The Last Days of Il Duce by Domenic Stansberry Page A

to Johnny Bruno. The two of them left together, went to Johnny’s place. Now I want you to pay me for those hot dogs.”
    I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but Sammy Lucca didn’t see anything funny. His friends were watching him from the table, he had his hand out, and it was all a matter of honor now. I’d seen it a hundred million times before. So I gave the old bastard his nickel, plus thirty years interest, then went out to hunt up Johnny Bruno.

THIRTEEN
    IL FASCISTO
    Johnny Bruno was one of those exiled men Mrs. Tollini had been going on about the other day. One of those San Francisco Italians who had been snatched up and penned inside the Western States Internment Camp during the war. When those men came back to San Francisco, most did not stay long. The streets were wrapped in all that euphoria, confetti tumbling down, and the shame was too much for the Il Buffone who had supported Mussolini once upon a time. Shame and then shame again, because how else could it be, all North Beach celebrating and then these men, aliens now, walking about with their heads hanging in everyone else’s hoopla. Most gathered their families and scattered soon as they could, and a number ended out in Reno. Johnny Bruno was one of those. He had returned to North Beach after his wife died. His son lived over in Oakland, and this way Johnny could take the subway under the bay once a week and get a look at his grandkids growing up underneath all those eucalyptus trees.
    I already knew most of his story but Johnny told it to me again, sitting in his room at the Ling Wei Hotel. The Ling Wei was a pensioners’ hotel, formerly the Hotel Colombo, one of the few places around not owned by Jimmy Wong, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. Johnny Bruno sat slumped in a chair under the window, smoking one Pall Mall after another, stinking out the place.
    â€œI read about your brother in the paper. Terrible, the way they kill him.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œBut no one pays any attention these days.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMeanwhile, Molini, two hundred years old, he gets an obituary the size of the moon. But what do you expect?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œA Genovesi like him, big shot delicatessen owner, he buys himself flowers in advance, pays the newspaper. Goddamn Genovesi think they can buy everything. When I was a kid, we Sicilians.…”
    He would’ve gone on it with, I know, but the Pall Mall got to him and he started to choke. The people in the Mission might lock you out, tell you nothing at all, but these Italians loved nothing better than to intertwine you in their familial wars, so that any slight had precedent in a feud generations old and ultimately pertained to their own grievances more than your own.
    â€œWhy did my brother come to visit you?”
    â€œWe just talk, that’s all.”
    â€œWhat about?”
    â€œThe old days, he let me reminisce. But my reminisce, you know, is no sweet stuff. I have some stories to tell and nobody wants to listen. Your brother, I guess, he had his own reasons. But I have my life in boxes all around me. It’s the way I am.”
    It was true. Johnny Bruno’s apartment was a cluttered mess, pictures everywhere, Sicilian fishermen, haggard women, Johnny as a young man hanging out in Washington Square, slouching around, curly-headed, arm hanging over some girl’s shoulder. He wore his Black Shirt and a cigarette hung from his lips.
    â€œThat’s what gets me in trouble. I joined the Fascio Umbrile. We met every week. The truth is, some people did not want me in. A Sicilian. But the group, it was paid for by the Italian Consul. And the Consul says everybody gets in. That’s the word from Rome. From Il Duce.
    â€œSome people say why you keep this picture in your house? You were no fascist. You were just a young man, you didn’t know what the words mean. I say, I have nothing to be ashame.”
    He