Temporary Perfections (11 page)

The judge dictated a brief order for the stenographer to enter into the record, and then ordered the two prison guards to bring the defendant before him. Then, he asked the prosecutor to begin.

“Have you read the charges in the indictment?” the prosecutor asked Nicola. Nicola looked at him in bewilderment, as if he couldn’t understand the purpose of such an idiotic question. Then he saw me nod my head and got that he was expected to answer.

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you do the things that are written in the formal charges?”

“I turned on the gas because I wanted to end it all. But I certainly didn’t want to kill people. Later, when I got my head on straight, I realized I could have caused a disaster.”

“Do you mean to say that you realized you had put into effect a chain of events capable of threatening public safety?”

I was about to object, but I thought better of it. An objection would be pointless, since the question was pointless. My client, who was not, as I have mentioned, the sharpest tool in the shed, sounded fairly reasonable as he responded. The prosecutor asked a few more questions, then said he was finished.

“Would you care to proceed, Counselor Guerrieri?” the judge asked.

“Thank you, your honor. I have very few questions to ask because, as you know perfectly well, the key to this trial has more to do with the law than the facts.” I paused, and I thought I detected an almost imperceptible nod of approval from the judge. This isn’t always a good thing, but the judge that day was well-informed and also intelligent, so that slight tilt of his head struck me as a promising sign.

“Signore Costantino, it is a well-established fact that you turned on the gas and that it was your intention to commit suicide. We need not cover that ground again. But I’d like to ask you something else: When you turned on the gas, was it your intention to kill anyone else?”

“No, of course not.”

“At the moment when you turned on the gas, did it occur to you, did you imagine that your action might result in the death of other people besides yourself?”

“No, no, I just wanted to go to sleep and end it all. I told you I was out of my mind. I was on medication.”

“Do you mean that you were taking pharmaceuticals?”

“Yes, antidepressants.”

“You said that it was only afterward that you realized the consequences your actions might have had. Is that right?”

“Yes, many days later, when I was beginning to recover. In prison.”

“Thank you. I have no further questions.”

“Very good. If there are no further questions, I would say that we can proceed to summation,” said the judge.

The prosecutor stood up and once again ran through his innovative interpretation of the definition of mass murder. The crime required the intention of killing, without any specific indication of who might be the victim of that intention. Costantino, when he opened the gas, intended to kill himself and implicitly accepted the risk of killing other people. This was sufficient basis for trying and convicting him. For mass murder.

Then it was my turn.

“Please indulge me, Your Honor, if I go on a little longer than is usually allowed in a preliminary hearing for the ritual, and often pointless, request for an acquittal. Because this is certainly one of those cases with potential for acquittal, even at this early juncture, without wading through the lengthy process of a full criminal trial. To tell the truth, the idea of hauling a defendant before a criminal court for a gas leak, albeit an intentional one, is paradoxical, if not verging on the outright grotesque.”

The judge picked up a pen and wrote something. I made a mental note, thinking that it might be a good sign, though judges are unpredictable creatures. I continued.

“There is no question that this trial should be resolved on the point of law, the interpretation of criminal law, given that the facts are unquestioned. Indeed, an unhappy young man struggling with depression attempts suicide. The Carabinieri heroically intervene, rescue the young man, and avert a potential tragedy. The question that this trial must
answer is the following: Did the behavior of this young man involve all the elements of the crime of mass murder? A crime, let us remember, that is punishable by imprisonment for a term of no fewer than fifteen years.”

I spoke for about ten minutes in all. I did my best to convey a fairly straightforward concept: The crime of mass murder can be said to have taken place—even if no one dies—only in a case in which the defendant acted with the intent of killing an unspecified number of people, because it is a crime against public safety. To put it simply, if someone tries to kill himself, he’s not trying to commit mass murder. And so if no one dies, quite simply, no crime has been committed.

I found that I was having a hard time explaining something so self-evident. Perhaps it was too self-evident to be argued effectively. When I was done, I was dissatisfied with my efforts, and I was convinced that the judge was about to order my client to stand trial.

Instead, the judge rapidly wrote something down, stood up, and read aloud: There were no grounds for subjecting Nicola Costantino to a criminal trial because the acts of which he was accused did not constitute a crime. The defendant should therefore be released immediately, unless he was in custody for any other cause.

That was the sudden and abrupt end of the hearing, and the judge had already vanished into chambers when I walked over to the young man to inform him that he had been acquitted and that, in a few hours—the time required to process his release from prison—he would be a free man.

“Congratulations. I was sure that they’d order him to stand trial, to avoid the responsibility of making the decision themselves and save themselves the trouble of having
to write the opinion,” said Consuelo as we left the courtroom.

“Yeah, I didn’t have high hopes for an acquittal either.”

“And now?”

“What do you mean, and now?”

“Will his parents be happier that Nicola has been acquitted, or more concerned about what might happen now that he’s coming home?”

That was exactly what I was wondering just then. And of course, I had no answer to the question.

I had said good-bye to Consuelo and was just stepping into a wine bar to get a bite to eat when Fornelli called. He said that he had spoken with Manuela’s mother, and that she in turn had called the two girlfriends and the ex-boyfriend. Through other friends of her daughter, she had also contacted Anita Salvemini, the young woman who had given Manuela a ride to the Ostuni train station. She’d explained to all of them that we were making an effort to find out what had happened to her daughter, and she asked them if they’d agree to talk to me. They’d all said yes, except for Abbrescia.

“Why not Abbrescia?”

I heard a brief hesitation at the other end of the line.

“She told Manuela’s mother that she was in Rome. She said for the next few weeks she’s very busy with classes and exams and she’s not sure when she’ll be back in Bari.”

There was another hesitation, and then Fornelli went on.

