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.
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