SYNOPSIS:

‘ESCAPE ON THE BAY’ BY Joe Simonelli SYNOPSIS Things go terribly wrong for three career criminals who pull a heist in downtown Manhattan and intend to escape via the Staten Island Ferry, where they will fence the bearer bonds they have stolen, take a private boat to Port Newark, then go their separate ways. Sixty year old Ben Goldstein is a career bookmaker, loan shark and master mind of the caper which was brought to him as restitution by thirty year old Charlie Owens (alias ‘Lewis’), a former Wall Street employee and degenerate gambler who owes Ben a lot of money and can’t afford to pay him back. Along with Ben’s dim witted but large and muscular brother in law ‘Jerry’ and another accomplish named Columbus their hope is that this ‘inside job’ goes off without a hitch. The fifth inside man is Clark, Lewis’ wall street connection, who is low on money and dying of cancer. He agrees to steal the bonds from the unguarded vault and pass them on to Lewis and Jerry in the lobby of his Broad street building then return to work to avoid suspicion. Unfortunately for the three accomplices who are now aboard the ferry bound for Staten Island, the theft of the bonds is discovered by an employee and the police are called. Clark confesses and now the police are waiting for the thieves at the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten island, where they plan to arrest them. Ben learns that his plan may have been compromised while on the ferry when Clark fails to call him at a pre-arranged time and Columbus calls from the St. George terminal and tells him of all the police activity. Ben quickly decides to put a contingency plan into place whereby he commandeers the Ferry and forces it to go out to open sea through lower New York Bay, not realizing that there are nautical hazards on route such as large cruise ships leaving the city via the same route. The only police presence on the boat is one second year uniformed patrolman, Napoli, and an off duty thirty year detective from the first precinct in Manhattan named Binelli, who happens to be returning to his home in Staten island after his night shift. When news of the hijacking gets out the Mayor and a task force of top police brass convene at the first precinct to negotiate and figure out a plan of action. Since the robbers already have their stolen and very ‘negotiable merchandise’ all they want is a clear escape from the slow moving very. Not such an easy task when being tailed by police and coast guard boats and helicopters. Ben’s escape plan is simple. With over eight hundred hostages on the Ferry he plans on throwing them all overboard knowing that the newly elected female Mayor of New York, Rita Franklin, will never allow her constituents to drown and will use every resource available to rescue them. Ben’s reasoning, eight hundred people in the water released in groups of ten and spread out every ten minutes take up a lot of rescue boats. Including civilian cabin cruisers and pleasure boats that will join in the rescue effort. He will wait until Columbus, draws near with his boat. Then they will jump in the water and be rescued with the throng. When Binelli decides to take some action contrary to direct orders from his superiors the escape plan starts to go awry. Ben, who is wounded in a gun fight exchange with Binelli outside the pilot house, decides to make for the southern tip of Staten Island through the very narrow Arthur Kill, in order to get to a doctor he knows who can patch him up. Unfortunately the narrow pass also has a large amount of Oil Freighter traffic from the refineries in New Jersey and a near collision with an out going freighter forces Ben to beach the Ferry on a stretch of sand off the southern tip of Staten Island. Trying to escape through a wooded area, he and Lewis are shot by Binelli and some New York City policeman. (Jerry was already killed in a previous gunfight aboard the ferry. )