1932 Drug & The Dominos

by Ryohgo Narita

  “W-wait, please. If this is about Roy, he had no money, so as an alternative, I—”

  “Oh yeah? And why didn’t you report that, hmm?”

  “Because I was technically not at work.”

  “Meaning you were slacking on the job for that time, huh?”

  Nicholas had grabbed Henry’s collar, and Henry steeled himself, certain he’d be hit.

  However, no fists flew his way, and the hands abruptly lifted.

  “Still, out of consideration for the guts you showed at the end there, I won’t slug you. That was really clever. The president’s a softy, after all. He’ll probably call it even for you after this.”

  “R-really?”

  On seeing how Henry looked, Nicholas furrowed his eyebrows again.

  “What? Did you say it without knowing? ……I see.”

  Gazing at Henry with eyes that seemed somehow pitying, he went back to his own post.

  “Poor guy. Well, this’ll be a great opportunity for you to experience the risk the president was talking about. Get through the jaws of death and grow a ton as a person. Just be careful not to actually die.”

  Left by himself, unable to understand what Nicholas meant, Henry began to feel uneasy.

  What’s going to happen, exactly? Curses! This is why those without information are powerless!

  Edith stepped into the Gandors’ office, prepared to die.

  As she went down the stairs to the basement, she reflected on the idea that had brought her here.

  No matter how she thought about it, the only people around her who might know about hitmen were the three Gandor brothers. It was no more than a possibility, but still, for now, it was the only lead she had.

  However, if she was going to ask them, she’d probably have to tell them everything. They might fly into a rage and beat her to death on the spot, or maybe they’d wait until right after she’d rescued Roy and kill them both. Even so, as long as there was a chance, she had to cling to it.

  Taking Roy and skipping town was also an option, but Roy probably wouldn’t let her abandon her friends and family. If she doggedly talked him around, he might agree to it, but after that, they’d both regret it for the rest of their lives.

  Resolving to shield him from a rain of bullets with her own body if it came to that, Edith stepped off the last stair with the determination of someone jumping off a cliff.

  “Oh, heeey. It’s Edith. C’mon iiin.”

  The room was mostly empty, and she saw Tick at the table in the center. Who was the guy sitting on the other side? At the very least, he’d never stopped by the speakeasy.

  When she looked, she saw that Tick and the guy had something spread out across the table.

  A large quantity of new scissors, their sharp blades gleaming.

  “Isn’t it great? We bought a lot. They cut really well.”

  As he spoke, Tick smiled like a child.

  The guy across from him had his palm spread flat across the tabletop, and:

  Tunk.  Tunk.  Shunk.  Tunk. Tunk, tunk, shunk, tunk, shunk-a-shunk-tak-shunk   taktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktaktak!

  He was jabbing the tips of the scissors into the spaces between his five fingers, rapidly traveling back and forth, rhythmically and powerfully. The speed grew faster and faster, until finally the scissors began to leave afterimages and it looked as though there were several pairs.

  Not only that, but when she looked closer, she realized that every time the guy stabbed the scissors in, he was closing and opening the blades.

  When the blades were open, the tips jabbed into two places, straddling one of his fingers, and as he raised them again, he closed the scissors.

  One wrong move, and he might have lost a finger.

  “Wow, that’s really, really cooool! Maybe I’ll try that…”

  “I wouldn’t. If you cut yourself, it hurts. Bad.”

  “Hmm, I wouldn’t like that. I know, I’ll try it with the hand of the next person I torture.”

  As she listened to their conversation, a cold thread ran down her spine.

  I might need to be prepared for more than just death…

  For an instant, she came very close to hesitating, but it was already too late.

  “Mr. Keith, Mr. Berga, Mr. Luck! Edith’s here!”

  Just as Tick finished yelling, the three bosses appeared through a door at the back.

  “Well, Edith. What brings you here? Oh, we’ve closed the speakeasy for a while, but you’ll be paid as usual—”

  “No, Mr. Gandor, that isn’t it. That’s not it.”

  There was no going back now. Intent on saving Roy, she took a step into hell.

  “Mr. Gandor, I’ve…betrayed you.”

  After hearing her whole confession, for a short while, the three of them looked grave. Then, after glancing at his older brothers, Luck spoke first.

  “We understand what you’ve told us, Edith. Frankly, it’s a pity you weren’t able to trust us. Although it is a shame, at the moment, we don’t intend to do anything about Roy.”

  At his answer, Edith’s face lit up.

  “Do you mean it, sir?!”

  “Well, he isn’t one of our comrades, and to be honest, we can’t insist that people we haven’t even met conform to our rules. And while it’s true we aren’t involved in the drug trade, that type of product hasn’t spread far enough among the outfits for a tacit understanding about their handling in the first place.”

  When he’d said that much, Luck’s smile abruptly vanished.

  “However, Edith. You are a problem. You knew drugs were against our rules, and yet you covered up the facts. Even if you’re only a speakeasy waitress, since you have aligned yourself with us, this was a definite act of betrayal.”

  Oh… He’s right. I was prepared for this, but if they’re going to kill me, I wish they’d let me make sure Roy’s all right first.

