Chapter 10: The Test (Part 2)

“After the first hint failed, I did just what you wanted. While you claimed to be outside having a smoke, I used the modified mobile I carry to hack the cheap phone you'd bought beforehand, letting you think everything was under your control. Of course, that wasn't difficult. Before you even came to see me, I already knew about your conversation with Sonny and your attempt to test me.”

Gu Wen's account gradually brought back Dewitt's memories, though revisiting them now was far from pleasant. It was even a little frightening.

“Once I got into your car, I gave you a second hint. I told you outright, ‘The way you're heading southeast gives me a bad feeling.’ You missed that opportunity too. You thought I was just showing off, so you played along and complimented my intelligence-gathering skills.

“But you failed to consider that however good those skills might be, I couldn't possibly keep track of every crime, big or small, taking place in the city at any given moment. Between meeting you and getting into your car, I was out of your sight for only a very short time. I spent that time hacking your phone and, to make the act convincing, actually calling Sonny to confirm things.”

Dewitt said, “So you knew about the deal because you'd already listened in on my conversation with Sonny and looked into it beforehand.”

Gu Wen replied, “Exactly. I thought southeast might have been too vague, so in my very next sentence I gave you Tony's and Joe's names and mentioned that they were both ruthless characters. That was meant to tell you I knew all about the deal you were going to interfere with. I didn't just have a rough idea of the location. I'd investigated the time, the people, the details, everything. I knew even more than Sonny had told you.

“But you didn't find me suspicious. You thought it perfectly normal for me to know that much and carried on with your plan. Very well, then. I'll allow for one possibility. You reasoned that I'd learned everything during my earlier phone call with Sonny. That would explain why you acted as though nothing was amiss, in which case my second hint was useless from the start.”

Dewitt took a swig of liquor, seething inwardly, because his actual thoughts hadn't been nearly that complicated. He simply hadn't read that much into Gu Wen's words at the time.

Gu Wen continued, “Next, I gave you your first lesson in what a ‘consultant’ ought to do. A consultant's job isn't to charge at the other side, kill everyone, and take the money. You can hire anyone to do that. A consultant provides advice on crime, rather than playing Grand Theft Auto.

“I told you in the car that I wouldn't concern myself with whether you lived or died. My only responsibility was stealing information, and I certainly wouldn't show up at the gunfight. I was telling you what a real consultant should do, but you took it as nothing more than a demand from a college student afraid of dying.

“Then you immediately hit a homeless man with your car, causing a commotion, and tried to pressure me with a situation even you couldn't control. That was when I said, ‘I think I'll have to reassess my impression of you.’”

Gu Wen finished his tomato juice and poured himself another full glass. “Half an hour later, I was sitting in the car, concealed a hundred meters from the site of the deal. Naturally, I could hear your entire conversation with Tony, Joe, and the others. The plan you'd supposedly prepared amounted to threatening them with two things: the police patrolling near Highway 41 and the fact that you were an ability user. You hoped they'd back down without a fight and let you walk away with the money, while you used me to steal their information and monitor their future movements.

“In the end, things still didn't go as you'd expected. They chose to fight back. Yes, it was a stupid choice, and it got them killed. But it also showed that you'd misjudged how the situation would develop. Fortunately, you could still correct things by force. Like someone who doesn't know how to use ‘Find and Replace’ and has to search by eye and replace each instance manually, you can still get the desired result.

“Then the police uniform you'd stashed in the trunk came in handy. That deserves some credit. If you'd planned to break through the police cordon by force, it would have been a truly sorry performance.

“Burning the vehicles at the scene was a decent way to clean up, too. But that day, I, the intelligence hacker ‘Mike Byron,’ served no practical purpose. Your mistaken decisions resulted in a waste of human resources.”

Dewitt's expression grew uglier by the moment as Gu Wen's account left less and less of him intact.

Gu Wen said, “The interrogation the next day came as no surprise to me, but your response deserves no praise. Perhaps you think mocking someone while they beat you over and over is what a tough guy does, but I think you picked the wrong audience. You were dealing with an idiot like Sonny and Gava, a thug of roughly equal intelligence. Even a genius can be outmaneuvered. Idiots and lunatics are another matter. If a rush of blood to the head had overwhelmed their already meager brainpower and they'd shot you dead, that wouldn't have been much fun.

“The composure you displayed that day still came from being an ability user. Again, what I call correcting things by force. You could break free and kill them both whenever you liked, but you never considered the danger I was in. Now you know I'm Gu Wen, but back then, the person with you was frail little Mike. Your actions could very easily have got someone else beaten. Treat a valuable pawn that way and you'll soon lose people's loyalty.

