The Last Words of Dutch Schultz

This is not just a film about Dutch Schultz. It is a film about Dutch Schultz and the sets in which he lived and operated. Success in any line is a question of being on set. The director looks around the set and says, “I need you and you and you, but you don’t belong on this set.” Albert Stern, the “Teacher,” is an example of someone who only got on set by mistake when he was sought by police as the gunman who shot Schultz. There is no reason to believe he ever shot anybody but himself. The sets are the medium in which the characters live that inexorably mold their actions. When a character is no longer on set, he is finished.

The enigmatic and disquieting character of Albert Stern, the “Teacher,” exercises a secret influence. Why was he identified and sought as the killer of Dutch Schultz? Just who or what was the “Teacher”? These questions remain at the film’s end, which leaves the impression that he is Dutch’s rejected alter ego.

There are only two female characters in the film: Kiki Roberts, who puts the finger on Legs Diamond, and Dutch’s wife, who may have put the finger on Dutch. In addition to the above, there are a number of anonymous gunmen, runners, enforcers, Negro and white.

All the characters take more than one part. Examples: The girl in the telephone exchange who traces Vincent Coll’s call to a drugstore phone booth on 23rd Street is seen to be Kiki Roberts; the judge who sentences Dutch to a reformatory and later upbraids the jury for acquitting Schultz on income tax charges is Lepke Buchalter; the doctor who delivers Schultz is Albert Stern, who later appears as his teacher in Public School 12. The characters also play in the period film sets, in 1920s gangster films, in 1930s G-men and bankbandit sagas, and appear in the background shots. Vincent Coll is a rowdy college boy in a raccoon coat; Aba Daba, a frantic broker in the 1929 crash; Charlie Workman, a demonstrator in a 1930 strike; Legs Diamond, a smooth playboy, et cetera. Or the characters may appear as anonymous members of a street crowd or background figures in a restaurant or nightclub.

Special features of this film:

1. The sets are presented first, and the sets draw the character. This is done by preparing film loops for the three periods covered by the film: 1902 to 1919, the 1920s, the 1930s. The film loops consist of typical films of the period (these are for the most part made-up) , typical characters and scenes ot the period, real or imaginary. The loop turns, wheels interlock, and the character is drawn on set.

2. All the characters play more than one part. The main characters are Dutch Schultz and his mob, joe Noe, Bo and George Weinberg, Lulu Rosencrantz, Abe Landau, Otto “Aba Daba” Berman, Martin Krompier, Joey Rao, Larry Carney, Dutch’s mouthpiece, Dixie Davis, Jules Martin, summarily removed from set in an argument with the Dutchman.

Defectors from Dutch’s mob, characters in opposition to him are Peter and Vincent Coll, Arthur Palumbo, Charlie “Fats" McCarthy, Legs Diamond, the fighting District Attorney. Forces in opposition to him are the growing power of the federal government in the thirties, the rise of the Gmen, and the Treasury Department enforcement of income tax laws. The growing power of the Syndicate as represented by Lepke “The Judge” Buchalter, Lucky Luciano, and Charlie Workman, the Syndicate killer. Neutral characters with important roles are Otto Gass, Dutch’s first contact with the beer business, Owney Madden, through whom he was able to trace and eliminate Vincent Coll.

These appearances are brief, mere glimpses. The audience is not quite sure they have seen the same character in a different role.

3. Line plot of the film can be drawn as a graph: Dutch’s rise to power in the 1920s as he expands from one speakeasy to a beer empire. Setback, graph down, 1931. The coll brothers start rival organization and launch a reckless attack on the Dutchman. Schultz goes into hiding. Coll eliminated. Dutch’s graph soars to the peak ot his power as he moves into the numbers and labor rackets. Setback, graph down. He is indicted for income tax evasion. The underworld thinks he is through. Dutch acquitted and stages comeback. Briefly his graph soars again like a rocket/Finish.

4. The film is entirely in black and white except for scenes involving bloodshed and death. It is a black-and-white world shot through with explosions of blood.

5. The film turns on the last words of Dutch Schultz. Dutch was shot at 10:20 p.m., October 23, 1935. He died twenty hours later. A police stenographer at his bedside took down everything Dutch said, about 1200 words. The last words of Dutch Schultz constitute a remarkable document, inspired delirium revealing the Dutchman as a potential artist. Rarely has the feeling of death been more vividly communicated. The secrets of life and death hover over these words.

Opening scene of the film shows a bored, gumchewing police stenographer with pen and clipboard. We do not see Schultz on the bed. We hear him say,

Mother is the best bet oh mama mama mama. The stenographer writes this down and says, Who shot you?

