Baccano! - Volume 16 - Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Mark Wilmens lets his bloodstained malice smolder in the rain

Wsssh-wsssh, wsssh-wsssh, wsssh-wsssh…

With no hesitation whatsoever, the rain dyed the town a different color, and the darkness a colder shade of gray.

Carl and the boy were drenched with the raindrops, but even then, they didn’t move.

Despite the hot and humid season, standing in the rain at night wasn’t pleasant.

But the two of them had better things to worry about than their discomfort.

One of them was a newshound who was approaching middle age. The other was a boy who appeared younger than fifteen.

Neither one of them seemed suited to such high tension, but the short line of dark red and silver extending from the boy’s hand had made it possible.

Blade wasn’t the word for it—it was an ice pick just a few inches long. But it was the link binding them together.

As the sound of the rain seemed ready to wash them from existence—the reporter was the first to speak.

“Ice Pick Thompson’s identity…”

He didn’t sense any immediate danger from the boy, but there was a determined, quiet, and very unchildlike look in his eyes.

The boy simply listened to Carl—the journalist, the information broker.

“You’re saying…it’s you?”

“Yes.”

“……”

That was impossible to believe—or so he would have said, if he were an ordinary reporter.

A reporter with sharp instincts might have been able to sense that the boy was the real deal simply from the look in his eyes.

However, Carl’s situation was different. He’d already been aware of the possibility that the criminal was a child.

The evidence was in the wounds thought to have been inflicted first.

Every one of them had come from below, in an upward thrust. Even strikes to the heart left similar wounds, and one theory proposed that the killer had only been able to attack from that angle.

Then there was the fact that Graham’s gang of delinquents was among the suspects, and the idea that one of the shorter members had disguised himself as a kid to get in close to the victims.

And the other rumor that they might be using an actual boy.

This information was technically only known to the police, but Carl had gotten ahold of it, too. On top of that, he personally had different intel.

It was something known only to a few people at the Daily Days newspaper: what the victims all had in common.

“You wouldn’t happen to be…?” Through the rain, Carl looked straight at the boy. “Can I ask your name?”

“…Mark. Mark Wilmens.”

“I thought so… You’re Paula Wilmens’s son?”

“……” At the name, for just a moment, light returned to the boy’s eyes. “You know my mother?”

“So I was right. I didn’t think it was possible—and after I published that ridiculous moniker, I was hoping Ice Pick Thompson wouldn’t turn out to be a boy like you, but…”

“…Answer me.”

“It would be easy to just say yes, but… Let me ask you a question. Do you know what it is your mother was doing in this town?”

At that solemn inquiry, the boy fell silent for a little while.

The darkness surfaced in his eyes again, and there was no emotion in his voice as he answered.

“She was a hooker. But only on the surface.” As if he were spitting out an unpleasant memory, he said, “Szilard Quates… I know she was hiding something because a man by that name told her to.”

“……”

“And they… They killed her.”

November 1930

It began with the doorbell.

The boy hadn’t heard that sound in several months. It’s a customer, he thought, and he went to answer the door himself, to save his mother the trouble.

But Paula’s hands had taken hold of his wrist and covered his mouth.

They were gentle, but he could feel a slight anxious tremble.

Impulsively, the boy’s mother hid him in the closet. “Don’t make a sound. No matter what happens.”

That was all she said, and then she shut the door.

She was smiling the way she always did, and Mark wasn’t particularly wary or afraid. He just smiled brightly back at her and nodded, resolving to do as she’d said.

That was the right answer, and it was also the wrong one.

The boy stayed hidden in the closet, and so he survived.

But at the same time—he lost his mother.

After the men’s voices had gone, the boy kept waiting for her, but she never appeared.

How long was he supposed to stay in that closet?

He couldn’t completely believe the deception, but he repeated it in his mind, silently, over and over.

He’d been doing that ever since he first heard the men’s voices to keep the explosion of fear in his heart under control. He knew this was serious.

He was afraid that acknowledging the unease would make it real and release it upon him.

Still, no matter how the boy tried to fool himself, reality was not so kind.

Dawn broke, but his mother didn’t come.

The sun set again.

It rose on a new morning. She still wasn’t there.

The boy had stayed in the closest for nearly two full days when he was found by a swarm of police officers after the landlord let them in.

