Ch.311If… the Rat Catcher Was Right? (2)

# When two people work together, tasks become more than twice as easy. Since the silencer on the pistol was quite worn out, I attached a new silencer to my well-maintained gun and handed it to the Rat-Catcher.

In exchange, I pulled out an 11-year-old pistol from my office desk drawer—I couldn’t even remember who I’d taken it from—checked its condition, and attached a new silencer. It appeared to have been cleaned at least once.

The Rat-Catcher was quite a comforting presence, except for his obsessive cleanliness. After inspecting the gun, he slid it into his jacket’s inner pocket with a satisfied expression. Fortunately, it was well concealed.

I also packed two masks. Trying not to discuss the war with the Rat-Catcher, we talked about family matters and how things were going with Sara until we left the house in the early hours of dawn.

We brought a car but parked it quite far from City Hall and walked the rest of the way. We kept the masks tucked inconspicuously behind our waists as we walked, with nothing particularly to hide.

City Hall wouldn’t normally have such tight security. Excessive security itself would be cause for suspicion.

Most of the lights in the City Hall building were off. The Rat-Catcher, hiding beside me as I watched through binoculars from a distance, whispered without malice:

“So while I’m at home listening to the radio with my wife, talking about work, and escorting her upstairs to bed around this time, you’ve been living like this? You’re definitely the hardest worker among us.”

“Don’t you know that calling a detective hardworking isn’t a compliment? How often are the cases we take not shady? Being diligent isn’t always a virtue. The guard just passed. Let’s go in.”

We pulled on our masks and with doubled strength and vigor, we lightly ran across the road toward City Hall.

For an administrative building, it had plenty of decorative elements on the walls—more than enough for an Argonne Invincible to grab and climb up.

Besides, we were men who needed few words. Without anyone having to point it out, we both recognized that while the wall was easy to grip, it was too high to climb in one go. The Rat-Catcher bent his knees.

I stepped onto his cupped hands, and with his boost, I jumped and grabbed the windowsill on the second floor of City Hall. I lowered my arm so the Rat-Catcher could jump up and grab it, then used my hunting knife to pry open the window gap before climbing inside.

This was the interior of City Hall that ordinary people couldn’t see. Since I had no intention of becoming a civil servant, this would probably be my last time seeing it. After looking around, I found a sign for the records room and signaled to the Rat-Catcher.

We both ran toward the records room sign, concealing our footsteps. However, unlike us, we heard the sound of people who weren’t hiding their footsteps. Based on the sound, there were two of them.

I held up two fingers to the Rat-Catcher, and he nodded as if he already knew. If they were ordinary security guards, we could let them pass.

If not, it would be better to subdue them and gather information. The two patrolmen didn’t even consider that someone might visit City Hall at this hour.

“What is this, some kind of courage training? Isn’t it weird that we get paid to walk around City Hall for two hours every day? Don’t they have their own security guards? Have they all gone home?”

From his mention of separate City Hall security guards, these men weren’t official guards. Their footsteps grew closer. Based on the direction and distance of their voices, the two were walking side by side.

“Yeah, those guys clock out at midnight. And…”

The second private security guard, standing on the right, seemed more cautious. He started to explain but then changed course. Though not by much.

“Even our councilman needs to pay extra attention to City Hall security sometimes. That’s all there is to it. Got it?”

I signaled two again, then pointed to myself with my right finger curled. The Rat-Catcher would naturally handle the one on the left. Our trust allowed me to throw myself into action.

And there was a key word. The second guard, being cautious, mentioned “councilman” while redirecting his speech. If a councilman was involved, they might really be trafficking children.

I’d have to think about this case after dealing with the guards first. I quietly steadied my breathing. The Rat-Catcher lightly touched my forearm with his fingertip. I turned my head slightly.

He brought two fingers to his neck, asking if we needed to kill them. I shook my head. There was no need to kill security guards and create stories about a murderer on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Soon, the two guards approached the corner where we were hiding. The guard on the left, assigned to the Rat-Catcher, turned the corner first, so the Rat-Catcher lunged slightly ahead of me.

His skills hadn’t rusted at all. The Rat-Catcher rushed the flashlight-wielding guard without making a sound, covering his mouth with one hand while grabbing his neck with the other.

