Chapter 12 - It Was Still Meaningful
After taking out the boss, I swept the money into my bag.
The cash was one thing, but what really excited me was the Colt M1911 I found inside the boss's bag.
This legendary automatic pistol, designed by John Browning—who perfected modern firearm technology—was now in my hands.
Two guns in one day.
Looks like firearms really are my lifelong companions.
I pictured the future ahead of me—collecting guns, customizing them, and sometimes using them aggressively.
I packed the guns and ammunition into the bag.
But I was still debating what to do about the ledgers and mail left on the dining table.
I was trying to pin the crime on the loan sharks, yet the evidence of the collaboration with them was blatantly sitting on the table?
That made no sense.
If you want to accuse a fraudster, you have to get rid of the evidence.
Besides, unlike the gang corpses found in the alley, this case was on a completely different level.
For one, the victim was a capitalist.
And tangled up in the death of this vicious swindler were a defense attorney, a real estate agent, and gangsters.
Maybe even the bank helping with the bankruptcy petitions was involved.
More than anything, I don't trust the police.
That much corruption and complicity run deep among many cops in this era.
Leaving this case in their hands could mean the evidence disappears.
At least for now, the evidence doesn't seem like it will be of much help.
I might as well use it.
After a brief moment of thought, I shoved the ledgers and mail into the money bag, and also grabbed the gold ring, necklace, and wristwatch that belonged to the boss.
I intentionally left the front door unlocked. When my mother and the others come by in the morning, they'll find the body easily enough.
Before leaving the house, I glanced outside through the window.
When I thought it was the darkest moment, I slipped out of the townhouse using the predetermined escape route.
On the way back home, I moved cautiously to avoid getting caught up in any gang trouble.
Then,
Bang! Bang!
Several shots rang out somewhere on the streets of Lower Manhattan.
I'd heard gunfire occasionally even at home, so it wasn't entirely unusual.
What made today different, though, was that I was now directly involved in this hunt taking place in this damned city jungle.
Creak, click.
Damn, maybe I should oil this door or something.
I carefully opened and closed the front door.
Maybe waiting up for me all night, my mother was asleep at the kitchen table with a lamp still lit.
I hung my mother's scarf back on the door handle, took off the bloodstained clothes, and stuffed them into the bag I'd brought.
I opened the cupboard door and hid my father's revolver among the shelves.
The problem was the bag.
Where could I hide it?
I looked around and noticed a box tucked in the corner of the kitchen. It was always filled with potatoes, no matter how many we ate.
Quietly, I lifted the potatoes and placed the bag underneath them.
I finished tidying up roughly and was about to sneak past the dining table when my mother looked up.
"Ciaran, you just got in now?"
"Uh, no, I came back a while ago."
She glanced at the wall clock.
It was 1 a.m.
Suddenly, as if a thought struck her, she stood up straight and held out her hand.
"Where is it?"
"What?"
"You know, that thing!"
Low enough not to wake the younger siblings, my mother growled softly. I calmly pulled out the revolver I'd just hidden in the cupboard.
My mother snatched the revolver from me and opened the cylinder to check the bullets.
A sigh of relief soon escaped her.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was that you might have gotten yourself into something dangerous?"
I used a knife, Mother.
I opened my mouth to speak but decided to stay silent.
She would find out tomorrow, but not tonight.
I yawned as if I were sleepy.
Seeing that, her expression softened with sympathy.
"We'll talk more in the morning. Now, go to sleep."
"Yes, you too."
She went to her room, and I headed to my bed.
I felt Liam's gaze from the bunk bed upstairs.
"You didn't wake up because of me, did you?"
Liam turned over silently, acting rude.
I had a long, vivid nightmare.
Falling into the Prohibition Era, living in a filthy place like a sewer, shooting and stabbing, clutching a bomb as I died... a horrible nightmare.
Even the dreams are awful.
When I opened my eyes, dawn had just begun.
The narrow living room and my mother sitting at the dining table were bathed in a reddish light coming through the small window.
The anger and fury I felt last night rushing out with the gun had faded, and I sat quietly at the table, my shoulders slumped weakly.
She didn't cook busily in the kitchen as usual.
She just... didn't.
Sometimes, when you don't move, you feel like a broken clock; when you don't do something, you might feel your very existence is useless.
I wondered if that's how my mother felt.
No pay for the work she'd done, now unemployed.
On top of that, she got caught holding a gun, and then her eldest son suddenly starts ranting nonsense about "changing from now on" and threatening to take even more.