When the boy was dragged out of the closet, all they told him…

…was that his mother’s body had been found on the banks of the Hudson.

Returning to the present

“My mom’s body was really pretty.”

The boy’s eyes were very, very dark, but there was something tranquil in them.

“Except for the fact that she’d been riddled with holes with scorch marks around them.”

When the corpse had been pulled out of the river, it had clearly been abused—had been put through a graphic execution.

The vivid evidence of the process by which her life had been taken had been carved into her corpse, impossible to ignore.

The day he confirmed it was her body, it was raining.

A few days later, a certain major newspaper had put a neat bow on the incident as “drug related,” and it had been raining then, too, just like this.

He didn’t believe his mother had been involved in the drug trade.

But even the police said that multiple witnesses had appeared, and the newspaper had reported it with confidence.

It was as if they were sacrificing the victim instead—as an excuse for their own failure to unmask the true culprit.

How much of the boy’s past did he know?

Carl lowered his eyes and kept his voice neutral. “I’m familiar with that article.”

“How about that… I’m impressed; that paper was just about the only one that ran anything on it.”

“…It’s complicated.”

I really shouldn’t tell him I used to be with that paper. Or that I know the guy who wrote that article.

Keeping his eyes down so that the boy wouldn’t catch on, Carl decided to listen to the rest of his story.

“It was raining. The rain wasn’t anything special; it was just like it is now.”

The boy spun the ice pick in his hand, taking a step closer to the reporter.

Carl didn’t move. He still didn’t sense that the boy intended to harm him.

Thinking it was worth trying to part his opponent from that ice pick, at least, he directed a very natural question at the boy. “I don’t suppose you’d put that thing away, would you?”

After a moment’s silence, the boy apologized.

“…I’m sorry.”

“I see.”

“If I let this go, I’ll… I won’t be brave enough to talk. I feel like I’ll stop being me.”

The boy’s eyes were murky and hollow.

Carl’s long years of reporting experience alerted him to that fact.

At the very least, the emotion wasn’t normal. Carl could easily imagine him screaming something irrational and striking out of the blue; he was probably more dangerous than Graham’s group of delinquents had been yesterday.

Yet Carl chose to keep listening.

Was it simply interest regarding “Ice Pick Thompson”?

Did he feel responsible for having given him that name?

Or—had he sensed something odd in the boy’s confession?

Either way, Carl didn’t avoid the rain or the boy’s gaze. He just let the chill seep into him.

“I think I know why you’re after Szilard now.”

“……”

“Ice Pick Thompson’s victims have one thing in common.”

Was he trying to even the mental playing field?

The boy hadn’t asked, but Carl quietly gave him an answer.

“They were all—pawns of the pawns of Szilard Quates.”

“……”

“Let’s set aside the question of Szilard himself. We know for a fact that he had several flunkies in political, judicial, and financial positions, right up to police Superintendent Veld, who was forced to resign after an embezzlement scandal… He used them to achieve a certain objective.”

In the rain, the information broker began to reveal his wares to the silent boy.

The boy realized the man’s gaze was steady—and simultaneously, he understood that a deal had been struck. He’d been acknowledged.

If they’d come to an agreement about the sale of information…

…it meant the other man had definitely acknowledged him as Ice Pick Thompson.

I can’t go back.

The boy quietly took a breath. The air, lukewarm from the rain, collected in his throat, but he didn’t feel it would go all the way to the bottom of his lungs.

Not that it matters, though. After all…I’m going to die. I have to die.

Mark’s throat was on the verge of trembling slightly. He tensed it, forcing the air into his belly all at once.

Then, in a rather dismal tone, he said, “…I already know.”

“In that case, what more do you want? What will you do if you learn Szilard’s whereabouts? If you’re planning to kill him… The reason is confidential, so I can’t say why, but I will tell you it’s not possible… In several ways.”

Was he trying to talk the boy around, or was it a challenge?

Whichever it was, Carl simply related the facts. Of course, as he did so, he was hiding one key fact.

“Nothing in particular.”

At the boy’s simple answer, however, Carl’s eyebrows drew together, and he fell silent.

Mark shook his head wearily. His eyes still clouded, he glared at the puddles by his feet.

