Meanwhile, in the scarlet painted conference room located on the third floor of the Club Ritz, sat an imposing figure of crime and disorder at the front end of a large red fiberglass table, smoking on a cigar and munching on walnuts. He wore a red double-breasted suit with black pinstripes, a dark burgundy checkered necktie, had greasy black hair, a facial mole near his left eye and a thin mustache as well as a nose, hands and cheek bones that were as big as his street name: Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice.
Big Boy was the kingpin of a syndicated crime organization known only as "The Apparatus", who had been stuck in the Alcatraz Island Penitentiary with a bunch of pedophiles and petty criminals for almost two years. Two. Whole. Years. He couldn't even find a good lawyer like Hy Habeas or Danny Supeena to take his case. But after all, what was the big deal? All he did was have his men murder some guy named Emil Trueheart just because he was a little "tight with his money" and then kidnapped his daughter so that he could use her for a payroll robbery-among other past offences. Anyway, under the company of his associates Giorgio Spaldoni and Ribs Mocco, Big Boy's lifestyle of easy living had turned into a living nightmare. He couldn't bathe; he couldn't smoke cigarettes or have an expensive drink, his meals were the infamous diet of bread and water, and the recreational activities were so scarce that Big Boy's obesity had emaciated over time and he came out of his cell looking like a real Robert De Niro while his cellmates received a lighter treatment of custodial duties for just simply "following orders".
Even though he was ashamed that everything had been taken away from him, Big Boy was glad to have gotten out of prison fair and square because of his ailing health, which in the process cut his five year sentence short by two. Never once did he try to escape from his hell on earth. One night, another associate of his, Tony the Bomber, had purposely lit his cell on fire with a small bottle of kerosene and a single match that he had secretly kept hidden from the maximum security in his untidy pockets. He spilled some of it on his bed and splattered the rest of it all over the walls, burning the bed to a crisp and shorting the electrical circuits embedded inside the walls. When the fire brigade arrived, Tony tried to escape. As soon as the door to his cell had opened, he stole a fireman's hat and coat and managed to succeed in getting as far as the front gates, but was shot dead by the tower guards when they caught him trying to climb up the electric fence that, surprisingly, had not been turned on for the evening thanks to the fire that destroyed the circuits from an outlet in his cell. "Very upsetting," mourned Big Boy when he heard the news. Now that he was out of the pen, he knew that somehow, someway, he would rebuild his empire from the ground up and exact revenge on the very plainclothes detective who made his life miserable: Dick Tracy.
After getting out of prison, the trio went their separate ways, Mocco and Spaldoni booked into a small hotel room while Big Boy moved in with his old friend Bob Honor aka Lips Manlis, the owner of the Club Ritz. He had short dark hair, a receding mustache, a slightly heavy set body, was always seen wearing a tuxedo and was named for his moniker because of his wide, distinctive mouth and huge lips that made him look like he had the face of a tuna fish. When he saw Big Boy's current state (commenting that he was as thin as a promise), Lips did whatever he could to get Big Boy back in shape. On weekends, they did boxing matches, on Wednesdays and Tuesdays they would have steak, potatoes, oysters and calamari (including chocolate malts and margaritas with high calories) and on half days on Mondays and Tuesdays, Big Boy would try to earn his keep for a month by cleaning the front window in the conference room, washing a few dishes, cooking the soup of the day, cleaning up Lips' favorite table and going out to purchase an extensive list of supplies from various grocers at a rapid pace. As though being lazy weren't enough, Big Boy had become a muscular figure with a hunchbacked neck while Lips was the one getting fat. Now here he was, watching his friend painting a Van Gogh style portrait of Breathless Mahoney, who stood perfectly still, wearing a white lace dress and positioned like a Roman goddess along with the club's piano player Clarence Keyes.
