The Colombian Mule Read online

  ‘Then it looks like your client’s fucked,’ I remarked.

  ‘If he goes to the preliminary hearing with nothing but what we’ve got right now, then yes, he’s fucked for sure. Nowadays trials in Italy are won or lost at the investigation stage. By the time they go to trial, it’s too late. You’re his only hope of not dying behind bars.’

  ‘I don’t see quite what I’m supposed to do.’

  ‘My client is the fall guy in some kind of conspiracy. We need to find out who set him up and why.’

  ‘Have you any firm leads?’

  ‘Just a feeling. Arías Cuevas was initially arrested by Venice airport cops. But then the special narcotics units of both the police and the Guardia di Finanza suddenly piled in. That’s really unusual for what was, basically, a low-level operation. Added to that, it turns out that the police were acting under the command of Commissario Nunziante, a sworn enemy of my client ever since that jeweler’s store robbery in Caorle.’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘There was some shooting, two cops were killed and Corradi was indicted. At the trial I managed to get him off, pleading insufficient evidence. But Nunziante swore to take revenge.’

  I took a cigarette out and played with it a bit before lighting it. ‘You were right to call it just a feeling. It’s not much to go on. Besides, as the man said, there are too many Colombian coincidences.’

  Bonotto gave me a worried look.

  ‘You’re not telling me you’re refusing the case . . .’

  I raised a hand to interrupt him. ‘I’m just saying that before I accept the job, I want to be convinced your client’s innocent. But not of course at my expense.’

  ‘All right.’ The lawyer took a yellow envelope from his jacket pocket.

  I counted the notes. ‘Fine. Does your client realize that if I take the case, it’ll cost him real money? On top of expenses, I’ll have to take account of the risks involved.’

  Bonotto smiled, got up and began to put on his overcoat.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I don’t come cheap either. But professional criminals like Corradi are prudent men—they have to be. I’m confident the legal fund he has set aside for just such eventualities as these will cover our fees.’

  ‘Whose idea was it to come to me? Yours or your client’s?’

  ‘It was my idea.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Just that he trusted my judgment.’ Bonotto picked up his cell phone from the bar and left.

  Virna came and sat at my table. ‘New job?’ she asked.

  ‘Could be,’ I said. ‘You’re tired,’ I added, looking at her face.

  She smiled. ‘Not too tired to ask you back to my place when the club closes.’

  I smiled back. ‘Okay.’

  ‘So don’t overdo the drink,’ she said, heading back to wait at the tables.

  Virna was my girl. Her real name was Giovanna but, owing to a passing resemblance to Virna Lisi in a famous toothpaste ad, everybody called her Virna. She was forty and had the charged expression and abrupt manner of someone whose life had not been easy. I liked her a lot. She loved me. All in all, we got along fine, even if she was a little too keen to organize my life and stop me drinking.

  I got to know her when she first came to work at the club as a waitress. Like everybody else, she thought the joint belonged to Rudy Scanferla, the barman, whereas in fact it was mine. Rudy had kindly agreed to manage it for the sake of our long friendship, not to mention the excellent wages I paid him. It was a few kilometers outside Padova in a small town that, like so many others, had sprung up thirty years earlier along the main road and was now basking in north-eastern Italy’s economic miracle.

  The club opened at eight in the evening and closed at four in the morning. Customers called it La Cuccia. It was warm, welcoming and discreet: a good place to sit, drink, chew the fat and hear good music–blues, mainly, my favorite kind of music. Not long ago, a singer, Eloisa Deriu, had turned up with a voice that could range from operatic arias to blues and jazz, and who had so much talent that somehow I never found the courage to tell her that before she came along nothing but blues had ever been heard at La Cuccia. I too had once been a singer, though not in Eloisa’s league. But I had taken to heart the old saying that ‘you can take the blues out of alcohol but you can’t take alcohol out of the blues’ and I would get up on stage with a few drinks inside me, and my voice would ring out as warm and moist as marsh mist. My group was called the Old Red Alligators and we even had a fan club. In fact it was my admirers who gave me the nickname Alligator. Those had been good times. But then I wound up in prison and by the time I got out my voice had dried up. After seven years of silence, all that was left was my nickname and a longing to listen. In prison I had become a skillful peacemaker, moving easily between the various criminal gangs. So when I got out I started working for lawyers who needed an entrée into organized crime to get their clients out of trouble.

