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THE STAR THIEF
Original Story Treatment, Synopsis & Additional Material
by
C.A. Littleton
for
TYMCAL PRODUCTIONS – HUA-HIN
Cast of Characters
The Car Thief - Aye
The Lady Detective - Suchit
The Aging Film Icon - Alee
The Film Director - Polapatr
The Film Producer - Bom
The Bad Guy - KoKo
KoKo's Girlfriend – Fon
Chief of Detectives - Winyoo
The British Film Exec - TerrySuchit's Sister - Tym
Tym's Daughter - Gratai
The Gay Neighbor - 'Girl'
The Desk Sergeant - Tom
Approximate running time: 90-100 minutes
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Synopsis
Running as fast as his young legs will carry him, the cops hot on his
heels, an up and coming car thief stumbles onto the set of an action movie
being filmed on the streets of Bangkok . . . straight into the world of
smoke and mirrors. His wild looks catch the attention, and the heart of
an aging screen hero, and self proclaimed 'Asian James Bond'.
Becoming a budding film star means leaving the reality of his life on themean streets of the city behind, and stepping into a fantasy landscape
where pretend and make-believe are the everyday norms, and where
appearance is the key that unlocks the vault . . . and a damn good place to
hide from the law, in plain sight. Or so he thinks.
With a brand new lady cop, right out of the police academy, dogging his
trail, the fleet-foot car booster has no intention of falling in love with
anyone, on either side of the law. But then . . .
In the end, a thief is a thief, and a cop must do his . . . uh, her duty.
The Star Thief is a modern fable of life and love, set against the timeless
realities of crime, fame, violence and illusion, and the lines that blur
between them, a tale where murder means freedom and love doesn't
always follow the straightest path.
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Point of Sale
If this film were cast with bi-lingual actors, each scene could be shot
twice, first in Thai, then in English. A parallel edit will produce both a
domestic and international version simultaneously, for the price of one.
In this, my talents as a dialogue coach will prove invaluable during the
shooting of the film, if needed.
Although the story of The Star Thief is universal, and could madeanywhere, my love for the essence of Thailand makes me feel strongly
that this the perfect setting, the perfect environment to make this film.
My hope is to be given the opportunity to work directly with an
established Thai screenwriter to produce twin versions of the screenplay,
exact copies of each other, the only difference being the fonts they're
printed in. I also think that a successful collaboration on this picture will
lead to more jointly produced film projects in the future.
I cannot describe how clearly I see this as a story that Thai, as well as
foreign audiences will enjoy very much.
C.A.L.
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Alt Titles & Poster Blurbs
1.
When you're on the lam from the long arm of the law . . .
There's no place better to hide than in the movies . . .
literally!
THIEF OF HEARTS
2.
With the heat hot on his heels . . .
He ran straight on to the silver screen.
But in the end . . .
His heart has to pay the price.
THE STAR BOOSTER
STAR OF THE SILVER STREETS
3.
From the means streets of Bangkok . . .To the dizzying heights of stardom comes . . .
COPS, R OBBERS & MOVIE STARS
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4.
One thing leads to another in . . .
HOT CARS & MOVIE STARS
5.
Sometimes life comes down to a simple formula . . .
HOT COPS & STOLEN CARS
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Full Story Treatment
The film opens:
A somewhat handsome looking, young man is strolling casually down a
busy, noisy street somewhere in the heart of Bangkok. No one pays the
slightest attention as he passes by their shops and carts, or notices him
sweeping the area with his eyes, scanning the endless column of parked
cars, looking for a likely target. He seems like just another normal,happy fellow, going about his business without a worry in the world.
The same as millions like him walking by all of us each and every day.
He sees what he's looking for. A bright shiny, brand spanking new
BMW (model) sports coupe, that has been all tricked out with the latest,
and costliest high performance accessories, parked right on a good corner
for making a quick, clean getaway. He wants it, and has the skills to
make it his, for a short time anyway. But, as his years of training havetaught him, he has to keep an eye out for the enemy, the cops.
Sure enough, a group of four of them are standing around in an informal
group, shooting the breeze, way over on the opposite of the busy, four
lane thoroughfare, packed with cars zooming in every direction but up.
He quickly calculates the odds. Can he boost the sharpest set of wheels
he's seen in a week of searching, before the coppers can get their butts in
gear and catch him? The sum of his calculations is an instant green light.
So, without further ado, he walks straight to the car, as though to admire
it like thousands of other envious car-obsessed young guys in his
position. He doesn't see anyone who looks like the owner, so wham-
bam, in half the blink of an eye, the door is jimmied open and he's
reaching under the dash reaching for the bundle of wires that will kill the
theft alarm sending up a deafening screech of electric hysteria at being
unduly disturbed, and fire the engine to life at the same time.
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What he didn't factor into his criminal equation is the local reaction to the
alarm. Vendors and shopkeepers begin pouring out their stores and
when they realize what's going on, start pummeling him with all manner
of flying objects. Trying to protect himself from being hurt by the fruits
and vegetables raining down on him, while keeping an eye on the police
at the same time. Two of whom are trying desperately attempting to
duck and weave their way through mid-day traffic, while the other two
are mounting their police motorcycles, makes him decide to abandon his
enterprise. He takes off running as fast as his legs will carry him, down
the same side street he saw himself speeding down in the Beemer only
moments before. His disappointment instantly forgotten in the heat of
making good his escape. As he zigs and zags through the normalstraggle of pedestrians and window shoppers, he sees a large crowd of
gawkers up ahead, looking intently at something beyond them. He
decides they're the best cover at hand, like a tree hiding in the forest.
Back at the corner, after a symphony of blaring car horns and squealing
tires, the two policemen have managed to cross the busy street, and are
both bent over, gasping for air. Helpful onlookers are pointing to the
direction the thief ran, exhorting the panting cops to hurry and run after
him. The two officers pass a look of 'what the hell?' between them and
reluctantly take out in the direction the angry citizens are waving at.
Our thief, his panic subsiding a degree or two, decides to stroll casually
up to the mob and blends in as smoothly as possible. But when he looks
back over his shoulder, there they are, the men with the guns and badges,
and they see him looking at back at them. The chase is back on.
The thief slams headlong into the mass of bodies, jamming and
shimmying himself deeper with all the strength he can muster. The swell
of mildly annoyed onlookers, sensing the nature of the situation, swell
closed behind him, like a Venus, uh human flytrap. The poor hapless
cops are frustrated in every attempt to penetrate the wall of flesh.
The thief bursts out of the crowd, and directly into a film production
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being shot on the streets of Bangkok. Without slowing down, he jumps
under the barrier ropes and is immediately grabbed by two burly security
guards, who saw him coming, and lift him off his feet. The thief squirms
and kicks, and somehow manages to break free. Now running from the
guards, who are screaming bloody hell at him, the thief isn't watching
where he's going when he crashes straight into a group of actors playing a
scene for the umpteenth time, heedless of the intrusion. They're all
knocked to the ground. A mature actor in the middle of the group, the
star of the film, is sent flying, like a stunt man. The other actors in the
scene, have to hide their faces to keep from being seen smirking. The
boom man can't resist a quick 'holy shit!' The actor shoots him a look
that would freeze vodka.
The director yells 'CUT!' only a milli-second before the film's producer
comes flying out of his chair with a stream of epithets, threats and insults
flying in every direction, including up. He'd been sitting with his back
turned to the action, paying closer attention to a pretty young starlet than
to the action behind him. He wants to know why so much of his money
is being flushed down the toilet like so much bullcrap, he's not made of
money, like Spielburg, after all. He's still in a flaming rage when he gets
to the scene of the crime. He glares, nose to nose, at the intruder like he
wants to rip out his throat. His shouts are louder than the car alarm.
The crowd roars with glee. They delight in seeing one of their own, so to
speak, poking a finger in the eye of the high and mighty world of fame
and riches. Real life action is a lot more entertaining than all the make
believe violence happening before them.
The thief is paralyzed with fear. Everyone else quickly backs away from
the onrushing storm. Everyone, that is, except the star, who has regained
both his feet and his loathing for the producer. His killer instincts are
driving him to come to the aid of the clumsy interloper, any excuse at all
to berate the hated producer, who has been a thorn in his side for more
years than he cares to recall. That is, until he actually sees the young car
thief. He is instantly taken with the boy's smoldering goods looks, and
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the air of danger that radiates from him. And he wants what he sees.
The actor launches a diatribe of invectives at the producer, who isn't
phased in the least, having heard it all before, too many times to count.
He completely ignores the star, until he hears a threat he is very familiar
with, and just as afraid of.
The star, the hero of this film and every other film he appears in, demands
that the boy be written into the film immediately, or else he'll walk off the
set and right out of the production. The producer is instantly shocked
into silence. He knows that the aging screen idol not only means what
he says, but with his clout, his star power, can make it happen. The
producer, knowing he's helpless to do anything about it, nearly faints atthe thought of all that money going down the tubes. He retreats, slinking
away in defeat from this battle. Down for the moment, but not out.
There's always tomorrow to look forward to, after all.
Meanwhile, the poor harried director is slumped forward in his chair, his
head in his hands, muttering to himself, oblivious to everything around
him. Utter frustration and hopeless desperation are the only emotions he
feels during the making of his movies, but secretly, he wouldn't have it
any other way. As he passes, the producer snaps at the director to reset
the shot and shoot the scene again, pronto!
The star coos at the thief, virtually quivering with lust, asking him if he
needs anything. Thinking quick on his feet is one of the thief 's best
qualities. He asks for a moustache. Oh, and becoming a movie star
would be pretty cool too, he adds just for the fun of it. With nothingmore than a look from the star, wardrobe, makeup and props are all over
the boy, outfitting him with a completely different look, not to mention
arming him with a rubber AK47. Before he's called to his mark, the star
winks at the thief, saying he'll look into the second request.
He's going to be one of the gang of thugs the star is about to blow away,
single handed, when shooting resumes, which is surprisingly fast for him.
An assistant director yanks him by the arm, talking a blue streak as they
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cross the street, telling him where he is to stand and how he's supposed to
fall when he's shot. A few hands reach out from the crowd to pat him on
the shoulder. He barely comprehends when the director shouts
"ACTION!".
Meanwhile, the four policemen have joined up to watch the action.
When the director yell 'CUT!' they elbow their way onto the set. The
security guards are not happy about this new intrusion. They shoot dirty
looks at each other. But not for long, the police are more star-struck than
interested in hassling with a pair of rent-a-cops, or catching a wanna-be
Beemer booster. They walk right past the thief. After all, how could it
be that a working actor can be a bad guy on the run? And vice versa.Cool as can be, the thief takes a drag from his cigarette and watches as
the cops make a cursory search the location, more interested in seeing a
movie star in real life than concentrating on the job. After a couple of
minutes, the cops leave. The thief takes a deep breath.
When the director finally wraps shooting for the day, the grips
immediately start striking the set and packing up the gear. The thief
watches, mildly curious, taking a minute or two to consider his next
move. He lives wherever he drops his hat, and right now things are
getting a little tense where he's been flopping for the last week or so, so
he's in no hurry to go back out on the streets. He lights another cigarette
and lets his mind drift along with the flow of the work going on around
him. His reverie is shattered when a hand firmly clamps onto his
shoulder from behind. He's startled, sure it's the cops.
The voice of the star sets him somewhat at ease, wanting to know if it's
true, that he arrived on the set running from the police. The thief shrugs.
Being so close to a genuine criminal turns the star on even more than he
already was. He asks if the thief has a place to stay. Again, the thief
just shrugs. So the star offers to help him break into a legitimate
business, showbiz that is, and offers him an apartment to live in if he
needs a place to stay for a while. The thief turns to look the star in the
eye, and shrugs. The star is even more deeply struck by the laconic
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outlaw from the mean streets. He feels like a teenager in love for the
first time, well nearly the first time. As they walk off the set, to an
awaiting limo, he assures the kid that he is sure to be a big star, with his
help, of course. He wants to touch the boy so much, he's actually
trembling with desire, but he resists the temptation.
The apartment turns out to be a glitzy, spectacular monument to
modernism, as seen through the eyes of someone a little less masculine
than his screen image would bear out. It is high up on one of the top
floors of a towering spike of polished steel and blacked out glass, with a
panoramic view of the cityscape that is truly breathtaking. Humble it
ain't. Manly it ain't, either.
The thief is even more at a loss for words at the idea of hiding out here.
* * * * *
A somewhat pretty young lady walks into the police station and asks the
desk sergeant to point out the way to the Chief of Detective's office. At
first the gruff little man behind the ratty old desk that serves as his
fortress bristles at her request, assuming she's just some bit of fluff off the
street with a petty complaint he's more than capable of dispatching. That
is to say, he still bears the teeth marks on his rear end from the last
chewing out he received from his boss for disturbing him with something
too trivial for his authority, his rank in the station hierarchy. That
explains the squeaky air cushion on his ancient institutional chair.
The girl insists with an air of impatience and boldness that prompts the
desk sergeant to leap from his rickety wooden chair, sprint around his
desk and come face to face with the audacious tart demanding entrance to
the holiest of all sanctums, the detective's room up on the second floor.
Well nearly face to face. The girl towers over him by a good eight
inches. Thanks to the icy stare she has learned to affect to cover her true
emotions, the little sergeant can't see just how petrified she is inside.
The stony hardness in her eyes serves its purpose, and moments later
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she's standing in front of another desk, this time with a genuine look of
terror on her face.
The compact little man behind the desk, middle aged, hardened by years
of trouble, in contrast to the noticeable spare tire around his middle,
easily roused into a rage, usually caused by a lifetime of anxiety and
frustration, slowly raises his eyes to look at this interruption to a
perfectly lousy morning. And it's not even ten AM yet.
Without a word from either, the girl hands her papers over the desk to the
Chief. He just sits there, staring like an overfed lion at its next prey, so
she gently places her dossier on the cluttered desk. The Chief uses thetip of a serious looking knife from under the desk to flip the folder open.
The girl is the first female police officer to graduate from university with
a degree in criminal justice, and thus the first of her gender to earn the
rank of detective. And now she's standing here, praying like hell that her
knees don't give out. It would ruin everything if she collapsed to the
floor at this precise moment. There's time for that later, when she
reaches the safe confines of the little apartment she shares with her sister
and her sister's daughter. For now she concentrates on remaining
upright.
After a cursory interview, the Chief, a lethally quiet cop from the old
school, grudgingly accepts that she's going to be one of his flock of
misfits, so he shows her around the squad room, assigns her a desk and
snaps his fingers. In the blink of an eye, a thick, dog-eared, coffee
stained file is dropped with a weary thud unceremoniously on her greasy,much-scarred new desk. A low rumble of male laughter growls through
the room. Everyone turns their backs on her. No one says hello. She
feels more alone, in a sweltering hot room filled with sweating detectives,
than she has felt in her entire life. Even on the day when she was nine
and her mother died, leaving she and her sister to fend for themselves.
The case before her concerns a car thief, personal data unknown, who
graduated from the occasional joy ride in a hot-wired tuk-tuk in the rice
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lands of the rural northern provinces, to boosting nothing but top of the
line automobiles here in the capital city. This time the cars aren't stolen
for a few hours of fun cruising, joyriding through the streets, trying to
impress girls. Now the thief is in a serious, and potentially dangerous
business. Stealing luxury cars, chopped, stripped or whole, for export to
middle eastern countries where oil sheiks and other ga-jillionaires who
want the latest model Porsche's at dirt cheap, bargain basement prices,
and are more than ready to break a few legs to get them. He's been at it
for the better part of ten years without a single arrest despite his MO of
only stealing cars in broad daylight while they're parked on busy,
downtown streets. It appears the thief craves the adrenaline rush he gets
from taking something while everyone is watching, but too slow to doanything. He obviously enjoys the shock value of his daring deeds, of
car thievery that is.
