Baccano! - Volume 8 - Chapter Pr1

PROLOGUE I

CAMORRISTA

1934A basement somewhere in Manhattan

“Firo Prochainezo.”

“…”

A person had called his name.

His real name, the one his parents had given him.

Even though he’d heard it, the young fellow stayed silent. The man who sat facing him muttered with apparent satisfaction:

“You’re a sight to behold. You look just like a Broadway star…in a comedy anyway.”

“If you’re jealous, I’d be glad to trade with you, Agent Edward.”

With a complicated expression that held a mixture of anger and scorn, Firo Prochainezo raised his head, giving respect that was anything but.

His features made it hard to decide whether to call him a boy or a young man, and his wrists were firmly linked by dull silver handcuffs.

Firo’s hands were currently useless, and the room he found himself in was cramped.

Even so, he couldn’t tell what the room was supposed to be for or even what kind of facility it was a part of. The police had put him in a car and dropped him off outside Manhattan in front of a nondescript, ubiquitous brick building, and except for this room—the first one he’d been taken to—he had no way of knowing what the place was.

The walls had no windows, only a lone mirror, and there was a sturdy door a good distance away from him. The walls were pale red brick and cold concrete, and the light of the electric bulb reflected off them to create an unsettling, lukewarm atmosphere.

Fine particles gleamed in that light. Imagining clouds of dust getting into his lungs, Firo began breathing more shallowly.

“This is a pretty crummy workplace for a guy who’s moved up in the world,” he continued after a time. “Although, I mean, it’s perfect for a clod like you. Or, what, did your stubbornness bite you in the ass and get you demoted right off the bat?”

In response to getting lip from a kid who was clearly younger than he was, Agent Edward Noah, a fairly young member of the Bureau of Investigation himself, shrugged and continued to look down at the criminal in front of him.

“This interrogation room is a bit special. Sure, it’s tacky, but you’ll just have to deal with it.”

“…You’ve changed, Edward.”

“How so?”

“Way back when, even a little jab like that would have made you turn beet red.”

The young fellow’s acrimony didn’t suit his boyish face, and Edward retorted with a barb of his own.

“You’re the one who’s changed.”

“……”

“Way back when, you wouldn’t have let the police take you in so easily, would you?”

The agent was a man Firo had been acquainted with for years, someone he was firmly unable to shake during all that time. So now, in response, Firo quietly looked away.

“…I didn’t want to cause trouble for my family, that’s all.”

“I see, I see. That’s just like you. To a sewer rat like yourself, I bet that piddling little syndicate is the only place that feels like home.”

“The ‘piddling’ was uncalled for. Although, compared with the Department of Justice’s mighty Bureau of Investigation, most syndicates probably seem tiny.”

His comment had been sarcastic, but it seemed to stir something in Edward, who responded to Firo frankly.

“As the Bureau of Investigation, we don’t even have the authority to make arrests, but starting next year, both our name and our organization are going to change. The ‘Federal Bureau of Investigation’… From what I hear, that’s the name we’re switching to. Grand yet simple. Well, I bet ‘the FBI’ is the moniker that ends up sticking.”

“…You’re gonna sound awfully pretentious. So you’re slapping ‘federal’ on the front of it now?”

The Bureau of Investigation.

Originally, the organization had been no more than a small office within the Department of Justice. At present, though, it was something like a representative for all police organizations, with bases all across America.

J. Edgar Hoover, the current director, had stepped into that role in 1924, and since then, the organization had expanded rapidly. In just a few short years, it had gained enough might to make its name heard throughout the country. It was a large organization that had performed thorough investigations of the interstate gangs whose influence had increased during the Prohibition era, and it ruled over the United States as one of the Department of Justice’s trump cards.

“This was a bad year for you people.”

As Edward muttered, his expression was triumphant. He put his face right up close to the cuffed gangster.

“They passed the firearms act, and now you can’t even kill one another in style. It must be real frustrating to put on your show of strength without your tools.”

“I usually use my bare hands, so it’s got nothing to do with me.”

Put briefly, the National Firearms Act, which had gone into effect that year, was a proposal created to shave away the violent potential of the organized crime syndicates who were active behind closed doors throughout the country.

