Ch.26Request Log #005 – Proci’s Concerns (1)

Working during the day makes one feel almost dead. The only time I truly felt alive was at night, but living a life where I stayed up at night and slept during the day couldn’t possibly be normal.

Wasting time playing poker in bars where half the air was cigarette smoke was the perfect way to rot my brain. If I kept spending time intoxicated by this $800, my instincts would die.

Today I needed to move around a bit. After staying up all night, and with the weather starting to warm up, I left my apartment wearing just a light coat and my usual newsboy cap.

There weren’t many places to go anyway. At best, I could spend the whole day at the veterans’ hall with former comrades who now felt awkward around each other, or in the red-light district.

Mine was a life with more collaborators than friends, and even more people I’d call acquaintances through work than collaborators. As I was about to head out as usual, an unusual piece of mail was stuck in my mailbox.

It was quite an elegant envelope, but it had a smell. The smell of hyena fur. I’d recently gotten tangled up with some Italians while resolving a case, and the local branch manager had mentioned inviting me somewhere.

I could set today’s schedule around this. I went back up to my office and opened the well-sealed letter with a letter opener.

It was an invitation. An invitation to dinner at an Italian restaurant on bustling Fifth Avenue in New York.

Fortunately, they weren’t inviting me to the restaurant I’d visited last time, which reeked of hyena fur.

The letter said they wanted to coordinate the schedule and included a phone number to call anytime, so I immediately picked up the phone and dialed.

The connection tone rang several times before the call connected. Through the static, I could hear the distinctive cackling laughter of hyenas layered upon each other, and a closer growling sound.

“Listening to that howling all day would drive anyone neurotic, Giuseppina. Don’t you think?”

The growling subsided, and in an instant, the cackling hyena-like howling stopped. It seemed like a deliberately staged situation to emphasize her authority.

“The good thing about hyenas is that I can make those sounds stop whenever I want. We have a clear hierarchy, detective. People like you who exist outside the rules are rare.”

Detective was a sufficient title. I had no desire to be respected by the mafia, who were just thugs with pretensions. Being a collaborator was enough.

“I hope that’s not an invitation to come inside. Anyway, I received your dinner invitation. I can make plenty of time in the evening. What did you want to discuss?”

Saying I could make time implied a horizontal relationship. In a vertical relationship, I would have made time no matter what. Whether she understood the implication or not, the hyena burst into hearty laughter.

“Ha! You can make time? I almost had to think about what that meant, it’s been so long since I heard it. Fine, let’s say I’ve been waiting for you to make time. Anyway, there’s only one thing to discuss. Someone else will be joining us. Don’t worry, they’re not dangerous. Just a higher-up who’s curious about who I’m having dinner with. You know how to be polite, right?”

“When I’m not working, I can be as polite as corporate executives at charity parties. Though I’m working most of the time. It’s fine.”

Another hearty laugh came back, followed by more words. The growling in her voice had mostly disappeared.

“And I have a job for you. That’s okay too, right? It’s not a life-or-death matter. A very simple… missing person case, let’s say. You don’t need to decide now, detective. Just keep it in mind.”

She hadn’t rejected my statement about making time, and it didn’t seem like she wanted me to work under them. That was fortunate in its way, as I loathed the sense of belonging as much as the battlefield.

Finding a missing person was time-consuming but fairly lucrative without being too difficult. In fact, it wouldn’t even be about finding a truly missing person, so it would be easy.

They called them missing persons, but I rarely actually looked for missing people. Most cases involved tracking down whistleblowers who had exposed corporate scandals and then fled.

Sometimes people would come to me as a last hope when their family members went missing and the police said they couldn’t waste any more angels, but that wasn’t common. The success rate was low too.

“I thought you said you were only polite when not working?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. We’re not trying to buy your attitude. What we need is skill, not pretense, detective.”

I kindly informed her that pretense was enough to create opportunities, while ability was what allowed one to seize those opportunities. Going to the meeting was pretense enough.

But her voice was trembling slightly. While offering good conditions to ensure I wouldn’t refuse, her voice trembled, suggesting this was about finding someone important…

True to the mafia’s nature—betraying each other readily in emergencies while constantly talking about family love—it was most likely a family member.

