Cape City Hero: The Origin of Gangbuster

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Cape City Hero: The Origins of Gangbuster

by Colin L. Campbell

This morning, I found the building I live in spray-painted with colorful, cryptic messages: gang signs. I could only stare at them in disbelief. Gangs today aren’t what they used to be. Not even close. Carol Rodgers, a lady that lives in my building, was outside in her nightgown going completely hysterical. I told her she had nothing to worry about, and I meant it. In fact, waking up to that sloppy, red paint almost made me feel good. I knew it would wash right off. When I first heard crazy, old Carol screaming in the hallway about gangsters and whatnot, I instinctively shot up in bed; that word awakened and alerted every fiber of my being to the most urgent promise of danger. But sometime after rocketing out of bed, clumsily kicking my feet into my slippers, and rushing toward the door, I remembered that it was no longer the Roaring '20s.

The kind of gangsters I imagined had mostly faded out by now, along with speakeasies and silent movies. Sure, we’ve still got gangs, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't run and hide at the sight of some minor vandalism. Don’t get me wrong. Urban street gangs and the mafia are huge problems, but nothing can compare to the unstoppable machine of organized crime in the early decades of the 20th century. The 1920s and '30s gangster -- now that is something to fear. Believe me, I know. I was one of them. My brother Leo and I both had gotten into organized crime at an early age. Our elevator ride into the underworld makes an interesting story, but I’ll reserve that for another time and place. This is the story of how I got out of organized crime and how I devoted my life to fighting it, along with dangerous criminals of all types, organized or not. This is my story. Me, Vincent Centuori. Gangbuster.

DEATH WORKS LIKE GANGBUSTERS

It was early October, and our empire of crime towered high above Kansas City, rising far above the cops’ heads, untouchable in the clouds. Figuratively speaking, of course. But just as you would imagine the life of a man who lived in a castle in the clouds, mine was equally good, or so I thought. I believed I was happy for awhile, but the ugly truth was that those clouds were storm clouds, dark and ominous. They continuously rained down on the city and its people, drowning their hopes and dreams and casting a cold, black fog over everything. It took me too long to see this. I was partly enshrouded in the fog myself, and by the time it had cleared, and I had shot my mouth off to everyone, it was too late. The others in the establishment didn’t want to hear another word out of me. What we did was never questioned. I could almost see a cold night’s slumber with the fishes hinted at in their eyes.

Then one night in our warehouse, it was eerily still, not the usual cigar smoke-filled hangout, where we laughed and counted our money. This night was dead quiet, and there was only enough light for me to occasionally spot shadows of my fellow crooks creeping around. A clandestine meeting was taking place in the office. I could hear their hushed voices. I edged in closer, hovering in the darkness. I felt like a little boy who overhears his parents talking about him and suddenly realizes the seriousness of their discussion.

Out of the little room, I heard a familiar voice say, “Day after tomorrow, that’s when I’ll do it.” The voice was from Sammy “One Gun” Getty, and it didn’t take much guessing to figure out what he was going to do and who he was going to do it to. Knowing when you’ll be killed is an advantage most people never have. I also knew with what. Sammy was called “One Gun” for a reason: he actually only had one, and I knew where he kept it. Everyone did. He never carried it on him unless he was going to whack somebody. So, I formulated a plan. One that didn’t leave much room for failure, but was all I had. It went beyond temporarily saving my own life. After all, if I’d wanted to skip town in the middle of the night with my wife and kid, fleeing to the far end of the world, I could have. But that wasn’t my style, and it was no way to live. My plan was deeper and more complex, but I had to work fast.

I knew a friend that worked in a new ammunition plant in Cape City, where they were making blank rounds for the talkies out in Hollywood. I was able to get my hands on a few. The night before I was supposed to be offed, I sneaked into our warehouse when the boys were doing business elsewhere. Except, I didn't plan on my brother being there. He had stayed behind, sleeping off his drunk. I told him I had forgotten my hat. He rose up on the couch, his black hair wild and his eyes bloodshot. We were twins, indistinguishable to everyone who didn’t know us well (and sometimes to those who did). He seemed distraught, like he’d just woken up in hell. He didn't say anything, just stared at me. I could tell he wanted to tell me something, though. It was itching at him, but he wouldn't let it out.

