California Below The Waist

THE FINAL OPTION (10TH Installment)

EXT. MARINA (NYC) - DAY

A car with a ticket on the windshield is in a red zone at the curb. The Blond Man comes out the gate, talking on his cell phone.

BLOND MAN
Troy? You mean up by Albany? ... I
don't know, two, three hours. Why?
INT. CAR

As he comes around to the driver's side and gets in, he lets the ticket drop to the street ... He’s still on the phone:

BLOND MAN
Somebody called, so what? Probably
a wrong number ... Yeah? How’d they
figure it was him if he didn't say … I
know, but just because the boat’s not
here …

EXT. CANAL & LOCK - LATE AFTERNOON

The lock is a rectangular enclosure comprised of concrete side walls and hydraulically operated steel gates at either end. Now that the rear gate has come closed behind her, water floods the chamber and the walls drop away, the ‘Sea Change’ riding higher and higher until the level has risen to that of the canal on the western side; then the forward gate opens and she continues on her way.

INT. SEA CHANGE

Maria, sitting with her blistered feet up on the bunk, reads aloud from the fanfold brochure on the New York State Barge Canal.

MARIA
‘The 8 locks of the Welland Canal
overcome a difference of 326 feet
between Lake Erie and Lake Ontar– ‘...

CHARLIE
Not going that way.

EXT. MARINA - TROY, NEW YORK - DUSK

The Blond Man exits the store and comes out to where he's left the car. He's got the brochure.

INT. SEA CHANGE - MOVING - DUSK

With a open packet of over-the-counter diet pills on the console, Charlie pops a couple, washing them down with Coke as he tries to decipher the chart he's got spread out before him.

MARIA
So then they picked you because of
your father?

CHARLIE
Godfather. My father's dead. They
picked me because of Gaines. No
wonder he wasn’t worried. He knew.
From Twombly. He already knew
what the Fed was going to do. And
now that option’s worth about two
billion. Could go high as three by
the time it expires. Maybe four.

Up ahead, beyond a long and curving stretch of canal: City lights. He locates the place on the chart, but can't make out the small print.

CHARLIE
What's this say?

Maria hears scratching noises. Watches the shelf.

MARIA
You need glasses, Charlie.

Still watching the shelf, she comes up behind him. She holds the Beretta down at her side.

CHARLIE
I don't need glasses, my eyes are just
tired What's it say?

MARIA
Rome.

The rat chooses this very moment to venture out onto the shelf and Maria fires, squeezing off three rounds before Charlie can get the gun from her. There are holes in the cabin wall. All that remains of the rat are a few bloody clumps of fur.

CHARLIE
Feel better? Satisfying, isn't it?

Taking the wheel again, he steers the boat back to mid-channel. Maria retreats to the galley.

Returning with salad tongs and a bucket of water, ready to clean, she starts by first removing everything from the shelf. When she comes across the damaged diskette, she shows it to Charlie.

MARIA
You want this?

CHARLIE
No ... Wait, yes! Yes, I do.

He takes it from her and, carefully blowing away the dust, checks the crack in the plastic.

CHARLIE
I left it open! (BEAT) Rome. Let's
hope there's a Kinko's in Rome.

EXT. ROADWAY - NIGHT

A billboard extolling the delights of Buffalo stands in a narrow strip of land between pavement and canal. Illuminated by head-lights. A car goes past. It's the Blond Man.

EXT. DOWNTOWN ROME - NIGHT

A cab is parked outside Kinko's, the only business in this block that’s open. The driver passes the time playing a pocket video game.

INT. KINKO'S

Maria watches the monitor where the option's termination date, together
with a countdown for time remaining, is displayed in blinking highlight. Using a window to call up a running tabulation of exchange rates, Charlie plugs this into the option formula and then looks on as the number to the right of the equal sign, three billion dollars and counting, goes clicking over like a high speed gas pump.

CHARLIE
Making about $10,000 every couple
of seconds. He's letting it ride.

Using the cursor, he selects for ‘Alter’.

CHARLIE
Okay, and now I'm going to fix it so
he can't get off.

EXT. WATERFRONT STREET & PIER

The cab leaves as they make their way back to the boat.

CHARLIE
If they can't access the account and
the option expires, that's it, they can
kiss all that money goodbye.

MARIA
So now what?

CHARLIE
So now I've got the upper hand.

INT. CAR - NIGHT - MOVING

Continuing along the frontage road which runs parallel to the canal, the Blond Man, once he's sure the ‘Sea Change’ is neither of the two boats there to his right, steps on the gas, speeding past the Oswego turnoff ...

EXT. CANAL - NIGHT

The ‘Sea Change’ passes from the straight line of this manmade watercourse into the wide spread of Lake Oneida.

INT. SEA CHANGE - MOVING

Charlie fiddles the ignition wires, and Maria, who's trying to get some sleep, is surprised when the engines quit.

CHARLIE
I'm going in.

MARIA
I thought we had to get there.

EXT. LAKE ONEIDA - NIGHT

Charlie, dropping anchor, waits for it to bite before making his way aft where he hooks a ladder over the transom and dives in, resurfacing as Maria emerges from the cabin.

CHARLIE
You said you were hot.

He treads water, watching as she disappears from view. And now a splash on the far side of the boat …

Maria swims to the ladder and hangs on, watching the smooth, moonlit surface of the water, expecting Charlie to show himself any second now, but when he doesn’t, she begins to worry that he might not be playing around. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. And then, just as she’s starting up the ladder, he pops up behind her, grabbing a foot, pulling her back down.

MARIA
Charlie!

CHARLIE
Cold! Jesus! But I guess I don't have to
tell you that.

He's looking at her breasts which she does nothing to hide. When she drops back into the water, he moves closer.

MARIA
You know, you look like a little boy
without your beard.

CHARLIE
But you like little boys.

MARIA
Not too little.

Both hanging onto the ladder, they kiss ...

A phone's ringing …

INT. GAINES BEDROOM - NIGHT

A hand feels for the cordless receiver on the bedside table, Gaines answering it on the second ring. He's got his back to his wife, Bunny, who's also awake now, listening.

GAINES
(On phone) Hold on a second.

He gets up, Bunny switching on her bedside lamp as he starts across the room.

GAINES
Business, dear. Go back to sleep.

BUNNY
Business? At this time of night?

GAINES
It's not night in Dubai.

BUNNY
Dubai?

GAINES
Yes, dear, Dubai.

BUNNY
Randolph?

But he's already gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

INT. BAT HROOM

Gaines runs the sink taps and sits down on the toilet. He holds the phone in both hands, cupping the mouthpiece.

GAINES
Okay, go ahead ... What things don't
add up? ... But that's according to the
moron security guard. Charlie couldn't
have left the building when he says he
did because the transfer posted at 7:51.
How’s it going to post at 7:51 if he left
at 6:42?! … What? …Call it?!

He's got to keep his voice down. He flushes the toilet.

GAINES
Two days left to run on this and the
dollar going through the roof, you’re
telling me to call it? ... Let me speak
to him then … No. I want to speak to
Tom ... So wake him up ...

He's been disconnected. Tries calling back, but can’t get through. For a while
he just sits there, unable to move. And then, when he does move, getting up, turning off the faucets, he catches an unwelcome glimpse of himself in the mirror. He takes a bottle of pills from the medicine cabinet,

INT. SEA CHANGE - MOVING - NIGHT

Charlie guides the boat from the lake along to the next leg of the canal which before long branches off in two directions, one heading west, the other, posted as the Oswego Canal, bending north. He's going north.

EXT. ERIE CANAL LOCK - NIGHT

The Lock Operator, looking down from where he stands at the rear door to the control booth, shrugs off the question just put to him and points east. The Blond Man down below hurries back to his car and, making a U-turn, heads back along the frontage road the way he's just come.

EXT. OSWEGO CANAL - NIGHT

The ‘Sea Change’ continues on in the moonlight.

INT. CAR - MOVING

Slowing as he comes to an intersection with a signpost for the Oswego Canal, the Blond Man turns left.

INT. SEA CHANGE - MOVING

Maria's at the wheel, Charlie in the galley, splashing his face with water. He's exhausted, wired.

POV THROUGH LENS - NIGHT

Seen at a distance, the ‘Sea Change’ follows the canal north.

EXT. OSWEGO CANAL

The Blond Man lowers his binoculars, high-tech field glasses with night vision
capability, and gets back in the car.

EXT. OSWEGO CANAL LOCK - NIGHT

The control booth here is brightly lit by arc lamps for painters cutting in the exterior trim. The Blond Man's car drives slowly past along the access road, then accelerates, following signs for Lake Ontario.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER – LOBBY – NIGHT

Deaf to the friendly greetings of the guard, Gaines crosses to the elevators. The guard flips him off.

INT. EXECUTIVE SUITE OFFICE - NIGHT

The wall safe stands open, Gaines at the computer entering the access code as it’s printed on the flap of the envelope. Startled by a warning beep and the monitor's response: ‘Error/Enter Access Code’, he checks to make sure he’s copied it right and tries the code a second time, typing carefully. When the same thing happens again, he grabs the phone and uses speed dial, keying in an extension.

GAINES
(Phone) I can't access it! He must’ve
changed the goddamned code ... How
the Hell do I know! …We've got to
find him!

Stunned by what he's now being told, he's short of breath and has to speak in short bursts.

GAINES
Here, I'm here. You've got to call it
Off! You've ... Hello? ...

The line's dead.

EXT. CANAL - ONTARIO LOCK - NIGHT

Driving past another control booth, the Blond Man pulls to a stop on the side of the road and gets out. He leaves his cell phone on the front seat.

INT. SEA CHANGE - MOVING - NIGHT

Up ahead is the lock where painters are still at work outside the brightly lit control booth. Maria covers her nose against the smell and goes to lie down, burying her face in a pillow.

CHARLIE
What's wrong with you?

MARIA
Paint. Feel sick. (BEAT) Hope you
didn't make me pregnant, Charlie.

INT. CONTROL BOOTH

The man at the controls waits for the ‘Sea Change’ to be tied off inside the lock before activating the hydraulics. Coming slowly down along the canal behind her is a houseboat.

EXT. OSWEGO CANAL LOCK

As water releases from the chamber, Charlie, watching the downward suck of submerged debris, notices the scuppers, fluted vents two feet across, at the base of the sidewalls. Before long, the water’s dropped as far as it’s going to, and the forward gate opens. The ‘Sea Change’ continues north.

EXT. FRONTAGE ROAD

The cell phone left in the car, ringing now to the tune of the ‘William Tell Overture’, is audible for only a second or two before being swallowed up in the rumble of a coming truck. As it blows past the control booth, the Blond Man materializes on the other side of the road, stepping from the shadows.

INT. CONTROL BOOTH - ONTARIO LOCK

The Lock Operator watches the many pressure and level guages as the water water rises to the Full line marked on the facing side wall. He then flicks a switch, opening the rear gate, allowing the ‘Sea Change’ to enter.

EXT. OSWEGO CANAL - ONTARIO LOCK

After Charlie’s secured all lines and signaled to the booth, lights on the rear gate change from green to red and start to flash. There's the hiss of pumps kicking in. He rejoins Maria on the aft deck as the water level starts to drop.

INT. CONTROL BOOTH

The Operator yawns as the ‘Sea Change’ sinks out of sight past the sill of the observation window. Suddenly, a glass pane in the door behind him pops and his eyes go wide, a gaping hole there between them where the bullet tore through.

The Blond Man, moving quickly as he crosses from the doorway, dumps the Operator out of his chair and takes over at the controls. When the needle in the level gauge drops past the halfway mark, he turns a key, and the signal lights outside go from red to green. At negative 20 feet, he flips a toggle for the rear gate.

EXT. ONTARIO LOCK

Reacting to the deep bass of the hydraulics, Charlie looks behind him to see the gate’s overlapped lips of steel starting pull apart. He calls out as loud as he can to the man up in the booth, and just now recognizes who that is at the window looking back down at him..

INT. CONTROL BOOTH

Watching as the massive gate opens wider and canal waters, no longer held in check, come pouring through, the Blond Man waves goodbye to Charlie.

EXT. ONTARIO LOCK

All her lines snapping under this avalanche of water, the ‘Sea Change’ rolls, capsizing …

EXT. ONTARIO LOCK - UNDERWATER

In all the turbulence, the only way to distinguish up from down is the green lit surface which Maria's frantically trying to get back to, but can’t because Charlie's got her by the hair, and he's pulling her the other way, using ladder rungs to descend to the floor of the lock, where he locates a scupper. But the bottom end of this downward curving pipe is sealed with a retractable metal flue which, despite desperate effort, he can't budge.

A panic stricken Maria, upsidedown and unable to turn, is trying to wriggle back the other way when suddenly the flue opens and they're both sucked through in a high velocity flush that propels them down and out.

EXT. LAKE ONTARIO

The lock's forward gate releases a torrent of water, along with the wreckage of the ‘Sea Change’, her battered hull sinking, making bubbles, as she goes down.

EXT. OVERLOOK

Here at a railing where the bluff affords an unobstructed view of the lake, the Blond Man uses his binoculars to pan out from lock to where flotsam bobs on a slowing outflow.

EXT. LAKESHORE

Carrying Maria through the reed thick shallows, Charlie gets her up the bank to a clearing where moonlight shines through. She's not breathing. He slaps her, shakes her.

CHARLIE
Breathe, Maria, breathe!

He’s giving her mouth to mouth when she's convulsed, rolling away from him to vomit water.

Reacting to the loud wail of an siren, he goes crawling off, Maria losing him as she tries to follow.

The siren continues as Charlie, waist-deep in water, looks from the edge of the reeds to the lock where the lakeside gate remains open. Something else catches his eye, something all but submerged as it goes floating past close to shore.

EXT. LOCK

The houseboat’s within a few feet of going over the edge when someone comes racing along the embankment, making for the control booth. The siren here is deafening and it's hard to make out the screams of the elderly couple on board, the man losing his footing as he tries to lay hold of a spring loaded stop sign that extends from a bank piling like a semaphore. In any case the houseboat’s already past the point of no return, and over it goes, the gate then closing, staunching further loss of water.

EXT. LAKESHORE

A searchlight probes the lake waters by the lock, then makes a wide sweep as the alarm falls silent. Maria draws back.

The sailbag, still tangled up in fishline attached to the bulky life preserver, has fetched up in the muck where Charlie finds it, and where Maria finds him, fighting the zipper open to get at the bank bag and all the waterlogged money inside. Dragging this up into the reeds, he upends it to drain.

MARIA
Still think we've got the upper hand?

CHARLIE
Doesn't make any sense.

MARIA
Maybe they don't need you. Maybe
they figured it out on their own.

She’s trying to button the shirt she's got on, but there's only one button left, and now this too comes off.

CHARLIE
Looks great. You always look great.
Come on.

He gets to his feet, picks up the bag.

CHARLIE
Used to be a place somewhere round
here where you could rent boats.

MARIA
I don't like boats anymore.

EXT. LAKESHORE - LATER

It’s no longer quite so dark by the time they emerge from the reeds. Maria wants to stop here and rest, but Charlie just keeps on going, sticking to the shoreline.

MARIA
I thought you said it wasn't far.

CHARLIE
It was a long time ago, alright?

EXT. LAKE CABIN - DAWN

Sound asleep inside a sorry looking wooden skiff that’s up on blocks here in the back yard of an unoccupied vacation house, an Old Man wakes to the sound of approaching voices. Peeking out over the side, he sees Charlie and Maria coming this way and makes quick work of stuffing his bedding into a garbage and stowing it under the aft seat. He then busies himself sanding the interior with a scrap of cardboard, and looks up from this work as if taken completely by surprise when he realizes he has visitors.

CHARLIE
Mornin’. We're looking for this place,
somewhere around here - used to be,
anyway - where you can rent boats?

OLD MAN
Boats, uh? Where you rent boats …

Scratching his beard as he studies on it, his eyes stray to Maria, her breasts showing through the damp shirt she holds closed.

OLD MAN
Nope. Not round here.

CHARLIE
Somewhere else? ...

The Old Man shrugs. Charlie needs a cigarette. He’s got an unopened pack in one of his pockets, but there’s a tear in the cellophane, the whole thing’s soggy.

CHARLIE
Wouldn't happen to have a smoke,
would you?

OLD MAN
Would if I smoked 'em. Just never
smoked ‘em. Nope, never ever did.
So, lookin’ to rent you a boat, uh?
What you got in mind? Big boat,
little boat? Motorboat? This here’s
a motorboat. Goes like a top, too.

CHARLIE
What would you want for her?

The Old Man just smiles and lets his eyes drift back to Maria.

OLD MAN
A friggin' top. (Patting the motor)
This here’s a Merc. Me, I gotta say,
I prefer Mercs.

Charlie pulls a packet of money out of the bag, breaks the plastic-wrap seal, and begins counting off hundreds, watching the Old Man fight a smile.

EXT. LAKE - DAY

As Charlie rows away from shore and the Old Man can be seen making off in the opposite direction, Maria spots flagged buoys just beyond a bend in the shoreline a couple of hundred yards further on. A big billboard, ‘Boats For Rent’, is visible even at this distance, and now the dock fingers and all the boats, lots of boats, come into view.

MARIA
(Mimicking) Nope, not round here.

Charlie moves aft to let the antique out-board down into the water. But he can’t find the release and Maria has to show him. But then she goes back to her seat, leaving him to deal with the motor, yanking the pull-cord over and over as the boat drifts.

MARIA
Maybe if you opened the gas valve …

Once more she shows him what to do, and the Mercury coughs and catches hold. Charlie throttles up, the skiff slowly coming about, trailing smoke as she makes for the far shore.

EXT. LAKE - DAY

Two sailboats slice across the water, closing fast. Beyond the point where their opposite headings cross, the skiff can be seen and heard as she putters north down the widening wedge of water that opens between them.

THE FINAL OPTION (9TH Installment)

EXT. 6TH AVENUE

There’s a city crew at work here outside the office building, breaking up pavement. Charlie crosses the street.

INT. 6TH FLOOR HALLWAY

From the elevator, Charlie makes his way down along the corridor to Sylvie's office. The door’s unlatched, but it’s blocked by something on the other side …

CHARLIE
Sylvie …?

INT. JACOBS DETECTIVE AGENCY

Crewcut’s just inside the doorway, lying face down in blood. There’s blood on the door-knob, as well, and a trail of it where he’s dragged himself across the carpet. Squeezing through and shutting the door behind him as the jack-hammers knock off for a few seconds, Charlie steps over the body. In the relative silence, he hears something, a dull buzzing sound, and keeps trying to determine where this is coming from as he crosses the room. But the jack-hammers start up again.

CHARLIE
Sylvie?

From where he's standing he can't see her. There's blood on the wall behind her chair and a big, splintered hole through the front panel of the desk, but no sign of Sylvie until he comes around to the other side and discovers her there on the plastic floor protector.

CHARLIE
Oh my God, oh Jesus …

He wants to embrace her, but there’s just too much blood, too much smell of blood. It’s all he can do - and this only by holding his breath - to free the finger hung up in the Beretta’s trigger guard. And that’s when he spots the bank bag pushed all the way forward in the desk’s kneehole. To lay hold of it, however, without kneeling in blood, he has to stretch himself almost flat, and he feels he’s going to pop holding his breath so long. But he manages it. As he pulls back, swinging the bag up into the swivel chair, the computer disk falls out of his pocket.

