Ch.125Request Log #012 – Night of the Mafia (6)

I could sleep for a couple of days straight if needed, but it was better to get some rest before taking action. After confirming nothing happened until 2 AM, I dozed off briefly in the car.

I wouldn’t oversleep. No matter how comfortable the spot or environment, I never slept more than four hours. That day too, I fell asleep around 3 AM but woke up at 5.

My body felt fine. I cleaned my binoculars and prepared, waiting for Arnold to emerge. Like yesterday, he came out at 6:30 AM to water his garden. He spent time trimming plant leaves.

I could have briefly left to check for special editions of newspapers or asked if Morrígan and Giuseppina Proci had been attacked, but if Arnold moved during that time, it would have been disastrous.

If I had my usual week to observe, I could have mapped his schedule quite accurately, but since I only had two days to watch before acting, I needed to be absolutely certain.

Fortunately, there seemed to be no difference between yesterday’s and today’s schedule as he left the mansion with his bodyguards at 11. I followed at a distance. Judging by the route, he appeared to be heading to the same destination as yesterday.

I took a different path to avoid raising suspicion about being followed. Though I lost sight of him briefly several times, he never completely disappeared from view.

He arrived at the same gym as yesterday, entering with his bodyguards. Were there other customers? No, an employee locked the door after he entered. He had rented the entire place.

I couldn’t use a gun. In residential areas, people might not recognize the muffled sound of a silenced weapon, but not here. I would be discovered.

His bodyguards could shoot freely under the pretense of protecting someone, but a detective had no excuse for barging into a gym and shooting unarmed bodyguards. Unfair, but familiar.

I got out of the car. My skinning knife was tucked inside my coat. I wouldn’t need it. Crossing the street, I pulled brass knuckles from my pocket and gripped them firmly with my gloved hand.

I approached the locked front door of the gym. With my free hand, I grabbed the neck of the doorknob and pulled out the entire locking mechanism with just a short metallic sound, then opened the now-unlocked door and entered.

There were no employees since they didn’t need to receive customers. I walked past the counter and into the area where that goblin was struggling to lift weights that weren’t even heavy.

My shoes, reinforced with metal plates in the soles, made clicking sounds. On my way in, I tapped some weight plates with my brass knuckles, creating a metallic clang. All eyes turned to me instantly.

The gambler Arnold didn’t think I was there to work out in his rented gym, or that I had entered by mistake through an unlocked door, or that I was an employee. He was a quick-witted goblin.

“Did you bring a machine gun, kid? I admire the guts to walk through the front door facing four ogres and three orcs, but if you’re planning to do something with that shiny thing in your hand, forget it. It’ll be hard to live with a ruined pretty face. Just tell me who sent you, and I won’t say anything if you turn around and leave. Why risk your life in a gangster war? You’re so young…”

Gambler Arnold stopped his bodyguards from approaching me with a shake of his head. In this business, such an attitude was almost as good as Gremory’s. So I engaged in a bit of conversation.

“I’m just like you. Tell me who you’re working with, and I might wait until you finish your workout, then escort you to Little Eire. Politely. With all that courtesy the mafia is so obsessed with.”

Seeing me reveal my purpose without naming my client, gambler Arnold twitched his eyebrow briefly. Sitting there with his sweat-soaked body, he gestured to his bodyguards.

“I thought you were just some low-level punk, but considering you came when the kids don’t have their guns out, and you know to watch your words… I should tell them to wear guns even during workout time. Thanks for the lesson, Mr. Problem Solver. Or is it Executioner? The Morrígan’s executioner is that headless fairy.”

“Interesting that you don’t suspect the other side.”

The goblin snickered. I couldn’t tell if he was speaking freely thinking I already knew everything, or if he was making a slip.

“Even half-blind, I can see you’re not working for Noll. So you’re a problem solver then. My thanks, Mr. Problem Solver.”

Four ogres and two orcs approached, navigating between the exercise equipment. One orc with a half-broken tusk stuck close to Arnold, probably worried I might draw a gun. That would have been annoying if I’d planned to shoot.

Seeing them approach, I raised both arms, but kept my voice steady without showing tension. Still half-mocking him.

“By the way, Arnold. What did you just say?”

One ogre stepped forward and threw a punch. I met his massive fist, weighted with his enormous body, with my brass-knuckled fist. The weight difference pushed me back, but that was all.

