REPORT: SCOTT FREE
FILE #: 202

IN MIDDLETOWN, DELAWARE Jarod is treating himself to ice cream at a shabby street-side cafe, when he comes across a young girl with a Wheel-O toy. [A red wheel on a steel wire frame that spins around, held in place by a combination of gravity, centrifugal and centripetal force.] He asks the girl if he can buy it from her, and she settles for a price of $25. With his new toy in hand, Jarod plays for a bit while eating his ice cream. He notices a young boy, Sean, at the table across from him, who is being treated to a snack of French fries by his father, Scott, who works at the diner. Watching the two interact, Jarod’s mind flashes back to a Father’s Day at The Centre when he was younger. As a child, he had seen Miss Parker give her father the gift of a brass paperweight (shaped like a rabbit). When he asked Syndey what the gift was for, Syndey explained that she was offering her father a gift for Father’s Day to show him how much she cared for him. Jarod then created a Father’s Day card for Sydney, drawing in it a picture of the two of them hand-in-hand. But when he gave the card to Syndey, Syndey rejected the gift telling Jarod that he wasn’t Jarod’s father, and didn’t deserve the present. “Don’t you love me, Syndey?” Jarod asked, to which Sydney replied with a distracted, “We have work to do.” Sydney then threw the hand-made card into a waste paper basket.

Back in the present, sitting in the diner, musing about Sydney and the card, Jarod accidentally spills ice cream on his clothes, and has to retreat to an open-air sink behind the diner to clean himself up. While he’s dabbing the ice cream from his pant leg, he overhears a conversation taking place by a large trash bin that’s also behind the diner. It’s between Scott (referred to as “Scooter”) and two other men: Dewey and Nick. During the conversation Dewey and Nick threaten and coerce Scott to join them in a burglary. Scott says he doesn’t want to be involved with the scheme. He’d just gotten out of prison and regained custody of his son, and doesn’t want anything to happen to ruin his new life. “Why don’t you get Martinez?” he asks. Nick replies that Martinez is dead. “He said ‘no’.”

Reluctantly, Scott agrees to join the group, and Nick informs him that there’s going to be a fourth member of the team: a man named R.H. (“Right Hand”) Cross. Scott, Dewey and Nick have never met Cross, but he was recommended to Nick by another “friend”, a man named Trini. Cross is a safe-cracker, but only has one good arm. He’s going to be arriving, Nick tells Scott, at 3 o’clock that afternoon at the train station.

After Nick and Dewey leave, Scott returns to his job and his son… and Jarod catches a cab to the train station.

Waiting for Cross to arrive, Jarod phones Miss Parker and tells her that he was sorry she’d “missed the party in Omaha”. Miss Parker says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so Jarod explains that she must have been “cut out of loop” by Lyle and Brigitte. He’d discovered Brigitte — “the blonde” with “killer legs” — tracking him, and had managed to elude her, but was surprised that he hadn’t seen Miss Parker in with the rest of the trackers. Jarod asks: “You’re not giving up on me, are you, Miss Parker?”, and Miss Parker replies with a dry, “You wish.”

Hanging up on Miss Parker, Jarod then intercepts Cross before Nick can find him, and sends Cross off on another mission: to rob The Centre’s office in Indianapolis. [Cross, of course, doesn’t know it’s The Centre.] Jarod tells Cross to meet him in four days in New York at the Hotel Argyle, and hands him a package to leave at the scene of the Indianapolis burglary. Cross leaves, and Jarod assume his identity just as Nick arrives at the train station.

BACK AT THE CENTRE , Mr. Lyle is upset because, not only is Jarod still running around “scott free”, he’s also just stolen $15 million from The Centre, and donated most of it to charity in Mr. Lyle’s name. The reception area of The Centre is littered with floral arrangements sent by grateful people and foundations to whom the moneys was sent. Mr. Lyle tells Brigitte that it’s not just the stolen money that bothers him, it’s the fact that Jarod seems to be “rubbing their noses in it.”

When he’s later confronted by Miss Parker, who demands to know why he didn’t tell her about Omaha, Lyle responds with: “It’s not my job to inform you of Jarod’s whereabouts. It’s your job to inform me.” He’ll give her no apologies… and accept no excuses.

