Ch.246Request Log #020 – Murder Machine (3)

Carmen was a confident woman. Even if I confronted her and tried to uncover her secrets, she wouldn’t mind that confidence and honesty. Or at least she would pretend not to.

Carmen had killed two people. It read like a sentence as ordinary as saying a journalist had oatmeal for breakfast. Not that she was a murderer. Just someone who would willingly do it if necessary.

But she wouldn’t do it dispassionately. Today, her usual lack of affection—normally well-hidden and wrapped in skillfulness and slyness—was plainly visible. It wasn’t like her. She was clearly disturbed.

What was causing her disturbance? Criminal record for murder? No. The fairies’ work was too clean for her to fear that. I hadn’t even heard about it, which meant they had made it completely disappear.

If not that, then was it the thought that she might have to remain tied to Irish gangs after committing murder? No, if that were the case, she wouldn’t have worked at a bar directly operated by gangs in the first place. She had skills.

In the end, only one option remained. It was because of a man who should have been there but wasn’t. Was he dead? No, there was a more important question. Did Carmen love him?

Carmen was driven by desire. Like a finicky engine, she accepted no other fuel. It would be better to assume that her motives, disturbances, fears—everything—was connected to desire.

I walked through corridors filled with the moans of fairy-hybrid hostesses and the sounds of men who came to buy prostitutes at this hour. Work came first. Everything else was pushed aside.

By the time I came out through the staff entrance, Carmen had finished her song. She was talking with organization members who had been sitting in her section on the small stage.

Trusting she would make up her own excuse, I approached her. Carmen jumped off the small stage without even using the stairs at the edge. She leaped toward me in her high-heeled shoes and smiled brightly.

“You haven’t suddenly decided to work at our bar while doing security for me, have you? It wouldn’t be so bad, but Carmen wants someone to watch only Carmen.”

“Didn’t those guys back there tell you?”

Carmen smiled sourly and nodded.

“They did tell me! That you had an appointment with Miss Bavan. What kind of appointment was it?”

An obvious lie. When Carmen smiled, it meant she was lying or trying to play tricks, whether maliciously or not. Her reactions were varied, but I could categorize them by certain standards.

“Don’t test me, Carmen. Those guys wouldn’t say such nonsense.”

“How boring. The detective is such a boring person that it’s fun. Yes, they told me over there. That inside this bar would be safe, and in exchange for providing extra security, Miss Bavan had called for you. What was it about?”

I could keep lying here, but even if I was meeting the men who disposed of bodies, only Carmen held the key to this job. There was no reason to lie.

But even in this situation, a direct approach would be unexpected. Wanting to see her face when surprised, I said:

“That was an obvious lie too. Those two guys warned me to be careful, saying your two ex-lovers shot each other dead about five days ago. So I asked Bavan. She said you shot them. But your ex-lover isn’t dead. I’m planning to investigate what happened. Want to come along?”

Carmen was uncharacteristically surprised. Her eyes widened briefly before she narrowed them again and smiled.

“You’re as honest as men making marriage vows. Yes, there was an unfortunate incident. I had to shoot. I thought I’d try dating a man who doesn’t know how to shoot this time. Other than that…”

She smiled again. It seemed less like she didn’t want to tell me and more like she wanted me to figure it out. She was the kind of person who would never be satisfied if I tried to please her.

“Since it’s within a detective’s responsibility, I won’t get involved. So, where are you taking Carmen tonight?”

“First, I need to find the guys who disposed of the bodies and ask if there was a third body. You probably know, but I doubt you’ll tell me.”

She wanted me to figure it out but had no intention of telling me. It was a stalling tactic. Thinking of it as stalling explained her capriciousness today. Carmen had kept me occupied from morning until evening.

Was there a reason to keep me occupied? Nothing except preventing me from working for someone else. Who was she trying to prevent from hiring me? Thinking this way made the scope too broad.

