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Polly’s head exploded like a watermelon dropped from a tall building. After a brief moment of silence, the scene erupted into chaos!
Only then did the deputy director remember to press down on Director Dale’s head, pushing him behind a police car.
Director Dale stared blankly at Polly, who was lying on the ground, his body twitching. He subconsciously reached up to touch the wet, warm substance on his face.
It was sticky, soft, and slowly creeping downwards.
He touched the jelly-like substance, then looked down, and a wave of nausea rose from his stomach. He felt sick, retched, and wanted to vomit.
He flung the substance from his fingers onto the ground as if it were a venomous snake. He couldn’t hear the “splat” in this noisy environment.
But he had succeeded.
His eyes were no longer as calm as they used to be, even when facing the worst situations where he could calmly think of countermeasures.
All smart people are helpless when faced with problems solved by violence.
No matter how smart you are, he shoots you.
No matter how eloquent you are, even if the president listens to you, he shoots you.
No matter how superb your methods are, how many times you can turn the tide and gain further opportunities, he shoots you.
Everything—politics, wealth, status, everything—paled in the face of life.
A large amount of blood gushed from Polly’s corpse. They were less than three meters apart. He could even smell the strong scent of blood and a special fishy smell.
Director Dale felt a tremor from the deepest part of his soul, a terror, a fear.
Only when he was a child and accidentally set fire to his grandfather’s warehouse, nearly burning himself to death inside, had he ever felt such a tremor, a trembling, an inability to control himself.
At this moment, the surrounding noise seemed to finally be able to affect him. The deputy director shook him hard several times before he looked at the deputy director, somewhat at a loss.
“You have to leave now. The gunman might still be nearby,” the deputy director said with an “I’m fucking thinking for your own good” expression.
Director Dale, whose eyes were still dazed with fear, immediately sharpened his gaze. He stared at the deputy director, who seemed to meet his gaze frankly.
The two looked at each other for two or three seconds. Director Dale shook his head. “Thanks, but I don’t need to. I’m staying right here, with my soldiers. I’m not going anywhere!”
He spoke very loudly, and some agents looked over. No one knew what they were thinking at this moment, but it definitely wouldn’t be very bad.
The deputy director lowered his eyes and looked away. “It’s good that you have your own judgment…”
It was as if nothing had happened, but also as if many things had happened. Director Dale took out a handkerchief and wiped the stains from his face, although he still felt a bit nauseous.
He glanced at Polly, whose blood was still gurgling, and threw the dirtied handkerchief over.
But unfortunately, it didn’t cover him, and it soon blended in with the color of the blood.
“The gunman is at the street corner, they’re escaping!” suddenly an agent saw someone who looked like the gunman, already getting into a car.
He shouted as he rushed into a car by the roadside, floored the accelerator, and with a turn of the steering wheel, the police car’s tires screeched on the ground, turning around on the spot with a plume of blue smoke.
Then, several other agents, fearing their colleague would be at a disadvantage, also got into their cars to give chase.
Although the distance between them was a bit far, as long as they caught up, with the help of the radio, there was absolutely no way the other party could escape in this city.
People breathed a small sigh of relief. If they could catch the gunman, perhaps they could dig up more valuable clues.
However, just as the first police car was about to speed through an intersection, a panel van rushed out from the side at an extremely fast, unreasonable speed…
The sound of the huge impact could be heard even from a distance of one or two hundred meters. The police car was knocked over and pinned against a wall, with only its drive wheels still spinning on their own.
A driver who looked somewhat annoyed got out of the driver’s cabin of the panel van. He looked at the police car he had knocked over with an uneasy expression, seeming somewhat at a loss.
Some of the agents who followed went to check on the condition of the agent in the car, while others rushed to the driver of the panel van and punched him.
Behind the window of a storefront opposite, a reporter meticulously recorded all of this with his camera!
In the sunlight, several law enforcement officers were pressing a driver to the ground and beating him with their fists.
Director Dale’s gaze returned from the distance, his face ugly. Without a doubt, this car accident was also arranged by the gunman’s people.
He had completely calmed down by now. He glanced at the dead ghost Polly lying on the ground, a question in his mind—
What gave him the qualification to be silenced?
As a qualified politician, it was natural for him to think this way. The more he thought, the more he felt that a large net had already trapped him, and them.
He might not have felt it when he wasn’t struggling, but when he started to struggle, he could clearly feel it, and the more he struggled, the tighter the net became, the more it made him unable to breathe…
“…After a fierce exchange of fire, we finally shot and killed the mastermind of the bombing who refused to surrender and stubbornly resisted, Polly, the leader of the Brotherhood, also known as ‘Big Polly’.”
