A Fine Line Read online

  Why not?

  Because of what Tancredi said.

  Because there’s a distance between you. He, the robber, isn’t part of your world, the world of trials, rules and justice. But a corrupt judge is. A corrupt judge – not his existence, but the fact that he’s your client, that his fate depends partly on you – undermines the system, the structure, the whole theatre where you’ve played your role until now.

  Corruption – and in particular judicial corruption – is different from robbery, because it has to do with power. The power of a judge is monstrous, when you think about it. He can decide on a person’s freedom, a person’s life. I don’t want to sound rhetorical, but that’s the way it is. Power – any form of power – is acceptable only if it’s transparent and clean, if it’s exercised in a way that is equal for everybody.

  Article 3 of the Constitution: equality and things like that. All right, you’re not giving a lecture. But what the hell. With corruption, power gets out of control and becomes unacceptable. Unbearable. Dirty. There, that’s the crux of it. If this fellow gets away with it, he’ll continue to exercise his dirty power undisturbed.

  But there’s always been judicial corruption. Pointless to get worked up about it; it’s a problem for prosecutors and the police, not you. The imperfection of the world isn’t your problem.

  Yes, there’s always been corruption, but this is different. This is too close. We know a lot of ugly things happen in the world and we can’t allow ourselves to get indignant about all of them. We have limited reserves of indignation. But when the events are so close, when they touch you personally, what must you do? It’s one thing not being able to do anything – you know something isn’t right, but you can’t do anything about it – it’s quite another when you have in your own hands the possibility of reacting in some way.

  Reacting? Reacting how? Maybe you’re forgetting that you’re a lawyer and he’s your client, maybe you’re forgetting that there are duties linked to your profession, for as long as you continue to exercise it. You have obligations to that client, and to anyone who trusts you. The client is sacred. If you question that principle, it’s over.

  And what about justice? Bloody justice? If that man continues to be a judge, how can I continue to be a lawyer?

  What has justice got to do with you? You said it yourself, you’re a lawyer. Your duties are simple ones: to defend your client to the best of your ability, not to commit mistakes, not to breach professional ethics. That’s it. You want justice? You should have become a magistrate if you wanted justice, if you wanted to change the world. Then the world would have done everything it could to make you change your mind, but that’s another matter.

  Everything you’re saying is just a smokescreen, a way to escape the responsibility of taking a difficult decision. A way of lying to yourself. You say that there are rules of ethics, the protection of the client, the lawyer’s obligations, but that’s just to avoid the responsibility that comes from knowing certain things. Aren’t you hiding behind your presumed professional duties in order to avoid bother, to avoid having to choose? To escape the effort of making distinctions? What was that line from that wonderful film by Renoir – The Rules of the Game? “I want to disappear down a hole, so that I no longer have to distinguish between what’s good and what’s bad.” Is that what you want to do? Disappear down a hole in order not to have to distinguish between good and bad? How will you feel about that in ten years’ time? What will you wish you’d done, when you look back in ten years’ time?

  I can’t bear these ethical discussions, they’re like something from a cheap magazine. Then let’s get down to brass tacks, let’s drop the abstract chatter. You want to report him? You want to tell the Prosecutor’s Department in Lecce everything? Is that what you’re thinking? Do you remember article 380 of the criminal code? It’s the rule on disloyal advocacy. The advocate who, becoming disloyal to his professional duties, harms the interests of the party defended by him is punished with imprisonment of three to ten years, if the offence is committed to the detriment of a person suspected of a crime for which the law imposes imprisonment of more than five years.

  A prison sentence of three to ten years, is that clear? Just tell them you instituted an unlawful investigation into a client of yours and now you want to bury him. That’s an excellent move. You’ll be put on trial and have to undergo a disciplinary procedure. You’ll be found guilty and, most likely, be struck off. If your idea is to quit being a lawyer, it’s the perfect choice.

  That kind of argument is a moral anaesthetic. You’re exploiting the formal rules to escape your responsibilities and your duty to choose. It’s an old trick you’ve been using for ages. You fill yourself with lies to justify your own cowardice to yourself.

  Everybody lies. Anyone who says they doesn’t is either an idiot or a bigger liar than anyone else. Mental health consists in finding a point of balance between truth and lies. To think you have to always tell the truth – and that you can – is the hallucination of a madman.

  You’re partly right. Lying to your fellow man is often ethical, and healthy, and excessive honesty frequently conceals – or exhibits? – the worst intentions. Lying to yourself, though, is quite another matter. It may happen – sometimes it’s necessary in order to survive – but if it becomes a rule it’s just a way to divorce yourself from reality, to protect yourself from the world, to avoid being reached. Yet, sooner or later, the world and reality catch up with you.

  You see, there’s no question that Larocca is a bastard. The only question is what you can do. You can’t bear to keep defending him? Fair enough, that’s legitimate. Give up the brief, and leave it at that. Forget this business. The rest isn’t up to you. Don’t do anything stupid. Behave like a well-balanced adult.

  A well-balanced adult.

