“In the end we’ll all wake up at heaven’s door
Always tryin’ to decipher what’s best for our lives
Till we’re flying in superhyper for sunnier skies
Only questions, never answers to what it’s all for
Tragedy and ecstasy start feeling all the same
Hiding from your majesty when you call my name
Don’t I wanta know what keeps my vision blind
Thinkin’ I can tell how best to survive”
….Comedy of Errors
….Saklad


Night One -- The Streets of Fatlington


When a good number of the committee suggested that Captain Blackadder go with them to Club 30, Blackadder politely begged off and went to his car for the ride home. Heading South on Atlantic Avenue, he'd gotten only a few blocks from the Convention Center when a cab stopped suddenly in front of his car. He slammed on his brakes and came to a stop, but the car behind him plowed forward anyway, sandwiching the vehicles together. Cursing, Blackadder began to work the door handle when two further cars screeched to a halt on either side of his Packard, scaping its sides as they huddled close.

<> he thought. Blackadder saw all four of the other drivers drop below their windshields out of sight. <>

The thought remained forever unfinished as the PIAT round fired by the fifth attacker from the roof above vented the full force of its 2.5 pounds of shaped-charge explosive through the skin of the vehicle and into Captain Blackadder. The other drivers quickly exited their damaged vehicles and fled the scene.


In the shadow of the boardwalk at the edge of Seaside Park, one man walking home from the convention center encountered a lone man wearing a black trenchcoat, muffler, and a gray homburg. There were no sudden moves or hints of violence, only a brief and hushed conversation. At the end of the discussion, the man in the homburg produced a card with a local telephone exchange number o n it.

“If you’re interested, contact me and we’ll finalize things.”

The first man nodded politely without replying, and continued his walk through the park and to home.


Raskolnikov was sitting in the living room of his brick townhouse, watching "I Love Lucy" and laughing at the antics of Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance. His tummy began to growl. The food on the television screen was making him hungry! It was time to order something, but what? Burgers? Chinese food? No, perhaps something more fitting.... maybe an Italian place was still open. As Raskolnikov thumbed through the yellow pages, he realized that it was the middle of the dinner rush -- probably too late in the evening for a fancy place to still have a table open. That's when he realized.... that pizza delivery place down the street was open past 10pm! His pangs of hunger increasing, Raskolnikov dialed, his sweaty fingers threatening to slip with each spin of the dial.

"Mizza Mut Pizza, Fatlington's sauciest pizza, may I take your order?" said the squeaky adolescent voice.

"Yes, I would like to order 10 large sausage and pepperoni pizzas, 5 milkshakes, and a half-dozen of your meatball sandwiches. And don't skimp on the plates and napkins! I don't have time to wash dishes OR bathe," said Raskolnikov.

"Certainly, your total will be $34.75, and it will be there in about thirty minutes!"

“ Hold on, wait.... "$34.75?" asked Raskolnikov, "Isn't that extremely cheap?"

“Not at all, actually. It's 1951, silly buns. This is the most expensive meal you'll ever eat."

And so Raskolnikov flipped open his wallet and found the cash for the feast, and waited and waited and waited patiently. It seemed like it was taking forever. Where was that pizza guy? He couldn't wait much longer, the fury within him demanded an explanation. His trembling fingers once again dialed the number and soon, the familiar squeaky voice responded with the familiar greeting.

"Yes, this is Mister Raskol P. Raskolnikov down on Oriental, I ordered pizza from you over an hour ago and I demand to know what is taking so long?" he bellowed.

"Sir, that was five minutes ago."

"Oh" said Raskolnikov, feeling a bit disappointed. "So I guess it's not free then?" he asked, hopefully.

"No, sir, I can't do that."

{i}Feeling dejected and disappointed, Raskolnikov hung up the phone. His patience had not been rewarded after all, and now, he was in a horrible mood. Only one thing to do[/I]....