The law limited the possession of a wide variety of weapons and accessories, from fully automatic weapons like Thompson submachine guns all the way to shotguns whose barrels had been sawed off to widen the spray.

“To think you’d ban silencers, too… Are you trying to make helpless civilian weapon makers hang themselves?”

“You think we want ‘helpless civilians’ manufacturing silencers, tools for the sole purpose of assassination?” Edward continued to display the composure of the law with but a light parry. “On top of that, this is the first year since Prohibition ended. Wasn’t that a huge blow to your group? Speakeasies were your main source of income.”

“I hate to tell you this, but whether they’re undercover or out in the open, business is booming at our places.”

“That gambling den you run, too…”

“Look, you’re the one who gets to gloat here. Would you quit constantly trying to pick fights?”

Just when irritation had started to show in the young man’s face—

“Hi there… It’s great to see you two getting along so well.”

—the door opened abruptly, decanting three men into the little room.

“Erm… I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m Bill Sullivan.”

A man with sleepy-looking eyes greeted their captive with a laid-back tone, then gestured to the two behind him.

“Uh… This well-built gentleman is Donald Brown. The one with glasses is Allen Becker. We all work with Edward over there.”

The agent who’d said his name was Bill spoke as if he was introducing friends. The two who stood behind him didn’t move so much as an eyebrow, and their expressions were stern.

“Hmm… I’m sorry we’re so surly around here. It’s a pretty stressful job, you see.”

With a slow gait that matched his voice, Bill sauntered over to stand beside Edward, then read from the papers he was holding, as if confirming their content with Firo.

“Uh, Firo Prochainezo…aged twenty-two. Single. Born in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. Italian father, American mother; both parents contracted tuberculosis and are no longer with us, correct? …Ah, my condolences. After your mother died, you left Hell’s Kitchen and drifted through New York… Then, although we don’t know the particulars, like your father before you, you joined a mafia syndicate…”

“We’re not mafia.”

Even at the mention of his parents’ deaths, Firo had remained expressionless. However, now, for the first time, he turned to face Bill. Shooting him an icy look, he said:

“We’re Camorra.”

Firo Prochainezo was not an upright citizen.

He was what was commonly known as a gangster, a type of person deeply associated with the America of this particular era.

That said, he belonged to an organization affiliated with a system that was known as the Camorra in its home country of Italy. It wasn’t connected to the mafia groups sweeping America at the time, represented by Cosa Nostra.

Unlike the mafia, which had begun in Sicily, this organization was mainly based out of Naples. Its organizational structure and what it traded in differed from the mafia as well, but in America, particularly among people on the right side of the law, the two groups were almost invariably lumped together.

Firo Prochainezo was an executive in one such organization, the Martillo Family, which controlled an extremely limited territory.

Even if he was an executive, he was still one of a dozen of that rank in their group—they made up nearly a quarter of the syndicate.

As the youngest of them, Firo had been put in charge of a small underground casino.

In a family emergency, he was prepared to immediately lay down his life, and at the same time, he was able to steel himself to take the life of an enemy.

This time as well, even as Edward brought him in for questioning, he hadn’t made a single blunder that would have brought unnecessary suspicion down upon him. It was likely that if they tried to get some stopgap information on the underground casino or anything else out of him, he was prepared to keep everything securely under wraps and was fully confident that he could do so.

Beneath the mask of a baby-faced young man, there was a gangster who lived a violent life in the darkness of the city—and at the moment, he was glaring coldly at Bill.

That was Firo Prochainezo’s hidden face.

“Ah… Camorra, right. ’Scuse me. I got that wrong on purpose.”

Bill apologized, beaming, and Firo put on a tense smile as he identified the man in front of him as a definite enemy.

“…Be careful not to walk through our turf after dark, all right?”

“Thanks for the warning.”

With a smile of ostensibly genuine gratitude, Bill went on as if nothing had happened.

“Erm… I think you’ve probably heard already, but we brought you in to ask about the destruction of property at Mist Wall last year. Nobody’s issued an arrest warrant yet, so don’t you act so high and mighty, either, Edward.”

