The Colombian Mule (16 page)

Giaroli's Renault slowly reversed back down the side road. Once again, they obviously knew where the coke was headed from here. All they were doing at this stage was keeping an eye on the situation and gathering some trial evidence.

The man came back out of the farmhouse, wearing a tracksuit and a pair of sandals. He was carrying a bowl full of food which he put down for the dog. This was his home all right. I took a better look at the buildings. There were signs of recent and costly remodelling. Tuscan terracotta tiles had been used to repave the portico, and the steps had been resurfaced with Verona marble. On the salaries that a school janitor and a Finanza marshal earned, they could never have afforded such luxury.

I recontacted my colleagues and gave them a description of the marshal's car, promising to call them again the moment he made a move. I checked the Calvados bottle, counted my cigarettes, and hoped something would happen before too long.

 

The marshal stepped out of the house at four o'clock. He had swapped his sandals for a pair of trainers and was now wearing a brightly colored down jacket over his tracksuit. He placed the canvas bag in the trunk of the car and drove away, giving a neighbor a big, friendly wave as he sailed past.

The marshal was feeling confident. Nobody was going to pull him over and search his car. If he came to a roadblock, he would just flash his badge. Of course, had he known his colleagues were polishing a nice pair of made-to-measure handcuffs for him, he would have been less chirpy. But for now he had no reason to feel under any threat. He was committing the classic mistake all cops make when they turn to crime: they think they're untouchable, and so start making a whole series of blunders that in the end give them away.

Bent cops are tolerated by their peers, just as long as they don't get sloppy, and, above all, provided they never forget they're in uniform.

‘He's moving. Heading for Udine,' I told Max.

‘Okay. Slip out the back. We'll pick you up on the corner of the road that runs parallel.'

Rossini stopped the car just long enough for me to clamber aboard. ‘Let's just hope we don't lose him,' he grumbled.

We caught up with the marshal's Seat a few kilometers further on, near the turning for Pagnacco. He was driving carefully, staying within the speed limit. After Udine, he followed the main road for Gorizia, turning off at San Giovanni al Natisone. As he passed a filling station, the cops' Fiat Ducato suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started following him. The marshal drove on until Corno di Rosazzo, a little village close to the Slovenian border, famous for its excellent wines. He continued through the village center and then swung through a gate and into the grounds of a small villa surrounded by vineyards. The van drove further up the hill before turning into the drive of a farmhouse.

Rossini smoothed his moustache. ‘That's their monitoring base. This operation must have been going on a while. The marshal is in tight with a sizeable outfit, otherwise his colleagues would already have arrested him.'

 

Night fell very suddenly and we needed to get closer to the villa. I had an idea. ‘We could try going through the vineyards.'

Max shook his head. ‘The cops would pick us up with their infra-red binoculars.'

Rossini pointed to wood of beech trees just outside the cops' line of vision. ‘From those trees we'll be able to keep an eye on the gate and the front door.'

We were forced to make a long detour through the fields but it was worth it. Old Rossini had calculated right. It was a safe position with an excellent view. We began to spy on the villa using our binoculars and videocamera. Two Alsatian dogs were roaming around the garden, without ever attempting to go out of the gate: this meant they were trained and dangerous. The landlord clearly didn't like intruders.

In the distance, we saw the headlights of a car approaching. A black BMW with Croatian plates pulled up alongside the marshal's red Seat. Three men got out. The front door of the villa opened and a man strode towards them, whistling at the dogs, calling them to heel. The four men greeted one another and remained in the light of the porch just long enough for us to get a good look at their faces.

‘They look like old acquaintances,' Rossini commented.

‘I recognize three of them,' I said. ‘Apart from Bruno Celegato, I can make out Ennio Silvestrin and Alcide Boscaro. Veterans of the old Brenta Mafia. Even back then, they were involved in drugs. But I don't know who the other guy is, the one dressed like a ladies' man.'

Rossini cackled, apparently pretty pleased with himself.

‘Gentlemen, let me present Vlatko Kupreskic, the Croatian chemist. He's freelance, works for whoever pays best. He has refined heroin for Russians, Chechens, Calabresi . . .'

The door closed and the men disappeared from view. I lowered my binoculars. ‘What the fuck is a chemist doing in a coke trafficking ring?'

