Liberty City Undercover: Day 3
posted 05/05/08
It’s day three of our Grand Theft Auto IV feature, so strap yourselves in as you take a ride in a Liberty City cab while listening to some Radio Noir…
Welcome to Radio Noir – the station that brings you the dark stories of Liberty City while you ride in your shitty cab. This morning we have, by popular demand, a repeat of last week’s detective story. We join our monotonous narrator as he ruminates on his recent misfortune…
Liberty City’s a tough place. Tough even if you’re an impossibly good looking stallion with huge pectorals and balls the size of grapefruit. The shadows in this place hide all manner of seedy goings on. Why, just the other day some hobo had the gall to ask me for some spare change. As if I’ve got the coin to waste on his drug habit. And if the local wildlife aren’t pestering you for pocket shrapnel they’re propositioning you for sex, street racing, lifts to their therapist and God knows what else.
Has a way of dragging you down, it does. Like you’ve been thrown into the ocean tied to a concrete block, no hope of reaching the surface. Oh, you can put in all the effort you want to try and tread water but the weight of this city’s vices will drag you down, and you’ll be assimilated into Liberty City like drops of water forming a puddle; only the water is the millions of low-lifes that exist here and the puddle is a stinking cesspool of debauchery. Fucks with the mind, it does – no one has any respect for the law. This badge of mine is worth about as much as the five berries rich business men give to hookers for handjobs in their expensive limos.
I’ve been a detective here for twenty years, although it feels like a lifetime. Like a prison sentence. In the city that never sleeps, a dick never clocks off. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I changed my clothes. There’s a laundromat down the street but there are too many dips skulking around this neighbourhood for my liking. You can never catch ‘em, they’re slippery as snakes with their pickpocket rackets. Makes you wanna mow one down, it really does. But that’s a line I haven’t crossed… yet.
So I’m on the blower and the Chief tells me there’s a lot of migrant activity of late; puts the onus on me to sort it out... fuck. As if I even know where to start. Hasn’t even been four hours since my last shift ended – but the Chief, he don’t care about those things. He expects us to shout “How high?” when he says “Jump” and then actually fuckin’ do it too. Things were simpler when those Mafia cats ran things. I mean, sure they were murdering sons of bitches and all, but blow me if they didn’t run things with a sense of honour-
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-clutching my arm, pain radiating through my body like nothin’ I’d ever felt before. Next thing I know I’m waking up in a hospital bed, surrounded by people who don’t give a shit about me, sardonic smiles on their faces and empty well-wishes pasted to their lips.
“Tough job eh,” said Frank Marzoney, one of those hard-boiled pricks from homicide who likes to look down their brown noses at everyone else.
I fix him with a dull stare and just nod.
“Anyway,” he continues, ‘we’ll find these bastards. Did you get a look at them?” It’s all fluff, the line about finding them. He knows that I know it, but he goes through the motions by rote. He pulls out a little black notebook, licks his pen and stands there with the tip of it hovering over the page expectantly. I clear my throat. It hurts to speak, so it only comes out in a whisper.
“I remember I saw a dark SUV. Not sure who it belonged to but two men… migrants by the look of their clothes and skin, were taking on a gang of what looked like dope dealers.” I lick my lips and dredge my hazy memory for something, anything about who shot me.
“I, uh, think I heard a name…”
Frank waits for me to scoop it out of the sludge that is my recollection.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I say. “One of the guys yelled, ‘Nicko! What the fuck have you got me into?’ and then I remember gunfire and…” I look at my bandaged shoulder, “then this.”
Frank’s face looks like he’s just licked a lemon. “I gotta tell ya, man, I don’t think we’ll catch these guys. Even with a name. Christ, how many Nickos you think fuckin’ kickin’ around out there? Nick, Nicky, Nicolas – could be any low life.”
I lean back into the pillow and zone him out. I never expected any of my so-called brethren to be any help. This would be a personal mission.
Nicko… It was only a name, but it was better than nothin-
“Hey, buddy! Wake up, we’re here. That’ll be $28… Man I wish I knew how to change this fucking radio station. I’m missing out on Lazlow! Okay cheers, catchya man, have a nice day…”
Written by Dylan Burns.
