Deadeyes #5: Once Upon a Time In Gothametropolis Previously, in Boss Deadeyes #1, #2, #3 and #4: Antony “Deadeyes” Ventredi, a 1930s gang racketeer, has been raised from the dead and has reclaimed his place as “boss” of Gothametropolis York’s criminal underworld. He possesses the supernatural ability to kill with touch, but can delay the effect for as long as he likes. With his reanimated comrades-in-crime, dapper hit man Emilio Cacciatore, accountant Ishmael Levi, and nightclub singer Myra Mason, the Boss is seeking to reunite the fragmented GMY mobs. This has not made him popular with corrupt city Mayor Velma Klein and he allies who have recruited specialist help to “resolve” the situation.. ***     At 1.13am a light aircraft touched down on a disused landing strip at Cook’s Bluff, up in the badlands between Shyminsky Falls and the Wastelands. It didn’t register on local radar because of a cascading fault that took air traffic control down for almost fifty minutes and left thirty planes stacked up over Paradopolis international. It landed without running lights and taxied to a standstill in absolute darkness. ***     At 2.51 an armoured limousine passed the state line and drove southeast along I666 straight towards Gothametropolis York. It paused only once, at one of the chain of cheap Profanity bars, where a stool pigeon called Lennie the Worm liked to drink. The vehicle’s occupant has the informer brought outside and crushed his skull personally before driving on. ***     At 3.47 all the milk in the City Hall canteen turned sour. Meat rotted and fruit shrivelled. The air became bitter cold. Armed security guards on work-release programmes from the Safe and other high-security prisons found that they were unable to force their feet to move towards the old building’s cellars. They heard the footsteps as someone emerged from the old vaults under the civic building but never saw the visitor who padded towards the Mayor’s office to await her arrival in the morning. ***     At 5.19 the inter-city train from Connecticut arrived at platform one of Gothametropolis’ Reed Street Railway Station. An unassuming man closed his laptop, marvelling at the technology that could produce such a miracle, folded away his mobile phone, and left his e-mails on his server to look at later. His e-mail address had been set up for him by the scholar he’d been to Yale to visit, and it was i.levi@themoon.com. The quiet accountant walked out of the station and took a cab to the Turpin Brewery. ***     At 6.40am the young woman lying beside Emilio Cacciatore reached out of the bed and slipped the lethal injection out of her purse. Before she could turn over to the man who’d brought her home last night she heard the click of a trigger being cocked and felt cold metal at the base of her neck.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m insulted,” Boss Deadeyes’ enforcer told the girl as she froze.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, listen…” she began, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No point,” Emilio told her. “I’m going to kill you very soon whatever you say. Lies, the truth, they don’t matter. You don’t get a second chance with me. I’ve dated Gamona and survived. What made you think you had a shot?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The money,” the girl said honestly. “Is it true that you’ve got this weird power that anyone you shoot, they die? Doesn’t matter how tough they are, how bulletproof, they just die anyhow?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. Me and death, we have a very special relationship,” Emilio told her. “You can ask about it when you’re dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Listen, you don’t have to do that. Kill me, I mean. I could just go. You’d never see me again. Or I could stay, and it’d be even better than last night.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nah. I’m just going to kill you. It’ll be quick and it won’t hurt bad.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please…”     Emilio pulled the trigger. The gun dropped on an empty chamber.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” he said. The guns had been loaded last night. The guns were always loaded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I took them,” said the other woman in the room. She was sitting in an upright chair by the window that hadn’t been open last night, and she was as different from the trembling would-be assassin in Emilio’s bed as a sleek red Ferrari was from a clunker.     She held out her palm and cupped the magnum rounds she’d palmed from the enforcer’s guns.     Emilio reached for his reserve pistols. They were empty too.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I took them as well,” the woman said. “And the ones from the pair strapped under the bed. I really didn’t want to get shot.”     The other girl took her chance and jabbed the hypodermic at Emilio. He knocked it aside and dumped her onto the floor in a tangle of sheets.