Baccano! - Volume 18 - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 The Youngest Brother Isn’t in High Spirits

“Say, listen, Isaac!”

“What is it, Miria?!”

One afternoon, when glimpses of blue sky peeked between the New York skyscrapers, an easygoing couple was having a conversation on the streets.

“You know what? I just realized something amazing!”

“Did you?! You really are incredible, Miria! I didn’t realize anything at all!”

People who didn’t know them thought, What’s with those two dimwits? and eyed them suspiciously as they passed. However, locals who frequently saw them walked past with weak smiles, thinking, There they go again.

Among them, there were a few who murmured, “I haven’t seen them in quite a while…” Of course they hadn’t. Up until very recently, the man had been in prison.

Be that as it may, if those people had heard Isaac had been in the famous Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, most of them—especially those who knew the pair pretty well—would have laughed it off: Applesauce!

Alcatraz was an escape-proof prison, which housed only the most dangerous of America’s criminals. Anyone could have told you this man didn’t belong there.

Not only that, but there was no way he could have gotten out again in just a few months, much less been capable of lighthearted conversation afterward.

However, despite their doubts, the truth couldn’t be twisted.

The man of this couple had definitely been to Alcatraz.

Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent were outlaws who’d committed a series of strange robberies and thefts all over the United States. These extraordinary troublemakers had stolen things ranging from chocolate to a very wealthy man’s legacy, leaving their ultimate goal so unclear that all the agents chasing them had been confounded.

They had turned over a new leaf and were now living ordinary lives.

Isaac, who’d been cleared of all charges through a special plea bargain, was relishing his freedom with Miria, whom the law had overlooked.

“So what is this amazing thing, Miria?”

“Well! You see, Isaac! We’ve run out of money, you know?”

The fact he was free meant, in essence, that he was unemployed.

“Ha-ha-ha! I see, yes, that is amazing! …Huh?!” Isaac turned to look at Miria with round, flustered eyes. This was a normal reaction, but Isaac being Isaac, what he was worried about was a little different from what would have worried most people.

“Old Yaguruma said not having money was the same as not having a head! H-hey, Miria! Are we going to lose our heads?!”

“Yes, Sleepy Hollow! The Headless Horseman!”

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was a folktale about a headless cavalry soldier, which had been told in New York since the colonial era. The writer Washington Irving had turned it into a short story, causing the tale to spread rapidly. At this point, it was one of the east coast’s most famous legends.

“D-don’t tell me… If we don’t have money, will the Headless Horseman come and cut our heads off?!”

“I’m scared! Wh-what’ll we do, Isaac?!”

“Come to think of it, I heard something else from Old Yaguruma: Even Satan in hell is motivated by money… Does that mean if we can’t slip a bribe to Satan, we’ll lose our heads?! …Wait, have we talked about this before?”

“That means this conversation’s important enough to have several times, Isaac!”

As a matter of fact, every time their assets had hit rock bottom, they’d had a similar conversation just before stealing money from the mafia or some other mob outfit. They had since retired from robbery, though, so neither of them even suggested trying that now.

“Hmm… Work, eh? What should we do for work, Miria?”

“Um… I think we just have to earn money, Isaac!”

They had practically no experience with legally sanctioned employment. Isaac had worked while he was an inmate in Alcatraz, but that was about it. They’d prospected for gold a few years ago, but they’d thought of it as “stealing treasure from the Earth,” so they didn’t consider it a job. Plus, no one had hired them, so even the people around them had just assumed they were digging a dried-up mining gallery for fun.

“I see… We’ll do work and draw wages for it… Should we be bankers, maybe?”

“Yes, the money game! Monopoly!”

“What are you supposed to do at banks, though? I can’t run financial calculations.” Isaac had only a vague understanding of the job.

“Maybe it’s about getting rid of bank robbers, Isaac.”

