like the others. But you still felt shame, didn't you, Jim? Every time you think of her, you feel shame.
BECKETT: No.
DIFFORD: You're shifting in your seat, Jim. You don't look so comfortable anymore.
BECKETT: My leg's fallen asleep.
DIFFORD: Sure, Jim.
BECKETT: I saw Jenny's father in the hospital.
QUINCY: What?
BECKETT: The nurses never put it together, did they? I went to the hospital. I wanted to see if her father was really there, if he was really dying. You can't trust what a woman says, particularly once you have her. They'll say anything if they think it will save their life. So I checked up on it.
I found him in an oxygen tent in intensive care,
Mister
Quincy. He wasn't allowed visitors, but I told the nurses I was working on his daughter's case and I had good news for him. Of course they let me in. Young nurses. One of them was quite beautiful but she was a brunette.
I leaned over until I could press my face against the oxygen tent. And I told him how beautiful his daughter was and how wonderfully she'd screamed. I told him she'd begged for her life and she'd prayed to God, but God hadn't saved her. She belonged to me and I took her. He died the next day.
You want to know what makes me, Mister Quincy? If you want to understand me, forget the mommy-hating or the bed-wetting, animal-torturing, fire-starting triad you guys developed. It's so much simpler than that. There's power in the world, and that is me.
It's the power of being alone with a woman and having her plead for her life. It's the power of having her on her knees and watching her implore God to intervene. He doesn't. She's mine. I am the strongest, I am the best. I used to not understand the Nazi officers and what they did during the Holocaust — I respected their discipline, but I didn't quite get them. Now I do. I've held a beating pulse between my fingers and I've squeezed. And it's the best goddamn feeling in the world.
DIFFORD: You're sick, Beckett. You are fucking sick.
BECKETT: Get over it, Difford. It's guys like me who keep you employed. You were just a backwater no-name county lieutenant until I came along. I was the best thing that ever happened to your career. You should like me.
QUINCY: Jim —
DIFFORD: You're wrong, Beckett. You're not the most powerful person in the world. Theresa is.
BECKETT: What?
DIFFORD: You heard me. Who brought you down, who put you in jail? Face it, you married a sweet eighteen-year-old girl you thought you could control, manipulate, and terrorize to your heart's content. But instead of simply rolling over and playing dead, she figured you out. She learned you, she fought you. She toppled the omnipotent Jim Beckett.
BECKETT: Theresa is a weak, stupid woman who couldn't even stand up to her own father. All you had to do was raise your voice and she cowered in the corner.
DIFFORD: She kept a log on you. All the times you said you were on duty when you weren't. All the times you came home with unexplained scratches and bruises.
BECKETT: She was a jealous wife.
DIFFORD: She tracked the mileage on your odometer. She kept a whole little book of evidence against you, writing in it secretly every night until she finally had enough to call the police. And you never suspected a thing.
BECKETT: Theresa is not that smart!
DIFFORD: She turned you in, Jim. You terrorized her, you traumatized her. You burned everything she owned, told her day in and day out that she was worthless, and still she stood against you.
BECKETT: I made her pay. Every time she takes a step now, she thinks of me.
DIFFORD: And every time you hear the cell doors slam shut, you can think of her.
Pause.
QUINCY: One last question, Jim —
BECKETT: Do you know what I dream of, Difford? Do you know what I think about every night? I dream of the day I see my wife again. I picture sliding my hands around her neck and feeling her hands flail against my chest. I envision choking her to the edge of unconsciousness. And then, while she's lying
BECKETT: No.
DIFFORD: You're shifting in your seat, Jim. You don't look so comfortable anymore.
BECKETT: My leg's fallen asleep.
DIFFORD: Sure, Jim.
BECKETT: I saw Jenny's father in the hospital.
QUINCY: What?
BECKETT: The nurses never put it together, did they? I went to the hospital. I wanted to see if her father was really there, if he was really dying. You can't trust what a woman says, particularly once you have her. They'll say anything if they think it will save their life. So I checked up on it.
I found him in an oxygen tent in intensive care,
Mister
Quincy. He wasn't allowed visitors, but I told the nurses I was working on his daughter's case and I had good news for him. Of course they let me in. Young nurses. One of them was quite beautiful but she was a brunette.
I leaned over until I could press my face against the oxygen tent. And I told him how beautiful his daughter was and how wonderfully she'd screamed. I told him she'd begged for her life and she'd prayed to God, but God hadn't saved her. She belonged to me and I took her. He died the next day.
You want to know what makes me, Mister Quincy? If you want to understand me, forget the mommy-hating or the bed-wetting, animal-torturing, fire-starting triad you guys developed. It's so much simpler than that. There's power in the world, and that is me.
It's the power of being alone with a woman and having her plead for her life. It's the power of having her on her knees and watching her implore God to intervene. He doesn't. She's mine. I am the strongest, I am the best. I used to not understand the Nazi officers and what they did during the Holocaust — I respected their discipline, but I didn't quite get them. Now I do. I've held a beating pulse between my fingers and I've squeezed. And it's the best goddamn feeling in the world.
DIFFORD: You're sick, Beckett. You are fucking sick.
BECKETT: Get over it, Difford. It's guys like me who keep you employed. You were just a backwater no-name county lieutenant until I came along. I was the best thing that ever happened to your career. You should like me.
QUINCY: Jim —
DIFFORD: You're wrong, Beckett. You're not the most powerful person in the world. Theresa is.
BECKETT: What?
DIFFORD: You heard me. Who brought you down, who put you in jail? Face it, you married a sweet eighteen-year-old girl you thought you could control, manipulate, and terrorize to your heart's content. But instead of simply rolling over and playing dead, she figured you out. She learned you, she fought you. She toppled the omnipotent Jim Beckett.
BECKETT: Theresa is a weak, stupid woman who couldn't even stand up to her own father. All you had to do was raise your voice and she cowered in the corner.
DIFFORD: She kept a log on you. All the times you said you were on duty when you weren't. All the times you came home with unexplained scratches and bruises.
BECKETT: She was a jealous wife.
DIFFORD: She tracked the mileage on your odometer. She kept a whole little book of evidence against you, writing in it secretly every night until she finally had enough to call the police. And you never suspected a thing.
BECKETT: Theresa is not that smart!
DIFFORD: She turned you in, Jim. You terrorized her, you traumatized her. You burned everything she owned, told her day in and day out that she was worthless, and still she stood against you.
BECKETT: I made her pay. Every time she takes a step now, she thinks of me.
DIFFORD: And every time you hear the cell doors slam shut, you can think of her.
Pause.
QUINCY: One last question, Jim —
BECKETT: Do you know what I dream of, Difford? Do you know what I think about every night? I dream of the day I see my wife again. I picture sliding my hands around her neck and feeling her hands flail against my chest. I envision choking her to the edge of unconsciousness. And then, while she's lying
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