But I stayed in the office. I sat down at my secretary’s desk. To think, or something like that.
Gianluca Scianatico was a notorious idiot. A typical, well-known representative of the so-called respectable classes of Bari. A bit taller than me, a one-time Fascist thug, a poker player. And a cokehead, so they said.
He was a doctor and worked in a teaching clinic at the general hospital. No one familiar with those circles in Bari thought he’d got where he had – graduating, specializing, passing competitive exams, and so on – on merit.
His father was Ernesto Scianatico, principle judge of one of the criminal sections of the appeal court. One of the most powerful men in the city. Everyone talked about him, his friendships, his extracurricular activities. Always in whispers, in the corridors of the courthouse and elsewhere. Anonymous petitions were said to have circulated, relating to a whole series of matters he was directly or indirectly involved in. It was said that some lawyers and even some magistrates had tried to report him.
Everyone knew that none of these petitions, whether anonymous or signed, had ever resulted in anything. Judge Scianatico was someone who knew how to watch his back.
For someone in my line of work-a criminal lawyer in Bari – to go up against him was just about the stupidest thing you could do. About half of all cases, after the initial sentence, were referred to his section on appeal. In other words, about half my cases were referred to his section on appeal. I was laying myself open to a glorious professional future, I thought.
“Congratulations, Guerrieri,” I said out loud, as I’d been doing ever since I was a child, whenever my thoughts clamoured to be heard, “once again you’ve found a jam to get into. You’ve crossed the difficult threshold of forty but your tendency to get involved in problems of every size, shape and description is still completely intact. Bravo.”
I sat there for a while, getting increasingly anxious, letting my eyes wander over the shelves and the box files that filled them.
Then I got annoyed.
A constant factor in my life is that after a while I always get annoyed about everything.
Good things and bad things.
Almost everything.
Anyway, as my anxiety diminished, I remembered some of the things Tancredi had just told me. About how he’d gone to see her after receiving the summons. What had he said? Oh, yes. That she could report him as many times as she liked, nothing would ever happen to him. Nobody would ever have the courage to touch him. Not him.
So when my anxiety vanished, I started getting angry. It didn’t take much to get me to the right point.
“Fuck Scianatico. Father and son. Fuck both of them. We’ll see if nothing ever happens to you, you bastard.” Out loud again.
Then I told myself it really was time to go home now.
I told myself that mentally. A sign that the din in my brain was fading.
7
Martina Fumai came to my office about seven o’clock the following evening, with Sister Claudia. Maria Teresa showed them in, and I asked them to sit down on the two chairs in front of the desk.
Martina was a very pretty woman with short brown hair. She was wearing quite a bit of make-up, and there was something evasive in her eyes and her manner. She was very thin. Unnaturally thin, as if she’d been on a diet and hadn’t stopped when she should. She was wearing a sweet-smelling perfume, and maybe she’d put on more than was necessary.
She spoke in a quiet voice, and as soon as she sat down she asked me if she could smoke. Yes, of course, I said, and she took a thin cigarette out of a white packet with a floral design and lit it. An unfamiliar brand. The type of cigarette I’ve always hated. She had a cylindrical lighter with the face of Betty Boop on it. That must mean something, I thought.
She thanked me for taking the case. I told her I couldn’t see any problems – using those very words, which I usually hate: I can’t see any problems – and then I asked her to sign the papers agreeing to have me as her attorney.
She asked me if she was doing the right thing, bringing a civil action.
Of course not. It’s madness. We’ll both be slaughtered. You and especially me. All because when I was a child I read comics featuring Tex Willer and now I’m incapable of turning back when that would be the most intelligent thing to do. Like right now, with this case. As my more pragmatic colleagues have done.
I didn’t say that. Instead, I reassured her. I told her not to worry, of course this wasn’t a simple case, but we’d do the best we could, we’d be resolute but at the same time tread carefully. And a whole lot of nonsense like that. The next day I would go the Prosecutor’s department, talk to the prosecutor and get the papers. Fortunately, I said, the prosecutor, Dottoressa Mantovani, was someone you could trust. That much was true.
I told her we’d meet again a few days before the hearing, after I’d had a look at the papers. I preferred not to talk about the case until I had an idea of what was in the file.
The meeting lasted at least half an hour. Sister Claudia didn’t say a word the whole time, just kept looking at me with those inscrutable eyes.
As they left, I threw a glance, almost involuntarily, at her tight jeans. Just for a moment, until I remembered she was a nun, and that wasn’t the way to look at a nun.
8
It was the weekend again.
We’d been invited to a party by two friends of Margherita’s, Rita and Nicola. They were nice people, a bit eccentric, who in order to have more space at their disposal had moved to a villa just outside the city, on the old road that runs south between the sea and the countryside.
Put like that, it sounds romantic. But the villa was half in ruins, the garden looked like the garden of the House of Usher, and every night girls from Eastern Europe congregated a few yards from the gate, in various stages of undress depending on the season. Their clients’ cars stopped practically in front of Rita and Nicola’s house. There was a constant stream of them until well into the night. Every now and again, the police or the carabinieri turned up, hauled in the clients and the girls, sent some of the girls back to their countries, and for a few days the traffic stopped. Then, within a week, it all started again, just like before.
The countryside behind the villa was populated by packs of wild dogs and scattered with ruins used as storage for stolen goods. I could say that with some certainty, seeing as how one of the fences who used these ruins was a client of mine who’d once been arrested while unloading a truck full of stolen hi-fis into one of them.
None of this seemed to be a problem for Rita and Nicola. They paid an absurdly low rent for a thousand square feet, which they’d never have been able to afford in the centre of town. The house was full of the strangest things. And, when there was a party, the strangest people.
Rita was a painter and taught at the Academy of Fine Arts. Nicola had a New Age bookshop, specializing in oriental and esoteric philosophies and practices.
One of the rooms in the villa had mats on the floor and mirrors on the walls. This was where they held seminars on transcendental meditation, tai chi chuan and shiatsu, and study sessions on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Chinese astrology, and so on.
Nicola was a kind of Buddha of Suburbia, like the Hanif Kureishi character. Only he didn’t operate in Seventies London, but in Bari in the early twenty-first century. Between Iapigia and Torre a Mare, to be precise.
As I was getting ready to go out, cleaning my teeth in front of the bathroom mirror, I thought I saw something under my eyes. Like a slight shadow, or a slight swelling. I rinsed the brush, put it away, and had a closer look. There were indeed two very slight swellings, between the eyes and the cheekbones.