Chapter 7 The Rival Isn’t Stupid
Somewhere in New York A major street
“Ngh… I wonder if the other guys are worried. I did give them a call, but…”
As Jacuzzi trudged along with tears in his eyes, Rail casually teased him. “Get it together, Jacuzzi. When you work under the table, aren’t you all washed up if people underestimate you?”
“If being underestimated is all it takes to keep everybody safe, I’ll let them underestimate us all day.”
“You’re pretty wishy-washy, huh? Don’t you have any pride?”
Up until a moment ago, Rail had been crying, but by the time Jacuzzi had rejoined her, she’d been her usual self again.
However, when a voice spoke behind them, her expression instantly went stiff and awkward.
“There’s nothing wrong with that, Rail. Sometimes you’ll get licked, and knowing how to endure it is important.”
“You can talk like that because you don’t know Jacuzzi, Chris.”
Ultimately, it had been decided that they’d go to Firo Prochainezo’s gambling den, and they were all following Ronny at a slight distance. Parenthetically, Isaac and Miria were still at the restaurant. They were probably asking Molsa for jobs of their own right about now. Jacuzzi had an extreme fear of Ronny, but Rail, who didn’t know the reason behind that fear, had written him off as a genuine coward.
With regard to Jacuzzi’s treatment, Ricardo had bluntly told him, “The Russo Family isn’t your enemy any longer. After all, even if we went after you, we don’t have the power to keep you from taking us out instead.” Then he’d added, “If you want me to take responsibility for what my grandfather did, I’d like to have that discussion another time.”
Jacuzzi had shaken his head emphatically and said, “N-no… Your grandpa was the one we had a grudge against,” and they’d ended up reconciling.
S-still, I wonder what’ll happen with Ladd Russo.
I never found the opportunity to bring it up, but we’ll have to do something about him, too…
If he spoke to him properly, through Ricardo, they might be able to settle things peacefully. If a kid like Ricardo approached them humbly, even Jack probably wouldn’t insist on getting his way.
On that thought, Jacuzzi examined his remaining worries.
That aside, I wonder why that red-eyed man is here…?
Whether or not he knew what Jacuzzi was thinking, Christopher cackled. “No, I mean it, it’s actually amazing: Did you know that, ages back, there was a torture where they’d have rats lick your stomach?”
At the word torture, Jacuzzi had steeled himself, but when he heard the rest of the sentence, he felt relieved. “I—I might be able to last through that, somehow… I bet it would really tickle, though.”
“See, first, they’d put lots of rats in an iron pot, then use the person’s belly as the lid. Their belly would be covered with honey or saltwater—I forget what, but anyway, it was something rats probably like.”
“S-stop, please… Just listening to that is making me ticklish.” Jacuzzi’s face went pale as he imagined the scene.
Christopher ignored him. “Nah, don’t worry. You won’t feel that way for long.”
“?” Jacuzzi tilted his head.
“They’d put that person on their back so that the pot was upside down. Then they’d put hot rocks or something on the base of the pot and presto—as they tried to get away from the heat, the swarm of rats would start digging into that soft, flesh-colored soil…”
“Yaaaaaaaaugh!” Imagining it vividly, Jacuzzi screamed.
“Burning rats? That’s cruel.”
“Not that part! That wasn’t the important part, Rail!”
“I’m joking. Seriously, Jacuzzi, you’re really easy to mess with.”
Jacuzzi had teared up again, and Rail laughed at him. Every so often, she’d sneak a glance at Christopher, then quickly look away.
Ricardo sighed. “If you want, you can come to the apartment we’re renting tonight.”
Rail gave Ricardo a contemptuous smile. “Ha-ha! Well, aren’t you considerate? Don’t be a creep. And anyway, what was that stuff you said? Do you seriously think you can rebuild the Russo Family? A weak little girl like you!”
Rail’s dislike for Ricardo was based in their similarities, including the fact that they were both women who were keeping it a secret. She braced herself, wondering how Ricardo would react, but…
The girl seemed to be brooding; she hadn’t heard what Rail had said.
Thinking this was odd, Christopher asked, “What’s up, Ricardo?”
“It might be better if…we didn’t go to that casino today…” Ricardo murmured the words almost as if she were talking to herself.
Christopher was perplexed. For that matter, so were Rail and Jacuzzi. Up until now, Ricardo had been all for going, and they had to know why she’d suddenly changed her mind. Ricardo looked down for a moment, still expressionless, then sighed.
“…No, never mind. It might actually be wiser to get this over with quickly.”
A lone shadow trailed Jacuzzi’s group, unobtrusively.
It was Ennis, who’d just finished helping out at Alveare. She was concerned not only about what Rail had said to her but also by Christopher’s very existence, so she’d followed them. Hearing that they were headed for Firo’s gambling den had reminded her of the incident at Mist Wall. She was worried that Christopher might go on a rampage.
This kind of work was not new to Ennis. As Szilard’s underling, she’d shadowed people and conducted infiltrations many times. Except for her unusual suit, she’d completely melted into the crowd.
Or at least she thought she had.
“What are you doing, Ennis?” a young voice said from behind her.
When she turned, the immortal boy who’d been living with her for the past few years was standing there.
“…Czes.”
“Why are you tailing those people? Is it for work?”
“No, that isn’t it…”
Ennis wasn’t sure how to explain, but Czes went on without waiting. “Not only that, but both of you at once…”
Huh?
Wondering what he meant by “both,” she looked around, and—
A girl poked her head out from behind a truck with a canvas-covered bed that was parked by the side of the road. It was Annie, who’d started working as a waitress at Alveare last year.
“Eh-heh-heh! You caught me.” The other girl was unapologetic.
Ennis called to her. “Annie? Why are you…?”
“I just happened to see you, Ennis, and you seemed a little odd, so I followed you. If you were watching somebody else, then we made a train!”
Watching Jacuzzi’s retreating group out of the corner of her eye, Ennis apologized. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you or worry you…”
Annie asked her a pointed question. “The place where Firo works is that way, isn’t it?”
“Y-yes…”
I mustn’t get her involved in this. Ennis averted her eyes and fell silent, but she was completely unprepared for Annie’s next question.
“By the way, Ennis… What do you think of Firo?”
When he heard that question, Czes thought Aha… and smiled inwardly.
This waitress had been a little odd for the past month—specifically, since Firo had gotten back from prison. She kept stealing glances at him, and although the two of them had hardly spoken at all before, she’d begun going out of her way to talk to him. Firo always seemed to politely brush her off, but she kept talking to him as if this was all she needed. The Martillo Family members who were constantly at Alveare had been gossiping about Annie: Do you think she maybe…? Hearing that just now had convinced Czes.
Firo’s a pretty smooth operator, huh, he thought, unconcerned.
However, Czes didn’t know something about Annie.
She had two other names.
Her other faces were peculiar ones: Hilton, a liaison who reported directly to Huey, and Leeza, Huey’s biological daughter.
Meanwhile, Ennis responded, perplexed: “…Ah? He’s family…”
Why would Annie ask that question now?
Ennis didn’t know what Annie really was, and she was largely oblivious to romantic matters to begin with, so she decided Annie was simply being weird.
“Family, hmm? That’s nice. Family.”
It wasn’t clear what Annie had thought of Ennis’s answer. She gave a thin smile.
Looking between her and the confused Ennis, Czes murmured, “This is getting interesting,” in a voice quiet enough for no one else to hear.
After all, he didn’t know about either Hilton or Leeza. He just assumed that a young female employee had fallen for Firo and arbitrarily decided that Ennis, who hadn’t even noticed her own feelings, was her rival.
Granted, although the situation was a bit more convoluted, he was basically correct.
Manhattan Little Italy
“…No, never mind. It might actually be wiser to get this over with quickly.”
Don’t even joke about that. Quick or not, this is bad news coming out of nowhere.
When he heard Ricardo’s voice in his head, Shaft—who was one of Sham’s bodies—muttered to himself silently, breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Sham” was a system Huey had created—an entity that used one mind to run multiple bodies, just as abnormal as the immortals. He took over the bodies of people who drank a special liquid and made them part of himself. There was a theory that the liquid itself was Sham’s true form—but even Sham didn’t know whether that was true.
Due to a variety of circumstances, Ricardo hadn’t actually had her mind taken over by Sham. She simply shared his knowledge and sometimes teamed up with him.
This won’t be like that one restaurant, Ricardo!
Unfortunately, Ladd Russo, who was in the backseat of this car, was bound for Firo’s underground casino.
If no one did anything, Graham and Christopher, who loathed each other, would meet, and Jacuzzi would come face-to-face with Ladd.
While the Martillo Family was small, the organization had clout. Shaft was a thug, but even Sham could tell if they tore up a casino run by a group that was home to the likes of Maiza and Firo, they would be inviting all kinds of hardship.
There’s no benefit in making them take each other out at this stage!
At that restaurant in Chicago, he and Ricardo had conspired to have Graham and Christopher run into each other in order to get the situation moving. However, this wasn’t the time to carelessly set the situation in motion.
With Mr. Huey and Victor’s group in town, too, it’ll just make the mess bigger!
Without betraying so much as a hint of this internal conflict, Shaft silently kept on driving. He’d considered buying time by pretending not to know where Firo’s casino was and saying he needed to check into it, but maddeningly, Graham claimed he knew the way.
“To get to the Martillo Family casino, you hang a right up there, Shaft.”
Graham was peeking into the driver’s seat from up on the roof and navigating for him. Shaft glared at him in disgust. “Hey, why do you know where the casino is anyway, Mr. Graham?”
“Oh, I figured someday when my money ran out, I’d strike it rich.”
“Are you good at gambling?” Shaft sounded dubious.
“No, I mean I’d strike the head of the guy who was transporting their takings…”
“You are so worthless!” Shaft yelled. “Argh, for Pete’s sake, come to think of it, you were that kind of guy, weren’t you, Mr. Graham?! Did you already forget how Nicola from the Gandors flattened you for trying that earlier?! He’s got the biggest heart I’ve ever seen, so he wrote it off as delinquents playing a prank, but still! If he hadn’t done that, we’d be feeding the fishes on the bottom of the Hudson right about now!”
That drew a response from Ladd in the backseat. “…Hunh? Kid Graham lost? In a fight?”
“Uh… Well… There’s this fella in the Gandor Family, Nicola; he’s a hell of a fighter. Graham went back for rematches lots of times, but he always got his ass handed to him…”
Up on the roof, they heard Graham launch into a long speech. “Hey, I won one and lost six. You forgot I won once. Shaft, you wouldn’t happen to be a Martian wearing Shaft’s skin, would you?”
Ladd might not have been listening to any of that, though. His lips twisted into a truly delighted smile. “Well, whaddaya know. It really is a big world. I should’ve partied a little harder last time I came to New York.”
He lightly smacked a fist into his palm. As Shaft glanced at Ladd, he felt even more certain that now wasn’t the time to let him run into Jacuzzi or Christopher.
Forced to ignore his resolution, though, Shaft still pulled the car over outside of Firo’s casino.
It would probably be a little longer before Jacuzzi and Christopher got there. He had to get Ladd and Graham to go elsewhere somehow. Shaft fished up a certain piece of information from Sham’s vast pool of knowledge and put it to work.
“Who… Right, Mr. Who!”
“Hunh?” Abruptly hearing the nickname of his childhood pal, Ladd frowned and looked at Shaft.
“N-no, I mean, once we meet this Firo guy, we may get tied up for a while, so wouldn’t it be better to go see Who first?”
“Uh… Hold the phone, Who’s in New York?”
“Yeah, I happened to see him the other day and thought, ‘Huh! Isn’t that Mr. Ladd’s old friend?’”
That seemed to put Ladd in a great mood. He laughed with genuine amusement.
“Oho-hoooo! I see, how ’bout that! So that lug Who didn’t get his ticket punched on the train, huh?! Well, he always was good at keeping himself outta trouble.”
If he was actually good at staying out of trouble, he probably wouldn’t have kept in touch with Ladd. Nader actually thought this at the same time Shaft did, but naturally, neither of them said it aloud.
“The thing is, Who’s working as an assistant at a clinic that’s just up the road a bit. With the car, we could get there in no time. Want to go say hello before we get settled in at the casino?”
“That’s an idea… Yeah, maybe I should,” Ladd said.
At that, Shaft mentally heaved a sigh of relief.
