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Characters: DETECTIVE TONY LaROSA, veteran cop, late 30’s;
DANNY St. JAMES, veteran suspect, late 20’s
Time: The present.
Place: Interrogation room, also known as “the Box”. Desk, table, couple of chairs.
(At rise, Danny is seated. Detective LaRosa enters with cup.)
LAROSA (Offers Danny a cup of coffee): Cream?
DANNY: Black. (LaRosa puts the cup on table, pulling packets of sugar from his pockets.) I’ll take
five.
LAROSA: Five?! (Counting packets.) How ‘bout three. Best I can do.
DANNY: The shit will taste like piss. (LaRosa starts to pick up the cup and heads for trash can.) I
need that, man! (LaRosa stands poised with the coffee.) Three. Put the three in there.
LAROSA: What, late night?
DANNY: Fuck you.
LAROSA: Drink your jo. I got lots of time. Need a smoke? (Takes out cigarettes and offers.)
DANNY: Quit.
LAROSA: You quit? What, the patch?
DANNY: Gum.
LAROSA: Yeah? (As he lights a cigarette, the smoke heads in Danny’s direction.) How is it?
DANNY: Tastes like piss.
LAROSA: Hey, did it cost you? Don’t whine.
DANNY: Can I go now?
LAROSA: We just sat down.
DANNY: Don’t fuck with me.
LAROSA: All these years we’ve known each other. Brings tears to my eyes.
DANNY: You give me a cup of piss and blow smoke out of your ass and ya think I got
the time for this? I ain’t on a date with you. What the fuck do you want to know?
LAROSA: You know.
DANNY: I hate when you play these cop games with me.
LAROSA: We go back a long way, don’t we?
DANNY: Yeah, you’d think by now you’d give me a ring.
LAROSA: Put out first.
DANNY: Shit, take me to a place with more class than this if you want to fuck me.
LAROSA: I don’t want to fuck you. How ‘bout we just try first base?
DANNY: (He can’t take the smoke any more as he craves a cigarette.) Give me one of those.
LAROSA: Those scratch marks on your face. A bit of blood on your shirt.
DANNY: Ran into a tree.
LAROSA: Where?
DANNY: Lake Road.
LAROSA: When?
DANNY: Three, four days ago.
LAROSA: (As he dangles the cigarette in front of him.) Look fresh to me. When?
DANNY: Shit how do I know? A wuss like you may know just when but me, shit, what
I do I care? It’s a scratch. I suck it up. Go on with my shit, you know?
LAROSA: And your “shit,” (He makes the quotation marks.) just what is your “shit”?
DANNY: Same as you.
LAROSA: Same as me? I work.
DANNY: Work? You call this work? You stalk.
LAROSA: Stalk? It was fate that brought me to you.
DANNY: Right, fate. Last week, I walk down the street and there you are-at a stop sign
in a beat-up Ford. I grab a beer at Bo’s and there you are. I’m on White Street a couple
of hours ago…
LAROSA: Ah yes, where the whores are…
DANNY: And there you are. Was it me or the whores who drew you to that part of
town?
LAROSA: (Hands him the cigarette.) You, babe. It was you. You’re on to me. (Pause.) Strange
thing, I just was on a case near by. Sad case. (He leans in and lights the cigarette.) Dead kid.
DANNY: Got some snacks?
LAROSA: Chips?
DANNY: Lays?
LAROSA: (As he pulls a small bag of chips from his desk.) Wise.
DANNY: Shit.
LAROSA: What’s wrong with Wise?
DANNY: When I was a kid, found a green chip in my bag of Wise. I was off chips for
years. Then I found Lays.
LAROSA: Well, I could dump them right here and make sure there’s no green ones.
DANNY: That’s true love. (LaRosa dumps the chips and checks them over. Danny starts eating.)
LAROSA: So, there was this dead three-year-old on Green St.
DANNY: Green Street? Green Street, green chips.
LAROSA: Got a bit of weird fate at work here, huh.
DANNY: Three lumps, three-year-old kid.
LAROSA: Dead kid.
DANNY: Yeah, you said that. Three times.
LAROSA: Blood on the kid, blood on you.
DANNY: That’s a stretch don’t ya think? You got more’n that? Your case is lame so
far.
LAROSA: I got you at the scene.
DANNY: Yeah? How’s that?
LAROSA: Well, it seems there was one more kid in the house. How’d you miss the
boy?
DANNY: What makes you think I missed him?
LAROSA: I know. The boy told us his mom left them with you while she went to
work.
DANNY: Those kids? That broad? Work? She’s a whore, man. Yeah, I sat with them
while she went to turn tricks. I drank her beer. She came home. Paid me in weed and I
spilt.
LAROSA: You split, she goes in the room, finds the dead girl on the floor, next to the
bed.
DANNY: (Shrugs.) I left no dead kid. Could be one of the tricks. Or she fell off the bed,
I guess.
LAROSA: Fell off the bed. Fell off the bed? What, do you have rocks for brains? Tell
me she fell off the bed? The dumb-ass cop will buy that she fell off the bed? (Takes him
by the scruff of the neck and lifts him off the seat.) I was there! At the scene. Blood. There was
so much blood. (Pause.) Man, how could you do that? What goes on in that sick head of
yours?
DANNY: Go on! Take me out! Right here, in your nice suit and silk tie! Your cop pals
can watch from the two-way glass! You think I don’t know they’re there? (Waves.) What
a show!
LAROSA: I’d jump at a chance to make you pay for that kid! It was you! I see it, man!
DANNY: What, on me?
LAROSA: In you. In your eyes.
DANNY: Shit, all you cops think you can get to the truth that way. The eyes. What a
joke.
LAROSA: Yeah, well we’ll see what a joke it is when the kid looks you in the eye at the
trial!
DANNY: Five-year-old kid on the stand? You won’t put him through that! (LaRosa slowly
releases him.) You got no case.
LAROSA: I don’t need the kid for a case. (He opens folder on the table and pulls out a picture. Danny
looks at it as his bravado slowly fades.) Seems like there’s not a kid left in the world with no cell
phone. They watch so much TV. Like I said, smart kid. Wants to be a cop. (Pause.) I want
to know one thing. Why?
DANNY: (After a long pause, he shrugs his shoulders.) I just felt like it.
LAROSA: You just felt like it?
DANNY: The right time, the right place, ya know?... There’s a phone call, right? (LaRosa
throws him a cell phone. Danny holds up his cup. LaRosa nods and exits. Lights fade.)
END OF SCENE
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