‘No, I wouldn’t,’ I replied at once. ‘But that doesn’t mean the rules aren’t totally fucked up. In such circumstances, I would feel obliged to comply with them because the alternative would be worse. But if Nazzareno decided to come out fighting in court, I would respect his decision. It wouldn’t be for me to sit in judgment over him.’
Max explained to Bonotto that our investigation had run into the sand and that we couldn’t help his client any further. Obviously he skipped a number of details, not least the murder of the Croatian chemist. He concluded his report by handing over the photographic material we had collected during the various stakeouts, and the tape of the conversation between Celegato and Rosa Gonzales Cuevas at the Ristorante Barchessa in Caposile.
‘This material is more than enough to win the case,’ Bonotto said. ‘If Corradi would only listen to me.’
‘Please tell him that if he decides to follow your advice he’ll have my total sympathy.’
‘Thank you for that, Buratti. I’ll pass it on, without fail. However, I’ve decided to play a little trick on my client. The preliminary hearing is set for the twenty-fourth of March, and I have decided to place Celegato’s name on the list of witnesses to be called. I want Nazzareno to make up his mind what to do while looking his friend in the eye.’
‘A waste of time,’ Rossini commented.
I handed Bonotto a sealed envelope. ‘You should deliver this to Corradi.’
Bonotto handed it straight back. ‘I can’t do that. As you well know.’
‘It relates to Corradi’s personal life,’ Rossini explained.
The lawyer rested his hands on his desk. ‘That makes no difference. I can pass on to him by word of mouth the content of the message and then report back to you his answer, should there be one. I’m bound by professional secrecy, and that ought to be more than enough for you.’
‘Okay,’ Max said. ‘We wish to inform Corradi that for some time now Victoria has been betraying him with Bruno Celegato.’
‘What?’ Bonotto asked in astonishment. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘We are absolutely certain of it,’ Max confirmed.
‘To think she kept coming around here begging me to do whatever I could to get Corradi out of prison, playing the inconsolable little woman,’ Bonotto continued.
I shrugged. ‘She fooled the lot of us.’
‘So she was aware of Celegato’s activities. Including his role in my client’s arrest,’ Bonotto went on.
Max lit another cigarette. ‘We want to know what Nazzareno intends to do about this.’
Bonotto looked us all hard in the eye. ‘Let it be quite clear that I am not a conduit for orders relating to murder or violence of any kind.’
‘What on earth are you thinking of?’ I said with a laugh.
‘Max was referring to a quite different matter—the fact that Victoria is living in his house and spending his money.’
‘I apologize, Buratti.’
‘Forget it. When are you intending to see him next?’
‘Tomorrow morning. I’ll call you as soon as I leave the prison.’
At eleven o’clock the next morning I was still sleeping and, in the perennial mess that is my home, it took me a while to locate the phone.
‘How did he react?’ I asked.
‘Not well. He burst into tears and it took me quite some time to calm him down.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What I’m sorry about is the fact that Corradi is still stubbornly refusing to implicate those responsible for his arrest. It’s an absurd position to adopt.’
‘Has he decided what to do about Victoria?’
‘Yes, he has. He asked me to remind you that you promised him you would look after her if things went badly. He would like you to see that she returns to Colombia. Immediately.’
‘Okay.’
‘Buratti?’
‘What?’
‘Provided she agrees to go, obviously,’ he stressed.
‘Obviously, Avvocato. Don’t worry.’
Victoria greeted me with her usual shy smile. She smiled at Old Rossini too, but her mouth fell open when she saw La Tía. She touched her hair with an uncertain gesture. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You’re going back to Colombia. Today. And for good.’
She backed into the lounge. I picked up the framed photograph of her, Corradi and Celegato laughing, their arms thrown round one another. I pointed at the police informant and she understood. She burst into tears. Doña Rosa walked over to her and stroked her hair. ‘Don’t cry, chica. From now on, I’ll be taking care of you.’