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t hurt her,” the woman by the window ordered. “Just let her go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She was sent to kill me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m sure she wishes she hadn’t agreed now. Anyhow, look at her and her bag. She’s got tiny stretch marks on her breasts and belly, she’s carrying a great wad of linen cloths in her purse, and that dress on the floor has been badly cleaned from vomit on the shoulder. She’s a young mother desperate to feed her sick child. Let her go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or what?” growled Emilio.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or I’ll be really disappointed. I heard you had class.” The woman by the window pointed a well-manicured finger at the source of her deductions. “You’d better go. Take your kid round to the Gothametropolis York Civic Relief Foundation off Eecee Street. Ask for a woman named Ellie Copper. Tell her you need help. Tell her Champagne sent you. Run.”     Emilio wasn’t sure why he didn’t chase after the incompetent assassin. Maybe it was because he didn’t have pants on and the dame in the corner was too classy to flash.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Champagne, huh?” he said, managing a smirk.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes. But don’t try the charming smile on me. I don’t use my full name much but it’s Champagne Cacciatore. My father is Francisco Cacciatore, and my best researches make him your great great nephew.” The sleek young woman smiled. “You’re my Uncle Emilio.”     The enforcer scowled. “And I just believe you, huh? You think I was born yesterday?”     Champagne shook her head. “I think you were born on February 1st, 1908. You went into the family business – which is to say, the family rackets – and you ended up working for Antony Vendredi, the infamous Boss Deadeyes. When he was taken down you were taken out too, at the age of 25 in 1933.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s crazy talk,” Emilio snorted. “If I died back then how am I here now? And I’d be ancient.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re still not used to the 21st century,” the vibrant blonde told him. “A 1930’s gangster and his mob coming back from the dead – well mostly back – is hardly the weirdest thing around. Just on this street you’ve got a Chapel of the Apostate, an entrance to secret subterranean ghoul tunnels, a Peter von Doom weapons dump, and a guy who can tie his arm into a knot if you give him five bucks. We’ve got aliens and elder beings and superheroes and urban robots. We’ve got gorilla people and racoon people and don’t get me started on the Detonator Hippos. The last mayor had a symbiotic fern on his head.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, so say I believe you for now that you’re some kid niece of mine, so what?”     Champagne pointed at the hypodermic his date had brought. “So you need my help. Take a look at that stuff. It’s not just poison. I haven’t had an change to get a full analysis on it yet but I’m betting that’s got some kind of mystic component specifically designed to counter whatever force it is that brought you back from the grave and keeps you around.”     Emilio looked down at the syringe. It felt unpleasant.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your little playmate might have been amateur and disposable,” Champagne said, “but whoever commissioned that formula knew exactly what they were doing.”     Emilio decided he’d better go along with it. “So what do we do?” he asked.     Champagne tossed her palmful of bullets back to her uncle. “Take me to your leader,” she said. ***     At 7.12am a black ’53 Plymouth Sedan headed north out of the city. It wasn’t alone.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think we’ve got a tail, Boss,” Carlos Kauffman warned his employer. The youngster was at the wheel of Antony Ventredi’s vintage roadster making his way out of town to upstate GMY.     Ventredi puffed on his Cuban and nodded. “Yeah.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Want me to lose them, Boss?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nah. Let ‘em follow.”     That worried Kauffmann. “Won’t they follow us all the way to the meeting, Boss?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Won’t they try and kill our visitor?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah.”     Kauffman still felt like a rookie too often. “So… um…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So if our guest’s any good he’ll deal with ‘em. If not, they’ll deal with him. Either way it works out just fine, kid.” ***     By 7.45 Ishmael Levi had already got two hours work done and was well on the way towards catching up with the backlog his trip had caused him. He was surprised when reception put a call through to him because he’d left orders not to be disturbed. When he heard who it was he was more disturbed still.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Show him in,” he allowed.     The door opened to admit a tousled-looking and slightly nervous young man in a crumpled shirt. “Er, hi,” the visitor said, waving his hand slightly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello,” said Ishmael cautiously. “What can I do for you, Mr de Soth?