>ding dong<

And sure enough, just as he was about to give up hope, and precisely 25 minutes from the time he ordered, the pizza had arrived at long last. There were two men standing at the door, holding the stacks of pizzas and sandwiches.

"That will be $34.75, mister Raskolnikov!" said one of the men from behind a stack of steaming boxes.

"Well it's about time!"

Raskol grabbed the boxes of pizzas, the sandwiches, the milkshakes, and the pile of plates and napkins, and made sure the order was correct, given that it was so late, it was obviously made wrong too. No, surprisingly, everything was still hot and made correctly, so Raskolnikov grudgingly admitted that he should pay full price, even though it was so very, very late.

"Here you go. Here's thirty four dollars and....."

[I} Raskolnikov grabbed his change jar, and began counting out pennies and nickels as slowly as humanly possible. A good 5 minutes later, the pizza men were handed exactly 34 dollars and seventy-five cents.

<> Raskolnikov took a bite of his pizza and a smile spread across his face. His heart grew three sizes that night, and he began digging into his pockets for something to tip the driver with. And sure enough, he heard the metallic jingling of coins in his pocket, and pulled out a fistful of more change. He began counting it very carefully, weighing how generous he was going to be.

"Here you go gentlemen. Here's a fiver for your trouble."

He handed one of the pizza guys a shiny nickel, to split between them, and slammed the door. Five minutes later, he heard the door bell ring again.

>ding dong<

[I}He opened the door and got a face full of burning hot pizza.[/I]

"OH MY GOD IT BURNS! IT BURNS!!!"

But that wasn't the end of it. More and more slices of pizza were being flung at the fat greasy man, who had in his infinite wisdom decided to come to his door wearing only his favorite unwashed pair of tighty-whities. The ones with the gaping holes in it. His skin was covered in melting cheese and burning hot pizza sauce, and he slammed the door.

"No, you can keep the change, you filthy cock-a-roach!" said one of the pizza delivery men, both of whom were now clad in trenchcoats and fedoras. They lifted up their Tommy guns and began blasting bullet holes in the flimsy wooden door, shooting out all the windows, and carving their nicknames into the brick building itself, and spraying bursts in Raskolnikov’s direction as well.

"Thanks for ordering, call us again soon!"

Raskolnikov dove under a couch and cried like a little girl until the disgruntled pizza men went away. Somehow, he escaped with his life.... just barely.


Near the Hotel Abbatoir, Earthling had just walked into the cool night air again after a nightcap at the hotel bar, when several men in trenchcoats and low slung hats stepped out of the trees and bushes of seaside park, drawing Tommy guns from their coats as they moved forward.

As they moved forward, two figures slammed open car doors and leapt on the gunman from either side. Three of the four would-be shooters were knocked down and had their guns kicked away by the rapidly retreating pair of tacklers. There was nobody to stop the fourth shooter, however, who moved toward Earthling and triggered a burst of fire.

Earthling had already made a start backwards toward the hotel doors. The gunmen fired behind him as Earthling sprinted through the door, almost as if he were “herding” him with gunfire. Nothing and nobody impeded Earthling’s escape, however, as he vaulted the main desk and ran out the back office exit on the far side of the Hotel.

Frustrated, the four shooters quickly left the scene, fading into the gloom of Fatlington.


Slash and earn was striding down the boardwalk, his pace suggesting frustration at something or someone, when his walk home was interrupted. The first shooter simply popped up a stairwell from the beach side of the boardwalk, leveling a revolver of some kind and holding some kind of business card.

>Clang…Clang<

went the two soft-nosed slugs as they ricocheted off the steel plates in his overcoat. Slash was staggered but unharmed by the shots. Two figures leapt up behind the gunman, knocking him off the raised boardwalk and into the sands, leaving the business card to flutter off in the breeze.

