"Death Row - Part II," Scene E

It's time to go to Cowboy Bill's, "later that night":

FRANK IS ON THE PHONE

FRANK

(INTO PHONE) Any news about my daughter yet, Sergeant?...I know.  Well, I thought you maybe found her in the last five minutes.

FRANK HANGS UP THE PHONE.  CARMINE AND RHONDA ENTER.  FRANK RUNS TO MEET THEM.

FRANK (CONT'D)

What's the word?  You find her?

CARMINE

Sorry, we looked everywhere and still no Laverne.

FRANK

I don't wanna hear that.  She's been gone twenty-four hours.  She's gotta be somewhere.

RHONDA

I went down to Lover's Lane and flashed a light in all the windows.  Some of the men even flashed back.

CARMINE

I checked all the bars.

FRANK

What for?  My daughter don't go to places like that.  (BEAT)  What'd they tell ya?

CARMINE

No luck.  They haven't seen her.

LENNY AND SQUIGGY ENTER.

SQUIGGY

Innkeeper, table for two.

LENNY AND SQUIGGY SPOT TWO YOUNG GIRLS AT A TABLE.

SQUIGGY (CONT'D)

On second thought, we'll seat ourselves.

LENNY

What was the first thought?

THE BOYS CROSS TO THE GIRLS.

SQUIGGY

The same as all our others.

LENNY AND SQUIGGY SEAT THEMSELVES WITH THE LADIES.  FRANK TURNS BACK TO CARMINE AND RHONDA.

FRANK

I don't know what to do.  She wasn't home all last night.  What if she's hurt?  What if she's in a hospital?

CARMINE

What is she's with a guy?

FRANK

Then she's gonna wish she was in a hospital.  I'm too old for this.

RHONDA
Well, if she's with a guy, maybe we could call.  I found Laverne's little black book in her apartment.

RHONDA PULLS A BLACK BOOK OUT OF HER PURSE.  IT IS AS THICK AS A BRICK.

FRANK

That's her little black book?

RHONDA

(HANDS BOOK TO FRANK)  Here, you take A through G.  (PULLS OUT ANOTHER OF EQUAL SIZE)  I'll take H through P.  (PULLS OUT YET ANOTHER ONE THE SAME)  Carmine, you start with Q through Z.

CARMINE

(WEIGHING THE LAST BOOK IN HIS HAND) Gee, Q through Z, you'd think it'd be much thinner.

RHONDA

She knows a lot of Chinamen.

FRANK

What are we waiting for?  Let's call these bums.  I'll go get us some dimes.

FRANK CROSSES TO THE CASH REGISTER.  RHONDA FOLLOWS HIM.  CARMINE, LEAFING THROUGH PHONE BOOK, CROSSES TO THE LENNY AND SQUIGGY FOURSOME.

SQUIGGY

So ladies, what say we ditch this place, find ourselves a department store, and watch them change the mannequins?

THE GIRLS ARE REPULSED AND THEY EXIT.   CARMINE SITS WITH THE BOYS.  THE BOYS REACT TO CARMINE'S WORRIED EXPRESSION.

LENNY

What's with the long face?  We'll find other girls.

CARMINE

I'm not worried about you two.  It's Laverne.  She's been missing.  Mr. DeFazio is worried about her.  He thinks she might be in trouble.

LENNY

Tell him to relax.  By tomorrow all his troubles will be over.

THE BOYS LAUGH.

As filmed, the scene starts with Carmine asking Lenny and Squiggy, who are sitting at a table with no girls, if they've seen Laverne.  They deny it and then tell him not to worry about "little Laverne."  Squiggy's line about being like "monkeys in a swap meet" is a Landerian elaboration of a line in the script.

And the next page of dialogue, including Carmine having some encounter with a "chunky" female prisoner, made it in.  But instead of having Frank get angry and beat up Squiggy, including against the jukebox, there was this:

CARMINE JUMPS UP FROM HIS SEAT.