  “Now then, regarding your punishment… In all honesty, there’s no precedent for this. I’m not sure what to do… What do you think, Keith? Berga?”

  Luck’s two brothers were standing beside him, and he looked to them for answers. However, Berga announced, “I dunno. Whaddaya wanna do?” and looked at Keith, while Keith played with his deck of cards and looked faintly troubled.

  In the end, the three of them stepped away for a moment, discussing what to do in low voices.

  “So what should we do?” asked Luck.

  “Hell if I know,” Berga replied. “Whadda they usually do?”

  “In Sicily, they occasionally kill people for adultery, but…this is different, isn’t it?”

  “Like we could kill her for this, you moron?! Why not just call it good and let her off?”

  “If we do that, we’ll lose face,” Luck insisted. “I know, I know, I think killing a woman over something like this is out of the question as well, but we have to do something. We need to come up with some sort of mild penalty.”

  “Dock her pay for the month, maybe?” Berga offered.

  “We aren’t a company.”

  “Well then, what do we do? If she were a guy, I could slug ’im and bust all his teeth, and we’d be done.”

  “Look, we can’t do that! Striking women is despicable.”

  “I know that, dammit! So, fine, we just let her go. There’s nothing else to do.”

  “But we need a reason of some sort… Agh, if we let her go, we’re bending the rules, but we mustn’t get violent, either.” Luck scratched his head.

  “How ’bout giving her some kinda chance?”

  “Chance?”

  “Jorgi embezzled from us, and we gave him a ninety percent chance of surviving. Even if he did end up biting it.”

  “Still, we can’t make her do Russian roulette…”

  “……”

  “Hey, how ’bout we have her draw one of Keith’s cards, and if she pulls the joker, she’s guilty?”

  “That’s it! And we’ll take the joker out ahead of
time!”

  “……”

  On hearing that, Keith looked a bit troubled again. He turned the stack of cards over and showed them the fronts.

  “Whaaat?! They’re all jokers?!”

  “I’ve been wondering about that; where do you buy things like this?!”

  “Don’t tell me you bought fifty-two decks and picked out all the jokers, one by one! …Uh, Keith?”

  “……”

  “W-well, uh, how ’bout if she pulls a joker she’s innocent?!”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!”

  What sort of terrible things are they talking about? I wonder how they’re going to kill me…

  As Edith watched the three brothers’ backs in a corner of the room, sweat started to break out on her own.

  Tick and the other guy had been watching, and finally, as if they’d gotten sick of it, they made a move.

  The mystery man had been juggling five pairs of scissors, but his hands abruptly stopped, and he whispered something in Tick’s ear. Snipping and snicking away with a pair of new scissors, Tick called to the three brothers in a lazy voice:

  “Say, Edith did something bad, riiight?”

  Hearing him, Luck turned around. He sounded perplexed:

  “‘Something bad’… Yes, but it isn’t as though she’s broken the law. I supposed you could say she did something bad as far as the neighborhood is concerned.”

  “Y’knooow, she’s got really long hair, doesn’t she?”

  “Well, yes…?”

  At that, Luck suddenly seemed to realize something. Tick was beaming, and his eyes looked almost abnormally innocent.

  “Can I cut it?”

  “I’ve been thinking this for a while now, but…”

  As the sound of the scissors echoed, the young man who’d been juggling shears muttered something:

  “Maybe you’ve made good a little, but deep down, you guys ain’t cut out to be mafia bosses. Seriously.”

  A woman’s hair is her life. There’s no telling which era those words were originally from, but in any case, cutting a little of it settled the matter. It was so unexpectedly easy that all the strength went out of Edith’s body.

  “Just so you’re aware, this is the last time we’ll let you off in exchange for your hair.”

  At first, someone had suggested shaving her bald, but since that wasn’t possible with scissors, they’d cut off about half of it and called it good.

  Tick was rather clever with scissors, and her hair actually looked better than it had before.

  “…Thaaat’s a wrap, folks.”

  Tick spoke in a pleasant-sounding voice, closing the scissors with a snick.

  With that sound as the signal, the curtain fell on this spectatorless farce.

  “All right. Returning to the original subject, then: What sort of information did the information broker want? It was something only people like us would know, correct?”

  He was right. She’d still only cleared the first hurdle. If it turned out that the brothers didn’t know anything about Vino, all her determination would come to nothing.

  Feeling as if she was praying, she forced the name to materialize from the depths of her throat.

  “I, um, actually, I’m looking for a hitman named Vino!”

  Just as she finished the yell, the guy who’d been attempting to juggle twenty pairs of scissors at the back of the room turned around.

  “…You rang?”

  Around the time the sun began to set, two shadows arrived at the second Genoard residence.

  After they’d rung the bell several times, an elderly gentleman appeared from behind the palatial door.

  “Ah. I don’t believe I have the pleasure of your acquaintance. Might I inquire…?”

  In response to Benjamin’s puzzled question, the two young men—one Asian, one Irish—smiled agreeably.

  “Erm, this is the Genoard residence, isn’t it?” asked the Irishman. “We have an introduction from Gregoire, the cook…”

  “We came to make meals for you, that sort of thing,” the Asian visitor offered politely.

