The next day, I asked Maria Teresa to step into my office. I still relied on her for anything having to do with clients and files that had been archived prior to Pasquale’s arrival. She knew exactly and immediately how to find things and she remembered every file that had come through the office.
“Do you remember Quintavalle? He was a member of that little group…”
“Of course I remember him. I’m never happy when we take on drug dealers as clients, but at least he was a well-mannered and likable young man.”
“That’s right, he was likable. We haven’t heard from him in years now.”
“Either they never caught him again or he’s stopped dealing, which would make me very happy.”
“Or else he has a new lawyer.”
“Impossible. You literally saved his life that time. Winning a plea bargain with the evidence they had against him…”
“Do you remember who the prosecutor was?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then you have to admit it wasn’t all that amazing an achievement. He’d sell his parents into slavery if it would clear a case off his desk. Anyway, do we have Quintavalle’s phone number lying around somewhere? I need to talk to him.”
“It’s definitely in his file, unless he has a new number.” Maria Teresa is perfectly aware of how drug dealers operate. They frequently change their cell phones and SIM cards to elude police monitoring, so their phone numbers tend to be somewhat unstable. That, however, applies to their work phones. Their personal phones tend to have a longer half-life.
I asked her to take a look in the file, and five minutes later there was a piece of paper with his phone number on my desk.
Quintavalle answered on the second ring.
“ Buon giorno, this is Guido Guerrieri, I’d like-”
“Counselor Guerrieri, buon giorno! What a pleasure. What an honor. To what do I owe the pleasure? I didn’t forget to pay last time, did I?”
“Damiano, how are you?”
“Doing fine, Counselor. And you?”
I hate it when people say they’re doing fine, but from Quintavalle it didn’t bother me particularly.
“Doing fine myself, thanks. I need to ask you something, but I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Would you mind terribly dropping by my office?”
“Of course, it’s no problem at all. When would you like me to drop by?”
“If you could come by today, you’d be doing me a favor.”
“How about seven o’clock?”
“A little later would be better, that way I’ll be done with my appointments and we can talk without being interrupted.”
“Okay, I’ll see you at eight.”
“Thanks. And… Damiano?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve moved. We’re not at the old address anymore.”
“I know, I know. I’ll see you there at eight o’clock.”
When I talk with someone like Damiano Quintavalle-a professional criminal, who makes a living from his illicit activities-I’m even more doubtful than usual of my ability to decipher the world and distinguish between so-called good and so-called evil.
In the first place, Quintavalle is an intelligent young man. He comes from a normal family. He attended college, though he never got a degree. He reads the newspaper and occasionally reads books. Also, as Maria Teresa said, he’s nice. Funny, without being vulgar. Well-mannered. Courteous.
But he earns his living by dealing coke.
He’s one of those dealers who operate on their own or with a very small group; they tend to make house calls, like the client whose case I had appealed to the Court of Cassation, unsuccessfully, the week before. Quintavalle gets a call, for instance, about a special party. He shows up at the party as an invited guest, then he fills the order, gets his money (with a substantial bonus for home delivery), and leaves. Or else he travels around Italy making deliveries to wealthy purchasers who are reluctant to dirty their hands by having contact with ordinary drug dealers.
The police and prosecutors have gone after him repeatedly, but he is fanatically cautious, he’s very careful about his cell phones, and he’s only been caught with drugs in his possession once. The quantity was small, so he got off with a few weeks in jail and a highly advantageous plea bargain. Quintavalle has a wife who owns and runs a profumeria and a son who’s in middle school. Quintavalle’s son is a great kid; his one shortcoming is that he wants to be a lawyer when he grows up. He thinks his father is a businessman who travels frequently for work. And in a way, he’s right.
Quintavalle walked into the office at eight o’clock on the dot. I jumped up to greet him-I’ll admit that I don’t do this for all my clients-and clasped his hand.
“Counselor, how are you?”
“Fine, and you?”
“Pretty good, though these aren’t easy times.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I sense a threat, an imminent danger.” That’s exactly what he said: “an imminent danger.” It’s not the sort of expression commonly used by a professional drug dealer.
“As if something terrible might happen any day now. That they might arrest me with ironclad evidence of everything I’ve done over the years. Or-much more likely-one of the thugs who run the city now might come to tell me that I can’t work independently anymore, that I have to work for him.”
