Poor, Broke And Off The Radar
Chapter 8: The Hardline
"DETECTIVE Keye Rawlins, Homicide. What's the situation here?"
Holding up a forged badge, Beta pushed his way through the media men and spoke to the agent-in-charge. In the open cemetery that was once the Vinewood branch of Fleeca, men dressed in suits and trenchcoats which spelt out 'FIB' walked around the aftermath of the massacre, picking up shell casings and samples of blood into sealed bags and moving cadavers towards the Coroner's van, where they had their bodies covered in lime and white sheets of nylon.
"According to surveillance footage, the perps are believed to be three men, possibly of Hispanic descent, judging by the accents." Said the agent, sliding his sunglasses into his suit pocket. "Kicked the doors down and waltzed right into the open crowd and fired at everyone, everything."
"So there were no female perpetrators involved?"
"Absolutely not, detective."
"What's the catch?"
"46 dead inside the bank including security personnel and 11 outside, mostly LSPD backup units. No survivors. Nearly three and a half mil stolen from the safe."
The agent took a sip of coffee.
"No disrespect, Rawlins, but this is an FIB case, what the hell are you doing here?"
"...Just wanted to know."
Quietly Beta made his way outside the bank and towards the corpses which lay neatly across the road, ready to be shipped off to the morgue. Stepping over yellow tape and greeting the coroner, Beta quickly got the details of the victims and headed over to the last covered body at the end.
Pale feet poking out from the sheet, the executive pulled it down, revealing a dark-haired woman dressed in a bloodsoaked cocktail dress, greenish-brown eyes as glassy as dead fish.
Covering the body, Beta made his way back to his Sentinel XS, revving up the engine as he bit his thumb hard, tears flowing out of his eyes.
They were meant to be headed for Mexico together after taking the cash from the company, to escape the confines of a world which had spiralled out of control.
After a moment of solitude Beta drove off the scene and headed back for the room.
That asshole had some explaining to do.
Erstwhile, at F.K Yu's Bistro, Downtown.
There were only five customers at Yu's this Saturday afternoon, as women dressed in aprons fired up the woks, cooking up Americanized variants of Chinese classics in the steaming hot kitchen. Cartons of sizzling orange and kung pao chicken, beef and broccoli, chow mein and fried potstickers were filled in large catering trays and brought outside to bunsen burners where they were heated up for consumption.
The noise was loud, and distracting, despite the general lack of patrons in the restaurant.
Los Santos Transit buses raced past the streets as Greg Touissant stuffed an entire potsticker inside his mouth, crunching it as he stared blankly ahead in the empty seat in front of him. The man had Nazi and Aryan Pride tattoos all over his body and yet, he was a regular of Yu's, much to the annoyance of the proprietors, believing a man of his desposition was bad for business.
Turning his head over to the sound of a muscle car roaring he watched as a blond man left his Monroe at the escarpment, casually making his way inside the Bistro, walking across the greasy floors and sitting on the vacant opposite the white supremacist, smiling like an idiot.
"Can I get a Mai Tai, please?" Yelled Charlie at the waiter.
Clasping his palms, the man laughed.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't The Acid Man?"
Greg, having his ambience ruined, began with a question.
"Turismo sent you?"
"She knows half of LS. Just out of curiosity though, why does a man who harbors such ultranationalistic views and a contempt for anything foreign turn up in an establishment such as this one?"
The contract killer chuckled.
"In a town full of kikes, niggers, spics and gooks, where else are you supposed to go, huh?"
Touissant stabbed a fork in another potsticker and raised it.
"Plus, they do a damn good lunch buffet. 15 bucks, for an all-you-can-eat? Sure beats the fags in Mirror Park."
A man dressed in a shirt brought over a cocktail, placing it on the table. Mixing the contents of the Mai Tai with the thin straw provided, Charlie drank.
Crunching on the potsticker, Greg opened his mouth.
"So you here just to have lunch or is this about-"
"Where's my thirty thousand quid, Greg?"