Cut to room above the livery stable and saloon where Dutch was born Arthur Flegenheimer, August 6, 1902. Cry of a newborn baby. The doctor, who is Albert Stern, asks the father where he can wash his hands.

Right in here, doctor.

Blood on the doctor’s hands in color. We glimpse his face in the washroom mirror, which turns into the face of Dutch Schultz washing his hands in the washroom of the Palace Chop House. The door opens behind Schultz.

Scene cuts back to the hospital and the police stenographer. Dutch says:

I was in the toilet, and when I reached thethe boy came at me.

Stenographer writes this down and says, Who shot you?

Scene cuts back to the toilet of the Palace Chop House. One-frame flash of Albert Stern in the door with a gun in his hand. He fires. A splash of red on Dutch’s back. He grabs his back and twists around looking at the blood. Fusillade of shots from the back room where Charlie Workman is doing his job. Next scene shows the shambles in the back room of the Palace Chop House littered with broken glass, bloody account sheets, adding machine. The three bodyguards groaning on the floor. Abe Landau pushes himself up and staggers out in pursuit of the gunman, pulling himself along the bar. He makes the door just as a black car pulls away. He fires one shot and collapses in the gutter dripping color. Camera pans to the front of the Palace Chop House and clicks to Flegenheimer’s Saloon. The nice young doctor gets in his horse-drawn buggy and drives away.

Set 1. Period from 1902 to 1919

Dutch was born in the Bronx. His father ran a livery stable and saloon. Dutch grew up in a world of horse-drawn beer trucks, saloons, free lunch, bartenders with striped shirts and sleeve garters, wind-up victrolas, pool halls, brass knocks, pawnshops. Morphine, heroin, and cocaine were sold across the counter in any drugstore. This set is briefly presented in stylized musical shots. “Ace in the Hole” for the pool-hall loafers, cardsharps, burglars, con men, whores, and drug addicts. “Home Sweet Home" for nostalgia shots of wind-up victrolas, free lunch, the old lamplighter, drugstores with jars in the window, grandmother buying her tincture ol opium, “the large family size please,” wooden Indian in front of a cigar store. Inside a barbershop a flash of Bo Weinberg with a leech on his black eye. There follows a series of family pictures ol Dutch as a babv and young boy. Series ends with a bleak shot of Public School 12. The scarred tables, the halls and washrooms with dirty pictures on the walls. The Teacher is calling the roll.

Arthur Flegenheimer, Arthur Flegenheimer, Arthur Flegenheimer. He writes down absent. We see Dutch on a corner with the Bergen Street gang, Dutch in a pool hall, Dutch and his gang snatching packages from a delivery wagon, Dutch stealing a suitcase in Grand Central, Dutch burglarizing an apartment. Next scene is a courtroom.

Arthur Flegenheimer. Dutch stands in front of the judge. The judge’s face is in shadow. Dutch stands in a ray of sunlight through the dusty window. The judge is Lepke Buchalter. He sentences Dutch to a year in Blackwell’s Island.

Scenes on the Island. Every morning the turnkey comes around with a shoe box full of heroin decks and sells them to the prisoners. Dutch’s cell mate is an addict.

You know what this stuff is kid? It’s time. Three hundred more shots and I walk out of here. Shoot your way to freedom kid. Dutch isn’t having any. He turns away in disgust as the man ties up.

At night the homosexual prisoners parade up and down the corridors dressed as famous actresses of the period. For a dollar the guard lets one into a cell.

There are cries of I want Alary Pickford etc. Among the drag queens we see Vincent Coll let into a cell where Owney Madden waits. Albert Stern is a wallflower dressed as Sarah Bernhardt. Kiki Roberts and Mrs. Schultz are also represented.

Dutch says,

What kind of a creep joint is this? All fags and smeckers.

But his eyes narrow at sight of Mrs. Schultz.

His time is up. The guard opens the door and lets Dutch out into the 1920s.

Set 2. The 1920s

Dutch stands in from of the prison and takes a deep breath of the 1920s. To the Flying Dutchman Overture, shots from 1920s gangster movies, speakeasies, beer trucks, gangster funerals, people mowed down from cars, shot in telephone booths and florist shops. The gangster films are intercut with wild parties, rowdy college boys in raccoon coats, quiet country clubs and golf courses from Fitzgerald. These shots are all in black and white, with no color at any time. The main characters take parts in this film medley.

Scene in pool hall as Dutch enters. Joe Noe says: Well, if it isn’t the Flying Dutchman.

Dutch sits down to a beer. He is calm and superior, already assuming a position of leadership. Joe Noe asks what he plans to do.

