The Colombian Mule (8 page)

Bonotto said nothing for a couple of minutes. Then he suddenly thumped the table. ‘I can't make any damn sense of all the comings and goings of the investigators at the hotel. I have to tell you, Buratti, this case has got me really worried. I've always steered clear of defending drug dealers and as a result have no experience in this kind of trial. Any mistake I make could ruin Corradi's chances.'

I shrugged. It was time for some plain speaking. ‘Venice Police headquarters have received hard information to the effect that your client did in fact kill the two cops outside the jeweler's shop in Caorle. This is the real nub of it. If Corradi goes to trial on these trafficking charges, you can bet your life that some high-ranking official or other will slip the court judges the information on the killing just before they retire to consider their verdict, and Corradi will get the maximum sentence. The only way we can save him is if we turn up some really incontrovertible evidence of his innocence, leaving the judge no choice but to release him. In Italy, as you said yourself, trials are won or lost at the investigation stage. After that, it's too late.'

Bonotto looked troubled. He removed his glasses and cleaned them with a white handkerchief. ‘I was so sure he was innocent. I defended him with passion . . .'

‘It was my duty to inform you, Avvocato. Does it change anything, now that you know?'

‘No, it doesn't. The evidence brought against him was entirely circumstantial. Besides, as a lawyer, it's my job to defend my client to the best of my ability.'

‘Will you still defend him with the same passion as before?'

Bonotto sighed. ‘Yes, I will. I'd much rather he wasn't guilty of a double murder. Those men had families. And besides, Corradi lied to me. He swore on the heads of his dead parents that he was innocent.'

‘That was another bad mistake. One should never lie to one's own defense lawyer. Listen. If you don't feel up to defending him, drop the case.'

‘I can't do that. I'll defend him. But it's the last time.'

I got up and shook his hand.

 

That evening we began to scour the nightclubs, lap-dance joints, discotheques, cafés, and bars of every description in and around Venice. We very quickly realized we were hunting for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

Whereas heroin was now the drug of the most desperate, marginalized section of society, most users of cocaine and ecstasy-like synthetic substances were pretty ordinary people leading pretty ordinary lives, and their use of drugs was essentially recreational. Coke in particular had become really popular. The world was full of fine upstanding people who somehow felt the need to get out of their heads at weekends. Dealers had no trouble at all selling coke because buyers were prepared to go out of their way to get hold of it.

It was an amazing money-spinner, expanding day by day. We came across business people, sales assistants, young factory workers, all with their pockets stuffed with cash, purchasing coke from big-mouthed wealthy dealers. We recognized quite a few of them from prison and got talking. They told us how things had changed with the arrival of the new foreign-based mafias. The entire market was spiralling out of control. Russians, Nigerians, Croats, the Neapolitan Camorra, the Sicilian Mafia: they had all carved out a slice of the action. And there were the independents, springing up like mushrooms from nowhere at all. Nobody was chasing them any longer. It wasn't like the days when the local Brenta Mafia ran things.

Antonio Soldan, nicknamed Zanza, a former con-artist who had thrown everything he had into coke dealing, was in the mood to talk. ‘Right now . . . say your company's in a spot of trouble, or you fancy opening a shop, or there's something you're hankering after, like you want to treat yourself to a boat, or something . . . you take a trip to Bolivia or Colombia, buy some coke, put it in a condom, stick it up your lady's fanny, and you're away.'

Like everyone else, Soldan had no idea who Arías Cuevas' buyer could have been. ‘It's almost certainly an independent operator or even some completely new channel. The way things are now, it's anybody's guess.'

In a salsa and merengue dance-club, we bumped into Victoria, Corradi's woman. She was with three Colombian hostesses who had a night off and were out to have a good time. We joined them at their table. Victoria was feeling sorry for herself and had had a glass too many. ‘They didn't let me see Nazzareno. They said he was in solitary.'

I laid my hand on her arm. ‘In a couple of days, you'll be able to go and visit him, you'll see. Just this morning, his lawyer went along to the prison to have a word with the governor.'