CHARLIE
Gaines … Oh my God! Oh God! Oh
goddamnit, Sylvie, I’m so sorry, I ...

The link between the diskette and Gaines, between Gaines and Sylvie’s death, are suddenly as clear cut as the one between the wire transfer and the bagful of money. And in that instant nausea’s swept away by clarity, by connections being made.

Using a piece of stationary, he picks up the diskette and wraps it, drops it into his jacket pocket. He also takes the Beretta and the box of ammunition he finds in one of the drawers, and adds them to the canvas bag where, in addition to all the packets of hundred dollar bills, there's an envelope with his name on it.

Inside, on a single folded square of notepaper, is a typed list of the telephone numbers he asked Sylvie to check out; also the End-Line Number. The area code is a surprise.

CHARLIE
But that's Canada. (BEAT – Another
connection made:) Toronto.

Once again he hears that faint buzzing sound. It lasts only a few seconds, shuts off, then starts up again ... Coming from the dead man. From the pocket pager on his belt. Charlie unclips it and uses a corner of the man’s shirt to wipe blood off the glass of the readout where a number’s displayed.

Now Sylvie’s telephone starts to ring. He freezes, looking at it there on the desk, waiting for the answering machine to kick in, but the machine's not on, and the phone keeps ringing.

EXT. BEEKMAN PLACE

It’s still raining ... Standing under the apartment house awning with a cell phone to his ear, the Blond Man, frustrated by unanswered ringing at the other end of the line, angrily cancels the call. He’s making another when a cab pulls up.

INT. CAB - MOVING

The Blond Man’s still on the phone

BLOND MAN
Doorman hasn't seen him and he’s
not downtown, so maybe he went to
pick it up himself ... So where is he
then?

INT. HOTEL BEDROOM - DAY

The Executive Secretary’s on the bed, wriggling into pantyhose, when Gaines exits the bathroom. The television’s on.

TV VOICE
The dollar, picking up from where it
left off yesterday, continues to gain
ground, even in the face of growing
concerns that other nations will ...

GAINES
(Switching off the TV) ... eat crow.

Standing in front of the mirror, he centers the knot of his tie and fusses with the black armband he’s wearing.

GAINES
Not very festive, is it? (BEAT) Poor
ole Charlie ...

Breaking the loosely stitched thread holding the band in place, he slips it off.

GAINES
You don't have to hurry back to the
office on my account, you know.

She puts off getting dressed and leans back into the pillows as he blows her a kiss and crosses to the door, opening it.

SECRETARY
Hope you've got an appetite now.

GAINES
At ten grand a plate, I better have.

SECRETARY
So who's it for, Republican, Democrat?
Which one?

GAINES
What's the difference?

EXT. BROADWAY

Charlie comes to the corner and stops - Where's he going? Shifts the heavy canvas bag to his other hand and, nervously checking behind him just as a bus pulls to the curb in front of him, turns back around to see what only a second before had been an ordinary street scene has now been replaced by a shiny, idealized vision of Niagra Falls. An advertisement on the bus’ side panel, it totally dominates his view. The rain continues.

CHARLIE
Edencroft …

When the bus pulls away again, he's on it, heading uptown.

INT. OFFICE BUILDING - HALLWAY

The Blond Man listens at the door before using a small battery powered device to trigger the electric lock.

INT. JACOBS DETECTIVE AGENCY

Unfazed by the bloody scene inside here, the Blond Man steps over the body and circles around to the other side of the desk where Sylvie now lies covered by a window curtain. He has a look at her, then goes to check out the closet, the kitchenette. He knows the money's probably not here and he doesn't waste much time on it. He goes back to Crewcut and, patting him down, finds what he's after: an incendiary grenade taped to his shaved leg. Leaving it there, he pulls the pin and exits.

INT. 6TH FLOOR HALLWAY

The Blond Man's through the exit door and on his way down the stairs before the thing blows, the office exploding into fire and broken glass.

INT. SEA CHANGE

Rigid with terror as she lies here on her back, unable to move, Maria has her eyes pinned upsidedown on a rat which has started down the rope from the headboard, turning back now as the boat tips.

Charlie, coming inside, sees the rat dart along the shelf and disappear. Maria’s hysterical, sobbing behind the duct tape.

CHARLIE
It's gone, alright? It's gone!

The unframed photograph of Edencroft lies on the chart table where he left it. Turning it over, he finds a photography studio imprint on the back-side, as well as: a telephone number. Comparing this with the so-called end-line number and seeing that both have the same 234 prefix, he needs time to sort things out. But he doesn't get it. Maria's wheezing, hyperventilating, and he gets caught up in her eyes, in the panic he finds there.

CHARLIE
You're alive! Sylvie's not. They killed
her. Henry, Sylvie ....

He squats down by the canvas bag, spilling packets of money as he digs out the Beretta.

CHARLIE
Because of me. And you.

After replacing the money, all but one packet of hundreds which he tucks into her purse, he removes a comforter from the bunk drawer. It’s as he’s covering her with this that he notices the scorched rope, as well as the burn blisters on her arms. On the TV is a rebroadcast of the Rodriquez report. He turns it off.

CHARLIE
You and Rodriquez. But now he's
dead, too.

He finds rain-gear in another bunk drawer, and then goes forward to the foc'sle, returning with a sailbag full of orange life preservers. He dumps these out, but there’s one caught up in a tangle of fishline which is also wound tightly around the sailbag grip. Has to cut it. Can't find his knife.

CHARLIE
Coffee ... Coffee and money. And
Charlie knows who's behind it. Well,
of course he does, he knows every-
thing, right, Maria?

From outside comes the frustrated cursing of someone trying to yank-start an outboard.

CHARLIE
Except I didn’t. I didn’t know.

Giving up on the fishline, he leaves the life preserver attached to the sailbag grip, fits the bank bag inside, and zips it shut.

CHARLIE
But that was then. This is now. Now
I do know.

He starts to free her, starting with the tape ...

CHARLIE
Didn't before, but I do now. Who
they are. Even where they are. It
wasn't staged, you know. I didn't
make that up. They're after you,
too.

When he's untied her, he picks up the sailbag and crosses to the open cabin door where he stands, looking out at the rain. Maria, stiff from having to lie so long in one position, rubs at the deep imprints on her wrists and ankles, watching him.

MARIA
That woman you saw me with, she
took care of me when I was little.
She’s from Columbia. She lost her
entire family down there. Children,
grand-children, everyone. (BEAT)
Charlie?

The rain beats down harder, and a wind kicks in, rocking the boat at the very moment that the balky outboard finally starts up, a coincidence of sound and motion that cues Charlie’s look to the key in the ignition, its chain loop tap-ping against the console. It's not going to work, he knows that, but he has to at least give it a try. So he does. Again and again and ...

CHARLIE
Needs a new switch. And I had one,
too. In my car. My fucking car!

MARIA
You could hotwire it, you know.

INT. HOTEL BALLROOM - DAY

Balloons crowd the ceiling, and there are posters of the smiling candidate all over the place. A band’s playing. Gaines, who has remained seated as others get up to dance, doesn’t know what to make of it when a waiter stops by his table to deliver a message printed on a gum wrapper. He puts on his glasses. And rises up out of his chair like a sleep walker.

EXT. HOTEL

The doorman points Gaines towards the taxi parked to one side of the drive-up, beyond which the rain’s still coming down hard. The rear door’s opened from inside. The Blond Man slides over.

INT. CAB - MOVING

The Blond Man takes his time rolling up a stick of gum.

GAINES
But I haven't had anything to do with
her for years, I ...

BLOND MAN
Where were you this morning?

GAINES
This isn't happening.

BLOND MAN
Where were you?

GAINES
What'd he say, what'd Tom say?

BLOND MAN
He's worried about you.

EXT. GAINES & FILCHER

The Blond Man stays with the cab as Gaines heads inside.

INT. EXECUTIVE SUITE

His Secretary slides a Tiffany’s catalogue under some paperwork when Gaines comes through on his way to the office.

SECRETARY
So how was it? (BEAT) That detective
called again. He'd like you ...

GAINES
Not now!

INT. EXECUTIVE SUITE - OFFICE

Gaines opens the wall safe and, removing the diskette Charlie gave him, puts it in the computer. Reading numbers off the folded fax sheet that came with it, he keys in the account access code and retrieves the file for cash reserves. The most recent entry shows a 6-figure debit, along with the time ( 7:51AM) and the date of the transaction. He picks up the phone.

GAINES
7:51? (Phone) Get me Security.

INT. CAB

Once again, the Blond Man’s ready with the door, opening it for Gaines when he comes back, visibly shaken.

GAINES
He's alive!

The Cabby's eyes are in the rearview, waiting for directions.

BLOND MAN
Just drive around.

GAINES
He's alive, he was here! 6:13! Enter-
red building at 6:13. They never put
a block on his goddamn key card!

BLOND MAN
But you have the disk.

GAINES
A disk, I have a disk. He must have kept
the original, the one you said was no good.
Not that that’d make any difference if in
fact he had been, and I quote, ‘taken care
of’ – yet another thing you said!

CABBY
Just drive around, huh?

BLOND MAN
That's right, drive around.

GAINES
Runs out of cash, and he can't go to
the bank because all his money's in
probate - he's supposed to be dead,
for godsakes - so he comes back here
where he knows he has access. And
doesn’t have to ask. Probably figured
nobody'd notice.

The Blond Man unpeels another stick of gum as the cab pulls out into traffic.

BLOND MAN
Figured wrong, didn't he?

GAINES
You think it was me. You think I'm
making this up to cover my ass. He's
alive, goddamn you!

EXT. HUDSON RIVER - DAY

The ‘Sea Change’ passes by at a good clip, her wake dying in the shallows where garbage bobs in a detergent froth.

INT. SEA CHANGE - MOVING

Charlie looks from the chart laid out before him to bluffs rising up on the eastern shore. The two wires sticking through the hole in the console are twisted together and held in place by one of Maria’s barrettes. It's no longer raining.

CHARLIE
So Rodriquez was your uncle. And
pure as the driven snow. Or was that
slush?

MARIA
He was a good man, an honorable man.

CHARLIE
He was a politician.

MARIA
Where are we going?

No response. Charlie continues looking out at the bluffs.

MARIA
Just because he was in contact with
Columbian authorities doesn't mean
he knew anything about what you
went through. I’m sure he didn’t.

Charlie uses matchsticks to plot distances on the chart, but he has difficulty making out the fine print; and keeps leaning back to compensate for his far-sightedness. Maria's watching him.

MARIA
I want to know where we're going!

He points to the photograph of Edencroft that’s now back inside the silver frame.

CHARLIE
There. Right there.

EXT. HUDSON RIVER

From here, high on the bluffs, the Sea Change looks like a toy disappearing round a bend in the sunlit river.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - SECURITY

The Chicano Guard, seen earlier stationed at the security desk in the lobby, sits at a table with his Translator, both watching Gaines as he stops pacing long enough to relight his pipe.

TRANSLATOR
But he says if he put it down as 6:42,
then that's when it was.

GAINES
But that's not when it was. He made
a mistake.

The Guard’s response to this is heated and laced with profanity. The Translator takes his time before rendering it into English.

TRANSLATOR
6:42. The subject left at 6:42.

GAINES
So then how'd the subject manage to
get logged onto our computer at 7:51?

He waves the Translator off.

GAINES
Don't bother. Just tell him he no longer
works here.

TRANSLATOR
But, Mr. Gaines, he has a wife, four
small children …

GAINES
(Going out the door) Only four?

EXT. HUDSON RIVER - NIGHT

There's a glint of irridesence, things floating on the water, as the Sea Change passes by: a number of dead fish.

INT. SEA CHANGE - MOVING - NIGHT

When Charlie gives up on trying to read the chart and switches off the con-sole lamp, the only illumination is the glow of the instrument panel. Maria watches him from the bunk as he stands there, drinking coffee, smoking one cigarette after another, trying to figure out her cell phone. He keeps poking at the buttons.

MARIA
It needs to be charged.

CHARLIE
So how do I do that?

MARIA
You need a charger.

CHARLIE
Need a charger. I hate these things.

He pushes open the windscreen and, licking his fingers, wets his eyelids, the better to feel the breeze coming through.

MARIA
You've got to sleep sometime.

CHARLIE
Slept for a week, I'm not tired.

MARIA
. You smoke too much. And you drink
too much coffee.

CHARLIE
Need a charger.

EXT. DOCKS - TROY, NEW YORK - DAWN

Seagulls hunker down on the roof of the marina’s general store where smoke curls away from the chimney. The ‘Sea Change’ is at the fuel dock where a young Attendant is topping up her tanks; he’s eating a donut.

INT. SEA CHANGE

Maria pulls back when she catches the Attendant staring at her through one of the dockside ports.

INT. PHONE BOOTH

With the end-line number in hand, Charlie deposits enough change for his call. It's answered by a voice easily overheard.

PHONE VOICE
Lotus Foundation. Hold please.

Standby music. Charlie’s looking out at the sunrise.

PHONE VOICE
Lotus Foundation. How may I direct your
call? (BEAT) Hello? ...

INT. SEA CHANGE

When Maria hears Charlie out on the dock, she’s relieved she’s no longer alone. Even so, she avoids the Attendant who doesn’t have any change on him and has to go back to the store for it. Charlie comes aboard. He grabs a couple of towels.

CHARLIE
They've got showers here. Come on.

EXT. MARINA STORE – TROY, N.Y.

The Attendant exits with a gas receipt and change just as Charlie and Maria disappear around the side of the building.

Finding the Men’s Room in use, two men with kit bags and towels waiting their turns outside here, Charlie wanders back the way he came, passing by the Ladies’ Room where a fat woman is just now letting herself inside. A shower can be heard.

INT. LADIES ROOM

Washing her hair, Maria’s not aware that anybody else is in here until a toilet flushes and she has to jump clear of very hot water.

The fat woman’s on her way out the door before the toilet overflows.

Pressed flat against the shower side wall to avoid being scalded, Maria keeps her eyes shut against the shampoo lather as she waits for the water pressure to recover, but the toilet intake doesn’t shut off so there is no change in pressure and she can't get at the faucets because of the rope of steaming hot water that drops straight down from shower head.

EXT. LADIES ROOM

Charlie, heading back to the Men’s Room, hears Maria calling out for help. The door's not locked.

INT. LADIES ROOM

When he comes in, steam’s billowing from the shower stall and the floor's flooded. He pulls back the mildewed curtain and, wrapping his arm in the towel he has, gropes for the faucets and turns them off. Maria’s still got her eyes closed. He looks at her standing there, naked, vulnerable, and it takes a moment for him to think what to do next. Water continues to overspill the toilet.

CHARLIE
You can rinse off on the boat.

He wraps her in the towel left hanging on a peg with her clothing, and picks her up.

INT. DOCK STORE

The Attendant’s at the window when Charlie goes past, carrying Maria. The
Fat Woman behind the counter comes to see what he's gawking at.

EXT. SEA CHANGE

The engines idling as Charlie readies the aft line to cast off, the Attendant,
hoping for a glimpse of Maria, shows up with change for the gas, as well as a Parks Service brochure. He hands this over, but waits until the boat’s pulling away before he says anything, shouting to be heard above the engines.

ATTENDANT
S’not called the Erie anymore, in case
you're interested.

THE FINAL OPTION (8TH Installment)

INT. SYLVIE'S APARTMENT

Her hair tucked up inside a plastic shower cap that leaks orange dye, Sylvie turns off the vacuum she’s pushing around when she hears the buzzer which doesn't let up until she calls out that she's coming. The phone's off the hook. Checking the peephole, she opens the door as far as the chain will allow.

CHARLIE
I've been trying to call you.

Recognizing the voice, she can't get the damn chain off fast enough. Crying and laughing, she pulls him inside.

SYLVIE
I knew it, I knew it! Well, not really,
not totally, but … Oh, Charlie!!!

INT. SEA CHANGE - NIGHT

Maria’s got a pencil and she’s using it to reach the matchbox when she hears rodent noises behind the paneling. She goes rigid and stops breathing to hear better, trying to get a exact fix on where this noise is coming from, but the Ab Flex commercial on TV is too loud.

INT. SYLVIE'S APARTMENT

Charlie and Sylvie are at the kitchen table, having tea.

SYLVIE
So nobody, you've told nobody.

CHARLIE
Right.

SYLVIE
Not even Gaines. No, of course not,
because then he'd want to know the
whole story and you'd be exposed as
a phony, is that it? Or you think he’s
mixed up in all this maybe.

CHARLIE
I don't know what I think.

He gets up and crosses to an open window with a cigarette in his mouth. Sylvie combs out her hair.

CHARLIE
I wake up, a whole goddamn week's
gone by.

SYLVIE
You've got to report this.

CHARLIE
I can't.

SYLVIE
Why can't?

CHARLIE
Because, Sylvie, I'm supposed to be
dead, they think I'm dead, which is
fine with me cuz, if I'm dead, then
they don't have to kill me, do they?

SYLVIE
So the bank thinks you're dead, too.
What’re you going to live on?

Charlie needs a light. Gets one off the stove, then hurries back to the window to blow the smoke outside.

CHARLIE
Six days. Six more days.

SYLVIE
Till? (BEAT) I love you, Charlie,
warts and all, but if you want my
help, I gotta know what's going on.

He's not listening. He's just discovered the damaged computer disk in an inside jacket pocket and holds it up to see where light comes through the crack in the plastic. Sylvie’s watching him.

CHARLIE
You've got an account.

SYLVIE
I can get you some money, Charlie,
but I mean it, if you don't ...

CHARLIE
No, I've got money. All I need’s an
account number so I can transfer it.

Going teary-eyed, Sylvie looks away, then starts rooting through an overloaded handbag.

CHARLIE
How about those telephone numbers?

SYLVIE
Some kind of call forwarding. I have
it at the office.

Finding her checkbook, she tears off the one remaining deposit slip.

CHARLIE
The routing number. I need that, too.

SYLVIE
Numbers, he wants numbers ...

Circling the nine digits that precede her account number at the bottom of the slip with a ballpoint that won’t give up any ink, she tears the paper and has to write these numbers by hand. She shows them to him, pointing out which is which.

SYLVIE
Routing number, okay? Routing number,
account number. You're staying here, right?

She gets up, and he follows her down the hallway.

CHARLIE
Call forwarding?

SYLVIE
Works on a relay. All those calls get
patched through to what's called an
end-line.

She gets bedding and a pillow from the linen closet and comes back to make up the couch.

SYLVIE
End-line number. Ones you gave me
all hook into the same end-line. Okay,
that's it for room service, I'm going to
bed. You know where everything is.

CHARLIE
I'll probably be gone by the time you get
get up, Sylvie. Bank opens at 9, right?

SYLVIE
And the money'll be there?

CHARLIE
It'll be there. So I'll see you at your
office, when? 10? 10:15?

Giving him a hug, she wants to ask him something, but doesn’t, just hugs him, then makes her way down the hall to her bedroom without looking back.

LATER …

Charlie, lying on the couch, can't get comfortable and keeps shifting about. He checks his watch.

INT. SYLVIE’S BEDROOM

Wakened by voices in the next apartment, Sylvie looks at her alarm clock. It’s 5:30. She kicks the wall to no effect, then gets out of bed and, going into the living room, finds that Charlie’s already gone.

