1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local (2 page)

December 29, 1931
The Dead of Night

“No, uh, so, um, um, how do I put this, let’s—
you
know, peacefully, let’s settle this peacefully, okay? We’re, all of us, we’re adults, so, all right? Okay? It’s fine, we can do it, see? So, so listen, let’s just calm down and think about this.”

Near a factory on the outskirts of Chicago. There were no streetlamps or neon signs to be seen in this alley, and a hushed darkness had settled in. Here, in a place that silence would normally have suited well, a voice echoed, clearly out of place.

Of course, conversely, when you considered that it was the shrieks and pleas of a man being held at gunpoint, there might have been no more appropriate place for it. In the moonlight, several men with guns—most likely members of an urban mafia family, given their clothes and demeanor—surrounded one young man.

If there was one odd thing, it was the black tattoo in the shape of a sword that was inked on the blubbering lad’s face.

“So, so, those guns! Put them dooown! Okay, okay? Please, I’m so scared I think I’m gonna go crazy, I mean it! Please, I’m begging you, only I don’t have one red cent on me at the moment, so for now I’ll just apologize, so please put down the guns,
put down the guuuuuuns!
”

Meanwhile, the men with said guns looked at each other dubiously. They all wore dark-colored trench coats, and as they stood, surrounding the crybaby of a young man, they blended into the darkness.

“Hey, are you sure this is the guy?”

“Should be. ‘Has a sword tattoo on his face.’ It’s gotta be him.”

“Yeah, but he’s completely pathetic. It’s really him?”

“Well, let’s just ask ’im.”

The man who seemed to be the leader of the group grabbed the boy’s collar. He’d already started crying anew.

“Hey, cut the waterworks. I’m about to ask you a real easy question. Depending on your answer, we may send you back home to your mommy, safe and sound. You get me?”

“Wah, wah, I-I don’t have a mommyyy…”

The next instant, the butt of a gun slammed into the wailer’s face, just below his eye.

“Yegyaaah!”

“Nobody asked about your situation! Huhn? What did I just say? I asked you, ‘Do you hear what I’m saying,’ you rotten little maggot.”

The mafioso hauled the boy—who was on the point of falling over—back into place by force, shoved the gun right under his nose, and began speaking slowly.

“—Listen up, you lousy blubberer. If you don’t want me to combine your nostrils by drilling a new hole in the top of your skull, say your name, slowly and clearly.”

Trembling, the boy nodded vigorously, swallowed his tears, and said his name:

“
Hic
…
hic
… Ja-Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi Splot.”

On hearing those words, the mafiosi exchanged looks and snickered, their expressions deflated.

“Bwa-ha, you gotta be kidding me… We catch the boss of the scum that’s been causing all this grief for the Russo Family, and he’s a sniveling coward? Truth is, we were only planning to scope out your hideout today. Then there you were, with a dumb mug that matched your description, out strolling around without guards, see? Kind of a letdown, ain’t it? Ha-ha, it’s hilarious, right? Right?”

When his laugh, which was almost a sigh, ended, the suit knocked the lad who’d called himself Jacuzzi to the ground.

“Yeah, it ain’t funny at all, ya damn brat. What’s
with
you, huh? You tore up our turf, so I was wondering what sort of tough guy you were, and this is
it
?”

With veins standing out on his face, the ringleader slammed a kick into the boy.

“T-tore up your turf? We—
hic
—we were just…”

“Just what? You made liquor and sold it without permission, you teamed up and obstructed Russo Family business like it was goin’ out of style, and then you robbed businesses under our protection—what about that
ain’t
tearing up our turf?”

Jacuzzi had just been enduring the kicks, but he abruptly stopped whimpering and loudly objected.

“Y-y-yes, we’re punks, but, but, the first—the first time we sold liquor,
you’re
the ones who killed eight of us! And so, and so, we made up our minds to, to fight the Russo Family for all we were worth!”

That tearful accusation seemed to really get under the mafiosi’s skins; their faces went bright red, and they clenched their fists.

“To hell with that! Don’t think we’re gonna let you die easy. We’ll take lots of money and time and turn you and all your friends into—”

“Wah, wah…
hic
, never mind that, please, hurry and put down the g-g-guns, i-i-if possible, I don’t want to—k-k-kill you.”

Jacuzzi’s voice clearly interrupted the mafioso’s.

“You little runt! Do you understand the situation you’re—?”

“No,
no
, NO, I hate it, it’s really scary! I hate seeing blood, and hearing bones break really scares meeee!”

Realizing that the conversation was weirdly failing to mesh, the mafiosi quietly stopped the fists they’d raised.

“So, please, Donny, not yet, please wait, wait for them, I’m begging you, please, I know these guys are gonna put down their guns for u-hu-huuus!”

“Donny? Huh? Whozzat?”

The leader stared hard at Jacuzzi’s face
And then he noticed.

The guy’s eyes weren’t focused on him. They were looking at something
behind
him, over his shoulder.

In the instant the air went tense, he heard it.

Grunch.

The second Jacuzzi heard that sound, he screamed and covered his ears. He was trembling hard.

The leader let go of Jacuzzi, violently sharpening all five of his senses. During the moment it took him to turn around:

His eyes took in his subordinates, who had spotted something and were standing stock-still.

