THE RUNNER/SCREENPLAY by BRIAN R. LUNDIN (best free ebook reader for android .txt) 📖

St. Charles, the gang flourished. Several of the Taylor Street Boys and Vito were murderers by the time they reached sixteen years old. The people in the Patch spoke of the gang with a strange mixture of awe, respect and fear. They admired the gang for its ability to outwit the Irish coopers who they believed interfered in the affairs of the Italians, and like Vito’s gang, they neither trusted nor revered outside authority and felt resentment and contempt for their presence in the Patch.

Vito was scary and a throwback to the old-time Italian gangsters known as “Mustache Petes.” Vito and his gang settled disputes with murder and violence, but to the people living in the Patch that was the way they settled disputes in the Old Country and to them was not a big deal, to these people, murder eliminated enemies. Vito was the undisputed leader of the Taylor Street Boys and ruled with an iron fist. He reviled in the fear and adulation of the cart peddlers and small store owners whom he was extorting. When Vito and his gang of thugs passed the cart owners they would take off their shabby caps, bow and offer them whatever they were selling.

EXT.STREET IN THE PATCH-DAY

CART OWNER
(eyes lowered)
Take whatever you want, il capo!
.
In time, Vito became a kind of crime broker in the Patch, the person to see if you wanted revenge on a disrespectful neighbor or a hot car. Vito had the bark of a pit bull and the bite of a Great White and always took the biggest piece of the pie for himself and he dared his gang members to complain. Vito’s success fed his arrogance and he demanded that his gang members treat him with respect, bowing and scraping in his presence like the people did to the “Made men,” or members of the Chicago Crime Outfit and nobody challenged his authority, and lived. In the run down, crime-ridden neighborhood, Vito was considered a “Tough Guy,” someone you didn’t fuck with. When Vito called a meeting for his gang of thieves and murderers he demanded they appear instantly, failing to show when summoned could result in a death sentence. Vito ordered one of his gang members who failed to show at a meeting killed.

VITO
You know why he was killed? He was killed because he refused to come when I called. He didn’t do nothin’ else wrong, let that be a lesson to all of you motherfuckas.

Where a heart should have been there was hell-fire burning in his chest with a wolf-like intensity and his blood lust seemed boundless. As his gang became more violent, Vito reveled in and soaked in his plunder. He took full advantage of the bad times of his people by terrorizing and exploiting them. He imposed a street tax on the wrong doers, merchants, businessmen and anyone doing business in the Patch. If perhaps Vito felt one emotion it way the joy of killing, murder eradicated competition, murder eliminated rivals, even within his own gang, murder dealt revenge against the hated Irish Micks and coppers. As the leader of the gang, he settled all disputes. If there were problems, he would listen to a brief description and then say, “Kill them!” To Vito, murder was the solution to all problems. Vito was known for his tailored loud and outlandish suits with matching wide brimmed Fedora hats. He held court at the Su Casa Restaurant in the Patch where he perfected the “Walk-talk,” conducting confidential conversations, while strolling along the streets. He had heard of people telephone conversations being tapped by the feds or the police. This was Vito’s neighborhood; he listened to babies wailing in tenement buildings with shiny metal sheets for windows. The tenement apartments were hot as the Sahara sands in the summer and cold as the Arctic icebergs in the winter. He loved the garlic smells coming from the Italian cart vendors that sold meatball and Italian sausage sandwiches.

FADE-IN.

Unlike many blacks that left the south with little or no money and had to live with relatives, the McLemore family, Jerome his older brother TED, his younger brother MCKENZIE whom every one called “Mack” and his mother HARRIET was well off financially. REVEREND MCLEMORE purchased a nice four-bedroom bungalow in the almost exclusively white upper class neighborhood of Hyde Park, two blocks from the University of Chicago on east 55th Street. In June 1952, Jerome graduated from the lab school and enrolled in the pre-med program at the University, but after the death of his father in 1955; Jerome dropped out of school and got a job as a Pullman Porter on the New York Central Railroad, which made the run two times a week to New York City from Chicago. Pullman Porters were a prestigious job for black men; they got a chance to travel, and although the wages were low, if they were attentive to the needs of the mainly white passengers they could make good tips. Harlem was where the black porters usually stayed between runs from Chicago to New York and Jerome got to know many of the hustlers and gamblers who waited to win the money off the Pullman Porters in crooked card or dice games. It was in Harlem that Jerome became acquainted with the old black gambling game called Numbers.

INT: HARLEM TAVERN-DAY

HUSTLER
Bet a dollar and win ten dollars. All you have to do is pick three numbers from one to seventy eight if I pull your numbers out my hat you win.