EXT. GAINES & FILCHER - PREDAWN

Charlie bypasses the revolving doors for a side entrance. Monitored by video camera, this entrance is equipped with a keycard lock-slot and finger-print scanner.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - LOBBY

A young Chicano guard, working a hand grip as he leafs through a gunclub magazine, sits facing a semi-circle of security monitors. When the side entry door shoots open, he glances up from the on-screen display of Charlie's face and ID number to see Charlie himself, eyes front, as he crosses behind a run of lobby pillars to the elevators.

INT. 39TH FLOOR

Stepping off the elevator, Charlie detours around a disabled floor buffer and two janitors trying to unjam its casters. He looks away when he recognizes one of them as the man who helped move his desk things.

INT. TRADING ROOM

A cleaning crew’s at work, vacuuming, polishing, emptying waste baskets, when Charlie comes through on the way to his office. But the door’s been padlocked and there’s a cleaning lady at the Secretary's desk, eyeing him as he stands there. And now the Janitor he recognizes is coming this way with the repaired floor buffer. Charlie hurries across to Henry's desk.

Sitting here, he loses no time in trying the damaged diskette, cheating looks to the Filing Room as he slips it into an external computer port and hits the switch.

CHARLIE
C'mon, c'mon, work, please work ...

The program boots up and now he enters the access code for Account 1066. Retrieving a file for Cash Reserves, he selects for ‘Funds Transfer’, types in $250,000, and then the routing and account numbers Sylvie wrote down for him.

The response comes back: ‘Invalid Entry’. He rechecks all the numbers and tries it again. And again. But there’s no change in the response. Panicking, he calls Sylvie. Gets her answering machine.

CHARLIE
Sylvie, wake up, it's me. Sylvie?!

Glancing towards the Filing Room, he sees the Janitor he recognizes on the other side of the doorway, guiding the floor buffer back and forth, flicking a couple of looks this way before moving out of sight. Charlie hangs up. He then retrieves a Command file for the on-screen program and alters a three-letter extension, which changes the account's ‘Closed’ designation to ‘Open’.

The buffer shuts down. Moments later the Janitor’s pushing it back through the doorway. Charlie's gone.

EXT. GAINES & FILCHER - DAWN

At the newspaper stand, a homeless woman, using display wire for clothes-line, is hanging her wash out to dry when Charlie comes down the steps. It starts to rain.

INT. SYLVIE'S APARTMENT - MORNING

A bleary-eyed Sylvie is stepping into the shower when she hears the phone. Cracking open the bathroom door, she listens as it rings a third time before being picked up by the answering machine in the kitchen. Even so she can’t hear the voice, not with the shower on. She runs to get it.

SYLVIE
Yeah?... You’re where?... Whaddaya
mean it's wrong? ... Wait.

She crosses to the table for her checkbook and comes back.

SYLVIE
Still there?

INT. KINKO'S COPIES

All computers here are in use. Charlie’s on a courtesy phone at the front counter, deposit slip in hand. Just above the tear in the paper where Sylvie wrote the routing number, the bottom curve of her 5 continues up into a loop, making it look more like an 8. The rainfall holds steady.

CHARLIE
The routing number. You put down
001-213-827... Five? That's a five?
So it’s 527? 001–213–527.

A customer comes to pay for his computer time, surrendering the key which the clerk rings up and clears, then hands to Charlie. Hanging up, he crosses to where the computers are. It’s 7:45.

INT. SEA CHANGE

Although she’s now gotten hold of the box of wooden matches, Maria’s hands are bound too tight for easy manipulation and the matches break one after the other as she tries to strike them. When finally she does get one to light, she holds it to the half foot of synthetic line binding her hands to the head-board, and it blackens under the flame but, instead of catching fire, it only blisters, then pops, spattering her with hot liquid plastic. Dropping the box, matches spilling all over the floor, she breaks down crying.

TV VOICE
It's 8:23 and a rainy 69 degrees ...

INT. BANK - MORNING

Sylvie waits for the prim, middle-aged Teller to come out from behind the counter, then follows him to the desk of a mannish Bank Officer wearing lipstick to match the pink of her bow-tie.

TELLER
This lady has an account with us, and
there's been a wire transfer, it posted
just about an hour ago now, and she'd
like to withdraw it. In its entirety.

He hands over a slip of paper where the amount of that entirety is recorded. When the Bank Officer sees this amount, her attitude shifts from an aloof condescension to fawning respect.

BANK OFFICER
(To Sylvie) Won't you sit down.

SYLVIE
For this I have to sit?

The Bank Officer mouths a silent thankyou, the Teller’s cue to go back to where he came from. Which he does.

SYLVIE
There's a problem?

BANK OFFICER
No, no, not at all. It's just that there
are certain procedures to be followed
whenever a customer makes such a
large withdrawal.

SYLVIE
(BEAT) How large are we talking?

EXT. BANK

The rain's coming down hard when Sylvie exits, accompanied by a security guard who carries the bag for her, a heavy canvas satchel. A cab is waiting.

EXT. MARINA

A noisy bilge pump sputters, puking water from a sailboat berthed directly across from the ‘Sea Change’.

INT. SEA CHANGE

The CNN Morning News Anchor is on TV, but nothing he’s saying can be made out until just now when the pump outside shuts down.

TV ANCHOR
... drowned while taking a bath last
night in his suite at Hotel Exeter.

Maria lies completely still, panting through her nose.

TV ANCHOR
While there is still no autopsy report
either to confirm or refute speculation
that prescription drugs were involved,
the Senator was, according to one top
aide, in constant pain from his cancer
and increasingly depressed over his
dismissal as UN Ambass - ...

The pump starts up again. Maria's crying.

INT. COFFEE SHOP

Charlie refuses more coffee and gets up. It's almost 10.

INT. JACOBS DETECTIVE AGENCY

The windows rattle with the sound of jackhammers. Sylvie's at her desk, reading The ‘Long Goodbye’- when she hears sneezing, somebody there right outside her door.

SYLVIE
Charlie?

CREWCUT (OS)
Police. Open up.

SYLVIE
(BEAT) Just a second.

Hiding the bank bag under the desk, she picks her book up again and hits the buzzer. It's the body builder seen at the UN. He comes in wet from the rain, and the door clicks shut behind him. There’s a gun in his hand, a .38 with a silencer, and he keeps it pointed straight at her as he comes closer, stopping just the other side of the desk.

CREWCUT
Charlie? Charlie who?

Another sneeze is coming, he can feel it. Sylvie uses the book like a shield, peering over the top of it.

CREWCUT
Where's the money?

SYLVIE
Oh, I get it, you're not really police,
you just said that, you're imper- …

CREWCUT
Cut the shit. I asked you a question.

SYLVIE
What money?

All of a sudden he sneezes and the gun goes off with a soft pop, the bullet slamming through the book. Sylvie slumps sideways. There's a hole in her neck, and blood pumping out of it. Crewcut backs away. He didn't mean to shoot.

CREWCUT
Shit! Goddamn you, Lady! (Sneez-
ing again) Goddamnit!

Choking, drowning in her own blood, Sylvie feels for the Beretta mounted under the desk’s middle drawer. She can't get it to release, but she’s able to work a finger inside the trigger guard and squeeze, and Crewcut stumbles backwards, clutching at his crotch as the 9mm keeps on firing, tearing into him again and again. His one and only answering shot hits high, shattering glass in the framed movie poster.

Sylvie slides off the chair to the floor and lies there, dying, her finger still hung up in the gun's trigger guard. Outside, the jack-hammers continue.

THE FINAL OPTION (7TH Installment)

EXT. MARINA - DUSK

A red, white and blue 4th of July banner is strung up over the gate. Dropped off here by a cab, Charlie goes directly to the Harbor-Master's Office where the top half of the Dutch door is open. The man inside at the desk is eating a sandwich.

CHARLIE
Excuse me? Somebody drop off a
bag for me here? For Hastings?

The man shakes his head and keeps right on chewing.

CHARLIE
You're open till 6:30, right?

Still chewing, the man nods, and Charlie follows his look to the big wall clock. It's 6:15.

Just inside the fence here by the Office is a restored 1950s vintage phonebooth where Charlie, watching traffic stop and go along the avenue, places a call. It’s picked up by voice mail: Henry’s.

HENRY (PHONE)
Tell me something I don’t already
know.

Charlie leaves no message. Two boys go running past.

EXT. DOCKS

The boys run down to where there's a bait and tackle shop with a ‘Closed’ sign in the window. Hidden behind racks hung with fishing nets, one of them shows off the firecrackers he's got, the other a box of kitchen matches.

INT. SEA CHANGE

All the curtains are drawn, and Charlie leaves them that way when he comes in. Sweating heavily, he strips down, pulls on a pair of shorts. And flip-flops.

The ignition switch, with the key still in it, hangs by wires from the console. It doesn't work, he knows that, but he tries it anyway. And ducks for cover when at that very moment a cherry bomb goes off outside - a ridiculous jump to the wrong conclusion, too many mob movies. Even so, he regains his composure only after the sharp, erratic pop of Chinese firecrackers is followed by little boy laughter, and by the hollowy dock sound of running feet … The security gate clangs shut.

EXT. MARINA

Charlie comes along the dock, pulling on a T-shirt. It's getting darker, and he's jumpy. An umbrella flare illuminates the water. As he cuts across to the phone booth, he skirts the lamplight. The Harbor-Master Office is closed.

Placing another call to Henry, he uses his foot to keep the folding door from unfolding all the way and the interior light from coming on. At the sound of loud music he looks to see his Mercedes going past on the avenue.

INT. MERCEDES - MOVING

Windows down, music blasting from the speakers, Henry slows, looking for the Marina's vehicle entrance in the long run of chainlink fencing. But he's already past it. Charlie’s duffle bag’s in the back seat, along with a bag of golf clubs.

EXT. AVENUE

Charlie calls out, chases after it, but the Mercedes doesn't stop until it’s gone halfway along the next block, almost to the end of the Marina fence. He now sees the door come open and Henry looking back this way, waving ...

INT. MERCEDES

Henry shuts the door, eases the gear shift into reverse …There's a sudden burst of light!

EXT. AVENUE

The Mercedes, engulfed by incandescence, suddenly inflates, there's a great crumping shock, the sheet metal buckling, and then nothing but explosion ... Charlie's blown backwards.

EXT. AVENUE - LATER

A cacophony of horns and angry voices react to the traffic backed up along the avenue, and there’s a face in every window, as well as people gathering on the sidewalks to see what there is to see. A pall of smoke rises from what remains of the Mercedes.

A woman comes to join the man squatting down beside Charlie who lies face up on the sidewalk.

MAN
You touch, you're liable. Don't touch.

A number of cars, most of them parked, have been damaged, and the corner section of chain-link is no longer there. Police divert traffic onto side streets and seal off the avenue as firefighters now hose down a burning Cadillac.

The runoff empties down a storm drain where a patrolman picks up a warped and blistered license plate.

By the time medics lift him onto a stretcher, Charlie’s fading in and out of consciousness, silence alternating with brief snatches of dialogue.

A flashlight plays on his eyes, and there’s a face behind it. Someone's going through his pockets.

MEDIC #1
How you doing?

His partner holds up a pack of Camels and the plastic key card for the dock gate; it's unmarked.

MEDIC #2
That's it. (To Woman) You know him?

MAN
No, we just ...

MEDIC #1
(To CHARLIE) What's your name?

MEDIC #2
He's going ...

Charlie's eyes roll and everything goes to black. Complete silence …

And then, very faintly at first, electronic beepings ...

INT. HOSPITAL WARD ROOM - DAY

Charlie comes to and lies there blinking, trying to get his bearings. Hooked up to monitoring equipment, he’s aware of a TV on behind the curtain separating his bed from the one next to it. Whoever's there keeps changing the channels. At the moment, it's a news broadcast:

TV NEWSMAN (OS)
... reeling from the effects. When the
Fed adjusts rates - up or down – it’s
a quarter or half a point. But a hike of
one and a half points ...

Again the channel changes, and Charlie, struggling to sit up, bangs his thumb, no longer bandaged. That this doesn't hurt is baffling, as is the plastic bracelet he notices on his wrist.

Because the Patient in the next bed is immobilized by a complicated back-and-neck brace and both arms are in traction, he’s left to work a suspended remote control with his teeth, and when the curtain is yanked back, startling him, he bites down on the wrong button, the power button, killing the TV.

CHARLIE
(BEAT) Henry?

The brace with its padded head clamps make it impossible for Charlie to see the man’s face. And the man, watching the blank TV screen, can see nothing more of Charlie than the hand with half a thumb that’s holding back bunched up folds of curtain.

PATIENT
Well, I'll be damned, you woke up!

Charlie pulls the curtain further back. All the other beds in here are empty.

CHARLIE
The Fed raised the prime?

PATIENT
The what? Oh yeah, right, the prime,
I guess that’s right. Anyhow, welcome
back to the world. I’m Gino. You?

CHARLIE
(Stunned) They raised the prime, the
fucking prime …

PATIENT
I mean, I’m pretty sure that can’t be
your real name.

CHARLIE
Excuse me.

PATIENT
John Doe. That's how they got you
down.

Charlie looks now for the first time at the name on the ID bracelet. He tries to pull it off. Can't.

CHARLIE
How long've I been here?

PATIENT
Dunno. Couple of days anyhow.

CHARLIE
Days?!

He feels his face, the heavy growth of stubble.

PATIENT
Well, that's how long I been here,
and you was already here when ...

CHARLIE
What's today?

PATIENT
Today? Today's Thursday.

Charlie wants to get up, but first has to disentangle himself from a number of wires taped to his skin, as well as an intravenous feeding tube, which starts a trickle of blood down his arm when he pulls the needle. And even then he's held back. By a catheter.

PATIENT
All they'd tell me was you had some
kinda concussion. Musta been a dilly.

CHARLIE
Thursday. So it's what, the 8th?

PATIENT
9th. July the 9th. 8th was yesterday.
Wednesday, July the 8th.

CHARLIE
Don't we have a phone in here?

PATIENT
Gotta put in for one.

An end to the morning’s visiting hours is being announced over the PA system as Charlie lets himself down off the bed. Though wobbly, he makes it across to the wardrobe where the door is labeled JOHN DOE on a piece of masking tape; he finds his things there, stuffed inside a plastic bag.

Apart from what’s right there in front of him, the Patient’s view of the room is limited to the TV’s fish-eye reflection. He can hear Charlie getting changed, but he can’t see him, not until he appears on the vacant TV screen in his T-shirt and shorts and flip-flops, crossing to the door, opening it …

PATIENT
Hey? What’re you doing? Hey?!

INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR

Departing visitors provide cover for Charlie as he follows along to the elevators. A man just ahead of him fails to notice when the little boy he’s carrying pokes free the cigarette he’s got parked behind his ear. Charlie picks it up. Pinches off the filter.

EXT. HOSPITAL - DAY

Charlie stops at a payphone at the corner. But his pockets are empty, he has no money. Not a dime. No matches either for the cigarette that’s stuck jibbering on his lower lip.

EXT. UPTOWN - MONTAGE

Weak and dizzy, he barely makes it to the bus stop shelter where he collapses onto a plastic bench and leans forward with his head down between his knees. A woman, seated across from him with her two children, notices the hospital bracelet and the line of dried blood running down his arm. She decides to wait for the bus outside.

Charlie crosses at the corner where blast scars pit the avenue’s pavement and the marina's 10 foot section of missing chain link has been replaced with new fencing.

EXT. MARINA

Disappearing into the store, he comes back out a seconds later with a book of matches and the unfiltered cigarette, stopping outside the door to light up. He then heads for the docks, smoking, coughing.

INT. SEA CHANGE

The cabin lights are still on and things remain just as he left them, including the wrinkled suit on the bunk. There’s a couple of dollars in a pants pocket, but nothing in his wallet. Only credit cards. Dressing quickly, he’s on his way back out when he remembers he has to shave.

EXT. MARINA STORE

The phone booth's occupied and Charlie, clean shaven, continues on past it, down along the breezeway between the store and harbor-master's to where the ATMs are. Inserting his card, he types in the pin code and selects for a withdrawal ...

The on-screen response:: ‘Your transaction cannot be processed at this time. Check with your branch office. Please remove your card.’

He wipes the card clean and tries it again. And again it's rejected. The same thing happens when he tries the other machine here.

A careful looking older man in a captain’s hat now stands in the breezeway, waiting for Charlie to give up on the machines and be gone before daring to show his own card. Even so, he remains wary and keeps checking back over his shoulder.

INT. PHONE BOOTH

Charlie holds the ATM card backside up where the bank's hotline number is printed in red.

CHARLIE
... a 45 day hold and you can't tell me
why? That’s some hotline ... Yeah? How
the hell am I supposed to do that now?
The bank's closed!

He hangs up, his mind racing. Leaves the booth, then stops there just outside, and comes back. Places another call.

CHARLIE
Mr. Gaines, please ... So he’s there,
he’s not available, but he’s there …
Well, is he or isn’t he? ... Okay, so
he's in conference. He’s there. Right?
Okay. If he’s there, I … Shit!

Placed on hold, he slams the cancel bar. Checks his watch. And tries another number. It's busy.

INT. JACOBS DETECTIVE AGENCY

The phone's off the hook, and there’s a Detective sitting on one corner of the desk where a haggard and worn out Sylvie sits slumped over a cup of coffee. Another Detective stands by the door, picking his nose.

DETECTIVE #1
So he ran away from school.

SYLVIE
Boarding school. Long time ago. So
anyhow, his mother died, and he ran
away. I was hired to find him.

DETECTIVE #1
By Gaines.

SYLVIE
His father was out of the country.

DETECTIVE #1
And you've been close ever since.

SYLVIE
Look, we did this already.

DETECTIVE #2
Yeah, well now we're doing it again.

DETECTIVE #1
We recovered a couple of teeth from
the blast site, but they don't match up
with dental records.

Sylvie looks up, her expression giving nothing away.

DETECTIVE #1
Doing very well, wasn't he? Making a
shit load of money.

SYLVIE
I told you, we never talked money.

DETECTIVE #1
No? So what did you talk?

EXT. GAINES & FILCHER

Quitting time: the revolving doors are millwheels turning on a steady stream of gray suits.

Across the street where the rush-hour is no less intense, Charlie’s watching the building's entrance from the steps of another brokerage. The moment he spots Gaines coming out a side exit, he starts this way, dodging traffic.

Talking on a cell phone, Gaines stays focused on the lobby's revolving doors where both he and Charlie, catching sight of Maria at the same time, lose her coming down the steps.

Now Gaines is no longer where he was just a second ago, and Charlie, by the newsstand, gives up on trying to pick him out of the crowd when he sees the Blond Man, also on a cell phone, putting it away as he heads for the subway entrance at the corner.

INT. SUBWAY STATION

On his way down the stairway to the platform, Charlie has no trouble spotting the Blond Man as he forces his way through the crush of commuters to where Maria can be seen waiting trackside.

A couple of transit cops are at the foot of the stairs where a group of Japanese tourists with digital cameras keep taking photos, even when Charlie gets in the way. The cops look off to where he's pointing.

CHARLIE
I don't know what he's on, but he's
on something. And he's got a gun.

A train's coming. The Blond Man, already close to Maria, now moves closer still, ready to shove her onto the tracks, when the transit cops seize him from behind, one on each arm. The train screeches past, braking …

Maria turns to see two cops leading the Blond Man away as the train pulls to a stop behind her, the doors hissing open. She gets on. Charlie does the same
two cars back.

