Ch.119Two Face’s Guests – Michael Husband (4)

She took a sip of the spider venom-infused liquor and giggled while sticking the tip of her tongue out.

“I think I drank it too quickly. My tongue feels numb and I can’t pronounce things properly. Am I already slurring my words from the alcohol?”

“It would be more convincing if you actually slurred your words before saying that.”

Carmen burst into laughter again. She was making it obvious that every word I said amused her. It was easy to tell whether she was genuinely showing her feelings or just pretending.

She took another couple of sips of the strong liquor as if it had obviously been a joke. Despite drinking that much, her pronunciation remained perfectly clear. If anything, the alcohol made her voice softer.

“If I had a lover right now, I would have seduced you, Michael. People need something to compare to understand value. If you give gold to a pauper, wouldn’t they spend it right away? Only someone who already has a silver coin would desire gold, understand its value, and use it properly. I’m a pauper right now. I don’t want to waste gold.”

There was no need to answer seriously. I just chuckled at her words.

“I’ve avoided the worst outcome, then. Men can’t stand seeing detectives, plumbers, and roofers with their women. And they especially can’t stand seeing them sharing drinks at a bar.”

Carmen smiled back. She quickly emptied her glass and ordered two more as if she would pay for them. It seemed like she wanted to compete with me on drinking capacity, but her body was already swaying gently from side to side.

Words leaked from between her lips as she grinned hazily, either from the venom or the alcohol. It didn’t even seem like she meant to speak.

“Alcohol catches fire easily, doesn’t it?”

“It burns pretty well.”

She leaned over the table again, stretching her upper body toward me and coming closer. She even fidgeted a little as if trying to look into my eyes again.

“Then it seems you’ve been drinking water, not alcohol. Your fire has weakened. It’s not blazing. At home it was blazing. Like a bonfire. My family once rented a mountain cabin. There was a fire. It rose so high it felt like being guided from Canaan. I saw that kind of fire in you, but now it’s died down.”

She wasn’t drunk. This woman always spoke ambiguously like this, going off-topic, then somehow returning to the subject. She didn’t seem to have any intention of finishing her thoughts.

“I’m not drunk yet.”

I nodded to her, then picked up the glass of Arachne’s liquor she had ordered and downed it in one go. There was a slightly bitter sensation on the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t feel intoxicated by the venom. I wouldn’t get drunk from this amount.

“If I were drunk, I’d be whining about going to bed. I can’t stand a cold bed. You would have followed Carmen, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t have refused. Men generally don’t refuse women who throw themselves at them or women they can buy. What are you trying to say?”

Carmen pulled a gun from inside her clothes and showed it to me. It was a revolver with a short barrel that used small-caliber bullets. She flicked her wrist to open the cylinder, showing it was completely empty, then placed the gun on the table.

She extended her hand toward me, so I took out my gun and placed it on the table as well. Only then did Carmen smile. It felt like watching a child who’s only satisfied when drawing symmetrically.

“I just think we’re similar. Carmen is driven by desire. You seem to be the same. Why do people pretend there’s meaning in life? Isn’t life about desire, not meaning?”

“Don’t worry about them. They only desire meaning, that’s all.”

Carmen leaned on the table again. She crossed her hands, rested her chin on them, and looked at me. She seemed to have lost all interest in drinking.

“You always have answers. I don’t know if they’re right or wrong, but they’re probably right. If I believe they are, they’ll become right somehow. Let’s be friends. I think having a friend like you would be reassuring.”

She was more incoherent than the ideology of the Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn. Now she was even trying to make friends. She continued without giving me time to answer.

“You don’t have to answer. Carmen will believe Michael is her friend. And when that friend is needed… what’s your fee? It can’t be $10 or $15 a day, can it?”

“Twenty dollars a day, expenses separate.”

“I’ll always believe we’re friends, but when I really need a friend, I’ll come looking for you with $20 per day of friendship needed. That works, right? Even friendship has a standard price.”

I rather liked what she was saying, so perhaps as she said, we were similar people. Not in the details, but in essence.

I took a business card from my wallet and tossed it to her. I wouldn’t be taking any jobs until next week, and my house would be empty, so even if she came looking, there would be nothing for her to find.