Clarence "88" Keyes had been a talented pianist ever since he was 8 years old when he played to the tune of Row Row Your Boat on his family's Steinway grand piano. As a teenager at the age of 18, he attempted to complete Schubert's Unfinished Symphony in front of his graduating class at the high school talent show and again at his ceremony, intent on replacing the considerably overused Pomp and Circumstance with the Schubert composition itself as the new walking march. As a matter of fact, 88 Keyes was so talented that he practically dropped out of college after two months of study to fulfill his dream of becoming a world-famous pianist. But he had to start somewhere, and the first place he looked up had been the newly opened Club Ritz, which was in need of a piano player, a singer and an orchestra for jam sessions. However, since Lips Manlis had spent most of his money on himself, Breathless and the club's taxes, 88's salary was terribly low and he had no choice but resort to Lips' criminal enterprise through a hire–for-kill gang led by singer Jinny Lynn to assassinate the millionaire A. B. Helmet at the request of his estranged wife. All of 88's accomplices were either killed or arrested by Dick Tracy and so was he, but he was let out to continue his piano career and was enamored by Breathless since they both shared a life of crime and entertainment as well as being extremely talented in the field of music. His handsome looks of dark blond hair and narrow eyes were concealed by his casual outfit of a light yellow newsboy cap with a baby blue checkered jacket and matching trousers, though he always wore a suit whenever he was present at the club.
Over the two years that had passed since his bail, Big Boy, claiming to have reformed, had hired several people from various departments to rebuild his organization under the promise of negotiable stocks and bonds for whatever their hearts desired. He made funds to his allies and took great offense to anyone who left the Apparatus as a turncoat. Recently, he been contacted through the club's e-mail address by a mysterious figure known only as a sympathetic spirit, promising him a life without Dick Tracy if he helped him to build the impossible: a teleportation device that could transport him to another dimension through the realms of time and space. Intrigued, Big Boy called up his old girlfriend Texie Garcia to arrange a meeting (or what some mobsters liked to call a "sit-down") to discuss the negotiations between this mysterious messenger and his objectives.
Lips made several positive compliments about the painting he had finished with a flick of the brush. The results were uncanny except for Breathless' hair, which looked a bit smudged like rainwater washing it away with the liquid of the sky.
"Doesn't it look nice?" he asked Big Boy.
Big Boy patted him on the back with his left hand. "Lips, my friend, you are an artist."
Lips smiled.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door and Big Boy went over to answer it. Whenever someone came uninvited, he would always ask the intruder with a password. If they knew the password, the intruder was free to be let in, but if he did not know the password or answered incorrectly, Big Boy would give the intruder two options: make like a tree and leave or get shot to death.
When Big Boy came to the door, he knocked back three times and gave the knocker his question.
"Password?"
"Eat lead."
He swung the door open and there stood his old moll, Texie Garcia.
Texie Garcia was one of San Fransokyo's fewest gunwomen and a prostitute with a taste for larceny. She wore a black floppy hat with a veil hanging in front of her face held by a red butterfly jewel, a black dress, a black fur stole made from a grizzly bear, red high heels, red lace gloves with black, red and grey squared bracelets, ruby earrings and was often seen carrying a red cigarette holder in her right hand. Additionally, she would fix her raven black hair in the style of Delores del Rio, a film actress long forgotten since the Golden Age of Hollywood. After Big Boy was sent to prison, Texie, who had been following orders and cleared of some criminal charges, moved in with fellow criminal Lorenzo Prunesti since Big Boy's assets including the nightclub that served as their hideout, were confiscated by the law. Despite his wife Ana Prunesti's dismay, Texie felt welcome and comfortable during her stay. She was relieved on the day that Big Boy got out of prison and had made arrangements for today's "board of directors" meeting. She greeted her old flame with a smile and a puff of secondhand smoke and he greeted her back with a bow and a gesture of the left hand to let her in.
"I bought them, just like you asked," said Texie to Big Boy with a soft tone in her voice.
"Wonderful! Have a seat next to me, Texie."
As Texie took her seat next to Big Boy's left hand side, along with her came twenty of the most gruesome and most bizarre criminals ever known to have walked the streets of San Fransokyo.