Get a job for now. Not going back there.

Joe Noe and Dutch get a job working on Otto Gass’s moving van. The moving van is converted to a beer truck when Otto Gass goes into the beer business. Dutch and Joe start carrying guns. They decide to go into business for themselves, and Dutch opens his first speakeasy at 513 Brook Avenue. Dutch buys three rickety beer trucks and assembles a nucleus of gunmen: Bo and George Weinberg, Peter and Vincent Coll. We see that he has a talent for finding the right man at the right time. He knows who is on set and who is not. In these early scenes another aspect of Dutch’s character becomes apparent. He is always trying to cut percentages and checking his books. He underpays his guns and drivers and cuts his whiskey. In other respects he is good-natured and genial. As Dixie Davis said about the Dutchman,

You cam insult Arthur’s girl, spit in his face, push him around and he’ll laugh. But don’t steal a dollar from his accounts. If you do you’re dead.

Dutch expands rapidly, opening more speakeasies, acquiring more guns and trucks. A number of the scenes from the 1920s film medley are repeated to show Dutch’s expansion from one speakeasy and three trucks to a fleet of trucks and seventeen beer drops within a year from 1928 to 1929. The Dutchman is on the way up. He clashes with the guns of Jack “Legs” Diamond, and his old friend Joe Noe is shot down on 54th Street. Legend has it that Dutch Schultz witnessed the killing from a window and picked off one of the gunmen. This legend is seen to be a creation of the Dutchman. He is a creator of legends.

The 1929 crash is shown in the film. In this scene Aba Daba is a frantic broker who makes a cleanup selling short. There is a brief sequence of breadlines and strikes. Charlie Workman appears as a striker in one of these demonstrations. The 1920s scenes are full of sunlight. As we move into the thirties, this light slowly gives way to the darkness of underexposed film. The transition is gradual, quite unlike the sudden breakthrough into the 1920s. We are now moving into Set 3.

Set 3. The 1930s

Dutch is not immediately affected. He is now in a position to take care of his old enemy, Legs Diamond.

Diamond has been acquitted on a kidnapping charge in Syracuse, New York. He celebrates at a drunken party and calls his girlfriend, Kiki Roberts. Kiki puts down the phone and makes another call. Diamond meets Kiki in a rooming house on Dove Street. There is a wild sex scene. Next scene shows Diamond asleep in the crumpled bed, his face smeared with lipstick. A key turns in the lock. Diamond shakes his head and sits up.

Kiki? Huh? Who is it?

Bullets explode across his chest, blood and lipstick in color.

At this point the film explodes in an orgy ol violence. The Coll brothers, together with Arthur Palumbo and the cop killer Charles “Fats McCarthy, defect from Dutch’s mob and start a rival organization. They are movie gangsters gone berserk. They burst into rooms where peaceful mobsters are gathered for a quiet game of Monopoly and shoot everyone in sight. Attempting to machine-gun Joey Rao, one of Schultz’s policy bosses, they miss Rao and kill five children in the street. Mad Dog Coll strikes again and again. The red color of blood flashes through the darkening film like summer lightning. Coll screams for “that yellow rat Schultz to come out in the open and fight.”

Who does he think he is, Wyatt Earp or somebody? Schultz mutters,

What a corn ball.

The Dutchman goes into hiding. He tries to get help from the midtown mobs, but they tell him: He’s your boy, Dutch.

Dutch puts down the phone and turns to his loyal guns:

Get Coll off my back!

He yells:

Get the Mick off my back!

He keeps moving, Dutch. He’s hard to find.

At this very moment Coll and his gang are wrecking one of Schultz’s garages on College Avenue, smashing slot machines and setting beer trucks on fire. Dutch receives word of this latest outrage. He pours a drink.

What are we going to do, Dutch?

Shut up, I’m cogniting.

Dutch’s face clears. He has an inspiration.

Owney Madden is a queer. Used to be sweet on Coll.

Dutch pours himself a drink and continues philosophically.

When a queer gets the hots he don’t think about what he’s getting himself into. Coll will bleed Owney for the last nickel.

Dutch puts down the empty glass and turns to face his guns.

You and you follow Owney. Don’t let him out of your sight. Stick zuith Owney until you find that creep. You and you go out and find his potato-eating brother.

The two guns delegated to find Peter Coll are disguised as two old ladies in a stolen electric. Peter Coll comes out of an apartment. He stands in the doorway looking up and down the street. He starts walking.

Why, there’s our young man now, says one of the guns. The electric stops beside Peter Coll.

Young man, could you direct me to College Avenue?

Peter Coll turns around.

