I Hadn't Understood (9781609458980) by Diego De Silva Page B

how much work you have”? I felt like slamming the phone down, right in his face), so he can go around telling everyone that you lacked the balls for the job, so you turned it down; second, for years you’ve been scraping by with fenderbenders, small-claims court, contracts and leases between relatives, leaks and water damage in apartments, insults and quarrels and condominium boards. For once in your life a real case comes along, and what do you do? You turn up your nose?
    He’s a butcher, I try pointing out. For the Camorra.
    So what? I say to myself. What are we turning this into now, a moral question?
    Well, yeah, in fact, I venture.
    Oh, I see, I say to myself, all of that nonsense you never get tired of spouting about the right to legal counsel and how even the worst murderer has a right to a defense lawyer who will argue his case, if for no other reason than to make it possible to have a trial, because otherwise the alternative is to go back to the Inquisition, and so on—that was all bullshit? Ah? Funny that you should happen to come to that realization now, isn’t it?
    I’m afraid, I whine.
    I know, I say to myself.
    I don’t want to, I add.
    You have to, I say to myself.
    I don’t know the first thing about criminal law.
    Oh yes you do, I say to myself.
    Oh no I don’t, I insist.
    That’s not entirely true, I say to myself.
    Yes it is, I reply.
    But you wrote your thesis about criminal law, I say to myself.
    Eighteen years ago, I respond.
    About pornography, I say to myself.
    I was just interested in the subject, I answer.
    Ha, ha, I say to myself.
    Eh. Ha, ha, I say back to myself.
    You did pretty well for yourself at Burzone’s hearing, I tell myself.
    Dumb luck.
    Are you sure of that?
    How the hell do I know?
    I find them debilitating, these face-to-face confrontations with myself. Especially when I’m on the losing side of the argument.
    Â 
    The phone again.
    Unknown caller. Okay, let’s answer and see who it is.
    â€œCounselor Malinconico?”
    A woman’s voice. Fairly young. I’d say barely thirty. Making a distinct effort to shed her dialect. Vowel formation reminiscent of a suppository. By the time she’s said a couple of sentences I ought to be able to guess her hometown.
    â€œYes, this is he,” I confirm.
    â€œ
Buon giorno
, Counselor Malinconico, this is Signora Fantasia speaking, am I interrupting something?”
    I can’t believe my ears: the First Lady herself. I’m on the verge of getting to my feet.
    â€œNo, not at all. Please go ahead.”
    â€œI need to speak with you urgently, Counselor Malinconico. It’s about my husband, Domenicu Fantasia, you represented him just a few days ago.”
    By this point I’d be willing to stake five hundred euros on Lady Burzone’s birthplace. It’s a town where not long ago two entire families reciprocally rubbed one another out in broad daylight, over some trival disagreement, as it happens. Like two third cousins (once removed) had a shouting match, followed by a fistfight in the town square over some bitch who dated them both, fully aware of the havoc it would unleash. One of them went home with a fractured septum whining that his cousin had had an easy time of it because he was so much bigger. Whereupon his father said: “Oh, no, this is a problem between you kids, I’m not getting involved.” And the cousin with the fractured septum grabs his car keys, goes downstairs, and a few minutes later he’s run over his distant cousin in the middle of the town square. At this point, one of the uncles of the guy under the car had been watching it all from his balcony, and now he wades into the melee with a handgun. To make a long story short, it culminates in bloody tragedy. So brutal that, at first, the detectives figured that this must be someone settling scores with someone else who’s trying to elbow in on the profits from some local crime