Let's use Bernie's 2020 Campaign to Launch a Mass Working Class Fightback
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Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Let's use Bernie's 2020 Campaign to Launch a Mass Working Class Fightback Councilmember Kshama Sawant
“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind
“Shoot Pools ‘Fast Eddie,’ Shoot Pools”-With Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” In Mind
By Lance Lawrence
“Fast Eddie” Felson was the greatest pool player to ever chalk up a stick and you had better believe that because I know from where I speak because in most quarters, among the serious followers of the game, I, Jackie “Big Man” Gleason think that title belongs to me. Maybe you never heard of “Fast Eddie,” never knew the story behind the story of how for a couple of years anyhow, maybe three he ruled the roost, he was the king of the hill. All I know is from the first moment Eddie entered Sharkey’s Pool Hall, the place where my manager, Bart, and I hustled all comers at the sport of kings, down on 12th Avenue in the teeming city of New York I was afraid to play him. Afraid he would damage my reputation as the king of the hill. I had never played game one against him but still I sensed something in his swagger, in his bravado that made my hands shake. Shaking hands the kiss of death in our profession.
In case you don’t know, and maybe some readers might not having decided to read my homage to “Fast Eddie” based on the “hook” that this was about Paul Newman the movie actor shooting big-time pool, hustling pool in the old days before Vegas, Atlantic City, Carson City started putting up money to have high dollar championships was about more that learning technique, having a vision of where the fucking balls would enter the pockets like your mother’s womb. A lot more. It was about having heart, about something that they would call Zen today but which we called “from hunger” in my day. Eddie’s too. That’s what Eddie had, that is what I sensed, what brought me to cold sweats when that swaggering son of a bitch came looking for me like I was somebody’s crippled up grandfather. It took a while, Eddie took his beatings before he understood what drove his art but he got it, got it so good that I left the game for a couple of years and went out West to hustler wealthy Hollywood moguls who loved the idea of “beating” “Big Man” Gleason at ten thousand a showing.
But forget about me and my troubles once Fast Eddie came through that long ago door after all this is about how the best man who ever handled a stick got to earn that title in my book. Like a lot of guys after the war, after World War II, after seeing the world in one way Eddie was ready to ditch his old life, was ready to take some chances and say “fuck you” to the nine to five world that would be death to a free spirit like him (that “free spirit” would put a few daggers in his heart before he was done but that is for later). Eddie, against my doughty frame, my big man languid frame, was a rangy kid, kind of tall, wiry, good built and Hollywood bedroom eyes like, well, like Paul Newman when he was a matinee idol making all the women, girls too, wet. Strictly “from hunger” just like in my time, the Great Depression, I had been the same before I left Minnesota for the great big lights of the city and “action.” Like I said raw and untamed but I could tell that very first time he put the stick to the green clothe he had the magic, had that something that cannot be learned but only come to the saints and those headed for the sky.
So Eddie came in with a few thousand ready to take on the “Big Man.” While I feared this young pup I sensed that I could teach him a lesson, maybe a lesson that would hold him in good stead, maybe not, but which would at least give me enough breathing room to figure out what I would do when Eddie claimed his crown. His first mistake, a rookie error that I myself had committed was not having a partner, a manager to rein him in, to hold him back in tough times. He had some old rum dum, Charley, Billy, something like that, who cares except this rum dum was a timid bastard who couldn’t hold up his end. His end being strictly to estimate his opponent and rein the kid in when he was off his game like we all get sometimes. Me, like I said after I wised up, teamed up with Bart, Bart who knew exactly who and who was not a “loser” and who didn’t lose my money by making bad matches or bad side bets (those side bets were the cushion money that got us through hard times and many times were more than whatever we won at straight up games).