  I had two associates. Beniamino Rossini, also known as Old Rossini to distinguish him from his many brothers, was one of the few surviving members of the old-style criminal underworld. His mother, of Basque descent, had been a legendary smuggler and Rossini had started out, no more than a kid, helping her to move contraband goods over the Swiss border. Later he specialized in multi-million dollar robberies. His last big job had gone wrong, and the two of us had met up in prison, where I had had the pleasure of helping him out of a delicate situation involving a group of Neapolitan Camorristi.

  Now Rossini was rich, fiftyish, and lived in a house by the sea at Punta Sabbioni, where he devoted his energies to smuggling goods from nearby Dalmatia: weapons, gold, caviar, girls, and people in trouble with the law. There was nothing that obliged him to help me with my investigations. He did it on account of our friendship and because he liked getting into trouble. He had a gut loathing for the new-style underworld, full of snitches and dope-peddlers, and often the cases that I worked on gave him the opportunity to settle old scores. He lived with Sylvie, a French-Algerian belly dancer. She was a fine-looking woman of about forty, with blue eyes, amber-colored skin, a resolute character, a husky smoker’s voice and a genuine passion for motorbikes.

  My other associate was Max the Memory, or Fat Max. He had recently got out of prison, thanks to a pardon from the Italian President. The clemency motion had actually been the result of an agreement negotiated with an anti-mafia judge whom I had had no hesitation in blackmailing. Max had been avoiding the police for a long time, owing to a matter that dated back to the Seventies. At that time, he had been in charge of counterinformation for a Far Left group and had run a whole network of informants who spied on everything and everybody.

  Then, in the Eighties, several turncoats had accused him of passing information to groups engaged in armed struggle and he had been forced underground. Everyone just assumed he was in France, but in fact he hadn’t left the city. Holed up in safe houses, rarely venturing out, he just went on gathering information. I used him as an analyst in a couple of investigations I was working on at that time, and his assistance proved absolutely decisive. To get in touch with him, you had to go through his woman, Marielita, a Uruguayan street musician. As it turned out, she died in my arms, killed by a hit man acting on orders from the local Brenta Mafia. Old Rossini had then gone in and restored a modicum of balance. After he got his pardon, Max moved into one of the two flats I’d had built above the club.

  I looked up at the ceiling and pictured Max sitting at his desk, busily entering data in his computer or surfing the net. Later, as always, he would come down for a drink. Like everyone else, he had his vices. His fingers were yellow with nicotine and he had a hefty beer gut. Come to think of it, the only one of us in good shape was Old Rossini, with his trim and taut physique. That was the way it should be: it was his job to show some muscle. The only thing that rang a bit false was his old-fashioned moustache à
la Xavier Cugat which, like the few remaining hairs on his head, had clearly been dyed.

  I popped behind the counter, picked up a clean cell phone and left the club.

  ‘Ciao, Marco,’ Rossini replied at once.

  ‘Are you busy?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve got to pick up Sylvie from the nightclub at three.’

  I looked at my watch. It was 10:30. ‘How soon can you get here?’

  ‘About an hour.’

  ‘I’ll wait for you at Max’s.’

  While Max the Memory had been in prison, I had stocked his flat with anonymous furniture bought from a local manufacturer during one of their periodic clearance sales. With his shrewd eye for pictures, carpets and lamps, Max had somehow managed to make the place warm and comfortable. Every time I walked in I couldn’t help being reminded that the only personal touch in my flat was my record collection.

  I found Max in his study. The walls were completely covered with reproductions of pictures by Edward Hopper, Max’s favorite artist. As a Christmas present, I had given him a copy of ‘Nighthawks’ produced by an eminent forger and I was pleased to see that Max had given it pride of place on the wall opposite his best armchair. Rising from the club below, Eloisa Deriu’s voice filled the whole room with ‘Just to Sing’. Max’s fingers rattled over the computer keyboard. Glancing at the screen, I recognized the face of a well-known Venetian banker.

