Ch.69Second Entanglement – The Mafia and Swing Jazz (5)

“Good morning, Giuseppina. Quite industrious from the morning.”

The detective taunted in a calm voice after leaping through the living room window into the house, timing his entry just after the flash bulbs given by the reporter exploded, creating a blinding flash and thunderous noise.

Giuseppina growled despite being unable to see, but in that moment, a stinging pain overwhelmed her. She hadn’t been hit directly. It seemed some scattered buckshot had ricocheted her way.

She immediately crumpled her large body and hid behind the sofa. The detective was firing a shotgun. He was shooting away like a hunter taking down trapped prey, not even caring about the police coming.

How the hell did he know we’d come here? Giuseppina couldn’t understand. The detective had no intention of understanding her either, so they were similar in that regard.

“Get down! There’s only one bastard who came in, so surround him…”

As Giuseppina shouted while hiding, one of her goons collapsed beside her. The shotgun blasts indoors were deafening, and the air instantly filled with the smell of gunpowder.

None of her senses were working properly. Whatever had exploded had temporarily blinded her with its flash, and the blast left her ears ringing so badly she could barely stand without staggering.

“You crazy bastard, this is a residential area! The angels will…”

“Go ahead and call them. I’ll wrap up a Mafia branch manager on attempted murder, threats, and home invasion charges and turn it into a sweet performance record. You don’t even register to me.”

Giuseppina couldn’t properly count how many shots the detective had fired. Her eyes were temporarily blinded by the flash, and her ears were so muffled she couldn’t hear properly. She didn’t know how many more of her goons had fallen.

Giuseppina belatedly admitted she was cornered. If she raised her head now, the detective would pull the trigger. If she stayed crouched down as if she could hide forever, the police would arrive.

But there had to be a way to turn this around. As she kept her head pressed to the floor trying to think of alternatives, the detective’s voice continued. His position had changed.

“You know it was over the moment I read where you were going, Giuseppina. Why don’t you surrender? My client isn’t the type to tell me to kill you. And I’d rather not escalate things further if possible.”

The moment Giuseppina growled, another deafeningly loud gunshot rang out. After a choking sound and the release of a final breath, another one of her goons collapsed face-down on the floor.

He fired three shots when coming through the window. And just now, two more… Even without seeing the shotgun, if it was a standard model, it would hold six or seven rounds. If she had her remaining goons charge him, she might have a chance.

She couldn’t hear the detective’s footsteps on the carpet, but she could tell his voice was moving.

“Answer with a yes or no. I don’t know if you’re under-evolved or just think being a beast is cool… but you still can’t see properly.”

That smug attitude won’t last much longer, detective. The flash’s hazy afterimage that clouded her vision was gradually disappearing. Giuseppina dug her claws into the floor, preparing to pounce.

She had three goons waiting behind the door. There should be one more at the front entrance… Even if she lost all her trusted subordinates, she wanted to kill the detective. She could do it.

After feeling the flash’s afterimage fade, she immediately raised her head. She felt something hard against her forehead. The detective was pressing a gun barrel against her head.

“No, Giuseppina. Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong. Did you think I couldn’t shoot because you were hiding behind the sofa? No. You might have thought I was out of bullets. No. Do you think you can somehow turn this situation around? I’m sorry, but that’s also a no.”

The cold mockery stirred Giuseppina’s mind. Everything she had managed to think of while lying on the floor was instantly negated.

Her hands gripped the floor harder, causing the wood to crack. The detective continued speaking as if he didn’t care.

“Move if you want to. If I need an excuse to tell the Godmother why I killed you, ‘she resisted too much even while subdued, I had no choice’ is a good enough excuse.”

Finally, the flash’s afterimage disappeared, and she could properly see the detective’s eyes. His expression wasn’t filled with vengeance or killing intent like hers. It was simply the face of an office worker handling a task.

I thought you were a fixer with a detective’s name, but you’re actually an executioner. Giuseppina growled as she raised both hands above her head. This effectively meant all the goons in the house were subdued.

The only thing holding her branch together was Giuseppina’s charisma. If that pride could be broken, the remaining goons wouldn’t be much of a problem.