But then Ladd took a thick wad of bills from his wallet, which Lua had kept for him while he was in prison, and said, “All right, Nader. You go on in and get the roulette wheel warmed up for us.” He tossed over the money.
“Wha—? Wait, what…?! Why?!”
“Well, watching me meet my old friend again would be boring for you, yeah?”
“I—I mean, yeah, but… But what’s this money for?!”
As he looked at Nader, who was royally confused, Shaft also seemed to be thinking, Quit making things more complicated!
“I’m giving you that money, so go bet big. Get ready to blow it all. Hit the jackpot or lose your shirt, it don’t matter—just make like a high roller. I wonder what Firo’s gonna think when he finds out I’m your sponsor. Ha!”
“…You don’t think I might just take this money and fade?”
“You’re gonna run off with it? Hey, that’s fine. If you do, it’ll just mean I lost my bet.”
When he heard that, Nader was convinced—Ladd really wasn’t normal. He was a hedonist who lived for the moment.
For that very reason, Nader was scared. He couldn’t help thinking that Ladd had omitted the part where he said, Next time I see your mug, I’ll just slaughter you, that’s all.
As a matter of fact, even if he did make off with the money, Ladd probably wouldn’t think anything of it. Not that it mattered. Even if he didn’t think anything of it, he’d probably throw lead at him anyway.
“Oh, but if you’re planning to run, I want to hear about your connection to the Flying Pussyfoot incident before you take off… Well, if it happens, it happens. If you run, I’ll give up.”
Ladd never killed anyone he’d decided was his pal.
Nader didn’t know about that rule, and he interpreted the remark to mean, “If you run, I’ll give up on getting the story and kill you as soon as I find you.” He was scared, but he clenched the wad of bills in his hand.
“…Okay if I keep my winnings?”
Even he thought he was pathetic for asking about that modest privilege.
A few minutes later
And so Nader stepped into the casino by himself.
He’d been to underground casinos in Chicago lots of times. The problem was that they might do things differently in New York. Besides, since the finer rules were different in each gambling den, he couldn’t reliably base his conduct on past experience.
Thinking he should get a feel for the place first, Nader observed the surrounding gamblers. There were men and women of all ages, but of course, he didn’t see any kids. The youngest person there seemed to be the guy in a green suit he’d glimpsed through the office window.
He wondered what a kid in his teens was doing down here, but since he’d been in the office, he was probably related to somebody on the staff.
If I manage to get that kid on my side, maybe I can break into this Martillo Family outfit.
The corners of Nader’s mouth rose in a smirk even as the rest of his face went pale.
No, no, no! What am I saying? Am I an idiot?! That stuff is what landed me in this mess!
Scolding himself, Nader smacked his own face.
This was just for today.
By burning through this money, he’d turn over a new leaf and get out of the underworld.
If he vanished into the crowds of this great metropolis, even Huey’s people wouldn’t be able to find him.
Starting tomorrow, he was definitely going to look for honest work. They’d been talking about an assistant at a clinic back there… That wouldn’t be bad.
Squeezing the wad of bills in his pocket, Nader imagined various tomorrows.
Still, he’d waded a significant way into underworld society, and he knew quite well that most people who resolved to go straight “tomorrow” ended up saying the same thing the next day. And the day after that, and the one after that… He knew tomorrow never came.
After all, if he’d been the type of person who could face tomorrow in a decent way, he wouldn’t have been taking back roads like these in the first place.
In the office
“What’s the matter, Firo?”
The young general manager had started shooting glances into the casino in the middle of their conversation, and Luck got curious.
“Sorry. New face, and he’s acting weird. He was smacking himself. What’s he doing?”
“Maybe it’s his first time in a casino and he’s trying to get himself fired up?”
“Oh, that could be… That’s a bad sign, huh. I really am getting jumpy.” Sighing, Firo turned back to Luck and began to explain. “You fellas got one, too, didn’t you? One of those invitations.”
“Yes, I’m afraid they weren’t kind enough to overlook us. At any rate, we have a bit of history with them. If even unconnected organizations like the Martillos are being ‘invited,’ I suppose it was inevitable.”
A few days earlier, just after Firo had finally managed to get back on the job, Molsa Martillo had abruptly summoned him and broached a certain subject.
“I expect you’re aware that the Runorata Family is building a huge gambling den just next door to Manhattan.”
Firo did know about that.
Rumors about it had been spreading before he went to jail.
A multipurpose building was going up on the coast of New York, near the island of Manhattan. It would house a hotel and shops, offices and restaurants—but people said the shadow of the Runorata Family was behind it.
All the land in that area was owned by Manfred Beriam, who had a notorious hatred of gangs, and even major mafia outfits had trouble establishing territories over there. However, in order to raise election funds, he’d put a portion of that land on the market. After traveling through several affluent parties, the rights had ended up in the hands of a corporation that was under the patronage of the Runoratas, and then the construction of that building had been announced.
Work on the building had proceeded rapidly, and while its height wouldn’t set any records, its striking modern exterior made it clearly visible even from Manhattan Island.
In contrast to Nebula’s Mist Wall, the structure was slender, with a design that tapered gradually. As a result, some wits had nicknamed it “Ra’s Lance.”
The building’s unveiling ceremony had already been held. If his memory served him right, all that was left was the construction of part of the underground restaurant, which had been postponed. Under the restaurant, there were spare guest rooms for the hotel. It was said that the restaurant would mainly use them as private rooms for VIPs, but Firo had heard a rumor that those many VIP rooms would all be converted into gambling dens.
When Firo had recalled that much, Molsa had continued. “Those rumors even made it to you, and yet I haven’t heard a word about the police making a move. Either they’ve gotten rid of just enough proof, or they’ve been handing out bribes here and there. This morning, a Runorata Family messenger came by. At first, I thought somebody was playing a trick on us, but it was no joke. Ronny recognized him, so it’s a sure thing.”
A messenger from the Runorata Family— What business could they have with a little outfit like ours? Firo had thought.
They couldn’t have come to demand their territory, could they? Remembering how the Runoratas rumbled with the Gandors a few years earlier, Firo had been anxious. Molsa’s following words had shaken him further.
“They said we’re invited. And it isn’t just us. They said they were going around to all the neighboring outfits. They’re going to watch what the police do and set the date accordingly, but the casino’s slated to open around the middle of February. All those underground rooms are going to be gambling dens. They’ve invited a crowd of big shots to the grand opening. On the day, they’re going to let each outfit use one of those rooms, so they want us to get in there and profit…or so they say. What a screwball idea.
“I could have turned them down on my own say-so, but you’re the one who’s in charge of our gambling den now. So, Firo, you decide whether we’re taking them up on their offer or not.”
After spending a night mulling it over, Firo had told Molsa they’d accept. If he’d said he didn’t want an opportunity to rebuild his reputation, he might have been lying.
However, Firo had taken this job because he thought it would ultimately benefit his family. Turning the offer down would have been an insult to the Runoratas.
Molsa hadn’t appeared to care if this turned into a war, but Firo hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of people thinking the Martillo Family had turned tail and run.
Of course, there was a definite possibility that it was a trap. He couldn’t rule out the idea that the moment the executives showed up to run those underground gambling dens, they’d be met by Runorata hatchet men with machine guns.
The worst-case scenario was that the police would bust in while they were running the gambling dens, go through, and arrest every family member there. That would be more problematic than a machine-gun massacre. Even if Firo hadn’t been immortal, he probably would have felt the same way.
After all, if they were formally arrested by the police, the cops could use that as a foothold to strike at every family involved. If the Runorata Family sacrificed the people they sent in for this scheme, then said they knew nothing and stuck to their story, they’d minimize the damage to themselves.
“If that happens, please tell them you cut me out of the family back when I went to jail. I swear I won’t talk.”
That was what Firo had told Molsa, when he went to let him know he’d decided to take the offer. Molsa had replied, “I wasn’t planning on saying anything, either.
“If we find ourselves in that situation, I’ll just slash the Runoratas’ throats without a word.”
“The damn Runorata Family, huh? They’re huge, so they just do whatever they want,” Firo groused to his old friend.
Luck listened with a wry smile. “Well, that is why they build up their strength in the first place,” he said quietly.
“Buncha showoffs.” Firo sighed. Then his expression turned serious again. “Besides, it sounded like they wanted to make us their pigeons instead of just their bookies.”
The Runorata messenger had said, You’re free to stake territory and concessions between syndicates. Naturally, if you’d like to gamble against us, any offer you make will be considered.
“Doesn’t that mean they just want to show off how much power they’ve got?” Firo asked. “If I had the time to let them yank me around like that, I’d just do the old-fashioned thing and lose on the sly to any fat cats who came to gamble.”
“You’d lose?”
“If I let ’em win, they might bring all that money here, right?” Firo shrugged.
“…I hope it does go that well,” Luck said. His face was expressionless. “I can’t imagine there won’t be strings.”
“Sure. If they get the chance, they’ll probably try to knock us down a few pegs in the eyes of everyone else around here.”
“Naturally. Well, the venue itself is a gray zone, so you’ll probably need to put some countermeasures in place.”
“Yeah, Ronny told me, too. ‘There’s no knowing what might happen,’ he said, ‘so be careful.’ That ain’t gray. It’s pitch-black.”
Everyone in the family had absolute trust in Ronny’s ability to gather information. He had a complete grasp of the executives of not only the surrounding gangs, but of mafia groups based on the West Coast. On top of that, his information had always been right.
It wasn’t wise for an organization to rely on one person so completely. Even so, while they were drinking, Molsa had carelessly confided to Firo, If Ronny sells us out, there won’t be a thing we can do. It’ll probably just mean I wasn’t worthy of respect. Even Firo thought that if Ronny turned traitor, they’d just have to give up.
Plus, nobody in the family had any idea why a guy with Ronny’s skills was satisfied being an executive in a little outfit like theirs. They all thought it was bizarre. However, if they asked Ronny, all he’d say was You overestimate me, so Firo had decided Molsa was simply that charismatic.
Firo respected Molsa as a person, Maiza as a sort of older brother, and Ronny as someone about whom he could genuinely say, He’s a hell of a guy. If Ronny was telling him to be careful, he didn’t have the ghost of a reason to get careless.
That said, he didn’t intend to back out.
“Still, I finally get out of stir and now this. Even if it is a coincidence, the timing’s lousy.”
He didn’t regret it, but he did have a bone to pick with fate.
Looking away, Luck thought for a little while. Then he murmured to himself.
“…I’ll be praying that it truly is just a coincidence.”
Nader had been observing people while pretending to take a breather in a corner of the casino.
He’d considered getting in on a card game, but his right hand was a prosthetic. It was a specially designed, Nebula-made prosthetic, and since he’d trained with it, he could do things like set his hand on a steering wheel or hold a wine glass with it in a way that looked natural, but he couldn’t manage the fine motions it would take to handle cards.
He wanted to avoid standing out by playing one-handed for a while longer. Once eyes were on him, he wouldn’t have the technique or the courage to calmly observe his observers in return. For now, Nader had decided he’d watch the room for ten more minutes, then take a seat at a roulette table or something, when—
“How are you making out?”
The man who’d spoken was standing right next to him. There was no telling when he’d gotten there, and all Nader’s hair stood on end.
“?!”
Thinking the guy might be a hitman who’d marked him, he reflexively covered his throat and heart with his arms.
“That’s an interesting startle reflex.”
“N-no, uh, sorry.” He apologized automatically. However, since it was still possible that the man was after him, he checked him out cautiously.
At a glance, the other guy seemed to be a few years younger than he was, maybe still in his teens. He was probably about the same age as the boy he’d seen through the office window earlier.
“No, no. I’m sorry I startled you. As an apology, would you care for a chip?” The boy handed him one of the cheapest slot tokens.
“Nah, don’t worry about it.”
“It’s fine. Go on. Think of it as a lucky chip and give it a spin.” The boy glanced at the slot machine right beside them.
“…I’ll take you up on that, then. Thanks.”
This boy might have ties to the gambling den, too. If so, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to keep turning him down. Deciding to casually test his luck, Nader dropped the token into that slot machine.
The reels spun.
The afterimages of the assorted pictures merged together, making it look as though three rainbow-colored rivers were flowing side by side.
Nader didn’t have any particular knowledge about slots, so he watched those rainbows until the spinning stopped, his mind elsewhere.
With a pleasant noise, the first drum halted.
From the sound, one would have thought the slot machine had become a musical instrument. The silvery bell that rang out whenever a drum stopped made Nader’s heart shiver.
