International best selling author Joe Bruno’s “Snakeheads,” a screenplay in ebook form, is FREE today on Amazon.com.

Product information:

Snakeheads are the worst human beings known to man.

Snakeheads are Chinese gangsters, based both in China and in the United States, who smuggle Chinese immigrants into the United States.

The price is not cheap; $50,000 a head. And the process is brutal.

Because the Chinese people who yearn for a better life are dirt poor, a small percentage of the smuggling money is paid up front to the Snakeheads. However, the collection of the balance is certain; or bad things happen to the illegal Chinese immigrants: beatings, torture, and sometimes even death.

When they arrive in America, the illegal immigrants work in Chinese restaurants, for pennies an hour. They labor in hot kitchens for 12-18 hours a day, and after work, they are chained in a filthy room so they cannot escape.

If one of them does manage to escape, their relatives in China are punished instead.

“Snakeheads” is set in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where the Italian-American mob tries to horn in on the immense profits generated by the Snakeheads’ human smuggling operation. The Italians want their piece of the action, and the Chinese gangsters resist – violently.

Thrust into the middle of this warfare is an Italian-America detective, who falls in love with a Chinese businesswoman. Together, they attempt to eradicate the villains who profit on the backs of the poor illegal Chinese immigrants.

https://www.amazon.com/Snakeheads-Screenplay-Joe-Bruno-ebook/dp/B00CPPJCHA?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

Joe Bruno’s “Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps” reviewed on Youtube

The first review of one of my books ever posted on Youtube.

If you know me personally, you know the answer why I sometimes write in street slang. Living on the Lower East side for almost half a century will do that to people.

PS – Just for the record, I don’t know Jeff McArthur from General McArthur or even McArthur Park.

This is the actual review on Amazon.com

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4Good short stories about the history of crime in New York

ByBandwagon Books “Jeff McArthur”on April 17, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps, Volume 1, as it implies, covers a number of underworld activities throughout the history of New York City. It does so in the form of short stories, each chapter telling a different one. This was a good, straight-forward way to tell these stories, in my opinion, and they really seemed to have a lot of credibility. The author lists his sources at the end of the book, and there was enough detail, (and I also know a lot about some of these stories,) to believe they’re quite accurate.

My only criticism would be that the writing often used slang which sometimes came across a little unprofessional for a non-fiction book. However, ironically, these moments gave the book a little more credibility as the type of slang was the kind you’d expect to hear gangsters use. It therefore gave me the impression that the author was either somehow related to these underworld stories, or he just became so closely connected to them that he began sounding like them.

International Best Selling Author Joe Bruno has 3 of the top 6 and 21 of the top 100 Best Selling Books on Amazon/United Kingdom in the category “True Crime – Hoaxes & Deceptions.”

‘New York City’s Five Points The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!” is highest at #2. It’s also ranked #6 in the same category on Amazon/United States.

Product Description:

“The Five Points is personal to me. In 1914, my mother, the youngest of 12 children, was born at 104 Bayard Street. When I grew up, I lived around the corner at 134 White Street. During my youth, the area was called Little Italy. But at the time of my mother’s birth, it was still called the Five Points.

The term “Five Points” was coined in the early part of the nineteenth century because the area had at its center a five-point intersection formed by Orange Street (now Baxter Street), Cross Street (then Park and now Mosco Street – Frank Mosco was my Little League coach), Anthony Street (Now Worth), Little Water Street (which no longer exists), and Mulberry Street.

Across the street from the front entrance to my White Street tenement building, and close enough to reach with three or four leaping bounds, was the imposing city prison called the Tombs. The dark and dreary structure was the third incarnation of a major jailhouse in this area, the first two being located one block to the west on Center Street. The Tombs played an integral part of the Five Points’ sordid history. Hundreds of dastardly individuals were hung at the Tombs, and hundreds of thousands more had the Tombs as their mailing address, some permanently.

In 1896, at the prodding of journalist Jacob Riis, the hideous Mulberry Bend was demolished by the city, and Columbus Park was built in its stead. Before then, the Five Points was predominantly Irish, and it is estimated that 10,000 – 15,000 people, mostly Irish, lived in horrendous squalor in the four square blocks that of “The Bend.” When the Bend’s buildings were razed, the Irish were displaced. Most moved north to Hell’s Kitchen, the area bounded by 42nd Street and 59th Streets, between 7th and 12th Avenues.