All I am saying is that this kid’s manager did Fast Eddie wrong, let him go wild that first night when he was all gassed up to beat the Big Man. You already know that I whipped his ass or you haven’t been paying close enough attention. But that was all a ruse like I said, all kid bravado and swagger added in so it was like taking candy from a baby that first night. But I knew I was beat, beat bad in a straight up contest. What saved me that night was two things, no three. First, Fast Eddie like lots of kids figured that he could beat an old man with his hands tied behind his back and so he started his “victory lap” drinking, drinking hard high-end scotch even before the match had started. Second, he was cocky enough to declare that the only way to determine the winner was who cried “uncle” first (Bart smiled and whispered “loser” in my ear at hearing that). Third and last he had picked up this broad, some boozer and maybe a hooker named, Sandy, Susie, no, Sarah whom he was trying to impress somehow. She looked like a lost kitten but I didn’t give a damn about that just that Fast Eddie’s mind would be half on getting her down under the sheets, maybe had dreams of getting a blow job for his efforts she looked the type who was into some kinky stuff just for kicks. At least that was the way it looked at the time. As I will tell you later it was very different and I was totally wrong about the dame.
It took almost twenty-eight hours in that dark dank smelly booze-strewn Sharkey pool hall which looked like something out of the movies’ idea of what a low rent pool hall should look like complete with low-lifes but eventually between the booze, the bravado, and the broad I took Eddie down, left him about two hundred bucks “walking around” money. Left him to cry “uncle.” Cry it for the last time. Between grabbing Fast Eddie’s money and the side bets Bart made I, we were able to lay off for a couple of months (usually after a big score that was standard practice since the one-time suckers who want to brag to the hometown folks that they played hard and fast with the Big Man and almost won scatter to the winds for a while before they inevitably come back for their well-deserved beatings). Bart said, no crowed, that he had had Fast Eddie’s number, a “loser.” Was another gone guy, forget him. But I had seen some moves, some moves especially before the booze got the better of the kid that I could only dream of trying without looking like a rube.
This part of the story coming up I pieced together from what Bart told me, what Sharkey had heard, and what little Fast Eddie let on when he came back at me in earnest, in that Zen state or whatever the fuck you want to call it when a guy is “walking with the king.” Eddie went into “hiding,” went licking his wounds, which in the pool world meant that he was trying to put a stake together hustling at pool halls in bowling alleys, places like that where the rubes are dying to lose a fin or double sawbuck and not cry about it. A player at the kid’s level though would have a hard time of making much scratch with the carnival-wheelers so unbeknownst to me Eddie got in touch with Bart who staked him to some dough for a big cut of the proceedings. They made money, a fair amount, but Bart, at least this is what he told me later after I pistol-whipped him before I left for Hollywood and the big beautiful suckers there figured that would just come back to me in the end because Bart still had the kid down as a loser, a big bad loser.
This part is murkier still. Along the way on this trip that Bart and Fast Eddie took to fleece the rubes this Sarah started to get religion, started wanted to settle down with Eddie, make Eddie settle down. After I had beaten him when he was laying low he moved in with her, they got along okay until Eddie connected with Bart whom Sarah definitely did not like, I guess she was off the bottle for a while but started in again once she saw that Eddie wouldn’t give up his dream, his dream of beating the Big Man. This part is even murkier but one night Eddie was hustling some Bourbon king and Bart and Sarah were left behind to drink the night away. Somehow Bart, who except when negotiating bets and matches was a pretty smooth talker, conned Sarah who was miffed at Eddie like I said into bed. Got her to either take him around the world or let him take her anally (or he forced the issue figuring she was just a bent whore anyway he had odd sexual desires from what I was able to figure out after a few years with him). The boozy haze, the rough sex, being unfaithful to Eddie, maybe her whole fucking life marching before her left her with who knows what angry feelings. In any case that night before Eddie got home she had slit her wrists.
This last part is not murky, not murky at all. After beating the hell out of Bart he took the bus back to New York and one night he came through Sharkey’s door and I knew I was roasted (Bart had telegrammed about what had happened and told me that he would put up fifty thousand dollars against Fast Eddie’s luck). I had no choice but to play the play out. After Fast Eddie took that fifty thousand and another twenty-five that I had put up I cried “uncle.” Cried uncle and left for Hollywood and the bright lights. Left Fast Eddie to play out his string, left Eddie to “shoot pools, ‘Fast Eddie’, shoot pools.”