[7]
Wow. So that’s what slots are like these days?
[7]
When I was making money chiseling casinos, they were nothing like—
[7]
—this, but…bu…bu…bu…?
At that point, for a moment, Nader’s mind went completely blank.
Three sevens. There were three [7] pictures, all in a row.
Before Nader could remember what getting a total of twenty-one meant—
Evolving from a singular instrument into an orchestra, the Nebula-made slot machine sent the original music that announced a jackpot echoing through the casino.
“Wh-what’s that noise?”
The music certainly wasn’t dark or foreboding, but it had begun blaring up to them from below just as their group started down the stairs, and Jacuzzi involuntarily shrank back.
Ronny, who was in the lead, answered him with no emotion on his face. “Hmm… It sounds as though someone’s hit a jackpot on the slots.”
“A jackpot?! That’s incredible!” Jacuzzi’s eyes shone with envy.
Ronny continued down the stairs, smiling wryly.
“It isn’t a sound proprietors really want to hear, but… Well, never mind.”
“Goddammit, that guy!”
When Firo heard the noise, then realized the man in front of the slot machine was that new customer, he sprang to his feet.
“Calm down, Firo. It could be coincidence. Besides, you were just telling me that it wasn’t a problem if someone hit a jackpot on that model,” Luck said.
“Yeah, but come on. He’s fishy… Plus, that was the triple seven music, the top jackpot. Even if you put all the slots together, you get one of those every ten days, but someone just got one yesterday!”
“In terms of probability, you can’t say you’d never get one two days in a row. If you’re suspicious of him but it turns out to be simple coincidence, it’ll be the Martillo Family name that will suffer, not yours.”
“…Yeah, I know. I know that. I’m not gonna walk up and deck him.”
Firo, who’d calmed down a bit at Luck’s words, started toward the door that led into the hall and took a few deep breaths.
“I’ll just go congratulate him and get a feel for what’s going on.”
“H-hey…”
This reel machine seemed to be a bit special.
As flashy music played on multiple bells, tokens poured out of the machine’s payout window. These weren’t like the bottom-rung token Nader had put in. They were the most expensive type this underground casino used.
In this era, slot machines weren’t controlled electronically, like the ones that would be made in the latter half of the twentieth century. Even the house couldn’t adjust the probability. Compared to the models that would emerge later, the odds of lining up the top roll were relatively high, so as payouts went, it wasn’t that abnormal.
Even so, it had given him enough chips that if he lived frugally, he’d easily be able to eat for a year without working. In this recession, it really was a ridiculous sum.
“Well, congratulations!” As Nader stood stunned, the boy who’d handed him the token complimented him. Then he started clapping. Everyone in the casino except those who were in the middle of their games turned to see what the fuss was about. The building erupted into thunderous applause.
In the midst of a storm of adulation, the likes of which he’d never experienced before in his life, Nader was drenched in cold sweat.
No.
He was just an average guy of no importance. He knew that as a fundamental truth.
There’s no way I have this kind of luck, he told himself.
No matter what his actual luck might be, he wasn’t the type who hit the jackpot.
It had to be this kid. This must be some sort of stunt…!
In other words, he had been dragged into something.
And the smiling boy in front of him had made him draw a stupendous booby prize.
As if to confirm his hunch, another boy appeared in front of Nader’s dazed eyes. “Congratulations, sir!”
Huh? He’s…the kid who was looking out of the office window.
“Sir”…? So what, does he work here or something?
No, wait, why would a rank-and-file employee be talking to me like this?
The boy in the pale-green suit greeted Nader respectfully. “I’m Firo Prochainezo, the manager here. I’m glad someone as fortunate as you found your way to our establishment. I can only hope some of that excellent luck will rub off on us.”
Anyone who knew the regular Firo would have busted a gut. Who’d he crib those highfalutin lines from?! they’d laugh. Nader was meeting him for the first time, though, and he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Huh?
H-he’s the manager? How old is this guy?!
Nader was close to drowning in the surge of questions through his mind, but he managed to hang in there and say what needed to be said. “Oh, no, you’ve got it wrong…”
“Wrong? What do you mean?”
“This was his…” As Nader spoke, he pointed at the boy who’d handed him the token—or at least he tried to. By the time he turned around, the kid was gone; he’d disappeared into the applauding crowd.
He’s…! I knew it!
I was right. That kid—he set me up!
An ordinary person might have thought of the boy as an angel who’d brought them good luck, but to Nader, he was a jinx who’d shone the worst kind of spotlight in him. He suspected he was about to be plunged into the sort of trouble that a jackpot couldn’t begin to make up for.
“Is something the matter?”
“Oh, no… It’s nothing.” The color had drained from Nader’s face.
As Firo spoke to him, that breezy smile was still pasted on his face. “By the way, sir… May I ask who referred you to this casino?”
Although the place wasn’t completely invitation-only since it was an illegal casino, they didn’t get any customers who just “happened to wander in.” After all, there was no signage, and at a glance, the entrance looked like the back door of a general store.
Getting anxious, Nader groped around for an answer. Then he realized he’d heard the name “Firo” before.
Th-that’s right. Of course. Ladd said his friend ran this casino. This kid is the friend, huh?!
“Fr-from Ladd! Ladd Russo! He said he was a pal of yours!”
With a huge smile, as if he’d managed to catch himself on the brink of disaster, Nader gave him the name, but—
Conversely, Firo’s smile turned icy and tense.
Uh?!
That’s not how people react to a friend’s name!
He felt like screaming This isn’t what you told me! at Ladd, but despite the greasy sweat building on his skin, he managed to suppress the feeling and smile.
“Sir…,” Firo said. “You mean they let him out?”
By the casino entrance
“What are you going to do, Ennis? Aren’t you going in?”
“But…I might end up getting in Firo’s way when he’s working…”
In the end, Ennis had stopped in the road in front of the casino, unsure whether to intrude. As she eyed the casino’s entrance uneasily, Annie spurred her on. “It’s fine, Ennis! We’ll walk in as customers. Just hold your head high and go right in.”
“But something dangerous might happen. Czes and Annie, you should probably go home…”
At that, Annie pouted irritably, then pinched Ennis’s cheeks.
“Wha’ ah oo ’ooin’?”
“I swear! It would be just as dangerous for you, Ennis!”
After thoroughly squeezing, pinching, and messing with Ennis’s cheeks, Annie let go. “You and I are both delicate, fragile girls!” she said emphatically. “That means the playing field is level!”
“Playing field? What playing field?”
“……”
In that moment, a silent wind blustered between them.
Ennis cocked her head, perplexed, while Annie blushed a little. Neither said a word.
When a man ran between them into the casino, Annie finally broke the awkward silence. “…Aw, geez! Why are you and Firo both so apathetic?!”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what this is about, but it sounds as if I’ve caused you trouble… Firo isn’t apathetic, though. He’s quite earnest and attentive to many things.”
“……”
Ennis and Annie continued their noncommittal conversation. They seemed likely to just stay the whole night there outside without making any progress.
“Um, listen, you two?” Czes cut in, destroying the mood. “I don’t think now is the time for this.”
What he said next was extremely ominous.
“The man who just went into the casino was carrying a big gun.”
Inside the casino
Firo was in front of the slot machines, talking with a customer.
From the foot of the stairs, Ronny watched them wordlessly. Jacuzzi and Christopher were going along with the rest of the crowd and clapping, but Firo didn’t seem to have noticed them. The children’s faces were unimpressed, but Ricardo was applauding politely.
“A jackpot! Wow. Lucky…” Jacuzzi was genuinely jealous.
“He doesn’t look too happy, though,” Rail said. “By the way, is Firo the one who looks like a kid?”
Ronny put a finger to his lips, warning them in a low voice. “He has a complex about that baby face. If you don’t want to get hurt, I wouldn’t mention it in front of him… I doubt he’s so hot-tempered that he’d truly lose his temper at a child, but you’ll definitely sour his mood.”
“…How about that. I’ll be careful.” Rail replied indifferently, but she still stopped smiling and looked away. Ronny had that effect.
“Huh…? Wait, is he older than I am?” Jacuzzi asked. He was lucky that Firo wasn’t nearby to overhear him and knock him out.
However, Jacuzzi never got an answer from Ronny.
After all, that was when the employee who’d been keeping an eye on the ground-level entrance came tumbling down the stairs with a crash.
“So what did Ladd say when he told you about this place?” Firo asked, his eyes twitching.
Nader was racking his brains for a response when a loud noise abruptly came from the direction of the entrance, and a boy with a tattooed face screamed.
“What’s going on?” Firo whirled around toward the source of the noise, and his eyes landed on the foot of the stairs. One thing immediately caught his attention: a red-eyed monster who was flashing a fanged, vicious smile and waving at him.
………?!
“Ghk…! Christopher?!” he blurted out.
What’s he doing here?!
He was too surprised to do anything initially, but a moment later, he caught sight of the man on the floor behind the monster. His first thought was that Christopher had caused this, but it looked like the guy had tumbled down the stairs just a second ago.
Next, he saw a man with a nearly demonic expression descending the stairs, gripping a tommy gun.
Firo recognized the guy—he’d just busted him for cheating, slugged him, and booted him out. The guy was supposed to have been taken to the Martillos’ office, but he must have managed to make a break for it.
“Dam mavya bassars!”
The cheater—who had a crushed throat, courtesy of Firo—brandished the tommy gun he’d picked up somewhere, firing wildly at the ceiling. Shots rang out, and an uproar punctuated with screams ballooned inside the casino.
Son of a bitch…! He’s gone off the rails!
From the fact that he hadn’t had any trouble getting his hands on a tommy gun, he might belong to a mafia outfit somewhere. Still, no syndicate anywhere would protect a guy who’d gotten caught cheating, been punished for it, and then pulled a stunt like this in retaliation.
Does this fella have a death wish? Did getting his ass handed to him frustrate him that much?
Or…did he think that because it’s the Martillo Family, he could do whatever he wants here and still make a clean getaway?
Either way, I’m gonna make him wish he’d never been born.
“Waaaugh-agh-agh-agh-agh?!”
The fact that a man had appeared right behind him and fired a tommy gun at random sent Jacuzzi into a total panic. Rail and Ricardo only covered their ears; they didn’t seem particularly rattled. As Christopher waited to see how Firo would handle the gunman, his eyes shone. Ronny didn’t seem at all disturbed. He chose not to immediately neutralize the thug, hoping to avoid using his powers in front of a crowd.
The man who’d fallen down the stairs didn’t seem to have been shot. The other man had probably threatened him with the gun, then kicked him down. Once he was certain the Martillo man was only unconscious, Ronny breathed a sigh of relief.
All right. What should I do? he thought. For the moment, maybe I’ll simply jump on the man and subdue him in the normal way.
If he had to, he could make the gun vanish from the man’s hands like a mirage. In front of this particular crowd, though, insisting it had been a magic trick probably wouldn’t go as smoothly as it had with Jacuzzi’s gang.
On that thought, he was planning to act like Firo’s “knife-fighting teacher” for once and reached into his jacket for his blade—but then something he witnessed brought him to a halt.
How about that. I won’t be needed this time, hmm?
Well, never mind.
He sighed, smiling faintly.
A woman in a black men’s suit was leaping down from the top of the stairs.
“Ah!” “Ahn?” “Aaaah!” “Ah—” “…Ah.”
With the exception of the shooter, nearly everyone—including Firo, Nader, Jacuzzi, Rail, and Ricardo—reacted at once.
The gunman hesitated a moment, realizing that all the eyes around him were focused on something over his head.
By the time he noticed, it was too late.
Before he even had time to look up, a sharp impact ran through him.
The woman in the black suit had brought her right leg down on the man’s collarbone. Then she grabbed the gun, which had been pointed at the ceiling moments prior, and she wrenched it upward along with his arm.
The man’s collarbone broke with a nasty crunch, and almost immediately afterward, there was a disturbing pop as his right shoulder was dislocated.
The thug opened his mouth to scream in pain just in time for the butt of his gun to be slammed into it.
All his teeth broke, and he blacked out before he even saw the face of the individual who’d stopped him.
The attacker had been subdued far too easily and much too efficiently.
The casino’s guests were stunned for a moment—but then they showered the woman with applause befitting a hero, far more than the cheers for Nader’s jackpot.
Meanwhile, Ennis looked around, spotted Firo, and gave a small sigh of relief. On the other hand, Firo wondered what Ennis was doing there, although he was relieved that she was safe and the situation resolved.
