***Doll’s Story-With The
Asphalt Jungle In Mind
From The Pen Of Frank
Jackman
Doll never had a guy who could go
the whole distance, never once, never a guy who could think one step ahead, one
step ahead of that next dollar, never a guy who could figure the percentages to
his advantage, never. Not even her last man, Bix, the straightest guy she ever
knew. The man she was crazy for from first day when he came into the club, the
Kit Kat Club where she was warbling for cheap change, and just kind of country
boy stared at her while she was singing, singing some torch number, Billie’s Am I Blue that she had done a thousand
times but reached some high white note while he was staring and so she was
hooked, hooked bad. Yah, Doll had it bad for Bix, yah, real bad, and so the
tensions between them, her loving him no matter what and he kind of casting her
aside, didn’t matter as she played her hand out right to the end, right to the
end of hope. Doll though never figured out the ABCs of hard guys-that hanging
around wrong gees, even stand-up wrong gees, was anything but heartbreak hotel.
But sometimes that is the way dames are, thankfully.
Yah, Bix and his childhood dreams,
his simple-minded dreams, his dream of recovering some bluegrass dirt farm his
father lost in the Great Depression like you could bring that back, or want to.
That was the hard edge county boy about him, mixed in, mixed in with wrong gee,
and with some sense of honor. A funny mix. All Doll wanted was for him to do
was pay her a little more attention, maybe set up housekeeping together, not
married, not if he didn’t want to, not if it would crowd him too much But Bix
couldn’t see it the way she wanted him to see it, he had to go and face his own
music his own way and now he was down in some good earth Kentucky hay field face
down to the wind pushing up flowers. Yah, he had to do it his way. Get involved
way over his head with a bunch of guys looking for easy street and coming up
empty. Damn.
Damn Doc and his big complicated
plans, the heist of the century is the way he tried to sell it. That wizened,
harden old con trying for one last chance at “easy street” with a big caper and
Bix as, well, the “hooligan,” the “muscle”, the guy who has to clean up after,
but see Bix as she knew from his talk was also looking for his own version of
that easy street. So that was the lay.
Doll knew from the beginning the
thing was a “no go,” was way too complicated with too many moving parts the way
he explained it, and Bix just a mug who might have robbed grocery stores or did
some strong arm work was in way over his head and she tried to kind of
telegraph the problem to Bix from the start; crime doesn’t pay, okay. But that
“wisdom” has never stopped a million "from hunger" guys (and not a
few dames) from taking the quick plunge to easy street since way back, way back
in pharaoh’s times probably.
See Doc, old time con that he was, had
just got released from stir for some previous big plan crime around the time
that Doll fell for Bix, had had plenty of time on his hands up at the pen to
work through his latest plan for easy street. A big plan involving knocking
over a big jewelry store, hard rocks not cheap jack wedding rings but serious
Mayfair swell jewelry, having the merchandise “fenced,” and then off he goes to
sun and senoritas, young senoritas by the way, the dirty old man, down in
Mexico. Mexico before the drug cartels blasted everything down there to hell
and back.
But such an effort needed upfront
cash for tool, plans and reliable men, and some major backing, to procure the
master safe cracker, an expert wheelman and, just in case things get rough, the
hooligan, her Bix, the guy who takes all the pot-shots for short money and also
to secure a conduit to fence this high roller stuff after the heist. And that
is where things started to go awry.
See, one of reasons Doll figured that
crime doesn’t pay, pay in the long or short haul, was that not everybody is on
the level. Sure the safe cracker, the wheel man, and the hooligan, the “proles”
were on the level. Especially her farm boy Bix turned loose in the ugly,
asphalt jungle city just looking for a stake to get back home to Kentucky and
out of the city soils. The problem was the up-front dough guys, one way or the
other, were not on the level.
One guy, Emmett, Doll thought his
name was, Bix wouldn’t say, has no dough (although later when she put the
pieces together it was easy to see why that was so since he was, well let’s
just call it “keeping time” with a young honey, Angela, and even Doll could see
where keeping her "happy” from the way Bix described her would eat up a
guy’s wallet), and the other guy wilted under the slightest pressure, police
pressure. He couldn’t stand up to the grilling and spilled his guts out. All it
took was a few slap arounds and he sang like a bird, the rat. But who had time
to check with the Better Business Bureau when you are in the rackets to check
the “fence’s” references (and bank book). Needless to say that while the jewel
heist was pulled off, although not without complications, deadly complications,
a couple of coppers or security guards, same thing, went down in a hail of gun
fire, some of it Bix’s , and that is the point where everyone got a share of the very painful message already telegraphed
above. Bix took some gunfire too and was bleeding like a pig when he got to
Doll’s place after the coppers cracked the case wide open.
So she could have told him a thing
or two about that thin line between the bad guys and the good guys, and the
good guys are not always the cops and respectable folks. Doc, for instance, was
cool customer, even if he was nothing but a has-been moth-eaten old con; although
he makes a few serious mistakes of judgment in whom to, and who not to, trust
he was a likeable enough crook. If he could have kept his talk away from Bix. Bix, ditto, because he was a stand-up guy, gave
one hundred per cent for what he is paid to do, and did not leave his buddies
in the lurch. But that policy left Doll just one more time with a guy, the
straightest guy she ever knew, who couldn’t go the distance. Damn.