Dropping the fork on the plate, the man stifled a loud laughter as patrons looked at the two men with curiosity, before making a 180 turn to a deadly seriousness and leaned forward, looking the Brit with menacing eyes.
"You know that job fucked up big time." Said the man coldly. "Barely made out of there with the loot, and my life. Even if I wanted to pay up, I don't have shit."
"I lent that money, so I expect it to be repaid in full." Smiled Charlie. "Is this such a hard pill to swallow?"
"Go fuck yourself, you limey prick. I ain't paying you shit."
Producing a .38 Revolver on his right hand, concealed for a period of time, the neo-Nazi pointed the gun at Charlie's face, as patrons slowly began to leave the restaurant.
"Now I gave you my answer, I presume that you'd the smarts to haul ass away from this place and never come back again before I pull the trigger by the time the minute's up. The drink's on me, by the way."
In a moment of ineptitude and impulse Charlie slammed the revolver sideways, firing a stray round, blowing his left ear off and shattering glass, as screams were heard inside the bistro, as the gun fell into a corner under the table. Screaming in pain Charlie quickly grabbed the man by the collar and delivered fists into his face, stray teeth flinging across the room as Greg began to bleed from the lips.
Grabbing the fork on the table Greg held the Brit's forearm forward and punctured it, blood seeping from the once clean suit.
"GAHH FUCKIN' SWEET FANNY ADAM'S SUGARY CUNT, MY FUCKIN' ARM!"
As adrenaline sped past his now exposed veins Charlie threw a hook against the man's face with his injured hand, landing him on the ground, and kicked his jaw in while he was covering the upper part of his face, as the glass broke and Mai Tai leaked across the floor.
Picking up the revolver underneath the table and using the table napkins provided at the side to soak up the wounds in his ears and left arm Charlie walked over the white supremacist and pointed the weapon at the back of his head. The Brit was pissed, half-catatonic and bleeding from the mouth.
Greg, heaving prolonged breaths, slowly got up on his knees, spitting blood across the bistro and remained defiant to the end. He did not make eye contact.
"Fuckin' die, you redcoat cocksucker."
Before Greg could say anything else the man behind him fired. Blood spilled outwards from the entry wound as Greg turned over to face his murderer with vacant, porcelain eyes, bits of potsticker mixing in with the red liquid as Charlie threw the gun next to him.
The Brit's left ear was mangled and blood was dripping from his left cuft.
Wincing in pain and pressing the napkins against his forearm Charlie turned to the waiter, who hid behind the counter, and asked weakly.
"...Could you please get some more paper towels, Jeeves?"
Simultaneously, at the Vagos Compound.
J was bound by his hands as he stared at the two men who stood opposite the chainlink fence. They were dressed in yellow jerseys and black pants, drinking Logger and counting the bills on the table for laundering.
His vision was blur and hazy as he looked on at the men, as they continued to ignore him. A cotton pad was tied against his forehead and alcohol hastily applied, the dried brown liquid reaching down his nose.
He was simply heading back home after slipping the postcard at Vix's, and out of the blue someone crashed into his vehicle and pulled him out while he was out cold. The last thing he heard was a bunch of guys talking about Vix and him in Spanish about 'the next job', and then he was here, with his hands tied in some shithole room in the middle of nowhere.
Zipping up the bag, the Foreigner and Cinco opened the gates and walked in, as the latter picked up a lead pipe in the corner.
"Who the hell are you guys? What'd you do to Blanca and Vix?"
"They're fine." Replied the Foreigner. "Your girlfriend's coming in real soon."
"What the hell do you want from us?"
The blond gangbanger took a deep breath and began talking.
"We hear the both of you are real good with your hands."
"Yeah, I jack myself to sleep every night. Thanks for asking. Could you be more fucking specific, man?"
Cinco slammed the lead pipe against the wall, shutting the man up. The Foreigner continued.
"The boss, Quechua, has a big job coming up, and he wants the both of you to help out."
"And if the both of us say no?"