The folder is filled with stacks notes, clipped haphazardly together in no
particular order. Scrawled in the illegible handwriting of clearly angry
cops, detailing just how close they've come to grabbing the kid, on
dozens of occasions, and the contempt (and a certain degree of grudging
admiration) he's earned from the frustrated lawmen. Among the
conglomeration of scribbled notes and typed reports are only two or three
sketchy descriptions of a youngish male, Thai, average, average, average,
good looking with no distinguishing marks and remarkably fast whether
behind the wheel or on foot. In fact, she glimpses the phrase 'formula
one' on quite a number of the pages. The file is conspicuously devoid of
photographs. The case was dropped on her desk as a kind of trial by fire.
The kid's considered to be the best at what he does, fast, smart andfearless.
She knows she will either earn her bones with this case. Or else she’ll
end up at the bottom of the food chain for the rest of her days as the city’s
first lady detective. Solving the case, and snagging the little prick, might
even earn her a few brownie points toward making detective first grade,
her life's ambition. She looks around the squalid room. No one returns
her glance. To the veteran cops she's not there, like she doesn't exist.
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This the opening gambit in the legendary head game old cops play with
rookies on their first day, made all the worse by the fact that she's a girl.
But she's more than ready and willing to play their macho game.
Downstairs, the desk sergeant is busy with another frantic woman,
shrieking at the top of her lungs that her pet dog has been abducted by
aliens from another planet and the police have to come immediately if the
world is to be saved. Plus, she really wants her dog back.
Her first day on the job finally over and done with, the detective runs to
the shelter of her apartment as fast as her little car will carry her. Inside
at long last, she drops her bag with a hard thump and lets herself crumpleto the floor in front the couch in the living room. Her sister is in the
kitchen fixing something to eat, while her young niece is sprawled on the
nice cool hardwood floor, coloring a picture in her latest coloring book.
After the vibrations of motion and tension finally die down inside her, the
tears flow. This has been the absolute worst day of her life. Being
stuck in an overcrowded airless room, wreaking with foul odors best left
undescribed, not the slightest breath of fresh air anywhere within a five
block area, the humidity set at ten thousand percent, any hope of a view
blocked by windows more grime than glass, with a dozen surly gorillas
who would be just as happy to eat her for lunch as have her run away in
terror, is one hell of a way to kick off a shiny new career as an angel of
justice, and warrior against wrongdoers.
She lets it all come flooding out, slumps on the floor with her legs spreadin every direction, tears turning to sludge on her cheeks, her hands lying
lifeless at her sides like a couple of dead fish, the pain in her lower back
threatening to burst into open flames at any second. From the kitchen,
all her sister has to say is 'I told you so'. She's more concerned with her
own love life, or more accurately, the lack of it, to spare any more
emotional energy to her overachieving sister than is absolutely necessary.
Without looking up, saying a word, or missing a stroke, the little girl in
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the hallway gets up, walks over and settles herself in the detective's lap as
gently and naturally as can be. Again, not a word spoken, and the
crayons are moving briskly back and forth, spreading bright colors inside
the lines on the book's pages, her concentration perfect and seamless.
The detective studies the top of her nieces pretty little head. The tears
stop, and the healing power of touch has once again saved the day. The
wonderful aromas floating from the kitchen do their bit to help, reminding
her just how hungry she is.
* * * * *
When he hears the sound of a door opening in the next room, the thief
wakes up with a start. He quickly throws back the rumpled red silk bed
sheets and leaps from the huge circular bed, searching for his clothes.
He's confused and a little frightened. For a split second he doesn't know
where he is or how he got here. Memories of the previous night, and
most of that day, are lost in the hazy blur of fine liquor, well drunk the
previous evening. The unctuous cooing voice of the actor sharpens his
focus.
Pulling up his pants as he enters the main living area of the magnificent
bachelor pad, the thief looks up to see the actor, grinning like the
Cheshire cat, dangling a set of shiny new car keys, on a diamond key
chain, from his well manicured fingers.
Downstairs, in the underground parking garage, the thief finds himself standing in car booster heaven. All around him, arranged in neat rows of
well ordered parking spaces, are a virtual menagerie of the finest
motoring machines ever crafted by the hand of man, not to mention the
most expensive. The sight is even more breathtaking than all the
penthouse vistas put together, for him at least. One night alone in here
and he could be one of the richest men in all of Thailand.
The actor mistakes the thief's obvious excitement as being for himself,
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especially when he silently points to a sparkling, brand new Beemer
coupe. Except for the color, not unlike his intended target of the day
before. The thief can't suppress the laugh that bursts from his lips, at the
irony of it all. Thinking quick, he gets himself under control. He knows
what he has to do, that is, at least pretend to be overwhelmed by the
unbelievable generosity of the gesture the actor is making. He protests
semi-strenuously.
The actor counters that if the thief is serious about a movie career he has
to be seen as a star, right from the get-go, he has to live large, think large
and act large. When people see him, they have to want what they see.
That's how the game works, now that the young thief has come under thewing of a genuine screen legend, as his protege, so to speak.
The thief is fully aware of how the game works, and is not in the least
hesitant in reaching for the keys. The actor looks somewhat crushed
when the thief says he'd like to take his new wheels out for a test ride,
rather than going back upstairs to celebrate the start of his new life with
the crest fallen star. The thief explains that he has to go fetch his stuff.
There are reasons he'd rather not talk about that make it necessary he get
his stuff as quick as possible. The look in his eyes tell the thief that the
actor accepts he has no choice in the matter. The thief is measuring just
who's going to wear the pants around here.
The movie-going world knows the star as a rough tough macho action
hero, who never hesitates to go up against the most dastardly of villains,
the more the merrier, master of all weapons and forms of man-to-mancombat. He has saved the world from certain disaster time and time
again, up on the silver screen. The actor's reward, the prettiest girl in the
film is his dewy-eyed love slave, at least until the final credits roll. His
publicity hails him as the "the Asian James Bond, fast with a gun, but
faster with the girl!" Little does his network of loving fans realize where
his eye, and heart, truly wanders.
But standing here, wincing at the symphony of the car's high performance
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engine and the squeal of its tires reverberating off the concrete pillars, as
the tiny red sports car races away from him, tears shoelace their way
down his flawlessly made-up cheeks, ruining his eye-liner and
foundation. He swallows his deflated smile and heads back to the
elevator.
* * * * *
The thief wheels his new ride into the alley where he normally stashes his
purloined cars before he can dispose of them. He is unaccustomed to
driving a car he hasn't stolen. He chuckles at the fact that he has never
owned a car of his own in his life, or applied for a driver's license either,for that matter. Now he has to park his very own BMW road rocket
where some other thief won't get his hands on it. The layers of irony just
keep piling up. When he gets out, he very carefully locks the car doors,
then pushes the alarm button on the key chain. The two little beeps
sound strange to him. Setting a car alarm, as opposed to dismantling
one, is another first for him.
Outside the chipped and scarred door of the cheap crib, on the third floor
of the third rate, flea-bitten hotel, in the meanest part of town, he's been
flopping in for the last couple of weeks, the thief hesitates. He takes a
deep breath, holds it a beat and a half, and then lets it out in a stream
through his pursed lips, like he's blowing an unseen trumpet. Very much
the same way he performs his pre-theft routine whenever he goes out to
snatch another car. He long ago lost the ecstasy of love he felt for cars
that made him want to steal them in the first place. Now it's strictly amatter of cash flow and the economic realities of life. The pinprick of
excitement he feels at the moment the car's engine fires to life is just the
icing on the cake, and very thin icing at that. The fun of it is slowly
vanishing in the haze of city life, and knowing how fast his life is heading
down a dead end street.
A lump of loneliness has been slowly growing in his gut, like a tumor, for
the last few years. Standing outside the door he's passed through so
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many times before, he hopes very much that the two-room junkie suite is
empty when he goes in. His hand moves to the doorknob, just as slowly.
He twists it. The door swings inward, hinges squeaking their usual cry
of annoyance. He steps inside.
The odor of rancid cigarette smoke and spilled liquor in the filthy rooms
is almost nauseating. The thief feels like vomiting right where he stands,
but manages to gulp down the feeling. Not a sound. No music, or
footsteps, or snoring, nothing disturbs the dry smoky air. He walks into
the next room. His clothes and junk are still heaped in the corner where
he left them. They're not much to look at. He feels a pang in his
stomach. He looks around for something to carry them in. His host'sgirlfriend's oversized canvas purse is lying on the floor in the front room.
She uses it in her work as a shoplifter, when her boyfriend is between
burglaries and needs a little ready cash. She refuses to hook, so the odd
snatch and run has become her main means of survival. Occasionally
she has acted as lookout during her boyfriend's burglaries, and once she
drove the getaway car after an especially messy jewelry store stick up.
The guy who rents the place, her boyfriend, is a hardened criminal, a
lifelong burglar, armed robber and strong-arm man. He especially likes
breaking into a place, guns blazing, just to see the terrified looks on the
faces of his victims. He lives for the rush of power that it gives him.
The only person he really cares about is himself, not even his girlfriend, if
the truth be told. She is his property. He found her on the street, taught
her what she needed to know to make a quick buck when times are lean.
In his way, he's a jealous man, be it over a living thing he covets or sometrinket he's stolen. He carries a loaded gun at all times, and isn't the
slightest bit hesitant to use it, especially if he suspects someone is trying
to make off with something that belongs to him, very much including his
current girlfriend.
Just as he reaches for the bag, the door swings open. In walks the
girlfriend carrying two shopping bags, stuffed to overflowing. She stops
short when she sees him, the glossy paper bags dangle like giant
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oversized earrings from her hands. The thief takes the old purse and
turns for the bedroom. If she's happy to see him, she doesn't show it.
She asks him if he's leaving. He grunts a quick answer. From that point
on, not a word passes between them. She doesn't ask, and he doesn't
offer, which ratchets the awkwardness filling the room near the boiling
point. She tries not to be obvious as her eyes follow his every move, her
ears drink in his sound and her nose flares with his scent. The thief
never looks directly at her, but he knows. Feelings have been growing
between them for a while now, even before he moved in with her and he
boyfriend. He's known her for a while, but in all that time he's never
made a move on her for reasons buried too deep to understand.
The seconds it takes for him to stuff his meager possessions into the bag
last hours. Every breath takes a century. The clock ticking in the
adjoining room beats a jungle drumbeat at the slowest rhythm, like lava
flowing down the side of a volcano. When he finally makes it to the
door, eyes meet eyes, briefly, but lips never move.
* * * * *
The star treatment begins in spades. The senior actor has succeeded in
casting him in the role of a spoiled Thai boy, from an extremely wealthy
family in Bangkok, who has just returned from England where he flunked
out of all the finest schools Britain has to offer. He must be completely
transformed, from the street to the penthouse, surprisingly similar to
what's happening in his real life, but glitzier, if that's possible. The thief has to act like he's bored and petulant. It's not easy for him. It goes
against the grain of his basic nature, but slowly he begins to show signs
that he might just get the hang of it. His father, in the story, is the arch
enemy of the 'Asian James Bond', and he is his father's lieutenant, and the
last to get blown away in a bloody shootout that should set new standards
for bloodshed and dismemberment on the silver screen.
Hour after hour, in studio after studio, hair, makeup, wardrobe, elocution,
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dance classes, which they insist are essential for learning to fall the right
way when he's hit by gunfire, or has to hit the deck to avoid same. The
pampering and massaging of his image and mannerisms goes on and on,
from morning to night. If it weren't for his youthful exuberance and
tenacity, not to mention the complete change of lifestyle, he would have
run screaming from the building after the first week. Being turned into a
new man is exhausting work, certainly not for the faint of heart,
especially when there are deadlines and budgets to meet. The thief
perseveres, happy to be out of the line of fire for the time being. Cops
and cars are furthest things from his mind during the torture sessions has
to endure.
* * * * *
A week later, on her drive to work, the new lady detective gets an idea
about where to start on the case of the Robin Hood of grand larceny, auto.
She has decided that the illusive car thief is hers, and hers alone. Plus,
she really doesn't relish the thought of spending another minute in the
squad room, stinking of dried sweat and ancient cigar fumes, listening to
the murmured insults and obscenities the other dicks share with each
other, but not with her. Of course, most of them are about her, but it
would be far better to be the direct brunt of their whispered hazing, than
to be ignores like some idiot cousin made to sit in the corner, wearing a
dunce cap, with her face to the wall.
If the thief was last seen running hell-bent-for-leather down a tiny side
street, straight into a movie production company shooting scenes for anupcoming feature film, then vanishing into thin air. It stands to reason
that someone connected to the movie company had to have seen
something, heard something, or knew something. She decides the
company headquarters are the best place to start her investigation. She
radios in as she swerves across three lanes of traffic to make a U-turn at
the next traffic light. The desk sergeant questions her about the car horns
he hears in the background. She just laughs it off with a clumsy joke.
She's damned thankful he isn't there to witness her stupidity behind the
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wheel.
Her secret sin is her obsession with all things to do with the movies.
After the death of her mother, the small movie theater in her village was
the only oasis of calmness and comfort available for her and her younger
sister. Whenever it was possible, that is whenever her maiden auntie
would break loose with a little spare change, the dark confines of the
humble palace of flickering light and magic shows was where she and her
sister were to be found. For reasons that totally mystify her, her sister
developed a completely take-it-or-leave-it attitude. But for the detective,
the fantasy, the famous stars, the dreams of living like at the top of the
world, the romance and wonder of it all sends her into giggling fits of ecstasy. People who know and love her describe her as a star-gazer
extraordinaire and a movie nut of the first order. Since moving to the
city, she has seen every movie she could make time for, and stood outside
more theaters on more opening nights, just to get a glimpse of a passing
movie star, than she can count.
Except that's not quite true. She can recount every detail of every thing
that ever happened to her, in complete and excruciating detail. That not
only includes movie trivia, but every moment, of every day of her life,
almost all the way back to her birth. She's a little fuzzy on that topic, but
that's about all she's unsure of when it comes to her history. Her
incredible faculty for remembering everything, down to the tiniest detail,
is the reason she was recommended for the detective squad in the first
place.
Except for her sister, and her sister's daughter, with whom she shares her
modest apartment, movies, and movie stars, are the things she loves the
most, in the whole world. They helped her more than once get over the
rough times she had to live through, being an orphan with a sister to look
after, when she wished she could give it all up and just lie down and fall
off to sleep, forever. Those days, and thoughts, are past her, but her love
of movies is most definitely not.
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When the guard at the gate asks what business she has with the studio,
she flashes her detective's badge. The guard gives her quick salute and
steps back. She gets a tiny flash of pride at his reaction to her display of
authority. The guard doesn't see the grin on her face as she lurches
forward in her long suffering Toyota. Quickly, she gets her car under
control and pulls into the parking lot in front of the tallest, shiniest office
tower she has ever seen. The incredibly sharp reflections radiating off
the glistening glass makes the building seem unreal, as if drawn by a
brilliant animator. To break the spell, she looks away from the chrome
and glass edifice, pretending to be reviewing something in her notebook,
while she lets her heartbeat fall beneath two hundred beats per minute.
Finally, after a minute or two, she takes a deep breath, switches off thecar's radio and opens the car door. The heat of the day, even at ten AM,
singes the hairs on her neck. She swallows, hard.
Her sister derides the studio as 'the temple of glitterati and tinsel', but for
the detective, it feels more like walking into a dream factory. She has to
struggle triple hard controlling her nervousness as she mounts the front
steps. She regrets choosing wearing high heels when dressing that
morning. She steps inside the near arctic, air-conditioned lobby, her feet
wobbling under her. Whether it's the icy air, or the reality of standing
there, freezing her lungs shut, she doesn't know, or care. She stops dead
in her tracks, a few inches too quickly, which is why she is nearly
knocked to the polished inlaid granite floors when the two inch thick
glass doors swing closed behind her.
One of the more experienced receptionists sees what's happening anddashes around the reception counter and comes to the detective's aid.
