Part 1 : Shaun Harvey
Jeez, I forgot how much I hate the heat in this place. It's so dry.
But then, almost as if the city realises I'm back, the heavens open. The deluge, mixed with the unyielding humidity, feels like I'm drowning on the goddamn sidewalk.
I find my "rental car" in an unlit long-term parking lot although, looking at the state of it, I could just as easily claim I got it from an auto-wrecker's. Before I get anywhere near the city limits I pull over and swap the license plates around of half a dozen other parked cars. Hopefully the owner of the plates that end up on the "rental" won't notice the difference too soon.
Hopefully the owner of the "rental" won't miss it at all – there is, after all, a key in the sun visor, the headliner sags right down over the passenger seat, the air-con doesn't work, and the window winder is missing from the driver's door. Even more pressing right now is the fact only one windshield wiper works too. Lucky for me it's the driver's side so I can still see half of what's in front of me.
It might have been careless to come in through the airport; I'm not exactly welcome in this city anymore, if I ever had been. You might be asking yourself, why's a guy that's escaped once, that's a wanted man and not just in the police precincts, why does a guy like that risk it all by skipping plain as day back through the front door?
Mainly, I don't wanna spend my entire time here looking over my shoulder. So I gave them their best chance of grabbing me, and they missed. Maybe I might make it back out when all this is over.
So then, you might ask, why the Hell did you come back at all?
I've been asking myself that same question the whole flight. I'm asking it again now as I drive streets once intimately familiar, now hazily recalled. There's a pang of nostalgia, sure; I gave the better part of my life to this city. It's where the underpinnings of the life I have now came from. I miss being a young guy with a future ahead of him and wonder, if I could do it all again, what would I do different?
If I'm honest with you, not a god-damn thing. That's not saying it all turned out gravy because it didn't. Maybe I'm saying I'm too stupid to learn from the first mistake and keep making it again and again. But also I don't do the "yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir" crap the real career guys seem to live their lives by. If only I had the smarts maybe I could've ended up one of the shot callers, but then maybe I'd have been bored enough to screw all that up too, so who gives a damn about maybe?
I've got a stop to make before I hit her place. Yeah, there's a 'her', but I'll get to that.
Right now I'm at a place I used to frequent, a place very few of my former colleagues would care to set foot in. It's not a comfortable spot for folks not from the neighbourhood, if you know what I mean; us white guys tend to stick out.
For all the world, it's a liquor store, cheap booze for life's losers. It's the under-counter prescriptions that I'm here for, the kind of dispenser that comes with 9mm pills. The counter guy don't know me and asks me if I'm a cop.
I laugh at that one. Counter guy calls for backup and finally, here's Jerome.
"The f*** are you doing here," he all but spits at me.
Yeah, nice to see you too, a$$hole. "What, no hug," is what I say.
"What you in here fo' anyway," he demands.
Nope, no hug. Shame, I almost missed his body odor. Wait – no I didn't.
"I need a piece," I admit.
"Fool, go to the gunshop."
"No I need a piece that I might have to use."
"Jeez, man, then hit up the pawn shop, top of this block."
"Jerome…"
"Hang on man," Jerome starts thinking out loud. This is never good. "You mean to tell me you jus' came in here an' you ain't packin'?"
Aww, damn.
He's getting on a roll now. "Damn, fool, you all kinds of stupid," he points out as he steps round from behind the counter. F***, I was hoping to avoid this.
Jerome pulls his own gat from the waistband of his pants and presses it against my temple.
Lucky for me, this is more the welcome I was kind of expecting so I can whip the gun from his hand before his pot-glazed mind can get to pulling the trigger, and then I bring the butt down on his nose. Him and his boy go crazy while I check the piece is loaded.
"This is a nice one J," I say, interrupting the flow of expletives and other bullsh*t coming from the pair of them. "This one for sale?"
"Hell no that ain't for sale, sh*thead! That's mine," he protests, still clutching his bleeding nose, but now he swings an arm lazily in the direction of his boy. "Get him something, better make sure it don't come back on any us," he instructs.
This is good. This means I'm getting a clean piece. Counter guy puts a silver vintage semi-automatic down. There's ivory decoration on the handle but it's cracked and half covered with several layers of grubby PVC tape. He slams it down on the counter, and then slams a box of 9mm shells down next to it. I take the bullets out of Jerome's clip, just for good measure.
"Fi' hun'erd," counter guy says. If you need a translation; $500.
"Get outta here, that's extortion," I protest.
Jerome snorts. "You can afford it."
Uhh, this again. I shake my head to show how tired I am of this sh*t.
