3

Bennie had taken her lunchtime run to Dunkin’ Donuts, looking for her wallet. It hadn’t been there, and she’d run back to the office, cooling down along the route she took into work, jogging in the prematurely warm weather past happy crowds, budding trees, and air that was clean, for Philadelphia. She kept scanning the curb in case she’d dropped the wallet, but no dice. She’d have to cancel the credit cards when she got back to her desk.

She ended up at her office building, extracted a promise from the front security guard to keep an eye out for the missing wallet, and scooted inside the elevator. She scanned the empty cab for her wallet, then leaned against the wall as the steel doors slid closed. She bent down to catch her breath, leaning over her ratty tank top, loose Champion gym shorts, and old Sauconys with the curled-up toes. The only sound was her panting until the elevator reached her floor, where there was quite a ruckus. The elevator doors slid open, and fifty people were mobbing the reception area. She prayed they weren’t her creditors.

Bennie stepped off the elevator into the crowd, but it was so thick nobody noticed her. They occupied all of the waiting-room chairs and stood talking and laughing among themselves. They were of all shapes and sizes—young, very old, men and women—and many of them carried tiny synthetic flags of a merry red, white, and green. They sipped coffee from Styrofoam cups and her JAVA DIVA mug while they ate biscotti and pignoli cookies from a huge bakery-style tray on her coffee table. Apparently, Rosato & Associates had been transformed into an Italian wedding. The only thing missing was the accordion.

“Uh, hello,” she said as excited faces began to turn toward her. The receptionist wasn’t around, but one muscular young man, wearing a T-shirt that read SOUTH PHILLY ROCKS, broke into a grin when he spotted Bennie.

“You gotta be Bennie Rosato!” he exclaimed. He extended a hand and pumped hers so hard she was glad she was wearing a sports bra. “I’m Art DiNobile. It’s so great to meet ya, and I can’t thank ya enough for helping us out.”

“You can’t?” Bennie asked. She had no idea what he was talking about, she was half naked, and strangers were using her coffee mugs. Other than that, she was completely in control.

“Yo, everybody, this is Bennie! Bennie Rosato’s here!” the young man shouted, turning to the crowd, which reacted instantly. The decibel level skyrocketed and the throng surged forward, pressing Bennie back against the elevator. Women tried to hug her, men offered their handshake, and someone passed her a cup of coffee and a plate of pignoli cookies. South Philly Rocks released her hand long enough to catch the cookies before they slid off the flimsy paper plate. “Have some, Bennie! They’re from my father’s bakery. Also I brought a nice rum cake and some sfogliatelle. It’s the least we can do.”

“It is?” Bennie asked, completely bewildered until Mary DiNunzio made her way though the crowd. Her hair was straying from its neat twist and her brown eyes were dancing the tarantella.

“Bennie!” DiNunzio was so excited she was almost short of breath. “Wait’ll you see. I got us a case, a wonderful case!”

“A wonderful case?” Bennie repeated, fully aware that three thousand pairs of tarantella eyes were focused on her. She couldn’t help feeling that her back was against the wall, or at least the elevator. “What kind of case?”

“The kind of a case you love! A once-in-a-lifetime case!” Mary shouted, and everybody behind her took up the cry like a Greek, er, Roman, chorus.

“Thank you!” they said, and “We appreciate your help” and “Ya gotta know the facts” and “We must bring it to light”—all manner of justice-sounding noises that made Bennie suspect she wasn’t going to earn a dime in fees.

“DiNunzio, maybe we should talk about this in the conference room?”

“Great! Great idea! The client’s in there.”

“These people aren’t the client?”

“No, this is the Circolo, from the neighborhood.”

“The Circolo.” Of course. Whatever-o. “DiNunzio, who’s the client?”

“Mr. Brandolini, but he’s dead. The client is really a lawyer, and he’s dying to meet you.”