“Oh, I see! That’s great, Miria! After all, we know a whole lot about robbery! I’m pretty sure there’s an Eastern proverb that goes…erm… ‘If you know your enemy, and you know everything about yourself, then yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend’!”

“Yes, no sides! Friendly fire!”

The remarks accomplished nothing but to boost their own moods as the pair headed briskly for a nearby bank…

And after they had been tossed out of every bank in an average of thirty seconds, they went to a nearby park, sat on the grass, and talked.

“Hmm. All the banks told us they weren’t hiring at this time.”

“Yes, we must have picked the wrong time to come.”

“I guess time really is money.”

“Yes, the time thieves won this round…”

The two sighed dejectedly. “We have to work.”

A few passersby who knew them overheard and also heaved weary sighs. These two seem happy all year round, and even they’re looking glum. Times really are hard, they thought.

It had been a couple years since the National Prohibition Act was abolished nationwide.

The Great Depression, which had begun on Wall Street in 1929, had left deep wounds on America and all around the world. Perhaps it was still clawing away at the global economy and people’s everyday lives. Many people were out of work, and more and more individuals with nowhere to go were getting involved in shady businesses.

Underworld organizations had also taken a hit from the Depression, but by attacking the incompetence of the government, they could get the common people on their side. It certainly did seem as if the claws of the recession were mixing up the public and hidden sides of society.

In 1933, a turning point came.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who’d taken office that March, fought the beast using every method at his disposal, from frontal breakthroughs to indirect attacks.

After he took office, the government temporarily closed all the banks and conducted a thorough internal inspection. One could have termed it a declaration of war on the Depression from the United States of America.

And so, the long fight against the invisible beast began:

The abolition of the Prohibition Act.

The abolition of the gold standard and a transition to a planned monetary system.

The beginning of the public works project that built dams in the Tennessee River Valley.

Job training for the unemployed, conducted by the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was known as “the CCC.”

On top of that, armed with the program commonly referred to as the New Deal—which included some policies that skated very close to the line and were later judged to be unconstitutional—America plunged into battle against the looming recession.

In the late spring of 1935, a large-scale public work promotion agency known as the Works Progress Administration would be established, creating jobs for several million unemployed workers.

But it was February now, and most of those several million people were unemployed at this time.

The monster of the Depression was still on the prowl, and America stood its ground against it. The fight would continue until the onset of a global turning point: World War II.

The struggle was currently at its climax; it was a conflict of historic proportions, one that would determine whether or not the sun rose for the citizens who were struggling in the darkness.

That was how things stood in 1935.

Still, even in the midst of that era, some rootless wanderers drifted where the wind took them and took no notice of the ongoing crisis. This pair remained optimistic, indifferent to the whole situation.

“Okay, Miria, that settles it! Let’s look for work!”

“Yes, it’s a journey in search of work! The start of an adventure!”

“For now, we’ll go around visiting everyone we know and ask them if they’ve got a job for us. Friends really are a great thing to have, aren’t they, Miria?!”

“Yes, yesterday’s friend is a friend today, and tomorrow, and every day after!”

What results would their optimism bring?

No one knew.

Not yet anyway.

Same day, night  Somewhere in New YorkAn underground casino

It was a magnificent space.

Las Vegas wouldn’t be transformed into an earthly paradise glowing with neon signs for another decade or two.

In this era, when an unprecedented recession was surging through America and the policies of the New Deal had begun to show people a glimmer of hope, gambling was heavily regulated in most states.

Granted, that wouldn’t change even after the dawn of the twenty-first century, but the visitors to this extraordinary realm had no way of knowing that.

Their eyes lit up as they set foot inside, and not only due to the magnificent interior; it was more a reaction to the territory they were about to venture into. Essentially, they were excited to gamble.

The guilty pleasure of doing something illegal, the thrill of wavering between destruction and success, would stir fevered emotions in any heart.

This was a casino. A place of gambling, created by gambling, for the purpose of gambling. No other words were necessary.