Five blocks up and turn to your right, he says surlily.

Oh, thank you.

A fusillade of machine-gun bullets hits him like a fire hose. The guns drive serenely away.

The guns delegated to take care of Vincent Coll have set up headquarters in a garage by Owney’s club. They have tapped Owney’s phone. The technician in charge of this operation is a thin, taciturn man with steel-rimmed spectacles, who suffers from dyspepsia. The guns have also contacted a girl in the telephone exchange who will trace calls. This girl is a retake of Kiki Roberts. Scene shows the guns and the technician in Lhe garage. Dutch calls.

Yeah, he called twice but he rings off before we could trace it .. .

Dutch gives directions. The guns settle down to wait. The technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hand. A light flashes on indicating that someone has called Owney.

Cut to Owney’s office. He picks up the phone.

Oh, hello Vincent, he says without enthusiasm.

The scene cuts back to the garage. The technician puts on his headphones. He listens. lie raises a finger.

This is it. Joe get going.

One of the gunmen slips out. He opens the door of Owney’s office with a skeleton key. He stands behind Owney, gun drawn.

Keep talking, Owney. Stall him.

Owney is willing, He wants the Mick off his back too.

The tracing of the call and the conversation between Coll and Owney are presented in a series of quick cuts between the garage and Owney’s office.

Be reasonable Vincent (Coll talking)—I tell you I just don’t have it, Vincent.

Cut to garage. The technician is busy at his improvised switchboard. Cut to the telephone exchange. Kiki Roberts in front of a switchboard chewing gum. She gets the technician’s call. She is plugging in switches.

Business is falling off, and I took a beating on my income tax.

(Coll talking)

The camera zooms out along telephone wires to 23rd Street and 10th Avenue. The wire leads into a drugstore phone booth. We see Coll at the phone.

Cut back to the garage. The technician puts down his headphones.

Drugstore phone booth. 23rd Street and 10th Avenue.

The gunmen scramble into a car. The technician opens the door, and the car leaps out.

Cut back to Owney’s office.

Well, l might be able to raise ten thousand, Vincent. It would mean selling shares at a loss— (Coll talking)

The car is on its way.

Cut back to Owney’s office.

Well, if you could meet me tomorrow afternoon. (Coll talking) No, not here. (Coll talking) No, that’s no good either. (Coll talking) Look, suppose I come along to your place.

The car stops in front of the drugstore. One man stays at the wheel. Another at the door. The third walks in with a submachine gun. He gestures to the druggist.

On the floor, pop.

He walks over to the phone booth and cuts loose.

Next scene shows cops in the drugstore. One of them is going through Coil’s pockets. He passes up a driver’s license. A cop reads out:

Name: Vincent Coll, Age: 23, Address: 86 College Aven ue.

Cut to Harlem. The heavy palpable darkness of underexposed film in the streets. On a corner a Negro reads about Coil’s death. “Vincent Coll, 23.”

23. Boy that’s my number.

He goes off to put a bet on number 23.

The Numbers: Dreams of numbers, numbers floating in the air, people writing down the license numbers of cars, cab numbers, police badge and porter numbers, numbers in movies, addresses and telephone numbers, a shifting sea of numbers in the Harlem streets as the Dutchman moves in. He ousts Caspar Holstein and goes in with the Ison brothers. Everything is clicking into place. Dutch now has a private army of more than a hundred expert guns, Negro and white. These guns are not like the flamboyant guns of the 1920s. It is a phantom army moving in the darkness of underexposed film, tracing telephone calls, slipping through doors with skeleton keys on their errands of death.

Come in with the Dutchman or else.

The Dutchman expands into the labor rackets. With Martin Krompier he forms the Bus Boys and Waiters Union to shake down restaurant and nightclub proprietors in the midtown area.

Cut to Chez Robert, an exclusive restaurant for international gourmets. It is 11 A.M. Robert, an immense glacial man, is having a scotch on the rocks at the bar. Two men walk in.

You Mr. Roberts?

I am (he replies stonily).

Of course you are. (These two characters cut in on each other one saying one sentence, one the next.)

You wish?

Nice place here, Mr. Roberts.

Want a keep it that way don’t yon?

Robert glares in silence.

You should unionize, Mr. Roberts.

Gives you a lot of protection.

Protection against JO hat?

Wrong kinda people walk in maybe.

Cockroaches in the soup.

Cockroaches in the soup Chez Robert? (Mr. Robert bristles.)

Disgrun tied cmployee.

Stink bombs in the john.

Acid in the cloakroom.

Get out, or I’ll call the police.

Sure, Mr. Roberts.

It’s your hash house.