Max lit a cigarette. ‘I'll tell you exactly what he's doing. What we're looking at is a drugs factory. In that villa they're manufacturing ecstasy, or rather super-ecstasy: sulphur, cocaine, amphetamine and caffeine. A bomb of a psycho-stimulant. And a kilo of coke is enough to make quite a few tabs of that stuff.'

‘It's the latest thing,' Beniamino added, ‘with a market price of fifty thousand lire a tab.'

Max pointed at the farmhouse where the cops were camped out. ‘The way they're going about things, it looks to me like they're intending to blow the whole organization apart.'

‘Fine,' I said sourly. ‘The problem is, what the hell do we do now?'

 

We drove back to Udine and picked up my Skoda. Then we headed for Jesolo. Rossini and Max were in Rossini's car a couple of kilometers ahead of me. Max had his cell phone at the ready to contact me if there were any police roadblocks, but there weren't.

La Tía was happy to get her hands on the money. She and Aisa were getting ready to go out. ‘You'll excuse us if we don't hang around but I have a meeting with a new client.'

A look of mock disappointment flitted across Rossini's face.

‘Such a pity! We were really hoping to invite you two ladies to dinner and then take you dancing all night.'

Doña Rosa stared at him for a moment, then resumed applying foundation to her face and eyeshadow to her drooping lids.

Outside, I asked Rossini if he had been serious about inviting Aisa and La Tía dancing.

‘Certainly,' he replied. ‘You could have danced the tango with Aisa through until dawn. A real shame.' Then he chuckled long and hard. At Punta Sabbioni, Rossini fetched the rifle from my car and handed it over for safekeeping to a person he trusted. Then he said goodbye to Max and me. ‘I want to spend this evening with Sylvie. I'll see you two tomorrow.'

‘Drop by in the afternoon,' I suggested. ‘Max and I will go and have a chat with Bonotto tomorrow morning. And could you call Mansutti and tell him we need to speak to Corradi tomorrow afternoon?'

 

After a long, scalding hot shower and a quick dinner at Max's, I went downstairs to the club. Rudy greeted me warmly and passed on some amusing gossip while he fixed me an Alligator. On the way to my usual table, I bumped into Virna.

‘Well, well, well. I thought you'd gone for good. Possibly with the dreamboat from your famous investigation,' she said, looking away.

‘Cut it out,' I snapped.

She started absentmindedly wiping the empty tray she was carrying. ‘Next week, I'm taking three days off work. I'm going away with a friend of mine.'

‘Girlfriend or boyfriend?' I asked, regretting the question at once.

She turned towards me with a smile of contempt.

‘Girlfriend.'

‘And what about our weekend together?'

‘Nothing doing, Marco. Right now I don't feel like spending time with you.'

I sat at my table, had a drink, and swallowed my rage. After a couple of minutes Max joined me. He ordered a Jamaican beer. It was a good thing I had more pressing problems to solve.

‘I'm planning to tell it to the lawyer straight,' I said.

‘Bonotto needs to know what's happening. Maybe he can come up with some way of pulling us all out of this mess.'

‘Fine.'

‘And I want to clarify the situation with Corradi, too. He's our client, after all, and we need to know what he thinks.'

‘Fine.'

I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Bullshit, Max. You're not “fine” with it at all, are you?'

‘You're mistaken. It makes absolute sense to explore every possible solution that doesn't require our direct involvement. But I'm afraid it may be a waste of effort. I'm convinced the only course realistically open to us is to engage the cops in direct negotiation. We know enough to blackmail them: either they set Corradi free and clear him of all charges or we screw up their special operation.'

I ran a hand through my hair. One time, while working on a previous case, Max, Rossini and I had ended up with the Brenta Mafia gunning for us and we had only escaped with our lives by blackmailing an investigating magistrate attached to the Venice anti-mafia unit. It was this same method that Max was proposing we use now. On the earlier occasion, we had threatened to screw up their investigation and it had worked. I reached my fingers down into my glass, took hold of the slice of apple soaked in Calvados and Drambuie and popped it into my mouth.

Max placed his hand affectionately on my arm. ‘What's up with you, Marco?'

I decided to be straight with him. ‘What we're up against here are supercops. As far as they're concerned, the law is nothing but a mass of hair-splitting technicalities that prevent them from putting criminals away. So they bend the rules whenever they get the chance—which is all the time. Sure, a negotiation might work. But these guys have long memories and they can fit us up any time they please. One morning you're getting into your car, the cops stop you and, what do you know, they find a kilo of heroin right under your seat. Or they take your name and plant it in the mouth of some supergrass. You know as well as I do how these people settle their scores.'

