Baccano! - Volume 12 - Chapter Pr2

Prologue 2—The Sleep-Deprived Hound

“Huh?”

At the abrupt gunshot, the men at the table stiffened—

—and beside them, their companion collapsed with a thud.

Their strongest weapon—or so they’d once thoroughly believed—had been transformed into a meat doll that only twitched spasmodically every now and then.

“De…death?”

They couldn’t comprehend what could have caused what they were seeing or what it meant, and for a little while, they were stunned. They couldn’t even turn their guns on the lone man walking into the restaurant.

“Wh-what the hell are you?”

At first glance, the brown-skinned man seemed to be empty-handed. He was dressed in a relatively casual way; however, on closer inspection, he was holding a large pistol in each hand.

If that was all you’d seen of him, you might have mistaken him for someone in the same league as the corpses lying around the restaurant.

He was probably about thirty. He didn’t have a mustache; instead, his chin was covered with stubble.

He was a gunslinger.

He wasn’t wearing a ten-gallon hat, and he didn’t have a guitar case with guns inside. Even so, the man carried himself like a true gunslinger. It was enough to trick someone into believing for a moment that the devastated restaurant interior was a film studio.

Guns dangling loosely in his hands, he coolly answered the question about his identity.

“I’m the sniper,” he said, stepping into the jaws of death as if such a thing meant nothing to him.

Naturally, the men at the table weren’t unarmed, either. They all had handguns in their jackets, and a few of them were already reaching for theirs.

“The sniper…?”

“I was taking a siesta until just now. I got a late start.”

“……”

The group at the table recalled what the big man had said before he was shot and killed a moment ago.

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

“I see. So that wasn’t a joke, huh?” said the man at the corner, and a thread of tension quietly laced its way through the group. “You supposed to be a bodyguard? Not much of a guard dog if you’re showing up now. Your masters are pretty much all gone.”

It wasn’t clear whether the other man was concentrating or not; he opened his sleepy eyes wide, and his extremely dignified voice echoed in the restaurant.

“I am no guard dog.”

The gunman, who seemed like a joke, answered in stiff English, his expression dark.

“I am a hound.” Just then, two gunshots echoed through the restaurant. “Even if my masters are all dead, I will tear out the throat of my prey.”

The gunman’s hands were still dangling at his sides—or they seemed to be.

But in fact, bullets had been fired, and brand-new smoke was rising from the downward-pointing muzzles.

At the table, two bodies thudded to the floor. A glance at the hands of the fallen corpses revealed that they’d had their guns out already.

They’d drawn, and so they’d been shot.

That was all.

It was a simple rule.

Once the businessmen realized that, they moved fast.

They promptly kicked over the table in the gunman’s direction and then dived behind it with the force of an avalanche.

All except for Illness, who just stood there awkwardly with her guns.

That empty-headed brat! What’s she doing?!

“Um…”

Naturally, the girl couldn’t hear her companions’ internal screams. She thought for a while, hmming to herself, but then—her eyes went wide with realization beneath her mechanical goggles, and she threw her shapely chest out to declare:

“Heh-heh-heh. Death was the weakest one of us! Don’t go getting a big head!”

“……”

Behind the table, the men and women all went silent. Simultaneously, they decided to go ahead and write her off as they adjusted their grips on their weapons. Did our teasing bother her that much?

As they did, the gunman nodded pensively, then spoke to the girl. “…Young lady, the man I killed a minute ago, the one who was dressed like you—wasn’t he a companion of yours?”

“Yes. Why?”

“You aren’t grieving for him.” The man’s face was expressionless.

Illness hmmed again and fell to thinking. Surveying the corpses that lay around her, she smiled sadly. “Hmm. Well, I mean, in this line of work, we could get killed at any time, too, so it’s sort of, like, I think of us as already dead? Or like, it’s not sad to me anymore, or um… Oh, what should I say? What should I saaaaaaay?”

Illness turned her guns on him. Her lips were smiling, but the rest of her face was completely hidden; the gunman had no idea whether her eyes held laughter or tears.

“I understand what you wanted to say. I’m sorry. That was an insensitive question.”

His reply was the signal for a volley of gunfire.

