Ch.9Request Log #002 – Giving and Receiving Help (4)

I return to my apartment. Since the goblin probably has no money left, I pay the taxi fare with my own money and enter the apartment.

Residents who have little interest in each other, a landlord who only shows his face when collecting rent. It’s a place where people live who can be treated as if they don’t exist most of the time.

That was what I liked about it, and I hoped this goblin wouldn’t cause any more trouble. I didn’t trust her. I’d trust a dog before I’d trust a person. And I’d trust a well-prepared tool before I’d trust a dog.

While the elevator rises, I put another cigarette in my mouth and light it. Before the smoke reaches the ceiling, we arrive at the top floor first.

After stopping the elevator, I press the doorbell attached to the iron gate that forms an additional barrier in front of the elevator. After pressing it a couple of times, the client comes running with an irritated voice.

“Who’s ringing like… Oh, the bachelor from 708!”

She rushes over and unlocks the iron gate. I hand the box containing the stolen goods to the goblin I brought back, then gently push her inside the gate.

“You probably already know why I brought your granddaughter, and I’ve recovered all the stolen items. As for expenses, I only paid for the taxi fare on the way here… I’ll see you when I pay next month’s rent.”

The goblin’s life was worth just one month’s rent. Though I suppose being alive matters more than how much was paid for it.

After the landlord’s thank you was swallowed up by my comment about knowing why I brought her granddaughter, I simply nod in greeting and return to my apartment. I figured I still had time to go to Eden.

I dump the pile of cigarette butts that had accumulated in the ashtray since morning into the trash can, then stub out the one I was smoking on top of them. I’d never started a fire in my home. Not yet, anyway.

I call Yehoel. Again, the call connects only after the ringtone changes, but that guy’s not completely clueless.

“Husband. You’re probably the only detective who handles two cases in a day. Isn’t that right?”

I click my tongue once before answering.

“If it weren’t for me, why would you pretend to be friends with a detective? Is there anything wrong with us both being careful?”

“Ha! If you wanted to be careful, you wouldn’t have fallen. So, do you have time for Eden?”

I let out a dry laugh. When there were only a few angels who had fallen and become corrupt police, there seemed to have been some punishment, but corruption spread faster than the Spanish flu.

“Yeah, I have plenty of time to spare. Let’s meet at Eden at 7.”

“Eden at 7, huh? I’ll have to postpone my flight around Long Island for a stroll until tomorrow. Alright, 7 it is.”

Nevertheless, fallen angels seemed happier than regular angels. An ordinary angel wouldn’t use their wings to see the sea swallowing the sunset. Could that be called living?

I had no intention of sitting in this apartment any longer, so I hang up the shabby shirt I wear for detective work and my coat. I might not be wealthy, but I don’t dress poorly.

I change into a suit with my back turned to the mirror covered with cloth. Sometimes bloodstains that had already been wiped away would appear in the mirror. I couldn’t tell if it was a hallucination only I could see or just a trick of the eye.

Brown suited me better than black.

Over my shirt, I tie a necktie with blue, red, and yellow diagonal stripes in what they call an African style—named by people who had never set foot in Africa. With a brown jacket and fedora on top, I look like the kind of human who might be allowed into Eden.

They say ability matters more than appearances, but appearances give you the opportunity to demonstrate those important abilities. Without appearances, there are no opportunities. With only appearances, there are only opportunities.

With a watch that looks quite elegant for its cheap price, I leave the apartment again after 20 minutes.

I still carried my pistol. A man might go out without a suit, but he can’t take to the streets without a pistol.

As I walk briefly to reach a good spot to catch a taxi, I see a shabby vagrant walking toward me from a distance.

His body is emaciated, his hair has turned white, and his grizzled beard is filthy. His eyes are filled with desperation, and his mouth looks like it might cry out at any moment. A common vagrant.

I try to ignore him and walk past, but he approaches me. When he tries to grab my sleeve, I reach out first and catch his wrist. With tears welling up in his desperate eyes, he begins to speak a familiar code phrase.

“Have you been baptized with the blood of the lamb? Have you been purified? Have you been cleansed! I’m asking if you’ve been cleansed…”

It was a code phrase used only among soldiers who had been in the Argonne Forest during the Great War. I knew what it meant, but I didn’t want to remember.

Still, I respond properly with the code. Compassion is cheap, so I looked at him with the eyes of a comrade rather than a vagrant.

“No, that was definitely not a lamb.”

