Monster
Page 5
BRIGGS
Mr. Cruz, when you were apprehended, did you make a statement to the police about your part in this crime?
OSVALDO
Yeah.
BRIGGS
You admitted to the police that you were a participant in this crime, isn’t that true?
OSVALDO
A what?
BRIGGS
You were one of the people involved with the crime?
OSVALDO
Yeah, that’s right.
BRIGGS
So for all practical purposes you were up to your neck in a crime in which a man was murdered. Is that right? Is that how you saw it?
OSVALDO
I guess so.
BRIGGS
And now that you’re in trouble, you’d do pretty much anything to get out of trouble, wouldn’t you? And when I say anything, I mean tell lies, get other people in trouble, anything?
OSVALDO
No.
BRIGGS
And when the Assistant District Attorney offered you a deal that would keep you out of jail, you jumped at it, didn’t you?
OSVALDO
I wouldn’t lie in court. I’m telling the truth.
BRIGGS
Well, I’m certainly glad you’re telling the truth, Mr. Cruz. But let me ask you, Mr. Cruz, hasn’t the prosecutor given you a choice? You go to jail or you put somebody else in jail? Isn’t that your choice?
OSVALDO
I don’t go around lying to people. Especially when I swear.
BRIGGS
And you did swear today, isn’t that correct? And it wouldn’t be right to lie under oath?
OSVALDO
Right.
BRIGGS
It wouldn’t be right to lie under oath, but it would be just fine to go into a drugstore and stick it up? That’s cool, isn’t it?
OSVALDO
That was a mistake.
CU of BRIGGS’s face showing absolute disgust.
BRIGGS
Nothing more.
O’BRIEN stands and takes her place at the podium.
O’BRIEN
Osvaldo, do you know how you were apprehended?
OSVALDO
I had a fight with my girlfriend and she called the police.
O’BRIEN
A fight? You mean an argument? A disagreement?
OSVALDO (quietly)
She found out I got another girl pregnant.
O’BRIEN
Are you a member of a gang?
OSVALDO
No.
O’BRIEN
So the information I have about you belonging to a gang called the Diablos is wrong?
A beat.
OSVALDO
No, that’s right. I belong to the Diablos.
O’BRIEN
So your first answer was a lie?
OSVALDO (Looks toward Petrocelli.)
It was a mistake.
O’BRIEN
You also said that the robbery was a mistake. Perhaps you can tell us the difference between a mistake and a lie?
OSVALDO (ruffled)
Hey, I’m just trying to turn my life around. (Looks toward jury.) I made a mistake and now I figure it’s about time I did the right thing.
O’BRIEN
How do you get into this gang, Mr. Cruz? Is there something you have to do to become a member?
OSVALDO (getting even tougher)
You have to fight a guy who’s already in the club to show you got the heart.
O’BRIEN
And don’t you have to do something else? Something involving a knife?
OSVALDO
You got to leave your mark on somebody.
O’BRIEN
Can you tell the jury exactly what it means to “leave your mark” on somebody?
OSVALDO
You have to cut them where it shows.
O’BRIEN
So to be a member of this gang, the Diablos, you have to fight a gang member and then cut someone. Usually that’s done to a stranger, and the cut is made in the face, is that right?
OSVALDO
They don’t do that anymore.
O’BRIEN
But Mr. Cruz, that’s what you had to do, isn’t it?
OSVALDO
Yeah.
O’BRIEN
But now you want us to believe that you participated in this robbery because you were afraid of Bobo, and not because this is what you do?
OSVALDO
I was afraid.
O’BRIEN
Did you tell the Assistant District Attorney who questioned you that you were a member of the Diablos?
OSVALDO
Yeah, they knew.
O’BRIEN
You weren’t afraid to fight a member of the Diablos to get into the gang. You weren’t afraid of cutting a stranger in the face. You weren’t afraid of beating up your girlfriend. But you were afraid of Bobo, is that right?
OSVALDO
Yeah.
CU of JUROR shaking her head.
DISSOLVE TO: INTERIOR: VISITORS’ AREA of DETENTION CENTER. There is a table in the shape of a hexagon. One side leads to a tunnel through which the PRISONERS can enter. They sit on the inside while the VISITORS sit on the outside. We see STEVE sitting among the prisoners. He is wearing his orange prison garb. MR. HARMON, his father, sits on the outside of the table.
MR. HARMON
How are you doing?
