Baccano! - Volume 12 - Chapter Pr1

Prologue 1—The Movie-Loving Businessmen

August 2002 Somewhere in South America

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“So okay. You know the movie Speed, right?”

“I saw One.”

“Me too.”

“Me too.”

“So did I.”

“C’mon, what about Two? You gotta watch Two. For us, Two’s the one that matters right now.”

“Is that the one with Willem Dafoe as the villain?”

“Yup! Good ole Willem. I’m impressed; you mentioned him before Sandra Bullock, and she was the main protagonist. You really know your stuff. Mm-hmm.”

Clink clink-clink

The table was abuzz with lively conversation, punctuated by the noise of knives and forks on china plates.

Here in South America, August was the dead of winter. Even though it was early afternoon, the cold air outside leached away the heat of the food in the restaurant. The ceiling was equipped with a climate control system, but it wouldn’t be much help. After all, every one of the surrounding windows was wide open, and there was no longer any difference between inside and out.

The windows weren’t the only way the outside air was getting in, either; there were also countless holes in the walls. In fact, upon closer inspection, the windows weren’t actually open at all. The sashes were shut tightly, but the glass that should have been in the frames had been shattered, and the fragments littered the ground outside the restaurant and the floor inside.

If you let your gaze travel a bit farther…

The restaurant’s interior was splattered with red.

A dozen or so men and women sat around the table in the center, conversing idly as they ate. They were of all different races and heights, but for the most part, their ages seemed to be somewhere between twenty and forty.

Unlike the lively group at the table, however, the heaps strewn all over the floor didn’t betray the slightest hint of life. They lay right where they’d fallen; if you imagined the whole restaurant as an enormous table, the piles of corpses would look like food that had been squirted with ketchup, then stabbed all over with a fork.

The group went on eating as if everything was normal, continuing their conversation so smoothly that you might even forget the heaps of corpses were there.

“God, Willem Dafoe is such a badass. I mean, he did the whole thing by himself. By himself! He pulled off a seajack working solo!”

“Hey, that was the character, you know. Geiger.”

“Good job remembering the name. As far as I’m concerned, every role he plays is Willem.”

“…So the detective in The Boondock Saints and the Green Goblin in Spider-Man are all Willem to you?”

“Yeah. And if you’re gonna ask, how could you leave out Platoon?”

“Haven’t seen that one.”

“Seriously?”

“I saw it.”

“I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Is it good?”

“Oh man, you’ve gotta see that one!”

“You say that about every movie.”

“Wait, wait, I’m not done talking about this Willem thing. Is the vampire in Shadow of the Vampire him, too? You should call him by his character for that one, at least. After all, Max Schreck was a real-life actor.”

“Like I care?”

“Wha…? Nosferatu deserves better! You should apologize!”

“Apologize to Nicolas Cage, too!”

“What for?!”

The conversation was so chaotic, it was impossible to tell who was talking to whom anymore. Words were just flying across the table.

“Anyway, Willem is incredible; he hijacked a luxury cruise ship all by himself. Only Willem Dafoe could pull that off. Seriously, the guy’s a genius.”

“But at the end there, he, uh… You know how he ends up, right?”

“Come on, it’s Willem. Even with an ending like that, he’ll pull through one way or another! With leeches!”

“Leeches, huh? They’re pretty amazing, aren’t they? Heal diseases and all.”

“Leeches have nothing to do with any of this!”

“You’re the one who brought it up.”

“Anyway! What I’m saying is it takes way more than your average Joe to take over a cruise ship alone! That deserves serious respect.”

“…Yeah, you’re right.”

“True.”

“You’ve got a point.”

Around him, the man’s companions all nodded at his unusually passionate statement, smiling wryly.

After all…

…given what they were about to do…

“I mean, we’re trying the exact same thing with a big ole group of thirty.”

Cackling, one of the diners knocked back a glass of juice.

“You think we couldn’t do it with just the thirteen of us here?”

“No, no way.”

“If we were Dennis Hopper or Christopher Walken, I think we could pull it off, but…”

The others followed suit, drinking from their glasses with a laugh. In the course of their conversation, they’d cleaned their plates, and now they were washing down the last remnants in their throats.

Then, exhaling in satisfaction, they picked up the idle conversation again as though nothing had happened.

“I kinda like this atmosphere.”

“It’s a whole lot like the opening of Reservoir Dogs, huh?”

“Nice.”

“Guess that makes me Steve Buscemi.”

“No, I’m Buscemi.”

“I want to be Buscemi, too, you know.”

“Moron. You think a woman could be Steve Buscemi?”

“Buscemi played Mr. Pink, remember? Pink could be a woman.”

“The heck? Like the whatever Rangers from Japan?”

“Yes. Obviously.”

“Wait, really?!”

The mood hadn’t changed a bit…but something had dramatically shifted in the restaurant around them.

Whether they’d noticed that or not, the conversation continued in the same desultory way.