His delivery was so relaxed, you’d never have thought the guy was with the Bureau of Investigation. Firo scowled upon hearing the news, stole a glance at Donald and Allen, then looked back at the man in front of him.

I don’t like this guy one bit.

That last comment, addressed to Edward, was something he wouldn’t have said if he hadn’t heard their earlier conversation. He’d probably been eavesdropping on what was going on inside this room.

“Bill, be serious.”

Donald, the man with the square build, rebuked his partner for his attitude.

Possibly because they were used to this, Edward stood there looking indifferent, and the other man, the one with glasses, patted Firo on the head. He was wearing a disgusted smile.

“Just ignore that, all right? He loves getting sarcastic with little guys like you.”

“Knock it off. I’m not a kid.”

Firo jerked his head, shaking the hand off, and examined the offending, bespectacled figure.

As far as age went, he wasn’t young, but he didn’t really seem middle-aged, either. He was bursting with energy, and he seemed to be a man in his prime.

Pushing his glasses up smartly, the man sat down in the chair facing Firo before Edward could get there.

And then, he leaned back into it with a creak.

“…?”

The man’s attitude was odd, and Firo gave him a quizzical look.

Who did Bill say he was? Allen Becker?

He was acting pretty self-important. Who was this guy?

Is he pushing his luck because I’m a suspect?

Firo was thinking this, unable to figure the other man out, when out of nowhere, he noticed that something seemed weird.

What is it?

He got the feeling he knew the man in front of him.

However, he was pretty sure they hadn’t met before.

That’s right. In the twenty-some years I’ve been alive, I’ve never run into a guy like this.

But he did remember him.

Don’t…tell me…

Just as Firo realized what that meant, the bespectacled man spoke, smirking.

“Careless, Firo Prochainezo.”

Smiling, he held up his right hand for Firo to see, opening and closing it.

“If I’d been hungry, right about now…you would have been my lunch.”

The man’s words were the clincher, and Firo realized exactly who he was.

His memories had been right.

It was true that Firo had never met him before.

However—the man was definitely in his memories.

The memories of a man who Firo had once “eaten” with his right hand: the alchemist Szilard.

Firo Prochainezo wasn’t an upright citizen.

Not only that; it was possible he wasn’t even human.

Four years ago, Firo had been pulled into an incident involving alchemists, and he and his friends had been turned into odd beings known as immortals.

Any and all wounds regenerated immediately.

They didn’t age to match the years they’d lived.

They were creatures compelled to live semi-eternally, whether they wanted to or not.

The only way they could die was by being “eaten” by the right hand of another immortal.

Even if they were packed into an oil drum and dropped to the bottom of the ocean, even if they were diced up and encased in molten iron, they’d be forced to keep living.

That was Firo Prochainezo’s third face.

“The demon’s rules for immortals are pretty fuzzy.”

In front of Firo, who’d frozen up, the man who’d been introduced as Allen shook his head, his lips twisting.

“It’s okay for somebody else to introduce me by a false name. Weirdly enough.”

“Victor… Victor Talbot?”

Tracing a thread of information in memories that technically belonged to somebody else, he watched the man’s past.

Victor Talbot.

As one of the alchemists, he’d summoned the demon and drunk the liquor of immortality, along with Szilard—the man Firo had eaten—and many other companions.

Apparently, he hadn’t gotten along with Szilard or the alchemists that Szilard had eaten, because that was just about the only information the memories had on him.

However, judging by his arrogant attitude, it probably would be hard to find anybody who got along with him, period.

As he reached that conclusion, Firo belatedly paled at the thought that this man’s right hand had been on his head a minute ago.

“Oho!” The kid had told him his real name without trouble, and Victor exhaled, sounding entertained. “Get a load of that. It’s just like the intel said, then?”

Arrogance still intact, Victor glared cheerfully at Firo.

“You’re the one who ate that old bastard Szilard?”

“……”

Firo responded with silence, but inwardly, he clicked his tongue in irritation.

Dammit, I tipped my hand, and now he knows. Still… What did he mean, “like the intel said”?

