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Everyone’s got problems, but that’s especially true of the four central characters of this serialized crime drama: a piano teacher with a sickly mother and financial difficulties, a gangster who’d rather be running an art gallery, an Afghan war vet with a drug habit and a shaky marriage, and a literary agent suffocated by her own sexual inhibitions. They work together to find solutions to their problems, but their efforts are undermined by various blackmailers, extortionists, and informants, and their lives become seriously imperiled by the unwanted attention of the NYPD and the Russian mafia. Suspense mixes with dark comedy and the occasional madcap moment in this TV series with a storyline and atmospherics rooted in the cinematic traditions of Alfred Hitchcock and film noir. The action takes place mostly in New York (Brighton Beach, Sutton Place, and Chinatown), with additional scenes unfolding in war torn Odesa, a Soviet labor camp in Siberia, and the ganglands of Kingston, Jamaica.

EXT.   CANARSIE STREET   DAY

A beat up Chevrolet Monte Carlo is standing, with the engine running, on the left side of a deserted one-way street in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.  SMILEY is sitting at the wheel.  VASILY, driving his purple Cadillac, pulls up behind the Monte Carlo, turns off the engine, gets out of the car, locks the door, and walks forward.  Smiley gets out of the car and walks toward Vasily, meeting him on the sidewalk.

VASILY

Swaggy?

SMILEY

No, man.  I’m the driver.  Need to pat you down.

Vasily raises his arms as Smiley frisks him thoroughly.

VASILY

Is he coming?

SMILEY

We’ll pick him up.

Smiley opens the left rear door and Vasily gets in the car.

EXT.   CANARSIE CORNER   DAY

Smiley’s Monte Carlo pulls up in front of a corner bodega in Canarsie.  Smiley is driving and Vasily is behind him in the back seat.  SWAGGY emerges from the store, opens the right rear door of the car, and gets in.  The car pulls away from the curb.

INT.   SMILEY’S CAR   DAY   TRAVELING

VASILY

Swaggy, I take it?

SWAGGY

The same.

VASILY

At long last.

SWAGGY

And yourself?

VASILY

My name is Vladimir.  Vladimir Trukhachevski.

SWAGGY

A name for a man of substance, to my ear.  And you have met mi parri Smiley?

VASILY

Smiley, is it?

(to Smiley)

How do you do?

(to Swaggy)

I can’t say it strikes me as the most appropriate moniker, but perhaps on more lighthearted occasions it becomes correspondingly applicable.  Do you have air con in this car?  It seems a bit steamy back here.

Smiley presses buttons on the door console and all four windows roll down.

SWAGGY

It’s good to light up a spliff when you’re doin’ business, so we like to keep the air circulatin’.

Swaggy takes a bag of marijuana and a package of rolling papers from his pocket and swiftly begins to assemble an oversized marijuana cigarette.  The car is getting on the Belt Parkway.

SWAGGY

You are interested in doin’ business, am I right?

Swaggy takes out a lighter and ignites one end of the cigarette.  After the flame goes out, he takes a long drag.

VASILY

Oh most assuredly.  Though not as a buyer.

Swaggy exhales smoke out the car window and offers the cigarette to Vasily.

SWAGGY

Well try this one anyway.

EXT.   BELT PARKWAY   DAY

Smiley’s Monte Carlo, with Smiley driving, Swaggy and Vasily in the back seat, and all four windows open, is driving eastbound on the Belt Parkway, along Jamaica Bay.

SWAGGY (V.O.)

I like driving along the water ’cause it reminds me of being back in Kingston.  They even call it Jamaica Bay!

Smiley’s car exits Belt Parkway and stops at a light at the corner of Cross Bay Boulevard.

INT.   SMILEY’S CAR   DAY   TRAVELING

Smiley is driving and Vasily and Swaggy are in the back seat.  Swaggy is holding the cigarette, unlit and partly smoked.  All of the car’s windows are open.  The car BACKFIRES and stalls out with a shudder.  Smiley turns the ignition key, restarting the engine with a GRINDING SOUND.