"You shouldn't believe everything The Man tells you," I say. "Two hundred, and gimme some bourbon for the road."
"Three hundred, take your bourbon and get the f*** outta here," Jerome counters.
This encounter's probably going to end up costing me a lot more than that, but hopefully I'll be long gone by the time Jerome's boss comes looking to collect. I get a handful of tiny airplane bottles of some nasty liquid advertising itself as bourbon, put them in the left pocket of my dishevelled suit jacket, the gun and the shells in my right, and drop Jerome's gun in a mop bucket full of filthy water by the door on my way out.
The little bottles aren't cheap, but they oughta be. I'd try using 'em as toilet cleaner if only cola weren't so much cheaper.
It's a little after nine when I pull up to her place on Fudge Street. I park a ways down from her house by a vacant lot because I don't want any curtain twitchers noticing me parking right outside. There's a light on in her window but nobody answers when I buzz the door. I can't see movement through the window, or in any of the adjacent houses, so I head around the back, sticking to the shadows. Last thing I need is someone calling the cops for a prowler, but lucky for me the rain and the dark covers most of my movement and my noise.
The back door's ajar. I draw my piece and nudge it further open, see that the lock's all busted from where it's been kicked in. Now I move slowly inside, sweeping methodically through the house like I did when I was a real detective. Whoever was here is long gone, and by all appearances, so is she; there's some strewn clothing in her bedroom and the sheets are unmade.
The bathroom sink and tub under the shower are bone dry. At least a couple of days' mail sitting under the slot.
I keep the nine in my hand until I'm back in the car. I'd been concerned before, but now I've got that cold feeling in my chest.
I didn't really know her. She was working despatch to pay her way through the academy when I worked homicide. It was only after my fall from grace, as it were, and subsequent hightail out of the state that she graduated, and quickly made detective.
That she managed it at all is all kinds of wrong. She's smart, don't get me wrong. Witty too, and I don't doubt she can protect herself, one on one, if push comes to shove. But far too nice. This work isn't for nice people and it isn't for straight-shooters. Being nice doesn't open the doors you need to kick open, doesn't get people talking that you need to beat the story out of.
Oh, you think I'm a dinosaur? Come see me when it's your sister, or wife, or mom that's lying dead in a convenience store parking lot. When you want justice but none of the 28 witnesses caught the license plate or the colour or even the god-damn make of the minivan that did the drive-by. When none of them saw which way it went out of the lot. When you know that they know who the trigger man is but they ain't talking because they got to cover for their truancy or pot stash or unlicensed firearm or other bad habit.
When the killer's some wise-ass underage gang banger that sees no difference between hitting an innocent bystander with an AK or choosing no cheese in their taco.
Damn, where was I? Oh yeah. Nice.
Nice doesn't keep you alive long in Los Santos.
Back in the car, I shake the rain off and pull my phone out of my inner jacket pocket to read her email again. Wonder why, out of everyone she could've reached out to, did she pick me? Not too difficult to work out, actually; she'd been sent undercover and she thought she was in danger. Either she mistrusted her handler, or else she was afraid of them. So she had to call for backup.
I was polite to her because I thought she was cute. Other guys, they hit on her all the time, said some downright filthy things to her, just cos they liked the way she blushed. I saw how much she didn't like that, and I didn't like her being exposed to it either.
Now I'm no gentleman, but there was something about her that made me want to shield her from all the dirty in the world. Call it my one remaining shred of decency, or maybe my desperation to have one.
Her name is Candace Butler but she has a little tattoo just behind her right ear, three little daisies. None of the other guys seemed to have noticed on it when they were busy making vulgar comments about her tits. So, whenever I was alone with her, I called her 'Flowers'.
That's how she signed off the email. That's why I'm sure it's her.
I need to know about her undercover assignment so I'm going to have to visit an old "colleague". Now won't that be nice?
I've never been one for good ideas, but the liquor from Jerome's store, although nasty, did a good job of numbing my senses and, besides, I wanted to see how the Lieutenant would react, so I poked the bear in the eye with a stick for the second time that evening and went and sat next to him at his usual barstool, ordered myself a decent drink from the barmaid before offering him any form of acknowledgement.
Actually, I decided to ignore him while I drank too, just to poke him that little bit more. Finally he got fed up and snarled "you've got some balls."
"Good evening to you too, Ray," I finally said and tilted my empty glass towards the barmaid, indicating for a refill.
"Tell me why I shouldn't arrest you right now and drag your sorry ass in front of all the boys you betrayed at the precinct."
"Because I suspect your real boss would prefer the cops didn't get to me first."
He chuckles then, before turning real serious. "Give us a minute Mandy," he barks, and the barmaid makes herself scarce.