“…Huh? It’s over? It’s done already? And here I thought we were going to get a show!”
The only dissatisfied comment came from Christopher. Resolving to get the full story out of him later, Firo took a closer look at the area around the stairs. Spotting Ronny, Firo froze up guiltily.
Aaaaaagh! Dammit!
Ronny just saw me screw up!
Firo hadn’t done anything wrong, but as the manager of this casino, the very fact that something like this had happened was a disgrace… Or that was how Firo saw it anyway.
He still figured getting the situation under control was more important than his shame, though, so he raised his voice and addressed the crowd. “I’m very sorry for the disturbance, folks! Those gunshots may have attracted the cops. We’ll get your chips cashed right away, so for now, go ahead and call it a day.”
The cops.
At the mention of law enforcement, the guests turned pale.
“My sincere apologies to those of you who were on a roll and those who were trying to dig themselves out of a hole. I swear we’ll make it up to you another day, so please do us a favor and head home for now.”
Even as Firo finished his sentence, the customers scrambled over one another to mob the cashier, while gamblers who’d lost and become simple onlookers rushed for the exit. They probably weren’t satisfied, but they had no time to gripe to Firo or the others. Rather than run the risk of being dragged into police business, many gamblers who still had a few chips left headed for the exit anyway.
As he directed traffic, Firo grumbled to himself, …This just cost us half our customers.
Because underground casinos were illegal, trust from gamblers was particularly vital. It was one thing if the gambling den belonged to the organization that ran the town, but here in Manhattan, multiple outfits had opened their own casinos. If something unpleasant happened at one, guests could easily take their business to another outfit’s establishment.
We’ll have to win their trust back somehow. Firo ground his teeth.
Behind him, he heard Ennis speaking to him. “Are you all right, Firo?”
He was planning to play it cool and say something like, I’m in the middle of evacuating customers. It’s an important job. We’ll talk later—but the moment he saw Ennis’s face, those words evaporated.
“Y-yeah. I’m fine. Never mind that; you’re not hurt, are you, Ennis?” Even as he said it, he realized it was a pointless question to ask an immortal.
“I’m fine. When I heard the shots, I thought someone had been hurt.”
“Well, he only shot up the ceiling. Unlike Alveare, the first story of this place has a sturdy floor, so I doubt any bullets even punched through.”
Firo tried to keep directing customers during their conversation, but another person intruded.
“Hiya, Firo. Tough luck, huh. Or does that sort of thing happen all the time?”
A red-eyed phantom poked his head out from behind Ennis.
“Christopher… What are you doing here?” Thoroughly disgruntled, Firo decided to deal with him absently and keep working.
Christopher responded to this reception with an exaggerated shrug. “Aww, so mean. Is that any way to treat a close friend you haven’t seen in ages?”
“I don’t see this close friend anywhere.”
“C’mon, don’t be rude. We’re going to be working together again, you know.”
“Hunh?” At that unexpected news, Firo stopped waving customers through and turned to face Christopher. “What are you talking about? Don’t tell me— Are you planning to do something crazy again, like you did at Mist Wall?”
“Hey, that’s entirely up to you.”
Christopher’s evasiveness made Firo tense again, but that was when someone else appeared beside him and broke into their conversation.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Firo Prochainezo.”
“…?”
The speaker was a child who seemed to be a few years older than Czes. What was a kid doing here?
As Firo wondered about that, the child coolly went on. “My name is Ricardo Russo. On instructions from Molsa Martillo, Christopher and I will be working under you from now on. We’re both looking forward to it.”
“Huh?”
Ricardo…Russo?
On Molsa’s instructions? Working under me?
Christopher, too?
Firo had no idea what was going on, but the name “Russo” reminded him of what the customer who’d hit the triple seven a few minutes earlier had said. “Oh, right, where’d he go…? I—I’ll hear you out later, so sit tight a minute.”
Hastily excusing himself to Ricardo, Firo scanned the room. The jackpot winner was just about to cash the tokens the slot machine had paid out.
Firo started over to him, walking fast.
As she watched him go, Ricardo murmured, “He’ll hear us out later, huh?”
With her eyes focused on some place that wasn’t here, Ricardo went on talking to herself.
“I hope we’ll have time in the chaos later.”
Outside the casino By the entrance
“I wonder if Ennis is okay…”
“The gunshots stopped. That probably means she’s all right.”
Customers were hastily running up the casino stairs to the entrance, then scattering in all directions.
“But we heard those shots loud and clear, so…the police are bound to be here soon.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. I think they’re busy right now.”
“?”
As Czes and Annie were talking, they heard a jaunty voice behind them. “Hey, kid. Hey, little lady. Those were some flashy firecrackers I heard just now. Was that from in there?”
“Huh?” Czes tensed as he turned to see who was talking to them.
Several men and a woman were standing back there…and he’d recognized one of the men.
When the man saw Czes’s face, he seemed to realize something, too. He smiled at him, but his eyebrows came together. “Hmm…? Have we met somewhere before, kid? You look familiar.”
The man thought hard for a few more seconds, but then, before he’d remembered completely, he headed for the casino entrance. “Ah, whatever. Right now, I need to put in an appearance at that party.” Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he registered the fact that the girl had fixed him with a ferocious glare. Stopping for a moment, he seemed mystified. “Hmm? What is it, little lady? I haven’t met you before, have I?”
That girl, Annie, didn’t respond. She only radiated hostility, glaring at the man as if he’d killed her parents.
“Did I bump off your fella somewhere, dollface? If so, sorry ’bout that. Not that I regret it or anything,” he said, amused by her nasty expression. He set off again, his retinue trailing behind him.
“I can tell you’re holding some sort of grudge there. Sorry, sweetheart, but if you’re planning to slaughter me, follow me down to the party.”
Inside the casino
“…So you thought we’d just let you head on home?”
Nader had finished cashing in his chips, but Firo blocked his way, wearing a hearty smile. Of course, that smile didn’t reach his eyes. Most of the twenty or so gamblers who’d been there had already booked it outside, and the casino staff was tying the grifter up.
Hugging an armful of bundled bills, Nader shook his head and pleaded with him. “H-hey… Hold on a minute. Check into it and you’ll see. I didn’t cheat or nothin’.”
“Well, let’s set that aside for now. What I’m curious about is the guy who told you about this place. Ladd.”
Watching their conversation from a short distance away, Christopher shook his head. He seemed bored. “This really isn’t what I was hoping for. You said it was Firo’s casino, so I thought they’d be playing Russian roulette with Gatling guns or something.”
“…Firo doesn’t look like that much of a dimwit to me.”
“Once you’re the boss, Ricardo, let’s build an underground casino that shows more respect for Nature. It’ll have incredibly big slot machines that use waterfalls, and roulette games that use tornadoes.”
“I don’t intend to be that much of a dimwit, either,” Ricardo responded sullenly. She paused for just a moment, then added, “By the way, Christopher…”
“Hmm? What?”
“I recommend you turn around soon.”
“?”
As she made that bizarre remark, Ricardo was still looking ahead. Christopher turned to look back—
—and saw a lethal silver disc flying straight at him.
He’d seen this same thing at the end of last year, in a restaurant in Chicago.
Christopher’s kinetic vision managed to register that the object wasn’t actually a silver plate but an enormous wrench. It was spinning so fast that it left a disc-shaped afterimage.
At the same time, he saw a young man partway down the stairs, wearing blue coveralls and a crazed smile.
“…Ha!”
Confronted with a sudden, incoming mass of death, Christopher broke into a fiendish smile of his own and vigorously kicked the enormous wrench upward.
With a dull clang, the wrench bounced into the air, its rotation broken.
“What’s that?”
“Hunh…?”
Firo and Nader saw the altercation in their periphery. When they turned to see what was happening, they saw something almost incomprehensible: Christopher and a man in blue on the stairs were simultaneously smiling and glaring at each other, while a wrench as big as a human arm fell between them.
The next moment, the huge tool landed on the back of the cheater, who’d been tied up and left on the ground nearby.
“Gebwaugh?!”
It hit the man’s spine, and he let out an unconscious shriek before succumbing to a quiet blackout again.
Tumbling off the man’s back, the wrench hit the floor with a loud clatter, and the handful of remaining gamblers curiously glanced their way.
“Fun… Let me tell you a fun story,” announced the man in the blue coveralls.
Graham completely disregarded the uncomfortable reactions from those around him and jumped onto the stair rail, nimbly balancing on top of it. His voice echoed through the whole place.
“Today, I stepped into this casino to gamble. I’ve heard casinos are life in a microcosm, and gambling dens are a competition with your own life in the balance… And looky here: I hit the jackpot! I knew I’d face my fated rival again. I’m talking about the vaguely irritating red-eyed bastard. To think we’d run into each other here!”
After that lengthy speech, Graham took normal-sized wrenches from his waist and began juggling them. They smacked into his hand on each catch.
“If reunions are jackpots, well, I just reunited with my brother Ladd, too, so I’ve won twice in a row! I feel like I drew the lucky seven card… If I reunite with one more card… Yeah, on the day I meet my big sister. Haven’t heard from her in forever. Then, I’ll have three lucky sevens, get a jackpot on the slots, win at blackjack with twenty-one, and victory will be mine! Could any story be more fun?”
Graham had delivered that incomprehensible monologue in time to his own rhythm. When he reached its finale, he pulled the wrenches out of circulation with light smacks, catching them in both hands.
“In other words, I’m thinking of pulling all your teeth and using them as chips. That okay with you?”
He sprang forward from the stairs, lunging at Christopher.
It was an astounding jump, and he covered a distance of several yards easily. Spinning without killing his momentum, Graham tried to slam his wrenches into Christopher.
However, Christopher dodged them at the last second, leaping to the side. “Wow. That opinion’s so selfish it’s genuinely moving! What’ll I do?”
His question made him sound indecisive, but in no time at all, he launched himself off the floor, rotating at an angle, and unleashed a spinning kick.
Graham evaded by flinging himself back into an exaggerated bridge pose and went on the attack, holding that position as he lobbed a wrench at the airborne Christopher.
Christopher snatched it out of the air easily and touched down as cleanly as a gymnast. “Nah, it’s not okay with me. Quit gambling and go straight. Then your sister might come back, you know.”
“What…? My sis?! Okay, got it! I’m on the straight and narrow! No more gambling for me!”
Christopher had been taunting him, but Graham responded in dead earnest. Springing back up from his bridge, he transferred his momentum into a pointless somersault over to his enormous wrench. He brandished it and his little wrench as if they were two swords, clanked them together, then rushed at Christopher again.
“By the way, my sister was also my first crush. When I see her again, should I call her Sissy or Sis or Sister or My Honey or Damn Hag? Whaddaya think? This is a pretty thrilling gamble. If I happen to tick her off, she might dismantle my spine using nothing but her upper body strength.” Graham kept on flapping his mouth with each swing of a wrench.
Dodging by the skin of his teeth or parrying with the little wrench he held in his right hand, Christopher responded cheerfully. “You really are dumb, huh! That’s fine! Even if they mobilized all their reason and intelligence, humans can’t get away from gambling. It’s in your nature. In other words, it’s the instinct of the species… Instinct of the species—somehow, that’s sounds so natural, doesn’t it?! Meaning that for humans, this casino is no different from forests or grasslands or the vast ocean!”
As always, Christopher had his own unique theory.
Both Christopher and Graham were about as broken as the other, but their gears would never mesh. They collided with a crunching noise that would frighten anyone with a sound mind. Even gamblers who hadn’t yet cashed in their chips began to rush outside.
With the screams and clamor of the scrambling customers as its soundtrack, the fight kept heating up.
On the sidelines of that fight, a variety of human reactions played out. Ronny listened to their exchange with deep interest. Rail said, “I’ve got to help Chris,” and took a bomb out of her jacket. The crying Jacuzzi tried to stop her, while Ennis struggled to process the situation.
At first, Firo had been stunned and bewildered, too, but when he saw his screaming customers heading for the exit, he came to himself with a jolt. He hadn’t managed to get a handle on the situation at all, but if this kept up, his casino’s reputation would take another dive. Firo bellowed at the combatants and their ferocious sword fight with wrenches. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up a minute, fellas! No, y’know what? Freeze, both of you!”
Maybe they’d heard him, maybe they hadn’t, but Christopher and the man in blue showed no sign of calling off their fight. Thinking he’d just have to stop them by force, Firo reached into his jacket for his knife, but just then—
From beside him, Ricardo softly put a hand on his arm, holding him back. “It’s okay. Let them be. They’ll get tired and stop before long.”