Victoria pulled away and La Tía slapped her violently.
‘You’re going to be my little whore,’ she told her. Then she reached her hand down between Victoria’s legs. ‘Here I want you rubia, blonde,’ she whispered in her ear.
Victoria let out a yell and tried to escape from her grip but La Tía pressed a hairpin against her throat. ‘You have family in Colombia. Father, mother, two sisters, baby brother and granny. You want to see them all dead?’
She shook her head and fell to her knees, begging us not to make her leave Italy.
‘It’s what Nazzareno wants,’ Rossini explained. ‘You should count yourself lucky you’re still alive and that you and your snitch of a boyfriend haven’t been thrown in prison.’
I handed her a glass of grappa. She drank it down and somehow found the strength to pull on her coat. Rossini rummaged through her bag and took out her passport and residence permit. As we left the house, the two rottweilers began to bark.
‘What’ll happen to them?’ I asked Beniamino.
‘I know a vet in Oderzo. Tomorrow I’ll get him to come and fetch them.’
When we got to Mestre we went through a back entrance into a store selling photographic equipment. It belonged to a masterforger, an old acquaintance from our prison days. He sat Victoria down on a stool opposite the polaroid he used for passport photos. He rearranged her hair, used a paper handkerchief to dry her mascara-streaked tears, and took the snap. He then picked up Aisa’s and Victoria’s passports and switched the photographs. This had been La Tía’s idea. She had taken a fancy to Victoria one night when she had met her at a club and when we had suggested she take Victoria back to Colombia with her, she had decided to leave Aisa behind in Italy. Aisa would end up as a hostess. Yet another.
‘Aren’t you afraid she’ll take revenge on you by going to the police and telling them what she knows about your organization?’ I had asked her.
‘Aisa has a big family in Colombia,’ she had replied.
They all had families in Colombia and they were all terrified. Threatening someone’s relatives was like reciting a magic spell.
We drove them to the station. I unloaded Doña Rosa’s bags onto the pavement. Victoria’s face was as white as marble and her eyes stayed fixed on the ground. La Tía took her by the hand and looked at us with a smile.
‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t tell you precisely how and when I’ll be arriving in Bogotá, but the fact is I can’t trust you. You might be tempted to pass the information on to those Marxist sons of bitches in FARC.’
‘You can bet on it,’ Rossini scowled. ‘I hope they kill you real soon.’
This failed to wipe the smile off Doña Rosa’s lips. She summoned a porter and headed for the ticket office. Victoria followed her docilely.
We got back in the car. I wasn’t proud of what we had done. Beniamino sensed what was on my mind. ‘Don’t even think about it, Marco. Right now, it upsets you because she has a face like an angel but has ended up in the power of that snake La Tía. But just remember how she betrayed Corradi and ratted him out to the cops. Victoria is a snitch. She deserves nothing better.’
I turned up the volume on the car stereo. Robben Ford’s ‘Tired of Talkin’ helped
me forget Victoria’s empty, absent gaze.
A few days later we heard that Bruno Celegato had been to every nightclub in the entire region searching for Victoria. Nobody was able to help him. He repeatedly phoned her relatives in Bogotá, but her father always replied that he had no news of his daughter’s whereabouts.
Old Rossini returned to his smuggling activities. Max and I worked on a couple of missing-persons cases: a doctor’s wife in the throes of some sort of mystical crisis and an obese, unhappy teenager who had fallen out with his mom. Two dead-end fucking cases.
Every time I went to La Cuccia, I couldn’t help but look for Virna, and it made me sad to see her place occupied by the new girl, a young brunette with a ready smile. One evening I plucked up the courage to go and see Virna at the sandwich-bar where she worked, in the centre of the city. She noticed me at once and came over with an icy expression on her face. She asked me to excuse her but she was very busy and couldn’t stop to talk. I handed her the envelope containing her last month’s wages, then left.