"Then you're dead, both of you!" Shouted the gangbanger. "Plain and simple! We want the both of yous on the frontline job and you're gonna work for us without a choice, you got that?!"
"And where the hell's the job gonna be?" Laughed J.
The Foreigner reached over and held J by the shoulders, making direct eye contact.
"Fort Zancudo. Our info says that the Marines have a money stash hidden underground somewhere in the hangars. You go in there, take the cash for us, and we'll talk of the split."
J turned silent for a moment.
"That's suicide."
The Foreigner let go and walked backwards.
"Well that's too bad, then." He says. "What the boss says, he gets. You got that, puto?"
"No. And it ain't because we can't do the job."
"Why the fuck not, J?"
J looked away and at the gated window of the room, as he saw the old railways of Los Santos, red, rusted and abandoned, rot into obscurity as the sun flamed in the distance. A faint smile formed.
"You obviously don't know what Vix is capable of." He faced his captors.
"Think she's just some random middle-class whitebread hipster stoner girl from Mirror Park, huh? Over the last five to six years I've known her, all we did was jobs. All our jobs, no matter how tough or heavy they were, we managed, and with the money we made could have easily started a huge corporation and get listed on BAWSAQ real quick. Now here's the problem when you bag us off the street in broad daylight and ask us to do a job..."
Slowly, Cinco and Foreigner stepped closer to the man as he continued the anecdote.
"See, Vix is stubborn, and I don't mean like, pulling-your-stupid-kid-to-church-on-Sunday kind of stubborn. Pull this shit on her, and you, your friends, family and your friends' families will go under the fucking sword, slowly. I ain't kidding, man. I've seen her pull that back in '13 on some guy who screwed us over on a job for 15 grand..."
"What the fuck did she do?" Asked Cinco.
"...Her eyes change, just like that, like some crazy split personality just took over. She found out where this asshole was living in town, and I drove her there. Instead of one body on her hands, it was eleven, including three women, according to the San Andreas Tribune Bleet the next day. I don't think anyone screwed with us since. So I'm gonna ask you again..."
The Foreigner raised his left eyebrow and gave the signal, as Cinco raised the pipe.
"Can you just, fucking let me go, please?"
"...I've heard enough of this piece of mierda for a day." Laughed the Foreigner.
"Cinco, fuck him up good and bring him back to the basement. We'll take him to the car tomorrow."
The man began to swing.
"You're making a mista-"
At Vix's.
"I don't give a damn about you, woman, and frankly I don't care if your boss was dead from sticking a prickly pear up his rectum." Said the black-and-white detective to a secretary in a film noir, mixed in a heavy amount of television static. "All I care about is getting it on with you within the confines of a bedroom, to extract information of course. Where's my goddamned Redwood cigarette?"
Lying across the couch, Vix was half-asleep, sticking a joint in her mouth as she breathed the fumes in, the THC began to come into effect as her mind began to float in an eternal space.
She was higher than the sun which shined mercilessly across the city and she imagined that the sun burned every single thing in its path like a flaming tire down a hill of grass, leaving behind a trail of fire as a new city emerged in its place from the ground.
Or so that's how she pictured it.
The static soon became worse, in which she picked up a nearby remote control and tried to turn the flatscreen off to no avail.
Staring at her reflection at the mirror on the table, she observed that her hair was noticeably lighter in color, almost a shade of hazel.
Probably just the ash. She thought to herself.
As static continued to buzz her phone rang on the table next to a bag of marijuana and cigarette paper.
She got up and picked it up.
It was an unknown number which traced back to Edinburgh, Scotland.
Under the belief that she was still high, she hung up before the same number rang again a few seconds later.
The young woman sighed and swiped right and placed the phone against her ear, and a female voice came through.
"Hello?"
An American accent came through.
"It's been a while. How's things, Vix?"
"Who's this? How did you get my number?"
"...Why don't you just think it through for a while and find out for yourself?"
It took her a while to realize that the voice was just like hers.
The static continued as Vix remained dumbfounded, phone latched onto her ear like she just heard a nuclear siren.
"...What the fuck is going on?"