The Rolling Bootlegs (23 page)

She tried to nail Szilard with a kick, but…

“It’s useless.”

“Ah……”

Szilard closed his eyes for an instant, and for some reason, Ennis fell to the ground. It was terribly abrupt, as if she were a marionette whose strings had been cut.

In that moment, the cellular equilibrium that had been maintained by Szilard’s power collapsed, and Ennis’s physical functions began to break down.

“I won’t kill you instantly. Suffer well before you die.”

His face, which wore a mocking smile, was hit with a fistful of pepper.

“Gwah…”

The immortal man, a man who had obtained immeasurable knowledge and behaved as if he ruled the world, recoiled from a blinding powder of pepper. It was a ridiculous sight.

“Why, you! What did you do to Ennis?!”

“What did you do, huh?!”

The priest and nun threw bags of pepper at him in rapid succession. They looked ridiculous as well, but it also looked a bit as if they were throwing holy ashes at a demon.

“Gkh… You blasted…!”

Firo had run up while this was going on, and he began to drag Ennis and Maiza away from Szilard.

“Maiza! Are you okay?!”

The holes in his knees were already half healed. It might have been the first time his joints had been destroyed: Compared to Dallas and the others, the regeneration seemed slow.

“I’m…fine… Never mind me… The girl…”

Ennis’s face was already pale, and her eyes had begun to go white and cloudy at the centers. Even then, when she recognized Firo, she began to speak slowly, relying on her weak breath.

“…You’re… You also… I don’t know when it happened, but…you acquired immortality, didn’t you… When I…saw your wounds healing, back there…I knew…”

At her words, Maiza stared at Firo, startled.

“Yeah, I’ve got no idea when it happened either, but…”

“…Then…I have a request. It looks…as if I’m dying… Would you… ‘eat’ me…? I told you…how it was done…earlier…”

“Hey, what kind of crap are you spouting?”

“…I don’t know if a homunculus like me…will be able to go to heaven or hell… It frightened me…and I couldn’t even end my own life… Oh… There’s still…so much I want to tell Isaac and Miria… So…please…would you ‘eat’ me…and deliver my message…? Also…no one ever told me…I was pretty before… Thank you… I was happy… …That’s…all I wanted to tell you…”

At her words, Firo quietly clenched his fists…and shook his head.

“I don’t have any obligation to deliver a thing like that. …Besides, I’m an atheist, so I can tell you straight out: Even if you die, there’s no heaven or hell. If you die…you just disappear.”

“…Ah-ha-ha… You’re harsh…”

Ennis laughed; she seemed a little disappointed. Even as she did so, her cells were breaking, one after another. At this point, her heart was already very near to stopping. The moment Ennis died…Szilard’s share of the elements of which she was composed would probably return to him.

Straightening up, Firo spoke flatly:

“Yeah. This world is harsh, and there is no next one. …So don’t die. Forget disappearing, deliver your message yourself! Don’t worry, I won’t let you die because of that rotten old geezer. …And actually…I’m not gonna let you die at all!”

Maybe he’d had some sort of idea: Firo drew his knife and turned toward Szilard, who’d finally managed to shake off the pepper.

Szilard glared back at him with rage-filled eyes.

“Boy… What are you trying to—?”

Something was poured over his head from behind.

“…?”

A pungent, stinking liquid. It was liquid fuel, the sort that was used in lamps.

When Szilard turned around, Randy and the other executives were standing there. Their clothes were torn where they’d taken bullets, but there wasn’t a drop of blood on them.

“You! I killed you! Impossible… All the liquor was there! Besides, Maiza would never have given it to you…!”

As Szilard shouted, he looked at Maiza, only to discover that Maiza’s expression was very like his own. In other words, he couldn’t fathom what was happening here, either.

“What kind of hooey was that? Are you nuts?”

Randy was holding an empty fuel can.

“We’ve burned gloves and storehouses…”

A blazing red match flew from Pezzo’s hand.

“…But we’ve never burned a head before.”

Szilard’s whole head ignited in pale flames.

“Gwooooooooooouh…”

Since he couldn’t feel pain, he didn’t feel the excessive heat, either. However, the violently leaping flames had definitely robbed Szilard of his eyesight.

Even then, somehow, he saw the brat they’d called Firo running toward him.

Was he an immortal, too?

If he was…

Terror took root inside Szilard.

“Ooooooooouuugh! I wooon’t alloooooow iiiiiiit!”

Swiftly, he thrust his right hand out at Firo, who was bearing down on him.

“Get that damn hand out of my way!”

Firo had drawn his knife from inside his jacket, and he brought it down in a fit of rage.

The blade ran between the index and middle fingers of Szilard’s right hand, splitting it open down to the wrist. The knife stopped, biting into the bone, and as he held it there with his left hand…

…Firo thrust his own right hand into Szilard’s blazing face.

Not caring that his own arm would be burned…

…the boy wished hard.

To devour the body in front of him, as his hatred dictated.

To gain the knowledge to save a woman whose name he didn’t know.

“Gahk…”

For a man who’d lived nearly three hundred years, it was far too abrupt a death.

And then

The only remaining earthly traces of Szilard Quates were the bright conflagrations of clothes and shoes.

Before long, those burned to ashes as well and were scattered by the wind.

Edward opened the back door just as Szilard’s leather shoes began to burn.

“…What the hell…?”

