Chapter 3

The unshaken, unmistakable look of courage was written in my own eyes as I prepared myself for action. There was a suit of body armor placed underneath my shirt and two handguns inside my jeans.

Mario, meanwhile, was combing his hair as we got out of the penthouse. Hopping into a Ferrari I owned, I got into the driver's seat, ready for what would be a highlight of my life.

"You know," Mario began slowly. "To be honest, I didn't think you'd take this assignment. You're not the kind of guy I'd expect to be doing something like this. . . I mean, you know what happened to your father, Josh. . ."

I twisted my head around to look at him. Mario looked curious and was fidgeting with his handgun. "I don't want to talk about that, Mario. You know that."

"All I'm saying is that I would've thought that would've flown back into your memory before you took the assignment!" Mario sputtered. "You know damn well as I do that Giovanni Diaz was running the show back then, and he still is today! He sent your father to the grave, god damn it!"

Slamming my foot on the breaks, the Ferrari spun out to the side of the bridge, just as we were approaching the Miami Bank. "Just drop it, alright?!" I said furiously. I looked away from Mario at the afternoon sun beaming down on the ocean, thinking of why I let this happen to me. Why was I who I was? Was this really me?

After that, Mario remained silent for the rest of the ride. He knew quite clearly that my father was the only person that meant something to me back then, but someone chose to take that meaning away from me when I was young.

We stopped in Little Havana first. It was a small version of the Cuban city, but was quite quaint nonetheless. This was a place Cubans decided to hang out in Miami, letting their own troubles be put aside for fun. They had their own mob here, but it was almost nothing compared to ours.

"Why are we here?" Mario questioned, following me as we piled out of the car and into the streets.

I smirked as I began looking for a police officer. "Little Havana is a place where most of the cops ride around. What we'll do, we'll trash a cop and take his ride to the station. That way we can use their uniforms as a disguise."

"Right. . ." Mario nodded. "I'll look around."

Walking around in search of cops, the two of us were in search, but so far couldn't find anybody.

Thinking everything was hopeless at first, we were almost three blocks away before we finally found a pair of officers in a tan uniform and brown pants. They were residing near Vice Point Mall, a large building filled with over three hundred stores and carrying at least two thousand people at a time.

"See 'em?" I pointed to the pair of them. I grinned and slapped my hand on Mario's back. "You're going to be my little decoy. Bring 'em around the corner of Brook and Main. Let me take care of the rest."

I took off for the corner quickly. "But --" Mario protested.

Breathing deeply, I gathered the strength inside of me. I pulled out one of my handguns and held the edge of it, revealing the handle of the Desert Eagle.

After a few minutes, I could hear Mario's voice trailing behind quickly. "You see officers, I have this problem with my.My uh.I've got this problem with my. . .device."

I rolled my eyes at Mario's stupidity. I could hear the multiple footsteps and then, I saw the police roll around the corner. I smashed the forehead of one of the officer's with my handgun, knocking him to the ground unconscious immediately.

"Hey!" The other officer cried. I shrugged my shoulders casually in front of his face, then punched him square in the nose, hard. He fell to the ground face first, leaving Mario looking shocked and appalled.

"Come on, before anyone sees," I ordered Mario, dragging one of the officers into an alley. I immediately stripped down his uniform, donning the disguise quickly, also grabbing the car keys as well.

Mario's reaction to all of this hadn't quite sunken in yet. He hadn't said anything, nor made any real reaction to it; it happened too fast for him. Nonetheless, he buttoned up the tan shirt and dark brown pants quickly.

"Their car is around back." Mario said. "We were lucky, they were heading around to their car before I stopped them."

Leaving the two officers unconscious and almost in the nude in the alley, we walked away and ran for the police car. I inserted the keys into the door, and we both piled inside, feeling confident of what we were doing.

As we got in and sped off for the Miami Vice Police Department, I began to remind Mario what we had to do. "Remember, before we break out Enrico, we have to get that name of the busted ass cop who put him in that cell in the first place."

“I know what we need to do. I should be asking you instead if you’re gonna be thinking straight. Since your meeting with this mysterious woman in the mall, she’s all you’ve been thinking about.”