No, I needed to think by Carmen’s standards. She only sang and performed here; she wasn’t a gang member. She wasn’t in a position to call the Irish gang’s contractors, let alone other contractors.

The only contractors she would know would be detectives specializing in infidelity investigations, or just me. She believed I was more capable than those others. She was trying to secure the best contractor she knew.

She’s afraid of something. Carmen looked at my silence. Uncharacteristically, she couldn’t meet my eyes. But then she naturally made eye contact again.

“Don’t suddenly go quiet. My friend is quite capable, so when you close your mouth and stare like that, it feels like hands climbing up my back to grab my neck. I might allow that in bed, but not over a case file. Here, you’re a detective rather than a friend.”

She’s hiding more. I probably wouldn’t need to drag Carmen around New York streets all night. I asked directly again.

“You’re hiding more. I want to confirm something—will you answer?”

“Will you answer Carmen’s questions too? You can ask first. After all, Carmen was the one who lied first. I should be grateful just for hiring a detective who doesn’t go berserk at the thought of betrayal, so I can’t ask questions first.”

At least she didn’t consider me an enemy. So she was right to fear my work. I could learn a lot even from questions without answers.

“Why not stop calling him your ex? He wouldn’t come here with a gun in the first place. He was there too, and he didn’t know how to shoot, so you had to shoot the intruder. You tried to cover it up quietly rather than calling the police—that’s not just about saving your own life. The Irish would become your guardian angels if they just saw your tears.”

I was saying she had tried to protect her lover. Given that only he was still alive, this was the most natural conclusion.

She probably wanted to keep things quiet because of that man too. It was hard to imagine Carmen being devoted, but it would be stranger if she did this for no reason at all.

She raised her trembling hands in front of my eyes, even in the warm bar, and burst out laughing. Her face showed her composure gradually depleting.

“I’m so scared my hands are shaking. I’m glad Michael is Carmen’s friend. Yes, well. It’s true. We never broke up. So… it’s Carmen’s turn to ask? Can a person disappear without a trace? Preferably without dying.”

“You won’t need to prepare a body. Taking someone away alive isn’t difficult. Just leave some clothes and cash at home, and it will look like they disappeared without taking anything.”

Clothes can be bought. Money can be taken, leaving some behind. Many police officers check if a safe is empty, but few know how much was originally there.

It would be difficult for Carmen to disappear that way. She was too entangled in too many things. Too many people remembered her, and she was involved in too many current affairs.

So the person she wanted to make disappear was her lover. The reason was obvious. It was almost laughable that I thought something big was hidden behind this.

“It seems like your promiscuous life is choking you, not me. Am I right?”

“I had bad luck. How could I have known that the good-for-nothing who swung his fists at me and came to my new boyfriend’s house with a gun was the brother of a back-alley gang boss? I’m just a singer, so I have no way to resolve this and want to run away. Maybe. This might also be promiscuity and capriciousness, but for now I’ve decided to run. That should be enough, right?”

It seemed she had finally found a man she liked after dating all kinds of men, but she had already dated too many.

The easiest way to win the lottery is to buy all the tickets for that draw. If you buy everything indiscriminately, there will be a first prize among them. If not, you should file a complaint.

Carmen had bought too many lottery tickets. She seemed to have finally found the winning paper, but among all the tickets she had bought so far, there was also a winning ticket in a bad sense. I sighed.

“Fine, for now. Is that why you hired me but didn’t give me a proper job and just wasted time?”

“Carmen isn’t someone who brings a lion to catch stray dogs. But she can’t let the lion roam the streets either. Right now, only Carmen knows you’re a lion… what would Carmen do if the stray dogs found out? So I decided to keep you by my side. Since I’ve lived so promiscuously, no one would think it strange if I acted like I wanted to spend a night with you, right?”

Her eyes are unnecessarily good. Despite never having shown her how I work, she was looking at me with her uniquely unpleasant intuition and prophet-like self-confidence. I asked back, exasperated.

“I really thought so until Irish gang members came to my table and tipped me off. And why do you think I’m so capable? Because of your family business?”

