No Country for Old Men Page #10

MOSS:

One room, one night.

CLERK:

That's twenty-six dollars.

MOSS:

You on all night?

CLERK:

Yessir, be here til ten tomorrow

morning.

Moss pushes a hundred along with smaller bills across the

desk.

MOSS:

For you. I ain't asking you to do

anything illegal.

The clerk looks at the hundred-dollar bill without reaching.

CLERK:

I'm waitin' to hear your description

of that.

MOSS:

There's somebody lookin' for me. Not

police. Just call me if anyone else

checks in tonight.

INT. SECOND-FLOOR HALLWAY - NIGHT

Moss is mounting the stairs from the lobby. The carpeted

hallway is lined by transom-topped doors. Moss goes to a

door halfway down on his left.

INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

Moss enters a room with old oak furniture and high ceilings.

He sets the document case next to the bed.

He unzips the duffel and takes out the shotgun which he lays

on the bed, and then goes to the window. He parts the curtain

to look down.

The street is empty. Mexican music floats up faintly from a

bar somewhere not far away.

INT. HOTEL ROOM - LATER

The room is dark. The music is gone.

We are looking straight down on Moss lying, clothed, on the

bed. We are booming straight down toward him.

After a beat he shakes his head. He opens his eyes,

grimacing.

MOSS:

There just ain't no way.

He sits up and turns on the bedside lamp.

The shot gun and document case are on the floor by the bed.

Moss swings the document case onto the bed and unclasps it

and upends the money onto the bed. He feels the bottom of

the case, squeezing it with one hand inside and one hand

out, looking for a false bottom. He eyeballs the case, turning

it over and around.

He starts riffling money packets.

He finds one that binds. It has hundreds on the outside but

ones inside with the centers cut out. In the hollow is a

sending unit the size of a Zippo lighter.

He holds the sender, staring at it.

A long beat.

From somewhere, a dull chug. The sound is hard to read-a

compressor going on, a door thud, maybe something else.

The sound has brought Moss's look up. He sits listening. No

further sound.

Moss reaches to uncradle the rotary phone by the bed. He

dials 0.

We hear ringing filtered through the handset. Also, faintly,

offset, we hear the ring direct from downstairs.

After five rings Moss cradles the phone.

He goes to the door, reaches for the knob, but hesitates.

He gets down on his hands and knees and listens at the crack

under the door.

An open airy sound like a seashell put to your ear.

Moss rises and turns to the bed. He piles money back into

the document case but freezes suddenly-for no reason we can

see.

A long beat on his motionless back. We gradually become aware

of a faint high-frequency beeping, barely audible. Its source

is indeterminate.

Moss clasps the document case, picks up his shotgun and eases

himself to a sitting position on the bed, facing the door.

He looks at the line of light under it.

The beeps approach, though still not loud. A long wait.

At length a soft shadow appears in the line of light below

the door. It lingers there. The beeping-stops.

A beat. Now the soft shadow becomes more focused. It resolves

into two columns of dark: feet planted before the door.

Moss raises his shotgun toward the door.

A long beat.

Moss adjusts his grip on the shotgun and his finger tightens

on the trigger.

The shadow moves, unhurriedly, rightward. The band of light

beneath the door is once again unshadowed.

Quiet. Moss stares.

The band of light under the door.

Moss stares.

Silently, the light goes out.

Something for Moss to think about. He stares.

The hallway behind the door is now dark. The door is defined

only from his side, by streetlight-spill through the window.

Moss stares. He shifts, starts to rise, doesn't. A beat.

A report -- not a gunshot, but a stamping sound, followed by

a pneumatic hiss.

It brings a dull impact and Moss recoils, hit.

He winces, feeling his chest.

The door is shuddering creakily in.

It is all strange. Moss gropes in his lap and picks something

up. The lock cylinder.

The creaking door comes to rest, ajar.

Moss fires. The shotgun blast roars in the confined space

and for an instant turns the room orange. The chewed-up door

wobbles back against the jamb and creakily bounces in again.

Moss has already risen and is hoisting the document case.

FROM OUTSIDE HIS WINDOW

Moss finishes draping his shotgun by its strap across his

back and climbs out onto the ledge with the document case.

He swings the document case out and drops it.

The bracketing for the hotel's sign gives Moss a handhold.

He grabs it as inside the room the door is kicked open. Moss

swings down as, with a muted thump, orange muzzleflash strobes

the room.

Moss drops.

EXT. HOTEL EAGLE SIDEWALK - NIGHT

Moss lands and grabs the document case and straightens. He

is at the hotel entrance, standing in the light coming through

the etched glass of the double doors.

He looks at his own shadow thrown onto the street. He plunges

through the doors into the lobby as a gun thumps and crackling

shot chews the sidewalk.

INT. LOBBY - NIGHT

Moss hurries across the lobby. A glance to one side:

A booted foot sticks out from behind the front desk.

Moss slows approaching the stairway. He risks a look around

the stairway wall.

Ascending balusters fade off into the blackness of the second-

story hallway.

Moss sags. He looks back across the lobby at the front door.

He unhitches his shotgun. He remains still for a moment

holding the shotgun, back against the protected side of the

wall.

He quickly swings out and with shotgun aimed up the stairs

he crosses to the back lobby.

He quietly pushes open the back door.

EXT. SERVICE ALLEY - NIGHT

OUTSIDE:

Moss emerges into a shallow service alley, dark and dirty.

He is at a run when we hear soft tock and a garbage can in

front of him snaps and wobbles.

He turns looking up, backpedaling. Another tock accompanies

a muzzleflash in a dark second-story window.

Moss fires his shotgun: loud. Chips fly off the brickface

and the window shatters.

Moss rounds the alley corner. He stops and squats.

EXT. DOWNTOWN EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT

Wide:
dark, deserted downtown Eagle Pass, Moss a lone figure

resting at a corner.

Close on Moss panting. He takes stock, painfully feeling at

his upper chest where the lock hit, then touching gingerly

at his side, beneath the ribs, newly bloody. He sighs.

He listens. No noise. He gets to his feet with the document

case in one hand and shotgun in the other. He waits a beat,

back against the wall.

He swings out and fires the shotgun into the alley and then

spins back and runs a short block and rounds the next corner

and stops to rest.

EXT. EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT

He waits for his breath to slow. He brings up the shotgun

and readies himself.

He swings out to look back around the corner.

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