VASILY

(annoyed)

I hope this old jalopy isn’t going to break down on us.  Perhaps we should have taken my car.

SWAGGY

This car gets me where I want to go.  I try to keep a low profile, brudda.  They know who the big dawg is.  I don’t need no Cadillac to prove it.

The light turns green and Smiley turns right onto Cross Bay Boulevard.

VASILY

I would certainly agree that one’s reputation must be judiciously managed.  Nevertheless, I can’t help feeling some doubt as to whether the scale of your operation is adequate to meet the needs of the collaboration that I have been contemplating.

SWAGGY

It’s the facts that matter, not the appearance.  I don’t need no custom Land Rover to prove what a big dick I have.  You see what I’m tellin’ you?  Big facts.  Consider this: right now, today, I got a stable with seven different ladies.

VASILY

Really?

SWAGGY

Yeah, really.

(counts on his fingers)

There’s Alma, who come up from Miami to Crown Heights with me and Smiley.  She saggin’ all over but she cooks all the Jamaican dishes my mom used to make: ackee and saltfish, curry goat, bammy, callaloo.  We always talking about her opening up a restaurant.  Then there’s Keysha, who’s over in a building in Bushwick with her sister and my son RJ where I got three apartments, one on the ground floor and two upstairs.  Chauncy is a skinny white chick from Oakland, California, livin’ in Williamsburg.  Kind of a schemer, but that girl can fuck her way out of any situation.  Fly Child is a young girl, kind of a tomboy.  She grew up on a Latin King block in East New York.  Carries a Viper Tec double action blade and she knows how to use it.  Coco is a regular U.S. born African American, a junkie and a hooker who got clean and is livin’ with our twins in Bed Stuy.  We got married to fix my immigration status, but what a headache that was, dealing with Babylon.

(holds up the thumb of the hand holding the cigarette)

Then there’s Erycka, my yellow gal, who’s just over the Queens line.  Her brother, Gee Ready, was in Shower Posse back in the day, before we came up here.  Now who am I forgettin’?

(picks up the lighter, preparing to relight the cigarette)

Oh Favour, a Trini (actually from Tobago), who’s got a house out in Canarsie and her own beauty shop.  She loves to quarrel, like a lot of Trini women, but we got a beautiful baby daughter.

VASILY

That’s wonderful that you’re so popular among the fair sex.  If I were to enumerate my own list of conquests, I believe that I could very well challenge your claim to the title of Don Juan of Brooklyn.  But I would have to admit that I have not been nearly as productive with respect to the number of progeny I have scattered across the face of the earth.  Not that I have the foggiest notion of how any of these metrics might relate to the topic of our discussion.  Have you never considered the possibility of using some form of birth protection?

SWAGGY

I’m no Rasta who has to do everything natural, but I am like a lot of Jamaican men who think wearing boots in bed is not good manners.

VASILY

Jamaica must be quite a crowded little island.

SWAGGY

True dat.  You can end up with a lot of little pickneys belonging to a lot of baby mamas.  But I like playing with the pickneys and knowing that my genes are being passed on and spreading out over the world and surviving for all of the generations to come.

VASILY

I do note that you have been careful to situate your ladies in various Brooklyn locations that are geographically removed from each other.  I take it that your purpose is to decrease the likelihood that you cross paths with one woman while in the company of another.  A clever strategy!

SWAGGY

No, man!  All these ladies know each other, and they working together all the time.  And I don’t tolerate none of this jealousy and badmouthing that can go on.  I find that so long as you can give a lady security so that she knows her needs and that of her pickneys will be taken care of then maybe she don’t have to get red eye for what some other lady got.  Or if she does, at least you don’t have to hear about it.

VASILY

Then I take my hat off to you.  I have never been able to indoctrinate my wife into your manner of thinking, and I’m reasonably certain that I never will.

SWAGGY

’Cause she take it personal.  My women understand it’s not personal.  You see, the business I’m in is what they call a labor intensive industry.  I need a lot of bodies, but they got to be loyal bodies, hundred percent guaranteed.  All them girls got brothers, sisters, chillun, friends.  So it’s one big extended family.  I like family because family means trust.  And trust is what I want right at the foundation of my network.  You feelin’ me, Mr. T?