  I didn’t know if I was a well-balanced adult, I didn’t know if I’d ever been one. Did I even understand the meaning of the words? I asked myself as I got off my bicycle and tied it to a lamp post near my building. I had ridden beyond the San Francesco pinewoods, got all the way to the end of the San Girolamo seafront, then come back across the city as far as Punta Perotti Park and returned to the centre. No more than about twenty kilometres, but I was as exhausted as if I had done a hundred.

  As I got into bed, I decided I would call Larocca the next morning, or maybe I would go and see him at the courthouse. And maybe I would also do something else, something that seemed to me as crazy as it was reassuring. Crazy, I repeated, sinking into a sudden sleep.

  27

  I checked that the hearings at the appeal court that morning were being presided over by the head of the court. When I called the clerk of the court’s office, I was told that it wasn’t a very heavy schedule and would be over by about two o’clock.

  It was raining. I prepared two envelopes with almost maniacal care. I wrote the addresses using an old stencil I had been keeping in a drawer of my desk for God knows how long. When I’d finished, I broke it and threw it in the bin. I stamped the envelopes, then put them in my bag together with a stick of glue. Passing Pasquale’s command post on my way out, I told him I wouldn’t be back in the office that afternoon. I had just one appointment, with a client who was coming to pay and wouldn’t be too upset about our meeting being postponed.

  I must have sounded like someone justifying himself, and even though I didn’t look Pasquale in the face I’m sure he noticed that something wasn’t right.

  Ten minutes later, I went into a phone and Internet centre used by young Indians, Bengalis and Mauritians. For the price of two euros I typed out what I had to, printed three copies, then deleted the file and left. On the street, I turned the first corner, took the envelopes from the bag, put one of the sheets I had printed into each one and sealed it with the glue, rather than licking it. It may have been paranoia on my part, or play-acting, or maybe both. The third copy I folded and put in my pocket.

  I dropped by the garage, got out my car and drove to the cou
rthouse. The security guard at the entrance, accustomed to seeing me arriving on foot or by bicycle, was surprised and full of admiration.

  “Is this your car, Avvocato?”

  “No, I just stole it. I’m hiding it here, if you don’t mind. Nobody will know.”

  He laughed. “A pity you never bring it, it’s beautiful. Petrol or diesel?”

  “Petrol.”

  “It must drink like a whore,” he concluded, laughing like someone who knows what he’s talking about. Cars and whores who drink a lot. He let me through, pointing to a rather large free space near the sentry box. When I got out, I noticed that he was looking at me with an expression of respect I’d never seen before.

  I dealt with all the chores at the clerk of the court’s office that I usually entrust to Maria Teresa, Consuelo or Pasquale. I felt a sense of calm as I withdrew copies of papers, lodged petitions, consulted case files – and even as I queued, which is something I hate. As I went from one office to another, I passed the courtroom where the appeals were being heard and checked how far the hearing had got. At about 1.30, they told me there was only one case left and that they would finish within about fifteen or twenty minutes.

  So I got in my car, drove out of the courtyard and parked about fifty yards from the gate of the courthouse, in a position that allowed me to keep an eye on the glass doors. Half an hour later, Larocca came out and immediately went straight down into the underground car park, reserved for magistrates and court staff.

  When he reappeared on board his red Giulietta, I started the engine and set off after him, leaving a couple of cars between us in order not to be noticed. I didn’t know why I was taking all these precautions, but at that moment it all seemed perfectly natural, almost necessary. Just as it seemed sensible, in the heightened state I was in, to pay obsessive attention to the road.

  We got to Corso Vittorio Veneto and drove along it slowly, because of the traffic. When we reached the Castello Svevo, Larocca turned right. I thought I would choose a different route, going past the harbour. A longer way round, but less congested. The Isabella d’Aragona Gardens looked sad and desolate in the rain. I looked at the outside temperature indicator: sixteen degrees, not very high for 2.30 on a May afternoon. Why hadn’t I simply phoned him and told him that we needed to talk? Maybe it was a way to gain time, to put off something I had no desire to do. On Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the traffic flowed a little more smoothly. Ahead of me, some hundred yards away, the Teatro Margherita looked like a film set. Come to think of it, I told myself, everything looked fake, as if I were taking part in some kind of Truman Show of which I was only just starting to become aware.

  Larocca was driving calmly, in a very disciplined manner. He signalled changing lanes with the indicator, stopped at yellow lights, gave way when he had to.

  I kept following him along the Di Crollalanza seafront, driving past the big, almost metaphysical buildings built during the Fascist period. The clouds were low and oppressive. We turned onto Via Egnatia, then onto Via Dalmazia. The Giulietta drove into a garage about fifty yards from the front door of his house, opposite RAI. Soon afterwards, Larocca came out on foot. He didn’t have an umbrella and was hurrying so as not to get wet.

  “Pierluigi!”

  He turned with an almost frightened expression, as if he were not used to being called by name anywhere near his house and breaking that rule was a dangerous and destabilizing infraction.

  “Guido. What are you doing here?”

