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CONFIDENTIAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY • FRED SMITH DOUBLES DOWN (DOUBLE DOWN OR DIE)
SCENE 11 • “THE MARKER” • (SUMMER 1973)
Continued from Double Down or Die, Scene 10 — Genesis 50:20 at the Airport
INT. TWA 727-200 – FIRST CLASS CABIN – LATE AFTERNOON (SUMMER 1973)
Engines hum at cruising pitch. FRED SMITH (28) sits in the aisle seat, jacket folded over his knee, watching the desert slide by under the wing as if it owes him money. The bourbon and water the flight attendant brought him sits untouched on his tray table.
In the window seat, DEL HARMON (60s) — Stetson on his knee, bolo tie, hands like fence posts — studies a racing form and, more closely, Fred.
DEL
(not looking up)
First class on a twenty-dollar redeye. Either you're the luckiest man on this airplane, or the unluckiest.
FRED
Ask me Monday.
DEL
Del Harmon. Feed and grain, Amarillo. Flown into Las Vegas every second weekend since Kennedy was alive.
FRED
Fred Smith. Memphis. We move packages.
DEL
Post office?
FRED
Faster.
DEL
(reading him)
Everybody's faster than the post office, son. You've got the look of a man who got told no by people with nicer chairs than his.
FRED
Chicago. Very nice chairs.
DEL
What's the number?
FRED
Sir?
DEL
There's always a number. Every man on this flight has one. Mine's a feed-mill note. What's yours?
Fred weighs whether to answer a stranger. Then he does.
FRED
Twenty-five thousand dollars. Standard Oil froze our credit on jet fuel. Cash by Monday, or my airplanes don't fly.
DEL
That the whole hole?
FRED
That's the fuel. Payroll's another fifty. That's what I asked Chicago for today.
DEL
(a low whistle)
And you're flying to Las Vegas.
FRED
Banks close at three on a Friday, Mr. Harmon. Las Vegas doesn't close.
DEL
That's the dumbest sentence I've heard since my brother-in-law bought a Studebaker.
DEL (CONT'D)
(beat, softer)
What've you got to work with?
Fred opens his wallet. One bill, folded small behind his license. He lays it on the tray table and smooths it flat. A hundred-dollar bill.
FRED
A hundred dollars. What's left after a cup of coffee and my wife's American Express. It's mine — not the company's. The company's money stays in Memphis where it belongs.
DEL
Twenty-five-thousand-dollar problem. Hundred-dollar answer.
FRED
I'm aware of the ratio.
Del studies him. The ice in his bourbon clicks. Something like respect crosses his weathered face.
DEL
I've known preachers with worse odds.
DEL (CONT'D)
(beat)
The cage at the Horseshoe knows me. I'll put my name behind a thousand for you. A marker — credit. You settle it the same night, win or lose.
FRED
I don't take handouts.
DEL
It ain't a handout. It's a loan with a signature. Lose it, and you owe Del Harmon a thousand dollars and a good story.
FRED
If I lose it, sir, you'll get the thousand. Every dollar.
DEL
I know I will. That's why I'm offering.
Fred extends his hand. Del takes it. Two firm shakes.
DEL (CONT'D)
How do you play it, Marine?
Fred's eyebrow lifts.
FRED
Sir?
DEL
Pacific, forty-four. I know how a man sits when he's been shot at for a living.
FRED
(a small, real smile)
Rules of engagement. One: I don't touch the company's money. Two: I play every hand by the book — no hunches. Three: I leave when I have the number.
DEL
Which is?
FRED
Twenty-five thousand for Standard Oil. A thousand for you. My hundred back.
FRED (CONT'D)
(beat)
Twenty-six thousand, one hundred.
DEL
(to himself)
Well, I'll be damned. He's got it figured to the dollar.
Outside the window, the Nevada desert turns to gold, and Las Vegas rises out of it.
INT. BINION'S HORSESHOE CASINO – DOWNTOWN LAS VEGAS – EVENING
Thick, yellow tobacco fog under low acoustic-tile ceilings. Slot reels clack. Silver dollars crash into steel hoppers. Cocktail waitresses in short red uniforms thread the pit, balancing whiskey sours on vinyl trays.
Under a spotlight near the entrance, a horseshoe-shaped glass case holds one million dollars in ten-thousand-dollar bills. A GUARD with a shotgun stands beside it, bored. Fred stops in front of it. Del walks on three steps, then comes back.
FRED
(quietly)
Forty Standard Oil bills. Behind glass.
DEL
Looks like a lot, don't it?
FRED
It looks like arithmetic.
INT. BINION'S HORSESHOE – CAGE – EVENING
A brass-barred window. A CAGE CASHIER (50s, green eyeshade, sleeve garters) counts bills into a drawer without looking at them.
DEL
Del Harmon. Open a marker for one thousand on behalf of Mr. Smith here. I'm standing behind it.
The Cashier's eyes go from Del to Fred and back. He slides a form through the bars.
CAGE CASHIER
One thousand. Mr. Harmon guarantees. Sign there, sir.
Fred reads every line first. Then he signs — FREDERICK W. SMITH — in a hand as steady as a rifle range. He lays his own hundred-dollar bill on the counter.
FRED
And this one, in chips.
The Cashier pushes across a single hundred-dollar chip, then a tray of ten more for the marker. Fred pockets the tray without looking at it.
FRED (CONT'D)
The hundred goes first. The thousand stays in my pocket until the hundred tells me something.
DEL
(to the Cashier, amused)
He's fixing to interrogate a hundred-dollar chip.
Continues in Double Down or Die, Scene 12 — The Call to Memphis
[SCENE END]
SOURCE & DRAMATIZATION NOTE: In his May 23, 2008 Charlie Rose interview, Fred Smith said he went to Las Vegas with a few hundred dollars of his own and that the man he was flying with got him a credit line of about $1,000. Del Harmon is an invented character, the marker is scripted from that credit line, and Fred’s stake is scripted as one hundred dollars. Frock’s Changing How the World Does Business puts the fuel need at $24,000 (scripted here as $25,000). The flight, the cage scene and all dialogue are dramatized.