But she's a policewoman, and a full-fledged detective to boot, so it won't
do to be seen falling down, on the job, as it were. The studio girl has
seen it all before, so she does her best to put the obvious flustered newbie
at ease. She's really nice and more than willing to help the detective find
her way through the rat's-maze of offices she's going to have to master if
she hopes to find out anything. The receptionist admits she's a little bit
impressed knowing the detective's badge is the real mc'coy, and not the
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crappy scraps of tin foil and cardboard the actors flash when the camera's
rolling.
Upstairs, the detective is bounced from office to office, like some hapless
ping-pong ball, from make-up studio to sound stage, from wardrobe to
props, post production, pre-production, and all point in between, back and
forth and back again. She winds up feeling dizzy, like a shuttlecock in a
mad hatter's game of badminton. Enduring the labyrinth of shuck and
jive, 'yeah I was there . . . well, maybe I was there . . . let me just check
my schedule . . . oh I'm so sorry, my girl's out right now . . . I'll get right
back to you . . . I'll call you . . . we'll do lunch . . . wait, on second
thought I was having lunch with Cee El that day . . . yeah I'm sure aboutthat . . . but I'll confirm that with you the second my girl gets back . . . so
if you'll excuse me . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah de blah'. 'Gotta run,
sweetie, I'm running late . . . I'll call ya soon as I can, bye now.'
Over and over again, no one could say for sure where they were that day,
or any other day for that matter, including the day they were born. It
would seem the movie shoot on the little side street was a figment of
someone else's imagination. It never happened, nobody was there, and
when an army of absent secretaries gets back from wherever they are,
we'll get right back to you.
After being numbed into a virtual stupor by all the non-talk one woman
can bear, the detective's brain is almost fried to a crisp. She stops to
catch her breath, when she decides to pick one last door on the corridor
she happens to be on, drop in unannounced and see what line of crapthey'll try to feed her. It's a shot in the dark, but she has just enough grit
left for one last foray into never-never land. She flips a coin in her mind,
grabs the first doorknob she comes to and walks inside, bold as brass.
For the second time that day, her feet are frozen to the spot. She can
breath later, when she's back outside. The walls of the outer office are
plastered from floor to ceiling with glossy photos, original ad artwork and
one sheets from movies starring her favorite actor, 'the Asian James
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Bond'. The shelves behind the glass and chrome desk, which is a
miniature of the building's architecture, is crammed to overflowing with
awards, statuettes, mementos and souvenirs from a long and illustrious
career. The office is a living biography, the actor's life as observed in
object d'art.
She has to force herself to blink her eyes before they shrivel up and fall
out. She has seen every movie of his, is familiar with every story about
him and admires every award she sees, as if they represent a chapter from
her own life. It is very hard for her to believe where she is. Still, she
doesn't move.
She snaps to, to half a degree or so, when she hears someone moving
about in the inner office. The door is open only a crack, making it
impossible to see who it is. She is expecting another of the endless
parade of overworked, underpaid office girls in jeans and tee shirts to
appear, when a figure she recognizes stops a few feet in front of her.
Once again she's stunned beyond movement. It takes all her
concentration to raise her eyes to his face. Her mind is a solid block of
concrete threatening to break loose, topple off her shoulders and crash to
the floor at his feet. She can't believe she's standing there, in that room,
only inches from the icon of her fantasies.
Accustomed with such behavior, the actor is content to get the ball rolling
and attempt to revive the bambi frozen in the headlamps of his gaze.
Most of his young female fans are overwhelmed by the radiance of his
aura the first time they meet him. Extremely few ever get the chance for a repeat encounter. That's the way he has been so successful at keeping
his reputation as a Don Juan lady killer alive and flourishing for so long.
At first, the actor is the ultimate in suave and gallant, turning his charm
on full blast. The very air around him seems to shimmer, as if reflecting
the beams of sunlight from the Ra that walks among us. The effect is not
lost on the floundering detective, which is how she feels for the moment.
She is unaware of how condescending and patronizing he is being to her.
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She was also blissfully unmindful of the expanding paunch putting a fair
bit of strain on the waistband of his impeccable Italian silk trousers. She
just thinks he's the most beautiful, most wonderful thing she's ever been
so close to in her entire life. His silky smooth patter is working like
magic until she reaches into her handbag, exposing her service revolver,
pulls out her shield and musters the courage to identify herself.
As quickly as the actor's charm can be switched on, his bitchy nastiness is
much quicker to surface, like a stiletto knife flicking open from PMS hell.
The detective is startled into reality. The shock brings her natural
instincts as a cop back to life. The pretty picture of mere moments
before has been shattered into a flurry of flying shards of illusory glass,like a make-believe mirror after running into a flying hammer.
She's been his biggest fan as long as she can remember, and is more than
taken a little aback by the sudden shape-shift in his demeanor towards
her. She scans her memory, trying like mad to think of what it was that
she might have said or done to provoked him this way. She can think of
nothing. What was it that could incite the beloved screen idol into
becoming so instantly vicious, filled with such intense venom for her, is a
complete and soul withering mystery to her.
A little history: it seems the actor was not your average boy when he was
eight or nine years old. He was drawn to very different things than the
other boys in his small town in the south. Except, that is, when it came
to bicycles. The notion of zooming as fast as a speeding bullet down the
hills around his area, his body bent all the way forward, his hair streaming in the wind, knuckles white from gripping the handlebars so
tightly, the sun glinting off the brilliant new red paint, only to slam on the
brakes and screech to a dramatic stop in front of all the kids in his
neighborhood that spent the better part of their lives taunting him, was the
dream that fired his young passions. It was a dream that was never to be
his.
His father was two things, more so when it came to him. First, the old
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man seemed to be perpetually mad at him for any and all unstated
reasons, and second, the stingiest man on the planet. The combination of
these two factors giving his dad the perfect excuse not to buy his swishy
son the shiny new bike he clamored and cajoled for constantly. His
father's unassailable stubbornness sent him into a spiral of submerged
rage and helpless frustration. The young actor cried himself to sleep
more nights than not.
But the boy was nothing if not crafty. It didn't take long for his
tormented young imagination to settle upon an outlet for his righteous
pique. He decided that if he was never going to get the bike of his
dreams, none of the other boys should be allowed to have what he couldnot. So he went out and stole bicycles, specifically, only the brightest,
shiniest, newest two wheelers in town. The town he grew up in was too
small to support a bike shop of its own, so all the new bikes had to be
imported from as far away as Bangkok, a fabled city of glamour and
riches somewhere over the horizon. The fact that the new bikes in town
traveled great distances from foreign lands gave them a mystique far and
above their humble beings. To the other kids, the newest bike was the
stuff of endless admiration and boasting, and more than a little envy.
And regular dads being what they are, when one dad sees the new bike
his rival down the street brought home from his last trip to the big city,
well that dad is honor bound to match him, if not top him with a better
bike, especially one from overseas, like a Raleigh from London, the
pinnacle of all bikes at that time. The actor's dad was inexplicably
immune to that whole system of one-upsmanship that should haveguaranteed him a bike of his own. Something in him made him reject the
idea of owning a second hand bike out of hand, so payback was the only
option left open in his devious young mind. A quality that would serve
him well years later, in his upcoming climb to the top of the fame and
glory ladder, as a film star and action hero.
There were boys who bullied and badgered him. He hated them, of
course. But the boys, and girls for that matter, that really burned his
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britches were the other kids who tolerated the bullies, who let the bullies
get away with anything they wanted, and never did a thing to stop the
daily harassment he had to endure. Even at the earliest age, the actor had
a highly overdeveloped sense of the dramatic. The knights of the round
table were true heroes, who roamed the land doing good deeds wherever
they saw them needed. Heroes were supposed to jump into every fight to
defend the innocent victim against harm and injustice. But where his
heroes? Where were the brave men, and girls for that matter, who were
supposed to come to his defense and rescue him from harm's way? In his
mind, they were all around him, but some reason adamantly refused to
come to his aid, over and over again. He stood alone against a sea of
torment and indignation. The boys who should have been his avatars became his targets of revenge.
Should one of those boys receive a Raleigh, or even a Schwin, for a
present, say on his birthday, then the actor felt hell-bent to shinny out his
bedroom window on the second floor of his family's home, in the middle
of the night when absolutely nobody was up or about, climb down to the
backyard and vanish into the shadows of the night. In his fevered
imagination, he became the Phantom of the Night, avenger of perceived
wrongs, of course always against himself. Assuming the persona of an
unseen, misunderstood doer of righteousness helped him develop the bug
for acting that would become his life's work in the future.
Being smaller than average and surprisingly nimble helped in his stealthy
endeavors. His size and agility should have made him a star at sports,
but to the consternation of more people than just his father, this was justnot in the cards. The actor, as a lad and an adult, never showed the
slightest interest in anything involving balls, bats, athletic supporters,
player's uniforms, finish lines or score boards. Getting involved in rough
and tumble activities that included sweating, rolling on the ground or
bodily contact with other boys was strictly peasant behavior, and he
would have none of it. Well, almost none of it as it turned out. In a
completely different context, bodily contact is a whole lot more fun than
being tackled on some dusty playground for the sake of the 'team', a
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concept in itself that filled his heart with loathing. He was kid everyone
admitted would go it alone, come hell or high water.
Anyway, the Phantom of the Night would make his way to the target's
house, make his way over, through or under the fence or wall that was
there to keep him out, find the unsuspecting bike and make off with it.
Too worried about getting caught, he would usually forego the thrill of
racing down is favorite hill, instead pedaling out to the farthest ranges of
his limited bravery, to an out of sight bend in the local river, or a flooded
rice paddy. There he would concentrate all his muscle power and spin
the bike round and round, like a hammer thrower, and hurl it out as far as
it would fly into the depth of the water. If he couldn't possess it, no oneelse could either.
The actor managed to get away with six of his daring escapades before
being seen slinking past the house of the town's most notorious
insomniac, who just happened to be looking out his window. At the
crack of working hours the next morning, two policemen show up at his
school and cart him away, one officer clamped like steel to each elbow.
The actor has to endure the humiliation of being identified as the bike
robber in front of a gaggle of gawking pupils, and then being dragged
sniffling and pleading away to the police station, all of this performed in
full view of the entire student body of his school. The sound of their
catcalls and laughter rings in his ears to this day.
After one hell of a brouhaha, and the only really hard slap his father ever
gave him, the actor's father came to his defense in front of the judge, tohis unending amazement, squared everything with the victims and their
outraged fathers, and somehow managed to put the whole matter to rest.
All the bikes were recovered, restored to new and returned to their
rightful owners. But hard feelings die hard, and thinking he had it bad
being constantly picked on by the tough boys, being completely shunned
by everyone was ten times worse. He began to think of himself as a
leper with a good complexion. At night, he prayed as hard as he could
for the knights of the round table, or any other table for that matter, to
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ride in and carry him away, to join their lives of magic, mystery and
adventure. It was at about this time that he decided acting was the thing
for him.
Now, standing here, in his very own offices, his innermost sanctum, face
to face with the person he dreads and despises the most, a police person,
the whole sordid affair is brought back in full four color Technicolor, in
amazing Dolby THX surround sound. His head is starting to spin. His
high blood pressure is pounding in his ears. The mark of guilt branded
on his fragile psyche, on his permanent emotional record as it were, is
threatening to pull his legs right out from under him. He stumbles over
to the chair behind his girl's desk and slumps down in it like a wet sack of potatoes. He clenches his hands together in front of himself on the
secretary's desk. His knuckles turn ghostly white under the strain. He
fixes his eyes in a straight line and stares at them hoping against hope that
when he looks up the demon of his nightmares will have disappeared like
a bad headache after a couple of those wonderful pills the doctor his last
lover recommended gave him.
He has never whispered so much as a word about his criminal past to
anyone, and thankfully both of his parents went to their graves with his
dirty little secret tucked away in their miserable little souls. Not that he
didn't love his parents, but the feeling of relief inside him, when each of
them past, father first then mother, far outweighed any feeling of loss he
might have felt. Not that anyone at the funeral could tell, however, the
grief struck orphan, weeping at the side of an open coffin is a scene he
can play to the hilt. He should have been given an award for his performance, but has only mentioned that oversight to only the most
intimate of his many 'friends and fans', as he calls his legions of lovers.
The idea of this tiny little cop lady, standing there all high and mighty,
come to make him pay yet again for his worst sins, has not only incensed
him, it has also done what hundreds of armed assassins and murdering
psychopaths have failed to. She has completely knocked the stuffing
right out of him. If she even so much as looks at him with those cold
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black unwavering eyes of hers, he'll fall over on his back, like a whipped
puppy, and beg for her mercy. But he can't let that happen. He can't let
her see him grovel on his knees like he used to in front of directors and
producers in the early days of his career, so he glares at his clenched fists
all the harder. He has to press his knees together painfully hard to keep
his bladder from exploding all over the room.
'I stole bicycles, not cars' he chants to himself, inside his head. The
sound of his perfect capped and polished teeth grinding themselves to
powder is deafening, in his ears anyway. And besides that, her fashion
sense is simply atrocious. It's as if she buys only the cheapest bits of
clothes she can find from the street vendors specializing in the oldest,ugliest clothes they can find, and then tries to mix and match them into
outfits that are supposed to make her look like a person of authority.
Who makes this kind of fashion abomination for sale in the first place?,
he wonders, also to himself. It's more than obvious she's stretching a
very limited budget way past the breaking point. Poor dear, he
commiserates a little, what wonders a little money could produce? At
least her shoes are kind of pretty, and they compliment her shapely legs
and ankles. With a complete makeover this dowdy policewoman, no
longer trembling at his presence, might just clean up good, who's to say?
I mean, one can only stay depressed for so long, he reassures himself.
The actor's eye for the do's and don'ts of fashion is dead on. He has a
reputation in the industry for spotting the unlikeliest diamonds in the
rough and polishing them to a brilliant luster, if only for the briefest of
moments. As his interest in one of his pets wanes, so does the elbowgrease he invests in the care and caressing of their image. He drops day
old friends and proteges like used tissue. His wake is littered with the
carcasses of countless pretty boys and girls, mostly boys, who caught his
attention for a few days, or weeks at the most, then failed to keep him
from growing bored with their endless whining and drivel. Here today,
gone by dinner, tomorrow the latest. This is also a well known chapter
in his legend.
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Meanwhile, the detective is in a complete state of confusion, with more
than a hint of shame making her discomfort all the more intense. She
isn't sure about anything at this moment. Her world is being rocked off
its foundations, and the rumbling is making her sick to her stomach. She
can't take her eyes off the man at the desk, her idol, her hero, glaring his
hands as though he might at any instant jump up and pummel her into a
pulp, the way he has so many times to the bad guys of the world.
The sound of the actor's outburst reverberates down the corridors of
moviedom, bringing the thief running to see what the commotion is all
about. He's been trapped in yet another of the endless series of meetings
he seems to have to sit through, if he wants to be a top star like actor promised. Any excuse to bolt from the overstuffed Italian leather
armchair and escape the room will do. The possibility that he may walk
in on a fight, a catfight as it were, is just the cherry on the sundae.
When he turns the corner into the actor's offices, he stops, he smells
danger in the air. Spotting the badge in the cute lady cop's hand, and
then seeing the actor's obvious distress, are all he needs to take a quick
bearing of the situation. The particulars will come later, but for the
moment, he sees that their is a kryptonite that can hobble the mighty
superman. He knows he can use the intense animosity between the star
and the cop to his advantage. The thief smiles.
Seeing the smile of mockery on the thief's face sets the actor off again,
with much renewed venom. The cop, with her back still to the thief, and
the thief both stand their ground. He can't be sure, but his hunches tellhim the gorgeous lady cop, in the worst looking get up he's ever seen, is
here in the actors chambers on his account. Some instinct warns him that
the focus of her mission is him, and not the actor, who is behaving
extremely weirdly for reasons only the actor is aware of. The thief
doesn't care a whit about that. Standing so close to his nemesis is
exhilarating.