After that, we exchanged meaningless conversation. More precisely, she kept throwing questions at me. Questions that required no thought. Words that could be brushed off with appropriate jokes and interjections.

In the end, I didn’t take her case. I got completely drunk and returned to Two Face in a driver hired from Arachne. The bartender wasn’t guarding the back door, so I walked in through it and collapsed onto the bed.

My memory was a bit clearer today. I remembered putting Carmen in a taxi and sending her home. That was remembering more than enough. Once again, apart from the cost of drinks, I hadn’t lost any money.

That woman was ultimately volatile. I wrote her name in my client list, but I would soon forget her.

Perhaps because I had been drinking until dawn, even my dreams seemed to have drowned in alcohol. I woke up to the sound announcing 7:30 AM and staggered toward the bar at Two Face. I desperately needed coffee.

The bartender was up early cleaning the bar. I didn’t hide the fact that I had been drinking heavily. There was no way to hide it anyway.

The bartender wrinkled her nose as she put water in the kettle. She proved that my decision not to lie had been a good choice.

“Looks like you drank at Arachne. Doesn’t your stomach hurt after drinking that much there, Mickey? Even if they say the venom is weak, drinking alcohol with spider venom in it…”

Soon a cup of coffee with plenty of sugar and milk was pushed toward me. I gulped it down with an expression that suggested I might finally survive. I bid farewell to the remaining intoxication.

“You know I came back from the Great War with an extra liver. Besides, if I drink today, I’ll probably drink here. No need to pay for a driver, so it’s all good.”

“I’ll only serve you beer, so don’t plan on getting drunk, Mickey. If you got drunk and made a scene, that would be one thing, but you just stagger to your room and collapse into bed. It’s actually a bit strange.”

One bartender’s concern was more than enough. There had never been a time when heeding the bartender’s concerns had turned out badly. No, it was the opposite. Perhaps this mess had happened because I hadn’t listened.

After that, I spent a week like a true idler. The only work I did was sitting at the door of Two Face from six to nine in the evening, nodding to customers who showed their invitations.

As the week passed, Veterans Day was approaching. I would probably have to go to Washington that day. My comrades who died on the battlefield were in Arlington.

It would have been nice if they could have been buried in their own graves, but circumstances weren’t that generous. Comrades who had been disintegrated by magic bullets or turned into monsters with not a piece of human body remaining had to be buried as unknown soldiers. I would meet with my surviving comrades again on this memorial day.

We didn’t gather for the memorial itself. I would do that privately. We gathered to prevent each other from putting a shotgun or pistol barrel in our mouths and pulling the trigger on some sudden impulse that night.

Apart from that, the rest had been successful. Without running around all day claiming to be working while neglecting proper meals and sleep, my depleted strength had recovered.

A new week dawned, my energy returned, and just as I had prepared clothes to fill my closet, I received a call from the kobold contractor. Since I had paid the full amount in advance, he wouldn’t have delayed the work.

“Oh, yeah! *sniff* Husband! Repairs are done, and the furniture’s all in! Did as much as the advance covered, *sniff*! You know my skills, right? If you want more shitty jobs done, *sniff*! Burn your house down again and call me! Not many jobs as profitable as working with you, *sniff*! Oh, I left you a gift, so look for it!”

There was no malice in his malicious words. After giving an appropriate response, I hung up. It was time to end my temporary cohabitation with the bartender. I picked up my bag of clothes.

The bartender looked regretful. On the second floor of Two Face, in the bartender’s home, there was a room for me. Though it hadn’t been used for a long time, it probably hadn’t been cleared out yet.

“So you’re going back to being just a regular customer now, Mickey?”

Her question was unusually vague. Normally the bartender was quick-witted, but at times like this, she acted as if she didn’t know what to say. I decided to tease her a little.

“We can’t go back to how things were before. If regrets could take us back, half the world’s tragedies would disappear.”

The bartender let out a small laugh. Predictably, she added one more comment.

“Even if we could, things wouldn’t be much different. If half disappeared, somewhere else an equal amount of tragedy would crawl out. Yeah, yeah. It can’t be helped. Take care, Mickey. Come by for a drink in the evening!”

I had a lot of regrets with the bartender. Enough to fill a couple of rooms. Enough to fill the back room of Two Face, and enough to fill my room on the second floor that she hadn’t cleared out.