CARMINE

Hey, Mr. DeFazio, the boys know where Laverne is!  They saw her at the prison on Death Row.

FRANK

Impossible.  What's the matter with you, Carmine?  How can you believe those idiots?

CARMINE

Well, usually, I wouldn't, but yesterday I saw her with these commando types.  I knew there was something weird about them.

Then the line of Frank asking Squiggy why they didn't say something sooner was kept, but onscreen Squiggy says, "Well, look what happened when I told it to you later."  Frank heads down to the prison, and Carmine wonders if the boys know the difference between right and wrong.  Squiggy says, "It's left and wrong that has me in a tizzy."  And the scene ends.  Here's the last page and a half of the scene in the script:

SQUIGGY

We thought it would be bad for your health if you got red in the face and looked like you were gonna beat us up.

LENNY

There was a good deal of concern and thought on our part.

FRANK

I got to do something.

CARMINE

I say we call the warden.

RHONDA

No, no.  We have to call the governor.

CARMINE

What are you gonna say, "Hi ho, it's Rhonda.  Let me talk to the governor."

RHONDA

I bet I get further with that than you get with "Hey, Gov, it's the 'Big Ragoo'."

AS CARMINE AND RHONDA CONTINUE ARGUING, FRANK REACTS.

FRANK

I gotta do something.  You watch the store.  I gotta get my muffin.

THE BOYS GO BACK TO THEIR HAMBURGERS.

SQUIGGY

You know, Len, I learned one of life's most important lessons from all this.

LENNY

You don't have to tell me, Squig, I know.  Never hold back important information when a life is hanging by the thread.

SQUIGGY

No, no[.]  Never eat hamburger when there's plenty of steak in the back and the owner ain't here.

SQUIG ESCORTS LENNY TOWARDS THE KITCHEN.

Observations:

1. This scene is both the best so far and still objectively terrible.
2. Frank's concern is for the most part touching and in character.
3. Rhonda is in this scene, but not in the filmed version, where presumably she got lucky with Sean Connery.
4. The.  Men.  Flashed.  Back.  At.  Rhonda.  I bet their dates loved that.
5. Frank is in semi-denial that Laverne goes to bars.
6. Also, fun fact, Los Angeles is a pretty big town.  Did Carmine cover all the bars, or just the ones that Laverne goes to?
7. In another episode, I might've been amused by some of the boys' dialogue, including when they try to pick up the "young girls" (how young? the boys are pushing thirty at this point), but not when Laverne is, you'll recall, on Death Row.
8. Frank's threatened violence towards Laverne is canonical, but geez, please not on this episode.
9. You're too old for this?  Your daughter is also pushing thirty, and if she had run off with a guy, that's her business.  (Unless it's to go on an aircraft carrier, and then LeRose & Co will see that she's suitably punished.)
10. If Laverne is with a guy, Rhonda is going to assume it's someone she's gone out with often enough to be featured in her "little black book" and she won't mind them calling.
11. Laverne's "little black book" is three encyclopedia-sized volumes, which somehow fit in Rhonda's Mary-Poppins-like purse.
12. "Chinamen."  Remember what I said about this script being racist?  Well, I didn't just mean in the prison scenes.
13. Oddly, the "mannequin" proposition is probably one of Squiggy's cleaner ones.
14. All Frank's "troubles" will be over once his only child fries, says Lenny, who once was in love with her.
15. Let this sink in, Carmine knew there was something "weird" about the commando types, but he didn't suggest trying to contact them, rather than running around to bars to ask men if they've seen Laverne lately.
16. It is a measure of how bizarre Season Eight is, that I can visualize Carmine and Rhonda calling Governor Reagan (probably played by Bryan Clark, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0093546/bio) and pleading for Laverne.
17. Note that, although Squiggy and Lenny raid the restaurant's kitchen (which balances them raiding Laverne's kitchen in a tag that's in the filmed version but not here), there are not actually any stage directions suggesting that anyone but the chatted-up girls exits.  Well, the audience is probably equally repulsed and exits.