American variety show: The Godfather, the Peace Ambassador, what the heck?

Chapter 199 Billy is dead
The sounds of sirens and ship horns mingled together at the Boston pier at night.

When Colin arrived at the shore location designated by Old Pigeon, he only found a corpse and a pistol. That familiar head of white hair was unlike anyone else in all of Boston.

Did White Hair just die like that?
Colin breathed a sigh of relief, but also felt a little regretful. If the white-haired guy were alive, he could have earned more merits, and maybe even gotten more information out of him. If he were dead, it would still be a great achievement.

"The Frenchman is dead, and now the white-haired guy is dead too. Who else in the Southern Alliance is qualified to take over?"

The leader of the Mullin Gang? Or...?
A young face flashed into Colin's mind.

Billy?

That guy now has the qualifications; he's of pure Irish blood, a direct descendant of the French, and has now consolidated the power within the Winter Mountain Gang.
But who does the old pigeon support?
Colin looked at the white-feathered corpse on the ground and realized that he had never understood Old Pigeon's intentions from beginning to end. Wasn't he supposed to be supporting White Feather? In the end, he turned around and died here.

He picked up the walkie-talkie: "This is Sullivan, I've found White Hair!"

That night, the police returned victorious, seizing hundreds of kilograms of drugs and capturing/killing more than a dozen gang members, including the gang leader, White Hair.

As Colin walked into the office area, he was greeted with enthusiastic applause, as if celebrating the return of a hero.

Colin greeted his colleagues with a modest joke, and paused slightly as he passed Dickman's office—the office was much emptier, and many of Dickman's personal belongings had been tidied up.

Behind him, his colleagues were laughing and chatting, but Dickman's office was cold and deserted.

Colin thought that rising to power within the police force wasn't much different from being a gangster; everyone was just focused on who had more power right now, and the dead were just a few pages added to the story of how they rose to power.

After the foul-mouthed Dickman and the bloodthirsty white-haired man took off their clothes and washed off their tattoos, there was no difference between them. In fact, when they opened their mouths, Dickman looked more like a gangster.

Colin turned and went back to his office, a room that was still rather small at the moment, but would probably become bigger soon.

He took out Dickman's belongings, including the cell phone that was still wrapped in an evidence bag.

Colin dialed the number and skillfully tapped the back of his phone with his fingers, communicating with the other party in Morse code—but the other party refused to speak.

Colin: "Thank you for the information."

Billy: "Did you catch the white-haired guy?"

Colin: "He's dead."

Billy: "You guys are pretty efficient."

Colin: "When are you coming to the police station for a meeting? I'll help you get your identity reinstated."

At that moment, several gunshots rang out over the phone, and then the call was abruptly disconnected.

Colin paused for a moment, and when he tried to call back, the phone was switched off.

"Is this guy an undercover agent?" Colin asked, puzzled. "He's even abandoned his identity?"

He tried calling again, but still couldn't get through.

"Is this guy not a cop? Or is he a gangster who's been turned? Like that Frenchman?"

Colin thinks this explanation is the most reasonable; surely it's not that the police have become corrupted?
Let's rewind to a dozen minutes before Billy hung up the phone.

Under the bridge over the Niponsit River.

Billy pushed open the car door, tightened his trench coat, and walked to the riverbank. Facing the melted river water, his expressionless face revealed a hint of numbness in the night.

Several henchmen behind him opened the trunk of the car and dragged out the Mulin gang leader and the detective, who were tied up.

The kidnapping was easy; he made a single phone call and lured the two men out. Although Dickman was dead, the cooperation between Billy, Boss Mu, and the police hadn't ended; instead, the detective had taken over the case.

This was originally a plan that the detective and Dickman had discussed together.

Because their scheme to rise to power was clandestine and couldn't be conducted in the open, the detective and the Mullin gang leader went to the agreed location alone to avoid suspicion, without bringing any of their men. That's when they were ambushed by Billy.

Tonight is the time to put an end to things.

Billy didn't want to show up, but he had a question that had been bothering him for a long time that he wanted to ask the detective himself—about being an undercover agent, about his identity, and about being forced into a corner.

Seeing the two men bound hand and foot, Billy waved his hand, signaling his henchmen to step back.

After the underlings had scattered and gone some distance, Billy stepped forward and pulled the towels out of their mouths.

"Fuck your mother!" Boss Mu spat at Billy's feet. "Billy, I trusted you so much, and you're playing dirty tricks on me?! Fuck you, let me go right now!"

“You don’t trust me, you only trust my identity as a police officer.” Billy chuckled self-deprecatingly. “If I weren’t a cop, if I weren’t undercover, would you still cooperate with me?”

Boss Mu spat, "Damn cops, I shouldn't have believed your lies in the first place!"

Billy shook his head: "That wasn't my plan. I had no idea beforehand that you were defecting to Dickman."

He then looked at the gloomy-faced detective beside him, "Sir, the biggest mistake you and Dickman made was not sending me undercover, nor was it trying to turn the gang against us, but why did you prefer to give the gang a chance rather than give me one?"

Billy's facial muscles gradually contorted into a ferocious expression. "Just because I'm a cop? Does that mean I have to obey your orders unconditionally, even if you send me to my death, I have to bravely charge into battle?!"

The detective stared at Billy: "Obey orders from superiors—that's probably the phrase you heard most often during your police academy training! Billy, this isn't child's play; this is a battlefield, a war, and sacrifice is inevitable."
Those police officers on the front lines of the fight against drugs have a higher mortality rate than undercover agents, but they don't cry to their superiors like you do. Because they understand their responsibilities. And you? Have you forgotten your responsibilities?