“Szilard Quates… I was just curious to know a little more about him, since they took Mom’s life and her honor because of him… So where is he?”

“He’s not in New York, I can tell you that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? That’s pretty vague.”

“I told you, remember? It’s confidential.”

Carl’s expression had hardened somewhat, and the boy cocked his head slightly, closing the distance between them a little more.

He tightened his grip on the ice pick. “…Is the information I gave you not enough?” he asked, his gaze as heavy and cold as the bottom of the ocean.

Carl quietly shook his head, and his eyes were even colder and sharper as he glared back.

“Kid, don’t sell us information brokers short. Who do you think we are at the Daily Days?”

“…?”

“If we sold confidential information on the cheap just because a mysterious killer came forward and introduced himself, we’d go out of business… In that case, if a guy wanted information, the quickest way to get it would be to murder someone. Of course, a hitman as notorious in the underworld as Vino would be a different story.”

“What…are you talking about? Who’d kill people for information…?” Mark took a step back in spite of himself; even with the rain between them, he could sense Carl’s overwhelmingly intimidating aura.

Carl spoke firmly. “Listen, kid. In this world, people who’d kill for information are just as common as people who’d kill for revenge.”

“……”

“Remember this: You don’t need revenge as an excuse to kill somebody. People can kill over a piece of bread, or for the sheer fun of it.”

As the boy fell silent, Carl explained almost as if he were speaking to his own son.

“But the reverse is also true—some people won’t kill over bread, and some wouldn’t even kill for revenge. I don’t know which type you’ll end up being, but… Anyway, regarding Szilard, you’re not likely to have any more points of contact with him than you do now. I can’t say any more than that.”

“What about the monsters who don’t die?”

“…I dunno if they’re the same as the beings I’m familiar with, but… I’m sorry. That’s confidential, too.”

The boy gazed at Carl with those murky eyes for a while. Finally, he slid the ice pick he’d been holding into his sleeve, then turned his back on the other man.

“…Thank you very much. There’s nothing else I need to ask you.”

“You’re sure you don’t have to shut me up?”

His ironic question was partially drowned out by the rain.

The boy stopped for a moment and spoke in a somewhat milder voice than before.

“Yeah.”

Then, with a smile that was somehow self-deprecating—

“I’m… I’m done,” he told him. “Besides, I have nothing against you. Killing for anything other than revenge…was too much for me.”

“?”

Carl picked up on something ominous in those words, as well as the boy’s determination, and he asked another question.

“What do you mean? And also… What are you going to do about the last member of that group?”

“…That’s none of your business.”

That was all the boy said, and then he ran off into the rain.

“Wait!” Carl tried to stop him, but to no avail. The boy faded into the downpour, and before long, he’d disappeared entirely.

As Carl watched the small figure vanish, he murmured quietly:

“I’ll be damned. I’m surprised he didn’t kill me. I just bluffed on an impulse.”

The rainwater that trickled down from his head camouflaged his nervous sweat. Quietly, he commented to himself:

“Well, well—should I consider that conversation a win or a loss? …I wonder. In terms of information, I got more than I gave.”

Carl shook his head, sighed heavily, and looked down.

“Well. I’ll have to give him his change someday…”

A few minutes later…

Still, maybe I’m losing my touch. Way back when, that wouldn’t even have given me a thrill.

Carl ambled along through the rain, taking his time. He was already wet; it made no difference at this point.

If Donna was alive, she’d be about that boy’s age.

As he remembered his departed daughter, the newshound’s brazen face wore a complicated expression.

All right. What should I do now?

Ordinarily, the thing to do would be to call the cops, but…that conversation was technically with a client.

Besides…he never said, I am Ice Pick Thompson. You couldn’t call that testimony.

Henry or Nicholas would probably call it exclusive information and be over the moon about it. Elean might tell the boy to turn himself in, or at least try to talk him out of his revenge.

…Should I ask the vice president or the president for advice?

……

What do I want to do?

Remembering his daughter’s death had made Carl just a little sentimental. The rain had cooled his head off, and he needed to warm it up again. For now, he decided to make for the newspaper.

Still, I never thought that kid was Ice Pick Thompson. I guessed wrong. And after all that crowing in front of Graham’s crew, telling them I had an idea who the real culprit was. That’s embarrassing. Well, I didn’t give any names, so it’s all—

For a moment, his thoughts cut out.