Victoria's lips curled. ‘That lawyer! He isn't doing anything for Nazzareno. All he knows how to do is ask for money.'

Until he overheard this remark, Rossini had been talking and joking with the other girls, but he now weighed in hard.

‘Go home and go to bed. You're beginning to talk crap. It sure as hell wasn't his lawyer that put your man behind bars.'

I looked at Rossini. ‘Leave her alone.'

‘Look. This lady's man is in prison. She's got to learn how to behave. If she carries on like this, sooner or later it'll affect Nazzareno.'

I let it go. Rossini was a gangster of the old school. He took the view that the need to abide by certain rules extended to prisoners' family members.

We got up and left the club, having decided we had spent enough time nosing around among drug dealers for one night. We went back to La Cuccia. It had already closed and I was relieved to discover that Virna had gone home. We knocked on Max's door. ‘I was expecting you,' he said, handing us a couple of glasses, Calvados and vodka.

‘How did it go?' he asked.

‘Badly,' I replied. I gave him a quick summary of our investigations, concluding with an account of the way Rossini had laid into Corradi's woman.

‘It'll have done her nothing but good,' Rossini growled. ‘How many kids in prison have we seen go out of their minds before trial because their girlfriends or mothers and fathers put it into their heads that their lawyers are not defending them properly? They end up doing something stupid, like insulting a screw, and pick up a conviction for defamation or, worse, get knifed in the back during a brawl.'

Max glanced at me and shrugged. ‘Rossini's right, damn it. A prisoner's mental balance is a delicate thing, especially just before trial.'

‘Look,' I snorted, ‘right now I don't particularly want to get bogged down in the intricate psychology of prisoners awaiting trial. I'd rather we decided how to proceed with this investigation. We can't waste any more evenings on wild goose chases.'

Max switched on his computer. He had dug out all the articles from the local press on investigations into Colombian cocaine trafficking and saved them in a file.

‘The only interesting snippet I came across relates to the arrest of a schoolteacher in a discotheque in Dolo, near Venice.' An article from
Nuova Venezia
, published a couple of months previously, came up on the screen.

 

SCHOOLTEACHER ARRESTED WHILE SELLING

COCAINE TO CHILDREN IN DISCO—EDUCATION AUTHORITY CONVENES EMERGENCY SESSION

 

From classroom to cell block in a matter of hours, all thanks to the Carabinieri!

Annibale Tavan, 42, a math and science teacher at the Sandro Pertini secondary school in Chioggia, was arrested yesterday at a discotheque in Gaia di Dolo where he was caught selling cocaine. During the week, Tavan was a respected schoolteacher, above all suspicion. But on Saturday nights, he allegedly turned into a drug dealer, selling top-quality cocaine and ecstasy to children little older than those he taught in class. The arrest was the result of prompt action taken by the Carabinieri of Chioggia.

 

The article continued with statements from Carabiniere officers, Tavan's staffroom colleagues and some of the parents of his students. Max had underlined in red the section of the article that was of most interest for our investigations: ‘The Carabinieri are now looking for Tavan's supplier. So far their enquiries indicate that Tavan has not travelled abroad at all in the last four years.'

I poured myself some Calvados. ‘What makes you think this is worth following up?'

Max scratched his paunch with his fingertips. ‘It's just possible that the schoolteacher gave the cops a tip-off, enabling them to arrest the Colombian at the airport. It's only a hunch, but none of the other investigations covered by the press are of any interest at all.'

I turned to Rossini. ‘What do you think?'

‘It's worth a try,' he answered.

I moved back to the computer screen and read the article through again, taking my time. Alongside the report of the arrest, there was an interview with the man in charge of drugs rehab programmes in Mestre:

 

COCAINE NOW THE MOST POPULAR DRUG—

9% OF ALL SCHOOL STUDENTS IN MESTRE
SAY THEY HAVE TRIED IT

 

Cocaine use is now extremely widespread among young people throughout our region. We are very concerned that increasing numbers of teenagers are becoming regular cocaine users. It's cheap and easily available on the streets. Second only to cocaine in popularity are ecstasy and the so-called new drugs. With these substances, kids are playing a kind of Russian roulette, often taking them precisely because they don't know what their effect will be. In reality their effect depends essentially on the kind of substance that the chemists playing around with the basic compound arrive at.

