The Nemesis Chronicles: Crime's Death Dealer

The Nemesis Chronicles

Crime’s Death Dealer

by Gary Lovisi

Published by Bold Venture Press

boldventurepress.com

Cover design: Rich Harvey

The Nemesis Chronicles and the stories with by Gary Loivsi

Copyright 2016 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express permission of the publisher and copyright holder. All persons, places and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental.

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please purchase your own copy.

Table of Contents

Publication Notes

The Nemesis Chronicles

The Kingdom of Crime

The Season of Darkness

Destiny With a Gun

Time Out For Death

The Falcon Strikes!

Claws of the Falcon

The Satan Plague

The Nemesis Returns

Afterword: My Story of The Nemesis

About the Author

Connect with Bold Venture Press

Publication Notes

The Nemesis Chronicles Copyright © 2016 Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

THE NEMESIS TM & Copyright © 2016 Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

The Kingdom of Crime; The Season of Darkness; and Destiny With A Gun by Gary Lovisi all originally appeared in The Nemesis published by Gryphon Books, copyright ©1988 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

Time Out — For Death! by Gary Lovisi originally appeared in Behind The Mask #3, Winter, 1990 issue, and was reprinted in Gryphon Double #9 as Claws of The Falcon, copyright © 1990 and © 1994 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

The Falcon Strikes! by Gary Lovisi originally appeared in Behind The Mask #6, Fall 1990 issue and was reprinted in Gryphon Double #9, 1994 as Claws of The Falcon, copyright ©1990 and © 1994 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

Claws of The Falcon by Gary Lovisi originally appeared in Behind The Mask #28, 1994 and was reprinted in Gryphon Double #9, 1994 as Claws of The Falcon, copyright ©1994 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

The Satan Plague by Gary Lovisi was originally published as half of Gryphon Double #19, 1999, as The Satan Plague and is copyright ©1999 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

The Falcon Returns by Gary Lovisi appears here for the first time and is copyright ©2016 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

Afterword: My Story of The Nemesis by Gary Lovisi appears here for the first time and is copyright ©2016 by Gary Lovisi. All Rights Reserved.

The Kingdom of Crime

New York City

May 1995

It was just another crack house in another run down section of the great city. The hopeless and the helpless paying for the dubious privilege of self-destruction; creatures who had allowed their lives to become such deep pits of despair and misery that only a terrible drug like crack could get rid of the pain for a few lonely hours.

The man hidden in the darkness of the tenement doorway did not think of things in those terms however. He would say that such descriptions were too romantic in nature for what was really going down on these old streets — for he had grown up in these fetid buildings and played in these mean streets as a young boy and had seen the truth of what happens when the evil prey upon the weak — and that truth is, that the weak are just hammered down lower and lower until the only way to survive is to become like everyone else around them. Then they just create more pain and misery among a new crop of the young, or the weak, or the good-hearted innocents, who seem to have become a quickly vanishing species. Well, that wasn’t about to happen to Harry Turner. No, Harry Turner had seen enough of the pain and torture, and he had had enough. Now he was going to do something about it!

Turner checked his weapons and other equipment for the final time in the secluded shadows of the old tenement doorway. Two Uzi sub-machine pistols, loaded and ready. Safety’s off. One large Bowie-type knife, serrated edge, stainless steel blade, sheathed to his outer right thigh, the guard loosened allowing his hand quick access to the weapon at a moment’s notice. A tough nylon cord with grapple was wrapped around his waist, while his belts held two smoke grenades on the right side, two standard fragmentation grenades on the left, and a dozen 15 and 25-load clips for the Uzis. He was ready for anything — he hoped.

Atop his head, covering a mass of thick black hair was a large slouch hat, also black, which blended well with his masked face and the black turtleneck sweater that bulged from the strain of his well-developed muscles. With black cape-like jacket, black pants, and even the black road shoes he wore for traction and agility, the ensemble of this newest of nighttime avengers was complete. Thus dressed and armed — The Nemesis was ready to strike!

