1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local (4 page)

December 30
Afternoon

Today is the worst day of my life.

In a certain mansion in Chicago, Placido Russo, the boss of the Russo Family, was sure of this.

The first trouble to occur had been that the month’s takings—a vast amount—had been stolen down to the last red cent while they were being transported.

The criminals had been a man and a woman. Apparently, they’d been wearing Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb uniforms. Someone had suddenly yelled, “Keee-
rack
!” at the transporters from behind, and when they turned around, baseball bats had been swung at them. They’d managed to dodge the first attack but had then been hit in their faces with fistfuls of pepper and lime. While they writhed in pain, the bag had been lifted and the getaway made.

Ridiculous. At first he’d thought it was a joke and had tortured the couriers, but apparently, it had been true.

If that had been all, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But after that, a rumor had come in that one of his executives and several subordinates had been turned into pulverized cinders outside the city.

He hadn’t confirmed it yet, but considering that a group had gone out to that district the previous evening to spy on some delinquents and hadn’t yet returned, it was probably safe to assume that it was fact.

On top of that, the terrorist wannabes who should have joined up with them today hadn’t made contact, either. According to his subordinates’ reports, all that was left of the factory they’d been using as their hideout was a mountain of rubble and corpses.

It would have been a nuisance to have people making noise about the Russo Family in connection with that conflagration, so he had the majority of his men out dismantling the factory and hiding the bodies.

“Dammit! That lowlife Nader must’ve messed up. I guess he was just a two-bit punk. Which makes me an idiot to have expected anything from him.”

However, the problem was serious. If Nader had sung about his relationship with the Russos, they might find themselves the target of unnecessary malice. After all, the other guys were terrorists. Not only that, but he really couldn’t tell what they were thinking.

The gang of delinquents was a nuisance, too. They should have been able to ice the boss and his lieutenants at a stroke and end the whole thing; he’d never imagined they’d get killed by their targets instead.

“For now, I’ll start with those weird robbers. Damn them. Starting tomorrow, I’ll throttle every blasted couple in this town…!”

“Yeaaaah, I wouldn’t, Uncle. Do it, and you’ll have people thinking you’re a jealous old geezer who can’t get a date.”

Someone suddenly spoke up from behind. When he hastily turned, his nephew, Ladd Russo, was standing there.

Hair that was neither long nor short, and the dark suit that was standard among the mafia. He was a bit on the tall side, but none of his features particularly stood out. He was a genial-looking young man, and the word
normal
seemed to fit him like a glove. In contrast, the way he spoke was incredibly flippant, and he had no concept of manners.

“Oh, it’s you, Ladd. I don’t have time to deal with you today. Scram!”

“Hmm? What’s this, what’s this, what’s this? That’s pretty cold, ain’t it, Uncle? What makes you think you’ve got that kind of leeway, hmm? It’s money, you know, money,
money
, the almighty money that you value right next to your almighty life, and some almighty somebody else took off with it. So this is what you really want to say, ain’t it, Uncle? Leave no stone unturned— Nah, burn the jungles to ash if you have to, find the criminals, and choke ’em, choke ’em, choke ’em until they foam at the mouth and keep choking ’em until their eyes pop out and then keep right on choking ’em—”

As his nephew kept talking, his derisive tone never wavered. Placido shouted at him, his face bright red.

“Don’t put me on your level, you murdering hedonist! Do you have any idea how much money and manpower I’ve spent cleaning up the guys you kill for fun?!”

Murdering hedonist.
There was really no better way to describe Ladd.

His true nature wasn’t his appearance or his words. It lay in the pleasure he sought, and in his greed for it.

He lived purely to kill. What distinguished him from hitmen, who killed for a living, was that he killed for fun.

Even so, Ladd had been kept in the family because he was incredibly skilled at finishing off enemies during disputes. It certainly wasn’t his job, but it was true that as a result, he was known as the best killer in the Russo Family.