Then suddenly, one of the men at the table turned to the man who was now standing behind him.

“And? What about you?” he asked, as if he was just making small talk.

The newcomer was simply standing there between the carnage and the odd group who’d just finished their meal—arms folded, as expressionless as a Buddha statue.

“Yeah. I like Reservoir Dogs, too.” The brown-skinned man’s voice was brusque, but he’d spoken in fluent English.

“I see. So we’re on the same page, then.”

“I don’t think it’s a good comparison, though.”

The man was big, close to six and a half feet tall, and he had the swarthy skin and mustache that were common among the locals.

And around him was a large group of other men who also seemed to be residents of the area. And maybe they were, but they clearly weren’t on the right side of the law. As if to underscore that impression, each of them held a weapon: guns or knives or machetes.

There were probably around forty of them. They formed a wall between the table and the piles of corpses, creating a human cage around the group who had just finished dining.

Then, arms still crossed, the tall man cracked his neck. “Just to be clear… Are you the ones responsible for these corpses over here?” he asked quietly.

The man he’d spoken to seemed amused, toying with his empty glass. “And if I said we were?”

“Why did you do it?”

“Business.”

“…Did some syndicate hire you?”

“More or less. These guys picked a fight with us at this restaurant, and they just happened to be our targets. We really only needed to take out their boss, but, well, we were on a roll.”

“…”

His casual answer was met with bitter silence. A chill was stealing into the air, but one man sitting at the corner of the table either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “So in this country, ordering fish always means cod, huh?” he said. “See, a while ago, when we went to Japan, they brought out so many different kinds of fish it was like, ‘What is this, an aquarium?’”

“Got a problem?”

“No, no. I hate fish anyway. Real meat’s where it’s at, for sure. I love that about your country. Lots of meat in your cuisine. The portions are big, too.”

“That’s great to hear. I’m glad you approve. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Well, it would be fantastic if you people would put down those guns,” the man said with a shrug, and his companions at the table snickered a little.

In contrast, the air around the men hemming them in grew colder and colder.

Every once in a while outside the restaurant, people who walked past from a distance glanced in, but as soon as they realized the nature of the groups inside, they automatically steered clear.

The police hadn’t arrived yet, and there was no sign they ever would.

That alone was enough to make it clear what sort of organization these newcomers belonged to. However, the group at the table were still perfectly unperturbed.

Still wary of them, the apparent leader of the second group spoke through slightly clenched teeth. “…For now, why don’t you come on a little picnic with us.”

Sensing the now-icy chill around the second group, the man at the table smiled quietly. “And what happens if I say we’d rather not?”

“We’ve got you perfectly surrounded, after all. About half of us will probably die from the cross fire.”

“You mean you’d all shoot at once with your friends across from you? Damn.”

“We have to. Otherwise, I don’t think we’d be able to kill you.”

He hadn’t let his guard down the slightest bit. If this really did turn into a gunfight, he’d probably pull the trigger even if it meant killing his comrades.

“…Damn, just because you’re willing to die doesn’t mean you have to.” The man at the table wiped his mouth with a napkin, rolling his eyes. “If you’re that scared, you shoulda just sniped us from a distance or blown up the building.”

“Our sniper and demolition guy are both taking their siestas.”

“Oh, well, in that case, it all makes sense. What, do they turn into Satan himself if you interrupt nap time?” he muttered, raising his hands in apparent surrender. “So you the boss of this outfit?”

The big man didn’t respond, and the fellow at the table sighed.

“Guess not, huh? Well, any boss who’d waltz into danger like this probably woulda gotten himself bumped off ages back.”

He giggled, and the big man slowly ran his eyes around the table, his face as expressionless as ever.

“Are you done? In that case, hurry up and choose: Are you coming with us or dying here?”

“Oh, that’s right. One last thing. You made one mistake.”

“What?” The big man’s eyebrows came down in a suspicious scowl.

Resting his elbows on the table, the man impassively corrected this mistake. “Back when you questioned if we were the ones who killed those guys, I just asked what would happen if I said yes, remember?”

“…?”

“Thing is, it wasn’t actually us.” The man gave a meaningful chuckle, then looked around at the group as if he pitied them, just a little. “…Illness, Death, sow yourselves over these men.”

Just then—

—two shapes swung down on ropes from the southeast and northwest sides of the room, catching the surrounding group of men between them.

“Wha…?”

Even before the men could tense their muscles—

Even before they could register that the things that were hanging there, upside down, were people—

—the two figures from the ceiling each leveled a pair of black guns—

—and subjected their stunned targets to a rain of boiling hot lead.

“Oh maaan. That was overkill. What was the point of wiping them all out?”

Silence had descended in the restaurant, and the first one to break it was the man at the corner of the table.

“Yeesh. Swinging down from the ceiling and blasting away with both hands like gangbusters. Oh, that reminds me; have you guys seen the Tomb Raider movie?”

“I have.”