As if to head off the young man’s doubt, Victor knocked on the desk with one hand and began playing his cards.

“Well, you know, there’s what’s-her-name, Ennis… The little chick who was the old geezer’s clone.”

“…!”

The moment that name came up, Firo stiffened.

At the same time, intense distress threatened to overwhelm him.

“…What about her?”

He knew nothing good would come of rising to the bait, but he had to ask anyway.

Ennis—the girl who’d once fought Firo as Szilard’s underling.

Szilard had formerly had the power to easily take her life if he chose, but now, Firo held that privilege. However, he was very fond of Ennis, and to him—

“Ha! Don’t get so jumpy. See, we knew that doll was stuck with the old guy—well, more like she couldn’t live without him. And now that the geezer’s gone, she’s stuck with you. I’d figured Maiza ate him to avenge his little brother, but that part seemed fishy. So I tried asking a couple’a leading questions, and voilà.”

“That was a dirty trick.”

As Firo clicked his tongue, clear hatred made itself plain on Victor’s face.

“Listen to you! That kinda stings, coming from troublemaking scum like you. Mafia or Camorra, you people are gangsters—enemies of the state.”

His rimless glasses made him look like an intellectual, but the way he was talking said he was itching for a fight. He took a condescending attitude as he ranted at Firo.

“Listen up, punk. I’m gonna keep on playing hardball with you, so don’t you come crying to me later and saying I didn’t warn ya. Let me make one thing clear right now.”

Smacking his right fist into his left palm, Victor the immortal let the young man in front of him feel the brunt of some terrifically personal sentiments.

“See, gangster bastards like you who strut around like you own the place, like you’re the rulers of underworld society—I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, ha— Koff…kaff…ghak… Ha… Kaff… Ha, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate you from the bottom of my soul, you get me? Maybe some of you are good-natured, maybe some of you don’t mess with people on the straight and narrow, maybe some of you think you’re on fire for goddamned justice, but you’re all the damn same to me. Why, you ask? Because fellas like you are what I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, ha— Koff…hack…ghak…!”

Victor choked and coughed, on the brink of suffocating, and Firo eyed him with disgust.

“Don’t keep going until you run out of air. And twice? Are you an idiot?”

“So what if I am?! At least I’m not you! This idiot’s got the upper hand, and you can’t do a damn thing about it.”

“If you know I’m an immortal…don’t you think I might jump you here and now and shove my right hand onto your dome?”

Victor’s abuse was openly hostile now, but Firo had retaliated with a light verbal jab. He’d definitely been careless a minute ago, but under these circumstances, he’d decided that it would still be an effective threat.

His opponent was only about a yard away across the desk. If he kicked the desk up and went underneath, even with cuffs on, he still had a good shot at capturing his opponent’s head.

Firo thought he’d see what the other man’s character was like, based on how he responded to that remark.

Victor didn’t change his attitude, and yet he didn’t give him any openings or look away, either. He just gave a counterattack of his own.

“Don’t make me laugh, you damn brat. You think you’re testing me as an immortal or something?”

“What?”

“You sound like a perp being questioned for robbery. It’s like you just told the detective, ‘I’m gonna jump ya, shove my thumbs in your eyes until it gives you brain damage that leaves you crippled for life.’ You think federal law bends over for threats like that?”

Tch! I guess he’s not just an overbearing moron.

Firo made that call not because he couldn’t argue with his sound logic, but because during that long reply, the agents had changed the mood entirely.

He must have sent them some sort of signal. Donald and Edward had circled around to either side of the desk, and at some point, Bill had lit a cigarette behind Firo’s back. Victor had also slightly shifted his weight in the chair, swiveling his hips to the right.

If it came down to it, the four of them were probably ready to draw their guns and fire at once.

“Are you crazy? If you shoot from there, you’ll take each other out.”

He’d tried to sound as derisive as possible, but Victor answered instantly.

“They’ve already got orders to shoot me right along with you. Hurts like a bitch, but afterward, I’ll just chop off your arms and legs, shut ’em in an iron safe so you can’t regenerate, then let you scream at me to give ’em back while I pay you back double on your face.”

