Deadeyes #6: Reservoir Dead
Previously, in Boss Deadeyes #1, #2, #3, #4, #5:
Antony "Deadeyes" Ventredi, a 1930s gang racketeer raised from the dead, 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.
Most recently, Klein's plots have included a number of allies and mercenaries, most notably Vlastimock Bogoff, the Necromancer General, who has a special interest in the pact that created Deadeyes' undead state. Few yet suspect that Klein is still being backed by returning crimelord Harry Flask, the Lynchpin.
Meanwhile other visitors to GMY include kaos-suffused maverick Tom Black and his demonic temptress PA Regret Kiskilla, international jewel thief Champagne, and acting sorcerer supreme and general occult busybody Vinnie de Soth, all of whom have found their way to Deadeyes' Turpin Hill brewery office.
***
"Gentleman" Nashua Hampton ran the white collar fraud on GMY's riverfront. He paid his tithes to Boss Deadeyes, added a cut to Mayor Velma Klein to keep her police department thugs at bay, and made sure he sent generous Christmas gifts to the Five Families over in Paradopolis just in case. He was well known in the underworld fraternity, and as much as any criminal could be was well liked.
He was stepping out of his barber's chair ready to head out to the races for the afternoon when he spasmed once then fell over dead.
Mara Keyes had the franchise for customs house smuggling down on the wharves. For the right contribution she'd make sure that a cargo container was overlooked at the checkpoint and entered the country uninspected. She'd inherited the job from her father; it was the family business.
She'd just finished signing off her crew's work schedules and overtime vouchers when she keeled over and stopped breathing. The paramedics rushed her to St Mary's only to have her pronounced DOA.
Jack "the Mack" Johnson was top man of the Cripple End Bloods, one of several vicious and organised youth gangs that carved up the streets of the city between them. The Bloods dealt and ran some whores but mostly they were into protection, and like all the gangs they too made a contribution to Deadeyes for permission to operate in the city.
The Mack was driving his Porsche 911 when his heart stopped. He ploughed across the barrier at 70 miles per hour and took out five other vehicles in the fireball.
And word got round. Boss Deadeyes was killing people.
***
"So you're Vinnie De Soth," said Tom Black.
"And you're Tom Black," said Vinnie de Soth.
The two men looked at each other across the waiting area outside Antony Ventredi's Turpin Brewery office.
Both were quite young but most of the resemblances ended there. Vinnie was a rather dishevelled figure in frayed but unfashionably frayed jeans and a Miscatonic U. sweatshirt. His scrubby blonde hair looked like he'd not combed it for a week. And he was the acting sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse.
Tom Black wore a $700 leather jacket like he knew he deserved it. His sharp-angled face was handsome enough to win hearts and wicked enough to break them. He was a living battery of malevolent kaos energy, a quasi-sentient mystic force from another dimension.
"I hadn't intended to get round to you today," Vinnie admitted.
"Nor me you," Tom replied. "You want to change the schedule?"
Vinnie considered this. "Depends," he decided. "Are you plotting to do something incredibly evil right now? Say in the next forty-eight hours?"
Tom reviewed his intentions. "How evil is incredible evil?" he asked for clarification.
"Evil enough for me to stop waiting for Boss Deadeyes to fit me into his calendar and take you down for the safety of the planet," Vinnie clarified.
"Do you really think you could? It's not too long since I had your whole Lair Legion jumping around making asses of themselves."
Vinnie shrugged. "I wouldn't go for round two any time soon if I was you," he recommended. "As for me, I don't have anything as powerful as that kaos energy that's possessing you. But yeah, if I had to, I'd bring you down."
"Then I'm not planning anything incredibly evil, no."
"Then I don't see any need to bring you forward on my to do list."
The two men sat in the waiting room. And waited.
***
Antony Vendredi sat behind his desk and poured another sour. "So lemme get this right. Gentleman Nash, Little Mara Keyes, and that Johnson punk all dropped dead about the same time today, along with Six Fingers Samson, Johnny the Queen, Packer Ted and Rex Hoddenam. And folks are saying I must've done it?"