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie,” said the youngster. “Please, call me Vinnie. Mr de Soth’s my dad and you wouldn’t want to meet him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What can I do for you then, Vinnie?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, it’s like this,” the Parodyverse’s acting sorcerer supreme admitted, “Word’s out that you and your Boss and his gang are actually undead powered by an evil death curse. And it’s kind of my job to deal with stuff like that.”     Ishmael put his pen down. “Is it?” he asked quietly.     Vinnie swallowed and nodded. “Sorry, but yeah. That’s the way it is. So…” ***     Mayor Klein’s 8am appointment was waiting for her. The pale figure sipping vodka on Velma Klein’s sofa was emaciated worse than some cadavers. His near-albino skin was stretched tight over his prominent bald forehead. His remaining hair was white and straggly, swept straight backwards to leave a high widow’s peak. His clothing was black and seemed to be dusty.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did you have a chance to field test my formula?” Vlastimock Bogoff asked his current patron.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” Klein answered sourly. “The girl must have fluffed it. Now she’s vanished. She’s probably landfill.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A shame,” Bogoff noted. His voice had an archaic Russian accent. “That test would have been a terribly useful diagnostic to see if I’d made the right assumptions about the Ventredi working.”     Mayor Klein’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not paying you for assumptions,” she warned. “I pay for results.”     The self-proclaimed Necromancer General wasn’t impressed. “Nobody has a better chance of untangling this than me,” he insisted. “Sometime back in the 1930s, Boss Deadeyes made some kind of pact or agreement or purchase from an elder undead named Vrykoulakas. Nobody knows how old that vampire is or how he’s survived so long, but his enduring passion is researching death, so if anyone could arrange for Deadeyes’ return, and his mob with him, it would be that bloodsucking bastard. Calculating how, and maybe why, he did it, that’s the challenge.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Give me more of the formula and we’ll arrange another test. Ventredi’s accountant has just come back from a meeting with that alien scholar Blargeslarch in Boston. We could jab something into him on the street. He’d never see it coming.”     Bogoff shook his head. “It’s not that simple. Firstly, the formula is very difficult to concoct. You wouldn’t believe the problems I had syphoning kaos energy to activate the current batch. Secondly, I believe that Deadeyes and his three followers each have a slightly different relationship with undeath. Cacciatore seems to channel it somehow, when he shoots. Levi does something with the mathematics of life and death, a kind of mortal arithmetic. I have no idea what the floozie Myrna does. And Deadeyes himself…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Has the ability to kill anyone he touches, either right away or at any time later of his choosing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think there’s an upper limit to the number of people he can string out like that for later deaths,” advised the Necromancer General. “I doubt he could hold more than fifty or so people from death at any given time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But nobody knows which fifty people,” pointed out the Mayor. “He’s shaken my hand.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s how he controls his competitors,” Bogoff suggested.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And that’s why I need you to find a way of breaking his death curse before we kill him,” Klein insisted. “When he was killed back during prohibition three dozen judges, top cops, journalists, politicians all keeled over dead at the same time. That’s not going to happen to me.”     Bogoff nodded. “I can accommodate your needs, I believe. I will of course require access to a significant amount of disposable life force?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not a problem,” Velma Klein told him. “I’ve made a re-election campaign promise to clean up the streets and reduce the number of homeless.” ***     At 8.21am the Plymouth Sedan pulled onto the tarmac of the Cook’s Bluff landing strip and drew to a halt alongside the private jet. An efficient-looking young woman came down the departure steps and greeted a platinum blonde from the vintage car.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How was the flight?” Myra Mason asked, politely removing her gum before she spoke.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing attacked us,” answered Regret of the Damned, an exiled demoness currently taking the shape of an efficient P.A. “But I gather that’s about to change?