INT. SUBWAY CARS - MOVING

Charlie works his way forward into the next car where Maria stands facing the doors. He comes up behind her.

CHARLIE
That man back there at the station,
he meant to kill you.

Maria sees him reflected there in the window, looking at her, but she doesn't recognize him until she turns around.

MARIA
Charlie? (BEAT) Oh my God!

INT. SUBWAY STATION

The doors slide open, and they get off, Charlie covering his nose, hanging onto Maria as they make for the exit.

MARIA
But if you don't know who he is, how
do you know he ...

CHARLIE
Air. Gotta get some air.

EXT. MIDTOWN

Charlie emerges from the underground steps lightheaded. Sits on the hood of a parked car. Maria watches him.

MARIA
My place is just a couple of blocks
if you want to ...

CHARLIE
Wind up dead?

He spots a cab. In his hurry to flag it down, however, he gets up too fast and his legs buckle. Maria only just manages to pull him back out of the way of oncoming traffic.

EXT. WESTSIDE AVENUE

A cab pulls up across the avenue from the marina and they get out, first Maria, and then Charlie, who needs help.

CHARLIE
Over there ... My boat. I'm living on
my boat.

EXT. MARINA

Maria, keying in a number on her cell phone as she waits outside the store, cancels the call as it’s ringing through and drops the phone into her handbag when Charlie exits, eating a candybar. When she offers her arm for support, he waves it off. He’s okay now, doesn’t need any help.

INT. SEA CHANGE

The first thing to catch her eye when she comes inside is the framed photo of JFK shaking hands with Thomas Hastings. She reads the inscription:

MARIA
Hastings. Is this your father?

CHARLIE
Was.

MARIA
Can't tell if he really looks like you
or not. Except for the beard.

She runs a finger over the photograph’s hot spot.

MARIA
What's this?

CHARLIE
Flashbulb. He had a glass eye. (BEAT)
What else do you want to know?

The shift in his tone of voice has her turning around. They lock eyes, and he comes closer. Maria doesn't move.

CHARLIE
You're part of it, aren't you? (BEAT)
I saw you there at the UN, I followed
you. You and that woman.

MARIA
(BEAT) It's not what you think.

CHARLIE
That's how they knew so much about
me. They got it from you, the summer
hiree with a job in the filing room.

She makes a sudden move towards the door, and he grabs her and pushes her backwards onto one of the bunks. A couple of buttons on her blouse pop free and she has to hold it closed as she sits there, scared, watching him.

MARIA
You were waiting for me.

CHARLIE
No, he was waiting for you. Me, I was
waiting for somebody else.

MARIA
But decided to save my life instead. Or
was that staged?

There's a sexual tension between them. He holds up his thumb.

CHARLIE
See this? They cut it off. Feel.

She doesn't flinch when he touches it to her cheek.

CHARLIE
Henry's dead. You remember Henry. He
borrowed my car.

When he reaches for the purse behind him on the chart table, she snatches the silver frame off the shelf and throws it, just missing him, and then tries to get away, hitting her head against the bunk railing. She’s knocked cold.

She lies there, slumped over sideways, the skirt hiked up high on her legs, and Charlie admires her for a few seconds before going forward to the foc'sle. He comes back with rope and a roll of duct tape. He doesn't like the idea of tying her up, but it's the only thing he can think of. So he ties her up.

When she starts to come around, moaning, he uses the tape to gag her. There's somebody passing by on the dock outside. Her eyelids flutter. She tries to call out. He tells her to shutup. And turns on a small, gimbal-mounted TV, upping the sound to out-volume her.

Maria, breathing hard, can do nothing but watch as he dumps her purse on the chart table. He pockets the cell phone, takes out all the cash in her wallet, looks at her driver's license.

CHARLIE
I'll pay you back. (Re: Date of birth)
November 11th, 1977. Just half past
24, and already a corporate mole.

He picks the frame up off the floor where it lies face down in broken glass. The backing plate's come off, and he can make out the faded imprint of some photo studio on the print's backside. Turning it over, he looks at the big house that’s pictured there.
CHARLIE
To finance my education. (To Maria)
How about you, who financed yours?
Rodriquez?

He checks his knots, one end of the rope going from her wrists to a stout center post of the headboard, the other from her ankles to the captain's chair where it's lashed around the base.

CHARLIE
The Coffee Wars. That's what this is
all about, isn't it?

Maria stares at him, unblinking. He stares back.

CHARLIE
Too good to be true. (BEAT) Better
blink, Maria. They'll dry up.

Her eyes bore holes in the back of his head as he crosses now to the cabin door. When he goes out, he locks it after him, and the boat rocks when he steps off onto the dock. Maria struggles, trying to free herself.

EXT. MARINA

In the phone booth, Charlie remembers he has a cellphone in his pocket, but he can’t get it to work, and so winds up using the payphone after all. In any case, he gets a busy signal and hangs up, hurrying out to the avenue.

INT. SEA CHANGE

Maria strains towards a box of kitchen matches there on the shelf, just beyond the reach of her fingers.

EXT. DOCKS - DUSK

The television is barely audible in the rope straining, cowbell wind that whips through the rigging and makes the water slap.

THE FINAL OPTION (6TH Installment)

EXT. BEEKMAN PLACE

Leaving his dufflebag with the doorman, who points out the available curbside parking spaces reserved with orange traffic cones, Charlie tips him, and crosses the street to a kiosk ...

He's lighting a cigarette from a new pack of Camels when he hears, then sees a TV News chopper flying low over buildings a couple of blocks south of here. Though it now disappears over rooftops, it can still be heard, together with a surge of crowd noise. He checks the time.

EXT. FIRST AVENUE

Three southbound squad cars pass by on this otherwise deserted avenue as Charlie joins others making their way along the gutter. The sidewalks are clogged, people converging on UN Plaza from all directions as noise from
there swells in response to what's being said over a PA system.

EXT. UNITED NATIONS

The amplified voice is that of former Ambassador Rodriquez who holds forth from a miked podium at the far end of the Plaza. On hand for crowd control is a large contingent of cops in riot gear.

RODRIQUEZ
... which we're to accept as something
beyond our control, a natural disaster,
act of God ...

REPORTER
Senator Rodriquez ...?

Cops move to head off a confrontation between Skinheads and a Chicano gang as the TV helicopter clears the rooftops again. Ignoring the reporter’s attempt at a question, Rodriquez continues ...

RODRIQUEZ
First the blight and then, when those
nations whose economies depend on
coffee start coming apart at the seams,
all of a sudden, everybody's got a gun.
Is this an act of God?

Every so often the text of his speech is translated into Spanish by another man who steps forward to use the same microphone. The translation of this last bit gets a loud response, and he plays to it.

Charlie works his way through the predominantly Latino crowd to where he has a relatively clear view of Rodriquez and the phalanx of TV cameras and crews spread out before him.

REPORTER
You’ve characterized today's meeting
of the General Assembly as window
dressing. Do you mean that it makes
no difference whether they vote for
or against intervention?

RODRIQUEZ
Did it make a difference in Rwanda?

A scuffle breaks out on the far side of the plaza, where Rodriquez can barely be heard above the Spanish-English crossfire.

RODRIQUEZ
How many more dead before we wake
up to what's really going on? Where’s
all the money coming from to finance
this carnage, this slaughter?!

REPORTER
Senator, there are those who say you
play to the Public's fascination with
conspiracy theory to push your own
agenda. How do you respond to that?

RODRIQUEZ
The pilot of that downed helicopter
was a healthy young man, a young
man with no history of heart trouble,
and yet, not one hour after being
examined by Red Cross doctors - who
say he was in excellent condition - he
suffers a massive coronary and dies.
Before Columbian authorities had a
chance to question him. Fact.

SKINHEAD
Fucking spic!

From the elevated spot he has atop a planter box, Charlie can see more cops converging on the Plaza.

RODRIQUEZ
It is also a fact, despite KemCo denials,
that those canisters were in KemCo
canisters containing KemCo gas. Is that
conspiracy theory? Act of God?

REPORTER
Senator, you ...

RODRIQUEZ
Is God to blame for all the dead, close
to three million in Columbia alone? Or
is it somebody playing God, somebody
who's also engaged in the manipulation
of international money markets.

There's a popping noise and the translator, having just then stepped forward to the mike, grabs his shoulder. He's been shot.

The violence ripples outward, Skinheads mixing it up with Latinos, and cops mixing it up with both as the TV helicopter hovers directly overhead, trying to capture it all on video.

A man with a crew-cut and dark glasses, a body builder, works his way against the grain of the still growing crowd, passing within a few feet of Charlie.

RODRIQUEZ
This genocide is no theory!

Charlie's watching Rodriquez get hustled away by his handlers when he spots Maria, a brief glimpse of her in the commotion surrounding the Ambassador before he is himself swept along in the stampede, cops riding herd, trying to turn it north and south along the avenue. He cuts across at 43rd, heading west.

EXT. 2ND & 3RD AVENUES

Once again he spots Maria, this time hurrying across 2nd. He calls out and she turns to look, but doesn't see him. When he fails to make the light, he stands on the bumper of a parked car to keep track of her, watching as she continues west, a slow moving river of traffic between them. There's someone with her, someone too short to see.

At first he means to catch up with her, but when he finally gets the chance, he hangs back. She's with the scar-faced Indian woman who drove the car to the rehearsal studio. He crosses to the other side of the street, intending to keep tabs on them from there, but they’ve disappeared. He’s lost them.

Crossing Lexington, he keeps on for one more block.

EXT. PARK AVENUE

It's only now that he realizes how close he is to Grand Central, less than a block. Too close. And yet, though repelled by the proximity, there’s also a strong attraction … He hesitates, starts back the other way. Stops again ...

INT. GRAND CENTRAL STATION

Entering through a side door, Charlie halts at the top of the steps, brought up short at the sight of all the people down below. He can't stay where he is for long, however. He's blocking the way for others coming behind him, trying to get past. He starts down.

Crossing the crowded storage area, coming to within a few feet of the locker, he’s suddenly he’s short of breath: the key's there. So is a young woman with a knapsack.

His eyes are on the door, waiting for her to open it, and when she does and he can plainly see that the locker’s empty, that’s it, that’s what he came to find out. Now he wants to get out of there, and quickly. But he’s too dizzy to do anything quickly.

EXT. VANDERBILT AVENUE

Just outside here, Charlie stops to catch his breath. There’s a lineup of taxis at the curb.

INT. CAB

The Cabby watches the rearview as Charlie climbs in back.

CHARLIE
21 Beekman. Place.

With the meter flagged, the cab pulls away, but it doesn't get very far. A tow-truck’s blocking traffic up ahead, the driver operating a forklift hoist to extricate a ticketed car from a tight parking space and then load it onto its flatbed.

CABBY
Look how easy. Like that. 1-2-3.

Charlie's not paying attention. He's looking out the side window at the entrance to the Yale Club here at 50 Vanderbilt, still looking when the cab starts forward again and he sees Henry coming down the steps there with a suitcase.

CHARLIE
Henry!

But Henry can’t hear him, and Charlie can’t roll his window down. There's no crank!

EXT. VANDERBILT AVENUE

The cab stops at the far end of the block, and Charlie comes running back this way, calling out to Henry who’s on a cell-phone and doesn't hear him. There's a loud skirl of under-ground trains,.

HENRY
I can't be there by 8. I told you, the
train doesn't get in till 9:15 ... Look,
are you going to come pick me up or
what? ... Can't or won't? ...

Henry doesn't recognize Charlie when he catches up with him, not right away. In any case, he’s still on the phone.

HENRY
Hello? … Can you hear me? Hello?

CHARLIE
Henry, it's me.

The connection’s failed. Henry slaps the phone shut.

HENRY
He shaved it off, I don't believe it.

CHARLIE
Look, Henry ...

Uncomfortable at being here right outside the busy station, he keeps ducking the eyes of people coming and going. But this is all lost on Henry who just can't get over how different he looks.

HENRY
Un-fucking-believable. Hey, what'd
you do to your hand?

CHARLIE
Nothing. Henry, I need a favor.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL

Not at all happy to be back inside, Charlie stays close, making like a cornerback as he goes backwards down the stairs ahead of Henry who tries to get by him.

HENRY
Because I've got a train to catch. That
big bash I told you about up in Lyme.
Change at Stamford. Any idea how
long that's going to take? Very, very
depressing.

He's heading for the track gates when Charlie grabs his arm.

HENRY
I thought I’d just rent something and
drive, but it's fucking 4th of July and
there's not one goddamn car and …

CHARLIE
Take mine. Really. Here.

He shows him his car keys ...

EXT. VANDERBILT AVENUE

From Grand Central to the Yale Club it's a short walk.

CHARLIE
It'll be parked out front.

HENRY
What can I say? You're a fucking life
saver, Charlie. Really.

INT. YALE CLUB

Leaving his bag with the hatcheck girl, Henry shows Charlie into the taproom where he signals the bartender.

HENRY
Twombly. At the Fed, right? Gaines
said he didn't know him?! Maybe not
in any Biblical sense, but he knows
him. Of course, he knows him.

Charlie shakes out a Camel and looks around the oak paneled room where talk is muted, club members absorbed in their reading, or backgammon. The bartender brings two beers.

CHARLIE
So this is where time stands still.

HENRY
Didn't you ever come here with your
old man? State Department, wasn't he?

CHARLIE
Never did. So, where do they hide the
yearbooks?

INT. YALE CLUB LIBRARY

Here it’s mostly older men in leather armchairs, reading, dozing off. Over at the bookshelves, Henry keeps his voice down.

HENRY
Got it.

Yearbook in hand, he leads the way to the only unoccupied table where he sits down next to Charlie, looking over his shoulder as he opens the book and starts flipping past all the photographs of graduating seniors … Until he comes across the one he’s after: the haughty, handsome face of his father: Thomas Hastings.

HENRY
Didn't you tell me he got killed in the
war or something?

Charlie doesn't answer. There on the same page, below the photo, is a cartoon of Thomas Hastings as Pharaoh, standing in front of a pyramid like the one depicted on the back of a dollar bill. Henry reads the text aloud.

HENRY
Egyptologist, Lamb Chemistry Prize,
Chess club, Deathshead ...

CHARLIE
You don't have to stick around for my
sake, you know. Or can't I stay without
your being here?

HENRY
No, you can. You don't mind?

When a man at the next table shushes them, Henry shifts into pantomime to express to Charlie his undying gratitude as he backs away towards the doors. He's got his hand on the knob before Charlie remembers something and has to hurry after him.

CHARLIE
Almost forgot. I left my duffle bag
with the doorman there. Can you get
that for me? Also there's something I
need in the trunk. A small box.

HENRY
So what, you want me to drop them
off at your place?

Charlie writes an address on a matchbook and hands it to him.

HENRY
(Reading) Marina?

CHARLIE
Harbor-master's office is just inside
the main gate. You can leave it for
me there.

HENRY
You've got a boat? I didn't know you
had a boat.

CHARLIE
No boat, I'm just meeting somebody
there. Appreciate you doing this.

HENRY
No problem, my pleasure, hey, are you
kidding me?!

Taking his seat again at the table, Charlie turns a couple of pages back from the photo of his father to one of Gaines, and then forward to the section on fraternities and clubs ...

Where he finds what he's looking for.

CHARLIE
Deathshead ...

There’s a photograph that shows Deathshead members ranged about a long banquet table, a Last Supper tableau. But for the small man with a serving tray at one end of the table, Thomas Hastings, who stands before the middle place setting, is the only one not seated. Charlie reads the roster of names.

CHARLIE
Bostick, Kerr, Hallaby, Twombly ...
(BEAT) Twombly ...

The future Reserve Board Governor is seated at the far left, but now Charlie's interest in him is deflected by the man with the tray who’s standing just behind him. Instead of being identified by a proper name like the others listed here, his name - in brackets – is given simply as ‘Coach’. Charlie lifts his hands off the book as if it were too hot, and then just sits there a while, staring into a middle distance …

Until gas escaping from a fat old man at the next table finds its way up his nose. He gets up quickly and, moving away from the stink, circles back around to the bookshelves.

There’s a magnifying glass hanging from a hook here, and Charlie takes it with him when he returns to the table with half a dozen more yearbooks. All of these feature a group photo for Deathshead, and the man with the serving tray is there in each one, looking just the same year after year, except for his retreating hair-line. Enlarged by the glass, the birthmark on his scalp is clearly defined.

CHARLIE
Jesus Christ!

The same man as before shushes him, but Charlie doesn’t react. He's in a state of shock, and this time his eyes don't snap back into focus until someone has intruded upon their vacancy: a well-oiled Yalie in his 70s, holding onto the chairback opposite, swaying slightly.

YALIE
Tooling down Memory Lane.

CHARLIE
Excuse me?

YALIE
Bee-beep. Class of '55.

Taking a seat, he points to the '55 yearbook, and Charlie, who’s in no mood for company right now, let alone drunken company, slides it across. The older man opens it to the senior class photos and, finding one of himself, turns the book so Charlie can see.

YALIE
Unravaged by time, of course.

Charlie pushes back in his chair and stands up, and then, as the Yalie looks on in some confusion, sits down again.

CHARLIE
Sorry, I, I don’t mean to be rude, I ...

He points to the Deathshead photo in the 1953 yearbook, which remains open be-fore him.

CHARLIE
You wouldn't by any chance happen
to remember this, would you, Sir?

YALIE
Deathshead? (BEAT) Oh sure. Sure, I
remember Deathshead. Secret Society.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... Hush hush.

CHARLIE
You know anything about it?

YALIE
About it? Scuttlebutt was they were a
bunch of Utopians, I know that much.

CHARLIE
Utopians?

YALIE
Dreamers. Going make their dreams
come true, too. Paradise. Right here,
right now. Utopia. You know how
that translates? Utopia?

Charlie sees the shushing man coming this way, angry, and he gets up and starts for the door, the Yalie calling after him.

YALIE
It's Greek. Means nowhere.

THE FINAL OPTION (5TH Installment)

INT. FATBURGER

Skinheads hassling people for spare change just outside here leave Charlie alone when he enters past them, heading down a long hallway to rest rooms where he inserts quarters for the turnkey.

INT. MEN'S ROOM

A tattooed and naked young Skinhead’s squatting in one of the sinks, taking a bath. Anticipating a shocked reaction, what he gets instead is no reaction at all. Charlie’s got other things to deal with. He disappears into one of the stalls.

The stall's filthy and there’s no toilet liner to sit on, no toilet paper, either, so he lays the attaché case across the seat and sits on that. He's got the shakes. But he needs clean water, so he gets back up and flushes, then flushes again before dipping a handkerchief into the bowl, using this to wipe blood from his face and hands. He then opens out the scissors of his Swiss Army knife and, working it left-handed, starts cutting his beard.

The Skinhead’s got his pants on now and he’s shaving stubble from the back of his neck when the door to the stall swings open. He shoots a look to the mirror. Charlie’s just standing there, watching him. His hair’s been cut short; the beard, too.

SKINHEAD
Yeah? You want something?

EXT. FATBURGER

When he rejoins the other skinheads out on the sidewalk, he lets the wet and bloody shirt he's wearing, Charlie’s shirt, say all there is to say about what went down inside. He’s not answering questions, he’s not in the mood for questions, or for company, either. Despite this, the others follow after, trying to keep up as he takes off, running down the block.

