“You’ve been here in this apartment the whole time?”

The radio operator snorted. “If so, Baka would have been a dead man fifteen weeks ago. The Nazis, they have machines now to hunt radios. They use three of them to try to, how do you say, triangulate our transmission location so they can kill us and destroy the radios. You know what is penalty for having transmitter radio these days?”

Pino shook his head.

“No questions, no nothing,” Baka said making a slitting sound, and passed his finger across his throat with a smile.

“So you move around?”

“Every two days, in the middle of the day, Baka takes the chance and goes for a long walk with his suitcase to another empty apartment.”

Pino had all sorts of other questions he wanted to ask, but he felt he’d already overstayed his welcome. “I’ll see you again?”

Baka raised a thick brow, shrugged. “Who can know these things?”

Pino left the apartment and the building quickly. He recovered his bike and mounted it in the light of a warm spring afternoon. Riding back through the burned wasteland, he felt good, useful again. As small an assignment as that had been, he knew he’d done the right thing, fighting back, taking a risk, and he felt the better for it. He wasn’t going to join the Germans. He was going to join the resistance. That was all there was to it.

Pino headed north toward Piazzale Loreto. He reached the fruit and vegetable stand just as Mr. Beltramini was lowering his awnings. Carletto’s father had aged terribly since the last time Pino had seen him. Worry and stress were sewn through his face.

“Hi, Mr. Beltramini,” he said. “It’s me. Pino.”

Mr. Beltramini squinted at him, looked him up and down, and then threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Pino Lella? You look like you ate Pino Lella!”

Pino laughed. “That’s funny.”

“Awww, well, my young friend, how can you survive what life throws at you if you cannot laugh and love, and are they not the same thing?”

Pino thought about that. “I guess so. Is Carletto here?”

“Upstairs, helping his mother.”

“How is she?”

Mr. Beltramini’s wall-to-wall grin vanished. He shook his head. “Not good. The doctor says maybe six months, maybe less.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“And I’m grateful for every moment I have with her,” the shopkeeper said. “I’ll go up and get Carletto for you.”

“Thanks,” Pino said. “Give her my best.”

Mr. Beltramini started toward the door, but then stopped. “My son missed you. He says you’re the best friend he’s ever had.”

“I missed him, too,” Pino said. “I should have written him a letter, but it was difficult . . . what we were doing up there.”

“He’ll understand, but you’ll look out for him, won’t you?”

“Promised I would,” Pino said. “And I never go back on a promise.”

Mr. Beltramini touched Pino’s biceps and shoulders. “My God, you’re built like a race horse!”

Four or five minutes later, Carletto came out the door. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Pino said, punching him lightly on the arm. “It’s great to see you.”

“Yeah? You, too.”

“You don’t sound convinced of it.”

“My mama has had a tough day.”

Pino felt a pang in his gut. He hadn’t seen his own mother since Christmas, and he suddenly missed Porzia, and even Cicci.

“I can’t imagine,” Pino said.

They talked and joked for fifteen minutes, until they noticed daylight beginning to fade. Pino had never dealt with the curfew before, and he wanted to be inside the new apartment long before night fell. They made plans to meet up in the coming days, shook hands, and parted.

It pained Pino to ride away from Carletto. His old friend seemed lost, a shell of himself. Before the bombs had started falling, Carletto had been quick and funny, just like his father. Now, he looked duller, as if inside he’d turned as gray as those men Pino had seen clearing the streets. At the checkpoint into San Babila, the guard recognized him and waved him through. I could have had a gun on me, Pino thought as he started to pedal, and then heard shouting behind him.

He looked over his shoulder. Soldiers from the checkpoint came running after him with their machine guns held at their waists. Terrified, he stopped and threw up his hands.

They ran past Pino and around the corner. His heart was racing so fast he got dizzy, and it took several moments before he could move. What had happened there? Where were they going? Then he heard klaxon horns. An ambulance? A police car?

He walked his bike to the corner, looked around it, and saw the three Nazis searching a man in his late thirties. The man had his hands up against a bank wall, legs spread. He was upset and got more so when one of the Germans pulled a revolver from the man’s waistband.

“Per favore!” he cried. “I only use this to protect my store and to go to the bank!”

One of the soldiers barked something in German. The soldiers all took a few steps back. One threw up his rifle and shot the man in the back of the head. The man went rag doll and crumpled down the wall.

Pino jumped back, horrified. One of the soldiers saw him, yelled something. Pino leaped on his bike, pedaled like a maniac, and, taking a roundabout route, got to the apartment building on Corso Matteotti without being caught.

The SS sentries in the lobby were new, and they paid closer attention to him than before. One patted him down and inspected his documents twice before allowing him through to the elevator. As the birdcage rose, the memory of the shot man kept playing over and over in his mind.

Numb and sickened, he only became aware of the delicious odors coming from the new apartment when he raised his hand to knock. His uncle opened it and let him in.

“We were worried,” Uncle Albert said, shutting the door. “You’ve been gone too long.”

“I went to see my friend Carletto,” Pino said.

“Thank God. But otherwise no problems?”

“I saw the Germans kill a man for having a pistol,” Pino said dully. “They just shot him like he was nothing. Nothing.”

Before his uncle could reply, Porzia appeared in the hallway, threw her arms wide, and cried, “Pino!”

“Mama?”

Pino was flooded with emotions that propelled him across the room to his mother. He scooped Porzia up off her feet, swung her around, and kissed her, which provoked a squeal of fear and delight. Then he swung her around again.

“Okay, okay, that’s enough! Put me down!”

Pino placed her gently on the rug. Porzia smoothed her dress before looking at him and shaking her head. “Your father said you were big, but I . . . My Domenico? Is he big like you now, too?”

“Not any taller, but stronger, Mama,” Pino said. “Mimo’s a tough guy now.”

“Well.” Porzia beamed, and her eyes began to water. “I am just so happy to be in my new home with my big boy.”

His father came out from the kitchen.