MAX & CARLOS:

"We're goin' to see this guy that I met awhile back, I met him here. He's a V dealer, he's lookin' to change the face of Liberty's drug ring. I've been chasing V since it got my wife and daughter killed, but no matter how much you fight, how hard, how fast, or how long. It's a drug, the formula never goes missing people never stop dealing. I've heard several stories about the ultimate high, the one drug that was perfect and eluded police, the drug that would have changed the face of crime if it weren't for the destruction of its formula. Bullshit, all of it, something like that never disappears. It's the same with Liberty City Survivor, ghost story, bullshit, fake. But see that's the myth, the myth is that Liberty City Survivor is fake, we just have to find the guy that'll prove us right and everyone else wrong."

"Man dog do you have like -a-a-a- a speech written down somewhere when you talk? Goddamn Max you talk more than anyone I know."

"That include you?"

"I don't know yet I'll have to think about it."

Max Parks the Stinger, on the street. He looks above him, the sky is pale gray, pitch-black clouds roll in slowly, approaching. On the radio on the way over, Max had just caught that a storm might be approaching the city. To Max this was just another sign of things to come. Right now he was just riding forward, soon he'd be at the edge, at the storm itself. The world was full of hidden messages and metaphores that plagued Max like the Black Death, nothing in the world was more painful than to be reminded of your pain.

Carlos steps up to a door that was unrealistically beat up, and shot full of bullet holes. A very flimsy roof over head. Carlos admires the cover from rainfall, but still enjoys the fresh air smell, which - every once and a while - was covered by the smell of moist wood. He waits for Max to approach the building. It's small and unpainted, the wet, dark wood, like a house out of horror story, looking completely abandoned.

Max steps up and knocks on the door.

"You're tellin' me someone lives here?"

Max shushes him, drawing his gun. Max kicks in the door and enters like a bounty hunter, aiming his gun. "DON'T MOVE!"

Inside is a woman, with long dark hair, she aims a Desert Eagle at him, she seems awfully small to be carrying around a Desert Eagle. Around her are bags, and packages. Clothes and personal items dropped into them.

"Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?"

"Where you goin'?" Max asks her.

"I asked you first. What the fuck are you doing here!" She asks him seriously. There's a short pause. "If I don't get an answer soon, I'll put a bullet right between your eyes."

"Good luck." she seems awfully surprised by this response, Max continues. "I'm here to see David."

"David's dead." She answers, almost immediately.

"Really how did he die."

"He got shot."

"Hmm. Who shot him." Carlos doesn't say anything, he just watches everything, like it's straight out of a movie.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that."

"That's too bad... Listen? I'm going to put my gun down, you don't have to lower yours, but I'd appreciate it, because me and my friend Carlos here got some unanswered questions." Max does exactly as he said he would, lowering his gun, even putting it away. She lowers hers as well.

"First question..." Max says.

"Shoot." she replies throwing clothes in her bag.

"Where you goin?"

"I find it funny that you don't have any idea who the hell I am, and the first thing you wanna' know is where I'm going."

"Nevertheless, that was my first question."

"San Andreas."

Max raises his eyebrows as if to say 'and...'

"San Fierra."

"Why?"

"Hey fuck you, you're lucky I'm telling you anything at all."

"Who told you to go there?"

"I can't tell you that. And if you ask again... my reply won't be pleasant."

Max understands and changes the subject. "You said David was dead..."

"-Yeah." She says very matter-of-factly, "He's dead."

Max walks around the broken-down home. The inside no better in any way than the outside, he picks up a picture frame, the picture inside showed the young woman he was speaking to, and a young man wearing a baggy sweatshirt and blue jeans, short blonde hair and a baseball cap. The description, seemed familiar to Max.

"Who's this?"
"That's my husband."

For some reason to Max, both of them seemed rather young to be married. "He here?"

"No." She says snatching the picture out of his hand, and shoving it into a black bag. "He's not."

"I'm sorry... what was I saying before? Oh yeah, so did David leave anything behind, tell you anything... uhh?

"That depends on what you wanna' know."

"I want to know who runs Liberty City Survivor."

She laughs, as if she can't believe what she's hearing.

"I talked to David, 'MagicMan', - whatever you want to call him - before, and whether he told you or not, he was involved in that show, and I want to know HOW involved HE was."

"He told me. Supposedly, no one knows who runs it. Unless of course you count Donald Love, but I don't think it was his idea. Besides he's gone now. He disappeared years ago."

"You have any idea how much info, or anything that David might have left behind?"

"There's a bag over there, I packed all of his stuff in it. I was going to bury it before I left, but you'll probably just dig it up anyway. That's the way you cops are..." she swings a bag over her shoulder, "Right?"

"Why were you going to bury it?" Max asks with increasing suspition that she killed David.

"Not for THAT reason asshole! Goddamn, I was burying it out of respect for him. Why would I tell you all this if I killed him?"

"Good point." Max says, only slightly guilty about asking. "Can I ask you one more question? What's your husband's name?"

"Sorry..." She says lifting up another bag, "I'm through packing. I have to leave." She pushes the door open angrily and and stomps out the door.

"That was interesting." Carlos says genuinly, "Hanging out with you might even be more fun than I thought."

"What do you think's in the bag?"

"Probably all bullshit, I can't imagine him keeping a lot of interesting stuff in here."

