Two partisans fired their guns into the air to get the mob back. Another tried to turn a fire hose on them. Pino and Major Knebel had retreated by then, but others kept pressing toward the bodies, eager to vent their rage.
“Hang them!” a voice in the chorus cried. “Get them up where we can see them!”
“Put the hooks into their hocks!” others sang. “String ’em up like pigs!”
Mussolini went up feet first, head and arms dangling below the girder. Those in the ever-growing mob went insane. Cheering, they stamped their feet, threw their fists high, and brayed their approval. Il Duce had been beaten so badly by then, his skull was caved in. He looked beyond grotesque, a figment in a nightmare and nothing like the man Pino had spoken to repeatedly over the past year.
They hoisted Claretta Petacci up next. Her skirt fell toward her breasts, revealing that she wore no panties. When a partisan chaplain climbed up beside her to tuck the skirt up between her legs, he was pelted with trash.
Four more bodies were strung from the girders, all high-ranking Fascists. The desecrations went on in the building heat until the barbarity finally broke through Pino’s grief-dazed state and sickened him. He felt dizzy, nauseated, and thought he might faint.
A man was brought forward. His name was Starace.
They placed Starace beneath the hanging corpses of Mussolini and his mistress. Starace gave the straight-arm Fascist salute, and six partisans shot him dead.
The bloodthirsty chorus in Piazzale Loreto sang deliriously and called for more. But seeing Starace shot caused Pino to reel off into the memory of Anna’s dying. He thought he might go mad and join the mob.
“This is how tyrants fall,” Major Knebel said, disgusted. “That would be the lead if I were writing this story. ‘This is how tyrants fall.’”
“I’m going to leave, Major,” Pino said. “I can’t take this anymore.”
“I’m with you, buddy,” Knebel said.
They pushed their way back through a crowd that had grown to twenty thousand or more. It wasn’t until they were across from the fruit stand that they could walk easily against the grain of more and more people coming to Piazzale Loreto to pay their disrespects.
“Major?” Pino said. “I need to talk to you—”
“You know, kid, I’ve been meaning to talk to you since you showed up this morning,” Knebel said as they crossed the street.
The door to Beltramini’s Fresh Fruits and Vegetables was open now. Carletto stood in the doorway, looking green with a hangover. He smiled wanly at Pino and the American.
“Another drag-the-knuckle night, Major,” Carletto said.
“That’s knuckle-dragger,” Knebel said with a laugh. “But even better. I’ve got the both of you at once.”
“I don’t understand,” Pino said.
“Would you boys be willing to help America?” the major asked. “Do something for us? Something tough? Something dangerous?”
“Like what?” Carletto asked.
“I can’t tell you right now,” Knebel said. “But it’s vital, and if you pulled it off, you’d have a lot of friends in the United States. Ever thought of going stateside?”
“All the time,” Pino said.
“There you go,” the major said.
“How dangerous?” Carletto asked.
“I won’t B.S. it. You could get killed.”
Carletto thought about that, then said, “Count me in.”
Feeling his heart race with a strange mania, Pino said, “I’m in, too.”
“Excellent,” Knebel said. “Can you get a car?”
Pino said, “My uncle has one, but it’s up on blocks, and the tires won’t go far.”
“Uncle Sam will take care of the tires,” he said. “Get me the keys and an address where the car is, and I’ll see it’s ready and waiting for you at the Hotel Diana, three a.m., day after tomorrow. May first. Okay?”
Carletto said, “When will we know what we’re doing?”
“Three a.m., day after—”
Knebel stopped. They all heard the tanks then. The roar of diesels. The treads clanking. As they poured into Piazzale Loreto, Pino saw war elephants in his mind.
“Here come the Shermans, buddies!” Major Knebel crowed, throwing his fist overhead. “That’s the US Fifth Army Cav. As far as this war goes, the fat lady’s singing.”
PART FIVE
“VENGEANCE IS MINE,” SAYETH THE LORD
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tuesday, May 1, 1945
As Pino and Carletto neared the Hotel Diana at 2:55 a.m., they were almost as drunk as they’d been before passing out just a few hours before. Only now their stomachs were queasy, and their headaches blazing. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was dead. The Nazi führer had shot himself in his bunker in Berlin, committing suicide along with his mistress the day after Mussolini and Petacci swung in Piazzale Loreto.
Pino and Carletto had heard the news the afternoon before, and found another bottle of Mr. Beltramini’s whiskey. Holed up in the fruit and vegetable stand, they celebrated Hitler’s death and told each other their war stories.
“You really loved Anna enough to marry her?” Carletto asked at one point.
“Yes,” Pino said, and tried to control the raw emotion that pulsed through him whenever he thought of her.
“You’ll find another girl someday,” Carletto said.
“Not like her,” Pino said, his eyes watering. “She was different, Carletto. She was . . . I don’t know, one of a kind.”
“Like my mama and papa.”
“Special people,” Pino said, nodding. “Good people. The best people.”
They had more drinks, and retold Mr. Beltramini’s best jokes, and laughed. They talked about the night on the hill the first summer of the bombardment when their fathers had performed so flawlessly. They cried at too many things. By eleven, they’d finished the bottle and drunk themselves into forgetfulness, nonsense, and not enough sleep. It took an alarm to wake them three and a half hours later.
Bleary-eyed, they turned the corner, and Pino saw Uncle Albert’s old Fiat parked out front of the Hotel Diana, running like a top, with brand-new tires that he kicked and admired before they went inside. The end-of-war party was winding down for the night. A few couples danced slowly to a scratched and popping record on a phonograph. Corporal Daloia climbed the staircase, clinging to Sophia, both of them giggling. Pino watched them until they disappeared.
Major Knebel came out a door behind the registration desk, saw them, and grinned. “There you are. Knew I could count on old Pino and Carletto. Got a few presents to give you both before I explain what we’re going to have you do.”
The major squatted down behind the registration deck and lifted up two brand-new Thompson submachine guns with rotary magazines.
Knebel cocked his head. “You know how to run a tommy gun?”
Pino felt fully awake for the first time since passing out, and regarded the machine gun with some awe. “No,” he said.