STEVE
All right. You talk to Miss O’Brien?
MR. HARMON
She doesn’t sound that positive. There’s so much garbage going through that courtroom, she thinks that anybody in there is going to have a stink on him.
STEVE
She said she’s going to put me on the stand. Give me a chance to tell my side of the story.
MR. HARMON
That’s good. You need to tell them that…
His voice fades away.
STEVE
I’m just going to tell them the truth, that I didn’t do anything wrong.
A beat as the father and son try to cope with the tension.
STEVE
You believe that, don’t you?
CU of MR. HARMON. There are tears in his eyes. The pain in his face is very evident as he struggles with his emotions.
MR. HARMON
When you were first born, I would lie up in the bed thinking about scenes of your life. You playing football. You going off to college. I used to think of you going to Morehouse and doing the same things I did when I was there. I never made the football team, but I thought—I dreamed you would. I even thought about getting mad at you for staying out too late—there you were lying on the bed in those disposable diapers—I wanted the real diapers but your mother insisted on the kind you didn’t have to wash, just throw away. I never thought of seeing you—you know—seeing you in a place like this. It just never came to me that you’d ever be in any kind of trouble….
MS: STEVE and MR. HARMON. An incredibly difficult moment passes between them. STEVE searches his father’s face, looking for the reassurance he has always seen there.
STEVE
How’s Mom doing?
MR. HARMON
She’s struggling. It’s hard on all of us. I know it’s hard on you.
STEVE
I’ll be okay.
STEVE puts his head down and begins to weep. MR. HARMON turns away, then reaches back and touches STEVE’s hand. A GUARD crosses quickly and moves the father’s hand away from his son.
MR. HARMON (choking with emotion)
Steve. It’s going to be all right, son. It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be home again and it’s going to be all right.
The scene blurs and darkens. There is the sound of STEVE’s FATHER sobbing.
Notes:
I’ve never seen my father cry before. He wasn’t crying like I thought a man would cry. Everything was just pouring out of him and I hated to see his face. What did I do? What did I do?
Anybody can walk into a drugstore and look around. Is that what I’m on trial for? I didn’t do nothing! I didn’t do nothing! But everybody is just messed up with the pain. I didn’t fight with Mr. Nesbitt. I didn’t take any money from him. Seeing my dad cry like that was just so terrible. What was going on between us, me being his son and him being my dad, is pushed down and something else is moving up in its place. It’s like a man looking down to see his son and seeing a monster instead.
Miss O’Brien said things were going bad for us because she was afraid that the jury wouldn’t see a difference between me and all the bad guys taking the stand. I think my dad thinks the same thing.
FADE IN: EXTERIOR: STEVE’s NEIGHBORHOOD. Camera pans. Homeless men have built a cardboard “village” on rooftops. Then: to edge of roof, where we see a crowd in the street below. As camera zooms in, we pick up a cacophony of sounds. Gradually one sound becomes clearer. The accent is West Indian, and a ground-level camera comes up on two dark, somewhat heavy and middle-aged WOMEN.
WOMAN 1
I think it’s a shame, a terrible shame.
WOMAN 2
What happened?
CUT TO: STEVE; he is holding a basketball and is within earshot of the 2 women.
WOMAN 1
They stuck up the drugstore and shot the poor man.
WOMAN 2
Oh, these guns! Is he all right?
WOMAN 1
Miss Trevor say he dead. They had 2 ambulances.
WOMAN 2
Two people got shot?
WOMAN 1
I don’t think 2 people got shot, but 2 ambulances came. One came from Harlem Hospital.
WOMAN 2
It’s probably those crack people. They say they’ll do anything for that stuff.
WOMAN 1
Was he married? I didn’t see no woman working in the store.
WOMAN 2
That young Spanish boy? I don’t think he married.
WOMAN 1
No, girl, he ain’t the owner. The old man owned that place. I think he from St. Kitts.
WOMAN 2
Oh, you know it’s a shame. You know it is.
LS: STEVE makes his way through crowd. He does not have the basketball. He is walking, then trots as the camera pulls back. He is running as camera looks from high angle, and we can no longer distinguish STEVE. We hear VO of women as above.
WOMAN 1
I’d move away from here, but there’s no place to go. I wouldn’t live in California.
WOMAN 2
California is a lot worse than Harlem.
WOMAN 1
But they say the weather is nice.
