CHAPTER 3
THE FUN-YET-SAD WORLD
A few days later An abandoned factory on a wharf somewhere in New York
“Ahhh… I’m so sad… Let me tell you some real, real sad stories.”
The abandoned factory by the Hudson River looked rather run-down.
Foot traffic in the area was sparse, and there was such a big difference between this neighborhood and the broad avenues that you never would have thought this was still in New York.
The factory, which had been shut down by the Depression, had lost all its former powerful dynamism. The building wasn’t able to go look for its next job, the way the unemployed did, and it might never serve its former purpose again until it rotted away.
In this era, business on society’s center stage had collapsed, and the power of the underworld had grown. Left behind by both these stages, the structure stayed dull and gray, its memory fading.
The plant was in a corner of that gray hulk.
The people who gathered there were also gray, individuals who didn’t belong to either society.
Ordinary citizens would never approach this building, and inside, members of the dark side of society were meeting together.
“These stories make anyone sad. If you want to cry ahead of time, now’s your chance.”
The man was using an oil drum as a chair, and in the dim factory, his silhouette was rather peculiar.
He was probably around twenty years old. If all you looked at were his blue coveralls, you might think he was a former factory hand.
Such a bright blue could never have been used on ordinary work clothes, though, and if he’d walked around town dressed like that, he’d be as conspicuous as you could get.
The truly odd thing wasn’t that color, but the object the man was fiddling with.
It was an adjustable wrench, the sort used to tighten nuts.
By itself, the name would suggest it was a normal thing for a workman to have—but there were two abnormal things about it.
One was its size.
The man didn’t have a large build, and the silver baton-shaped object he held in his hands was clearly longer than a child’s arm. It felt more accurate to call it a mace from medieval warfare rather than a tool.
The other thing was…
The fact that the surface of the once-gleaming silver wrench was dull with caked red blood.
At first glance, the man seemed slender and mild-mannered. His muscles were unexpectedly solid, but shiny blond hair hung over his face, and the half-open, sleepy eyes behind it were striking.
If all you saw was his lustrous hair and his pale skin, you might have been able to call him a handsome young man, but the color in his eyes was both incredibly dull and terribly upsetting to people who saw them.
As he toyed with that enormous, misshapen wrench, spinning it between his hands, he spoke quietly to the mixed crowd in front of him.
“They say humans grow during sad times and sing life’s praises while they’re lazily enjoying the fun times. I don’t plan to grow any more than this, though.”
The wrench the man had been spinning stopped dead, and he slipped down from the oil drum in an agile move.
“So why do I have to tell such sad stories, huh? What are you trying to pull, making me grow more than I already have? Where are you planning to take me? This, when what I actually want is to sing life’s praises and let laziness corrupt my soul!”
Venting his irritation in odd phrases, the man fiddled with his wrench with both hands.
“The first sad story is that Toady cheated at a casino and got sent to the hospital with all his digits broken.”
Shaking his head, his face expressionless, the man lobbed the wrench straight up into the air.
The tool fell, spinning fast. It probably weighed about ten pounds or so, but the man caught it easily with a pleasant smack.
“The kid in charge, Firo or whatever his name was—he looks innocent enough, but damn, can he be nasty. I would’ve felt better if he’d plain killed him… But wait: If Toady died, I’d be so sad I’d stop feeling better. What a contradiction! Yeah, that’s way too damn sad!”
Tossing and catching, tossing and catching, juggling a wrench that would cause him serious injury if it hit him in the head, the man went on.
“The next sad story is that an ashtray came falling out of a hotel window and stuck right into my car… And it was a brand new Ford, fellas. And lemme tell ya, those things are sturdy; by some miracle, I was able to keep driving. Still sad, though.”
Smack, smack.
The intervals between wrench throws were gradually shrinking.
At the same time, the wrench was spinning faster.
“I was thinking of raiding that hotel, but it sounds like the Runorata Family backs that place. Don’t wanna make enemies of a huge mafia outfit.”
Smack, smack.
“And one more thing.”
Smack, smack, smack-smack.
“Mr. Smith tangled with a Gandor exec and ended up in the hospital with a busted mug… Dammit, he promised he’d gimme a few of those dozens of guns he had stowed in his coat, but ain’t no way that’s happening now.”
