“This is my colleague, Consuelo Favia, who will be handling this case with me.”
Colleague?
Every client’s face asks the same question. So I spell it out for them, saying, “ Counselor Consuelo Favia, a lawyer who’s been working with me for several months now. We’ll be handling your case together.”
Their astonishment is understandable, and it’s not racism, per se. It’s just that in Bari, and in Italy in general, people still don’t expect a young woman with dark brown skin and Andean features to be a lawyer.
The surveying engineer wore a watch that he could never have afforded on his salary and a charcoal gray suit over a black t-shirt, like a playboy running out the clock, and he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He kept saying that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that at the very most he’d accepted a few tips and small gifts. They were given spontaneously, he insisted. Come on, who turns down a gift? Was he to be arrested for that? He wasn’t going to be arrested, was he?
Now, I want to point out here that I despise criminals like this surveying engineer. I defend them because that’s how I earn my living, but frankly, if it were up to me, I’d be happy to throw them all into a big comfortable prison cell and arrange to lose the key permanently. After letting him ramble on for twenty minutes or so, I was obliged to resist the urge to encourage his fear rather than offering words of reassurance. I told him that before I could express an opinion, we would need to examine the search-and-seizure warrant, and that we might need to contest it before the special arraignment court. Then we could decide whether to request a meeting with the prosecutor. I suggested that he avoid having any potentially compromising conversations over the phone or in the offices that the financial police had searched; they could easily have been bugged. Finally, Consuelo coolly informed him that we’d be in touch in a few days’ time, and that in the meantime he should speak to the secretary on his way out to pay our retainer.
I love her when she absolves me of the unpleasant responsibility of talking about money with my clients.
The burglar’s wife, Signora Carlone, was much less agitated. Talking with a criminal lawyer about her husband’s latest legal problems wasn’t a new experience for her, even though this case was much more serious than usual. A police investigative team had been looking into a worrisome epidemic of break-ins and had wiretapped a number of phones, followed suspects, and taken fingerprints in the apartments of the victims. In the end, they’d arrested Signore Carlone and five of his friends, who were now charged with multiple counts of aggravated theft, running a burglary ring, and criminal conspiracy. Carlone had a lengthy criminal record (which made for especially dull reading, because he’d committed the same crime, burglary, over and over), so when his wife asked about the only thing that mattered to her-when she could expect her husband to be released from jail-we told her that it wouldn’t happen soon, and we weren’t certain it would happen at all. For now, we could contest the court order for preventive detention before the special arraignment court, but, I informed Signora Carlone, it would be better not to get our hopes up, because if even half of what was written in the court order was supported by the files of the investigation, he would remain in jail.
After Signora Carlone left, I asked Consuelo to study the documents that the surveying engineer and the burglar’s wife had brought in and to prepare two draft appeals to the special arraignment court.
“May I say something, Guido?”
Consuelo always approaches a subject that she knows or suspects will lead to an argument with those words. She’s not actually asking permission. It’s a conversational tic, her way of announcing that she’s about to say something I might not like.
“You may.”
“I don’t like clients like-”
“Like our surveying engineer. I know. I don’t really like them myself.”
“Then why do we take their business?”
“Because we’re criminal lawyers. Or perhaps I should say: I’m a criminal lawyer. You might be done before you even get started if you worry about this sort of thing.”
“Are we obligated to take all the clients who come to us?”
“No, we have no obligation to take everyone. And in fact, we don’t take child molesters, rapists, or Mafiosi. But if we start refusing to take the case of some respectable public servant who accepted a bribe or extorted money from the citizenry, then we might as well limit ourselves to arguing parking tickets.”
I was trying for light sarcasm, but a slight note of exasperation crept into my voice. It bothered me that deep down I agreed with her, and I hated being forced to play the part that I liked least in that conversation.
“But if you don’t want to handle the appeal for that clown with the Rolex, I’ll handle it.”
She shook her head and gathered up the files, and then she stuck out her tongue at me. Before I could react, she turned on her heel and left the room. The little scene aroused an unexpected feeling in me. It gave me a sense of family, of domestic warmth, of well-being mixed with splinters of nostalgia. The people who worked alongside me in my law office were my substitute family, the family I no longer had. For a few seconds, I was on the verge of tears. Then I rubbed my eyes, though I wasn’t actually crying, and told myself that I ought to at least try to lose my mind a little at a time, not in one fell swoop. Back to work.
At 8:30, as Maria Teresa, Pasquale, and Consuelo were leaving for the evening, Sabino Fornelli arrived with his clients and their mysterious case.
5.
Fornelli’s clients were a man and a woman, husband and wife. I guessed that each was about ten years my senior. A few days later, I would read their personal information in the court records and discover that we were almost exactly the same age.
Of the two, the husband made the stronger impression on me. His gaze was vacant, his shoulders stooped, his clothes hanging off his frame. When I shook hands with him, I felt as if I’d picked up an unhappy invertebrate creature.
The wife, who was nicely dressed, looked more normal. But on closer inspection, there was something unhealthy about her gaze, the aftermath of an injury to her soul. When they came into my office, it was like a gust of damp, chilly wind came in, too.
We introduced ourselves in this vaguely uneasy atmosphere, which remained in place throughout our conversation.
“Signore and Signora Ferraro have been my clients for many years. Tonino, Antonio,” and here he gestured toward the husband, perhaps concerned that I might assume that the wife was named Tonino, “owns a few furniture and kitchen supply stores, here in Bari and in the province. Rosaria was a gym teacher, but she retired from teaching a few years ago, and now she works with him managing the stores. They have two children.”
At that point, he stopped talking and sat for a minute in silence. I looked at him, then over to Antonio, aka Tonino, then at Rosaria. Then I looked back at him with a friendly but quizzical smile that morphed into a grimace. From the street outside, I heard a clash of sheet metal, and figured that there’d been a fender bender. Fornelli went on.
“They have a daughter, their older child, and a son who’s younger, sixteen years old. His name is Nicola, and he goes to the science high school. Their daughter, Manuela, is twenty-two, and she’s at the university in Rome-the LUISS.”
He paused, as if to catch his breath and gather his strength.
“Manuela disappeared six months ago.”
I don’t know why I blinked my eyes shut at those words, but when, in the darkness behind my eyelids, I saw globes of blinding light, I opened them again immediately.
“Disappeared? What do you mean, disappeared?”