His ears picked up the sound that came on the heels of the unpleasant noise from a moment ago: a sound like something hard being scraped together.

His nose caught the scent and the chill of the freezing air.

His tongue tasted the bitterness and acidity of the gastric juices that were working their way up his throat.

And the instant he’d completed his turn, his arm took a direct hit from the worst pain he’d ever experienced.

“Ghakh… Aaaaaaaaaugh!”

A sudden impact. When he looked at the affected area, giant fingers that seemed several times the size of a normal person’s were wrapped around his fist, the one that held his gun. His wrist was twisted at an unnatural angle; the flesh had split in places, and dark red liquid was spurting out in time with his heartbeat. Somehow managing to hold his pain-dazed head together with logic, the leader looked at the
something
in front of him.

It was a giant shadow with the moon at its back.

It was about six feet tall. The huge man, who was cloaked in shadows, had twisted and broken one of the leader’s hands with his own right one. Meanwhile, his left hand was high in the air, violently choking the throat of one of the other mafiosi. The big man’s grip had warped the man’s neck, and his head and body hung, unnaturally limp, from either side.

The moon was directly behind the monster’s head, and he couldn’t see his expression in the shadows. In the place where his face would ordinarily have been, there was nothing but deep, still darkness.

“Muh, muh, monsteeer!”

His terror was greater than his pain. Desperately, he flung his hand up into the air; its nerves had already shorted out. Without any particular resistance, the big man released his right hand from its restraint.

Set free, the leader took aim at the giant in front of him and attempted to pull the trigger. However, naturally, the muscles in his fingers were in no condition to take orders.

“Wh-wh-wh-what are you doing, men?! Hurry, fill this guy with lead!”

He fired off an order to his subordinates, but nobody moved. Not only that, their eyes weren’t even focused on the giant. They were wandering through the surrounding darkness, moving this way and that.

At that point, the poor leader finally noticed them: the many shapes in the darkness around them, picked out by the light of the moon. He and his men stood around Jacuzzi, and their group was surrounded by kids about twenty years old with glaring eyes. Each of them wore clothes that had nothing in common with the others, but the made men immediately realized what they had to be. It was the group of punks they had to wipe out—the foot soldiers of the crybaby in front of them.

On both sides of the alley, in the shadows of the telegraph poles, at the edge of the fence that surrounded the road, they easily numbered more than fifty. They had the area surrounded, and with extraordinary slowness, they were closing in on the criminals.

“What…What are you?!”

When he turned to look at his men a second time, in an attempt to break out of the situation somehow, the leader lost his voice yet again.

What he saw was the faces of his subordinates. They were still standing frozen.

However, two things were different from what they had been a moment ago.

One was that they’d tried to fire at the big man or the surrounding human wall, or at Jacuzzi.

The other was that their eyes were no longer moving, and the life had completely drained from their faces.

Before the leader even had time to blink, his men fell to the ground, one after another. A sharp silver knife towered from the back of each head, dully reflecting the moonlight.

As the leader stared dazedly at the corpses of his men, he realized that several men and women were standing beside him.

“How are you feeling, sir?”

Abruptly, the woman who stood in the center spoke to him. She was young, probably about the same age as Jacuzzi. The woman was distinguished by the large scar on her face and the rough eye patch that covered her right eye. The fact that she wore a pair of glasses over the eye patch made her abnormal appearance all the more striking.

Even though it was winter, she wore clothes that exposed her arms, and both arms had countless scars on them as well.

Struck by the illusion that he’d heard a human voice for the first time in years, the leader—or no, the man who had been a leader, and who had now lost all of his subordinates—gradually regained his presence of mind at the sound of the woman’s voice. At the same time, the violent pain in his right wrist returned. In rhythm with his pulse, the heat of the blood and the pain assailed his brain.

“What is this?! What the hell are you people?! When did you get this—?”

He broke off in midsentence. A man who’d been beside the woman had struck him in the cheek with an iron pipe.

“Ah, ah, ga-ga, gwaah!”

“No one inquired about your circumstances! Well? What was it I just said to you? I inquired how you were feeling, you minuscule, putrefied maggot
Wasn’t that it?”

A polite version of the words he’d barked at Jacuzzi a moment ago came right back at him.
Dammit, were these guys here the whole time?! This rotten bitch led me—us—into a trap.
He tried to say the words and cuss her out, but the blood that streamed from his mouth wouldn’t let him.

When he looked around, a human wall had formed around him, unnoticed. As they watched the bloody show that was unfolding here, some showed no change of expression, others jeered, and still others looked at him with pity in their eyes. He hadn’t managed to grasp the true nature of this group, but one thing was clear:

There was really and truly no escape.

The mafioso had been reduced to a mere thug; his back was against the wall. Remembering the words Jacuzzi had sobbed earlier, he immediately took action.

Shaking the gun free from the mangled right hand that had been wrapped around it, he shouted a plea at Jacuzzi at the top of his lungs.

“I put down the gun! I put down the gun, I swear! I don’t have a weapon anymore! Tell your friends not to kill me! Okay?! You don’t want to hear bones breaking or see blood, right? So…”

When he’d screamed that much, he realized that Jacuzzi wasn’t moving.

With both hands still over his ears, his eyes had rolled back, and he was frothing at the mouth.