“To tell you the truth, Signora Ferraro thought the girl seemed uncomfortable. That she wasn’t particularly happy about the phone call, and even less interested in the idea of talking to you. Talking to a lawyer, in other words.”

“Can you get her phone number?”

“Sure. Anyway, all the others said they would be willing to come talk to you in your office. Even today, if you have time.”

I told him to hold on for a second, took a quick look at the appointment book I carried in my briefcase, and saw that I had only a couple of meetings scheduled in the early part of the afternoon.

“Okay. There are three of them, so let’s ask them to come in one after the other, an hour apart. Let’s say at six, seven, and eight o’clock. That way I’ll have all the time I need to talk with each of them. Could you call them and schedule the meetings?”

“Of course, I’ll take care of it. Unless you hear back from me within an hour or so, assume it’s all confirmed.”

The first one to show up, a few minutes past six, was Anita Salvemini.

She was a short, stocky young woman, dressed in cargo pants and a brown leather jacket. She had a face that was chubby but determined; when we shook hands, she had the grip of a man. All told, she struck me as trustworthy.

“Let me start by thanking you for agreeing to come in. I believe that Signora Ferraro already explained why I wanted to talk with you.”

“Yes, she told me that you’re doing some kind of investigation into Manuela’s disappearance.”

Before I could catch myself, a sensation of intensely pure and completely idiotic vanity swept through me. If I was doing “some kind of investigation,” then you might say I was some kind of investigator.

Or perhaps—I thought, as I regained control—it might be more accurate to say I was some kind of asshole.

“Let’s just say that we’re going over the documents from the investigation that the Carabinieri did to see whether, perhaps, they might have missed some minor detail that might suggest a new theory about what happened to Manuela.”

“You’re a lawyer, though, right?”

“Yes, I’m a lawyer.”

“I didn’t think that lawyers did … well, that lawyers did that kind of thing. Like a private investigator, right?”

“Yes and no. It depends on the circumstances. What are you studying, Anita?”

“I’m about to graduate with a degree in communications.”

“Ah. Are you planning to be a journalist?”

“No, I’d like to open a bookstore, though it’s a tough business. I think I’ll get a master’s degree, and then I’ll work in a bookstore chain for a few years. Maybe somewhere outside of Italy. Someplace like Barnes & Noble, or Borders.”

There’s no faster way to win me over than to say you want to be a bookseller. When I was a boy, I sometimes thought I’d like to run a bookstore. It was mainly because I had a romantic and completely unrealistic idea of what that job entailed; in my vision, it would consist mostly of spending my days reading any book I wanted for free. Oh, from time to time, I’d have to stop reading to wait on someone, but customers wouldn’t hang around, probably because they wouldn’t want to interrupt me. I figured that if I were a bookseller, or perhaps a librarian, I would have lots of time to write my novels, especially on long spring afternoons, when the sun’s rays would slant in low through the shop
windows—something along the line of City Lights Books—landing on the tables, the bookshelves, and, of course, the books.

“Good idea. When I was a kid, I thought it would be nice to run a bookstore. To get back to your question: You’re right, as a rule investigations are done for the defense by private detectives, but in this specific case, Manuela’s family wanted a lawyer to do it—someone with expertise in the judicial process.”

I spoke as if this were something I did all the time. She nodded her head, and her expression suggested she was happy with the answer I’d given her. To be exact: happy that she’d asked the question and happy with the way I’d answered her, treating her respectfully. I thought this was a good starting point, and decided to ask her to tell me her story.

“All right, let me start by asking you to tell me what you remember about that Sunday afternoon.”

“I told the Carabinieri everything I remember.”

“No, sorry. Don’t think about what you told the Carabinieri. In fact, I’d like you to try to forget everything you said in the Carabinieri station, when and how the interview was conducted—everything. As far as you are able, I’d like you to tell me what happened as if it were the first time, thinking visually if you can. Which is to say: tell me about going to the
trulli
, why you went, who you knew there. Whatever pops into your head. Just let go of the story you told the Carabinieri.”

I wasn’t doing some cop act. I’d studied these techniques while preparing to do crucial questioning in the courtroom during a trial.

Once we’ve told a story about something that happened—especially
if we have told that story in a formal context, before a judge or to a detective, with a written, signed statement—and we are asked to tell it again, we tend to reiterate the first narrative rather than evoking direct memories of the actual experience. This mechanism only becomes more firmly cemented with each successive repetition and, in the end, what happens is that we no longer remember the actual events, but instead our account of the events. Naturally, this mechanism makes it increasingly difficult to recover details that we overlooked the first time. Details that may seem insignificant, but can prove to be crucial. In order to succeed in recovering these details, it is necessary to release the person being questioned from the memory of the earlier account, to bring the person back to the actual memory of the events experienced. But of course that doesn’t always work.

I didn’t go into this whole explanation with Anita, but she seemed to understand that there was a certain logic behind my request. So she sat in silence for a few moments, as if she were concentrating before doing what I’d asked. Then she began.

“I didn’t know Manuela, that is, I only met her that weekend at the
trulli.
”

“Had you been to the
trulli
before?”

“Yeah, lots of times. It’s an odd place. All sorts of people wind up there. Maybe you’ve been there, at some point.”

I told her that I’d never been, and she explained to me that it was a large compound of
trulli
that a group of friends rents and where lots of people come out to spend time, all summer long. There was enough room, if everyone squeezed in, for maybe thirty people to sleep there. There were parties and all kinds of happenings every night. It was a sort of
commune for well-to-do young people, generally left-wing young people, on the radical-chic side of things.

“That Sunday afternoon, I had to go to Ostuni to meet a girlfriend and Manuela asked if I’d give her a ride. She had to get back to Bari and the people she’d come with wanted to stay at the
trulli
that night.”

“Do you remember who came with Manuela?”