But at least we weren’t the kind of people who suffocated in regrets. The bartender gave me a clean wave goodbye, and I waved back before getting into the car I had borrowed from Madam Ysil and returning to my apartment.

It had been a while since I’d been home. A home where not a single person welcomed me. Now it was time to return to detective work. I had spent too much money fixing my burned house and idling at Two Face.

I seem to earn twice as much as other detectives, but quite fairly, I end up spending twice as much. On my way into the house, I removed the absence notice that had been attached to the nameplate on the door.

After entering, I filled the empty closet with clothes and buried a fireproof safe in the closet floor. If someone had set fire to my house before, now others might start by setting fires too. I had to be prepared.

The kobold had definitely mentioned a gift. I went to the office area separated by curtains and sat down at the desk. When I opened the secret drawer where I used to hide whiskey, there was a bottle of whiskey with a ribbon on it.

Judging by the label with two crossed orc axes, it was a high-quality product. It was from before Prohibition. More than enough for a gift.

Instead of drinking, I picked up the phone. As a new phone, the dial felt a bit stiff, so it would take time to get used to it.

I called Giuseppina’s restaurant number first. I had asked the Godmother to protect Two Face, but since it was in Giuseppina’s territory, I heard she had protected it herself.

After the connection tone rang about seven times without anyone answering, the call finally connected. It wasn’t Giuseppina who answered, but another gnoll.

“Ah, sorry for the late answer. This is Trattoria Proci. I mean, if you’re looking for Boss Giuseppina… ahem, please call back later. She’s currently busy with business matters…”

It seems she hadn’t been purged in the meantime. She wasn’t particularly smart, but she was cunning, and she was a thin, lanky gnoll, so I wasn’t too worried.

“This is Husband. You know, that detective who shot and killed about seven of your thugs last time. The detective Giuseppina trusted.”

After I said that, a growling sound came from the other end of the line. Since I had no intention of fighting, I clarified my purpose again.

“But we agreed to forget all that on the Godmother’s orders, so don’t growl too much. I’m calling today to thank you for protecting a bar run by someone I know, as a personal favor to me.”

At the mention of the Godmother’s orders, the growling stopped as if cut with a knife. The mafia was obsessed with hierarchy. If the Godmother told everyone to forget something, it became as if it never happened.

The female gnoll on the other end hesitated for a moment. She seemed to be wondering what level of hierarchy I belonged to, but eventually spoke.

“I’ll make sure your thanks get to the branch manager. Oh, wait… if the Godmother said to forget about the branch manager’s power struggle with you too, the branch manager might visit you soon. If you don’t have anything else to do, just wait quietly in your office, detective.”

Giuseppina might come to visit. Business-related matters… I felt the scent of another case, so I asked. It was a familiar smell. A smell I’d encountered recently. The smell of conflict.

“Looks like the Godmother has called an assembly. What’s going on?”

The gnoll’s characteristic giggling sound started but stopped at the mention of the Godmother’s assembly. The gnoll, who seemed to be thinking for a moment, evaded the question.

“Well… there’s nothing to know yet. Just a few of our businesses were attacked, and we’re looking for who did it. We can’t let those bastards who messed with our businesses go free.”

After saying this much, she claimed there was nothing to know yet. If that were true, then the attacks on the stores wouldn’t be important. Or else… what’s important is who did it.

Seeing how even this low-level grunt was being secretive, it must have been other mafia groups. Generally, the mafia groups that had bad relations with the Italian mafia were the Irish mafia led by The Morrígan.

They might be keeping quiet because they’re already worried about conflict, but the Irish half-bloods who even had an unworshipped god with them wouldn’t handle things this stupidly.

Besides, gnolls weren’t a particularly intelligent species. Nor were they quick-witted. If such gnolls could easily identify the culprit, they might have seen evidence planted by someone.

I can deduce this much, but either way, it’s not my concern right now. It’s just a detective who’s spent a decent amount of money catching the scent of a potentially profitable job.

“Right, you have to get your bloody revenge. Call me again if you need someone to handle things. Goodbye.”

It took several days to escape my routine and become an idler at Two Face, but it took less than an hour to return to my daily life.