Baccano! - Volume 10 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE

SOMETIMES, THEY GO HOME

Afternoon of that same day Alcatraz Island

“Well, ain’t that a kick in the head. Seriously…”

As promised, Firo had told Ladd how to kill an immortal—but Ladd felt vaguely tricked.

He hadn’t actually been tricked, of course. He’d sensed that Firo probably wasn’t lying, and he doubted the guy was low enough to fib at a time like this.

“If you wanna kill an immortal, another immortal just has to put their right hand on the guy’s head and think ‘I want to eat.’”

It was an incredibly simple answer. If they could be killed that easily, no wonder Firo was always on his guard…particularly when there was another immortal like Huey right there with him.

However—in order to kill an immortal that way, you had to become an immortal yourself?

Not only that, but the other guy’s memories and experience lived on inside you afterward?

“Can you really say you killed ’em, then? If your memories and experience end up in somebody else, that means you keep living inside that person, don’t it?”

Not only was this a question that probably didn’t have an answer, for Ladd, there was an even bigger problem.

“Are you telling me—me—to become an immortal? Someone who’s about as far as you can get from death?”

When people lived without being aware of death, it made Ladd want to kill them. No way in hell would he become one of them himself.

In the end, he was out of options, and he kept gazing up at the cramped ceiling of his cell and thinking.

What if both Lua and I became immortals together…?

And then, even if it took tens of billions of years, what if I slaughtered all the other humans and immortals…and then ate Lua?

Ah, that’s no good. Firo’s my pal, so I can’t kill him.

Thinking something oddly fastidious, he went on to imagine things that didn’t seem so friendly, such as What if somebody else ate Firo…?

In the end, he didn’t come up with an answer…and the bloodthirsty killer, most of whose crimes hadn’t seen the light of day, decided to spend the little remaining time of his sentence as a model prisoner.

For now, I’ll hurry and blow this joint, then talk it over with my baby Lua.

The guard—Sham, whatever his name was—had told him, “I won’t mess with Lua again,” for some reason.

He didn’t believe him 100 percent, but either way, he figured this was more practical than attempting a jailbreak.

It wasn’t that he thought crushing out was impossible.

However, when he did it, he might have to kill a few of the rifle-toting guards.

The guards on this island were risking their lives in the course of their duties, and Ladd liked them for it. He even showed them a kind of respect.

I can’t kill guys like them.

Aah, I want to hurry up and get out of here and massacre some soft fellas.

Relaxing into his tremendously warped conviction, Ladd gazed at his tightly clenched fist and smiled.

As he did, that fist seemed to smell of new blood.

Afternoon of the same day Chicago The Gansluck Hotel

“Hmm. That was quite palatable. As measured by my personal standards, my degree of satisfaction was in the top seven percent.”

“…I’m impressed you could just sit there and eat in an atmosphere like that…,” Carol murmured, looking rather gaunt.

The vice president sent her a cool look. “You are unable to handle the mafia, industrialists, and politicians. With whom can you interact without feeling nervous?”

The two of them were relaxing in the lobby of the hotel, enjoying a few brief moments of peace and quiet.

They’d reserved train tickets for the day after tomorrow. When the vice president had contacted the president, he’d instructed them to investigate the situation in Chicago for a while before returning home, and so it had been decided that he and Carol would spend a few additional days there.

After their lunch engagement with Bartolo, the information brokers had emerged from a private room at a high-class restaurant and walked back to this hotel along streets that were still busy with police cars.

Carol had been too nervous to eat a single bite, and once they were in the lobby, she looked positively starved and wouldn’t stop complaining.

“How can you just go up and talk to absolutely anyone like that, Vice President? That’s not normal.”

“In that case, who could you talk to?”

The vice president’s words made Carol hesitate a little. Then, her face suddenly brightened, and she firmly declared, “Th-there was that one man. The one near the end of the table, with the bandages where he hurt his eye… I’m sure I could talk to him, even one-on-one!”