The detective knew where Giuseppina would go, when she would go… even how to subdue her. In contrast, Giuseppina knew nothing more about the detective than that he was a useful human. That was all.

The angels would arrive soon. He needed to escape quickly, but he had to leave enough evidence to threaten Giuseppina. The detective slightly raised his voice to call the reporter waiting in the car.

It would be safe for the reporter to come out now. The goons wouldn’t abandon their branch manager for revenge.

“Reporter! Raise your head and take the picture. Female goons are more sensitive about their pride than their erogenous zones, so one photo like this is enough for blackmail.”

Only after hearing the detective who had suddenly invaded her home and killed the intruders shout these words did the editor-in-chief realize that Rose had hired him.

His heart swelled knowing that the reporter who had been threatened and attacked because of him was now helping him, but he wouldn’t know that this man standing before him was the same detective who had once tried to kill Rose.

Rose changed the camera lens and took a photo of the detective pointing the shotgun at Giuseppina’s head and Giuseppina surrendering with her hands up.

Giuseppina made an irritated growling sound, but the detective only responded by pressing the gun barrel harder. After taking one more photo as a backup, the reporter gave a thumbs-up from the car window.

The reporter cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. The elf’s sensitive senses could faintly hear the sound of angels flying toward them.

“The angels will arrive soon! Get out quickly!”

The detective removed the gun barrel from Giuseppina’s head and waved his hand dismissively.

Giuseppina trembled with anger, but she knew that whatever she might pull from her pocket, the detective would pull the trigger faster.

Shamefully, she had no choice but to flee. She couldn’t even collect the bodies of her dead members, and abandoning one car that became unnecessary due to reduced personnel, she escaped in the remaining car.

The detective had a bit more time. He had enough to leave a few words for the man who was using his shirt to stop the bleeding where Giuseppina had torn him—presumably the editor-in-chief’s son.

“Looks like you didn’t get caught without firing a shot. Well done, Yankee. See you.”

The detective jumped over the window lightly, just as he had entered. Though the wound in his abdomen ached when he raised his voice, Gerard Thayer shouted what he hadn’t been able to say last time.

He felt strangely relieved. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the words he’d had to keep in his heart for five years, or because the wound in his abdomen had opened and warm blood was leaking out.

“Th-thank you again! I mean, um… damn it! They really are the Angels of the Trenches, Samuel!”

Before the editor-in-chief, who was dumbfounded by the sudden invasion of the goons and their equally sudden defeat, could follow, he got into the lawyer’s car, and the lawyer immediately turned the wheel.

They would blend into the traffic in the central district for a moment and then return to Rose’s house. As they were leaving the edge of the residential area, angels streaked through the sky, flying toward the address where gunshots had been reported.

Fortunately, they didn’t seem to have caught the gunpowder-soaked detective’s scent. Though Rose looked like she might vomit at any moment.

The detective brought out his duffel bag and loaded six 20-gauge shotgun shells into the shotgun in advance.

Rose, who had been watching with her nose covered, flinched slightly. She had heard everything the detective and Giuseppina had said, including when the detective claimed he had bullets left.

“So, it was an empty gun? And you used that to…”

“We have a relationship of trust. That goon believed bullets would come out if I pulled the trigger. That’s enough. More importantly, since this job is ending earlier than expected… I’ll change the payment method. I’ll charge separately for the life allowance, bullet costs, and everything else. Is that okay?”

Rose looked at the detective with slightly disgusted eyes as he immediately brought up money, but she nodded right away. He was a man worth every penny and more.

“I’ll open my father’s safe and clean it out for you, so don’t worry. Really… Is it, is it all over now?”

The only things in the Clichy president’s safe would probably be a laurel wreath made of woven branches and a green hood, but he didn’t bother to mock her.

“No, we need to meet the Godmother. We need to meet the person who tried to kill you and the person who tried to kill me, and settle things. As the daughter of President Clichy, you must have dresses. You’d better wear the best one you have. We’re going to face goons who failed to kill both me and you because they were distracted by etiquette.”

If asked to choose between killing the Godmother’s assassin ten times or insulting the Godmother once, the detective would proudly choose killing ten assassins. That’s how much the Mafia revered etiquette.

