The only other things in the room are a black-and-white TV hooked to a VCR and currently playing This Gun for Hire with the volume off, a Hubbard 2000 vaporizer, a wrought-iron bookcase filled with cinematography texts, a portable, manual Clark Nova typewriter, and Jakob’s prize possession, the thing he sleeps with, his most cherished appendage, a Seitz 16 mm movie camera.
Jakob knows the Seitz was intended as a bribe from Papa. But it’s his ticket to attaining his dream and though he sometimes feels a bit guilty about the implications of accepting such a present, there’s no way he can part with it now. Not when he’s this close to a start date for filming on his first feature, on the work that will announce his arrival into the world of film, a masterpiece he’s titled Little Girl Lost.
He’s been writing Little Girl Lost since the Family arrived in Quinsigamond. He thinks he needs one more polish on the screenplay before he’s ready to turn the Seitz loose on the world. He writes every chance he gets, staying up all night in the tiny studio, clicking out rewrite after rewrite on the Clark Nova, scribbling notes and cost sheets and location possibilities in his spiral notebooks. But even with all the hours he’s put in he can’t believe his script is close to completion.
He picks it up now, this revision on yellow paper, holds it gingerly in his hand, stares at the title page:
16 mm: B&W “Lumiere Flat”
Revision 9
An Amerikan Pictures/H.A.G. release
Maisel/Quinsigamond
Little Girl Lost
a screenplay by
Jakob Kinsky
dedicated to the memory of Felice Fabri lover of film
“the image must be pure to the point of horror”
He turns the page to the first scene and reads once again
FADE IN
TIGHT SHOT — THE DOOMED MAN
FILLS SCREEN. CAMERA studies his panicked, sweat-drenched face, partly obscured in shadow. His eyes are blinking and darting from left to right and back again. His Adam’s apple heaves as he gasps for breath. Camera pulls back to
MEDIUM SHOT — EXT. TRAIN STATION — NIGHT — RAIN
The Doomed Man is attempting to hide himself behind a large steel girder. He presses his back against the beam, steals furtive, rapid glances in either direction down the train yard. The collar of his coat is turned up against the wind and driving rain. In the distance, a chorus of barking dogs can be heard, the sound, once detected, getting progressively closer.
CLOSE UP — EYES OF THE DOOMED MAN, RAPIDLY BLINKING
MEDIUM SHOT — FREIGHT CAR ACROSS THE YARD FROM THE DOOMED MAN
The Doomed Man makes an awkward, tripping dash across the open yard, planting feet in deep, muddy puddles, finally reaching and boarding the ancient, rusted, wheelless freight car. He sits inside on the floor, huddles into himself, cups hands and blows on them, stares up, terrified, at the smashed-out windows of the train. Finally, he pulls from inside his coat a crumpled page of newsprint.
POV/THE DOOMED MAN
Camera tracks in on the newspaper. The headline reads:
BODY OF MISSING GIRL DISCOVERED
Divers recover remains of Felice Fontaine
Accompanying photo shows sweet-faced, ten-year-old child.
TIGHT SHOT — FACE OF DOOMED MAN
as he reacts to newspaper. Face dissolves in weeping horror. He crumples newspaper in hands, brings it to face as if a handkerchief, and begins to cry into it.
A throat clears behind Jakob. He jumps, pulls the script into his chest. His cousin Felix is standing in the doorway wearing an annoyed grin.
Felix shakes his head and says, “We’re ready to start the meeting.”
Hermann Kinsky is seated at the head of the altar. Weltsch has left this month’s ledger before him but Kinsky hasn’t bothered to open it. Hermann doesn’t need a balance sheet to tell him when he’s been betrayed. He feels the Judas in his stomach, senses the transgression the old way, in the blood and the spleen.
Felix sits next to him on his left and Uncle Hermann knows his nephew is anxious to tell of this week’s exploits by the resident Kinsky muscle, a growing gang that’s come to be known as The Grey Roaches. Hermann doesn’t know why Felix has settled on this appellation, but there’s something about it he likes. He’s upset, however, by the fact that the Roaches take their marching orders from Felix rather than Jakob. It’s a bad sign to hang out to the neighborhood, a gesture that could easily be misinterpreted. And for this reason he refuses to pay too much attention to gang business. He lets Weltsch keep track of the pack’s extortion accounts and pharmaceutical dealings.
Jakob sits to his father’s right, dressed, as always, in his black bar mitzvah suit, though he’s outgrown it by a size or two. Look at the boy. It’s as if he’s uncomfortable with his own presence. As if each moment of his short life has been lived on the trap of a gallows. Why can’t he have some of his cousin’s confidence and bravado? How did two boys, raised together since Felix was orphaned in the July Sweep, end up so different? Kinsky blood running through both sets of veins, Hermann thinks, looking at his son’s profile, but they’re night and day.
What Hermann doesn’t realize is that through the open chapel door, Jakob can see across the hall into his bedroom and makeshift studio where he’s left the TV on, playing a tape of This Gun for Hire. The volume is turned off and as Alan Ladd mouths dialogue, Jakob can hear each line in his head.
Jakob would love to be Alan Ladd, or rather, Ladd’s character on the screen: Raven, the heartless, hired killer, the contract assassin who walks through a beautifully moody, 1942 black-and-white world in his trench coat, possessed by his legion of inner demons. When Laird Cregar asks Raven how it feels to kill someone, Jakob mouths the response, “It feels fine.”
Weltsch enters the chapel with Johnny Yew, one of Hermann’s new mid-level managers based down in Little Asia. Johnny runs the sex co-op on Alton Road that the Kinsky’s picked up in a very hostile takeover last May. Hermann brought in a Bulgarian contractor for the move and disappeared Yun-fat, the cooperative’s founder and Johnny’s former boss. Normally, that kind of brassy nerve would have triggered some all-out reprisal, but since Doc Cheng was eliminated last year, Little Asia has been up for a lot of quick grabs.
Weltsch sits down next to Felix without a word and Johnny Yew slides in next to Jakob, saying, “Good to see you, Mr. K,” across the table to Hermann.
“It is good to see you, Johnny,” Hermann says in a low and unusually warm voice, so friendly-sounding that Jakob looks away from the distant television screen for a second to study his father’s face.
“Gustav tells me you have something important to discuss,” Yew says, both nervous and excited. He’s dressed in a double-breasted shark-skin suit that looks a little like the one Felix is wearing.
Hermann gives a slow nod.
“I’ve asked you down today, Johnny, to discuss your future with the company.”
Jakob hears Yew swallow, feels his legs shift under the table.
“We’re extremely pleased with the job you’ve been doing for us down at the co-op. You’ve settled in nicely.”
Johnny’s head bobs. “It’s a wonderful position, Mr. Kinsky. I’ve worked hard and—”