“Wha..what!? She was hot Mario and a real lady. If you saw her, you would’ve been smitten by her too. She even had the backbone to bite back.”

Mario shook his head as if he was feeling hopeless for his friend but a glare from this friend and he eventually nodded carefully, knowing exactly what he was doing.

To be honest, Mario was a bumbling fool, but my trust was in him always. In fact, since we were teenagers it always had been. It was at least good of Mario to accompany me on this mission.

"Then we'll find the location of Enrico, get him out and concealed, and make a break for the King's Club, right?"

"That's the plan." I said, watching us speed off at around 3PM, ready to roll for the most outrageous stunt I had done in awhile.

*

Facing the station with my own two eyes, I looked up at the three-storey building in wonder. "I'm not so sure this is a good idea." Mario sputtered, feeling the fear. "Come on, we already have about a million each, what would 200 K mean to us?"

I glared at Mario again, thinking of how stupid that sounded. "It's money, Mario. A little extra cash wouldn't hurt us. Look at it this way, when we get the money, I'll buy us a speedboat. We don't have that yet."

The thought of a speedboat did seem appealing to both Mario and I. Mario took in another deep breath, and began leading in the way, taking off his sunglasses and placing them in his pocket, revealing his brown eyes.

We walked in casually inside the police station, seeing one officer at the desk filling out some paperwork. He waved to me, greeting me as if I were a real police officer. Everything seemed to be holding up fine right now, so I seized the moment by giving him a small wave as well.

I had been in here long enough to know how the building worked. The lower level was where they kept the prisoners, the main level was for the police officers and paperwork, while the top was where they did most of their investigating and held files and information. That was where I needed to go first.

"Mario!" I whispered to him, watching him trail off to another door. "Wrong way." I grabbed him by his collar and started dragging him up the stairs into the investigation room.

It was decorated with a half dozen plants to the side and about two dozen desks lined up neatly in rows of three. There were five rooms off to the side designated for only the chief and his lieutenants.

There was only a few officers in this room. In fact, to my knowledge, I think we were two of about nine officers in the building. There was an officer lying back in his chair in one of the offices, and two officers playing cards in a corner, and one woman doing detective work in front of us.

I could see the filing cabinets up ahead, marked in alphabetical order. They were three-drawer cabinets, each drawer having a letter. We quickly searched for the one marked 'M', for Enrico Mettini.

Mario was leaning casually in a chair beside me, watching me rip open the drawer. I quickly skimmed through the heads of the files, frantically searching for Enrico.

"Need some help?" A voice echoed behind me. I jumped at the voice, and I tried to turn around but stopped myself. The voice sounded so similar. It was the voice I had been hearing in my dreams recently. I was shocked and flabbergasted as this was something completely unexpected.

It was a female officer.

"Oh. . ."

I looked at her from the corner of my eyes as I pushed down the cop hat, I was wearing to cover my face and kept my back towards her.

She had deep blue eyes and long sandy hair. She had her hair tied in a tight bun and was wearing thick-framed spectacles as well as her uniform, identical to mine and Mario's.

I had finally found the woman I met at the mall. I felt butterflies in my stomach as I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

She grinned at me with shiny white teeth, waiting for my response. "Well?" She added. "What's the name you’re looking for?"

"Um. . ." I began, still gazing at her from the corner of my eye.

"Yeah, I'm looking for Mettini. Enrico Mettini."

She pushed me aside and began looking down for the folder.

"I remember this fellow. He's part of a crime ring that's been circulating in the Vice for about a dozen years." She informed. "No one can get a hold of these guys, they've killed anyone who's stood in their way. . ."

I looked down at her. Never, before in my life, had I heard someone say things like that. The way she said it. . . 'Killed anyone who's stood in their way. . .'

"A band of murderous, blood-thirsty, rich Miami Vice people. . ." She continued. "Killing anyone at will with their weapons as if they weren't the same as they were. It's horrible and disgusting, and no one's ever tried to put a stop to it." The woman looked up at me with shimmering tears and anger.

Mario didn't say anything, nor did I. What could we say? How could we even gather up the courage to even speak to her now? She was right about a lot of things. It began to really get me thinking. . .

