The Rolling Bootlegs (16 page)

A faint light seeped through them. Apparently they opened into an underground room.

…And the cheers were definitely coming from those holes.

“Aha… The office is in the basement, then?”

In that case, where’s the entrance?
As he began to look around, he heard the Chinese girl scream.

“Aaah! Sir! Not there! Very dangerous! Get away, hurry!”

At her voice, all the customers in the place turned to look at Isaac. Miria also hurried over with an inquisitive expression on her face.

“Huh…? What on earth is dangerous abou—?”

Bang.

He heard a dry sound from the basement. Then a light shock ran through the toe of his shoe.

“Wha…?”

When he looked, the tip of his shoe had been gouged slightly. His actual toes seemed unscathed, but wisps of smoke were rising from the brutal scar in his leather shoe.

Moving stiffly, Isaac looked up at the ceiling.

There was a small hole in it that looked brand-new.

“Huh…? Did I just get…shot?”

Isaac said nothing more. He collapsed with a
thud
, right on the spot.

Miria, who’d seen the whole thing from start to finish, screwed up her face and screamed.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Isaac’s been
killed
!”

“A toast! To the birth of a new camorrista!”

Molsa took the lead, and everyone in the place drained their glasses at once.

Having completed the ritual, the executives had gathered around their newest member and held a feast in his honor. Today, they were the only members present at Alveare. The associates and apprentices had been sent out to their jobs at other establishments, and it was just executives and extremely close interested parties… Or at any rate, that should have been the case.

“I tell you what, I really thought I was dead.”

“Thought so!”

It just so happened, two strange outsiders were present at the feast. The tuxedo and the dress didn’t seem that out of place on an occasion like this one. For some reason, they were seated at the same table as Firo, the guest of honor.

When the group had rushed upstairs, they’d found Isaac with his eyes rolled back in his head and Miria, who was sobbing “Murderrrr!” Then Maiza and Firo had exclaimed “Ah!” and the rest had
assumed they knew the pair…and so it had gone. There was also the fact that, had things happened a bit differently, the bullet might have struck and killed one of them, so none of the executives had any objection to treating them to liquor.

“…Who’d have thought the couple from the hat shop would be here…?”

“Coincidences do seem to happen, don’t they.”

Firo and Maiza looked at each other, exchanging wry smiles. …Although, if they’d known about the other coincidences that surrounded them, they probably wouldn’t have been able to smile or anything even remotely like it.

“I’m terribly sorry about that, fella. I had no idea that barrel had been moved…”

Molsa bowed deeply.

“Huh? Oh, uh, no, no, it’s fine, don’t worry about it! It’s just the toe of my shoe. It’ll heal up fine if I lick it!”

“…No, it probably won’t.”

Possibly because he hadn’t had someone older—much less someone with Molsa’s dignity—apologize to him before, Isaac seemed a bit flustered. As for Miria, she’d eagerly begun to sample the dishes that had been brought out.

Seina, the proprietress, and Lia Lin-Shan, the waitress, had personally prepared almost all the food they carried out. Many of the offerings were surprisingly elaborate for a speakeasy, and the content varied widely and mixed all sorts of styles, from Italian pasta dishes to highly seasoned Chinese sautés made with lots of oil.

In addition to electric lights, a number of fuel-burning lamps hung on the walls of the establishment, and the pale flames made the food look even tastier.

One dish that particularly stood out was the duck placed in the center of each table. These had been fried whole in oil, then stewed in honey—the house specialty—and then fried again.

When Miria touched one with her knife, there was a light, exquisite
crackle
, and the juices flowed out from the break in the skin.

“Ooh, this is delicious!”

On hearing Miria’s cry, Lia looked pleased. The two women smiled like children, and it naturally brightened the mood at the tables.

Just then, the executives Randy and Pezzo came up.

“Say, Firo. That liquor we just had… Is it gone already?”

“Yeah, we only bought a little.”

“Huh. It was pretty stiff stuff. I like liquor like that.”

“We were supposed to go around to different places and stock up, but there was a fire along the way. I went over to check it out, and we sort of ran out of time…”

Firo didn’t mention that he’d been wandering around looking for a girl. It was true that he’d gone to rubberneck at the fire, so he hadn’t lied, per se.

Abruptly, Randy’s and Pezzo’s expressions changed.

“? What is it, guys?”

“Uh…nah… Nothin’. Right, Pezzo?”

“D-don’t look at me!”

“?”

As the two of them stood there, tense smiles on their faces, Seina—who’d brought in some more food—smacked their heads with the flat of her hand.

“Honestly! What are you good-for-nothings jawing about?! If you want liquor that badly, drink ours! And you, Firo, you’re just as bad. Going all the way to some other place to buy liquor for your own party!”

Seina gave him a mild glare, and Firo ducked his head slightly.

