Baccano! - Volume 16 - Chapter 11.5

Digression B

1932 A certain day of a certain month The speakeasy Alveare

“Sure, we can say we’ll become money, but how do we do it?”

“What if we made clothes out of coins?”

“I see…! True, if you put lots of coins in layers, they might even stop bullets! Okay, Miria! Let’s go get all the bills we’ve got and exchange them for coins!”

“Okay, Isaac! Won’t they be heavy, though?”

“Of course they’ll be heavy! They’re protecting our lives, so they may even weigh more than us! But there’s no way around it! Money outweighs life!”

“Yes, Money Wars!”

Watching the pair converse as they always did, Firo sighed again. “Are you two still goin’ on about that?” All the ice had melted in his glass, so the young camorrista started rinsing it out as he spoke. “Say you block Ice Pick Thompson’s attack. What’re you gonna do afterward?”

“What are we going to do? …What are we going to do, Miria?”

“Settle his hash?”

“But we don’t know if he’s a good person or not yet.”

“Ooh, that’s a tough one!”

The pair had begun worrying about something very basic, and Firo watched them, wide-eyed.

“Whoa, come on. First, you can’t actually settle his hash, and second, he’s a killer, remember? There’s no way he’s a good person.”

“You can kill people and still be good.”

“Yes, Jacuzzi’s a really good person!”

“Who? What the hell kinda name is that?”

Firo was perplexed by the sudden name, but instead of answering, Isaac and Miria smiled brightly at him.

“Even you, Firo. You may be mafi—uh, Camorra, and you may be breaking Prohibition, but you’re a good guy, too!”

“Yes, you’re all good people!”

“Cut that out. If everybody starts thinking fellas like us are ‘actually good people,’ it’s not gonna end well.” With a genuinely reluctant smile, Firo warned the pair off, but—

“Hey, don’t be so modest! At first, we thought you were bad guys ourselves! We figured nobody could blame us if we stole your money, but then we met you and you turned out to be really good people!”

“Yes, and you saved Ennis! So now you’re an even better person!”

“Hold it—did you just say something nuts about stealing from us?” Firo hastily asked; he definitely couldn’t let that slide.

However, without looking the least bit guilty, Isaac and Miria thumped him on the shoulders.

“Don’t worry about it; that’s all in the past! Instead of stealing your money, we’re stealing your time, Firo!”

“Yes, money is time!”

“……”

Maybe I really shoulda let that one slide.

It would be bad if that story ballooned and the other executives heard it, so Firo politely hustled Isaac and Miria out of the speakeasy. Then he resumed his seat at the counter and heaved a big sigh.

“I’m a good person, huh?”

As he murmured, he mentally sized himself up against Ice Pick Thompson.

Firo had killed a man before, too.

That man had been Szilard Quates, the lowest scum there was, and he’d killed many times more people than Ice Pick Thompson—but Firo had taken his life with his own hand. On that point, maybe there wasn’t much difference between himself and the other killer.

Killers probably didn’t need salvation. Even Firo knew that.

By the same token, he understood there was no perfect salvation for him, since he’d voluntarily joined the Camorra in making a living breaking the law.

In a way, one could say being punished for those crimes was its own form of salvation.

No doubt there were some who’d say no punishment was severe enough for a criminal who’d committed serial murders.

But what if Isaac and Miria were right about him? What if he wasn’t a total villain?

What if they hadn’t been indiscriminate killings? What if he’d acted with some goal in mind?

To look at an extreme case, killing was allowed in war. What if this was the same? What if anyone would condone these murders once they heard the whole story?

Firo mentally shrugged.

Well, I doubt the streetwalker would have had anything to do with that. Since he killed her, I bet that’s not the case.

Unaware of the truth, Firo kept on thinking.

If they never managed to catch Ice Pick Thompson, would he—or possibly she—keep on killing people without consequences? Would the killer take perverse delight in their luck, murdering freely without ever getting caught?

Or if there really was a reason behind the murders, and the killer didn’t receive the salvation of punishment, would Ice Pick Thompson be able to bear the weight of his own crimes?

Even if the killer was a good person, and his victims were bad people—still, he probably didn’t need salvation.

No matter the reason, murder was murder.

Whether or not it was premeditated, having a body count meant rejecting salvation.

Naturally, Firo didn’t need total redemption after having killed Szilard, either. He’d justified his actions in his own mind, and he hoped to marry the girl he’d fallen in love with. If people said that made him even worse than a murderer, well, that’s just how it had to be.

But at the very least, he wanted to limit all the punishment to himself.

Imagining his roommate, the woman he loved, Firo quietly closed his eyes.

Just then, a small figure came to stand beside him.

“Did what Isaac and Miria said back there get to you? Do you think you’re not a good person?”

“Czes.”

“Don’t worry about it, Firo. After all, you’re going to be alive for a long time. There’s no point worrying about whether everything’s ‘good’ or ‘bad.’” Czes’s advice sounded more jaded than precocious. “Up until a few years ago, bars were perfectly legal here. Now, though, it’s prohibited by law. Not many countries or eras have made murder legal, but there’s no telling what may happen in the future. And then there’s war, of course.”

“……”

“All we immortals can do is reach an understanding with the ages in which we live. Times change. Countries change. The boundary between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is practically meaningless.”

The experienced immortal Czes delivered a lecture to the much younger Firo.

“In that sense, Isaac and Miria were right about humans being unable to beat time… Aging and natural life spans aside.”

Czes’s smile seemed vaguely resigned. As he looked him, Firo got the feeling he should say something, but he realized he would have to grow before he would know what it was.

He thought it might have to do with the distance Czes kept between himself and the rest of them, and he wasn’t sure whether he should continue the conversation—but just then, Czes seemed to remember something.

“Oh, but there was one strange person among the immortals.”

“Yeah?”

“What I just told you, I actually heard from someone else. He said that once we were immortal, we’d end up living in all different times and places, so we’d have to reach an understanding with those eras…”

As he reminisced about the past, Czes was visualizing the faces and words of the alchemists who’d become immortal along with him.

“Then someone else laughed and said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I won’t obey the era or the country. Wherever, whenever you are, people’s smiles are the same. So they’re the only rule I’ll follow. They’re the law, as far as I’m concerned.’ He wasn’t embarrassed at all.”

That peculiar alchemist had been prepared to die for another person’s smile since before he was immortal. Remembering him, Czes murmured with a smile as real as they come.

“Elmer was unsettling in some ways, but still… I wonder where he is and what he’s doing now.”