A second before, the gunman swayed, then took cover behind the salad bar near the entrance.

He’d moved as smoothly as a heat mirage, but his speed was nothing normal. With a swarm of bullets hot on his heels, the gunman vanished into the shadows—

And in the next moment, right after the bullets bit into the counter, he stuck his head back out from behind cover and fired two clean shots.

There were two solid thuds. Then groans.

However, neither came from Illness. The voices belonged to two of her companions, who’d poked their heads out and leveled their guns from behind the table.

All they were holding was handguns.

Since he’d killed Death first, Illness had been sure she’d be his next target, but he’d betrayed her expectations twice now, and she let her guns point at the floor again.

The group behind the table seemed to understand that if they drew, they’d be shot. They held their breath and took a few seconds to size up the situation.

In the midst of that brief silence, Illness spoke to the gunman, who was under cover again. “Hey, um, why didn’t you shoot me just now?”

“Don’t you know?” The sober voice coming from behind the counter sounded like stiff, worn-out cloth. “I don’t kill women or children.”

The answer was both simple and, in this situation, bizarre and impossible to understand, but Illness accepted it and called to her companions behind the table.

“Hey, now what do I do?! This guy’s actually kinda cool!”

“Like we care, you moron!”

Naturally, the response was frustrated and unkind. It could have been worse, perhaps; they could have just ignored her entirely.

“He’s selling you short, so let him have it, all right? Please!”

“That bastard gunman! He’s a blatant sexist!”

“He discriminates against children!”

The gunslinger was ignoring the yells, but—

“Dammit! Quit talking like the hero in Contract to Kill!”

—he couldn’t let that one go, and he called back from behind the counter, “You mean like John Wayne.”

At that interjection from the enemy, the movie-loving businessmen mentally stepped out of the shootout for about three seconds and spoke among themselves.

“Did John say something like that in one of his movies?”

“I haven’t seen ’em all, so…”

“Maybe we should do a loop around the rental shops next time.”

The gunman called out again, interrupting their discussion about the Hollywood legend. “I don’t know whether Wayne ever said anything like that. But even if he never said it on the silver screen—we could pretend that he did. Can’t we?”

At that answer, the businessmen all grinned.

“Y’know, I think we’d probably get along, Gunslinger.”

“Yeah. That makes it even more of a shame that we’re enemies.”

“You ain’t John Wayne, though. You’re obviously Antonio Banderas.”

As they answered, the businessmen signaled each other with their eyes. Then they all took hand grenade–shaped objects from inside their jackets and tossed them across the floor.

“Hmm…?”

They were special smoke bombs.

The white smoke expanded explosively, obscuring the view in a matter of seconds despite the open windows.

As the flat white darkness covered him, the gunslinger thought. In this situation, the girl in the goggles was probably the one with the greatest advantage.

“I’d love to say this was interesting, but—”

The gunman sighed, his expression icy, and focused his ears on the faint noise of an engine.

“I’m sorry. I believe our demolition specialist is up from his siesta,” he murmured.

A second later, he flung himself through a nearby window.

And once he was outside, the gunman saw what he’d expected to see.

A huge unmanned truck punched through the wall of the restaurant where he’d been a few seconds ago, mindlessly wreaking havoc on its interior.

Without looking back, the gunslinger started running.

After he’d gone about a hundred yards at an all-out sprint, he hid behind a nearby building, still stoic as ever.

…He knew what was coming. A second later, a massive explosion roared through the streets, swallowing the truck and the restaurant whole.

“…So they got away.”

The gunslinger hadn’t counted the corpses, but there was a certain conviction in his quiet words.

“Heya, Mr. Angelo. How’s it going?”

The two-way radio at his waist sounded with cackling laughter, and the gunslinger—Angelo—picked it up and responded, blank faced.

“There’s no problem. I accomplished the initial objective.”

“You mean the one about chasing ’em out of the restaurant? Ah, wait, the boss wants to talk to ya. Hee-hee!” The demolition specialist laughed again in an ugly way.

After him—Angelo’s boss spoke on the other end of the radio.

A few days later North America, somewhere on the West Coast

Unlike the restaurant that had been blown to kingdom come the other day, this bar had a sophisticated atmosphere.