“What thugs?”
“That’s right, you don’t take on cases involving organized crime, so you might not know about it, but things are grim here in town. There are new gangs in the city, and they want to take charge of everything. They’ve formed an alliance to monopolize all the neighborhoods, and in particular they want to control extortion, loan sharking, and, of course, drug dealing. If someone really does come around and tell me that I have to work for them, well, that would be the time that I finally quit this racket and find an honest job.”
“That wouldn’t be the end of the world, you know. Maybe there’s nothing happening. Maybe it’s just your subconscious telling you that it’s time to quit dealing.”
“Right. My wife tells me more or less the same thing. The problem is that with a normal job, you just don’t make the kind of money I’ve gotten used to.”
“You have the shop. You wouldn’t starve to death. And your son is growing up.”
“Right, maybe that’s the real reason. I’m not afraid of prison, but I couldn’t stand it if my son found out how I make a living. Anyway, I doubt that you asked me to come in so we could chat about my future. What can I do for you?”
“To tell the truth, I’m not even sure what it is that I need. I don’t quite know where to start.”
“Try starting from the beginning.”
It was good advice. I did as he suggested and told him the whole story. I told him that I was trying to figure out what had happened to Manuela-he’d never heard of her-and that the only lead I had involved Michele Cantalupi, who was a regular and fairly heavy user of cocaine. That was why I had called him and wanted his help. Did he know Cantalupi, had he ever had him as a customer, and in general had he ever heard of him in his dealings?
“Michele Cantalupi?”
“Yes. I don’t know if this is helpful, but they tell me he’s good-looking.”
“Michele. It sounds familiar, but after all, it’s not an unusual name. Do you have a picture of him?”
“No, I don’t. I can try to get my hands on one. But never mind the photograph. There’s something I want you to tell me. If this guy was dealing to people in the upper echelons of society, would you know him?”
“Not necessarily. Of course, I know lots of people in town, but Bari is a big city and there are a lot more people consuming-and therefore selling-cocaine than you might imagine. There are times when I deliver fifty grams of cocaine to a party, and then find out they used it all up. That night, at the party.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about how the system works?”
“No, of course not. You’re my lawyer, and anyway, it’s for something important. Ask me anything you like.”
“Say a young man goes to these kinds of parties. How would he evolve from a mere user to a…”
I realized that for some reason I was embarrassed to use the term “drug dealer,” as if I might offend Quintavalle, who was in fact in that line of work, by using a slightly distasteful phrase. He noticed my discomfort.
“A drug dealer. Really, Counselor, don’t worry about it, I’m not offended. It’s a fairly typical process. Let’s imagine that there’s a group of people who want to buy a certain quantity of drugs, to divide up, or even to use all together, as friends. They take up a collection and then one of them goes and meets with the dealer. By the way, the Italian Court of Cassation has ruled that the purchase of drugs for group personal consumption is not a crime under the law and… well, I guess I don’t have to tell you that. In other words, this one guy is making the buy for his little group of friends and at a certain point it occurs to him that he could make a little profit on the arrangement. So he starts to buy the drugs on his own and sells them just to his friends at a mark-up. Then word starts getting around: This guy can get drugs in a hurry. If you need some coke, he’s the guy to call. He gradually builds up a network of customers, he gets to know more and more suppliers, maybe he goes out of town to buy the product because it’s better or cheaper somewhere else, and anyway, out of town is always better, and that’s how someone turns into a drug dealer.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“More or less. There were some other things going on, but they’re probably of no interest to you.”
I nodded and did my best to put on a knowledgeable expression. I was trying not to look baffled, but after that conversation I knew nothing more than I had before. For a few seconds I felt-with excruciating intensity-like a perfect and inexcusable fake. Then the sensation ebbed, leaving me with nothing more than an underlying wave of nausea, faint but inexorable.
“Okay, Damiano, thanks. I’ll try to get my hands on a photograph of this guy, and when I do I’ll give you a call.”
“Okay, in the meantime I’ll see what I can remember, and I’ll ask around a little bit.”
“Don’t put yourself in any danger, please.”
Quintavalle gave me a smile, stood up, and said good-bye.
The smile meant that he appreciated my concern, but that it was entirely superfluous. For many years, he’d made it his business and his way of life to stay out of the line of fire.