‘We'll take care they can't identify us.'

‘Use your head, Max. We've been rattling around northeast Italy questioning nightclub hostesses and bouncers and a bunch of other characters not famed for their discretion. “Taking care” isn't going to do it.'

Max gave me a sly smile. ‘We'll find a way of covering our backs.'

‘You've already got a plan, haven't you?'

Max got to his feet. ‘Let's just say I have a couple of ideas. We'll talk them over tomorrow when Rossini gets here.'

I watched him as he made for the door, and when it closed behind him I just sat there staring at it blankly until I heard the voice of Eloisa Deriu launching into ‘Non so se tu', a ballad by Bruno de Filippi, the grand old man of Italian jazz. Sitting at another table, my friend Maurizio Camardi took his soprano sax out of its case, assembled it with a few deft movements and stepped onto the stage to join the other musicians. I downed three Alligators, one after the other, after which I felt a great deal better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following my advice, Renato Bonotto had had an elegant little wicker basket installed on his secretary's desk where clients could leave their cell phones before entering his office for a consultation. He came out to greet us in person. ‘I'm pleased to see you. I went to see Corradi yesterday and the attitude he is taking towards his trial . . .'

I raised a hand to interrupt him. ‘Let's forget for a moment about Nazzareno's attitude. We've uncovered the back story of his arrest.'

Bonotto fell silent, keen to hear what we had to say. I glanced at Max. Reports were his job.

Max stretched his legs and rested his hands on his gut. ‘We are now in a position to make a rough reconstruction of the entire sequence of events. On the twenty-sixth of December, Guillermo Arías Cuevas, a Colombian national, landed at Venice airport with a belly full of cocaine and was immediately stopped on suspicion. He admitted possession, decided to cooperate with the border police, and provided a physical description of his Italian contact. As the police report states, he removed one of his shoes “without any prompting,” and handed the agents a piece of paper bearing the address of the Pensione Zodiaco, a small hotel in Jesolo, where he was supposed to meet the purchaser that afternoon. The police and the Guardia di Finanza quickly set a trap and Bruno Celegato fell right in. On reaching the police station in Jesolo and realizing he was facing a long spell in prison, Celegato, in his turn–following, as it were, the mood of the moment–decided to cooperate with the police investigation. He confessed to belonging to an organization involved in the manufacture and distribution of super-ecstasy. He mentioned that, as well as some former members of the Brenta Mafia, the said organization included a Finanza marshal. It's this snippet of information that must really have given the police something to think about . . .'

‘I can just imagine,' said Bonotto. ‘The chance arrest of a Colombian drugs mule throwing open a hugely important line of enquiry. At that point they would have made a couple of quick phone calls to get authorization to set up a special operation.'

‘While making quite sure they weren't going to get tied up in red tape,' Max added. ‘Their first move was to make Celegato an inside agent so they could follow the movements of the criminal organization and figure out its command structure and personnel. But things weren't that straightforward. The Colombian had been arrested and the investigating magistrate was waiting to hear the outcome of the stakeout at the Pensione Zodiaco. Also, by this time, there were a lot of police and Guardia di Finanza officers in the loop. It was at this point that Celegato himself suggested Corradi be arrested instead of him. The decision to betray his best friend was no accident. Nunziante, the station officer interrogating Celegato, had sworn years previously to take revenge on Corradi for the killing of two patrolmen during a botched raid on a jeweler's shop in Caorle. Your client, as you will recall, was accused, tried and eventually acquitted owing to a shortage of hard evidence. Celegato, however, knew for certain it was Corradi who fired the shots, because Celegato was also involved in the Caorle job. So Celegato serves up Corradi's head on a silver platter, providing Nunziante with a couple of details that never emerged during the enquiry into the deaths of the patrolmen, and that pin down Corradi as the killer. Of course Corradi can't at this point be retried for the Caorle killings but, if they let him take the fall for Celegato, he'll be inside long enough for it to make no difference. So the police and the Guardia di Finanza go to the Pensione Zodiaco a second time, take up position along with the mule in the hotel room, and draw Nazzareno into the trap with a phone call informing him that Victoria, his woman, has been taken ill. As soon as the mule sees Corradi, he yells at him to make a run for it—just as an accomplice would—and this lands Corradi straight in jail.'