Calmly, Firo argued with the child. “N-no, if I wait until that happens, my casino’s going to get smashed to…”
However, Ricardo glanced at the top of the stairs without much of a reaction. “Isn’t he the person you really need to talk to?”
“Huh?”
Following Ricardo’s gaze, Firo looked at the stairs—then froze.
Potential trouble even greater than the two brawlers was standing there, smiling a gleeful smile.
“Hey there, Peter Pan. It’s been, what, two months or so?”
“…Ladd. What, you got out already?”
It was a man he’d met in Alcatraz.
It was the first time he’d seen Ladd in clothes other than his prison uniform. The air of danger that hung around him might have been even greater now than it had been in the big house.
“Yeah, they just turned me loose today. So, this is your Neverland, huh? Nice, real nice. Li’l punks who never grow up gambling forever—that’s a pretty entertaining thought! Ain’t it, Lua?”
“It sounds like a wonderful world.” The woman behind Ladd spoke quietly and smiled.
Oh… Um. Right, she’s Ladd’s fiancée. She’s more of a looker than I expected.
At the sight of this woman, Lua—whose name he’d heard ad nauseam in prison—Firo felt momentarily relieved. She’d almost been taken hostage by Sham and Hilton, but apparently these two had managed to find each other again.
Jolting back to his senses, he remembered this was no time to be feeling anything like relief. “Hey, is that fella in blue with you? Make him knock it off already!”
“Ha-ha-ha! No can do. Once he gets like that, he won’t stop unless you splash liquor on him or something. Fights to the death are one thing, but in regular ol’ fights, he’s stronger’n me,” Ladd said bluntly, leaving Firo without a paddle.
“Enough. I’ll stop him myself, then.”
“Whew! You’re planning to stick your head into that wrenchnado? Damn. Rough work, bein’ a manager.”
Thoroughly irritated with Ladd, who’d decided to rubberneck and enjoy the show, Firo gave a little sigh before he sized up the situation. True, both men were moving in ways no ordinary person could. Firo knew about five people who had the skills to stop people of that caliber. That said, the fact that there were five such people in his circle meant that Firo knew a lot of abnormal individuals.
One of those people, Ronny, was simply watching the fight as if it fascinated him. Maybe, since Firo was the one in charge here and the customers had escaped to safety, he simply wasn’t planning to interfere.
Either way, Firo was young and proud, and that pride wouldn’t have let him run crying to Ronny while Ennis was there.
Warily, Firo went closer to the fight. Behind him, Nader called to Ladd: “Didn’t you go to a hospital or some such to see your old pal?”
“They were closed today.”
The answer was extremely simple and clear, and it was enough to convince him.
Behind Graham was a very enervated Shaft. That concerned Nader, but not so much that he’d go out of his way to ask him what had happened.
Just then, Ladd noticed the bundles of bills in Nader’s arms. “…Hey, whoa, get out, are you kidding me?! Something wild went down here! That’s about ten times the money I handed you! What the hell?! Man, that’s really somethin’! Nader, pal, you’re a riot! Did my uncle have the curse on you because you busted his casinos?”
When he heard that phrase, Firo twitched and glared at Nader. “…You’re a casino breaker?”
“N-no! I’ve never cheated at a casino! Besides, the one who’s really famous for breaking casinos in Chicago was a jane named Pamela, and you know it!”
As Nader shouted, Graham’s wrench slammed into the floor, sending a violent noise echoing through the casino.
Without seeming to care, Ladd latched on to the name “Pamela.” “Hmm? Oh, right, yeah, yeah, that’s the one. Pamela, it was Pamela. My uncle put a bounty on her, too, and she made tracks. I wonder what she’s up to now?”
As they talked about things that wouldn’t have made sense to anyone who didn’t know much about Chicago, one person interrupted to answer Ladd’s question. “I heard a lady named Pamela pulled off a museum heist somewhere and is on the run from the police as well.”
“Hunh?”
Ladd gave the speaker a hard look, and then his face lit up.
“Huh? Hey, Ricardo! It’s you, huh? Well, look at that! You’ve gotten big since I saw you last. So I hear you took over the Russo Family. That’s gonna be one hell of a job.”
“Did you want it? …The family.”
“Hell nah. I didn’t get along with my uncle’s cronies, that Krieck louse and his men. Nobody says I gotta take on a hassle like that, and plus, if I was the boss, I couldn’t be a hitman.” Ladd, who’d become a hired killer for the fun of it, wouldn’t have taken the boss’s chair if they’d paid him. “Still, from what they tell me, it’s just you and that red-eyed nutjob, right? If you need a hit, call me up whenever. We’re family, so I’ll do the job for you cheap.”
“…I don’t plan to repeat Grandpa Placido’s mistakes.” Ricardo shook her head quietly. There was no hatred in her eyes, but they were firmly rejecting the offer. The Russo Family she was going to build wouldn’t need people like Ladd. She’d told him so, plainly, right to his face.
However, Ladd didn’t seem particularly ticked off. He laughed. “Ha! That’s one wholesome mafia outfit. Well, I guess it’s better than Uncle Placido anyway. All right, I’ll start working freelance here in New York, then.”
Ladd continued down the stairs, watching the scene that was unfolding below, when—he suddenly caught sight of a guy who was staring at him from a corner of the casino and trembling. It was a kid with an inked-up face. The moment Ladd saw that tattoo, he remembered exactly who he was.
“Well, well! Ain’t that Jacuzzi Splot over there?”
“Eeeep!”
H-he remembers meeee!
The moment their eyes met, the man had called his name. Despair flooded Jacuzzi’s expression, and sweat broke out on his back. He’d known they’d probably run into each other, but he’d never dreamed it would happen out of nowhere, here of all places.
“C’mon! I drop in to see my pal Firo and get a load of this! Did you fellas set up a surprise party here, just for me? Why is a bounty whooping it up at a casino with the boss of the Russo Family?”
Lightly descending the stairs, Ladd started toward Jacuzzi with slow, menacing steps.
Th-this Firo guy has a ton of dangerous friends… What’s going on?!
Silently screaming a question that entirely ignored his own circumstances, Jacuzzi spoke up fearfully. “H-hello. It’s been a long time.”
“If I recall, on the train, you said, uh, lemme see… Something about absolutely making me pay. Ain’t that right?”
“Yeeeek?!”
He even remembers that?!
“So how are you planning to do it? Want to put that plan into action right here?”
The words were taunting, and a shudder ran all through Jacuzzi.
Apologize.
That voice echoed up from the depths of his heart.
He’d made that challenge in the heat of the moment. If he asked Ladd to forget it, promised to grovel or do whatever he wanted, and begged for forgiveness, the man might not actually kill him.
That was what Jacuzzi’s rational brain was telling him, but the memory of Jack near death rose in his mind, and he shoved that option back into the depths of his heart. Although there were tears in Jacuzzi’s eyes, the next thing he said was: “I—I’ll make you pay by, um… I—I’m still deciding! Please look forward to it!”
At that outrageous answer, not only Ladd, but also Firo and even Nader stared openmouthed at Jacuzzi.
However, in the next moment, Ladd chuckled. “You really are something, fella. Good thing I didn’t kill you on that train, yeah?”
Jacuzzi had no idea how to react, and he fell silent.
Graham had overheard their conversation, and he yelled to Ladd. “Oh— Ladd! I’ve got something to tell you about that Jacuzzi guy later, so don’t kill him! He’s my pal! And hey, Jacuzzi, what’re you doing here? Should I see this…as my third reunion card…? We just saw each other the other day, though…”
Pausing his attack for a moment after shouting to Ladd, Graham switched to talking to himself.
This created a prime opening for Christopher. He grabbed that chance—but he didn’t use it to attack Graham.
With a grin, he raised the wrench he was holding and lobbed it at the back of Ladd’s head.
“Aaaaah, look out!!”
Luckily for Ladd, his enemy Jacuzzi tipped him off about the impending crisis. Jacuzzi’s already pale face went even paler, and as he screamed, Ladd raised his left arm and turned around.
The next moment, a peculiar crash rang out.
Ladd’s iron prosthetic hand had solidly protected his head from the flying wrench, with the sleeve of his suit jacket sandwiched in the middle.
“Thanks. I owe you one,” Ladd told Jacuzzi, cracking his neck.
Meanwhile, the wrench he’d deflected sailed through the air, heading toward Rail. Rail dodged, and Ennis stepped in front of her, then kicked the wrench to the ground.
When Rail said nothing, Ennis asked, “Are you all right?”
“…Nobody asked you to butt in,” Rail retorted sullenly, apparently having a bone to pick with Ennis. However, she’d spoken normally, and Ennis smiled in relief.
“Oh, good. It looks like you’re okay.”
“……!”
“Wow. Rail doesn’t know what to do when people treat her like that.”
As Christopher watched Rail, who was wearing a complicated expression, he gave a mischievous grin. He’d forgotten the stunt he’d just pulled.
Tilting his head to one side, Graham looked at Christopher. He, on the other hand, was not smiling.
“…Huh? Why did you just take a shot at my brother Ladd?”
“I wondered how you’d react if somebody you apparently respect got hurt.”
“…That’s it?”
“That’s it. ”
Christopher smiled like a naughty little kid. Instantly, every inch of Graham began radiating murder.
That is, until he picked up on an even more overwhelming hostility from behind him. Graham shuddered.
“I see. That’s a real simple answer. I like it,” Ladd said. Smiling cheerfully, merrily, he asked Christopher a question: “Then it’s okay if I jump in here, right?”
“Be my guest. ” “Ladd, this guy’s mine…”
Christopher and Graham spoke at the exact same time, but Ladd wasn’t listening to either of them.
Brrr…
Jacuzzi, Ennis, and Rail had seen Ladd’s face, and a chill ran down their spines.
Though he was smiling, behind it was pure bloodlust.
It was a self-sustaining system of warped pleasure, in which the sheer opportunity to turn that urge to kill on somebody was way too much fun in his mind.
Firo had a feeling how this would turn out, and he tried to shut it down in advance. “H-hey…”
But with that as the signal, Ladd took off.
A single step.
The other two were five meters away.
Christopher’s opportunity to brace himself was canceled out by just one step.
“Hey, red-eyed bastard.”
Ladd closed in, staying low. He greeted him casually, and in almost the same moment, he unleashed a unique, upward right jab.
“?!”
It was a high-speed first strike, something Ladd’s rather large frame hadn’t seemed capable of.
Overwhelmed by the speed worthy of a pro boxer, Christopher reflexively pulled back.
As Ladd stretched his right arm to its limit, he took one more step forward. His right hand instantly shifted from a fist to a claw, latching on to Christopher’s throat.
Christopher visualized his head being crushed by a monster punch.
Huh? Is this when I die? he asked himself.
The pressure on his neck was abnormal. Christopher raised a foot, preparing to strike back, but Ladd took another step in. Still holding Christopher by the throat, he jumped forward and swung Christopher’s body as lightly as if it were a bucket.
After whipping Christopher around at a speed that could easily have dislocated an ordinary person’s neck, Ladd slammed him into a roulette table.
The table broke right in two.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Goddammit, what the hell are you doing?!” Firo screamed. He was thinking of how much it would cost to replace the table and the losses they’d incur while it was out of commission. However, he didn’t seem particularly worried about Christopher; he knew this wouldn’t be enough to kill him.
As a matter of fact, although Christopher was being pinned down by the throat between the pieces of the broken roulette table, he was still smiling.
Ladd smiled back. “Listen, fella, do you think you’re not about to die or somethin’?”
“No, I’m not so sure about that. If I die, it’ll mean I was a normal human, right?”
“Nah, it’ll mean you were a human who was a bit dumber’n normal.”
With that, Ladd raised his steel left hand. Even if all he did was let gravity take its course, he was sure to seriously hurt his opponent.
“Chris…!”
In an attempt to rescue Christopher, Rail took something out of her pocket, and Jacuzzi screamed, “N-no, Rail, you can’t!”
Meanwhile, Graham spoke up in protest, swinging his wrench around. “Hey, Ladd, I mean it, quit! He’s mine! If you swipe him, it’ll be way more than just a sad story, and I’ll have to wreck all the slots in this place!”
Why exactly?! Even as he yelled inwardly, Firo was already running to stop Ladd.
As he ran, he noticed something.