Angelo didn’t have his guns with him, but he still had that gunslinger aura around him, which made him extremely distinctive among the families and couples.

However, the modern-day gunman didn’t care. He was gazing out at the view from his seat by the window, his face expressionless.

His eyes were fixed on an enormous fortress. Its pure-white walls towered high over the ocean, looking down on the surrounding buildings, simply existing.

It was one of the most luxurious cruise ships in the world.

The ship was used not just for overseas voyages but for trips around the globe. It was more than a marine hotel; it was a bona fide castle.

“……”

As someone who was preparing to attack that castle, the gunman quietly focused his mind.

Then his cell phone sent a vibration through his chest, breaking his concentration.

“Heya, how’s it going, Mr. Angelo?”

When he took the phone out of his coat and put it to his ear, he heard a familiar coarse voice.

The demolition guy.

Unlike him, this man worked freelance, and the gunslinger heaved a quiet sigh upon hearing his voice.

Angelo had almost never seen his face, and the man only helped them out once or twice a year during big conflicts, but for some reason, he called Angelo frequently. Well, only once every couple of months, but still.

When the mystery organization had attacked the other day, the demolition guy had just happened to be around. “Hey, me and this group go way back,” he’d said, and then he’d tapped a few sources of intel for them.

As a result—

—they’d learned that the strange armed group was planning to travel to Japan by ship, to let things simmer down.

If they reached Japan, finding them again would be problematic.

“Look, I know I’m a freelancer, so maybe this ain’t my place, but the cartel’s done for, don’tcha think? Once you get hurt that bad, you can’t push the cops around anymore. If you make your triumphant return with their head, and there’s a parking lot where your syndicate used to be, well, that ain’t a very funny punch line, right?”

“Even if that happens, it changes nothing. What I have to do…is hunt them. That’s all.”

“What a hound! Really brings a tear to my eye. Well, I got paid up front, too, so I’ll do what I can do.” The man on the other end seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the situation. “Hee-hee! I’ll be on board, too, so just relax. Let’s turn every last one of ’em into fish food.”

“…Don’t do anything that will cause trouble for the regular folks.”

“Man, that’s cold. You’re talking like I’d blow up the whole boat.”

“Our objective is to identify their leader and their client; that’s all. There’s no need to start a war on a ship full of people,” Angelo said with a warning in his voice, then asked a very natural question. “In any case, if we’re going to be on board together, why not at least show your face?”

“’Cause you stick out like a sore thumb, and I ain’t about to die young. Don’t you worry. On the ship, I’ll get weapons to you somehow. Once everything’s over, just throw ’em into the ocean along with the corpses, and voilà: no more evidence. The ocean sure is wonderful, ain’t she! Like a great big whore who swallows everything!”

“Don’t pollute the ocean,” Angelo retorted, and it was difficult to tell whether he was being serious or not. Quietly, he hung up.

He didn’t know how the man was going to get weapons onto a ship that was heading overseas, but the demolition guy always managed to handle things like that somehow. He was probably trustworthy.

Angelo’s eyes went to the ship again, and he thought about his targets.

According to the demolition guy’s intel, they weren’t an enemy organization per se. The group had been hired with money by some individual or syndicate.

They were a huge organization with a trail of unlikely rumors behind them. For example, that not only did they take simple jobs like murder; they would even foment civil wars.

A lone gunslinger could hardly afford to make an enemy of such a group.

After all, even if we are on a boat, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be unarmed.

With the unlikely possibility of his own death on his mind—actually, the probability was closer to fifty-fifty—Angelo thought of the family he’d left in his distant hometown.

“Carlos will be three this year, I guess.” He had yet to meet his son; he’d only heard the news of his birth.

Angelo resumed thinking about the enemy. A secret society of criminals might be a tasteless way to put it, but they really were a group of businessmen who engaged mainly in crime.

Their trademark was their masks.

During big jobs, this peculiar group invariably carried pure-white masks around with them for luck.

As a result, their organization was called the Mask Makers. As he thought about the group, the gunslinger murmured too low for anyone else to hear.

“…Once this job is over, maybe I’ll head back to Spain.”

“I’ll bring my wife and kid their masks, and then we can go to Venice or something.”