That’s right: He was a crazed, murdering hedonist who lived to follow his desires. Placido was sure of it.

At least he had been, up until this moment.

“Hey, there’s no problem. I brought you some good news, Uncle.”

“Say your piece. Then get out.”

His uncle brushed him off coldly, and Ladd gave an exaggerated shrug. Then he said something far too abrupt.

“See, I hear you’ve got money problems, Uncle, so I’m gonna go cause a little trouble tonight. If I pull it off, I’ll lend you some of mine. My dough.”

Because the way he’d phrased it had been unnatural, for a moment, Placido didn’t understand what his nephew was saying. Anticipating this, Ladd kept speaking.

“It’s that, that thing—the limited express leaving from Union Station tonight. The
Flying Pussyfoot
, I think it was. The nonstop that goes straight to New York. I’m gonna hijack that a little and run it right into the middle of Manhattan.”

At those words, the inside of Placido’s head went pure white for a while.

“…And that bit’s a bluff. First, I threaten ’em with that, see? Then, if they don’t pay up, I turn it into a passenger kidnapping on the spot. Well, then, see, if I kill off about half the passengers, I bet the railway company will probably cough up for me. I get to kill people, I get money… Sounds like a plan, right, Uncle?”

“Get out.”

That was all Placido could say. His reason had finally begun to work again. Whether the guy was joking or serious, he couldn’t waste any more time on him. Where were the guards, where had the servants gone to?

“Hey, somebody toss this idiot out.”

As Placido called for someone, the half-open door slowly opened farther, and several men and a woman came in.

They were all strangers to Placido. Disturbingly, all of them were dressed in white. The men wore white suits or sweaters, and the woman wore a pure-white dress. Their outfits were too much for a wedding; it looked as if they were headed to a costume party.

At that point, for the first time, a trace of impatience appeared in Placido’s expression, and an alarm bell began to sound in his head.

Even then, holding onto all the dignity he could muster, he questioned the intruders:

“Who are you?”

However, Ladd was the one who answered the question.

“My men-and-friends who share my hobby. Oh, and the doll’s Lua. She’s my lover-and-girlfriend-and-fiancée, so treat her nice, Uncle.”

“Um……uh, delighted…”

Even the woman’s face was white, and she gave a greeting that wasn’t a greeting in a scarcely audible voice.

“She’s, whaddaya call it, kinda timid? See, though, I’m always wired, and it neutralizes that, so we go round ’n’ round ’n’ round, see? I guess you’d say we’re a good couple?”

“Silence!”

Placido’s angry roar echoed through the room. Lua flinched and shrank into herself; Ladd gave an especially exaggerated shrug.

“You come in here and spout complete hogwash— Dammit, what are the guards doing?!”

Placido stood up, striking the desk with his fist as he did so. He grabbed Ladd’s collar and hauled him up.

“Listen to me, you blasted lunatic brat! Go right ahead: Kidnap or murder or whatever you want, but you are not allowed to use our outfit’s name. Kill however you want and die however you want, but do it as a nameless nobody, a guy who doesn’t exist!”

He spit the words at him, loaded with menace, but they seemed to have no effect whatsoever on Ladd; he talked back to his furious patriarch.

“Yeah, yeah. Killing’s fun because I do it just for kicks, see? Using the outfit’s name would make it boring, Uncle.”

“Don’t talk as if you know! If you want to kill people so badly, become a mercenary or something and go to the death fields of South America!”

“Isn’t that real rude to mercenaries?”

“Shut that filthy mouth! If you go to a battlefield, as long as you don’t get killed, you can kill all you want! That’s what you want, isn’t it?! Satisfy yourself by sneaking around and hiding and imagining the pleasure of killing tough guys!”

At that point, abruptly, the strength went out of Placido’s hands. In response, Ladd’s own hands went to the arms that had grabbed his collar and caught them firmly about the middle.

It felt as if something were being shoved into the spaces between the old man’s muscles. As he felt the strength drain away, in the blink of an eye, his hands had released the collar.