Charlie, clean shaven, wearing a filthy, sleeveless T-shirt, stops just inside the glass doors and stands there watching the street until the manager, tracking his muddy footprints, comes up behind him, tells him he has to leave.

EXT. AVENUE

Of the two public pay phones here, one has no receiver at the end of its cord and the other’s occupied by a pregnant young woman with four small children, two of them on leashes. She speaks a spitfire Spanish, and leaves behind a wet mouthpiece when she hangs up. Even after wiping this dry, Charlie uses news-print to hold it, and he’s careful not to let it touch his face. He dials a number.

INT. JACOB'S DETECTIVE AGENCY

Nobody here. An answering machine picks up on the third ring.

SYLVIE (RECORDING)
Jacobs. Leave your name and number.

The line clicks, goes to dial tone.

EXT. AVENUE

There’s nobody by the pay phones. A bus is pulling away from the stop.

EXT. SIDESTREET

Where a missing section of the sidewalk has been staked out with forms, a construction worker stands at the rear of a cement mixer, ready to pull the gate on the pour chute. The Blond Man, soaked through and animated as he comes this way, talking on his cell phone, never breaks stride as he passes by, losing all he took off the dead Columbians under a flood of concrete.

He’s talking non-stop, and whoever it is he's talking to, it's nobody he likes.

BLOND MAN
... so he called and he's coming to see
you, and you'll handle him now. Well,
who could ask for anything more? ...
How do I know it’s cracked? I saw it!
It’s cracked, alright? It’s no good. He
says he's got a backup ...

EXT. EMERGENCY CLINIC

Charlie exits, his thumb heavily bandaged and taped.

INT. CAB – MOVING

Examining the cracked computer disk, Charlie glancess up just as the driver, instead of continuing east on 50th, makes a right onto 2nd Avenue.

CHARLIE
Why're you turning here?

CABBY
Cuz you can't get through that way.
Some bullshit at the UN.

EXT. APARTMENT BUILDING

Heading down the sidewalk, Charlie sees two cops at the south end of the street where barricades close off 1st Avenue. He pulls on his jacket. And buttons it.

INT. PENTHOUSE

Coming inside, Charlie goes straight for the bookshelves and takes down an outdated and disemboweled edition of the Social Register where he keeps his backup diskette in the cut-out. Removing this, he puts it into an envelope, on the flap of which he writes a phone number, a date, and the account's access code.
CHARLIE
Just for fun. Just for fucking fun!

The message light on the answering machine is blinking. He hits playback and, as the tape rewinds, starts pulling off his wet clothes. A sudden twinge of pain in his balls. He eases himself down onto the couch, takes a prescription bottle out of his pocket. Shaking out three, four pills, he pops them, but can’t choke them down dry, so he pulls flowers from a vase on the side table and drinks the scum-green water. The first message clicks in:

VOICE (RECORDING)
Ya, Mr. Hastings, this is Klaus at West
Side. Your car, it is here now. We try
to have it back to you by 3. Thankyou.

His thumb hurts, but his balls hurt more. He holds himself ...

The next call on the machine is a dial tone hang-up, as is the next one, and the one after that, three blanks of empty noise that crank up his fear. He gets to his feet. And then just stands there, adrenaline pumping, but stuck in neutral until the pain medication kicks in and then he has to move just to keep from falling, stumbling a few steps to the mantle-piece where he hangs on. And now there’s another voice on the tape. It’s Gaines.

GAINES (RECORDING)
Got your message, Charlie. Five'd be
just fine. See you there.

Charlie watches the answering machine, waiting for more. But that’s the last of it. A brief moment of silence before a clock on the mantle sounds the half hour. It's 4:30.

INT. BEDROOM

After putting on a clean shirt and getting a duffle bag down from the closet, he's dizzy again. Needs to sit. On the bed. But he's too dizzy even for sitting, and so he lies down. And uses the remote control to turn the TV on. For the sheer noise of it. To keep himself awake. He flicks channels until he comes across an interview show where the guest is just now being introduced.

HOST (TV)
And here to help us better understand
all of this is Theodore Twombly. Dr.
Twombly’s a graduate of Yale, class
of ‘52 ...

TWOMBLY (TV)
(Interjecting) '53.

HOST (TV)
... ‘53, where he also earned both his
Masters and doctorate in economics,
Dr. Twombly was senior fellow at the
esteemed Brookings Institute until 1997,
at which time he was elected to the
Federal Reserve's Board of Governors.
So. Welcome. Thankyou for being here.

TWOMBLY (TV)
(Careful, fruity voice) My pleasure.

Charlie has difficulty striking a match left-handed, and then, when he does get a light, discovers that the cigarette has a tear and won't draw.

HOST (TV)
The Chairman, in a statement issued
earlier today, said that any tightening
of the money supply to further slow
the dollar's decline would be premature.

As he tries to get comfortable, Charlie keeps getting tangled up in the bedcovers and clothing he's laid out there to be packed. And now he smells something and he gets himself even more tangled as he shifts about, looking for the dropped cigarette.

TWOMBLY (TV)
I believe what he actually said was that
it would be premature to comment on
any such eventuality.

HOST (TV)
I have the transcript right here if …

TWOMBLY (TV)
Yes, I’m sure you do. In any case the
Central Banks of all the G8 member
nations have pledged to continue their
support, and we ...

Charlie's frantically slapping at a slow spreading burn hole in the comforter when the channels begin to flip. He must be sitting on the remote. He is. He moves and the flipping stops. But he can't get at the damn thing. He can feel it buried there, but doesn’t have the energy to dig for it, and now the TV's stuck on a program hosted by rhinestone Christians with big hair, teary eyed hucksters who use film clips of starving orphans of the Coffee Wars to solicit contributions in the name of Jesus. The phone rings.

There's a phone on the bedside table, but he lets is ring, instead retrieving the .38 from his attaché case and, on the third ring, when the call's handled by the answering machine, he goes to stand in the doorway, listening, waiting for a voice. But once again, the caller hangs up.

EXT. APARTMENT BUILDING

Exiting from the service door, Charlie makes his way down the alley, lugging the unzipped duffle bag.

EXT. 49th STREET

He hurries along the sidewalk to the parking garage near the corner; barricades along 1st Avenue close the street to cross-town traffic.

INT. PARKING GARAGE

Charlie keeps glancing at the wall clock as the Manager looks for his car keys on the pegboard. It's 5:25.

MANAGER
Nope. Still checked out. And now that
they got everything blocked off round
here, ain' no way you gonna ...

CHARLIE
They said they'd have it back by 3!

The Manager looks at the clock, looks at Charlie. Nods, shrugs, blows his nose.

MANAGER
Long past 3.

Charlie's already out the door.

EXT. 49TH STREET

A cop lets Charlie past the barricades. As he crosses 1st Avenue, he reacts to loud bi-lingual chanting and sees a large number of people spilling over from the UN Plaza on 48th. He continues east along 49th toward Beekman Place.

INT. GAINES APARTMENT

Gaines keeps checking the time. He's got his angry wife on speaker phone.

MRS. GAINES (OS)
... and they're not just dropping by.
This has all been planned for weeks,
as well you know, you who set such
great store by tradition. Certainly it
is not for my sake that I ...

GAINES
Bunny ...

MRS. GAINES (OS)
It's 4th of July weekend, Randolph,
we do this every year!

GAINES
Yes, I know we …

MRS. GAINES (OS)
I hope you don't expect me to fire that
obnoxious little cannon of yours.

GAINES
Damnit, Bunny, I told you, I can't be
there. I wish I could be, but I can't.

The doorbell rings. He turns off the speaker, finishing what he has to say into the receiver.

GAINES
Look, Bunny, I’ve got to go. I'll call
you later. Okay?

The line's dead. Hanging up, he quickly composes himself and strides briskly out of the room to the front door. He’s taken aback when he opens it and finds himself face to face with a clean shaven Charlie.

GAINES
Lord love a duck, it's the Godchild I
remember. Come in, Charlie, come in.
I was beginning to think you might not
Show up. I worry about you, Boy-O.

Charlie leaves the duffle bag in the entryway when he comes in. Still groggy, he avoids looking directly at Gaines who, after closing the door, crosses to the bar.

CHARLIE
About lunch today, I ...

GAINES
You weren’t hungry. Sit down, take a
a load off. Drink?

There's the clink of ice cubes, drinks being poured, Charlie unaware that Gaines is watching him in the mirror as he takes the envelope out of his pocket.

GAINES
A little R&R, Charlie. You get your fill
of that, you'll come back chomping at
the bit.

Setting two highballs down on the coffee table, he waits for Charlie to hand him the envelope, and then acts pleasantly surprised when he does just that. He notices the numbers printed on the flap of the envelope, has a quick look at the diskette inside. Explaining what each of the printed numbers signifies, Charlie starts at the top with 7/16/00.

CHARLIE
Expiration date ... And this here is the
access code ... Fund manager's phone
number, in case you feel like leaving a
message.

GAINES
Fine. Now you can put it out of your
mind. Relax. Let me worry about it.

He returns to the bar where he locks the envelope inside a mirror fronted wall safe. Charlie, watching him, fiddles with a silver cigarette box on the table, opening and closing the lid.

GAINES
The hell happened to your thumb?!

CHARLIE
Car door.

GAINES
Jesus, Charlie!

CHARLIE
What do you make of all this stuff
coming out now about the coffee,
how this blight's no accident and ...

GAINES
Fairy tales.

Joining Charlie on the couch, he moves the cigarette box to his side of the table to stop him from playing with it.

CHARLIE
They're saying it's CIA.

GAINES
Who's they, the Columbians? Always
consider the source, Boy-O.

CHARLIE
But what if it's true? I mean, how do
you explain ...?

GAINES
(Interrupts) It's not my job to explain.
We're not here to fix all the world’s
problems, Charlie. We're here to make
money for our clients.

CHARLIE
And if that means people are going to
get killed, then, if that's what it takes,
that's what it takes.

GAINES
So now this is the house Jack built?
You make out on the coffee and all
of a sudden, it’s blood money? Hey,
Charlie, look, people get killed, okay?
People are always getting killed. It's
a jungle out there.

Plainly irritated, he pats his pockets down for his pipe, the one he now spots on the mantelpiece. He gets back up.

CHARLIE
Survival of the fittest.

GAINES
Goddamn right.

With ritualistic precision he stops before an antique clock there by the fireplace, and proceeds to wind it.

GAINES
Let you in on a little secret, Charlie.
Those people down there, whenever
something goes wrong, it's always the
CIA. What was it your dad used to say?
Jesus may be their savior, but it's the
CIA has to suffer for their sins.

Finished with the clock, he packs his pipe and lights it, and Charlie, reading this as an invitation to smoke, and out of Camels, reaches for the cigarette box. It's polished silver, an ebony deaths-head mounted to the underside of the lid. It's also empty. Gaines puffs on his pipe, watching him.

GAINES
The Great Satan.

Charlie's not listening, his attention totally on the box. Engraved on the outside of the lid is the name DEATHSHEAD, the year 1953 in Roman Numerals, and a motto in Latin which he tries to translate.

CHARLIE
We die and salute you? About to die.
We about to die salute you.

He picks the box up, showing it, but Gaines, pouring himself another drink, dismisses it with a wave of the hand.

GAINES
Something like that. Afraid Latin never
was my strong suit.

CHARLIE
Deathshead. 1953. This was at Yale?

GAINES
Silly thing really.

CHARLIE
'53. Twombly was '53. You know him?

GAINES
Who?

CHARLIE
Twombly. Federal Reserve Board.

GAINES
Know the name. (BEAT) So. Where you
off to?

CHARLIE
Just point the car and go, I guess. Wind
up someplace. Oh no, I ...

He suddenly remembers he doesn't have a car and needs the business card he has in his wallet. His thumb’s hurting again. He holds the card up to the light.

GAINES
4th of July weekend, you're driving?!

CHARLIE
Use the phone?

There’s one on the coffee table. He dials it. The ensuing conversation alternates between Gaines and whoever it is he’s got at the other end of the line.

CHARLIE
Car's in the shop. Supposed to be back
by now, but ... (PHONE) Hello? Yes,
I’m calling about my car. I was told I’d
have it back by 3, and here it’s almost …
Hastings.
Gaines sets his drink down on the table, on top of the business card.

CHARLIE
(To Gaines) Something at the UN. They've
got all the streets ... (PHONE) No, it’s not,
I was just there ... But that’s the point, he
can’t drop it there, they’ve got the streets
closed off all along 1st Avenue.

GAINES
Just have them drop it off here. Building
reserves spaces out front. I'll tell the door-
man.

CHARLIE
(PHONE) Right. So could you have ... Yes,
I know he's not back yet, but when he gets
back, could you tell him to drop it off at 21
Beekman ... Place ... And about how long
do you ... Bitch!

The line's dead. He hangs up.

GAINES
I 'll go call that down right now.

When he exits the room, he takes his drink, and with it the card that's stuck to the bottom of the glass.

Charlie, once again patting his pockets for cigarettes he hasn’t got, gets up and wanders about the room. An Air Canada ticket’s been left out on the desk, the itinerary typed on notepaper that's clipped to the folder. He's looking at this when Gaines comes back in, all business.

GAINES
Done.

Hooking arms with Charlie, he steers him to the door.

GAINES
Hate like hell having to kick you out of
here, but Bunny'll be back any second
now. With our houseguests. If she finds
you here looking like something the cat
dragged in ... Well, you know Bunny.

Gaines remains in the open doorway as Charlie carries the duffle bag out to the elevator and hits the call button. There’s an awkward silence with only elevator noise to fill it. Until the car arrives and Charlie gets on.

CHARLIE
So you're off to Toronto?

GAINES
(BEAT) Some damn charity thing. I'll
tell Bunny you said to give her a hug.

He treats Charlie to a wink and a big smile that dies as soon as the doors slide closed and Charlie's no longer there.

THE FINAL OPTION (4TH Installment)

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - OFFICE - DAY

A Phone Man uses a voltage meter to check the lines, watching the needle as he taps the phone's redial button. Charlie sits tipped back in his swivel. Both men are sweating heavily.

PHONE MAN
Nope. Nothing.

CHARLIE
It's got to be something.

PHONE MAN
Getting a buzz, huh, some kind of high
frequency signal?

CHARLIE
Same thing happened with the phone I
had out there. Never on local calls. Just
long distance. Wait …

He keys in a number, waits for the call to go through, then hands the receiver to the bored Phone Man who, still watching the meter, listens a bit. Grunts.

PHONE MAN
Slight drop in voltage. Nothing to do
with your line, though. Might want to
check with your long distance carrier.

CHARLIE
I did. They said it was probably some-
thing in the line. (BEAT) So now what?

PHONE MAN
(Gathering up his gear) Got me, Pal.
I’m just here to check your phone. I
checked your phone. There's nothing
wrong with it.

He puts everything back the way it was, and Charlie waits for him to go before picking up the receiver, keying in a number.

INT. JACOBS DETECTIVE AGENCY

A framed movie poster for ‘The Long Goodbye’ hangs on the wall behind the desk where Sylvie, dining on a hotdog, picks through a pile of high contrast surveillance photos, the same two men in any number of locales; in some, they're kissing. She answers the phone on the third ring.

SYLVIE
Jacobs ... Yeah? Me who? ... So talk,
but make it snappy, Charlie, I got a guy
cheating on his guy with another guy,
and I gotta be in Boston by 4 ...

She pushes the photographs aside, making room for her to write on the desk blotter: a list of telephone numbers.

SYLVIE
See what I can do.

There's someone at the door. She hits the buzzer fixed to the underside the desk's middle drawer where there's also a 9mm Beretta mounted on a spring release. An effeminate businessman comes in and, seeing the photos, covers his eyes, peeking through his fingers. Sylvie flaps a hand for him to sit.

SYLVIE
Gotta go, Charlie. Be back on Monday.
Gonna be that long before I’ll have any-
thing to tell you anyhow … Yeah? You
only love me when you need something.

The man across from her bursts out crying.

INT. TRADING ROOM

A hot, sluggish atmosphere. The Secretary, fanning herself, notices when a lit button on her telephone console goes off. And then Charlie's there in his office doorway. He flicks a look to the Filing Room.

SECRETARY
Good day to call in sick, huh?

CHARLIE
What?

SECRETARY
She called in sick.

CHARLIE
God, it's hot. Air conditioning goes and
you can't even open a goddamn window.

SECRETARY
Keeps the jumpers inside.

CHARLIE
Think I'm going to call it a day.

SECRETARY
Sure, why not? Wish I could.

EXT. WALL STREET

A Blond Man, chewing gum, gets into a cab that follows after the one carry-ing Charlie.

EXT. MARINA

Charlie passes through the entrance and uses a keycard to unlock the gate let-ting onto the docks.

The Blond Man makes his way along the sidewalk, watching Charlie through the chain link fence as he boards the ‘Sea Change’, as he uses a dipstick to check fuel levels in both tanks before going below …

INT. SEA CHANGE

The ignition switch hangs loose from the console, and Charlie needs one hand to hold it as he turns the key with the other, but there’s a short in the wiring and the starter whirs only briefly, and just once. He’s not going anywhere.

EXT. MARINA - DUSK

The Blond Man exits the marina store. Tearing the end off a pack of Juicy Fruit, he returns to his surveillance.

Charlie, wearing nothing but shorts and flip-flops right now, is on the dock, hosing himself down.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - LOBBY - MORNING

Charlie makes for the already crowded elevator where Maria, near the front, is being chatted up by a good looking young Trader who chooses not to notice that Charlie wants on.

TRADER
So what do you do to unwind?

MARIA
Nothing. I'm always keyed up.

TRADER
You like horses, you like to ride?

She smiles at Charlie as the door comes sliding shut between them.

CHARLIE
You like boats?

The polished chrome doors have closed, and he stands there face to face with his own reflection. He can't believe he said what he just said.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - TRADING ROOM

Everything's on fast forward, clerks and messengers hurrying back and forth as brokers work the phones. Charlie’s out of synch with all this activity. Emerging from his office, he stands there in the doorway, waiting for his Secretary to get off the phone.

CHARLIE
What's up?

SECRETARY
Latest inflation figures.

The phone rings and she answers it, at the same time holding up a hand for him to stay right where he is. Which he does, but not for her sake. Maria’s just now going past on her way back to the Filing Room. She doesn't stop.

MARIA
Yes, I do.

CHARLIE
What?

MARIA
Like boats.

She calls this back over her shoulder. The Secretary's hand is still up for him to wait as she listens to the caller on the line, but as soon as Maria disappears into the Filing Room, Charlie ducks back inside his office, closing the door behind him.

INT. OFFICE - LATER

The floor's littered with Charlie’s missed shots, balled up paper that hasn’t
made the wastebasket in the corner. He shoots another. The intercom buzzes.

SECRETARY (OS)
Charlie, you're going to be late.

CHARLIE
For what?

SECRETARY (OS)
Lunch. Gaines is already up there.

INT. TRADING ROOM

The Secretary's holding up a padded envelope which Charlie takes on the fly as he hurries past her desk.

SECRETARY
Someone dropped it off for you in the
lobby.

He heads for the elevators. Maria's coming the other way with food in a plastic container. He holds the door for her.

CHARLIE
You're Maria.

MARIA
I know.

CHARLIE
Who likes boats.

Henry, looking on from the water cooler, is too far away to hear whatever it is they're saying. And then Charlie's out the door, and Maria's on her way back to the Filing Room.