When she realizes there's someone standing behind her, she turns. His
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eyes meet hers straight on. Bold as brass, he sticks out his hand to
introduce himself. There's a childlike innocence in her face that instantly
captivates him, in spite of her bearing of authority. His instincts also tell
him that what he sees is only a brave front, the flimsiest of facades, put
on to curtain the fear and confusion that is eating her up inside. He can
see how hard she's working to maintain the pretense. His eyes never
waver.
He has all but forgotten about the star, still ranting and raving behind the
desk, about being pushed out of the center of attention. So has the
detective.
The thief's heart settles a few beats when he sees her jaw drop nearly to
the floor, and a flood of astonishment gush from her gee-gaw stare. All
his life, people have told him how handsome they think he is, but he
hasn't really believed them. Seeing the look on the detective's face is
proof enough to accept the praise, a little.
Having worked so hard learning the role of a rich playboy brat with
international tastes and moves, he slides behind the mask and lets his
hours of training take over. He is no longer a wanted car booster who
never made it past the seventh grade in school, living from hand to
mouth, on the lam from the long arm of the law. Seamlessly, he
becomes a worldly wise, debonair young dandy with smoky Asian good
looks and charisma enough to charm the pelt right off an alligator's back.
The hint of sinister associations gives him the edge that makes it all come
together, makes it all work. Only his connections are real, not the product of some screen hack's fevered imagination in trying to sell a
mediocre script to the studio bosses. The thief ratchets down the
negative side of his character, and amplifies the sexier aspects.
It takes the detective more than a few heartbeats to recoup her
composure. The thief relishes every second of her discomfort. Her
hand in his goes from stone cold to blast furnace hot in a matter of
seconds.
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Meanwhile, the actor has risen to his feet, standing there, leaning on his
legs against the edge of the desk for moral, as well as physical support.
He's virtually vibrating in a near frenzy of outrage at the double insult of
the cop's continued contamination of his star-clad existence, and then
being pre-empted from her focus on himself, by his very own protege,
who should know better by now not to steal the spotlight away from the
sun in his universe. The effrontery of it all! And here he is, the only
card-carrying movie star in the room.
The fact that the two men in the room share a common bond of mutual
self-interest is the only thing keeping him from leaping over the desk andchoking one or the other of them to death. The girl would be easier, but
that would give the thief the chance to do him serious bodily harm.
While the boy is no match for his expertise in the martial arts, the
diminutive lady detective is carrying a very real looking revolver only
inches and from her fingertips. So, the wise actor decides discretion is
the better part of valor, and a fair percentage of basic survival.
The thief is the first to speak anything intelligible. He asks the detective
if she's like to have dinner with him sometime, say, tonight, for instance?
He wants to gauge just how far this act of defiance will drive the spike
into the actor's already tormented heart. When he sees the reaction on
the actor's face, he feels recharged. Seducing the cop out to clamp his
ass in the slammer should be as much fun as snatching hot looking cars
right off the streets in broad daylight, his criminal MO. He sees it as the
snake eating the mongoose, while the fox looks on, drooling from thesidelines.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, things aren't going so peachy in the life of the burglar. His
last major heist netted a big fat zero after the rent-a-cops guarding a
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consignment of luxury automobiles refused to be good little puppies and
roll over for the burglar and his men, who came to liberate a few of the
juicier cars for their own benefit. When the guards refused to get down
on their faces, at the burglar's more than explicit demand, and decided to
be cowboys about the whole thing, the ensuing gunplay not only roused
the slumbering neighbors in a five block radius into dialing (911), it also
produced a dozen or so, five Baht sized bullet holes in the most expensive
cars, including a shiny maroon red Rolls Royce earmarked for delivery to
the head of the movie company where the burglar's rival will soon be
enchanting a diminutive lady police detective, the same lady cop who has
been dogging his own tracks since she was a uniform cop patrolling the
streets.
The superficial, but irreparably psychological, damage to the cars renders
them irredeemable to the agents who commissioned the burglar's first
foray into high stakes auto theft in the first place. For the last week, he
had searched everywhere, but no one seemed to know the whereabouts of
the thief, who is by all accounts the reigning expert in this sort of
enterprise. He even went so far as trying to beat the information out of
his own girlfriend. Nagging suspicions had been gnawing at the back of
his brain about the two of them, for a few days before the thief vanished
into thin air. She protested loudly that she knew nothing and that nothing
had happened between her and the wayward guest. He very reluctantly
accepted her word, mostly because his arms were weary from throwing
things at her. Finally, after failing to locate the thief, the burglar
proclaimed himself boss of his motley gang of petty crooks and promptly
set about screwing the entire caper up to the hilt.
The girlfriend is trying to get some sleep after a long night's battle with
the burglar. The burglar is more frantic than she's ever seen him before,
worrying himself into a violent tizzy about what he has to do to get
himself out trouble with his bosses. It's impossible, the combination of
the bruises and the thought of him returning from wherever he is in an
even worse mood conspire to rob her of even a minute's sleep.
Whenever she tries to roll over pain and terror shoot through her like a
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million lightning bolts. She's been alone in the rooms for more than four
days. She wishes the thief was here to hold her and make the burglar go
away, forever. The thought of running away, on her own, never enters
her mind.
Suddenly, the apartment door crashes open. She is startled and tumbles
backwards, out of bed onto the floor. When she hits her head on the
floor, she lets out a squeal of pain. Thugs, armed with guns and clubs,
some she's seen before, some strangers, pour into the bedroom like the
army of hulking barbarians they are. They grab her, yank her semi-nude
into the front room and throw her hard on the ratty armchair that is the
only stick of furniture in the place that hasn't been smashed to splinters.She tries desperately, and in vain, to cover herself from their leering eyes.
The obvious leader tells the one closest to the door to go outside and keep
an eye out for nosey neighbors or the cops, and close the door behind
him. The junior thug grunts and follows orders. This might take a
while, the leader sighs, resigning himself into doing something he has no
taste for, torturing a pretty young woman for information. He's a thief,
and a lover, not a psychopath who gets his kicks inflicting pain on others,
especially girls, and if it wasn't for the threats hanging over his own head,
he wouldn't be here in the first place.
The girlfriend has been through this scenario once or twice in the past.
The burglar's associates are not nice people you have over for Sunday
dinner. When double-crossed, they are pure bad. She knows
instinctively what she has to do. She's a brave little cookie, and although
the burglar treats her mean from time to time, she keeps her mouth shutabout his comings and goings. The only thing she can tell them,
something they already know, is that her boyfriend has gone to ground
somewhere until he can figure some way to get himself out of this current
jam. He's in the wind and she has no idea where. The leader, knowing
it's most likely the truth, is more than a little taken with her. He tells her
he wishes circumstances had been different, he would have liked to add
her to his list of things to do on cold rainy nights, when a couple of
candles, a bottle of wine and a warm bed are the best medicine for the
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late night blues. Something inside her heart is sparked to life. She
wants to smile, but dares not.
After the door finally closes behind them, she sits there, her legs sprawled
out in every direction, arms dangling, dead at her sides, waiting to let her
heart rate fall back to somewhere near normal. She can't get his face out
of her thoughts. She too wishes circumstances were different, in more
ways than one. The sun sets through the grimy window behind her, but
she doesn't move a muscle as the darkness washes over her bruised and
battered form. The shadows hide the mournful tears tracing down her
cheeks.
* * * * *
At the studio, an armored car is backing up to a steel door at the rear of
the HQ, painted industrial green, in an odd jarring contrast to the
pearlescent pastels of the building's public essence. The door is open in
anticipation of the delivery. Standing in the doorway are three of the
studios execs and an executive producer from England, here to oversee a
major cooperative film project that will be going out on an extended
location shoot in the deep rain forest in a couple of days. The armored
car is carrying a substantial amount of cash that will be used for out-of-
pocket expenditures, extras, laborers, security for the vehicles, food for
the locals, medicine and hospital care, the occasional intoxicants, bribes,
etc.
The British movie mogul is understandably nervous, even after being
shown the magnificent state-of-the-art safe in the studio boss's penthouse
office suite. He's at the back door to personally supervise the transfer of
his backer's money from the truck to the strong box upstairs. This much
cash, in one place, and in such an easily observable place, puts a knot in
stomach the size of Buckingham Palace. Who knows if there are eyes
out there, watching with high-powered lenses from one of the
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surrounding buildings that back up to the studio lot's perimeter fences?
Or how many there might be? The Thai execs, saying they agree with
his worries, are actually laughing at him behind his back. The foreigner
knows, but doesn't care, just as long as the money gets to a safe place,
under lock and key, ASAP.
* * * * *
Back at his own mansion, the actor finds that he's jazzed by the thrill of
competition with the lady detective in the hideous outfit for the hand, andother parts, of the fair thief. He's on his third sherry in as many minutes,
and is beginning to feel the heat swelling in his loins. He chuckles out
loud when he remembers her attempt to look like a real police detective
with the absolute ugliest rags he has ever witnessed, and the really
adorable shoes she was wearing. Shoes, the more expensive and trendy
the better, are his secret addiction, and are never far from his line of sight.
He thinks of the thief now as a prize, a spectacularly beautiful prize, to be
awarded to the best man, as the saying goes. Whether it's his astonishing
good looks, or the slightly villainous air mystery that forms his aura, or
the certainty that the thief is a creature that can vanish in the blink of an
eye, he can't say for sure, but something about the handsome outlaw
makes him want to possess the boy more than anything, or anyone he's
ever seen before. Not to put too melodramatic a face on it, but he'd
almost be willing cut off his arm, left of course, to have the thief all tohimself, from now until the sun fades away. His lust is intense enough to
make him think such thoughts, and about a mere stranger off the streets at
that. But not just any ordinary pretty boy, he has to admit to himself.
To alleviate the melancholy cloud forming over his heart, he pours
himself another snifter of fine Spanish sherry. This time he makes it a
double, or something like that. Tonight is a night for alcohol's fiery
narcosis to help bolster his determination. Once convinced of
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something, the actor is virtually undeterable in his drive to get what he
wants. Much like the bike debacle of his childhood. When reason and
the reality of failure should override the worst of his instincts, he can
shove them aside, send them flying into the gutters like a string of eighty
pound stunt players on one of his action hit movies.
He understands the thief's strategy to use the lady detective to ward off
his advances. But he sees that as nothing more than the thrust and parry
of the tempestuous affair he's sure will happen in the future. I mean, he
asks himself, how could the boy not want him as much as he wants the
boy? After all, he, a bona fide screen legend, holds the key to a life of
limitless wealth and utter decadence all young men from his amoral background would kill to have. He and the thief are a matched pair when
it comes to the things they expect from life, or so he believes. The thief
is simply trying to make the game more interesting by using the cop lady
as his foil. But the actor reassures himself, lying on an Italian silk chaise
lounge, alone with his fantasies, his robe falling open to reveal a sizeable
paunch, that he has the sharpest sword of all. The boost he feels as the
result of this bit of self-hypnosis spurs the strings of his heart into playing
the sweetest of melodies, to his ears anyway.
Let the games begin! The words echo off the cavernous walls of his
magnificent cave.
* * * * *
The thief's prospects as an actor in demand are starting to really pick up.
The right people are beginning to remember his name when it comes up
in conversation, which it does more and more as the days pass. Word is
getting out about him, that he's the next star set to hit the stratosphere, on
his way to grabbing the brass ring as it were, and set the night skies
ablaze with his fame and glory. And all this without a single on-screen
credit to his name. His career is all set to skyrocket into the cosmos,
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more specifically, movie theaters all over the country and then the world,
who knows?
Each morning, as he drives to work he spots car after car that would
otherwise be his for the taking. He greets each with a tiny nod of his
head, assuring them that they're safe for the time being. Which means
the detective can turn her attentions to other crimes and misdemeanors,
and leave the dusty old file to gather even more dust in the right hand
bottom drawer of her desk.
In the squad room, her appearance there every morning hardly raises an
eyebrow anymore, as a truce of boredom has settled over the room and itsinhabitants. She hasn't done anything to earn their respect, but then
again, she hasn't shot anybody with her service revolver either. So a
mutual contract of dis-involvement with each other has come into being.
At least now, when she gets home at night, she isn't doubled over by the
tension in her gut cramping her stomach muscles into a knot.
Everyday, the thief shows up at the studio in his very own bright shiny
Beemer. The guards at the gate snap to mock attention, smile and salute
him as he passes them. Something about him makes them treat him like
the more established talents that worked long and hard to achieve their
status as 'names' in the pecking order of stardom. He can't help smiling
to himself that he has managed somehow to become a rising young star in
two completely different realms, crime and fantasy. He never fails to
sing along with the two tiny beeps that sing out from his car every time
he presses the alarm button on his key chain. It's as if his car is wishinghim another terrific day. Passers by have wondered why the young
proto-star says 'thanks' to his car before turning and walking away. They
come to accept his strange ritual as part of his routine to bring good luck.
After the days are over, the thief and the detective are seeing more and
more of each other, going out to eat and take in a movie, or whatever they
think of at the moment. They are growing closer as time passes. But
not close enough for the detective. Her sister, the self-proclaimed 'guru
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of the heart, and swami of all loves' is puzzled, and somewhat concerned,
that the relationship is not progressing as hoped for. She has her
misgivings about the beautiful actor in training.
After all, she reasons, if the big star, the screen idol of millions, can turn
out to be something he's not, in the minds of the teeming masses who fork
over their hard earned dough to be thrilled and chilled by his manly
exploits vanquishing evil, then why is it that the thief isn't beginning to
pay more romantic interest in the detective, manly interest that is. If he's
a healthy virile young man, he should have needs that need satisfying?, if
you know what I mean, she asks her sister. When a handsome boy and
an attractive woman, the same age and temperament get together, thereshould be more to it than a few pleasant dinners, the occasional movie
and spoken 'goodnights' between them. Shouldn't there? The sister is
growing worried that all isn't as it should be.
One evening the thief and the detective are up in his apartment relaxing
on the luxuriously deep Italian leather sofa, idly watching TV when
there's a knock on the door. The detective excuses herself to use the
little girl's room, while the thief goes to answer the door.
When opens the door a crack, suddenly it explodes open, hitting him in
the face and knocking him back. As suddenly, the burglar and a very
tough looking goon he's never seen before burst in. The two grab the
thief and roughly lift him back to his feet. They are in the process of
dragging him out the front door, into the privacy of the hallway, when the
detectives rushes into the living room, drawn by the noise of the ruckus.She's all the way on the opposite side of the room, with an unobstructed
view of the commotion. She instantly concludes that this is an attempted
kidnapping and immediately she dives for her purse and the gun inside.
The burglar recognizes her, decides not to investigate the situation for the
moment, and turns to make a break for it. He stops for just a split second
to hiss something into the thief's ear, something about finding him, and
how much the thief owes him, before cursing at him.
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The thief falls back to the floor right where he is. He is completely
baffled. The burglar can't resist knocking the stunned look off the much-
changed thief's face, so he punches him hard enough to knock him out.
His accomplice has already disappeared, the loud thump of his boots
resonating down the emergency stairway. Without another moment's
hesitation, the burglar turns and runs in the same direction. Instantly, he
too is gone, and now the sound of four boots thunders up from the stairs
never, but never, used by the building's tenants.
The detective, torn by her emotions like she has never been before,
decides she must protect the thief, and forego chasing the kidnappers.She runs to his unconscious body, sprawled half in and half out of the
apartment door and lifts his head into her lap. She can't help listening as
the footsteps grow fainter and fainter down the stairwell. She can't decide
which is stronger, her fear, or her regret. Tears gush from her eyes. The
thief is out cold and never sees her shame.
Back in the squad room, after making her report to the grim-faced chief,
the other detectives make fun of her for failing to 'handle a simple snatch'
like a seasoned pro, which she definitely is not, they point out repeatedly.