“Huh?” Bennie was confused about who was dead and who was dying, but let it go. “Where’s Murphy and Carrier?”

“In the conference room, with everybody else. The Circolo called while you were out, and I told them all to come right over. Marshall’s still out at her gyno for a checkup.”

“I’ll see you inside in two minutes. I have to change out of my running clothes.”

Bennie hustled to her office, skipped her usual shower, and put clean clothes on her sweaty body and slid reddish toes into her pumps. She’d wanted to call and cancel her credit cards, but Sicily awaited her in the conference room. She sent their secretary an E-mail listing her credit cards and asking her to cancel them when she got back from the doctor. Then she hurried out of her office and down the hall, into the crowd that spilled into the reception area. She shook their hands and greeted them as she passed, and they parted for her with a reverence usually reserved for Frank Sinatra.

“Brava, Bennie Rosato! Bravissima!” someone shouted, startling Bennie as she crossed the threshold into the conference room, when the entire room burst into resounding applause. The place was packed wall to wall, crammed with cheering, hollering, applauding people, and Bennie laughed and took a spontaneous bow.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said, and pulled out the seat at the head of the long walnut table. Murphy and Carrier stood against a wall lined with happy Italians, which Bennie was beginning to understand was redundant. Mary sat beaming, catty-corner to her, next to a middle-aged man in a three-piece suit. He had thick dark hair and a brushy mustache, sharp brown eyes, and a pleasant smile. Bennie extended a hand. “I’m Bennie Rosato. Pleased to meet you, Mr. . . .”

“Cavuto, Frank Cavuto,” he supplied, rising. “I’m a lawyer, representing the estate of Tony Brandolini.”

“Welcome.” Bennie nodded him into his seat, and the boisterous crowd deigned to settle down to business, with residual smiles—except for a tiny older woman who scowled inexplicably from the far end of the table. She looked immersed in a brown wool coat, despite the balmy day, and her salon pink-gray hair had been teased into a very feminine wren’s nest. Thick glasses magnified her round dark eyes, fixed so hard on Bennie that she had to look away. “Now, Mr. Cavuto, what brings you here?”

“I’m Frank, please, and I’ve known the DiNunzio family since the day Mary was baptized. In fact, I’m her godfather’s son.”

Bennie didn’t know that Italians really did have godfathers, and in truth didn’t know much about Italians at all, despite her surname. “So you came to us through Mary.”

Mary took over. “Frank came to see me when he probated the will of Tony Brandolini, who died last month, of cancer. Tony was a contractor, and his father, Amadeo Brandolini, was interned in 1942, as part of the internment during World War II. Mr. Brandolini was a fisherman, from the days when you could fish right off the port of Philadelphia.”

Bennie raised a palm. “Slow down, wait a minute. What do you mean by ‘interned’? Interned means confined during war. Imprisoned.”

“Yes, exactly. Well, you know that Japanese people living in this country were interned during World War II, even if they were citizens. Their property was taken, and their homes.”

“Yes.” Bennie remembered the historic Korematsu case, which held that it was constitutional to seize the property of American citizens who had the misfortune of being Japanese during wartime. The stirring dissent by Justice Brennan was renowned by fans of civil liberties. By the way, having pink hair wasn’t a civil liberty. “I remember the time. Not a nice chapter in our history.”

“Ours, either,” Frank added, and heads nodded around the table, except for that of the old lady with the magnified glare. She fingered a gold necklace with a tiny horn charm as she looked daggers at Bennie, like a Neapolitan Madame Defarge. She sat next to a heavyset, balding man who appeared to be her husband but, unlike her, was dressed normally and was kind-eyed behind bifocals.

Mary cleared her throat. “Well, more than ten thousand Italians, citizens and legal immigrants, were interned in this country. They were covered by the same act and declared enemy aliens, even if they’d lived here for twenty years or more. They were ordered to register and sent away to internment camps in Missouri, Texas, and other states.”