  ‘I was going to come down in half an hour or so,’ Max said, without glancing up.

  ‘Maybe we’ve got a case,’ I said. ‘Rossini’s on his way over.’ This time Max looked at me. ‘What does maybe mean?’

  ‘Just that for the time being we get paid to decide whether we like the look of it or not.’

  Max snorted. ‘Come on, give me a clue. Rape, drugs, child abuse . . . ?’

  ‘Cocaine. But the guy accused may well be innocent.’ I drew up a chair and helped myself to one of his untipped cigarettes. I pointed at the face on the screen. ‘Why are you interested in him?’

  ‘I received a tip-off. It seems that people have been going along to his bank to borrow money and he’s been feeding them to the loan-sharks.’

  ‘Nice people,’ I commented. ‘Have you got anything for me to drink?’

  He waved at a drinks cabinet, where I found some Calvados. Max was drinking Jamaican beer. I drank and smoked in silence, observing Max as he worked at the computer.

  Old Rossini arrived punctually, looking as elegant as ever. Under his camel-colored overcoat he was wearing one of his pin-striped gangster suits. He freed his wrists, setting the gold bracelets on his left wrist all a-jangle. They were his scalps, each one the souvenir of a score settled with a firearm. He was very proud of them.

  He placed on the table a packet of Marlboro and the kind of gold cigarette lighter that was fashionable back in the Seventies, when Milan was run by syndicates from Marseilles.

  ‘What kind of mess are you getting us into this time?’ he asked, with an inquisitive smile.

  ‘Does the name Nazzareno Corradi mean anything to you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve heard of him all right. As far as I’m aware, he’s on the level.’

  ‘He was arrested in a hotel in Jesolo on the twenty-sixth of December. He claims he went there to fetch his Colombian girlfriend who had been taken sick. But when he got to the room, instead of his girlfriend, a Colombian drug courier with eight-hundred grams of coke in his belly opened the door. And surrounding him, the drug squads from both the regular police and the Finanza.’

  Old Rossini poured himself a drink. ‘The twenty-sixth of December? At least he managed to miss the millennium party nightmare . . .’

  I signaled to Rossini to shut up, and then recounted my conversation with Bonotto and our agreement.

  ‘You did the right thing,’ Rossini said. ‘The way I see it, there are far too many Colombian coincidences. In any case, it’s best to check things out. People change and Corradi may have degenerated.’

  Max scratched at the stubbly beard under his chin. ‘Yeah, I agree. But the lawyer has a point. For such a minor arrest, it was one hell of a police operation. They even went to the trouble of taking the mule along with them to the hotel, just to make the trap seem more convincing. And the timing is all wrong. Arías Cuevas was arrested at five in the afternoon but Corradi didn’t knock on his door till three in the morning. What I’d like to know is what happened in those ten hours. Maybe Corradi was put in the frame because somebody figured his links with Colombia would help make the accusation stick.’

  I got up and stretched my legs. ‘You’re right. The whole thing reeks of special operations. But that’s still outweighed by Corradi’s known links with Colombia and the easy money to be made from coke trafficking.’

  ‘What are you thinking of doing?’ Old Rossini asked.

  ‘I thought I’d have a word with Corradi’s Colombian girlfriend and then the hotel staff. But the main thing is to set up a direct line to Corradi. I want to hear the story the way he tells it, without Bonotto’s spin.’

  Max uncapped another beer. ‘A direct line? What do you mean? A cell phone or a bent cop?’

  ‘A cop.’

  Rossini snapped his fingers. ‘I know a corporal in the prison police who’s just the man.’

  Nazzareno Corradi lived on the edge of Ormelle, a small village not far from Treviso. The house, awkward-looking and pretentious in its architecture and color-scheme, seemed just like what it was—the home of a nouveau-riche gangster. It was strategically isolated, ringed by a thick boxwood hedge, and guarded by a pair of rottweilers. Rossini and I looked it over for a moment or two. Then we got out of the car. Max had stayed at home. He wasn’t one for wearing out shoe leather.