INT. FILING ROOM

Maria, who’s alone here, glances up from her salad to see Henry in the door-way, watching her. He comes inside. A phone’s ringing out in the Trading Room.

HENRY
Brown bagging it again, how about
that? You know, when someone says
Harvard, it just never occurs to me
that they might mean Radcliff.

Maria says nothing, waiting for more. But there is no more. Suddenly realizing that the ringing phone is his own, Henry hurries back across the Trading Room to his desk.

INT. EXECUTIVE DINING-ROOM

Charlie, sitting across from Gaines, only picks at his food. Focused on the envelope he has in his pocket, he’s trying to guess at the contents by the feel of it through the paper.

GAINES
We all need a vacation every once in
a while. Recharge the old batteries.

CHARLIE
Maybe you're right.

GAINES
Maybe's got nothing to do with it. Get
some fun out of life, Charlie. Wasn't
all that long ago I thought you might
go off the deep end, but you stuck with
it and turned things around, and I’m
damned proud of you.

CHARLIE
Wait a couple of weeks.

GAINES
What, when your option expires? Just
might surprise you, you know. You do
what we talked about?

He waits for an answer, but Charlie hasn’t got one, doesn’t even know what the question refers to.

GAINES
Backing it up, Charlie, Jesus, making
a backup.

CHARLIE
Right. On disk, you mean. Yes. I did.

The waiter comes to refill his wine glass. Gaines holds off saying anything more until he's gone again.

GAINES
So you leave it with me. Show me how
to access the damn thing, and then just
forget about it. Go somewhere, take a
powder. I'll exercise the call for you if
it comes to that.

Charlie, absorbed in his one-handed opening of the envelope, nods his head in agreement. Gaines watches him.

GAINES
I'm told you had someone in from the
phone company to check your lines.

Charlie cheats a look at what he's extracted from the envelope: a round-shafted key which, absent the locker number, is just like the one in his attaché case.

GAINES
We do have people in-house for that
sort of thing, you know. (Re: Steak)
Not rare enough? (BEAT) Charlie?

CHARLIE
(Pushing back his chair) Sorry, I ...

GAINES
What? What is it?

CHARLIE
Sorry, I'm really sorry, it's just, I just
remembered. Something I've got to do.

GAINES
Well, for Pete's sake, can't it wait till
after lunch? We need to talk.

There's a perceptible drop in the volume of conversation at the other tables as Charlie hurries off across the room, the buzz not picking up again until he's out the door.

Gaines sits there a moment in stunned silence, his eyes fixed on the now empty chair across from him.

EXT. GAINES & FILCHER

Charlie, carrying the attaché case, makes for the subway entrance at the corner.

INT. SUBWAY CAR - MOVING

He stands right by the doors, ready to be the first one off when the train pulls in at Grand Central.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL – STORAGE AREA

Apprehensive as he nears the locker, Charlie hesitates. He uses the duplicate key and, upon opening the door, immediately covers his nose against the stink. It's Coach, or what’s left of him, his severed head standing upright on a short and bloody stump of neck. Letting go of the door, he turns away, retching, drawing attention. Nonetheless, and despite his revulsion, he sticks with established routine, depositing quarters and reclaiming the key before leaving.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL - MAIN CONCOURSE

Holding himself back from actually running, Charlie hurries across to the main stairway where he climbs the steps two at a time, and he’s just about to the top when the Blond Man appears as if out of nowhere, grabbing hold of him from behind. Charlie, spinning around, swings the attaché case and connects with such force that the man’s knocked backwards off his feet and down the stairs.

EXT. GRAND CENTRAL STATION

Charlie exits on the run, heading west along the sidewalk. Constantly checking back over his shoulder, he doesn't notice the brown sedan parked on the other side of Vanderbilt, nor Stiletto who bumps him wide of the crosswalk, towards the sedan, where he's jolted, going spastic.

Behind the wheel’s a grey haired Indian woman with a long, jagged facial scar. The Fat Man holds the back door open, a raincoat over his arm, concealing something … a gun ...

The Blond Man, exiting the station, catches sight of Charlie being loaded into the sedan, which now pulls out, heading west on 42nd. He goes after it.

INT. BROWN SEDAN - MOVING

Charlie, still wracked by seizure in the narrow floor space between the front and back seats, keeps an eye on the Tazer in the Fat Man’s hand. Stiletto rides with the Indian woman up front.

FAT MAN
Like to ask you a few questions, Mr.
Hastings.

EXT. 42ND STREET

Traffic is heavy, making it possible for the Blond Man, though on foot, to keep the sedan in sight until two blocks further on when it turns off onto the avenue. At this intersection there’s a slight elevation, affording him a view of the traffic ahead. But the brown sedan's not part of it. He pops a stick of gum and starts in checking the side streets.

EXT. REHEARSAL STUDIO

The sound of loud drumming and bass is audible outside where the brown sedan is just now driving off.

INT. REHEARSAL STUDIO

Charlie’s being hustled down a corridor past a number of rehearsal rooms, all in use, and then left down a second corridor made narrow by stacked rows of bagged garbage along either wall. The Fat Man unlocks a doorway at the end.

INT. REHEARSAL STUDIO - ROOM

Stiletto dumps Charlie onto a metal chair, lashing his elbows to the chair back, his ankles to its legs, with baling wire.

The Fat Man puts a pot of water on a hot plate and plugs it in.

FAT MAN
Coffee? From Columbia. Juan Valdez.
A close, personal friend of mine.

Charlie, still twitching from the effects of the Tazer, watches as the Fat Man sets the gun down and opens his attaché case.

CHARLIE
What's going on?

FAT MAN
War, Amigo. A war is going on. Ooo,
is this what I think it is? A floppy?!

Shaking his head, amused, he picks up the diskette.

FAT MAN
A little behind the times, no?

Removing the disk from its sleeve, he feeds it to the computer.

FAT MAN
You know, we've been monitoring
your trades for almost a year now,
and I have to tell you, your read of
market trends …

Having fit a cigar into the opening of the slicer, he bangs the handle home with the heel of his hand.

FAT MAN
(Continuing) Fantastic. Particularly in
coffee. Truly fantastic. But what I find
even more fantastic is the way that this
incredible knack of yours seems to have
developed overnight. You're not doing
very well, and then, all of a sudden …

Once more he picks up the Tazer and, when Charlie flinches, goes for his balls, squeezing so hard his eyes roll.

STILETTO
The goose! The golden eggs!

CHARLIE
Jesus! Let go! Please! Whaddaya want?
Just tell me what you want!

The Fat Man relaxes his grip and smiles. He glances towards the monitor where there's an A> prompt flashing on screen.

FAT MAN
The code. I want the access code.

CHARLIE
Okay, okay, I'll tell you the code, but
it won't work. Not here.

The Fat Man crosses to the boom box and, turning it to full volume, takes aim with the Tazer and fires, Stiletto keeping his distance as Charlie bucks backwards and the chair jumps.

When he tries to speak, he makes like a goldfish at feeding time, his voice lost to the electric current. Stiletto shoves one of the tables closer, then grabs hold of Charlie's right hand, forcing his thumb into the slicer.The Fat Man lights up.

CHARLIE
It's the truth, I swear, I'm telling you
the truth! It can only be accessed on
the system we use at the firm!

Stiletto slams down on the slicer, and Charlie's scream competes with the boom box. His thumb’s been cut off at the first joint, blood pumping out the knuckle end.

The Fat Man pours coffee on it, then wraps the hand in a towel which is quick- ly soaked through, red and dripping.

CHARLIE
My thumb, my thumb, my thumb ... !

STILETTO
Shutup!

He tosses the severed joint into the toilet and flushes and, when Charlie persists in mourning its loss, comes back to the chair and slaps him. Hard.

STILETTO
I said shutup.

CHARLIE
BOH 1066 Slash 12 Slash 24 ...

The Fat Man types this on the keyboard, then waits for the on-screen response which comes up: ‘System Incompatible’.

Charlie's repeated attempts to touch his injured right hand with his left are frustrated by the wire bindings which also keep him from protecting his face when Stiletto starts in slapping him again. The Fat Man makes him stop.

FAT MAN
You're sure that's it?

CHARLIE
Yes! BOH 1066/12/24. It's just that
you can't ...

All of a sudden it's raining, water spraying out under high pressure from the over-head sprinklers, and there’s somebody out in the corridor yelling 'Fire', and a confusion of other, more distant voices which become audible when the boom box shorts out.

The Fat Man closes the attaché case and holds the Tazer on Charlie as Stiletto crosses to the door. At first he opens it just for a look-see, then wide enough to step through to the corridor where, in addition to rain, there’s fire, a dance of flame shadows on the wall there, framed by the open doorway.

(SUBTITLED - SPANISH)
STILETTO (OS)
Fucking garbage!

Smoke's now finding its way into the room. The hot plate spits and sizzles.

FAT MAN
(Calling out) How bad?

Waiting for a response, he alternates his attention between Charlie and the corridor, and now they’re both looking to the doorway as Stiletto floats back in with the smoke.

FAT MAN
What's wrong?!

He doesn't see the hole in Stiletto’s head or the Blond Man there right behind him, holding him up, until it's too late, until after the silenced rounds of a .22 have already passed through him and he's falling, taking Charlie with him as he upsets the chair and rides it over backwards. The monitor screen shatters.

Hitting the floor under all that weight, Charlie has the wind knocked out of him, and he lies there on his back, still seated, with the Fat Man sprawled across him, part of his bulk hung up on one of the chair arms.

The Blond Man rips off the interior shutters and opens the window onto the fire escape. As the smoke begins to draw, he squats down next to Stiletto and starts going through his pockets, hanging onto a snub-nosed .38 and all identification papers. He then goes to pat down the Fat Man and once again keeps the wallet and passport, and anything else that might identify him.

BLOND MAN
Now they're nothing but a couple of
dead spics. Tell me what it was they
wanted to know, Charlie.

But Charlie can't tell him anything - can't tell because he can't talk, because he can't breathe - and he's slapping his chest, trying to explain, when suddenly the Blond Man grabs his right hand and holds the bleeding stump of a thumb to the hot plate.

Charlie passes out, and right away starts breathing again. The Blond Man covers his mouth with one hand, slaps him awake with the other. The stump is blackened, smoking.
BLOND MAN
Can't have you bleeding to death.

Charlie makes noise, struggling for air.

BLOND MAN
I'm on your side, Charlie, I'm here to
help you. Okay? Okay. Now. I'm go-
ing to take my hand away and you're
going to tell me what happened, okay?

The baling wire’s just pulled through a split in the chairback, and Charlie, realizing he can now move his left arm and that the Tazer, on the seat between his legs, is within reach, makes no sound when the Blond Man takes his hand away from his mouth.

BLOND MAN
And you better let me have the key.
The locker key, Charlie. Where is it?

CHARLIE
Briefcase. Pocket. Side pocket ... I
didn’t tell them anything.

BLOND MAN
What interests me more is what they
told you, what they wanted to know.

As he backs away, angling for the table where the Fat Man left the attaché case, he steps on something: the diskette's empty plastic sleeve. He picks this up and crosses to the computer, about to say something when the spluttering sprinkler system shuts down. Flipping open the port, which has taken a direct hit in the gunfire, he discovers that the disk inserted there is cracked. He holds it up for Charlie to see.

BLOND MAN
Hope you've got another one. Yes?
No? Yes? Safety deposit box, home,
where?

His movements concealed by the Fat Man, Charlie holds the Tazer level and, waiting for his target to cross into the line of fire, fires. The Blond Man jerks backwards and goes down.

Charlie manages to roll the Fat Man off of him and then sets to freeing himself from the remaining wire bindings. He gets to his feet. The Blond Man watches as he picks up both the .38 and the diskette, and he tries to protect himself when Charlie again points the Tazer.

BLOND MAN
We're on the same team, goddamnit!

Charlie shoots him, then grabs the attaché case and hurries out the door. But he doesn’t get very far. In addition to the smoking mess of spilled garbage making the corridor all but impassable, there’s the sound of voices … Coming this way. Ducking back inside, he locks the door and, going carefully around the twitchy Blond Man, makes for the window. Where he climbs through.

EXT. FIRE ESCAPE

The bolts securing the corroded wrought iron to the building are loose and, as Charlie makes his way down the zigzag of steps, begin to pull out. It’s not until he frees the ladder extension at the bottom end, however, that the entire framework shudders and drops away, banging and scraping against the brick wall as it swings, arcing back and forth, suspended by the one and only top bolt that holds. Charlie leaps clear.

INT. REHEARSAL STUDIO - ROOM

The Blond Man makes it to the window just as Charlie’s climbing out of the trash dumpster in the alley down below. The fire escape, though still swinging slightly, hangs out of reach. He reacts to voices outside in the corridor.

ROCKER #1 (OS)
Fuckin’ landlord's gonna pay, I know
that much. All my fuckin’ equipment.
Look at this shit.

The Blond Man goes to listen at the door.

INT. CORRIDOR

Two longhairs kick their way through the smoking garbage.

ROCKER #2
It coulda got started, you know, like
how when things catch fire by them-
selves. What's that called?

ROCKER #1
Who the fuck cares. All's I know is we
coulda fried, Dude. That fat fuck! I’m
gonna sue his ass.

EXT. AVENUE

Charlie’s momentarily blinded as he emerges into sunlight. It's only now, as he stands there, dripping wet, passersby giving him a wide berth, that he be-comes aware of all the blood on him. He crosses the intersection.

There’s a crowd in the side street outside the rehearsal studio, and the sound of approaching sirens. A police car pulls up. He goes the other way.

The Final Option (3rd Installment)

EXT. WALL STREET - SUMMER - MORNING

Maria Sanchez, 20s, a beautiful young Columbian, exits at the tail-end of people coming up the subway steps and takes a moment to stand there, looking up at the imposing facade of Gaines & Filcher.

INT. WALL STREET CAFE

A TV mounted high on the back wall is tuned to an interview show featuring the Host and his guest, Ambassador Rodriquez.

                                                 HOST(TV)
                             ... very outspoken, especially on the
                             subject of these Coffee Wars.

                                             RODRIQUEZ (TV)
                             I had to give up my Senate seat to be-
                             come UN Ambassador. But that doesn't
                             mean I gave up my right to speak out.

Some of this is lost to the loud hiss of the milk steamer, as Charlie, in the take-out line with Henry, strains to hear.

                                             RODRIQUEZ (TV)
                             ... and certainly there have been rogue
                             elements before, but with reference to
                             this latest incident of aerial spraying,
                             we've been hearing the same thing for
                             some time now. First in Brazil, then
                             Jamaica, Equador, Central America …
                             And now Columbia.

The two counter clerks use the espresso machine for cover as they argue over how much coffee to put in each measure.

                                                   HENRY
                           This going to take all day or what?

Due to the noise of the steamer, Charlie gives up on trying to hear the TV.

                                                   HENRY
                           Excuse me ... Hey!

                                                  CHARLIE
                           Jesus, Henry, relax.

                                                   HENRY
                           (To Clerk) Short shots, I wanted short
                           shots, I asked for short shots.                           

One clerk pours espresso in a number of to-go cups, while the other steams more milk. Both ignore Henry.

                                                   HENRY
                           (To Charlie) It's 9, I'm late.

He pays with a ten-dollar bill as the Clerk fits lids on the two lattes.

                                                  CHARLIE
                           Since when did being on time ...?

                                                    CLERK
                           Together? Twelve-fifty, please.

                                                   HENRY
                           Twelve-fifty?! When'd that happen?

Charlie drops a 20 on the counter and leaves.

EXT. WALL STREET CAFE

Once outside, Charlie stops to light a cigarette while Henry hurries off, calling back over his shoulder.

                                                   HENRY
                           Doing an orientation, gotta spoon-feed
                           some goddamn Harvard business major!
                           Harvard, for Christsakes!

EXT. NEWSTAND

Charlie buys a paper. The headlines: COLUMBIA - DEATH TOLL TOPS 2 MILLION … DOWNED PILOT IS U.S. CITIZEN.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - TRADING ROOM

Charlie's on his way to his office when he sees Maria for the first time: On the other side of the room. With Henry. He stands there watching as the Secretary watches him.

                                                SECRETARY
                           Summer job. Young enough to be your
                           daughter, Charlie.

Her beauty has a look-but-don't-touch quality to it, a self-contained severity, and yet she moves with liquid grace. He can't take his eyes off her. She's coming this way.

                                                SECRETARY
                           Name's Sanchez. Maria Sanchez.

Henry makes like he doesn't even notice Charlie, even as he and Maria pass within ten feet of him. She, however, meets his look in passing and smiles.

                                                SECRETARY
                           Probably just gas.

                                                  CHARLIE
                           (Dazed) What?

                                                SECRETARY
                           Nothing. (BEAT) You want this?

She holds up a fax, of which he takes no notice until Maria's disappeared inside the Filing Room. It's the same three-word message: ‘Just for Fun’. Balling it up, he hits with a no-look hook shot to a wastebasket in the corner.

EXT. GRAND CENTRAL - DAY

Charlie enters, unaware of Stiletto who, instead of following him inside, hurries off down the sidewalk.

INT. MAIN CONCOURSE - LOCKER AREA

There is no envelope for the blue-sleeved diskette Charlie takes from the locker this time.

REVERSE POV - THROUGH GLASS CEILING

A small video camera and transmitter are clamped to a crossbar, the lens trained on the area below where Charlie's now leaving.

EXT. SIDESTREET - MIDTOWN

Stiletto enters a low rent rehearsal studio sandwiched between a porno theatre and warehouse.

INT. REHEARSAL STUDIO

In the darkness, a single point of red light, revealed as the power indicator on a video recorder, comes on when the door opens and Stiletto enters, flicking the light switch.

The room's one window is closed off behind interior shutters which, like the ceiling and walls, are soundproofed. There's a table for all the video gear, a cot, two chairs and a boom box. Stiletto checks his watch against the footage counter for the tape now rewinding, hits the stop button, and then sits to view play-back on a monitor.

The scene displayed is an overhead view of the storage lockers at Grand Central. It isn't long before Charlie appears.

Using a mouse to isolate the subject, Stiletto's able to enlarge what he's isolated: A freeze frame of Charlie with the diskette …

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - OFFICE

Charlie inserts the new diskette in the computer, enters the access code and then leans back to read what comes up on the monitor: there’s a number of options, buy orders involving currencies and market indexes. Using a window for calculations pegged to exchange rates, the math is soon done. But it doesn't add up. So he does it again. With the same result. He tilts back in his chair, incredulous.

                                                   CHARLIE
                           What’s going on? Jesus, I can't do this.

He reaches for the phone. As before, when the call goes through there's that same high-end buzz in the line and the same recording that he doesn't bother listening to; he hits the 3-digit extension for voice mail.

                                                   CHARLIE
                           Hastings, Sir. Sorry to trouble you, but
                           with respect to our next investment, I'd
                           like to go over the particulars with you
                           before proceed- ...

When a beep indicates the end of the allotted message time, he hangs up in frustration and hits redial. Once again, as soon as the Institute's switchboard voice recording comes on, he taps in the extension. He speaks rapidly.

                                                   CHARLIE
                           Hastings again, Sir. I'd appreciate it if
                           you'd get back to me as soon as you can,
                           Sir, by 3 if I'm to get this done today. I
                           just want to be sure we're on the same
                           page here because, to tell you the truth ...

