A Fine Line (9 page)

He leafed through the pages he had in front of him. Caught up in the momentum of what he was saying, he had raced ahead of his own notes and was now finding his place. Or else it was only another theatrical ploy to make the most of the pauses and keep the audience's attention.

“I'm sure many of you have felt a sense of unease in listening to the things I've said so far. That's what I wanted. I
wanted
these unpleasant truths to make you uneasy.

“My intention was to prompt you to think outside the conventional patterns, to think about the elements of hypocrisy and even brutality lurking in our criminal justice system. To draw your attention to these elements, I've used the weapon of paradox and exaggeration. Of course not all prosecutors, not all judges are unaware of their duties; and of course many defence lawyers know perfectly well that their task isn't basically to see that justice is done, but to carry out a role which guarantees that the rules are respected.

“The reality isn't only the anguished and surreal one we see in the distorting mirror of paradox. But nor is the legal system an idyllic place where we always succeed in harmoniously combining the rules of the law with the demands of justice. Such an idyllic place doesn't exist.

“Anyone who experiences the everyday reality of the criminal courts knows perfectly well the kind of influence that incompetence, hypocrisy, often mistakes, and sometimes even dishonesty may have on the final outcome of the legal system. He knows perfectly well how often the principle of equality before the law is damaged by a lack of culture and a poor sense of rules and roles, because
of bias, illegitimate personal aspirations or even simple intellectual laziness.

“To make sure that justice is done, we need to free ourselves of false myths about justice. And in order to free ourselves of these false myths, we need to destroy them, because they're tenacious. If we merely set them aside, they come back and again overwhelm our minds, preventing them from functioning in the right way. The right way is the way guided not by emotion, but by reason.

“To be aware of what I've said shouldn't lead to a resigned recognition or cynical acceptance of the rules of a game that's inevitably unjust and brutal. We all of us, judges and lawyers alike, have a duty to reject cynicism and resignation.

“This rejection would be meaningless and futile if it were not solidly argued, if it were merely a general, however noble, aspiration to justice and an equally general willingness to respect the rules.

“Of course, it's certain that the guarantees embedded in the process are also limits to a free – indiscriminate? – search for the truth. If, for example, we could order phone taps merely on the basis of suspicion, of conjecture by the investigators, it would be easier to capture criminal conversations and discover the perpetrators of serious crimes.

“If it were possible to question suspects without a lawyer present, it would be easier to obtain confessions.

“Does that mean that rules and guarantees are incompatible with an effective search for the truth? I don't think so.”

At that precise moment, for no reason, or rather, for no reason I was able to pin down (maybe because I was surrounded by young people who were embarking on their legal careers), I recalled a few scenes from my first months as a trainee prosecutor. Trivial things – queueing up at a clerk of the court's office, filing a petition, asking for a postponement
in a hearing at the magistrate's court – that I would never have thought could still make me feel emotional. And yet, unexpectedly, those memories broke my heart. They filled me with an almost unbearable sadness and nostalgia. It was a strange nostalgia, because the painful memory of my youth was mixed with a different sensation, something like a feeling of having wasted my time, of not having done what I should have done, of having – out of fear, cowardice or laziness – been content with second best.

I remembered a sentence I had read a few weeks earlier:
It's never too late to be who you might have been
.

By the time I tuned back into Larocca's lecture, he was nearing his conclusion.

“Does nobody really want justice? And, in a broader perspective, can we dispense and, above all, obtain justice? These are questions to which it is not possible to supply an answer in the brief space of an event like this. Among other things a shared answer would imply a consensus – one that doesn't in fact exist – about the meaning of the concept of justice, which at one time or another has been compared with legality, impartiality, equality, whether formal or substantial, and so on.