  28

  Near the front door of the building there was a broken gutter, with water gushing angrily from the gap. It seemed as if the rusty metal might burst at any moment. As if that violent, threatening water were a symptom or an omen, as if that leak presaged something else, something worse.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  “Has something happened?”

  “In a way.”

  “Do you want to come up? We’re getting wet.”

  “Maybe it’s better not. Maybe we could go for a ride and talk in the car.”

  From the way he looked at me, I realized he thought I was taking precautions because his apartment might be bugged. “All right, I’ll go up, leave my bag, and come and join you.”

  Five minutes later, we were on the move, first in the direction of the sea, then southward.

  “What’s happened?”

  The rain was beating regularly on the bonnet, on the asphalt and on the sea to our right. The windscreen wipers were dancing, and the liquid being moved to the sides of the windscreen looked more like molten metal than water.

  “There’s a new development,” I said, sensing something ridiculous and at the same time disturbing in what I was doing.

  “What?”

  “The information I have is a bit vague, but I’ve been told about some inquiries into a Swiss bank account you’re apparently able to draw on.”

  Strictly speaking, I hadn’t told a lie: someone – Annapaola – had told me about inquiries – made by her – into an account in Switzerland. I was watching the road, but out of the corner of my right eye, on the extreme edge of my field of vision, I could just about make out, or intuit, that Larocca’s face had turned pale and frozen.

  “What the fuck have they done?” he said at last. “What the fuck have those sons of bitches done?”

  He was breathing in a forced way, conveying a mixture of anger and fear, and rubbing his hands hard together, as if trying to cleanse them of something, to get rid of something so that nobody could find it.

  “Can’t we go to your office? Talking like this, in a car, in this rain…”

  It was only then that I realized why I hadn’t called him to tell him I needed to talk to him. I didn’t want him in my office. I never wanted him to come there again.

  “The office is almost unusable today,” I lied. “There are workers in, doing maintenance.”

  Without realizing it, I drove onto SS16, the road that goes south to Lecce. People who like to read symbols and metaphors into everything would have said that I actually wanted to take him to Lecce. I don’t know, but when I realized the direction I’d taken I felt bad, and at the first turn-off I turned round and started back towards Bari.

  “Let’s at least go and sit somewhere,” he said. “We can’t talk this way about something so delicate.”

  I got back to the city, drove all along the seafront in the opposite direction, past the old town then the Castello again, the harbour, and finally parked outside a café not far from the Fiera del Levante.

  The place was deserted. We sat down at a table from where we could see both the sea and the street. The rain was still falling, silent and stubborn. Some lines of poetry came into my head – It rains without sound on the lawn of the sea/No one passes on the glistening roads – but I couldn’t remember who they were by.

  The barman asked us what we wanted and before I could reply Larocca ordered a bottle of chilled white wine.

  “Guido, listen to me. I’m sorry if you think I didn’t put my full trust in you. I did, and I still do. The problem is that some things aren’t all that easy to explain. I didn’t know if you would understand. I was afraid that your defence would be less effective knowing… how shall I put this?… the background.”

  “Background, that’s good.”

  He didn’t catch the sarcasm. “But tell me, how the hell did they find out about the Swiss account? It’s incredible, because it’s coded, I’ve never done any transactions between Switzerland and my accounts in Italy. Nobody knows about it except for a lawyer in Milan and my adviser in Zurich, who are the most discreet people in the world. I really can’t imagine how they did it.” He poured himself some wine, drained the glass and refilled it. “How did you find out?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s the point.”

  “You’re right. You’re right, there’s a risk you may misunderstand, and I want to explain. I was wrong not to tell you the truth. I’ve treated you with a lack of respect, and I
apologize. I’ve done a few… thoughtless things, but I want to stress that there’s never been any major harm done.”

  “What do you mean there’s not been any major harm done?”

  “On a certain number of occasions, over the past few years, I’ve accepted some… gifts, so to speak.”

  “Before you go any further: did you accept a gift, so to speak, in the Ladisa case? Was Capodacqua telling the truth?”

  “Not really, because—”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not in the mood for subtle distinctions today. Did you take fifty thousand euros to get Ladisa released? It’s quite a simple question. Maybe later we can go into it in more detail.”

  “I received a gift, yes. But it’s precisely the Ladisa case that allows me to clarify what I mean when I say there’s never been any major harm. You’ve read the ruling in which we – and I emphasize: we, because my colleagues were in agreement, there was no dissenting opinion – released that fellow, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve read it. Of course.”

  “Did it strike you as correct?”

  “It was a plausible interpretation,” I conceded.

  “So you understand what I mean when I talk about the lack of major harm. In the case of Ladisa, and in all the others where I accepted gifts from some grateful lawyer—”

  “Through Salvagno.”

  “Through poor Salvagno, yes. In every case where I’ve accepted gifts, I’ve never forced a decision. They were proceedings in which the investigations had been conducted badly, in which there were invalid arguments, legal irregularities, insufficient evidence, unlawful phone taps, and we had to grant release. And sure enough, these rulings have almost always been confirmed by the Supreme Court. There has never been any abuse. Only decisions that were right and proper.”