Like I said, I've never been one for good ideas. Confronting the Lieutenant at his regular haunt was a foolish move. I should have anticipated the assault from the six guys now coming up behind me.
Oh, wait a minute, I did anticipate it; I'm already dropping off my stool when the first punch comes, hastily redirected to try and catch me mid-flight and as such it hurts the top of my spine but won't slow me down much until the bruise comes out later. My spine on the guy's knuckles hurts him more than me and by that time I'm on the ground, bringing the stool around sweeping at the legs of the guys there.
The Lieutenant's already tumbled off his stool and scurried back. He could hold his own in this fight but he's fat and lazy and, more to the point, he's with his boys so why bother?
He's got a superior smirk that I'm looking forward to wiping off his face, but now the odds have caught up and the six guys are raining punches on me. I'm on the floor again because they've put me there and all I can do is curl up and hope they don't hit anything important, like the gun I'm fighting to get into my hand that I blow one of their feet off with.
Yeah, that gets their attention. They fall back a little and I take the opportunity to clamber back to my feet, swinging the piece from face to face. Sure, any of them can rush me, but who's first in line to take a bullet for his buddies, huh? Huh?
"Boys, let me introduce you to Detective Shaun Harvey. You might remember he hit a crew right after they ripped off an armored truck, and made off with five million dollars." The Lieutenant says "five million dollars" slowly, like a gameshow host, or maybe like he's not sure if his boys can count to five.
Oh yeah, didn't I mention? I'm famous. Apparently I'm filthy rich too, but if you know what I apparently did with the loot, I'd appreciate you letting me know. I might even throw you half for your trouble.
From the looks on the guys' faces – at least the ones not on the floor howling for their momma, holding the bloody stump that used to be their foot – they want to know what I did with the money too.
"Who is it you're working for these days Ray," I ask. "Is it Madrazo or Weston? Or… someone else?"
"Looks to me like you have a more pressing concern," he retorts, still wearing that godawful smirk. Seriously, he looks like he's been caught in the middle of soiling himself.
"You're right, I do. I need to talk to one of your undercover dicks."
He laughs at that one, laughs long and hard. "I can't say I don't miss you Harvey," he beams.
"Yeah, always lovely talking to you Ray. We'll have to catch up again sometime. Now if you don't mind," and I wave with the pistol briefly, indicating that I'd maybe like a bit of space to head out the door, if it's all the same to you nice boys.
"Let him go, boys," the Lieutenant orders, wearily, but resigned. They try to look tough for a minute. Damn near succeed too, but then they back up. Not much, but enough for me to slide through keeping my gun on them. Eventually, as I near the exit, they turn their attention, rather unsympathetically, to their injured friend. My exit isn't anywhere near as graceful as my entrance. I'm gonna need an aspirin and maybe some more bourbon.
So, what did that achieve? I'll be honest with you – nothing. But can I tell you a secret? It wasn't supposed to.
You might be thinking, Harvey you idiot, why not just sit in the car and follow him when he leaves? See where he goes? But I already know the answer to that. He'll go to a titty bar, or to Lacey's to see the working girl without a visa he thinks he's exploiting. If he's feeling particularly whacky, he might even go home and play the good husband to his wife (he's got grandkids now, two from his oldest daughter and his son's wife has one on the way).
What makes me think my appearance will make him change his plans for the rest of the evening? Well, technically, Ray's not stupid. But sometimes he makes an exception.
If I'd have been thinking more clearly, I'd have stopped by an electronics store, figured out some way to bug his car or listen in to his phone.
But I wasn't, and moving around the city was perilous enough anyway so I called Lester to do it for me.
Lester's brilliant with computers but if you're a human being, well, calling him may have been a mistake.
Nonetheless, I'm not tailing the Lieutenant. He'd spot that. No, I'm driving out of the city to a rural motel for the night, making sure nobody's tailing me, so I'm nowhere near him when he stops at Legion Square and scurries to a phone booth.
Lester's got an audio feed from the booth before the number connects, but the conversation's short and one-sided; the Lieutenant simply says "he's back in town," and hangs up.
I'm just getting ready for a hot shower when Lester calls with the lack of news. The number the Lieutenant called is unregistered, probably a burner, and whoever's using it is hiding their tracks well because the signal seemed to be coming from China. Either that, or Ray's working for the Triads, which is unlikely. He's your all-American corrupt police official, as long as you count Mexico as part of America.
I've got a million questions about what's really going on. I've also got a million aching parts, my head is starting to pound because it's been too long since my last drink and I'm tired so I shower, put my clothes in an easy-to-grab bundle and get into bed with the gun and car keys in my hand.