"That's the word on the street, yeah," agreed Carlos Kauffman, the only one in the room who hadn't been reanimated from the 1930s. "I mean, everybody's heard the rumours that you've got a death touch, Boss. So when more'n half a dozen guys who operate in the city all fall over at the same time..."
"Folks naturally start to look in my direction," Deadeyes surmised. "Yeah, I see that."
"But it wasn't you," Myra Mason pointed out. The torch singer was sitting on Ventredi's desk filing her nails. "So who was it?"
"Somebody who want to make the Boss look like he's doing it," accountant Elias Levi suggested. "I mean, the whole of our organisation is based on the fear that maybe, just maybe, the Boss has put his death touch on someone - a gang chief, a crimelord, whatever - and is holding it off while they're loyal to him. If folks start panicking, thinking the Boss is going to randomly slaughter them without warning..."
"Then the whole thing comes tumbling down," Deadeyes' hitman Emilio Cacciatore concluded. "And then they turn on us."
"Velma Klein?" suggested Myra. "She's not been happy ever since you came back, Tony. She was counting on running the city after that big Lynchpin mook got taken away, and then you showed up and stepped right in."
"Klein's not that smart," Levi considered. "Although I suppose she could hire someone who is."
Emilio pointed to the vial of poison he'd laid on the desk earlier. "And don't forget this, Boss. I'm told this stuff has some hoodoo on it to make it lethal to revenants like us. It was specially brewed up to take me out, and that means someone's gunning for us."
Deadeyes rose from his chair and looked out over the city. "Yeah, there's something out there. Something wrong. I know this town, these streets. I can feel the change."
"So what do we do, Boss?" asked Carlos nervously. He's never seen Deadeyes' old companions worried before.
Ventredi puffed on his cigar and thought. "You're right about the deaths turning our biggest asset to our biggest liability, Elias," he admitted, "but you're wrong about one thing. Our whole organisation's not based on fear. We use it, but the best weapons are the ones you never have to draw. That's why I don't go around killing joes with my death touch all the time. No class and it's bad business."
"So what is our organisation based on, Tony?" asked Myra.
Deadeyes stubbed his cigar out in his palm. "Respect," he said.
***
In the outer office, where Myra's desk was, two dazzlingly beautiful young woman read magazines and evaluated each other.
"So what are your conclusions?" Regret of the Damned asked Champagne.
"I think trying to make peach the new pink is a bad idea," the international jewel thief said, putting down her Cosmo.
Regret gestured to her coffee-coloured complexion. "Peach only goes with a European colour scheme," she suggested.
"Well, you could have one of those if you wanted," Champagne suggested. "Just find someone with a liking for Eurotrash and shapeshift."
Regret snorted. "So you do know who I am then."
The elegant blonde nodded. "Of course. I read the Lair Legion files on you."
"The Lair Legion let you see my files?"
"How else could I have seen them? They're kept under maximum security in their records vault."
Regret looked carefully at the young adventuress. "Perhaps you were tempted?" the demon temptress ventured.
Champagne put down her magazine and regarded the exiled demon that was now working as Tom Black's PA. "They say you didn't start out as a supernatural creature."
Regret shrugged. "Just so long as they're talking about me. They say you grew up in the Cacciatore crime family."
"I'm sure they don't," Champagne replied. "They'd have better sense than to say things like that in case I heard them talking. So you started life as a mortal and got upgraded when Sage Grimpenghast needed a temptress to go after Nats?"
"Thinking of applying for the position? You might have some of the right credentials."
"They also call you Kiskilla. Any relation to the night demon in Sumerian myth that encountered Gilgamesh?"
"Grimpenghast got me a comprehensive work training programme. So why are you really here, Champagne? What's attracted you to Boss Deadeyes' situation right now? It's not concern for a long-lost uncle, is it?"
"Why are you clinging onto Tom Black? Sure, he's shielding you from your old master's horrible vengeance and so on, but there's other places you could claim sanctuary. What do you know about Tom Black that he doesn't?"
Two dazzlingly beautiful young women caught each other's gazes, then smiled, then went back to their magazines.
***
"Okay, Mr De Soth. Did Hatman send you?"
