Baccano! - Volume 14 - Chapter Pr

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Terminal—Prequels

Childhood Pal

December 29, 1931 Somewhere in Chicago

“Hey, Who. Got anything going on tomorrow and the day after? Betcha don’t.”

“?”

Somebody had called me Who, as in Who are you? right in the middle of town, and as I turned around, I imagined the face I was probably about to see.

And I was right.

“What is it, Ladd? Maybe I don’t look it, but I’m a busy guy.”

“Don’t be like that. I bet your kind of ‘busy’ means thinking about what to have for dinner or something—that’s all.”

“Unlike you and your rich family, I’ve got practically zero income. Maybe you don’t know, Ladd, but we’ve been in a depression for a couple years now, and I’m worried out of my skull that I’ll starve to death one of these days.”

I’d meant that as sarcasm, but that jerk nodded, cackling away.

“Oho. Come to think of it, out of all the ways you can buy the farm, they say starvation’s one of the nastiest. It ain’t my favorite way to kill, though. I mean, c’mon. After a while with an empty belly you start to think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna die.’ I can’t get jazzed over killing fellas like that. Know what I mean?”

“I hope you’re not expecting a yes.”

Ladd Russo.

I know a lot of unsavory characters, but there’s really, truly no hope for this guy.

I mean, he’s murdered a ton of people.

He’s the lowest of the low—a murderer who revels in it.

Your average dumb kid might stop to question why killing people is wrong, but not Ladd. I tried to talk sense into him from that perspective before, but…

Well, of course it ain’t okay to kill people. Our brains are built to hate the idea. In war or self-defense, you might be able to fight that feeling off with a sense of duty following orders, fear for your life, or maybe even love. Then you flick a switch somewhere in your head, and you can take somebody’s life. Outside of those rare situations, that justification is hard to find. Hell, if you gotta stop and ask why you shouldn’t kill, your instincts are already screwy. No wonder the decent folks around him want to either run that dangerous punk out of their society or try to fix his brain. They don’t want to get all buddy-buddy with a nutcase ’cause they don’t wanna die. That ain’t me, though. I know it’s wrong, and I kill ’em anyway. I flip that switch in my mind, click, just like that. Guess it’s pretty easy for me. And then, when fellas understand that people can kill and still think, “I’m the exception; there’s no way anybody’s ever gonna kill me”— Well, I show ’em: “This world you’re living in has freaks like me in it, and there’s no telling when you’re gonna die either, and actually, die now. Die right this second. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die.” Like that.

…That’s what he had to say on that. He’d busted up laughing, and that was it.

Geez. He’s hopeless.

A blank-faced, gun-toting kid wondering why they shouldn’t kill is adorable compared to him. I mean, when you act on that impulse, they get their elbows checked by the sheriff and hauled off to jail or the hangman.

But Ladd’s already killed a lot of people—and it doesn’t seem like a sheriff will ever catch him.

Any regular sheriff would probably get shot and killed by him instead.

Ladd.

The trouble with this guy is that he’s under the protection of a mafia syndicate, the Russo Family.

From what I hear, he’s famous as their top hitman, but hitmen really shouldn’t be famous… That makes no sense.

That said, he’s only acting as a hitman to satisfy his bloodlust. The syndicate cleans up all the bodies for him. That’s exactly why he’s using his family to get a kick out of life. He said so himself a little while ago.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting pulled into his ugly messes for ages, all because this fella and I go way back.

Every time a group of Ladd’s buddies marched me off somewhere, they’d ask me “Who’re you?” so somewhere along the way, my nickname had become “Who.” Even Ladd started using it, and he should know my real name. I wasn’t okay with that, but I knew he wasn’t the type to listen to anything I told him, so frankly, I didn’t care anymore. Nowadays, I’ve started to get pretty attached to the moniker myself.

Plus, Ladd’s buddies were all as psychotic as he was.

A few years back, they had a bet on whether Ladd could sock a guy in the Nebula headquarters building—the chairman of that huge corporation—and he bulldozed his way into that skyscraper to do it.

I was worried just being around those guys would get me in hot water with the cops.

In the end, nothing happened (I dunno what went on in there, but both Ladd and the Nebula chairman are still alive and kicking), so all’s well that ends well. I’d steeled myself anyway; I was positive I was going to die right there.

Sometimes, even when you’re just living your life and minding your own business, a flowerpot falls on your head and kills you.

On days when I was around guys like Ladd, the Grim Reaper kept on advancing toward me.

I probably stuck with him anyway because I wanted to at least try to keep his rampages to a minimum. Not that I could actually stop him.

If I left him alone, there’s no telling when he’d set Chicago on fire. I categorically refused to die because he dragged me into a mess.

“So if I say I don’t have any plans tomorrow, then what?”

It was going to be something dumb.

I already knew that, but I decided to hear Ladd out anyway.

Ladd put an arm around my shoulders and whispered, his eyes shining like a kid who just got his allowance.

(“Let’s go pull off a lil’ trainjack, all right?”)

