“Still, that was one nasty customer! There’s really no excuse for making false accusations like that!”
“Yes, he was just too mean!”
“I mean, this place doesn’t stink at all, and there are no monkeys anywhere! Ye gods, how dumb does he think we are?!”
“The guy who makes fools of people is the real fool!”
As Jon heard out their proclamations, a doubt flickered inside him.
Wait… Were these guys actually protecting us, or…did they just not understand what the slang meant?
Breaking out in a cold sweat, Jon hastily canceled that thought.
“Who are those men in the white suits?”
Goose frowned over the obstacle to the operation that had suddenly presented itself.
He’d heard that there was a group of men in white suits in the second-class carriages, but he’d never imagined that his subordinates, who’d had machine guns, would be defeated. He didn’t know what sort of group they were, but it was evident that they were far from ordinary.
“In any case, temporarily call back everyone whose hands are free.”
At that order, several members withdrew, while one switched on the wireless set and attempted to contact the rear cars.
“Good Lord. First Nader and now the group in white. Should I consider this some sort of trial?”
“I can’t imagine we’ll reach it that easily, can you, Goose?”
At Spike’s question, Goose glanced at the corner of the room—where Chané was, silent, with her arms folded—and answered quietly.
“You’re right. It isn’t possible to reach Master Huey’s heights by any normal path.”
As he turned his back on Chané, Goose’s lips twisted into a smirk.
“So, hey. Ladd. What the hell is that orchestra?”
Ladd answered his friend’s question with a rapturous expression:
“A feast. I dunno anything else, and there’s absolutely no need to. Right?” he said, absently, bewildering his companions.
“Anyway, just kill them all.”
At those words, delighted cries escaped his friends. Now that Vicky was dead, there were ten group members left. They were packed like sardines in the second-class passenger compartment, even though it wasn’t a small space.
Although they had far fewer people than the orchestra, that wasn’t what they were feeling.
“It’s outta sight! We get to kill two or three apiece! Not only that, but these are relaxed guys who think they’re squarely on top!”
The delighted cries became cheers, and the second-class compartment was engulfed by their mood.
“Still, what a farce… Except for the ones in the dining car, the only people in the second-class compartments are us and those black suits.”
Three corpses lay in the room next to theirs. While Ladd was in the dining car, his friends had finished them off.
It was the three-man group from the orchestra—the Lemures—that had been sent to occupy the second-class cars.
Each had been killed in a different way. The only thing they had in common was that none had been allowed to die in the first attack.
“All right, it ain’t safe for us to be all huddled up like this, so let’s scatter. I’ll tell Lua and the other guy.”
Taking nothing but his rifle, Ladd threw open the door to the corridor.
“We’ll meet up again whenever! Just come back here whenever you think, ‘Yeah, I did good!’”
Nobody objected, and the group of white suits fanned out into the train. In order to destroy the black shadows, and to devour the train themselves.
Neither Goose and the black suits nor Ladd and the white suits had noticed it yet.
The fact that the train carried an even stranger shadow.
The one to notice that fiendish monster’s existence was the most cowardly guy on the train.
“What……is this……?”
All the color had drained from Jacuzzi’s face. He stood transfixed, unable even to tremble.
He’d run into the conductors’ room, out of breath. And what he’d seen there was
“It’s a lie, it has to be a lie, you can’t really be dead, please, please, wake up and say it’s a lie! Mr. Conductor! Please!”
The end of the train was dyed red.
What he saw there were the bloody bodies of the conductors.
There were two corpses.
One conductor had been shot dead.
The other’s body had been disfigured before he died.
His head was twisted at an impossible angle, and his face and right arm were completely gone.
It was as though they’d been ground off, or maybe chewed off by something. The cut surfaces were incredibly dirty, and it was likely that no blade had been used. If one had been used, it had probably been some sort of rough-toothed saw.
The incandescent lamps cast a warm light over the horrible scene. As he gazed at the pool of blood that covered the floor, Jacuzzi muttered quietly. There were no tears in that voice. What did it hold: determination or resignation?
“It came, I was too late, it already caught up…”
As it reflected the light, the color of the blood was nauseatingly pure, almost like wine.
Then Jacuzzi murmured the monster’s name:
“The Rail Tracer…”
In the dining car, Mrs. Beriam was telling her daughter something.
“Listen to me, Mary. Go with Czes and hide, quietly. It’s all right; if you stay hidden until noon tomorrow, I’m sure Papa will come to save you.”
Their surroundings were surprisingly calm. The passengers were all seated, and their faces held varied mixtures of despair and hope. Sobs could be heard from a few places, but aside from those, things were very quiet.
Although, as you’d expect, no one was ordering food anymore.
“All right, Czes. Please take care of Mary.”
“Uh-huh!”
The boy nodded decisively, then took the girl’s hand and left the dining car. After the door was open, she saw him walk away, looking around carefully as he went.