It was news to Bennie, even with her background in civil rights work, but it didn’t surprise her. The government assumed all sorts of powers in wartime and used them to their fullest extent, for good and sometimes not-so-good reasons.

“The impact on Italians was biggest on the West Coast, and on fishermen on both coasts. The FBI considered fishermen especially dangerous because they had access to the sea, submarines, and enemy vessels.” Mary glanced at her notes. “The government confiscated flashlights and shortwave radios so nobody could signal the enemy.”

“It’s all true,” interrupted an elderly man near the door to the conference room. “My father and mother were both taken to the camp, even though they were living thirty-two years in this country. Even though I was enlisted and served. They weren’t enemy aliens or what they called them, traitors. They were patriots! They never got their papers because they couldn’t read and write in English.”

“How’s that for irony?” called out a woman near him. She had an academic air, with reading glasses dangling on a chain. “The son was fighting for this country while the parents were considered enemies by the same government. Did you know that Joe DiMaggio’s father wasn’t even allowed to go to his own son’s restaurant in San Francisco? He was confined to a special zone.”

Mary set her stack of papers on the table. “People lost businesses and homes. Families were split up and left without anyone to support them. And some, like Amadeo Brandolini, killed themselves in the camp. Amadeo couldn’t live with the shame he felt he had brought upon his family.”

“What shame? He didn’t do anything wrong. He was a victim.”

Cavuto raised a finger. “You look at it from a modern perspective, Bennie. Maybe even a woman’s. But that wasn’t the way Amadeo saw it, according to his son. His business was taken from him. His fishing boats. His livelihood. He had failed to support his family or to protect them. It made him feel ashamed, as a man.” Cavuto cocked his head. “What kind of Italian are you, you don’t know that? You just married one?”

“I’m single,” Bennie answered, fighting the need to apologize for her condition. Being single after age thirty defined defensive. “I understand what took place. What I don’t get is what you want us to do.”

“Tony Brandolini wasn’t a wealthy man, but he had some means and he never forgot his father or forgave his government.” Cavuto bent over, reached into his thick briefcase, and retrieved a manila file folder. “Tony started to research what happened to his father’s business, but then he got cancer and was too sick to finish the job. He provided in his will that when he died, his estate should hire a lawyer to recover the damages incurred by his father. We came to hire Mary and your firm to do this.”

“You mean sue the government? Recover damages? Reparations?”

“That’s what my client wanted. He was divorced, he had no children, and he left his entire estate to this cause.” Cavuto gestured around the table. “It’s a very important issue to all of us, and that’s why we’re all here. We’ll help you any way we can.”

“I second that emotion!” yelled South Philly Rocks, with a wink at Bennie. “Anything you need, you got it! And Mary, too. Alla youse!” Heads around him nodded in instant agreement.

“Thank you,” Bennie said, pulling the case file over while the Circolo resettled, hopefully permanently. She opened the file, skimmed Brandolini’s will, and read the bequest with a sinking heart. The will earmarked nine thousand dollars to fund the litigation. It was a lot of money, but it wasn’t enough to take on the United States.

Mary read her mind. “Bennie, I told Frank how expensive it is to sue the government, and the Circolo has taken up a collection to raise money for the lawsuit. They’ve already pledged to match the funds in the will. That’s almost twenty thousand dollars.”

From across the table, South Philly Rocks was nodding again. “We got three Easter raffles going at church. And Goretti and St. Monica’s are gonna do a real big basket of cheer. We got three different parishes working on it!”

Bennie sighed inwardly. You can’t stage a lawsuit with a bake sale. “Frank, this is a very complex question. I’m not even sure the Brandolini estate has standing to bring suit, and there are issues of sovereign immunity and constitutional law. This is an expensive—”

“Bennie,” Mary interjected, “I would donate all my time and do it pro bono. I would even work on my own time, outside of regular business hours.”