Billy laughed bitterly, “Ridiculous! You don’t have to go to the battlefield, so of course you can sit in your office and lecture me about responsibility and principles. But why won’t you even give me a chance? You’d rather support that bastard Mu than give me a chance.”

"why?"

The detective looked around at the almost certain death situation. He didn't want to explain too much. To put it bluntly, Billy was a pawn of the police, a puppet on a string, bound by ropes called responsibility, ideals, morality, and honor to control his actions in order to achieve the police's ultimate goal.

Some pieces are meant to be "sacrificed" or "exchanged" to take down the opponent's "big pieces." As long as you can kill the opponent's general and achieve final victory, what does it matter how many pieces you sacrifice in the process?

But the biggest difference between humans and puppets is that humans have self-awareness and desires, and cannot be 100% perfectly controlled. Once a conflict arises and things get out of control, the ropes binding them will break. Billy is clearly out of control now.

The detective sighed inwardly.

That would ruin all of the police's plans.

What will become of the South Side and Boston in the future?
“Say something!!” Billy demanded sharply.

"It's not too late for you to turn back now," the detective said as a final piece of advice. "White Hair will be arrested tonight, and the plan is just one step away from being completed. Then I can restore your file."

"Can not go back."

The wind howled along the riverbank, and Billy's bitter laugh echoed in the wind. "You still won't admit you were wrong. In your eyes, is being a police officer just a badge? A piece of paper? A file? As long as you have an ID card, no matter whose photo is on it, he can be a police officer?"
No, it isn't in my eyes!

Billy pulled a pistol from his waist. "Being a cop once taught me why I lived, but now Billy is dead."

The detective was slightly taken aback.

So it turns out that Billy wasn't blurring the lines between his identity, but rather that he was too clear-cut, even to the point of being a black-and-white psychopath, which led him to frequently visit a psychologist.

For a moment, the detective didn't know whether to feel gratified that there had once been a righteous policeman, or to feel sad that Billy had chosen a different path.

If the distinction is too clear, then what is not white becomes black.

I shouldn't have chosen this guy as the undercover agent in the first place.
Just then, Billy received a phone call and tapped Morse code in a gesture the detective was very familiar with.

The detective was taken aback. Who was Billy passing this message to? Was someone inside the police station contacting him?
Just as I thought of this, a gunshot rang out.

The detective fell to the ground.

Billy hung up the phone and turned his gun on Boss Mu.

Boss Mu sneered, "Oh, I see now. So you don't want to be a cop anymore? That's perfect, the two of us can team up now."

“You don’t deserve it. Boston only needs one voice.”

boom!
Boss Mu collapsed right after him.

Billy called his henchmen over, and they buried the two bodies in the mass grave under the bridge, along with the past.

The police were buried in the gangsters' mass grave, and the traitors were buried in the police station's archives.

The tombstone was always placed in the wrong place.

This night was destined to be anything but peaceful.

The panel in front of Luca kept flashing for a long time, and the last refresh showed the death notice of the Mullin Gang leader.

Billy, the pawn that has crossed the river, has entered the king's 3x3 grid, charging forward unstoppable. Behind him are rows of rooks, some of which have "SSR" engraved on their bottoms. This game was never fair from the start.

Luca closed the panel and continued his conversation with Joey Ty in front of him.

“Old Pigeon, this isn’t quite what we agreed on,” Joey Ty said, not entirely satisfied. “The police confiscated all the drugs. Can’t you leave me a little? Did I come all this way to Boston for nothing?”

If it weren't for the enormous favor Old Pigeon owed him, Joey Ty wouldn't have wanted to get involved in this mess. But he couldn't help it; the old guys in the gang, along with the officials, were all very grateful to Luca, and those old men were quite traditional, valuing "righteousness" and "trust."

Although I'm involved in organized crime, I can't abandon morality and rules.

All Joey wants to say is that even those people in Hong Kong don't follow the rules this well.

Listening to Joey's complaints, Luca said, "If you want to get something else, I can help you, but I'm helpless when it comes to drugs."

Joey sighed. Pigeon's biggest drawback was that he didn't deal drugs, which meant there were fewer topics to talk about.

But Luca's next words excited him again: "I can open the Boston docks to your local and New York triads in the future. It should be much more convenient for you to transport things, such as smuggling, and customs won't bother you."

Joey was overjoyed; this would make smuggling drugs much easier.

Luca: "Except for drugs!"

Joey: “.”

Damn, it doesn't smell so good anymore.

The following day, Boston media reported on the police's arrest of a major drug trafficking gang the previous night, making it the day's headline.

There is another news item that the media was unaware of.

A police detective has gone missing, with no trace of him, neither alive nor dead. The police only discovered the disappearance belatedly because the detective's family reported it missing, saying they couldn't contact him.

When Colin called Luca to mention this, he was also very confused and didn't understand what was going on.

Luca knows this, but he won't explain.

With the detective dead, Luca is the only person in the world who knows Billy's true identity, and Luca has no evidence to prove it, nor does he have the time or inclination to expose him.

Billy has proven his stance with his actions; from now on, there will never be another policeman named Billy Costigan.

—You chose him, my idol.

That same afternoon, William also found Luca.

"Pigeon, how exactly did my brother die?"

(End of this chapter)