Murder and Robbery (II)

Perhaps the fluorescent light was too harsh, or perhaps he had been staring for too long. Oswald's eyes felt a little dry.

"Mr. Oswald, glaring at me won't save your girlfriend. Come on, give me an answer. Preferably before her throat gets slit!" Maroni shot his subordinate a look, and the man pressed his dagger into Gloria's throat.

The blade pressed down, tearing her skin. Blood dripped from its tip onto the tiled floor.

Gloria's pupils dilated, her mouth held shut as pleading whimpers rose in her throat. Oswald felt as though a wildcat had been stuffed into his chest and was using his heart as a scratching post.

Its sharp claws sliced through his heart valves, leaving him in too much pain to speak.

What should I do? Keep my mouth shut, of course.

Oswald still remembered what Qin Wei had said.

"If someone can kill you with a flick of his finger but doesn't do it right away, don't doubt it-killing you would cost him something. What you need to do then is exploit that mindset. The more he wants something, the more you have to withhold it. That's your last bargaining chip!"

But the problem was that he wasn't the one being threatened. It was Gloria, the woman he loved.

"Enough! Why threaten me? It's not even a secret!"

Oswald finally broke down and revealed how Qin Wei and Falcone communicated. He had nowhere left to turn. All he could do was hope Qin Wei had anticipated this, hope Qin Wei had never intended to hide it, hope he wasn't betraying Qin Wei by doing this.

"So Falcone calls him every time, and all your friend has to do is answer 'yes' or 'no'? It's that simple?"

"You can ask him to confirm it!"

"I admire your honesty."

Maroni planted his cane heavily against the floor. With the sharp crack of a tile breaking, a group of bodyguards in black filed in and hauled Oswald up amid Gloria's screams.

Maroni frowned. The nurse's screaming displeased him greatly.

He pointed out the window.

"Shut that woman up."

Seeing Gloria lifted up and pushed outside the window, Oswald's head exploded with a buzz. Dragging his battered body forward, he struggled free and lunged headfirst at Maroni. But before he could cover that final step, the bodyguards swarmed him and pinned him down.

"Sal Maroni, what are you doing?!"

For the first time, Oswald addressed Maroni by his full name. He bared his teeth like a rabid dog, his eyes bloodshot. If eyeballs could serve as weapons, Oswald might have dug them out without hesitation and hurled them at Maroni.

"Why that look? Over a woman?"

Maroni crouched with an indifferent smile and rubbed his cane against Oswald's hair.

"There are plenty of things in this world more deserving of your anger. For instance, while you're suffering here, your good friend just withdrew ten million dollars from the bank.

"Do you think that's fair? So far, you seem to be the only one suffering.

He turned and beckoned, and the bodyguards lowered Gloria.

"I could have taken her life, but now I'd like to give her to you as a gift."

The beggars crowded together beside the truck doors, ready to rush out the moment they opened.

Qin Wei and Royce placed two crates in front of themselves as cover, ready for a gunfight at any moment.

The cargo container's doors opened a little farther. Driven beyond reason by fear, the beggars couldn't wait any longer and poured out of the truck.

The Joker Gang members waiting to receive them had never expected this. They had planned to lure the temporary workers to the river on the pretext of paying them, then kill them to silence them. But before the container doors were fully open, more than a dozen beggars charged out and trampled the thug opening them.

A nearby Joker Gang thug raised his gun to aim, only for the tall leader to shove him aside.

"Are you insane? That truck's full of arms! Fire now and you'll blow us all sky-high!"

"But..."

"Let them run. Sure, killing them would be safer, but there's nothing we can do now!" The leader glanced at the beggars disappearing into the night, then turned his gaze to the thug who had opened the doors. The stampede had ruptured his belly and spilled his guts.

He walked over and shot the man without hesitation, ending his suffering.

"Heh, you really are unlucky..."

Boom!

The leader had just been about to follow the villain's rulebook and offer his dead subordinate a few cruel remarks when a shotgun blast tore away half his skull.

The sudden gunshot rang out across the silent wilderness. The shotgun's muzzle flash briefly lit the night like the dying sparks of fireworks, illuminating the pale face of the gunman beside him.

Before the man could raise his gun, Royce leaped out of the truck and caught him in his sights.

"Picture time! Smile!"

The shotgun flashed like a camera. Royce landed, rolled, and sprang up, sweeping his aim across their surroundings.

"I thought we'd have a big fight on our hands. Turns out they only sent three guys!" He took a cigarette from the pack with his lips and brought the red-hot barrel to his mouth to light it, then took a deep drag in the cold night wind.

Royce had hogged all the swagger, leaving Qin Wei a little annoyed.

It wasn't that he couldn't stomach killing. This was simply his first time using a gun, and he lacked the confidence to fire without hitting an ally.

Besides, he had forgotten to ask Royce how to disengage the safety.

What do I do? Should I ask now? But wouldn't that be embarrassing? A seasoned crook plotting murder and robbery who can't even disengage a gun's safety-won't he laugh at me? What do I do? Awaiting answers online. Urgent!

"Why didn't you shoot? What if there'd been a whole bunch of them?"

Royce's reproach came soon enough.

"Uh... ahem! I don't like using guns." Qin Wei gave a deliberately solemn cough, gently stroking the shotgun in his hands.

"But I still appreciate their appeal. Their weight, their elegant lines, their cold, hard texture, their precision. They're a monument to the development of human industry... the killers that ended the age of cold steel!"

What am I saying? Can someone tell me what I'm saying?!

Qin Wei regretted his nonsense the moment it left his mouth. He was so embarrassed that his toes nearly clawed through his leather shoes.

In any normal setting, those words would indeed have sounded painfully pretentious. But on this dark, windy night of murder, they sounded perfectly suited to Qin Wei's mysterious, dangerous air when they reached Royce's ears.

"I wouldn't have guessed you had such strange principles. You don't like guns? No wonder you've built yourself such a great physique!"

After one final drag, Royce rubbed the ember out against the sole of his shoe and carefully tucked the cigarette butt into his pocket.

"What do we do next? Just drive this truck back?"

"That won't work. With a shipment this big, the truck probably has a tracking device. We need another vehicle to transfer the cargo into." Qin Wei gestured for Royce to take care of it. He was a commander without troops; only Royce had men under him.

Royce contacted his men, arranging to meet in the clearing behind Wayne Manor in northeastern Gotham County.

Rather than wait where they were, they took a long route around Gotham City, mainly to avoid running into Joker Gang reinforcements.

If their enemies did catch up, a moving truck would be harder to stop, and they might hesitate to shoot because of all the arms aboard. That would give Qin Wei plenty of time to deal with their pursuers.

As it turned out, Qin Wei's decision had been extremely wise.

Barely ten minutes after the truck left the scene, seven or eight pickup trucks came charging in.

Looking at the blood covering the ground, a leader wearing heavy clown makeup pinched out his cigarette between two fingers.

"Have you located the shipment?"

"Yes! They're on Brown Bridge. Looks like they're heading into the city!"

"That shipment is crucial to the boss's plan. Even if we have to chase it to the ends of the earth, we're stopping it!"