Ch.27Request Log #005 – Proci’s Concern (2)

While it might not be easy for orc or ogre-like races, making a small, weak male gnoll write a letter himself was nothing. Though I couldn’t be certain he had written it himself.

In the end, I’d have to meet with the Irish mafia. I didn’t particularly like those half-breeds, but this time I had backing.

If family was so important to her, I could borrow gnolls from Giuseppina, so I wouldn’t end up in a situation where I couldn’t resolve what I’d discovered while snooping around alone. Not bad.

It was time to move on to the important matter. The important matter was always money.

“So, what’s my compensation?”

Giuseppina’s eyes gleamed like an animal’s.

Animals have no instinct. Only reason. Everything they do—mating, eating, handling their young—is done in the most efficient way possible to survive. So, an animal-like face is a rational face.

“The fact that you’re bringing up payment means you’ve finished weighing your options. There’s an orc saying: a friend who doesn’t repay debts is no better than a dull knife. There are problems money can’t solve, detective.”

So she’s offering to be a friend who repays debts? Seems I made quite an impression at our first meeting. I didn’t like getting involved with thugs, but… a branch manager was a different story.

Still, I wasn’t one to lend my abilities easily for empty words. We might be on terms where we could hire each other for money, but we weren’t close enough to trust each other with work.

“Either offer cash, or tell me why you’re trying to share trust. I’m just one of countless detectives all over America. Why me?”

“See, you’re not one to snap at kindness. And honestly? You were the last detective whose card I received, so you were at the top of my stack. If you fail, I’ll flip to the next card, and if you succeed, I’ll sweep the whole stack into the trash with my forepaw. Feeling more inclined to work now?”

She’s asking me to choose whether I’ll be discarded or become a regular. If there was no ulterior motive behind her kindness, there was no reason to worry or fear.

In this vile city with its golden mask, the thing to fear most was kindness without reason. Kindness that doesn’t seek money usually takes lives instead.

“I usually take missing persons cases with a one-month deadline. Is that acceptable? If I can’t find even a thread after a month of searching, then I can’t find them.”

The food arrives. In front of Giuseppina was a piece of aged—almost rotten—meat like I’d seen before… in front of the tongueless notary was soup, and in front of me was placed an ordinary steak.

Giuseppina is actually an easy gnoll to deal with. She doesn’t twist her words, and her lies are easily spotted. She doesn’t lie much to begin with. Among clients, she’s practically top-tier.

In contrast, I couldn’t read the notary sitting quietly beside her, just staring at me. I probably couldn’t understand the mindset of someone loyal enough to cut out their own tongue, anyway.

At least the meal was decent. Not disappointing enough to make me regret wearing a suit. After finishing the meal neatly, I left the restaurant, still hearing The Oiler’s howling.

Giuseppina extended her thick-furred forepaw first. I lightly took her hand and shook it.

“Freelancers have it good. You should know how I feel having to escort the notary to see the Godmother from now on. Anyway, I hope to see your brother’s face next time, detective.”

I chuckled. How ironic that she complained about her difficult work after dumping all the truly troublesome tasks on me. As if she’d forgotten something, she pulled a note and a key from her pocket and handed them to me.

“The address and key. You know where it is, right? There should be a gnoll guarding it, but if you say I sent you, he’ll step aside. I’m counting on you again.”

Though such gatekeepers rarely stepped aside properly. I got in my car at the restaurant parking lot and headed home. But I had a stop to make before going home.

I headed to a hardware store quite far from home. Since I was already dressed neatly in a suit, there were some things I needed to buy here. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and put on a pair of low-prescription glasses I kept in the car.

I grabbed an empty briefcase from the car and entered the hardware store. I wondered if I could pass as a respectable gentleman with this appearance, but it worked better than expected.

“Ah… s-so, I came to buy a silencer…”

I deliberately dragged my words and spoke in a meek voice. While every neighborhood hardware store sold shooting silencers, it wasn’t good to walk in dressed obviously as a detective.

In a neighborhood where people occasionally get shot and killed, it would be stupid to volunteer as suspect number one. So this approach was much cleaner.

The balding hardware store owner looked me up and down, then spoke in a phlegmy voice.

“Look like you got an earful from the neighbors for shooting in your backyard. Shotgun or pistol?”