“Do you know how to wash away that blood? Do you know how to break that spell?”

A veteran over forty was speaking with tears in his eyes. Even I had thought war would be glorious—how much more so for someone from an earlier era who had dreamed not only of honor but of chivalry?

There wasn’t much I could say. Grabbing his shoulders and telling him my method was the only thing I could do.

“You just have to get used to it. Cover your mirrors. What’s out of sight becomes out of mind.”

“So you’re still searching too. Do you think you’ll find it before the Victory Day fireworks? If you do, tell me then. Is the Veterans Association still using this code?”

He looked like a madman, but he wasn’t one. What we saw during the Great War was enough to make people like this.

“They’re still using it, though I don’t know what it means.”

When I told him I didn’t know the answer, we looked at each other with the same eyes. Eyes trying not to show pity. Wounds might heal, but they never disappear.

The old veteran continued walking down the street, chanting the question about being purified by the lamb’s blood like a song or prophecy, while I turned around and headed for Eden. I needed a drink.

I catch a taxi and, swallowing this ambiguous sensation that feels like nausea but also doesn’t, I say:

“Fifth Avenue.”

The lizard-man taxi driver flicks his tongue. His sharp eyes look me up and down, and his tone becomes more respectful.

“Going to Eden, I see. I’ll get you there comfortably. Well then…”

Appearances give opportunities, as I said. His driving was so smooth I almost fell asleep, barely feeling the car move.

I stare blankly out the window at the passing streets without focusing, and before I know it, we’re on Fifth Avenue. Streets full of nothing but walls surrounded us, and I could see the more vibrant side of New York.

If desire had a smell, this place would reek worse than the street where I went to find the landlord’s granddaughter. Fortunately, desire has neither color nor smell.

I pay the taxi fare with a generous tip and get out. There was a café nearby where I could kill about an hour. I look for the sign with the face of an ancient Roman emperor carved on it.

I enter the café with tables arranged along the street. Pleasantly, the air was thick with the bittersweet aroma of coffee beans.

When there was no alcohol, there had to be coffee, and when there wasn’t even coffee, there had to be cigarettes. Coffee is better than cigarettes. Better than alcohol, too.

The server who almost reflexively greets customers sees my face and waves her hand high. There wasn’t much solidarity among humans, but seeing one’s own kind was always welcome.

“Welcome! Oh, it’s you again! The usual today?”

“Yeah, the usual. Ah, add a bit more sugar today. I’m craving something sweet.”

Coffee alone helps, but drinking a cup loaded with sugar gives me enough energy to stay up all night.

A cup of coffee with plenty of sugar and milk arrives. I always drink this here. If the coffee were the only good thing, it wouldn’t be a place I’d visit often, but the server at this café was quite nice too.

Unlike bartenders, she remained human even after six o’clock. Her healthy tan skin and moderately flowing blonde hair were appealing.

She approaches my table with the coffee cup. This is why I like sitting on stools in cafés and bars.

“You’re dressed particularly neatly today. Going to a dance party?”

These don’t seem like clothes good for dancing. Her outfit—a shirt with vertical stripes under a brick-colored apron—was quite different from mine.

Instead of answering verbally, I raise my hand and point to the building across the street. Eden was a bar located on the top floor and roof of that building. Rebecca, the server, covers her mouth with her hand.

“My, it seems you poke around everywhere, and now you’ve even got an invitation to Eden? I heard if you have an invitation to Eden, you can bring one more guest, so next time…”

“I’m going with a friend’s invitation too. Either way, New York is overflowing with people like me, so why would they give me an invitation? Oh, but I could take you to Arachne.”

“Ugh, I’m afraid of spiders. Though I would like to try a drink fermented with spider venom…”

Since no more customers were coming in, and she wasn’t someone with connections broad enough to receive invitations or someone who spent money on alcohol, I tell her more about the secret bars. This was her own form of adventure.

I show her the invitations—from Arachne’s spider web pattern to Two Face’s invitation with a human on one side and a wolf on the other—and go through all twelve secret bar invitations before putting them away.

After examining each one with apparent interest, she always expresses concern.

“Don’t you have more than when you showed me last time? What kind of alcohol are you drinking, really? My father too…”

“Was a healthy, good person. When you were young, he carved wooden horses for you, but then he fell into alcoholism and his skin turned yellow and swollen… That’s what you’re going to say, right? I hear it every time I come here.”

She nods vigorously as if to say “you know it well.” It felt good to receive concern. Better than I expected.