After the demolition of Mulberry Bend, the Five Points became the domain of Italian immigrants sprinkled with a few hundred Chinese, who claimed parts of Mott, Pell, and Doyers Streets as their turf. In fact, over the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Five Points district evolved into two intertwining ethnic neighborhoods: Little Italy and Chinatown. It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that the term “Five Points” started to fade from the vocabulary of the area’s residents.

Most remnants of the original Five Points are long gone. But the names of its former inhabitants still flicker across the lips of many New Yorkers, never in a flattering way.

So, fire up your Kindle and read about some of the most distasteful creatures ever to roam the face of the earth. They all inhabited my old Five Points neighborhood in times gone by.”

Amazon/United Kingdom Link:

Amazon/United States link:

International Best Selling Author Joe Bruno’s “Find Big Fat Fanny Fast” is FREE today on Amazon Kindle. Click the link below to grab your FREE copy!

Synopsis: Since the start of the 20th Century, the Italians and Chinese gangsters in the Little Italy/Chinatown area in New York City have endured an uneasy truce. In the first three quarters of the century, the Italian gangs ruled the neighborhood with an iron fist.

But starting in the 1970’s, the dynamics began to change, as more Italians moved out, and droves of Chinese began flowing into Chinatown from China.

This did not bode well for Italian mob boss Tony Bentimova (Tony B), so he enlists the help of his most trusted killer, Big Fat Fanny Fanelli, all six-foot six-inches and six hundred and sixty pounds of her, to ensure the Italians maintain control of all the illegal rackets in Lower Manhattan.

Best Selling author Joe Bruno’s ebook in screenplay form “Snakeheads” is FREE today at Amazon.com.

To get your FREE copy, click the link below.

Product description:

AMAZON.COM TOP 25 BEST SELLER IN “ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE”

AMAZON/UK TOP 30 BEST SELLERS IN “ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE”

(Snakeheads is written in the screenplay format.)

Snakeheads are the worst human beings known to man.

Snakeheads are Chinese gangsters, based both in China and in the United States, who smuggle Chinese immigrants into the United States.

The price is not cheap; $50,000 a head. And the process is brutal.

Because the Chinese people who yearn for a better life are dirt poor, a small percentage of the smuggling money is paid up front to the Snakeheads. However, the collection of the balance is certain; or bad things happen to the illegal Chinese immigrants: beatings, torture, and sometimes even death.

When they arrive in America, the illegal immigrants work in Chinese restaurants, for pennies an hour. They labor in hot kitchens for 12-18 hours a day, and after work, they are chained in a filthy room so they cannot escape.

If one of them does manage to escape, their relatives in China are punished instead.

“Snakeheads” is set in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where the Italian-American mob tries to horn in on the immense profits generated by the Snakeheads’ human smuggling operation. The Italians want their piece of the action, and the Chinese gangsters resist – violently.

Thrust into the middle of this warfare is an Italian-America detective, who falls in love with a Chinese businesswoman. Together, they attempt to eradicate the villains who profit on the backs of the poor illegal Chinese immigrants.

Another 5-start review for Best Selling Author Joe Bruno’s “New York City’s Five Points: The Most Dangerous and Decadent Neighborhood Ever!”

*****

The Rotten Core of the Big Apple September 24, 2014
By Silver Screen Videos
Format:Kindle Edition

For the better part of a century, from the early 1800s to the early 1900s, New York’s Five Points was one of the most poverty and crime ridden parts of the city and the entire United States. Most people today know it, if at all, as the setting for Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.” But Joe Bruno knows the area better than most people since it’s where he hails from and he’s taken the stories he grew up with, added to them the results of a lot of painstaking research, and has come up with a new book, “New York City’s Five Points,” which contains a number of entertaining stories about the area and its most infamous residents and events.

“Five Points” is organized into a series of short chapters, usually two to ten pages in length, each devoted to a particular person, group, or incident, and Bruno’s chapters, for the most part, are arranged in alphabetical order, so they skip around a lot. Readers looking for a comprehensive history of the area will be disappointed, but those looking for fascinating, colorful tales will love this book. Since Bruno is far better at telling colorful anecdotes than organizing a formal history text, his approach, even though it skips around a great deal, is actually fairly effective. In many cases, Bruno probably had little historical information available (some of his chapters deal with events from the 1820s and 30s), so a short chapter provided ample space to tell the story.

