(THEME)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions.....Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(THEME FADE)
GK: It was May, it was spring, the season of renewal and romance, neither of which I was finding on my voice mail when I checked it (BEEP)--
FN (ON PHONE): Hey, it's Todd, down at the bank. Just wondering if you might've misplaced your April payment on the car loan. Mr. Noir. Maybe you could check your sportcoat pocket. It's the --78 Rambler, okay? And we're also waiting for the March and February payments too. Thanks. (BEEP)
SS (ON PHONE): Mr. Noir, It's Sandy, at the diner. Sorry to bother you, but we think that the meatball dinner you ate last night may have contained toilet bowl cleanser. Are you experiencing numbness or stiffness in your extremities this morning? (BEEP)
TR (ON PHONE): This is Huey, down in St. Louis. Huey Sansui. You remember. Listen, I got a job for you, I'll pay you a hundred bucks a day. (BEEP)
GK: Fifty bucks a day is less than my going rate, but I haven't been getting the going rate for a long time. My going rate is a sort of goal, like batting .400.. I thought, a hundred bucks a day. It's good enough. So I flew to St. Louis and met Huey Sansui. Downtown, by the river. (TRAFFIC)
TR: (FOOTSTEPS) This is a great city, Guy, and people here are proud of it, so when someone comes along and insults us, we take it personal. Know what I mean?
GK: Who's insulting you?
TR: Look up there.
GK: The Gateway Arch.
TR: Look closer.
GK: My gosh. Someone's thrown a pair of tennis shoes up over it. How'd they do it?
TR: We think they may have used a catapult.
GK: But why?
TR: Why? To bring ridicule to our city. And maybe to ask for a quid pro quo.
GK: And my job?
TR: Find out who they are and what they want. (STING, BRIDGE)
GK: It took city workers a long time to get the sneakers down. (DIESEL ENGINE) At first they tried to do it with a crane, and then they tried to do it with a man on the wings of an airplane (PLANE FLYING LOW UNDER ARCH), and then they tried to get it down by throwing a bolo at it (SFX) and then they tried to retrieve the sneakers with a hawk (SFX) but that didn't work, and finally an Army sharpshooter shot the laces (GUNSHOT) and they fell (SFX), and inside one of the sneakers was a note.
TR: --St. Louis we will keep throwing our shoes
Until you recognize the blues
And let Mr. Louie Louie the Famous Flame
Sing --Take me out to the All-Star Game--.
GK: Hmm. The All-Star Game is in St. Louis this summer, isn't it.
TR: That it is.
GK: And who's this Louie Louie the Famous Flame?
TR: He's a local guy. Louie Spitui. He's a nothing, a nobody. And now he's trying to blackmail us. And you've got to stop him. (STING, BRIDGE)
GK: I was told I'd find Louie Spitui in Room 2E at the Hotel Dewey. So that's where I went. (KNOCKS)
SS: (INSIDE) Who is it?
GK: Guy Noir. Looking for Louie.
SS (INSIDE): He ain't here.
GK: Mind if I come in and wait?
SS (INSIDE): He ain't here.
GK: Can I wait for him in there?
(DOOR OPEN)
SS: I'm Louie's wife, Julie.
GK: Julie Spitui?
SS: No, Julie Patchouli. I kept my own name. Come in. (BRIDGE)
GK: It was a seedy hotel room, empty bottles all over the place. Smelling of hairspray. She had a bag over her hair, and a man was mixing some kind of paste in a plastic bowl. (SFX)
FN (FEY): Head to the left.
SS: Don't tell anybody but I'm not a real blonde. I use dye from a bottle. So what? I'm in show business. A girl has to keep her looks. Right?
GK: Your husband is causing a lot of headaches for the city, Julie. He's got to stop throwing his sneakers over the Gateway Arch. It's not easy getting those down.
FN (FEY): Head up.
SS: I don't know what he's doing. All I know is that I'm gonna be at the All Star game at Busch Stadium in July and I want to look good.
