TIGHT SHOT — FACE OF DOOMED MAN
realizing he’s been spotted.
WIDE SHOT — EXT. LOWENSTEIN ROAD
Doomed Man turns and begins a pathetic, limping run down narrow, curving Lowenstein. Waitress emerges from door of Lazslo’s, runs into middle of street.
WAITRESS
(cupping hands to mouth, yelling)
It’s the killer. The killer is here.
Doors open up and down Lowenstein. PEOPLE emerge pulling on coats. Confusion as they all approach waitress at once. Slowly they begin to form into an ANGRY MOB. Din of cries and curses fills the air. Mob overturns trash cans. Arms itself with rocks, broken bottles, iron bars, baseball bats. Whistles are heard. Barking dogs are heard. Police sirens are heard in the distance. Mob begins pursuit.
EXT. THE TENDERLOIN
The Doomed Man hears the commotion behind him. Dashes from street lamp to mailbox to doorway, bumping into and off of drunks and seedy thugs who populate the area. Doomed Man emerges to an open square where there is no place to hide.
TIGHT SHOT — FACE OF DOOMED MAN
as he turns and sees the bulk shadow of the mob moving forward through the tenderloin. Panicking, blinking eyes. Blood, seeping from forehead, obscuring vision.
CRANE SHOT — EXT. OPEN SQUARE — LIT BY HARSH HALOGEN SPOT
The Doomed Man turns around and looks across the square toward the Train Station, where he began this odyssey. He runs toward the Station, falls on his face in middle of square. Sound of the angry mob increases. Doomed Man gets to his feet and desperately runs to the train yard.
“Cuz.”
Jakob looks up, unsurprised, unruffled, and smiles.
Felix leans his elbows onto the lip of the car, peers inside.
“We’ve been worried sick about you,” Felix says. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
Jakob closes his notebook. He cradles the Seitz and climbs outside to see all of the Grey Roaches waiting for him.
“I couldn’t visualize a scene,” he says, “I had to come out here. Look at it again. Up close.”
Felix smiles and shakes his head, throws an arm around his cousin’s shoulder. “The things you do for your art, huh?”
“What are you doing here?” Jakob asks, staring across the yard at Huck Hrabal who flinches and looks to the ground.
Felix turns to Jakob so they face each other, then he begins to brush down Jakob’s lapels like some compulsive valet.
“Well,” he says. “It was supposed to be a surprise. Huck had an idea where we might find you. We wanted to have a little party back at St. Vitus—”
“A surprise?”
Felix takes a deep breath, shrugs his shoulders a bit.
“I’ve talked to your father, Jakob. And it’s clear to both of us. Finally. Our way just isn’t your way, cuz. You’re an artist. You can’t help yourself. We’ve all seen the light. Gustav has even found a way to funnel income to underwrite your career. You are in business, cuz. You can make your movie. And we’ve got a present for you.”
Jakob looks over Felix’s shoulder at Vera Gottwald who gives nothing away.
“It’s good you brought your movie camera,” Felix says. “We should record it all from the start. Some day the archivists will want to look back at everything. Hugo Schick is meeting us here. He’ll be turning over the deed to the Skin Palace. To you, Jakob. It’s yours from this night on, cousin. Your own studio. Your own stable of actors. Your own crew. Your own theatre. The whole thing is yours.”
“But Papa—”
“Your father is a very wise man, Jakob. In the end, he always knows what’s best.”
The cousins stare at each other, the space between their faces filled with the white clouds of their breath. There’s a minute of silence until Felix says, “You don’t look very happy, Jakob. This is what you’ve always wanted. I thought you’d be delirious.”
Jakob stares down at the ground, at the crumpled remains of dozens of Jenny Ellis posters.
“It’s just …” he begins and breaks off.
Then starts again, “It will be awkward. Mr. Schick has been very good to me.”
“Well,” Felix says, shaking his head, tossing his arms out to the side and making a hand signal that the Roaches note and act on, spreading into a circle around the two Kinskys, “everyone has been good to you, Jakob. Haven’t they?”
Jakob lifts his camera to his shoulder, pans across the faces of the Roaches and says, “We’ve all been fortunate, Felix. America has been very kind to our family.”
Felix squats down and starts to trace something in the ash with his finger.
“Still,” he says, “I lost both my parents in the July Sweep.”
Jakob moves the camera to Felix’s face, zooms in.
“I know that. And I’m sorry about it every day.”
Felix smiles for the camera.
“Yeah, well, like that prayer says, life’s a bitch—”
“And then you die,” Jakob finishes for him. He pans to the left and sees Vera Gottwald take a section of rubber hose from an inside fold of her suitcoat. He turns slowly, keeping the Seitz running. He does an even 360, frames each Roach extracting saps and blackjacks and brass knuckles from their clothing.
“It looks like Mr. Schick is going to be late for our meeting,” Jakob says.
Felix lets out a laugh.
“Aputz to the end, eh cuz?”
“Mr. Schick isn’t coming, is he Felix?”
“No, Jakob, I’m afraid Schick won’t be joining us tonight.”
“This is suicide, Felix.”
“Put the camera down, Jakob.”
“You are out of you mind. Do you have any idea what Papa will do to you? There’s no way you can pin this on one of the other gangs.”
“Put the goddamn camera down.”
Jakob refuses. He keeps the Seitz filming and comes back to a closeup of his cousin, who’s now holding a longbarrel revolver straight out, pointed at the camera.
“All right,” Felix says, “have it your way. Film the whole thing. Your first and last feature, you stupid little son of a bitch.”
“Please,” Jakob says, “put your gun away.”
Felix jerks the pistol into the air and pulls the trigger. A shot explodes, echoes across the train yard, fills the air with a trace of burnt powder.
“It’s not a prop, dickhead. It’s the real goddamn thing. It’s a beauty, isn’t it? And there’s a bullet in every chamber. You know who gave me the gun, Jakob? Uncle Hermann. Your goddamn Papa who’s coddled your wheezing ass since the day we hit this city. You know where it came from, Jakob? Any idea? Huh?”
Jakob stays silent.
“It belonged to the commandant who murdered my mother and father. A man named Teige. One of the great zealots of the July Sweep. Before we left Maisel, Uncle Hermann paid more money than you can imagine to get next to Teige. Then he took out his Schonborn and strangled the bastard, came close to taking the man’s head off his shoulders. Literally separating the head. He told me he’s never pulled that hard in his life. He hit bone, Jakob. Can you imagine what that feels like, cousin? To pull wire through the skin, through the cartilage and the arteries?
“Uncle Hermann gave me the commandant’s gun, Jakob. He gave you your camera there. Belonged to some great director, right? He gave me the pistol that killed my mother and father.”
“Felix,” Jakob says, “should you hurt me in any way, Papa will manage to bury your head a block away from your body.”
“You idiot,” Felix’s voice dropping low. “Can you imagine how you’ve disappointed him? I told you the video store was your last chance. I tried to help you. You were in there talking to that freak. You were inside talking about movies. My God. You should have seen Hermann’s face when I told him.”