Two weeks, Four days until racing day...

Carl pulled his car into the garage next to a less than happy Cesar and Chi Kim's ride. A modified Sultan with a crappy custom paint job of a naked woman riding a dragon. "That shit was insane!" Carl laughed as he got out of his car and slammed the driver side door shut.

Cesar stood by the open trunk of the sultan, a grim expression on his face.

"What, there a dead body back there or something?" Carl smirked and walked back to stand next to Cesar. "...oh shit."

"My sentiment exactly, homes." Cesar sighed.

The trunk of the sultan was packed with cocaine, enough to supply half the state, not to mention land them in jail for a lifetime if they were caught with it. A problem...but a managable one. Chi Kim was sitting at the bottom of the bay, he wouldn't exactly be looking for his stolen coke. All they had to do was find someone to take it off their hands. Easy.

"Look, it's not that bad." Carl lied. "I'll call Woozie and he'll help us out."

"You sure about that esse?" Cesar looked at Carl skeptically, then back to the cocaine, then back to Carl before shutting the trunk. Out of sight out of mind.

"Of course." another lie. Woozie didn't touch cocaine, there were rules about it and he followed them. Maybe he'd make an exception? "Look, go to my place, you know where it is, have a drink, chill out. I'll call you if i need any help, okay?"

Cesar started to argue but Carl cut him off.

"Look man, if we get caught with this much white we're going away for a long time." Carl sighed. Why did this shit always happen to him? "You really want to see your daughter grow up from behind bars? You want to leave Kendl to raise your daughter by herself?"

"Alright, alright, shit, enough guilt," Cesar chuckled. "I'm going." he left the garage and Carl alone with a mountain of cocaine.

There was a time he would have dumped the shit in the ocean and he would have laughed about it the whole time. But now...now he had no money...a mountain of debt and a lot of favors he owed to people. There was also Sweet to think about, no matter whether or not his brother wanted to speak to him. This cocaine would bring enough money to fix so much, or at least patch the problem. Values meant nothing in the grand scheme of life...not now anyway, when he was the only person keeping everyone else's head above water, no matter that he was drowning in the process.


"Tell me you have other things in this trunk that i'm feeling." Woozie grunted as he ran his hand around the various packages of cocaine.

Carl started to shake his head but caught himself in time. "No, it's all white."

Woozie hissed through his teeth and slammed the trunk shut. "There's a hell of a lot more than you told me about." he snapped. "There has to be half a million here, more in street value." he slid his sunglasses off with his right hand and rubbed his temples with his left. "Do i even want to know where you got this much?"

Carl exhaled heavily through his nostrils. "Probably best that you don't." things had changed in San Fierro, Carl wasn't well versed on who was fighting who anymore. For all he knew he'd ripped off a friend of the triad.

Woozie slid his glasses back on. "Alright..." he turned in Carl's general direction. "You know i don't deal in cocaine, there are rules and i have to follow them. My advice to you is to dump this shit in the bay before whoever you stole it from shows up to take it back." he turned to leave but Carl placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Wooze," Carl pleaded. "I know about your rules and normally i wouldn't ask...but we all need the money." Woozie wasn't even pulling in a quarter of what the casino made back before it had gone under. He was a laughing stock now, something this money could help him change if he spent it wisely. Carl knew that, Woozie knew it too.

And the promise of splitting the profits down the middle all but forced him to reconsider his stance on the rules.

"I'll ask around discretely, this much product shouldn't take long to garner interest." Woozie shrugged Carl's hand off of his shoulder and turned towards the door. "After that i think you and i shouldn't be seen together for a while." he didn't wait for a response, he put his hand out in front of him and walked through the garage door.


With the garage emptied out for the night Carl headed for his office. Cesar was staying at his place and more than anything Carl just wanted some time to himself, something he wouldn't get sharing a roof with his brother in law who'd want to do nothing but talk. Talk about the cars, the race, the baby, Kendl...and then about Sweet. That wasn't a topic Carl could handle, especially now.

He plopped into the dusty office chair with the torn leather back and the missing wheel on the bottom, opened the top desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of something with the label scratched off. It didn't matter what kind of alcohol it was, as long as it was alcohol.

Half the bottle later his mind was racing. Had he bitten off more than he could chew here? One car in and already he'd killed people, stolen a mountain of cocaine, and brought a lot of potential heat down on himself. Not just himself but his friends and family. Why did he always fuck everything up? There was still one more car to get...christ only knew what was going to happen when they found a suitable one and went to get it. Would they burn down half the city or just an orphanage?

The sound of glass breaking pulled Carl out of his liquor fueled inner rant of self loathing.

"I'm here now man," the voice came from the garage. "The place you told me to be muthafucka, what else would mean here?"

Carl snapped into action, sliding out of his chair while grabbing the pistol from his waistband. He creeped over to the office door, making sure to stay low so the intruder didn't spot him through the office window that looked out over the garage. Slowly he pulled the door open and peered out.

"A'ight, i see the car, hit your cell in a second." Carl watched as a thin man in a black hoodie- hood pulled over his head making it hard for Carl to make out the wearer- walked over to Chi Kim's car and put an elbow through the driver side window.

That was all Carl needed to see before pulling the trigger. Four shots and only one hit the intruder.

"My leg!" the thin man fell to the dirty garage floor screaming.

Carl stumbled out of his office, gun...sort of trained on the thin man. His vision was blurry and his head was swimming. "You picked the wrong fucking garage!" he yelled, putting another bullet in the garage floor.

"Wait!" the thin man squealed, putting his hands up. Were Carl not so drunk he might have noticed the hint of urine in the air. "CJ, it's me homie!" the thin man pulled the hood back and Carl almost lost it.

"Loc?"