CLIFFORD WORLEY                DENNIS HOPPER
VINCENZO COCCOTTI            CHRISTOPHER WALKEN
 
 

EXT. TRAILER - DAY

A lower-middle-class trailer park named Astro World, which has a neon sign in front of it in the shape of a planet.

A big, white Chevy Nova pulls into the park. It parks by a trailer that's slightly less kept up than the others. Cliff gets out of the Chevy. He's drinking out of a fast-food soda cup as he opens the door to his trailer.
 

INT. TRAILER - DAY

He steps inside the doorway and then, before he knows it, a gun is pressed to his temple and a big hand grabs his shoulder.

                                        GUN CARRIER (DARIO)
        Welcome home, alchy. We're havin' a party.

Cliff is roughly shoved into his living room. Waiting for him are four men, standing: VIRGIL, FRANKIE (young Wise-guy) LENNY (an old Wise-guy), and Tooth-pick Vic (a fireplug pitbull type).

Sitting in Cliff's recliner is VINCENZO COCCOTTI, the Frank Nitti to Detroid mob leader Blue Lou Boyle.

Cliff is knocked to his knees. He looks up and sees the sitting Coccotti. Dario and Lenny pick him up and roughly drop him in a chair.

                                        COCCOTTI
                        (to Frankie)
        Tell Tooth-pick Vic to go outside and do you-know-what.

In Italian Frankie tells Tooth-pick Vic what Coccotti said. He nods and exits.

Cliff's chair is moved closer to Coccotti's. Dario stands on one side of Cliff. Frankie and Lenny ransack the trailer. Virgil has a bottle of Chivas Regal in his hand, but he has yet to touch a drop.

                                        COCCOTTI
        Do you know who I am, Mr. Worley?

                                        CLIFF
        I give up. Who are you?

                                        COCCOTTI
        I'm the Anti-Christ. You get me in a vendetta kind of mood, you will tell
        the angels in heaven that you had never seen pure evil so singularly
        personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you. My name is
        Vincenzo Coccotti. I work as a counsel for Mr. Blue Lou Boyle, the man your
        son stole from. I hear you were once a cop so I assume you've heard od us
        before. Am I correct?

                                        CLIFF
        I've heard of Blue Lou Boyle.

                                        COCCOTTI
        I'm glad. Hopefully that will clear up the how-full-of-shit-I-am question
        you've been asking yourself. Now, we're gonna have a little Q and A, and,
        at the risk of sounding redundant, please make your answers genuine.
                        (taking out a pack of Chesterfields)
        Want a Chesterfield?

                                        CLIFF
        No.

                                        COCCOTTI
                        (as he lights up)
        I have a son of my own. About you boy's age. I can imagine how painful this
        must be for you. But Clarence and that bitch-whore girlfriend of his
        brought this all on themselves. And I implore you not to go down the road
        with 'em. You can always take comfort in the fact that you never had a
        choice.

                                        CLIFF
        Look, I'd help ya if I could, but I haven't seen Clarence -

Before Cliff can finish his sentence, Coccotti slams him hard in the nose with his fist.

                                        COCCOTTI
        Smarts, don't it? Gettin' slammed in the nose fucks you all up. You got
        that pain shootin' through your brain. Your eyes fill up with water. It
        ain't any kind of fun. But what I have to offer you. That's as good as it's
        ever gonna get, and it won't ever get that good again. We talked to your
        neighbors. They saw a Mustang, a red Mustang, Clarence's red Mustang,
        parked in front of your trailer yesterday. Mr. Worley, have you seen your
        son?

Cliff's defeated.

                                        CLIFF
        I've seen him.

                                        COCCOTTI
        Now I can't be sure of how much of what he told you. So in the chance
        you're in the dark about some of this, let me shed some light. That whore
        your boy hangs around with, her pimp is an associate of mine, and I don't
        just mean pimpin', in other affairs he works for me in a courier capacity.
        Well, apparently, that dirty little whore found out when we're gonna do
        some business, 'cause your son, the cowboy and his flame, came in the room
        blastin' and didn't stop till they were pretty sure everybody was dead.

                                        CLIFF
        What are you talkin' about?

                                        COCCOTTI
        I'm talkin' about a massacre. They snatched my narcotics and hightailed it
        outta there. Wouldda gotten away with it, but your son, fuckhead that he
        is, left his driver's license in a dead guy's hand. A whore hiding in the
        commode filled in all the blanks.

                                        CLIFF
        I don't believe you.

                                        COCCOTTI
        That's of minor importance. But what's of major fuckin' importance is that
        I believe you. Where did they go?

