“Ah, there it is. I’m a bit of a regular at this shop.”
The old haberdashery stood on a wide street with a view of Manhattan Bridge.
When they entered, the elderly shopkeeper shot them a glance but offered no welcome of any sort. He was a very unfriendly proprietor for a store on a major street, but when you considered the sheer range of merchandise on display, that didn’t matter at all. The shop specialized in hats and belts, and its stock was so vast that Firo gave a small murmur of admiration.
“This’s incredible…”
Hats hung on every wall. Or rather, the hats completely hid the walls, to the point where you had to wonder whether there were really walls behind them at all. It wasn’t just the walls, of course: Scores of hats were arrayed on the shelves lining the shop as well, and the area around the register was hung so thickly with belts that they looked like wallpaper.
“It really is amazing, every time I see it… I’m supposed to pick the hat that looks best on you out of all of this, you see. …I’m sorry, but it may take a while.”
“Absolutely. Don’t worry about it. Take as long as you need. I’ll wait.”
Ducking his head in a deferential nod, Firo began gazing at the mountain of hats, too.
Among the Camorra, as a rule, when a member was promoted to camorrista—executive—he wasn’t told about it until the night of the promotion ritual. However, their family had a custom that differed from other Camorra groups. The member in question was notified the day before, and on the morning of the ritual, he visited a hat shop with a specific executive. There, the executive picked out a hat for the member who would join their ranks that night, choosing the one that suited him best.
There was no special meaning to it. The custom began when Molsa Martillo, the current head of the syndicate, had run up his family’s flag in New York and given each of the first members a hat. That was all.
Even so, to Firo—on the brink of becoming an executive—choosing a hat was part of the important ritual, and he’d gone into it both elated and with a mild case of nerves.
While contemplating headwear with Maiza, the recent incident and the spiteful assistant inspector completely vanished from Firo’s mind. All it held now was a mixture of anticipation and trepidation regarding the ceremony that would take place that night.
“This one might do. What do you think?”
A hat settled onto Firo’s head.
A pearl-green fedora. In the reflected light from the door, the pale green seemed to shine faintly. It went well with the boy’s light skin; he looked as if he’d stepped out of a picture. When he moved into the shadows and the green lost its tinge, it abruptly adopted a dark color… The contrast with his white face grew clear, and it made him look sharp.
“This is… Maiza, this is great! It really is perfect for me!”
He wasn’t just being considerate toward the contaiuolo; he was genuinely delighted. He looked at himself in the shop’s big mirror, feeling as if he’d become a different person. He thought he’d like to get a coat in a matching color. It would probably make him stand out a little… No, a lot, but he didn’t care.
As the boy gazed into the mirror, his smile was truly happy. Based on that expression, it was impossible to imagine him as he’d been a short while ago, sarcastically needling the panhandling mugger or ruthlessly punching him in the face.
It was the first time Firo’d shown a face like that since the boss had given him permission to join the family.
While they bought the fedora, the shopkeeper was as silent as ever. Wordlessly, he put the merchandise in a bag, and money changed hands according to the price tag. Even when Maiza gave him a casual, seasonally appropriate greeting, the old man only shot him a cold, silent look.
Still, the two didn’t let it bother them, and they left the shop, chatting about what the menu might be for the party to be held after the ritual, and about picking up some liquor at a speakeasy on their way back.
Exiting the establishment, they passed a couple on their way in.
The man was even taller than Maiza, and he nearly bumped his head on the door’s lintel. The woman was a little shorter than Firo, and she wore jeweled bracelets on both arms and shining silver rings on several fingers.
Both were dressed in very swanky outfits. The man sported a tuxedo with black leather gloves and no tie. The woman wore a black dress with bright red belts wrapped around her waist and arms. It was a rather unusual costume for a woman of the time, and it made her seem like a witch from a musical.
In short, the couple stood out from the rest of the world like a pair of sore thumbs.
“Whoops! Excuse me.”
They’d bumped shoulders, and Maiza apologized immediately.
“Hey now, be careful.”
“Be careful!”
The woman echoed the man’s words immediately after he’d said them.
Nothing else happened just then, but sizing up the couple, who looked like Broadway escapees, Firo thought:
They both look like they’re twenty or so, but… In tough times like these? Are they some rich guy’s kids?
Speculating in a fashion that completely ignored the contents of his own wallet, he left the shop.
In the haberdashery, after Firo and Maiza had gone… The man in the tuxedo—Isaac Dian—spoke to the woman—Miria Harvent—who stood next to him.
“Listen, Miria. One more time, just to make sure: No matter what, don’t do anything eye-catching.”
“I know. I just have to be really, really mousy and quiet, right?”
“That’s the ticket. As long as you know.”
After this exchange—which, thanks to their outfits, was fairly unconvincing—the pair looked around at the chapeau-laden walls. The man held a large travel bag in his right hand, but he certainly didn’t seem dressed for travel.
“Egad, they’ve got everything here.”