Here, “gambling” was the motto and an absolute presence.

Winners and losers were made here, and sometimes entire lives were reset. This place was isolated from the world outside; luck could turn justice on its head.

And since it was a casino, size didn’t matter.

This was a small underground casino in a corner of New York. Naturally, it was illegal and unauthorized, and its clientele were hardly refined—although, every so often, customers who seemed wealthy stopped in as well. The relatively narrow room was enveloped in an indescribable chaos.

Within that room was a young man who seemed terribly bored.

Firo Prochainezo had a boyish face, but he was past twenty already.

Although most people his age still wouldn’t be trusted with much, he’d risen to a distinguished rank in the Martillo Family, an illegal syndicate. He was also the person in charge of this underground casino. However, a certain complicated “characteristic” of his kept widening the gap between his age and his looks, to the point where people who didn’t know him mistook him for a boy who was wandering around the casino playing scofflaw.

That said, if they planned to earn a little extra dough because of that impression, they’d lose more than just their money.

As Firo leaned against the wall in a corner of the casino, even the regulars who knew him well were eyeing him.

The reason was simple: It was the first time he’d been there in a full two and a half months.

While he was gone, a certain whispered rumor had traveled through the community of regulars:

“I heard Firo Prochainezo got charged by the DOI.”

Assuming the casino might be in chaos since the young guy who ran it wasn’t there, those visitors had been by daily, thinking this might be their chance to win.

Ironically, this meant the casino had pulled in record earnings due to its manager’s absence, and Firo couldn’t hide the fact that he was sore about it.

The regulars, however, failed to notice this as they kept shooting him complicated looks. “We heard they’d put him under glass, so how come he got back this fast?” they whispered.

As a faint, prickly tension began to run through the glittering space, a man spoke to Firo, apparently unaffected.

“Are congratulations of some sort in order?”

He seemed to be about the same age as Firo, but the piercing air around him suggested that he was more of an underworld veteran than Firo was. Luck Gandor was the youngest of the three brothers who ran the Gandor Family, a mafia group with territory nearby.

“Oh, Luck. I didn’t see you come in… Congratulations for what?”

“For making it back from Alcatraz in one piece, or for the fact that the Martillo Family didn’t hold you accountable for the incident. Either is fine.”

At his childhood friend’s remark, Firo sighed. “Man, your ears are as sharp as ever.”

“We’re a small outfit. If we didn’t have sharp ears, we wouldn’t survive.”

“Well, either way, I don’t need congratulations for all that. It’ll just make everything feel worse.” Shrugging, Firo surveyed the casino again.

The place was fitted out with the classic gaming facilities: baccarat and blackjack tables and roulette wheels, surrounded by clusters of gamblers with superficial calm and extremely intense eyes. A row of slot machines stood against the wall opposite Firo and Luck, and multiple people were taking turns at them, their eyes darting around in dismay.

“Would you look at that. They’re Liberty Bells.” Noticing that the slot machines were different from the type that was currently nearing the height of its popularity, Luck gazed at them, intrigued.

Pleased that he’d stolen a march on his knowledgeable friend, Firo cheered up and started telling him about the machines with some pride. “They’re not on the market yet. Apparently, they’re practically prototypes. Ronny brought them in from somewhere.”

“To celebrate your release?”

“All right, all right, knock it off.” Sighing again, Firo took a step forward. “From what I hear, they’ve got some sort of original musical instrument inside them. When you win, the thing makes a hell of a racket, but it sounds nice. It’s so good that when the jackpot signal plays, everyone in the place starts clapping.”

Slowly, Firo cut across the casino.

Luck followed him, listening to what he was saying—but as they walked, he picked up on something.

Firo’s attention wasn’t on him. It was focused elsewhere.

“When the other fellas see that, they want people to clap for them, too, so they shove their money into the machine, and the winners want that kick again, so they let the slots hoover up their winnings.”

