Reinaldo Povod

CUBA: If you wanna jump offa the Empire State Building but you live up in the Bronx—

JACKIE: Or Brooklyn—where I live.

CUBA: Anywhere.

JACKIE: Staten Island.

CUBA: If you ain’t got money for your token, you better beg, borrow, or steal. And if yer old enough to beg, you’re old enough to steal. So you end up what? You end up forgetting yer problems ‘cause you got money in yer pockets—and you’re living a life of crime.

CUBA: …she gave me this powder. When the judge is gonna sentence you, she said, you bring it up to yer lips and blow it. Blow it hard. And you don’t do it before, you don’t do it after, you, you do it—

TEDDY: Right at that moment.

CUBA: Right at that moment, yeah. The judge says, all rise. I said, where’s the powder. On the count of first-degree possession with the intention of distribution—(Slowly for effect) I find—Anthony Vito, guilty. Richard Carlo, guilty. Rossi, guilty. Peppino, guilty. Tommy something, guilty. Joseph Cuba… I find you—I went like this, real fast—I find you—I blew it—(HE blows) not guilty.

CHE: You, Cuba—yer a father, you gotta son, you know, yer doing what you can to raise him—to a lot of people yer nothing but a drug dealer. A nasty cliché. I’m a junkie who steals. I’m a junkie who steals, like a lot of junkies do. But I’m also a junkie who steals with a Tony Award. I’m a junkie who steals, I gotta Tony Award, and I got compassion in my heart for you. (To JACKIE) For you. (To TEDDY) And for you. I’m a junkie, I steal, I gotta Tony Award—compassion—and I’m Hispanic… that ain’t a cliché. The attitude for a junkie like me who is Spanish, is: “Turn him upside down and he got hemorrhoids.” It only affects him, and his own kind, and Kojak. I’m a junkie who steals but I got compassion in my heart for the dealer who sells me my dope.