Pandora Driver: Blind Luck

SLAM!

Two more men dressed in jet-black Mossants and dark overcoats emerge from one of the few automobiles parked on the brick street. It is a sleek, dark-red 1936 Cord 810 sedan that stands out in a neighborhood of laborers like a diamond in a coal chute. Even if some residents of Colfax Street could afford an automobile, they have no need to drive. Everything required for survival is either within walking distance or dropped off by delivery boys.

The foreboding pair stride to positions on either side of the bakery door. From suspicious bulges, they reveal tommy guns and cock them before scanning the growing crowd for potential agitators.

Ray swallows hard to force the spit down past his pounding heart. He has heard of the guy in the maroon hat and Cord. It's the Gooch. The word on the street is, he has recently begun haunting this part of Citadel City like a wraith. He is a dangerous bastard. 

The Gooch had been beaten into existence by his uncle. As an adult, he could feel no pain in himself or sympathy for others. He is the type of guy who likes to hurt people and would do it for laughs, money, or personal advancement. The way he sees it, the world is divided into givers and takers. One day after he had taken enough from his uncle, he gave him a push in front of speeding bus. He remembers the fear on his uncle's aging face as he realized what had happened. Deep down inside the Gooch has always suspected, that if his uncle had time to think about it, he would have been impressed by the boy's ingenuity. 

Upon impact, blood spurted from his uncle's skull, spattering his nephew in red. Reflexively, the little Gooch licked the newfound trickle of moisture from his lips and swallowed. It tasted sweet, so he licked more from his wet hands until a passerby stopped him. To this day, he's saved his little blood stained shirt as a keepsake. It is neatly folded in his dresser drawer, not on the floor, just like his uncle taught him. 

The Gooch grew into a self-made man who pulled himself out of poverty by bloodstained bootstraps, once he collected his uncle's life insurance policy from the accidental death. 

His uncle taught him that life wasn't fair. On his own he learned that you could make things fairer simply by lying. If others aren't smart enough to figure that out on their own, fuck'em. You could get whatever you wanted from people, if you could figure out what they needed to hear. And if that didn't work, there were other painful and permanent forms of coercion.  

As he grew, he realized many others shared his beliefs, oddly enough most of them were loaded. Their web of amalgamated lies provides the Gooch with the wealth and freedom to operate above the laws written for common men. He teams up with the takers, because the givers are suckers.

***

Ray stands on the sidewalk in his socks, high-waist, tan trousers and suspenders scanning the multi-cultural crowd for a beat cop. Strangely, not one is around. He spots the wrinkled face of a scrubwoman leaning out her window and calls to her. "Hey, Mrs. Carney. Telephone for the police!" 

She nods frantically, then ducks back into the safety of her apartment above. On the streets below, mothers are gathering their children and shepherding them away from the crisis.  

Ray's eyes land back on Hooperman's store, looking for activity between posed loaves of bread and a patchwork of painted sale-signs in the window. Unconsciously, he inches toward the bakery. He thinks‚ "I have to help somehow, but I don't want to get killed in the process. I don't want to see anyone get hurt. What could the Gooch want with Mr Hooperman?"

Witnesses closest to the bakery gasp at the muffled yelling and crashes from within. 

Ray clenches his fists, shakes his head and thinks, "These days it seemed that the ones who care least about people, have the most power over them. The rest of us, without resources, are powerless."