An revoir, monsieur.

Few more calls to make.

Dinner Chez Robert. Very quiet, very expensive, very exclusive. The guests talk in low voices. Robert stalks about nodding coolly to his guests. Few of them rate a smile. Dutch Schultz is there as a Midwest industrialist with his wife and daughter. He receives the briefest of nods. Legs Diamond is a smooth playboy millionaire beautifully dressed, with Kiki Roberts as a famous movie star.

Good evening, Mr. Poindexter.

Robert favors them with a two-star smile.

A frail old gentleman with a mustache, napkin tucked into his chin, gets a warm smile and a handshake. He is a Michelin inspector. The guests look at him with awe. Rut there is a wrong note. A table of people who talk in loud voices and say things like,

Where is the salt?

Robert hisses to his heaclwaiter:

Who are these people? How did they get in?

I don’t know, sir. I looked around and there they were.

At this point a man at the table looks up and catches Robert’s glare.

Hey, boy (he shouts), bring me some ketchup. There is a moment of stunned silence. T hen grunting, squealing, a herd of famished hogs rush into the dining room, overturning tables, slopping the haute cuisine from the floor.

Similar scenes are occurring throughout the midtown area.

The Silver Cord, a nightclub featuring exclusiveness, where the famous silver rope is ceremonially unhooked by the proprietor to admit a favored client, is invaded by a horde of panhandlers, clutching at the guests with filthy fingers, drinking their drinks, snatching food from the tables.

Chez Victor, a flashy overexpensive spot:

Voila Le Supreme of Guinea Hen bonne chef. The waiter lifts a silver cover to reveal the bloated corpse of a huge sewer rat.

Truck stops in front of The 400, and fifty screaming faggots leap out. They storm past the doorman and fill The 400, twitching and camping.

The restaurant owners pay.

But forces are at work that will bring down the Dutchman. One factor is the growing power of the Syndicate. The Syndicate now holds board meeting to decide questions of policy and assignment of territories. The emphasis is on organization and peacefid settlement of difficulties by negotiation. Murder is bad press. The Dutchman and his army of guns are out of date.

Another factor is the growing power of the federal government. Income tax evasion is now serious. The shadow of the T-man falls across books of America. Shots of worried businessmen, farmers, gamblers, gangsters, restaurant owners. The shots showing the growing influence of the Syndicate and the Treasury Department are alternately intercut.

At the height of his power, Dutch is arrested for income tax evasion. He goes into hiding. In hiding he continues to direct his enterprises. His obsession to cut the payoff becomes a mania. He finds Aba Daba the mathematical genius, who gets him higher odds on the numbers by a last-minute bet at the track which alters the pari-mutuel total. The numbers that have been heavily played are relayed to Aba Daba at the track. He calculates exactly how much to bet just before the windows close to keep these heavily played numbers from coming up. There is a scene showing an electronic model of his computer brain in operation. Dutch cuts the take of his runners from 33 to 25 percent. Two thousand runners go on strike and hire a hall. This scene is a caricature of 1930s leftist meetings, to the tune of “Joe Hill" and “You Can’t Scare Me I’m Sticking to the Union.” The strikers win. Dutch is muttering away in hiding like an embittered capitalist. He decides to surrender and stand trial.

The underworld thinks Dutch is through.

The Dutchman is going away. He won’t be back. Dutch hires Dixie Davis as his mouthpiece, who gets the case transferred to Malone, a small town in upstate New York. Dutch consults a public relations firm.

Well, Mr. Flegenheimer, we need a peg to hang on. Something that will take hold. Something that people will associate with your name . . . Howabout, this? “Arthur Flegenheimer, the man zuho collects rare books.”

Dutch starts buying rare books ancl donating them to tite local library. He cultivates his public image as “the man who collects rare books.” He entertains, makes donations to charity, and mixes with the townspeople. His task is made easier by the fact that farmers are themselves extremely reluctant to pay income tax. The strain of public benevolence is telling on the Dutchman. In the Old Harmony Hotel, Cohoes, New York. He has summoned Jules Martin lor an accounting in the midtown unions take. Dutch is drinking and ugly. He starts a loudmouthed argument with Jules Martin. They are standing, their faces shoved together.

What do you mean you haven’t been clipping me? (says Dutch) Look, I don’t owe you a nickel (says Jules Martin)

Dixie Davis and Martin Krompier witness this scene, bored and yawning. It looks like one of those arguments that goes on and on and never gets any place.

Martin opens his mouth to say something else. Suddenly the Dutchman hitches up his vest, pulls out a pistol from an inside belt holster.

Shut up, you gotta big mouth.