“Well, uh… Miz Seina… All the liquor here has honey mixed in, you know? This sort of thing doesn’t happen every day, so I wanted to drink something a little more…adult.”

“Ha! You still look like a kid to
me
.”

With a dramatic shake of her head, she went to bring in more food.

All the liquor at this establishment, even the wine and beer, had honey in it, and it was terribly sweet. Although there were regular customers who came for its unique flavor and the two women’s home cooking, it couldn’t be denied that the speakeasy got fewer customers than other places.

There were two main reasons that, even then, Alveare was able
to do business on this scale: the fact that it was run directly by the Martillos and didn’t need to pay protection money, and the fact that it didn’t pay off the police and Prohibition enforcers, or prosecutors and government bureaus.

Edward, who was in charge of the district, accepted no bribes whatsoever, and he didn’t cave to pressure from his superiors, either. In other words, slipping him cash would have been pointless. That said, they were good at spotting stings, and so far they’d managed to get by without any arrests.

At ordinary establishments, these expenses added up to five hundred dollars a month. One of the perks of being a speakeasy was the ability to make money while ducking the liquor tax, but in the end, the taxes they’d paid before Prohibition had been cheaper.

In that sense, the more than thirty thousand speakeasies in this city were trapped in a strange spiral of their own.

Because of the Great Depression, the amount spent on liquor had dropped drastically, and the spiral staircase was rocking wildly. In the midst of that situation, being excluded from the spiral made this place one of the lucky ones.

In this fortunate speakeasy, the jovial outlaws’ revel continued.

“You’re really something, though, Firo. To think you’d beat Maiza like that…”

“No, it was a fluke. Besides…if they’d let us strike at anything other than arms, I’d be dead.”

“Mm-hmm, you certainly would! I’m going to keep right on putting you through the mill, so you’d better be ready for it!”

“Agh…”

“If it had been me… Let’s see. First I would’ve taken his arm and thrown him over my shoulder…”

“Except that isn’t a knife skill.”

“…Nn? The pepper’s gone…”

“By the way, you know that big ol’ round table in the basement? How’d they get that down there?”

“Hey, somebody grab me the pepper.”

“Hmm? Firo, didn’t we buy four bottles of high-grade liquor?”

“…No, just two.”

“Ah, Miria, I want some of that duck, too.”

“Sure! Here, say ‘Aaaaah!’
”

“…Whoa, that’s tasty. But it pales in comparison to your beauty, Miria.”

“Man, what’re you doing comparing looks to food?”

“Yaaay! Isaac complimented me!”

“Wow, do I want to slug these guys right now.”

“Heeeey. Pepper. Anybody.”

“Hmm. You could also catch him off guard and hit him with a flying knee kick.”

“Yes, only that isn’t a knife skill either.”

“I tell you what, this country’s much too cold to us Japanese and Chinese. The immigration laws, for one. Treating Asians as scoundrels so blatantly is just…”

“Yaguruma, you’re jumping topics all over the place… Are you drunk already?”

“Huh…? Don’t you have any pepper at your table either?”

“From what I hear, when they built this building, they put it in before they hung the ceiling.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“The table! What you just asked me about, Pezzo!”

“Oh, Randy. Randy.”

“What, Maiza?”

“Aren’t you going to do that trick today? You know… The one with the burning glove.”

Splutt.

“Waugh, Randy and Pezzo just spit across the table!”

“Nasty!”

“Suh, sorry, sorry. …We don’t really feel like doing that one today…”

“Hey, Ronny. Where’s the pepper?”

“Boss, come on, just make do without pepper.”

It was impossible to tell who was talking to whom anymore. It was a chaotic mealtime scene, and Firo was enjoying himself enormously.

Ever since he was born, he hadn’t smiled much. The people who’d lived around him in the slums hadn’t smiled much, either. …Or rather, they hadn’t had enough leeway to smile.

From the time he was a kid, he’d dreamed of smiling cheerfully like the Italians who showed up in movies and books. Right now, that dream had come true.

He made a wish:
Let this time last forever.

He knew it was a dumb wish.

Still, he felt really lucky just to be able to make a dumb wish like that one.

One side of the spiral staircase was brightly lit.

Naturally, everything on the other side was shrouded in darkness.

Three men walked through the darkness in the spaces between the hustle and bustle of the city.

The jazz hall had its C
LOSED
sign hung out. Ordinarily, it would have been busy even at this hour, but since its three managers were all gone this evening, it had shut down for the night.

When they opened the door, there was a lone man inside.

“Oh, sorry. We’re closed toni—”

One of the three men swept a hand past the man’s neck.

“Nn…ah…
,
,
!”

For a brief moment, air leaked from the man’s throat. The next instant, red spurted out.

