Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition)

her, Mister Big Deal Father,that’s spending six or seven years in prison while she’s growing up. You talk to her. You tell her what a bad girl she is.’ Of course Connie couldn’t’ve told me, I was in there, what the fuck’s going on. How’m I supposed to know it? Shit. There’s nothing you can do anyway. It don’t matter. It just pisses me off, is all. It pisses me off.”
    â€œLook,” Frankie said, “I don’t mean nothing, all right? I don’t care how pissed off you are. You at least got something.”
    â€œStill come up dry, huh?” Amato said.
    â€œYou know what I did?” Frankie said. “I went down the Probation. Like I actually believe all that shit they’re always handing out, there, all that stuff. ‘Here’s something for you. Place in Holbrook needs assemblers. One thirty a week. Four to midnight. Steady work and it’ll keep you out of trouble.’
    â€œBeautiful,” Frankie said. “I’m living in Somerville. How the hell’m I supposed to get to Holbrook in the middle of the afternoon? Never mind, for Christ sake, how the fuck I’m supposed to get home inna middle of the night. ‘Buy a car. You need a car for your job, we’ll help you get your license back.’
    â€œWith what?” Frankie said. “I haven’t got no money. What am I gonna buy a car with? Why the fuck they think I need a job, I’m living with my sister and everything. So I can keep warm? I haven’t got no money, a car. ‘Maybe you can get a ride,’ they tell me. Right. Hang around the Square every day, I find somebody that just happens to be going down to Holbrook. Just at the right time, too. Assholes.
    â€œÂ â€˜Move down there,’ they tell me,” Frankie said. “Same thing. I still haven’t got no money. I had money, I could move down there, I’d move some place else, Iwouldn’t be bothering them in the first place. Well, they’re sorry. That’s all they got right now, that they’re pretty sure the guy that does the hiring’ll take a guy like me. I should probably go down the welfare and get enough dough, I can move out there. The guy’s just sick of talking to me. He wants his fuckin’ coffee or something. Okay, that’s the end of that. Then I see Russell. He’s going right along. He’ll probably buy a hotel or something in a couple weeks or so.”
    â€œNot on dogs,” Amato said.
    â€œHe’s just doing that,” Frankie said. “He’s gonna use that to buy something, soon’s he gets enough. That’s what I’d like to do, I got something in mind like that myself. But first I got to get the money to buy the stuff.”
    â€œWhat is it?” Amato said.
    â€œThere’s this guy I know,” Frankie said. “I see him, he naturally wants to know, how’re things going? So we have a couple pops, he’s buying, and we talk, and then he says, well, he’s gotta go over this place and I can come along if I want, maybe I’ll see something.
    â€œSo we go down this place,” Frankie said, “and it’s money. All twenties. Beautiful stuff. I had, I could’ve bought some of that stuff. I hadda thousand on me, I could’ve bought twenny thousand dollars of that stuff. And I tell you, it’s beautiful. You could move it under a floodlight.”
    â€œBetter call the guy up,” Amato said. “Tell him bye-bye. He’s gonna get grabbed. He better pass the first one inna drugstore and get himself a new toothbrush. He’s gonna need one.”
    â€œJohn,” Frankie said, “wrong. This stuff is really good. The paper’s good, the ink’s good, the colors’re right. I tell you. I really looked at that stuff. The guy that madeit oughta go take some of it to the government. It’s better’n the real stuff.”
    â€œThe guy’s Chubby Ryan,” Amato said.
    â€œI dunno him,” Frankie said.
    â€œHe’s not around,” Amato said. “He’s in Atlanta. He’s doing ten fuckin’ years for that beautiful stuff. That funny? You know something? I agree with you. It’s beautiful stuff. It’s fuckin’ near perfect. But Chubby, Chubby knows a lot about printing and all of that, but, see, Chubby hasn’t got no fuckin’ brains. Just like your friend, there, Doglover. He’s all right.