Her mind must be tangled in all sorts of ways.
As I heard my mother's long sigh, I sat up.
Almost at the same moment, a creaking sound came from the bunk bed upstairs.
I caught Liam's eyes as he half-sat up.
"Go back to sleep."
"Who do you think woke me up at dawn?"
"Like I said, go back to sleep. That's how you get better."
"I'm fine now."
"Oh really? Let me check."
When I reached out to grab his arm, Liam recoiled in disgust and pulled away. "What are you doing? Do you think you can know anything just by looking?"
"I do. Well, you look fine."
The splint Uncle Larry put on had already been removed.
Still, since he could move his arm, the bone didn't seem damaged.
"So, you're going to start working from today?"
"Yeah. I have to..."
"Why don't you just rest, Liam?"
Their mother smiled gently as she looked at her two sons who had gotten up early without her noticing.
"Since we have some time today, I'll make a proper breakfast. It's okay if we're a little late, right?"
"I don't mind. Time's all I have anyway."
Like my mother, I'm essentially unemployed too.
So I had no reason to object.
Meanwhile, Liam remained silent with a dark expression.
Maybe he understood what our mother was going through.
"Since it's a special day, breakfast will be special too!"
As if determined to change her spirit, Mother stood up from the table and rolled up her sleeves.
It was probably going to be potatoes anyway.
Boiled potatoes, potato soup, mashed potatoes.
Potatoes, potatoes...
There's even a joke about it:
[An Irish seven-course meal: A potato and a six-pack.]
It's understandable that the food ingredients for poor Irish immigrants are monotonous, but that's not the case for the Italian or Jewish neighbors.
Anyway, potatoes?
For a moment, I thought of the money bag hidden inside the endlessly multiplying boxes of potatoes.
Quickly, I pulled the potatoes out of the box.
"I'll peel these."
Not long after breakfast finished, Mother put on her clothes roughly and was called away to a meeting.
"Mom is going out to take care of something."
It looks like the workers who have been unpaid and lost their jobs finally plan to visit the boss's house.
I'll find out soon enough.
As soon as Mother stepped out the door, I hurriedly grabbed my clothes and got dressed.
Roa hurried over.
"Is big brother going out too?"
"Yeah. To exercise."
"What were you doing with Roa just a moment ago!?"
"That was just warming up."
Leaving Liam and Roa at home, I stepped out onto the street for a jog.
There's a saying that criminals always return to the scene of the crime.
Like being pulled by a magnet, I soon found myself inspecting the alley where the incident had taken place.
According to psychological profiles from crime profilers,
if a criminal flees the scene in a hurry, they often come back to see if they left behind any clues.
In my case, it was simple curiosity.
"It's like every day, after waking up, more and more people are dying. How can anyone live in fear like that?"
"That's gangsters killing each other. Whatever they do to one another, it's none of our business."
The police must have already been here, because the bodies were gone.
Only a few passersby and a street cleaner washing away bloodstains from the alley remained.
Nothing much to see. Once even the street cleaner disappeared, there was no trace left of what had happened overnight in the alley.
People made wild guesses, saying it was just a murder incident between gangs.
Unless you were directly involved or caught up in it, it was ultimately something that happened in their own world.
The term "Underworld" hadn't come about for no reason.
While the gang talk was still going on, a group suddenly appeared, lurking around the scene.
Feeling uneasy, the passersby stopped their conversations and hurried away.
That was the wise choice.
More gangsters showed up—seeming like they belonged to different crews.
And from all of them, the name of one gang kept coming up.
"Ppeok, Marginals."
So the ones chasing those who died overnight were the Marginals gang.
Just as I planned, they were being framed as suspects. No one would ever dream the shoeshiner was the culprit.
The police must be no different.
Meanwhile, the thugs who spotted me raised their eyebrows.
"What the hell is that Ching Chang Chong?"
"Starting the morning off bad with a Yellow Coolie scuffling around where he shouldn't be."
"Ain't he gonna scram? Damn Chink bastard."
There were so many derogatory remarks aimed at me.
Most of them were slurs directed at Chinese people, but even if I shouted that I was from the Korean Empire, it wouldn't make a difference.
Anyway, I was just standing there, yet a flood of varied and racist insults poured out.
In my past life, the reason I was tormented by trials and exploded alive along with a bomb was because of situations like this.
Of course, unlike back then, the PTSD that used to haunt me was gone, and since racial discrimination was so common in this era, I couldn't always deliver a proper lesson in return.