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tony figured it was best if we met the opposition where the was no witnesses,” Myra explained. “He says he hopes they won’t be expecting your guy so they won’t be ready for him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Makes sense,” Regret agreed. “Any idea who it is?”     Kaufmann opened the other door for Boss Deadeyes. “Hired hit,” the crime lord guessed. “It was only a matter of time before the opposition made their move.”     They were joined from the aircraft by a fit-looking young man in casual clothes and a windcheater. “I’m not too happy about being your stalking horse, Antony,” Tom Black warned. “Don’t make me reconsider the deal.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Chances are it was what you did in Badripoor that lit the touchpaper here in GMY,” Deadeyes replied. “That stunt with the fake Carnifex? Flushing the Necromancer General from his hidey-hole? Word is Bogoff’s here now and Klein’s got him. Things are accelerating.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So why is the Mayor still alive?” Regret wondered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because I don’t know for sure,” Antony Ventredi admitted. “And I don’t whack people just for the hell of it. That’s bad business.” He turned to look at the gate to the landing strip. “Anyhow, these mooks are gonna help us out a little with that.”     An unmarked pick-up truck burst through the gates and screeched towards the tarmac.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re not here for me,” Deadeyes explained. “The opposition’s not dumb enough to rub me out. But word’s out that I’m bringing in some outside talent. If you’re dead on the tarmac that sends word that I’m losing my grip.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So I have to kill your enemies for you or I’m dead?” Black surmised. “You think that’s clever, do you?”     The Boss shook his head. “Nah. Clever would be catching ‘em alive and asking them a few questions in a dark cellar. They won’t know nothing, of course, but we can put out word that one of them was smarter than he looks and squealed what his bosses didn’t know he knew. That might shake things outta the trees a bit.”     The side of the van opened, revealing three men with machine guns.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Meanwhile,” breathed Regret, “those fellas are carrying a lot of firearms and pointing them at me. Us.”     Tom Black had gained the ability to generate will o’ th’ wisp kaos globes, semi-sentient spheres of occult energy that could possess mechanical and electronic devices. By the time the assassins pulled their triggers their firing pins were already jammed. Their magazines exploded in their faces.     Another kaos sphere locked the truck’s steering wheel. A last one jammed the accelerator on full.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You ain’t capturing them?” asked Myrna.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re the distraction,” said Tom, letting the vehicle crash into a concrete pylon on the field perimeter. The thugs would all get out of hospital eventually. “It’d be an insult to Boss Deadeyes not to hire some special talent.”     There was a spray of sundered arcane energies as Tom’s kaos orbs ripped away the cloaking spell around the invisible assassin squad that had been creeping up on him.     At a glance from Deadeyes, Myrna identified them. “Flashfry, Krotch, and I think that must be the Shimmer. She’s new. Flashfry can make searing hot plasma shapes, Shimmer’s supposed to be some kind of illusionist girl, and Krotch… I don’t want to say.”     Deadeyes wasn’t impressed. “Punks and second stringers. Good to know the opposition can’t convince any serious players to go against me yet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Serious?” shouted Flashfry, first to recover from the surprise of being discovered. “I’ll show you serious, old man!”     Deadeyes pulled his ’45 and emptied the clip.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dumbass!” Flashfry hissed. “I can melt your bullets ‘fore they even get near me.”     Ventredi curled his lip. “Wasn’t aiming at you.”     Behind Flashfry, the Shimmer sank to the ground clutching her sucking chest wound.     Myrna jumped past the surprised science villain and put Krotch down before the raincoat-clad pervert could even move. Myrna was specialised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And now,” said Premiere, Technopolis’ foremost science hero, “it’s time to finish this, Flashfry.”     Buddy Wahooni, the plasma-generating mercenary-for-hire from another dimension, paled as he saw his nemesis. “You’re dead!” he objected. “Everyone saw it! Dead!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you still retain a homoerotic fascination for me,” Premiere said; or at least Regret Kiskilla said it, since she had the gift of assuming any form that her victims found desirable.     While she was occupying Flashfry, Deadeyes blew out the villain’s kneecaps.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That all?” he asked Tom Black.     