  “Oh, you’re the…! Yes, yes, please, do come in.”

  Obediently following the butler’s instructions, they stepped into the luxuriously decorated interior.

  “It’s a butler.”

  “Yeah, a textbook butler. So textbook it’s a shame he doesn’t have whiskers.”

  As they conversed in low voices, the two trailed after the aged servant.

  The Asian cook was Fang Lin-Shan. The Irish bartender was Jon Panel.

  Up until yesterday, both had worked aboard the Flying Pussyfoot, a transcontinental limited express. However, because of a certain incident, the dining car had been scrapped, along with the rest of the train.

  At that juncture, they’d found a temporary employer through Gregoire, the dining car’s former head cook. The initial contract was only for the first part of January, but if they made a good impression, they might be given work at the main residence in New Jersey.

  With those particulars pushing them, the two were headed into this job with definite willpower. First, they’d display their skills at dinner tonight. The impression they created with how delicious—or unappetizing—a meal they managed to make with the ingredients provided would no doubt make a world of difference.

  They followed the butler, envisioning all sorts of situations, and before long, they arrived at a large door on the second floor.

  “Miss, miss! The kitchen staff have arrived! Please come and greet them personally—”

  But there was no response.

  “Miss?”

  The servant hesitated, wondering whether he should open the door. If she was only sleeping, it would be a terribly improper action for a butler to undertake.

  As he was worrying over what to do, Samantha, who happened to be passing by, unceremoniously pushed the door open.

  “Missy Eve, c’mon and git some yummy grub.”

  Samantha went into the room with no hesitation…but Eve wasn’t there.

  Having registered this fact, the butler ran in as well, not caring that the room belonged to his mistress.

  “M-miss?!”

  He shouted in spite of himself, but there was no answer from inside the room.

  The window on the far wall was wide open, its curtains flapping.

  When Samantha and the butler hastily stuck their heads out, they saw a large ladder set underneath it.

  “What’s this?”

  Fang, who’d entered after them, picked up a letter that was lying on the desk.

  “L-let me see that!”

  Snatching the letter away from him, the butler skimmed its contents with bloodshot eyes.

  It held an apology for going out without permission and expressions of gratitude to Benjamin and Samantha for several things. Then, upon discovering a line that read, If I haven’t returned in three days, he looked up, without reading any further.

  “Miss… You can’t possibly have…?”

  “Oh, miss… How terribly reckless!”

  Benjamin was on the sofa, his head bowed low.

  Samantha’s response, however, was unflappable: “Watchoo stressin’ fah? Missy Eve ain’t a little ’un no more. She’ll be jest fine.”

  “How could I possibly not worry now?! Samantha! How can you be so calm about—?”

  His howl broke off abruptly as he looked up. Samantha had put on her good walking shoes and was all ready to go out. “Where are you heading off to?” he clucked.

  Jon and Fang, beside her, were also headed out the door.

  “First that business on the train, and now this. It’s been a really noisy New Year’s,” Jon complained.

  “No help for that,” Fang replied coolly. “If the guest of honor isn’t here, there’s clearly no point in cooking.”

  Looking mystified, Samantha spoke to the butler, who was gaping at the three of them.

  “We’re goin’ ta hunt around for Missy Eve, natch. Are
you not comin’ or somesuch?”

  After a moment’s silence, as if to rebuke himself for his foolishness, the butler shouted:

  “Of course I am coming! Obviously!”

  “By the by, what’s that black carry y’all got in yer paw?”

  Samantha was eyeing the bag Fang was holding with his right hand, and he answered, albeit awkwardly:

  “This. Right. My sister gave it to me to hang on to today. She said she wanted to leave it somewhere secure, so I thought I’d ask if I could put it in your safe, but now isn’t the time for that.”

  “Yeah, apparently it’s full of a dangerous drug some corporation uses in their development processes, so she wanted to give it to somebody trustworthy.”

  On hearing that, Samantha thumped her chest, reliably:

  “If’n that’s so, then you jes’ leave it with the feller we’re gonna go see! It’s a big ol’ company, and it’ll be worlds safer than t’would be ’round here!”

  That night, when Henry had finished his work and was preparing to go home, a figure appeared beside him.

  “Hmm? Ah, if it isn’t Miss Edith. What did you need?”

  Hmph. I expect she’s realized her own powerlessness and has come to throw herself on my mercy. As if that would work.

  “Henry, do you remember what you told me? You said information was power, and if I wanted it, I’d need power that could compensate for it.”

  “Yes, and that is indeed the case. Well? Did you find that power?”

  “I don’t have wealth or authority, but…apparently, my personal connections are good beyond belief.”

  “Pardon?”

  In that instant, someone flung their arm over Henry’s shoulder.

  “Evening.”

  When Henry turned his head toward the voice, a young fellow was standing there. Well, he thought “young,” but the other guy seemed to be in his early twenties; he was probably the same age as Henry, or maybe a year older.

  “E-ve-nin-g.”

  The newcomer repeated the word, very deliberately, then shot Henry a cold glare.