The Rolling Bootlegs (15 page)

Fast…!

Directly after Maiza had stepped forward slowly, he’d then sped up drastically. That was what had given Firo the illusion that Maiza’s body had stretched.

Maiza gave a slightly disappointed smile. Then he closed the distance again, unleashing a series of attacks with his knife.

The way it moved changed from attack to attack. Just when Firo had seen several arcing attacks in a row, in the next instant, a sharp, direct thrust would bear down on him. Firo also struck, undaunted, but every strike was deflected by beautifully spare motions. Then another attack would be launched in the opening he’d left.

He was
tough
. The way Maiza handled his blade showed his skills to be first-rate among the people Firo knew. If he’d been watching from the sidelines, he probably would have involuntarily marveled at it, but he didn’t have the time right now to be impressed.

However, Firo also had the best knife skills of the associates, and he continued to evade Maiza’s serial attacks by a hair.

Firo’s strength lay in his sharp eyes and the breadth of their vision. The knife’s pathway wasn’t the only thing his eyes picked up on:
He had a detailed grasp of the movement of Maiza’s shoulders, his gaze, and his footwork, which he used to make split-second decisions about what his own moves should be.

The job he did for the syndicate involved being on the alert for cheating at a gambling den, and it would have trained his kinetic vision and broadened his visual field whether he wanted it to or not. In addition, when he had free days, he’d studied martial arts with Yaguruma and knife handling with Ronny and Molsa, so he was skilled at making snap decisions in combat.

Even so, Maiza was driving him to the wall.

Firo’s eyes picked up the state of the room behind Maiza. Given the position of the walls beyond him, it was clear that Firo would be forced into a corner very soon. If his back hit the wall even once, Maiza would probably get him. In which case—

Firo took a gamble. He voluntarily leaped backward, slamming his back into the wall. Maiza closed in. Firo swiftly went into a crouch…then kicked off the wall, charging at Maiza. For an instant, the other man looked confused—Or Firo thought he had, but he couldn’t afford to double-check things like that. He took aim and thrust his knife at his opponent.

If he aimed for the arm, his own arm would likely have been sliced first. And so—

Maiza’s arm suddenly stopped.

The tip of Firo’s blade jammed into the guard of Maiza’s knife. The two weapons overlapped each other perfectly. But the blade of Firo’s knife seemed to be just a bit longer: Maiza’s blade hadn’t reached Firo’s guard.

A cross-counter with knives. The strange sight didn’t even last a second.

Maiza hastily withdrew his knife, but as if synchronizing his movements to Maiza’s, Firo shoved his own knife farther in.

The unexpected force threw Maiza off-balance.

This time, aiming for that instant, Firo yanked his knife back. Soundlessly, the blade slipped free of Maiza’s guard. Then, as Maiza staggered, it slashed his left arm.

The close combat, which had lasted several minutes, came to a truly abrupt end.

The sleeve of Maiza’s shirt split, and red blood seeped from the tear.

“…That’s the match, gentlemen.”

Maiza beamed, holding his red-stained arm high.

After a moment’s silence, the basement room erupted with cheers.

Up until then, the executives had observed the ritual with wooden expressions, but from the way they looked now, you would have thought their favorite ball player had hit a homer. Everyone was praising Firo, all at once.

“Yahoo! That was incredible, Firo!”

One of the executives put an arm around Firo’s shoulders.

“I can’t believe you managed to land one on Maiza!”

Apparently all the executives had known about Maiza’s skills. Come to think of it, he’d never heard the executives say anything nasty about Maiza behind his back. Now that Firo had recovered enough composure to be able to calmly consider such nuance, sweat began trickling down his face.

“No…I was…startled, too.”

“Congratulations, Firo.”

All the strength seemed to have drained from Firo, and Maiza hugged him, as if to keep him on his feet. Then, as though they were following his lead, the other executives embraced Firo, one after another.

As he slapped Firo on the back, Yaguruma sent him a rare compliment.

“You sure have grown. I’ve served as witness for many years, and you’re the first exec candidate who’s ever beaten Maiza!”

Finally, Molsa hugged Firo, thumping him on the back.

“I won’t say another word. You’re a fine camorrista, Firo.”

Then Molsa picked up the gun that had been used in the earlier ritual:

“I now fire a salute, to celebrate the birth of our new executive!”

Aiming at the ceiling, he pulled the trigger. The bullet punched
through the wooden ceiling, heading upstairs. These shots were probably always fired at the same place: There were several old bullet scars in that area.

With that, the entire ritual was over, and a new camorrista had been born.

Possibly from happiness, the camorrista in question kept looking around at everything.

“…Huh?”

Then he noticed.

The red stain that had been on Maiza’s arm had vanished completely.

Just as he was wondering what that meant—

There was a heavy
thud
, as if something had fallen over on the other side of the ceiling. Then a woman’s scream rang out.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Isaac’s been
killed
!”

A little while earlier.

Isaac and Miria were walking along, looking just as they had before, when the streetlamps began to light up.

“Well. I wonder if Ennis got those four turned in to the police.”

“I hope she managed to make a clean getaway afterward!”

She’d called herself a criminal, so apparently they were worried she might have been caught by the police.

“Say, what do you suppose Ennis even did?”

“She probably ran away from home, don’t you think?!”

They had no way of knowing she’d thought
they
were runaways.

“Hmm… Yes, that could be it. Still… She was seriously tough!”

“Really tough!”

“I wonder if that was the rumored ‘Oriental Baritsu.’”

“What’s Baritsu?”