The stories are indeed fascinating, starting out with the Chinatown murder of a well known comic that is accomplished by lowering the assassins down the side of a building, in a story that resembles a classic locked room tale but is actually true. I also enjoyed the chapter on Chuck Connors (not the actor, but the unofficial “mayor” of Chinatown), who specialized in taking leading celebrities of the day such as Sir Thomas Lipton on tours of the area, complete with a trip to an “opium den” that was a complete hoax designed to give his upper class guests some cheap thrills. There’s even a far more bizarre story later in the book about a con artist who victimized bunches of people by claiming that the southern end of Manhattan was in danger of falling into the Hudson River due to all the tall buildings that had been built there and that he could “save” the area by cutting off part of it and rearranging the rest.

I should point out that Joe Bruno’s books are not written in conformance with any style book I’ve ever seen. There’s a good bit of colorful slang (boxers “duke it out mano a mano”), and he includes conversations between characters that may or may not have actually occurred. However, I’ve read several of Bruno’s other books and, in this one, he seems to have toned down the language a bit so that it supports his stories rather than distracts from them. Further, since the book is organized in a number of short chapters that read like the telling of a story, Bruno’s colorful language is not nearly as distracting as it might have been in a longer, more formal text on the same subject.

There is some repetition in “Five Points,” as certain events and characters are described in different manners in different chapters, but it’s fairly minimal. However, those who have read some of Bruno’s other books should be aware that some of the material has appeared in what seems to be substantially the same form in some of his earlier work. Nonetheless, there seemed to me to be a good bit of fresh material, including a bonus chapter that really hit close to home, as Bruno talks at length about his Italian-American uncle by marriage who actually was elected mayor of Chinatown in the 1920s and later went to Hollywood. Uncle Johnny’s story is as colorful as those of the considerably seamier characters Bruno discusses in the earlier part of his book.

There’s a lot of fascinating material in almost every chapter of “Five Points.” Further, because most of the stories in the book take place before the days of Prohibition and “big name” gangsters like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, they will be completely new and refreshing to many readers. After reading “Five Points,” readers will be well aware that organized crime in New York didn’t begin after World War I; it was well established and just as dangerous for a number of decades prior to the Great War. “Five Points” is a good complement to Bruno’s other books on crime in the Big Apple.

Johnny Keyes – The Elected Mayor of Chinatown

 

In 1924, just as the area was being transformed from the Five Points into Little Italy/Chinatown, my uncle Johnny Keyes (real name Canonico – he married my mother’s oldest sister, Mary) was re-elected the Mayor of Chinatown for a second time term by a paper-thin margin.

According to the June 21^st issue of the New York Times, my uncle’s opponent was Le Chung Wei. But with the backing of New York City Mayor, John Francis Hyland, “Red Mike” to his pals, Johnny Keyes came out on top by a whopping 67 votes out of more than 4,500 votes cast. World heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey also contributed mightily, in the form of greenbacks, to my Uncle Johnny’s campaign.

Also a former boxer (not very good), and fight manager/trainer of international renown, Johnny Keyes handled over 100 fighters, including my mother’s brother and Johnny Keyes’s brother – in-law – Oakie Keyes (real name Daniel Mucerino). Five of Johnny Keyes’s fighters, including Pepper Martin and Midget Wolgast, became world champions.

Explaining how Johnny “Keyes” Canonico, an Italian/American, could become the Mayor of Chinatown, the New York Times said:

 

The Mayor was born on Bayard Street when it was called the Five Points. He was a local leader from public school days and was deemed the heir-apparent to the late Chuck Connors in the latter part of Connors’s administration. When Chuck died 12 years ago, Chinatown regarded Johnny as the logical successor.

 

The Times went on further to explain how the 1924 election came about in the first place.

 

There is no fixed tenure of office for Chinatown Mayor. An election takes place any time an aspirant feels that he’s strong enough to cope with the administration. A date for the election is fixed, and at a number of secret polling places, the ballots are marked and counted. Those known to the clerks of the polls as natives of Chinatown and its immediate confines are enfranchised.