“Pistol, please. And, the price…”

I deliberately didn’t specify the gun type, but the hardware store owner pulled out a 1911 pistol silencer as if it were obvious. That was the most common one, so there was no need to appear as a know-it-all reciting gun names.

“Ten dollars. You know how to attach it?”

I nodded my head emphatically a couple of times. He’d probably imagine the reason without me having to explain. I took out two five-dollar bills from my wallet and handed them over, receiving the silencer he offered.

After leaving the hardware store and getting in my car, I checked to make sure the store owner couldn’t see inside the car, then took off my glasses and headed home. The silencer was for insurance.

While I do carry a gun, I rarely actually fire it. New York was a metropolis with over 6 million people. No matter where you fired a gun in this neighborhood, someone was bound to hear it.

The mafia had grown large enough to be brazen, and they bribed the police to maintain that brazenness, but I couldn’t do that. So without a silencer, it was an item I couldn’t fire.

A silencer doesn’t magically reduce the gunshot sound. It just makes the muzzle flash invisible and reduces the sound enough that people can’t tell where the shot came from.

If I needed to shoot, I could just escape while they were trying to locate where the shot came from. I put the silencer in the empty briefcase I always carried, then stuffed it under the passenger seat that no one had sat in for nearly a year.

I changed from my suit into a more comfortable jacket, pulled on a newsboy cap, got back in the car and headed to the address Giuseppina had given me. I thought it would be near her shop, but it was completely on the opposite side.

It was a detached house in a neighborhood that had nothing to do with that slum—not exactly wealthy, but where many middle-class people lived. Did she want to live normally while helping her mafia brothers?

I parked the car. And then I caught a familiar scent nearby. The smell of hyena fur. It seemed to be coming from the car parked right in front, probably the gnoll Giuseppina mentioned.

I got out of the car, took one step forward, and lightly knocked on that car’s door. A thick-furred hyena head popped out of the passenger window.

“Hey, mister. If you’ve got no business here, move along. I don’t want to make trouble sitting here.”

“Giuseppina sent me. She said I could investigate inside the house.”

I pulled out the note written in her handwriting and the key from my pocket to show him. Not that gnolls could identify each other by handwriting.

She took the note I offered, held it to her nose, and inhaled deeply. She returned the note and nodded toward the house.

“It does smell like the branch manager… Ah, right. You’re the guy who came to the restaurant with Suzie. That makes sense. Go in and investigate. Want me to come with you?”

The gnolls’ sense of smell was definitely useful. Since I didn’t have a good nose anyway, I just had to endure the unpleasant animal fur smell they gave off.

“I’d like to talk about Giuseppina’s missing brother too… Ah, do you know his scent?”

The female gnoll, who looked small compared to Giuseppina but was still large, got out of the car. She nodded.

“Organization members all memorize each other’s scents. They say it’s more efficient or whatever… but I don’t really get it. Anyway, the whole house is covered in his scent. You can’t use me like a hunting dog.”

That was obvious enough. Still, if I found something, I could at least confirm whether it belonged to Giuseppina’s brother.

“That’s fine. Anyway, what kind of guy was he?”

“An unpleasant one. He always tried to keep his distance from us. Well, even though he tried to keep his distance, he still collected his salary regularly… and he didn’t care when we buried someone who sold drugs. Just a guy who would stare at you unpleasantly. Why? Is this helpful?”

I might not have the ability to make brilliant deductions, but knowing what kind of person he was helps. Even if it doesn’t help find him, it might help persuade him after I find him.

“Knowing something is better than knowing nothing at all.”

I entered the house, which was covered in a thick layer of dust. There was nothing special inside. It seemed he lived alone, using only one room while the rest remained empty, and even in the room he used, there were just a few ledgers.

I wondered if he might have fled after embezzling money and fearing he’d be caught, so I looked through the ledgers, but as the gnoll had just said, there was no sign of that. Just stiff, methodical entries.

By the way, is this how much mafia members usually earn? As someone who lived half-dead from boredom on $800, the amounts written were beyond my imagination.

If nothing else, one thing was clear. Giuseppina’s branch desperately needed this gnoll. That’s why they were looking for him.

If they were creatures who could fend for themselves, they wouldn’t have let him take home ledgers that clearly showed how much they earned, or at the very least, they would have retrieved them after he disappeared.

Sighing, I tossed the stacked ledgers to the gnoll. The gnoll, who caught them without even knowing what was flying at her, growled.