As the ogre reflexively pulled back his arm from the pain, I stepped forward. Grabbing his wrist with twice-cursed strength, I yanked him toward me when his center of gravity shifted.

The ogre lost his balance and stumbled forward with tangled legs. I drove my fist into his solar plexus. Instead of a scream, only a short choking sound escaped. Still, being an ogre, he maintained consciousness.

Wheezing and barely able to breathe, the ogre tried to step back but tripped over dumbbells scattered on the floor and fell backward. With no air in his lungs, he probably couldn’t even think.

As the ogre tried to get up after landing on his backside, I approached and stomped on the bridge of his nose with my metal-plated shoe.

I kept stomping until I heard not the ogre’s voice but the sound of meat being tenderized. Gambler Arnold had made only one mistake. He had underestimated me. I continued my question from earlier.

“Next time?”

The other bodyguards, who hadn’t intervened believing one ogre could subdue me, glanced nervously at the orc behind them. He was now approaching me.

Ah, another melee. At least I knew my opponents weren’t carrying guns, which made this fight more comfortable than what I’d experienced in the Great War.

I knew they were strong, but they must have thought they could subdue me by knocking me down, as three ogres charged forward using their weight advantage.

A reasonable decision. Even Argonne Invincibles couldn’t match ogres in weight class. I grabbed a 45-pound barbell rod lying nearby and swung it.

“Ah, aaagh! My eye!”

The ogre who took the 40-pound metal bar to the head clutched his face and stopped in his tracks. The other ogres, who had been charging through the exercise equipment, momentarily froze.

They probably knew intellectually that they should keep charging even if one was taken down, but their bodies wouldn’t move. We were inevitably emotional animals.

“Monster bastard… Why are you stopping! Are you planning to hold a tournament for him?”

The orc with one broken tusk shouted impatiently and gestured for the orcs to surround me. The gym was packed with equipment, so their encirclement wasn’t perfect.

I properly gripped the 45-pound barbell rod. It was too thick to hold like a bat, but I didn’t care and grabbed it with both hands. All the orcs and ogres surrounding me were hesitating.

The ogre clutching his eye while crawling on the floor showed courage. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to die like this. Despite being unable to see, he reached out and grabbed my ankle.

Unfortunately, the others didn’t show the same courage. Even while my ankle was held, no one charged. Seeing it was my turn again, I swung the barbell rod horizontally at the ogre’s head.

A terrible sound echoed through the gym. It was a sound orcs might recognize—the cracking noise that only occurs when something both rigid yet somewhat flexible breaks.

Their horror seemed to intensify. Now the ogres wore expressions suggesting they wanted nothing more than to escape. This was why I liked striking suddenly, like lightning from a clear sky.

I tossed aside the barbell rod and removed the brass knuckles from my hand. I threw them to the orc with the half-broken tusk. He seemed to need them more than I did. I stood there, taunting him.

Gambler Arnold was finally showing some interest in me. He watched with the face of someone enjoying a decent show.

The orc, making a gurgling sound as if offended by the blatant insult, shouted. He gave orders to the two ogres who had been dominated by horror and numbness.

“Follow me in! After we subdue him, smash his head like he did to our comrade, or whatever you want. Are you going to just tremble in fear while our kinsman lies dead?”

The disadvantage of such orders is that I could hear them too. The orc cleared a barbell rack with his hands and began charging. He was quite agile for an orc.

His stance was neither high nor low, making it difficult to tell if he planned to tackle me or throw punches. It didn’t matter. I charged right back at him.

Though outweighed, I wasn’t outmatched in strength. As I charged, he finally raised both fists to strike down on my back, so I moved into his space and struck his throat with the side of my fist.

I felt a heavy impact on my back, but it was only half-strength. Even at half-impact, my body was twice as tough as others’. Only a dull vibration remained, not even pain. But an orc was still an orc.

Despite striking his windpipe properly, he only let out a gurgling groan before continuing to move. As he raised his fist to strike again, I raised my elbow just as I had against the Hanger of New York.

Since this orc wasn’t as strong as the Hanger, his fist wasn’t shattered, but I could see him gritting his teeth against the pain. The ogres seized that moment to charge at me.