I casually walked around the corner, out of his line of site and found Sammy's loaded gun (under his "whacky hat,” an oversized novelty in the Mad Hatter fashion) and replaced the bullets with blanks. When I came back, my brother was still sitting up on the couch, looking like a confused toddler who just woke up from a nap. Then he started to cry. I came closer to him, if only to see if it was true that a Centuori could cry. He suddenly grabbed me by my shirt collar and pulled me next to his beet-red face, still criss-crossed with lines matching the pattern on the couch. His breath was thick with bootleg.

He finally spoke, "They're gonna whack you, Vincent." I told him that I already knew. Then he wiped his eyes as fast as he could, as if each tear was acid on his face. He sighed and slouched over, lost in thought. I could see a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and I almost felt like I should have told him my plan. But I didn't. He was too deep in the world I’d be leaving tomorrow. When I left that life, I would leave him, too. He was lost.

“I found my hat,” I said as I walked toward the door. “By the way, how’s that new Tommy of yours?”

“Works like gangbusters!” he said. I was just about out the door, when, from behind me, I heard the tatatat of that gun and saw the final, sober slump of my brother on the couch. He was lost, but he found a way out. I wanted a better way out.

A SCARECROW IN THE FIELD

The next day, I found myself riding in the back of a car with Sammy and a couple of his bozo cronies.

"Yeah, Tony said to meet out here in the middle o’ all these fields,” Sammy said. “Can you believe that? In the fuckin' fields, Vincent." Sammy was always a bad liar.

"Hey, Vincent," said one of the bozos, leaning back. "Where's your brother? He was supposed to meet us for breakfast."

Sammy answered for me, "Hey, you know Leo. Probably got sloshed and slept in some alley. You never know where that guy's gonna pass out. Hell, he could be sleepin' out here for all we know. You hear that, Vincent? Your drunken brother's passed out in the middle o' these fields like a scarecrow!"

This all got heavy laughter from the others, but it sputtered out abruptly as we turned onto a gravel road. We traveled about half of a mile in silence, except for the terrible, bone-crunching noise of the tires grinding against the rocks. Then the car suddenly stopped, and we all got out.

"Tony says to meet him out here," Sammy said as he pointed to the middle of a great field. How stupid did he think I was? Or maybe he just didn't care. I led the way, crushing through the autumn grass. I could feel the rest of the gangsters’ eyes burning a hole in my back. Just when I thought we had walked for a hellish eternity, I heard Sammy finally say, "This is far enough." I turned around and saw that Sammy already had his gun out, pointed at me. He was giggling as he put on his “whacky hat.” I always thought that hat was his desperate way of making murder fun and easy, as if the hat protected his emotions. Or maybe he just liked the mercury buzz. "Ho, ho, it's whackin' time," Sammy chuckled.

He narrowed his already squinty eyes, aimed the gun at my chest (never in the face; it was the rules. At least they gave me that much), and fired. I cried out and gripped my chest, at the same time splashing blood (my brother's blood) over my shirt. Then I fell over dead. He was none the wiser. I was dead to them, dead to organized crime, dead to everything...except vengeance.

But that would come later. Right then, my only concern was being dead. I knew my plan wasn't foolproof. It was only a matter of time before Sammy figured out the bullets in his gun were kind of screwy, but it would be enough time to hide out and think of what I was going to do next. I thought the least I could do was leave them a body. That night, I went back to the field and laid my brother down where his blood had already stained the grass. They were right; my brother was sleeping out in the fields...like a scarecrow.

Over the next few days, I hid out in old warehouses. Memories of my brother kept haunting me. I couldn't get his last words out of my head: "Works like gangbusters." I called a few people I trusted to see if anybody had caught on to my trick, but I shouldn’t have worried. Word on the street was that Sammy and his gang had gotten on the wrong side of a shootout with an Irish gang. Sammy and his boys got shot up like Swiss cheese and dumped into the Missouri River. That's the last anyone ever saw of Sammy “One Gun” Getty.

After that, I decided to pack up and leave town. I took Leo's Tommy gun and left my past behind me. Started over new. I found myself in Cape City, a fresh, booming metropolis whose black clouds weren't as thick as in some of the other cities. But it would happen sooner or later. My job was to make that later, or never, if possible. I had seen first-hand what organized crime did to a city, to democracy itself, and I was determined to cripple it at all costs. That’s when, remembering my brother’s dying words, I started calling myself “Gangbuster.”