“…Yeah, I guess you would.”

“The ability to use suicide maneuvers freely is one of the few advantages we immortals have.”

Victor’s attitude was as domineering as ever, and Firo decided that continuing this war of words wouldn’t get him anywhere.

So he resorted to violence instead.

With no hesitation, he grabbed the table with his cuffed hands, smoothly tensed his upper and lower body together like a spring, and flung the flat surface up.

The table hurled into the air.

It was a shabby-looking wooden table, but it certainly wasn’t light.

Firo had thrown the table up in the blink of an eye, immediately killed his momentum, looked straight ahead at his target—and froze up.

In front of him, under the airborne table, Victor was nowhere to be seen.

Where is he?!

Before he managed to find him, the table stopped rotating in mid-spin, then dropped back to the floor in its original position.

He heard the sound of a hammer being cocked.

At the same time, a shiny black muzzle appeared in front of Firo.

“All right, sit down.”

Firo slowly looked up—and there was Victor on top of the table, staring down at him right along with the barrel.

Victor gave Firo a smirk, which then became a grin as he spoke.

“I see. Yeah, it’s just like they said: You’re quick to fight, and you’re pretty confident in your strength and agility, too.”

“…Can everybody in the Bureau of Investigation do circus tricks?”

“Hunh… Stuff like this is indispensable when it comes to arresting vicious criminals and enemies of the state. Everyone who’s gone through formal training can do it…easily! More splendidly, swiftly, beautifully than I ever could!” Victor cried triumphantly.

But all the surrounding agents broke in at once:

“Uh… No, sir, I can’t.”

“Quit raising the bar for new recruits on your own say-so, please.”

“Assistant Director Talbot, I wish you’d hurry and get down. You’re getting the table dirty.”

“…Fine. Damn, you people are no fun.”

Sounding a little embarrassed, Victor put his gun away, quietly jumped down to the floor, and resumed his seat.

“…Well, uh, see…the actual jump went the way I’d planned, but landing on the table was an accident.”

“…Huh.”

“……”

“……”

A meaningless, awkward silence passed between Firo and Victor.

After a few breaths, Firo sighed and picked up the conversation again.

“So let’s move on. You made a big fat deal out of hauling me in for my involvement in the damage to the Mist Wall… What exactly are you trying to get me to do?”

Firo, who had been pulled into a certain incident the previous year, was considered a witness to an explosion that had occurred in a high-rise building known as Mist Wall.

The event was several incidents at once, in which humans and immortals from multiple organizations had become entangled in complicated ways, driven by varying motives. In the course of the grand, closed affair, they had assembled in a building owned by Nebula, a vast organization, and had been confronted with a variety of facts.

Led by a man named Christopher, Ennis and Firo had been instantly transported from outside the incident to the inner circle.

Of course, they knew who had actually caused the explosion. However, for a little while, the police strangely hadn’t said a thing to them.

According to Maiza, an upper-level executive in Firo’s syndicate, it sounded as though some politician with ties to that building had put pressure on them, but…

A year had passed, and just when he’d let down his guard completely, they’d hauled him in.

For the love of… I guess I probably should have taken precautions on my end, huh?

Firo cursed his own boneheadedness, and Victor smiled brightly as if to mock him and replied with a seeming non sequitur.

“Well, I just thought I’d suggest you take a little trip.”

“A trip?”

“Yeah, to flowery San Francisco, on the West Coast. A vacation surrounded by sea and sky… Sounds great, doesn’t it? If you’re lucky, you just might meet one of your world’s big stars, and you’ll get to spend time in perfect silence, since nobody there talks to one another.”

Firo had a bad feeling about this.

To people like him, who lived in underworld society, West Coast, San Francisco, and surrounded by sea and sky were loaded phrases, especially when heard from a G-man. The last half of what he’d said had been so blatant that he didn’t even feel like trying to think about what it meant.

There were a nauseating number of hints, and they focused Firo’s thoughts on one place.

And then, wearing his breeziest smile, Victor made one last, hopeless remark, turning that hideous premonition into a reality.

“Ever hear of Alcatraz?”