Their car mixed with the cars of early-rising office workers in the central district, joining the procession of black-roofed cars, then naturally pulled away and arrived at Rose’s apartment. The detective got out first, but there were no goons.

He remained vigilant until they entered the house, but the goons weren’t thorough enough to prepare a second method like this. If they were there, he would smell them.

Only then did the detective put down his gun. Uncharacteristically tense, he sighed.

“They didn’t touch the house. So, we need to wait. We have to wait until Giuseppina runs away and reports to the Godmother. Does the hot water work?”

“What place doesn’t have hot water these days! Of course it does.”

The detective snorted and walked into the corner room he was using. The detective’s apartment had hot water… sometimes. Just barely.

The mirror on the desk in the room was flipped over, and the bathroom mirror was covered with a piece of waterproof cloth. The detective didn’t want to see his smudged and blurred reflection.

Averting his eyes was simply like chewing painkillers to mask the pain, but even being able to forget momentarily was quite helpful. This was how the detective lived.

After washing off the gunpowder smell with proper hot water for the first time in a while, the detective immediately put on the suit he had brought.

He pressed the middle of his light gray homburg hat with a black band to shape it. A clean white shirt, a black suit jacket with visible texture that didn’t look too dark, and a black and white striped tie pointing up to the right—it was decent enough to wear when dining with a Mafia Godmother.

The detective was the type of person who spent money on clothes before other things, but he was also someone who needed to dress well. Living that way, one finds decent clothes at cheap prices.

The lawyer’s mouth corner rose mockingly when he saw the detective who had been shooting people appear in a neat suit. He seemed to want to say he looked like a gentleman, but the detective didn’t care.

Once again occupying the sofa in the reporter’s living room, he called the Godmother’s number that he had called earlier this morning. After the connection tone rang a couple of times, the call connected.

Since the Godmother wouldn’t know who was calling, he spoke first. It was generally rude, but in this situation, making the Godmother ask who was calling would be ruder.

“Hello, Godmother. Have you received a report from Branch Manager Giuseppina? I called because we might need to move up our dinner appointment, but if you haven’t received the report yet, I’ll call back in two hours.”

This time, he maintained both appearances and manners. The Godmother seemed satisfied, making a purring sound.

“People really change quickly. The more I see, the more intrigued I am… Anyway, I received a report from Giuseppina. Yes, we should move up our dinner appointment. How about the restaurant where I met Giuseppina before, for dinner today? If it’s today, we could dine while watching Satchmo’s band perform. That young man with a mouth as big as a hippopotamus. It cost quite a bit to book him, so he’d better be worth it.”

Who was Satchmo again? Ah, yes. Louis, was it pronounced Louis or Lewis… well, anyway, that was the musician’s name.

He had seen him at another jazz bar, and unlike the usual riffraff who performed, he was someone who made you focus on the music rather than the alcohol. It was the sound of jazz’s golden age.

Anyway, booking such a musician was a way of showing off one’s influence. It was something people who wanted to say they were interested in art and intellectually sophisticated would do.

Still, there was no reason to refuse. He answered with a leisurely voice mixed with laughter. Until now they had been adversaries, but now it was time to talk.

“With such a musician there, I couldn’t ask for more. I’ll come with my client. What time would be good for you? As you know, we have all day free because of this matter.”

“Let’s make it 6 o’clock. Just be there at that time. I’ll have all the seats cleared, and it will be just the four of us talking—me, Giuseppina… you and your client. Will that be enough?”

“It would be better to have five, including my client’s lawyer. You don’t hide your business from your bodyguards either, Godmother. Well, maybe you do, but my client isn’t that kind of person.”

The Godmother’s laughter traveled through the phone line. People who had been baring their teeth and growling at each other just hours ago were now exchanging friendly words like close friends.

“Can’t you find a hyena skin to wear on your face? If so, I’d somehow convince everyone you were Italian and bring you into the organization. Let’s do that. The five of us will meet. I look forward to sharing comfort.”

“Yes, I’ll see you then. We also look forward to sharing comfort.”

There was only one way to get the Mafia to sit at the negotiation table and share comfort. The only method was to put a leash on them and point a gun at their head, making them understand that trying to kill us would cost them much more blood and gold than persuading us.