to be a zillion cars there.”
Feet shook his head. “No, only two thousand forty-four. We counted while we were waitin’ for you. We had nothin’ else to do.”
Judy blinked, astounded. “But how will we know which one it is?”
“It’s an ’81 red Volkswagen, a pickup. He used it for the construction business. It had a gold Mason emblem on the back, because Frank was a Mason.”
Judy smiled. “How do you know their truck, Feet?”
“Frank and Gemma lived down the block from me. We all know each other’s cars in South Philly. How else you gonna double-park?”
Mr. DiNunzio nodded. “We were thinking, if you only look at the red ones, that narrows it down to only 593 wrecks we gotta look at.”
“But we gotta check the burned ones, too,” Tony-From-Down-The-Block added, “since I think the truck caught on fire.”
“How many burned trucks are there?” Judy asked, but Feet shrugged.
“We didn’t count. We got tired and ate doughnuts instead.”
Judy smiled and faced the Cyclone fence around the scrapyard. She didn’t know how’d she’d scale it, much less get them over. It was easily ten feet high, and the concertina wire would slice like a razor. “Only one obstacle left. We gotta climb the fence.”
“The hell with that,” Feet said, and Mr. DiNunzio laughed.
“You think a fence can keep out a coupla boys from the neighborhood?” He hooked an arthritic index finger on one of the fence’s wires and yanked. A waist-high door opened in the fence, its metal crudely severed. “I know it ain’t right, so don’t tell my daughter on me.”
Judy’s eyes widened. “Mr. D, this is breaking and entering.”
“No, it ain’t,” Tony-From-Down-The-Block said. “We didn’t break nothing.”
“Let’s go.” Feet ducked down and shuffled with his coffee through the makeshift gate, and Tony-From-Down-The-Block went behind him, while Mr. DiNunzio held open the door for Judy, who balked.
“I can’t do this,” she said, albeit reluctantly. All the Italians were going inside to have fun. Even the puppy tugged at the leash. “I’m an officer of the court. I’ve never broken the law in my life. It’s the only rules I follow.”
“Don’t be a party pooper!” Tony-From-Down-The-Block shouted from the other side of the fence, and Feet agreed.
“You tol’ us to find the truck, we found the truck. Now come on, Jude! It could be in there somewhere. We gotta get goin’.”
Judy thought hard. She could petition the bankruptcy court for permission to enter, but that would show her hand, publicly and to Frank, and they wouldn’t grant it in the end. Maybe if she called the counsel for the scrap company, but that could take days. She couldn’t see any alternative.
“You gotta do it, Judy,” Mr. DiNunzio said. “For Pigeon Tony. How’s he ever gonna get justice if we don’t help?”
Judy smiled at the irony. “Is it okay to break the law to get justice, Mr. D?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, and though none of them had ever discussed the direct question of Pigeon Tony’s guilt, Mr. DiNunzio knew just what she was saying. “Sure it is,” he said with certainty.
Judy considered it, standing her ground, feeling like a hypocrite, then a fool. It had started as a simple question but had become freighted. Still, an ethical question didn’t have to be a momentous one to present the issue; the fact that it seemed minor only eased glossing over the ethics. Judy was confronting the white lie of break-ins.
“Penny, come! Come!” Feet shouted suddenly, with a loud clap, and Penny, on the leash in Judy’s hand, leaped forward and tugged them both through the gate, lunging for the doughnut Feet was offering.
“No fair!” Judy said, landing confused on the other side.
Mr. DiNunzio came through and patted her on the back. “Let’s go save a life,” he said, but Feet shook his head.
“What’s the big deal, Jude? You may be a lawyer, but you can lighten up a little.”
Tony-From-Down-The-Block threw an arm around her, with a cigar between his fingers. “Sometimes education makes you dumb,” he said.
Judy wasn’t sure she agreed, but she was already on the other side of the fence.
And the gate was closed behind her.