In the Beginning, part I

For purposes of my own entertainment, I'm doing a "Let's Play" of Vice City. All missions, side missions, and challenges will be done for the most part, with the except of perhaps a few unique jumps. So far as I remember it, I will include a link to an appropriate song from the game's soundtrack.
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Mood Music: "Broken Wings", Mister Mister


It’s eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, and my life is ruined.

Again.

Fifteen years of incarceration ended for me on Thursday afternoon when the doors of Liberty State Penitentiary slid open and I saw Harry Cardoni waiting for me. Cardoni is one of Sonny Forelli’s favorite goons. He was a toadie back in the day: I suppose he still is.  Sonny, bless his bastard heart, was giving me work. Good work.  The work that makes you a rich man. He was sending Harry and me along with another goon -- a new guy, Lee something or another -- down south, to Vice City.  “’It’s the land of opportunity,’ Sonny said,” said Harry as he drove us to the airport. I stared outside through the windows, looking at the city I was born and raised in: Liberty City. It was grey, cold, dark, and depressing. Reminded me of prison. “The coke trade is huge down there, and we’re goin’ to set ourselves up as distributors.” Apparently we were going to down to Vice City, buy a large quantity of coke from a dealer, and then start a distribution network.  It sounded promising: easy money. I could start living again, and this time do it better than living in a cruddy apartment in Liberty.



We landed in Vice City and were met by a lawyer, a guy named Rosenberg. Excitable. We drove straight to the meeting point from the airport, which sucked:  I could have done with some sleep.  Things went smoothly at first: the dealers didn’t give us any problems.



 I could barely keep my eyes open, but then all hell broke loose.



Harry, Lee, and the dealer were hit. Fifteen-year old reflexes from my hood days in Liberty came back in a flash, and before I knew it I was half-inside Rosenberg’s car and screaming for him to floor it. Whoever hit us wasn’t interested in pursuing -- they even let the dealer’s helicopter get away.  Rosenberg starting coming apart even as we parked the car, like some terrified rat running on one of those exercise wheel things. I tried calming him down, telling him we’d start sorting this mess out tomorrow. “Get some sleep,” I said. “That’s what I’m going to do.”




Only I can’t. I’m sitting in the hotel right now, but I can’t sleep, because I’ve got a call to make. I’ve gotta tell Sonny that I just lost all of the money he sent me down here with.  I don’t even know that’s not what was supposed to have happened. I don’t know who those gunmen were working for. Maybe this was Sonny’s way of having me hit and seizing the coke without paying the money for it.

So who knows? Maybe I make this call and Sonny realizes that oops, the Harwood Butcher survived. Then what happens?  They try again. Only this time, maybe they succeed.

On the other hand, if the deal was an ambush, and Forelli did lose his money, I’m just as dead. So much for living again. I’m a dead man already.

Hell of a phone call to make.