As it turned out, I wasn’t alone. There were a few of us starting to surface here and there: superheroes. That's what they called us. But we didn’t see ourselves as superheroes. We didn’t even see ourselves as heroes. We were just crazy people who had snapped under the weight of out-of-control crime. There wasn’t a single one of us whose eyes didn’t reveal a touch of madness. It was the media and the people who labeled us as heroes. They only knew what they saw and felt. The time was right for superheroes. It was a crazy time that called for crazy people. I teamed up with a few of them every once and awhile, including Speakeasy Sasquatch, Fast Finger Freddy, and the original Skyscraper. We had our fun, and I'd like to think we made a difference. I’d like to think the dark clouds above the city were thinning.

FOSSILS FROM THE PAST

For many years, I brought down villains and busted up gangs. Being a costumed crime fighter had become a normal way of life for me. I dressed as I always had: a charcoal-gray, pinstriped suit and a fedora. But I also added an eye-mask to hide my identity. Together with my Tommy gun, a host of hi-tech gadgetry, and some key contacts on the inside, I usually managed to stay one step ahead of the gangsters.

Nothing came as a bigger shock to me, though, then the day when I learned from a contact that Sammy hadn’t been the one who ordered my death back in Kansas City. He was just a pawn, but being the scum that he was, he eagerly went along with it. The real double-crosser had been my closest confidant and trusted partner, Lorenzo Draconi. I still can’t believe it to this day, but it was true. By the time I learned this, Lorenzo, like me, had moved his base of operations to Cape City, where he got cozy with the arms manufacturers that were popping up all over that town.

He no longer went by the name Lorenzo, but was calling himself “Fossil”. Apparently, he’d started to identify himself as a super-villain, which he undoubtedly was in every way. One day, when he was doing some business at a factory (ironically, in the same place that had manufactured the blanks that saved my life years earlier), the place "accidentally" caught fire, and the whole thing blew sky-high. It was a terrible disaster, killing hundreds. Lorenzo survived, but was horribly deformed from the neck up.

The story goes that soon after the explosion, his right-hand man, Jimmy Jesky, when seeing his boss for the first time, said, "Geez, Boss! You look like some kinda fossil from, like, the Jurassic times." They say Lorenzo was so infuriated by this remark that he stabbed Jesky 123 times and threw him into Lake Inferior, where -- who knows? -- someday millions of years from now, Jimmy Jesky himself might become a fossil. As hard as Lorenzo fought it, the name stuck, and he eventually learned to accept Fossil as his sole identity. Like me, Lorenzo Draconi was dead, and Cape City would from then on fear the name of Fossil. And indeed they did!

In time, Fossil would become my arch-nemesis. We fought hard for many years with some victories and failures on both sides. He didn't know that I was actually Vincent Centuori, come back from the dead. He just hated Gangbuster. Shortly after the stock market crash in '29, we had our final battle. I remember it like it was yesterday. The whole country had come apart at the seams, and Fossil, disturbed as he was before, was now categorically mad. He and his loyal army of thugs broke into the Cape City Museum of Natural History and started shooting up the place, killing people left and right.

Skyscraper and I were on the scene the minute we got the call. The place was already surrounded by police cars, and Detective-Captain Max McGurk flapped his mouth and waved his tin in our faces, but eventually let us through. He knew this wasn't his fight. Within seconds of entering the museum, I unclogged some goons' pores, while Skyscraper slapped some skulls together. He was easily the tallest man on the planet, towering over 9 feet high. And like most giants not of fable, his height was a result of an overactive growth hormone, and he suffered from health problems. But not as much as villains did when they got in his way. He had fists the size of kettlebells and could intimidate anything that was considered alive. Probably anything that wasn't alive as well (bullets often seemed to turn tail in midair).

“I'll get this floor; you take the second,” I said. The former circus sideshow freak nodded and lumbered up the stairs, shaking several displays with each step. He was almost at home among the colossal dinosaur skeletons haunting the museum. Fossil, however, had already kicked his shoes off and was calling them family.

When I found him, he was bruising up some gal who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A mounted Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton reigned over him and his henchmen. More than any other dinosaur, Fossil resembled T-rex, suited up in dark tweed. His eyes peered out angrily at me from deep hollows and then, moving that muzzle of his, he sicked his boys on me. I mowed through them pretty quick, avoiding their bullets by sacrificing a petrified tortoise shell, which seemed fit for a shield.

“Drop the Tommy,” said Fossil, poking the poor lady's face with his own gun's barrel.

“You need help,” I said.

