A Fine Line Read online

  And here was my friend Carmelo Tancredi, one of the few people I’d trust in any situation – I’d have believed him even if he announced that extraterrestrials were due to land on the seafront in Bari tomorrow – telling me that this one hypothesis was indeed the truth: Larocca was corrupt.

  Corrupt. The word bounced around my head like a blunt object, and with each bump it produced a hollow, painful sound.

  “Let me get this clear. Did someone tell you that the story of money changing hands to get Ladisa released is true?”

  “No, nobody’s talked to me about that particular case. What an informant of mine told me is that Larocca is a crook, and a greedy one at that. Apparently he’s been in the habit of taking money – lots of money – ever since he was an examining magistrate.”

  Maybe the wind turned at that moment, or maybe it was my shock at what Carmelo was saying that sharpened my senses. What is certain is that my nostrils were struck by an intense, nostalgic smell of the sea. All my sadness came crashing down on my shoulders, as if these revelations had all at once drained my life and my work of meaning and made me feel suddenly old.

  “Is this man reliable?”

  Tancredi nodded like a doctor informing a patient of the seriousness of his illness, a task he’s obliged to carry out but which he’d gladly forego. “He’s never talked bullshit in the twenty years we’ve known each other. If he isn’t sure of something, he tells me he isn’t sure.”

  “And this time?”

  “He’s sure. He’d already heard gossip – including from some of your colleagues – about Larocca. But that’s all it was: gossip. I didn’t even think of telling you. Now it’s different.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “Why did he tell you only in these last few days if, from what you tell me, it must have been well known?”

  “Because the press came out with the story. We met, he commented on the news, and that’s when he told me that thing about how you used to have to go to Salvagno and now… Well, you get the idea. Of course he doesn’t know we’re friends.”

  We sat in silence for quite a long time. He smoked, while I looked straight ahead. I was confused and didn’t know why. A criminal lawyer mostly defends guilty people, that’s obvious. Even if the informant was right, what was the problem? What the hell was the problem? I couldn’t find an answer, as if my brain were stuck in neutral, unable to change gear, turning on empty without moving an inch.

  “Why does it bother me so much?” I asked finally. It wasn’t a question for Tancredi, I was just letting it out, trying to get things into focus.

  “For the same reason it bothered me. For the same reason I came and told you instead of keeping it to myself.”

  “Which is?”

  Tancredi grimaced, as if a nasty thought had occurred to him and he’d had to suppress it. “If a client of yours is charged with theft, receiving stolen goods, or even something more serious, do you have to know he’s innocent to defend him?”

  “No.”

  “Precisely. You do your best, you make sure the rules are followed, you try to get him acquitted if possible or to ensure he gets a light sentence. Everyone’s in his place and everyone’s happy, more or less. Right?”

  “Go on.”

  “Not being a crook like some of your colleagues, you live by those rules. Your work makes sense if they exist. I’d even say that your world – and mine, too – stands up if these rules are there and if they’re generally respected.”

  He was about to continue when an old gentleman – he must have been in his eighties – passed our bench on a squeaky bicycle. He seemed to have just come out of a time machine. He was dressed to the nines – suit, tie, shiny black shoes, grey Borsalino – and spread around him, to a distance of a few yards, an unmistakable smell of vintage aftershave, identical to the one my grandfather Guido had used. A dog that was sitting in front of a door, and which I hadn’t noticed before, stood up as if for a rather troublesome but unavoidable duty and trotted after the old cyclist. I watched them, and so did Tancredi – they were almost a living allegory – until they disappeared round a bend, against the horizon of the sea.

  “That was like a scene from a neorealist film,” Tancredi said.

  “Right,” I said, with a bitter taste in my mouth. “A scene from a film. I guess we also look like a scene from a film.”

  “Where was I? Oh, yes. The rules make sense if there are judges who make sure they are followed. If that’s true, and I believe it is, the idea of defending a judge who takes bribes isn’t only upsetting, it also challenges your whole notion of the world, your sense of the things that comprise it. That’s why, when Larocca turned to you, you accepted the assignment in the belief that he was innocent. You needed to be convinced of his innocence, even if he got on your nerves. Which I think he did, by the way.”

  The sea continued to diffuse its pungent smell. After the old man on the bicycle, nobody else had passed along the ancient walls. Except for a few details, the place must have been very similar to the way it had been five hundred years ago.

  “Am I talking crap?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “You may not want to defend a guilty robber and get him acquitted, but that doesn’t interfere with your perception of the world. Defending a corrupt judge is another matter. To put it another way: if he took bribes in the past, he’ll do it again in the future. It’s something you can’t accept, and above all you can’t accept the idea of being somehow… jointly responsible. So you’re forced into an interpretation of the facts that’s compatible with you and your vision of the world. It’s a moral and psychological survival strategy.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I wanted to tell you so that you’d know what to do. You’ll keep representing him, but maybe you could put a distance between you. You could find a way to make it clear you’re not the one who’s going to take Salvagno’s place, if you know what I mean.”