When Johnny Rocco Was King Of The Whole Wide World-With Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind
When Johnny Rocco Was King Of The Whole Wide World-With Lauren Bacall, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind
By Fritz Taylor
“Hey Curly one of guys, one of the old cons Smiley if you know him, who works with me in the laundry told me that you used to the mouth piece for the legendary Johnny Rocco out of Chi town back in the day,” Johnny “Fingers” softly mentioned from his lower bunk to “Curly” Hoff in the upper bunk as the call for lights out was running through the cell-block. That cell-block in sweet home Joliet where Fingers had just come for his first “vacation” after grabbing a dime’s worth for an armed robbery of a liquor store off of Division Street in sweet home Chicago and had been assigned the lower bunk (the upper one gotten based on seniority or toughness) in the old time hood’s cell where he had been sitting on his hands for murder and about six other crimes and given a full jolt since he had been nabbed and extradited down in Florida in 1948.
“Sure I knew Johnny Rocco, the larger than life Johnny Rocco, king of the streets, when he was riding high in Chi town in the old days and later before he met his end down in Florida where I got nabbed as a result when he worked out of Cuba, out of Havana when that town was wild and wide open after the “Feds” busted him and shipped him out, deported him as an undesirable alien. Johnny always took a certain pride in the fact that no local or state coppers could lay a hand on him, he owned them one way or another and it took the “Feds” to close down his operations. But kid you are wrong when you say your understanding is that I was a “mouthpiece” for Johnny Rocco. First off in those days a mouthpiece was a lawyer, the “fix it” man when things got hot and you needed him. Anyway nobody was a mouthpiece for Johnny Rocco he was loud enough and hard enough to make his own news. What I was if you want to know was his go-to guy, the guy that held the operation together, maybe too his advisor on this and that although in the end, at the end he didn’t listen to me a damn nickel’s worth. So, no kid, I wasn’t his mouthpiece. If you keep quiet since lights just went out I will tell you about how the great Johnny Rocco met his end, fell down and tomorrow you can ask me questions about stuff if you are still interested.
“Johnny came over from Italy back around World War I, maybe he was trying to avoid the war over there like a lot of guys were maybe he just heard that there were easy pickings in America and grabbed a ticket for the next tub. Johnny wasn’t much for going into the details of early life and I knew him for thirty years so don’t ask me about that. He hit Division Street running pulling an armed robbery of Jimmy’s Gas Station in broad daylight a couple of days after he landed in Chi town from New York. The fucking gas jockey was so scared of Johnny that he told the coppers he couldn’t identify the guy who had robbed him. Made it plain from jump street he was the new guy in town and if you didn’t like it well you would like it. I ran into him one night at Stan’s Tavern deep in Division Street where he made his headquarters then before he moved up to the Club Nana. I was looking for the guy who made the news with his unmasked armed robbery in daylight. I wanted in on a guy who was that tough on day one. One thing about Johnny Rocco he wasn’t like a lot of those wops who just stayed with each other-you know Cosa Nostra-our thing- which meant everybody not Italian stay away. Johnny looked for guys as tough and mean as him that was all that counted. Guys like the guys who went down to Cuba with him and back to Florida. Me, an old German, Toots, a limey, Angel a spic, Feeney a Mick. Had his choice of women too but usually went with Irish girls (said he liked the way they had the rosary in one hand and their hand down your pants with the other). Went big for Mary Maloney, stage name Crystal Dawn, Johnny gave her that name when he bought the Club Nana for her to sing at, she was pretty good too until the booze got to her-and Johnny started grabbing whatever ass he could. Johnny would have killed me if he had ever found out but I had banged Mary when she was about fourteen and I didn’t have to coax her one little bit. Yeah funny when Johnny cashed his check in America, had to leave he wanted Crystal there with him.
“The twenties were a good time, a great time for guys whose motto was “more,” and more is what Johnny and the rest of us wanted. We started to make a little name for ourselves for running liquor, then the numbers, then women, any women you wanted, any age, Johnny would let me take the young ones and break them in since I always liked the young pussy, the younger the better. Down in Cuba, Jesus, they get ripe about twelve and most of the times you didn’t have to do a lot to coax them out of their dresses. But the thing that made Johnny, made him a little ahead of his time in rackets was the dope, marijuana, opium, cocaine, heroin, you name it. Most of the battles among us was over dope forget booze, even illegal booze, there was a ton of money in dope if you knew how to control the product. And a mountain of dead bodies followed that struggle. Funny because that is what would do Johnny in, a chicken shit rap by some young punk Assistant Attorney-General, a Fed, thirty years as an upstanding member of the community and Johnny had to go bye-bye to Havana.
