Ch.286Request Log #023 – Waiting for the Holy Night (1)

The job ended easily enough. The union worker’s murder charges were dismissed, and he went on to live happily, forgetting he had even been an assailant.

It wasn’t particularly gut-wrenching. For justice to prevail, countless people had to band together and work hard, and even then, there was no way to determine if the outcome truly favored good or evil.

I pulled on my mask. I yanked the acceleration lever as far as it would go and sped up. Targeting the darkest moment just before dawn, I threw a fish wrapped in a gangster’s coat in front of Giuseppina’s restaurant. Then I slipped away.

I’d spent two days slowly making them anxious, so now it was time to cast the bait they would eagerly bite. I let out a sigh. I desperately needed a drink.

Tomorrow or the day after—or perhaps today if the mafia moved faster than I anticipated—I would be called in, questioned, and then released.

I returned home, removed my mask, and decided to rest briefly. Tomorrow I would need to wander the streets a bit. Somewhere the gangsters could find me easily would be best. Still, I didn’t want to worry Levi.

If the matter was important enough, Giuseppina or Salvatrina would come personally. If not, their underlings would be scouring the sidewalks looking for me. I was prepared for either scenario.

The job was now finished. Since there was no client involved, having a drink or two wouldn’t be a problem. I finally opened the Armagnac bottle I’d been sipping from alone in the sewers and poured it into a glass.

I took a large gulp. The heavy aroma of sweet fruits like plums and grapes rose up, almost sickeningly rich. It tasted quite luxurious, but right now it was nothing more than a sleeping aid.

I threw myself onto the hard bed, surrendering to the intoxication of a single glass. Somehow the bed felt a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps now I wouldn’t feel like I was drowning even when lying on a soft bed.

Have I changed a little? In the pre-dawn darkness, I clenched and unclenched my fist. I had changed a little. Just a tiny bit. But until now, I had barely been maintaining the status quo.

If so, I could say my condition had improved slightly. Improvement… might be a good thing. I changed my definition. I decided not to fear improvement. That’s what I resolved.

Even with this resolution, if my condition improved a bit more and perhaps I regained some color, I would still tremble. I would worry about falling back into the past, so I needed to at least make this mental commitment.

I didn’t become any more emotional than that. Though I had settled both the client’s revenge and my promise to the journalist, there might still be some loose ends to tie up. I closed my eyes briefly.

I barely slept two hours, let alone four, before getting up from bed. This time, it wasn’t double vitality forcing me awake. Someone was pounding heavily on my door.

Judging by the height of the knocking, it was either an ogre or Giuseppina. The expected visitor had arrived. Wearing my rumpled shirt I’d slept in, with only a pistol tucked into my waistband, I approached and opened the door.

Giuseppina stood there. With an expression that seemed both enraged and frightened, she bared her teeth and growled as if about to spray dirty spittle. She couldn’t organize her words.

I’d done well to throw that package in front of this woman’s establishment. Though Giuseppina was loyal, she wasn’t as clever as she thought. Seeing that sight, she would have immediately called the Godmother, blaming other gangsters.

Pretending to assess the situation just by looking at her expression, I gestured with my chin. Opening the door fully, I said:

“The Godmother did contact me about her daughter not coming home. Was she found covered in blood in some alley? Come in.”

Giuseppina shouted. Her voice trembled with anxiety, and the louder she spoke, the more vulnerable she appeared.

“Did you say come in, detective? Come in? If that were all, I wouldn’t have come personally. Some bastard made that girl vanish and left a warning right in front of our territory! Follow me. The Godmother wants to see you. This time we’re not feeling courteous enough to mind our manners, so I’d appreciate if you’d follow quietly…”

Vanished, eh? Giuseppina doesn’t usually give compliments. She and her underlings had discovered nothing, despite being just one step away from where the gangster had died.

Still, the Godmother was moving quickly, just as I’d anticipated. She was trying to grab the situation with both hands and handle it rather than getting caught up in it. I decided to treat this as a new job.

“This doesn’t seem like something that will end in an hour or two. Let me grab my coat and come out. Wait here.”

Giuseppina continued growling, unable to calm herself, but she didn’t stop me from getting my coat. I threw on a leather jacket over my rumpled shirt and pants.