Floyd Jones was San Fransokyo's most recognizable crook and Dick Tracy's archenemy. He was nicknamed "Flattop" because of his distinctive hairstyle that was curled sideways at both ends and was flat on the top (hence his cognomen). In addition to his attire, which consisted of a violet sport coat, indigo trousers, a red bowtie, black shoes, black leather gloves and a clean white dress shirt with black buttons underneath the jacket, he had brown eyes, freckles on both sides of his cheeks and lips that were so puckered you might as well could have called him "The Big Smoocher". Born and raised in Cookson Hills, Oklahoma to his disowning parents, a church-going aunt and an abusive uncle who perceived his nephew as the family black sheep, Flattop carried Poptop Jones' legacy of violent hunting games by killing a federal agent in Kansas City with a single bullet to the chest and made his way to other parts of the country through the black market before coming to San Fransokyo. Nevertheless, Flattop and his short-tempered older brother Blowtop Jones (who was currently serving in prison) were known for being too trigger-happy with their machine guns, as evidenced by the taunting messages of "Eat Lead!" written in bullets they had often so left at the scene of a crime they committed (if they had a wall to write it on that is).
Itchell Oliver was a type of felon known to have a skin condition rather than a deformity. He was nicknamed "Itchy" because he always seemed to itch and scratch a lot. When armed, he would be holding a gun in one hand and in the other he would be scratching the back of his head, his chin, his torso or any other part of his body, even his privates. In addition to his primary outfit, which consisted of a bottle green suit and fedora with an orange necktie and a purple shirt (sometimes navy blue with a leopard spotted clip-on, a black shirt and a gold pin); he had blond curly hair, wore Coke-bottle glasses and spoke with a very nasal Bronx accent from his pursed-lips. Itchy sat in between his associates, on his right was Shaky Trembly, who was the stepfather of Breathless Mahoney, and on his left was Measles Enog, a 19 year old drug dealer who had dropped out of high school to be more closer with his mother Anna at the women's prison where she worked as a matron. Both of them had similar conditions as Itchy, only Shaky, true to his name, was mentally unstable and Measles had a pockmarked forehead as a result of acne.
Mumbles was a fast talking thief who had been a guitar player for the Mumbles Quartet some years ago. In fact, his speech was so indecipherable that it was difficult for anyone to understand him (which came with the common question "What did he say?"), though some like Flattop were able to translate for him. He liked to wear bowties and his wardrobe had a variety of colors, ranging from his natural hair color of chartreuse to a gooey royal purple. Needless to say, it would take no more than a cup of water to slow Mumbles' speech down.
Louise Brown, nicknamed "Crewy Lou" for her crew-cut hairstyle, was another accomplice of Flattop and at personal times, his girlfriend. In relation to the fact that her blonde hair extended all the way down to her shoulders, she had brown eyes that matched her surname, carried a small golden choker around her neck and wore a black peplum blouse with a white belt and a red skirt. Crewy first met Flattop when she participated in a sting operation at an Atlantic City steakhouse two years ago. She had been sent by her associate Sphinx to dispose of any incriminating evidence from an unauthorized dispute between the Atlantic Shipping Company and the New England Marine Corps that would have the employees fired for possessing illegal beverage. However, she didn't reckon on Flattop, who had been sent by his late superior Zola to kill the employees, should they refuse to cooperate without further persuasion. The plan was successful, and when Flattop first laid his eyes on Crewy shredding the evidence into a trash can, he was enamored by her good looks and her brutal strength, but she was too feisty to return the favor. It was only after he chased her across three cities, New York, Chicago and San Fransokyo where the trail ended, that Crewy had earned her trust in Flattop and two of them began a relationship of criminal activities, among her other hobbies which included professional photography, kidnapping of children and foolishly attempting to resist Flattop's advances.
The man known as Eislander sat in between Flattop and Mumbles smoking on a Cuban cigar. He was nicknamed "B-B Eyes" because of his small black eyes that matched the shape and dimension of BB bullets. In addition to his signature apparel, which consisted of a brown derby with a grey blue suit and an orange pinstriped shirt, his face looked like it had been run over by a truck. Along with the eyes, he had thin hair, battered pointy ears and three parallel scars from a cat attack that extended all the way down on the right side of his face from the temple to the chin. In his criminal career, B-B Eyes was a racketeer and a bootlegger whose gang capitalized on counterfeit car tires, alcoholic booze and pirated DVDs, all of whom were killed or arrested by Dick Tracy. He also had a distant brother named Jacques who faked his marriage to debutante Debby Thorndike to gain ownership of the Bird Club, a rival to the Club Ritz.