“I see.” Realizing what his friend was about to do, Luck took care to act natural as he responded.

That was when Firo turned back to Luck—and grabbed the hand of a man who’d been out of his line of sight, behind a blackjack table.

“Gyagh!”

Firo twisted the man’s arm behind him, and cards fell out of his sleeve. “We can’t have that, sir. We don’t let our guests bring their own cards.” While Firo did take a polite tone, he also brought his weight down on that twisted arm. “You used the same trick three years back, didn’t you? I remember banning you. Don’t tell me you thought this would be water under the bridge by now…”

The grifter’s eyes were tearing up as he overcame the pain to shout, “Shove off! Th-this place is a clip joint anyway! At mafia casinos, in the back, they—eh…eh, oh…kuh…buh.”

The man’s shriek trailed off in the middle, and he slowly passed out, foaming from his mouth and nose.

“We’re not mafia. We’re Camorra.”

Luck saw that during the exchange, one of Firo’s hands had circled the man’s throat; he’d shoved his thumb in deep, crushing his Adam’s apple. Imagining the pain, Luck unconsciously rubbed his own throat.

As they watched the scene play out, the customers gulped, and time in the casino stopped.

Once you threw a wet blanket on their fun or shut down their lucky roll, the guests might be jolted out of their fantasies and leave the casino.

That was what Luck thought, but Firo was used to dealing with situations like this. Letting go of the man, he clapped his hands together and spoke in a cheerful voice. “Sorry to disturb you, folks! As an apology, I’ll give you all a round of Alveare’s special honey liquor on the house, so please keep enjoying yourselves.”

Signaling for his staff to take the fallen cheater away, the casino manager smiled breezily.

“If anybody lost money to the magician here, speak up within the next five minutes. We’ll check his wallet, and I guarantee we’ll return as much of your money as possible!” he joked.

It wasn’t a terribly witty joke, but it had broken the tension, and about half the customers started to chuckle.

Luck was impressed; the way Firo had called out to his customers sounded nothing like the way he normally talked. Firo turned toward him again, falling back into his usual voice.

“Sorry about the noise, Luck.” After he’d made sure that things had calmed down in the casino, Firo headed for the office in the back.

As Luck followed him, he gave a wry smile and spoke in a low voice: “…It feels as though I see the same thing every time I come here.”

“That’s because there are lots of morons who see we’re not a big outfit and sell us short. They figure we can’t call the cops if they bull their way through, and they’ll probably manage to make a clean getaway from a smaller syndicate.”

Once the pair entered a different room and closed the door behind them, Luck asked a question that was only half-serious. “So you’re not actually cheating?”

“You know we don’t have to. It’s set up so the house wins even if we don’t do a thing.”

As a matter of fact, there weren’t many Americans who assumed that the house cheated at underground casinos. No one would go near an illegal gambling den that was rumored to clip its patrons; they’d take their business to a place with a fairer image.

At Firo’s casino, they used dice made of crystal or glass, and it was possible to place roulette bets even after the ball was launched.

“Well, if someone’s winning too much, I do recommend they try their luck at cards.” Firo’s face clouded over. “Although, I did that to Isaac a while ago, and the dealer completely screwed up. We ended up dropping a bundle, dammit.” With a weary shake of his head, Firo went on griping about his friend. “After all, Prohibition’s over. Alveare ain’t a speako anymore. It’s doing well out in the open, but the casino still attracts the same dangerous crowd as ever.”

Not that Firo had a problem with the situation. He continued, even smiling in mild self-mockery. “New Jersey allowed casinos five years back, but New York isn’t even considering doing the same. What’s up with that anyway?”

“But that’s perfect, isn’t it? The fact that it’s not legal is precisely why you’re rich, Firo.” Brushing away his friend’s complaint with a little smile, Luck admonished him lightly. “Or are you saying you’re confident you don’t need shady tactics to beat casinos built by the giants of Wall Street or the rich men of Millionaires’ Row?”