She knows they're right and walks out into the humid night air almost
ready to pass out from the weight of the shame chewing her gut to shreds.
Not being able to decide her next move, she stands there praying the night
air will ease her suffering. It doesn't. She feels as if she's about to be
smothered, when the crusty old desk sergeant walks out of the building at
the end of his shift, stops at her side and offers her a ride home while helights his first cigarette of the evening. The look in his eyes tells her that
he understands what it must have been like, back there with two armed
thugs taking her and her movie star boyfriend by complete surprise.
Wordlessly, she understands there wasn't anything she could have done to
catch the bastards. At the very least she foiled their plans and protected
the life of the intended victim in the process. The two jamokes will be
caught, or killed, sooner or later. She thanks him for his offer, but says
she's okay, her car is just around the corner. Their eyes meet for an
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instant before he turns to walk away. Maybe by accident, maybe not, his
hand brushes hers. Suddenly the moist cool evening air feels a degree
cooler.
* * * * *
On the movie set the next day, a P.A. brings a mobile phone over to
where the thief is lounging, waiting for the next setup, trying to appear as
if nothing about the previous night's assault is bothering him. He wasn't
being kidnapped, he knows that, it was a brutal overture for something
the burglar wants him for.
It's the burglar on the line. The thief demands to know how the burglar
found him and how he got this number. The burglar sneers that anything
is available for the right price. The thief doesn't believe him. He knows
perfectly well the burglar would rather eat his own eyeballs than fork out
actual cash to get what he wants. The thief feels a tad sorry for the poor
sod that must have taken a serious beating before giving the burglar what
he wanted, and probably after as well. The thief isn't really afraid of the
burglar, but respects his penchant for violence.
He expresses his confusion about any debts between them. They run
with two different crowds, work two different sides of the street, rob two
different brands of goods and usually don't cross professional paths at all.
So, what's this all about, he wants to know. He's smart enough not to
whine about the knockout punch that jarred a couple of his teeth loose, or
bring up the subject of the girlfriend. Nothing happened between the twoof them, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything to the volatile burglar.
The burglar comes straight out and tells the thief that he knows all about
him and his girlfriend. It can't be true, but that does nothing to lessen the
stab of fear piercing his belly. The thief quickly guesses the burglar is
using this tactic as a way to knock him off his guard. He holds his
tongue. Protesting his innocence would be the same as confessing. And
he's confident there's nothing to give up when it comes to the girlfriend.
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Longing looks and an aching heart do not add up to messing around with
someone else's property. The thief half wishes that the burglar's words
were, in fact, true. Then a head-on confrontation would settle the score,
once and for all.
The burglar is trying to lever him, trying to extort him, the car booster
cum fledgling movie star, into feeling guilty enough about something to
help him pull off some robbery or other, for whatever reason he doesn't
know. Word of the botched car heist hasn't reached him, so he has no
idea the jam the burglar's in with the city's top crime bosses. (joke of the
day around the squad room: what does a red Rolls Royce and a block of
Swiss cheese have in common?) He doesn't know that the burglar bit off more than he could chew, and choked on it, all over the evening news no
less, leaving the bosses exposed, not to mention out a considerable
amount of up-front money, and looking for blood as payback. (answer:
they both whistle when you throw them.)
He doesn't say so to the burglar, but he has heard rumors around the
studio that there's a pile of cash locked up in the headquarters building, to
be used on an upcoming location shoot, to pay for odds and ends, this and
that, and more than a few of the comforts of home for the company big-
wigs when they wander down to inspect the proceedings. Cash talks and
credit walks out in the boonies, among the natives who trust big city
jerkoffs as far as they can spit them out. Being left holding the bag,
again, when some fly-by-night film outfit disappears in a puff of smoke is
something the wiser country elders are not keen to repeat. They've seen
it all before, and now only believe it if they can fold it in their hands and put in their pockets. From make-up artists to grips, everyone is drooling
to have that money, which of course was supposed to be a secret.
When his ploy has apparently failed to intimidate the thief into
submission, the burglar's tone of voice changes completely. The burglar
knows that the thief is starting to chafe under the collar. When push
comes to shove, the thief isn't the type to lie down and let himself be
rolled over by nothing more than bluster and cheap intimidation. The
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thief's no pansy when it comes to holding his own. He is also not the
kind to blurt out his every thought. So the burglar backs down a step or
two from his aggressive tone. He too knows when wait & see is a better
policy than punch & kick. He sketches the fix he's in, and a little about
what happened during 'the great Rolls Royce screw-up', as the papers
characterize the failed robbery. The thief laughs, maybe just a hint too
freely, to demonstrate his sympathy and bond of comradeship for a fellow
wanna-be car booster. Again, the subject of the burglar's girlfriend slips
past unmentioned.
As he is suggesting to the burglar that the cars they went after were a
little bigger a nut than he should have tried to chew, in the back of hismind, he is deciding the stash of cash in the next building is worth
checking out. The burglar grunts his answer and hangs up. The thief
realizes the burglar has decided to keep a close eye on his movements.
* * * * *
Later that night, on the drive from her apartment, the thief makes up some
phony excuse about needing stop by the studio to pick something up from
his dressing room on their way back. The sister watches from the sliding
glass doors that lead onto the front veranda as the Beemer pulls out into
traffic and merges into the fray. She's chewing her lip, a brooding look
on her face. Idly, her eyes fixed in the distance, she strokes her
daughter's hair.
As they're sitting in the smoky, candle lit restaurant, he reassures her it'srather important and will only take a second. She understands
effortlessly. Suddenly, without warning, the soft flickering light, the
gently wafting music, the intimate atmosphere, transforms the detective,
the hardened cop, into the detective, the woman. And a surprisingly
lovely one at that. The thief is somewhat shaken by the sudden spike in
his emotions, the sudden eruption of desire he feels for the enemy in his
midst. In the blink of a heartbeat, she has become something totally
unexpected, something not entirely within his control, a ravishing
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woman. A woman he wants. The suddenness of the perplexities
attacking him from all sides casts a shadow across his face.
She leans forward to ask if something is wrong. He tells her it's nothing,
really, just work stuff, he can handle it. Dinner passes without a word.
The thief keeps his eyes on his plate and eats like the end of the earth is at
hand. Just as soon as he can manage it, he hustles the detective out of
the restaurant, into his waiting car and out into the flow of nighttime
traffic. She knows something is not right, but she keeps her tongue.
Occasionally she sneaks a sidelong glimpse over at him. The thief
makes no sign of recognition. Maybe it's the air of mystery surrounding
the whole evening, maybe it was that look that came into his eyes whenthey first sat down in restaurant, she can't say which, but she's sure
something has changed, something has come over him, and she can only
wait and hope it's what she wants. For the moment, she'll bide her time
and let the truth evolve as it will. She has the patience to hold on a little
while longer, and let her confusion go unanswered.
Stopped at a streetlight, the thief spots the burglar, and three serious
looking men, sitting two cars behind him. The burglar stopped his car in
a way, straddling the white lines, to give the thief an unobstructed view,
in his rearview mirror, letting the thief know that he's is right there and
wants the thief to know it. Just to make sure there's no question, he takes
an extra long time lighting his cigarette. The glow from the lighter casts
a bright orange halo that lights up all the occupants of the car. All eyes,
except one pair in the back seat, are on the thief. The lone holdout is
bored and more interested in the chicks in the next car. They're doingtheir best not to look too eager to return his stare. The backseat man is
saying something to the girls in the neighboring car, but the thief can only
guess at what it is. Concentrating his gaze on the backseat lothario,
helps him avoid the burglar's menacing stare. When the light turns
green, the thief jams the throttle to the floor, and within two blocks and a
short series of rather abrupt turns, leaves the burglar and his stooges in
the dust.
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From her side of the car, the detective turns to look back at the road
behind them. For his part, the burglar didn't recognize the woman sitting
beside the thief, which is a stroke of luck for all of them. Now that
they're lost from sight, she can only assume this bit of road chicanery had
something to do with the attack the other night. The thief is driving
normally again. His demeanor is so cool, so unruffled, it isn't long
before the detective is questioning if anything out of the ordinary
happened at all. She can't take her eyes off of him. The thief doesn't
seem the least bit flustered, or even that she, as a cop, is there, in spite of
the small talk between them. Anyone seeing them, not knowing who
they are or anything of the circumstances, would think them a perfectly
normal couple, blessed with above average good looks, going about their business with the greatest of ease, without a care in the world except
where to satisfy their immediate desires the same as millions of couples
just like them.
The fact is, the thief did recognize the three accomplices with the burglar.
He doesn't know them personally, he's seen them around, in all the usual
hangouts, which is how he knows their reputations as hard boys, always
spoiling for a fight to alleviate the boredom of their degenerate
existences. They like nothing better than to gang up some unlucky sod
in a dark alley somewhere just out of sight of passers by, but at the same
within earshot, then kick and beat the poor bastard until their muscles and
knuckles are crying out in agony, and their need for inflicting pain on
others is satisfied. Walking away from a bloody body, slumped in the
filthy gutter never fails to leave them with the warm glow of satisfaction.
The fact that the three were riding in the burglar's car makes it only tooclear how serious the burglar is about getting him into whatever plan he
has to extricate himself from harm's way.
The burglar is in too deep and growing more desperate with each passing
hour. The thief is also in deep, in terms of his feelings for the detective,
and he doesn't like the idea of it. He feels strange and uncomfortable in a
way that is new to him. Nothing and no one has ever held any claim on
him, or his heart. He knows just how incredibly lucky he is never to
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have been caught. His criminal record is unblemished. So far, the only
thing the cops have are vague descriptions and sketchy eyewitness
testimony. His strongest instincts tell him that it is best that he do
whatever it takes to keep it that way. His mind is working in double
overdrive.
He thinks he has a way to use the burglar, and his gang, to get out from
under the threat of being found out, permanently. He can't the studio
back lot rumors out of his head. Even though he didn't see it with his
own eyes, he accepts the accounts of an armored car backing up to the
main headquarters as true. Too many people described the rare event
right down to the last detail for it to a case of mass hysteria, like playingthe lottery. What would any of them, the working stiffs, do to score a
pot of gold so big it would guarantee a lifetime of freedom and luxury
beyond their wildest dreams? At least a couple of year's worth anyway.
He has a pretty good idea. He's never been outside the country before.
Now, he decides, is the best time to see the world.
As he pulls his car up to the front of the studio HQ, he is surprised to see
the studio bosses cars, and the stretch limo the London Exec has been
using, already in the lot. He has to cut the wheel sharply to avoid
running into them. Putting a dent in the boss's car would not be the best
move right about now. Apologizing to the detective, he slides out of the
car. He's relieved that she insists on waiting for him here in the car.
Just a tiny bit miffed, she has to struggle a little to put on a smile for his
benefit.
As he closes the door, he shoots a glance up the building's facade. Sure
enough, the top floor is ablaze with lights. That tells he thief all he needs
to know. As quick as he can make it, he runs up to his dressing room,
grabs the first official looking script he sees and starts back to his car, and
the waiting detective. Standing in the corridor, with his fists on his hips,
his feet spread apart, is eyes narrowed, is the actor. The effect is
somewhat lessened by the pearly white skin cream slathered all over his
face. Little do people realize how much time he spends at the studio in
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order to avoid being home alone. He virtually haunts the halls and
studios, like a living ghost, white face and all.
The actor is growing desperate. He demands to know what the thief is
after and where he’s going in such a rush. His voice is tinged with more
sadness than authority. The thief tries to beg off saying he’s on a date
and just wanted to grab a copy of his lines to study for the next day. By
the purest of luck, those are what he has in his hand. The actor is
begrudgingly forced to believe him, but persists in questioning the thief.
When the thief has had enough of this harassment, he simply tells the
actor who is in the car waiting for him. The flesh on the actor’s face
blanches as white as his make-up. He is stunned into silence.
More than relieved, the thief dashes out of the building. The cool night
air feels triple good on his overheated skin. He lets out a long breath.
He looks around. No one moving. He half suspects she'll be out of the
car snooping around. Despite there being nothing to see, or uncover as it
were, he's more than a little happy to find her still sitting in the car where
he left her. No matter what, you damn sure can't trust the cops to mind
their own business. As he opens the car door, he thanks her for her
patience and understanding.
He has no idea what makes him do it, but when he slides down into his
seat and pulls the door closed, he leans over, turns his face to hers, and
kisses her.
On the ride back to his apartment the silence filling the car is streakedwith a rainbow of emotions, uncertainty, rapture, desire, confusion, fear,
longing, nervousness. His mind is racing. He can only think clearly
about one thing. It helps him focus.
The word is that the transfer was a single cash pouch, fat as a suckling
pig. No handcuffs, no keys, nothing extraordinary in the handoff. The
bag was hand carried up to the penthouse by the British exec himself.
The local company execs put on a good show of feigned concern. Fools
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like that want more than anything to see their money stacked in neat piles,
inside some glossy, overpriced wall safe, behind a swing-out Picasso
knock-off, with a six inch thick door, and hear the tumblers click when
it's swung closed and the dial spun. It's a kind of pageant that creates the
illusion of impregnability.
The thief knows the burglar and his crew can pop the puny safe open
easier than a beer can. He smiles, unconsciously. His spirits are
buoyed. His juices are flowing, for more reasons than one. He’s ready
for anything, and this renewed energy is contagious.
The detective sees his smile. She wants to believe she is its inspiration.She doesn’t know what to think about his silence, but takes a degree of
relief when she sees that they’re driving back to his place, not hers. She
has her fingers crossed that she will most likely wake up in bed other than
her own. She spends the remainder of the ride debating with herself
whether or not to phone her sister when they get upstairs. Tentatively,
she thinks she’ll wait until the morning, go home to clean up for work,
stroll into her apartment and wait to see the reaction on her sister’s face.
Within moments of walking into his apartment, before the ornate front
door has even swung shut, they fall into each other’s arms. Their
passion is ablaze, threatening to flame out of control at any instant. The
way he crushes her in his arms, the way his body flows against hers, the
way his lips burn on hers is far and away beyond her wildest fantasies.
Just when it seems their love is going to set the night on fire, the thief pulls back, abruptly. The detective feels as though she’s been dropped
off a mile high cliff, stumbling, choking, falling while floating, like
standing vertigo. The thief’s lips are moving. He’s begging her to
forgive him. Something urgent has come up and she needs to leave. He
promises repeatedly to call her the moment he’s free and everything is
taken care of. But she can’t hear him. The thundering in her ears is too
loud.
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She’s crushed. Tears are streaming down her face, but she maintains a
degree of dignity as she gathers up her things and turns for the door. The
thief has retreated back into the shadows of his bedroom, where only
moments before their love had finally come to life. He can’t take his
eyes off her.
Teardrops have soaked the front of her chemise, as she pulls the
apartment door silently closed behind her. Barefoot, sobbing, clutching
the disheveled remainders of her clothes in her arms, leaning against the
once cherished doorframe, alone and lost in the lifeless hallway, she has
never felt so defeated, so ashamed, so hurt in her entire life. Seconds
later, she is still pulling on the last of her clothes, buttons be damned,when soft chimes announce the arrival of the elevator. The mature
couple inside look away, mute as mummies, for long trip to the ground
floor. They heave an audible sigh of relief when the detective steps out
of the elevator opposite the building’s main doorway. The woman
immediately reaches for the elevator button, which is still glowing from
pushed earlier, but the man restrains her arm. They continue down to the
underground parking level.
* * * * *
Upstairs, the thief has retreated even further into his dark inner chambers.
The only illumination in the room is the blanket of pinpoints of lights
rippling across the ocean-scape of the city far below. Tears are
streaming down his face as well, as he sits scrunched up to the headboard
as far as physically possible, the bedclothes rumpled beyond recognition,hugging his knees to his chest with crushing force.