It was identical to what I’d worn when meeting the Godmother’s gangster. A spare. It looked exactly like the one I’d worn when killing her, but without Sol Invictus’s sheath or the smell of her blood.

I had no choice but to leave home looking even more disheveled than usual, but considering the alternative of being kidnapped with a hood thrown over my head on the street, this was a decent escort.

Giuseppina’s eyes flashed with vengeance, but some of her subordinate gangsters seemed afraid this incident might escalate into a proper conflict. Something big was about to happen.

Should I offer to investigate this time too? No, unless the Godmother ordered it, there was no need. I just needed to meet with the Godmother once, as if being interrogated, and that would be it.

I entered the elevator with the gangsters. The elevator creaked under the weight of the large gangsters as it descended to the first floor. Without taking my car, I rode in Giuseppina’s vehicle as we crossed New York.

We weren’t heading to the gangsters’ restaurant on Fifth Avenue. We must be going to the Godmother’s house. I glanced leisurely out the window. As expected, we were heading to a wealthy neighborhood with a view of Staten Island.

Giuseppina seemed to have hundreds of questions for me, but perhaps the Godmother had ordered her to keep quiet, as she remained silent, fidgeting anxiously. She looked like a dog circling to catch its tail.

After driving for quite some time, the car entered a wealthy home through long iron gates that had been opened. The car stopped in the middle of a circular driveway in the garden where vehicles could turn around. It seemed like hundreds of gangsters had gathered.

I got out of the car after Giuseppina, who exited first. The branch manager who had given me information was pretending to be solemnly tense. The way people looked at me was almost chilling.

One needs that level of acting skill to betray someone. Without putting my hands in my leather jacket pockets, I followed Giuseppina into the mansion. I had to leave my gun with the gangsters.

Now I had no gun in my hands. The magnificent mansion was filled with gangsters. But at least I seemed freer than those gangsters. They were bound by fear and anger.

I wasn’t free from such things either, but… at least not right now. That’s how I decided to put it. Clearing my mind of idle thoughts, I looked around the mansion once.

It was quite a sophisticated three-story mansion. There were no chandeliers hanging, and it looked almost like an art museum, filled with artwork displayed to show off the owner’s artistic taste.

Amusingly, or perhaps paradoxically, all of it only proved that the Godmother wasn’t such a refined woman after all. If she truly had class, she wouldn’t act so desperate to show it off.

Giuseppina led me to the Godmother’s room without saying a word. It was in the center of the mansion. A reception room with large windows facing the backyard. A bright place that didn’t match today’s atmosphere.

Unlike the other gangsters who were gloomy, excessively tense to the point their nostrils dried up, or enraged like Giuseppina, the Godmother appeared calm, at least on the surface.

Giuseppina stood behind the Godmother, in the place where that gangster had once stood but which originally belonged to Giuseppina… and I was guided to the guest sofa in the reception room. I sat quietly with my back straight.

The Godmother was also choosing her words. She seemed to be contemplating whether to interrogate me immediately or to ask questions gently. A growling sound escaped from the corner of her mouth.

“If you were a man who couldn’t grasp at all what had happened, I would have had to spend quite some time explaining. Why do you think I called you here, detective?”

I gave her the answer she expected. Like when I killed the policeman she treated as her son last time, I just needed to deliver the lines she expected me to say.

“I remember you called a few days ago saying one of your daughters hadn’t come home. Giuseppina confirmed that story was true. What exactly happened?”

The Godmother placed a piece of cloth she had been gripping tightly enough to wrinkle her clothes onto the reception room table. It wasn’t difficult to identify what it was. It was the gangster’s coat.

After briefly considering whether to bite my lip or chew the inside of my mouth, I chose to bite my lip. I should recognize this coat. I spoke as if I had grasped the situation.

“That’s the coat that gangster was wearing that day. So…”

The Godmother spoke with a voice that seemed about to reveal emotion, yet was firmly suppressed. Her expression suggested she would immediately begin a bloody revenge if she knew who the culprit was.

“What did you say to me when you called after killing my son? You said you’d put Jonathan in a box, throw him into the sea, and leave canned sardines wrapped in his police uniform. You were smart enough not to do such a thing, but…”

The Godmother’s sharp nails tapped the marble reception table as if about to break it. Though she pretended to be calm on the outside, she was probably the most anxious of all.

