What I thought was that the appeal hearing was in three days’ time.
I told her I didn’t have anything else to do.
27
I visited Paolicelli the day before the hearing. When he came into the interview room I noticed that he looked particularly depressed.
“I’ve come to go over things with you. Before anything else, we have to decide once and for all what we’re going to do. We can still choose to plea-bargain tomorrow morning.”
“I’m being stupid, right? I should plea-bargain and limit the damage, shouldn’t I? Otherwise the sentence will be upheld, and then God knows when I’ll be out of here.”
“Not necessarily. But as I’ve already said many times, if we plea-bargain you can be certain you’ll be out in a few years, or at least on day release.”
“For weeks I couldn’t wait for the hearing to start and I felt really confident. Now I don’t know what to do and I’m fucking afraid. What should I do?”
Don’t ask me, I can’t tell you that. I’m just a professional, I’m here to suggest alternatives, in a detached way, from a technical point of view. I have to present you with the likely outcome of each option. Then the choice has to be yours. I can’t take that responsibility.
I didn’t say any of that shit. I was silent for just a few seconds, before replying. And when I did reply, neither my voice nor the words I was saying seemed to be coming from me.
“I say: let’s go ahead and appeal. If the drugs weren’t yours – and I believe they weren’t – it isn’t right for you to be in prison and we have to get you out. We have to try every possible way. If the drugs were yours, this is the very last moment for you to tell me. I’m not here to judge you. Tell me and tomorrow we’ll do the best plea bargain possible.”
He looked me in the eyes. I returned his gaze and it seemed to me that his eyes had become watery.
“Let’s appeal.”
That was all.
I gave him a brief rundown on what would happen the next day and told him his examination would take place during the following hearing. Then I asked him if he had any questions, and fortunately he didn’t. So I said goodbye – see you tomorrow in court – and left.
As I left the prison I was about to switch my mobile on again. Then I had second thoughts. Better to avoid any risk, any temptation, at least tonight. For what it was worth.
28
I didn’t even feel like the punchball and so, when I got home, I made myself a roll, ate it, and went straight out without bothering to change.
I soon found myself in the streets of the Liberta neighbourhood. Places full of memories of a period of my life, around twenty years ago, when things seemed simpler.
Lost in thought, I stopped in front of the entrance to a kind of private club. From inside came a voice speaking dialect. Seven or eight men were sitting around a table. They were talking loudly, interrupting each other, waving their arms. To the side, two crates of Peroni beer.
They were playing for beer. It was an old game, halfway between a game and a tribal ritual, involving a pack of Neapolitan cards and several bottles of beer. The winner of each round had to drink a bottle of beer.
“Avvocato Guerrieri!”
Tonino Lopez, a fence well known in the Liberta, with a police record as long as your arm. My client for about ten years.
Officially, in the intervals between one arrest and another, he was a greengrocer, and – since for some reason he was particularly fond of me – every two or three months he’d send a crate of fruit to my office, or artichokes, or a jar of olives in brine, or two bottles of rustic wine. Every time, I would phone him at his shop to thank him, and every time, without fail, he would reply in the same way.
“At your service, Avvocato. Always at your service.”
Tonino stood up from his folding wooden stool, came up to me and gave me his hand.
“We’re playing for beer, Avvocato. Why don’t you come in and sit down?”
I didn’t even think twice. I said thank you and went in. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol, cigarette smoke and men. Lopez introduced me to the others. I recognized most of them by sight. I’d seen them either on the streets of the neighbourhood or in the corridors of the courthouse. Some said good evening, others nodded. None of them seemed surprised that I was there, in my grey lawyer’s suit and tie.
Tonino took another folding stool from where it was propped against the wall, opened it and put it down next to me.
“Take a seat, Avvocato. Have a beer?”
I took a beer and drank half of it in one go. Tonino liked that, I could see it in his face. I had drunk like a man. I thought it would be better to remove my tie. I did so, and looked around.
It was a dirty little room with a single little door of flaking wood, on the side facing the street. The grimy walls were bare apart from two football posters: one showing the Bari team in the good old days, another with Roberto Baggio in a blue shirt, in the middle of a game.
I finished my beer in another two swigs. Tonino opened another and gave it to me. “Do you know how to play for beer, Avvocato?”
I took a long swig of the second beer. I noticed a packet of red Marlboros on the table and had the impulse to take one. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, I didn’t. To be honest, I’ve never really known why I quit smoking.
I turned to Tonino. “A little. I played it in the army, with guys from Iapigia and San Pasquale.”
“So play with us. It’s not too late to join in.”
A great idea. We were practically in the street. Someone I knew could easily pass and see me, without a tie, surrounded by some of the biggest crooks in the area. Getting drunk on beer, belching and arguing and quarrelling about the strategy of the game. It might end up in a brawl, there’d be knives involved, and with a bit of luck I’d spend the night in a police holding cell. A perfect trajectory.
“Let’s play,” I replied, feeling a thrill go through me, and thinking, what the hell.
I played with them for a couple of hours, drank a lot of beers, and left when everyone else did. I was drunk, like all the others, and I felt light-headed and free.
When we said goodbye, everyone was very friendly to me. Almost affectionate. It was as if I had got through some kind of initiation ritual with flying colours. A guy with a belly so big it looked fake actually embraced me and kissed me on the cheeks. I felt the rubbery touch of his belly against me. He smelled of beer, cigarette smoke and sweat.
“You’re a great guy, Avvocato,” he said before turning and staggering away.
I also staggered away and somewhere on the way home I started to sing. I sang old songs from the Seventies. There must be a meaning to everything that was happening to me, I thought.
Fortunately I was too drunk to figure out what it was.
29
I entered the courtroom after a glance at the sheet of paper fixed to the door, with the list of cases that would be heard that morning.
There was the usual menu – petty thefts, building violations, receiving stolen goods – which would be dealt with at the rate of one case a minute, with the presiding judge giving black looks to the defence counsels and even the prosecutor if they dared utter one word more than was strictly necessary. Which was two or three words more than silence.
Mine was apparently the only case where the defendant was in prison, so it should have had precedence. Should have, but in fact they took them as they came.
It was nine-thirty, in other words, the time when the session was supposed to begin. Obviously there was no one there yet. I’d tried to get there on time because I like deserted courtrooms, and sitting there without doing anything helps me to concentrate. I like the sense of anticipation. It’s like the way you feel when you leave home early in the morning and there’s nobody about yet. When you sit down in a bar near the sea, have your coffee and wait, and the streets gradually fill and you’re very aware of everything and you feel as if you’re part of something fleeting yet eternal.