But his agonies are cut short by the sound of the front door opening. The
thief, thinking the detective has returned, rushes into the front room, still
naked. After it’s too late, he remembers he never gave her a set of keys
to the apartment. Before he can grab something to put on, the actor is
there, in the room, suffused with burning desire and barely contained
outrage. His voice is tripping with evil ecstasy as he described watching
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the detective stumbling from the apartment, holding the remnants of her
horrible costume to her breast like a pathetic life buoy, trembling under
the weight of her sobbing. The actor can care less at this point whether
or not the thief shares his glee. It’s time to reap what he has sown. He’s
ready for his dreams to come true, or so he thinks.
Confusion meets lust and a fight ensues. The actor loses all control. He
goes ballistic. His white-hot temper is legendary, as much so as his
penchant for inflicting violence on those he believes are his property, his
whipping boys, his canvas of pain. He loves to hear the screams of
others at his own fingertips. Now is as good a time for a little release as
any. Scorched by rejection, the actor is about to kill the thief, when thethief grabs a heavy glass sculpture and smashes it down on the veteran
actor’s head.
The actor crumples, lifeless, to the floor. Blood gushes from his head,
washing across his cheeks in a crimson flood. The thief falls back,
spent, breathing as hard as his lungs can go. He’s knocked senseless by
what has just happened. He’s a thief, a purloiner of fine automobiles, not
a killer, not a murderer. Violence has never been his thing. Now,
seeing it so close and real like this is more than a little overwhelming.
He stumbles back to the bedroom, nearly falling two or three times. He
has never felt his legs so weak before. His eyes are turned, locked on the
motionless form on the floor, waiting, wanting to see it move. Lying
there in a pool of blood is the remains of the man who wanted to give him
everything, and wanted everything in return.
It takes a long moment before he sees the blood on his hands. At first he
can’t comprehend the connection, as though he’s looking at someone
else’s hands. These can’t be mine, he tells himself. But before long the
reality sinks in. The blood drying on the hands before of his eyes is real,
and the hands are his.
It takes all his concentration to regain his senses. A look of determined
relief washes over his face. He knows with the precision of a lifelong
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thief exactly what he has to do.
Later, showered and dressed to the nines, he steps over the body cooling
on the carpet. All emotions for the former film star have vaporized. He
looks down at the body with ice cold detachment. To him, it’s nothing
more than a speed bump staining the actor’s fleecy white carpet a gooey
brick red. With nothing more to worry about, he leaves the apartment
apparently unfazed and ready for anything.
Well, that isn’t entirely accurate. He’s worried he might have stepped in
blood and ruined his exquisitely expensive Italian shoes. The image of
the still coagulating black pool of blood forming a glossy lake of tar around the actor’s head, making it look like a grotesque island lost in a
sea of licorice stabs him in the back of his head. He has to shake his
head violently to send the memory flying into oblivion.
Outside in the corridor, he takes a deep breath. He’s unmarked and
unscathed. His focus has returned, in spades. The unerring ability to
erase annoying and troublesome issues from his mind is the centermost
aspect of his psychological makeup. While everyone else around him is
running around in a panic, like headless chickens, he has always been
able to carry on as if he was the only man in the universe and had all of
time to do whatever is necessary. Very few people know of, or
appreciate the full dimensions of his cool nature, especially when the
world is crumbling down at his feet.
Back in the driver’s seat, so to speak, he knows his plan will best beserved with the acquisition of a new set of wheels. And they must be the
perfect wheels to compliment the lifestyle and image has become
accustomed to living. He’s come a long way from his devil-take-the-
hindmost, rough and ready, rag-tag days as a mere car thief. He checks
his reflection in the polished stainless steel frame around the elevator
doors. ‘Just look at me now,’ he says out loud to the new man in the iron
mirror. Feeling the soothing power of his new self in the shiny steel is
the final step in his mental preparations. He’s locked, loaded and ready
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for action, as the elevator doors slide silently open to welcome him on
board for his descent into the night.
* * * * *
A splinter of his old reality shatters his calm when he steps out of the
elevator on the parking garage floor where his current, and soon to be
cars await.
The burglar’s girlfriend steps out of the shadows and takes two steps in
his direction. She stops, her eyes locked on him. Her face is bruised
and swollen, and smudged with dirt. The tracks of newly dried tearsstain the lovely tones of her complexion, even in the dim lighting. The
burglar is in the habit of beating his girlfriend to a near pulp the night
before an especially big job. Feeling his fists meeting her flesh and bone
is his final preparation for mayhem. After two or three seconds of trying
to be strong, she collapses to the concrete floor.
The car thief is caught on the horns of a dilemma. He’s torn between
stepping over her sobbing body, jerking with the spasms of pain and
torment, and walking away. Or leaning down and helping the girlfriend
to her feet. He wants very much to rush over to her and take her in his
arms. Vestiges of the unspoken thing between them are still alive and
well in his heart. His heart forces his hand. He runs over to her.
Gently, he lifts her into a semi-standing posture and leans her against the
nearest car. He does so so gently, in fact, the car’s alarm system is not
triggered, and the sirens don’t blare. Which would be especially bad asthe concrete walls and pillars form a cavernous echo chamber the whole
world can hear on a clear night like this one.
The girlfriend takes his tender touch as a physical admission of his love
for her and she kisses him hard on the lips.
At first, the thief tries to pull back, but something inside him makes him
give in to the heat of the kiss. He fears all is lost, when the sight of a
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shiny new stretch Mercedes limo brings him back to the here and now.
He pulls back, his fingers still clinging tightly into her upper arms. He
tells her he has something important to take care of tonight. She
understands that to mean dangerous and illegal. The look in her eyes
takes him aback. He assures her that if everything goes as planned all
their problems will be fixed, permanently. But she has to go,
somewhere, anywhere, she just can’t come with him.
The girlfriend starts to get hysterical.
Just at that moment a party of happy residents, and their guests, steps off
the elevator. The group is obviously on their way out for a lively nighton the town. When they see the thief, someone they recognize as one of
their kind, and the poor crying wretch giving him some sort of trouble,
they pause no more than half the wink of an eye. This sort of thing is not
unheard of, and certainly none of their business. So why ruin a perfectly
good time ahead interfering in someone else’s affairs of the sheets?
The thief pulls the girlfriend into his arms and kisses her, hard, as though
making up for some imagined lover’s quarrel the wandering group was
too late to see and enjoy. He continues kissing her with his eyes
squarely on the party of nightcrawlers as they make it to their cars and
drive out of the building. Only then does he come up for air.
The girlfriend has stopped screaming. She can’t, she’s too dizzy. Her
eyes roll back in her head. Her hands fall lifelessly to her sides. Her
limp body threatens to slide off the car and topple to the floor once again.
The thief studies her closely. She’s been beaten pretty badly and she’s in
rough shape. It’s plain she’s not going anywhere on her own steam, not
without drawing too much unwanted attention to herself, and him if she
falls into the hands of some less than sympathetic cops.
He turns his body next to hers before she falls. He puts his arm around
her waist and tells her in hushed tones that she’s coming with him. He
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tells her he’s going to drop her somewhere and asks her if she has a place
to crash for the night. It’s understood between them that it should be a
place where the burglar won’t find her. If she goes back to old apartment
in the morning, that will be all right. No one will be there, then or ever.
But he keeps this to himself. Instead, he repeats again and again that she
has to come with him to find a room for the night. He wants this to be
true.
The girlfriend blinks and swallows hard. A fresh tear has swollen from
the corner of her eye.
He pushes her back against the car and tells her to hold on as best shecan. Casually as a professional car thief, he strolls over to the sleek, gun
metal grey Mercedes. In the shake of a lamb’s tail, he has the door open
and the engine purring away. Only two short bleeps from the alarm
system announce his mischief. No one is the wiser.
The girlfriend is impressed with the thief’s display of criminal skill. She
pushes herself up onto her feet. Her legs hold. She pauses a moment
before she attempts walking to the car. Again, her legs are under her.
At first, it looks as if she’s going to circle the Mercedes and sit in the
front seat with the thief. But before she can get away from him, he
jumps out and opens the rear door for her. He bows with a great flourish
and announces that her car is ready, madam.
The look of confusion on her face prompts the thief to explain that it
would look more appropriate if she were his passenger and not her datefor the evening. In these circles, the chauffeur is never given the keys to
family limo for such petty social matters. She smiles and slips, with
some discomfort, into the spacious rear compartment. Smooth as
greased butter, they glide out into the glittering Bangkok night.
Within a matter of seconds, the burglar’s car falls into place in the thief’s
rearview mirror. The thief gives the girlfriend a quick glance. His eyes
are markedly hardened. He wonders if this was a setup and if her kiss
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was a grand performance. It doesn’t appear as if she is aware of the game
of follow the leader going on around her. She looks as if she would be
only too happy to make the plush leather rear seat of the limo her
permanent address. He splits his focus between his driving, which must
be flawless, and the headlights looking back at him in the mirror. His
mood is ironclad. His elation will not be burst by the proximity of his
nemesis. He cannot wipe the grin from his face. He switches on the car
radio and cranks the volume to full blast. He starts singing as loud as the
radio. He has never higher in his whole life, including his short foray
into the world of recreational drugs and opiates.
The pillars under his emotional cloud is the secret he plays over and over in his head. The massive land yacht he is piloting effortlessly through
the tangle of city streets, carrying them to their separate destinies, is
equipped with a state-of-the-art anti-theft system. Which at this very
moment is beaming a constant stream of electrons to every police station
within a five mile radius, alerting the lumbering lawmen in no uncertain
terms that it, a monumental vessel of obscene opulence, is being operated
by a person or persons unauthorized to be doing so. And considering the
extent of the owner’s connections in the worlds of power and civil
authority, it best behooves the police to come to its immediate rescue,
post most haste.
* * * * *
The detective’s squad room is no exception. The alarm bells are
sounding. One of the more clever inhabitants stuffs a wad of paper between the bell and clapper, thereby handling the emergency in a timely
and efficient manner. But not before the wiry desk sergeant gets wind of
the racket. He calls the lady detective on her mobile phone.
* * * * *
The detective is stuck in traffic, supposedly on her way home from the
worst night of her life. The sergeant on the phone thinks it might just be
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the fabled car thief, who has been lying low for a few months now. But
tonight, the wily rogue is back at his usual games, in spades. It’s curious
to both the detective and the sergeant that the thief would be unaware of
the silent alarm system and the ensuing army of cops it will bring down
on him. It’s very much unlike him to be looking for trouble in such an
amateurish way.
The news that the chase is back on helps to deflect her pain a bit, at least
for the moment. Without checking her mirrors, she pulls a quick U-turn.
She floors the throttle, burning rubber and sending up plumes of smoke in
her wake. These actions aren’t strictly necessary, seeing as how she
doesn’t know as yet what direction she’s supposed to be heading. But itsure felt good to do something she’s always dreamed of doing since the
first time she saw a cop car burn-out in the movies. The shocked
bystanders and fellow motorists stare after in complete amazement.
Such a display of wanton horsepower is a first for them as well.
She stays online with the sergeant who fills her in on details as they come
in. The thought that she might actually bag this bad boy wipes away the
last of her heartache. The second the sergeant gives her the whereabouts
and direction of the limo, the batteries on her phone run dead. She looks
at it with a mixture of annoyance and mischief. She opens her window
and carelessly tosses the useless thing out into the street. She hears it
crash to the pavement behind her speeding car and smash into a thousand
tiny pieces as she starts to close the window.
She stops rolling it up and opens the window all the way. The coolevening air feels good caressing the side of her face. It helps wash away
some of the burning emotions left over from the thief’s apartment. She
pictures him in her mind’s eye, crumpled into a tight ball in the darkest
corner of his glorious bedroom, weeping uncontrollably for the stupidity
of his callousness and the loss of the only true woman who will love him
forever for who he really is and not for his fame and fortune.
When her mind clears a little, a sudden pang of recognition stabs her in
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the gut. The limo seems to be heading straight for the movie studios.
The very same studio complex she was at earlier this evening.
Something is very wrong and she has to take a long and deep breath of
fresh air, and hold it until she’s about to pass out to control her worst
suspicions. She hates to admit it to herself that there have been tiny
worms wiggling in the back of her mind about the thief and his
miraculous, mysterious appearance into the world of riches and fawning
love from millions of adoring fans.
Out of normal curiosity, she ran a background check on the thief. When
it came back blank as a white sheet of paper she put that down to the fact
that the name he’s using is a stage name, and not his birth name. At anyof hundreds of opportunities she could have swiped a glass or a comb and
sent it off for fingerprint analysis. But her love for him forbade her from
this most dastardly of deeds. Something he mentioned in passing lead
her to think he is from a small village somewhere in the north, near the
borders with one of the nation’s neighbors. On more than one occasion
she’s had to suppress her uneasiness about his apparent lack of family
and education. Those are two subjects he avoids talking about with
consummate skill. Of course, pushing her curiosity to the back of her
mind is an easy thing to do when those amazing eyes of his were wrapped
so tightly around her heart.
She pulls into a gas station and jogs inside. She flashes her badge and
tells the clerk she has to make an emergency phone call. The hard edge
in her voice leaves no room for argument. The somewhat nervous clerk
pulls the phone from under the counter and places it in front of her. Ittakes her a couple of thundering heartbeats to remember the number to
her precinct house. After all, it’s programmed into her cell phone, which
is now strewn along some forgotten boulevard somewhere out in the dark.
The clerk eyes her suspiciously until a paying customer walks up to the
counter. As soon as the clerks glaring eyes are off her she remembers
the number and dials. When the sergeant answers, she tells him to call
off the troops, tells him to hold them back until she has a chance to check
out the circumstances first. Considering the thief’s skills, it’s highly
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likely this is a false alarm or screw up with the alarm itself. Best to wait
and see, she assures the nodding desk sergeant. He agrees.
* * * * *
Behind him, the chief of detectives has been eavesdropping on the
conversation and trusting his gut instincts, nods his assent to the sergeant
who tells the lady detective that she has made a good point. If it does
turn out to be the thief, he cautions, don’t do anything until backup
arrives. They’ll be waiting for her call. She agrees.
* * * * *
If it weren’t for the view of the world moving past outside the car’s tinted
windows, the Mercedes glides so smoothly it’s virtually impossible to
sense movement. The thief is at the pinnacle of his emotions. He’s
flying high on the rush of adrenaline surging through his veins. The idea
of what is about to go down, his feelings for the lady detective, the music
cranked to the max, the dazzling array of city lights in downtown
Bangkok, makes his high so intense he completely forgets about the
burglar’s girlfriend sitting quietly in the shadows of the back seat. The
only thing on his mind is his plan.
The girlfriend sits in stony silence. She can’t take her eyes off the back
of the thief’s head. A feeling of dread has wrenched her stomach into a
knot. She knows the burglar is following them with a carload of the
toughest thugs he could find. She knows something bad is going tohappen pretty soon.
The limo takes the last turn and pulls to a stop at the studio gates.
They’re closed due to the lateness of the hour. Normally, during
working hours the gates are open. The two guards are quite accustomed
to seeing such grand autos arriving at all hours of the day and night, so
they snap to it. The first one out of the guard shack walks over to the
driver’s window and leans down to inquire the nature of their business.
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To his knowledge, none of the studio bosses is on the lot, or expected that
evening. But surprise visits are not uncommon, so this should be a
routine greeting. When the window glides open, it takes the guard a
second or two before he recognizes the thief. He can’t stop himself from
asking why a shiny new movie star is driving such a car.
The thief explains that the girl in the back is a very famous, very
eccentric French film actress who has an urgent appointment with the
head of the studios. It is vital that he meets her before she flies back to
Paris. The guard nods knowingly and signals them through. The gates
swing open and the Mercedes glides inside.
The gates begin to swing shut. Just as they are about to close, a second
car comes screeching around the corner and crashes headlong into them.