The girl — she couldn’t have been much older than ten or twelve, lay in a grimy corner of the squalid room. She watched with a mixture of fear and fascination as the other denizens of the house — in this modern version of an olden day opium den — bought the drug that was the mainstay of their miserable lives and then readied it for use. They were a crude lot, the losers of life; a druggy pimp, his for-sale whores, small-time thieves, addicts of all kinds, some old and young welfare mothers, and even a couple of hot-shot high school punks who were out for a thrill and thought they knew it all at seventeen. All were brought together by their one insatiable desire — the desire for drugs. In this case crack!

The Nemesis moved across the rooftops slowly now, careful and quiet as a mouse, in a manner not to attract attention. It was a hot and rainy Spring night, and few people were out on the streets and fire escapes, as the man in black jumped an intervening alleyway long since used as a garbage dump by the inhabitants of the surrounding tenements. In a few more rapid movements the man in black quickly jumped across a couple more rooftops until he reached the building that was his target.

Come here, girl. One of the men cooed softly giving the child a nice enough smile, laced as it was with all manner of hidden base desires. And some of them not so well hidden. I got something here for you — something you gonna like very much. Make you forget all your troubles.

Lay off the kid, Mousey. This came from a large fellow by the name of Gando. He was the ‘house mother’, the guy who sold the crack and furnished the works. He made a deuce on each ten dollar hit and a fiver for every twenty buck vial of the drug that he sold. He also had the local paraphernalia concession, he made a buck for the rental of works — pipes, cutters, flame, needles when wanted, and all the other nasty little things that would get a crackhead to crack heaven in no time at all — or junkies and shooters of all types.

Little lady needs a lift, Gando. Some crack’ll get her friendly enough, the stony said as his eyes melted over the slim girl.

The kid just shivered under his slavering gaze. Alone. Scared. She didn’t have a friend in the world now, nor a chance in hell, and she knew it only too well.

She’s goods, Gando said with a gruff growl, and no one touches her but Rico. He owns her now and if anyone messes her, it will be him, not you — understand!

The girl, all of twelve years old was terrified now, she hardly knew what to make of things. She’d been given by her mother to her uncle Johnny to raise — or so the story went — but in reality she had been sold by her own mother, to her mother’s pimp, for a rather paltry score of drugs. Crack had done that, totally destroyed the mother’s last sense of decency so that the welfare of her own daughter was forgotten when it conflicted with that next powerful hit of a drug that she just had to have.

Harry Turner knew the hookers, tramps, winos, druggies and pimps who infested this section of the city — he knew all about Johnny Rico too. Johnny Rico, a hot-shot, wise-guy who knew all the answers and seemed to get away with all kinds of crimes. Yeah, Rico was one of the worst of a bad lot.

Father Torrez, who ran a settlement house for runaway children, many all-too-soon caught up into all kinds of nasty things they could not handle and in desperate need of help — had heard word on the street about how Johnny Rico had himself a new little lady all bagged and ready to be picked up for training in the life. Father Torrez had told the cops all about his fears for the girl’s safety and future, but in this part of the city the police were usually a part of the problem and not the solution. They’d been real attentive and full of official sympathy, but this kind of thing happened a hundred times a day in the big city, which all meant that a lot of nothing was going to be done about the problem. At least not right away — and by the time the officials moved on this — he knew it would be too late for the girl. Finally Father Torrez mentioned the story of the girl to his friend of many years, Harry Turner, hoping that he might know how to deal with the situation and save the girl from the grim fate that Rico had in store for her.

I hear she’s just a kid, Harry, the priest said with heavy sadness. A good kid, too. Innocent and sweet. He mother really tried to shield the girl, in her own ill-conceived way of course, to spare the child some of the pain and misery that controlled her own life. The mother recently died — God forgive me — and now I think Rico’s got the girl stashed away in one of his crack houses uptown. Pretty soon everyone will forget about her — then Rico will step in. Eventually she’ll be just another casualty walking the streets not knowing or caring if she’s dead or alive, but that would be long after they’ve auctioned her off to some big money buyer who’d get first dibs on her virgin cherry. You know what the reality is. Harry, please, you’ve got to do something to save that poor child.

