1932 Drug & The Dominos

by Ryohgo Narita

  “I, uh, I will. Thanks.”

  Roy, who hadn’t had a decent meal in several days, started to shovel what was probably a New Year’s celebration dinner into his mouth.

  The spread included fish amandine, spicy Italian seasonings, and lamb steak so tender it could be bitten through easily. Although Eve held back at first, even she gradually began to reach for things all over the table.

  “…It’s delicious.”

  Eve, who’d been silent until then, murmured her thoughts aloud. It was a pure comment she made, with no falsehood about it, but her overall feelings were rather more complicated.

  Kate, the woman in front of her, really didn’t look like the wife of a mafia boss. However, if the lady said she was, there was no help for it. It was likely—no, almost certain—that she was related to the people who’d killed Eve’s brother Dallas. Eve really had no idea how she should act in her presence.

  “That’s wonderful. I wouldn’t have known what to do if you hadn’t liked it.”

  Kate smiled softly. It was a kind expression, but there was something ethereal about the woman, a misty sort of atmosphere.

  “By the way, about what we were discussing earlier…”

  To disguise her conflicted feelings, Eve attempted to move the conversation forward. She’d been asking about Keith and the others a few moments ago, and apparently, Keith had had plans to celebrate the New Year here, in this house. However, something sudden had come up, and he hadn’t been able to return home.

  “Um, do you know when we might be able to meet him?”

  “Let’s see. Things always do seem to come up abruptly for him, so… He’s dealing with a little trouble right now, but once that’s over, he should make it home every day.”

  “There’s trouble?”

  “I don’t know much about it, either. He never talks about his work at home… And I think, because of that, he’s trying not to come back any more than he has to, right now.”

  When Kate talked about her absent husband, her voice held a mixture of happiness and loneliness.

  “Um… He is a mafia professional, isn’t he?”

  Splurt. On hearing what Eve said, Roy spit out a little black tea.

  “E-Eve. You can’t just say stuff like—”

  “Hmm? But…”

  As Kate watched their exchange, she only smiled quietly. “Yes. Although officially, he manages a jazz hall.”

  Maybe she’d taken a liking to the pair, because Kate began to tell them just a little about her husband’s work:

  “His father was the one who started the organization. The father was a member of another syndicate, and the boss of that syndicate abruptly said he’d cede some territory to one of his executives. It was a rather suspicious offer, but the executive—my husband’s father—accepted gladly. Then, immediately afterward, he got pulled into a tremendous dispute, and before he knew what was happening, the territory shrank. That territory was right on the border of other, larger syndicates that were jostling each other, you see. The former boss knew it was going to happen, but for appearances’ sake, he couldn’t simply run, so he gave the territory to my husband’s father, who knew nothing about it. He just took the money he’d earned up to that point and made his getaway… Apparently, that’s how it went.”

  After Roy and Eve had finished eating, as she cleared away the dishes, she spoke almost as if she were telling them about her own memories.

  “Still, even if it was small, it’s amazing that he managed to preserve the organization at all under those circumstances. From what I hear, Keith’s father was an old-fashioned sort, and he said, ‘I can’t lose the outfit my boss gave me.’ In the end, the strain of worrying took its toll on him, and he died young, but the brothers took up his cause, and they’re still protecting that area together. That’s what he told me. So you see, even now, they’re constantly having trouble. Even I have almost been killed twice.”

  “Why did you marry someone that dangerous?”

  She knew it was a rude question, but she couldn’t help it; she had to ask. Kate’s bearing also made it seem as though Eve would be forgiven even if she did ask.

  Having carried most of the dishes to the kitchen, Kate sat down at a small organ in a corner of the room.

  Then, after she’d gazed at the pair’s faces for a short while, her slim fingers began to glide over the keys.

  The sounds that echoed from the organ accurately reflected Roy’s and Eve’s hearts.

  At first, the melody seemed to symbolize unease and doubt, but as they listened to it and changed from it, it gradually transformed along with them.

  The performance lasted about five minutes. During that time, Roy’s and Eve’s fears were neatly wiped away, and the end of the melody impressed them with its truly pretty harmony.

  As the recital ended, they both applauded involuntarily.

  “Awesome, seriously, that was great.”

  “You weren’t looking at any sheet music… Did you improvise that?”

  In response to Eve’s question, the woman nodded. Her expression hadn’t changed.

  In 1927, the world’s movie market was monopolized by silent films.

  These comedies and tragedies were shown without audio, and organ accompanists hired by the movie theaters played melodies to go with them, sometimes using sheet music, sometimes improvising to suit the images. At the time, this was mainstream.

  As an organ player employed by a major movie theater, Kate had improvised all sorts of music, sometimes matching the type of audience or the day’s weather, providing the best possible melody for each situation.

  However, that year, the silent-movie era came to an end.