                                        CLIFF
        On their honeymoon.

                                        COCCOTTI
        I'm gettin' angry askin' the same question a second time. Where did they
        go?

                                        CLIFF
        They didn't tell me.

Coccotti looks at him.

                                        CLIFF
        Now, wait a minute and listen. I haven't seen Clarence in three years.
        Yesterday he shows up here with a girl, sayin' he got married. He told me
        he needed some quick cash for a honeymoon, so he asked if he could borrow
        five hundred dollars. I wanted to help him out so I wrote out a check. We
        went to breakfast and that's the last I saw of him. So help me God. They
        never thought to tell me where they were goin'. And I never thought to ask.

Coccotti looks at him for a long moment. He then gives Virgil a look. Virgil, quick as greased lightning, grabs Cliff's hand and turns it palm up. He then whips out a butterfly knife and slices Cliff's palm open and pours Chivas Regal on the wound. Cliff screams.

Coccotti puffs on a Chesterfield.

Tooth-pic Vic returns to the trailer, and reports in Italian that there's nothing in the car.

Virgil walks into the kitchen and gets a dishtowel. Cliff holds his bleeding palm in agony. Virgil hands him the dishtowel. Cliff uses it to wrap up his hand.

                                        COCCOTTI
        Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I'm a Sicilian. And my
        old man was the world heavyweight champion of Sicilian liars. And from
        growin' up with him I learned the pantomime. Now there are seventeen
        different things a guy can do when he lies to give him away. A guy has
        seventeen pantomimes. A woman's got twenty, but a guy's got seventeen. And
        if you know 'em like ya know your own face, they beat lie detectors to
        hell. What we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don't wanna
        show me nothin'. But you're tellin' me everything. Now I know you know
        where they are. So tell me, before I do some damage you won't walk away
        from.

The awful pain in Cliff's hand is being replaced by the awful pain in his heart. He looks deep into Coccotti's eyes.

                                        CLIFF
        Could I have one of those Chesterfields now?

                                        COCCOTTI
        Sure.

Coccotti leans over and hands him a smoke.

                                        CLIFF
        Got a match?

Cliff reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter.

                                        CLIFF
        Oh, don't bother. I got one.
                        (he lights the cigarette)
        So you're a Sicilian, huh?

                                        COCCOTTI
                        (intensly)
        Uh-huh.

                                        CLIFF
        You know I read a lot. Especially things that have to do with history. I
        find that shit fascinating. In fact, I don't know if you know this or not,
        Sicilians were spawned by niggers.

All the men stop what they were doing and look at Cliff, except for Tooth-pic Vic who doesn't speak English and so isn't insulted. Coccotti can't believe what he's hearing.

                                        COCCOTTI
        Come again?

                                        CLIFF
        It's a fact. Sicilians have nigger blood pumpin' through their hearts. If
        you don't believe me, look it up. You see, hundreds and hundreds of years
        ago the Moors conquered Sicily. And Moors are niggers. Way back then,
        Sicilians were like the wops in northern Italy. Blond hair, blue eyes. But,
        once the Moors moved in there, they changed the whole country. They did so
        much fuckin' with the Sicilian women, they changed the blood-line for ever,
        from blond hair and blue eyes to black hair and dark skin. I find it
        absolutely amazing to think that to this day, hundreds of years later,
        Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. I'm just quotin' history. It's a
        fact. It's written. Your ancestors were niggers. Your great, great, great,
        great, great-grandmother was fucked by a nigger, and had a half-nigger kid.
        That is a fact. Now tell me, am I lyin'?

Coccotti looks at him for a moment then jumps up, whips out an automatic, grabs hold of Cliff's hair, puts the barrel to his temple, and pumps three bullets through Cliff's head.

He pushes the body violently aside. Coccotti pauses. Unable to express his feelings and frustrated by the blood in his hands, he simply drops his weapon, and turns to his men.

                                        COCCOTTI
        I haven't killed anybody since 1974. Goddamn his soul to burn for eternity
        in fuckin' hell for makin' me spill blood on my hands! Go to this
        comedian's son's apartment and come back with somethin' that tells me where
        that asshole went so I can wipe this egg off of my face and fix this
        fucked-up family for good.

Tooth-pick Vic taps Frankie's shoulder and, in Italianm asks him what that was all about.

Lenny, who has been going through Cliff's refridgerator, has found a beer. When he closes the refridgerator door he finds a note held on by a ceramic banana magnet that says: "Clarence in L.A.: Dick Ritchie (number and address)".

                                        LENNY
        Boss, get ready to get happy.