His mind was wide awake, but his train of thought had been forcibly broken off as a gentle shock ran through his back.

Did I just get stabbed?!

The tension of the past few minutes may not have completely worn off; Carl’s nerves spiked all at once. He turned to look—

—but it was only an illusion. The silver object that had connected with his back was not nearly as precise as an ice pick.

“How curious… Let me tell you a curious story,” murmured the rain-soaked young man holding that enormous silver weapon—a wrench of the type used in demolition work. “I poked you in the back with my wrench, just to scare you a little. Why were you so startled? You acted like I stabbed you… What do you think, Shaft?”

The young man in the drenched blue coveralls, Graham Specter, turned to the friend behind him, who was holding an umbrella.

“Probably figured you had him at gunpoint,” Shaft answered impassively.

“Or you only meant to poke him. Maybe you actually did stab him.”

Behind Graham, Shaft was standing next to another young man Carl didn’t know. He was wearing an easygoing smile.

“Hmm…,” Graham mused. “Then all I can do is make an assumption that splits the difference between your guesses.”

“So the worst possible answer, then.”

Possibly because he hadn’t been able to hear Shaft’s retort, Graham began brooding, twirling his wrench.

“Which means…our journalist friend was startled because he thought he had just been stabbed with a gun. I see… Yeah, that’s quite a scare, all right! I’d jump out of my skin, too! The blunt, unassuming muzzle of a gun sinking slowly into my back… That’s a magic trick right out of a horror show! Help me out, here, Shaft… I’m gonna lose sleep over this.”

“What scares me is that you believe every word you’re saying, Mr. Graham.”

As Shaft covered his face with his free hand, Graham spun back toward Carl and kept talking.

“Well, I’m real sorry I did that to you, Mr. Journalist. I’m even sorrier that I don’t remember your name. You don’t mind if I just keep calling you Mr. Journalist, do ya?!”

“It’s Carl,” the reporter responded as his heart rate slowly returned to normal.

The wrench Graham was spinning stopped dead, and he pivoted back to face Shaft again.

“What now, Shaft? Does this mean he rejected my nickname?”

“He’s rejecting you.”

“Oh… I can see that. After all, I realized I was the enemy of the world this afternoon. It’s perfectly normal for your enemies to reject you… But I’m sad. How can I shake this sadness?”

The smiling man who stood beside Shaft answered Graham’s broken question.

“If you just decide to have fun for now, I think the sadness will probably go away. So come on and smile!”

“Hmm… Good answer. But aren’t some things fun and sad at the same time?”

“You could just stop being sad and focus on having fun, couldn’t you?”

“Is it okay to be that happy? Wouldn’t people become so very happy that they forget to move forward and eventually die out?”

Graham’s vague worries could have been deep or shallow, but Elmer kept right on smiling at him.

“If everyone’s happy as they die out, what’s the harm?”

“If everybody was happy, wouldn’t that be the same as unhappiness?”

“As long as they don’t think it’s unhappy, it wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“I see… Good answer.”

Feeling alarmed by the increasingly bizarre trajectory of this conversation, Shaft intervened with a shout.

“It’s a terrible answer! What the hell are you people thinking?!”

Still wet with rain, watching a conversation that was nothing like the one he’d had moments earlier, Carl thought, Was that boy truly real?

Or was he just a phantom he’d seen because he was pursuing Ice Pick Thompson?

Even as the doubts came over his mind, Carl pulled himself together and asked the young men in front of him a question.

“Beg pardon; I was a little flustered, that’s all… And? What brings you out here?”

“Well, Mr. Journali… gnrgh…Carl, we saw you walking out here in the rain by your lonesome, and we wondered why. Did you have a run-in with an umbrella thief?”

“Oh… Thanks for your concern. I just felt like getting rained on… And I can’t help but notice you don’t have an umbrella, either. Even though the two behind you do.”

Carl smiled a little at Graham, who was as drenched as he was.

Graham responded with a supremely confident expression. “I’m getting ready to take on the sun.”

“…?”

As Carl’s smile turned confused, Shaft hastily waved a hand.

“Uh, Carl, just ignore anything this guy says. This one time, he said he’d spin that wrench over his head and knock the rain away. He ended up getting soaked.”

