A Walk in the Dark

6

In normal circumstances I should have gone too. It was already well after office hours. I hadn’t been home even for five minutes since I’d left in the morning, and I needed to have a shower and maybe eat something.

But I stayed in the office. I sat down at my secretary’s desk. To think, or something like that.

Gianluca Scianatico was a notorious idiot. A typical, well-known representative of the so-called respectable classes of Bari. A bit taller than me, a one-time Fascist thug, a poker player. And a cokehead, so they said.

He was a doctor and worked in a teaching clinic at the general hospital. No one familiar with those circles in Bari thought he’d got where he had – graduating, specializing, passing competitive exams, and so on – on merit.

His father was Ernesto Scianatico, principle judge of one of the criminal sections of the appeal court. One of the most powerful men in the city. Everyone talked about him, his friendships, his extracurricular activities. Always in whispers, in the corridors of the courthouse and elsewhere. Anonymous petitions were said to have circulated, relating to a whole series of matters he was directly or indirectly involved in. It was said that some lawyers and even some magistrates had tried to report him.

Everyone knew that none of these petitions, whether anonymous or signed, had ever resulted in anything. Judge Scianatico was someone who knew how to watch his back.

For someone in my line of work-a criminal lawyer in Bari – to go up against him was just about the stupidest thing you could do. About half of all cases, after the initial sentence, were referred to his section on appeal. In other words, about half my cases were referred to his section on appeal. I was laying myself open to a glorious professional future, I thought.

“Congratulations, Guerrieri,” I said out loud, as I’d been doing ever since I was a child, whenever my thoughts clamoured to be heard, “once again you’ve found a jam to get into. You’ve crossed the difficult threshold of forty but your tendency to get involved in problems of every size, shape and description is still completely intact. Bravo.”

I sat there for a while, getting increasingly anxious, letting my eyes wander over the shelves and the box files that filled them.

Then I got annoyed.

A constant factor in my life is that after a while I always get annoyed about everything.

Good things and bad things.

Almost everything.

Anyway, as my anxiety diminished, I remembered some of the things Tancredi had just told me. About how he’d gone to see her after receiving the summons. What had he said? Oh, yes. That she could report him as many times as she liked, nothing would ever happen to him. Nobody would ever have the courage to touch him. Not him.

So when my anxiety vanished, I started getting angry. It didn’t take much to get me to the right point.

“Fuck Scianatico. Father and son. Fuck both of them. We’ll see if nothing ever happens to you, you bastard.” Out loud again.

Then I told myself it really was time to go home now.

I told myself that mentally. A sign that the din in my brain was fading.