  “Please don’t ask me if you’re talking crap or if I know what you mean.”

  “It’s just that this conversation is making me a bit nervous.”

  “You were telling me about the friend who told you these things.”

  “He isn’t a friend, he’s an informant. Very reliable, but an informant, nothing more.”

  “All right, I’m sorry. Your informant told you there was a special relationship between Salvagno and Larocca?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that there have been other cases where Larocca was paid to give favourable rulings?”

  “Yes. In some cases Salvagno appeared for the defence, in others he acted as intermediary. In other words, some selected lawyers turned to Salvagno and he, in return for a kind of commission, handled the contact with Larocca without being named and without appearing in the proceedings. Oh, and it appears that Larocca also acted as their adviser.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He suggested to them what to write in their appeals in order to have a greater likelihood of success. And if he wasn’t able to guarantee the ruling of the court, for example because there was a risk he might be in a minority, he gave instructions on how to write the appeal to the Supreme Court. In these cases, it seems that he entrusted the writing of the ruling to the most incompetent judge so as to make it flimsier and easier to overturn.”

  “How did they pay him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where the hell does he put this money?”

  “Nothing came out from the financial investigations, I suppose?”

  “No.”

  “He must use figureheads or foreign accounts. They can’t just search blindly. Without a lead they’ll never find it.”

  He didn’t add anything else. He had said what he had to.

  Again, the smell of the sea, even stronger. A lady dressed in black, a clear outline between the white of the stone and the amazing blue of the sky. An outburst of yelling: boys playing fo
otball in the little field at the foot of the wall, about ten metres below us. The rough surface of the bench beneath my fingers. The noise of a powerful motorbike accelerating along the seafront. A couple of young men passing with rucksacks on their backs, singing a song I didn’t know.

  Someone once said that the world is a roaring, buzzing mess, made tolerable only by our ability to ignore almost everything that surrounds us.

  “What should I do?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Then: “Was I wrong to tell you these things?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  24

  I was in my office, sitting at the desk, with no desire to work – even less than usual. One of those times when I hope that something will happen, that someone will come and disturb me: a dissatisfied client, the manager of the building, a troublesome colleague.

  Nothing.

  It took more than an hour of unaccustomed silence for the telephone to ring.

  “Hi, I’m outside.”

  It was Annapaola. I searched for a witty response and couldn’t find one. “Outside my office?”

  “Outside your office. If you’re not too busy, I’ll come up and say hello, and maybe you’ll let me read the record of that hearing.”

  “Of course, come on up.”

  I went to open up for her. Before coming in, she gave me a kiss on the corner of my mouth and I had to make an effort not to turn and check if Pasquale had noticed from his command post. Actually, even if he had noticed, he wouldn’t have reacted.

  She was very pleased to see me, she said. She must have caught the sun, because she was ruddy, almost tanned, and when she smiled, her very white teeth were even more noticeable; she conveyed a sense of adolescence that was both touching and dangerous.

  I was very pleased to see her, too, I said. More than was wise, I thought. To hell with wisdom, I also thought.

  I was waiting for a client, but when I’d finished – it wouldn’t take long – we could have a chat, maybe go outside for a coffee or a fruit juice. In the meantime, she could read the record of the pretrial hearing.

  I told Pasquale to show Signorina Doria into the conference room while I received Signor Oronzo Scardicchio.

  This Scardicchio was a builder who specialized in public– private partnerships and financial fraud. His method was simple, not too original but effective – until it had been discovered. He drew up contracts of sale indicating a different and lower price than the one that had been agreed. The buyers paid the regular part by bank transfer or by cheque. The substantial difference – around 40 per cent of the total – they paid in cash, off the books. The money ended up in accounts abroad, transported by Scardicchio and his sons in suitcases, bags and rucksacks. The customs police and the Prosecutor’s Department had taken an interest in him and had discovered a total fraud of about twenty million euros. That morning, everything of his that could be seized had been seized – apartments, villas, luxury cars – which was still much less than the amount of tax he had evaded, which in turn was less than he had defrauded over the years.

  He felt persecuted by an unjust system, tended to see it in political terms – the judges were communists and things like that: a somewhat overused script, to tell the truth – and demanded justice. I was about to tell him that too pressing a request for justice might turn out to be counterproductive because justice might indeed be done, in the form of a heavy sentence and more seizures. Then I decided that he was in no state to appreciate my subtle sense of humour.