“What is certain, however, is that, between the radical scepticism of those who consider the very aspiration to justice as utopian and hypocritical and the more or less concealed fantasies that are basically just new versions of ‘an eye for an eye', there exists a space of rules, guarantees and rights. Rights of defendants and suspects, of course, but also of the victims of crimes. It is in this space, the space of jurists, our space, that it is possible and lawful – with difficulty, but protected from abuse and prevarication – to try to reconstruct the truth, establish responsibility and, last but not least, dispense punishment. With an awareness of our limitations
and an acceptance of the idea that in many cases a guilty person will be acquitted and that this is the price to pay for a system in which it will be difficult (although not impossible) for an innocent person to be found guilty.

“Each one of us is free to call the results of this effort whatever he chooses. Even justice, of course.

“Thank you for listening to me.”

For a moment, silence hung in the air, almost dizzyingly. Then loud applause broke out. After a few seconds, I, too, started clapping.

12

While the applause was still ongoing, I moved towards the exit. I was at the door when our eyes met. Larocca changed expression, losing the smug self-confidence he had exhibited until that moment. My presence reminded him of an unpleasant thought, something he had dismissed for the space of that morning and which now reappeared in all its disturbing force. He nodded in my direction and made a barely sketched gesture with his hand, indicating that he wanted me to wait for him. For at least five minutes, there was a flurry of smiles, congratulations, thank-yous and handshakes. With a touch of contempt, I observed the collective servility of that little crowd. Then I, too, was struck by an unpleasant thought. I was there. Larocca was a client of mine, but if he hadn't been an important judge would I have gone to see him to talk about questions regarding his case? Or would I have considered it completely natural to summon him to my office for that kind of communication? I felt uncomfortable and tried to think about something else. I went back to watching the action that was taking place behind the speakers' table. From the grimace of regret the head of the bar association was giving, I grasped that Larocca had just said that he had to go. The two men shook hands for a long time in an overly emphatic way. Larocca also said goodbye to the undertaker, whose expression had remained unchanged the whole time.

When I saw that he was starting to move away from the table, while still shaking hands and saying goodbye, I left the lecture theatre to wait for him outside. I didn't want everyone to notice that I was the reason for his haste.

“Hello, Guido,” he said. His face was torn between surface cordiality and an underlying apprehension.

“Hello, Pierluigi. Can we go somewhere and talk?”

“Do you have good news or bad news?”

“Half and half. Partly good, partly a little upsetting.”

He was unable to repress an expression of impatience, mixed with a slight dismay.

“We could go to my office, but we'd have to move to the other courthouse. Or else your office, even though it's a bit further. Or even to a nearby bar or café, whatever you prefer. In any case, you can start to tell me while we're walking.”

We headed for the centre and looked for a café that had slightly isolated tables. Going to the courthouse together on a Saturday would have attracted attention. Not that there was anything unlawful in what we were doing, but the more secret we could keep this matter – and therefore our relationship, which wasn't judge–lawyer but client–lawyer – the better it was.

“I heard your lecture.”

“What did you think?”

“Very good. A few years ago I read a book by Alan Dershowitz that said lots of similar things about the hypocrisy of legal systems.”

“I haven't read it. What's it called?” There was a hint of tension in his voice when he asked this, as if he meant: they were my ideas, I didn't get them from anyone else.

“I don't think it's ever been translated into Italian. It's called
The Best Defense
. It's a collection of cases. Very interesting, even instructive, I'd say.”

If I think about it now, there was a touch of wickedness in my talking so calmly and in such a detached manner, taking my time in getting to the point when he was so obviously on tenterhooks.

“I've found out something.”

“I was right, wasn't I? There are proceedings pending?”

“Yes.”

“Where does the information come from?”

“I'm sorry, Pierluigi, but I can't—”

“No, no, forgive me. I just wanted to know if the source is reliable.”

He was speaking quickly, much faster than usual, clearly embarrassed at my denying him something. He couldn't object to it, but it clearly bothered him. People used to having others say yes, to always being right – and there are several judges who fall into that category – don't easily accept refusals.

“Yes, very reliable. I've also seen copies of some documents.”

“Do you have them? What kind of documents are they?”