“Are you sure you don’t need to hide, too, ma’am?”
In response to the question Jon had asked her across the counter, Mrs. Beriam smiled gently.
“Yes, it’s all right. I don’t know why, but both the people in black and the people in white seem to be looking for me. If I hide, too, it will cause trouble for the people in this car.”
“I see. Well, it might be safer in here, anyway, and even they probably wouldn’t kill just the kids.”
…Although he couldn’t be positive about that white-suited boxer.
Jon kept those words shut up inside himself. Mrs. Beriam had probably already realized that. It was likely she’d sent them away for that very reason, so that the enemy wouldn’t know where they were.
Just then, Isaac and Miria abruptly spoke up.
“Okay, we’ll be back!”
“We’re off!”
At that, they both clambered down from the tall chairs.
“‘Off’? Off to where?”
Isaac and Miria answered Fang’s question without a shred of hesitation.
“Where? To find Jacuzzi.”
“To find Nice, too!”
“It’s dangerous, you know.”
He did try to stop them, but naturally, Isaac didn’t reconsider.
“That’s why we’re going to find them!”
“Yes, it’s a rescue!”
“I have no idea what’s going on here, but if I see black suits or white suits or a weird guy with a knife, I’ll just threaten ’em with my pistols and run!”
“Amazing!”
Patting his empty holsters, Isaac gave a proud whistle.
“Oh. Huh. I see.”
Jon wasn’t trying to stop them anymore. In any case, he was acquainted with the “weird guy with a knife,” and it made him feel too awkward to continue the conversation.
Why did Nick pull a stunt like that, a
nyway?
While he was wondering about it, Isaac and Miria exited through the car’s rear door.
As if to replace them, the front door opened. In unison, the passengers screamed and ducked down.
A group of black suits with machine guns had come through the door.
“Good evening. Madame Beriam, I presume?”
The leader spotted Mrs. Beriam and spoke to her. The other black suits were glaring around at the passengers, machine guns in hand.
“My name is Goose. I believe you’ll understand; there’s a certain matter in which we require your husband’s cooperation. Would you come with me?”
Mrs. Beriam stood, directing an intense glare at the man who’d introduced himself as Goose.
“Please promise me you won’t harm anyone else.”
“Ha-ha-ha. You must know that you are in no position to set terms. Well, I will tell you that the fate of the passengers depends on the answer we receive from your husband and the government.”
He began to escort her away at gunpoint, but someone essential was missing from her side.
“And where is your child?” Goose asked the lady, grimacing a little.
Mrs. Beriam looked down, biting her lip hard. She curled both hands into fists, squeezing them tightly.
“What is it?”
When Mrs. Beriam raised her head, her eyes were wet with tears, and blood was flowing from her lip and hands.
“My daughter… Those people in white They took her away…!”
I see. So that’s her angle.
Jon, who’d taken cover behind the counter, was impressed by Mrs. Beriam’s idea and her acting skills. He really couldn’t visualize either from the mild person he’d seen a moment before.
“The white suits, hmm? Who are they?”
Open hatred was apparent in the phrase white suits, but Goose promptly made a cool-headed decision.
“I don’t know. They seem to have been looking for me as well, but first they took…my daughter… Oh, oh, Mary…!”
“I understand your feelings, but…”
Without seeming particularly moved by her vivid acting, Goose gave an unconcerned sign to his subordinates.
“For now, come back to our room.”
Together with his subordinates, who held their guns at the ready, Mrs. Beriam left the dining car.
“All right. I want teams of two to watch this group, in shifts.”
After he’d issued orders to his subordinates and was about to exit, Goose noticed the sound of wind flowing through the dining car. When he looked toward the source of the sound, he saw that one of the windows beside the tables was open. It was a small thing, but Goose’s instincts were insistently telling him something. He turned his gun on the man closest to that window.
“You. Who opened that window?”
“Yeeee!”
Finding himself abruptly at gunpoint, the terrified man shrieked and began to speak like Jacuzzi.
“N-nuh, nuh-nuh, no, no, you’ve got it wrong! Th-th-that window— A woman in coveralls—!”
“A woman in coveralls?”
“Y-ye, ye, yes! When the shooting started, she just pushed the window open a-a-and climbed out! It’s true, I swear! I’m not lying, so please don’t shoot meeeeee!”
Without listening to any more of the man’s story, Goose put his head out the window. When he looked up, he saw that part of the ornamentation on the outer wall was within arm’s reach. Above that, several sets of the same ornamentation formed rows of bumps and dents, and it looked as if it would be possible to climb up to the roof.
A woman in coveralls.
Goose had an idea about that. It was the woman he’d seen by the freight car, before boarding. Who on earth could she be?
Adding the item “woman in coveralls” to his mental watch list, Goose left the dining car without a word.
MeanwhileSomewhere in New York CityAn illegal casino
“Firo, hey. Wouldja make it a little easier to score on the roulette wheels here?”
