Ch.225Request Log #018 – The Ghost Wandering New York (1)

I cast my vote against the God-President’s reconfirmation, just as I did last time. Even after speaking with him directly, my disgust had only slightly diminished, but my choice remained unchanged.

I only came to cast a meaningless ballot. People would choose reconfirmation again anyway. If they reconfirmed him after the war ended, they certainly wouldn’t reject him during these golden times.

During voting season, there was no work. The omnipotent God-President had no need for political thugs, and since there were no opposing candidates, they weren’t necessary anyway.

It was barely worth calling a vote, but at least they weren’t branding the foreheads or wrists of those who voted against him, so I suppose he’s improved somewhat from the old days. After this sarcastic thought, I returned home.

And now I’d spend another week without work. This used to be the normal schedule. It was actually strange when someone who collected two-thirds of a factory worker’s weekly wage as a daily rate was working every day.

Only after the echoes of politicians proclaiming the righteousness of reconfirming the God-President and the Anti-God Party’s calls for his rejection had faded did I feel like going outside again.

I decided to call my former supervisor at the Blingkerton Detective Agency after a long while. All I could remember about her was how she kept appearing behind me with Blingkerton’s signature blink magic to hit the back of my head, calling it training… but now I somewhat understood why. She probably didn’t want to assign assassination jobs to a kid like me back then.

She must have been heartbroken when she saw that kid return from the battlefield as someone perfectly suited for those assassination jobs. I spoke as if I empathized, but there wasn’t anything that deeply emotional about it.

Let’s just say… enough familiarity had developed to share a drink. At least now I wasn’t contacting her solely to ask for Blingkerton’s help. I dialed the number.

The connection tone didn’t ring for long. The call connected almost immediately, and I could hear someone mumbling while eating, followed by a big swallowing sound before a voice came through.

“Yeah, so was there anything at the scene? Or was it completely…”

“I don’t know who you were expecting, but it seems you’ve taken on another rookie?”

Though I didn’t identify myself this time, she seemed to recognize my voice, responding with an amused tone. She’s a kind person. At least to me.

“Ah, our little Mike. The last time I played your nanny was seven years ago. I need to make a living too, so I have to teach these kids. What can I do for our little one?”

“I was calling to buy you a drink, but if you’re busy with work, forget it. It’s better not to touch a drop when you’re working, right?”

She spoke as if she was proud of me. Though I couldn’t see her expression, she was surely grinning.

“You remember well, little one! Ah, if you’re calling about that, you must be without work too, right? Hey, I got a big job in, and what can I give my little one besides subcontracting? How about it?”

Subcontracting. Even if I bust my ass, I’d only get 30% of the pay. Still, if it came from Blingkerton, they wouldn’t subcontract everything, and if they did, I could skim that much off the top.

“What kind of subcontract, honorable supervisor? I’ll hear you out before deciding.”

She clicked her tongue once. She seemed pleased that I wasn’t accepting blindly… but also slightly annoyed for the same reason.

“I wonder if I taught this kid too well… Anyway, have you worked with those Idealists before?”

“The time I asked you for collaboration was when I worked with those things.”

I heard short, rhythmic tapping sounds like fingers drumming on a desk. Then a somewhat whispering voice came through the phone line.

“As it happens, I need someone who’s friendly with the Idealists, but can you do it without revealing my connection? If you mention my connection, both you and I will get paid less.”

Money was important. Always is. Since she was doing me the favor of telling me in advance, I gladly accepted.

“Sure. I gave you my card when I requested collaboration with Blingkerton last time, so we can say you remembered me while looking through your list of collaborators.”

“You’ve gotten slick, little one. Yes, I’ll get the approval and come back. Ah, this job is quite big, so if you succeed, you could earn the Blingkerton name. Do you need it? This time I can really teach you that blink magic. You’ve become a one-man operation now. You need tricks like that to make a living.”

The blink magic would be useful, but not that essential. I already knew how to climb walls silently and move at speeds that were as unreactable as the blink magic.

Above all, jobs from Blingkerton would leave an even more bitter aftertaste than what I had now. I decided to cut back a bit on voluntarily stepping into the gutter while seeking peace of mind.

I didn’t show my displeasure. I brushed it off with something close to a joke.

