Mimeographed orders from the division chief of staff were stacked by date, the latest directing Arnold to await transport to Naples until the rest of the headquarters unit arrived there. All the others had to do with the mundane daily routine of any HQ. Boring, repetitive, useless.
I went through two drawers and found nothing of interest. Forms in file folders, lined up alphabetically. In a bottom drawer, under a copy of Stars and Stripes, was something more interesting: a Luftwaffe forage cap, filled with wristwatches, rings, and a few German pay books. Soldbuch, they called it. It contained a photograph of the soldier, his unit, rank, that sort of thing. I dumped the lot onto the desk.
“The major collected those books,” the corporal said.
“And he had a nice sideline in watches too. Taken from the dead, stripped from POWs. Interesting guy.” I flipped through one Soldbuch, looking at the photo of a young kid who could have been wearing any uniform. I didn’t like looking at war souvenirs. It made me think of some fat Kraut pulling my wristwatch off.
“I’m not seeing anything here but evidence of a tidy mind and an acquisitive nature,” I said.
“Billy,” Kaz said. “You should look at this.” He held a clipboard, one of six hung from nails on the wall.
“Those are replacement lists,” the corporal said, “the latest batch. I ain’t had time to file them away yet.”
“What?” I asked Kaz. His finger pointed to a list of names, and traveled down three from the top. A column of serial numbers and names.
BOYLE, DANIEL P., PVT.
“What is your brother’s middle name?” Kaz asked.
“Patrick,” I said. I felt sick as I said it, and leaned on the table for support. “Daniel Patrick Boyle.”
“Hey, you found a relative?” the corporal asked. “Lucky guy.”
“Is this the ASTP group you were telling us about?” I pointed to the clipboard.
“Yeah. Those are the replacements Major Arnold brought out. Before he got it.”
I’d been hoping for that inside straight to come along, and how did I finally manage to beat the odds? By having my kid brother show up and join a division about to end up in combat, if my guess was right. Replacements were flowing in to Caserta, filling the ranks after other replacements had been killed, wounded, or captured. I traced the line with his name on it to the right, past numbers that meant something to the army and nothing to me, until I came to his unit. Private Daniel P. Boyle had been assigned to the 3rd Division, 7th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, Easy Company, 3rd Platoon.
Right in the goddamn middle of not only the shooting war, but my investigation.
Kaz drove us back to Caserta. I was in a daze, unable to get my mind off Danny. The plan was to report to Major Kearns and find the 3rd Division. I was certain of two things: my kid brother was headed for trouble, and the Red Heart Killer was going to strike again.
Kearns was busy, so I waited outside his office while Kaz went to check on something he said was bothering him. A lot of things bothered me, so I didn’t ask what it was. I watched messengers, aides, high-ranking officers, British airmen, and a couple of civilians scurry in and out of the Intelligence section, everyone in a hurry. I bet none of them gave a hoot about my kid brother and all the other green kid brothers heading up to the line. I was upset, and the more I watched them, the more I wanted to deck one of them, just to see how they liked it. But I held back, because of the two MPs on duty outside Kearns’s door, and because while I knew it would be satisfying, it wouldn’t help me find Danny.
“Boyle,” Kearns said, appearing in the open doorway. “Get your gear and be back here in one hour. We’re shipping out.”
“We, sir? Where?”
“You’ll drive with me to Naples. We’re joining VI Corps staff.”
“Third Division is part of VI Corps, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Kearns said. “That’s why you’re coming with me. I’ve been transferred, and you need to find this killer. Something big is about to happen, Boyle, and we can’t have one of our own gunning for the brass. One hour, you and Lieutenant Kazimierz.”
“You’ve heard about Major Arnold then?”
“Me and every GI, Italian, and Brit within ten miles. The damn Krauts probably know by now.”
“Where are we going?”
“That’s top secret. You’ll know when you get there. Now hustle, goddammit.”
He was steamed, so I hustled out of sight. I waited for Kaz, who showed up twenty minutes later. I told him what Kearns had said and we beat feet to the jeep and made for Signora Salvalaggio’s. We grabbed our gear and said our good-byes. The signora promised to cook la Genovese for Kaz when he returned, and gave him a curtsy that wouldn’t have been out of place at the palace, a lifetime ago. She didn’t ask about the pearls, and I was glad, because I had no idea what we were going to do with them.
“What were you doing, back at the headquarters?” I asked Kaz as we drove to meet up with Kearns.
“Asking around, about the Fourteenth Carabinieri, the unit our friend Lieutenant Luca Amatori served with. I was curious, after the reaction of the officer in Acerra.”
“What did you find out?”
“The unit served primarily on the island of Rab, off the coast of Yugoslavia. As concentration camp guards.”
PART THREE
CHAPTER NINETEEN
For the hundredth time in this war, I sat in a jeep at a crossroads, watching a convoy of trucks crossing an intersection ahead of us. Worrying. Everyone was worried, about getting killed or wounded, about fear and what your buddies thought of you, about trench foot and the clap, about chickenshit officers and insane orders, about Schu -mines and what your girl back home would do when she heard you were alive but minus your private parts.
Everyone worried, everyone sat, everyone waited. But now I had a new worry. My kid brother. When Dad would get mad at Danny and me, he’d say that if he could put the two of us in a sack and shake it up good, he might end up with one son who was smart enough to stay out of trouble, and strong enough to get out of it when it came looking. Trouble was, Danny was a skinny kid, smart enough in class but just plain dumb anywhere between home and school. I was always stronger than most, but I used up all my smarts before I got to the schoolhouse door. We’d come home with our fair share of black eyes and pants torn at the knee, usually as a result of trouble Danny got into and I got him out of. Or in deeper, he claimed. I wondered if he had any idea how deep this trouble was.
I got tired of worrying and watched the scenery instead. On the left, a drainage ditch was filled with sluggish water, and beyond that a ruined farmhouse sat crumbling into the earth as weeds and vines worked their way through the masonry. On my side, an open field sloped gently away, down to a long green patch where water flowed, a real stream, not a ditch, maybe with frogs in the warm weather. Maybe fish. What did they fish for in Italian streams? I didn’t know, but the memory of springtime at the grassy edge of a stream came back to me, and I wanted to run through that field, feel the sun on my neck, scoop up fresh cool water and splash my face.
A line of pine trees ran up to the road, forming a neat border to the side of the field. In the field itself withered brown plants and faded grasses hung on, and occasional rock outcroppings provided a shape and contour that gave the land its own definition. This was a place that people knew well, perhaps by name, a natural field where sheep could graze, kids could play, and lovers could go for a walk. I spotted a flat limestone rock that would be great for a picnic, and a tall one that would be perfect for shade in the summer.