The Second gunman, positioned on the roof of an apartment block about a block away, saw the failure of his associate, figured the target to be armored, and eased the sights upward to head height. He never even squeezed the trigger a third figure leapt onto the boardwalk and knocked slash and earn to the boards and behind a concrete and board bench as he was lining up the shot. He quickly dropped the weapon and made his escape across the rooftops. Though chased for a little while, his partner made good his escape as well. Slash, dazed by the episode, wondered who he should thank for the armor plating…and the knot on his head from when he was knocked down.


Askthepizzaguy was walking from the cinema house, still chuckling over the Bugs Bunny cartoon he’d just seen, when the attack came. The first he knew it was an attack was when the baseball bat hit him behind the left knee and folded his legs under him. The Balaclava-wearing batsman was bringing up the bat to smash in the supine Pizza’s face when a gunshot took the bat right out of his hands. A second shot hammered into the batsman’s body armor, staggering him behind the movie ticket kiosk that Pizzaguy had just passed.

Seeing the failure of their designated hitter, a quartet of shoots opened up on Pizza from the middle of the street in front of the theatre. Pizza, low on the ground, would have made an easy target if it were not for the sudden arrival of three cars, each screeching to a halt between the shooters and Askthepizzaguy. Oddly, the third car was a bit behind the others, as though catching up to cover a missing car. Of the thirty-two rounds fired by the shooters, none reached him where he was, low to the ground behind the covering cars, though 5 other movie patrons were hit, three fatally.

With sirens announcing the approach of the police, the shooters rapidly departed the scene, followed almost as quickly by the protectors. His leg aching, Askthepizzaguy found himself staring up at the other movie patrons, all watching him and the other victims in a sort of stunned fascination. Pizza broke the momentary silence.

“B’duh, b’duh, b’duh…that’s all folks.”


Knife wounds are kind of unusual, as Slysnakehad just found out. You can be cut and bleedinf for a surprising amount of time before you realize you’ve been wounded. He collapsed in the street, only a few steps from the entrance of the City Library.

“This isn’t good at all,” he said, collapsing into the arms of some unknown Fatling matron, “not good at all.”

[It had started with a lot of jostling in the crowd at the front of his boarding house. Normally, things were fairly quiet, but a shooting at the cinema up the street had foot traffic backed up and things were rather unsettled. He was pretty sure there had been five attackers, coming in close with their knives and using the crowd for cover. All told, there had been eight people with fedoras and mufflers mixed in with the crowd, though the ones he thought were trying to screen him from harm didn’t have their act together enough to keep the attackers from slipping in close.

In the end, he’d thought he had made a lucky escape despite the odds, running 3 blocks from the attack and coming away with nothing more than a few slices and the need to get a new overcoat. He never felt the slice under his arm that pushed between the ribs. Enough luck was with him to make it a downward slash – and upwards motion would have punctured deeply into the lung or spleen, but he’d bled profusely before his adrenalin-jacked system had bothered to inform him of the wound[/I].


9:52AM, Tuesday, 30 October 1951
The Executive Meeting Room (Small Ballroom)
Fatlington Convention Center
Fatlington, New Jersey


“…so anyway, the ambulance got him over to Mercy Hospital in time, but he lost a lot of blood and certainly won’t be attending today’s meeting.”

Fermanagh looked grimly around the room.

“That’s several attacks we noted, one of them successful. You’ve got to do your best to root out those Mafiosi and bring them to justice. I don’t know how much longer we can count on them staying uncoordinated. General?”

Generalhankerchief strode to the podium dressed in dark “morning” gray, somber and all too appropriate for the harsh business at hand. A quick glance noting that there were no initial questions, he gaveled the Committee into loose session for the mid-day.

OOC

Day Two, and its lynch vote, begins. Phase ends:

Remember, do NOT edit a post with a vote in it; post the change in a separate post.



Attacked: Askthepizzaguy (n1), Earthling (n1), Raskolnikov (n1), Slash and earn (n1)

Wounded: Slysnake (n1)

Killed: Captain Black Adder (n1)

Lynched: Nobody

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