VASILY

That does indeed put a rather different complexion on the situation.  I’m pleased to say that I have perhaps underestimated you, Mr. Swaggy.

SWAGGY

I’m thinkin’ you didn’t come to me to hear about my love life.  Maybe you can give me a clue as to what’s on your mind.

Swaggy relights the cigarette and takes a drag.

VASILY

What’s on my mind is an important life lesson.  I’ve learned that, in order to be successful in life, you need to be prepared for the opportunities that come your way.  And when you find a unique opportunity, you can’t let it get away.  You need to jump on it immediately.

Swaggy exhales smoke out the open window.

SWAGGY

True dat.

Swaggy offers the cigarette to Vasily, who shakes his head and waves a hand, declining the offer.  Swaggy hands the cigarette to Smiley in the front seat.

SWAGGY

(to Smiley)

Mi man a capitalist philosopher, Smiley.

(to Vasily)

And how do you advise I should be applyin’ this philosophy?

Smiley takes a drag on the cigarette and throws it out the car window.  Vasily takes a small vial and a silver cokespoon from his pocket and offers them to Swaggy.

VASILY

I have a little present for you.  Here.  Try it.

Swaggy takes the vial with his right hand but, instead of taking the cokespoon, holds up his left pinkie finger, which has an unusually long, curling fingernail.

SWAGGY

That’s OK I have my scooper.

Swaggy opens the vial, looks inside, and inserts his fingernail, withdrawing a small quantity of white powder.  He holds the tip of his fingernail up to his right nostril and inhales the powder.  Then he puts the fingernail in his mouth and tastes the remnants of the powder.  He closes the vial and hands it to Smiley.

SWAGGY

H.

Smiley stops at a traffic light, reaches back over the seat, and Vasily hands him the cokespoon.  Smiley opens the vial, extracts a small quantity of white powder with the cokespoon, and places it on his tongue.  Smiley frowns and nods his head.  He hands the vial and cokespoon to Swaggy.  Swaggy gives the cokespoon to Vasily.

SWAGGY

Good stuff.  Where’s it from?

VASILY

Chinatown.

Swaggy leans his head back for several seconds.

SWAGGY

Hmm.  So not from the Italians up through Mexico and not the usual Russian stuff coming from Afghanistan.  Meaning you’re not Democrat or Republican.  You’re lookin’ to start an independent party.

EXT.   CROSS BAY BOULEVARD   DAY

Smiley’s car, heading south toward Rockaway Beach, exits Cross Bay Boulevard onto Beach Channel Drive.

SWAGGY (V.O.)

Why do I get the feeling you tryin’ to sell me somethin’?

VASILY (V.O.)

I’ll give you two hundred grams for five thousand.  See how you like it.  There’s plenty more.

SWAGGY (V.O.)

Twenty-five per kilo?

INT.   SMILEY’S CAR   DAY   TRAVELING

Smiley is driving and Swaggy and Vasily are in the back seat.

VASILY

Fifty.

SWAGGY

So the five thousand is a tester price.  How about we say forty per kilo?

VASILY

Actually it’s packaged in seven hundred gram units.

SWAGGY

So twenty-eight.

VASILY

I see that your math skills are considerably more advanced than your English skills.  The best I could do is thirty-two, pay on delivery for the first batch.  But after that I’ll want a bigger cut and I’ll need twenty in advance for any re-up.

Through the rearview mirror, Smiley gives Swaggy a dirty look, full of suspicion.

SWAGGY

Well let’s not get too far forward.  We can see how it go with the two hundred and the seven hundred.  Maybe we can do fifty-fifty: one half up front.

VASILY

That might work.  But as you can see, what I’m looking for is a retail network that will be able to distribute some serious weight.  So you’ll be able to move a pound and a half?

SWAGGY

No problem if it’s this quality.  Above that, we’ll need to spread out some.  Which might lead up to a bit of controversy around town.  So how soon can you get the two hundred grams?

VASILY

Soon as you’ve got the five thousand.