“…”

“He looked really swell. Those bandages made him so dark and mysterious… Easy on the eyes, you know?”

Carol’s opinion made her sound like a young woman with a wide yet shallow knowledge of sensual matters, and Gustav, who knew who the bandaged individual actually was, merely narrowed his eyes and held his tongue.

Ignoring the vice president, Carol let her fantasies about the “really swell” man expand to infinity.

“My journalist’s instincts are telling me he’s sure to become a big fish, so I should chase him and get the scoop!”

“…He is the sort of individual who’d attend a mafia luncheon. Are you saying you would ignore the danger?”

“Ngh… B-but he looked so kind, you know?”

“Hmm… Well, your appraisal of him as ‘a big fish’ is accurate, in a way, but…” After gazing at Carol calmly, the vice president shook his head in resignation. “I won’t stop you. Although I imagine your romance will be torrid indeed.”

“My ro…! It’s not romance! I—I mean, yes, he was dashing, so I’d probably have lots of rivals, and I doubt a girl like me would have much of a chance, but—!”

That was not what I meant.

He hesitated, wondering whether he should give her the full rundown on the man with the bandages, but determined that, right now, it was probably best not to make her anxiety any worse.

Having come to that decision, the vice president began to mentally organize information as a form of after-dinner exercise.

“…It seems to me that either Master Sham or Miss Hilton worked quite feverishly during this incident…,” he murmured to himself with conviction. With a wry smile, he added, “Well, Sham may contact us within the next few days.”

Carol didn’t hear the vice president’s quiet mumbling.

Only the sounds of her rumbling stomach echoed noisily through their surroundings.

Inside Ricardo’s mind

Sham might have gained his freedom, in the truest sense, the first time he’d failed to subjugate.

Before then, he’d forced many minds to yield and made them his own. But no matter what sort of knowledge or pasts the individuals under his control had possessed, his perspective couldn’t be shaken.

No matter how much power he acquired, he was nothing more than Huey Laforet’s tool. He had no way to imagine becoming anything greater, and he never even doubted Huey’s instructions.

It seemed to Sham that the change in himself had most likely occurred then.

His one mistake. A complete irregularity.

In an attempt to insinuate himself into a certain mafia syndicate, he’d intended to take over the mind of its successor, the boss’s grandson.

Even though the boy was still quite young, he’d felt no guilt about stealing his life and his mind.

However—

—the moment he’d merged their minds, just before he was about to take control, he encountered something he’d completely failed to anticipate.

As it turned out, he—or rather, she—wasn’t Ricardo Russo at all. Her real name was Lydia Russo, and she was 100 percent female.

This isn’t funny. My assigned role is male. Using female bodies is Leeza’s role. Wouldn’t deviating from that mean betraying Huey?

That thought struck him almost immediately, and he gave up on subjugating that particular mind. It would mean letting his knowledge leak to the outside, but if she got in his way, he could just kill her.

But that was when something else unexpected happened.

Just as he’d ceded the right to her mind—she had also given up her own will.

The Chicago suburbs In the car

“After that, Sham and I began our strange joint life. It’s what happened when we both gave up control. I kept my freedom and only shared knowledge with Sham inside my mind.”

“I see… Back then, you really didn’t care about the world or anything in it, did you?”

“Not so much.”

While they drove aimlessly through the suburbs of Chicago, as promised, Ricardo had told Christopher the whole story.

“So what was Sham after anyway?”

“…About that…”

Now that he was sharing his knowledge with someone besides himself—this one little girl—Sham was able to look objectively at someone else’s mind for the first time.

Then he took another good look at the lives and pasts of the people he’d acquired previously, and as a result—one day, quite suddenly, he was inundated with a desperate feeling of unease.

Up until now, he’d lived as Huey Laforet’s tool, and he’d believed it was the natural order of things. Now, for the first time, he had doubts.

In addition, as he took another objective look at the world itself…

…Sham realized just how abnormal Huey was.

