SOFTENING FLATBUSH

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