THE RUNNER/SCREENPLAY, BRIAN R. LUNDIN [best classic books to read .txt] 📗

Candy got out a black compact, an African pick and looking in the compact she powdered her nose and picked her hair. The three women got dressed, checked their outfits, had another drink and left, Vito and Jimmy were both snoring soundly.

CANDY
(laughing)
White boys ain’t shit, with their little dicks.

The three women laughed as they boarded the elevator. Once again Candy’s saying had been proven true,” A good hoe, don’t have to do a lot of fuckin’ or suckin’. The three left the office with no white man’s sperm in their bodies or mouths.

INT: VINNIE’S OFFICE-EVENING
A Luciano Pavarotti aria of La Boheme played softly in the room.

VINNIE
(Seated behind his desk snacking on a canapé and offering one to Candy)
How did your evening go with Vito?

CANDY
(looked at the tray)
What the fuck is that?

VINNIE
(smiling)
Canapé, my dear, or what you probably would call chopped liver.


CANDY
(turning up her nose)
No thank you, Vito is such a bore and a slob.

VINNIE
That’s for sure.

Candy slid a white envelope to him.

CANDY
(smiling)
He couldn’t even get it up talk to you later; she said as she got up from her seat and swished out the door.

After Candy left, Anthony Spocko entered Vinnie’s office.

ANTHONY
(stuttering)
She sure has a-a- ni-nice ass for an old broad.

VINNIE
I’m concerned about that asshole, Vito!

ANTHONY
He’s-he’s, dis-disrespectful and a pig-pig.

VINNIE
He’s is going to start a lot of trouble if he keep fucking with them niggers, especially Jerome McLemore. Jerome is respected and liked in the community and has the support of the churches and the politicians, but more important he has the support of his people, many of whom would be starving if his policy stations and wheels did not give them jobs. Our people on the police department at the Wabash station say that the Commander, that Hollis guy, don’t take money, but he don’t let his guys fuck with the policy game, because they provide jobs.

ANTHONY
You think Vito got the message at the sit-down?

VINNIE
Hell naw, Vito thinks he’s untouchable because he’s made, but he’s wrong.

ANTHONY
If you get the-the wor-word to eliminate that that ass-asshole, let me do it, it will be rel-real slow.

Anthony Spocko was forty years old and had a below average intelligence. He had been a violent, totally incurable stutterer since being hit in the head with a bat when he was fifteen and in a rumble with an Irish gang. Anthony was Pauli Gaza nephew and had grown up in the Gaza family. His father, Bennie was Pauli’s older brother and was a mob enforcer. Rival Irish mobsters gunned down his mother and father when Anthony was eighteen. In respect for his father, Pauli Gaza took Anthony into his family and Anthony started off, as a collector. His job was to meet with the family’s bookies, collect their bets, and take them to the clearinghouse. When he was twenty-one years old, he made “his bones,” or got “made,” when he killed a bookie that was skimming money. Gaza assigned Anthony to Vinnie’s crew and Anthony became Vinnie’s trusted enforcer, like his dad. Anthony was a broad shouldered man with a narrow waist and thinning silver hair, Anthony took a seat across from his boss.


The following morning Vito woke up with a splitting headache and felt sick to his stomach. He slowly got off the couch and felt a sharp stab of pain in his ass which he gently rubbed as he staggered over to his desk which still contained three lipstick stained glasses and the almost empty pitcher of Martini. The sight of the Martini made his stomach churn worse; he had to throw up and hoped that he could make it to the bathroom which was down, what looked to him like a long hallway. His face had turned a beet red and he was sweating profusely. Holding onto the wall he finally made it to the bathroom where he felled on his knees and hugged the toilet bowl as he violently threw up, twice. When he looked in the toilet bowl, he saw a white liquid mixed with red sauce, and little white strands of undigested spaghetti, that looked like maggots. He threw up again. He stayed on his knees for a good fifteen minutes and then he started to feel better. The pain in his butt had started to subside and he thought he had to have a bowel movement. He slowly got to his feet and sat on the toilet, holding his head in his hands. After nothing happened, he got up, using the face bowl for support and gingerly pulled up his boxer shorts that had small traces of blood. As he staggered into his office using the walls for support, Jimmy was still asleep. As he passed the couch, he saw the white dried up semen stain on its pillows. He smacked Jimmy upside his head. Jimmy stirred and instinctively rubbed his head, but did not wake up Vito smack him again, but harder.

JIMMY
(slowly opening his eyes)
Ouch, why you hitting me boss?

VITO
(pointing to the stain))
Motherfucka suppose to come in the bitch, not on the couch.

JIMMY
(Embarrassed)
Fuck, I’ll buy you another one.

VITO
(laughing)
What the fuck, it’s only a couch.

Jimmy walked over to the desk and poured himself a drink of the stale Martini.

VITO
(feeling sick)
How can you drink that shit?


JIMMY
(Gulping down the drink)
You got to bite the hair of the dog that bit you.

VITO
(running to the bathroom)
Aah!


BACKSTORY.

