Roy read in the newspaper that Doctor Death had escaped and was believed to be hiding out in South America. Doctor Death, whose real name was Aribert Heim, had supposedly murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and other prisoners in unspeakable medical experiments at the Mathausen concentration camp during World War II. He had been captured by the Allies and held in custody with other Nazis for a short time following the end of the war, then, for some unexplained reason, released. Heim lived in Germany for fifteen years, until he was tipped off that he was about to be indicted and fled the country.
Walking to work after school, Roy stopped in front of Vignola’s appliance store and watched the televisions in the window. There were three, each tuned to a different station with the sound off. At first, Roy watched the one showing a Porky Pig cartoon, then a picture of a man came on another set, the one in the middle. The man’s face was darkly handsome but hard, the almost oriental eyes staring to the left of the camera, the grim mouth tight and turned down at the corners, his severely widow-peaked hair slicked back. The name “Doctor Death” appeared under the photograph. Wet snow began falling, melting before it could accumulate on the ground. The wind blew flakes into Roy’s face, but he wiped them off and watched the TV with Doctor Death’s face on it until it switched to another story. Then he remembered that old man Vignola was from somewhere in South America.
Roy went into the appliance store and saw the owner standing on a small stepladder, replacing a lightbulb. There were no customers in the store. Roy went over and stood next to the stepladder.
“Hi, Mr. Vignola,” he said, “need any help?”
“Here,” said the old man, handing down the dead bulb to Roy. “Hold this.”
Roy took it and Vignola finished screwing in the new bulb, then climbed down.
“Thank you, Roy,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
Roy handed back the old bulb.
“If you were going to hide out in South America,” said Roy, “where would you go?”
Vignola stood half a head shorter than Roy, mostly because he was bent over and had a hump on his back. He had a head of thick, curly white hair, though, that made Roy imagine him wearing a tuxedo and conducting an orchestra with his hair flying.
“That’s a strange question,” said Vignola. “Why do you ask me?”
“You’re from there,” Roy said.
“From Argentina, yes,” said the old man, “Buenos Aires. But not for forty years. I came to this country in 1922, and I have never gone back.”
“This Nazi called Doctor Death that I saw on the news is probably hiding out down there.”
Vignola nodded. “I heard. Heim. He and Mengele experimented on people in the camps. Beasts. Brazil, maybe. Many of them went there. Some to Argentina, sure, and Bolivia. Paraguay, too. Chile, perhaps, a little fishing village far from anywhere.”
“Why are they allowed to live there?” asked Roy. “If they’re fugitives, and it’s obvious they’re Germans, not Brazilians or Bolivians, why aren’t they arrested?”
“Because in many cases the governments sided during the war with the Axis. Also, the Nazis escaped with enough money to pay for protection for years, or their children now support them.”
“Were you born in Buenos Aires?”
The old man looked up and directly at Roy, who noticed for the first time that Vignola’s eyes were blue.
“No,” said Vignola, “in Napoli. My father was a cobbler, but in those days Italy was not united, not truly a country. There was a great schism between the North and the South, there still is. In Napoli, there were many factions vying for power, political battles in which men were killed just for an insult. Tribe against tribe. My parents took a boat with me and my sister to Montevideo, Uruguay, and settled eventually in Argentina, where there was already a large Italian population.”
“Why did your father leave?”
“They wanted him to go into the army to fight in Abyssinia, and he didn’t want to go there. The Abyssinians defeated the Italians in 1896, and after that Italy wanted revenge. They got it when Mussolini invaded again in the 1930s. This began the war for Italy.”
“They sided with Germany,” said Roy.
The old man shook his head, and said, “Italy has never ended a war on the same side on which it began.”
“I’ve got to go to work,” Roy said.
Vignola looked out the front window.
“It’s snowing harder now.”
“I’ve got a hat,” said Roy.
“This Doctor Death,” said the old man, “they’ll get him. Maybe not right away, but they won’t stop.”
“Who won’t stop?”
“The Jews,” said Vignola. “The Americans won the war but they didn’t finish the job. The Israelis will. They’ll hunt down Doctor Death and the other Nazis, you’ll see.”
“Even if they’re far from anywhere?”
“The world is shrinking fast, Roy. Anywhere is not so far any more.”
“You’re not Jewish, are you?” asked Roy.
“I wish I were,” said Vignola.
“I never heard anybody say that before,” said Roy, “that they wished they were a Jew.”
“How old are you, Roy?”
“I just turned fifteen.”
The old man smiled. “Put on your hat,” he said.