IN MIDDLETOWN: Along with Nick, Dewey and Scott, Jarod practices the break-in and burglary Nick has planned. Dewey will act as a decoy to distract the police; Scott will disarm the alarms and surveillance cameras, Nick will act as lookout, and Jarod will open the safe. While working on their timing and strategy, Jarod learns that Nick was something of a father-figure to Scott when Scott — an orphan — was growing up. Nick had clothed and sheltered Scott, and taught him the tricks of the trade. But when a job went sour, Nick had abandoned Scott and let him go to jail, alone, for seven years.

Not all father-son relationships are “good” ones, Jarod understands.

When Jarod and Scott leave the “hide-out” at the end of the day, Jarod is unaware that the local Police Department is keeping an eye on Scott (a parolee) and is taking photos of everyone associated with him. When the photos arrive at the desk of Detective Evans of the Middletown P.D., Evans sends Jarod’s photo through the police internet, trying to find out who he is. The photo is intercepted by Broots, who relays the information to Miss Parker. Miss Parker decides to get Evans to help her track down Jarod, but first she insists that Broots do a thorough search of Evans’ background. She demands: “If he stole a Babyruth when he was six, I want to know how many nuts it had.”

While Jarod and Scott get ready for the burglary, Scott pulls a gun from his equipment case and points it at Jarod. When he pulls the trigger, a flame comes out of the nozzle. It’s not a gun; it’s a lighter. Jarod is not amused by the facsimile. “Sometimes,” Scott explains, “looking dangerous is enough.”

BACK AT THE CENTRE , Brigitte brings to Mr. Lyle (while Miss Parker, Sydney, and Broots are on hand) a large manila envelope containing a red notebook and a Wheel-O toy that had been left by Cross at the burglary of The Centre’s office in Indianapolis. The red notebook indicates a rendezvous at the Hotel Argyle in New York, but Sydney and Miss Parker warn that Jarod would never leave behind such a blatant clue to his whereabouts behind. Brigitte ignores Sydney’s warning and tells Mr. Lyle that Cross just screwed up, and that the notebook would definitely lead her to Jarod. Mr. Lyle gives her leave to go to New York. When he then asks Sydney what the Wheel-O toy is about, Sydney explains that it’s indicative of “something”. Miss Parker elaborates: “It means you’re going nowhere… fast.”

Subsequently, much to her chagrin, Brigitte returns from New York, empty-handed. Jarod isn’t in New York, he’s in Delaware… only about 100 miles from The Centre.

ON A LATER EVENING , while burglarizing the DeWitt and Associates office with Nick and Scott, Jarod is startled to discover that the security guard is running fast on his rounds and returns more quickly to the office than any of the group had anticipated. Jarod breaks into the safe, and then approaches the door with a gun in his hand. He aims the gun at the door, on the other side of which is the security guard, then points the gun at the ceiling. When he pulls the trigger, a flame comes out — his gun, too, is just a lighter — and the flame sets off the fire alarms and sprinklers in the building. With that as a distraction, Jarod, Scott, and Nick are able to escape from the DeWitt office unnoticed. What they’ve stolen from the office isn’t money, however. They’ve stolen a magnetic key-card.

The card, Nick explains, is to the Federal Diamond Depository in Wilmington, Delaware. A shipment of $20 million in raw uncut diamonds is coming through the depository, and it’s the diamonds Nick wants.

When Scott balks at the notion of a second burglary, and refuses to cooperate, Nick has Dewey kidnap Sean to force Scott to go along with the big burglary. Reluctantly, Scott agrees to participate.

MEANWHILE , Miss Parker goes to the Middletown Police Department and confronts Detective Evans with some very incriminating, blackmail style photographs she’s found of him. She demands that he help her find Jarod or she’ll do what’s necessary with the photos to cause Evans the most embarrassment. At first, Evans refuses to cooperate, then he folds and tells Miss Parker that he thinks he knows where Jarod and the other burglars might show up next: the diamond depository.