Carmen sank deep into her chair as if she was finally at ease now that she had started confessing. She looked half-reclined. She crossed her legs and smiled.

“No! It’s just Carmen’s intuition. You’re a killing machine. But you don’t look like one. It’s as if a machine meant for a different process fell onto the wrong conveyor belt when it jerked. So I won’t ask you to deal with the gang. Because Michael isn’t a killing machine.”

She was a woman who ended her sentences with repeat signs, not periods. She believed I could wipe out the gang if she just asked, which made even her statement that she wouldn’t ask contradictory.

Still, it was a wise decision. For New York gangs, organization and territory were more important than women. If they abandoned those two things because they were infatuated with a woman, they would have nowhere to return. So they wouldn’t pursue her.

Using me to escalate the situation would be stupid. It’s not something to welcome for a detective who makes money when clients do stupid things.

No one can know about the Argonne Invincibles. If they don’t know, they can’t prepare, and if they can’t prepare, they can’t respond. It was a familiar saying, but there were two very simple ways to deal with it.

One was to know. To finish the background check cleanly and wait at the Divine State Hotel or somewhere with a Doppelsöldner when I went to find Levi. To pull the trigger.

It was a very clean and certain method, but no one had that capability. There were only those who knew an Argonne Invincible was in New York but couldn’t pinpoint the location, so they let loose monsters.

The other way… was simply not to deal with an Argonne Invincible. I had many names. I had the name Michael Husband, and the name detective.

Carmen arbitrarily called me a killing machine. The journalist I worked with gave me the name Mr. New York. Sarah called me Mickey, and to Blingkerton’s shooter, I was little Mike.

Such names were much more harmless than names like Argonne Invincible or Doppelsöldner. They seemed almost gentle. Often there was no need to prepare or respond.

Not knowing. And not trying to know. It’s a warm indifference. I felt like I might develop some personal motivation for this case. This time, no sigh escaped.

“It’s my first time having a client who tests a detective for twelve hours. Where have you hidden him? I can help one man disappear from New York, so don’t worry. Not you though. It’s better for you to stay here a bit longer until things quiet down.”

“That doesn’t matter! Carmen finds it quite enjoyable to be friends with Rose. So it’s okay to stay here longer. I should apologize for lying, shouldn’t I?”

Quite often, unexpected things happened when I was around that woman. When I mentioned the journalist, Carmen looked at me with a somewhat sly expression.

The reason was obvious, but I decided to ignore it. Twelve hours after accepting the case, I finally heard the details from the client. She extended her hand first. We shook hands.

“I don’t mind much if a client isn’t trying to entangle me with lies. I find betrayal terrible, but I do it sometimes too, so I can’t just hate it. And, you must have asked about the location.”

“Let’s go together after I finish work. Michael, you look quite reliable as a detective right now. When you came to my house before, your eyes were blazing, but now there’s no fire. You’re emotionless. I almost didn’t recognize you when I looked down from the stage. Ah, my break is over. To look natural…”

“You should act according to your usual schedule.”

Carmen smiled and climbed onto the stage. The song the band started playing was in a minor key, but she arbitrarily changed it to major, and the band seemed accustomed to her changing the tempo or key.

She’s the most honest woman about love that I know in New York. Not that she was a romantic. Her honesty and desire were excessive, which was why this situation had developed—certainly not ideal.

But it’s enough to get by. Everyone was like that. Each one was terribly imperfect. Professor Albert had ideals and vision but no power. Gremory had good intentions but compromised with reality.

In an era where even the most ideal people I knew were like that, Carmen deserved a passing grade.

I couldn’t hear the sound of sleet tapping on the window. My seat was near an elaborately decorated fireplace. I couldn’t feel the unpleasant dampness created by the outside weather.

Yet, due to the temperature difference between inside and outside, water droplets formed and fell on the windows covered with thick curtains. The window frame would rot at this rate. Someone was needed to wipe away the moisture.