Cut off yet again, he bangs the phone down, checks his watch, gets up, and is halfway across the room to the window when he stops and comes back to his chair. Calling up the client list directory, he finds the name and phone number for Pettis, the fund manager, on page one, then scrolls down to the next page where, listed alphabetically, is a client roster of some 200 names and numbers. The first is Atkinson.

Charlie, dialing the listed number, is taken aback when he hears the same high-end sound he always gets when calling Pettis. And when the call's picked up by an answering machine, he hangs up  Tries the next number on the list. Different area code, but there it is again, that same distinctive sound. And yet another recording. This time, however, he decides to leave word.

                                                CHARLIE
                           Mr. Bacon, this is Charlie Hastings - 
                           Gaines and Filcher. I'm calling about
                           the fund, Sir. I do of course know
                           it’s irregular, phoning you directly  ...

Cut short by the message-end beep, he slams the phone down.

INT. REHEARSAL STUDIO

Stilettto’s still watching the computer monitor. It’s the same overhead view of the lockers at Grand Central, people coming and going … Hitting fast forward as he sits here in a kind of stupor, he works the guillotine cigar-slicer, chopping pencils into carrot rounds.

INT. TRADING ROOM

Henry, like most of the other Traders, eyes Maria as she tags after another File clerk, gathering paperwork from the out-trays.

INT. OFFICE

There's that high-pitched signal in the line again as Charlie waits for his call to go through: It’s ringing: Three rings, and now a busy signal! When he tries it again, the same thing happens. On the monitor, the cursor’s stopped at the last name on the client roster.

He makes a printout of both the option formula and his calculations.

INT. REHEARSAL STUDIO

The Fat Man comes in. Stiletto, still watching surveillance tapes on the monitor, hands over a number of digitalized photos. Videotapes are stacked to either side of the computer.                           

(SUBTITLED – SPANISH)
                                                   FAT MAN
                           Nothing?

Stiletto indicates the stack of  tapes to the right of the computer.

                                                  STILETTO
                           Done those. I’m up to 9 o’clock.

                               FAT MAN   
                           This morning?                                    

                                                  STILETTO
                           Last night.               

                                                   FAT MAN
                           He's got to be there somewhere.

                                                  STILETTO
                           Somewhere. You find him.

When he stops the tape and gets up, only to then lie down on the cot, the Fat Man sweeps the table clear of all the rounds of sliced pencil, then fits a cigar through the hole in the guillotine and sends the tip flying. Lighting up, he crosses to a shuttered window and opens it, blowing smoke out onto the fire escape.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - EXECUTIVE SUITES

Gaines looks over the option formula printout, then hands it back to Charlie who sits opposite him at the big desk.

                                                  GAINES
                           Over my head, Charlie. But if you're
                           asked to execute on something, that's
                           what you do.

                                                 CHARLIE
                           But this is 700 million dollars! You
                           been keeping track of exchange rates
                           lately? It doesn't make any sense.

                                                  GAINES
                           Well, apparently it makes sense to your
                           clients or whoever's managing the fund
                           for them.

                                                 CHARLIE
                           But what if it's a misprint or something?
                           And I can't get through to him! Every-
                           time I call, all I ever get is voice mail.

                                                  GAINES
                           It's the new Millennium, Charlie, every-
                           body’s busy, busy, busy. Take a deep
                           breath. Relax.

                                                 CHARLIE
                           Okay. But it isn’t just the fund manager.
                           Look, I know I'm not supposed to deal
                           directly with any of the clients on this
                           account, but ... 

Gaines stifffens at this mention of clients, sits up straight, puts off lighting his pipe.

                                                  GAINES
                             (BEAT) But what?

                                                 CHARLIE
                             No, I didn't. Of course, I didn't. All I
                             mean is, if I can't get through to Pettis,
                             to actually talk to him - and I can't –
                             then that's it, clients be damned. I - I
                             don't know, it's just ...

                                                  GAINES
                             (Finishing for him) Damn annoying.

Standing up, he comes around from his side of the desk, and waits for Charlie to follow him to the door.                                    

                                                  GAINES
                             When you've got a hunch to play, you
                             play it, and you play it while it's still a
                             hunch and you've still got some takers
                             out there. Go to it, Boy.

INT. FILING ROOM

One Fileclerk shows a printed transaction record to another who's been explaining settlement procedures to Maria.

                                               FILECLERK #1
                             What's the name on this?

                                               FILECLERK #2
                             No name. Just the number. 1066.

It's 4:55. While the other clerks gather up their things to go, Maria stalls, wait-ing to see where this document gets filed.

INT. PENTHOUSE - NIGHT

Charlie comes awake with a start and gets up. He goes to check the fax machine in the living room ... Nothing there.

INT. REHEARSAL STUDIO - NIGHT

The number of tapes to be reviewed is down to just a few. The Fat Man, watching the monitor, yawns, checks the time, and is on the point of waking Stiletto when he finally sees what he’s been waiting for: somebody at the locker, somebody with a key. It’s Coach.

(SUBTITLED- SPANISH)
                                                     FAT MAN
                             Sonofabitch ... (To Stilletto)Wake up!
                             I got him. Wake up!

He rewinds the tape and plays it back again as Stiletto pulls up the other chair and takes over at the keyboard, letting the tape run until the Fat Man says stop, then hitting the print button: Coach there in freeze frame: At the storage locker. Facing this way.

                                                     FAT MAN
                             Get one of the shirt. The pocket.

Zooming in, the stitched-in name of McCoy's Health Club shows clearly on the pocket of Coach’s polo shirt.

EXT. HEALTH CLUB - EARLY MORNING

Across the street in a No Parking zone is the same car seen before outside the    deli. The Fat Man's at the wheel, watching the health club entrance.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - LOBBY - MORNING

Charlie looks over the front page of the NY Times as he waits for an elevator:  DOLLAR LOSING GROUND - RECORD LOWS.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - 39TH FLOOR

He's absorbed in his reading as he makes his way slowly along the corridor, two Suits trailing their voices as they pass through the glass doors.

                                                    SUIT #1
                           ... and not a word from the Fed. Dollar
                           keeps on slipping like this ...

                                                    SUIT #2 (OS)
                           Slipping! We're in a goddamn free fall!

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - TRADING ROOM

Henry's at his desk, studiously ignoring Charlie when he comes through on the way to his office. Taking one of the steaming mugs being served by the Office Boy, he takes a sip. And screws up his face.

                                                 OFFICE BOY
                           Postum. Can't get coffee anymore.

                                                     HENRY
                           Stupid spics!

INT. OFFICE - LATER

With an index of constantly adjusting exchange rates there before him on the monitor, Charlie sits watching the Dollar's continuing decline.

INT. FILING ROOM

Besides Maria, there’s only one other file clerk in here, and he’s too busy with his work to concern himself with what she's up to at the file cabinet behind him.

INT. TRADING ROOM – LATER

Charlie emerges from his office as the last few traders are on their way out. He pats himself down for cigarettes. Of all the employees, the clerks in the Filing Room are the only ones still hard at it.

EXT. ROOFTOP - LATE AFTERNOON

Charlie takes a deep drag. And chokes on the smoke when the door thuds shut behind him. It's Gaines.

                                                  GAINES
                           You're still coming up here to smoke?
                           You can smoke in your office.

                                                 CHARLIE
                           (Coughing) S’okay. Need the exercise.

He puts out the cigarette and checks his watch.

                                                  GAINES
                           Yanks home to Boston tonight. Figured
                           maybe you'd like to go with me.

                                                 CHARLIE
                           I'd like to, really, I ...

                                                  GAINES
                           Another time then. (BEAT) You okay?

                                                 CHARLIE
                           A little concerned about the dollar.

                                                  GAINES
                           Ebb and flow, my boy. Ebb and flow.

                                                 CHARLIE
                           It's ebbing all right.

Gaines smiles and, throwing up his hands, turns to go.

                                                  GAINES
                           You don't want to go to the game, you
                           don't want to go to the game, but I want
                           to go to the game.

INT. HALLWAY

Charlie comes in through the emergency exit, Gaines just ahead of him crossing to another elevator, a private car, that has been held waiting.

                                                  GAINES
                           Don't forget what Yogi said, Charlie.
                           Ain't over till it's over.

INT. TRADING ROOM

A Fileclerk switches off the lights and is closing the door to the Filing Room when Charlie approaches.

                                               FILECLERK
                           You just missed her.

EXT. GAINES & FILCHER

Surveying great herds of pedestrian traffic from the steps, Charlie spots a bit of red dress just now disappearing behind the newsstand, and goes after it.

It's not Maria.

INT. PENTHOUSE BEDROOM - NIGHT

The television, on without sound, flickers as lightning makes the walls jump, a whiplash illumination that’s followed by thunder. Charlie’s in bed. He sits up - hasn't been watching TV, but he is now, turning up the volume on a C-Span  interview with Ambassador Rodriquez.

                                             RODRIQUEZ (TV)
                           Well, I'm no longer the Ambassador.

                                                   HOST (TV)
                           So next week when the General Assembly
                           convenes to debate the merits of UN
                           intervention, you, who worked so long
                           to bring this about, won't be there?

                                             RODRIQUEZ (TV)
                           Not in any official capacity.

                                                   HOST (TV)
                           Unofficially? (BEAT) The President
                           announced that you were stepping down for
                           health reasons.

                                             RODRIQUEZ (TV)
                           The fact that I have cancer has nothing
                           to do with why I stepped down. I stepped
                           down because I was asked to.

Another flash of lightning scrambles the reception, and it's a few seconds before the picture holds steady again. It’s raining now. Charlie lies back down.

                                                   HOST (TV)
                           ... feel about your not being invited to
                           participate when the President met with
                           the NSC to discuss the situation down
                           there. Why do you think ...?

                                             RODRIQUEZ (TV)
                           The National Security Council is an
                           appendage of the CIA. Next question?

                                                   HOST (TV)
                           KemCo?

                                                 CHARLIE
                           (Surprised) Kemco?

                                             RODRIQUEZ (TV)
                           Another appendage.

                                                   HOST (TV)
                           But, Mr. Ambassador, even if the cannisters
                           in that helicopter could be traced to
                           KemCo. that wouldn't necessarily mean
                           Agency involvement.

More lightning, this time simultaneous with a long sustained and very loud roll of thunder, knocking out the electricity. Charlie sits there in the TV's afterglow.

THE FINAL OPTION (2nd Installment)

EXT. POST OFFICE - -SPRINGTIME- - DAY

In addition to all the red, white and blue paper bunting that’s been strung up between stanchions out front, there are multiple postings of the date, April 15th, and poster sized versions of Form 1040. A postal employee’s stationed curbside with a couple of canvas carts where passersby can drop off their tax returns.

Charlie,  all tucked in and tidy, carrying himself with the flippant ease of money, makes his way just past here to a newstand where he stops to buy a paper.

The above-the-fold front-page photo is of soldiers posing before the wreck-age of a downed helicopter. The headlines:

                   COFFEE BLIGHT SPREADS TO COLUMBIA-
                     -CANAL ZONE  -  US FORCES ON ALERT-

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - TRADING ROOM

Henry's at his desk watching Charlie as he works the computer and phones, unloading coffee contracts ...

Out on the floor, a fax machine comes on line and there's another printout to add to those already in the tray. An office boy collects and distributes these to the appropriate brokers.

Charlie doesn't look at the fax he's just been handed until he’s finished execut-ing a deposit, transfering $435,000 in dealer commission to his personal ac-count. The on-screen display is a balance sheet for Account #1066; it shows multiple debits and credits of six figures and up.

On the way out, he stops off at the shredder and inserts his fax,  its message legible as it feeds through: 4 PM Shuttle.Track 2. Just for fun.

INT. BANK - DAY

The teller finishes counting out Charlie’s money and slides a neat stack of it, all hundreds, across the counter. He slips it into an envelope.

EXT. PARK AVENUE

Charlie steps from a cab just north of the Hensley Building.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL STATION

Descending the marble stairway, cutting across the vast, crowded concourse, he enters a tunnel way, following signs for the Cross-Town Shuttle.

There's a train taking on passengers as he heads down the steps to the platform. It's 3:59

INT. SHUTTLE CAR

Standing room only, the sliding doors starting to jerk and jump in their tracks as Charlie slips inside. There’s a garbled announcement on the intercom as he slowly makes his way forward, looking at faces.

A little man in a Yankee baseball cap surrenders his seat to a pregnant Indian girl and grabs hold of Charlie when the train lurches away from the platform. It's Coach.

                                                   COACH
                             You don't know me. Look at some-
                             thing else.                                                   

Charlie does as he's told. He sneaks the envelope out of his pocket.

                                                   COACH
                             Keep it.

The pregnant girl watches her hands as the lights flicker, the train picking up speed, a strobe effect: Coach handing something over - Charlie looking at it ...

                                                   COACH
                             Baggage area, main concourse.

Wary of being overheard, he stares at the girl, scaring her eyes away when she looks up.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Look, I don't know why you're ...

It goes dark. There's a deafening screech of brakes. And when the lights come back on, the train’s pulling in at Times Square. Coach is no longer where he was just a moment before, and everybody's pressing towards the doors which, following yet another wholly unintelligible announcement, slide open.

INT. SHUTTLE STOP - TIMES SQUARE

Out on the platform, Charlie pockets the numbered locker key he's been given and crosses to another train that’s now boarding for the shuttle back to Grand Central. Coach is nowhere to be seen.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL - MAIN CONCOURSE

Charlie locates the locker and, opening it, finds an envelope inside and, in-side that, a computer diskette in a blue plastic sleeve. Taking this, he deposits two dollars in change and reclaims the key.

EXT. APARTMENT HOUSE - NIGHT

It’s raining. A doorman lets Charlie inside.

INT. PENTHOUSE APARTMENT - NIGHT

Of the furnishings here, only the antiques have survived the move from where he lived before. Pouring himself a whiskey, Charlie settles in on the couch with his laptop and, using an external drive, inserts the diskette from the storage locker. Boots up ...

The transaction that appears on screen is a straddle involving the trading range of a number of Exchange Indexes. There's  a complicated formula involving inverse ratios and percentages.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER TRADING ROOM – DAY

Sitting idle in the cubicle workspace next to Charlie’s, Henry overhears his friend on the phone and leans back for a look past the partition.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             (Phone) Right, 3, times 3, but that’s 
                             inverse, okay? Inverse ratio ... Yes.                                                                        
                             right. 3 times the exchange rate ... No,
                             that's it.

With nothing to indicate an  awareness of anyone there at his back, he pivots the computer monitor so Henry can't see it.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             (Phone) One hundred even ... Ten-six-
                             six, right. One, zero, six, six ... Got it.
                             Thanks. (Hangs up)

                                                   HENRY
                             Ten-Six-Six. What's Ten-Six-Six?

                                                 CHARLIE
                             (BEAT) Battle of Hastings.

He waits for Henry to disappear behind the partition before executing on a large fund transfer: 80 million dollars to a bank in Mexico. He then makes his phone call. There’s a high-pitched signal in the line as it rings through and ...

                                       VOICE RECORDING
                             Longevity Institute. If you know your
                             Party’s extension, you may enter...

Charlie keys in the numbers and gets connected to voice-mail.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Charlie Hastings, Sir. Contracts are all
                             in place. Also the fund transfer, as indi-
                             cated. Thank you.

The high-pitched signal quits only when he's hit the cancel button. Shaking the receiver, he whacks the earpiece on the heel of his hand.

EXT. MANHATTAN MARINA - DAY

Following a yacht salesman out along the docks, Charlie stops to admire the ‘Sea Change’, a somewhat decrepit 40 foot Matthews that's more African Queen than yacht.

                                              SALESMAN
                             Afraid she's not for sale, Mr. Hastings.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             (BEAT) Everything's for sale.

INT. PENTHOUSE - -WINTER- - MORNING

Just beyond the bedroom’s French doors which open out onto the terrace, a potted Birch tree stands naked with a cruciform of blinking Christmas lights twined about its trunk and branches. Charlie wakes to fax sounds in the living room.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL - DAY

He retrieves another diskette from the storage locker, again keeping the key.

EXT. GRAND CENTRAL - DAY

Guttered, sooty snow. When Charlie comes back to the Mercedes, which he's left double-parked, there's a ticket on the windshield.

                                               HENRY (OS)
                             (Calling out) Charlie.

Henry, foregoing the cab he’s about to get into halfway up the block on Vander-bilt, comes this way.

                                                  HENRY
                             (Re: Car) How much this set you back?

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Week, two weeks. Hard to say. Drop
                             you somewhere?

He unlocks the car and they both climb in, Charlie filing the parking ticket away in the glove compartment.

INT. MERCEDES – MOVING

Henry plays with the electronic seat controls while waiting for the call he's just keyed in on his cell phone to go through.

                                                  HENRY
                             Sunday brunch at the Yale Club. You
                             ought to join me sometime. Your old
                             man was at Yale, wasn’t he?

The call’s answered and there's a recording for exact time. The dashboard clock is ten minutes fast. He resets it.

                                                  HENRY
                             11:O9. Exactly! (Re: cell phone) Still 
                             won’t break down and get yourself one   
                             of these, will you?

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Brain cancer.

                                                  HENRY
                             Bullshit, that’s just bullshit and you.
                             know it. You won’t get one because    
                             everybody’s got one and you don’t
                             want to be part of the crowd.

       

EXT. 81ST STREET

The Mercedes pulls up opposite the entrance of an apartment building where Henry gets out, holding onto the open door as another car pulls in behind.

                                                  HENRY
                             What I'd really like to know is where
                             you got all this inverse ratio shit from.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Fifth form math. I’m blocking traffic,
                             Henry.

Henry closes the door and waves as the Mercedes pulls away.

                                                  HENRY
                             Fifth form math, my ass.

INT. PENTHOUSE APARTMENT - NIGHT

Charlie studies the pretty girl passed out in bed here next to him and knocks back another shot of whiskey. He tries to wake her up, pats her cheeks, peels back an eyelid.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Come on, I mean it, you gotta tell me,
                             okay?, I'm serious. Just tell me. What
                             it is you like. About me. S’important.
                             I just wanna know.

                                                     GIRL
                             Oh, Charlie, Charlie, I dunno, Charlie.
                             You're funny.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             My what?

No answer. She's out again. And now he’s slipping off to sleep, mumbling to himself ...

                                                 CHARLIE
                              Money? S’at what you said?

EXT. WALL STREET - -SPRINGTIME- - DAY

It’s lunchtime and the sidewalks are teeming with office workers as Charlie, attaché case and shopping bag in one hand, take-out coffee in the other, looks to escape the heavy foot-traffic by ducking into an alleyway. Where he trips over a bearded Vagrant squatting in the shadows. He's got no teeth and holds out his very dirty hands to catch coffee dripping from Charlie’s cup

                                                VAGRANT
                             Spare change, Bro?

Charlie can’t escape fast enough. Handing over the coffee and a crumpled wad of pocket money, he backs away. Doesn’t want to be touched.

INT. TRADING ROOM

Charlie's trying, without success, to fit his shopping bag into one of the desk drawers when he notices a janitor with a handcart and a load of boxes exiting an office near the File Room. A Secretary sits at a desk just outside the doorway, doing her nails. She sees him coming.

                                               SECRETARY
                             Transferred. Need a secretary, Charlie?                  

INT. OFFICE

The room's been stripped of all personal effects and Charlie's at the window, looking out across New York Harbor.