  Corradi’s girlfriend opened the door. Victoria Rodriguez Gomez was a beautiful, dark-haired young woman, who must have been in her early twenties. She had a perfectly formed oval face, full lips, skin with a dash of Colombian coffee to it, and a whole lot of curves. Corradi could be forgiven for losing his head over her.

  Old Rossini took hold of her hand and grazed it lightly with his lips. I tried to be more professional, confining myself to a simple greeting. ‘We’re working for Nazzareno’s lawyer,’ I explained. ‘We’d like to have a word with you about what’s happened.’

  ‘I was expecting you.’ Victoria beckoned us to follow her and led us into an expensively and sumptuously furnished lounge. There were silver-framed photos of the joyous couple all over the place. ‘I’d like to thank you for what you are doing for my man,’ she said, with a display of emotion.

  ‘He pays us, end of story,’ Rossini said icily. It was time to stop drooling over her beauty.

  ‘Does Nazzareno peddle coke?’ I asked.

  ‘No, he doesn’t.’

  ‘What about you?’ Rossini insisted.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘You’re Colombian, right? From Bogotá. The mule is Colom­bian. From Bogotá. And Nazzareno has been on several trips to Colombia. To Bogotá.’

  Victoria picked up one of several framed photos from a small table and clasped it to her breast. It portrayed Corradi and Victoria standing on either side of a man who was embracing them affectionately. ‘Nazzareno came back home with me one time to meet my family,’ Victoria stated calmly and firmly, in almost flawless Italian. ‘Look. I know that before you agree to take the case you want to be absolutely certain Nazzareno isn’t a trafficker, and that’s as it should be. But if you’re asking me why he of all people was lured into a trap, I just don’t know.’

  I was thirsty. I looked around, but all I could see on the drinks table were bottles of amaretto and grappa. I was going to have to wait a while before any Calvados came my way.

  ‘This story about a trap . . . you know what doesn’t add up?’ I asked, looking squarely at Victoria. ‘The fact that everything hung on Nazzareno not reaching you on your c
ell phone. He claims he received a call informing him you had been taken ill in a hotel room in Jesolo. And he also claims he tried to ring you, but you were unobtainable because you’d gone to meet your girlfriends in a lap-dance joint where there was no signal. But the cops couldn’t have known that, and leaving things to chance is not the way they work. Do you see what I’m getting at? Nazzareno’s story just doesn’t stand up.’

  Victoria looked me straight in the eye. ‘But it’s the truth . . . I often go there. Everyone knows that. Maybe the cops had us under surveillance.’

  Rossini and I exchanged glances. The interview was over.

  ‘Excuse our blunt manners,’ I said, getting up, ‘but this case is a tangled mess, your man is in big trouble, and we have to be sure we’re working for the right client.’

  Victoria walked us to the door. She was still clasping the photo of Corradi. ‘Nazzareno took me out of the lap-dance joint,’ she began. ‘Before I met him, I used to work all night and sleep during the day. I was terrified that that was how I’d end my life. I owe him everything. There is no way I would ever have introduced him to the narcos.’ She closed the door.

  ‘She didn’t say she loved him though,’ I remarked.

  ‘You’re expecting too much,’ Old Rossini said. ‘Let’s face it, they’ve both gained a lot from the relationship. Corradi would never have got to screw a bombshell like that free of charge.’

  ‘Do you reckon she’s telling the truth?’

  ‘It’s too soon to say. What about you?’

  ‘She seems sincere all right. All the same, this evening I think I’ll go and have a chat with her old colleagues at the lap-dance joint in Eraclea.’

  We had lunch at a restaurant in Jesolo, not far from the Pensione Zodiaco. This was Rossini’s home turf and we were treated like VIPs. I made do with a few forkfuls of risotto alla pescatora, but Rossini got stuck into a whole variety of different antipasti. When we had finished eating, we invited the restaurateur over to our table for a coffee.