“Currently, we will continue to arrest and question other members of the Brotherhood involved in this case, and decide whether to send them to court based on the crimes they have committed.”
“You may now ask questions freely.”
Half an hour later, in the conference room of the Bureau of Dangerous Goods, Director Dale announced the result of the arrest with “we shot and killed the resisting Polly.”
Because Big Polly was unwilling to be arrested, he knew he had committed an unforgivable sin and would inevitably go to the electric chair, so he refused to negotiate and refused to surrender.
The agents of the Bureau of Dangerous Goods could only shoot him on the spot, and the rest of the work of digging into the details of the bombing could only be started from other members of the Brotherhood.
They had sealed off the scene at the time, so people didn’t know exactly how Polly had died. Although some said Polly was assassinated to be silenced, in this era, people were still willing to believe the law enforcement departments.
At this moment, all the reporters at the scene were raising their hands high. Director Dale, with a calm face, chose a reporter who looked a bit more pleasing to the eye.
The other party’s chest bore the introduction “Golden Port Today Columnist.” Although Dale hadn’t been in Golden Port for long, he knew how influential “Golden Port Today” was in this city.
The reporter’s first sentence made Director Dale blacklist this newspaper and all its reporters.
“Director, eyewitnesses claim that you had almost captured Polly alive, but someone shot and killed Polly from over a hundred meters away with a rifle to silence him. The public is worried about whether you can truly do your job properly.”
“Is there anything you would like to say to us?”
Director Dale answered without even thinking, “Fake news. Next.”
He pointed to another reporter, just a random one. A reporter who looked slightly bald stood up and asked, “Director Dale, we are reporters from the ‘Tide Newspaper,’ ranked fourth in circulation in Golden Port. Have you read our newspaper?”
Director Dale nodded slightly. “I’ve had some knowledge of it.”
The scene immediately burst into laughter. Director Dale suddenly realized something, and his expression became even uglier.
That reporter didn’t seem to care at all that he had offended the director of a powerful law enforcement department. He probed deeper, “In this issue, we featured sixteen eighteen-year-old girls. Who is your favorite?”
The “Tide Newspaper” was a newspaper that mainly reported on strippers and published call-out information, filled with a large number of unclothed girls in urgent need of kind-hearted people’s help.
Anyone who was willing to lend a helping hand just needed to dial the number on it to meet these poor girls and then discuss the details of the assistance.
The reason this newspaper had huge sales was because of the girls on it. For just five cents, one could see a massive amount of nudity, which was full of temptation for men of all ages.
It was said that they were recently planning to publish a new newspaper called “Firm,” which would mainly feature male dancers, targeting the growing female consumer market.
In Likalai State Penitentiary, a copy of the “Tide Newspaper” was worth more than ten dollars!
Reporters from this kind of trashy newspaper should, most of the time, be at major nightclubs, strip clubs, and those call-out venues, not at a serious press conference.
Their target audience didn’t care about these things at all; they just wanted to see bodies, not serious news.
But his appearance here was clearly a malicious act.
It could even be said that there were many other reporters at the scene like him. As long as they were called on, they would embarrass Director Dale.
It didn’t even matter if they weren’t called on; they would rush to stand up.
Hearing the piercing laughter from the crowd, Director Dale directly chose to end the free questioning, picked up his documents, turned around, and walked away.
He returned to his office full of anger. Ever since he came to Golden Port, nothing had gone smoothly!
He thought the informant providing him with a huge warehouse of smuggled liquor was a good start, but he didn’t expect it to be the beginning of his misfortune!
Damn it all to hell!
In his office, he slammed the desk hard. Polly’s death had turned him from active to passive again.
He looked at Golden Port bathed in sunlight outside the window. Even though the sunlight covered every corner of the city, he always felt that there was a shadow, lingering, looming, bigger than the sunlight, covering the city…
The matter fermented faster than he had imagined. In less than an hour, almost everyone in the government departments knew about the new political joke, “had some knowledge of it.”
These onlookers were also clearly divided into several parts. Most of them could laugh out loud unscrupulously, without any regard for Director Dale’s face.
This part of the civil servants were all native-born locals, like William, with a large number of civil servants in their families.
Either you get rid of all of them across multiple departments, or if you only deal with one, you will offend the others.
So they could laugh loudly and freely without having to bear the consequences, and there were no consequences.
Some people’s laughter was not so obvious. These were outsiders who were in the process of transforming into locals, or you could say “Golden Port immigrants,” not “Federation immigrants.”
They were almost all Federation citizens, but not native-born Golden Port people. However, as their work stabilized and they married locals, they were integrating into the local community.
So they could appropriately express their true emotions without worrying about retaliation.
As for those who didn’t laugh or speak, these were the typical outsiders. They had to be very careful. In this seemingly open and inclusive city, sometimes it might not be able to accommodate a person from another town!