“Have I been starving until now? I don’t want to be crushed under the overtime work Blingkerton dumps on people. Collaboration is fine as collaboration.”

Pride began to swell in her voice. She might think she raised me well since I didn’t fall for her shallow temptation. She was a good mentor. Probably.

“Ah, right. Collaboration is fine as collaboration.”

After waiting for a while, the phone rang again. I heard my supervisor’s voice, tinged with amusement.

“Congratulations on getting hired, little Mike. They said, ‘There’s a guy like that and you haven’t been using him?’ Are you coming here? Or shall we meet at a café again? This job is big, so you’d better come if possible.”

“I’ll come, just give me the address.”

After getting the address from her, I left home. The city, having passed autumn and entering the early stages of winter, was losing its color easily. The air seemed to be tinted with the blue of cold.

I stepped on the pedal to start the engine and drove out of the parking lot. Perhaps due to the cold weather, there were few pedestrians on the street. Even doomsayers must dislike the cold.

Most of those who prophesied doom while invoking the name of the Industrial Spirit King had disappeared by now. After all, the passionate voice of a prophet with a hoarse throat and drenched in sweat couldn’t shake this city.

I continued driving down the street. At least in these times, fewer people were shivering from the cold. It was an era where boiling gold was poured over wounds to gild rotten injuries, but many people benefited from that gilded membrane.

I arrived at the Blingkerton National Detective Agency’s New York branch. After glancing at the sign with its distinctive logo of closed eyes, I opened the building’s door and entered.

It’s not a small building. Rather, it’s a building so large that it’s hard to believe it was built with detective work earnings. Perhaps the God-President stepped in to prevent detectives from making this much money.

As I was about to tell the receptionist I was a collaborator, I heard footsteps approaching then stopping. I quickly moved my hand behind my head to catch the wrist of my supervisor who was teleporting in. She smiled, raising only the left corner of her mouth.

“You haven’t gotten rusty at that age, little one. Come in. Ah, Jane. He’s the collaborator I called, so don’t worry. I’ve already got approval!”

“Didn’t you say we shouldn’t act like we know each other?”

She shrugged her shoulders. She was grinning as she showed me a contract that only needed my signature.

“That was necessary until the contract came out. Now that the contract with all the payment ratios is ready, what difference does it make if they know we know each other?”

“They could fire someone who caused company losses for personal gain and tear up the contract, I suppose.”

She tapped her side a couple of times. It would be where a gun would be if she were wearing a holster.

“I’m just looking after my own people, hmm? If they try to nitpick about that, a detective with 42 years of experience won’t sit quietly. Our Blingkerton folks have some flexibility too. They just don’t use it for good things.”

I held back from humming the song I often heard at strike sites: “Look at that Kobold child, his father was shot dead by a Blingkerton detective.” I followed her into the office.

The disorganized desk was dirty, but all the junk on it had been pushed to one corner, with a single file placed on top. It was labeled “Worker Disappearance Case.”

If worker disappearances involved the Idealists, it would probably be an investigation into whether the Idealists had turned workers into terminals without permission.

Tapping on the file’s temporary title, I said:

“Did those Hive Mind commies kidnap workers to increase their numbers? They didn’t seem that stupid usually.”

The Idealist Hive Mind knew well how people viewed them. That’s why they made efforts to legally consume souls through contracts.

But thinking about it again, all the souls they devoured through proper procedures had their own value. The people I hunted for them for money all had obvious reasons.

Two entrepreneurs were obvious cases, and a Blingkerton detective’s terminal would have been one of the best terminals for them, as they needed physical contact to suck souls.

Is it just about eating something delicious? While I was trying to piece together the information I knew, my former supervisor at Blingkerton spoke:

“Look at how stiff your speech gets? Ah, even we don’t know much yet. A factory owner said several workers suddenly stopped coming to work, so he went to their homes, but their families said they never returned from the factory. The families suspect they died at the factory, and the factory owner is looking for a scapegoat and thought of the Idealists.”

So it’s not about covering up deaths at the factory? Such things were common. Of course, unless factory owners had exceptional talent for hiding bodies or were cold-blooded enough to burn them, they would soon be discovered.