"No. No, I'm not here for the Lair Legion. This is my day off. This is a strictly nothing-to-do-with-the-Lair Legion-visit. Well, I did check up Yuki's files on you and get Hallie to run a database search and talked with Hatty and CSFB! about your likely reactions and such, and there was this psyche profile I worked up with... er, I mean, no, Hatman didn't send me. No."
Boss Deadeyes sat back in his old leather chair. "Did your family send you?"
"Father? No, no I'm not... right now I mean, me and the De Soth Clan aren't that... clanny. See there was this fall-out during the Parody War, where we all agreed we'd better intervene and do something, only it turned out that everybody else meant help the Parody Master, and then mother send - mother didn't send me either, by the way - mother said..."
"So why are you here, kid?"
"Ah. That. Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt your... undeading. I wouldn't want you to think I was unvitalist. I don't mind undead per se. It's not what you are it's what you do that matters. Some of my best friends are undead. Well, they're not, although I've dated a ghoul a few times. And there was that banshee back in college. And my brother used to sleep with a zombie. At least he said she was a zombie, although I never saw her move, come to think of it. Anyhow, I'm not against being undead just because someone's animated by death rather than life."
"So why are you here, kid?"
"Well, thing is, there's some stuff happened back in the 1920s that we need to talk about. A really grand working, one of the biggest occult events of the century. It was called the Incantatum Necrogenesis and it involved sacrificing an immortal. It was a huge thing at the time. It's still an open case for the sorcerer supreme. And about the same time all that went down you and your friends got death-related powers."
"So?"
"So the murder of an angel's taken pretty seriously in places where will and power are one."
"You trying to pin that rap on me, kid?"
Vinnie paused. "I'm just saying I need to check a few things out. Look, for what I can gather you've not been too bad for GMY since you came back. People whose opinions I respect reckon you've curbed some of the nastiest elements of the city and kept Mayor Klein and her organisation in line. You even kept order when the LL went AWOL during that Safe breakout. I don't like that you do criminal stuff but it's not my department to stop you breaking human laws and the folks whose job it is to do that believe that right now you're better than the alternatives. But if whatever pact gave you that death touch has anything to do with the Incantatum Necrogenesis and if you had any part in what happened back in the day then we do have business and we do have a problem."
Deadeyes noticed that when Vinnie got onto business he stopped stammering and blushing.
The crimelord opened his desk drawer and tossed the enhanced vial of poison across to the young occultist. "What's your take on that, kid?"
Vinnie caught the hypodermic cartridge by reflex then frowned at it. "Whoa! This has a karmic signature like a twenty-car pile up. This is..." The acting sorcerer supreme paused for a moment, muttered something then stared again at the vial. "This is poison enhanced by kaos energy bound by sundered souls." His expression was bleak and angry.
"Some dame was coerced into trying to stick this into my lieutenant," Deadeyes explained. "What would it have done?"
"Well," Vinnie breathed, "it would have disrupted whatever bond he might have had with the powers of death that brought you all back from the grave. It might have splashed back to you, since you're the one keeping your retainers alive with your death touch. It's a clever, nasty piece of work. It's very evil. And Vlastimock Bogdan shouldn't have signed it."
"Who?"
"My problem," said Vinnie. "Yours is to find out who's sponsoring him to find ways of disrupting an Incantatum Necrogenesis."
"Whatever that is."
"Yeah. You know, the first time that spell was cast was before our sun had even ignited. It created the elder vampires and snuffed out worlds. Second time was when the deep ghouls awoke. Third time got us the shadow lords. Then it was forbidden. Nobody cast it for billions of years. Nobody could cast it. And then you come along and it's done in Gothametropolis in 1928. And here you are, back again, no kind of undead that I'm aware of from any previous creation."
Deadeyes drew on his cigar. "Sounds like you've got your work cut out for you, kid."
***
Asil Ashling wasn't alone when she arrived for her 3.45 meeting at Swanham and Fitch Shipping. That was unexpected.
"But not insurmountable," said the Captor, calm and ready for the hunt. "Who's she brought along?"
"Scanners say it's a robot," one of his tech support answered. "It's a modified sexbot 9000."
"That'll be Tandi then," the Captor reasoned. "She's working with the Legion these days. Watch out for those modifications."