  The cause was Vitaphone, a recording system developed by a major movie company: in other words, the appearance of “talkies.” The system had been created the year before, and starting with Don Juan, it was made more practical, little by little, until finally it sparked a revolution for the movie industry.

  That year, the world’s first feature-length talking movie, The Jazz Singer, opened and became news all across America. The movie theater that employed Kate decided to show it as well, and it caused such a commotion that there were lines for several days before the screening.

  Kate was there, too, in the milling crowd.

  It wasn’t because she was looking forward to the talkie system or to the songs from the film’s lead, Al Jolson. It was because, if these talkies became popular, she and others like her would lose their jobs.

  Kate thought that in the end, recorded music wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to live sound. She thought it could never beat the sound of their performances. She went to the theater to scoff at it, to clear away her own unease.

  She took a seat and quietly waited for the movie to begin.

  Ordinarily, someone would have been seated at the organ, but now there was a black cloth draped over it.

  No matter what sort of songs they were, no matter what sort of music it was, they absolutely couldn’t lose. They couldn’t afford to.

  If the music in this film was truly wonderful, she’d make music that was even better.

  Then the movie began.

  What sort of music would play? Would it begin with a song instead?

  However, even when the picture started to move, there was absolutely no sound.

  Had there been a malfunction? The moment she thought this, the lead actor, Al Jolson, appeared onscreen.

  So it would be a song. As Kate listened closely, with undisguised hostility, the first sound echoed through the theater.

  It came from the audience on the screen…and it was the noise of a storm of applause.

  The next thing she knew, Kate was crying.

  They got us.

  It was a sound she’d never expected. She could have called it an attention-grabbing stunt, and that might have been all it was. However, Kate knew: This was a sound she and the others couldn’t make. The self that had thought her songs and music could win, and the
self that had been planning to scoff, seemed hopelessly petty to her. She even felt they had been insulting to other accompanists.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute—”

  As the first tears fell from the corners of her eyes, the first lines played, as spoken audio.

  Those lines, which would become famous around the world, shattered her heart.

  “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

  She didn’t remember much of what happened after that. Lots of the subsequent lines were written intertitles, anyway, but as far as Kate was concerned, this was trivial, and the audience seemed moved by Jolson’s songs.

  Afterward, movie theaters across the country scrambled to show—and keep on showing—movies with the talkie system, and films that had been created to be silent were hastily converted into talking movies.

  Like the others, she wound up unemployed, and she drifted through various jobs.

  One day, a strange man approached her.

  He didn’t say anything, and his bearing marked him as someone who was clearly not an honest citizen.

  At first, she had no idea what he wanted to say, but then, quietly, he spoke.

  “What movie theater do I need to go to, to hear you play now? At the movies they show these days, you can’t see the performers’ faces, so I can’t tell who’s who.”

  Initially, she thought he was teasing her, but this odd man said he’d always come to the theater because he’d wanted to hear her play.

  He said nothing else, staying thoroughly reticent.

  Before long, she found out that he was one of the Gandor Family’s bosses, and she gradually started to take an interest in the way he lived.

  As Kate learned about this man called Keith and the world he inhabited, she began to think she’d like to play music for him.

  After all, he was practically a silent movie himself.

  When the conversation turned to Keith, Kate grew talkative. In contrast, she didn’t want to say much about herself.

  The recital had been designed to dodge Eve’s question, and apparently, it had distracted them nicely.

  The young girl who’d said, I want to speak with the Gandor boss, and the man who’d brought her, saying, I don’t want to meet them, or, uh, actually, I really can’t.

  To Kate, they both looked as if they were dealing with special circumstances of some sort. Eve’s thoughts seemed to hold a mixture of hope and unease. The feelings in Roy’s expression were complicated: It was as though he was afraid of something but still had a task to accomplish.

  The only thing she was sure of was that neither was a bad person. As far as she was concerned, that was enough, and there was no need to probe further.

  “Will the two of you be going home now?”

  At that question, the pair looked at each other. Roy didn’t think Edith would be looking for him, and he had no place to go home to anymore. For Eve’s part, she knew that if she went home now, they’d probably never let her outside again.

  Seeing their faces, Kate smiled gently.

  “You can stay the night. Try stopping by the office again tomorrow evening.”

  The newspaper offices, late at night.

  Nicholas was sitting in the chief editor’s chair, smoking a cigarette and quietly staring into space.

  How many years has it been since I took this job?

  Nicholas had originally belonged to the military’s intelligence division, but he’d left the army, joined this newspaper, and risen rapidly to his current position. He’d taught the company’s Asian employees how to handle guns and had built up the information brokerage’s military might until it equaled the power of the surrounding syndicates.

  Not yet. Something’s still missing.

  As long as he was in the business of selling information, no matter how well he fortified himself with equipment, he could never be free of the anxiety that preyed on him. That was what it meant to be an information broker.

  Handling information meant simultaneously being forced to dance by that information. Nicholas’s experiences in the intelligence division had fixed that fact all too firmly in his mind.