“Cuba was okay as a place to stay for a week or two but after you got tired of getting your ashes hauled or had enough of pina coladas Johnny and the rest of us got restless. The way the story went later was that Johnny had gotten a ton of counterfeit money and was going to head back to Florida and make a deal with some guys who wanted to buy it in Miami and use that as seed money on the road back to being king of the rackets again. That is how legends get started and go wrong though. The stuff Johnny had was dope in case you heard otherwise, the stuff that had made him king. He couldn’t very well go to a wide open town like Miami so he decided to lam out for Key Largo further south and quieter on his big yacht to make the deal. I told him that the Keys in the summer were too hot and he would wind up sweating his ass off (me too) but he wouldn’t listen, wanted to make the deal on the QT.
“We needed a place once we got there and the only place that was open, or wasn’t closed for season once the winter trade drifted back North was this Hotel Largo, kind of rundown and kind of too open. So I negotiated with this old guy in a wheelchair who owned the place, Lionel something, no, James Temple, and his daughter, Nora, a looker for an older dame if that was your thing, who I found out later was not his daughter but daughter-in-law who had come down after her husband, James’s son George had been killed in action over in Europe during the Second World War. I gave this Temple enough money to make sure he kept the place open and enough so that he had better not ask questions. So the six of us (remember Crystal Dawn was along for the ride too, a mistake since she couldn’t keep her hands off the booze, or off a couple of Indian boys who she snuck out back with when Johnny was sleeping)
“Then this Frank McCloud came in, came in on the bus so I figured him at first for just a cheapskate tourist looking for cheap lodging on the off-season. It turned out that Frank had been this Temple son’s commanding officer over in Italy I think it was and he had decided to come down and tell Temple and Nora how brave their guy had been. I didn’t like the look of him and told Johnny that this guy would be nothing but trouble. Knew who Johnny was since he had been some kind of newspaper guy before the war. I had that right. Johnny always quick to show anybody at all who was king of the hill challenged this McCloud to duel it out with him, threw him a gun, see what he was made of. This guy backed down, backed down saying ‘what difference did one Johnny Rocco’ in this world. After that Johnny would always bait him with the term ‘soldier’ and say it in such a way that made the word seem like dog shit. I tried to tell Johnny to cool his heels this guy was more than he looked like, was made of something to back down when he was being watched by this Temple and that Nora who seemed to have eyes for him right off. I was right about that worry. Later when I came up for my trial this Frank showed up to testify against me for some reason and the news came out that he had won a Bronze Star and a couple of other medals so he was no coward. Little good that did Johnny R.
“Maybe if the weather, the hurricane that was brewing after we arrived, hadn’t been so drastic we would have made the deal, gone back to Cuba for a while to figure out the next step and Johnny would be back in Chi town and me with him. But the weather had everybody off especially when the winds started to blow hard. Trouble was some nosey copper had been around looking for that pair of Indians that Crystal had given a tumble-they were wanted for some crumb bum crime. Here is where Johnny let the heat get to him but also showed that when the deal went down he was still the best stone-cold killer around even if he did farm out most of his work when he was on top. This copper who we had to cold-cock but when he got up all groggy he was all gung-ho, this was after Johnny had humiliated Frank, he took the gun off the floor where Frank had thrown it and tried to take Johnny in, arrest Johnny. Johnny shot him where he stood without blinking an eye. See that gun was unloaded. Beautiful play- a Johnny special.
