The Body Surrender Pact
Declan's method of torture was simple.
Cruel, violent, and laced with a sneering mockery that fully earned him the title of torture artist.
The real problem was Gugu Nox's mental state.
Normally a man thrashed harder the worse the pain got. Gugu Nox was different. His eyes rolled pure white; even when the hammer pulverized his left hand he only screamed and rambled nonsense. The more they worked him over, the cloudier his gaze became.
Has his mind already drifted off to the nine heavens?
Something Tanner once said floated up unbidden.
Circular Jack, Kid York, Gugu Nox. Those three founded the Hudson Dusters, and every last one of them was a lunatic.
The Hudson Dusters had been nothing but madmen—beating cops for sport, roaming the city throwing wild parties, assaulting passersby, living each day as if it were their last in pure frenzy.
So Gugu Nox had never been sane to begin with.
In the end I decided to try a new approach. Instead of more torture or threats, I would coax the madman gently.
"Our Gugu Nox… rough night, huh?"
His hazy eyes locked onto me. Then the corner of his mouth curled upward.
Is this actually working?
His guard had crumbled; the tension had drained out of him. To drag the buried words out of his unconscious I needed to dig into the psychology itself.
"I'll get you out soon. Just hang on a little longer. I swear I'll spring you."
"…"
"We're not ordinary pals, right? You trust me?"
Gugu Nox's mouth slowly opened. He stared up at my eyes, half-hidden by the scarf, and muttered,
"Willy Moretti?"
There it was.
"Yeah. It's me. You remembered."
"… Then… Elmira… cellmate."
New York State had a prison in Elmira. Apparently Gugu Nox and Willy Moretti had shared a cell there.
The moment the conversation started paying off, Declan snatched up a pen and started scribbling furiously in his notebook.
"Yeah, Elmira. Good times. You helped me out a lot back then, Gugu Nox."
"… With me next to you, who the hell was gonna touch you. But… you're gonna save me?"
"Of course. My boys are on the way."
"… Boys?"
Distrust flared in Gugu Nox's eyes as he glared at me.
"Idiot. With just three of them… what do you think you're gonna do. Don't forget… I'm the center of the business."
Judging by his words, Willy Moretti's outfit wasn't large. And the two of them didn't seem particularly fond of each other either.
I kept guiding the interrogation, weighing every rambling answer for meaning.
"We've got a lot of work left. Plenty of trucks still waiting to be hit."
"… Right. Whiskey. Prohibition's an opportunity…"
Gugu Nox's head drooped. I lowered myself with him.
"Exactly. So first we need to move the whiskey we already stole. You've got it stashed safe, right?"
"Naturally… DL&W Pier 5 warehouse…"
Now the specifics were pouring out.
"Oh right, that's where we hid the liquor. Chelsea Piers, was it?"
"You kidding me…? It's Jersey City."
"Ah, right, right. By the way—what about the pistols? We were supposed to have thirty ready."
"Those damn things… that's why this happened. That bastard Maddox… stabbed me in the back… *cough*."
Gugu Nox gurgled bloody spit. A long string of saliva stretched sticky between his mouth and chin, then slowly dripped.
Through the questions and the gibberish I picked out clues the way you piece a puzzle together.
Then, suddenly—
"… Who the hell are you!?"
"Ah, hell. Here he goes again."
Irritated, Declan cracked Gugu Nox across the back of the head.
"I told you to keep him calm."
"Sorry, Boss. Habit."
Still, we had results.
Through repeated guided interrogations we extracted several important facts.
First: Gugu Nox worked with a man named Willy Moretti. Willy Moretti, an Italian gangster out of Jersey City, was less a backer than a partner.
Years earlier the two had been cellmates at Elmira Prison in New York State.
After release Gugu Nox had been arrested again by Jersey City police—this time for draft evasion. He'd walked free on probation after the trial only two months ago.
From the pattern it seemed Gugu Nox had been running crimes back and forth between Manhattan and Jersey City.
Their partnership had clear roles: Willy Moretti the brains, Gugu Nox the action chief.
It was Moretti who had planned, during the one-year grace period before Prohibition, to steal Manhattan liquor, raise capital, and build a real outfit.
I took that information straight to Maddox.
"Jersey City doesn't have gangs on Manhattan's scale. Moretti and Gugu Nox were probably trying to carve out territory there."
My read matched his.
The thirty pistols Gugu Nox had tried to seize from Maddox, the talk of military armored cars—all of it looked like preparation for the coming dry years.
That made Willy Moretti far more interesting to me than Gugu Nox.
The Union could not control every street. Sometimes you had to join hands with another outfit or take on a capable partner. It wasn't optional. It was necessary.
As the talk wound down, Maddox asked carefully,
"What are you going to do with Gugu Nox?"
"We'll watch how things develop and decide."
"Still got use for him?"
"We'll find out."
Maddox stroked his chin and gave me a strange look.
"Making that call on your own without even reporting to the Boss—allowed, is it?"
"I have that much authority."
His lips twitched as if he wanted to argue, then he simply shook his head.
"Anyway, finding Moretti comes first. He might even walk right up to us himself."
Gugu Nox and his crew had gone to meet the Hell's Kitchen gun dealer and vanished. Anyone suspicious would start looking here.