Turner played that fateful conversation over and over in his mind the last few hours as he thought about the kid. Turner was a man who was moderately well-off and rather comfortable in life, a person whose good sense told him not to get involved with this dark side of life again — but when he was shown a photo of the girl, something within Turner burst open and he silently vowed that he would leave no stone unturned until he found that missing child and brought her to the safety of Father Torrez.

For hour after hour Turner roamed the streets, unshaven, smelly, with that drug-hungry look blazing from his eyes, copping coke and crack from neighborhood skells. He bought the drug in many forms and talked to everyone he ran into, and eventually he discovered where the crack houses were and who ran them. Finally he discovered a run-down pile of debris that was said to be run by a big Latino named Gando — a too-tough gang guy who was said to be an associate of the mob gangster Johnny Rico.

It was now bare moments before his first attack on this refuge of crime and evil. Harry Turner stood silent in the stark moonlight atop the roof of the building, looking down through the dirt-smeared skylight into the rooms of the tenement — and he grew taut and fearful. It was a big step he was about to take, to take the law into his own hands, and as a lone individual tackling the very inner sanctum of crime it now seemed foolhardy and much too dangerous. For a moment he’d had second thoughts about what he was about to begin this night. Better to go home and let the police handle this, after all it’s what they get paid for. Then some inner reflex caused Harry Turner to withdraw the worn photo of the little girl from his jacket pocket. He saw the innocence and hope in those young eyes — and then looking below him through the filthy cracked glass he saw that same terrified child shivering alone on the floor in a corner of the room — with two of the house’s drugged occupants slowly moving in on her. It was then that Harry Turner knew what he must do — and that The Nemesis would be born this rainy Spring evening to make war upon all those who were a part of the kingdom of crime.

With a mighty leap, Turner’s feet landed dead-center and directly through the skylight — as his body plunged downward to the floor of the apartment below accompanied by a raucous assault of awful sounds. Turner quickly let loose with two smoke grenades that instantly set the rooms into utter confusion, with howls of rage and surprise from the dozens of druggies sprawled out upon the floors in all of the many rooms. No one knew for sure what was happening, but all agreed that it was real bad, so instantly all the rooms became a mass of confusion and panic.

One woman yelled, "Raid! Cops! Get out now!"

Then the stampede began, but not before Harry Turner was upon his feet with both Uzi auto pistols out and ready for action. One druggie, probably a guard or lookout came at Turner with a long rusty blade, but two short bursts from the weapons at his side dispatched the attacker into a tangled heap upon the old dirty floorboards. The man was certainly dead. So now the killing had begun. So be it!

Where’s the girl! Turner shouted through the smoke to another terrified man who was hastily trying to scoop up a few vials of the drug that had been left behind by another addict in the panic. Where’s the girl?

The man looked at Turner for a brief moment, thought better of drawing his own pistol when he saw the smoking Uzis pointed right at him with meaningful deadly determination. He said, Scruf and Sam took her, Man. Now leave me be!

Turner threw the man away from him in one solid blow and the man eased back slowly to disappear into another room and run away with the others.

Turner ran through the maze of rooms looking for the girl. Where was she? The place was a mess, nothing better than a barely standing pile of filthy debris set up in the manner of a large rat warren, with tunnels and passages broken through walls and floors into room after room and floor to floor, through walls, stairwells and what was left of apartments where people — families — had once lived. Now it was just the land of the walking dead.

Turner ran into one room and shot through a huge hole in the wall to find himself in a filthy alcove, and then through another wall opening, to find himself in yet another apartment on the other side of the tenement. Here he heard a muffled cry, and moved closer to see the girl a few yards ahead of him being dragged through a doorway by the two druggies, probably Scruff and Sam.

Drop her — or I’ll drop you both! Turner shouted as he let go with