“Kept dry for about ten seconds, though.” Graham crossed his arms, looking disappointed.

Carl smiled dryly at him. “Anyway, what are you boys doing? Don’t tell me you’re out looking for the real Ice Pick Thompson.”

The young man’s answer brought all the tension back.

“Yep, that’s the one!” Graham declared, nodding vigorously. “We promised we wouldn’t tell anyone, so I can’t say who it is! But apropos of nothing, Carl, have you seen a kid who comes up to my chest around here? Nothin’ really special about him, but… Uh, Elmer, what was the kid’s name again?”

“Mark.”

The man he’d called Elmer answered with a smile, and Graham turned back to Carl, spinning his wrench.

“Yeah! Mark. He’s not easy to pick out of a crowd, but… Oh, right! He might have an ice pick or something, so that’ll count!”

Thirty minutes later In an apartment somewhere in New York

The old building still looked the way it had decades ago.

Opening the door of one of its apartments, Mark returned to the place he called home.

The apartment he’d shared with his mother had been bigger.

However, when his mother had been killed, he’d begun living carefully on what she’d left him.

Even if he was just one boy, the inheritance had been large enough for him to live on for several years—and that fact had fueled suspicions that she’d been peddling dope.

He knew that it was probably too late to clear her name now, though.

The people who’d killed his mother hadn’t been satisfied with taking her life. They’d stolen her honor as well.

The boy couldn’t let them get away with it.

So when he’d heard the truth from “her”—

—when he’d learned why his mother had been murdered and the names of her killers—

—he’d resolved to take revenge.

He didn’t care what hell it would bring him.

He’d polished up a rusty ice pick he’d found discarded behind a tavern. Taking his time, the boy had spied on the killers, calmly learning their habits and keeping the fires of revenge burning in his heart.

At times when the rain fell hard enough to hide the whole city—just as it had when his mother had been raped and murdered—the boy had quietly acted on his dark intent.

Nonetheless, by then he was thinking of his own death.

Even though his revenge wasn’t yet complete.

There was still one person who hadn’t yet been punished, but reluctance was growing deep in his gut amid the fury.

“I’m not afraid of dying… I’m not scared to die.”

The boy repeated the words to himself as he left the entryway and headed deeper into the apartment. He tried to recall the resolve he’d felt when he’d decided to jump off the bridge.

At the same time—he remembered the immortal man who’d held him back.

Come to think of it, how did he notice me?

In the heavy rain, nobody had seen him standing there on the edge of the bridge, preparing to jump. As a matter of fact, quite a few people had crossed that bridge while he was there, but he didn’t think he’d been seen.

And the one who noticed me, the one who stopped me, was an immortal monster, of all things.

He felt the terrible irony in that.

From the way the information broker had spoken, the “immortal monster” wasn’t a daydream. It actually existed.

But even revealing his own identity hadn’t been enough to get the information he wanted. The boy had decided there was nothing else he could do. He shook his head hard, erasing all thoughts of the man from it.

That’s right. Either way, I have to die.

“I’m not afraid of dying.”

Repeating the same words a few times, like a magic spell, he sat down in a small chair and finished the sentence.

“But…not until I kill one more, one more…”

Suddenly, he heard a noise from the entryway.

It was the sound of the lock being turned from the inside, startlingly clear.

Flinching, the boy looked toward the door.

From the shadows, a tall figure emerged. The voice that spoke to him was cold.

“You’re not afraid to die, are you?”

“Wh-who are you?!”

He’d heard the lock turn, but he hadn’t heard the door open.

The man must have been hiding in here beforehand, then moved to the entryway when the boy came back.

In that case, he’d locked the door to cut off any help from outside.

The boy felt his pulse jump. He could feel the blood vessels at the back of his head pounding with so much pressure he thought they might burst.

In his belly, his guts were screaming as if they’d been frozen in ice.

But his mouth was silent and unmoving. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t even breathe properly.

“What’s wrong? Why so tense?”

“……”

Scoffing at the petrified boy, the tall intruder quietly walked toward him.

“Steeling yourself to face death isn’t the same as accepting its inevitability, you know.”

The figure looked peculiar.

He wore a hat, pulled down low, and his collar covered everything up to his mouth.