See? Completely dumb.

“No. And actually, don’t pull a birdbrained stunt like that,” I told him flatly.

Ladd ignored my input, though, and started explaining his cockamamie plan, thumping me on the back the whole time.

“See, tomorrow, this ritzy train called the Flying Pussyfoot is coming to Chicago. We’re gonna hijack it a little, kill half the passengers, then kill the other half and crash the train right into New York… Whaddaya think? Nifty plan, huh?”

“Tell me what I could possibly get out of that.”

“C’mon! You can’t waste your life thinking about what you’re gonna get out of it. Sometimes you’ve gotta make a move, even when you know it’s gonna cost you… And that time is obviously now!”

There’s making no sense, and then there’s Ladd.

Ladd’s energy nearly swept me away, and I struggled desperately in an attempt to escape the current.

“Listen, Ladd. I’ve got nothing going for me. You drop me into a trainjack bloodbath and watch what happens. I guarantee one of your stray slugs is gonna send me to my maker. Even if that doesn’t happen, try stirring up trouble in a train that’s going about sixty miles an hour. I could stumble headfirst into the coal furnace and go up in flames, or I could slip and fall onto the rails, get caught up in the wheels and ground into hamburger! A strong passenger could break my neck; I don’t have the muscles to fight. Or maybe that Rail Tracer urban legend will eat me headfirst, or I could drop dead of a heart attack from all the stress! The world’s dangerous enough as it is, so why should I voluntarily go somewhere that’s gonna get me killed?!”

I was panting after that little rant, and then Ladd had the nerve to say, “Y’know, I think that extreme fear of death you’ve got is really something. I mean it. I respect you as a person.”

“Then quit with these screwy rampages already.”

I paused for the space of a breath, then mentioned a certain woman’s name:

“I don’t want to end up like Leila.”

“…”

Leila.

The moment her name came up, Ladd stopped moving, if only a little.

A long time ago, that would have been enough to put the brakes on pretty much any rampage, but—

“Hey c’mon, Who. It ain’t good to let the past tie you down like that. When are we living, huh? Yeah, that’s right. Now. Looking back is important, but you can’t let memories trap you. We have to keep our focus on the future. Ain’t that right?” Ladd had come out with a speech that sounded almost inspiring, and then he smiled with something close to ecstasy as he murmured, “Yeah… I gotta do it for my future with Lua. For our quiet little marriage together.”

I give up. Medicine’s come a long way, but there’s no cure for stupidity.

“…And anyway, if you’re planning some rough work, invite that fella who’s in New York. Uh, what’s his name…? You know; the one with the big wrench.”

“Oh, that kid? Graham? No can do. You can count on him, but just try getting that guy all worked up on a train. He’d take the whole thing apart before we got anywhere.”

“I did drop him a line, though. I’ll break the people, he’ll break the stuff. I’m already looking forward to that party, trust me.”

As it turned out, I ended up going along on that ridiculous train ride.

I tried talking him out of it for close to three hours, but then he kept pestering me. When it was all said and done, the conversation took a solid four hours total.

Apparently, no matter how I tried to stop him, he planned to smuggle shotguns and other weapons to hijack that train. The odds of the passengers’ lives being spared were probably about fifty-fifty.

I went along with it because I was worried about him: If he was going to pull a dumb stunt, maybe I could stave off the worst of it… But I know there’s no excuse. If I was worried, I should’ve stopped him, even if it came to blows. I wasn’t brave enough to have a fistfight with Ladd, though—that’s all.

In other words, I was a moron, too.

Just in case, I purchased my ticket separately from the rest of the group so that people wouldn’t think I was with them. If we got surrounded by cops, I’d have to strip off my white jacket and tell them, “You’ve got the wrong guy; my clothes happened to be the same color…!” It would make me a yellow-bellied coward, but dammit, what else was I supposed to do?!

If I ended up unable to stop them, I’d have to get away somehow, even if that meant jumping off the train.

……

Technically, I could report this to law enforcement now.

But if I did, I’d probably die.

I wasn’t worried about Ladd pulling the trigger. He said some messed-up stuff, but once he decided you were his pal, he’d never kill you.

Even so, there’s a reason I was always afraid for my life around those guys.

The only one with that policy was Ladd.

The day I was dumb enough to squeal on them, Ladd’s buddies would hack me to pieces. If I was real unlucky, they’d say I caused trouble for the Russo Family, and Ladd’s uncle, Don Placido, might even torture me to death.

Ladd always says, “There’s no reason I ended up like this. I was born screwy.”

Yeah, the guy maybe was a natural murderer. I couldn’t think of any trauma that would have made him a homicidal maniac, so I wouldn’t deny it.

But I did have an idea about why he killed folks who thought they couldn’t possibly die yet.

Leila.

Her death probably caused this.

She went down way too easily.

And…it might have been partly my fault.

The bottom line was—

—the next day, I would board that train.

I would help out with that birdbrained trainjack.

……

It was an excuse.