Director Dale knew that all of this had a deeper mastermind, including what Polly had told him on the phone, that he didn’t plant the first bomb.
Now, he believed it.
But Polly was already dead, and many potential clues were broken. He had almost no way out.
Just as he was thinking about how to solve this situation, the phone on his desk suddenly rang.
“This is Dale.”
“Dale, it’s me.” He could still recognize the mayor’s voice. Remembering everyone’s voice was also something a qualified politician should do.
Some politicians, big shots, have some strange habits. They want everyone to respect them. Sometimes they will jokingly ask people on the phone if they know who they are.
If you encounter such a person, you’d better know!
“Mr. Mayor…”
“Do you have time to talk?”
Director Dale had not visited the mayor since he came to Golden Port. On one hand, he came from the central hub, although he was just a “small character” in the central hub.
But he had a senator behind him; he also had backing and a circle.
On the other hand, the Bureau of Dangerous Goods itself was a vertical agency. He could avoid dealing with local officials, and he tried to avoid this matter as much as possible.
If you deal with them too much, it’s hard to maintain your own neutrality. You never know how complicated the relationships here are.
After getting along with certain people for a long time, if they suddenly make an excessive request, do you agree or not?
And the purer his loyalty to Congress and the Presidential Palace, the more the gentlemen above would like him and value him.
But now, he seemed to have no way out. He immediately agreed.
A dozen or so minutes later, a very low-key but luxuriously decorated car parked in the parking lot of the Bureau of Dangerous Goods. Director Dale changed his hat, wore a stand-up collar trench coat, and without being noticed by outsiders, entered the mayor’s car.
Luxurious interior, soft upholstery everywhere, cowhide, sheepskin, ivory, silver, precious woods…
He took off his hat, took off his coat, and placed them on the seat beside him.
“Something to drink?”
The mayor took a bottle of liquor from a small liquor cabinet. Director Dale did indeed need a little something right now.
Don’t look at how Congress was closely watching the national Prohibition issue and demanding that they treat it seriously and crack down hard on those who defy the ban and continue to sell and drink alcohol.
In fact, they themselves had never banned it at all. There were even special people who provided liquor for Congress and the senators, including the Presidential Palace, which would purchase a batch of liquor for consumption every month.
This huge social experiment was always aimed at the middle and lower classes, not the middle and upper classes.
They pretended to abstain from alcohol just to show the common people their determination, not that they really wanted to abstain.
“Whiskey, do you have any?” Director Dale needed some strong liquor to calm his nerves right now.
The mayor changed to another bottle of Gold Label Whiskey. The amber liquid and the aroma it emitted seemed to relax Director Dale just by smelling it.
He took the glass, clinked it with the mayor’s, and then they both took a sip together.
After a sip of liquor, he felt much better.
The car started to move slowly. On the street, the people outside could not see the situation inside; there were curtains here.
The mayor, perhaps seeing Director Dale’s “caution,” said with a smile, “You actually don’t have to be so worried. I won’t harm you.”
He was referring to how Director Dale had waited for him to take a sip before drinking. He was too careful.
Director Dale smiled foolishly as if he didn’t understand, but the mayor didn’t mind being more explicit. “Because we are both outsiders.”
“So, Dale?”
“Are you satisfied with the locals’ welcoming ceremony?”
Director Dale’s expression gradually became a little more serious. “I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“Don’t use honorifics. We are actually both outsiders.”
“You are not a native of this city, and neither am I. Our experiences are the same.”
“This is their welcoming ceremony!”
“The local city councilors, and the so-called Five Families, these locals who span politics, business, gangs, almost all industries, have formed a huge net.”
“We outsiders can’t join them, so naturally we are guarded against and targeted by them.”
“Do you know why Polly died?”
Dale actually had some guesses, but he still shook his head. Pretending to be stupid when you should is not really being stupid.
The mayor didn’t mind him playing dumb. “Because you are an outsider. You want to explore the secrets of the locals, so this person who might know the locals’ secrets, and is unwilling to keep them, or might not be able to keep them, has to shut up.”
“I heard that Councilor Wade’s people appeared at the scene and later withdrew.”
Director Dale caught a keyword from this. “You mean, Councilor Wade?”
The mayor nodded. “His family has a longer history than this city. If Polly might know any of his secrets, then Polly would definitely be silenced.”
“This is their welcome gift to you, and also a warning to you, warning you not to explore the secrets of this city and the locals!”
The mayor leaned back in the car seat. The soft backrest made him feel very comfortable and also gave him a sense of security. “Actually, I’ve been through it too.”
“And my experience was more terrifying and brutal than what you’ve encountered.”
“Care to hear a story?”
(End of this chapter)