Johnny Ramm was a notorious gunman whose facial features seemed to be a carbon copy of Clark Gable, another actor from Hollywood's Golden Age. He was a semi-racist with a black suit, a mustard yellow necktie, a blue shirt with a beige handkerchief and an operative for the corrupt politician Mayor Chiang, who held a vendetta against San Fransokyo's long standing merger of eastern and western culture, believing that his ancestral country of China was superior in comparison to the rest of Asia. Using an alias ("Pete Reppoc") Dick Tracy went undercover as a member of Johnny's gang to put a stop to the corrupted politician and his agent. Johnny was thrown into the state penitentiary for three years, but somehow he escaped during Tony the Bomber's failed breakout attempt and went back to working at the restaurant he owned in Little Tokyo, but not before he left the restaurant under new management when Big Boy's meeting was announced on his social media wall.
Ribs Mocco was the former lieutenant of Big Boy and a member of the original Apparatus. He had a careworn face with a pointed nose, and wore a crimson bowler hat, a black coat, a checkered bowtie, a yellow cream shirt with a matching handkerchief in his left breast pocket, a purple vest, grey trousers and black and white Oxford shoes. For his own agenda that concerned his abuse of power, Ribs intended to double-cross Big Boy onboard the cruise ship Alonia by putting three slugs into his mouth so that the Apparatus could be controlled by a much younger and more sensible subordinate. Unfortunately, Big Boy survived and Dick Tracy (posing as a drifter named Joe Smith) ambushed him and Big Boy with a serious beating and Spaldoni who had confessed Big Boy's recent actions to the police had already been found out by Pat Patton. And to make a long story short, all three of them were arrested for multiple charges of murder, robbery and the kidnapping of young Buddy Waldorf. "At least Texie doesn't care for stripes," Ribs commented as soon as he got out of jail. He didn't like the idea of occupying a cell that was two rows away from his boss and his lawyer, nor did he appreciate the relentless experience of being a hallway custodian.
Lorenzo Prunesti was a high ranking German-born spy whose ideologies were what some considered to be Neo-Nazi. He was christened "Pruneface" because of his wrinkled facial features from a bad skin defect of injury and disease. In some shades of lighting to fit his red and purple suits, his skin color appeared to be normal in brighter shades, but in darker shades his skin turned pale red, then purple like a real prune. His wife Mrs. Pruneface had similar features, only more skeletal with eyes that were sunken into their sockets with a non-existent nose and teeth so pointed; she would have been a vampire with a shrunken head. Pruneface (or "Boche" as he preferred to be called in public) had often supplied explosives to Big Boy and would test firebombs on a car, one of them being Big Boy's old Coupe de Ville. Big Boy had little concern for the destruction, given the fact that it was accidental, which led to his purchase of the Escalade and two spare cars for other reasons: an Audi R8 and a stolen red Toyota. Pruneface also supplied nerve gas and old fashioned firearms made new again, for he was certainly a weapons expert and a tough criminal of espionage intelligence. But despite this, his connections with Big Boy allowed Texie Garcia to stay with him during Big Boy's internment.