I coughed slightly, then took the report from her hands. "Er, thanks." I said, going downstairs with Mario. Thinking that now was the best time to seize the moment, I asked her nervously, "Hey, do you have a card key to the prisoner cells?"

"Sure." She said quietly, then pulled a grey card out of her pocket and handed it to me. "Anytime I can help." I thanked her quickly, and then looked back at her one last time before heading downstairs.

"I remember busting him in the first place, too." She said quietly. "Enrico Mettini, that is."

The moment those words left her lips, I felt the ground beneath my shake. A sinking feeling welled up inside me as I turned to look towards Mario who had widen eyes and a look of realization on his face.

“You’re the badass cop we’ve been hearing about that has really been up the asses of all the gangs in the city? What’s your name again?”

I did my best to conceal my inner turmoil as Mario took a good look at her.

She smiled in response.

"I take it you're a new one around here. The name's Andrea Tanelli. Remember, the pronunciation is An-dray-yeah. I hate it when people mistaken me for An-dree-ah."

"I'll remember that." I replied in a monotone voice. "Thanks for your help again."

The woman nodded, and then went back to her desk.

Suddenly, Mario nudged me in the ribs with a smile on his face.

"Oh, look what I picked up at the desk." Mario grinned, pointing to his pocket, where a stun gun was held. "We'll spark the cops in our way. . ."

No one knew the conflicted emotions I was feeling but I decided to push through.

*

Meanwhile, the woman, Andrea looked up from her desk as an intense feeling of something wrong had just happened occurred to her but she couldn’t quite pin it to anything. It was a feeling like something grave had just occurred.

For a moment she felt like she recognized that voice and that she knew these men especially from their side profile she had gotten a look of as they left. She felt something was amiss but eventually calmed herself down, thinking that it was just because she was remembered her past of 2 years ago when she was taken as a hostage and her father was killed. She shook her head and went back to work.

*

We went downstairs to the bottom floor, meeting a long row of jail cells. There were about thirty cells in total, and the card key we had would unlock the cell we wanted. The cells were marked in different numbers, and the control unit would allow us to press which cell we wanted to open.

"Enrico!" Mario said excitedly, jumping to a cell where he was. There Enrico sat, on a mossy, yellow cot looking down and horrified at the same time. "There you are." I said quietly, looking up at cell number 28 where he was.

Enrico jumped to the bars and kissed Mario on the forehead. "Get me out of here, boys. I assume Diaz had you two running this assignment?" He asked. Mario nodded quickly as I ran over to the control unit, unlocked the cell and set Mario loose.

"We'd better get out of here, quick." I ordered, pushing Mario and Enrico out of the way. The two of them got out of the cell hall quickly and darted upstairs, meeting an officer of the law who was questioning why he was out of his cell.

Mario pulled the stun gun out of his pocket and instantly shocked the officer down to the floor. I picked him up and threw him behind a desk, hiding and concealing his body.

The three of us sprinted up the stairs onto the main floor where a number of officers were here, pulling up with a few new prisoners. "Why's 28 out of his cell?!" A fat man yelled, wearing overalls and smoking a cigar. I assumed this man was the chief of the station, wearing a silver badge and a handgun in his holster.

"So long." I said, pulling a handgun out of my pocket, and firing at his shoulder blade. He landed with a dull thud and I watched behind, seeing Mario and Enrico escape into the cop car we stole in the first place.

I saw as the rest of the officers came sprinting from upstairs and opened fire.

The woman who helped us and I had fallen for was looking at me in wonder and confusion. I hesitated for a moment before bowing towards her and dashing for escape.

"Thanks, love." Mario grinned, running out of the station, and into the car where Enrico waited for us.

She just stared at me in absolute shock, her mouth hanging open and her hands cupped over it as realization dawned onto her and the consequences of her actions.

I continued to give a lonely smile, speeding off with Enrico, and what would soon be another two hundred and fifty thousand in my account.

However, a lingering doubt was still in my mind. Something that wouldn't go away. Something that remained, hidden inside of me, something that I just couldn't get a hold of.

I was determined to find out.