  After allowing him to let off steam for a quarter of an hour, I assured him that we would do everything possible, that we would contest the seizure – at that moment, for just a few seconds, the unpleasant thought occurred to me that it might be Larocca’s court that would deal with this case – but now I had to say goodbye, he could go to my secretary’s office and talk about the advance, and no, thanks, no cash, no, unfortunately I couldn’t do a discount without issuing an invoice, yes, I knew that other colleagues of mine didn’t kick up all this fuss, but unfortunately, as he had been able to observe, the tax authorities were sharp-eyed and dangerous, in any case I wouldn’t be offended if he went to one or other of my aforesaid colleagues who weren’t too fussy and weren’t averse to cash payments without the pointless formality of invoices, good evening, Signor Scardicchio, see you soon, maybe.

  I looked into the conference room where Annapaola was engrossed in her reading. She looked up and smiled at me. Again, those white teeth and those tanned cheekbones and confused images of that night at her house. Oh, I wanted to ask you something: would you mind if we went somewhere now and made love? I mean right now. Wherever you like, maybe not your place, it’s a bit far, but my apartment is ten minutes from here. Afterwards, if you like, we can talk. Afterwards.

  I didn’t say that. I returned the smile and sat down a couple of chairs away from her. The strategy of insecurity.

  “You did a good job with Capodacqua,” she said, tapping her fingertips on the sheets of paper she had in front of her. “That prosecutor woman can’t have been well pleased.”

  I shrugged. I longed to tell her what Tancredi had told me, and was wondering if now was the right time.

  “If nothing new happens they’ll have to ask for a dismissal.”

  I replied with a monosyllable and another shrug of the shoulders.

  “If you like, I can also use sign language. What’s the matter?”

  It took me a few more seconds, but I had decided. Actually, I had decided immediately after finishing talking to Tancredi, but I hadn’t known it at the time.

  “I saw Carmelo Tancredi two days ago.”

  I told her everything. By the end, I felt at least a little bit relieved. The good old therapy of words, in the sense of telling someone what’s eating away at you, always works. Letting everything out. A kind of flushing of the emotions. Opening the floodgates, something like that.

  When she was sure that I’d finished, she gave a kind of whistle.

  “Well, if it’s true, it’s a bit annoying.”

  “A bit annoying strikes me as quite an understatement.”

  “Tancredi was right to tell you. He acted as a friend.”

  I nodded. “I feel like a shit.”

  “That strikes me as rather excessive. Why a shit?”

  “Maybe that’s not quite right. I can’t think of the specific word, but I feel as if I’ve been made to look a fool.”

  “To whom?”

  “To myself. Probably to him, too. I’ve displayed all the most hackneyed prejudices.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “You know there are certain kinds of client I don’t take on. I don’t take people accused of being paedophiles, I don’t take Mafiosi, and when it comes to people accused of corruption, embezzlement and similar offences I’m a bit choosy, I decide on a case-by-case basis. I know some might tell me – some colleagues do – that by doing that, I’m refusing to defend the people who might need me most, that is, people unjustly accused of the crimes I find most horrible. It’s true, and in fact there have been occasions, rare ones, when I’ve agreed to defend people on those kinds of charges. It happens when I’m sure – and maybe sometimes I’m wrong – that they’re innocent. Do you follow me?”

  “I follow you.”

  “So, if someone comes to me and asks: do you want to defend a corrupt judge, someone who take bribes in order to have people released or for other favourable rulings, my answer is no. In your opinion, why do I do that?”

  “For various reasons. I’ll tell you one, if you’re not offended.”

  “If I’m offended, I won’t show it.”

  “Vanity.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t take on certain clients out of vanity. That’s not the only reason, but it’s part of it.” She smiled again. One of those smiles – a mixture of provocation, joy, seductiveness, false innocence, real innocence – that some women give at times, and that make you feel irredeemab
ly inferior.

  “I am offended. But since the deed is done, tell me more. I assume it’s free.”

  “Each of us, over the years, creates a character for ourselves. One we identify with, which corresponds to a positive idea of ourselves, which encapsulates the qualities we like to think we have. Your character, the one you’ve created for yourself, the one you identify with, has, among its various characteristics, one that could be described like this: He’s a criminal lawyer, therefore he defends criminals, but not those who’ve committed heinous and disgusting crimes. Am I making myself clear?”

  “All too clear.”

  “In this case – apparently – something has happened that’s making you doubt the correspondence between reality and the character you like to resemble. That’s why you feel this sense of disorientation. Guido Guerrieri isn’t someone who defends corrupt judges. It isn’t so much his moral sense that won’t allow him to do so as his vanity.”

  A moment after that sentence, before I could even think of a response, someone knocked at the door.

  “Come in,” I said, at a higher pitch than intended. It was Pasquale: there were papers I had forgotten to sign that had to be given to a courier. I did so, and he slipped away as he had arrived. The unexpected diversion had given me a chance to recover.

  “You mustn’t get worked up,” Annapaola said. “I’m an expert on narcissism because I suffer from it myself. Maybe in a worse form than yours.”

  “And what form is that?”