“Yeah, it was good.”

“I swear, you people only watch the blockbusters.”

“Even back when I was playing the games, I just knew Angelina Jolie was the only choice as Lara Croft.”

As the idle conversation started up again, the two people hanging from the ceiling flipped right side up, then dropped soundlessly to the floor.

At some point, holes large enough for an adult to pass through had been cut into the ceiling. Apparently the two of them had been lurking up there, waiting for an opportunity.

Both of them were, in a way, dressed for the occasion.

They looked like a special police unit straight out of the movies in their full-body suits—military fatigues that were easy to move in, dyed pitch-black instead of camouflage—and masks and mechanized goggles covered their faces. It was broad daylight, so the goggles probably weren’t for night vision, but since the two weren’t taking them off, they must have had some sort of function.

Maybe these two were assassins, completely covered in jet-black except for their mouths.

Maybe they were brutal special forces who came to erase those who had learned national secrets.

Maybe they were heartless, unrivaled killing machines who showed no mercy even to women or children.

Or maybe they worked for the other side as military heroes who protected the civilians by eliminating all enemies from the shadows.

From the way they looked, most ordinary people would have imagined one of these scenarios. Of course, whether it impressed or frightened them was another matter.

One of the two had a toned, masculine body. The other’s slumped posture didn’t suit the outfit—but her relatively slender contours made it clear she was a girl.

Then, with the guns in both her hands lowered, the woman cocked her head. “Um, excuse me?” she said. Her sweet voice was the last thing you’d expect from her appearance. “Would it be all right if I said something?”

“What, Illness? Just go ahead and talk.”

“Okay, so, the thing is, the smells of blood and smokeless powder are grossing me out, so I think I’m gonna be sick, and— Okay, can I just throw up now?”

No sooner had she spoken than the woman who’d been called Illness—who sounded young enough that girl might have been the better word—hurled all over the floor.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaagh! She threw up, dammit!”

“You id— Look, we just finished eating over here…”

“You looked so cool annihilating the enemy and now this!”

“Why aren’t your combat skills and mental stats balanced?!”

“What is this, a video game?!”

“You really are a child of your era, aren’t you!”

Illness’s apparent companions were letting her have it, and she flailed her hands (which were still holding the guns) up and down in frustration, puffing her cheeks out sulkily.

“Well, I can’t help it! It’s weirder to not feel anything after you just killed someone!”

“Whoa! Hold it! Don’t wave those guns at us! The weird one here is you! There’s definitely something wrong with you!”

As her companions hastily took cover under the table, the girl who only looked like a member of the special forces angrily threw out her chest.

“Hmph! You people sat in the middle of a bunch of corpses and ate a big lunch! That’s the weird— Blargh!”

“She blew chunks again!”

“Why’d you eat so much before a maneuver?!”

As the people around her shouted at her, the girl finally calmed down. Then she murmured to the men in front of her in a cutesy voice.

“So, hey, this restaurant? Up there in the ceiling, there were tons of cockroaches and rats and bugs I’ve never seen before. Like, literally tons. Kinda makes you wonder about the hygiene around here, huh?”

Bwuff.

Several people spat out the water they’d been drinking.

“That’s just mean! Was that payback, Illness?!”

“Serves you right. You people should throw up, too; see how you like it.”

“What are you, a kid?!”

“Yeah, now I remember why you got the code name Illness.”

“Go back to the hospital!”

Ignoring his howling companions, the other assassin was wordlessly keeping a watchful eye on the area. The man exuded an overwhelming aura, cold as ice. If he wasn’t in view, you’d never even know he was there, but once you saw him, the fear would freeze you in your tracks.

Noting that he wasn’t distracted by the clamor at the table, the people who’d been eating spoke up, sounding impressed.

“Man… That’s Death for you. He looks like a real pro.”

“He is a pro. I know it’s cliché to say, but he’s the toughest guy in the organization.”

“Illness, Death, Life, Aging… Even among our four great weapons, you really are exceptional. The Final Four. In Japan, they might call you the shitennou, the four heavenly kings of Buddhist legend, but… Even among them, you really are in a different league.”

“Compared to you, it’s like… Illness is the first one to go down, and then you and Aging come in and say, ‘She was the weakest one of us’ or ‘Don’t get full of yourself because you defeated a little girl like her.’”

As her companions offered their unsolicited two cents, Illness looked down, disgruntled.

Ignoring her, the man sitting at the corner of the table cracked his neck audibly. “Anyway, now we just need to put down the boss of this group and we’re done…but we killed ’em all. Should we make tracks before the cops show up, or do we want to try asking them where the boss is?”

It was a surprising suggestion.

Their attitude was truly laid-back, but they were seriously starting to consider fighting the police.

Completely unperturbed by that possibility, the man called Death radiated an aura into his surroundings that did credit to his name.

Until, just a few seconds later—

—the bullet that entered through his mouth shattered the back of his skull.