  Sure, information is power. It’s not power anyone can monopolize, though. It’s just like the weather: You can predict it, but you can’t control it. If Henry would just figure that out…

  As he was thinking these things, the door to the editorial department crept open.

  “Henry!”

  From beyond the door, a young man with a bloodless complexion appeared.

  “Hey, buddy, stay with me. You alive?”

  The man was on the verge of toppling over, and Nicholas hastily caught him in his arms; Henry’s eyes were wide open, and his whole body was trembling.

  It was as if something were rampaging around in the cores of his bones. His eyes were unfocused, and the only sound that struck Nicholas’s ears was his harsh breathing.

  “Dammit… Vino, you bastard. That was going way too far.”

  Complaining to someone in absentia, he checked to make sure Henry’s life wasn’t in danger.

  “I hope you’ve wised up a bit, after getting into a scrape that ugly.”

  Even as Henry heard his voice, his consciousness was thinning rapidly.

  However, just before he passed out, his lips opened slightly. Possibly because his mind was cloudy, the words he murmured under his breath sounded delirious.

  “I’m the one who got this news…… This information…this power…is mine…”

  Henry went quiet after that. Peering into his face, Nicholas muttered, “For the love of… See, this is why selling information isn’t decent work.”

  COLLAPSE

  January 2, 1932 Noon The speakeasy Alveare

  The unlicensed bar run by the Martillo Family.

  During the day, it was transformed into a lunch hall where the syndicate members gathered, and lots of executives and rank-and-file members were there today as well.

  Intending to fill his belly before he opened his illegal casino, Firo Prochainezo went in through the thick door.

  Once he was inside, the sight in front of him was a bit different than usual.

  The round tables that should have been in the center of the room had been pushed to the side, creating a large open space in the middle.

  “…What’re you doing?”

  A man in a tuxedo and a woman in a dress were there, on their knees, lining something up on the floor for dear life.

  “Shh! Softly, softly! They’ll fall!”

  “Yes, they’ll fall!”

  “Huh?”

  The objects they were setting up on the floor were thin and rectangular. They looked like flattened mahjong tiles, but with dicelike dot patterns on the wide sides. When he saw that, Firo finally realized what they were. He remembered they’d bought the things at the general store the other day and that there’d been a mountain of them in Ennis’s car.

  “Huh. Domino tiles. Why are you lining them up on the floor?”

  Firo watched them curiously, but the pair—Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent—kept setting up tiles, seemingly unconcerned. The two were Firo’s friends, and they’d been freeloading at the speakeasy for the past few days.

  “To knock them down, I suppose,” Isaac pontificated.

  “Yes, to knock them over!” Miria added.

  “Huh?” Firo had no idea what was going on. “Why would you line them up just to knock them down? What’s the point?”

  “That’s a tough question. If I had to say, it’s because the dominos are there!”

  “We’re dominers! Dominists!”

  “Don’t talk like a mountaineer. Maiza, what are they doing with those things?”

  A bespectacled man seated at the counter answered Firo’s question: “It’s a game that’s popular among children. They often play it when they don’t understand the rules of dominos.”

  “Oh, I see… Except, um, you guys are in the way.”

  Firo just wanted to eat lunch, and he didn’t care
about this either way. The seats at the counter were already full, so, with no help for it, he decided to head for a table in the rear… However.

  “Huh? Hey, the dominos go all the way to the back.”

  In the back, around the corner of the counter, several people were already crouched down.

  “Pezzo and Randy, you, too? Seriously, what are you doing?”

  “Well, see, we knocked a few over, and it turns out it’s fun.”

  “I did this all the time when I was a kid.”

  Behind the two executives, two women were lining up dominos, their faces serious.

  “Lia and Ennis!”

  “This is fun.”

  “Oh, Firo. Won’t you come help?”

  There were lots of little white headstones farther back, already lined up, creating a geometric pattern on the floor.

  “I came to eat…”

  “Firo. You’re in the way.”

  “If you’re not gonna help, then move it.”

  When he looked to the side, even two of the upper-level executives had joined in.

  “Ronny, Yaguruma…”

  “I tell you what, when I was a boy, I did this with shogi tiles all the time. It’ll improve your concentration. C’mon, you try it, too. Think of it as training.”

  “No way. If any of the guys from the other syndicates see us like this, we’re through.”

  Appalled, Firo covered his face with a hand. Ronny, who was lining up dominos with abnormal rapidity, said to him:

  “It’s all right. If that happens, I’ll get rid of them.”

  “Please don’t say scary stuff with such a serious face.”

  Should he consider this situation pathetic, or be happy that the days were so peaceful? Firo’s head started to ache, and he decided to keep waiting for a counter seat to open up.

  “By the way, that pattern’s unbelievable. Who designed it? It can’t have been Isaac and Miria.”

  At that, the eyes of everyone in the place went to one man.

  “…I like this sort of thing.”

  “Maizaaaaaaa!”

  At the same time