“If you’ve heard the story so many times, shouldn’t you at least cut back on drinking? I thought you’d at least pretend to reduce it!”

“If I cut back on alcohol, I’ll smoke more cigarettes. You’re not telling me to smoke, are you?”

“I wish you’d drink coffee instead of smoking. Then I could earn more money and move to a bigger apartment. You’ve got deep pockets.”

I empty my coffee cup. I can clearly feel the sugar dissolved in the coffee pouring into my stomach, and my eyes immediately open wide. This feeling of awakening was always good.

“Ah, so you see me as a source of money too?”

“Besides me, is there anyone who sees a detect… problem solver like you as a source of money?”

Not calling me a detective was her own form of consideration. She didn’t care much whether I was a detective or not… but others were different.

“No, I guess not. That’s true.”

Another meaningless conversation. I organize my thoughts by exchanging meaningless words and letters. The memory of the old veteran I met before coming here fades with the aroma and sweetness of coffee.

As I spend time with meaningless conversation and occasional laughter without malice or mockery, Yehoel finds his way here. This was the only place near Eden where I would wait.

“So you were here after all. Do you prefer this place to Eden?”

Though his golden wings are folded, his majestic angelic bearing remains, and the gazes of those around us turn in our direction. It was time to leave.

“I’d like it better if they sold alcohol. But they don’t, right? See you next time, Levi.”

After saying goodbye to Rebecca, I walk out to the street with him. We enter the building where Eden is located. We take the elevator to the top floor. No one bothered us up to this point.

The walls of the top floor were filled with religious paintings depicting historical moments.

From a copy of the painting showing the fingertips of a human and the God-President about to touch, to the moment when the God-President, crumpling the decoded German telegram in anger, gives a speech in Congress. It was quite amusing to name a place Eden, decorate it with such religious paintings, and operate an illegal secret bar.

The entrance to Eden was at the end of that corridor. Two well-built angels, carrying double-barreled shotguns on their hips like pistols when normal people would have to sling them over their shoulders, guarded the entrance.

“Invitation.”

One of the two angels extends his hand to Yehoel, who pulls out an invitation with a glowing dove spirit drawn on it from his pocket. The doorkeeper angels’ burning eyes scan the paper, then they step aside.

A beautifully decorated indoor garden with an apple tree planted in the center, and an artificial stream running around the edge of this floor… it was a place worthy of the name paradise.

Yehoel, seemingly more familiar with the place, finds us seats. The furniture was marble the color of fluffy clouds, perhaps meant to depict heaven filled with clouds.

Soon, an Eden server in a clean white suit with a golden mask on his face approaches us.

“What would you like to order? We’ve just imported some new nectar…”

“A bottle of Etz Ha’Chaim. You can find nectar in a few other places, but this can only be drunk at Eden. I brought a friend along, so I might as well spend some money.”

It probably means the tree of life. If the God-President saw this, he might break his rainbow promise not to judge with water again.

He is omniscient, so he must know about this bar’s existence, but he hasn’t taken action.

No, actually, he was never fond of Prohibition. He even gave a speech saying that he created taste buds so people could enjoy the taste and pleasure of everything edible.

Well, he still had his rules. The rule that human laws are determined by Congress, and he would not comment on their decisions.

So he wouldn’t use his authority to enforce a law he didn’t like in the first place. In a way, not just Eden but all secret bars operate under his tacit permission.

Soon the server brings two glasses and a green bottle with a label depicting a tree laden with fruit, deer nuzzling beside it, and a lion devouring the deer.

The cork, sprouting branches and buds, is pulled out, and the server pours about half a glass of the golden liquor for each of us. The sensation of tasting a new alcohol for the first time… it had been a long time.

Yehoel clears his throat and raises his glass.

“To a long-lasting cooperation, preferably one that never ends.”

“Yes, hopefully lasting until we both set aside enough retirement money and can wash our hands of this business without regrets.”

It was a bit cringeworthy, but we clink glasses, enjoy the aroma, and drink. The taste was fantastic.

It had an unrealistically perfect blend of sweetness, sourness, fizz, and just the right amount of alcohol—a taste that felt like committing original sin.

The bottle with the tree of life on it showed its bottom all too quickly, and since we couldn’t drink much of that hundred-dollar-a-bottle liquor, we followed it with smuggled mead.

I don’t remember how many bottles we drank, but somehow… I made it home again this time. It was a night I would have spent wide awake without alcohol anyway, so it was better not to remember.