The Silence of the Wave Read Online Free Page A

cocaine, the fine texture of it, the white or pink color, the slightly medicinal smell. He remembered it as if there were a heap of it right there in front of him, on the doctor’s desk. The memory was like a slap.
    He did his best to dismiss it. He nodded: he wouldn’t change the doses.
    “Now do you feel like telling me what happened after they took you on at the … what’s the name of the department you were telling me about?”
    “The criminal investigations unit.”
    “And what are its functions?”
    “Much the same as the flying squad in the State Police. In other words, detective work. In a big city like Milan, it’s divided into sections. Robbery, homicide, organized crime, corruption. And narcotics.”
    “And what section were you assigned to?”
    “I did a few years in robbery and then they moved me to narcotics.”
    “Why was that?”
    “There was more work and they needed more staff.”
    “There were more drug cases?”
    “There are
always
more drug cases. Potentially, there’s no end to them. The idea that you can defeat the phenomenon with carabinieri and judges andtrials is complete nonsense. It’s like thinking you can stop a wave by planting a stick in the sand. I’d never say this in public—none of us would ever say it—but the only way to wipe out the whole system and literally bring the Mafia to its knees would be to legalize drugs.”
    “But you didn’t think that then?”
    “You mean when I started to do that work? Of course not. I never thought we’d arrest them all and clean up society, but I was convinced I was part of the mechanism that would solve the problem.”
    “So what happened to change your mind?”
    “We’d arrest ten people and confiscate, for example, two kilos of cocaine. After weeks or months of investigation. We had the feeling we’d struck a real blow, but from the point of view of the market it was as if nothing had happened. Nothing
had
happened. The drugs continued to circulate, the dealers—not those ten, but others—continued to deal, and the customers continued to smoke and snort and shoot up.”
    He looked at the doctor to see what effect these words were having on him. He couldn’t detect any—his expression was always inscrutable—but for the first time he noticed that the doctor had completely asymmetrical eyes: they were shaped differently, and one was noticeably bigger than the other.
    “What exactly did your work consist of?”
    “At first they stuck me in the wiretapping room,listening to phone calls about black and white T-shirts, trousers, and jackets, and cream and chocolate pastries.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Those are some of the terms dealers use to refer to drugs when they’re talking to each other and they’re afraid of being bugged. Or rather, let’s say that they used to use. They’ve realized now that it’s not such a good idea. I remember once two guys talking endlessly about deliveries of jackets, trousers, and T-shirts. The deputy prosecutor asked us to check if the individuals really did deal in clothes, if they had warehouses or even just kept boxes of jackets, T-shirts, and trousers at home. He wanted to rule out any possibility that they could defend themselves by saying they really were talking about clothes.”
    “And obviously there were no deliveries of clothes.”
    “Obviously not. Anyway, as I was saying, the first months were almost entirely wiretaps and raids. Then I started working on the street, in discos and clubs.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Let me explain a few other things first. When we made arrests and took people to the station to do the paperwork before transferring them to prison, there were always a few colleagues who thought they’d take the law into their own hands and give the suspects a good going-over.”
    “You mean just beat them up without any reason?”
    “Pretty much. Though they’d say that, since wewere arresting them and then the judges were going to let them go, beating