The man in the plaid green suit and fedora sitting next to Ribs Mocco was Pruneface's on-and-off partner in crime, Influence, whose face resembled the top half of a theatrical mask with prominent cheekbones, big nostrils and dark wavy hair (minus the happy/sad expressions since his remained consistent) and wore special green tinted contact lenses that could hypnotize anyone who looked straight into them for over 30 seconds flat. In fact, it was Influence himself who invented these contacts during his days as an adult student at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology three years ago through careful planning and creativity. His peers thought that they would be useful for police interrogations, but when Tadashi Hamada came into the picture, he and the other scientists, including Robert Callaghan, had deemed that the lenses were too dangerous should they be made into mass production for some people (even criminals) to use them for their own selfish purposes. Before he could order Influence to smash them, by means of a hammer to keep his patented technology from being copied through the criminal underworld, Influence refused to have his only working invention be destroyed and he left the school in a huff. It was then that Influence had decided to use the lenses for his own satisfactory, which led to his life of crime, sparked by hypnotizing Vitamin Flintheart, who eventually became his butler for the next two months. After Vitamin regained self-control and left Influence's employ, the hypnotist met Pruneface at the Bird Club and the two of them opened up a casino in the Bay Area with Influence as the sole proprietor. Despite his appearance, he was kind and courteous to Texie Garcia when she stayed with them while Big Boy was in prison, but Mrs. Pruneface would not allow her husband to have any other women in the house after the streetlights were turned on. Fortunately, Influence was able to calm the mad woman down by claiming that Texie was his through his own words…and the help of his special contact lenses.
On the other side of the table, two seats away from Influence's right hand side was Oodles. He was a blue skinned fellow who weighed about 465 pounds, wore dark blue overalls and a short black necktie, and had a wild hairstyle that covered his eyes and exposed the back of his head. It was because of his ravenous appetite that made him this way and he didn't like to admit that he had been bullied in his youth for it. He was also dimwitted, though he liked to participate in weight-watching programs and always kept a calorie counter with him at home. But with his introduction to the criminal underworld, Oodles could use his heavy-set body to fatally crush anyone who viewed his obesity as an object of scorn.
Sketch Paree was a Frenchman who had his own fashion blog on the internet and a doll named Babee who acted as his familiar and spoke to her as if she were a real person. He had dark hair with a French mustache, a pointy nose and his outfit consisted of a black French tailored suit and a big Prussian blue bowtie. He was said to be the rival of Talcum Freely, who designed baby clothes and when the news of Big Boy's release came on the local feed of his blog's subpage, he commented on a humorous post showing how much they looked exactly alike. Big Boy himself was marginally pleased about the subject and thus was the reason he invited Sketch to the meeting.
Of all the criminals present in the room, Paree's hit-man, Louis Rewes, a.k.a. the Mole, had his own tragic backstory to share. He had been abandoned by his parents ever since he was a baby because of his horrifying facial features that resembled that of an actual mole. Additionally, he wore a light purple suit (sometimes a red polyester shirt with black drawers), was very light sensitive and proved to be a little horny in his personality when three years ago, he tried to take advantage of a woman –Honey Lemon's mother- during a bribery that took place at a gas station run by his associate Oily. When word had spread about his crimes in the sewers, Dick Tracy caught the illiterate mobster red handed after the winter snow had flooded the Mole's hideout and melted into cold water. Showing sympathy for his unhappy beginnings, Tracy gave the Mole a nine month sentence in prison and when Christmas came around again, Tracy and the Hamada brothers greeted the recently released Mole with a gift package of fruit, cigarettes and candy, something he didn't have in almost thirty years. Mole's personality had changed his entire look on life and when the news of Big Boy's meeting came to him via Sketch Paree, Mole was hoping that Caprice would be going straight for once, by using his money to help people with a similar condition like him for a good cause. But instead, he felt as though he was going back to his old ways of getting revenge on the society that dejected his appearance.
Spots wasn't a well-known criminal but he was known for having a crowded array of sixteen dark spots floating in front of where his eyes should be and he was proud of them since they acted as his eyes in an animated fashion. It has been said by many accountants that he was born with them, since no one, not even he himself, knew where the spots originated. He had short dark hair and wore a light blue suit with a black necktie. In his criminal career, Spots produced phony plaques, resorted to blackmailing a Hawaiian girl and murdered his wife when she foiled his scheme to make it look as though she and the girl were related. When his crimes were notified, Spots had successfully escaped the city, though his shady appearance had drawn Big Boy's attention and thus was the reason he invited Spots to the meeting.