 

After winning re-election, Uncle Johnny Keyes explained his mayoralty duties to the New York Times:

 

This is a big job and you can’t expect to keep regular hours at it. The Mayor of Chinatown has to sleep with his clothes on. He must be ready at any hour to rush to help Mrs. Grogan keep the old man from throwing the dinner table out of the window. When an argument between children on Mulberry Bend spreads to their parents, he must be able to keep the scratches and bruises down to as few as possible. In other words, he must keep the paddy wagons and ambulances out of Chinatown.

 

The Chinese don’t get into too many scraps. They are hard-working and happy if they are left alone. Occasionally they have a dispute over a business matter, and this comes to me for settlement. If one steals the customer of another by giving a lower price, I am asked to stop the cutthroat competition. If a Chinaman is slow in making payments on something he bought from another Chinaman, I am asked to speed up the installments. This doesn’t happen often because the Chinese are particular about paying debts.

 

However, according to Johnny Keyes, the most important job of the Mayor of Chinatown was to polish the bright image of the neighborhood, and not let it be tarnished by outside influences.

Johnny Keyes told the Times:

 

We have no objection is people want to see a little of Oriental life in Chinatown. But we don’t want the place held up as a nest of opium dens. As mayor, I have fought to keep the moving pictures companies from using scenery in Chinatown in plays in which the Chinese are villains and white girls get kidnapped.

 

Of late, Chinatown has wanted its Mayor to give the neighborhood a better reputation in the eyes of the rest of the world. My men listen to the talk handed out by the guides on the sight-seeing busses, and when it gets a little too harsh we step in and tell them to stop.

 

The truth is there are probably fewer guns to a block in Chinatown than anywhere else in the city. The days of the hatchet men are gone, and there hasn’t been a knife thrown in years.

 

Johnny Keyes also told the Times, that his responsibilities as Mayor of Chinatown included helping the local parents control their wayward offspring.

He said:

 

Speaking to the young men who appeared headed to the Tombs is another of my duties. Parents whose boys are in bad company ask me to tell the kids they are making a mistake. The young fellows listen. I have spoken with hundreds of boys who have found it easier to steal than to work and have managed to save most of them from getting in bad.

 

One of Johnny Keyes first actions after being re-elected Mayor was to throw a grand shindig at Tammany Hall, which he called the Chinatown 400 Ball. The expressed purpose of the events was to raise substantial cash, intended strictly for the pockets of Johnny Keyes, after he threw a few monetary bones to the Tammany Hall brass (Keyes obviously got this idea from his mentor, the dearly departed Chuck Connors).

There was said to be almost 1,500 guests at the ball, and the highlight of the night was a grand procession scheduled for 12 midnight, which was supposed to be led by the famous writer, Damon Runyon, a close friend of Johnny Keyes. But Runyon had neglected to take his tuxedo to the grand ball, and a Tammany Hall bootlicker was sent by taxi to fetch Runyon’s tuxedo, which was at his upper west side apartment.

By 1 a.m. there was still no tuxedo. And by 1:30 a.m., a member of the Chinatown 400 floor committee rushed up to the Silver Slipper Box, where Runyon and Keyes were holding court, and said that the taxi with Runyon’s tuxedo and come and gone, but no one from Tammany Hall had been there to take possession of the tuxedo.

Disgusted, Runyon turned to Keyes and said, “This is your ballgame now, Pally. I’m drunk, my belly is full, and I’m off to grander places.”

“Hey, Cousin, you can’t do that (Keyes called everyone Cousin or ‘Cuz’)!” Keyes said.

“Watch me,” Runyon said.

And the next thing Johnny Keyes saw was Runyon’s back shrinking in the distance.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, Johnny Keyes was nonplused, and he decided to head the grand march himself, accompanied by his lovely wife, Mary (this writer’s aunt).

The Eagle wrote under the headline:

 

Chinatown Ball Joyous

But Damon Runyon Misses “Tux” and Disappoints.

Was Scheduled to Lead March.

Oriental Setting Lacks Nothing but Chinamen

 

Promptly at 2 o’clock, Johnny Keyes, Mayor of Chinatown, stepped down from his box to lead the march for the guests.  Mrs. Keyes, in white georgette (sheer silk) embroidered in gold, was at his side, affecting one of the novelty Poiret dolls.