Camera pans down the street, past playing kids and stores to a basketball that lies in the gutter.
CUT TO: Television news; the shot is grainy, the reception poor as if it is in the home of a ghetto resident.
VO (NEWSCASTER)
In New York’s Harlem, yet another holdup has ended in a grisly scene of murder. Alguinaldo Nesbitt, a native of St. Kitts, was found shot and killed in his drugstore.
CUT TO: Television shot of front of drugstore. Small children are gathered around trying to get a peek inside.
CU: NEWSCASTER. He is a handsome, light-skinned Black who speaks with a precise television-newscaster accent.
NEWSCASTER
Late yesterday afternoon 2 armed and masked bandits rushed into this neighborhood drugstore behind me. They first demanded money and, when the store owner, 55-year-old Alguinaldo Nesbitt was slow in handing over the money, viciously ended his life. Residents of the neighborhood are in absolute dismay. (To NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT) Sir, can you tell me just how shocked you are by this tragedy?
CUT TO: NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT.
NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT
I ain’t shocked. People getting killed and everything and it ain’t right but I ain’t shocked none. They killed a little girl just about 2 months ago and she was just sitting on her stoop.
CUT TO: STEVE’s APARTMENT. We see him sitting and watching the news program. We see his brother pick up the remote and change the program. We watch 30 seconds of a Road Runner cartoon.
CUT TO: CU of STEVE. He is staring straight ahead, mouth open, in absolute shock as the reflected colors from the cartoon move across his face.
DISSOLVE TO: TWO WEEKS LATER; INTERIOR: STEVE’s KITCHEN. Door opens. MRS. HARMON enters with a bag of groceries. She puts it down.
MRS. HARMON
Mrs. Lucas said they got those guys that killed the drugstore owner. (She turns on the television.) You have anything to eat?
STEVE
I had some cereal. See if you can find the news. You think it’s on the news?
MRS. HARMON is putting away the groceries when an image of the front of the drugstore appears on the screen. She sits down, obviously pleased that the culprits have been caught.
FEMALE NEWSCASTER
An arrest has been made in the robbery and murder in an uptown drugstore. The police announced today the arrest of Richard Evans, known in the community as Bobo. Mayor Rudy Giuliani says that he is determined to stop crime in all areas of the city.
CUT TO: PRESS CONFERENCE with MAYOR GIULIANI and POLICE BRASS.
MAYOR GIULIANI
The idea that we’re just trying to stop crime in white or middle-class areas is nonsense. Everyone living in the city deserves the same protection.
CUT TO: EXTERIOR: MS of a sullen BOBO handcuffed and being led to police van. He glowers at camera. Prisoner he is handcuffed to winks at camera.
CUT TO: INTERIOR: STEVE’s BEDROOM. He is lying on his bed, eyes open but not seeing anything. We hear first the doorbell ring and then his mother calling him, but he doesn’t react.
CUT TO: MRS. HARMON, who wipes her hands on a towel and heads toward door. She stops and looks through peephole. CU on her face. There is a worried look as she opens the door.
MRS. HARMON
(Calls to him.) Steven?
STEVE
Yeah? (He comes out and sees DETECTIVES WILLIAMS and KARYL.)
WILLIAMS
We need you to come down to the precinct with us. Just a few questions.
STEVE
Me? About what?
WILLIAMS
Some clown said you were involved with that drugstore stickup just before Christmas. You know the one I mean?
STEVE
Yeah, but what do I have to do with it?
WILLIAMS (as they handcuff Steve)
You know Bobo Evans?
MRS. HARMON (mildly panicked)
Why are you handcuffing my son if you just want to ask him a few questions? I don’t understand.
WILLIAMS
Ma’am, it’s just routine. Don’t worry about it.
MRS. HARMON
What do you mean don’t worry about it, when you’re handcuffing my son? (There is panic in her eyes as she looks at STEVE, who looks away.) What do you mean don’t worry about it? I’m coming with you! You’re not just snatching my son off like he’s some kind of criminal. Wait till I get my coat. Just wait a minute! Just wait a minute!
CUT TO: JERRY standing in doorway, holding comics. He looks from MOTHER to STEVE. He reaches out toward his brother as the detectives hustle the handcuffed teenager out the door.
CUT TO: MS of STEVE sitting in back of patrol car.
CUT TO: Two OLD MEN in front of John-John’s Bar-B-Q looking at the scene as the car drives off.