So, I had to accept that I'd be hearing this kind of talk until I died—even a hundred years later...
I couldn't live like that.
I left the gang-infested scene and headed toward the place where the next crime had taken place.
This was where middle-class Jewish residents lived.
At a quiet townhouse, people had gathered early in the morning, creating a noisy scene.
Compared to the gangs who had died on the street, the death of someone from the middle class attracted much more public attention.
I blended into the crowd and eavesdropped on the briefing between the police and reporters.
My mother and the staff stood off to the side, their faces downcast.
"Who was the initial reporter?"
"The employees of the clothing factory run by Blank, the deceased."
Reporters eyed the workers and scribbled in their notebooks.
"At the scene, the victim wrote 'took all' in blood just before dying. This seems like a significant clue. Is there anyone who can be specifically identified from this?"
"It's not the stage to reveal that information yet."
At that moment, some angry middle-aged women watching the briefing shouted out.
"If it's not the loan sharks, then who else would have killed the boss?"
"Please find the sewing machines they took away!"
Most of them were Jewish or Italian immigrants, accustomed to discrimination. They were distrustful of the police's ability to conduct a proper investigation and watched with suspicious eyes.
The police officer, annoyed by their attitude, frowned and tried to wrap up the situation.
"Okay, reporters, I know you have many questions, but we just arrived at the scene not long ago. The police headquarters will arrange a separate session to go over the details. Let's end this here."
Once the formal briefing ended, the reporters shifted their focus to interviewing the factory workers.
"I heard wages were delayed. Do you think that's connected to this incident?"
"We want to know more about the exact circumstances when the loan sharks took the sewing machines last night."
A suitable headline for tomorrow morning's paper might read: "Why Did the Angry Employees Go to the Boss's House Early This Morning?"
Meanwhile, my mother, who had joined the interviews, caught sight of me.
Our eyes met.
She quickly hid her surprised expression.
Then, with a complicated look, she asked me—
Was this related to me?
Did I do this?
I nodded without hesitation.
My mother's expression changed, and overwhelmed with confusion, she turned her head away.
From then on, she avoided looking at me and focused only on the interviews with the reporters.
It's okay, Mother.
No one is paying attention to me.
I have no intention of hiding my actions from her. There will be more events unfolding in the future.
Keeping secrets every time wouldn't suit me anyway.
Besides, what am I supposed to do with the money I've hidden inside the potato crate right now?
After watching the scene for a while, I turned and headed home.
Back at home, Mother remained trapped in shock.
How could it not be, when suddenly her eldest son had become a murderer?
She hid it for the sake of my younger siblings, but her gaze had changed from before when she looked at me.
Although I had committed two murders, nothing had happened to me.
The alleyway murder was pinned on the Marginals gang, while the loan sharks were named suspects for the boss's death. The investigation focused on them.
That afternoon, Mother returned home after meeting with her colleagues and the defense attorney.
With a wronged look, she started speaking:
"I don't think we'll receive any compensation."
The boss's family home was quite wealthy, located in Pennsylvania.
But we couldn't expect any compensation from them.
Moreover, the loan sharks who had been named suspects denied any criminal charges, claiming that the sewing machines were just repayment for the boss's debts.
How shameless of them, after orchestrating such a scam.
It was all done from the start to take everything away.
As I pondered and began to solidify my future plans, my mother, misunderstanding my blank expression as shock, took my hand.
Then, unexpectedly, she said:
"The outcome isn't good, but it was still meaningful."
"...What?"
"If you think about it, you're no different from a soldier heading to the battlefield. You just took down a very bad enemy. The boss was even more ruthless and malicious than the German soldiers."
Even if we couldn't get compensation, completing the revenge was enough.
She compared the method to soldiers fighting against the German army during the European Great War.
Of course, I understand that soldiers and civilians are fundamentally different.
But for my mother, there was little difference.
Life itself was a battlefield.
Her unyielding heart trying to accept and rationalize her son's actions. It was time to make amends.
"It wasn't a pointless effort after all."
I rummaged through a box of potatoes and pulled out a bag.
The moment I opened it and checked its contents—
"!"
"$1,400."
That was roughly seventeen times the unpaid wages.
My mother gasped sharply and covered her mouth with her hand.
"There's more."
I dumped out the ledger and the mail.
My mother seemed slightly disappointed, perhaps expecting money. But—
"These are the proofs of what the boss was up to."
"Proof...?"
As she nervously skimmed through the mail with trembling hands, her expression gradually turned to shock.