“After that, Sham began to break away from this Huey person’s instructions and extend his own network, independently… So he could learn more about the world, you see.”

“Huh. So he doesn’t feel guilty about killing people.”

“No… Sham apparently doesn’t think of taking over a mind as killing. However, recently, he has shown some signs of guilt, and he’s been holding off on expanding further.”

Ricardo explained indifferently, but this conversation and her own thoughts were all an open book to Sham. Thinking that, ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been odd for someone in her situation to go insane, Christopher opted to keep quiet about it and encouraged her to go on.

“So what was this incident all about?”

“…It looks like Sham wants to become a being able to surpass Huey, and then do just that. In extremely blunt terms, he wanted to shut down Huey’s current experiment. I’ll fill you in on the details later, but apparently the experiment could have killed a lot of people…”

“Well, that sounds like fun,” Christopher cackled, and Ricardo shook her head and sighed.

“If Sham’s personality were anything like yours, Rail’s bombs might have blown the whole city sky-high.”

“Does that make you the hero who saved Chicago, then?”

“Cut that out; it’s creepy. Still… I do think it’s ironic. After all, Sham and I started sharing knowledge because I thought I didn’t need to hold on to this world,” Ricardo murmured, lowering her eyes.

Silence fell for a while, and only the purr of the engine filled the car.

Come to think of it, these silences laced with engine noise were something she’d experienced with Christopher many, many times.

As Ricardo gazed out the window, lost in thought, Christopher murmured in his usual tone.

“Do you still think that?”

Ricardo thought for a bit after the abrupt question, then chose the fewest words possible.

“At this point…I may have gotten a little attached,” she mumbled.

Perhaps embarrassed, she kept her face turned toward the window. Christopher burst out laughing in utter delight. “Fantastic! That attachment to your own life is a really natural way of thinking. I’m so glad you changed!”

Christopher was as happy as if this were his own story, and Ricardo put her face even closer to the window. In a voice so quiet it was nearly drowned out by the engine, she revealed just a little of how she really felt. “…Maybe you’re what changed me, Chris.”

“Huh? What? I didn’t quite catch that; say it again,” Christopher asked without missing a beat.

Ricardo shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye. He was smirking in a way that made it patently obvious that he’d heard her, and the sight of it made her even more sullen than usual.

“I thought you had good ears, remember? …Idiot.”

“Well, what are you going to do now?”

“For starters, rebuild the Russo Family, maybe.”

When they picked up the conversation again, after a silence that was uncomfortable only for Ricardo, this was how it began.

“Wow. Now there’s an answer I seriously wasn’t expecting.”

“For the moment, I’ll start being kind to nature and practice singing… Although I’ll never be able to fly.”

She was echoing a nostalgic conversation, and Christopher smirked a little in spite of himself.

As if to fan the flames of Christopher’s excitement, Ricardo smiled slightly and laid out her plans for the future. “According to Sham’s knowledge, there’s an interesting outfit in New York. I’m thinking of starting by subcontracting to them.”

“Huh. Intriguing.”

“Will you come with me? You might be able to reunite with Rail and the Poet…and even Graham, you know.”

It probably wasn’t just a hunch. The words were a solid deduction, based on Sham’s knowledge.

After pretending to think for a while, Christopher gave the answer he’d been planning to give all along.

“Certainly. I’ll take the liberty of using you for my own peace of mind.”

Once he’d pointed the car eastward, Christopher brought up Rail’s name again.

“Oh, right. While we’re at it, let’s make Rail a member of the Russo Family, too.”

“If you insist, but…I really don’t think I get along with Rail.”

“That’s not true. Emotionally, I think you’re a perfect match.”

“On what grounds?”

Ricardo attempted to discount the idea as more of Christopher’s nonsense, but Chris shook his head in wonder, then smiled the sort of smile that was unique to mischievous little boys.

“Well, you and Rail have one big thing in common, you know.”

“Something in common?”

Ricardo sounded puzzled, and Christopher flashed a mental thumbs-up sign.