Jerome and twenty other Pullman Porters gathering around the hustler placing their bills in a pickle jar. The hustler gave the men a slip of paper to write their three numbers down from one to seventy-eight. The hustler looks in the jar and estimates there must be at lease fifty dollars in the jar. He places seventy small numbered balls in his hat and shakes it vigorously and tells one of the plays to pull a number he does and hand it to the hustler.

HUSTLER
The number is one.
(holding the ball so everyone could see)

Two other men draw the numbers five and eight. Jerome numbers are 15, 20 45, he loses as does all the players. They play the game ten more times and nobody wins. The Hustler leaves with over two hundred dollars.

Jerome often played the game when in New York but in two years, his number never came out. Jerome had a lot of pride and although considered a good job he did not like how he had to cater and bow down to the white men and women who often were rude and insulting, and all he could do was smile and lower his head. He got tired of them calling him a nigger, instead of Jerome, so he quit and looked for other means of earning a living, something where people would call him Mr. McLemore.

FADE-IN:

The livery cab business in Chicago served only whites, they would not come into the blacks neighborhoods or even pick up black passengers, they’re excuse was they were afraid of being robbed or worst, but the real reason was they did not like chauffeuring “Niggers.” Jerome saw this as an opportunity to go into business for himself and his family.

JEROME
(talking with Ted and his mother)
I’ve been thinking about the how the livery cabs won’t come into the black community what you’ll think about opening out own cab service?

Harriet
What would we need?

JEROME
We could start with two new Fords.


TED
I could drive one and you the other and mom and Mack could answer the calls.

HARRIET
Well I believe I have enough money from your father’s life insurance policy to get us started.

FADE-IN:
We see Jerome and Ted driving the cabs day and night and his mother and brother working the phones. The two cabs rolled nearly twenty-four hours a day and although the work was tiring and consuming, it provided a needed service to the black community and income for the McLemore family. The cabs were always clean, the prices fair, and the brothers were always courteous and prompt. Most of the cab business customers were from the hustlers who used the cabs mainly to impress their ladies. After a year of operation, the cab business started to prosper and the family was making a good living. Mack, their younger brother was the dispatcher and their mother was the bookkeeper, but Jerome could not forget the policy game he often played in New York, but never won. Jerome noticed while driving the livery cab, the prevalence of churches in Bronzeville. Many of them still bore the marks of the previous owners-the six pointed star of David, Hebrew and Swedish inscriptions, or biblical names chiseled on old corner stones, which did not tally with the Baptist signs on the front lawns that announced the times for Bible Studies and services. Only the policy stations rivaled the churches in the black community.

FADE-IN.

Jerry noticed while driving the livery cab only the policy stations rivaled the churches in the black community. Jerome noticed mainly older black people waiting in lines outside of basement apartments.

JEROME
(stopping the cab and talking to an old man in line)
What’s happening?

OLD MAN
(surprised)
I’m waiting to put in my gig!

JEROME
What’s a gig?

OLD MAN
(smiling)
Where you from boy?

JEROME
(smiling)
Can I buy you breakfast?

OLD MAN
(looking at the long line)
Sure I got time.

INT: RESTURANT AT 47TH STREET- MORNING

Jerome and the old man named Davo sits in a booth Davo is eating salt pork, eggs and coffee Jerome is sipping a cup of coffee.

DAVO
You say you have lived in Chicago all your life and you don’t know nothin’ about Policy?

JEROME
I played the numbers in New York but I’ve heard of Policy.

DAVO
I never heard of no numbers.

JEROME
How does it work.

DAVO
The policy station is to the black community what the racehorse bookie is to the white community. Policy stations are everywhere and are technically illegal, but the police are paid off. It’s very simple a bet called a “gig,” consisted of three numbers in any combination, from one to seventy eight. The gig can be bet in the “Two-Leg Book” that contained twelve numbers in two vertical rows or the “One Leg Book,” that contained twelve numbers. A ten-cent bet in the Two Leg Book could win twenty dollars or you can hedge your bet by adding a “Saddle” for an additional dime. In a “Saddle” if two of the three numbers came out, the bettor would win ten dollars, if all three of his numbers came out he would win twenty dollars for the gig and two dollars for the “Saddle,” or you can bet a “Horse,” four numbers that would yield forty dollars for a dime the last bet is a five number “Jack,” a dime would yield two hundred dollars. In the “One Leg Book,” that contained six numbers in two vertical rows payout was a lot higher than the two-leg book.

JEROME
What were you and all those people waiting for?

DAVO
The station to open so we could play our gig.

JEROME
You play inside the house?

DAVO
Yep!

JEROME
What time does the station opens?

DAVO
Most stations opens at six am and again at five pm.


FADE-IN
INT. McLEMORE