Christopher wasn’t just taking a one-sided beating. Although his arm hung limply, his hand was gripping a fragment of the roulette table, one that was as sharp as a stake. He was probably planning to use the momentum of that downward blow to counterattack and run that fragment into Ladd.
No matter who won, in another moment, tragedy was going to erupt.
This was his gambling den, and there was no way in hell he’d let that happen between two people who called him a friend, even in a twisted way! Firo sprinted, preparing to get in the middle of that worst of all possible combinations and take both attacks himself, but then—
There was a noise.
A grand ensemble of bells echoed through the casino, stopping time for everyone at once.
Huh?
Firo knew what that sound was. He’d just heard it a few minutes earlier.
It was the unmistakable sound of someone hitting a jackpot on the casino’s new slot machines.
What kind of astronomical odds would it take to hit two of those in a row?
Actually, forget that: Who was playing the slots while all this was going down?
Firo wasn’t the only one confused. Nearly everyone who was still in the casino looked toward the sound, their minds filling up with questions.
Two men were standing at the right end of the row of seven slot machines.
One of them had features that put him somewhere between boyhood and late adolescence. He seemed to be about the same age as Firo.
As he looked at the man, Firo abruptly thought, Oh. I know that face.
He’d caught a glimpse of it in the casino today, too, but he’d skimmed right over it, since it hadn’t registered as a new face for him.
No… Wait.
Yes, I do remember him.
But… This is… Huh? He’s not one of the casino’s big customers…is he…?
When he’d seen the man in a crowd of gamblers, he’d overlooked him. Now that he was looking at the boy alone, though, something tugged at Firo’s heart.
The memory of that face seemed to linger in the deepest part of his mind.
Who is he…? Who is this guy?
As Firo considered this, his eyes went to the other man. That one was a dull-looking individual with Coke-bottle glasses. His hat was pulled down low, leaving his face in deep shadow. Between that and the whiskers around his mouth, it was impossible to tell the man’s age.
And who’s this guy? I’ve never seen him before. How long has he been in the casino?
A man with whiskers that striking should have stuck in his memory at least a little. He stayed silent and motionless, and Firo didn’t know what to make of him.
In contrast to the taciturn bespectacled man, the young man scanned Firo’s group, then gave an easy smile. As the slot machine finished its performance, he slowly began to clap.
“Wonderful. You’ve put on a very interesting show here.”
The young man had lightly referred to the bloodthirsty fight to the death as “a show.” He was clearly abnormal, and even as Ladd smiled, his temples twitched slightly. “Who’re you, bastard?” he asked.
Bowing as respectfully as a butler, the young man introduced himself to everyone in the casino, Ladd included. “Pardon me. My name is Melvi.”
“Melvi? That’s one wacky name. If you enjoyed the show, you better be prepared to pay up.”
“Pay? Pay, hmm…? Will this do, then?”
Melvi reached toward the slot machine’s payout window, catching a few of the coins that were jingling out of it.
“Nah, not enough. I ain’t cheap. You can’t fudge it with that.”
When he heard that, Graham gasped, then turned to Shaft and Lua, who’d come downstairs. “Not good… Shaft, Miz Lua, let me tell you an extremely not-good story. That Melvi fella… He’s the type Ladd hates the most.”
“…You’re right,” Lua murmured.
“Yeah…,” Shaft agreed, clutching his head.
The people Ladd hated most were the type that didn’t even consider the possibility that they might die. The type that got carried away, thinking their golden days would go on forever.
Despite the danger around him, the man didn’t show the slightest trace of fear, nor did he seem prepared to die. He peppered Ladd with jokes, simply and calmly.
He was acting as if he was a god here.
What the man was doing was guaranteed to whip up Ladd’s homicidal instincts. Shaft tried to figure out who he might be, but even Sham’s knowledge held nothing about him.
Melvi gave a troubled smile. Then he took the cheapest type of token out of his pocket, fed it into the second slot machine from the right and, in an elegant motion, pulled the lever.
“?”
As Firo and the others frowned, the slot machine’s reels spun vigorously. However, while they were still spinning, Melvi dropped a second token into the third machine from the right, then pulled its lever as well.
Depositing a coin in the middle slot machine, he pulled its lever, too. As he did, the first picture on the second machine from the right stopped on [7].
The moment he saw that, Firo felt horror crawl down his spine.
Hey, don’t tell me…
As the fifth slot machine began to spin, the second reel on the second machine and the first reel on the third machine stopped, both on [7].
It can’t be.
At that point, the others also figured out what was happening on the row of slot machines.
Once he’d set the sixth machine in motion, Melvi took a rather theatrical step, then gave another deep bow. He’d directed this one at Firo, not Ladd. That was when the third reel on the second machine from the right stopped, forming a perfect row of sevens.
The slot machine played its mechanical song of benediction.
A few seconds later, the third machine began the same melody, and then the fourth, so that a canon of slot machine music echoed in the casino.
Finally, the sixth machine from the right also produced triple sevens: Melvi had demonstrated a miracle.
Nader had won his initial jackpot on the machine on the far left. The machine on the far right was the one that had arrested Ladd and the others. In other words, the row of seven slots had all—on the same day, in the space of half an hour—turned out jackpots one after another.
Naturally, Firo understood: The only ones who’d call that a miracle were fools who never doubted anyone, messengers of God, or the very person who’d pulled off the cheat.
“You slimy piece of…,” Firo grumbled.
Ladd wasn’t the only one. Firo also decided this man was an enemy, and he glared at him, his temper growing sharper.
However, Melvi parried his glare with a friendly smile. In the midst of the slot machine ensemble, he spread his arms wide, as if to say he was the owner of the vast number of coins they’d ejected.
As the music stopped, he spoke politely to Firo. “I would have liked to see more of your show…but I thought, if I watched any longer, I wouldn’t have time to greet you properly.
“In any case, it’s almost time for my escort to arrive.”
Outside the casino
“It’s quiet now, so…I think we could probably go in…”
“Miss Annie, I really wouldn’t. It’s been incredibly noisy in there for a while.”
Annie was trying to follow Ennis, and Czes was still encouraging her to stay back. Even Annie didn’t seem sure whether she should go in. Every so often, she would mutter things like, “If I used someone stronger…” and “I can’t afford to lose this body,” but Czes’s ears didn’t catch half of it. He guessed she was probably frightened and confused about something, and he’d been trying to come up with ways to get her to wait outside.
He, Ennis, and Firo were immortal, so they’d be fine, but that wasn’t true of Annie. Or at the very least, Czes wasn’t aware that it was. Hence, he wanted her to act out her romantic rivalry with Ennis in some other, less dangerous direction.
After all, since he’d become an immortal while he was still a child, love affairs were foreign to him. As one of his few amusements, he wanted to watch Firo stuck in this tug-of-war.
Precisely because Czes was thinking like a small-time scoundrel, Annie was a valuable part of his entertainment; he didn’t want to lose her.
…However, curses—like chickens—come home to roost.
As Czes attempted to relish the unhappiness of his neighbor and his woman troubles, he received a just reward.
In other words, he began to develop woman trouble of his own.
“Czes? …That is you, isn’t it, Czes?”
“Huh?”
Someone had called to him abruptly from behind, and he responded involuntarily.
A girl who seemed slightly older than Czes was standing there.
“Oh, thank goodness… I knew it was you!”
She must have been afraid she’d gotten the wrong person. The girl sounded a little timid, but she smiled at him, sighing with relief.
“…Mary?”
Without thinking, he said her name.
Mary Beriam, the daughter of Senator Beriam, was the girl who’d been taken hostage by the men in black suits during the Flying Pussyfoot incident.
Czes only pretended to be a child, and he’d tried to use her as camouflage by playing with her on the train. If she still remembered him now, more than three years later, apparently both he and the incident had made a deep impression on her.
By the time he realized he should have insisted she had the wrong person, it was too late. She took his hands and looked down at him. She was a little taller than he was.
“Huh? Czes, were you always shorter than me?”
It was an innocent, childlike question.
Breaking out in a cold sweat, Czes said the first thing that came into his head.
“I—I haven’t hit my growth spurt yet. I’ll get taller soon. It kind of bugs me, so could you not bring it up?”
“Oh! I—I’m sorry, Czes. I was just…so happy…”
Mary was as timid as she had been three years ago, but time had changed her, transforming her from a child younger than Czes to a girl in her early teens.
“But… Really, thank you so much for what you did for me on that train! If you hadn’t given me courage, I…I might have died there…” Mary pulled Czes into a tight hug.
An ordinary boy would probably have blushed, but Czes went pale instead.
Oh, hell. If I’m friends with this girl, she’ll eventually realize I’m immortal.
As fellow immortals, Firo’s group didn’t pose a problem, but if ordinary people found out about him, things would get hairy. He’d experienced that far too many times already. On top of that, this girl was a senator’s daughter. If she told her father the immortals’ secret and he happened to believe her, there was bound to be trouble.
But why now?!
As Mary hugged him, Czes began to curse his own fate. America was a big country, and naturally, it was no coincidence that Mary was here. The being who’d created the inevitability Czes wanted to curse spoke from behind the girl, and it wasn’t God.
“Is that the boy who saved you on the train, Mary?”
When Czes looked toward the voice, he saw a boy about Mary’s age, right at the beginning of his teens.
“Well, we’ll go get Mr. Melvi, so you wait here, Mary. If we take you into a casino, your father will be furious.”
The boy started down the stairs, followed by an entourage of several other people. As he looked at that group, Czes realized what position the boy occupied. Even as the situation bewildered him, the face of his roommate rose in his mind.
Firo… What in the world did you do?
Inside the casino
“Whoops, speak of the devil. Here they come,” Melvi murmured, turning toward the stairs.
The employee who’d come tumbling down those stairs had already been helped by other staff members, who’d carried him into the office.
Everyone who was still in the casino followed Melvi’s gaze to the empty stairs and heard several pairs of footsteps, coming down.
The first person to appear was a young man in a formal swallowtail coat. He wore a pair of goggles on his forehead. Between those and the gloves on both of his hands, he seemed to be a biker.
A biker in a swallowtail coat struck them as odd, but several of the others who followed him down seemed out of place in a casino as well. The most striking one was a boy who seemed to be a few years older than Czes and Rail, no more than Ricardo’s age. He was smiling ingenuously. Behind him came several beautiful women who wore faint smiles and chic dresses of black and white. Tall, muscular men in black suits formed a protective perimeter around them— And finally, a man with the exact same features and clothes as the first man descended the stairs as the group’s rearguard.
The boy, who was guarded front and rear by a set of twins in swallowtail coats, smiled and began waving as soon as he saw Melvi. The reaction was terribly unsophisticated. It intensified the impression his black clothes gave, and Firo, who was steeped in the criminal underworld, felt an indescribable eeriness about him.
It wasn’t that he sensed malice behind it; it was just that the kid’s straightforward innocence felt wrong somehow.
In contrast to the boy, Melvi wore his smile like a mask. He went up to the group that stood at the foot of the stairs. “Well, well. Young Master Carzelio. To think you’d come in person.”
“I keep telling you to call me Cazze.”
“No, no, I’m here to deliver a formal greeting. I can’t call you by your nickname.”
A greeting? Overhearing the pair’s exchange, Firo frowned. Come to think of it, he did say something like that earlier.
As if he’d read Firo’s mind, Melvi turned back to face him. With an exaggerated gesture, he said, “All right, once again, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Firo Prochainezo. My name is Melvi. I will be serving as the dealer for the Runoratas’ room, in the casino which that family is about to open.”
Melvi bowed politely. From behind him, Carzelio spoke to Firo, his childlike eyes shining even more brightly. “So you’re Firo from the Martillos?! I’ve heard about you! Thank you very much for being part of my grandfather’s event!”
“Your grandfather?”
“Oh! …I’m sorry. I hadn’t introduced myself! I’m Carzelio Runorata!”
The moment the boy gave his name, Firo stiffened again.
Someone with blood ties to the Runoratas, huh? I knew it.
Firo’s cheeks were drawn and tense, while Carzelio smiled at him cheerfully. “I’ll only be there as a guest, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what kind of betting your group does!”
“…No, we’re honored to have been invited,” Firo told him, although the courtesy was empty. Forcing a smile, he turned to Melvi. “Then all that earlier stuff was part of your ‘greeting’?”
