Baccano! - Volume 21 - Chapter 22

Chapter 22 Maybe It Will, Maybe It Won’t

As it turned out, day one of the casino party ended quite peacefully.

The event had begun with a speech from the manager of Ra’s Lance.

This was proof that the entire building was under the control of the Runoratas. However, since practically nobody had ever thought otherwise, that fact didn’t really surprise anyone.

The party was scheduled to take place over three days.

On that first day, almost everyone focused on waiting and watching.

And the gambling wasn’t the only thing they were watching.

What was the Runorata Family plotting? Would the police really leave this party alone until it ended?

And—was there some larger scheme at work here?

Even as they harbored various doubts, they gradually began to wager their chips.

If I win this modest bet, I’m sure nothing’s gonna happen.

Quite a few people tried to reassure themselves with these superstitious hopes—and the dealers began to prey on their small wishes, creating a new current.

A current of money that would set more desires in motion.

Both the Runoratas and the Martillos had created those currents quite nicely, starting on the very first day.

Even in diplomatic terms, no one could have called the room the Martillos had been assigned an advantageous site. They’d effectively been exiled to a corner of the basement, but they knew how to attract customers to places like that.

After all, the gambling den Firo ran was in a similar location: a small territory, pushed away by its neighbors.

All the syndicates did fairly well promoting their casinos on the first day, and some who didn’t know about the underlying situation began to think, Is this actually a handout from the Runorata Family?

That thought would definitely come back to bite them.

Meanwhile, those who were extremely wary of the Runoratas assumed that the real contest would begin on day two.

Everybody knew that the first day was a time for sizing up the situation.

There weren’t many important figures in Ra’s Lance yet, and not all that much money.

The actual showdown would start the following night.

That was what everybody thought, and they were proved correct as the day drew to a close.

However—

—fate did begin to make some major changes.

The action wasn’t in the casinos.

Instead, many different fates began to stir late that night. So many, in fact, that one might wonder if that wasn’t the reason they’d decided the event should last three days.

The one whose fate began to shift most dramatically was—ironically—the man who’d tried hardest to escape its torrent.

Nader Schasschule.

The first day, Nader had devoted himself to observation.

He hadn’t placed any large bets, just keeping an eye on the flow of money in each of the rooms.

From what he’d seen, there were no disturbances in the casino’s financial currents. Winners won, losers lost, and the house turned a decent profit. The only currents were ordinary ones.

Nader had spent long years slipping into places like these as a grifter; for him, this wasn’t a glittering society gala where chips flew back and forth. It was more like a rough sketch that hadn’t been colored yet.

He and Eve had split up to look for Dallas, the man in the photograph he’d been shown, but he’d had no luck on that front yet. The guy might be in disguise, or maybe he just wasn’t participating today.

Nader had seen no sign of Huey’s organization, either. The day might end without incident, and all he would have seen was the setting.

There was one thing he’d noticed, though.

Several singularities were developing in the flow of money.

A strangely energetic couple was ignoring the current and currying major wins and losses, over and over again. They were part of it, but what concerned Nader most was the woman who was lying low and devoting herself to watching—just as he was—and somehow still winning.

She might make a good “in.”

Nader grinned, then started observing the woman. He continued placing small bets, sticking with the general flow so that no one would notice what he was up to. He let himself fade into the background and become just another face in the crowd of “extras” who didn’t make waves while he quietly analyzed what it was about the woman that was off.

Ever since he first set foot in Ra’s Lance, he’d been reclaiming his past self, little by little. It almost felt like a miracle, worked by the casino’s magic.

…And the conclusion he reached was a terribly simple one:

There’s no mistake.

That woman is cheating.

Late at nightThe port

“Hey there, dollface. You have a minute?”

At the sound of Nader’s voice, the woman slowly turned around. “…What is it?” Her eyes were dubious and wary.

After the first day’s festivities were over and Nader had said his good-byes to Eve, he’d tailed the woman. From the way she kept switching between deserted streets and heavily trafficked areas, she was trying to see whether she was being shadowed. Once he realized this, Nader had circled around ahead of her before she spotted him—and finally made his move when she’d reached a deserted street.

“First, let me make one thing clear: I’m not involved with the mafia or the cops. I’m a proxy gambler who’s been hired by someone with plenty of money to spare.”

“And what does a gambler want with me?”

“Would you be interested in teaming up?”

“Excuse me?” The woman frowned.

“You’ve got skills,” Nader went on. “I bet I’m the only one who’s got your number.”