SWAGGY

We’ll come pick you up Thursday, then.

Vasily shakes his head.

SWAGGY

And where did you have in mind for this transaction?

VASILY

Chinatown, in a restaurant.

Through the rearview mirror, Smiley gives Swaggy a dirty look, and shakes his head slightly.

SWAGGY

(to Smiley, annoyed)

Don’t be cuttin’ me with your eyes, Smiley.  Outfit on his back is five thousand!

(to Vasily)

So let’s smoke a little more ganja to celebrate this unique opportunity.

Swaggy takes a bag of marijuana and a package of rolling papers from his pocket and swiftly begins to assemble an oversized marijuana cigarette.

SWAGGY

No vapin’ for an occasion of this magnitude.

EXT.   RIIS PARK   DAY

Smiley’s car enters a parking lot in Riis Park, stopping in a spot with a view of the ocean.  There are only a few other cars in the lot.

VASILY (V.O.)

I’m rather impressed by your technique.

SWAGGY (V.O.)

A lot of practice, pardna.

INT.   SMILEY’S CAR   DAY

Smiley, in the driver seat, has shifted his body so that he can face the passengers in back.  Vasily, on the left, and Swaggy, on the right, are in the back.  Swaggy exhales smoke through the car window and offers the lit cigarette to Vasily.

SWAGGY

So how long you been in this business?

Vasily takes the cigarette from Swaggy.

VASILY

Too long.  To tell you the truth, I’ve outgrown it.

Vasily takes a drag on the cigarette.

SWAGGY

Is there some occupation more suits you?

VASILY

Huh?

(coughs for several seconds)

Oh.  Oh yes!  Well what I thrive on is creativity.  So in all of my pursuits I seek to live my life as creatively as possible.  And what I need is an endeavor that will provide me with an outlet for my imagination, for my artistic interests and aesthetic sensibilities.

Vasily hands Smiley the cigarette as Smiley and Swaggy, perplexed, exchange a glance.

SMILEY

So you good with a mike?  You wanna toast, maybe go on TV?  Some like that?

(takes a drag on the cigarette) 

VASILY

Well yes although I’ve never seen myself so much as a producer of art as much as someone who is capable of utilizing his critical faculties in order to evaluate, present, and market the artistic works of others.

SMILEY

(exhales smoke out the car window)

So like ownin’ a club?  Or workin’ at a museum?

VASILY

Yes like a museum.  Or I could open my own art dealership.

Smiley hands the cigarette to Swaggy.

SWAGGY

Mi man nah wuh fi wuk inna museum, Smiley.  Ya nuh see him wan a shop inna Soho?  In that right, bredren?

Swaggy takes a drag on the cigarette.

VASILY

Yes, exactly.  Although you’d be surprised to learn where the hottest new galleries have opened lately.

SMILEY

In Brooklyn?

SWAGGY

(exhales smoke out the car window)

No, man.  They all in Chelsea now.

Smiley turns the key in the ignition and the engine STARTS.

VASILY

You’re a bit behind the times.  Chelsea and Soho, of course.  And there are numerous galleries in Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint.  But if you want to be where the scene is really taking off, you go to Chinatown.  And I can picture the gallery I’d like to open down to the last detail.

INT.   SMILEY’S CAR   DAY   TRAVELING

Smiley exits the parking lot and heads west on Beach Channel Drive.

SWAGGY

Now I see it!  My man got himself a Chiney matey and she a painter lady.  That’s who puttin’ all these notions inside your head.

Swaggy takes a drag on the cigarette and flicks the remainder out the car window.  Smiley gets on the Marine Parkway Bridge.

VASILY

I know that the back rooms of luxurious art salons and their elite clientele couldn’t seem more distant, an entirely different universe from the back alleys where you peddle your wares to the most wretched creatures on earth.  But you’re probably not aware that, outside of the drug trade, transactions involving forged and stolen works of art constitute the largest black market on the planet.

Swaggy nods slowly and blows smoke out the car window.

EXT.   MARINE PARKWAY BRIDGE   DAY

Smiley’s car heads north over the bridge.