The French Connection Scene 17

Scene 17

• Mineral oil is being poured into a glass lab-grade funnel, and the camera pans down a glass tube, and then cuts to a close up of a thermometer, with someone wrapping a rubber band on its end.
• A chemist licks the end of a plastic needle, then secures it in the band, the dredges it through a pile of what's probably heroin. He puts the thermometer above the glass tube, then lights a gas lamp and puts it under the contraption.
• "Blast off," he says, then begins to read and evaluate the numbers as Sal paces, watching the numbers go up.
• Weinstock puffs at a cigar.
• The test completes and the chemist says it's the purest heroin he's ever seen.
• The chemist says goodbye and Weinstock and Sal talk numbers: there's 60 kilos of dope, which is worth half a million (that's 3.21 million bucks in 2015 dollars).
• Sal wants to go ahead as soon as possible, because Charnier is impatient, but Weinstock cautions him to chill out: he can gather the money to make the deal, but it always pays to be patient—if he were more patient, the cops wouldn't be tailing him.
• Sal tries to protest, but Weinstock won't budge.