Author's Note: This is the first bit of GTA fanfiction I've written in a while, so bear with me if I make a mistake on a name or location. The story is this: a hired killer, fresh out of prison, is contacted by Tommy Vercetti and hired for his organization. This is set after the events of San Andreas but before the events of GTA III.
Alright...so, enjoy! Please read and review!
A Vercetti man was waiting for him outside the prison. Louis saw him and immediately thought 'setup', but there were no other cars and the man standing there wasn't a killer in any regard. Besides, why would anyone want to kill him? A washed up shooter from times long past? It seemed outlandish that a Vercetti man would even be here to see him.
The man was standing in front of a older car, a Hermes, burgundy in colour. It was in stellar condition and would've gleamed in the sunlight if there'd been any sunlight that day. The man who stood in front of it looked like the kind of person who'd drive that car. Short, bald save for a ring of hair around his dome, with a round face and big dimples and fat cheeks. He looked like a cake: wide and soft and pale white. There was a cigarette in his left hand. Louis said nothing for a long time, just stood there and watched this old man who he'd known years ago.
"Louis Vachss," the man said. The hair on his dome had flecks of gray in it that hadn't been there before, Louis noticed. "Thought I'd never see you again."
Louis said, "Give me a cigarette."
The man reached into a pocket of his suit--which was dark grey, double breasted, tailored, and obviously extremely expensive--and withdrew a pack of Dunhills. Louis's brand. He passed them over and Louis lit up with a fake plastic zippo. He took a drag. First cigarette in freedom. Don't'cha' love it?
The man said, "Come on. I'll drive you to your hotel." Louis coughed: the cigarette was good and it bothered his lungs after years of shitty smuggled Generics. "What hotel?" he asked.
The man winked and got into the car, which shifted from side to side a little because of his weight. Louis looked up and down the road again: parolees getting into cars, getting onto buses, standing around waiting. He shrugged and said, "What the hell," and got in on the passenger side, throwing his suitcase with it's meager containments into the back. The man started to drive.
The man's name was Paul Lazzarro, and he was one of Vercetti's money men. An accountant type. He'd gone to work for the gangsters almost as soon as he left college because of his father, Tito Lazzarro, who'd been a controlling presence in the organized crime circles of Carcer City. Twenty years of Mafia money-making later and he was firmly under the employment of Tommy Vercetti, Mr. Vice City himself. Tito hadn't ever killed anyone. He'd probably never gotten in a fight. Louis only knew him second handedly from the old days, before the prison sentence.
For a while they cruised silently through Vice City, passing the old familiar places: Downtown past the skyscrapers and business hubs, Little Havana, Little Haiti, Kaufman Cabs. Louis had flashbacks: gunfights on the Star Island bridge, killings in the backseats of Vercetti's cabs, drugs coming in through the Cherry Popper ice cream factory. Paul deliberately took the long way round: he swung around Washington Beach before coming up on the main hotel strip of Ocean Beach.
Lazzarro parked the car and Louis grabbed his bag and stepped out onto the street, feeling a cool spring air ruffle his body.
Lazzarro said, "Kenny Shanks is coming by in the morning 'round ten to pick you up." Lazzarro reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a roll of bills: two thousand dollars in hundreds. Louis looked at the money without trust. What was Lazzarro pulling?"
"Here," the fat accountant said, "Buy yourself a suit. You go to see the boss looking like that and he'll shit." Louis looked at his clothes: grey slacks thinning at the knees, a black button-up shirt with short sleeves and a snake design on one side, old dress shoes with nearly broken soles. He said, "What's wrong with the way I dress?"
Lazzarro laughed. He fucking roared. He put the car in gear and tossed Louis his pack of Dunhills. "Remember: Kenny Shanks, ten AM. Don't be anywhere else and don't fuck with Kenny, he's got a temper and likes to carry around a piece."
Lazzarro roared off. Louis watched the car turn a corner and dissappear, and then he went into the Hideaway Hotel, which claimed itself to be Vice City's Number One Hotel, Right By the Beach. Louis knew for a fact that Vercetti ran--or used to run, back in the day--hookers and gambling and drugs out of the place.
The receptionist was a fag with vampy eyeshadow. He said, "Reservation?" He eyed Louis's crotch. He scoped the prison tattoo on his left arm: a weird tangle of black thorny vines stretching from his elbow to his wrist on the forearm.
Louis said, "Vachss. For one." The receptionist clacked away on a computer--Christ, Louis thought as he looked at the sleek machine, have I been away for a long fucking time--and then said, "Room 17 on the third floor." He handed Louis a card. Louis said, "Fuck is this?"
The receptionist giggled for a moment but when he saw that Louis was serious he said, "It's how you open your door. There's a slot for it beside the knob."
Louis eyed the card, warily. He said, "Alright," and then took the elevator to his floor.
He got the room open after only five or six minutes of struggling, and once inside tossed his suitcase on the floor and fell on the bed. The room was nice enough: a lounge area, a TV, a kitchenette, a small walk-in closet, a big bed. Everything seemed different than how it used to be, though. No more gaudy reds and blues and pinks, no more New Wave posters on the wall. Louis lit a cigarette and turned on the TV and even that seemed different, just the way the shows looked. He didn't recognize any of the channels and after a while fell back onto the bed and closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and fought frustration.
Twenty minutes later he pocketed the roll of money and went to go buy a suit.