“It’s all-you-can-buy!”
“I bet we could conquer the world with hats.”
After producing that incomprehensible metaphor, the man picked up a random topper and began spinning it on his finger.
“What sort of hats are we going to get?” Miria asked.
“Well, something normal would be good to start with. …Or, no, something eccentric might make for a better distraction…”
The farther they ventured into the depths of the store, the wider the variety of choices became.
At the end, there were rows of straw hats, even though it was winter, and Indian feather headdresses, and even the tall, round black hats that the guards of the English royal family wore, all on display.
“…Is it all right to sell things like this?”
Isaac was holding a helmet that was part of the gear worn by New York’s uniformed policemen. Meanwhile, Miria had put on a U.S. soldier’s helmet, and her appearance, which had already been eccentric, leveled up to the point where it could be described as downright weird.
“Wow, this is nifty.”
A strikingly brilliant piece of merchandise sat on an upper shelf. The hat was made of metal. Something like stiff cloth adorned its edges, and gold thread had been used in places. And on the forehead, there was a shining golden…
“What’s that? Is it a boomerang?”
“Maybe you’re supposed to head-butt people with it? I bet that would hurt.”
Two objects like oddly shaped knives were affixed to it in a V shape.
Below the strange helmet was a card with the word Japan written on it.
“Aha… Maybe it’s a Japanese crown.”
“I bet it is. It’s sort of shiny, even!”
The shelves below the crown held masks from some civilization or other, silk derby hats for phantom thieves, and other articles that were far beyond questionable.
“……Is this a bit too peculiar?”
Smiling brightly, Miria let something fearsome slip as if it was nothing. “It might not be good for robbing people in!”
“W
ell, never mind, let’s just buy them all.”
In the end, without paying any particular attention to what Miria had said, Isaac took a black fedora and a woman’s lace hat, plus the Japanese crown and a peculiar wooden mask, up to the register. Quite a lot of paraphernalia was deposited in front of the old shopkeeper.
Even then, the haberdasher was silent. He only glanced at the items, then smoothly wrote down the prices of each and the total on a receipt.
The paper showed a sum equal to two months of a bank clerk’s salary. Casually, the man called Isaac withdrew a bundle of bills from his bag, counted them carelessly, then held them out to the shopkeeper.
He’d given him too much, and a minute later, a dozen or so bills and a few coins were returned to his hand as change.
Then the pair added something entirely unnecessary.
“Listen up, Gramps. You’d better forget the fact that we visited this shop entirely.”
“Better forget it.”
In some cases, doing and saying things like that—compounded by the conspicuous outfits they wore—would have been enough to get these two reported on the spot. Apparently, true to their appearance, they weren’t quite all there.
“If you report us to the police…we’ll, uh… What will we do?”
Even as he admitted to being a criminal, her beau in a tuxedo openly asked Miria for help.
“Umm, why not just say we’ll hit him? If you don’t have anything specific in mind…”
“I see. Well then, Gramps! If you report us…we’ll hit you!”
“Hit you!”
By all indications, the two of them were even worse than they looked. In more ways than one.
Whether or not he’d been listening to their dubious lines, the shopkeeper fixed the pair with a cold scowl, all but his eyes utterly motionless.
Immediately, the man and woman fell silent. Then they hurried out of the shop, hugging to their chests the items they’d set down at the register.
The shopkeeper turned his eyes to his newspaper and forgot all about the customers who’d just visited.
“Haah, haah, haah… Th… Th-th-th-that was scary.”
“Really scary…”
Running as if fleeing the hat shop, the notable pair reached a nearby alley.
“Blast it… That old man must be a real tough guy. Just one glare, and he had me… Uh… Well, no, I wasn’t afraid, but…um… He made me run… No… Ran me off…???”
“Made you withdraw.”
“Yes, that’s it… To think he made me withdraw with just one glare… Of course, you know—if we’d fought, I could have beaten him, but you see, well, he was strong, too, and I thought it would be terrible if you’d happened to get hurt, Miria.”
“Really?” Miria asked, sounding happy.
“Yes, really! In the year since we began our tour of larceny, we’ve robbed eighty-seven places, from San Francisco to New Jersey, and in all that time, have I ever put you in danger?”
“About eighty-seven times.”
“…………”
“…………”
“There, you see?! It’s not even a hundred yet!”
“You’re right! That’s amazing!”
Her cry sounded as if she was moved from the bottom of her heart. If they were like this, it was likely there’d been many times when they hadn’t even recognized the danger they were in.
“That’s right! We’ll do our last big job here in New York, and then we’ll retire to Miami and take life easy. Once that happens, the word danger will have nothing to do with us!”
“Nothing at all!”
“Let’s buy a big house. We’ll put in a pool, and we’ll spend all day swimming in it, from morning to night.”
“It’ll be cold at night.”
“Not to worry. If we install about ten stoves, the pool will warm up.”
“Ten of them! Amazing, amazing—even the king of the Arabs doesn’t use that many!”