But according to Gugu Nox, Moretti only had two men under him.
"He's probably busy guarding the liquor warehouse right now."
"So you're heading to the Jersey City docks?"
"I am. Market research, among other things."
"True—you can't ignore the liquor market over there either. But…"
Suddenly Maddox's eyes fluttered and he grabbed my arm.
"You're not leaving me and Gugu Nox here and just going, right? You're taking me too, right?"
"The members will stay. And Maddox—your protection detail isn't finished. You need to go where Hazel's waiting."
"Phew. Thank God."
Before I left I went down to the shooting range and gave Declan a few instructions.
"Patch his face and the crushed hand just enough to keep him breathing."
"Boss, you're planning to keep this bastard alive?"
"The right time will come."
I left one member with Declan. Then Maddox and I headed for the LES twin buildings.
Gugu Nox and his men—sent to collect thirty pistols—had disappeared. I needed to move before Willy Moretti learned of it and got ideas of his own.
Besides, the more markets that could drink our liquor, the better. This trip also meant expanding into the neighboring city.
The moment we reached the twin buildings I summoned the members again. Thirteen men, yesterday's roster minus Declan and one other.
That evening we boarded River Grey's boat at Pier 35 on the eastern edge of the Lower East Side.
"Anyone been to Jersey City? Hands up."
Including Captain River, more than half the hands rose. It was that close to Manhattan.
Jersey City, New Jersey, faced Manhattan across the Hudson—barely 1.2 kilometers of water to the west.
Like Manhattan it served as a vital transport hub for the sea and New York Harbor, and it had grown at breakneck speed. The war boom of the Great War had poured immigrants into the city in torrents.
In the future it would be called simply the Port of Jersey City. Right now it was a patchwork of massive terminals and pier districts owned by the railroad companies—places where bulk cargo hauled by rail from the interior (coal, grain, manufactured goods) was loaded onto ships.
The warehouse where Willy Moretti had stashed the stolen liquor sat at Pier 5 of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad—DL&W Pier 5.
Ten o'clock at night.
We slipped out of the noise of whistles, engines, and shouting stevedores and made for the nearby warehouse.
Along the darkened road the members went to work. From bags they pulled Bibles and novels, extracted the pistols hidden inside, and fanned out to watch the building.
In front of the long, low warehouse, under the soft glow of a single bulb, three men sat with their backs to the door, smoking.
Their casual posture said they knew nothing of Gugu Nox's fate.
At my signal the scattered members closed in around the warehouse. Leo, Brian, and I walked straight toward the entrance.
As we drew near, the smokers slowly rose.
"Nox sent us."
"Stop! Wh-what's that in your hands!"
Guns, of course.
They reached into their coats the instant we reached the door. My muzzle was already leveled at their heads.
"Hands out of the coats. We're here to talk."
"Mamma mia! Who believes that when you're pointing guns?"
Clumsy English. They froze halfway through the motion, eyes rolling toward the gathering members, faces filling with dismay.
I spoke again, drawing every gaze to me.
"Which one of you is Willy Moretti?"
A man in his mid-twenties, sharp Italian features, answered.
"I am Moretti."
"Inside. Open the warehouse."
The members stripped their guns.
Seeing resistance was useless, Moretti opened the door without further protest.
Two men stayed on watch outside; the rest of us entered. Inside the lit warehouse, whiskey crates were stacked high.
"All of it stolen from Manhattan?"
Moretti kept his mouth shut. I snorted and dragged him deeper into the shadows between the crates.
"Damn it—what the hell is Gugu Nox thinking? And who the hell are you people?"
His voice was sharp with anger.
"What would you do if you knew? More important—why partner with a man like Gugu Nox?"
"Why ask that out of nowhere?"
"You know what's coming when Prohibition starts. I heard you were preparing for it and got my hopes up. Turns out you don't even have that much sense. A lunatic like Gugu Nox won't last. One wrong step and you're dead too."
Every scrap of information painted the same picture: Gugu Nox was not sane. Moretti's silence only confirmed it. Instead of answering he narrowed his eyes and glared.
"So 'Nox sent us' was a lie."
"I never claimed it was that Nox."
I stepped closer to the confused man.
"Curious who we are?"
He nodded. I brought my face right up to his.
"The Union. Lower East Side, Manhattan."
"!"
Moretti's pupils trembled.
Neighboring city or not, the name already carried weight in Jersey City.
"Our Boss is interested in you. He's deciding whether to take you as a partner… or simply walk into New Jersey himself. What's your answer?"
"… You threaten me like this and expect what kind of reply?"
"Anything. Talk."
We locked eyes for a long moment. Then Moretti glanced toward the front of the warehouse, judged the odds, and nodded.
"I… I want to be partners with the Union."
"Good."
Satisfied, I drew a single sheet of paper from my coat and handed it over.
Moretti's face twisted the instant he read it.
"B-body surrender waiver?! This is insane—!"
"Read the actual content."
I, _______________, hereby willingly surrender all rights to my own body in the event that I am the first to betray this trust.
I pressed a pen into Moretti's hand. He shook his head violently.
"N-no. I refuse!"
"Then the Union steps into New Jersey itself. When?"
Right now.