Street Boys (8 page)

18

CASTEL DELL’OVO, NAPLES
SEPTEMBER 26, 1943

The wood fires, spread out across the long stone entrance, lit up the cloudless sky. Off in a corner, standing on centuries-old steps, their backs to the sea, three boys sang the words to “Guarda Un Po.” Along the farthest side of the castle walkway, stretched out across the length of the path, handguns, rifles and starter’s pistols lay in one long row, drying from the heat of the fires and a warm night. Well over a hundred boys and girls were scattered across the open space, sitting around the four full fires, each eating a long meal of fresh fish grilled on wooden sticks and drinking from bottles of wine brought up from the castle basement.

“It’s nice to see smiles on their faces again,” Nunzia said. She was sitting across from the main fire in the center of the road leading to the castle, a tin cup filled with red wine by her feet, looking at the cluster of boys stretched out around her. “At least for one night.”

“A smile goes hand in hand with a stomach full of food,” Franco said. “It’s been a while since many of them have had both.”

“How soon you think before the guns are ready?” Vincenzo asked. He was resting across the cobblestones, his arms folded behind his head, legs crossed.

“Maldini said they should be dry by morning,” Franco said. “Then they’ll need to be cleaned. If we could find some oil to coat them, it would be even better.”

Nunzia looked across the square, at three boys struggling with a wheelbarrow filled with an unexploded bomb. Beyond them, two younger boys bounced a small black ball against the side of a brick wall.

She saw the jeep swing its headlights into the piazza and come to a sharp halt in front of a statue. She watched the soldier get out, a large dog following close behind, and walk into the center of the square, staring out at all the activity around him. He turned to look toward her, their bodies separated by distance and a large bonfire, their eyes meeting for a brief instant.

“The Americans have finally arrived,” Nunzia said in a calm voice. “At least one of them.”

Connors and the mastiff slowly weaved their way past the scattered children. Their quiet murmurs and soulful singing echoing off the large, barren castle walls, the fires crackling and sparkling high into the air.

Connors stepped over two sleeping boys and turned past the edge of a fire when he saw an older man walking toward him, a small glass in his right hand. “You in charge here?” Connors asked, stepping in the man’s path.

The old man shrugged. “They don’t even trust me to make coffee,” Maldini said.

“Then who?” Connors asked.

Maldini downed the remainder of his drink, wiped his lips with the palm of his right hand and then turned toward the edge of the pier. “The boy in the long-sleeve shirt,” he said.

Connors looked past the blaze of flames and down toward the darker end of the pier. “The one next to the girl?” he asked.

“Yes,” Maldini said.

“You’re kidding, right?” Connors asked. “He’s only a kid. Where are the others?”

“What others?” Maldini asked, walking with Connors now toward Vincenzo and Nunzia.

“Anyone else,” Connors said. He glanced down at a group of kids drying wet guns and rifles with torn rags. “Resistance fighters. American soldiers. You can’t be the only adult here.”

“My daughter would give you an argument about how much of an adult I am,” Maldini said. “But I’m the only one here old enough to join an army.”

“And what’s going on with all this?” Connors said, pointing at the kids with the guns and another group wheeling a bomb inside the castle walls. “What’re all the guns and bombs for?”

“They’re getting ready,” Maldini said.

“Ready for what?” Connors asked.

“They think the Nazis might be coming back to Naples,” Maldini said.

“They probably are,” Connors said. “What’s it to these kids?”

“They’re going to fight them.”

Connors stopped, turned and stared at Maldini. He held the look for several seconds and then smiled. “That’s great,” he said. “No really. It’s a great idea. I don’t know who came up with it, you or the kid, but I wish I had thought of it. In the meantime, I don’t suppose you found a radio while you were digging up all these rifles and bombs. The one I got is pretty banged up.”

“No,” Maldini said, glancing over Connors’s shoulder and watching Vincenzo, Franco, Nunzia and Angela come toward them. “There aren’t any radios in Naples.”

“I have to get word to my command,” Connors said. “See if I can get some trucks sent down here and get these kids out.”

Connors pulled out a crinkled pack of cigarettes and offered one to Maldini who shook his head. “I have enough bad habits,” he said.

“How do you fit into this?” Connors asked. “Or you just somebody else that’s eager to die.”

“You know me so well and we only just met,” Maldini said with a chuckle. “I was drafted, just like you. Except I didn’t get a uniform with a fancy patch on the sleeve.”