On March 16, the police and the Guardia di Finanza launched their operation to smash the Veneto drug ring. Beniamino woke me up the following morning waving a copy of the Gazzettino di Venezia under my nose.
COCAINE RESTAURANT, 27 ARRESTS
Following orders from the city’s investigating magistrates, the historic Trattoria da Nane has been closed down. The chief of police commented, ‘Nowhere is safe from drugs anymore, not even the centre of Venice.’ The police and the Guardia di Finanza are working to dismantle a major warehousing operation for drugs originating in South America, based in premises situated in Venice’s central Calle dei Fuseri. The operation’s code name is ‘Mozzarella by the kilo.’
Among those arrested I noticed the names of Toni Vassallo and his wife, as well as all those on the list that Beniamino had given La Tía. Rossini was grinning from ear to ear.
‘That’s the end of La Tía’s Italian connection.’
‘Celegato has got away clean yet again.’
‘Well, what did you expect?’
‘In eight days, Nazzareno’s case will come up for the preliminary hearing. I wonder what he’s decided to do . . .’
Rossini looked at me askance. ‘He’ll behave like a man.’
Avvocato Bonotto stood up and adjusted his gown. ‘Your honour, we would like to call Bruno Celegato.’
Visibly surprised, Corradi gripped the bars separating him from the rest of the courtroom. The usher led Celegato in and, once he had taken the oath, asked him to turn and face the court.
‘The defense counsel may proceed,’ the judge said.
Bonotto said nothing, turning instead to stare at his client.
‘Bruno,’ Corradi shouted. ‘Look me in the face.’
Celegato didn’t move. He had kept his eyes on the floor ever since entering the courtroom.
Nazzareno waited a few seconds, then turned towards Bonotto and shook his head.
‘Forgive me, your honor. The defense counsel has decided not to interrogate this witness.’
Celegato, as pale as death, was led out, his head bowed.
‘Does the defense wish to call any other witness evidence?’
‘No, your honor.’
The trial itself was held a couple of months later. The proceedings lasted two days, at the end of which the defendant was convicted and sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment.
I heard the outcome of the trial on the evening news, and knocked on Max’s door.
‘Fourteen years,’ I said.
‘We did what we could, Marco.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But we did. It’s this country that has lost any sense of where truth lies. Maybe it never had it.’
‘Whose side are we on, Max?’
‘The side of the innocent.’
‘I never really doubted it, but I’m happy to hear you say it.’
That evening I went back to the sandwich-bar to see Virna. She was wearing her hair in a new way and had put on a few kilos. To me she looked incredibly beautiful.
‘I miss you, Virna,’ I said softly as she brought me a glass of Calvados. I hadn’t ordered anything and Calvados wasn’t on the list of drinks available. Maybe she had put a bottle aside, waiting for me to come back. In any case, right then, that’s what I wanted to believe.
‘I miss you,’ I repeated. She surveyed me at length, without a word. Then she resumed serving the other tables. I stayed until the place closed, trying not to overdo it with the drink and thinking about what I could possibly do to win her back. I couldn’t resign myself to the idea of losing her for ever.
I walked her to her car. ‘I’d like to see you again.’
‘We could go out one evening for dinner,’ she suggested, to my great surprise. ‘I want to explain to you why I left.’
‘I’ve got things to say to you, too.’
She caressed my face, then went home alone. Without me. The following day, Beniamino dropped by to see Max and me, bearing caviar and Cuban cigars. ‘I had a bit of trouble at sea last night,’ he began to relate. ‘Two motorboats from the Guardia di Finanza started following me, and when they realized I was losing them, they opened fire with a twenty millimeter light cannon. It’s all the fault of those smugglers down in Puglia. Those nuts are prepared to declare open war on the Guardia di Finanza, all for four lousy crates of cigarettes.’
I offered him a glass of his favorite vodka. ‘They’re not smugglers, those people,’ I said. ‘They’re mafiosi, Southern Italian mobsters with bases all over Montenegro.’
