Every other Italian restaurant in Chicago is called Ristorante Napoli.
Inside, it was a dump. A small room and eight rickety tables covered with oilcloth. He walked in and looked down at one of the tables, not pleased with the cheap tableware and the battered glass, into which was rolled a thin paper napkin. But then the smell of basil, garlic, and fennel came to his nostrils, and he sat down.
A waiter, or maybe the owner, a none-too-clean white apron around his waist, walked into the room.
"Buenas tardes, Se¤or."
"Parli Italiano?"
"Of course. You are Italian?"
"Yes."
"From the North," the man said, and then tapped his ear. "I myself am from Napoli, but I can hear the North."
Actually, I'm from Cicero, Illinois. I don't think I should tell you that, so if you think I am from the North of Italy, fine.
"Where?"
Shit! I know as much about Italy as I do about Argentina. Zero. Zilch.
"Far north. Up by the border."
"Perhaps near Santa del Moreno?"
"Not far," Tony said. He tapped his ear. "You have a fine ear, Se¤or."
"It is something like a hobby for me," the man said. "I am told that I am very good at it."
"You're amazing."
"And how may I help you, Se¤or?"
"I would like something cold to drink, and then I would like to eat."
"We have the Coca-Cola, and agua con gas."
"Coca-Cola."
"And have you considered what you would like to eat?"
Tony heard his father's voice in his ear:
"This only works in a little restaurant," he said. "But if the guy running it is pushing something, take it. It's one of two things: He personally made it and he's proud of it. Or they made it yesterday and he's trying to get rid of it. You can always send it back.''
"You surprise me," Tony said.
"I will try to please. And a wine.'"
"You surprise me."
The first thing that appeared was the Coke and the wine. The Coke was cold, and Tony drained it and burped.
"Excuse me."
"It is nothing."
There was a whole bottle of wine. All I wanted was a glass, but what the hell. The man went through the wine-tasting ritual.
In a joint like this? But what the hell, he's trying.
"Very nice," Tony said. The man beamed and filled Tony's glass.
"What do you call it?"
"Vino tinto Rincon Famoso. It is Argentine. I would not want my mother to hear me say this, but I prefer it to the Italian."
"Very nice," Tony said, meaning it, even if it wasn't the Chianti he had hoped for.
Next came prosciutto-damned good prosciutto-on a plate with french fries.
"What do you call this in Spanish?" "Jamon cocido con papas fritas."
"Jamon cocido con papas fritas," Tony repeated. "Jamon co-cido con papas fritas."
"Fine," the man said. "In no time you will learn Spanish. It is not that different from Italian."
"I hope," Tony said.
Yeah, it won't be long. I'll speak Spanish in a couple of months. If I'm still alive in a couple of months.
Next came a small plate of vermicelli with a tomato-and-pepper sauce. Washed down with a couple of glasses of vino tinto, it wasn't at all bad; but Tony was disappointed. He could have eaten two, three times as much.
The small portion was explained with the delivery of some kind of chicken.
"What's this?"
"Suprema a la Maryland."
"Maryland?"
The man shrugged. "It is something my mother taught me. The sauce is from bananas and corn. Perhaps it is Argentinean, not Italian."
You bet your ass it's not Italian. Grandma told me the first banana she ever saw was in Chicago, and that she tried to eat the peel, it looked so good.
Washed down with the rest of the bottle of vino tinto, the Suprema a la Maryland wasn't half as bad as he thought it would be.
Tony declined another bottle of wine-the last thing I can af-ford to do is get shitfaced-and dessert. He was full up.
"Magnifico," he declared, and asked for the bill. It was a hell of a lot cheaper than the last meal he'd had downtown.
"Do you know someplace I can buy some telephone wire?"
"Right around the corner," the man told him.
Tony consulted his pocket-sized Spanish-English/English-Spanish dictionary before entering the hardware store.
"Cable para el telefono, por favor?"
What looked like a hundred-foot roll of multistrand 16-gauge steel wire was produced. He would have preferred copper, but this would do.
And, hey, look at me, I'm speaking Spanish!
"How much?"
"How many meters will Se¤or require?"
"All of it."
"This is all I have."
So what?
"I will require all of it. Where I wish to place the telephone is a long way from the wall."
The man shrugged, announced a price, and Tony paid him. The wire was neatly wrapped in an old newspaper and tied with string.
Tony returned to the street and headed back toward the water-front. As he neared Ristorante Napoli, he saw a fine-looking fe-male coming the other way. She looked out of place here-too well-dressed, like one of the Mi¤as in the hotel. He wondered what she was doing in this neighborhood.