I'm not sure why I decided to lie. Maybe a vague sense of caution, maybe irritation at the overbearing and slightly hysterical tone of his questions. I told him that I'd read the documents and then given them back.

As we walked along Via Calefati we met a colleague of mine, Carbone, who specializes in defending burglars and fences, and is also a notorious frequenter of the East European prostitutes on the southern seafront. I say
notorious
because he made no mystery of his predilection – the main reason being that they were such excellent value for money – and also because he had once been caught in one of the periodic police raids. The officers hadn't been discreet and, the morning after, the fact that Carbone had been taken to
police headquarters in the company of whores, pimps and crooks of every kind had been the main subject of conversation at the courthouse. I would have died of shame, but he paraded around the place like a star, pleased with the sidelong glances that were thrown at him.

He greeted Larocca obsequiously and threw me a questioning glance that I ignored.

“Let's go into the first decent place we find,” Larocca said. “It unnerves me, talking like this while we're walking.”

A couple of blocks further on, there was an old café, the Cristal, which had been there for as long as I could remember. When I used to go there as a little boy, there were five flavours of ice cream – hazelnut, coffee, chocolate, strawberry and pistachio – and there was lemon and coffee granita, with whipped cream, of course. It had tables at the back where nobody ever sat apart from a couple of very old ladies (the barman had once said that they'd both been born in 1900) whose presence could be sensed from a distance because of the very strong smell of mothballs mixed with eau de cologne and the stink of cigarettes. They would have coffee granita with double whipped cream, and they would smoke and peddle malicious gossip about everyone. They both died well into their nineties, cigarette addicts to the end, having avoided the indignity of the smoking ban being introduced in public places.

If those two were there, it was impossible to get to the table area without gas masks and bulletproof vests. If they weren't there, the barman – a very thin man, with a face devoid of expression, but capable of rare, unexpected and scathing one-liners – let us park ourselves there all afternoon, even though we consumed almost nothing. There were three of us, three friends, fifteen years old, and spending time at a café table, immersed in interminable discussions – the subjects
ranged from sport to girls, from politics to books – made us feel like men.

It struck me that I hadn't been in that place for at least ten years and that I hadn't sat at those tables – assuming they were still there – for more than thirty.

“Let's go in here.”

At the counter there was a young man with a gaunt face, maybe the grandson of the barman who'd let us camp out there all those years ago. The tables were still in their places, the same as before, three-legged Formica tables of different colours – what remained of the different colours. And just as before, there was nobody there. Apart, maybe, from the ghosts of the two old ladies.

Larocca looked around somewhat uncomfortably.

“Nobody will disturb us here,” I reassured him.

Over a coffee and a Prosecco I gave him a summary of the situation. He let me speak without interrupting or asking any questions. His facial expression wavered between incredulity, dismay and anger.

When I finished – I'd tried to be as concise and neutral as possible – he rubbed his forehead with his hand. “I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I was working, going out, sleeping, and those bastards were investigating me. They were bugging my phones, checking my phone records, my bank accounts, my assets. It's unheard of.
Unheard of
.”

I was about to reply that actually they were only doing their job and that it would be best not to take it too personally. Then I told myself that Larocca wasn't in a state of mind to consider the matter objectively.

“They asked to arrest me. They
wanted
to arrest me, and if the file had ended up in the hands of a judge less scrupulous than that woman, they'd have succeeded. It's astonishing they haven't searched my home or office, quite astonishing.”

“Maybe they would have done it when they arrested you. I don't want to give you any further reasons to worry, but it could still happen, maybe a few days before you're notified of the appeal hearing. Or maybe at the same time.”

He shook his head, dejected, angry and powerless. Then he looked at me and noticed the plasters on my temple. “What happened to you?”

“Oh, nothing, a little scratch at the gym.”

“In our university days you used to box.”

“I still do, a little.”

“Good for you, you're in great shape. I should do something too, I'm too sedentary, just sit writing rulings.”

The waiter came and asked us if we wanted anything else, and I told him no before Pierluigi could order another Prosecco.

“What do we do, Guido?”