Melvi shrugged. “A grifter, an unnatural jackpot, a thug with a gun. I was looking forward to seeing how you’d handle it, and it was quite exhilarating. You appear to have a lot of fascinating friends. That last fight… That unforeseen complication was a sight to behold, but I feared I was going to run out of time, so I took the liberty of stopping it.”
“……!”
According to Melvi, everything—all the way back to the card sharp—had been a setup.
Firo thought he might be bluffing, but then again, he might be telling the truth. Even if the latter was true, Melvi probably hadn’t told the cheater what he was really after. He’d just egged him on by telling him something else. As far as Firo was concerned, even that made the man a hopeless lowlife.
Dammit… I knew it. He does look like somebody. He’s the spitting image of…
Of who? Who does he look like?
I’ve seen him. I’ve seen this guy before…
The murky thoughts that welled up inside him got in the way, and Firo couldn’t quite focus all his hostility on him.
However, someone else certainly could; he smiled with consummate malice at Melvi.
“I see, I see… Yeah, I get it… It all makes sense now. I get it all the way down, right to the bottom.” Ladd Russo chuckled as if he was enjoying himself. In a slow, menacing motion, he turned to face Melvi. “The Runorata Family, huh? Well, ain’t that something. You’re one of the biggest outfits out here.”
“Melvi, who is that man?” Carzelio asked.
Melvi smiled. “A murderer, just a maniac. There’s nothing to worry about, Master Carzelio.”
“A murderer?! Wow! I’ve never seen one of those before!”
Unlike when he’d spoken to Firo, Carzelio sounded like a genuine child, and his eyes sparkled. Everyone else found it disturbing.
Taking the boy’s rather unhinged words at face value, Ladd joined the conversation on the same frequency. “Oho. So it’s your first time seeing a homicidal maniac, huh? Well, today’s your lucky day, kid. And hey, pretty soon, you just might get to see this very same maniac butcher somebody.”
Ladd rolled his left shoulder lightly, then asked Melvi a question, without bothering to hide his hostility. “So is that what this is? Is that what you’re thinking? You’re connected to the Runorata Family, so if you speak up and say so, there ain’t nobody who’d lay a finger on you?”
“Yes. Anyone who did would be a fool, wouldn’t they?” Melvi said bluntly, and he smiled.
Ladd already knew it—even now, when he was faced with a bloodthirsty killer, Melvi didn’t have any fear that he might die here.
“So is that it? You think there couldn’t possibly be any fools like that around here? Basically, you think there’s no way you could die… Ain’t that right?”
“Well, of course.” Still smiling, Melvi spoke with assurance, as if he was intentionally goading him. “Certainly not because of you.”
“So you mean to say that— Die.”
Right in the middle of his sentence, as he paused for breath—Ladd was already in motion.
Closing several feet, he expertly shifted his center of gravity and brought his prosthetic hand down on him diagonally, at maximum force. If that attack hit home, the man’s upper half would splatter like a tomato hit by a baseball bat before he even had time for regret.
And yet, Melvi didn’t even try to dodge.
Just before the blow fell, the bearded man with glasses cut in from the side, caught Ladd’s arm with one hand—and, in an economical motion, broke down Ladd’s center of gravity.
“…Hunh?”
Although Ladd didn’t understand what had happened, the momentum of his lethal attack was stolen away, then converted into a throw and used against him. He spun, flying off to the side behind Melvi, where he crashed into the casino wall.
“Gah…!”
“Ladd!” Graham was startled, but Ladd got up as though nothing had happened. Smiling, he glared at the man who’d gotten in his way.
“Whoa, ow-ow-ow… So what are you butting in for, Whisker-Specs?”
Ladd hit the bearded man with the same intent to kill he’d turned on Melvi, but the man didn’t respond. He just stood in front of Ladd, barring his way, guarding Melvi.
Meanwhile, that maneuver had shocked Firo in a different way.
“…Wow.”
It was probably something similar to the martial arts he’d learned from Yaguruma… But could he have diverted the speed and force of Ladd’s attack? No matter how much he trained, he’d probably have to be on Yaguruma’s level before he could do that in the middle of an actual fight.
That guy is genuinely bad news. Is he a Runorata man? Who the hell is he…?
A fella like that… You’d have to be Ronny to— He glanced at Ronny, who was in a corner of the casino, then hastily forced himself to focus. Look, come on, don’t lean on Ronny!
Even as Firo scolded himself, Ladd was closing in on the bearded man, smiling with every step. Then, with even greater speed than earlier, he paid out several high-speed jabs, skimming through a repeating pattern of small steps.
However, evading them all with the slippery flexibility of a willow, the man set the heel of his palm against Ladd’s chest. It looked as if he’d only touched him lightly, but Ladd’s upper body snapped backward, and he crashed to the ground.
As he watched the man twist Ladd around his little finger, Firo’s mouth hung open.
Suddenly, Luck, who’d emerged from the office somewhere in there, called to him. “Firo.”
“Huh? Hey, Luck! Check this guy out. He’s incredible!”
Firo was all worked up, but Luck responded coldly. “I wonder where he learned that sort of thing. He did say he’d been into martial arts recently.”
Firo made an incredulous nose. “Huh?” Luck was talking as if he knew the man.
“…You mean you haven’t caught on?” Luck asked, startled by Firo’s reaction. Then, raising his voice slightly, he called to the man with the beard. “You’re wearing that disguise again? Are you partial to it or something?”
The bearded, bespectacled man shot a glance at Luck.
“The glasses are different and so’s the color of the beard… How’d you know? Man, count on you to notice, Luck.”
The sound of that voice sent a shock through Firo. “Huh… Wait, what?!”
The voice that issued from that mountainous beard was one Firo knew.
“The hair that shows under your hat doesn’t match the beard at all. You should dye them the same color, at least.”
“Oh yeah. Good point. I can’t do that, though. It’s just not gonna happen, Luck.” With a glance at Ladd, who was back on his feet, the bearded man spoke sadly.
Then he stripped off his hat, false beard, and glasses.
“The thing is, Chané said my hair was pretty.”
“““““?!”””””
At the sight of the face he’d revealed, five people—Firo, Jacuzzi, Christopher, Ladd, and Graham—found themselves speechless at the exact same time.
There was no telling where his previous quiet energy had gone. Now that he’d shown himself, the redheaded man casually raised a hand as if he was a regular young guy, the kind you could find anywhere in town.
“Hey, Firo.”
“Fuh… Felix?!”
“Oho, you’re finally calling me Felix on instinct, instead of Claire! Good, fantastic! Claire’s dead. Now I live only in my girl’s heart.”
“No, hang on, hold it! What’s going on here?! Explain all this, Felix!”
Felix Walken, formerly known as Claire Stanfield—originally a hitman nicknamed Vino, he’d faked his own death on the Flying Pussyfoot, began using the name of Felix “the Handyman,” and embarked on a new life.
Due to his unparalleled physical abilities and strong will, he was often called things like genius, monster, and the ultimate hitman. On Firo’s list of people he never wanted to make an enemy of, he was right up there with Ronny. That said, he’d been a friend of Firo’s since they were kids, and the guy was a sworn ally to the Gandor brothers as well.
“Explain, huh? Well, uh, it won’t take much explaining.” At that, Felix looked away just a little awkwardly—
Then, smiling, he hit Firo with the news, point-blank.
“Sorry, Firo. I’m not on your team this time.”
Somewhere in New York Chané’s hideout
“By the way, Chané. I hear you have a lover.”
In the apartment, Chané’s moving reunion was still underway.
Chané, now dressed, flinched at her father’s words.
I knew it. Father knows everything. I could never keep a secret from him.
She was certain of this, but at the same time, she grew uneasy. It was an unease her old self had never felt. She couldn’t really put a name to it. She clenched her fists lightly, waiting to hear what her father would say next.
The words that came out of his mouth were not the ones she had expected at all.
“He’s quite an interesting fellow, isn’t he?”
“……?”
From the way her father spoke, it sounded almost as if they’d met already. Chané cocked her head, puzzled.
As if answering her question, Huey gave a thin smile.
“Before coming to see you, I met and spoke with him briefly…and made a bit of a contract with him.”
Inside the casino
“See, I made a bit of a contract with my girl’s old man. I’m the bodyguard for that snotty punk Melvi over there.”
As Felix bluntly called the person he was supposed to guard “snotty,” Melvi shrugged and grinned sarcastically.
“I didn’t want to square up against you guys, so I wore a disguise and hoped you wouldn’t figure it out. But then you went and saw right through it, Luck.”
“Wait, just… Hold it, about—everything.”
“Oh, I really am just a bodyguard, so rest easy there. If he’d told me to crush or bump off the Martillos and the Gandors, I mean, even if it was my girl’s old man who was asking… You know?”
Firo didn’t understand at all, and he pressed his old friend for answers. “No, I don’t know! Don’t give me that! What’s this contract?!”
“Hey…”
A voice spoke from another direction. The emotions in it were as hot as compressed magma, and Firo tensed up.
“You… I remember you, bastard… Your voice, that red hair, those joker eyes… Yeah, like I’d ever forget!”
The voice belonged to Ladd. The feelings that had begun to churn inside him when he saw Felix were joy, rage, nostalgia—and an overwhelming urge to murder him.
“What is this…?” (Kill, kill, kill, kill…) “Is this casino actually Neverland or something?” (Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…) “How come all these old pals and buddies and people I want to slaughter keep turning up?” (Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill…)
His glaring eyes, the breath he exhaled as he spoke, every tiny gesture—it all exuded a boiling, savage intent, to the point that no matter what Ladd actually said, it sounded as if he was actually muttering the word kill.
Although Ladd was obviously not acting normal, the redheaded Handyman spoke to him in a friendly tone. “Hey there. You survived, huh? Glad to see your girl’s doing well, too.”
When Felix shot a glance at Lua, she paled. Those words seemed to have tipped her off as well: This redhead was the red monster she’d once encountered on the roof of a train.
“Sorry about using you as a threat that time. But y’know, since you fell for a homicidal maniac, you’re probably prepared for ugly stuff to happen to you, right?”
Luck looked from Felix, who was smiling, to the frightened woman. “I don’t know the circumstances here, but I suspect you did something awful to this woman. You owe her a better apology.”
“What?! Luck, c’mon! What kind of problem kid do you think I am?” Felix refuted the idea in a lackadaisical tone, but he knew Luck had a point. “…That said, uh, maybe so. Should I apologize more sincerely or something?”
While Felix was casually asking Luck for advice—
* * *
—Ladd hurled half of the broken roulette table at him.
As his bloodlust soared to new heights, the adrenaline seemed to have boosted his strength. Ignoring the screams of the muscles in his right arm, he pitched a chunk of roulette table that had to weigh over forty pounds as if it were a baseball.
Felix knocked it out of the air with a heel drop, using the kickback to launch himself into the air.
Just then, another face closed in, right in front of him. It was Christopher, who also had a bone to pick with him. Launching himself off a nearby baccarat table, he tried to hit the airborne Felix with a spin kick, but using Christopher’s outstretched leg as a stepping-stone, Felix jumped even higher.
The ceiling wasn’t all that high. Grabbing the chandelier, he swung from it like a pendulum, then used his momentum to execute a midair jump, as if he were on a flying trapeze at the circus.
Then he kicked the approaching wall, bouncing off it and toward Ladd.
Christopher tried to break in from the side and counterstrike, but Graham attacked him with his giant wrench. “That’s my brother Ladd’s mark! If you get in the way, I’ll turn you into a sad story they’ll tell down through the ages!”
“Look, seriously, you’re the one who’s in the way!”
As they clashed again, beside them, Ladd picked up the other half of the roulette table, swinging it at Felix.
Before long, that violence pulled in both Christopher and Graham, and they rampaged around the casino like a mini tornado.
“Agh, no, you shouldn’t fight!” Carzelio scolded them, as if he were reprimanding naughty little kids. Jacuzzi and the others stared at him, thinking that he really couldn’t be quite right in the head.
Meanwhile, a pale-faced Firo yelled desperately at the core of the violence.
“Wait— Don’t— Knock it off, fellas! Enough already!”
“I think you should probably evacuate your employees,” Luck said calmly.
Firo signaled his staff with a glance. “You too, Ennis. For now, take those kids and get outside…” As he spoke, he spotted a man on the stairs, scrambling to get out the door. It was the guy who’d said Ladd had told him about this place. The one who’d touched off this riot.
What, he’s making a run for it?!
He instinctively yelled, trying to stop him, but—
“Oh, he doesn’t matter. That man’s scum. Just let him be.” Melvi spoke in a quiet voice; he’d come up right beside Firo.