“Berga, you come to someone else’s turf and ask for what?”
In the midst of a dazzling clamor, two men were talking. One was a big, stern-faced guy; the other was a young man. The big man, the one called Berga, was one of the bosses of the Gandor Family, a tiny New York mafia outfit. Since his organization was run by a triumvirate of brothers, no one was technically “the top.”
Firo, the young guy, was the youngest executive of the Martillo Family, which was part of the organization known as the Camorra. He was also Isaac and Miria’s friend.
In addition, Firo had been put in charge of running this underground casino, and as a rule, it would have been unthinkable for Berga—the boss of another organization—to be there.
Firo and the three Gandor brothers had grown up in the same tenement and were practically family. That said, when it came to the interests of their syndicates, they never colluded.
“Anyway, Berga, this is no time for you to be here, is it? I heard the situation with the Runoratas is a ticking bomb.”
Firo gave the name of a mafia outfit that had recently begun throwing its weight around in New York.
“Well, that’s why. If I hang around on our turf, they might take a shot at me, and I know for a fact the Martillos wouldn’t sign on with the Runoratas.”
“Just stay home. Don’t drag us into it.”
As he responded to what Berga was saying, Firo abruptly raised his right hand and made some sort of sign.
At that, people gathered around a man who’d just won big at a poker table in the corner of the room. One of them grabbed the man’s arm and held it up.
Several cards slipped out of his sleeve.
An expression of despair came into the man’s face, and he was dragged off to an inner room.
“I’ll be heading home for the day in a minute or so. I have to go to Penn Station tomorrow to meet somebody. Frankly, I want to get to bed early. You go home, too, before the Runorata fellas see your face.”
On hearing that, Berga looked puzzled.
“What, you too?”
“Me ‘too’?”
“We’re supposed to pick up you-know-who tomorrow, too.”
“Who’s ‘you-know-who’?”
“You know, c’mon! I know you know. That’s who you’re going to get tomorrow, ain’t it?!”
In contrast to Berga, who was unfairly yelling, Firo responded coolly.
“Calm down, Berga. I’m going to pick up Isaac and Miria. You met them at my promotion party last year, remember?”
“Huhn? Uh… Ah, aah! Oh, for cryin’ out loud. You mean those idiots?!”
“You’re one to talk. …Quit with the scowl. And? Who are you going to pick up? Say the name, all right? Gimme the name.”
At that, smirking, Berga answered Firo’s question.
“Claire.”
When he heard that name, Firo’s eyes went wide.
“Claire? You mean the Claire?”
“What other Claire would be Claire besides Claire?!”
“I see… Well, that’s something to look forward to. So Claire’s coming… Then the Runoratas have as good as lost.”
Firo nodded to himself, predicting the defeat of the Runoratas solely by the existence of this Claire person.
“Nah, you don’t know that yet.”
“No, I know. That natural-born contract killer is coming back. There’s practically no one in this business who doesn’t know the Vino name by now. If you manage to lose anyway, you’re complete idiots.”
He muttered this in an undertone. When you talked about a currently active killer using their real name, it wasn’t the sort of conversation you wanted people to overhear.
“Yeah, well, Claire does awesome work. The genius turns up everywhere and can kill in absolutely any situation!”
“Don’t yell it, moron. Well, true, those physical skills and the ability to assess situations are something else. It seems impossible for those skinny arms to be as stron
g as they are, though.”
To them, the name Claire seemed to indicate someone who had reached the heights of a certain type of strength, someone who could be said to be the physical embodiment of that strength.
At that point, as if something had just struck him, Firo turned to Berga and asked a question:
“Say, is the train Claire’s riding in on the Flying Pussyfoot?”
“Yeah! That’s the one! What, are those idiots on the same train?”
On hearing that answer, Firo suddenly went quiet. After a short silence, he looked up and informed Berga of a certain fact:
“Actually, Maiza’s going to meet it tomorrow, too.”
A little hesitantly, Firo brought his superior’s name into the conversation.
“Huh? To pick up the idiots? Maiza, in person?”
“No, not them. He has another acquaintance on that train…”
After hesitating a little, he muttered under his breath:
“Maiza’s old friend—one of the alchemists who became immortal two hundred years ago.”
Ladd had headed for the conductors’ room to look for Lua. In order to reach it, he had to go through the third-class carriage and the freight rooms. It was likely that the black suits had taken control of the third-class compartments already.
How should he kill them? As he was entertaining himself with speculation, someone squirmed on the connecting platform between the cars.
Ladd leveled his rifle and spoke to the back of the man on the platform.
“Whoops! Don’t move, you giddy bastard. Did we scare you? You’re being pretty sneaky—”
At that point, he realized something: The shadow wasn’t a black suit. It was the gray “magician,” the one he’d seen when they boarded the train.
The magician turned to face him and spoke. He didn’t seem especially afraid of the rifle.
“You’re not a friend of the group in black suits, then?”
1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local Page 9