The most unnerving thing of all was how he was dressed. No matter how chilly the rain was, it was still midsummer.

But he wore a long coat that fell below his knees.

“If you’ve only steeled yourself, and death arrives when you least expect—”

The man’s face was scarred, and between that and his sharp eyes, everything suggested he was on the wrong side of the law.

The boy thought he might be connected to the Gandor Family, whom he’d visited that evening. He rose from his chair very slightly, keeping his guard up.

But…it was too late.

As the boy started to get to his feet, the man took a shotgun out of his coat and pointed it at the boy’s head.

The iron muzzle pressed against his skull, then pushed him back. The boy wasn’t fully standing, so he was knocked off-balance and forced back into his chair.

“If death comes when you didn’t expect it—you feel fear, don’t you?”

The pressure on his forehead kept the boy from standing up, in multiple senses. Carefully, he felt for the ice pick he’d hidden in his sleeve.

However, the guy in the long coat grinned, then stopped him with a word.

“Don’t do anything rash, ‘Ice Pick Thompson.’”

“…!”

“…Ha-ha! You flinched… Apparently, you really are the killer.”

“Ngh!”

A shock ran through the boy’s heart.

He knows.

How? Was it that reporter?

No. It’s too soon. The Gandor Family?

 Or maybe… Don’t tell me…

Various guesses ran through his head. But in this situation, he realized, it didn’t matter whether they were conjecture or the truth—the boy managed to get his trembling throat to swallow, then forced the words out of his nearly dry mouth.

“Who… Who are you, mister? How did you know about me?”

“Oho. You’re awfully polite for someone who’s talking to a hitman. I assumed someone with a moniker like Ice Pick Thompson would be a rougher type, like the gangsters who use real machine guns, but… Well, just look at you. You seem like a good, serious kid.”

“A hitman…?”

The boy’s heart constricted at the word.

The sound of the rain echoed from outside. The same sound he’d heard when his mother was stolen from him.

He considered lunging at this unknown man, and perhaps dying in the process.

Under the circumstances, though, even a hint of such intentions would probably be enough to get him killed.

Apparently, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, the hitman didn’t intend to kill him immediately.

Deciding he’d just have to watch for an opening, the boy spoke to the man as he got his breathing back under control.

“You’re…a hitman…?”

“I am. My target is Ice Pick Thompson. They generously told me your address and what you looked like, too. I doubted you were a killer, but they paid me in advance, so I had to at least investigate. Know what I mean?”

“Who the hell would’ve hired…?”

“No hitman alive would rat out his client. Except that rotten amigo-woman, maybe.”

The man sounded a little irritated, and the boy was perplexed.

“…Amigo?”

For a moment, he remembered the Mexican woman he’d met at the speakeasy, but the pressure in Smith’s voice soon broke up that vision.

“It’s got nothing to do with you. If you don’t want to die, don’t say amigo again.”

“But you’re going to kill me anyway.”

“Keh-keh… You’ve got a sound argument there—but those don’t work on me. After all, this line of work was not invented anywhere near sound arguments.”

The man’s oddly roundabout phrasing tugged at Mark. But he kept his focus, chose his words carefully, and let the burning heat inside him come through in his voice. “Why didn’t you just kill me right away?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you.”

“To…talk…?”

“Indeed. Ice Pick Thompson is a symbol of insanity and terror now. If he’s going to be lost forever and end up a legend like Jack the Ripper, his identity forever buried—then I wanted to connect with the source of that insanity… That’s all. By peering into its source, I won’t be engulfed by that insanity—I’ll instead draw nearer to its purest form.”

What is this guy talking about?

Apparently, this hitman was completely drunk on himself.

Mark understood what the words meant, but he couldn’t understand why he’d be reveling in these ideas in this particular situation.

He wanted to make a comment, but with a shotgun against his forehead, he couldn’t risk upsetting the one holding it.

“Now, then. What should I ask about first? Let’s see… To begin, let’s hear about the feelings that drove you to this violence.” From what Mark could see of the hitman’s eyes between the hat and collar, he seemed to be enjoying the situation. He also seemed to pity the boy.

Mark didn’t know what to do—but when he saw that the man’s expression hadn’t so much as flickered, he gave up and decided to tell him everything.