“They didn’t even collect the ledgers? Since they left all the accounting to him, Giuseppina must have gone crazy when he disappeared. Take these back and keep them at the restaurant. Did that gnoll manage the restaurant ledgers too?”

“Huh, what? Ledgers? Probably… I guess so.”

This is maddening. I could understand why that gnoll ran away. I’d run too rather than work with creatures like these.

“Then go back and stack them on top of the restaurant ledgers. Was she asking me to find her brother or an accountant?”

“Well, it’s not entirely family love that makes her want to find him. It’s because anyone who isn’t Giuseppina’s brother can’t last long and leaves, and because she can trust her brother, that’s why he was placed there. Why, is it serious?”

“It almost seems easier to find a branch manager’s brother kidnapped by the Irish mafia than to find an accountant who ran away from a business that handles things this poorly.”

Good thing I came. With the gnoll awkwardly holding the ledgers, I searched the bedroom a bit more.

One thing I’ve learned as a detective is that races who have to search desperately for even the smallest clue because they lack sensitive senses are much better at finding clues in cases like this.

These gnolls seemed to have just sniffed around and searched only where they smelled something. There were no marks in the dust on the floor indicating furniture had been moved. When someone disappears, you should turn the room upside down.

I moved the bed and checked underneath. There was some junk, but nothing important. However, I noticed a black line protruding from the wall. A telephone line?

I snapped my fingers a couple of times to call the gnoll, then showed her the protruding, cut line from the wall.

“What does this look like to you?”

“A telephone line. Wait, if there’s a phone line hidden behind the bed… are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

I pulled the bed all the way out and examined underneath again. Under the bed was a dust-free area shaped like something long had been sitting there for a while. The shape was obviously that of a telephone.

If he had hidden a phone under there to have conversations, the first possibility that came to mind was that he had been collaborating with someone. I took out my notebook and recorded this.

“If he was collaborating, think about who it might have been with. The police, or the Irish guys. Anyone else?”

“There are the Eastmans too. There are so many it’s hard to pinpoint just one… Do you have connections with the police, detective?”

“I do, but not enough to ask if Giuseppina’s brother was collaborating with the mafia and get an immediate answer. What about your branch?”

The gnoll shook her head. It would be laughable to think that creatures who couldn’t even manage their ledgers properly had done anything beyond bribing patrol officers.

So there was evidence of collaboration. And a gnoll meticulous enough to keep such clean ledgers wouldn’t have left traces. There was another problem.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I needed to figure out whether he collaborated to prepare for escape, or whether he escaped because of the collaboration. The gnoll who had been pondering finally spoke.

“We can leave checking with the police to the higher-ups, and Branch Manager Giuseppina has connections with the Eastmans. As for the Irish guys… we’ve got nothing.”

At least this gnoll’s mind works quickly. It seemed I would have to meet with the Irish half-breeds after all. I corrected the gnoll’s statement.

“They hired me because they don’t have any connection with the Irish guys. Are you going to report back to the restaurant?”

“Yeah, I need to report that he might have been collaborating… and you gave me an errand too.”

It still bothered me that she treated ledger management as a mere errand, but I decided to let it go for now.

“Then tell Giuseppina I’m going to Little Eire to meet those half-breed guys. She’ll want to know.”

“Will do. The branch manager didn’t hire you for nothing.”

Ireland had many gods. Weak gods closer to humans compared to the God-President.

Generally, gods didn’t sleep with humans, but the gods there left descendants with people, and because of that, there were now fewer Irish people without mixed blood from gods or fairies. That’s why they were called half-breeds.

As a result, they knew how to handle quite nasty magic. I brought the silencer hoping I wouldn’t have to fight in Little Eire where they gathered.

Well, actually, apart from that, it’s not a bad place to visit at night. The fact that there are many gods close to humans means it’s decorated with human sensibilities, and Little Eire, named after the goddess of light, couldn’t help but be brilliant at night.

After parting with the gnoll, I drove toward Little Eire. While other neighborhoods were starting to turn off their lights, Little Eire was shining as if just beginning its day, visible even from blocks away.

As I entered that street, the brilliance intensified. Kids with signs around their necks showing casino names and photos of jazz bands performing there today were whistling at passing cars, and true to the golden age of jazz, the roads were filled with music. It was disgusting.