Bennie didn’t have the lira to let an associate work for free. “Mary, I’m sorry but—” she began to say, when there was a loud shout from the back of the room.

“Vide! Vide!” a woman shrieked, and Bennie jumped. The hard-eyed old woman at the end of the table was on her feet, yelling in Italian and pointing at Bennie with an arthritic finger. Bennie didn’t understand anything until the end, when the woman lapsed into broken English. “You! You, Benedetta Rosato! You are evil! Evil!”

Bennie’s eyes widened. She had no idea what she’d done. She’d never even met the woman. Who was she?

“Mom!” Mary shouted, leaping to her feet. “No, please! Mom!”

Mom? Bennie looked dumbfounded from her associate to the shouting woman and back again. Madame Defarge is DiNunzio’s mother?

“Mom, no! Dad, please! She promised!” Mary was rushing over to the woman, whose thin skin had turned red as marinara. “Ma, no! You promised! Dad, she promised!”

Mom? Dad? Bennie watched as the older man got to his feet and tried to hug his wife into a state less hysterical. She kept waving her finger at Bennie, even as the rest of the Circolo tried to calm her down with help from Mary.

“Mom, please, be quiet!” she kept saying, joined by Carrier, who sprang from the side wall and hurried over to Mrs. DiNunzio. Fuchsia hair blossomed like a petunia among the brunettes. Murphy was right behind her.

Bennie rose to her feet, amazed. The conference room had gone nuts. Everybody left their chairs. People shouted at one another, and Mrs. DiNunzio was on a Neapolitan tear. Bennie turned to Cavuto. “Frank, do you speak Italian? What is she saying?”

Cavuto grabbed Bennie’s elbow and took her aside. “Well, she says that you’re evil and she hates you.”

“How can she hate me when she doesn’t even know me?” Bennie was confounded. “You have to know me to hate me.”

“She says that you don’t care about nobody but yourself. Sorry, but Italian uses the double negative.” Cavuto translated as the raving intensified. “You don’t appreciate Mary. You don’t care about nothing but yourself. Again the double negative.”

“Me? I don’t care about Mary?”

“You aren’t good enough to her daughter. Or to her daughter’s friends.”

“Carrier and Murphy?”

“Yes. You almost got them all killed on some murder case.” Cavuto’s dark eyes narrowed in accusation. “Is this true?”

Ouch. “Well, yes. But it was on three different murder cases.”

Cavuto turned away. “She says you don’t pay them enough.”

Bennie had no immediate reply. Mrs. DiNunzio was in the zone.

“She says your hair is always a mess.”

“Does this matter?”

“And you walk like a man.”

“I’m trying to get somewhere!”

“You’re all alone. No man will ever marry you.”

Whoa. Bennie bristled. “Now she’s getting personal.”

“You should leave immediately.”

“She has nerve, throwing me out of my own conference room.”

Cavuto met Bennie’s eye. “She didn’t say you should leave, I did.”

“Why? It’s my conference room. She should leave, not me.” Bennie folded her arms. “I’m as capable as anyone of being childish. I have a First Amendment right to be childish.”

Cavuto shook his head. “Rethink your position. I know Vita DiNunzio. She can go on like this for an hour or more. She only gets stronger as she goes, like a house on fire.”

Bennie eyed the scene. The group was practically wrestling Mrs. DiNunzio to the ground, and she was still yelling. Her finger stuck up from the throng, like the Statue of Liberty in a hurricane.

Cavuto tsk-tsked. “At some point, she gets completely out of control. A whole city block can be consumed. She’s a natural force.”

Bennie snorted. “Okay, tell Mary I’ll meet her in my office. I’ll get back to you about the Brandolini representation. You put me on the spot here, you know.”

“Forgive me, but it’s for a good cause. Buona fortuna.”

“For that I don’t need a translation.” Bennie gave him a pat on the back, then went back to her office to find her goddamn wallet.