[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]
[CRICKETS CHIRPING]
[FATHER SIGHS]
[EXCLAIMING IN ANNOYANCE]
[UTENSILS CLATTERING]
Honey, it's family hour,
there must be something on.
DAUGHTER: Oh, wow, Candy Critters!
[FATHER EXCLAIMS]
Oh, great. It's Monsters, our favorite show!
[MONSTROUS LAUGH] Shh, it's starting.
[MONSTROUS LAUGH]
[FATHER CHUCKLES]
[JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING]
[TELEPHONE RINGING]
[FAN WHIRRING]
[TELEPHONE RINGING]
So,
are you gonna back me up on this or what?
Come on, pop, have a sip.
Oh, no. No, no, officer. I've been bad.
I don't deserve no coffee.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
[DOOR SWINGS OPEN]
All right, Sergeant Mancini,
what's going on here?
I hate to bother you with this, Inspector,
only, this is the first time...
I know... Maybe...
All this craziness is for real.
It's cold in here.
Cold?
Get to the point.
[MOANING]
Jesus.
So the old man doesn't have any arms. So what?
We found him in the subway like this.
On a bench.
There were no scars at all.
The skin was smooth as a whistle.
Like it was polished.
Me and Parkhurst,
we looked him over real carefully.
Didn't we, Parkhurst?
Come on, Parkhurst, you gotta back me up on this.
You can see for yourself, Inspector.
It's like he was born this way.
Maybe he was born that way, Mancini.
Lot of babies are born that way nowadays.
Sign of progress.
That's just it, Inspector.
We know damn well he wasn't born that way,
P-Parkhurst and me, because
just yesterday,
we damn near busted him for stealing a couple of pineapples
off the Greek's vegetable stand down the street.
He ran near half a block with those damn pineapples
before we stopped him.
And he was using his arms to hold the goddamn things.
Two of them, two arms!
Just like you and me got.
Isn't that so, Parker?
Come on, Parkhurst.
Damn it, back me up!
[CHUCKLES] Okay.
I'll, uh.
let you two, uh, talk it over.
Yeah, you take it easy.
We're not gonna hurt you.
Come on, old timer.
Don't, don't bother with that, Inspector.
I'll take care of him.
Mancini,
you and Parkhurst stay put.
All right, come along, my friend.
They took 'em.
Took me arms.
Who took 'em, old timer?
Oh, oh, I-I don't know, officer.
I was asleep down there,
asleep by the toll booth
where it's safe, you know.
But it wasn't safe.
'Cause I woke up and me arms were gone.
I never even felt it.
I don't even feel it now, mister.
[CHUCKLES WEAKLY]
I'll be back to talk to you two later.
MAN: [MOANING] Oh, Jesus.
Was I bad?
Is that why they done it?
Is that why they took 'em?
Is that why they took me arms?
No.
No, you weren't bad, old timer.
You were just fine.
I don't get it.
Why'd the Inspector take the old guy and leave us here?
I should have taken the old guy.
This is not how you do it.
He ain't treatin' us like cops, I tell you.
He's treating us like we was perpetrators.
He's got us waiting in here almost 15 minutes.
He's working on us, damn it.
[FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING]
So, we're all ready here?
You men ready to talk? How about you, Parkhurst?
Oh.
[SIGHS] All right.
It's like he said, it's like Mancini said.
Yesterday the guy had arms.
See?
See, it's like I said, Inspector.
It's, it's like with this other stuff.
You hear it from the other cops.
You see it for yourself, but you think:
"Who's gonna believe this?
"Who's gonna believe some bum just lost a chunk of himself?"
Missing ears, noses, all that.
But there's no blood.
There's no scars, there's no nothing for Christ's sake.
Who's gonna believe you?
For Christ's sake, who's gonna believe you?
You backing this up, Parkhurst?
Once we came across this nut case
trying to play a busted guitar for quarters.
The only trouble was, see,
he didn't have any fingers.
He didn't even have any thumbs.
Just his palms and the backs of his hands.
And all smooth 'round the edges.
They were only flippers.
Like a seal.
He was crying and all,
trying to tell everybody that he could play real good.
If only they'd heard him yesterday.
That they'd come too late.
Another guy, he come up to our car,
waving his arms,
his mouth wide open like he wants to scream something fierce.
So I rolled down the window.
He's not making a sound.
I could feel his breath on my face, okay.
I could smell it,
but he's not making a sound.
Then I see the reason why.
He don't have no inside to his mouth, see?
No teeth, no tongue,
he's got nothing inside there at all.
It's just a hole.
Where do you think that stuff goes, Parkhurst?
The eyes, the arms, the fingers?
Where do you think that stuff goes?
Uh...
I got an idea about that, Inspector.
I ain't told nobody but Mancini here.
You tell me.
All right. I will.
It's this guy, see,
and he's the worst of all.
Only, he has everything.
He's not like the rest because he's not missing anything.
Only. none of his pieces match up.
Tell me about him, Parkhurst.
Go on, tell me about him.
He wasn't nothing.
Parkhurst, we was, we was wrong about him.
Oh, yeah?
The hell we was.
You wanted me to tell about it,
so I'm telling about it. So shut up.
We saw him at the far end of the platform
down near the subway, right.
Uh, lower level where the express trains stop.