“……!”

The woman seemed to realize where this was going. The doubt vanished from her eyes, while the wariness rose.

“If you’re pulling a stunt like that in the middle of all those mafiosi, you’ve got real guts. And brains. You win right up until they’re about to get suspicious, then switch to another room. It’s possible only because the event is hosted by multiple syndicates.”

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

“Look, if you want to play dumb, you go right ahead.”

The composed smile on Nader’s face was fake. On the inside, he was worried that one wrong step might spell the end of everything, and there was a thin slick of sweat on his palms and back. And yet not the slightest trace of those feelings showed; Nader was definitely reclaiming his past as a con artist. “Just consider this a pickup of sorts. It’s not blackmail or a threat. I think I could make it worth your while.”

“Then let’s say I still have no idea about whatever it is you claim to have noticed. What exactly are you after? Just money?”

“…Well, in a sense, but that’s not all.”

“?” The woman looked perplexed.

“Strictly speaking, I’m not after you. You’ve got an invitation in that handbag. What I want are the people who gave that to a smooth operator like yourself.”

“……!”

“I don’t know what type of outfit they are. I’m just a guy with a wealthy employer. I don’t have ties to any organization, and after this party is over, I won’t be involved with the person who hired me. However, I think someone sharp enough to employ an enchanting lady like you might have a pretty good opinion of me, too.”

As a rule, it wasn’t possible to get into the underground casino without an invitation from the Runoratas or from one of the organizations running a gambling den.

He’d seen a group down there whose clothes seemed to be wearing them. Some outfit had probably hired them on the cheap to boost the energy of the place. They’d seemed a little weird—particularly the teary-eyed kid with the face tattoo—but he’d decided he didn’t need to worry about them.

This woman was different, though.

She was clearly a specialist in casino breaking.

If somebody like her had managed to get in, it meant either that she’d been employed by someone rich and naïve, the way he had, or that she had a major backer with an objective of their own.

He doubted there was anyone except himself who fit the first category, so he’d decided it had to be the second.

It might be a mafia syndicate, or it might be an ambitious businessman, but he didn’t care who it was if he could get in with them.

He’d just do what he’d done in the past.

He had to sink his teeth in, build strength in their organization, and claw his way up until he had enough rank to let him fight Huey Laforet’s outfit.

That was the only way he could save himself now.

Remembering again what this was all for, Nader drew a deep breath, then introduced himself. “My name is Nader Schasschule. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

He took the risk of telling her his real name because there was one thing he had to make sure of here, while they were alone.

And—

“Nader…Schasschule?”

—when the woman heard his name, she gasped.

“!”

She’d obviously recognized it, and Nader’s face fell. Dammit! Lucky I gave my real name, just in case! Did I flag down the wrong person?!

If she knew his name, she was probably one of Huey’s people. She hadn’t said anything when she saw his face, which meant she wasn’t one of the Hiltons, but the odds that she was involved were now sky-high.

“…Forget you ever saw me, all right?”

“Huh?! Wait just a minute!”

The woman sounded confused, but Nader turned on his heel.

His plan was done.

Since his enemies already knew he was in New York, he couldn’t afford to silence the woman and make the commotion bigger.

Sorry, Miss Eve, but if this is how things stand, I’ve got to withdraw.

The case in his left hand held the windfall he’d picked up at Firo’s casino.

He’d gambled away almost none of it still, so it might be enough to fund his escape.

He’d pitched himself to the wrong person.

He’d lost this round.

That meant he should bow out gracefully.

If he got in deeper, he’d just keep up the losing streak.

These and many other excuses popped into his head, and he started putting together an escape plan.

But that was when Nader Schasschule’s fate reached its biggest turning point.

In the next moment, he learned he hadn’t blown his gamble, and he hadn’t hit the jackpot, either.

He’d caught hold of something far beyond either of those things—and had tossed it onto a dangerous roulette wheel.

Nader heard the woman call after him, trying to stop him. “Wait, you’re not—”

“……”

As he started running, the words reached him.

“—Sonia’s childhood friend?!”

“……”

…What?

“……?”

What did that woman just…?

The confusion had stopped him in his tracks.

Sonia…

Sonia…?

“……—?!”

It took a moment before the shock ran through his brain—and he whipped back around as if he’d been stung. “You just… What did you say, just now?”

“…I knew it. No wonder the name sounded familiar.”

“Hey… Is Sonia…?”

Instantly, his excuses for running all went out the window.