“That was his last smart play though. After the guys from Miami came, gave the dough, and left Johnny found out that the captain of his yacht had moved the boat to safer harbors so we needed to get the hell out to the boat some way. This Frank had helped Nora with the hotel boat earlier so I told Johnny that this guy could take us out in that craft. We made him agree to do so. The five of us, Crystal was excess baggage with her booze problem then so Johnny was dumping her, and this Frank got into the hotel boat and started heading out. The seas were rough but we were doing okay until I noticed that Frank had made a strange move with the boat and Feeney had gone overboard. I took a shot at Frank, wounding him, and he shot at me wounding me. I fell down on my face. Everybody later thought I was dead but when we got to port, back to the hotel Frank noticed I was still breathing and they took me to the fucking hospital and then extradited me back to Illinois. Toots took a shot at Frank too and Frank felled him as well. That left Angel and Johnny to figure out how Frank got a gun. Johnny no hero when things were even told Angel to go up against Frank. He said no. Mistake for Angel-Johnny shot him like a mangy stray dog. It is now Johnny against Frank with Johnny trying to bargain with him. No go. Johnny then goes off his wheels-goes after Frank. Bang-Johnny boy is a goner. Frank, wounded twice, still gets us back to the hotel port.
How did Frank get a gun? Crystal when Johnny turned her over had grabbed the thing from Johnny’s pocket when she was kissing him good-bye. The drunken bitch. Yeah, but the important thing to remember is that for a long time Johnny, Johnny Rocco and no other was king of the hill, maybe the last of his kind.
Finished Curly could hear Johnny Fingers breathing softly in the bunk below. Fingers would certainly have questions in the morning for him.
Kitty’s Tale-‘s With Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster’s Film Adaptation Of Hemingway’s “The Killers” In Mind
Kitty’s Tale-‘s With Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster’s Film Adaptation Of Hemingway’s “The Killers” In Mind
By Si Landon
[Kitty Collins was a knock-out, was a gal who guys would jump through hoops for and not think twice about it, who would lie, steal and double-cross for just to get a whiff of that jasmine, or whatever the hell that scent was that drove guys dizzy when they in the same room with her. This the way that Jim Reardon, the high-priced investigator for Acme Insurance described her in a note that he left in his records of the Ole Andreson case, the case that would make him that high-priced investigator back in 1946. John Colfax was looking through Reardon’s files one day trying to figure out how his mother Kitty had wound up doing a long stretch in for her part in a murder and robbery scheme, the famous Tip Top Hat Company payroll job. They had grabbed $250,000 cash, not a lot now maybe just walking around money in but a big number then-a number worth cutting guys up for and cutting guys out of. When the cops picked up Kitty at her palacial home outside of Philadelphia after his father, Jim Colfax, had been killed by one of his confederates, a guy named Dum Dum who was looking for the dough that went missing she was frantic that the dying Jim (everybody had called him “Big Jim” then) exonerate her, get her off the hook for the murder of the hat company guard and the dough. No dice. Big Jim passed before he could say word one, one way or the other.
After Kitty had been convicted of the felony murder and sentenced to that twenty to thirty year stretch her parents had decided that it was better to raise John without him, only two at the time, knowing too much about what had happened to his mother and father. Had told him early on that they had died in some car crash. Later when he was an adult somebody recognizing the name “Big Jim” Colfax when John was “in his cups” at Jimmy’s Grille in Pottstown where he had been raised and had mentioned that his parents had died in a car crash a guy put him wise, told him that was all hogwash and filled him in on the real reason that Big Jim had died-and his mother had spent her life in stir (she died there in some kind of poetic justice just before she was to be released some twenty years later). That night he confronted his grandparents about the matter. They confessed to what they had done without giving many details since they had forgotten many of them in their dotage.
They did tell him that if he was interested in finding out more details about what really happened that he should check and see if Jim Reardon was still at Acme Insurance in Philadelphia. As it turned out Reardon had retired some years before after a successful career and was living in Tom’s River over in New Jersey. A couple of weeks later he went to Tom’s River and met up with Reardon. Reardon had told him that he had too forgotten many of the details of the case, although he remembered without guidance or guile that John’s mother was a beautiful woman, a woman to twist a guy up. He offered to let John look at the files, his personal files of the important cases he had worked on which he kept in his basement. John eagerly agreed that he wanted to see the files. The next day he came back to Reardon’s house and spent the entire afternoon going through the papers at a table Reardon had set up down in the musty basement.