Firo thought that over. “…Well, nah, not that confident.” He could maneuver during turf wars; there was no way he could compete fairly in business. Then, to camouflage his discomfort, he steered the conversation off topic. “Either way, we’re illegal, which means that bastard Edward could bust in here at any minute, which means I don’t have time to let my guard down. Of course, I’m here because I want to be, so I’ve got no complaints, but still.”

“Edward, hmm…? I hear he’s a rather well-known member of the Division of Investigation.”

“A DOI agent who’s well-known ain’t worth squat.”

Firo reached for the office cupboard, intending to have a drink. He didn’t have a snack to go with it, but gossip about the absent lawman would do.

However, when Luck asked his next question, his eyes looked rather serious. “Getting down to business: What happened over these past two months?”

“…What, weren’t you here to celebrate my getting out?”

“I meant to, and I wasn’t planning to ask any questions, but you seem a little odd.”

“I do, huh?”

Firo played dumb, and Luck continued. “Ordinarily, you would have handled that card sharp simply by signaling your men with a glance. But you hurt him personally… You’re strangely on edge—almost as if you’re on the lookout for something.”

“……”

Firo was silent.

Luck went on anyway. “If it’s a personal matter, then I’m an outsider, and I should just let you be. But I’m in charge of an organization that operates nearby. If there’s a situation that could end up affecting us, I need to set aside our relationship as sworn brothers and learn what I can.”

“…You’re as much of a boss as ever.”

“As I said, precisely because we’re small, we can’t afford to let our ears and noses lose their edge.” Luck grinned, but his eyes remained sharp.

Firo sighed, giving up. Then, bit by bit, he began to tell him. “All right. Hear me out and don’t get mad. I don’t really know what’s about to happen, either. I just think something’s gonna. That part’s for sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d better give you a rundown of what happened during those two months.”

To Luck’s eyes, his friend still seemed evasive despite what he was saying.

“Uh…” Firo paused. “First, cut me some slack—there are some parts I don’t completely get, and I’m skipping the stuff that’s personally embarrassing. The situation should still make sense anyway.”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

“Well, let’s see… Where should I start? …Yeah, probably when that jerk Edward took me in, and there was this asshole immortal in the interrogation room.”

Immortal.

The moment he heard that word, Luck straightened up, focusing more intently.

It wasn’t that he’d been listening casually before. He’d been planning to pay close attention, as the boss of a mafia outfit. Now that the word immortal had come up, though, he had to be wary for additional reasons.

After all, both Firo Prochainezo and Luck Gandor were immortals themselves, people with a unique and rare characteristic.

On top of that, there was one other thing that worried Luck. If this involved immortals, he’d have to consider the possibility that the Runorata Family, one of the area’s leading syndicates, would come into it, even if they seemed unrelated at first glance.

“I see. Making the trip to someone else’s turf just paid off.” Luck leaned against the wall of the office, automatically scanning his surroundings.

Firo also checked to make sure there was no one else in the office, then focused part of his attention on the casino, visible through the window.

Lowering his voice a bit, he began to tell the story.

But then, he saw a man coming down the stairs on the opposite side of the casino, the ones that led up to its ground-level entrance.

Breaking off for a moment, Firo gave the man a once-over.

That fella hasn’t been here before.

Due to the nature of this place, Firo was automatically wary of new faces.

Of course, since the casino wasn’t completely invitation-only, there were plenty of newcomers. Firo considered it his responsibility as the manager to be at least a little wary of all of them.

That said, due to the timing, he was a bit warier than usual at the moment.

The man wasn’t doing anything particularly suspicious, though, so Firo decided to keep half an eye on him through the office window while he resumed his conversation with Luck.

There was something Firo didn’t know: This man, a completely new face to him, was a puzzle piece from the incident that surrounded Firo and the other immortals. More accurately, he’d been involved for a few years now.

His name was—