That woman she had personally brought from Sicily was not only the Godmother’s operative but also her closest aide and bodyguard. Anyone who could target that woman could obviously target the Godmother too.

So the Godmother’s reaction was largely anxiety. It wasn’t just fear of having her life threatened. I decided to make some deductions now. It was like trampling through someone’s mind with muddy feet, but I didn’t care.

She wasn’t a client, wouldn’t give me work immediately, and was someone whose close connection could bring as much harm as benefit, so I decided to show her only the courtesy she wanted.

I deliberately let out a laugh that sounded like disbelief. To make it seem like an unconscious action, I apologized once.

“I’m sorry. No, it’s just… this is absurd, isn’t it? I had to bluff in that situation to protect my client, but who would actually do something like this?”

I deliberately left one opening. That wasn’t a bluff. I had once told the Godmother that if she didn’t accept the deal, I would personally prevent her from attending the dinner meeting.

The Godmother clicked her tongue a couple of times at Giuseppina standing beside her. Giuseppina drew a gun from her chest and handed it to the Godmother, holding it by the barrel. She took the gun and pointed it at me.

There was no reason to be alarmed. She just wanted reassurance. She needed to be certain that for whatever reason, I wasn’t at odds with her… cutting off her limbs.

“I think you really have the ability to do it, don’t you? You have the ability to go to the house I gave her, grab her by the nape of the neck, drag her out, and kill her. Leone.”

“You’re overestimating me a bit too much. If I had such ability, why would I have arranged a dinner meeting to negotiate? Yes, I’m a skilled operative as you say, but I’m not good enough to show mercy to a mafia boss. And I’m certainly not good enough to earn such hatred.”

The intensity of the interrogation increased. Or more precisely… the Godmother tried to increase the intensity. She put her finger on the trigger. My gaze met the gun barrel directly. It was an ineffective action.

The Godmother didn’t seem to like my calmness. I didn’t need to please her right now. I had to be somewhat defensive, while appearing to cooperate and look out for my own safety.

The threats would be coming soon. The Godmother was suspicious of me. Perhaps that was somewhat pleasing. Once I escaped the circle of suspicion, the Godmother would not pursue me.

“The bartender at Bouton de Rose, or the bartender at Two Face… you seem quite friendly with bartenders, detective. Especially the Bouton de Rose bartender, who was also the last person to see my daughter that night. You might be able to laugh and say ‘go ahead and shoot’ even with a gun pressed against your eyeball. Would that woman be able to do the same?”

I gladly mocked her. I got up from the reception room sofa, approached the head seat of the reception table where she sat, and pulled the gun to rest it obliquely against my forehead.

Even if she really pulled the trigger, with the body of an Argonne Invincible that takes half the harm but delivers double the intensity, I could probably withstand a shot or two. I was making a bet I couldn’t lose.

“Then the Godmother will just lose a bullet without finding anything out. That woman met me at Bouton de Rose and came to my place for a glass of Armagnac. You know that. This coat happens to be what I wore that day. You must have already turned Bouton de Rose upside down—did you hear what I was wearing?”

The gangster who had lost the ability to have a sincere conversation without a gun placed the weapon on the reception table. She looked my jacket up and down. She growled.

“They said you were wearing a leather winter jacket. Take it off. We may not be werewolves like that Sarah woman from Two Face, but we have quite good noses. Giuseppina.”

I took off the leather jacket and threw it to Giuseppina. She caught it easily with one muscular hand and began sniffing with her protruding snout. She was looking for the smell of blood or gangster fur.

She wouldn’t find any. It wasn’t the jacket I had worn that day. After sniffing for a long time, Giuseppina quietly placed my jacket, which only smelled of alcohol, on the reception table with disgust.

Though they had built an impressive three-story mansion with money earned from selling bootleg liquor and no longer worked in flickering basements, the mafia members were still mafia.

They still acted like violent thugs brewing cheap moonshine in a basement. No matter how glossy the exterior, the essence never changes.

I was the first to immerse myself in their suspicion, and also the first to escape it. The Godmother gestured as if to say she would be watching me, but with hundreds more suspects, it was merely an empty threat.

It was quite fierce for something to handle while waiting for Christmas, but not that fierce after all.