Baccano! - Volume 3 - Chapter Ep

EPILOGUE

THE FLYING PUSSYFOOT

A few days laterSomewhere in New York

“…And what did you gain by using half of that money to buy tickets?”

Somewhere in Chinatown. A voice spoke to Rachel, mixing with the sound of the ringing phones.

Rachel also answered in a shout that rivaled the voice.

“I don’t know, sir. I was just very tired somehow.”

Unusually for her, she was speaking politely. The listener was the president of the information brokerage with which she did business.

There were stacks of documents in the way, and she couldn’t see his face. However, she was convinced he was smiling.

“Well, it’s up to you whether you make use of that experience in the future or forget it.”

“More than that, I regret that I didn’t get to punch that whiskered pig myself.”

Hearing the frustration in Rachel’s voice, the information broker, whose face couldn’t be seen, asked her a question:

“I have a little information regarding how the aftermath of that incident was dealt with. Would you like to hear it? —I won’t charge you.”

“I won’t stand for it! I swear I’ll take you to court! Over the security on that train, of course, and also over that business with the damned hick and the yellow monkey!”

The fat man with the little mustache was blustering. Once he’d come to after getting his shoulders dislocated by Claire, he’d spent the whole time in the bathroom, shaking with pain and terror. He’d been discovered by a squad of police officers after everything was over. When they’d popped his shoulders back into place, he’d bawled, and the passengers in the dining car had laughed at him.

He was an executive at a major railway company, and the humiliation had been hard for him to bear. As payback for that anger, he’d started to bring legal action against Nebula, the corporation that owned the train. However, someone had blocked that action at the last minute.

The person who had received the mustachioed man in the Nebula reception room was a middle-aged executive with a contradiction—an expressionless smile—plastered across his face.

“I’m afraid that won’t do, Mr. Turner. We’ve paid sufficient reparations, and damaging the image of railway travel would prove unfortunate for you as well.”

“That’s irrelevant! This isn’t about money for me—it’s a matter of pride…”

Just then, the reception room telephone rang.

“I apologize for interrupting our discussion, but the call seems to be for you.”

As he spoke, the executive remained expressionless. The mustachioed Turner grabbed the receiver away from him.

“It’s me! Who the hell are…you…?”

On answering the telephone, Turner’s expression changed dramatically. His face went pale, and as he continued the conversation, he broke out in a cold sweat. Before long, he put the receiver down, then glared at the executive with a fatigued expression.

“That’s dirty. Bringing in politicians…”

“It seems that Senator Beriam also wants to keep the incident as quiet as possible. In this day and age, it’s impossible to cover it up completely, but we can dilute its existence. There were no fatalities among the passengers during the incident, so we’d prefer not to draw too much attention to the matter.”

“B-but…”

“Mr. Turner. I hear you once pinned the blame for your own mistake on a technician. We don’t mind asking those technicians to testify again. If we tell them we’ll hire them away on favorable terms, I’m sure they’ll speak honestly.”

Whiskered Turner went dead white, then left the room, unable to say another word.

The executive sent the final blow at his back:

“What goes around comes around, Mr. Turner. The senator has his eye on you. Unless you work very hard, your company will turn you into a sacrificial pawn…”

“…And that’s how it is, or so I’m told. Does that make you feel a bit better?”

“How do you have information like that, sir?”

“I’m the one who sold the information on our whiskered pig’s past to the executive. It was a trade.”

In the midst of the ringing telephones, the voice spoke to Rachel quite casually:

“If you don’t use information, it rots away. It’s just like a craftsman’s skills. Though I do feel bad about using information about your past without permission.”

Rachel was silent for a while. Then she spoke, addressing the far side of the stacks of paper:

“May I bill you for travel expenses, starting next time? I’m not quite sure why, but I’ve decided to stop stealing rides.”

“I don’t mind in the least. That’s fine. ‘Not knowing why’ is important. I think trusting your own senses is a very good thing.”

Saying something quite unlike an information broker, at the very end, the voice from behind the documents added:

“Just don’t forget your receipts.”

Senator Beriam’s political clout and the railway corporation’s financial muscle were gradually making it as though the Flying Pussyfoot incident had never occurred. There had been one victim among the general public. A conductor had been discovered in the Chicago sewers, and his killer was still at large. The police weren’t putting much effort into the investigation and had concluded that it was unrelated to the events on the Flying Pussyfoot.

The culprit had already left this world behind.

The faceless corpse that had been found in the conductors’ room was assumed to be Claire Stanfield.

The train itself was scrapped, except for the locomotive, and its cars stood quietly in a public park on the outskirts of the city.

Strangely, there was one bit missing from those cars. After they were put on display, someone had taken a piece from the roof of the last one.

Then came December 5, 1933.

On that day, when the Prohibition Act was repealed, people danced for joy on the train and smashed it up, after which it mingled with the scrap iron in the junkyard and vanished.

The Flying Pussyfoot—or “flying prohibition enforcer”—had swaggered across the whole of America along with the Prohibition Act.

In contrast with the demise of the act, its end was far too lonely.

The stage of the incident was covered up, going from darkness into darkness, and no one ever knew what had become of it.

…Except for one piece: the message that had been cut out of the roof.

Baccano! 1931—The End