Jimmy Tortoreno was a little man, no more than five feet five or six and only weighed 150 pounds and had a bad habit of repeating himself. He had a full head of wavy jet-black hair and had a dark complexion. His eyes were dark, with no light in them at all, but they were intelligent eyes that missed nothing. Jimmy was an only child and was born and raised in Calabria, in southern Italy. His father Dominic was a fisherman and had customers in mainland Italy and Sicily. His father’s brother Alphonse had moved to Sicily in the late 1930’s and was a “Picciotto,” for one of the many Mafia families. When Benito Mussolini came to power, he waged an all out war against the Mafia, imprisoning some and assassinating others. When Mussolini’s army arrested Alphonse, Dominick went to Palermo to find out about him. When the authorities discovered he was Alphonse brother he too was arrested, even though he had no connections with the Mafia. The authorities ordered the execution of the brothers with other suspected Mafia members. When Maria, Jimmy’s mother heard of her husband’s execution, she immediately took her son and immigrated to Chicago, the “Promised Land. Maria and Jimmy moved in with relatives on the southwest side of the city in a mainly Italian neighborhood known as “The Patch.” His mother like many of the other Italian women worked long hours in the sweatshops and factories of the garment industry. When Jimmy was fifteen he started hanging out with other Italian young men who were constantly fighting with the Irish, German and Swedish immigrants who resented their intrusion into the neighborhood. At that time, Vito Paligreno was an up and coming “Soldati,” or “Made man,” in Sammy “Pauli” Gaza Crime Family. Vito collected the money from the mob bookies and loan sharks that worked the area and turned it in to his Caporégime, or crew boss, but on the side, Vito also was extorting money from the Italian shop owners and businessmen in the area. One evening after Vito made his collections and was walking to his car, he three young Irishmen grabbed him. The men pushed Vito into a dark alley and one of them held a knife at his throat while the other two went through his pockets. Jimmy and five of his Italian friends saw what was happening and immediately hurried into the alley. During the ensuing fight Jimmy, stabbed one of the robbers in the neck, killing him, but he also was stabbed in the chest as the other two robbers hurried out the alley. An ambulance took Jimmy to Cook County Hospital, which had one of the finest trauma centers in the world.

INT. COOK COUNTY HOSPITAL-NIGHT

Vito hurried to the hospital’s emergency room. The smell of alcohol, antibiotics and affliction filled the room. Pale, thin and hopeless faces greeted him as he pushed pass the line waiting at the reception counter. A heavyset white man in a black rent- a- cop uniform stepped out of somewhere and blocked his way as another rent-a cop appeared from nowhere. Babies wailed and suckled: small children twisted, bounced and struggled against-weary adult arms, pulling away before being snatched back.

SECURITY GUARD
Can I help you, sir?

VITO
I’m here to see about the young guy they just brought in I’m his brother” Vito lied.

SECURITY GUARD
He’s being worked on, have a seat and I’ll notify the doctor.

Vito sat down next to a young black woman holding a baby in one arm as two other children held on to her skirt. The baby was crying and smelled as if he had soiled his diaper another child had snot running out his nose Vito got up and stood against the wall. In a few moments the heavyset security officer led Vito down a long white corridor tacked with safety and nutritional posters, county health bulletin, and exhortations to nurture vaccinations and abstain from drugs and alcohol. The officer held open the door to an office with institutional beige walls relieved by bracket bookshelves filled with books and journals.

INT: DOCTOR’S OFFICE-NIGHT

The desk was standard hospital-issue phony walnut and chrome. Seated behind the desk, wearing a long white coat over a blue and white dress was an Asian woman with dark hair and eye, writing on a patient chart.

SECURITY GUARD
This is Mr. Tortorino’s, brother, DOCTOR AMAN.

VITO
How is he?

DOCTOR
Your brother’s lungs had been punctured and there is scarring on his heart. Right now he is being prepped for surgery, leave a number and I will call you after the surgery.

Vito did as instructed and went back to the Patch but Vito was a regular visitor to the hospital and instructed the doctors and nurses to give Jimmy the best of care and submit the bills to him. While Jimmy was recovering, Vito moved his mother out from her relative’s apartment and he purchased a house for her and her son. After three surgeries and two months Jimmy was released from the hospital and Vito hired him as a member of his crew. Over the years, Jimmy became Vito’s most trusted and loyal employee and eventually became his under boss. Jimmy was level headed and smart where Vito was emotional and often would act without thinking but before he made any important decision, he discussed it with Jimmy. Jimmy had an analytical mind and weighted the pros and cons of all of Vito decisions, on more than one occasion; Jimmy had saved Vito from making mistakes. Vito called a meeting of his crew at a motel he owned in Riverdale, Illinois.

INT. RIVERDALE MOTEL ROOM 3K- EVENING

The men sat around a large table that contained expensive Guippa and Chianti wines and an assortment of fine foods; whole lobsters, fried and boiled shrimp, spicy meatballs, pasta, and homemade breads. Captain Turnbo with his broken nose, and