Max wanders around the room again, pulling open drawers. He pulls open the first one, pictures they all seemed to be random people. One of them though has a picture of the womans husband, Max lifts it up, a rubberband is wrapped around it, realizing it's a group of pictures Max removes the band. The second picture is a mugshot, of a scruffy looking man with hair that goes down to his ears. For some reason the mans name is unreadable. Between two pictures appears to be a drawing of that man, wearing all black, an overcoat and a flat-top cowboy hat, weilding a samurai sword.

"What's that?" Carlos asks him.

"It's some criminal urban legend, it doesn't matter it has nothing to do with our case."

"Does it have anything to do with your last case?" He asks referring to the infamous trio.

"I don't think so..."

"So what's the legend?"

"It's not important."

"So it should be no problem telling me?"

"Fine, it's short anyway, it's actually two legends. One is that a young criminal, - he at least looks like he's still in high school - runs a large mob ring, under the radar, acts like a small-time dealer, like Keyser Soze, or criminal James Bonde, he supposedly runs everything. The second story interlocks with the first, some guy with no past, or records, goes on a killing rampage, Vigilante killer, dressed all in black."

"Hmm." Carlos says smiling, lighting a cigarette, "Who does that remind you of?"

"I know." Max says, "That's what I thought too, but he doesn't quite fit the bill. I don't think it's based on my story at all, I think it's something else."
"Do you think it's real."

"Who cares?" Max says finally getting through to Carlos his disinterest.

Max opens up the last drawer to find a large quantity of V. "It appears," Max says, "that she left all of his stuff."

Carlos moves over to the case, he wraps his fingers around the zipper and then stops, turning to Max. "You know, it could be a bomb."

"It could." Max say as if that wouldn't bother him in the least.

"You want me to call it in?"

"I don't think she was lying, you can just open it." Max says this very sure of his decision.

Carlos slowly and carefully opens the case, he lifts it as if it were the heaviest thing in the world, and acts as if it would help if it did turn out to be a bomb. He throws the suitcase open. Inside is a folded peice of paper marked 'Recipe for Twinkie filling. A golden key, and a bullet with an ureadable inscription on it.

"Recipe for Twinkie filling..." Carlos says reading aloud.

"It's bullshit," Max says, "open it."

Carlos folds the piece of paper down, revealing several paragraphs of wording. He turns to Max laughing. "He's actually got the recipe for Twinkie filling here, this is the fuckin' dumbest shit I've ever seen."

"Wait, look on the back."

Carlos had almost discarded the paper, until Max stopped him. He turns the paper over and finds a list. The list reads:

Liberty City:

Agostino/Sal Nico, Trent/Marilyne/Samantha? Baldassarre, Fidelio Gerodi, Tony Cipriani, El Burro, D-Ice, Amaya Kaida, Sheng Yul, Lucio/Marco/Lanza Forelli, Marc Lincoln, Carlos, Max Payne, Donald Love?.

"Oh shit man, what the fuck is this?"

Max takes the paper out of Carlos' hand and stares at it, "Appears to be a hit list... Both our names are on here - Carlos where's your last name?"

Carlos laughs to himself a little bit, "I don't have one."

"Serious?"

Carlos nods his head. For some reason Max finds that extremely facinating.

"Okay," Carlos says, "I'll take this key down to a buddy o' mine, find out what's up with it. I want you to find out what's on this," he hands Max the bullet, "I'm sure it's an inscritpion of some kind, I'll have my buddy run all these names through a computer... but I recognize most of them anyway. Cool?"

Max twirls the bullet in his fingers staring at it, "Yep. Cool."

"Okay." Carlos lifts up the black case and heads out.

"Okay," Carlos says, "We're going to Liberty City airport, Check out a lock box number one-zeero-ooone."

"How'd you find that number?

"Underneath the hit list it reads, 'second list in lockbox number one-zero-one', see - there - at the very bottom. Which reminds me, the names on the list are all Liberty's big-time leaders and their biggest 'big men'."

"Who's Marilyne Baldassarre?"

"Remember the girl who left the case?"

"The one with the long hair?"

"Bingo."

"Fuck, I didn't know she was related to Trent."

"Well you didn't even know her first name, and she's not related to Trent, not by blood anyway. Marc Lincoln is El Burro's personal body guard, Sheng Yul is the Triad leader... -"

"Yeah I know who they are."

"What'd the inscription say."

"It had his name on it," Max says smiling, "He had a bullet with his name on it."

"Maybe he figured betraying all those people would get to him after awhile. We found another list with twenty other hits on it, combined they contain the names of leaders and bigshots from every gang excluding Columbian Cartel."

"Well that's interesting enough, anything else?"

"Like what?"
"Like what our names are doing on a list full of criminals."

"Oh, he just added your name on because he hated you, and mine because I hang around you."

"Donald Love's name is on there after ours."

"There've been sightings of Donald Love around Liberty for days now, he's becoming the city's big-foot, and his status is the size of King Kong so if people say they see him, chances are, they saw him."

"What's in there?" Carlos asks while Max pokes his head inside the airport locker.

"Well, the first thing is a second hit list, Vice City... Then..." Max flips the page - YES!"

"What! What!" Carlos asks anxious to find out what it is.

"It's information on Liberty City Survivor... damn, it's all petty crap, it's ridiculous."

"I think I know where we can find some more info..."

"Oh yeah, where?"

"Love Media Tower."