Then, with the expression of a cad revealing the secrets of another’s magic trick:

“Ah… So you really hadn’t noticed?”

The transcontinental railroad On a New York–bound train

“And so then I just let him have it. ‘Hang it all,’ I said!”

“Isaac, that’s amaaazing!”

“I think I heard that story a few years ago…” Jacuzzi pointed out, but Isaac just puffed out his chest.

“You bet I’ve told it before!”

“Uh-huh, he’s got an amazing memory!”

“Wha—? Huh?”

In the third-class compartment, as they fled toward New York, Isaac and Miria were so familiar in their antics it was refreshing.

They hadn’t spent a particularly long time talking about how happy they were to see each other again, and Miria hadn’t blamed Isaac for going off and getting himself arrested. The moment they ran into each other, everything was back as it was before for them.

They really do fit together as perfectly as puzzle pieces.

…Lucky.

As Jacuzzi felt a hint of jealousy toward the pair…

…his eyes went to Nice, who was sitting a little ways away.

“Wow… That’s it? You actually took down a building with that little?”

“Yes, although as a result, I needed to fine-tune the direction of the explosion carefully…”

“Now that you mention it, it would be better to pack the   with   instead of the plumbing…”

Nice and Rail were having a lively conversation about bombs, something Jacuzzi couldn’t follow. Was he imagining it, or was Nice’s smile brighter than it was when she talked with him?

It’s just my imagination. I’m sure it’s my imagination…I think?

As Jacuzzi gazed at Nice with a flustered, clearly anxious expression, his delinquent friends came over, gathered around his seat, and started chattering with the enjoyment of one finding a fun new toy.

“Hey, c’mon… Jacuzzi, buddy. Don’t tell me you’re jealous of that kid.”

“N—… No, I’m not!”

Jacuzzi shook his head hastily, but his friends razzed him the way they always did.

“Did you see that reaction? Right on the money.”

“You look like you’re gonna cry.” “Get over those tears and become a great man.” “Change your tears into pearls.” “Yeah, then give ’em to me.” “Hya-haah!” “Hya-haw.”

“Q-quit, you guys!”

Jacuzzi shook his head, red-faced.

Suddenly noticing, one of his friends frowned.

“…Uh, wait, are you seriously jealous?”

“Ngh, I told you, I’m not…”

“No, I mean… Huh? Didn’t they tell you?”

“?”

It was an odd question, and Jacuzzi and the others looked at him with question marks.

“Well, see, the back-alley doctor said it after he came by and gave Rail that physical.”

Then, the moment they heard his next words—time froze for Jacuzzi and everyone else who had just learned something new.

“Rail’s…a girl.”

In the car

After she heard what Christopher had to say, Ricardo’s eyes widened slightly, although her expression was still sullen.

Almost simultaneously, Sham’s knowledge confirmed that Rail was indeed female.

However, apparently Sham had only just learned this as well, and the surprise he was failing to hide came through loud and clear.

“…I did not notice that at all.”

“Yeah, I bet it’s something only Huey and I know. Well, us and Salomé and the rest of the research team that handled the experiments on Rail. Personally, I wanted you to accidentally walk in when she was taking a shower so I could see if she’d scream.”

“Pervert.”

Suddenly narrowing her eyes, Ricardo glared at her vulgar friend. However, Christopher didn’t look the least bit sorry, and he cackled as he stepped on the gas.

“See? The world’s still lousy with things you don’t know.”

“…”

“Which means when you feel like despairing, you might as well wait until you can see a bit farther ahead! I just now realized that myself!”

“I see… Yes, you could be right.”

At that point, it seemed as though silence might fall again, but…

…as if she couldn’t hold back any longer, Ricardo snorted and dissolved into quiet giggles.

Christopher amplified her chuckle with his own, and the car was filled not with the sound of the engine, but with the pair’s cheerful laughter.

The car went east, and the sun went west.

The luxury car and its cargo of mirth raced purposefully toward its next destination.

Next stop: New York, New York!