“You even try to talk them out of it?” Connors asked.

“I no longer try to tell people what to do or what to believe,” Maldini said.

“Our decision was made before you got here,” Vincenzo said, standing behind Connors. “And it won’t change, even after you leave.”

Connors tossed his cigarette into the fire and turned toward the boy. He glanced over at Nunzia and then focused his attention on Vincenzo. He caught the boy staring at the Thunderbird patch on his sleeve. “We need to talk,” Connors said to him. “Just you and me. Quiet and alone.”

“We can talk here,” Vincenzo said.

“Yes, we could,” Connors said, “but we’re not.” He grabbed the boy by the arm and lead him away from the fire toward the darkness of the silent castle.

They were in an entryway lit by two hanging torches. Connors was pacing, his boots echoing off the stone steps. Vincenzo stood with his back against the cold wall. “Here’s how it’s going to work,” Connors said. “First thing in the morning, you round these kids up and get them to follow me out of the city. If that doesn’t happen, then you and me got ourselves a serious problem.”

“What will you do?” Vincenzo asked. “Shoot me if I don’t do as you say?”

“I just might,” Connors said.

“This is our fight,” Vincenzo said. “Not yours.”

“What makes you so sure there’s even going to be a fight?” Connors asked. “That the Nazis are heading back into the city?”

“Every night their planes dropped leaflets down on us along with the bombs,” Vincenzo said. “Told us that tanks would be coming in after the air raids ended, to destroy what was left of the city.”

“If that’s true, then it’s all the more reason to get these kids out of here now,” Connors said.

“Everyone we ever trusted has betrayed us,” Vincenzo said. “Everyone we believed has lied. Your words don’t mean anything to me or to those outside. You’re just another uniform marching through the city.”

“You got a chance to save those kids,” Connors said. “Instead, you’re going to let them stay here and, if the Nazis do show up, watch them die.”

“What difference does it make where we die?” Vincenzo asked. “In the city fighting or on the road running?”

“The Nazis come back in here, they’re not gonna see kids,” Connors said. “They’ll see targets. Treat you no different than they would me.”

“They’ve treated us in worse ways,” Vincenzo said. “They haven’t killed your family. They haven’t blown up your home. They haven’t burned your city.”

“I can’t let you or these kids be left here to die,” Connors said. “You have to understand that.”

“You have no choice, American,” Vincenzo said. “And you have to understand that.”

19

GRAND BALLROOM, VILLA PIGNATELLI, NAPLES
SEPTEMBER 26, 1943

Carlo Petroni lit a hand-rolled cigarette, wooden speckles mixed in with stale tobacco, and looked around at the barren ornate ballroom that was often used by the Fascist high command as a place to convene meetings. The villa was once the site of the finest gardens on the Italian coast, designed by the great Giovanni Bechi himself. Now the grounds lay scorched, lush green lawns and rose beds turned brown by the constant aerial attacks. Petroni looked away from the flowered patterns lining the walls and turned to the curious faces that surrounded him. He was eighteen and a convicted felon, sentenced by an Italian court to two years in the boys’ prison at Saint Enfermo. He had been a street orphan long before the first bombs fell on Naples, left to fend for himself since early childhood, abandoned by both parents and family. He was in charge of a small team of thieves who ate the food they stole and sold their pilfered goods through the black market. Petroni was tall and muscular, dark hair nearly shoulder-length. He had a small scar below his lower lip and a much longer one running down the length of his right arm. His war had not been against the Nazis or the Fascists, but had been fought instead on a daily basis inside the brutal walls of a prison without rules. Each day was a quest for survival, warding off surprise attacks from vengeful and frustrated guards and other inmates eager to get a grip on his access to the black marketers working the alleys and dark rooms of Naples.

When the German evacuation came, the Nazis opened all the prison doors and sent the convicts back to the street. Most of them did as they were told and walked out of Naples, under the steady gaze of Nazi guards. Petroni made sure he and his team of thieves hid and waited. He saw no profit in fleeing. Nor was there any in fighting, as far as he could tell. But Petroni did see a potential opportunity opening up in the next few days. If it all evolved as he envisioned, Petroni would end up with the Germans on one side, the Americans on the other and the Italians, as always, stuck in the middle. It was a golden moment to make some money and begin his postwar life with a pocketful of cash. All he needed to do was play one side against the other and stay alive. And those were talents Carlo Petroni had learned to master since he was a toddler just free of diapers.