Smack-smack-smack-smack-smack-smack!
“And…the saddest, saddest, saddest thing…is that Ladd got hurt real bad and was hauled in by the cops! What’s up with that?! Not only did the cops pick him up, it sounds like somebody dropped him off a train!”
The wrench reached peak velocity, and it looked as though a translucent disc was dancing through the air.
“Are you?!”
Smack!
“Telling me!”
Smack!
“Someone who!”
Smack!
“Could hurt Ladd!”
Smack!
Smack!
Smack!
“Actually exists!”
Smack!
“On this planet?!”
Smack!
Smack!
Smack-smack-smack-smack!
Wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff.
Wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff.
Wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff.
Wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff-wff
When the wrench’s rotation had stabilized at top speed, the man stopped throwing it into the air and, without killing its rotation, kept spinning it between his hands like a baton.
“We had so many plans for when he came to New York… My brother Ladd was gonna break people, and I’d break stuff! Just thinking about it kept me from getting any sleep, and then my dreams were shattered— How ironic is that?! That’s a sad story. Yeah, yeah, a sad story! What the hell is God trying to pull, making me tell sad stories?! What’s this world doing to me?! Dammit! It’s sad, really sad! I feel like the whole world’s making a monkey out of me, and I’m sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad— Aaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagwaaahgaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The instant the man’s scream reached its peak—
—a roar like a lightning strike echoed, and the oil drum he’d been sitting on a moment ago soared through the air, though it was no longer drum-shaped.
The people around him flinched and then gradually realized what had happened. It was very simple: He’d struck the oil drum with the wrench, and he’d struck it hard. That was all it was.
Even empty, that oil drum still weighed at least fifty pounds—and it soared as lightly as if it was made of crumpled paper. If he turned that wrench on them, they definitely wouldn’t survive.
Shivering, the handful of people in the factory fearfully looked at the creator of that destruction—the man who was the center of their group, Graham Specter.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAaAAAaah!”
Still gripping the wrench, Graham kept howling, but little by little, his tone of voice changed.
“AAAAAAH! AAaaah! Ah— Ah, aaaaaah… ~~~~Aaah! AAAAaah I feel better!”
His icy mask of an expression was gone without a trace. His face shone so brightly that you’d think he just won the lottery, and he swung the wrench around lightly.
“And now for a fun story! Let me tell you a fun story! If you want to laugh ahead of time, now’s your chance!”
The way he spoke had barely changed at all, but the direction of his tension had flipped 180 degrees.
“Life is fun! Try saying that ten thousand times a day! Your head will go all screwy, and all the pain will disappear! Okay, okay, okay, okay. I’ve triumphed over sadness and have simply evolved to a higher stage! Power’s good. Really good! Don’t you think so, fellas?”
He was saying something completely different from what he’d said a moment ago, but the people around him could only nod in unison.
Graham Specter: Chicago native and former auto factory worker.
In Chicago, he’d been a Russo Family flunky, but when the factory had failed, he’d moved to New York.
He idolized Ladd Russo like a big brother, and he took more pleasure in the act of destruction than anything else.
That said, what perplexed the people around him more than that tendency was that his emotions shifted in extraordinarily intense ways, and they were prone to extreme spikes and dips, always at either zero or a hundred.
It wasn’t clear whether he was doing it on purpose or unconsciously, but either way, it was all the people around him could do to keep shifting emotional gears.
In terms of New Yorkers with intense mood swings, Elean was notorious for them at the information brokerage. But Graham wasn’t manic-depressive. He was always manic, and the capricious shifts in his emotions only affected the direction.
In a nutshell, that was the young man who had appeared in town just about the time Dallas Genoard had vanished, and who now ran the local gang of hooligans.
“Wonderful! Man, is life fantastic! Well, I was going to tell a fun story, but I can’t think of anything in particular! I’m all worked up now! My okay brain is so okayed that it’s okayified, fellas, so tell some kind of fun story! If you don’t, I’ll break one joint apiece, got it?!”
Revealing his true tyrannical nature, Graham twisted his wrench to the side.
Imagining their own elbows getting trapped by that wrench, twisted, and broken, the surrounding figures shuddered.