And it's a race against time. The moment a substance gets classified as a drug and placed on the prohibited list, the producers come up with a new one kids feel they have to try. Taking ‘E' is becoming a highly risky business now that its manufacture is increasingly in the hands of East European chemists. There is no way of knowing what kind of ingredients they use.

 

An idea flashed through my mind but failed to take solid shape, dissolving almost instantly in a mix of alcohol and tiredness.

‘I'm going to bed,' I announced.

Rossini gave me an affectionate slap on the cheek. ‘I'll pick you up after lunch. Make sure you're awake.'

 

To find out who had supplied the schoolteacher with cocaine, we agreed that the first thing to do was pay a visit to the man in charge of security at the Gaia di Dolo discotheque where Tavan had been arrested. Most chief bouncers are police informants and, according to the information Rossini had gathered that morning, Giovanni Scrivo was no exception. As a former security guard and one-time kickboxing champion, by the age of forty Scrivo was tired of risking his life standing around outside banks and had turned instead to the lush pastures of nightclub security.

We drove to his house, an anonymous little villa not far from Mira with a panoramic view over the chemical works at Miralanza. His wife, a charming and discreet Filipino, opened the door to us, then called her husband and disappeared. We stood by the open door and waited for a few minutes until Scrivo arrived, barefoot, in nothing but a pair of jeans, displaying a powerful chest and arms the size of Parma hams.

He scrutinized us with expert care. ‘What can I do for you?' he asked, planting his feet squarely on the floor.

Rossini leaned on the door jamb and calmly lit a cigarette. Maybe Karate Kid didn't scare him, but he sure scared the wits out of me. From that distance he could kickbox me in the teeth before I had a clue what was happening. I summoned up all my courage. ‘We figure it was you who gave Tavan to the cops. We don't give a shit about it. It's none of our business,' I quickly added, to reassure him. ‘What we're after is the name of the individual who supplied the school-teacher with Colombian coke. You must know who it was. It's got to be another of the regulars at the discotheque. What's more, it's reasonable to assume you've sold him to the police too. And, since the papers haven't carried any news about his arrest, he must have skipped out just in time.'

The bouncer stared at Rossini. ‘Are you going to leave here on your own legs or must I tell my wife to call a couple of ambulances?'

I snapped my fingers to regain Scrivo's attention. ‘This here is Beniamino Rossini. If you lay a finger on him, he'll come back and shoot you.'

Scrivo nodded slowly. ‘I've heard of you. From Milan, right? There's a rumour going round that you're the guy that killed Tristano Castelli's soldiers last year.'

Rossini gave him an ugly grin. ‘Yeah, I've heard those rumours.'

Scrivo scratched his densely carpeted chest, lost in thought.

‘It'll cost you.'

I pulled a couple of 50,000 lire notes from the inside pocket of my jacket. The bouncer quickly stuffed them into his jeans. ‘The guy's name is Fernando Maiorino. He lives not far from here, at Spinea. Since the schoolteacher was arrested, Maiorino's been missing, evading arrest. But his business is all concentrated in this area so he won't have gone far.'

‘Is that it?' I asked.

‘Well, as it happens, I do have another piece of information.'

I pulled out another two notes. ‘Is it worth hearing?'

Scrivo shrugged. ‘Let's just say you're not the only people looking for Maiorino. As well as the police, obviously.'

I handed him the money.

‘The other evening, this lady showed up at the discotheque. South American, about fifty, with a young girl in tow. She paid me in dollars to tell her the name of Tavan's supplier, and then asked for a list of other people who peddle Colombian coke.'

Rossini and I exchanged glances. I had the photos of Alacrán and La Tía in my pocket. I showed Scrivo the photo of La Tía.

‘Yeah, that's her. It's not the same girl though. This one's a blonde and she's uglier and fatter.'