Free The Colombian Mule by Massimo Carlotto, Christopher Woodall Page A

it’s my job to defend my client to the best of my ability.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜I can’t do that. I’ll defend him. But it’s the last time.’
    I got up and shook his hand.
    Â 
    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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Look. This lady’s man is in prison. She’s got to learn how to behave. If she carries on like this,