The Attaché – The Black Spot – Brian Manton

1.
Inside a small private bar. The bar is at basement level, we can see the stairs up to street level through the window at the back. The door has been left open. The bar's name is written on a blue neon sign behind the bar (panel right) - "The Black Spot". The "O" in spot is a fully black circle with blue glow from behind. The bar is lit with harsh blue lighting. Most of the details are to be rendered in black silhouette, including a man, LENNY, dragging a body across the floor in the foreground. We see his eyes in relief from the silhouette, and the tears running down his face. The bar is otherwise deserted.

LENNY (singing - include broken musical notes to show he is singing badly):  Ten Dead Men on a...

2.
We can now see that Lenny is wearing a tattered old suit. His face is in shadow. Lenny walks backwards, dragging the body by the arms over to a mass of bodies in the corner of the room. Eight other suited men lie dead, piled atop eachother. Each body (except the one Lenny is dragging) is wearing an eye patch. There is an overturned table and broken bottles and glasses. We can just about make out the open attaché case underneath the bodies. We can maybe see some of its contents - some paperwork, an open and half empty (no optimism here!) box of ammo and a gun.

LENNY (singing):  Bottle of rum, on a...

3.
Lenny has laid the body over the case so we can't see it anymore. He is putting an eye patch on this last body.

LENNY (singing):  Yo ho ho, on a...

4.
Low angle shot. In the FG we see the feet of one of the dead men. Lenny is grabbing a stool at the bar. His head is cropped from shot.

LENNY (singing):  Ten dead...

5.
Front view of Lenny sitting at the bar. We see that he has a cleft palate. His eyes are distant. He looks confused, absent. Tears continue to run down his face. He is reaching into his inside suit jacket pocket.

LENNY (singing):  Ten dead men on a...

6.
OTS shot of Lenny. We can see a gaping hole in the back left hand side of his head, brain mangled and exposed. He is holding a photo of a group of children.

LENNY (singing):  Ten dead men...

7.
Close on the faded and creased photo. Ten children, around 8 years old, dressed in 70s clothes. One holds a toy parrot, two wear pirates hats, a few have eye patches and some hold swords. Lenny is one of the ten, to the right of the picture - we recognise him from the cleft palate. He is tied up in rope.

LENNY (singing, OP):  yo ho ho.

Why The Attaché?

With 100 Bullets, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Rizzo (with beautiful covers by Dave Johnson) crafted a crime fiction masterpiece. Over 100 issues we saw lives dismantled, rebuilt and blown away all over again. We were shown stories of redemption and damnation, geed and love, hope and desperation. Azzarello has been praised for the realistic use of regional accents and slang in his pulp noir opus and Rizzo's dynamic art confidently rotates around complex scenes, building a believable landscape for their violence to unfold.

Bearer of the Attaché is the mysterious Agent Graves. He approaches an individual who has suffered some terrible wrong. He offers them the Attaché containing irrefutable evidence of those responsible for this misdeed, a handgun, and 100 untraceable rounds of ammunition. Any investigation which returns this ammunition will cease immediately but once revenge has been attained, the remaining bullets become as traceable as any other.

Graves is an agent of The Trust, a clandestine organisation with power greater than that of any government or head of state. There are larger motives at play as the Attaché moves from chess piece to chess piece - no one sure if they are a knight or a pawn.

You don't know any of this.

All you know is that you have been given an attaché case, and inside you have found a gun, 100 rounds of untraceable ammunition and a photo of the person who ruined your life. It doesn't seem real. You don't want to believe it... but all the evidence has been provided for you. It's true... They ruined your life.

Your move.