None of the police officers, Edward included, had any idea what had happened. Shoes were on fire, the Martillo Family executives were assembled, the priest and nun from earlier were there, a car with a badly dented body was stopped farther down the alley, and the whole place stank of liquid fuel.

“What’s going on? …Explain this, Firo Prochainezo.”

He strode over to the tired-looking boy and hauled him up by his collar.

“From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t look as though anyone died, but… Are you planning to start a handgun orchestra or something?”

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb with me! We’ve been getting civilian complaints about nonstop gunfire around here! You want me to haul you in for violating the Sullivan Act?!”

Just then, a roar echoed through the area.

The squad of police officers hastily ducked, shoving their hands into their jackets and looking around for the source of the noise.

On top of the car, the priest and nun had machine guns pointed at the sky. They were the tommy guns Dallas and the others had been carrying.

“Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! The Martillo Family’s treasure is ours!”

“Yes, it’s ours!”

“So long, incompetent policemen! And by the way, the Martillos haven’t done anything!”

“Not a thing!”

On that irresponsible note, they tossed the guns away and took to their heels. They’d probably spoken out of consideration for the Martillos, but the last half of that line had been synonymous with “The Martillos did something.”

“…Assistant Inspector…uh… Can we shoot?”

“No… They’re unarmed now.”

Why a priest?
After giving it a little thought, he realized that something about them did ring a bell.

“…The bandaged bandits!”

“…Huh?”

“Never mind, just go after them! As long as they don’t have a gun, don’t shoot!”

Edward swiftly issued orders for their arrest to his bewildered men.

The policemen scrambled to follow them, and then Edward was the only police representative left.

“All right. You can’t hoodwink me with something like that, Firo.”

Just then, two more men appeared from inside the speakeasy.

“Ah… Edward, there you are.”

“We need your help with something. C’mere a second.”

It was Bill and Donald.

“But…”

“We’ll tell you what you want to know, too.”

“…What do you mean?”

“Come along and you’ll see,” Donald said, simply.

Edward hesitated a little, but in the end, he went with them.

After Edward had disappeared into Alveare, Bill spoke to Maiza.

“Uh… What happened to Szilard?”

At those words, Maiza gaped at the men in front of him.

Realizing who they really were, he gave them a straightforward explanation.

“Ah. He…disappeared.”

“Erm… Into you?”

Maiza smiled a bit mischievously as he answered:

“I can’t leak organization secrets to law enforcement, you know.”

After the police were gone, Maiza asked Firo:

“Firo… I don’t understand. When did you and the others become immortal? You have Szilard’s knowledge now. You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“Uh… Well…”

Nervously, Firo confessed:

“I saved this old guy yesterday.”

“I see…”

“He was carrying some liquor, and I switched it out on him on the sly. We’d bought four bottles of liquor, and I dumped out two. Then I poured the contents of the old guy’s bottles into the empties, and filled his bottles with the liquor from our last two…”

Firo had done it on a whim. If the old guy had given him a genuine thank-you, he would have told him the truth and given them back; if he cussed at him, the plan had been to keep quiet and swipe them.

“What you take, you share with the rest. I was just obeying Camorra law…”

“Don’t tell me… You passed it around to everyone at that party?”

“…Come to think of it… If I’d done it right, I probably could’ve switched two bottles and gotten by with only dumping one, couldn’t I…”

That hardly seemed to be a major problem.

“Firo…”

“Well, once I got Szilard’s knowledge, it all made sense, but… Maiza…”

At that point, Firo gave a forced smile and continued, addressing a stunned-looking Maiza:

“Coincidences really do happen, don’t they…”

The priest and nun ran at full speed, from alley to alley, toward a fleeting freedom.

The hum of the crowd was growing gradually louder. It was proof that they were close to a major street.

“This is bad.”

“Yes, it’s bad!”

Just as the mouth of the alley came into view, they realized there were two police officers standing in it.

The policemen seemed to have noticed them as well, but the pair didn’t let it faze them. Without slowing down, they yelled:

“Aaaah! Mr. Policeman, help us!”

“Save us!”

Their charade had been off-the-cuff, but thanks to their appearance, it seemed to have worked. Given their abrupt arrival, the officers hesitated.

Diving against the chest of one of the policemen, Miria trembled in an exaggerated way and cried:

“A-a-a-armed men just started chasing us!”

She wasn’t lying.

The police officers, who’d only managed to grasp about half the situation, overreacted to her words. Their hands went to their holsters, and they fixed tense eyes on the depths of the alley.

…But what appeared from around the corner was a group in familiar uniforms.

“Wha…!”

By the time the policemen had hastily turned back, the two had already broken into a run again and were weaving through the crowd.

The pair mounted the NYPD-issued police horses that had been waiting nearby and started after the two, but they were blocked by the very people they’d sworn to protect.

“Meeerry Christmaaaas!”

As Isaac shouted, he took bundles of bills from his bag and threw them high in the air, scattering them.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You’re early, too early! You’re a month early!”

As Miria laughed and whooped, the avenue was transformed into a coliseum.

The bills took flight like a storm of confetti, and under their spell, the crowd began to gather them indiscriminately.

Men holding placards that said G
IVE ME A JOB
, panhandlers who’d been crying that their legs were broken, fine ladies on their way home with liquor they’d purchased, cargo-truck drivers, freight wagon operators, and even the well-to-do with purses full of money—all began to converge on the extremely easy-to-understand “blessing” of money.