Coffyhead was the boss of Autumn Hews and Lugi who wore a yellow cream suit and bow tie that matched his hair color and a head that resembled a coffee pot. Two years ago, Coffyhead wanted to discredit Junior Tracy's Crimestoppers Club so that his enterprise system could run smoothly without further delay from Dick Tracy. First he kidnapped Junior and seven of his friends (chosen because of their innocence) and tried to recruit them into his criminal organization for $15 a day. The boys were tempted, but the strong-minded Junior refused, and after failing to coax Junior two more times (almost to the point of begging), Coffyhead placed him in a gas chamber that was to be filled with a toxic brand of nitrogen dioxide. Fortunately, Tracy had always been in touch with Junior on his own wrist radio and managed to track him down, rescuing Junior from an unfortunate fate in the process. Shortly after a series of investigations that lead to his hideout in the Zabu Importing Company located on the south side of San Fransokyo, Coffyhead, Autumn and Lugi were arrested, and never again did Coffyhead feel the delicious taste of freedom until he was bailed on account of Big Boy's meeting and his good behavior.
As Coffyhead poured his afternoon coffee, the man sitting next to him, Laffy Smith was counting his bills from a gambling debt. He was a chubby guy with freckles and had a helmet of light wavy hair with an orange tint and wore a typical business suit. He was so called Laffy because he had a case of infectious laughter (which continuously made him suffer from lockjaw and needed a quick exercise with the lower part of his jaw to negate it) and was an insane drug dealer who tried to make a profit by stealing drugs from the medical offices of San Fransokyo Tech. When the drugs were reported missing, Tadashi Hamada, a sophomore at the time, soon found out about Laffy because he formerly worked at the institute as a doctor, who had gone insane after a freak accident with an antidepressant and after putting two and two together through a serious investigation, Laffy was thrown into jail for three years. Afterwards, he was let out because of his good behavior, but to Laffy he believed that the "happy pill" had finally paid off.
Pear-Shape Tone (initials P. S. Tone) was named for his heavily rounded stomach that made the rest of his body look like an actual pear. In addition, he had brown wavy hair and wore square-cut glasses, a plum purple suit with a cherry red necktie and black laced shoes. He was also greedy, ambitious and liked to smoke cigars. A year ago, Pear-Shape had established connections to the criminal underworld and participated in a jewel theft from his client, the wealthy Mrs. Waldo, who was shot during the robbery by one of his confederates. Little did Pear-Shape know that he had been followed by a Boxer dog adopted by Dick Tracy named Mugg, and his plans to fence Mrs. Waldo's jewels to a sucker were foiled, but unfortunately for Tracy, Pear-Shape subdued Mugg and got away. Big Boy's meeting had called him back and Pear-Shape instantly accepted, hoping he would get some other jewels as a reward for what Big Boy had in mind.
And last but not least, at the very end of the table was Big Boy's attorney Giorgio "Spud" Spaldoni (real name: George Bumpstead) who had dark hair, a handlebar mustache, and wore a purple fedora with a matching coat and a pale cream shirt with a honeycomb colored necktie. He was born in London, England and chose a new name to distance himself from his mother and older brother, who was a police officer for Interpol. Even though he wanted pull off several crimes of his own, things always went wrong and was considered to be the bad luck charm of the Apparatus. His cars were sabotaged and the men he hired were literally down on their luck. But all-in-all, he was still loyal to Big Boy, despite their rivalry ten years ago over a fake subpoena for the both of them that concerned an arson attack on an apartment complex that was actually caused by Tony the Bomber during a demolition test.
These new criminals led by Big Boy were known as the second Apparatus, the former one having been dissolved upon Big Boy's arrest. This one was more composed of well-known degenerates, or to those on the right side of the law – infamous felons. Dick Tracy would later call them "The Gruesome Gang" as a chapter in his book of suspects.
Big Boy clapped his hands together and clasped them very tightly in a locked couple before he made a brief introduction to his new cohorts.
"I'm glad you're here today, Flattop, Pruneface, Johnny Ramm, Ribs, B-B Eyes, Laffy-"
"Don't forget me," called out 88 Keyes from the other side of the table next to Pear-Shape. He was raising his right arm as though he were back in elementary school.
Big Boy shook his hands defectively. "I don't have time for formal introductions."
"Ok," 88 Keyes lowered his arm onto the table and his expression went content.
"Before we begin," said Big Boy. "Let me explain to you the modus operandi of the new Apparatus."