They couldn’t let the silence go on and have him actually start breaking things, but they also couldn’t let him backslide into gloom. Coming to that decision, one of the figures timidly ventured, “M-Mr. Graham… Um, uh, I dunno if it’s a fun story, but do you know about the new group that got into town recently?”
“Nah, I dunno ’em… Whoa, it’s a story I don’t know! I got kinda psyched up there! How do I brake my racing heart?! Break? Say, breaking stuff’s the only way, right? Right?! What’ll I do?! C’mon, tell me what I should do!”
As he spoke, Graham turned his wrench on a piece of abandoned factory equipment and started messing around with it.
They figured he was going to use brute force and hurl the thing, but instead, he efficiently dismantled the machine’s joints with the wrench, occasionally taking a small screwdriver or pair of clippers out of his coveralls and working with both hands at once.
“W-well…they seem like a group of hooligans, like us… And it looks a whole lot like they’re based out of Millionaires’ Row.”
“Millionaires’ Row? The rich folks’ street?”
“Yessir.”
Millionaires’ Row was an avenue lined with mansions, the second residences of the nation’s wealthiest individuals. Even for New York, the district had a particularly elegant atmosphere, and it was both physically and emotionally distant from the area in which they lived.
“Nice. I love stories with plenty of dough in ’em! So how come a gang of fellas like us is hanging around there? Are they knocking it over? Yeah, it’s gotta be robbery! Damn… Before they get the scoop on us, we should dismantle a house ourselves and take the safe out, bring it safe here, and slowly break it down, and break it down, and break it down some more… Aaaaaah, I’m all psyched up now! I’m absolutely, hopelessly, transcendentally worked up!”
Although his hands were still moving precisely as they dismantled the machine, the rest of Graham kept wriggling in a strange semblance of a dance. Relieved more that his destructive impulses were focused entirely on the machine than by the fact that his mood had improved, his delinquent henchman went on with his story.
“No… The thing is, seems they’re tight with the head of the Genoard Family, and they’re hanging out at one of their second homes.”
“Genoard? Ah! I know them! That’s the one where the family head and his oldest son went into a dam or a river or something last year and drowned, right?”
“Yeah, when I said head of the family, I meant the heir, a girl named Eve. The second son, Dallas, is missing too, so everything went to the oldest daughter.”
“I see! In other words, those new fellas in town somehow managed to get in tight with poor little Eve, or maybe threaten her! That’s incredible! They must be geniuses, huh? Sorry, I don’t really get it, but I just wanted to use the word geniuses right now!”
As if he’d been dragged into Graham’s hyperactive, nonsensical mood, the delinquent grew more animated as well.
“So see! If we slyly take ’em in, then take ’em over, we’ll get to milk that, too— Blugh?!”
The end of his sentence turned into a groan, and the delinquent crumpled forward, knees quaking.
The tip of the giant adjustable wrench had dug into his stomach, and the blow seemed to have compressed his organs and run right through to his spinal cord.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. What’s with that plan? You aren’t even hiding that you’re a leech; it kinda got me excited! But no! Hell no! What’s the point of being so timid? I mean, you can’t bust up anything that way. Maybe you could bust up their friendship, but the stuff I want to bust up is physical, get me? If you get me, gimme an answer!”
Graham beamed, letting his wrench dangle.
Due to the shock of that jab to the gut, the delinquent couldn’t speak well.
“…What about that answer?” Graham’s eyes were smiling, but his voice sure wasn’t.
The guy knew he had to answer, but his lungs weren’t working properly, to say nothing of his vocal cords.
Through his despair and anxiety he desperately tried to calm his mind and lungs. Still, his galloping heart and the dull pain from his stomach allowed him no relief.
As if he was trying to frighten him further, Graham raised that enormous adjustable wrench high in the air. To the delinquent, it seemed to be as clear a symbol of death as the blade of a guillotine.
“No answer. Then you can just be…dead meat!”
“Yeaaaaaaaaaagh—!”
The sound that tore from his throat was a wordless scream, and a dull noise echoed in the room.
“Hya-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I was obviously kidding! Why’d you—? You didn’t need to pass out like that! Man, I feel super-duper guilty! Oh shit, I’m all psyched up now! My stomach’s clenching up! It’s that mix of loneliness and happiness, that feeling you get the day before a trip! That feeling makes us even, yeah?”