A smile tore across his leathery face and revealed a wide chasm of splintery teeth. “I need help not laughing at your idiocy. I can't be cured, Gangbuster. If you had lived my kind of life, you would understand.”

“I believe a man can be rehabilitated, Lorenzo.”

“That's name calling! And it's not fair unless you tell me yours. Now, drop the gun and slide it over.” I did like he told me and kicked my gun across the linoleum. “Attaboy!” he said. “Now I'm going to kill the g --” But he must of seen my brother's initials that had been scratched onto his old Tommy gun.

The T-rex skeleton started shaking; a bullet must have loosened it up during the last gunfight. Before it came crashing down, the gal had time to run to safety, as did Fossil. Had he wanted to. He just stood there staring at me, and I think he finally knew who I was. He didn't move, and the complete skeletal structure collapsed and showered bones down on him. He was smothered and crushed, and he died instantly.

I left Leo's gun buried with Lorenzo and joined Skyscraper on the second floor. He had already pounded the remaining goons, and they were piled together in a giant heap, waiting for the cops. We walked out the door with a dozen or so rescued citizens, happy we hadn't become Fossil fuel.

NEW THREATS FOR NEW DEALS

Throughout the '30s, as America continued to sink into the Depression, I continued my crusade against crime, both organized and unorganized. Murder and corruption were still rampant, but I felt better knowing I was doing something about it.

At that time, the man whose name everyone knew and feared was Baron Khan. The baron was not just a threat to Cape City; he was a threat to the whole world. Not a single animal, mineral, or vegetable was safe as long as he was out there. And as much as I hated to admit it, he was out of my league. Besides, by now, there were superheroes galore. Some with superpowers so amazing, so awesome, that it made the rest of us feel like small children who wanted to help out, but just got in the way.

More super-villains came too. Ones with equally staggering powers. I knew my place and let the big boys, like The Crimson Fist, handle most of them.

Someone like The Frog was more on my level. He was someone that I could fight and still feel I was accomplishing something. In fact, he was sort of a petty criminal caught up in the super-villain mentality, who never would have amounted to much without Baron Khan. The baron supplied The Frog with an experimental nerve gas, which he used to kill nearly 300 people on the new Hi-Lo mass transit system in 1935. So, in a way, I was fighting Baron Khan.

The last time I saw The Frog, he had just pulled off a daytime jewelery heist. I spotted him hurriedly toddling down an alley on his flippers, toting a jingling pillowcase. When he saw me, he leaped at least 30 feet into the air and landed on a rooftop. All I had was a hookshot. I fired it into the sky and was whizzed up within seconds. As I struggled to unhinge the hook, The Frog was already making his way towards another building. I dashed across the roof and tried to tackle him, but his slippery wetsuit prototype made it impossible to get a grip.

“This is none of your beeswax, Gangbuster!” he shouted and then hopped onto the next building's rooftop, which was several feet taller. I managed to yank the pillowcase full of stolen jewelery away from him as he flew up, but the effect was similar to what happens when one tug-of-war opponent suddenly lets go of his side of the rope. I tumbled backwards and through a skylight, landing in the attic's insulation. Then, like pink cotton candy quicksand, it swallowed me whole. I sunk down, crashing through the ceiling and onto the ground floor.

Running out the building's front door, I tried to follow The Frog's rooftop retreat from streets below. I saw a green shimmer streak across the sky, onto the Swann Hotel. Unfortunately, my hookshot wasn't long enough to reach the roof, so I was forced to take the building's elevator. Rushing past a frightened porter, I ordered the operator to take me to the top floor. From there, I darted up the stairs, shedding fiberglass, and burst through the door to the roof.

The Frog was still there, finishing putting on his new rebreather gear. He saw me, and once again, took off. I knew he was headed for Lake Inferior, and I knew that if he was allowed to reach it, I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of capturing him. As he bounded away onto the top of the Farqwater building, I shot my hook, hitting him, but it didn't catch. After firing again, I latched on to a gargoyle, which didn't look very happy to be my anchor, but stood sturdy long enough for me to eventually be reeled up.

On the roof, The Frog was stumbling around like he'd had one martini too many. My only guess is that when I fired my hookshot at him, it had hit the regulator of his rebreather, messing up the mixture of oxygen and whatever breathing gas he was using.

“Go away, Bang Guster!” he slurred out, his voice unnaturally low. He made his way to the edge and dizzily contemplated diving into the lake, over 100 feet below. “Thass nothin' I...can do that.“

“You'll die,” I said.

