Chapter 137: The Corpse Collector

Alex was a petty criminal.

Before entering prison, he was a member of Falcone's—though it sounded impressive, in reality, he was just the most inconspicuous little lackey in a super-gang.

When he first arrived in Gotham, Alex still wanted to find a legitimate job, but Gotham didn't give him many choices. He suffered for a whole year, yet the money he earned could barely support himself and his mother.

The expired oats distributed by the relief station were hard to swallow; his mother's asthma medicine could only be bought on the black market; the extra rent the landlord charged was protection money for Oswald's gang; there were thugs stealing everywhere in the subway cars; there were robbers running out to commit muggings in the alleys at night; he heard Wayne Enterprises was researching some clean energy plan, but for him it was still too late, because the exhaust fumes from the chemical plant had been spreading for who knows how many years; otherwise, his originally healthy mother might not have developed asthma within a year.

His first contact with the gang was when he was gathering money for his mother's medicine; a colleague told him there was a side job available, not dangerous, paying well, and asked if he wanted to join.

Of course, he wanted to join.

Then, he was dragged into a casino.

Fortunately, there was no one in the casino at the time, and his colleague wasn't dragging him to gamble—he was taking him to do cleaning.

Vast patches of sticky blood, metal bullet casings scattered all over the floor, and traces of something being dragged out of the blood through the door, bloody footprints, damaged gambling tables, broken glass cups, spilled drinks, shattered fragments of blood-stained clothes—yet not a single body or injured person was seen.

"Brother, there's no danger." His colleague patted his shoulder and smiled: "A scene with no living people is the safest; we don't even need to handle the bodies, there are specialized cleaners for that; everyone just needs to help clean up this place—just sweeping, wiping off the blood, sweeping up the casings, burning those cloth pieces, loading the broken tables onto the garbage truck; these are small things, just do it fast."

"Most importantly—the employer pays generously enough, isn't that enough?"

So from that day on, he became a black cleaner; he began to be able to afford the rent; gradually, he started helping carry bodies, then began to be able to afford his family's food, oil, salt, and daily expenses; finally, he joined the Falcone gang, and then could finally rent a house through internal family channels without paying protection fees, and thus could afford his mother's medicine.

He did such dirty work day after day, hoping one day to take his mother to the hospital for treatment, until one day, he froze in front of a corpse.

It was the corpse of an old woman, hunched over, wearing simple gray clothes that were obviously cheap promotional goods at a glance; her expression was not painful, because the bullet hole was on her head.

Could such an old lady be part of a gang?

"Alex, what are you doing?"

His partner walked over, took a look, and then understood why he suddenly stopped moving.

"Don't look, Alex; this is probably an ordinary old lady caught in a shootout—in Gotham, this kind of thing always happens; sometimes it's young people, only this time it's an old person. She must have been very unlucky, hit in the head by a stray bullet. But if that bullet had been slightly off, she might have died in great pain."

"We're just going to dispose of her like this?"

"Yeah, can't we do anything else, right?"

"What about her family?"

"Who knows? Maybe alive, maybe dead, maybe even on one of the two sides in the shootout; anyway, the boss's order is to clean up the scene; we can't leave her body; we have to throw her into Gotham Harbor like usual."

Alex remained silent and motionless; he looked at the corpse, and this gray outfit reminded him of his own mother.

"I know you might feel bad, Alex; I feel bad too." His partner shook his head and started carrying the corpse on his own: "But we are family; the family's interests are most important. Besides, there are many such things; I'm already used to it; you'll get used to it sooner or later."

Can one get used to it?

Alex didn't know, but his numb mind indeed drove his body to move, helping his partner carry that old woman onto the car, helping his partner sink her into Gotham Harbor.

The next day, when he passed that street again, everything returned to normal; calm and peaceful; pedestrians hurried back and forth as if stepping over any ordinary street. Even on television there was no related news; instead, it broadcasted Bruce's gossip, the Roman's high-class banquet, and the super-hero in Metropolis fighting evil and punishing the wicked, just like before.

This city seemed as calm as any day passed before, until several days later, a missing person notice for an old lady was posted in the corner of the newspaper, then casually flipped past by someone.

Since then, Alex began paying attention to the corpses he carried; some were in their forties or fifties, some in their twenties or thirties, and some in their teens; some looked like him, some didn't.

He even went to check the files on those corpses; most were lackeys, living in the poor East Side like him; a few were mid-level gang members, living in the slightly more prosperous Oswald's Fort; there were no people living in the highest-class Burnley District or Diamond District.

Every night since then, he would always wake up startled from his dreams; he dreamed of corpses everywhere crying at him; he dreamed of his hands and body covered in fresh blood; he dreamed that those lying on the ground also had his own face.

Perhaps most of them indeed had no difference from Alex; they just weren't lucky enough to survive.

Also from that day on, Alex began resisting the use of guns; he tried his best to avoid participating in gang shootouts, and also avoided becoming a thug because he did the corpse-cleaning work well.

Of course, everything had a price; Alex, who was not a thug, lost the possibility of climbing further up, and had his own codename within the family.

Coward—that was what others called him.

Then, the war between two gangs in Gotham City suddenly began—at least in his eyes, it started suddenly.

The mid-level members of the family went into prison one after another like dumplings, then the high-level, then the low-level—including him, he was caught.

On the day of his arrest, he was somewhat relieved that he was caught while cleaning up the scene; otherwise, if his mother had seen him being stuffed into a police car, she might have been very sad.

"I know you're going to send me to prison, and it's a private prison," he said, "so can you let me make a phone call to my mother, let me say a few words to her?"

The sheriff with the big beard looked him over, then nodded.

"Don't give your last words, kid," he said, "the few years in prison might be the most human years of your life."

(End of this chapter)