Nader started toward the woman, planning to learn everything he could from her—

—but a second woman’s voice spoke behind him, cutting him off.

“Found you, traitor.”

“?!” Panicked, he turned around, but no one was there.

He knew he’d heard a woman’s voice, but all he saw was the empty alley.

The casino breaker seemed to have heard it, too; she was looking around.

“What is it…? Who are you?!”

Traitor.

The voice had definitely said that word.

No…

An awful feeling welled up deep inside him, sending cold sweat trickling down his cheeks. “Is that…Hilton?” he choked out, while the voice replied cheerfully.

…And her answer filled Nader with despair.

“My, you knew. That’s impressive. I’m ‘Leeza’ right now. It’s a pleasure.”

“……”

Trembling from head to toe, Nader kept scanning the street around him, but he couldn’t see anyone who seemed to be the voice’s owner.

However—

—the casino breaker had noticed something completely different, and her eyes widened. “What…the hell…?”

“……?”

She was looking up. Nader tipped his head back, following her gaze, and saw birds everywhere.

In the dim glow of the streetlamps, several dozen birds perched on the roofs or on the telephone wires or circled overhead. And every one of them was glaring at him.

“Ngh…”

It was dark, so he hadn’t been able to make them out at first. As soon as Nader noticed them, though, the sight was so eerie that he almost shrieked.

Were the birds related to hawks or kites? They weren’t native to these parts, at any rate.

Nader had a clear memory of the species, though.

One of them had been watching him through the window earlier that evening, while he and Eve were at the restaurant.

“What…the hell is…?” Nader’s mouth gaped uselessly.

Leeza’s voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. “But you see, I’m not the one who’s going to kill you.”

“Wh…what…?”

“There’s someone who says killing you is her mission, and she’s really dead set on it.”

The voice spoke right by his ear, seductive and clinging—although the words themselves weren’t exactly sexy.

The next instant—

Shink. A sound like metal scraping against stone reached him from the depths of the alley.

Nader and the casino breaker both looked toward the noise at the same time.

Something was standing there in the darkness.

It was probably human, but the distance and apparently black clothing made the shape blend into the shadows, so he couldn’t tell for sure.

In the next moment—the figure dropped into a low crouch, then ran at him.

“!” The woman’s breath hitched at the shadow’s speed.

It moved more like an enormous cannonball than a black beast.

Cutting diagonally across the alley to avoid the casino breaker, the woman in black launched herself off the wall like a ricocheting bullet, closing in on Nader.

That was when he realized something.

Something he might have been better off not knowing.

Even in the dark, he recognized those superhuman movements. That killing machine.

“Cha…”

The motions of the woman who’d discarded her humanity for Huey Laforet.

“Chané…”

He couldn’t even scream. All he could do was murmur her name in a daze.

The unwavering gleam of her blade bore down on his neck.

I’m gonna die? Me? Here?

Why is Chané—? No, that’s not it.

Where did things go wrong? Oh, no, no, no, no—

Sonia.

A storm of fears and questions churned in his heart, but at the end, Nader remembered the name he’d heard just a moment ago, the name of his childhood friend—

—and finally, his body moved.

He couldn’t escape, and he couldn’t dodge. He only tried to knock the knife away with his hand.

The woman in the black dress couldn’t have cared less; she tried to cut right through it.

But when the knife connected with Nader’s hand, there was a sharp metallic ring.

His prosthetic had blocked the knife.

“……”

Chané didn’t get flustered.

She didn’t need to force her knife through that hand.

She could cut through his arm below the prosthetic, or simply avoid his hand and slash his throat. With skill like hers, a false hand wasn’t much of an obstacle.

“E-eeeep!”

As Nader scrambled away, Chané stoically closed the distance between them, showing no emotion whatsoever.

The difference in speed was glaringly obvious, and in the space of a breath, she’d nearly overtaken Nader.

For a moment, though, her movements lost their edge.

She’d seen a strange object come flying out of the depths of the alley. It was shaped like an egg, and there was a small clock attached to it.

“Get back, Chané!”

The voice rang in Chané’s ears, and one of the birds from the surrounding flock plunged into a steep dive.

“…?!”

Wordlessly, Chané took a great leap backward, and the bird snatched the egg-shaped thing out of the air and soared upward with it.

A few seconds later—

—the object exploded, taking the bird with it, and a bright flash and the noise of the blast reverberated in the dark street.

“……!” Chané gulped.