True, desert nights do get chilly, but… There was a marked stupidity about that comment.
“Then we’ll run a railway through the garden, and we’ll take the train from the house to the gate every day.”
“Wow! …But we’ll spend a fortune on tickets that way.”
“This is true. All right, then let’s not have a railway.”
“Still, that’s amazing. Are we really going to be that rich?”
“Absolutely. If I’m with you, Miria, I could even become president! That’s the king of America—the king. Yes, I could become the king, the queen, or even the joker!”
“Queen” would have been physically impossible.
“I don’t really get it, but that’s amazing!”
Before they knew it, the pair had been overcome with emotion, and they began to hum jazz music. The alley was their stage, and they took each other’s hands, beginning to dance. The two lovers were lost in a dream
—and then they got hit by a car.
“—Are they dead?”
An old man’s voice came from the backseat of the car.
“No… We weren’t going fast. Oh, they’re moving. They probably just lost their balance and fell.”
The voice that returned from the driver’s seat belonged to a young woman.
“In that case, hurry up and go.”
“Yes, sir.”
The car sped up and drove away as if nothing had happened. Finally, once it had exited the alley and turned onto the broad street, the passenger picked up the conversation again:
“…Be careful. Why did you hit them?”
“I’m very sorry, sir. I meant to avoid them, but they suddenly started dancing right in the middle of the road… I didn’t brake in time.”
The man was silent for a little while. Then he remembered that the woman driving had never told a senseless lie before.
“…They started dancing?”
“Yes. The man was wearing a tuxedo, and the woman wore a black dress, so… I think they were probably rehearsing for a play.”
“Broadway’s rather far from here.”
“Also… The man was holding hats and…a Japanese helmet in his right hand.”
As one might expect, the man’s eyebrows furrowed.
“…I don’t understand young people these days…”
There was no response from the driver’s seat.
“Hmph… That said, I haven’t been able to comprehend what young people are thinking for a very long time.”
He slowly closed his eyes, continuing to talk to himself.
“Yes… Not for two hundred years or so… Not since that stripling lost his mind. That’s when I stopped trusting anyone younger than myself.”
“…Compared to you, Master Szilard, everyone in the world is younger.”
The voice from the driver’s seat reached his ears. It had interrupted his monologue, but he responded without sounding particularly annoyed.
“Of course. And so I trust no one.”
Those words were the last. Silence enveloped the interior of the car.
The large black automobile the woman was driving stopped in front of a building to the south of Grand Central Station.
A glance around the area revealed the Empire State Building, which was scheduled for completion the following year. Even now, still under construction, it looked down over the city with an air of august dignity.
The female chauffeur got out of the car first, then opened the door to the backseat. The car was a rarity for the time: There was plenty of room in the back.
Szilard Quates got out crossly, then screwed up his already wrinkled face even further. The late autumn sun, which was visible through the canyons between the buildings, clearly illuminated his face.
“…It’s bright.”
The female chauffeur immediately opened a parasol. They covered the paltry five yards from the car to the building’s entrance in their patch of improvised shade.
When they reached the door, the chauffeur used her free ha
nd to insert a key. While they waited in silence for the door to open, Szilard didn’t look at his chauffeur even once.
Inside the building, there was nothing. The rooms had been partitioned, but that was all. The building didn’t seem the slightest bit lived-in. However, you couldn’t simply call it abandoned, either. There wasn’t a single piece of rubbish on the floor, and the walls and electric lightbulbs seemed new, as if the interior construction work had been completed just the day before.
Szilard crossed to an area beside an ascending staircase, then struck the floor several times with his heel.
After a few seconds, the lightbulb that hung on the staircase lit up. When he saw it, he kicked the floor with his heel again, adding one more kick this time.
A short distance in front of him, the floor rose up, and an elderly man’s head peeked out.
“Well, if it isn’t Master Quates! It’s been a very long time, sir!”
“Only twenty years. That’s not so long.”
“Ha-ha-ha… The passage of time is far too different for you than it is for us.”
“Time is a constant. I will admit that we feel it differently.”
As they conversed, the two old men and the woman descended a staircase.
The way he walked didn’t betray his advanced age. Then there they were, in front of him:
“Oh, Master Quates.”
“You’re looking very well, sir.”
“You haven’t changed a bit…”
“You truly are a marvelous being…”
On seeing Quates, who hadn’t changed at all in twenty years, about a dozen men let cries of admiration escape them.
The men were of all different ages, but even the very youngest appeared to be around forty. As for the oldest… There were three elderly individuals who seemed as if they might be ninety.
The old man who’d been surrounded looked around at the codgers who’d done the surrounding and spoke with an air of boredom.
“I don’t see Barnes or Stagen.”
The old men glanced at one another, then looked down. The butleresque fellow who’d escorted Szilard delivered the news with a sorrowful mien.
“Master Barnes is currently at the ‘distillery.’ Master Stagen Heim…passed away last year.”
The Rolling Bootlegs Page 4
