“For?”
“A goddamned party,” Knebel said, his grin getting bigger. “I have friends sneaking in here after dark, and this son-of-a-bitch war is almost over, so they’ll be wanting to blow off some steam, celebrate. Sound good to you?”
The major had an infectious quality that made Pino grin. “Sounds fun!”
“Can you do it? Get a record player, or a shortwave? Some pretty Italian girls for us to cut a rug with?”
“And wine and whiskey. My uncle, he has both.”
“Your uncle is hereby awarded a Silver Star for conduct above and beyond the call of duty,” the major said. “Can you get everything here by nine tonight?”
Pino looked at his watch, saw it was noon. He nodded. “I’ll take you to the telephone exchange and get started.”
Knebel looked at the American soldiers, saluted them, and said, “I think I love this kid.”
Corporal Daloia said, “He gets a few pretty broads in here, Major. I’ll put him up for the Medal of Honor.”
“That’s saying something for a guy who’s up for a Silver Star for valor at Monte Cassino,” Knebel said.
Pino reappraised the corporal.
“Who gives a fig about medals?” Daloia said. “We need women, music, and booze.”
“I’ll find you all three,” Pino said, and the corporal saluted him smartly.
Pino laughed and studied the major’s uniform. “Take off the shirt. You’ll be noticed.”
Knebel did so, following Pino out of the Hotel Diana in his T-shirt, fatigue bottoms, and boots. At the telephone exchange, partisan guards blocked the entrance, but once Pino showed them the letter he’d gotten the night before and explained that Knebel was going to write the glorious history of the Milan uprising for his American audience, they let him enter. Pino set up Knebel in a room with a desk and a phone. Once connected, the major covered the mouthpiece and said, “We’re counting on you, Pino.”
“Yes, sir,” Pino said, and tried to salute with the same finesse as Corporal Daloia.
“Almost,” Knebel said, laughing. “Now, go round us up a party to remember.”
Feeling energized, Pino left the exchange and started north on Corso Buenos Aires toward Piazzale Loreto, trying to figure out how he was going to find everything Knebel asked for in eight and a half hours. A pretty woman in her twenties, no wedding band, came walking down the street toward him, looking anxious.
On impulse, Pino said, “Signorina, per favore, would you like to come to a party tonight?”
“A party? Tonight? With you?” she scoffed. “No.”
“There will be music, and wine, and food, and rich American soldiers.”
She tossed her hair and said, “There are no Americans in Milan yet.”
“Yes, there are, and there’ll be more at the Hotel Diana, in the ballroom, tonight at nine. Will you come?”
She hesitated, and then said, “You’re not lying?”
“On my mother’s soul, I’m not.”
“I’ll think about it, then. The Hotel Diana?”
“That’s right. Wear your dancing dress.”
“I’ll think about it,” she allowed, and walked away.
Pino grinned. She’d be there. He was almost sure of it.
He kept walking and when the next attractive woman came along he said the same thing and got roughly the same answer. The third woman reacted differently. She wanted to come to Pino’s party immediately, and when he said there would be rich American soldiers, she told him she’d bring four friends.
Pino was so excited that only then did he realize he’d reached the corner of the Piazzale Loreto and Beltramini’s Fresh Fruits and Vegetables. The door was open. He caught the silhouette of someone standing in the shadows. “Carletto? Is that you?”
Pino’s oldest friend tried to slam the door shut. But Pino threw his shoulder against it and overpowered the smaller Carletto, who fell onto his back on the floor.
“Get out of my shop!” Carletto shouted, crabbing backward. “Traitor. Nazi!”
His friend had lost a lot of weight. Pino saw it as soon as he slammed the door shut behind him. “I am no Nazi, and no traitor.”
“I saw the swastika! Papa did, too!” Carletto sputtered, pointing at Pino’s left arm. “Right there. So what did that make you other than a Nazi?”
“It made me a spy,” Pino said, and told Carletto everything.
He could see his old friend didn’t believe him at first, but when Carletto heard Leyers’s name and realized that was who Pino had been spying on, he had a change of heart.
Carletto said, “If they’d known, Pino, they would have killed you.”
“I know.”
“And you did it anyway?” his friend said, shaking his head. “That’s the difference between you and me. You risk and act, while I . . . I watch and fear.”
“There’s nothing left to be afraid of,” Pino said. “The war’s over.”
“Is it?”
“How’s your mama?”
Carletto hung his head. “She died, Pino. In January. During the cold. I couldn’t keep her warm enough because we had no fuel and no produce to sell. She coughed herself to death.”
“I’m so sorry,” Pino said, feeling emotion ball in his throat. “She was as kind as your father was funny. I should have been here to help you bury both of them.”
“You were where you were supposed to be, and so was I,” Carletto said, looking so crushed Pino wanted to cheer him up.
“You still play the drums?”
“Not in a long time.”
“But you still have the set?”
“In the basement.”
“Know any other musicians who live around here?”
“Why?”
“Humor me.”
“Sure, I think so. If they’re still alive, I mean.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“What? Where?”
“To my house to get you something to eat,” Pino replied. “And then we’re going to find wine, food, and more young ladies. And when we’ve got enough, we are going to throw the end-of-war party to end all end-of-war parties.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
By 9:00 p.m. on the second day of the general insurrection in Milan, Pino and Carletto had moved six cases of wine and twenty liters of homemade beer from Uncle Albert’s private stock to the Hotel Diana. Pino’s father contributed two full bottles of grappa. And Carletto found three unopened bottles of whiskey someone had given his father years before.
Corporal Daloia, in the meantime, had discovered a dismantled stage in the basement of the hotel and saw it reassembled at the far end of the ballroom. Carletto’s drum kit was set up at the rear of the stage. He was thumping the bass drum and adjusting his cymbals while a trumpeter, a clarinetist, a saxophonist, and a trombonist were tuning up.