 

Huge bouquets of American Beauty roses were the favors of the evening. The stately march was followed by the song “Chinatown.” Its jazz not only kept the dancers on the floor, but several went atop tables to give exhibitions of the art decried by the generation not familiar with its movements.

 

The imposing headdress of the Chinatown 400, said to have cost $4 each,  gave the wearer a dignity alike to a potentate of the Mystic Shrine and a Chinese Mandarin.

 

Everybody had a wonderful time. Empty square bottles were everywhere.

 

And Johnny Keyes made a mint.

After my Aunt Mary died at a-much-too-young age, Johnny Keyes moved from his beloved Chinatown to Los Angeles and then to San Diego, where he opened a restaurant named Spaghetti Joe’s, which is the nickname Damon Runyon anointed Keyes with in New York City. While in Los Angeles, Keyes was also the boxing promoter at the East Side Arena.

According to a Runyon syndicated newspaper column in 1937:

 

Johnny Keyes, the five-foot-three-inch former Mayor of Chinatown and now over 200 pounds, lost over $5,000 last night at the new Del Mar Racetrack in San Diego. His only reply was, “Money don’t mean nuthin’ to me. It ain’t your life. It ain’t your wife. It’s only money.’

 

When Runyon wrote his famous play, Guys and Dolls, one of the degenerate gambler characters, Nicely-Nicely Johnson, was based on my uncle, Johnny Keyes.

You can’t make up stuff like this.

 

 

*****

 

Besides being a savvy politician, Johnny Keyes fancied himself as somewhat of an entrepreneur, and an international one at that.

In 1925, with the backing of several prominent Chinese businessmen, Johnny Keyes traveled to the Canton region of China with several of his world-class fighters, including lightweight Pepper Martin, flyweight Mickey Nelson and bantamweight Terry Martin, ostensibly to teach the locals the refinements of boxing.

But, as usual, Johnny Keyes had his ulterior motives.

Keyes told the New Castle Herald in New Castle, Pennsylvania, “The Chinks are deficient, if one might not say utterly lacking in pep. A few smacks on the whiskers may stir up something in the fight business there, and then I’ll be the only fight manager on the spot.”

But, alas, Johnny Keyes’s trip to China was also deficient, if one might not say utterly lacking in pep, too.

The idea of an American staging boxing matches in China was slapped down by Chinese officials. And when Keyes proposed to the United States authorities that he should be allowed to import several Chinese boxers into the United States, he ran into the exclusion law – the Geary Act – or as it was previously called “The Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Persons into the United States of May 1892.”

This act of Congress said that only Chinese laborers would be allowed to shuffle back and forth between China and the United States, and not too many of them, at that. And try as he may, Johnny Keyes, the revered New York City “Mayor of Chinatown,” and blessed with the gift of gab, could not convince immigration officials on either continent that the gaggle of Chinese boxers he wanted to bring to New York City’s Chinatown could in anyway be categorized as “laborers.”

As for the tens of thousands of dollars Keyes spent on his trip to China; which was, of course, the money of others, Keyes was again philosophical.

Upon returning empty-handed to Chinatown, Keyes told the Chinese businessmen who had financed his excursion, “It ain’t your life. It ain’t your wife. It’s only money.”

Johnny Keyes was nothing if not consistent.

 

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EZCFVNU

Johnny Keyes in the middle of the cover of the Boxing Blade. 

“Snakeheads: Chinese Illegal Immigrant Smugglers – A Screenplay” is FREE today on Amazon.com.

“Snakeheads: Chinese Illegal Immigrant Smugglers – A Screenplay” is FREE today on Amazon.com.

To snatch your free copy, click the link below.

*****

Snakeheads are the worst human beings known to man.

Snakeheads are Chinese gangsters, based both in China and in the United States, who smuggle Chinese immigrants into the United States.

The price is not cheap; $50,000 a head. And the process is brutal.

Because the Chinese people who yearn for a better life are dirt poor, a small percentage of the smuggling money is paid up front to the Snakeheads. However, the collection of the balance is certain; or bad things happen to the illegal Chinese immigrants: beatings, torture, and sometimes even death.

When they arrive in America, the illegal immigrants work in Chinese restaurants, for pennies an hour. They labor in hot kitchens for 12-18 hours a day, and after work, they are chained in a filthy room so they cannot escape.

If one of them does manage to escape, their relatives in China are punished instead.