They met near the door to Ristorante Napoli. Tony smiled at her. She didn't respond, although he was sure she saw him smil-ing at her.
She looked right through me. Well, what the hell, the way I'm dressed, she probably decided I don't have any money. Or maybe she's not a Mi¤a after all. She looks like a nice girl. Nice girls, nice Italian girls, always play hard to get.
And then she pushed open the door to the Ristorante Napoli and went in.
I'll be damned. That gives me two reasons to come back here. He reached the waterfront and started toward the bus stop.
He saw a taxi.
Fuck the bus. Lieutenant Pelosi has made all the sacrifices in the service of his country he intends to today.
He flagged the taxi down and told the driver to take him to the Alvear Palace Hotel.
Jesus, that was a good-looking woman!
[TWO]
Aboard MV Colonia
Rio de la Plata
0115 8 December 1942
"What do you say we go on deck and take the evening breeze?" First Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, said to Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi, CE, USAR, as the waiter cleared their table.
"All right," Tony replied.
Clete stood up, peeled a couple of bills from a thick wad and tossed them casually on the table, then walked out of the dining room onto the deck.
The dining room, like their cabin, was on the bridge deck. There were benches along the bulkheads, and a dozen or so deck chairs. All the deck chairs were occupied, and people were scat-tered along the benches.
Clete looked aft. There was a glow on the horizon, obviously the lights of Buenos Aires. He estimated they were twenty-five, maybe thirty miles into the river. It was about a hundred twenty-five miles from Buenos Aires to Montevideo. The Colonia looked like a miniature ocean liner, and carried probably two hundred people. It sailed from Buenos Aires just after midnight, and would arrive in Montevideo at about nine in the morning. There were cabins, a dining room, a lounge, and a bar. You came aboard, had a drink and dinner, and then went to bed. When you woke up, you were in Uruguay. A couple of times Clete took the over-night boat from New York to Boston with his grandfather, when the Old Man had business with the Bank of Boston that had to be handled in person. The Colonia reminded him of that.
He led Pelosi forward, then down a ladder, then forward again, and down another ladder to the main deck. They stepped over a chain, with a sign in Spanish, "No Entry-Crew Only," hanging from it, and walked forward to the bow.
"That sign meant 'off limits,' didn't it?" Tony asked.
"Well, if somebody comes, we're just a couple of dumb Norteamericanos who don't speak Spanish. Besides, what they're worried about is a bunch of people out here lighting cigarettes, which will keep the helmsman and the officers on the bridge from seeing. No lights forward, in other words."
"No shit?"
"Would you like one of these?" extending to him a leather cigar case.
Tony considered the offer for a moment... He gives me a speech about no cigarettes up here, and then pulls out cigars... and then took a long, thin, black cigar.
"Thank you," he said.
"A fine conclusion to a splendid meal," Clete said.
"If you like eating at midnight."
"I wonder what they were serving at the O Club at Fort Bragg tonight? Three'll get you five it wasn't what we had."
"Jesus, their food is good, isn't it?" Tony said. "First-class steak!"
Clete handed him a gold cigarette lighter.
"You have to flip the top up first, and then spin the wheel," Clete explained. "I have the feeling that was made sometime around World War One."
Pelosi lit his cigar, then, hefting it, handed the lighter back.
"Heavy. Gold?"
"I'm sure it is. Nothing was too good for my uncle Bill."
"Excuse me?"
"My granduncle Guillermo. That was probably his. I found it and the cigar case in a drawer in his-now my-bedroom. I de-cided that if he had known what a splendid fellow I am, he would have left me both in his will, so I took possession."
Tony had to smile. He was glad it was too dark out here for the Pride of the Marine Corps to see his face.
"And the house, too?"
"The house belongs to my father. Uncle Bill lost it betting on the horses."
"No shit?"
"Uncle Bill was a man after my own heart. According to my father, he spent his life drinking good whiskey, laying all the women in Buenos Aires, gambling on horse races, and playing polo. I have decided I want to be just like him."
"You know how to play polo?"
"We used to play it at A and M. We called it polo, and I guess it was. But we did it on cow ponies, using brooms and a basket-ball."
"What's A and M? For that matter, what's a cow pony?"
"A and M, you ignorant city slicker, is the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical Institute. You really never heard of A and M?"
"Yeah. Now I know what it is. You went there?"
"For two years. I finished up at Tulane in New Orleans."
"So what's a cow pony?"
"A horse, most often what they call a quarterhorse, a small one, trained to work cattle. When we played 'polo,' the cow po-nies made it clear they thought we were insane. We had them running up and down a field, and we were yelling and making a lot of noise, and there wasn't a cow in sight."