Maybe around 4:00 in the morning.
It was just him and us.
We had the place to ourselves.
He was trying to get away from us.
Only he had to kind of waddle, see.
He had to walk in all these different angles.
He had to move real funny all over the place.
This way, that way.
On account he was built all weird and lopsided.
Hey, look, Inspector, he's all wrong about this.
Parkhurst, he's a little over excited.
All right, maybe the guy was all stitched up
like he'd been sewed together a couple 100 times,
but you see stuff like that all the time in this city.
It was nothing.
You just shut up, Mancini!
Go on, Parkhurst.
He wouldn't answer me, this guy.
So I took hold of him by his shoulders.
It was awful.
I can't tell you just why, except one of his shoulders was big
and the other one was small.
It felt awful.
They didn't match any way at all, those shoulders.
And when I got him turned around,
His face was like the rest of him.
With nothing on it
went with anything else.
He couldn't really talk, only kind of croak,
on account of his head didn't match his neck, see.
I figured what it was
was he couldn't get enough air through his throat
for more than just breathing.
[BREATHING NOISILY]
Look, Inspector, please,
let's just forget about all this, all right?
I'll take care of it.
You, you won't hear another word, I swear.
Parkhurst is a little slow, you know,
but, but he's okay, I swear it.
I'll talk to him, all right?
Inspector, you can count on us.
It's all right, boys.
I gotta do a few things.
I gotta get a few things.
And I gotta see a few people.
You boys wait here.
I don't want you leaving the room.
You understand me?
By the way, you boys did right telling me about this.
Shows I can trust you.
Believe me, you won't regret it.
[SIRENS WAILING IN BACKGROUND]
He's taken this whole thing okay, you know?
Maybe we can work it out.
Yeah, we can,
we can still work things out.
It's all right. He'll be here. Don't worry.
Where is he?
What's going on?
I gotta get home.
[EXHALES]
[DOOR OPENS]
You men are gonna have to trust me on a lot of things here,
a lot of things that won't be easy.
Okay?
Now, I've talked to some important people.
Told them what you said, what you saw.
This may turn out to be a very good thing for you.
If you handle it right.
Sign these before we go any further.
[PEN SCRATCHING]
This is...
INSPECTOR: That's right, Mancini.
Big stuff.
You're in another league.
If you wanna stay there,
you gotta be quiet, all right?
It's important that you get that through your heads
because what I'm about to tell you,
what I'm about to show you,
no one has any idea
of what's going on.
No one's supposed to have any idea what's going on.
Only important people know,
people I talked to about you.
They don't want you to tell what's going on.
That's why you sign these papers.
Of course, you don't have to sign them.
It's your choice. It's a free country.
I have confidence in you boys.
You're both good cops, good Americans.
Put your pieces in here.
My gun?
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
You want my gun?
In here.
Good boy.
I knew I could count on you, Parkhurst.
Once a good cop,
always a good cop.
I always wondered what was behind that door,
behind all those locks.
You really don't want people in there.
That's right.
We don't.
You first.
Keep moving. Keep moving.
On up ahead.
What the hell is...
Worry about it later, Parkhurst.
Keep moving.
Jesus, there's someone in here.
You could say that.
Jesus!
These are hands.
This in here's full of hands.
And they're moving.
Could be because you bumped into it, Parkhurst.
No, no.
There's fingers too. The fingers, it's moving!
All right, Parkhurst, keep moving.
[BUBBLES POPPING]
[SUPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
Oh my God.
This is something...
Honest.
No way. No.
It's alive! Shut up!
What is it? Both of you shut up.
That's the way it is own here, okay?
Get used to it.
It isn't nice down here.
What you've seen so far is nothing.
If you can't even take that, you're no good to us at all.
Do you two understand what I'm trying to tell you?
If you can't cut it down here,
we can't use you.
That thing in there,
is it...
Did it really, uh...
Is that alive?
Well, can you handle that?
It's alive.
It's a woman's head and it's alive.
That glass case has been covered in soot for years, Mancini.
Probably a long, long time since she's even seen a guy.
You can't blame her for wanting to kiss you.
You up to this, Parkhurst?
Yes, sir.
Yeah? Well, we'll see.
[LOUDLY] Are you decent?
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
[LOUD RASPY BREATHING]
Is he the one you men saw on the subway?
No. No.
he ain't the one.
[GRUNTS]
Well, the reason I asked, we got a lot of them out there.
You know, it's a funny thing, people don't seem to notice them.
I guess that's, uh,
because of the way the city's going downhill these days.
No. It can't be.
No, you, you wouldn't.
INSPECTOR: Wouldn't do what, Mancini?
You made him into a cop.
You built that thing.
Out of all those other people.
Then you made it into a cop.
That's an early work, an old model.
Believe me, we made many more important people that just cops, Mancini.
Why?
We want people who are loyal.
People who don't have wives or husbands.
And people who don't ask questions.
[GUNS COCKING]
[DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING]
He was just the beginning, just the start.
Too bad you boys won't get to see the others.
You and Parkhurst well, it seems to me,
you've got a bad attitude problem here.
I don't think you're gonna see anything more whatsoever.
I'm afraid you guys are only good for parts.
[LAUGHING MANICALLY]
[GUNSHOT]
[CONTINUES LAUGHING]
[GUNSHOT]