Being both strong and light was always helpful. I immediately stepped back two paces, avoiding one ogre who threw himself forward, then jumped to evade the other.

“Got you, you bastard!”

At that moment, I felt an orc grab my waist from behind and throw his body forward. This is why you shouldn’t fight multiple opponents alone. My body rolled forward.

Fortunately, my neck didn’t slam into any metal object, and due to our size difference, the orc’s body almost completely covered mine, so apart from a few kicks, nothing else came at me.

I grabbed the orc’s collar to prevent him from getting up. Keeping our position so I could use him as cover, I grabbed the back of his neck. With double strength, I gripped and pressed down on his throat.

My fingers dug into his neck. He flapped his arms like a half-decapitated chicken seeking help, but those above couldn’t see what was happening.

Even that resistance faded after I simultaneously compressed his airway and arteries. He soon lost consciousness and went limp.

After pushing away the orc’s body, now heavy as a drowning victim, I grabbed the ankle of another orc who had been trying to remove my arm from the collar by stomping on my forearm.

Turning my body halfway, I grabbed his toe with my other hand. I pulled the orc with the captured leg and knocked him down. Our eyes met, and the orc seemed to realize what would happen next.

His ankle was as solid as a tree trunk, but when I gripped it with both hands and applied pressure, it began to turn. I didn’t stop halfway. The orc’s terrible scream echoed through the gym.

No, it wasn’t terrible. But it certainly drew attention. After twisting his foot backward as far as it would go, I stood up, leaving the orc sitting on the floor, clutching his leg and sobbing.

The bodyguards didn’t leave me alone while I was getting up. This was an unlimited weight class fight with few rules. A foot came kicking up toward my stomach.

Since those fat ogres couldn’t possibly raise their legs this high, it must have been an orc’s leg. And the only orc left would be the one with the half-broken tusk.

My body lurched significantly after the first kick, but I caught the leg on the second attempt. With twice the vitality and only half the harm taken, my body didn’t even register pain from such impacts.

I looked up at the orc who was struggling to free his captured leg. With eyes wide open, I hugged his shin to my chest and applied pressure. Breaking an orc’s leg bone was harder than bending a machine gun barrel.

The orc tried to escape my grip by punching my head. My hat fell off, but I felt no pain. I applied more force to the arm holding his leg, hearing a sound like tree bark splitting.

The orc’s punches gradually weakened. Finally, I pulled back my head and countered his punch. By then, he could barely make a fist.

It was impressive that he was still swinging punches at all. Even for an orc, most would be screaming pathetically like a pig being slaughtered, as the previous one had.

A cracking sound echoed at that moment. The bone seemed to have only cracked rather than breaking completely, but the knee couldn’t hold. I finally released the orc’s leg, now bent in a direction it shouldn’t go.

The two remaining ogre bodyguards didn’t dare approach me. I picked up a weight plate from a nearby barbell and threw it like a discus. Though its weight created a rather gentle arc, throwing it wasn’t difficult.

One ogre’s nose split in two as he collapsed, and the last remaining one began looking back and forth between me and his client.

“B-boss, what should we… I mean…”

Gambler Arnold didn’t have an answer either. He couldn’t have prepared for the Argonne Invincibles since he didn’t know about us. That was all. It was always the reason.

I finally drew my skinning knife from my waist and showed it to him. After resheathing it, I approached gambler Arnold, ignoring the ogre bodyguard. Arnold muttered with a defeated expression.

“Looks like I’m the one who needed a machine gun. So, who wants me dead? If you’re going to kill me anyway, at least tell me that much…”

He seemed to misunderstand something, so I raised my fist and struck the goblin’s head horizontally. While ogres or orcs might have withstood a hit or two, the goblin’s small frame was knocked out with one blow.

I picked up the unconscious goblin. I needed to cross the street to my car, and I looked a mess. Anyway, I had succeeded in securing a relevant person.

For a hasty move, the outcome was substantial. I deliberately caused this commotion so that whoever was backing gambler Arnold would notice.

Once they learned what I’d done, either the Italians or the Irish half-breeds, or both, could deduce that someone had discovered their behind-the-scenes operations. Then they would at least temporarily halt their activities. They might even stop altogether.

Since my client’s intention was to prevent conflict, I needed to create this opening to give them time to collect themselves and think rationally. That was the extent of a detective’s responsibility.