The Rolling Bootlegs (18 page)

“What’re we gonna do, Dallas?”

“Calm down! …For now, let’s think about blowing this town.”

Dallas and the others were in a juice joint they didn’t normally frequent. The finished product had been stolen, and it had been taken while they were recoiling from
pepper
, of all things. The instant they went back, they were bound to get “eaten.” Even if they fought, it was doubtful whether knives or guns would work against that Szilard guy.

“…Even if we leave town…let’s get that thing done first.”

“That thing?”

“What else would it be…? We’re gonna go off that Firo punk!”

The policemen had finally disappeared from the Gandor Family office.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Goddammit!
”

Berga, who’d been silent for a while, grabbed a nearby stool, raised it high, and smashed it against the floor.

With a dry sound of destruction, wood fragments flew across the area.

Catching one, Luck spoke.

“Calm down, Berga… Breaking chairs won’t accomplish anything.”

“Like I could calm down, you idiot?! What about you?! How can you be that calm?!”

“If we aren’t calm, we won’t be able to avenge Mike and the others. …Besides, I may be calm, but I
am
angry.”

He clenched his hand around the chair fragment. Blood dripped from between his fingers.

“Yes, this emotion is definitely anger. Getting angry calmly may be a contradiction, but there’s really no help for it. I’ve been trying to think of a way to quell this anger for a while now, but the answer I get
never changes: revenge. I’m aware that this may be a foolish conclusion. Even so, in my mind, when I think about whether we should find the bastards who killed Mike and the others and turn them in to the cops, or whether we should get rid of them ourselves, right now I want to twist their heads off their necks with my own two hands, no matter what. Hmm… In that sense, I may not actually be calm. Still, if I stop mulling things over like this, I’ll probably grab a gun this instant and run all over the city hunting for the culprits, and I will most likely shoot and kill any police officers or civilians who get in my way. And so, right now, let me ask a favor: If it looks as though I may do that, Berga, stop me, even if you have to hit me or shoot me. So at least… This may not be a fair thought, but I want the two of you to stay calm.”

During this long speech, Luck’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. He didn’t even blink.

“…I see. Sorry about that, Luck. You’re still way calmer than me, though.”

Picking up on the dark flames burning inside his little brother, Berga calmed down.

“…”

Silently, Keith watched his younger brothers. What was he thinking? His perfect poker face made it impossible to tell.

“…In any case, the neighboring organizations are probably suspicious about the police shoving their way in here today. For the moment, let’s go around and report what happened…while we exchange information and warnings, naturally.”

Quietly, Luck spoke about what they’d do next. For now, they decided to start with the syndicate closest to them.

“Right… Let’s head over to the Martillos first. If a small outfit like ours got attacked, they might be a target as well. On the other hand, they might know something…”

“Now, then… Sad as it may be, we must take our leave of this city.”

“Yep, we’re making a break for it!”

The thieving duo was walking toward the station, preparing to get out of town.

“Still, there are an awful lot of police officers around, aren’t there?”

“Lots and lots!”

They couldn’t possibly be searching for them. Their disguises were perfect, and their faces hadn’t actually been seen.

They spotted a chap issuing orders to several police officers, so they waited until the officers had scattered, then spoke to him.

“Excuse me. Has something happened?”

The man he’d addressed, Assistant Inspector Edward Noah, nodded to the fellow dressed as a priest, then gave him a bare-bones outline of the situation.

“Good day, Father. Well… As you may already be aware, there was another gang dispute last night. Several of the Gandor men were killed.”

He told him only what would be printed in the papers. If the other man hadn’t been a priest, he might have simply ignored him.

“I am a sinful man, Father. I thought it would be best if people like them simply killed each other off. However, when actually confronted with corpses as miserable as those…I realized I felt a strong hatred for the culprits, just as I do when an ordinary citizen is killed. They were a foolish lot who steeped themselves in violence, but do at least pray for their peace after death.”

With that, Edward walked briskly away.

The couple he’d left behind looked at each other with evident despair.

Gandor men had been killed. That information alone seemed to reverberate, a lingering echo.

“…Wha… What are we going to do?! I didn’t think they’d actually
die
!”

“Oh… Oooooh… Maybe we used too much pepper…”

It was the ultimate misunderstanding. Not only did they think that Dallas and the others had been Gandor men, they thought they’d died because of the pepper.

“Aaaah… Now we won’t be able to look those dead children in the face…”

“Ennis, either…”

“I never dreamed it would get this serious…”

“Aaaah!”