“We go to the appeal hearing when we know the date, and we argue the case. I wouldn't be too pessimistic about it. The judge's rejection was well argued, and in my opinion doesn't leave much room for discussion. We'll see what the prosecutor writes, but if I'd been him I wouldn't even have contested it.”

“What would you have done?”

“I'd have tried to make further inquiries, and if the outcome was positive, I'd have presented a new petition to the examining magistrate. But with the situation as it is, the appeal will almost certainly be rejected and the Prosecutor's Department will have had two unfavourable decisions in a row. Not exactly the best conditions for going ahead with such a delicate case.”

“
Almost
certainly.”

“I'm sorry?”

“You said the appeal will
almost
certainly be rejected. So you think it may also be accepted?”

When someone in the profession – a judge, a policeman or a lawyer – ends up entangled in the legal process, he loses, as if by magic, the ability to look at things lucidly. Like a doctor who falls seriously ill. His intelligence and his technical competence are completely obscured by anxiety and a paranoid vision of events and people. If this case had been about someone else and that other person had asked him for his opinion on the possible outcome of the appeal, Larocca would have smiled somewhat contemptuously and said that there was no way the court would overturn the examining magistrate's ruling. But now he was asking me with a worried look on his face to tell him what I meant by the expression
almost
certainly – a “get-out clause”, as they say.

“No, I really don't think so. And even in the very unlikely event that this happens, the decision, as you know much better than me, is suspended until the Supreme Court can give its verdict. But in all honesty I wouldn't worry about it. The more general question concerns the strategy we adopt, always bearing in mind that we don't want the news to leak out.”

“You're right, I hadn't thought of that. If they don't succeed in arresting me, they'll try to bad-mouth me in the press. I can already imagine the headlines:
Former Mafioso accuses the head of the appeal court of corruption, Umpteenth scandal at the Palace of Justice
, or—”

“I'm sorry, Pierluigi, but this isn't the right way. It's very unpleasant, I won't deny that, but the most effective way of confronting the matter is to avoid emotionalism. Let's try to be cool and practical, if we possibly can.”

He sighed, clenched his jaws – it was likely he didn't appreciate my paternalistic exhortations to keep calm, and come to think of it I wouldn't have appreciated them in his
place either – then lowered his gaze and let about ten seconds go by. “All right, let's try to be practical. What do we do?”

“The first decision to make is this: do we wait for the notification of the appeal hearing or until they institute something like a search, or do we reconsider the possibility of presenting a petition based on article 335, with a request for you to be examined? The scenario has changed a bit since we first talked about it, and there may not be the disadvantages that we considered back then.”

“What would you choose?”

I took a few seconds to think, even though there was really no choice. The only thing that made any sense at that moment was to wait for the Prosecutor's Department to make its next move.

“I'd wait. I realize it's a little more nerve-wracking to remain in suspense, waiting for other people to make a move, but right now it'll only be a matter of a few days before they notify us of the date of the appeal hearing. Then we'll know formally about the proceedings, and we'll be able to consult the papers, make copies, ask to be questioned, all without any particular urgency. Then we'll go to court and challenge the appeal, which in all probability will be rejected—”

“And what if it gets into the newspapers?”

“If it gets into the newspapers, we could emphasize that the original petition for a custody order was rejected for lack of evidence. But we'll decide that if and when the time comes.”

He nodded. He seemed calmer. “So we wait?”

“We wait, yes. But while we're about it, I'd like to ask you a few questions, just to get a better idea of the overall picture, to understand why it all happened in the first place, why on earth Capodacqua made those statements.”

“I don't follow you.”

“Capodacqua made those statements. That's a given, and we can't argue about it. He may have made it all up. He may have said those things thinking they were true. Because Ladisa told him a pack of lies, to boast or for some other reason I can't quite figure out. Or because Salvagno was influence peddling. To work out a line of defence, we need to try and figure out which of these hypotheses is the right one. The judge thinks it was influence peddling, and in my opinion that's the likeliest hypothesis.”