The Man Who Wasn't There Page #17

The customer in Ed's chair is in white shirtsleeves that do

not hide rolls of fat. He has a hot towel over his face that

does not slow his speech, although it does muffle it to some

extent:

CUSTOMER:

She makes this stuff, she calls it

gatto, it's got egg in there, it's

got sugar, it's got--it's cake,

basically, except she calls it gatto.

Like if you don't call it cake maybe

you won't put on any weight, like I

need to eat gatto, you know what I'm

saying? This stuff, if I've had a

square meal, I've had my steak and

potatoes, I can just have another

cup of coffee afterward, I won't ask

for the desert if it's not there...

His voice turns into a drone under the narration.

ED (V.O.)

Sooner or later everyone needs a

haircut...

CUSTOMER:

Got the recipe from a magazine,

woman's magazine...

ED (V.O.)

We were working for the bank now. We

kept cutting the hair, trying to

stay afloat, make the payments, tread

water, day by day, day by day...

CRANE DOWN:

Inside a courtroom we boom down toward the defendant's table,

the fat customer's drone turning into the drone of the bailiff

reading an indictment. Doris stands next to Freddy

Riedenschneider.

ED (V.O.)

Most people think someone's accused

of a crime, they haul 'em in and

bring 'em to trial, but it's not

like that, it's not that fast. The

wheels of justice turn slow...

BAILIFF:

...did willfully and with malice

aforethought take the life of one

David Allen Brewster, a human being...

ED (V.O.)

They have an arraignment, and then

the indictment, and they entertain

motions to dismiss, and postpone,

and change the venue, and alter this

and that and the other. They empanel

a jury, which brings more motions,

and they set a trial date and then

change the date, and then often as

not they'll change it again.

BAILIFF:

What say you to these charges?

Our boom down has ended close on Doris. We hear Freddy

Riedenschneider, off:

RIEDENSCHNEIDER:

We plead not guilty, your honor.

BARBERSHOP:

Booming down toward the fat man.

ED (V.O.)

And through all of it we cut the

hair.

CUSTOMER:

I say, Honey, if you're gonna make a

cobbler, make a little bit of cobbler,

don't put a whole pan in front of me

and tell me it's not gonna be any

good when it's cold...

OPERA SINGERS:

We are panning photographic portraits of opera singers in

character, wearing the wardrobe of different eras, armies,

dukedoms, and boudoirs, and displaying the heights and depths

of various emotions, their mouths stretched wide in song. We

pan off the pictures to discover that we are in a hotel room,

floating in toward a bed on which Freddy Riedenschneider, a

mask over his eyes, slumbers.

ED (V.O.)

...Meanwhile, Freddy Riedenschneider

slept at the Metropole...

RESTAURANT:

Tracking in toward Freddy Riedenschneider, who sits twirling

spaghetti with a fork against a spoon.

ED (V.O.)

...and shoveled it in at DaVinci's.

LATERAL TRACK:

From inside a car. Pedestrians bustle along a sidewalk. Among

them scurries a weedy little man who has one hand clamped to

the crown of his hat to keep it in place in a stiff wind.

ED (V.O.)

He'd brought in a private investigator

from Sacramento...

LATERAL TRACK:

Moving the opposite way. A different day, but again a crowd

moves along the sidewalk, and among them the little man

scuttles in the opposite direction, hand still raised to his

hat, his forearm and the tilt of his head largely obscuring

his face.

ED (V.O.)

...to nose around into Big Dave's

past.

PUSHING IN TO ED

In the Abundas living room again, again listening to Birdy

at the piano, but now the two of them are alone.

ED (V.O.)

I found myself more and more going

over to the Abundas's. It was a

routine we fell into, most every

evening. I even went when Walter was

away on his research trips. He was a

genealogist, had traced back his

side of the family seven generations,

his late wife's, eight. It seemed

like a screwy hobby. But then maybe

all hobbies are. Maybe Walter found

something there, in the old county

courthouses, hospital file rooms,

city archives, property rolls,

registries, something maybe like

what I found listening to Birdy play.

Some kind of escape. Some kind of

peace...

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