The key document that John found was a diary, no more of a journal that Kitty apparently kept during her younger days, had kept for several years before the robbery, and during the time of the robbery ending just before his father was killed when Kitty had placed a notation in the book that she was off to meet Reardon and was fearful that he was getting too close to the truth of what happened back then to Ole Andreson, to the Swede as everybody called him. The most startling news he received from his perusal of the journal was that despite her protestations of innocence she, not his father Big Jim, had been the driving force behind the robbery. Had spent the better part of her young womanhood plotting to “hit the motherlode,” her expression and take a ride on easy street (John’s term for what she had been looking for). He confronted Reardon with that journal and asked what he knew about it. Reardon confessed that he had picked up the journal from Kitty’s bureau drawer after she had been marched off to the police station but that he had never bothered to look at it since the case was now closed and he had about ten other cases that his boss was driving him crazy to finish up. The journal made for chilling reading, made John unsure about whether he would have wanted to meet his mother if he knew where she was and knew what was in the journal. Reardon let him keep the journal and a few weeks later he gave it to his newspaper friend, Larry Larson, to make sense of what had really happened in the famous, maybe infamous, Tip Top Hat company case. Here’s what Larry was able to do with the material. Si Landon]
Kitty Colfax, nee Collins, had been brought up on the wrong side of the tracks, Irishtown, in Pottsville, Pa and from as young as she could remember she had dreamed about escaping lie among the coal slags, among the dirty, drunken shanty Irish too. She was aided considerably in her dreams by her startling good looks, her long black at those coal slags hair, a tidy body and big ruby red lips. Early on she figured that she could use that beauty to her advantage. That and a cold, calculated sense that every man was nothing but putty in her hands once they got a whiff of that scent she was wearing that said femme fatale (the jasmine she wore from early on only added to the effect). Almost naturally she used sex, the sex act, acts to get something from a man (boys at first, that was how she got her first bottle of jasmine perfume, her “trademark”) losing her virginity one night when she was fourteen. Everything later flowed from that understanding of the world, the man’s world that she was going to trample on.
Kitty also knew she had to get out of Pottsville, get out fast so at sixteen she told her parents she was going to Philly to make her life (she told them she wanted to get married but not to anybody in Pottsville as a pretext). In Philly she went through a bewildering series of men [to John] who picked the up tab, kept her, paid her rent although nobody who had hit the big time, who had serious don’t worry about the future money. Then one night at a party where she was slumming (and kind of singing for her supper since they guy who was hosting the party was also paying her rent, paying for her voice lessons as well) she met Ole Andreson, the “Swede,” who had come in with a date but blew her off once he got a look at Kitty. Once he told his story-that he had been a boxer, had broken his hand doing so and so was moving on, moving into some connections he had with guys in the rackets, probably act as muscle she sensed that he might come in handy. He certainly had the built for some tough action (although she also noted that his “member,” his cock wasn’t that big and he wasn’t much of a lover, couldn’t give her an orgasm). She had him all tied up though and she knew it, he knew it too. One night she had been in Joey’s, a restaurant when pugs and other bad boys hung out, mostly cons and clip artists wearing a stolen brooch, a very expensive stolen brooch when a copper, a friend of the Swede’s came in to pinch somebody, to pinch her. The Swede walked in, glammed to the situation and claimed he had stolen the brooch to the copper after she begged him to do something. Yeah, he took a fall for her, did three hard ones. She had him down forever if she needed anything.
Of course a guy doing three hard ones, even if for her, wasn’t getting her ahead in the world and so she started stepping out again (she had made it a policy from early on, except for an off-hand blow job if a guy was giving her something, to only deal with one guy at a time-unless she needed to use another guy for some caper and that was his price). That was when she met and shacked up with “Big Jim” Colfax, a guy moving up in the rackets and a guy who seemed to have a “front” unlike the Swede who was just a pug, somebody to be used. Funny this Big Jim was seriously into sex, seriously into kinky action and so Kitty let him have his way-for a while. A guy like Big Jim though was a guy who liked to lay back and take it easy-have his boys take up the “collections” on the numbers rackets his was running on the North side.
That is what Big Jim thought was the big time but Kitty knew that serious money was not through some middle-level push in the cheapjack numbers racket. She would keep hammering away at him to listen to her plans about making a big score and then ducking out and become “legit,” make some real easy street money from a business start-up. She would go after him particularly when she had him tied up on the bedposts and she was ready to down on him. He kept putting her off though.