Beside the shattered concrete lay an unconscious delinquent kid, his eyes rolled back in his head.
After he’d finished his self-centered apology, Graham took gears the size of baseballs out of the pocket of his coveralls and began to juggle with them.
“…So? Those new fellas have a leader, right? What’s that guy like?”
The question was a completely natural one, and another man who’d been standing beside him straightened up.
“Y-yeah! I just happened to get a look at him that time I went to Fred’s hospital,” he answered. “He was this weirdly nervous guy with a tattoo of a sword on his face!”
“He’s inked, but he’s nervous?! Damn. I don’t really get it, but whoa, that guy’s incredible! If we’re careless, somebody might get killed… Who, you ask? Me! And you fellas! But who would do such a thing?”
“Who?!”
They knew that he tended to speak and act haphazardly when he was worked up, but even so, the delinquents felt compelled to speak up.
“A tattoo of a sword on his face, huh? He sounds like a guy worth breaking… Hmm?”
Ignoring the verbal jabs from around him as a matter of course, Graham abruptly stopped moving.
“…I’m pretty sure…somewhere around here…”
He headed over to a table in a corner of the factory, then began rummaging through the mess of paper and trash on top of it.
“Ah, found it. This is it, this right here.”
Finding a sheet of paper in the pile, he carelessly shoved it at his delinquent friends.
“This wouldn’t be him, would it?”
When he saw the portrait on that paper, one of his underlings gave an involuntary yell.
“Whoa! Th-that’s the guy! That’s him for sure!”
“Biiiiingo! Whoo! Wahahoo! Nice! Nice! Nice!”
Beside Graham, who was delivering a series of weird whoops, the delinquents wondered why that portrait was even there—but when they saw what was written on the paper, it instantly made sense.
The paper held the signature of a Russo Family executive, one Graham had been friendly with—and text that said, to put it briefly, Whoever finds this one will get a reward.
If the police happened to spot the text, it would just look like they were searching for somebody. However, to anyone familiar with the Russo name, there was only one thing this paper could mean.
In other words—the guy had a bounty on his head.
“Let me tell you a happy, happy story. Let’s savor this. Fun and happy are totally different things! Fun is transitory, but happiness remains in your memory forever, or that’s what I figure! I’m saying so, right here and now! Heh-heh… Are you gonna laugh and say I’ve got a swelled head? Go right ahead! Give me a chuckle, and I’ll demolish you!”
Saying something unreasonable, Graham turned back to the big piece of equipment and went on dismantling it, working even faster than he had earlier.
“All right, let me tell you a fun-yet-sad story. Fun is the flip side of sad… I guess? In other words, they’re heaven and hell. A milk train and a special express. Love and peace! Love! And! Peace!”
“Why’d you say that twice…?”
About half an hour later— Standing in front of the big machine, which had been broken down beyond all recognition, Graham wore the expression of a man who’d accomplished something.
As he used his wrench to hammer out components that had already been meticulously disassembled, he outlined a plan.
“For now, if we nab that Jacuzzi fella, we’ll get bread from Mr. Russo. It might even make a good tribute for my brother Ladd in the big house! Not that that’s anything to do with anything!”
Unaware of the fact that Ladd and Jacuzzi had actually met, Graham kept going, his excitement gradually building.
“Right… Speaking of love and peace, let’s talk about two birds and one stone.”
“What do those have to do with—? Gwuff!”
“So! First off, we’ll—yeah! We’ll kidnap Eve! Oh man… Just the idea of kidnapping an unmarried doll got me all worked up, but unfortunately, I like older women! I’m not interested in anybody my age or younger!”
“Huh? Then what about us— Mgwah?!”
Lightly striking his companion in the gut with his adjustable wrench, Graham started outlining the plan.
“We’ll use her as a hostage to lure Jacuzzi over here, and then we’ll nab him, too! Then we’ll nab his bounty! Howzat? That’s a gem of a fun-yet-sad story, ain’t it?”
“What part of that is sad?”
Graham answered his henchman’s unnecessary question with utter confidence.
As if he was entertained.
As if he was really and truly enjoying himself—
And in the shadow of that expression, something about his smile vaguely resembled the murderous man in the white suit.
“It’s fun for us…and sad for them. Right?”
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