If it were a colleague’s family, she wouldn’t show such concern. It must be Giuseppina’s own family. She didn’t seem to have a husband, so it probably wasn’t a child or spouse, but likely a sibling.

I didn’t try to deduce what had happened. That was the client’s domain, and all I needed to know was who to bring back and where they were last seen. That was enough.

“In that case. See you this evening.”

“Yes, detective. We’ll have a nice meal and exchange some favors. Let’s keep things pleasant.”

Once again, keeping things pleasant. After hanging up, instead of grabbing casual clothes, I started searching my closet for a suit. Navy would be better than brown this time. This was a business meeting.

It seemed like quite an upscale restaurant, so I should bring a fedora too. I found the one my mentor had picked out for me when I was doing odd jobs and learning the trade at the Blingkerton Detective Agency branch.

It was something I hadn’t worn in a long time. I wasn’t the kind of detective who met clients good enough to warrant wearing a suit.

This time would be different. I prepared a navy suit with a modest purple tie. A gray homburg hat with a blue band would do. After selecting appropriate clothes, I killed time until evening.

The radio was enthusiastically promoting a boxing match scheduled for tonight, but unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to listen to it.

I’d loved boxing since childhood. It was a childhood dream of sorts. I thought it was fair and square, an honest fistfight. That’s why I could still enjoy boxing even after learning how to fight properly.

Those who learned to fight by striking behind the jawbone like hunters killing rabbits, targeting shins or groins, breaking fingers and gouging eyes—such people couldn’t help but love boxing.

If swords and magic were fantasy for some, then for people like us, even the relatively fair fight of boxing was nothing short of fantasy. That’s why we liked it.

To meet Giuseppina, I turned off the radio just as the excited commentator announced the match was about to begin, and headed out in my suit. It was better to take my car when going to places like this.

I headed toward Fifth Avenue along roads that were still quiet before the end of the workday. While the area near my home wasn’t congested, Fifth Avenue was so packed with large cars that you couldn’t distinguish between the road and parking lot.

Good thing I left early. Fortunately, I arrived 15 minutes before our appointment time and headed to the entrance of the restaurant, which operated by reservation only.

The hyenas working in this restaurant didn’t give off the distinctive fur smell of their kind. And they appeared almost like a different species from their kin due to their extremely courteous and polite manners.

I didn’t even need to push the door open as a large female hyena opened it for me. She spoke in quite a polite tone.

“May I have the name of your reservation, sir?”

“Giuseppina Proci. I heard someone higher up would be coming too, but I wasn’t told their name. Is it on the list?”

The hyena took out a list from her pocket and read through it. After finding the name, she nodded with increased cordiality.

“Branch Manager Giuseppina has made a reservation. I’ll show you to your table. Oh, The Oiler is dining in the first-floor hall today, so we’ve prepared the second floor.”

True to her word, something close to a howl was echoing through the first-floor hall. It was the kind of sound ghouls made for no reason, which honestly didn’t match well with such a well-ordered restaurant.

Ghouls, who dig up graves to eat corpses, had noses as developed as hunting dogs, but their intelligence was also at about the same level.

Digging up graves to eat corpses harmed people, so they were classified not as people but as monsters to be hunted. Perhaps because of this, some of them underwent a kind of mutation.

Some of them developed the ability to smell oil beneath the ground rather than corpses in graves. Moreover, the oil fields these ghouls found often had excellent reserves.

Thus, some ghouls became Oilers. As payment for finding oil fields, they became something like vulgar symbols of capitalism, wearing neat tuxedos over bodies with flesh hanging loose like corpses, walking around with leashes on several subordinates. Yet they hadn’t changed at all. Their intelligence remained at the level of hunting dogs.

Their assistants must have a miserable time. They weren’t even figureheads. Even Oilers who no longer directly found oil showed almost supernatural abilities in choosing businesses to invest in and knowing when to enter and exit investments.

It was amusing. They would climb onto office tables, make barking noises, and tear apart portfolios of investment sectors with their claws—and investments in those torn-up sectors would yield returns.