“Snakeheads” is set in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where the Italian-American mob tries to horn in on the immense profits generated by the Snakeheads’ human smuggling operation. The Italians want their piece of the action, and the Chinese gangsters resist – violently.

Thrust into the middle of this warfare is an Italian-America detective, who falls in love with a Chinese businesswoman. Together, they attempt to eradicate the villains who profit on the backs of the poor illegal Chinese immigrants.

Front Cover: Chinatown’s Bayard Street Park House with Tombs City Prison in the Background

*****

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Snakeheads – A Sceenplay – Part Two

EXT. A FISHING TRAWLER – LATE NIGHT

 

The TRAWLER rocks back and forth in a furious RAINSTORM.

 

A small ROWBOAT bobs violently next to the TRAWLER.

 

A CHINESE MAN sits in the row boat, an oar in the water on each side. The ROWBOAT looks like it might CAPSIZE any second.

 

Ah Kay is standing on the deck of the trawler. Xin Lin is standing next to him.

 

Two CHINESE GANGSTERS drag three CHINESE MALE PRISONERS onto the deck of the trawler.

 

Ah Kay motions to the man in the rowboat to move the rowboat closer to the TRAWLER.

 

Xin Lin grabs ONE PRISONER.

 

XIN LIN

            (in Chinese)

Jump. Now!

 

The man hesitates. Then JUMPS into the ROWBOAT.

 

Ah Kay grabs the second prisoner.

 

AH KAY

            (in Chinese)

You too. Jump!

 

The SECOND PRISONER jumps down into the ROWBOAT.

 

Xin Lin grabs THIRD PRISONER.

 

XIN LIN

            (in Chinese)

Now you. Jump!

 

The THIRD PRISONER jumps. MISS-TIMES his leap. Falls into the RAGING WATERS.

 

The THREE MEN in the rowboat try to save the DROWNING MAN. But they are too weak to drag him onto the ROWBOAT.

 

The DROWNING MAN struggles to swim.

 

A man in the rowboat offers the drowning man an OAR.

 

The DROWNING MAN grabs the OAR.

 

A WAVE crashes into him and he FALLS BACK into the water.

 

The ROWBOAT TIPS and almost CAPSIZES.

 

The THREE MEN in the boat SCREAM.

 

A GUNSHOT blasts from the TRAWLER.

 

The DROWNING MAN takes the bullet in the chest and DROWNS.

 

Ah Kay looks down at the ROWBOAT, holding a SMOKING GUN.

 

AH KAY

            (in Chinese; to the men in the boat)

Row to shore!

 

The original man in the rowboat hands OARS to the other three. They ROW away into the DARKNESS.

 

AH KAY

            (continuing in English to Xin Lin)

That’s part of the cost of doing business.

 

XIN LIN

Yeah, but what a waste of a bullet.

            (beat)

But what about the money we lose for the creep we just killed that we were supposed to have smuggled into the United States?

 

AH KAY

            (smiles)

We already got twenty grand from the family in China. We’ll collect the rest.

 

XIN LIN

How? The guy’s dead.

 

AH KAY

We’ll collect the money before they realize he’s dead.

 

XIN LIN

Suppose they find out he’s dead before we get our money?

 

AH KAY

We’ll just kill one family member at a time until we get our money. Believe me, after we kill one, the others will pay.

            (beat; spits into the ocean)

That’s the best part of being a gangster.

 

Both man LAUGH like HYENAS.

 

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Snakeheads – A Screenplay – Part One

Snakeheads – A screenplay

By Joe Bruno

PUBLISHED BY:

Knickerbocker Literary Services

Copyright 2013 — Knickerbocker Literary Services

*****

FADE IN:

 

Ext. CHINATOWN – NIGHT

 

The CHINESE NEW YEAR’S CELEBRATION is in full force.

 

HORDES of CHINESE CELEBRANTS clog the sidewalks and streets.

 

GONGS CLANG as a team of celebrants perform the CHINESE DRAGON DANCE in the street.

 

Firecrackers EXPLODE at their feet.

 

BILLOWING SMOKE fills the air.

 

CLOSE ON – CORNER STREET SIGN

 

“MOTT and BAYARD.”

 

SUPERIMPOSE: CHINESE NEW YEAR 1996 – YEAR OF THE RAT.