“I showed you to shut up, Gangbanger!” He pointed his little peashooter gun at me and fired, missing wildly. I could have shot him then, but I felt sorry for him and felt I was in no immediate danger. “Graybadger...heheheh...iz 'at your name? Hey! You kinda look like a gray badger. Hey...badgersss...don't wear hats!” He eyed the lake again.

“Don't do it, Frog.”

“S'nothin',” he said and then awkwardly stumbled off the roof's edge, his body tousling in the wind as he fell. Near the end, he sort of formed a half-assed diving position before he slammed into the frigid water. He was never heard from again. Although he most likely died as a result of the fall, or not being able to swim in his mental state, some people still credit it as the work of Natiakah, Cape City's very own lake monster.

After the decade came to a close, and the depression began to end, World War 2 suddenly ignited, and hysteria spread like wildfire. The world became preoccupied, watching the flames in the distance, wondering when we too would plunge into the inferno. All over the city, everywhere you turned, people’s faces would be masked behind the black and white of the papers, but their expressions were clearly spelled out in the headlines. And when America sent her boys overseas, the term “superhero” suddenly seemed facetious. Here they were vaunting around with their self-proclaimed, ostentatious titles, while normal people with normal names, like Jonathon McDonald and Charles Arnold, were being shipped off to the most dangerous and noble of all causes. The crazy people that had blossomed two decades earlier into a roaring chaos to be worshiped like gods were now seen as pests or threats to the order America so desperately sought. The popularity of the superhero had nose-dived to just above a German-speaking Jap.

It was then, in the early '40s, that I decided to call it quits. Not because I got caught up in the anti-superhero fervor of the time, or I had stopped believing, but because, quit frankly, I was getting old. And it wasn’t just physically either. Everything about me was antiquated. Younger, more modern superheroes with superhuman strength and other abilities were beating me to the action. After the National Firearms Act of 1934, it got harder and harder to get my hands on Thompson submachine guns and doing so made me feel like just another criminal. This was all part of the changing times; people tried to forget the violent decades that preceded them and looked to a more civilized future. I too was tired of all the violence and war and wanted nothing more than to hang my hat up and finally let my knuckles heal.

MY TWO CENTS’ WORTH

Whenever I was asked my name as a child, I always gave the same witty reply: “Vincent Centuori, and that’s my two cents.” If they got it, they usually laughed. But as I got older and became a troubled adolescent, it became sort of an inside joke for those who knew me. It was ironic, because I never had a “two cents’ worth” about anything. I never had a strong opinion, never had anything to stand behind and believe in. It was because I didn’t care. So it is with more great irony that I should find myself, today, telling this story. Not only would I make my opinions known, but I realized that I actually stood for something; I was a symbol of my beliefs during the more than two decades I fought crime. As I put on my eye-mask for the first time and stepped out onto the grimy streets of Cape City, I finally had something to believe in.

This afternoon I took a walk down Main Street. I don’t get around as well as I used to, but I still like to walk the streets of this city I’ve come to call home. It turned out to be a rainy day; the sun was trapped behind a thick layer of dark clouds and gloom hovered in the air like stale smoke. But I had come to see something I hadn’t seen in a long time: an 8-foot statue of me, erected in 1977. It stands at the southeastern end of Pavilion Park on Main and Rank Avenue, downtown. I don’t know why, but it was just something I needed to see. Maybe because I look so proud in that statue, hands pressed firmly on hips, projecting such a youthful confidence that I’ve lost over the years. That’s what I had come for, I guess.

I sat down on a park bench next to the statue and just stared at it through the rain. It too had been covered in gang signs (you don’t think a gang would pass up trashing a statue of some old-timer called Gangbuster do you?), but they weren’t recent and had started to fade. As I was looking at them, I noticed something that I had forgotten all about. Walking over to the statue, I saw the shiny, metal plaque at its base. The rain had washed away all the bird droppings and had pushed the vines away. I now could read the words:

Gangbuster
An original Cape City hero whose tireless campaign against organized crime helped keep the city safe and realize its dreams

I don’t know how long I stood there looking at that plaque, but when I finally looked up, I noticed that it had stopped raining. I gazed up into the sky and saw that the sun had finally broken free. The dark clouds had thinned out and, at last, dissipated altogether. And I knew I truly had made a difference.

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