Anyway, it was fortunate not to be seated at a table next to an Oiler. I followed the guiding hyena up to the second floor. Completely isolated from the howling on the first floor, only jazz from a phonograph filled this level.

I was guided to a table. Giuseppina hadn’t arrived yet, but another hyena was already seated at the table. Judging by his small stature, it was a male hyena. The higher-up she mentioned, I presumed.

“I’m Michael Husband, invited here today. Perhaps…”

The hyena also stood up from the table and extended his hand, covered in stiff hyena fur. I shook it, but the atmosphere was awkward.

The hyena, as if asking for understanding, briefly placed his hand on his chest and then opened his mouth to show me. His teeth were weak for a hyena, but more notably, he had no tongue.

Without a tongue, one cannot speak. If you can’t speak, there’s no worry about divulging secrets? As I was about to find this absurd, Giuseppina arrived, properly dressed in a suit unlike last time. It was her characteristic purple.

“What’s this, already exchanging greetings? If you don’t mind, I’ll introduce you on his behalf. This male human can’t understand hyena sign language.”

Seeing Giuseppina using honorifics, this must indeed be someone important. The hyena raised his hand, drew a circle in the air, flicked his index and middle fingers twice, then made a fist. I couldn’t understand what it meant.

“Ah, yes. I understand. So, Husband, this is the family notary. If we want to make a contract with someone outside the family, we need his permission.”

I considered being polite, but since I’d heard they called me here to give me a job, the work was more important than etiquette.

“I thought I heard that a higher-up who was curious about who you were meeting had come along. Was that a lie?”

The male hyena this time put his index and middle fingers together, raised his thumb, and circled it beside his head, then waved it toward his face as if creating a breeze. Afterward, he showed his hand with only the ring finger bent, then lowered it.

“No, it wasn’t a lie. He just said it. He came here because he was curious about what wind had blown to make Giuseppina hire an outsider. He says he can swear to it—do you doubt him?”

If only I could know if it was true. Since his ears would be fine, and Giuseppina’s interpretation wasn’t challenged, it seemed he was telling the truth.

“No, if it’s not a lie, that’s fine. I’m just sensitive because of clients who act like they’ll break out in hives if they tell the truth, even though they know lying complicates things.”

The female hyena, who had acted like a queen in her own territory last time, now looked like she might start wagging her tail to show respect.

Hierarchy, I see. Branch manager must be quite a high position, yet this branch manager was showing respect to this notary. I briefly glanced at him before looking away.

There was still time before the pre-ordered food would arrive, and Giuseppina used this interval to start talking. The job details. I needed to determine if this was a real job or not.

“Ah, we agreed to talk about the job. Yes, I need you to find someone, detective. My brother has run away again. He worked as an accountant in our branch, but he disappeared without a word.”

“Again? If he’s run away several times already, it should be easy to find him. Why call me?”

He must be tired of working under the mafia. Judging by Suzie stealing drugs, Giuseppina’s branch dealt in narcotics too, and not many people could work comfortably in such a place.

“Yes, he’s run away several times. Usually, he couldn’t even leave New York before the boys caught him and brought him back. But this time, he’s nowhere to be found. As a detective, you must have found many missing persons?”

“I’ve found many fugitives.”

I corrected her words. She growled as if displeased but didn’t deny it. Her family love wasn’t fake, it seemed.

I continued with a distinctly realistic possibility. Though I despised detectives who made deductions, there was nothing better for showing off to clients.

“He wasn’t found in his room? You wouldn’t have missed checking there.”

“Even though he’s not the type to commit suicide, we wouldn’t have missed that. This time, he only left a note saying he was really leaving. And yes, it was real. It had his scent.”

Leaving a note saying he was really leaving this time, and vanishing in a way they hadn’t considered before… It seemed like I was getting a fairly normal case for once. Though I couldn’t relax yet.

“Any possibility he went to another branch, or to the Irish guys you don’t get along with?”

“He’s not at another branch. I used my authority as branch manager to summon other branch managers and asked them directly. And would the Irish be crazy enough to mess with a branch manager’s brother? That would immediately lead to conflict.”

Another name for something no sane person would do is something that has already happened. For now, it seemed better to follow that lead.