The Bordello is the story of Enzo Vega, a part time male escort busy being a fulltime lowlife, currently selling skin in the City of Sin. Sucker’s Game shows us how he got started.
See, Enzo was raised his Uncle Dominic, an ex-card shark and Rat Pack relic. Dom owned a strip club, La Dolce Vita, and young Enzo grew up around a gaggle of showgirls, aging wise guys, washed up entertainers and Dominic’s best friend, a gigolo out of Miami by the name of Victor Salamanca.
Being raised around that bunch would screw any cat’s priorities up real fast, and he picked up a few things, maybe grew up a little quicker than he should have. Easy money and loose morals will do that to a guy. It’s no wonder Enzo and Uncle Dom had their little falling out, or that Enzo ran all the way to the Army to get away from things.
Sucker’s Game takes place after Enzo returns from a four-year sabbatical playing grunt out East. He finds La Dolce Vita under new management and learns that his Uncle has wound up in a hole somewhere in the desert. The new management might have had something to do with that. Did I mention they’re Russian gangsters?
It’s a story about a man who finds his back against the wall, the rug yanked out from under him, with nowhere to turn. So he decides to get creative. The only people he knows are hustlers. Time to start hustling on his own.
He takes stock of his skills and finds he’s really only good at two things in life.
Screwing and screwing up.
Who says you can’t make a buck doing either?
Toss a bad temper, copious amounts of booze, a pack a day habit and the Las Vegas Strip into the mix and you’ve got something that’s more than halfway interesting. Mix in a big dose of revenge, a healthy love of film noir, gussy it up in sharp threads and now you’re really talking.
When a guy lacking any kind of conventional morals gets pushed to the edge, there isn’t a whole lot he won’t do. Enzo Vega is that guy. Sucker’s Game is that story.