Once discovered, it was time for struggle. Factory owners would anxiously hire detectives or contractors, and what followed was my specialty.

This is just background knowledge. I still hadn’t heard the most important part of this job.

“So, I assume the factory owner hired Blingkerton? If it was the families, I’d be looking for evidence that the Idealists weren’t at fault, but if it’s the factory owner, it would be the opposite, right?”

Work always has intentions behind it. A detective needs to know the intention but shouldn’t speculate about the intention behind the intention. That ambiguous line had to be maintained.

The supervisor opened the file to show its contents. The factory owner must have been a good person. It contained photos of the missing workers that seemed to be provided by the families and attendance records that appeared to be from the factory owner.

“They sent them together before handing it over to the police, saying they wanted to investigate first. Ha, if all factory owners were like this, we at Blingkerton would have starved to death. Don’t you think?”

“If all factory owners were like that, I would have found a job at a factory before starving. If it’s both sides, that makes it easier. I just need to find out what really happened.”

If the country had been full of entrepreneurs like Gremory, I would have chosen a factory instead of the Blingkerton office at fourteen. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that wasn’t the case.

For now, my part would be all about the Idealists. It was something I could find out just by calling the National Idealist Union, but I needed to make sure.

“I’m on good enough terms with the Idealists to exchange favors, but am I really just handling that part?”

“Yeah, it’s collaboration, not your sole responsibility. And if those Idealists really did suck those people dry, you just need to help us take down their terminals with guns. Idealists are easy to deal with. Without terminals, they’re just ghosts wandering around America, so killing their terminals is punishment enough. Anyway, report promptly… and when the job’s done, let’s have a drink at The Merman’s Opera.”

The Merman’s Opera wasn’t that great a bar. True to its name, it mainly sold rum, and while it might be better than gin, it was still cheap stuff.

One had to be thorough about where to drink after finishing a job. Without such pleasures, one might not enjoy another day of detective work. I clicked my tongue.

“Taking someone with no alternatives to a place like The Merman’s Opera isn’t right. At least Bouton de Rose. Or we could go to Two Face, where I’m a regular.”

Bouton de Rose was a bar Sarah liked. Well… Sarah liked most things with French names. It specialized in smuggled port wine and served fairly drinkable alcohol.

“Then let’s go to Bouton de Rose. Two Face is really not my thing. Since I got my shoulder bitten while dealing with werewolf gangs last time, I’ve been avoiding werewolves altogether. Wait, is that bartender at Two Face who I think it is?”

“Sarah, Sarah Dunham. You seem to remember.”

Like a magic lantern, memories of the past flashed by, including my supervisor at Blingkerton. She smirked and stared at me intently. They say most people’s eyes soften with age, but my supervisor hadn’t changed at all.

“Not Sarah Husband? You acted like you were going to get married as soon as you turned eighteen, so why is she still Dunham?”

It was a jab at the past, but it didn’t hurt as much anymore. I wasn’t holding onto it like a dead baby. I answered calmly.

“Well… during the Great War, when I said I was going to enlist, Sarah told me, ‘I just inherited Two Face, so you can stay here too.’ I thought she meant she still saw me as a child.”

Blingkerton’s supervisor clicked her tongue. Revisiting childhood mistakes always feels like this.

“You know the family tradition. Suddenly having it thrust upon her, exhausted and driven, she just wanted you to be there with her. Why do such words sound so unpleasant when you’re young? Don’t you think?”

If I hadn’t swallowed it down, I might have grabbed her by the collar. Still, it wasn’t so bad having someone who shared this calmness now. I took out a cigarette from my pocket and put it in my mouth.

As I was gathering mana at my fingertips to light it, my former supervisor at Blingkerton gathered mana at her fingertips and lit it for me. I took a leisurely drag and exhaled.

“That’s right. But it’s already in the past. Still, Sarah is still Sarah, and I’m still a regular at Two Face… not much has changed.”

The interlude before work was slowly coming to an end. My supervisor at Blingkerton, who had also lit a cigarette, smiled with just one corner of her mouth raised.

“I can’t even call you little one anymore. Yes, yes. Yesterday is yesterday and today is today, so let’s get to work. If we don’t earn today, we can’t even miss yesterday.”