Frank Hickey

Softening Flatbush Frank Hickey

I, Max Royster, fat, broke, divorced, thrown off the NYPD for mental illness. Now in Flatbush, Brooklyn, I find new love, new murder and new career. Can I keep my love? Crack the case? Can I inspire and change private security? And maybe regain my NYPD shield? I, Max Royster, ex-NYPD cop, cashiered "for mental disease or defect", am changing. I want to marry and stay in one place. Cooper, my new love, lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that used to be the borough's jewel. The Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson played ball there. Back then, nobody in Flatbush locked their doors. Sixty years later, street crime plagues the area. As an ex-street cop, I watched robberies and shootings increase and criminals savage the neighborhood. Someone kills a local black comedian. Cooper and her friends want to clean up the neighborhood and improve Flatbush's image. That way, they can 'flip' their homes and triple their profits I call her friends "Flippers," a term that does not amuse them. She challenges me to run a guard agency that suffers from guards ducking work and taking bribes. Somehow, I think I can inspire the guards by instructing them tricks I learned as a cop. I can transform them from unhappy minimum wage-earners to passionate, hardworking crime fighters. If I succeed and make Flatbush safe for Cooper and her friends, we will buy a home there and enjoy a happy marriage. My new employees and I fight to take back the Flatbush streets. I give them better training, uniforms and weapons. The guards buff their new badges with pride. My boyhood friends, out-of-work actresses, barflies and story-tellers, join us in our quest. But some guards refuse to let go of old vices. Others turn vigilante and bully innocents. Curbing their zeal, I try to teach them to uphold civil rights as I hunt the suspect in the comedian's murder. Then, under cover of night, good and evil clash at the Lefferts Historic House. Facing disgrace and prison, I must decide what matters most in life to me. Come walk with me on that razor edge between brutality and staying alive as Cooper and I, my Flippers and my guards give everything to try Softening Flatbush.