THE STAGE 32 LOGLINES

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THE SAN QUENTIN SHUFFLE
By Mark Kitchen

GENRE: Thriller, Crime
LOGLINE:

An over-the-hill con artist with a price on his head agrees to one final con, getting sent to San Quentin prison to locate his deceased mentor’s fortune.

SYNOPSIS:

Only a con artist would consider getting sent to prison a means to an end.

You see, when the prize is a bagful of cash or diamond the size of a pool ball, grifters don’t see problems, they only see opportunities. So, even as the ageing Henry considers retirement and reconciliation with his estranged daughter, the lure of his former mentor Jamaica Joe’s legendary black book proves too enticing a prize to pass up.

The book, as legendary as Joe himself, contains a plethora of unfinished cons, high level contacts and most importantly the location of Jamaica's retirement fund, which he has now bequeathed to the Henry and the 2 remaining members of their infamous crew. The catch is they need to locate the book, which Jamaica hid somewhere inside the walls of San Quentin before he died, Their only clue in this quest is a name. Anthony Carduccio.

Driven by a dream of a sun-kissed, luxurious retirement, Henry agrees to get himself imprisoned on fake charges, which in turn attracts the attention of the FBI. Now incarcerated, Henry is on the clock to recover the book and exit before his arraignment turns his fake charges into a real sentence, unaware that one of his fellow inmates and former victim, billionaire Mark Trask, has placed a $20,000 target on Henry's head, attracting every gang in the prison.

With a much needed helping hand from some friends, old and new, as well as a large slice of luck, Henry manages to cracks the Carduccio clue and gets his hands on the book just in time to be released. Finding the book however is only the beginning of their quest for a worry free retirement, as they learn that Jamaica's book does not reveal the location of his retirement fund, which comes in the form of a very special coin. The mythical and priceless 1933 $20 Gold Double Eagle worth millions.

As a grifter, Henry is used to finding himself between a rock and a hard place, but never like this. His rock is the newly focused attention of the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge who puts in motion a surveillance team to catch him red-handed after she is convinced that there is a lot more to Henry’s brief incarceration than meets the eye. Henry’s hard place comes in the form of a notorious and lethal hitman, the Boston Clipper, who has been commissioned to kill Henry and his crew after Henry decided to pay a debt to a dangerous loan shark with counterfeit currency.

With the net closing in on all sides and his fellow grifters falling one by one to the hitman, Henry must make the biggest decision of his life - flee Los Angeles to a life of poverty and mediocrity or risk it all to get his hands on the Jamaica's fortune, and just maybe go down in history as one of the greatest grifters of all time.

Nate Rymer

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