“Heh-heh-heh! It’s an Eastern martial art used by Holmes, the hero of those popular British novels. I hear it’s actually an abbreviation of ‘Barton-style jujitsu’!”

“Wow, Isaac, you know
everything
!”

“Heh-heh-heh, had you
observed
instead of merely
seen
, you would have known the meaning of
Baritsu
, my dear Miria.”

Apparently he was a fan of detective novels. That said, it’s doubtful that even observing would have clarified the meaning of
Baritsu
. For one thing, there hadn’t been anything to see.

“Still, tough girls are really swell, aren’t they…”

“Yes, like Tomoe Gozen!”

Why did these two have such an abundance of bizarre knowledge, and no other kind?

“By the way, Isaac! Where are we going next?”

“Right. About that…” Isaac dropped his voice to a whisper and began to explain. “Even if we’re stealing money from the Mafia, if we take it from a group that’s too big, we’ll have lots of guys chasing us, and that’ll be rough. For that reason, the plan is to target a small outfit that isn’t affiliated with anybody! According to the information I hunted up earlier, the groups that fit the bill in this area are the Martillo Family and the Gandor Family.”

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.”

“And so, for now, I thought we’d head to the Martillo Family’s hideout, since it’s closer. We’ll use today to just case the joint.”

“Case the joint! Okay!”

When they went to the address they’d gotten from the information broker, they found a shop with a sign in the shape of a beehive.

The brown sign had A
LVEARE
written on it in white paint, but Isaac didn’t know Italian, so he didn’t realize that the word meant “beehive.”

“Ah, this is it, this is the place.”

“Yes, this is it!”

When they opened the door, their noses were greeted by a strong, sweet smell.

Inside, the store was crowded with rows of honey of all kinds. They’d thought the sweet smell might have been leaking from the
jars, but apparently the culprit was the honey simmering on a stove behind the register.

“C’mon in.”

The woman who was stirring the pot on the stove spoke to them.

“We’ll be closing soon, so if you’re looking for something, speak up quick.”

She seemed brusque, but Isaac and Miria didn’t particularly mind. They looked around the shop.

There was a hallway back behind the register with a sturdy-looking door at the end of it.

“Erm, we’d like to go through that door.”

“We want to go in!”

In response to this, the proprietress gave them a cold glare.

“…Haven’t seen you ’round here before.”

“Don’t worry about it!”

“Don’t!”

The proprietress took another good look at the pair. A tuxedo, no necktie, and a black dress. In their hands, they held something that appeared to be a helmet from some foreign country and a weird mask.

No matter how you looked at them, they didn’t seem to be police investigators, and she’d never heard of a woman participating in a sting operation before.

Arriving at that conclusion, the proprietress wordlessly started down the hall.

“C’mon, then.”

She knocked several times on the tightly closed door. For just a moment, light showed through the peephole.

There was a brief pause, and then they heard a heavy
click
from behind the door. Probably a padlock being released.

The door swung open, and brilliant light flooded out.

“Whoa…”

“
Amazing
…”

The interior looked like something out of a musical. The light of a chandelier illuminated the milk-white walls, turning them a gold
reminiscent of honey. The room seemed more spacious than the building had from the outside, and it held nearly ten tables covered with white cloths. The exterior of the adjacent buildings had looked separate, but apparently several of them were connected on the inside.

There was a small platform at the back, probably so that local canaries could show off their voices. The concentration of lightbulbs was higher in that area.

“Ah, customers! Welcome, come in!”

From the back, a voice addressed them in slightly accented English.

A Chinese girl with pretty black hair came running up to Isaac and Miria. She was wearing an eye-catching cheongsam sewn from red fabric and embroidered with gold thread. The slim lines of her body showed up clearly, and her appearance was bound to attract male glances. However, occasional glimpses of something childlike showed in her gestures and the way she spoke, and it seemed more fitting to call her the darling of the establishment than its Madonna.

“Oh, I’m so sorry! I’m afraid we’ve been reserved by group today, so I’ll need to seat you two in corner. Okay?”

When she mentioned it and they looked around, the place really was quite empty. Aside from them, the only customers were a few old geezers and, for some reason, a child. Other than that, there was a group of about three men at the back, and that was all.

Without waiting for their response, the Chinese girl showed them to a small table in the corner.

Isaac and Miria followed her without complaint. Since they were only here to case the joint, they didn’t particularly care where they were seated.

“Uh… For now, bring us your cheapest liquor, would you?”

“Would you!”

“Yes, yes! Just one moment, please.”

After their exotic waitress had gone, the pair began chatting confidentially in whispers.

(“All right, listen: We’re looking for places where money might collect.”)

(“Like a safe?”)

(“Right. From what I heard, the syndicate’s office is here somewhere. That means there’s probably a safe here, too.”)

(“Okay!”)

Silently, the two stood up and began casually prowling around the establishment. They couldn’t have looked more suspicious if they’d tried, but at the moment, the only staff member was the Chinese girl, and she didn’t seem to have noticed what they were doing.

“Now then, where to start looking… Nn?”

Isaac’s ears had caught something that sounded like cheering voices.

“What’s that…?”

He strained his ears, searching for the source of the noise, and found that there were barrels lined up in the corner of the room, by their table.

Isaac went over to the barrels and peeked through the gaps between them.

At first, it didn’t look as if there was anything in the space, but the cheers were definitely coming from there.

“…Nn?”

His eyes fell to a patch of floor in the shadow of the barrels. There were several small holes drilled in it.

“What’s this?”

Isaac wrestled a barrel out of the way and stood there, looking down at the holes in the floor.