"Target and the robot are entering the offices of Swanham and Fitch," observation point one called in. "They're asking for Ms Cordelinger."
"Of course they are. We had to come up with a background cover that's get past Hallie. We just used a real firm and real people and replaced them with our personnel. Asil thinks she's there on behalf of Sir Mumphrey Wilton to discuss possible sponsorship of a scholarship exchange programme for the Caphan Foundation."
"They're heading into the board room."
"Fine. What's Weissman got to say about the target?"
A new voice cut into the shielded comm-chatter. "That's Mr Weissman to you, Captor. Mr Weissman, appraiser."
"Fine, Mister Weissman. Are you close enough to give me your very expensive appraisal of Asil Ashling?"
"I believe that I am. Let me see..."
The Captor remained patient. Nothing was gained by rushing. The capture needed to be perfect.
"Yes," said Rupert Weissman, almost to himself. The cosmic appraiser loved his work. "Yes, she's an interesting specimen alright. A physical clone of the current Destroyer of Tales with her own psychic signature. Resonances but not replication. And remarkably innocent, physically and mentally, despite her many trials. So good as to make one sick with it."
"Is she suitable for the transfer?"
"Oh yes. She'll be an ideal host to shift the death touch upon Mayor Klein onto. That way when Boss Deadeyes decides to eliminate his rival it is the Lair Legion's beloved pet who falls down instead. A shame, really, because she's quite a valuable piece in her own right."
"Fine," said the Captor, no longer interested in Weissman or his opinions. "To work then. We'll need electromagnetic suppressors as well as psychic locks in place around that board room so that we can place both the robot and the target into fugue states without them realising. We'll need to remember to reset Tandi's internal clock before reactivating her. Tell the Necromancer General to be ready with his ritual because we'll only have a window of around thirty minutes. Get the memory implant of the meeting ready to install for when the target awakes. Come on, people, move like you have a purpose!"
***
"Kaos energies in a poison meant to take my people out," Boss Deadeyes noted to Tom Black.
"Metahumans at the airstrip trying to kill me before I could assist you," replied the wielder of the kaos energy. "Mind if I check your poison?"
Deadeyes allowed his guest to examine the phial. Tom shot another of his will o' th' wisps through it for a quick diagnostic. "Ah. This is from energies I loosed against the Necromancer General back in Badripoor. Very clever. Slightly irritating."
"That fits with information from the young De Soth," admitted Ventredi. "It seems this Necromancer General is interfering in my business. That's not gonna be healthy for him."
"From what I can recall of British Intelligence files there's nothing healthy about Vlastimock. He sacrificed pretty much his entire family back in the middle ages to extend his own life and he's been doing bad stuff ever since. He spends half his time being a bad joke in the necromantic community and the rest being a mass murderer."
"And he's working for Klein."
Black spread his hands in a 'maybe' gesture. "There's something happening, that's for sure. That's why I wanted to talk to you - in person. I think we might have a mutual interest."
"What's that then?" Deadeyes still wasn't sure about the too-clever Englishman.
"Well let me ask you straight. When you got your undead status... did it have something to do with a device called the Judas Box?"
Deadeyes hesitated for a moment, then answered: "Maybe."
***
Continued...
***
"You dirty rotten footnote, you killed my brother!"
Regret of the Damned is a demon temptress, perhaps best exemplified in Untold Tales #226: Nats Must Die. Since her exile from hell she's been working for Tom Black.
Asil Ashling is a clone of Lisa Waltz, whom she resembles physically but not in character. A long time associate of the Lair Legion and Sir Mumphrey Wilton's amanuensis, Asil did not end up in bed with Tom Black in Tom Black #2: A Date With Death - but hey, the plotline's still progressing.
Tandi 9000 is a former sexbot now working on the Lair Legion's staff.
The Captor is one of the oldest villains in the Parodyverse. He precedes my time on the board. His first appearance is lost to the internet ether and I don't know which poster created him - possibly Zemo? Jarvis?
Cosmic appraiser Rupert Weissman debuted in Untold Vignettes #4 by Visionary
All the rest was covered in last time's footnotes, or else is in the Who's Who in the Parodyverse or the Where's Where in the Parodyverse. Many many back-issues are available via The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
***
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. |
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