The transcontinental railroad Third-class car

On the same train as Jacuzzi’s group, in another car…

In a rather cramped space, Graham was spinning his smaller wrench.

Not even this guy is oblivious enough to spin that huge wrench in here, Shaft thought, sitting next to him, then spoke as if he’d just remembered.

“Oh, right. I heard about this from somebody…”

“What?”

“That Ricardo kid. Rumor has it he’s going to take over as the Russo Family head in New York.”

“…”

This was something Ricardo had just decided—but Sham/Shaft talked about it as if he’d known for some time.

On hearing the news, Graham stopped twirling his wrench with a smack, thought for a few moments—and then plastered a fiendish smile across his face.

“Let me tell you a fun, fun story.”

“There he goes again…!”

“Yeah, Placido’s still missing. Stepping into his shoes anyway seems a little like conspiracy, but would a kid have the balls and the brains for that at his age? I mean, something about young master Ricardo did feel odd; what am I gonna do? What should I do…? It’s obvious! My brother Ladd’s gettin’ outta the big house soon, so what I should do is fix up a place for him to come home to! If our Ricardo turns out to be a drip, I can hijack the Russo Family and hang on to it for Ladd. If he’s the real deal, I can just sit tight and let Ladd make the final call. Man, all these possibilities! I see it… I see it now. Everything in the world is made of waves, I can tell ya for sure! Waves of possibility! And if you don’t catch ’em in time, you’re fated to drown in the waves of the other fellas. Which means we should become Moses and part those raging waters, ain’t that right?!”

“Not if I drown under a verbal flood first.”

Ignoring Shaft, who’d put in his retort as coldly as ever, Graham began spinning his wrench again—and spoke to the woman who was sitting in the seat in front of him.

“Now you can take it easy and wait for Ladd, too.”

“…”

The woman merely smiled. Her face seemed as listless as ever, but—

—her cheeks flushed scarlet, and her vacant eyes were already fixed on something far away.

She just let her thoughts run to her dear, darling fiancé—her bloodthirsty murderer who was coming to kill her.

Carrying those thoughts, the train charged ahead.

Onward, toward New York…

January 1935 New York Grand Central Station

“…Okay. What now?”

He was back.

A young man with an eye patch over his left eye drew in a huge breath of New York air.

Even though he’d only been gone for two months, everything was a sight for sore eyes.

When Victor had learned of Huey’s escape after everything was over, he’d stormed and raged, but he’d released Firo. The report on Sham and Leeza’s secret apparently counted as having done his job.

Well, I didn’t mention the part about gouging out the guy’s left eye… But that’s probably okay, right?

The memory of Victor’s frustration at being outfoxed by Huey lifted his mood a little as he strode across the station platform.

However, the moment Firo stepped outside the station building, the nostalgia gave way to an apprehension that weighed heavily on his mind.

“…What am I gonna tell them?”

That he’d become Victor’s pawn, because they’d all been used against him as hostages? How pathetic could you get? Maybe they’d tell him he had to pay with his life.

If that happens, I wonder who would end up eating me.

He was an immortal, and if they wanted to execute him, they’d have to make somebody eat him; there was no other way. If possible, he thought, he wanted Ennis to be the one who ate him so he could help continue her life—but that was probably wishful thinking.

The society he belonged to wasn’t that soft. Firo understood this. He pushed through the nausea-inducing unease and fear, summoned his resolve, and took that first step into town.

Just then, someone called from behind him.

“Firo! Well, if it isn’t Firo!”

“Huh?”

He turned around. A girl was standing there, holding a paper sack.

She was probably eighteen or so, and there was still a hint of childish youth about her face. When he saw her, Firo pulled up a memory from a corner of his mind.

“Annie… Right?”

She was one of the waitresses who worked at Alveare, the bar Firo and the rest of the Martillo Family used as their headquarters. If he remembered right, she’d been there for less than six months, but she was a hard worker with a sharp eye, so she’d made a solid mark on his memory.

