Caterina left, and for the next hour I was caught up in meetings with Maria Teresa, Consuelo, and Pasquale, who came in one after another to present a variety of papers to sign or examine. Notifications of fees to be sent to the bar association, summonses and complaints served by courts all over the region of Puglia, the schedule for the following day, briefs for appeals drawn up by Consuelo and Maria Teresa, who were still learning the trade and, eager apprentices that they were, had successfully conveyed to me their intense anxiety.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. Pleading union rules, I told them it was long past normal quitting time. I insisted they go home, or go to see their sweethearts, or go wherever they felt like going. The important thing was that they go, and go immediately.
When I was alone at last, I tried to think through the events of that afternoon, from my meeting with Anita and the phone call from that asshole Schirani, up to my long conversation with Caterina.
Fifteen minutes of musing produced nothing, so I picked up a fat, brand-new legal pad and began jotting down on its blank pages everything that had emerged from my two meetings, as if I were writing a report for someone who hadn’t been present. When I was done, I circled a few words in red ink and drew a double circle around the name Cantalupi every time it appeared in my notes, as if those red circles could make the answers emerge, or perhaps at least conjure some reasonable questions.
The only real working hypothesis-feeble though it was-involved Manuela’s ex-boyfriend and the question of his use-and possible dealing-of narcotics.
I tried Googling Cantalupi’s name, but I came up with nothing. Just to give it a shot, I Googled Manuela’s name, too. There were a few hits, but none of the Manuela Ferraros were my Manuela Ferraro.
On my legal pad I wrote the following phrase: investigate the world of drug dealing, followed by a handsome question mark. I circled that note in red. I felt like an idiot. But then, immediately afterward, I did have an idea.
I rarely have clients from the world of organized crime, so I don’t have much call to defend drug dealers. The few that I happen to take on as clients are generally lone operators, like the young man for whom I had gone to Rome a few days earlier to argue, unsuccessfully, the Court of Cassation appeal.
Among these clients, however, there was one-Damiano Quintavalle-who had continued to operate for years now because, even after he was caught, he always managed to emerge more or less unscathed. He was a smart young man, even likable, and most importantly for my purposes, he seemed to know a lot of people, in every walk of life, all over the city.
He was the only person I could reasonably contact to ask for help in discovering whether, and in what way, Michele Cantalupi was involved with the world of drug dealing or with illegal activities of any sort. I decided I’d give him a call the next day and have a chat. I was feeling my way in the dark, I told myself, but it was better than doing nothing.
As I was deciding to call Quintavalle the following day, I found myself thinking about Caterina. I thought of her in a manner that was inappropriate, in view of the fact that-as I told myself over and over again with a certain masochistic emphasis-I could have been her father, or at least a youngish uncle of hers.
Cut it out, Guerrieri. Get a grip: She’s a schoolgirl. Ten years ago, she was thirteen years old, and you were already a grown-a fully grown-man. Fifteen years ago she was eight, and even then you were already a fully grown man. Twenty-two years ago she was just one year old and you’d just graduated from university. Twenty-four years ago you and your girlfriend Rossana spent nearly a month of horrible apprehension, thinking that you’d slipped up and were about to become twenty-year-old parents. That turned out to be a false alarm, but if it hadn’t, you’d now have a son-or a daughter-Caterina’s age.
At that point, I was caught in a maddening cycle. Since I couldn’t go back in time twenty-four years, I decided the thing to do was to shift my point of view. I tried to remember how long it had been since I’d been with a girl that age.
The episode I managed to dredge up from my memory proved somewhat confusing. The last twenty-three-year-old with whom I’d had a fleeting and illicit sexual experience, over ten years earlier, was not exactly an inexperienced young girl. Quite the opposite. In fact, I realized as my recollections acquired greater-and increasingly unprintable-clarity, she showed a noteworthy willingness to push the envelope of conventional morality. In fact, she had been quite capable of providing me with instruction in a number of new forms of sexual experimentation.
I asked myself which category of twenty-three-year-olds Caterina was likely to belong to, and I imagined the answer. Now my thoughts were veering in a decidedly dangerous direction.
Time to get something to eat-I told myself-time to let those thoughts evaporate.