BACK AT THE CENTRE Miss Parker tells Broots, Sydney, Mr. Lyle and Brigitte what she’s discovered. They contrive to trap Jarod at the diamond depository. Miss Parker says she wants to grab him before he gets into the building, but Brigitte insists that letting him enter the building and start on the burglary will lull him into a false sense of security, and make it easier for Centre Sweepers to get him. Mr. Lyle agrees, and again closes Miss Parker out of the chain-of-command. What no one at The Centre knows, however, is that Jarod is already aware that Miss Parker is in town. When Dewey snapped external photos of and around the diamond depository, he’d captured an image of Miss Parker exiting her car. Jarod recognized her immediately.

THE NIGHT OF THE BIG BURGLARY , Jarod, Nick and Scott enter the depository… and are watched on surveillance cameras by Broots, Syndey, Miss Parker, Mr. Lyle and Brigitte, who have all camped out in the security-operations office of the same building. Mr. Lyle has seen to it that Broots has control of the building’s security systems — so they can watch Jarod even when Scott manages to by-pass the security cameras in the vault area.

Sydney warns: “Jarod would never have walked in here without a plan to walk out.” And Miss Parker demands that she be allowed to grab Jarod once he’s in the vault area. But again Brigitte convinces Mr. Lyle that she has things under control. She’ll let the burglary continue, then trap Jarod as he and the others try to leave the premises.

In the vault area, Jarod sets up a lap-top computer, and then gets his burglary tools out. When he tries to drill a hole into the vault’s main lock, however, the drill bit breaks. Jarod has Nick remove the broken bit from the drill while he backs away to retrieve another one… demanding that Scott come to help him. As soon as Scott is beside him, Jarod closes the gates on the vault area, and locks Nick inside with all the burglary equipment. Nick threatens to shoot Jarod, and Jarod tells him to go ahead and try. Nick pulls the trigger on his gun… and a flame shoots out of the end of it. Unbeknownst to Nick, Jarod had replaced the trigger mechanism in his gun with a lighter mechanism. Jarod quips to Scott: “Sometimes looking dangerous is enough… and sometimes it’s NOT.”

Nick demands that Jarod release him from the vault area, but Jarod instead hands him a cell phone and demands that Nick call Dewey and have Sean released. Nick does as he’s told, and throws the cell phone back at Jarod… and Jarod catches it with his LEFT hand, the one that’s not supposed to work. “You should have checked with Trini,” Jarod tells Nick, and then, smiling, leaves the vault area with Scott.

In the security office, Broots notices that Scott and Jarod are on the move, and tries to activate the security system in the building to cut off their escape. But instead, all of the exterior exits open up throughout the building. [[The laptop Jarod had set up in the vault area, had been connected to the building’s security system and had over-ridden all of the Broots’ controls.]] The only door that LOCKS in the building is the one to the security office. Brigitte runs to try to catch the door before the lock sets, but can’t get there fast enough. She, Mr. Lyle, Broots, Sydney and Miss Parker are all trapped inside the office. Standing behind Brigitte, Miss Parker simply smirks with delight.

BACK AT SCOTT’S HOUSE , Scott and Jarod are relieved to find that Sean has been released by Dewey and is in fine health. Jarod gives Scott an envelope filled with some of the money he had stolen earlier from The Centre — “Don’t worry. It’s money that was owed to me.” — so they can leave the state and build a new life for themselves. When Scott asks why Jarod has given him such a gift, Jarod says, “Think of it as an early Father’s Day present.”

MUCH LATER , at a sidewalk pay phone, Jarod calls Sydney. Sydney tells him that he hopes Jarod’s situation hasn’t been made worse by aggravating Mr. Lyle and embarrassing Brigitte. Jarod tells Sydney that he didn’t call about them. “I’ve been thinking,” he says. “And I was wondering if you ever thought about what it would have been like to be my father.”

Syndey answers, “That was never an option, Jarod, so I never allowed myself to even entertain such a notion.”

Disappointed with the rejection, Jarod responds with a despondent: “Well, thank you, Syndey… for your honesty anyway.” He hangs up the phone and walks away, alone, down the sidewalk. As the camera shows us images of a dejected Jarod walking slowly away, his back to us, it also shows us images of Sydney.

Syndey reaches into his desk and pulls out a silver metal box. In the box is the origami rendering of Onyssius Jarod had created…
…one of the red monkeys from his Barrel of Monkeys toy…
…and the hand-drawn Father’s Day card Jarod had made for him…