“How much longer do we wait?” Piero asked. At thirteen, the youngest thief in the group was quiet and shy, two traits that hid the fact that he was also deadly with a knife and all too willing to prove it.

“Until we see Nazi uniforms,” Petroni said. “And then we’ll find out if what we heard is true, that some crazy boys are going to try and stop them from doing what they were sent to do. If that happens, then we step in.”

“Step in and do what?” another in the group, Aldo, asked. “Fight with the boys against the Nazis?”

Carlo looked at the boy, his same age but much smaller in both stature and girth, and shook his head. “The guards beat on your head a little too much while you were inside,” he said. “What are you thinking? We join no one’s army. We listened to no one while we were under Mussolini’s rule. Why should we listen to anyone, especially those our own age, when there is no one to rule?”

“So what do we do?” Marco asked. He stood apart from the group, staring out through a broken window at the remains of the gardens below. He was shirtless and shoeless and had a small handgun wedged in the back of his brown pants. “You say we’re going to step in. What does that mean?”

“It means money in our pockets,” Petroni said. “We follow all that goes on between the Germans and the boys. We join with both groups and tell each what they need to hear. Tell the Nazis where the boys are hiding. Tell the boys where the traps are set. Stay back and watch as they all kill each other.”

“I haven’t heard anything about money yet,” Piero said, still not convinced Petroni’s plan was worth his time or energy.

“The Germans will see us for what we are and they will pay for the information we give,” Petroni said, stomping out the last of his cigarette with the heel of his foot.

“The Germans have money they can give us, maybe even some food,” Marco said. “But the boys have nothing to give. So why bother with them?”

“Everyone has something,” Petroni said, standing and walking between the small gathering of boys. “If these street fighters can’t give us money or food, we’ll take their weapons or clothes. But we’re looking for more than that from them. The Nazis won’t stay long. They’ll set the city on fire and leave, head back to Rome and then to the north. That leaves Naples to whoever’s left, and that will be us.”

“They’ll know we’re convicts,” Aldo said. “And they’ll know not to trust us. Why would they take us in?”

“Because we can fight,” Petroni said. “Probably better than anyone in their ranks. They sit around fires at night and talk like brave men. But none of them has been in fights like we have, none has killed to survive. They’ll want us because they’ll need us. They won’t be happy about it, they’ve been warned all their lives to stay away from boys like us. But the people who were so quick to warn them away are dead, and we are still here. Ready to help them.”

“How many are there?” Piero asked.

“Does it matter?” Petroni asked with a shrug. “A hundred, maybe two hundred. Even if there’s a thousand, what difference does it make? Each one in our group is worth fifty of theirs. It’s a match made in hell and hell is where we live.”

“And if we’re found out?” The question came from a large boy sitting on the one chair left in the room, his long legs stretched out before him, arms folded across his chest, his dark eyes rimmed red from infection. “Or even if a few of them suspect us of dealing with the Nazis. What then?”

Petroni walked toward the boy, arms spread wide, a bemused look on his face. “You’re the last one I’d expect to hear such a question from, Bruno,” he said with mock surprise. “You know the answer to that better than I do. In fact, you know it better than anyone in this room.”

“I just want to hear it come out of your mouth,” Bruno said, raising his eyes up to Petroni. “Have you say it to me and everyone else here. It’s a decision that needs to be made now.
Before
it starts. And once you make it, you have to keep to it.”

“There is no problem with this, Bruno,” Petroni said. “Not for you, me or anyone who’s spent a day inside that prison together. If our plans are found out or even if you
suspect
someone of knowing what we’re up to, then that person must die. Whether he is a German soldier or an Italian boy. The same punishment applies.”

Bruno Repello pulled up his legs and stood. He was several inches taller than Petroni and, at twenty, the oldest of the group; he was also its most violent member. He was born into a family of Camorristas that held the city in its grip much like a hawk would hold a squealing mouse. Mussolini’s reign had tempered their control, but not enough to wash the taste of power from their mouths. Repello knew that eventually Naples would be returned to its people, a war would end, Germans and Americans would go back to their own lands, savoring a victory or overcoming a defeat. And once again, the Camorra would control the streets. He wanted to be at the controls when that happened. “Then we have talked enough,” he said to Petroni. “Let’s go out and meet our new friends and give them all the help they need.”