He puts the gun right in Martin’s mouth and pulls the trigger. Martin falls to the floor moaning and screaming. Davis and Krompier are aghast. They go into the next room where Lulu Rosenkrantz, Dutch’s bodyguard, is sitting.

Dutch is crazy (says Krompier) . He just shot a man for nothing.

Schultz comes out, putting away his pistol.

Give me a drink, Lulu.

He takes a drink and turns to Dixie.

You must hate me for this.

To do a thing like that right in front of me,

Dixie moans. Jules Martin is still moaning and screaming in the next room. Dixie starts to leave. He opens the door. A Negro porter walks by whistling “Home Sweet Home,” down the empty corridor.

Dutch is acquitted. He makes a comeback. Several disloyal guns are executed. He is back in the numbers, Aba Daba calculating away, money rolling in. But an incorruptible District Attorney is looking into the Dutchman’s operation. Knowing that he will be arrested if he sets foot in New York, the Dutchman moves to Newark, New Jersey, and makes his headquarters in the Palace Chop House. He decides that this nemesis, as he calls the D.A., must be eliminated and takes it up with the Syndicate. Some board members are in favor of liquidation, others oppose it. They decide that, pending a final decision, they will stake the D.A. out and figure how to do the job if it is favored by a majority vote. The stakeout man equips himself with a child on a velocipede, to give his presence in front of the D.A.’s apartment an innocent air. The D.A. emerges with his two bodyguards. Pushing his “son" on the velocipede, the stakeout man follows. The D.A. goes to a drugstore. He goes inside and makes a phone call while the guards stand at the door. The stakeout man with his child is now in front of the drugstore.

I want an ice-cream cone, Daddy, the child says. The stakeout man looks inside. The D.A. is in the phone booth. Albert Stern is also there arguing with the druggist about a morphine prescription.

I tell you it’s a legitimate prescription, lie says weakly.

Maybe (grunts the druggist) . Just don’t be corning in here with your prescriptions every Tuesday and Thursday.

As the case man, pushing his child on a velocipede, passes the oblivious guards, he has shot a look of such keenness into the drugstore that he is there for a second, seeing and hearing what is going on. Next scene shows case man in a phone booth.

Every morning at nine A.M. he comes out with

his bodyguards. Goes to drugstore on corner of-

and-. And makes a phone call. The phone booth

is a natural.

Scene shows the plan to kill the racket-buster as it would operate. D.A. and bodyguards walk out. The man with the velocipede and the child is there; woman with a baby carriage stops and talks to him. The scene conveys familiarity, reassurance, dullness. Nothing is going to happen, nothing can happen. The D.A. takes in the scene and smiles. As he strides toward the drugstore he says:

This is a great country . . . those people back there. . . . It’s our job to see that people like that are protected.

Yes, sir,

says a bodyguard indifferently. He stifles yawn.

Behind them a moving van, J. J. Cohen Removals and Storage, has pulled to the curb. Woman, baby carriage, child, and velocipede are bundled into the van, which pulls away in the opposite direction. Inside the van the baby starts to cry and the child pipes precociously:

What I want to know is when do I get paid? The stakeout man hands him a lollipop. Empty street in the morning sunlight.

The guards take up a stand at the door. The D.A. walks in. A man with his back to the D.A. is talking to the druggist.

What you got for a cough?

He coughs.

Well, there’s Doctor Brown’s Mixture and . . . Out of the corner of his eye the man has seen the D.A. enter phone booth and close door. He reaches into his lefthand breast pocket.

Preparation I always use. Got it written down.

He pulls out an automatic with a silencer, shoots the druggist twice in the chest. The druggist coughs and falls behind the counter. The man walks over and pulls open the phone booth with one hand. With the other hand he puts four bullets in the D.A. He walks out past the guards whistling “Sunny Side of the Street.” Briefly glimpsed, the man is Charlie Workman. Since this scene is conditional, the characters do not bleed color.

Cut to meeting of the Syndicate board. Lepke the fudge shakes his head.

After all it’s a local issue. Why burn down America for the state of New York? We have to think in territorial terms.

But New York is my territory (Dutch moans), I’m being thrown to the wolves.

The greatest good of the greatest number must guide our policies. Would you go out on a limb for Cincinnati?

How did Cincinnati get in this? I say he’s gotta be hit on the head. We gotta make an example. Consider the wider implication . . . a bad press . . . an aroused public. If we knock him off even the federals will jump on the rackets. We’ll be chased out of the country. You have to take a broad general view of things. It’s just not good business.

This argument is the cincher. There is a murmur of assent from the board.

That makes sense.

Why stick our neck out?

