In need of input on game, cards and icons

The icons are okay. The layout, and number of ranks suggests you can play this game as a poker deck. Or not. I don't know.
The gun/bullet spread behind the icons gets ridiculous at the higher ranks. Maybe change it up, and have the ranks use different stuff?

The card layout is fine, as you really aren't stuffing that much information onto each card.

I love cell-shaded art. The theme is sort of dark, but the colorful artwork really makes the ranks stand out.

This makes me wonder, if the ranks are straight up better (i.e. higher ranks are always better), or if the ranks have a certain theme, or range of mechanical effects. Since players can easily tell rank at a glance, is the information useful in game?

Without actually seeing the rules and the card effects, I can't really tell if the game has anything new to offer. The theme and art are great draws, but you might want to start thinking about what the focus of your pitch would be. Would it be some interesting mechanic, or are you just going to sell this game based on the strength of your art and theme.

I like your game more the more I think about it.

What happens if two players use the same ranked gangster? Is the next round used as a tie-breaker?

I'd probably just write the rules on a poker deck if I wanted to play, but your artwork is good enough to make me consider buying if the price is fair.

I didn't like your icons the first time, but they look fine today. I don't know why. Also, you're right about the higher ranks being easier to identify with the icon weapon spread. I didn't recognize the knife until I read the text description though.

Also, is the game strictly 2-player? If I had two decks, could I play a 4 player game with two on each side?

If I could make a suggestion on the ranking symbols;

Instead of a number of bullets and guns all mixed like they are presented here, perhaps do colour coded bullets;

1 Grey/Steel/Black bullet for 1-2
2 Grey/Steel/Black bullets for 3-4,
1 Silver bullet for Ranks 5-6
1 Gold bullet for Boss/Rank 7

I would consider also adding the corresponding bullet colour to the white outline area of the ranking to further reinforce it. Although you do have the background images corresponding to the various ranks, so that may be overkill if you also did the white area.

Perhaps 2 Silver, 3 Gold in those ranks just to emphasize it beyond the colour.

Otherwise, the layout looks perfectly functional. You have the pertinent quick info in the top left so people can fan their cards out naturally and still see it which is important.

I really, really like the concept and execution of your game. The fact that it likely will have a fairly low price point (as a seemingly card dominant game) only makes the odds of me potentially buying it go up!

I have 2 quick suggestions. One is very small and is simply an aesthetic thing that I noticed, the other might be more of a tweak to the game.

Minor aesthetic idea: In the background colors of the cards, it basically follows a rainbow color order from yellow to purple and then red for the boss. I like this, and I like red being the boss and it makes sense for it to be there. The one thing I noticed is that the current Enforcer level color is a blue/green and is noticeably lighter than the regular blue cards in the current soldier level. As you are already so close to having a very easy to distinguish pattern, I would switch the background colors of those 2 groups to have a more natural color palette transition.

If certain special powers defeat certain levels of characters, you could even then make those box colors match the background colors of the character to give a visual clue as well.

Tweak idea: I don't personally like the idea of a #1 being able to take out the boss. I know it is similar to the Spy in Stratego and I agree that there needs to be some way to defeat a Boss. This leads to my idea for a 14th card for each player: The Police. (With the art having a white or gray background so it contrasts against the color backgrounded criminal cards) (Use a police badge as its symbol in the corner with no number)

Think of it as the crime family tipping off the Police in order to catch their rivals in the act. The Police have no number, only a single special rule. "This card defeats all characters and this city card is reshuffled back into the deck." (This could also just make the city card go to no one at all as well, or even to the Police card playing player to show them bribing the Police. Whichever of those options you prefer.)

This adds one more card that will be left in your hand, increasing the variance. In multiplayer, it becomes an interesting decision where a high demand city card may invite The Police, but who plays the card? So you will see sometimes 2 or more Police cards getting played which are redundant, so those players may have burned off a valuable resource, or everyone plays a low card on a high demand city card, thinking it a Police trap, and then seeing a 3 or 4 winning a city card they had no business winning.

EDIT: Something I just thought of would be for the #1 level card special power basically able to ignore any Police cards played. He's such a low level guy, that he basically has no wrap sheet, so the Police aren't looking for him. THis creates this neat paper/rock/scissor between the #1Crook/Police/#13 Boss that both makes much more thematic sense, and increases strategic decisions.

For example: In a 4 player game, Player A plays a 4, Player B plays an 8, Player C plays Police, and Player D plays the 1. The Police card defeats all criminals, taking out the 4 and the 8, but the 1 escapes detection and then wins the square.