‘You’re right there, Marco, they’re not really smugglers at all. Real smuggling is like cops and robbers. You run and the Finanza runs after you. Whoever runs faster wins. No violence on either side.’
Max prepared a slap-up lunch: yellow pumpkin risotto followed by baccalà alla vicentina. At the end of the meal, Rossini blew the smoke of a Montecristo number five into his glass of cognac. ‘I’ve got news of Celegato.’
‘Tell us about it, partner.’
‘It appears someone has been spreading rumours about Victoria among Colombian nightclub hostesses. A word here and a word there, with the result that Celegato found out she’s gone back home. But the most interesting thing is that a few days ago our dear old friend Bruno confided in Toni Baeta, the barber, that he’s planning to make a trip to Colombia in the near future.’
Max guffawed and raised his glass to Rossini. ‘I wonder who’d be spreading rumours like that, eh?’
I shook my head. ‘If he goes to Bogotá, he’s a dead man. If La Tía’s killers don’t get him, those in the pay of the prostitution rackets sure as hell will.’
Beniamino picked up the box of cigars, lifted the lid and held it out to me. I chose the lightest in color, ran it under my nose, clipped the end, and lit it with a long wooden match. The spirals of smoke were white and dense. They reminded me of fog. And winter.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is dedicated to a friend, a dear friend. The story of Nazzareno Corradi is his story. At sixty years of age, though innocent as charged, he is serving a long prison sentence for international narcotics trafficking. He was unwilling to play by the rules of the law, so the name that could have thrown open the prison gates never left his lips. He preferred to remain loyal to his lifelong principles. I am proud of his silence. It wasn’t for him to speak, but for justice to do its work.
Having a friend in prison is like having a friend who is dead but who perhaps one day will return from the grave and re-enter your life. While waiting, I have put aside a bottle of ‘venerable’ Calvados, and in my garden I have planted an oak tree to give him the strength to go on. Small, senseless gestures to keep old nightmares at bay.
Along with a few others, I did what I could to help him. It made no difference. Even though there was no evidence. And even
though my friend’s rooted aversion to drugs was well known.
We met in jail. We were all ‘long-stay’ prisoners. Some of us had the words ‘RELEASE DATE: NEVER’ stamped in red ink on our files. A number of the prisoners in our section had links to the usual lousy mafia-style organizations and had set up a heroin-trafficking ring. Corrupt guards brought the stuff into the prison and these guys peddled it. It was straightforward and lucrative.
We told them we wanted nothing to do with it. For a variety of reasons, drug-dealers and heroin pissed us off. There were three of us: me, my friend, and a guy from Verona who was both a poet and a murderer. It was a rough time. We became friends watching each others’ backs at shower time. Two of us would wash while the third stood guard, a bathrobe rolled round his left arm and the handle of a frying-pan, filed to razor sharpness, clasped in his right hand.
In the end we managed to force a negotiation, and everything was resolved by a series of internal transfers. Somebody, however, took the view that we had broken some unwritten law, and the poet from Verona ended up paying for all three of us. One day he said a word too many and thereby wrote his own death sentence. We realized this immediately, and my friend and I have always thought that he did it on purpose. Remorse had already killed him some time earlier. A couple of years later he was released on probation, and then he disappeared. His body was discovered in the Adige river. His wife recognized him from a tattoo on the big toe of his right foot.
If a person’s word counted for anything in the courts of Italy, I would have appeared before the judges and told them what happened in prison all those years ago. But it doesn’t. So it remains just a story. One of many.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Massimo Carlotto is one of the best known living crime writers in Europe. In addition to the many titles in his extremely popular “Alligator” series, and his stand-alone noir novels, he is also the author of The Fugitive, in which he tells the story of his arrest and trial for a crime he didn’t commit, and his subsequent years on the run. Carlotto’s novel The Goodbye Kiss was a finalist for the MWA’s Edgar Award for Best Novel.
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