Just as he’d done for the information broker a short while ago, he described the malice in his heart.

“I see… Revenge is an extremely natural motive. On the other hand, killing five people for the death of one may be enough to merit calling you insane.”

Once the hitman had heard the whole story, he thought for a little while.

Then, with a slight smile, hidden behind his collar, he made a brief comment to the boy he was holding at gunpoint.

“Laz Smith.”

“…Huh?”

“My name. Those who’ve been to the depths of underworld society call me Gunmeister Smith.”

“Why are you telling me your name?”

“You should know the name of the man who’s going to kill you.”

Oh, so he’s finally going to shoot me.

Steeling himself, the boy focused his whole attention on the man’s finger. The moment the trigger was pulled, maybe he could shift his head out of the way.

Except Smith’s finger wasn’t quite on the trigger, and it wasn’t moving toward it. But if Mark moved at all, the man would still be able to fire easily.

Should he act, or should he wait?

Processing his thoughts in the space of just a few seconds, in the end, the boy chose to evade by drawing out the conversation.

Technically, he knew that it might be a stupid move, but he was hoping his opponent would be even stupider.

Yet, as if he’d read the boy’s mind, the killer spoke with exquisite timing.

“I should ask, just in case. Do you have any last words?”

This was his final chance. Mark forcibly swallowed down the fear that fell over him, and with the help of the rain patter around him—he gradually transformed his heart into that of Ice Pick Thompson.

“There is…one thing that’s bothering me.”

“Speak.”

“A minute ago, you said I’d killed five people in revenge…but you’re wrong.”

“What?”

The man seemed genuinely puzzled, and the boy went on.

“There’s one person left who I really need to kill. One of the five you mentioned—was a mistake… I messed up.”

It was a lame excuse, he knew. Still, he hoped the words might generate a slight opportunity for him to exploit, but—

“You killed the wrong one?”

“I did… I did! The last person I killed was the wrong one! I killed someone I shouldn’t have, someone who had nothing to do with any of this! At first, I wanted to kill myself over it! But someone got in the way…and I changed my mind. After I killed the last man…I’d die then!”

After he said it, the boy realized his mistake.

I killed somebody innocent.

Every time he remembered what he’d done, the shadow of Ice Pick Thompson grew fainter in his heart.

It’s no good.

He couldn’t fight it anymore.

This is what I deserve. I killed a completely innocent person—this is what I deserve.

The boy had completely lost Ice Pick Thompson. As his eyes started to burn, this time, he prepared to die in earnest.

However…

“The wrong person…?” Frowning, the hitman slowly lowered his gun.

“Huh?”

“I’m even more intrigued by your insanity now.” The hitman took a step back, then took a newspaper out of some unknown recess of his coat. “I bought this before I came here, in order to gain a deeper knowledge of your insanity… Look.”

With that, Smith tossed the newspaper down onto the table.

The Daily Days.

When the boy saw the newspaper’s name, he recognized it—the information broker he’d encountered on his way home had said that was the paper he belonged to.

On the front page was the headline “Ice Pick Thompson’s Fifth Mad Murder”—

And when he saw the smaller headlines below it, the boy’s eyes went wide.

“First Female Victim”

“Prostitute Slain”

“The Malevolent Ghost of Jack the Ripper”

“Huh…?”

For a moment, his vision blurred, and his sense of reality was draining away.

Watching his reaction, the hitman frowned.

“How insane would you have to be—to mistake a streetwalker in a smoking-hot dress for a man?”

It wasn’t clear whether the boy had heard the question. He snatched up the newspaper and scanned it.

Then, his eyes stopped moving—and his face blanched.

“What… What is this? Wh-wha—what the hell…?”

“?”

“Lisha…was…killed…?”

Apparently, he had found the victim’s name.

“Lisha Darken. That’s the prostitute you killed yesterday, isn’t it?”

But the boy didn’t seem to have heard the hitman.

“No… This isn’t true!” Mark fell to his knees. He’d gone deathly white, he was trembling—and then he screamed.

“Why… Why is Miss Lisha dead?!”

There was no telling what Smith thought as he watched the shivering boy.

He quietly shook his head and raised his shotgun again.

Then, in one smooth motion, he took aim at the back of the boy’s head and pulled the trigger.