Baccano! - Volume 4 - Chapter 9

RUNORATA FAMILY

On the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey

“And so?”

Under a bright, cold, clear blue sky, an elderly man stood alone on the grass.

There was a young man behind him. He’d been Gustavo’s subordinate and had delivered constant reports on the situation.

“Sir. By some miracle, Gustavo is alive. We don’t know what sort of weapon was used, but it seems to have missed his carotid artery. The bullets left in his body were fired by the staff in self-defense. They seem to have decided that the wound to his throat was self-inflicted while he was out of his mind.”

In response to the words from Bartolo—his true boss—the man made his report without showing the slightest nervousness.

He seemed like an entirely different person from the guy who’d cowered in front of Gustavo.

“In addition, the police seem to have begun to consider him a suspect in the Genoard murders, and we think it’s only a matter of time before he’s arrested. The groundwork has already been laid. We’ve made arrangements with the politicos, and they won’t touch any of us beyond Gustavo.”

“I see.”

Giving a small nod, Bartolo looked up at the sky and murmured, as if he were talking to himself.

“Well, I suppose you could say he was lucky.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“We’ve had requests from other councils to hand him over for a while now. The guy did flashy things in the past. The others probably wanted to settle the score.”

He stated the bottom line in an indifferent tone, as if he were talking about the economy.

“If he’d gotten the Gandors’ territory, that would have been fine. We would have put an end to the matter by handing that territory over to Manhattan’s Five Families.”

“And if he’d failed, you would have given them Gustavo…?”

“As it turns out, he did fail, but if they put him in the clink, the other fellas won’t be able to get at him easily. As far as he’s concerned, it was a lucky break. That said, to compensate, I’ll have to part with some of my profits.”

Pausing for a moment, Bartolo gave an unamused smile and grumbled mildly to his underling.

“This is quite an age we’re living in. You need the approval of councils or the Commission just to bump off a man who’s sold you out or to get revenge for a follower.”

Since Luciano’s blood-soaked revolution, the mafia world had undergone a rapid transformation into a modern organization. Connections with politicians had grown stronger, and their excessively antagonistic relationships with Jewish and Irish gangs had cooled down.

The Runorata Family was continuing its operations a step removed from those waves of modernization. That said, they weren’t fighting them. Like the other syndicates, they’d chosen coexistence, and Bartolo had enough clout to force that whim through.

“Lucky Luciano’s a guy with power. However, he doesn’t personally rule as the head of the organization. Instead, he created a council, just like a politician. See, he knew if he said he was the guy at the top, he’d be setting himself up as the next target. Even so, everybody acknowledges him as the boss. Well, at the very least, it’ll be his age for a while now.”

Bartolo abruptly turned to look at his subordinate, and a hint of emotion stole into his expression. “It may be a rough age for us and the Gandor men, though. I’m looking forward to seeing how high we can go.”

When he heard those words, the subordinate looked surprised. “Then, the Gandors…”

“Establish a nonaggression pact with them. From here on out, we’ll treat them as equals, whether we become enemies or decide to coexist.”

“Even if they’ve got a contract with Vino, an outfit that size couldn’t—”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

His cold expression returned in an instant, and from behind his glasses, Bartolo scrutinized the man’s face quietly.

“In our world, it’s either one or zero. It’s a straight choice between two things: Either they’re an enemy on equal terms, or they don’t even exist. There’s no such thing as lower rank. Never think of the other guy as being less than yourselves. The second you do, they’ll start to trip you up… When it came to that, Gustavo thought the same way. However, I see them as ones, and he saw them as zeroes. We differed there.”

Bartolo lightly raised a hand in the direction of his mansion.

He’d seen his grandchild, who was still very young, running toward him.

“By the time my grandkid’s grown, what will the Gandors be, enemies or neighbors? I’m looking forward to finding that out, too.”

As he stepped forward, to finish up, he stated his impression of the man who’d negotiated with him:

“Keith Gandor, hmm? He was a real resolute guy; quite eloquent.”