This is 1935 not 1925.

We can ride this out.

D.A.’s come and go.

A hundred, loud-mouthed D.’A.’s would spring from his coffin.

A11 over A m erica.

Screaming for our blood.

The whole idea is unsound.

Like the Judge says, you gotta take a broad general view of things.

It’s just not good business.

The Judge turns to Dutch.

You are outvoted, Mr. Flegenheimer.

The Dutchman is on his feet.

But you can’t just scrap a story like this. It deserves to go down in history. Why it’s got everything . . . children . . . velocipedes . . . silent death.

He points to an imaginary phone booth and says, Split Split Split.

The board looks at him with cold disfavor. The Dutchman goes on.

It’s . . . it’s Americana . . . it’s beautiful . , . it’s a work of art.

We are not in the art business, Mr. Flegenheimer. You are outvoted and out of order.

The Dutchman walks to the door. With his hand on the door knob he turns to the board and shakes his head . . .

Passing tip a thing like that.

He goes out.

The Judge looks at his nails.

The Dutchman is out of date. . . . But I’ll say one last thing for him. He’s got color.

October 23, 1935. A car enters the Holland Tunnel. Piggy is at the wheel. The seat is tailor-made to accommodate his heavyset body. He takes this seat with him on any job. He is part of the car. The hulking strangler Afendy Weiss sits on the jump seat. He is the only ready-made article in this set, and he resents it. He looks sullenly at the two killers in the backseat. They are too much, he thinks. Sitting in the backseat are the two killers, Charlie “The Bug” Workman and his associate Jimmy the Shrew. Charlie Workman is a cool casual killer in his middle thirties, dressed in a tailor-made twilightblue suit. He is curly-haired, hatless. He has cold metallic gray eyes. He is relaxed, calm, disdainful. The other killer, Jimmy the Shrew, is a thin, intense young man dressed in a tight pea-green suit. His ears stick out. His ears and his whole body are trembling slightly with eagerness.

Charlie Workman glances at him.

Relax Shrew. We’ll get there.

I’m there already, says the Shrew.

A flash of their faces in color. The Workman’s cold metallic eyes, his curly hair, and pale face. The Shrew, smooth poreless red skin drawn tight over the cheekbones, lips parted from long yellow teeth the color of old ivory, his black eyes shining. The tunnel lights ring their heads with an orange halo. They are not human. They are angels of death.

Cut to the back room of the Palace Chop House. The Dutchman is sitting at a table with Lulu Rosencrantz, Abe Landau, and Otto “Aba Daba” Berman. Beer mugs on the table. Aba Daba is working an adding machine and writing figures down on ledger paper.

Gross for past seven weeks $827,253.

Net $148,369.

William Burroughs, fifty-five, has been a medical student, newspaper reporter, private detective, and exterminator, but is better known as author of Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, and other books.

The Dutchman smiles.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

This scene contrasts sharply with the inhuman glimpse of the two killers. These are ordinary mortals drinking beer and figuring the take.

Dutch stands up.

I gotta call from Nature. Right back.

He goes out.

The death car stops in front of the Palace Chop House. Mendy, the Shrew, and Workman get out. Workman looks up and down the street. Flanked by the Shrew he walks through the door. Mendy stations himself by the door. Workman turns to the bartender.

Do yourself a goodness and hit the deck, he says. The bartender disappears behind the bar. Workman, flanked by the Shrew, starts down the long bar toward the back room. He is cool, unhurried, casual. As he walks, he unbuttons Iris coat. AVe see two .38 revolvers, the grips tailor-made to fit his hands in tailor-made holsters tight against his thigh in front, one on each side. They reach the end of the bar.

Check the head, Shrew.

The Shrew slips his own tailor-made .45 automatic from a shoulder holster. His arms are pipestems, his wrists and hands smooth and hairless. He is wearing flexible pointed black shoes. He steps to the door of the washroom and opens it. Dutch is washing his hands with his back to the door. Without knowing who he is, the Shrew fires. A splash of red on Dutch’s back over the liver. At this moment the Shrew’s red face and red hands light up in color. At tire sound of the shot the three men in tire back room dive for their guns. They are still in black and white. Charlie Workman is standing in the doorway, right hand on his gun. He has not even deigned to draw yet. Like the Shrew, he is already in color. Before their guns are out, he draws and fires with cool accuracy, ripping Rosencrantz’s great paunch with slugs. Throughout this scene he is expressionless, nerveless, deadly, efficient. The Shrew is at his side now. The Shrew’s eyes light up inside like a cat’s, and his hair stands on end. His gun quivering like a dowser’s wand, every bullet finding its mark. The yellow light outlines the two killers with the halo we have already seen in Holland Tunnel. They are creatures from another world, gods of death. Three mortals lay crumpled on the floor at their feet.