“…?! Why, you— When did you…?!” Firo snapped at him, not bothering to feign civility.
Putting his face up close to Firo’s, Melvi whispered in his ear, taunting him. “Your true colors are showing. That’s no good. Dealers should always wear a poker face.”
“I’m just the manager. I’m not a dealer.” Listening to the sound of a roulette table being smashed up nearby, Firo narrowed his eyes. “If you weren’t with the Runoratas, I’d be rolling you up in a rug and dumping you in the Hudson right about now.”
“You do say some frightening things. Have I ever done anything to wrong you?”
“Nope. I’ll do you a favor and take the blame for today, since I was the idiot who didn’t see it coming… But I’m sure now. You’re a psycho. And I’m sure you’ve got something up your sleeve for that gambling meet.”
Firo was trying to gauge the other man’s real ability, and he wasn’t being the least bit careless. However, he genuinely had seen the young man’s face somewhere before, and the slight confusion unsettled him.
Dammit, who is he? Where have I seen this guy…?
Meanwhile, Melvi smiled and continued on, unperturbed. “You and I have become friends, after all. Why don’t we play a little game on the day?”
“…There, see? You’re planning to swipe something from us, aren’t you? What is it? Territory? Money?”
Firo snorted, but Melvi’s eyes narrowed. Leaning in even closer to Firo, he whispered in a voice only he could hear.
“What I want…is Szilard Quates’s knowledge. That’s all.”
“—?!” Firo tensed.
At the same time, still smiling, Melvi bit through his own lip.
A little blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth, and a few seconds later, the blood began to writhe as if it had a will of its own, returning to the wound on his lip…until at last, even the wound was gone.
“……!”
Firo stared in silence, his eyes wide.
“I hope we have a chip that’s worth enough to balance the wager, but…”
Wearing the same masklike smile he’d worn a moment ago, Melvi spoke as if nothing had happened.
“I anticipate our match will be a good one, Firo Prochainezo.”
Outside the casino
Hurry! I’ve gotta get outta here, fast!
Dammit, what are those monsters?
And the Runorata Family, too…? I ain’t gonna stick around for that!
Nader stripped off his suit jacket, leaving himself in his button-down shirt. He hit the top of the stairs just as he was tying the bundles of bills up in the jacket.
But…is this okay?
Abruptly, the promise he’d made when he was young flickered through his heart.
Isn’t this my chance to make a change?
Something deep inside Nader was trying to keep him there.
Right now, this was definitely no place for normal people. But what if that meant he’d get a chance to stop being normal here?
Hesitating, Nader stopped in his tracks.
Right in front of him, some young children were talking. The scenery was peaceful. As he took it in, that promise came back to him more vividly.
Be a hero…
No, but… What am I supposed to do there?
If he gave back the money, at least, would he stop feeling as if he was in their debt? With that thought in mind, Nader hesitantly started to turn around. Facing him down was a girl in her late teens, glaring at him.
“……?” He didn’t recognize her. He’d taken his jacket off; did she think that was weird?
As Nader wondered about that, the girl quietly approached him. Then she spoke in a hate-filled voice only he could hear.
“Nader Schasschule… Why are you here, hmm?”
With a shudder, he felt all his blood retreat into his depths, while a cold sweat broke out all over his skin. He didn’t recognize the girl’s voice, but that sticky tone of hers was familiar. It really didn’t match her appearance.
“Were you sneaking around during the Chicago incident as well?” she asked.
“……”
He had no memory of any “Chicago incident,” but he couldn’t even argue. He’d tensed up so fast he could hear all his joints creak.
As if matching the rhythm of those strange noises, the girl gave her name. There was a sharp light in her eyes.
“We…Hilton…will never forgive traitors.”
“Agh… AAAAAAaaaaaAAAaaAaaAAAH!”
With a scream that was pretty far from anyone’s idea of a hero, Nader took to his heels.
He didn’t have the mental capacity to feel conflicted anymore. He just followed his instincts and ran.
At this point, running was all he could do.
As he watched the man sprint away from the casino, another man who’d just arrived adjusted his glasses and frowned. “…What on earth was that? Has there actually been some sort of trouble here?”
The man who headed for the casino’s entrance, walking a little faster, was Maiza Avaro, the Martillo Family’s treasurer.
A client who’d just happened to run past him on the street had told him “Some guy’s knocking over your casino!” and so he’d hurried over to check on things.
Spotting Czes and Annie near the casino’s entrance, Maiza called to them, although he didn’t stop.
“Are you two all right? I heard they’d had trouble here.”
“Oh…Maiza.” Czes, who was standing next to a girl Maiza didn’t recognize, looked startled.
“We don’t really know, but there’s been an incredible racket down there…” Annie’s face had already returned to normal.
When Maiza heard that, all he said was, “You three get away from here and take shelter in another building immediately.” Then he started rapidly down the stairs.
He had no idea what he was about to see down there.
A few minutes earlier Inside the casino
“Felix, I’m leaving now. Stop playing around, would you?” Melvi said, turning his back on Firo.
When he heard him, Claire launched himself off the floor, instantly putting distance between himself and the other three.
Several casino tables had been broken, and three of the chandeliers were on the floor.
Firo was kind of amazed they’d managed to do so much damage in the minute or so he’d spent talking to Melvi, but at this point he didn’t have the presence of mind to be shocked, or the time to clutch his head in anguish.
He’s…an immortal?
And Felix is his bodyguard?
That meant Firo had no chance of making like a gangster and doing something about the guy in an ambush.
“Hey… Hold up. We’re not done yet.” Panting, Ladd set his hands on the edge of an as-yet-unharmed baccarat table and squeezed, making it creak audibly. If left to himself, he would probably pick up the table one-handed.
Graham and Christopher were also watching Felix closely. As one would expect from people who’d just inflicted horrendous violence on each other, they were out of breath, and their foreheads were sweaty.
Although he’d been in the thick of it all, Felix Walken wasn’t even breathing hard, and there wasn’t a single drop of sweat on his sleeves. “Would you fellas hurry up and learn you can’t beat me already? Whaddaya mean, ‘We’re not done yet’? Don’t get the wrong idea. We never even started.”
Felix had composure to spare, and he wasn’t through goading Ladd and the others. With a bored sigh, he turned his back on them. “If you’ve got beef with me, bring it anytime. Feel free to come at me with as many friends as you want. Try to give me a little challenge.”
When he’d said that much, he stopped dead, then looked back and went on. “We were at Firo’s casino today, though, so I made sure nobody bled on it.”
The expression on his face belonged to an endlessly callous killer—that of Vino.
Jacuzzi, who’d been careless enough to look, felt his consciousness start to drift out of reach. Rail broke out in a cold sweat, her expression tense.
Any ordinary person would have been petrified, even if they’d only glimpsed his eyes, but Ladd’s urge to kill swelled even further—and he laughed. “Ha-ha… Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Haw-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! ‘Bring it anytime,’ huh? …Yeah! That’s a good one! That’s exactly what laid-back lugs who think they won’t die always say! Yeah, yeah, yeah! I’ll do that for you any day, buddy!”
His laughter stopped abruptly, and he actually did pick up the baccarat table with one hand. “In that case, heck… It’s fine if I go now, ain’t it, Rail Tracer…!”
However, Ladd saw something that stopped him in his tracks.
At some point during the exchange, Melvi had taken a handgun from his jacket, and he was pointing it at Lua.
“……!”
Instantly, some of the ferocity he’d focused on Felix was diverted to Melvi.
Letting the enormous malice flow past him as if it were a cool breeze, Melvi put his gun away, still smiling. “You take my meaning, don’t you? Let that be enough for today.”
Melvi tilted his head, his lips curving. Ladd clenched his fist, tightly. He squeezed so hard his fingernails split the skin on his palm, and blood trickled out. “Listen up. There are two guys I swore I’d kill once I was out of the big house. One’s the ginger over there, and the other’s Huey Laforet.” Ladd’s voice was brimming over with rage. Several people reacted to the name “Huey”—and in particular, Rail’s expression changed conspicuously.
“You said your name was Melvi, yeah? …You’re the third guy on that list,” Ladd spat, looking at the floor. Nobody around him could see his eyes, but the vicious grin they saw on his lips made the air in the casino as sharp as ice.
For just a moment, Melvi’s expression nearly vanished. However, he promptly recovered his smile. “…Do as you please. If you can kill me, that is,” he said, starting toward the stairs.
Felix went next, and Carzelio was about to follow him when he seemed to realize something. His eyes widened in surprise, and he hastily turned back to Firo. “I’m sorry our dealer’s bodyguard got into a fight and broke your casino. If you bill us for the repair fees and your losses, the Runorata Family will guarantee as much of it as we can. I promise.”
Carzelio’s eyes were honest. He probably meant exactly what he said, but it made Firo feel as if he was being challenged in another way.
It took everything he had to respond. “…Well, thanks. I’m grateful for your generosity, kid.”
When Melvi came up beside Ronny, his steps slowed, and he whispered with a thin smile. “What’s between Firo and myself is just a spat between immortals. I have no intention of opposing the Martillos, so be at ease, Ronny.”
Melvi spoke as if he knew what Ronny really was. The Martillo Family’s secretary responded impassively. “I’m not so sure about that. Going after Firo is the same as firing on our family, but… Well, never mind.”
Without saying another word, Ronny watched the Runorata group go.
Then, just as Melvi stepped onto the stairs that led up to ground level, a belated visitor appeared.
A tall, bespectacled man looked in from the top of the stairs. Almost immediately, he saw Firo in the center of the casino and the wretched condition of the place. “Firo! Are you all right? What is…? What in the world…?” Maiza descended quickly.
Just as he reached the last step…he froze, staring at Melvi’s face.
“…Excuse me.” With a nod to Maiza, Melvi passed him, leading his entourage back above ground.
Stiffly, Maiza tried to keep watching Melvi, but other people came between them, and then he couldn’t see him anymore.
After they were gone, Maiza murmured just one word. His eyes looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
“…Gretto…?”
As soon as Firo heard that name, something clicked deep inside him.
He could almost hear it, like the sound of a lock being opened.
And in fact, a lock had been forced open in the depths of his heart, and a memory that ordinarily stayed out of sight had begun rampaging through his mind.
Gretto.
Gretto Avaro.
He was Maiza’s kid brother, a fledgling alchemist who’d been eaten by Szilard Quates.
In other words, Gretto’s memories had been inside Szilard’s memories, which meant they were still dormant in Firo.
I see…
At that point, Firo finally remembered, realizing why Melvi had looked familiar.
When Szilard Quates ate people he hadn’t known for long, he never really remembered what they looked like. The familiarity had come from Gretto’s own memories.
In other words, that guy Melvi—
He was identical to Gretto’s own reflection in a mirror—the one Gretto himself knew.
Outside the casino
“Huh? Czes? Where could he have gone…?”
Mary looked around, mystified. However, the moment Felix had emerged from downstairs, Czes had bolted without even taking time to scream. On top of that, the woman who’d been with him had vanished somewhere along the way. Mary tilted her head in confusion, a little dazed.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mary,” Carzelio said. “I’ll take you home, then.”
“Huh…? Oh, yes. Thank you, Cazze!”
“It’s fine. I have to give the letter my grandfather sent with me to Mr. Beriam anyway.”
With that, Carzelio showed Mary to the car.
As if taking the children’s place, a man who’d been standing beside the car slowly walked up to Melvi. “To think you’d make your subordinates pull a stunt like that just so you could introduce yourself to the enemy. What are you trying to do here?”
The man wore glasses, and he had a cloth tied over his shaved head. From the fact that the twin bodyguards weren’t moving, he seemed to be an acquaintance.
“Don’t look so upset, Tim.” Melvi laughed.
Tim’s expression turned sour. “…Are you even a little conscious that you’re the leader of Time? There’s no way you don’t know just how big the current experiment is.”
“Have no fear. I’ll do everything I’ve been told, and nothing that’s forbidden. In all else, I’m free. Isn’t that right? It’s true of me, and those of you in Larva, and Rhythm, and Sham and Hilton, too.” Melvi grinned.
Realizing it was pointless to say anything else to him, Tim’s face went blank, and he replied tersely. “I hate your guts. The sooner you get that through your head, the better.”
“Please don’t let it bother you. I can’t stand you, either.”
Starting toward his car, Melvi added one final comment.
“I obey the will of my master. That’s all.”
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