Oh, great. I run into somebody I know before I even get home?

He was off to a lousy start. Firo gave a tense smile.

For her part, Annie beamed innocently and grasped his hand. “Goodness, where have you been? Everybody was worried about you!”

“Uh, well, I just, um…”

“Oh, that’s right! I have something for you, Firo!”

“Huh? This is sudden.”

Hmm?

That was when Firo got the feeling that something was off.

He could understand why she’d be surprised that he was back—but why hadn’t she mentioned the patch over his left eye?

Is she just being tactful?

For a moment, he thought that might be it… But then the girl took a jar out of the paper sack, and he realized that he’d been wrong.

“Huh…?”

When Firo looked at the thing squirming in the jar, his remaining eye widened—just as the girl opened the lid without a moment’s hesitation.

The next moment, a round, red and white object shot out of the jar, flew at Firo—and burrowed under his eye patch.

Something that felt intensely wrong wriggled in the cavity in his face, and then…

…the darkness Firo had lost returned to his left eye.

Unlike the complete void he’d had up till this point, it was the darkness that came from simply closing his eyes.

“…!”

When he hastily removed the eye patch—a painful amount of light poured into his left eye.

With it came a burst of all kinds of thoughts, and Firo instantly focused on the girl in front of him.

“You…”

“Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. I didn’t steal your waitress’s mind; I started working there using a girl I’d stolen several years back.”

“It’s the same thing, you little— Okay, hold on, first things first: Why did you give my eye back?”

At this perfectly natural question, Annie—who was also Hilton and Leeza—spun to face the other way and spoke, faltering a bit.

“Because…you saved my body before, so…I’m just giving it back.”

…Huh? Wha…? What the heck?

Her behavior looked a lot like self-consciousness, but he had no idea what she had to be self-conscious about.

He should have seen that her feelings had undergone some sort of change, but in his mind, her true body was a little kid. Ennis was slow to pick up on delicate signs like that, and similarly, Firo was the type who tended to miss subtleties in the emotions of anyone other than himself.

And before he could notice them, Annie shut those feelings away completely.

She fell silent for a few moments, then turned back to him and murmured in a voice that was a little heavier.

“Besides, I don’t have the time to hold a grudge against you anymore.”

“What?”

“Right now…I’m thinking about how to eliminate a traitor.”

She wasn’t just trying to disguise her earlier awkwardness. As proof—Firo sensed a hatred in her words greater than what she’d turned on him in the prison, and he felt cold sweat trickle down his back.

“What do you mean, ‘traitor’?”

“You’ll know soon. Come on, let’s hurry back to the bar!”

The girl’s Annie mask was already back in place. Firo was confused, but he decided that going home was the only thing he could do right now and left that worry for another time.

Alveare

“Look, everybody! It’s Firo! Firo’s home!”

“Hey, don’t—”

No sooner had they reached the storefront than Annie ran in, shouting.

He didn’t even have time to brace himself.

Would a knife suddenly come flying at him, or would he just be skewered by everyone’s icy glares alone? He imagined a whole host of bleak scenarios, but then…

…when he saw the first figure to come dashing out of the shop—they were blown away.

Everything he imagined, everything he had braced himself for was blown clean from his mind.

“Firo!”

“Ennis…”

She was looking stylish as ever in her women’s suit, and as he gazed at her…

For a little while, Firo opened and shut his mouth uselessly, like a goldfish. Before long, though, he pulled himself together, smiled awkwardly, and said the words he’d most wanted to say.

“…I’m back.”

Tearing up a little, Ennis said the words he’d most wanted to hear.

“Welcome home!”

That was all.

To Firo, it was more than enough.

Next, Isaac, Miria, Maiza, and Czes came running out, and as he looked at them, Firo was certain. No matter what hardships might lie ahead…

…for now, in this one moment…

…he was undeniably happy.

And so the players in the crazy ruckus returned home.

Home to the city that was both their beginning and their end.

In order to spin new tales in the hustle and bustle of New York…