The gates are bent and twisted off their hinges and fall open at odd
looking angles. The guard who spoke with the thief is thrown back and
knocked to the ground while the invading car has to spin its wheels in
reverse, trying to get itself untangled from the mangled wrought iron
gates.
The second guard rushes out of the shack. He runs over to help his mate
and tells him the studio boss is out of the country, so there can be no such
appointment. The first guard grunts and jumps to his feet. He’s glad to
be uninjured, even though his uniform is soiled and torn. He pulls his
gun and starts shooting.
* * * * *
The thief pulls the long car up behind the studio office tower where he
knows the money is waiting. Locks mean nothing to him. He’s inside
the back hallways in no time at all. With all due deliberation, he makes
his way up to the top floor, toward the office suite of the studio’s owner.
He chooses to pay no heed to the girlfriend following close on his heels.
Maybe if he ignores her long enough she’ll give up and go away, he
smiles to himself. But she doesn’t make it easy.
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The girlfriend is making a tiny, soft whimpering sound, an uncontrollable
unconscious reaction to the danger. The sound of it is beginning to
annoy the thief. He hisses at her to shut up or he’ll lock her in a closet
and leave her there. In blissful silence, they keep moving.
* * * * *
At the gate, the first guard has managed to shoot out the back glass of the
car. The gets free, lurches back and swerves dangerously, nearly going
out of control.
Just then, the lady detective screeches to a stop in her car, just behind the
two guards.
Startled and frightened, they both swivel around. Believing they’re
being attacked from behind, they open fire.
The detective is in her private vehicle, with no police markings or
flashing lights to alert the guards to her identity. So they have no way of
knowing that she isn’t part of these weird circumstances, movie stars
driving stretch limos filled with French starlets, crazed madmen crashing
into their gates and now this. It’s all too much for them to comprehend,
what with guns being fired and all.
The detective ducks down behind the dashboard. She scrambles for her
purse, spilling all its contents on the floorboards. In her frenzy, sheknocks her revolver under the passenger seat where she can’t reach it.
She curses her clumsiness out loud. She searches her spilled things for
her cell phone, but again has to curse herself. This time for her stupidity.
She feels a degree better when she remembers the batteries were dead
anyway. But this doesn’t fix the fix she’s in.
As quickly as they began, the bullets ricocheting off her car stop. She
hears gunshots coming from somewhere else, and not at her. She
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pavement. She’s breathing as fast as her lungs will take in air. The rush
of full-blown panic, on top of her survival instincts kicking in, the intense
thrill of gunplay, combined with the emotional wreckage from earlier and
the dread certainty that the thief is somehow at the heart of all this have
exhausted her. She feels as if she’ll never be able to lift her arms off the
dirt, let alone get up and walk away from here. It’s too much for her
wounded mind to bear, but she must.
She leans over and asks the guards if there’s a phone in their shack.
Without waiting for an answer, she tells one of them to call a number.
Before she repeats the number, she decides she should do the calling.
She finds her badge and flips it out onto the tarmac. It lands open andface up. The guards see she’s a cop and help her to her feet. Slowly,
dizzily, she follow them to the little building they call their office. In all
this, the two guards don’t say a word. They’re pretty much overwhelmed
as well.
The call made, she takes a quiet moment to reload her pistol. She’s a bit
upset with herself for not carrying more ammunition. One of the guards
pulls a clip from his personal bag under the counter, but it’s immediately
apparent the bullets are the wrong caliber. They smile at each other.
* * * * *
The burglar pulls his car to screeching halt when he spots the limo. He
and the remaining two men enter the building through the back door,
which is still slightly ajar. The burglar doesn’t take the time to questionthis little stroke of luck. He’s never been lured up a garden path before,
and doesn’t suspect anything.
* * * * *
Crouching, the detective makes her way through the now familiar
landscape. When the lone gunman trips on something in the dark, he
falls to the ground in a loud clatter of metal. The detective spins, her gun
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up, the flash of muzzle fire illuminating her face like a lethal strobe light.
The gunman is hit in the chest. He slumps forward and falls across the
tangle of metal that brought him down. He’s wounded, but still alive.
He quickly loses consciousness. The detective checks his pulse and
pockets the man’s gun. Assured he won’t be running off any time soon,
she leaves him there.
When she finds the two cars awash in the beam of soft yellow light
streaming from the open door, she stops. She has to lean against the
building to catch her breath. She checks the gunman’s pistol. It’s
empty. She throws it to the ground with the distinct clatter only gunsmake when they fall. Her momentary fascination is split open by the
distant sound of police sirens floating through the air. The sound carries
the promise of help soon to arrive. Maybe too soon for her liking.
She decides not to wait. Carefully, she slips into the building. The
hallway is empty.
* * * * *
In the semi-dark penthouse, the thief has located the safe and has
managed to get it open. There, inside where it was meant to be, it is, all
in neat little bundles, each wearing its own little paper waistband, all
stacked in neat little piles in neat little rows, is a stash of money the likes
of which neither the thief nor the girlfriend has ever laid eyes on before.
It takes their breath away. The interior of the safe is illuminated, makingthe display that much more spectacular.
Without realizing what she’s doing, the girlfriend slips her hand into the
thief’s. It’s another of her instinctive reactions. This time, to the sight
of so much cash money, all in one place, and so close they could reach
out and touch it, if they wanted that is. Right there, in front of them, so
much potential happiness, lying there, waiting to be taken away, waiting
to be theirs. Neither of them hears the burglar slip into the room behind
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them. It’s extremely hard for them to look away from the loot.
The burglar stops just in side the doorway. He leans back against the
doorframe. He sees the two of them, standing across the room, facing
away from him, staring at what he takes to be the grand prize they’re all
after, hand in hand.
Hand in hand.
Calmly, he raises his gun. Without even a split second’s delay, he fires
one shot, straight between his girlfriend’s shoulder blades. The bullet
explodes from between her breasts in an eruption of blood. She dropslike a stone.
Bits of flesh and blood splatter everywhere. The thief is hit with his
share. He hits the deck, but there’s nowhere to hide from the burglar’s
hand cannon.
Just then, gunfire breaks out from behind the burglar, who was not
expecting company. He spins around.
The thief dashes for the boss’s desk. Once upon a time he thought the all
glass edifice to power was a thing of breathtaking beauty. Now he
wishes it was an old-fashioned oak monstrosity with enough drawers that
surely one would be big enough, and deep enough to hide him from the
crazed killer somewhere behind him. Cringing behind polished and
beveled glass is not the most effective way of avoiding detection byarmed murderers.
When he can, he wipes the blood and viscera from his eyes. He can hear
sirens, faintly, approaching outside the glass wall quivering with his
reflection. He’s not sure if they’re still a long way off, or that the gawd-
awful building is just so high it makes the sound seem that way. He’s
damn sure not happy to be looking at himself in the wall, as it were.
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The burglar looks back over his shoulder to make sure he hasn’t lost track
of the thief. Their eyes meet in the wall of shiny black glass. But his
interest can’t linger, he has to return to the business at hand. Whoever it
is out there has already taken out one of his men. The third has decided
that escape is the better part of survival. His footsteps can be heard
running down another hallway, then clumping down the stairwell. The
remaining labyrinth of corridors and offices are all dead quiet and
blackened for the still of the night. Or so it was meant to be.
Back in the office, the thief looks down to discover a small nickel-plated
pistol in his hand. At first, he has no idea how it got there, then he
remembers seeing it in the safe alongside the cash. He must havegrabbed it before he dived to the floor. He smiles at his own bit of
cleverness, then starts shooting at the burglar. The little gun has a
surprising kick for something so petite.
The burglar fires a potshot at the thief without turning to look. He has to
keep his eyes glued to the mystery man in the hall who has trapped him
alone in the office.
The thief fires twice more.
The burglar, enraged at this interruption, turns to kill the thief once and
for all. When he does, the thief fires and the bullet hits the burglar right
in the eye. As the burglar falls, slipping down the doorframe as his legs
give way beneath him, his hand spasms and the gun in his hand goes off
one last time.
The detective is hit in the stomach. She looks down at the blood gushing
from the black hole in her belly as her knees begin to buckle. She falls
to the floor where she is, in slow motion. Her gun falls from her hand
and ends up buried under her legs, out of reach for the helpless
policewoman. She can’t take her eyes off the growing spot of red
soaking the front of her blouse. The last of her strength is draining away
with her lifeblood, like runoff after a cloudburst. A calm, peaceful look
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comes across her face. She feels warm inside, as if she were lying in her
bed back when she was a little girl, snug in her favorite blanket, getting
ready to slips off into a deep relaxing sleep.
Without knowing where, or how, they came from, a pair of feet wearing
gorgeous shoes appear in front of her eyes. The shoes are so stunning,
she refuses to blink or look away. Everywhere else in her field of view,
the floor is littered with spent cartridge shells and guns. Her interest in
them is strictly clinical, like she’s outside watching a zookeeper counting
his animals. She makes no moves to reach for one.
The feet walk away. When they get far enough from her, she can seethey belong to the thief, her thief, her lover, her only lover. Her heart is
crushed. She begins to sob silently.
The thief, having emptied the tiny silver gun he grabbed from the safe, is
now picking up gun after gun, looking for one with a bullet left in it.
When he sees that they all look to be empty, he throws them down in
disgust.
In a final gesture of bravado, the detective tries to get up. As she does,
she rolls onto her back. Her entire front is soaked with blood. The gun
under her legs is revealed. She tries reaching for it, but the thief is too
fast for her. As her fingers strain to clutch at her revolver, the thief
snatches it away from her. He checks the chamber.
The thief smiles at the irony of it all.
Slowly, deliberately, he walks over to where the only love he’s ever felt,
and his potential captor lies bleeding on the parquet floor. He stops in
front her. Standing, he towers over her. He raises the gun straight at
her.
Hearing his approach, she rolls her head to the side. The beautiful shoes
have reappeared. Such handsome footwear. Such a shame. At last she
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blinks her eyes. The pain in her eyes, dried in spite of her tears, is
searing. Such beautiful shoes. What might have been . . .
The gun’s hammer makes a pair of sharp click, like two loud claps of
nearby thunder, as it’s being pulled back into full firing position.
The detective closes her eyes. In a whisper, she asks him not to kill her.
Cut to black.
* * * * *
Back at the apartment, the actor begins to come to. His head is
pounding. When he tries to lift it, he’s stopped. He can’t pull his head
up from the floor. His hair is matted in the fuzzy dried pool of blood that
comes into his peripheral view. He and his magnificent locks are caked
to his poor ruined carpet. He cries out in rage at the idea of it being so
spoiled. Such beauty wasted, destroyed, lost, and at prices very few
people would believe possible. The thought of his ruined rug rips his
heart to pieces.
With a considerable amount of pain and screaming, he finally manages to
free himself. More than half the hair on that side of his head has been
ripped out by the roots. Ridges of blackened dried blood are pasted
down his face like some asymmetrical space alien. He can’t open his left
eye. He sits up, exhausted, heartbroken and crying. The pain from his
head almost causes him to swoon once again. To keep from passing out,he attempts to stand. But his legs have left the building, so he resorts to
crawling.
He makes it over to the couch, where he pulls himself in a great display
of courage. Only one problem, no one is in the room to applaud his
magnificent efforts. Forgetting that quickly enough, he realizes he needs
serious help. He nearly falls to the floor time and again as he makes his
way to the apartment door, then out into the hall.
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Not wanting to besmirch the glistening clean walls of the corridor outside
the lover’s den where he once dreamed of raptures unbound and
splendors that will never be with the most gloriously perfect beauty of his
wanton life, not to mention the indignant condemnation he would receive
from his neighbors for spoiling their pristine environment, he musters his
remaining reserves of strength and stumbles to the door two down from
his own. Managing the most heart-wrenching prat-fall of his long and
illustrious career before the camera, a fall worthy of an Oscar of its own,
he lets his body collapse, with full sonic effect, against the polished teak
and chrome door.
His performance in the hall succeeds in sending the apartment’s occupant
into a complete shrieking frenzy. Flitting and flapping in every direction
but up, the tiny frail jittery little man in the apartment finally opens the
door.
The very old, very shriveled up wisp of a man appears looking straight
ahead. At first he doesn’t see the actor prostrate on the floor at his
gristly old feet. He pulls his robe tighter around his pencil-thin frame.
He attempts to take a step forward and kicks the actor in the ear. The
actor shouts in mock pain. The old man jumps back in total shock.
The actor is lying there, splotches of raw white skin all over his scalp,
splotches of dried blood everywhere to be seen, whimpering like a mangy
street dog out in the rain, looking at the ugliest feet he’s ever seen in his
life. He doesn’t say anything, though, because he is more than familiar with the ugly feet and their owner. This is hardly the first time he’s been
in such proximity to them in the past, for a veritable plethora of reasons.
He knows his appearance and performance are guaranteed to win the man
over.
The little man is less than bowled over at the lump of flesh at his door,
once again. He asks in a bored tone what kind of a mess the actor has
gotten himself into this time, then calls him a faggot. He wheels about
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and retreats into his apartment. He comments over his shoulder that he’s
seen the actor in worse shape and that if he wants to come and clean up,
well do so, damn it. He curses the actor for messing up the corridor, still
without turning back to see if the actor can stand or not.
The actor calls him ‘Girl’ and asks for help. He genuinely needs it.
The little man breaks down his mask and rushes back to help the fallen
actor. He bends down and with all his tiny might, he helps the poor
bedraggled, much deflated actor inside. This is by no means the first
time this scene has been played out.
Fade to black.
-- FIN --
* * * * *
But not quite.
Final credits begin to roll.
* * * * *
The final credits roll all the way to the copyright. The screen goes black,
when suddenly a hospital room appears.
The detective’s sister is helping the detective into a wheelchair to wheel
her out of the hospital.
When the two emerge on the hospital steps, into a glorious sunny day,
skies bluer than blue, a gentle breeze tossing the detectives hair, they
stop. Waiting for them outside are the detectives from her station and
the Chief of Detectives, to welcome her back with a cheer.
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* * * * *
Meanwhile, the actor has moved into the apartment down the hall to rest
and recuperate out of the limelight, as it were, and not for the first time.
His neighbor is nothing if the essence of discretion. There’s a full size,
full color framed poster of the thief hanging over the bed on the wall in
the bedroom. The actor rips it down, smashes the glass into a million
splinters and tears the poster in as many pieces before breaking down in
tears.
* * * * *
The inmates in a minimum security prison are being let into the dining
hall for lunch. The thief, dressed casually in his prison uniform, is sitting
down for a hearty meal. He’s surrounded on all sides by his fellow
convicts. He stares at the awful food on his tray, unable to put the sight
of all that money out of his mind. He sighs and picks up his fork. No
one around him cares one bit.
Fade to black.
– FIN –
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Extracted Story Treatment
The film opens:
A somewhat handsome looking, young man is strolling casually down a
busy, noisy street somewhere in the heart of Bangkok. No one notices
him sweeping the area with his eyes, scanning the endless column of
parked cars, looking for a likely target. He sees what he's looking for, a
bright shiny, brand spanking new BMW sports coupe. He wants it, andhas the skills to make it his. As his years of training have taught him, he
has to keep an eye out for the enemy, the cops.
Sure enough, a group of four of them are standing around in an informal
group, shooting the breeze, way over on the opposite of a busy, four lane
thoroughfare, packed with cars zooming in every direction but up.
After calculating the odds, he walks straight to the car and in half the blink of an eye, the door is jimmied open and the engine is fired to life.
What he didn't factor into his criminal equation is the local reaction to the
alarm. Vendors and shopkeepers begin pouring out their stores at the
sound of the car alarm and start pummeling him with all manner of flying
objects.
Two of the cops start trying desperately to duck and weave their way
across mid-day traffic, while the other two are mounting their police
motorcycles. The thief abandons the car and takes off running as fast as
his legs will carry him, down the side street the car is parked on. As he
zigs and zags through the normal straggle of pedestrians and window
shoppers, he sees a large crowd of gawkers up ahead, looking intently at
something beyond them. He decides they're the best cover at hand, like a
tree hiding in the forest. When he looks back over his shoulder, the men
with the guns and badges are huffing and puffing, running in hisdirection, and they see him looking at back at them.