GK: Don't count on it. Your husband trying to con the city into having him sing at the All-Star Game and it ain't gonna happen because, guess what, he's a crummy singer.
FN (FEY): I am not! Who told you that?
GK: You?? You're Louie Louie?
FN (FEY): One and the same. --I'm a hair stylist and a song stylist. I have the biggest hair of any male singing star since Wayne Newton. If I were from New York or Los Angeles, I'd have a big career right now, mister, but being from St. Louis, I have yet to be discovered.
GK: And what is it you want exactly?
FN (FEY): At the All-Star Game, during the 7th inning stretch, I want to walk out on the field and sing, that's all. (SINGS, MANILOW)
Take me out to the ball game.
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack.
I won't be back, I won't be back.
GK: And this is why you keep throwing sneakers onto the Gateway Arch.
FN (FEY): I wouldn't mind if they wanted me to come out at the beginning and sing-- (SINGS)
O can you see what we saw last night
Does it still wave in the dawn's early light?
Broad stripes and bright stars, O say can you see
Home of the brave, land of the free.
GK: Time for a reality check, Mister Louie Louie. Major League Baseball is not going to have you sing to a nationwide audience for the All Star Game. (GUN COCKS) Not even if she points a revolver at me.
FN: Then I'm gonna have to just keep flinging my sneakers at that big old arch over there. (RATCHETS CATAPULT)
GK: Very ingenious. A powerful catapult cleverly disguised as a fold up couch.
FN: I just open the window (SFX) and I put the pair of sneakers there -- and I pull the lever (CATAPULT BWANGGGGG AND FLIGHT OF SNEAKERS) and one more pair of sneakers wraps itself around a municipal landmark. Bingo.
FN (SINGS):
O beautiful for spacious skies for am--
Ber waves of grain the rain in Spain
For purple mountains majesty
Above the plain, above the plain.
GK: Is that gun loaded, Miss Patchouli? I'm only asking--
SS: I guess there's only one way to find out.
GK: No, no -- there are other ways. You just look in the -- here, let me have a look-- what's wrong?
SS: You ever consider going blonde, Mr. Noir?
GK: No, I haven't. Just hand me the gun, Julie.
SS: You seem to be perspiring, Mr. Noir. Even your hair is sweating. Remarkable.
GK: It is. But not as remarkable as that man standing behind you--
SS: A man? Where? (GUNSHOT, RICOCHET)
GK: Nice shooting, Huey.
TR: Thanks, Noir.
SS: Who're you?
GK: Huey Sansui, this is Julie Patchouli, and Louie Spitui.
FN: Something's screwy. I missed the Arch.
SS: Phooey.
FN: Missed the Arch and hit a buoy.
TR: We don't care, do we. What do you say we go out and have ourselves some ratatouille. (BRIDGE)
GK: I left St. Louis with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket and two days after I got home--(KNOCKS ON DOOR)-- yeah, come in-- the door opens. (DOOR OPEN. FOOTSTEPS. CLOSE. SEXY SAX) She was wearing a UPS uniform and what a parcel she was. Not even khaki work clothes could dim her splendor. Her long blonde hair had a gloss to it that could only have come from a diet of peeled grapes and nasturtium blossoms. Her dark eyes spoke a language not taught in schools.
SS: I have a package here for Mr. Noir.
GK: That's the most wonderful thing anybody has said to me in weeks.
SS: It's from St. Louis.
GK: I can't wait to open it.
SS: This big brown box.
GK: Oh that. Well-- (RIPPING OF PAPER, CARDBOARD) It's a pair of shoes. Red shoes.
SS: Cardinal shoes.
GK: Dancing shoes-- might you be--
SS: Tonight?
GK: Tonight.
SS: I could be--
GK: Will you--
SS: Let you know? Yes, I will.
GK: Good. I'll be waiting. With bated breath. Fully bated. And I have more bate where that came from.
(THEME)
TR: A DARK NIGHT in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions... Guy Noir, Private Eye.