The criminals moved their heads forward silently as Big Boy began one of his motivational speeches.
"As long as anyone can remember," Big Boy began in a couple of pauses. "Our forefathers and their descendants – that being us – have made life miserable for the citizens of this wonderful and highly advanced city of San Fransokyo. Some of us have resorted to crime for our own personal gain; some of us have resorted to crime to exact vengeance on those who see us for what we are on the outside and not on the inside – like Pouch."
Big Boy motioned his hands toward a half profile painting of the said figure named Pouch, hanging on the left side wall of the room. He wore an old yellow straw hat, a black coat and was shown to be holding a few balloons in his right hand, individually colored red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, indigo and violet against the background of a park. The criminals looked at it with sympathy; Pouch was named for his loose flaps of excess skin after losing a significant amount of his 500 lbs. when he was a freak show attraction. His neck had been implanted with a snap seal when he realized that he could use it to conceal items within it. Exacting vengeance on those who laughed and jeered at his fat appearance during his sideshow years, he resorted to a life of crime with the help of a smuggler named Johnny Scorn, who specialized in trafficking stolen goods and demolitions while at the same time a popcorn popper for pedestrians. Pouch's plans for smuggling jewels were eventually disrupted by Dick Tracy, who discovered the plans thanks to a few clues that led him to the bay where he was arrested in the middle of a shipping order. All of this happened about a month ago, and Pouch was currently serving a seven year prison sentence.
"We have felt completely alone in this world," continued Big Boy. "To be called names like 'freak', 'wacko' and worst of all, 'psycho'."
Hurt by the scornful words, Mole felt tears well up into his eyes as he remembered the day his parents abandoned him…his mom and dad throwing him into the river….his journey into the sewers, he had such an unhappy life, even though he found out that his parents were dead. Unsure of their forgiveness, he turned his face away from Big Boy and choked back a few sobs as the tears rolled down his cheeks. Feeling sympathy for the poor man, Oodles laid a comforting right hand on Mole's left shoulder, remembering his own abuse of being teased for his weight.
In the second phase of his speech, Big Boy's voice had changed into a tone of justice and hope for those in need of his "help". Even though he was a powerful mobster, he always fought for human rights and held several campaigns of anti-bullying propaganda to gain a positive reception of his new image, despite the fact that he had never been bullied in his life other than running with a bad crowd of juvenile delinquents that took action against the federal minimum wage laws. He aimed mostly to subjects who were physically or mentally disabled, among other curiosities and victims of scornfulness like feral children, sideshow attractions and even amputees or people who were born without limbs.
"But today, is a day of reckoning," he went on. "We've got a lot of stores and business owing tens and thousands of dollars to people in need of a cure for their problems and I think they should be working real hard-for us. And to make a long story short, this city doesn't need normal people, it needs people like us: the outcasts, the rejects and the scorned. There's no need for people like Dick Tracy or his Crimestoppers nowadays, they're history, overrated and lack the foresight to see the man in the mirror."
The criminals were silent and looked at each other in a slight confusion. Big Boy was very talkative, but sometimes his words made no sense at all. So he delivered a short message.
"What I'm trying to say is: Because we are for the people. 'And if you ain't for the people, you can't buy the people.'- Lincoln."
Big Boy was always known for making false quotations by famous speakers like Jefferson or Nietzsche; it made him look like a scholar with only a few simple words to get a simple message into a simple minded person's head.
The crooks clapped their hands in a scattered applause.
"So," huffed Pruneface. "You brought us all the way here for a lecture about what mainstream people think of us?"
"That…and this."
He pulled out a snapshot from the right breast pocket from his jacket and handed it to Pruneface, who in return, handed it to Flattop, then Mumbles, and then B-B Eyes until every single one of the criminals present in the room had finally caught their first glimpse of the mysterious red-streaked kabuki mask against a pitch black background. His black leather clothes were barely noticeable, so they thought it was just a picture of a mask on display at the San Fransokyo Museum of Modern Art, though B-B Eyes was the only one to notice the clothing, thanks to his sharp eyesight.