The man with the knife promptly used the door to shield himself from his victim’s geyser of blood.

When the flow began to subside, Dallas Genoard silently kicked the man over; he’d tried to cling to his killer. The crimson puddle that was forming around his upper body kept growing.

“…Downstairs. First, find out where they put that crate, got it? Then…pepper everything. Just make sure you don’t hit the box.”

There was a knife with a bloody blade in Dallas’s hand.

The two men behind him held new-model machine guns inside their coats.

“Hey… Who’re you?”

When they went downstairs, they found four members of the Gandor Family waiting there. They seemed to have been playing poker: All four were sitting at the table in the center.

Dallas answered, his face expressionless.

“Well… We forgot something here this afternoon, see. When we asked upstairs, he told us to go ask the guys inside…”

“Forgot something…? Oh, you mean that crate?”

The man glanced at a sturdy-looking safe. The crate was sitting on top of it.

“Yeah… That’s it, that box.”

“Sorry, fellas, but we dunno if it’s really yours. Wait until tomorrow when Luck’s back, wouldja?”

When he’d gotten that far, one of the other members muttered:

“Hey… Mike should know about that crate, too.”

Mike was probably the man upstairs with the slit throat.

The corners of Dallas’s lips curved nastily. He raised a hand, giving a signal.

The two behind him, who were smiling in the same way, produced the organ grinders from under their coats.

They were Thompson submachine guns, which gangs had affectionately dubbed “tommy guns.”

A raid. It couldn’t be… On a small outfit like this? That hesitation created a second’s delay.

“So long, nameless underlings.”

“…You bastards! What did you do to Mike?!”

Before the Gandor men’s hands could reach their hips, the tommy muzzles spat fire.

One after another, the Chicago typewriters punched several dozen holes into their bodies.

The massacre lasted only a few seconds. The roar that echoed
through the basement room was more than enough to destroy three human bodies, the table, the radio, and the vases on the shelf.

“Ha, ha, ha… Ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa…ha-ha… What, that’s
it
? You go around calling people scum, and that’s all you’ve got…? That’s real nice. Nice and
hilarious
.”

As Dallas laughed maniacally, a red hole opened up in his forehead.

“…Huh…?”

Those several dozen bullets hadn’t quite been enough to kill the fourth man. He’d survived by using the other three as shields, and now, on his knees, the man struck back at his attackers with bullets. By the time he’d emptied his gun, one of the attackers had died instantly from a hole in his forehead, and he seemed to have nailed the other two in their guts: They were curled up, hugging their Thompsons.

The survivor picked up the gun of one of the comrades who’d served as his shield and emptied that one into them, too, without a pause. When he saw he’d blown away parts of the skulls of the remaining two as well, he drew a deep breath.

“What the hell was that…?”

The friends he’d been playing poker with just a few moments ago lay on the ground in front of him. One of them had had his fingers blown off. Even if he’d survived, he’d never have been able to play cards again.

“What the hell was
that
?!
Damn
it!”

As he screamed, he threw the gun he’d picked up at the corpses of the attackers.

After breathing deeply for a while, he stood, slowly. His knees were quaking, and he couldn’t walk well.

“…The phone… For now…I’ve got to tell Luck…”

The telephone hung on the wall on the attackers’ side of the room, so it hadn’t taken damage from the machine guns.

“I’m pretty sure…Luck and the others are…uh…”

A hand had come down on his shoulder.

“…………”

Terror enveloped him from head to toe.

“……Mike…?”

When he turned, fearfully, a knife was jammed into his forehead.

“…That hurt, fella.”

Kicking the man who’d already fallen to the floor, Dallas spoke cheerfully.

“We really
are
immortal. That’s awesome… I’m really moved… Yeah, really truly moved!”

The wound in his forehead had closed completely. Not a drop of blood remained to stain his clothes.

“Now, that’s a problem…”

“Yep, a problem!”

“They were real nice people…”

“Yes, really nice!”

Isaac and Miria were wandering aimlessly through the nighttime streets. They’d partied until their bellies were full, then said their good-byes and left… But not only had everyone in the place been sad to see them go, they’d even said, “Go on, have yourselves a souvenir,” and given them a jar of honey.

“I bet it would be a bad thing to take money from people that nice.”

“We’d be absolute fiends!”

And so, the pair had gone to scope out their other target, the Gandor Family, but…

“Ah, it must be that building.”

“Yes, that building!”

“It sure is quiet, though…”

As they watched from a distance, there was movement at the entrance.

Three men appeared from inside the building.

Hastily, Isaac and Miria hid themselves, then watched from the shadows.

The light from the streetlamps was unreliable, and they couldn’t make out the men’s faces. However, they could tell they were carrying a box of some sort as if it was important. They seemed to be standing around at the entrance and talking, and at this point they showed no sign of going anywhere.