“What the hell?! Hey, what was that thing?!” Nader screamed, clapping his hands over his ringing ears. He had no idea what was going on, either.

The casino breaker had already taken to her heels, fleeing the scene.

Without giving them time to get a handle on the situation, a second object was tossed into the alley, and then a third.

However, these weren’t bombs. When they burst, they released enormous billows of smoke.

“Smoke bombs… I’d recognize those anywhere.” Leeza’s resentful voice echoed in the alley. “What’s the big idea, Rail?!”

But nobody answered her scream. Instead, yet another smoke bomb went off, obscuring a wide stretch of the dark street. Then the only ones left in the alley were several furious birds and Chané, who was still expressionless and on high alert in the cloud of smoke.

“Are you okay, Chané?” Leeza had reverted to speaking like herself, although she was still using that alluring voice.

Chané didn’t answer.

“……”

Leeza couldn’t sense the slightest confusion or frustration from Chané at having let her prey escape. That was scarier than anything else, and all her bodies shuddered at once.

What’s this?

Who’s pulling me by the hand?

Nader kept on running through the smoke.

Who was holding his false hand? He couldn’t sense much strength behind the grip. It really felt as if a fairy or something were tugging him along as he wandered through the smoke’s white darkness.

When his hearing finally returned, Nader’s ears picked up the voice of a young child.

“Mister, can you hear me now?”

When he strained his eyes, he made out the child’s figure in the smoke.

Then, a little ways away, he heard another young voice. “That was utterly reckless!”

The juxtaposition of the boy’s childish timbre and grown-up words made an odd impression.

“Ah-ha-ha! Keep your shirt on, Czes. Can’t believe Leeza was actually birds. Priceless,” said the first child, whose exposed arms and neck were covered in suture scars. “Seriously,” the child called to someone else now, “how did you know about that, um…Mr. Shaft?”

This time, a young man spoke a little ways ahead of them. “Well, you know. One thing led to another.”

Nader recognized that voice and the name. “?! Hey… You’re Ladd’s sworn brother…”

“Well, technically, I’m Mr. Graham’s sworn brother, but yeah.” In the depths of the smoke, the man sighed. Then he went on, sounding apologetic. “Sorry about all this trouble we’re causing for you.”

“?! ?! ?!”

Nader didn’t know who any of these people really were—Shaft or the kids leading him by the hand. Yet again, he silently screamed the question that had occurred to him many times since he got out of jail.

What the hell have I gotten dragged into?!

“……”

In a room in the Ra’s Lance hotel, Melvi was gazing out the window at the scenery.

Looking at the increasingly dense smoke that hung around the streetlamps, he frowned very slightly. “Nothing that happened today should have sparked such a dramatic fight…”

He didn’t know yet.

The grand plot he’d designed was no more than a small piece of the magnificent crazy ruckus that had begun just a moment ago.

Fifteen minutes later

“Well, that’s one hell of an accident.”

“The driver blacked out, but he doesn’t seem to be injured all that badly.”

“What was he transporting at this hour anyway?”

Next to the alley where the explosion had occurred, a few police officers were sighing and inspecting the scene of a car crash. Startled by the smoke screen that had suddenly billowed up, the driver had yanked the steering wheel all the way to the side and rolled his truck.

“What’s with all the smoke?”

A faint haze still hung in the air. Waving it away with a hand, the officer looked at the bed of the truck, then realized that its canvas cover had been shredded. His eyebrows drew together.

“…? This didn’t happen in the accident.”

“It sort of looks like something busted through it.”

Just then, the policemen noticed something.

A wild, animalistic scent mingled with the smell of the smoke.

Breaking out in a light sweat, one of the officers muttered, “Christ… What was he carrying?”

As he shambled through the night, he quietly raised his head.

The sudden impact had startled him, and he’d burst out of the truck without thinking. Now he was searching for his friends, one slow step at a time.

Even though a truck had just tipped over, the darkness and smoke screen had camouflaged him well, and almost no one had seen him. Would that prove lucky for him and the town, or unlucky?

Without even attempting to guess what lay in store, he thought of his friends and gave one brief roar.

The friend Claire called Cookie and Cazze called Charlie.

The enormous grizzly, who was easily over nine feet in length, sent a lonesome roar echoing through the city streets.

Destiny’s gambling den had Ra’s Lance at its heart and the whole town as its stage.

Like a loud signal that registration for this grand bet was now closed—

—the huge beast’s roar spread through the darkness, far and deep.