one year passes...
one year passes...
Picking up the story six years on...
Charlie: "Joey! But I thought you were... "
Joey: "...yeah, you and a lot of other mugs, but the whole thing was a set up, Charlie... there were no feds at Delancy's that night, it ain't that easy to rub out Kid Lombardi, especially not if you're a stinkin' copper! See, I needed to lay low for a while, let the heat die down and see what might... transpire... if the Kid was no longer around."
Charlie: "Why you I oughta!"
Joey: "Now settle down there Charlie boy, careful you don't give yerself a heart attack, we wouldn't want for you to end up in the city morgue. Dead."
Charlie: "But Johnny told me, he said ..."
Joey: "Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, I had you figured for being smarter than that...."
Charlie: "Johnny... (blankly) was in on it from the start...(angrily) why that lousy... and Shorty?"
Joey: "Well you know Shorty, always runnin' off at the mout'... but then you fixed him good, didn't you, Charlie? No more singin' like a boyd for old Shorty..."
Charlie: "...now look, I had nuttin' to do wit' that!"
Joey: "Sure Charlie, sure."
Charlie: "Say just wait a minute there, whaddabout the funeral? The whole of the neighbourhood was there and if Kid Lombardi wasn't layin' in that casket just who was?
Joey: "Oh, some stiff fished outta the East River."
Charlie: "And Mrs Lombardi? Could you do that to your own muddah?!?!?"
* voice from behind Charlie*
Little Old Lady: "Oh don't worry about me, Charles, this whooooole thing... *removes wig*... was my idea."
Charlie: "Father Flotsky!"
Meanwhile at the script meeting:
Director: "Right. I got a few problems with this goddamned script. First of all there was an open casket at Joey's funeral, how in holy hell do we explain that? I mean if the whole of the neighbourhood was there surely someone would have noticed it was just some random bum lying in the coffin?"
Screenwriter #1: "Ah, who said it was just some random bum?"
Director: "OK...right. Not some random bum. I'm liking it. I'm liking it. I can see where you're going there... I think?"
Screenwriter #2: "Don't worry, CJ , we can work something up for you tonight, have it in your trailer by tomorrow morning."
Director: "OK, I'll let that ride. Next, what's happened to Johnny? I liked that guy!"
Screenwriter #2: "Uhhhhhhhh. Can you field this one, Myron?"
Screenwriter #3: "Yah, the thing is, CJ, Johnny is scheduled to make a surprise entrance later in the..."
Director: "... another surprise entrance? Goddamn it, we've already had the Kid springing back from the grave, not to mention Father Flotsky, who's next, that little schmuck, Shorty? And while we're on the subject of Father Flotsky, didn't he used to be Mayor Flotsky?"
Screenwriter #4: "But CJ, he was Father Flotsky at the start of the script.... uh, wasn't he?"
Director: "He may well have been but sure as eggs is eggs he was goddamned Mayor Flotsky when he was shot at the goddamned Kitty Cat Club! Jesus H. Christ, this script has more holes in it than Mayor stroke Father Flotsky!"
Screenwriter #1: "I think I've got it: 'Father Flotsky, a simple neighbourhood priest who, thanks to his selfless work with kids growing up in the slums of the Lower Eastside, rose to become Mayor?'"
Director: "He had a wife and kids, Nussbaum, explain to me that one!"
Screenwriter #2: "Twin brother?"
Director: "No!"
Screenwriter #3: "Twin sister!"
Director: "You're fired!"
two months pass...
three months pass...
two years pass...
nine months pass...