Baccano! - Volume 8 - Chapter Pr

Epilogue IAt the Information Brokerage

Where should I begin?

The locations featured at the beginning and ending of the tale I must relate today are incredibly vague, you see. Strictly speaking, this matter might easily have begun before my birth, and perhaps it has not yet ended.

There’s no need to mingle emotion with information?

Just give you the facts, plain and simple? Ha! Don’t be absurd!

Here’s the thing, info broker. I ain’t telling you this stuff because I want lettuce.

I desire completion… Yes. I wish to complete the information.

The dope I know ain’t enough to complete this incident.

I think one must gather and spin many, many stories until, in the end, they form one shape.

Right, this information will combine many perspectives to create one set of facts.

Objectively reassembling it is a job for you information brokers—the gentlemen who’ve heard the tale—is it not?

Yes, as I’ve told you, I shall relate it accurately.

I’ll give you hopelessly subjective information, all from me, by me, and for me!

“Don’t get worked up,” you said?

Haaaaah… Man, you don’t get it. You just don’t get it.

This excitement is a scrap of info, too, see?

Read between the lines, fella. It’s written right there in the mood itself.

For example, say, ain’t the way I’m so worked up startin’ to paint a picture of the incident I’m about to go over?

Results always come with a side of emotion. Erasing that is a job for you newshounds. When we see it, we bystanders will accept that single result with a whole new set of feelings.

…Yes, that’s right. In a manner of speaking, the past is a matter of the heart.

You folks eat that kinda thing to live, don’tcha?

You take that one result that people produced by mustering up blood and sweat and tears and wits and courage and shame and dreams and strength and emotions and pasts and hopes, and you leap on it, greedily devour it any way you please, change and degrade it, then expose it to the world.

…Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist. That was a compliment, a’ight?

No, it’s no good. You won’t do.

Call the vice president for me. Gustav St. Germain.

Him and the president. They’re the only ones. Way back, I told them the same stuff. I was being sarcastic, but they both laughed and said, “Oh, you’ll make me blush. Don’t compliment me like that.”

That, and Gustav pays well. The president’s fine, too, but he’s probably stuck in that mountain of documents like usual, yeah?

…Don’t look so upset. I’m just pulling your leg.

I already know. Gustav’s in Chicago right now, ain’t he? Him and that half-pint photographer girl. They stayed in Chicago’s Gansluck Hotel last night, and they had ham and eggs for breakfast this morning.

How do I know?

Well, because I just happened to be in that hotel.

I’m the waiter who poured the hotel’s original blend, that aggressively bitter coffee, for your young lady photographer as she stuffed her face with ham and eggs.

The girl looked boggled, but she toughed it out and drained the cup.

…Now, don’t give me that business about the times being inconsistent. Sure, it’s not possible to get here from Chicago in a few hours.

Man, that’s no good.

You really don’t know anything about me?

What, me?

I’m… Let’s see. I’m not sure how to put this.

A name? I’ve got several hundred of those.

Oh, no, no. I don’t mean aliases. I have scores of actual names.

I have a body to go with each name, too.

I’ve got only one mind, though. Just one.

…Hmm, well, I wonder… Is it possible to count minds as one?

Minds are a curious thing. I can sense mine quite clearly, yet it’s so vague I can’t count it. Can you really say you have zero minds after you die or before you’re born? In that case, what about when you’re sleeping dreamlessly? Or when you’re just spacing out?

Well, I suppose there’s no point in thinking about it. That’s simply how it is.

Nobody can prove that my mind and your mind are similar in the first place.

…Oh, right, yeah, that’s right.

My name. Sorry ’bout that.

I know my speech style’s all over the map. Don’t let it get to ya.

My mind can’t make itself up, see.

It’s not sure whether it owes you respect or not.

It has as many ways of living as it has names and bodies.

However, there is a name that I go by. A name that all my bodies share.

This may be the start of a long relationship, so I shall make an exception and tell you.

It’s Sham.

There’s no need for you to remember it. I’m merely being diplomatic.

Well, that’s all I want to say by way of background information. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

All right… Now then, let’s start over.

Where should I begin?

During this incident, I was present in some situations and absent from others.

Let me make one thing clear.

This little episode is already over.

If you view it as part of one long-term, larger occurrence, it may not actually be over yet, but…technically, this “single” incident, which developed simultaneously in New York, Chicago, and just off the shore of San Francisco, does seem to be at an end.

I’ll say it once more:

There were times when I was present and times when I was not.

What I would like to hear, in exchange for providing you with my report, is information about the locations from which I was absent.

That can wait, however. From the beginning of all this, then…

Well, though, I’m still not sure. Which beginning should I start with?

That’s right: There were several events that can be termed “beginnings.”

I’m truly not sure which I should relate first, but perhaps I’ll start with a simple one.

With the story of a camorrista in an interrogation room…

A young executive from an organization that is not the mafia.

The name of this abject young man, who had been taken captive by the FBI, was—