He gripped under the jaw as if trying to wedge his hand in, expertly pressing for several seconds to subdue the guard by rendering him unconscious. It was enough. Fighting alongside a comrade wasn’t such a bad feeling.

I also lunged at my target, the guard on the right. I struck his wrist holding the gun. Then I straightened my bent arm, grabbed his face, and pulled him down without making a rolling sound.

I gripped him with enough strength to crush him. The one on the right knew more. He was searching his waist for the knife he carried, not even realizing I could see everything.

I deliberately didn’t respond. He pulled a pocket knife from his waist and stabbed at my neck from the front. The leather didn’t tear. There was only a slight red scratch. The harm was halved, and the durability was doubled.

After showing him this, I took the pocket knife from his stunned hand and pushed the blade sideways. Soon the blade made a distinctive “ting” sound of low-quality metal breaking and shattered.

That was the only sound made until we subdued the two guards. The one the Rat-Catcher had grabbed was already unconscious, and the one I held had eyes wide with shock.

I sat the guard I’d caught on the floor, picked up a piece of the broken blade, and lightly pressed it against his knee. I bluffed, pretending to know more than I did.

“If you thought parents who lost their children would sit quietly, you’re gravely mistaken, friend. Would killing you send a message to him? A message that someone is making moves? Hmm? What do you think? Tell me.”

The man’s expression began to turn almost blue. I pressed the blade’s cross-section with my thumb. As the blade dug into his suit pants and touched his flesh, he shook his head, unable even to struggle.

“Then maybe I’ll hang your neck in the office of the respected New York councilman. Is he that important? Huh? Are the adoption agency donation records in this records room worth risking your life for?”

About 80% of what I said was speculation and the other 20% was bluff, but it seemed to work on the guard. Seeing him desperately shaking his head, I removed my hand from his mouth.

“I-I’m just a low-level guy! You must have figured out how many people Edward hired! That bastard bought an orphanage and…”

I lightly struck down with my fist on the blade fragment partially fixed to his clothing. While he screamed, my hand covered his mouth, preventing the sound from escaping. This man wasn’t low-level.

The Rat-Catcher seemed a bit surprised by my action, so I explained my reasoning. The explanation wasn’t for the guard rolling on the floor with a blade in his knee and his mouth covered—it was for the Rat-Catcher.

“One, low-level guys don’t know the client’s name. This bastard immediately revealed the client’s name when he thought a blade might pierce his knee. One, low-level guys don’t know what they’re doing. This bastard knew he was managing donation ledgers. One, low-level guys don’t know how other operations are progressing. This bastard knew.”

He knew that Edward had bought an orphanage and hired more operatives. This bastard knew what the councilman was doing. And yet he helped with the operation.

The fact that he tried to pass himself off as low-level showed he had some brains. The Rat-Catcher’s expression also began to grow cold at this realization. This wasn’t a sight for an expectant parent.

He might be thinking his own child could be sold to men like these. Nevertheless, he calmed down briefly and looked down at the man he had knocked unconscious.

“Is this one low-level?”

I nodded briefly. Based on the conversation, he was low-level. Besides, he hadn’t seen the Rat-Catcher’s face, so there was no need to deal with him. If it turned out otherwise later, we could always find him again.

He would consider being knocked unconscious as fortunate. The Rat-Catcher spoke first with a troubled expression. He held out his hand as if asking for the knife. He swallowed hard.

“Let me do it. With a baby on the way, I want to at least say I did my part in making a slightly better world for them…”

I clicked my tongue. Trying to share the burden of guilt rarely helped. Instead, I nodded toward the records room right in front of us.

Someone with a family who could envision a future—perhaps dreaming of a liberation better than that of the future, tomorrow, salvation, and the poet—shouldn’t kill people.

“It hasn’t even been a day since I said I realized holding a child with blood-stained hands isn’t a good thing. Go in, find the ledger, and find the name in it. The councilman’s name is Edward.”

After watching the Rat-Catcher smash the records room doorknob with his fist and enter, I turned to the still-frantic guard and lowered my head. I pulled off my mask, allowing him to see my face in the moonlight.