Taking advantage of the opening, Ladd leaned in close to his uncle’s face. At a distance where he could feel the breath from his nose, with his eyes opened abnormally wide, he spoke. He just
spoke
, calmly.

“You’re the one who’s talking like you know, aren’t you, Uncle? You don’t know a thing about me. Battlefields? Those aren’t our
style
. Those are places where warriors gather,
warriors
, warriors! Guys prepared to die in order to kill, guys who fight like they’re gonna die because they don’t want to die, guys like that, see? Frankly, there’s nothing fun about killing those guys. Get me, Uncle?”

Placido was no longer able to object: While he’d rattled on, at some point, Ladd had pulled a rifle out from who knew where and had jammed its muzzle against Placido’s jaw.

“Looking for enemies stronger than we are—that ain’t how we roll. That doesn’t mean we only go after women and kiddies or weak guys, though.”

Using the muzzle of the gun to toy with his uncle’s jaw, Ladd explained his aesthetics.

“The guys I kill, the guys that are
fun
to kill, are the ones who are completely relaxed. Get me? The type who are somewhere absolutely safe, without the
tiiiiiniest
suspicion they might die in the next second. Guys like that. Like, for example—”

The eyes that watched his uncle changed completely. The cheerfulness that had been in them a moment ago vanished, and he glared at his uncle—contemptuously, pityingly, lovingly—with the sort of eyes that dealt death equally to anyone who met them.

“He…Hey, wait, wait, Ladd. Stop, stop!”

“Yeah, for example—”

The final stop for Ladd’s gaze was the tinge of terror that had risen deep inside Placido’s eyeballs. When he’d seen that tinge appear, Ladd’s face twisted happily, and he began to tighten his trigger finger.

“—guys just like you right now, Uncle.”

“For the love of God,
stoooooop
!
”

There was a hollow
click
.

…And that was all.

In the hushed room, only Ladd’s quiet laugh echoed briefly.

“Ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, ha-ha! Ha-ha, as if I’d actually kill you. It ain’t loaded, Uncle. You’ve taken real good care of me up till now. Even a murderer like me has
that
much decency. See?”

Ladd’s wired mood hadn’t changed a bit. Placido’s heart had already been completely swallowed up. He fell to his knees on the floor, drawing in deep breaths, over and over.

“Well, we need to hit the road. We probably won’t meet again, but take care, Uncle.”

As if to declare he had nothing else to say, Ladd spun, turning his back on the man.

“D-don’t you ever come back!!”

For Placido, who’d been completely whipped, that parting shot took all his resources. However, Ladd shattered even that hint of pride.

“Nah, I doubt I’d be able to even if I wanted to.”

“Eh?”

“See, Uncle, you’re, what’s-it-called, all washed up. You groused about Luciano’s reformers’ proposal the other day, remember? And y’know, I bet you’re on their hit list now.”

Lucky Luciano. He was right up there with Capone as a made man who symbolized the era. He was working to modernize the mafia and was taking steps to get rid of outfits with old ideas. In other words, he was promoting an inventory clearance of guys who talked about things like “duty” and “tradition.”

“Wha…?”

“Lucky Luciano’s killing hundreds of mafia bosses just because their attitudes are outdated. That’s a hell of a lot scarier than a murderer like me. You really don’t want to be on that guy’s bad side. Right, Uncle?”

At his receding nephew’s words, Placido’s body was once again dominated by trembling and nausea.

“Th-that’s nonsense…”

“Just be real careful not to end up like Salvatore Maranzano, a’right?”

Ladd’s warning intentionally invoked the name of a mafioso who’d been killed in New York a few months earlier, while in his own home. It wasn’t clear whether it was Ladd’s kindness or cruelty talking.

“Well, maybe you feel safe because you’ve got great guards here, but it sounds like the police and the tax men also have their eye on you after this latest mess. As a ‘sacrifice,’ see, to take back the town of Chicago from the mafia.”