“So this also demonstrates your lack of leadership.”

Gu Wen went on, “Fortunately, Joseph Lucchese was there that day too, and after some talking I finally smoothed things over. You decided your opportunity had arrived and immediately offered him a plan. That led to the trap at the Wishbone that night.

“Frankly, I thought going to war was extremely unwise. On the way to the hotel that day, I even analyzed the situation for you and laid out the best, middling, and worst strategies, hoping you'd reconsider. Sacrifice that idiot Sonny and preserve the peace. It wouldn't have affected your pure-alloy business at all. But you wouldn't listen. Relying on the wm2030 you'd prepared beforehand, you thought victory that night was assured and insisted on having your way.

“Hmph... You kept calling yourself a consultant, yet you always led the charge in those dangerous situations. That only shows your blind faith in force. But you're also excessively arrogant and regard people without abilities as worthless, which is why you later underestimated the armed threat posed by the Genovese family.”

Dewitt replied sourly, “That's just hindsight.”

Gu Wen said, “You're free to think so. I won't waste time arguing with you.” He drank his tomato juice. “After the night the war began, I went into hiding. Partly because I had no desire to get caught up in the war and be hunted for no good reason. Partly because I knew you'd be very busy for a while and would gradually begin to realize your decision had been a mistake. Once you were at your wits' end, you'd come looking for me again.

“Sure enough, less than half a month later, you came. And at a very bad time. I was speaking with my clients, a fairly small local Mafia group. They were far weaker than traditional Italian Mafia families like the Luccheses or the Genoveses, but they were my clients. They were the ‘local Chicago client’ I'd taken on shortly before meeting you in mid-February—the second of the two purposes I mentioned earlier.”

Dewitt's eyes widened. Remembering the scene, he could only regret his own carelessness.

Gu Wen smiled. “Neither Mike Byron nor I have an uncle who's our mother's cousin. And that story about the Opium Club being a retired workers' organization was a fabrication. You could call that the biggest hole in my story, but you still didn't look any deeper.

“So I gave you another demonstration of what a real consultant should do. I looked up the information you needed and narrowed Frank Genovese's whereabouts down to a single inn, hoping you'd use your head and put an end to this whole mess through diplomacy. I think the Genovese family might have been willing to sit down and talk with you. But once again, you resorted to force, directly leading to your subsequent arrest.

“Heh. Forgive my bluntness, but every plan you make goes off course within three steps. Yet you still thought you could ‘go to your coffin clutching power and money, enjoy a king's funeral, and become someone countless fellow criminals would strive to imitate and surpass after your death.’ I honestly found it hilarious when I heard it, so all I could advise was, ‘Stop dreaming.’”

Gu Wen sighed. “After that, you played the murderer again, as though it were great fun. You killed Ouni and found Genovese, but that idiot Sonny had long resented your rapid rise in the family and decided to sell you out. So the police arrived at an inconvenient moment.

“You immediately chose to surrender. The Genovese brothers hadn't actually seen you kill Ouni, and you'd never explicitly told them you were an ability user, so acting submissive right away was your best option. If you'd used your ability to escape the police cordon, or accidentally killed a few officers in the process, you'd certainly have ended up on HL's blacklist. Once they had their eye on you, with your Normal-rank strength, no alias would do you any good. Your grand pure-alloy smuggling scheme would inevitably have collapsed too.”

Gu Wen finished another glass. “Waiting for things to die down before breaking out of prison was the right move. You successfully concealed the fact that you're an ability user. But look at you now.” He shook his head. “Ah... Joseph lost his trust in you long ago. You've done him considerable harm, and going back to him won't help you now. Lately, he's been considering pinning everything that's happened over the past month or so on you, then using you and your ‘pure-alloy plan’ as his last bargaining chip. If he's left with no other choice, he'll trade you to the police for his freedom.

“Hmm... My test has been a complete failure. You've disappointed me terribly. To sum up, you like putting yourself in danger, you have no idea how to deal with people, your arrogance is out of all proportion to your competence, and you give far too little thought to the likelihood of failure. You play the ‘consultant’ like a petty thug.

“You're a gambler, Dewitt. If you weren't an ability user, you might be suited to Sonny's position. Let you rise any higher and you'd only throw away your own life and other people's.”

Dewitt set down the bottle. At that moment, he made no attempt to hide the murderous intent in his eyes. “Hmph... Speaking of throwing away lives, after all that mockery and belittling, do you think a fraud who worships force like me is still going to let you leave alive?”