At that moment, tears began to flow from his eyes. He was someone who knew exactly when a masked anonymous assailant would reveal their face, which could become evidence.

To him, who now wore a completely resigned expression, I spoke. I tried to make my whisper sound gentle.

“Names. The names you know. It’s unfair that you’re the only one suffering this fate for the same crime, isn’t it? Talk. I’ll at least make sure you had it the easiest. Okay?”

Human grudges were stronger than human trust relationships. Now, with a sense of resignation, he began to spill names. There was a lizardman named Karim, and the councilman’s name was Edward Collins.

He also revealed the name of one operative, and as he poured out various information, he looked up at me as if wondering if there might be some hope for him. I grabbed his chin with one hand and gently twisted it to the right.

A sound somewhere between a “ttuduk” and a “ttodok”—perhaps closer to an “odok”—rang out. He went limp. I took out my hunting knife.

There was a message that needed to be carved. “This is what happens to sinners.” I wrote it neatly on his shirt.

I would throw him in front of Councilman Edward Collins’s office. He would realize someone had discovered what was happening, and then he would start moving—either to clean up or deal with it urgently.

When men who had been methodically handling their business suddenly start moving, gaps appear. And the mission of the Argonne Invincibles was typically to exploit small gaps and open paths.

I would kill them all. I would hang them all. That was an appropriate punishment for those who prevented children from living as children.

The Rat-Catcher finally emerged with the ledger. He opened a page and showed me a name that had been crossed out. Normally, donors’ names would be written very prominently.

Crossing out a name meant there was a reason to hide it, and what that reason was seemed obvious. It seemed like the name had been written down proudly at first, then crossed out by rubbing it.

When we placed paper behind it and scratched away, the name Edward Collins—the same one the guard had mentioned—appeared. He died without lying. The guard’s final handling could be done cleanly.

We had discovered who was behind it, and the other names were quite credible, so it wouldn’t be difficult to deal with all of them by exploiting their vulnerabilities. I returned the ledger to the Rat-Catcher.

“I’ll handle the investigation. I’ll go with you to find the child, and I’ll take care of the ringleaders… If you know any journalists, you handle contacting them. This involves the life of a journalist who died trying to expose this case, and I don’t know anything about that dead journalist. Publishing the story and revealing the truth would be a fitting memorial…”

As I said those words, an unpleasant memory surfaced. I remembered the journalist who had said she wanted to find out if discovering the truth could help us.

Was that woman who made me spill past stories like vomiting blood feeling this way when she spoke? It was somewhat confusing. We all end up resembling the people we dislike.

It would be better to discuss that woman after this job was done. I didn’t necessarily abandon the thought that making the truth known might be a form of memorial. Nevertheless, that woman was an outsider.

I still decided to say no to the question of whether a person can memorialize another’s pain. Perhaps that woman could create memorial wreaths for others from the flower garden filling her mind.

In the end, I shook my head and continued what I was going to say. The thought that had just occurred to me seemed to have made my words rougher. I felt a scraping sensation on the tip of my tongue.

“Publishing the story would be a memorial, and to memorialize someone, you need to know them. Well, even if it was somewhat one-sided, you knew that journalist. The journalist placed hope in you. That’s enough of a relationship to memorialize someone. That’s your part.”

The Rat-Catcher sighed as he looked at me. Perhaps I seemed like I was trying to shoulder everything. It was just division of labor. That’s what we decided.

“That journalist was just someone who wrote editorials I liked, and you’re a guy who fell into hell with me at Argonne. Look, since you’re the expert in this business, I won’t say anything about you handling those bastards yourself… But don’t become, you know, a mongrel. I mean, ‘The Hanger of New York!’ Something like that. You know what I mean?”

It was like a nickname given to serial killers. I smirked at his words, shaking my head to indicate he shouldn’t worry.

“I know exactly what you mean. Don’t worry. I’m not some crazy masked vigilante, I don’t think I’m doing righteous work, and I’m not looking for salvation here. I like the name though. The Hanger of New York.”

Those who bought and sold children would come to fear the Hanger of New York. We escaped after hanging that guard with his own necktie on Councilman Edward Collins’s office doorknob.