Kept putting her off until she heard that the Swede was getting out of prison and then she went full- bore, wouldn’t do the kinky stuff that consumed Big Jim unless he listened to her plan. The plan was simplicity itself and she had been working on a variation of the scheme for some time. Where was there serious money almost laying on the ground. Banks-or the payroll at some big factory. Banks were too risky but a payroll with little security and no vaults was a cinch. In Philly then right after the war when hats for men and women were a big deal the factory had to the Tip Top Hat Company with a big payroll and nothing more than a door to go through. They, Kitty figured they needed three other guys besides them for muscle and firepower if necessary, would be dressed as workers going through the single guard gate when the shifts changed. Then to the payroll office and the dough on a Friday morning. Big Jim started to show some interest once Kitty laid out the scenario and before the day was out they were casing the place (and it didn’t hurt when she let him do his thing with whips with her). Big Jim was in.
Of course the Swede would be in once he saw that she was lined up with Big Jim just so he could get his hands on the dough to take her away from him (little did the Swede know then that Big Jim whom she would use to front the whole operation was claiming half of the take for figuring out the plan). Yeah, Swede was in when he heard the plan with Kitty sitting provocatively on the bed with that come hither look that meant she was “available.” The other two guys were more trouble. There had been a dearth of firepower talent in the town since the war with first-rate guys heading to Chi town and the Motor City where there was more action. So Big Jim contacted the best available, the second best, a guy named Dum Dum and a guy named Blinky. Then Kitty went to work. Took Dum Dum up to her room and let him have his way with her. Blinky, an old time junkie but a great wheel man when he was sober, could have cared less about sex but a few bindles of smack, of boy, of heroin brought him on board (and the promise of enough dough to stay junked up for a year or two). So that had the five ready to go.
In the event the robbery went as planned except at the end some guard thinking the money being robbed from the company was his personal stash or something had started shooting and Dum Dum had wasted him. An overhead cost. The plan was to meet at a cabin that night after they had split up in different direction when the robbery was completed and they headed for the cars they had parked across the street from the plant. This is where things got dicey-or seemed to. They were all to meet and divide the dough the next morning at another cabin when the coast was clear. What had happened was that, by design, Kitty had gone to Dum Dum and Blinky and told them the meeting cabin had burned down and the new meet place was at a farm a few miles away.
She told the Swede that he was being cut out, that the others wanted him out but that she loved him, had always loved him so why didn’t he foul the boys up by showing up at the farm and grabbing all the dough and head to Atlantic City. She would meet him there. She left her calling card to make sure he was in-she let him have his way with her (although she made another note that prison had done a job on his sex drive and she had to pretend to have an orgasm). The next morning the Swede came through, grabbed all the dough and hightailed it to Atlantic City with a sack full of dough. Kitty showed up later in the day. A couple of days later she blew town-with the dough-leaving the Swede holding the bag. Classic fall guy.
Here’s the deal. The Swede was set up not only by Kitty but through her by Big Jim. Kitty had bet the farm that Big Jim had enough smarts to put together a legit business-with her guiding him. But she wanted all the dough to get the thing rolling. That was why the Swede was left with egg all over his face. So everybody, everybody being Dum Dum and Blinky, thought that Swede had crossed them up.
Big Jim, with Kitty in tow, did wind up setting up a big time construction company and Kitty finally had all the dough that even her black heart could use. The Swede, well the Swede figuring the others had him down as the villain disappeared, went underground in some small town in Ohio working as a gas jockey, all a washed up pug and robber was good for. Then one day while driving through Ohio on company business Kitty stopped at a gas station for gas and water. There was the Swede with a stupid sheepish grin on his face. Kitty was able to hold him off with a promise to show up at his room after she convinced him that Big Jim had forced her to betray her man-him. Yeah, this Swede had it bad. Once Kitty got back to Philly though she implored Big Jim to hire a couple of gunsels and get rid of the Swede for good.