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The thief slams headlong into the mass of bodies, jamming and
shimmying himself deeper with all the strength he can muster. The thief
bursts out the front of the crowd, and directly into a film production being
shot on the streets of Bangkok. He thief isn't watching where he's going
when he crashes straight into a group of actors playing a scene for the
umpteenth time. They're all knocked to the ground. A mature actor in
the middle of the group is sent flying, like a stunt man. The other actors
in the scene, have to hide their faces to keep from being seen smirking.
The actor, the star of the film, shoots them a look that would freeze
vodka.
The director yells 'CUT!' The film's producer comes flying out of his
chair in a flaming rage when he gets to the scene of the crime. He
glares, nose to nose, at the intruder like he wants to rip out his throat.
His shouting is louder than a car alarm. The crowd roars with glee.
The thief is paralyzed with fear. Everyone else quickly backs away.
Except the star, who has regained both his feet and his loathing for the
producer. His killer instincts are driving him to come to the aid of the
clumsy interloper. When he actually sees the young car thief, he is
instantly taken with the boy's smoldering goods looks, and the air of
danger that radiates from him.
The actor launches a diatribe of invectives at the producer, who
completely ignores the star, until he hears a threat he is very familiar
with, and just as afraid of. The star, the hero of the film, demands that
the boy be written into the film immediately, or else he'll walk off the setand right out of the production. The producer is instantly shocked into
silence. He knows that the aging screen idol not only means what he
says, but has the clout to make it happen. He retreats, slinking away in
defeat from this battle. As he passes, the producer snaps at the director
to reset the shot and shoot the scene again, pronto!
The star coos at the thief, virtually quivering with lust, asking him if he
needs anything. Thinking quick on his feet is one of the thief 's best
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qualities. He asks for a moustache. Oh, and becoming a movie star
would be pretty cool too, he adds just for the fun of it. In an instant,
wardrobe, makeup and props are all over the boy, outfitting him with a
completely different look, not to mention arming him with a rubber
AK47. Before he's called to his mark, the star winks at the thief, saying
he'll look into the second request.
An assistant director yanks the thief by the arm, talking a blue streak as
they cross the street, telling him where he is to stand and how he's
supposed to fall when he's shot. A few hands reach out from the crowd
to pat him on the shoulder. He barely comprehends when the director
shouts "ACTION!".
Meanwhile, the four policemen have joined up to watch the action.
When the director yell 'CUT!' they elbow their way onto the set. They
walk right past the thief. After all, how could it be that a working actor
can be a bad guy on the run? Cool as can be, the thief takes a drag from
his cigarette and watches as the cops make a cursory search the location.
After a couple of minutes, the cops leave. The thief takes a deep breath.
When the director finally wraps shooting for the day, the thief watches,
mildly curious, taking a minute or two to consider his next move. He
lives wherever he drops his hat, so he's in no hurry to go back out on the
streets. He lights another cigarette and lets his mind drift along with the
flow of the work going on around him. His reverie is shattered when a
hand firmly clamps onto his shoulder from behind. He's startled, sure it's
the cops.
The voice of the star sets him somewhat at ease, wanting to know if it's
true, that he arrived on the set running from the police. The thief shrugs.
He asks if the thief has a place to stay. Again, the thief just shrugs. So
the star offers to help him break into a legitimate business, showbiz that
is, and offers him an apartment to live in if he needs a place to stay for a
while. The thief turns to look the star in the eye, and shrugs. As they
walk off the set, to an awaiting limo, he assures the kid that he is sure to
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be a big star, with his help, of course. He wants to touch the boy so
much, he's actually trembling with desire, but he resists the temptation.
The apartment turns out to be high up on one of the top floors of a
towering spike of polished steel and blacked out glass, with a panoramic
view of the cityscape that is truly breathtaking. Humble it ain't. The
thief is even more at a loss for words at the idea of hiding out here.
* * * * *
A somewhat pretty young lady walks into the police station and asks the
desk sergeant to point out the way to the Chief of Detective's office. Atfirst the gruff little man behind the ratty old desk that serves as his
fortress bristles at her request, assuming she's just some bit of fluff off the
street with a petty complaint he's more than capable of dispatching. The
girl insists with an air of impatience and boldness that prompts the desk
sergeant to leap from his rickety wooden chair, sprint around his desk and
come face to face with the audacious tart demanding entrance to the
holiest of all sanctums, the detective's room up on the second floor.
Thanks to the icy stare she has learned to affect to cover her true
emotions, the little sergeant can't see just how petrified she is inside.
The stony hardness in her eyes serves its purpose, and moments later
she's standing in front of another desk, this time with a genuine look of
terror on her face. Without a word from either, the girl hands her papers
over the desk to the Chief. The girl is the first female police officer to
graduate from university with a degree in criminal justice, and thus thefirst of her gender to earn the rank of detective. And now she's standing
here, praying like hell that her knees don't give out. She concentrates on
remaining upright.
The Chief, a lethally quiet cop from the old school, grudgingly accepts
that she's going to be one of his flock of misfits, so he shows her around
the squad room. In the blink of an eye, a thick, dog-eared, coffee stained
file is dropped with a weary thud unceremoniously on her greasy, much-
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scarred new desk. Everyone turns their backs on her. No one says
hello.
The case concerns a car thief, personal data unknown, who graduated
from the occasional joy ride in a hot-wired tuk-tuk in the rice lands of the
rural northern provinces, to boosting nothing but top of the line
automobiles here in the capital city. He's been at it for the better part of
ten years without a single arrest despite his MO of only stealing cars in
broad daylight while they're parked on busy, downtown streets. She
knows she will either earn her bones with this case. Or else she’ll end up
at the bottom of the food chain for the rest of her days as the city’s first
lady detective.
Her first day on the job finally over and done with, the detective runs to
the shelter of her apartment as fast as her little car will carry her. Inside
at long last, she drops her bag with a hard thump and lets herself crumple
to the floor. Her sister is in the kitchen fixing dinner, while her young
niece is sprawled on the nice cool hardwood floor, coloring a picture in
her latest coloring book.
This has been the absolute worst day of her life, being stuck with a dozen
surly gorillas who would be just as happy to eat her for lunch as have her
run away in terror. She lets it all come flooding out, tears turning to
sludge on her cheeks, her hands lying lifeless at her sides like a couple of
dead fish, the pain in her lower back threatening to burst into open flames
at any second. Without looking up or missing a stroke, the little girl in
the hallway gets up, walks over and settles herself in the detective's lapand again, not a word spoken, and the crayons are moving briskly back
and forth, spreading bright colors inside the lines on the book's pages.
* * * * *
When he hears the sound of a door opening in the next room, the thief
wakes up with a start. He quickly throws back the rumpled red silk bed
sheets and leaps from the huge circular bed, searching for his clothes.
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He's confused and a little frightened. Pulling up his pants as he enters
the main living area of the magnificent bachelor pad, the thief looks up to
see the actor, grinning like the Cheshire cat, dangling a set of shiny new
car keys, on a diamond key chain, from his well manicured fingers.
Downstairs, in the underground parking garage, the thief finds himself
standing in car booster heaven. One night alone in here, among a virtual
menagerie of the finest and most expensive motoring machines ever
crafted by the hand of man, and he could be one of the richest men in all
of Thailand. The actor mistakes the thief's obvious excitement as being
for himself, especially when he silently points to a sparkling, brand new
Beemer coupe. The thief is fully aware of how the game works, and isnot in the least hesitant in reaching for the keys. The actor looks
somewhat crushed when the thief says he'd like to take his new wheels
out for a test ride, rather than going back upstairs to celebrate the start of
his new life with the crest fallen star.
The movie-going world knows the star as a rough tough macho action
hero, who never hesitates to go up against the most dastardly of villains,
the more the merrier, master of all weapons and forms of man-to-man
combat. The actor's reward, the prettiest girl in the film is his dewy-eyed
love slave. Little does his network of loving fans realize where his eye,
and heart, truly wanders.
* * * * *
The thief wheels his new ride into the alley where he normally stashes his purloined cars before he can dispose of them. He is unaccustomed to
driving a car he hasn't stolen. He chuckles at the fact that he has never
owned a car of his own in his life, or applied for a driver's license either,
for that matter. Setting a car alarm, as opposed to dismantling one, is
another first for him.
Outside the chipped and scarred door of the cheap crib, he takes a deep
breath, holds it a beat and a half, and then lets it out in a stream through
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his pursed lips, like he's blowing an unseen trumpet. Very much the
same way he performs his pre-theft routine whenever he goes out to
snatch another car. He long ago lost the ecstasy of love he felt for cars
that made him want to steal them in the first place. Now it's strictly a
matter of cash flow and the economic realities of life. A lump of
loneliness has been slowly growing in his gut, like a tumor, for the last
few years. His hand moves to the doorknob. Slowly he twists it. The
door swings inward. He steps inside.
The odor of rancid cigarette smoke and spilled liquor in the filthy rooms
is almost nauseating. Not a sound, no music, or footsteps, or snoring,
nothing disturbs the dry smoky air. His clothes and junk are still heapedin the corner where he left them. He looks around for something to carry
them in. His host's girlfriend's oversized canvas purse is lying on the
floor in the front room.
The guy who rents the place is a hardened criminal, a lifelong burglar,
armed robber and strong-arm man. The only person he really cares about
is himself, not even his girlfriend, if the truth be told. She is his
property. He carries a loaded gun at all times, and isn't the slightest bit
hesitant to use it, especially if he suspects someone is trying to make off
with something that belongs to him, including his girlfriend.
Just as he reaches for the bag, the door swings open. In walks the
girlfriend. The thief takes the old purse and turns for the bedroom. If
she's happy to see him, she doesn't show it. Feelings have been growing
between them for a while now, even before he moved in with her and he boyfriend. He's known her for a while, but in all that time he's never
made a move on her. She asks him if he's leaving. He grunts a quick
answer. When he finally makes it to the door, eyes meet eyes, briefly,
but lips never move.
* * * * *
The star treatment begins in spades. The senior actor has succeeded in
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casting him in the role of a spoiled Thai boy, from an extremely wealthy
family in Bangkok, who has just returned from England where he flunked
out of all the finest schools Britain has to offer. He must be completely
transformed, from the street to the penthouse. It's not easy for him. It
goes against the grain of his basic nature, but slowly he begins to show
signs that he might just get the hang of it. Hour after hour, in studio after
studio, hair, makeup, wardrobe, elocution, dance classes, which they
insist are essential for learning to fall the right way when he's hit by
gunfire, the pampering and massaging of his image and mannerisms goes
on and on, from morning to night. The thief perseveres, happy to be out
of the line of fire for the time being.
* * * * *
A week later, on her drive to work, the new lady detective gets an idea
about where to start on the case. She has decided that the illusive car
thief is hers, and hers alone. If the thief was last seen running hell-bent-
for-leather down a tiny side street, straight into a movie production
company shooting scenes for an upcoming feature film, then vanishing
into thin air. It stands to reason that someone connected to the movie
company had to have seen something, heard something, or knew
something. She decides the company headquarters are the best place to
start her investigation.
Her secret sin is her obsession with all things to do with the movies.
After the death of her mother, the small movie theater in her village was
the only oasis of calmness and comfort available for her and her younger sister. People who know and love her describe her as a star-gazer
extrordinaire and a movie nut of the first order.
She can recount every detail of every thing that ever happened to her, in
complete and excruciating detail. That not only includes movie trivia,
but every moment, of every day of her life, almost all the way back to her
birth. Her incredible faculty for remembering everything, down to the
tiniest detail, is the reason she was recommended for the detective squad
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in the first place.
When the guard at the gate asks what business she has with the studio,
she flashes her detective's badge. The guard gives her quick salute and
steps back. She gets a tiny flash of pride at his reaction to her display of
authority. Her sister derides the studio as 'the temple of glitterati and
tinsel', but for the detective, it feels more like walking into a dream
factory. She has to struggle triple hard controlling her nervousness as
she mounts the front steps. She swallows, hard.
Upstairs, the detective is bounced from office to office, like some hapless
ping-pong ball, from make-up studio to sound stage, from wardrobe to props, post production, pre-production, and all point in between, back and
forth and back again. She winds up feeling dizzy, like a shuttlecock in a
mad hatter's game of badminton. 'Yeah I was there . . . well, maybe I
was there . . . let me just check my schedule . . . oh I'm so sorry, my girl's
out right now . . . I'll get right back to you . . . I'll call you . . . we'll do
lunch . . . wait, on second thought I was having lunch with Cee El that
day . . . yeah I'm sure about that . . . but I'll confirm that with you the
second my girl gets back . . . so if you'll excuse me . . . blah . . . blah . . .
blah de blah'. 'Gotta run, sweetie, I'm running late . . . I'll call ya soon as
I can, bye now.'
After being numbed into a virtual stupor by all the non-talk one woman
can bear, the detective's brain is almost fried to a crisp. She decides to
pick one last door on the corridor she happens to be on, drop in
unannounced and see what line of crap they'll try to feed her. She flips acoin in her mind, grabs the first doorknob she comes to and walks inside,
bold as brass.
The office is a living biography, the actor's life as observed in object d'art.
The walls of the outer office are plastered from floor to ceiling with
glossy photos, original ad artwork and one sheets from movies starring
her favorite actor, 'the Asian James Bond'.
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She hears someone moving about in the inner office. The door is open
only a crack, making it impossible to see who it is. She is expecting
another of the endless parade of overworked, underpaid office girls in
jeans and tee shirts to appear, when a figure she recognizes stops a few
feet in front of her. She can't believe she's standing there, in that room,
only inches from the icon of her fantasies.
Accustomed with such behavior, the actor is content to get the ball rolling
and attempt to revive the bambi frozen in the headlamps of his gaze. At
first, the actor is the ultimate in suave and gallant, turning his charm on
full blast. The very air around him seems to shimmer. His silky smooth
patter is working like magic until she reaches into her handbag, exposingher service revolver, pulls out her shield and musters the courage to
identify herself. As quickly as the actor's charm can be switched on, his
bitchy nastiness is much quicker to surface, like a stiletto knife flicking
open.
She's been his biggest fan as long as she can remember, and is more than
taken a little aback by the sudden shape-shift in his demeanor. What was
it that could incite the beloved screen idol into becoming so instantly
vicious, filled with such intense venom for her, is a complete and soul
withering mystery to her.
Now, standing here, in his very own offices, face to face with the person
he dreads and despises the most, a police person, the whole sordid affair
of his boyhood criminal past as a bicycle thief is suddenly brought back
in full four color Technicolor. His head is starting to spin. His high blood pressure is pounding in his ears. The mark of guilt branded on his
fragile psyche is threatening to pull his legs right out from under him.
He stumbles over to the chair behind his girl's desk and slumps down in it
like a wet sack of potatoes. He clenches his hands together in front of
himself on the secretary's desk. He fixes his eyes in a straight line and
stares at them hoping against hope that when he looks up the demon of
his nightmares will have disappeared like a bad headache after a couple
of those wonderful pills the doctor his last lover recommended gave him.
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The idea of this tiny little cop lady, standing there all high and mighty,
come to make him pay yet again for his worst sins, has not only incensed
him, it has also done what hundreds of armed assassins and murdering
psychopaths have failed to. She has completely knocked the stuffing
right out of him. He has to press his knees together painfully hard to
keep his bladder from exploding all over the room.
Meanwhile, the detective is in a complete state of confusion. She can't
take her eyes off the man at the desk, her idol, her hero, glaring his hands
as though he might at any instant jump up and pummel her into a pulp,
the way he has so many times to the bad guys of the world.
t.b.c.
Monday, July 05, 2004
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