Black flashed his consciousness into the kaos balls he’d spread out across the landing strip, then nodded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then welcome to Gothametropolis,” Deadeyes told him. “Let’s do some business.” ***     At 8.33 the armoured limo passed through into a gated estate on Millionaire’s Row and vanished out of site into an underground garage. Only there, shielded from prying eyes by the best security money and coercion could buy, did the smoked-glass door open and the vehicle’s occupant step out.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m back,” said Harry Flask, the Lynchpin of Crime. The fat man lit a cigar and took a long draw on it. “Amateur hour is over. Time to take Deadeyes down.” *** Squealing Like a Footnote: Profanity bars refer to the chain of seedy interstate drinking establishments that form part of the growing empire of the alluring and elusive Profanity. Few are aware that Profanity herself is the exiled dark faerie Camellia of the Fey or that she has a long-term agenda to cleanse the Earth of its mortal population. Gamona is the former apprentice of interplanetary tyrant Dark Thugos. She’s a nearly-indestructible green-skinned assassin. During her long exile on Earth she spent some time as enforcer for the Lynchpin of Crime but eventually turned on him and departed the planet. She dated Emilio Cacciatori in #4. Champagne is a jet-setting socialite detective and secretly an international jewel thief. She is a daughter of the Cacciatori crime family based out of Cicily. Elli Copper is the pro-bono lawyer and mainstay of the GMY Foundation, a charitable trust trying to better the lives of the people of the city. Chapels of the Apostate have become popular since the end of the Parody War, when many of the cultists previously faithful to the Parody master switched their allegiance to the mysterious Apostate who is prophesied to rule all creation once Visionary is removed from existence. The Ghouls Under Gothametropolis are a cabal of undead scholars led by their dean, the Abyssal Greye. They number amongst their college several city founders. Peter von Doom is a mad scientist supervillain, the first adversary faced by the group which would become the Lair Legion. Vinnie De Soth, jobbing occultist-for-hire and reluctant acting sorcerer supreme for the Parodyverse, is the disgraced white sheep of the De Soth mystic clan. Vinnie is more dangerous than he looks, which is a really good job. Velma Klein is Mayor of Gothametropolis York, and has turned the corrupt city into an even more corrupt place. Her work-release programme for violent felons has given her access to a talent pool of enforcers. The GMY police work to her agenda without conscience. However, elections are coming up and Klein is getting nervous that her hold on the city isn’t what it was. Vlastimock Bogoff, the Necromancer General, is an occultist who has extended his life through sinister arcane means. He is a master of death magics and an expert on the undead. Amongst his wicked deeds was sacrificing his own niece to undeath. Most recently Bogoff clashed with Tom Black in Badripoor. Vrykoulakas is an elder undead, a consulting vampire who advises other evil creatures for a price. Vrykoulakas was the broker of whatever deal game Boss Deadeyes his death touch and allowed the crimelord to return from the grave. Dr Blargelslarch is an amphibian alien scholar and archaeologist from Frammistat Eight, now tenured at Yale. He is also a trustee of the Lunar Public Library of which Ishmael Levi is a member. Regret of the Damned, a.k.a. Regret Kiskilla, is an exiled demon temptress on the run from her former master the demon lord Sage Grimpenghast. She has taken employment as the leman of kaos-wielder Tom Black. Amongst her other talents, Regret can take the aspect (but not the powers) of any being her victim desires. Tom Black, a former British intelligence officer, became suffused with evil kaos energies from the enigmatic Judas Box. This has given him the ability to generate will o’ th’ wisp-like kaos orbs that give him long-range sensory capabilities and can possess technology or magical contructs. Tom’s long-range motives remain unrevealed. The Carnifex was a massively-powerful and cruel being masquerading as a great hero. He was recently destroyed by the Lair Legion. Flashfry (Buddy Wahooni) is a science villain from the alternate reality of Technopolis. He has the ability to generate shaped molten plasma and control it. Krotch is a super-powered pervert with the ability to flash his enemies in an entirely different way to Flashfry. The Shimmer is a neophyte illusion-casting villainess using mystical abilities; or she was, since this is her final appearance. Premiere was the greatest hero of the alternate reality of Technopolis. He died in the final battle against the Parody Master. Harry Flask, the Lynchpin of Crime is the overweight but massively muscled former overlord of Gothametropolis York. After his fall and arrest before the Parody War Flask was incarcerated in the Swordrealms alternate dimension but has now been released on legal technicalities. He wants his city back. *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2011 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2011 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.