"This guy, who calls himself our benefactor, has personally hired us to build a teleportation device that will transfer him to another dimension. It may seem like a harebrained scheme but he's gonna pay us big, in exchange for the death of Dick Tracy and to turn this city into a utopia for the disabled, the discriminated and the deformed. Together...we will own this town."
Hearing the mention of that name, Mumbles raised his right hand worryingly.
"AhAhAh. Onesmallprobwenderboz," he said quickly.
Big Boy lowered his eyes in confusion, furrowing his brow as he titled his head forward by an inch.
"What did he say?"
Flattop raised his right hand in a poor imitation of Mumbles by lifting his index finger upwards.
"One small problem there, Boss," he translated.
"And?"
"Speaking of Dick Tracy," added Itchy. "What if he gets on our tail and ruins everything?"
"Ah, oui," interrupted Sketch Paree. "These encounters with Monsieur Tracy does come very naturellement."
Pear-Shape pointed his right thumb in the direction of Sketch like a hitchhiker. "I am with the Frenchman on this one."
"Yeah, heaintgonletyagetawaywithit," Mumbles continued to ramble. "Heaintgonletyagetawaywithit! Heaingonnaletyaitawaywitanythaing!"
This time Big Boy understood because Mumbles repeated his sentence three times. He sat back comfortably in his chair, feet on the table, hands behind his back, not a care in the world.
"I can do whatever I what with Tracy, even if it means that we have to bump off one of the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology's leading scientists with the help of you two."
He pointed his grubby right fingers to Lips and Breathless, who in return, pointed at each other.
"Us?" they asked unison.
"Yes, tomorrow night is the annual showcase where inventors and geniuses like to show off all their creativity and if one of the pieces required for the device is there, we need a distraction. You'll go in, disguised as janitors, or better yet; a pretty teacher from a distant boarding school."
As he mentioned the "pretty teacher", Big Boy smoothed his right fingers under Breathless' silky chin, gliding it from her jawbone to the precipice of the mental region. She smiled; enjoying the touch of fingers roughened by work and sweat like a real man. Lips, however, thinking that his friend was trying to advance on his mistress, stood up from his chair, fist clenched and wanting to change the subject of the next element in their latest scheme.
"What's in it for me if you can't do it?"
After several excuses in the past couple of years to give Lips a reason to do his dirty work, Big Boy twitched his eyes backwards to the left and exited the room without a word. Scrambling down the stairs and through the dining area, he went into the kitchen and found the silver platter he was looking for on a cart. With both hands at a steady pace, he bought the entrée back up to the conference room and placed it in front of Lips, still standing like a general instructor waiting for training results.
"Would clams be enough for you?" asked Big Boy as he opened the tray cover.
On the plate was Lips' favorite dish, eight clams (or oysters) embedded with two lemons, a tiny cup of spicy ketchup and a single layer of lettuce underneath it all. Lips stared at the gourmet in disbelief before his emotions turned into a happy little chuckle and a smile of avarice.
"Oh, ho, ho, oh, Big Boy, you spoil me."
He sat back down again and began to slurp down on the oyster meat from the shells with both hands. Breathless just stared at him with a disgusted look on her face that was added by an offended groan, seeing Lips eat with such loud slurping and crude table manners made her sick to her stomach, as she had told him a few times before.
"All right, men, let's leave these two love birds alone with their meal."
Big Boy and the criminals left the room quietly, leaving Breathless and Lips alone in the red and cream painted hall. The only sound that could be heard in the room was the slurping of oysters and the empty shells clattering on the dish like raindrops on a tile roof. Breathless continued to watch Lips devour the last oyster as her expression turned sour, her eyes at half-mast like always and her teeth exposed from her mouth, grimacing in a sulky emotion.
"Oh, Lippy," she moaned. "I hate it when you do that."
Lips knew what she was talking about but he didn't give a care. "You didn't used to."
Then came the blunt reply. "You didn't used to be a zeppelin."
Lips just stared at her, his big lower lip forming a grotesque version of a guilty ridden frown. This was not like her at all. But then again, with all her charming wit and pure sarcasm, Breathless Mahoney was not a very fun person to work with.