Cut to Newark City Hospital. Several detectives at Dutch’s bedside.

Who shot you?

I don’t know, sir, honestly I don’t. I don’t even know who was with me. The Baron says these things. Please give me a shot.

The doctor is coming.

The doctor gives Dutch a shot of morphine, and his mind clears for a moment. He notices a paper one of the detectives is carrying and asks, Has it been in any of the other papers?

Cut to a press conference at police headquarters. Reporters are interviewing the police commissioner. You gotta line on the Dutch Schultz killers? Yes, we have. One of the killers has been definitely identified by three witnesses as Albert Stern.

And who is this Albert Stern?

Because of his spectacles and his mild appearance he is known as the Teacher. Wild Boy would be a better name. A dope fiend and gunman wanted for eight other gangland killings, lop trigger man for the Bix Six Syndicate, he is probably one of the most dangerous killers at large today.

Scene shows Albert Stern the Wild Boy holding up a pool hall. He waves a nickel-plated revolver uncertainly. His Adam’s apple bobs.

AH I want is a dollar,

he says. One of the players tosses a crumpled dollar on the table.

There’s your dollar, kid.

Stern snatches it up.

Don’t anybody move, he says wildly and backs out the door.

In his rooming house he tries to sneak up the stairs but finds his way blocked by Mrs. Murphy.

And when will you be taking care of the rent, young man?

Well, Mrs. Murphy, I hope to have it for you in fust a few days now.

I’ll give you till Monday. Pay up or get out.

In his room the Teacher takes a packet of heroin from his pocket and prepares a shot. There is enough left for two more days.

Cut back to the hospital. The doctor has given Schultz another shot of morphine. Morphine acini mistered to someone who is not an addict produces a rush of pictures in the brain as if seen from a speeding train. The pictures are dim. jerky, grainy, like old film. As Schultz lies there delirious, the pictures of Ids life rush past.

The scene featuring Dutch Schultz’s last words cannot lie presented in lull detail here since it is made up of material of the film presented in arbitrary sequences. All the flashback shots in this sequence are silent. The only sounds are the last words of Dutch Schultz, the questions of the police, and background noises of the hospital. Doctor Stern wanted in emergency.

(hun ter grain of COM.

Whistling porters in the hall, nurses and interns stroll by chatting.

Background shots catch the feel and smell of a city hospital. They are recorded on location in the Newark City Hospital.

All the flashback shots are silent phantoms that sometimes synchronize with Schultz’s last words and sometimes do not. To show how this works in operation. Dutch is twisting on the bed screaming: Sir, please slop it. Say listen the last night Flashback to fules Martin silently moaning on the floor of the Old Harmony Hotel. The police stenographer says:

Don’t holler.

The image track is all black and white progressively darker as the scene draws to a close and the heavy palpable darkness of underexposed film fdls the hospital room. Some of the shots are random background, a face on the street, a street sign, a curtain in the wind, license number of a passing car. Other scenes refer directly to important events and synchronize with Schultz’s last words:

I want harmony ... I don’t want harmony. Cut to the Old Harmony Hotel.

Oh, and then he clips me. Cut that out “we don’t owe a nickel"'. . ..Hold it. Hold it instead against him. . . . Shut up, you gotta big mouth. is synchronized to a silent retake of the argument with Jules Martin in the Old Harmony Hotel.

Let him harness himself to you, and then bother you.

Flashback to the telephone conversation between Owney and Vincent Coll.

Look out, it can be traced.

Flash to the call traced to the phone booth on 23rd Street and the machine-gunning of Vincent Coll.

Dutch Schultz’s meeting with Frances Schultz is presented in silent pantomime. She is seen as a hatcheck girl. Dutch looks at her, and his eyes narrow. Cut to the female impersonator in the jail scene and hack to Frances Schultz. Dutch points a finger at her and smiles. She is unimpressed, obviously saying to another hatcheck girl,

And -who is that creep?

The girl tells her, and her face changes. She looks at Dutch and smiles. At this point she appears at Schultz’s bedside and says,

This is Frances.

Schultz says,

Then pull me out. I am half crazy.

The pictures cut in again. The film is very dark now. Cut to Albert Stern’s room. He is lying on the bed with the gas oven turned on. His face lights up in color and changes to the face of Dutch Schultz in color. Darkness Tails across his face like a black mist. He is underexposed to darkness.

I want to pay. Let them leave me alone is spoken from a dark screen. Darkness is the end. There is no The End on screen.