Street Boys by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page B

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