Big Jim, for once, didn’t argue the matter. He hired a couple of boys to do the job, and they did it as neat as any hit job had ever been done. They killed him right in his crummy boarding house room while he was sleeping, an easy hit. That is where Reardon came in. Seems that the gasoline company that employed the Swede had life insurance on its employees, Not much but enough to have Reardon smell a rat. So Kitty and Big Jim would go down for a$2500 life insurance policy. Jesus. Reardon was a bulldog on the case once he saw that the Swede, mere gas jockey, had been waylaid for no apparent reason. By dogging it out, by retracing some footsteps he found that the Swede was no mere gas jockey but a pretty good boxer whose hands went south on him. He had gotten mixed up with the local branch of the Philly mob, met the mysterious to Reardon Kitty, taken the fall for her, and then had taken part in the Tip Top Hat robbery.
The important thing though was that Reardon figured out that the Swede had been the fall guy-the guy who was supposed to have skipped with all the dough. That got the pissed off Dum Dum and Blinky thinking once they read that the Swede had been wasted under suspicious circumstances. Then the trail led back to Big Jim and Kitty who were now married and had a son. Dum Dum finally not so dumb wasted Blinky figuring he was the bad guy. When that proved not to be true he then went after Big Jim. In the meantime Reardon had figured out that Kitty had betrayed everybody. He had it almost right except that she one last plea-and that was where the journal ended. Everybody knows though that Big Jim and Dum Dum had a shoot-out and had killed each other with Kitty begging Big Jim to get her off the hook as he lay dying in a pool of blood. We already know Kitty’s end.
Larry thought after finishing up his piece figured that Kitty’s parents had been right to keep John in the dark. And after reading this article he was also sure that John would be glad that he had not met his mother later.
In Search Of…. –Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey-(2012)-A Film Review DVD Review
In Search Of…. –Hobbit:
An Unexpected Journey-(2012)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell
Hobbit: An Unexpected
Journey, Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage and a cast of thousands
including those dreaded no good orcs that disturb one’s dreams, directed by
Peter Jackson, 2012
Anybody familiar with
The Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by the same director, Peter Jackson, as
in the film under review, the first in the three part Hobbit series, An
Unexpected Journey knows that Hobbits, or better a Hobbit played a central role
in beating the hard-core selection of bad guys and monsters in that series. Well
the brethren or rather one such member of the clan, Bilbo (played by Martin
Freeman), will be dragged kicking and screaming from peaceful, tranquil, boring
nine to five Hobbitsville to avenge all evils some sixty years before the action
in Rings. So the same sense of the fantastic, the weird, and the down-right
unfair will drive this ploy sequence.
Old man Tolkien was on to something back in
the day when he wrote all of this material. He knew at least by allegory and
metaphor that the various tribes, kingdoms, nations, races had many-faceted
relations with each other and among themselves. Something replicated in real
life. So while the kids can go crazy with the six million fights and slayings
there is some kind of lesson to be learned for the whole thing.
Here’s the play on this first film in the
series and why I liked it. Hey I am a guy who supports national liberation
struggles as a rule (okay, okay kingdom liberation for the literally-minded) so
what is not to like when our little man Bilbo gets waylaid into traveling with
a band of thirteen dwarfs in order to act as a burglar of the precious stone
that will solve all Middle-Earthly problems. The reason they need his services
is because some time before a dragon who loved gold descended on their gold-rich
kingdom dwarf kingdom and killed or made the residents flee. That situation
required vengeance and the need for Bilbo’s services. The main actor in getting
Bilbo off his comfortable butt is the magician Gandaph, played by Ian McKellan,
who has his own agenda. These freedom fighters led by their exiled leader
Thorin, played by Richard Armitage, don’t immediately trust Bilbo’s abilities
or motives but by the end of the film he is a regular member of the tribe
despite his alien status.
Needless to say the
fight to get back to the Lost Mountain where their kingdom was located and
where that nasty dragon was sleep-guarding the filthy lucre will test the lot
of them. After getting the no alliance needed from the elves a little higher up
the chain they go through the forest and have a series of battles of arms and
wits with dim-witted trolls, feisty goblins and worst of all their hereditary
enemies the dreaded Orcs led by the maniac Azog the defiler so you know what he
and his tribe are about. Funny about those allegedly fierce and war-like
Orcs-the wee people seem to be able to handle them with ease by a little
cunning and sword-thrust so that menace in the end you know will be conquered.
By the end of film number one though it is far from obvious whether they will
get to that Lost Mountain in order to go mano a mano with that flame-throwing
dragon. Stay tuned.
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