Abruptly, Miria shouted.

“Wh-wh-what?!”

“What if—Isaac, what if—? If the police or people from the Gandors find out that Firo and the others have that box…”

“…!”

Then, instead of them, Firo and the others would be caught.

Conversely, that meant the odds of their escaping in the meantime would improve, but they weren’t that underhanded. …Or rather, it didn’t even occur to them to be so.

In any case, they’d already been in the wrong when they’d given stolen goods to somebody else as a present.

“This is awful!”

“We have to go back!”

The priest and the nun broke into a run.

They’d slipped free of the spiral of destiny once.

Although they didn’t realize it, it had swallowed them back up.

“Hey, those two…”

Since Edward had been roped in to work on an emergency incident, Donald and Bill were investigating on their own.

A man and a woman whose height difference matched the one in the report ran right past them.

“Uh… Oh, maybe… You think it could be
those
two?”

“What do we do?”

“Nn… Let’s leave them. We should head to Grand Central first. That’s our real mission… Once we secure the other party, we can talk to Edward, too.”

“…Right.”

“Ah… It’s like we’re lying to Edward, and I feel just terrible about it, but…”

The spiral was spinning faster and faster.

Its point was growing narrower, converging on a single result.

Destiny’s spiral staircase. All sorts of wheels of fortune were beginning to roll down that staircase, whose central support was the liquor of immortality.

Those vibrations resonated, such that the spiral tower shook violently.

Almost as if they meant to break the very staircase of destiny.

“What’s wrong, Firo? You’ve been acting strange for a while now…”

Behind Alveare’s heavy door, Maiza and Firo were having a light lunch. Several other executives were there as well. Members who weren’t executives tended to be hesitant about entering the place, so there were no associates to be seen.

“Uh… Well…”

“Is there something wrong with that crate and its liquor?” Maiza asked, sounding worried. They’d set the crate on the table, and he pointed at it with his fork as he spoke.

“No… I, uh… I was just thinking that coincidences tend to come in groups…”

“Coincidences?”

“One was running into Isaac and Miria again. Then, what they brought was—”

Just as Firo was about to answer, the door opened with a bang.

Everyone in the speakeasy turned to look in the direction of the noise.

An elderly gentleman was standing there. Nobody recognized the man’s face.

Nobody except Maiza.

“…Szilard…”

“It’s been a very long time, Maiza Avaro! A full two hundred years and more!”

“Listen, don’t even look at the other guys. We’ll just kill that punk and run. Well, we’ve got these Thompsons, and I guess if we just ice everybody on our way out, there’ll be nobody to bother us about it later… Ha-ha…”

As they walked toward Alveare, Dallas and the others checked the ammunition for their tommy guns. Counting the drum magazines, they had about a hundred shots left.

“By the way, Dallas. The Martillo Family, the one that punk’s in. Is that really their hideout?”

“Yeah… I heard it from an information dealer, after I paid him. …If the brat’s not there, we’ll just rub out the Martillo Family or whatever they’re called. We’ll leave the punk a message in blood: ‘You’re next’…”

“Ha-ha! What’re you, Jack the Ripper?”

“It fits, using a corny old gimmick on a corny punk. Ha-ha…”

The three walked down a gloomy backstreet hemmed in by old brick. The main streets were crawling with cops, so they’d decided to avoid them, but if it came down to it, they were prepared to kill coppers and even unrelated passersby. Or rather, they weren’t prepared so much as defiant.

Taking advantage of the fact that the street was deserted, they were openly checking their machine guns as they walked.

“All right… This is our last job in this apple. If we don’t make it a good one, we may end up out of work and have to take up begging, y’know.”

“Ha-ha-ha… Hey, speaking of beggars, that one a little while back was hilarious…”

“Yeah, the guy with the flowers in that paper bag? He’d saved up quite a bit.”

“And you, Dallas, you kicked him all to heck. What’d you say, something like, ‘Mugging pays better’n begging these days’…?”

“Watch that the guy’s actually a mugger now… Ha-ha… Ha-ha! Ha! Ha! Ha-ha…”

The spiral of destiny converged. As if it were not coincidence, but inevitable.

“…Mu-mugging… W-was that…? Were they talking about us?”

“I don’t think so… I mean, I just heard them over the fence.”

Isaac and Miria were wandering around a factory lot. They’d been at a loss as to what excuse to give, and then they’d managed to lose their way as well.