EXT. RESTAURANT & AVENUE - NIGHT

Charlie exits. Starts walking ... Further on, sensing that he's being followed, he checks behind him, even stops and takes a few steps back in the opposite direction as though he’s just realized he might be going the wrong way, but nobody’s there, and he continues on, turning right at the next corner where he comes within sight of his building.

EXT. SIDE STREET & APARTMENT BUILDING

Just across the street, Stiletto, a tall, dark-skinned man with a fragile, volatile intensity, keeps to the shadow of a lamppost. He’s standing there, watching as Charlie comes this way, when a UPS truck suddenly blocks his view. 

Before heading inside, Charlie glances back over his shoulder as the UPS truck pulls forward, clearing the lamppost where only its shadow remains. Stiletto’s gone.
. 
INT. GAINES & FILCHER - TRADING ROOM - DAY

Henry feigns disinterest as the boxes on Charlie's desk get carted off to his new office. All that remains, other than the shopping bag, is an open cardboard box that’s piled high with paperwork and a silver frame that rides on top. When the Janitor comes back for this, he sticks the frame inside the shopping bag.

INT. OFFICE

Charlie's rearranging his attaché case, trying to make room for the shopping bag, when the Secretary sails in with a number of fax transmissions. But there’s no time to look at these right now. He's in a hurry. He adds them to the case which is already crammed full, pressing down hard to get it to click shut.

INT. DELICATESSAN - DAY

Charlie makes his way to a booth where he sits down opposite Sylvie, an older woman with loud jewelry and red hair. She leans across to kiss him.

                                                   SYLVIE
                             Get a load of Mr. Bigshot-All-Of-A-
                             Sudden. Hardly know you anymore.
                             Hardly ever get to see you.

Charlie sets the attaché case down on the table, frees the snaps, and the top flies open, spilling faxes. Sylvie retrieves one that's come to rest, print-side up, on her lap. She reads it, hands it back.

                                                   SYLVIE
                             ‘Just for fun?’ Got yourself a girl?

                                                  CHARLIE
                             You're the detective, you tell me.

He's lifting the shopping bag out of the case when a gift-wrapped package, as well as the silver picture frame, drops out through a rip in the bottom. Sylvie picks up the frame. The silver's tarnished, the photograph obscured by dust she wipes clear.

                                                   SYLVIE
                             What's this? (Reading) Edencroft ...

                                                  CHARLIE
                             Place we had up in Canada.

It's a lakefront view of a country estate, the name ‘Edencroft’chiseled into the stone archway in the foreground.

                                                   SYLVIE
                             Oh right, that's right. Oughta polish
                             this, Charlie.

                                                  CHARLIE
                             I kind of like it that way.

                                                   SYLVIE
                             Yeah? Like your teeth that way, too?
                             Still smoking?

She keeps the frame away from Charlie when he reaches for it. He cheats a look at his reflection in the napkin dispenser, checking his teeth.

                                                   SYLVIE
                             (Re: Photo) Too bad Gaines was execu- 
                             tor. Think I would've hung onto this.

                                                  CHARLIE
                             Had to finance my education somehow.

                                                   SYLVIE
                             That's some expensive education.

                                                  CHARLIE
                             But worth every penny, right?

                                                   SYLVIE
                             And it’s finally paid off, is that what                  
                             you’re telling me. You think I was born
                             yesterday?

                                                  CHARLIE
                             Yesteryear. Happy Birthday, Sylvie.

Exchanging her birthday gift for the frame, which he puts back in the attaché case, he watches as she unwraps a hardbound edition of Chandler's ‘The Long Goodbye’.

                                                  CHARLIE
                             I know you've already read it, but it’s 
                             a first edition. Signed. 

He notices a Fat Man just beyond the deli's plate-glass window, cupping his eyes against the glare to see inside.

                                                  CHARLIE
                             Anyhow, I'm sorry about not keeping
                             in touch, Sylvie. Just been so damn busy.

Sylvie follows his look to the entrance where the Fat Man’s come in. He takes a seat at the counter.

                                                   SYLVIE
                           Busy doing what? Can't be you're count-
                           ing your money all day long.

EXT. DELICATESSAN - LATER

Stiletto, at the wheel of a car parked up the block, checks the rear-view where people going in at the deli entrance make way for Sylvie and Charlie coming out.

Sylvie decides she’d rather walk, leaving Charlie to drive off on his own in the cab he’s just flagged down. The Fat Man follows Sylvie.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL

Following him downstairs to the crowded concourse, Stiletto temporarily loses sight of Charlie and has to really push himself to catch up when finally he spots him on the other side of the information kiosk.

INT. GRAND CENTRAL - STORAGE AREA

Sticking close as Charlie makes his way to the lockers, Stiletto lets him go once he’s retrieved the envelope he’s come for. He crosses to the locker and checks it out. There's no key ...

At the far end of the room, a man on a scaffold is squeegeeing the glass-bricked ceiling through which another man, suspended by harness from the truss-work, can be seen doing the same thing on the other side. Stiletto watches them.

INT. PENTHOUSE BEDROOM - NIGHT

The wind-tossed Birch scratches at the glass of the terrace window. All but one of its Christmas lights have burned out, and it blinks, lending a red pulse to the room. Charlie lies awake in bed, watching the ceiling.

THE FINAL OPTION

THE FINAL OPTION  is a screen novel. Far too detailed for a conventional screenplay, too bare-boned to be a novel, this is a mongrel. The following are some useful terms and abbreviations with examples, as needed

EXT = Exterior

INT = Interior

VO = Voice Over (As in a narration, interior dialogue, wherein the speaker is not on screen)

OS = Off Screen (Similar to VO, the difference being that OS only indicates that the character speaking is not visible, as opposed to being absent)

INSERT indicates something being featured.
e.g.: Following upon a scene where we see man reading a newspaper, there’s this:

               INSERT - NEWSPAPER
               The front page photo is of a downed helicopter in a jungle clearing; the headlines -“US  Chopper shot down in Columbia.”

SCENE HEADING / SLUG LINE, the first line of the set-up, is always in upper case, locating the scene in place and time. For example:

                EXT. CITY – DAY – SUMMER

Besides the location (Exterior City), it’s important to note that not only is this happening during the day, but also that it's summertime. It’s easy to skim past this, but if you do, if you miss it, you’re bound to misunderstand the implications of the time jump indicated in the Slug Line that follows.

                 EXT. CITY – DAY - WINTER

The Final Option will be posted in installments once a week.

THE FINAL OPTION

EXT. COFFEE PLANTATION – PRE-DAWN
                                                
In amongst the trees, two men on horseback, the older one training a flashlight on branches that hang heavy with clusters of ruptured coffee beans. When the young man, trying to get a shot of this, spooks his horse with the camera flash, the older man turns his pony and heads uphill, the young man calling after him ...

(SUBTITLED - SPANISH)

                                                YOUNG MAN                                                
                           I'm telling you, Old Man, this coffee bean
                           shit, it’s like a plague, and not just here. In
                           Brazil, Costa Rica, I seen the same thing,
                           exact same thing!

EXT. HILLTOP - A SHORT TIME LATER

Sunrise ... The older man, on foot now near the crest, no longer needs the flashlight to see. In any case, the trees at this elevation are healthy. The young man catches up with him. His horse is skittish.

There's the deep metronomic thump of a rotary, sound muffled by hills and foliage, now bursting clear as a helicopter suddenly over-flies the crest from the other side. Startled at the sight and sound of this, the young man waves, trying to draw the pilot’s attention. He steadies his horse, watching as the chopper banks and comes back around, flying at treetop level. Taking aim with the Instamatic, he tracks it through the viewfinder, waiting for it to come closer, to fill the frame. Then shoots.

And seconds later is himself shot, hit with a burst of machinegun fire that nearly cuts him in two. The camera shatters. His horse takes off down the slope with a corpse in the saddle, trampling the older man when he tries to stop it.

The old man lies broken in a narrow clearing between rows of trees. There’s a drainage ditch with overhanging branches just a couple of feet away, but he can’t make it that far, and now the helicopter’s back, machine gun rounds stitching the dirt and him in one straight line.

He doesn't move as blood soaks through his shirtback and the engine noise  recedes, all but gone by the time he’s able to roll over, muttering prayers, looking up at the sky. And then its back again, even louder, and the treetops bend to the propwash, trembling ...

Unmarked and equipped for crop dusting, the army green helicopter passes directly overhead, trailing a white cloud of particles that settles slowly ...

Like snow



EXT. WALL STREET - -WINTER- - DUSK

It's snowing, the sidewalks crawling with hurry as employees pour from the buildings. Outside the marbled front of Gaines & Filcher, a trim Santa Claus, looking more like Uncle Sam than Santa, rings a bell for charity.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - TRADING ROOM

Office party in progress.. Henry Zara, a broker, is looking for someone. Mid-40s, meticulously groomed, he picks his way through moving tangles of bodies and cocktail talk until he makes eye contact with another broker and calls across, shouting to make himself heard.

                                                    HENRY
                             You seen Charlie? He leave?
                           
The other broker doesn’t know.

EXT. ROOFTOP

A bearded, 45 year-old Charlie Hastings, drunk and disheveled, is up here with his glass of champagne, having a smoke, having a dance with himself as he
negotiates the outer reaches of the rooftop. Hopping up onto one of the parapets, he slips on ice and falls, twisting midair to redirect his landing to the inside of the ledge …

Where he comes down unhurt with the long stem of a broken cocktail glass in one hand, a soggy cigarette in the other. He shoots a look to the sky.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Missed. (BEAT) And who the fuck
                             cares, anyway?

Teeth chattering, he digs a pack of Camels out of his pocket. Empty. He pulls open the heavy, counter-weighted access door and returns downstairs.

INT. GAINES & FILCHER - TRADING ROOM

Randolph Gaines, 70, shaking hands with departing brokers as the Christmas party continues, spots Charlie in the corridor and excuses himself, hurrying off. He catches up with him outside the Men’s Room.

                                                   GAINES
                             Jesus, Charlie, you look like Hell.

Henry’s also seen Charlie and come after him, but he backs off  when he recog-nizes who he's with. Gaines brushes snow off Charlie's shoulders.

                                                   GAINES
                             You okay?

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Fine. I'm fine.

                                                   GAINES
                             (BEAT) You really have someplace to
                             be for Christmas, Charlie. Because
                             you're welcome to spend it with us,
                             you know. You do know that?

Charlie keeps on nodding, absently patting his pockets for cigarettes he doesn’t have. He's getting the whirlies. But he’s no longer the main point of focus for Gaines who, distracted by something only he has seen, gives him a quick hug and lets go.

                                                   GAINES
                             Hang in there, Boy. You'll make it, I
                             know you will.

Coach, 80, a short, dapper man in a Fedora, slides along the corridor wall, using other, larger bodies like blinds to get past Gaines coming the other way.

INT. MEN'S ROOM

Charlie keeps his head immersed in a sinkful of water as others behind him jockey for mirror space. Henry, impatiently checks the time and waits, along with a couple of other brokers, for Charlie to surface.

                                                   BROKER
                             Didn't get canned, did he?

                                                    HENRY
                             Get real. Gaines is his Godfather.

Charlie comes up, gulping for air. He avoids the mirror and, with water dripping from his beard, makes for the door.

EXT. WALL STREET - EVENING

Coach exits the building a few seconds behind Charlie and other brokers from the Men's Room, all in high spirits as they head for the subway entrance at the corner. When they start down the steps, however, he balks, nobody missing him until Henry turns to tell him something and discovers that he’s no longer there beside him, that he’s still topside. Drawing back now …

                                                    HENRY
                             Hey, Charlie, come on! Party time!

He tries to reverse direction, make his way back up to the sidewalk, but there are too many people coming down and he’s up against the filthy stairwell wall, and has to grab hold of the railing to avoid being trampled.

EXT. BROAD STREET   

Charlie, halfway across the intersection when the light turns red, keeps himself perfectly still as he stands there shivering in the middle of the street, hemmed in by traffic from both directions, flinching at the sudden blast of an air horn, a delivery truck splashing him as it rumbles past.
   
Coach keeps an eye on Charlie from a distance.

When he makes it to the other side of the street, Charlie takes refuge from the crush of pedestrians in a recessed gateway; he slaps bits of slush from his pant legs. When he realizes that this is a side entrance to Trinity Church, he heads inside.

INT. CHURCH

The city sounds are muted here. An old Nun, replacing candles on a votive rack, keeps shooting looks to the back pews where Charlie’s settled in. When he drops from sight, she goes to investigate.

Finds him curled up on the seat like a fetus with a palsy. Jangles her keys!

                                                        NUN
                             This is a church, Young Man. You 
                             hear me? Not a flophouse.

EXT. TRINITY CHURCH

Coach follows Charlie hurrying away down the sidewalk.


INT. RESTAURANT-BAR

Charlie squeezes through the clog of patrons, mostly Wall Streeters,  angling for the far end of the bar.

He gives the barmaid an American Express card when she brings his whiskey and cigarettes, but she only takes it to read the name that's printed there. She hands it back.

                                                 BARMAID
                             I’m sorry, Mr. Hastings.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Didn't go through?
         
                                                 BARMAID
                             Canceled.

A hundred dollar bill appears on her tray. Coach doffs his hat, exposing a balding head with a raspberry birthmark.

                                                   COACH
                             Happened to me so many times I got
                             rid of the damn things.

INT. DINING AREA

A waitress carries her tray to a window table where Charlie sits across from Coach. In addition to food, she’s brought whiskey, two more shots to add to empties already here. Also a couple of packs of Camels, all for Charlie. Who’s plastered. Who smokes even as he eats.

                                                   COACH
                             So you're a broker of some sort?

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Some sort, yeah, sounds about right.

                                                   COACH
                             A financial engineer.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             (Making like a conductor) All aboard!
                             Think I can, think I can …You think
                             I can? You an investor?

                                                   COACH
                             Speculator.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Speculator, uh? Well, Merry Merry.

                                                   COACH
                             I mean, on paper. Just for fun.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Fun. Me too. Just for laughs.

                                                   COACH
                             Actually, I've done quite well at it.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Well, good for you, good for you.

EXT. RESTAURANT-BAR -  NIGHT - LATER

It's snowing harder. There's a waiter at the door, relocking it every time someone exits. The sidewalks are empty.

INT. BAR

Charlie sits slumped at the table, watching with heavy lids as Coach folds up the paper placemat he's been writing on.
                                              
                                                   COACH
                             Because, as I already told you, I'm
                             not a player.                            

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Not a player. Coach.

                                                   COACH
                             Coach. That’s right, I’m a coach. But
                             I’m looking for a player, I’m looking
                             for somebody like you, Charlie, some-
                             body to carry the ball for me. (BEAT)
                             Of course, if you don’t feel comf- …
                            
                                                 CHARLIE
                             No, no, s’okay. S’okay, s’just …

                                                   COACH
                             Just what?

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Why me?                     

                                                   COACH
                             Why not? Besides, it's Christmas. I'm
                             in a giving mood.

Charlie's saved from nodding off by a cigarette that burns down to his fingers. Coach leans in closer, speaking slowly, distinctly.

                                                   COACH
                             It's a pool, Charlie. The investors are
                             all listed on the account directory, but
                             you need only concern yourself with
                             the fund manager. You contact him to
                             confirm on any and all transactions.

Reaching across, he tucks the folded paper away in Charlie's inside jacket pocket. Charlie fights to keep his eyes open.
                                    
                                                   COACH
                             Everything you need to get started, 
                             bank codes, first couple of orders, it's
                             all there. But remember, Charlie: Con-
                             fidentiality. I hope that’s clear.
                              
                                                 CHARLIE
                             Clear. Very, very …

                                                   COACH
                             Good. Start you off on the coffee, see
                             how that ...

INT. RESTAURANT - LATER

When the waitress comes to shake him awake, Charlie's surprised to see that he's the last customer. Coach is gone.

EXT. RESTAURANT BAR - NIGHT

In a cab just outside at the curb, the Driver rolls his window down when Charlie comes stumbling out the entryway.

                                                    DRIVER
                             Mr. Hastings?

EXT. APARTMENT HOUSE - WEST SIDE

Charlie trips as he steps from the taxi. Confused and dizzy, he's fishing his pockets for money to pay the fare when the cab drives off.

INT. APARTMENT HOUSE CORRIDOR

He slides along the wall from the elevator to the door of his apartment. Has to pee so bad he's knock-kneed.

INT. APARTMENT

He comes inside, canceling the light from the corridor when he closes the door behind him.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Goddamnit! Damn it!

A picture frame shatters, knocked from its hook as he sweeps the wall for a light switch. And he's wet his pants. He flops himself down on the unmade bed, rolls off onto the floor. And gets sick.

INT. APARTMENT - MORNING

An old high-ceilinged apartment in poor repair with an eclectic mix of furniture, most of it shabby … There are, however, a few valuable antiques. The phone’s ringing. Charlie comes to on the floor. He’s fouled by vomit and his hands are sticky. The call’s picked up by an answering machine on the bedside table: A woman's voice.

                                              SYLVIE (OS)
                             Charlie ... You there? Oh come on,
                             Charlie, wake up, it's me, Sylvie ... 

There’s somebody knocking at the door, tap-tapping the buzzer.


                                              SYLVIE (OS)
                             (Continuing) Thought you were com-
                             ing over. So where are you? … And
                             you wonder why you have no friends.

He gets to his feet and goes to see who’s at the door: an Old Lady in a ratty bath-robe who recoils from his stink. She points to the keys he’s forgotten to remove from the lock.

                                                OLD LADY
                             Good way to get yourself kilt..

He takes the keys and tries to say something, but his mouth's too dry. The Old Lady's across the hall, back inside her own apartment, closing the door, by the time he gets his voice to work.         

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Merry Christmas.

Shutting the door, leaning back against it, he sees the frame he knocked off its hook last night. He picks it up. The glass is cracked.

It's a signed photograph of President Kennedy shaking hands with a bearded man about the same age as Charlie. The man is smiling, facing the camera, and there’s a strange burst of light obscuring one of his eyes. As he re-hangs the frame on its hook, he reads the inscription..

                                                 CHARLIE
                             “For services above and beyond the 
                             call of duty.” Above and beyond, al-
                             ways above and beyond.
                            
Catching an unwelcome glimpse of himself in the mirror, he decides to get undressed, and quickly, taking everything off and tossing it into the kitchen, then remembering to go through all the pockets. 

Only the vaguest of memories stirs when he retrieves the folded restaurant placemat and tries to open it, but he’s too shaky, too tired to bother with all the sharply creased folds – he can’t make out the lightly penciled printing anyway, not in this light - so he balls it up and overshoots a wastebasket in the corner, where it caroms off the wall and comes rolling back. Almost to his feet.
                        
                                                 CHARLIE
                             Coach …

He looks at it lying there, waits for his head to clear as the balled up paper makes tiny crackling sounds, twitching and losing its pack in a slow bloom that parallels his recollection. He gets down on his hands and knees and, opening the crumpled paper with great care, discovers that there's more than just a paper placemat here. There’s also a cashier's check for $250,000.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Holy shit!

Laying the paper flat, he tries to make out the small, neat print, then crawls to the window where the light's better. It's still snowing. He fires up a crooked butt from the ashtray there on the sill, and starts to read.

                                                 CHARLIE
                             Coffee ... (BEAT) Just for fun.