 

INT. CHINATOWN TENEMENT APARTMENT – NIGHT

 

SOUNDS of the CHINESE NEW YEAR’S CELEBRATION emanate from the street below.

 

A lone CHINESE GIRL dressed in a tattered smock sits BAREFOOT on the floor. A CHAMBER POT rests on the floor next to her. The young girl looks 14-16 years old, yet, because of her disheveled look, she could be in her twenties, or even in her early 30s.

 

Her HEAD is SHAVED. Her thin legs are EXPOSED, and her almond-shaped eyes SCREAM FEAR.

 

Her hands are HANDCUFFED behind her back, and a chain connected to the handcuffs is wrapped around a STEAM RADIATOR.

 

We hear the VOICES OF MEN speaking IN CHINESE in the hallway outside.

 

The young girl WRIGGLES her thin wrists behind her, desperately trying to slip through the handcuffs.

 

The CHINESE CHATTER outside the room STOPS. Feet SHUFFLE away from the door.

 

The DOOR OPENS.

 

A middle-aged, CHUBBY CHINESE GANGSTER struts into the room.

 

He’s wearing a black leather jacket. A black shirt. And gold and diamond BLING are sparkling on his HANDS and around his NECK.

 

His shirt and jacket are open, exposing his Buddha-like belly. A SABER-LIKE KNIFE is stuffed into his belt.

 

The CHUBBY CHINESE GANGSTER stops. He STARES at girl; his eyes sparkling with LUST.

 

He smiles. LICKS his lips. Then STALKS towards the girl.

 

He removes the LEATHER JACKET and FLINGS it to the FLOOR.

 

The young girl WRIGGLES her boney WRISTS behind her, and finally her thin right hand SLIPS through the cuffs.

 

CHINESE GANGSTER

           

The rent is now due.

(beat)

You ready to pay?

 

He KNEELS DOWN in front of her. He removes the KNIFE from under his belt, and lays it on the FLOOR next to him.

 

He slowly parts the young girl’s LEGS with his hands. Then he UNZIPS his PANTS, and pulls his pants down until he’s naked from the waist down.

 

He MOUNTS inside her.

 

They sit face to face; her HANDS still behind her, and her legs SCISSORED around his body.

 

He closes his eyes; MOANS in pleasure, as he slowly pulsates inside her.

 

The young girl sits; looking BORED, SCARED, and slightly DISGUSTED.

 

He increases the speed of his trusts; MOANING LOUDER with every thrust.

 

She slowly slips her FREE HAND from behind her.

 

Eyes closed, he PUMPS HER; FASTER and FASTER. MOANING LOUDER and LOUDER.

 

He achieves orgasm, and then emits a PRIMAL SCREAM.

 

Exhausted, he COLLAPSES on top of her.

 

Quickly, she snatches the KNIFE off the floor and STABS him repeatedly in the back and in the side.

 

She’s yelping like a MANIAC. Screaming LOUDER with every plunge of the KNIFE.

 

His blood SQUIRTS onto her face and into her mouth. She SPITS his blood back into his face.

 

She SHOVES him off her.

 

She straddles him. FACE to FACE. Her on top.

 

She STABS him AGAIN, AGAIN and AGAIN. SAVAGELY. Her face DEFIANT, with low GROWLS emanating from her mouth

 

While SCREAMS like a Banshee, she SLITS his throat, from ear to ear. His BLOOD SQUIRTS in every direction, soaking the young girl’s chest.

 

He rolls onto one side; then onto his back, his fat belly POINTED toward the CEILING.

 

His DEAD EYES are wide OPEN.

 

She reaches inside his pants pocket. Removes a roll of KEYS. Finding the right one, she UN-CUFFS her other hand.

 

She stands, picks up the dead man’s LEATHER JACKET, and DRAPES it around her SHOULDERS.

 

She SPITS on his face.

 

She quietly opens the FRONT DOOR to the apartment, and SCANS both ways down the HALLWAY.

 

No one is in sight.

 

She SCAMPERS down the stairs, passing a few startled CHINESE TENANTS. Then she SPRINTS through the front door of the building.

 

EXT. CHINATOWN – NIGHT

 

The young girls DASHES out of the building, and MELTS into the FESTIVE CROWD.

 

We see her push past CHINESE REVELERS, as she DISAPPEARS into the night.