INT. JACK’S BASEMENT FLAT – SITTING ROOM -  DAY

The untidy evidence. To the accompaniment of the music, a discordant version, three dog-eared copies of ‘The Invention Of The Wheel’, A Novel by JACK MANFRED. Worn furniture. A pile of literary magazines. Two elegantly arranged vases of flowers.  Women’s fashion magazines. Books everywhere, including ‘Scarne on Gambling’, ‘The Education of A Poker Player’, ‘Delta of Venus’ and other books by Anais Nin. A woman’s dress, back from the cleaners. A framed etching of Cape Town, South Africa, in the eighteenth century. Finally...Beneath the iron barred window, with a view of the iron steps down from the street, JACK sits at the dining table. In front of him is a word processor. He toys with a glass of vodka, smoking a Gitane, and leafing through a soccer fan magazine. He starts to touch-type, looking at the screen, not the keyboard. Words appear, letter by letter... THE BALL... A NOVEL... BY JACK MANFRED. He pauses to drink.

INT. P.B. HERMAN’S RESTAURANT – DAY

The place is empty except for one table at the end of the bar.  EDDIE FLEMMING, Manhattan’s most famous detective, and his savvy, black partner, LEON JACKSON are having cocktails. Eddie is smoothly handsome, tough, smart and tired.  Not only is he the best homicide detective Manhattan has ever seen, he’s continually mentioned in New York columns and has been the subject of several magazine articles.  There’s even been a TV movie about one of his biggest cases.  Leon has been with Eddie a long time and was also featured in the TV movie.

Sitting with Eddie and Leon is ROBERT HAWKINS, host and star reporter for the tabloid show, “Top Story.”  Hawkins is also the best in the business and has dealt with them all: Joey Buttafuco and Amy Fisher, Lorena Bobbitt and OJ.

Wait staff bustles in the b.g. doing the morning set up. Hawkins listens as Eddie, cigar in hand, finishes a “war story” and a vodka tonic at the same time.

JOHN LETOUR, forty, light sleeper. Never meant to be a drug dealer, it just came along. He’s been other things: messenger boy, cab driver, model, postal clerk, doorman, nightclub shill -- never meant to be them either. Now he’s a D.D. Drug dealer.

JOHN LETOUR, well-groomed, khaki slacks, leather jacket, tippet-like scarf, belt pouch, “Beatle” boots, a shadow drifting in and out of other shadows, New York, day, night: watching, listening, rarely speaking -- nonexistent, seen only by those he sees. His face an affable blank. Make of it what you will. The eyes flicker; the hands shift discreetly. A map of calculation. Once he had a drug problem. Life turned a page. Today he follows instructions: he sleeps light -- one eye open, anticipating.

JOHN LETOUR, D.D., loner, voyeur, has been drifting toward an unknown destination. At mid-life the destination draws near. The circle tightens. The dealer is anxious. The destination is love.

EXT. STREET DAY (WINTER)

WINTER WIND blows across a scene as strange and bleak as an alien planet. VALLON, carrying his cross high, steps through the doorway. The OTHERS slowly follow VALLON out of the building, which is three stories high and maybe a block long. A dilapidated sign identifies it as the 5 Paints Brewery.

It is the tallest structure in the midst of low, squalid SHACKS, winding ALLEYS as narrow as a snakes back, and DIRT STREETS filled with ruts, mud and filthy snow. A few PIGS wander forlornly about, rooting for garbage.WASH hangs stiff, in the middle of the square, from a peculiar monument erected to some forgotten war hero. The Brewery occupies one side of a SQUARE surrounded by some storefronts and a couple of collapsed wooden sidewalks. If this place resembles anything at all, it’s a horrible hybrid of London’s Limehouse and a pioneer town in the American West whose best days have long passed--or never came at all.

VALLON stands still, staring across the square past the monument. His battalion of irregulars waits for his signal. Now... very, very slowly...from around both sides of the monument comes ANOTHER GANG, in size the same as VALLON’s, men and women both, armed like Visigoths with HOMEMADE WEAPONS: knives, pitchforks, building blocks and bricks, boards with sharp nails protruding from the ends. Every member of this second group is dressed in a long DUSTER which reaches to the ankles. Several MEN in front of the group sport dusters made of leather.