Pelosi chuckled.
"But you never played real polo?"
"No. I've been wondering if I could. Maybe. Christ knows, I grew up on a horse."
"Really?"
"On a ranch in West Texas. I was raised by my aunt and uncle."
"So those cowboy boots are for real? I thought maybe you thought they just looked good."
"They feel good. When I went in the Corps and had to wear what they call 'low quarter' shoes-do they call them that in the Army?-I felt like I was running around barefooted."
"Yeah, they do. When I went in the Army, the goddamned boots killed me. I was blisters all over. Then I got used to them, and then I got to wear jump boots, and they're really comfortable, and I felt the same way, barefoot, when I had to start wearing civilian shoes again."
"Well, keep your fingers crossed, and maybe pretty soon you can put your jump boots on again and get back to jumping out of perfectly functioning airplanes."
"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Tony said. "I like para-chuting."
"I don't," Clete said. "I tried it once and hated it."
"How come you tried it?"
"There was a Japanese pilot who was much better than me," Clete said.
"No shit? You were shot down?"
"They warned us that the Japanese liked to shoot at people in parachutes, and that the thing to do was not pull the handle..." He made a pulling gesture across his chest.
"The 'D Ring,' " Tony furnished.
"... until you were close to the ground. Or in my case, the water. So there I was," he gestured with his hands, "doing som-ersaults in the air, and every time I turned around-which seemed like twice a second-I looked at the water and tried to decide how close I was. Finally, I figured fuck it, and pulled the han-dle..."
Tony, chuckling, corrected him again: "The D Ring."
"... and all of a sudden, it goes 'bloop,' jars the living shit out of me-I was sore between the legs for weeks-and then there's the water. Water is not always soft. And have you ever tried to swim wrapped in three square miles of parachute silk?"
"You didn't have your harness tight," Tony said. "That's one of the first things you learn, to make the harness tight."
"As I said, I tried it once and didn't like it. But you have fun, Tony. Each to his own."
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Tony thought. That's a true story. He was out fighting the Japs and got shot down, and jumped, and fucking near killed himself not opening his 'chute in time. He may be a little stuck up, but he's no candy-ass.
"But you came out all right."
"They had PT boats patrolling between Guadalcanal and Tulagi. One of them saw me coming down, and they started firing at the Zero who was strafing me, chased him off, and then fished me out of the water. There was a guy-he commanded one of the other fighter squadrons, VMF-229-who went in the drink and spent twenty-four hours out there, floating around all by him-self, before he was spotted and fished out. I don't think I could have taken that."
"Huh?"
"Waiting for the sharks. I think I would have gone nuts." Tony could imagine that. He felt a chill.
"You ever shoot down any Japs?"
There was a moment before Clete replied, ' 'I got lucky a cou-ple of times."
"You going to tell me how many times?"
"Seven."
"You're an ace, then."
"Before I was dumb enough to volunteer for this, the Marine Corps was about to put me and a dozen other aces on display on the West Coast to sucker other innocent young men into volun-teering for the crotch."
"The crotch"? What the hell is "the crotch"? Oh! He means the Marine Corps. If I called it "the crotch" he'd shit a brick.
"Was it as bad as they say on Guadalcanal?"
"It was unpleasant, Tony. Hot, humid, filthy, lousy food- much of it captured from the Japs-all kinds of bugs. And flying beat-up, shot-up, worn-out airplanes against Zeroes... a much better airplane, flown by pilots who were better than we were."
They weren't all better than you. Not if you shot down seven of them.
"You never talked about it before."
Clete shrugged. "Most people, civilians especially, don't un-derstand."
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
"What are we doing here?"
"Hell, I thought you knew, Lieutenant Pelosi. Our contribution to the war effort is going to be to blow up a ship. That is, if people we must presume are far wiser than we are can make up their minds which ship, and tell us where it is, and how the hell we are supposed to blow it up."
Tony chuckled.
"I meant, where we're going?"
"Tomorrow morning, when we dock in Montevideo, we are going to a crude-oil terMi¤al and make believe we know what we're doing as we examine the pipes and tanks and look at the books. Then we are going to a gambling casino for the night."
"A gambling casino?"
"You ever hear that line, 'theirs not to reason why, theirs but to ride into the valley of death'? In our case, it's walk into a gambling casino."
"And then what?"
"The next morning, we drive a rented car to a place called Punta del Este, where we take a swim. If Nes-the
man who gave me our orders wasn't pulling my leg, the beaches of Punta del Este are crowded with good-looking women. Then, at night, we drive up to the Brazilian border, where they will air-drop your explosives to you."
W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound Page 33
