***Out In The 1950s Film Noir Night-With Vince Edwards’ Murder By Contract In Mind

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Some guys had all the angels figured, not figured too closely and then have no room for some big thing to come smack and you down, but figured, figured enough. Figured out that sticking with nine to five dullsville might pay the rent, barely, but would leave you feeling about one hundred years old by the time you were thirty. Figured out though that if you changed up your life, took some chances, you had to play the percentages, maybe not carefully but you had to think about them. Figured out that if you were going to break out, jailhouse breakout from that old world you had better do it alone, better stick to the lonely rooms, the one man walks, the sit at the bar and have a couple and look straight at the mirror, take in a show alone once in a while (and watch out for those creeps, guys, guys in raincoats no matter what the weather, who wanted to, wanted to sit next you and do what for god’s sake). Figured out that if you played your card rights, some of them anyway, you would be on easy street by, say thirty-five or forty and not look like one hundred either. Yah, juts stay cool, cool in the 1950s night and things would work out okay, maybe better than okay.

Take our man Vince, Vince Edwards stuck, deeply stuck in nine to five nowhere, just scratching along, but dissatisfied, really unhappy. Not unhappy in love, he didn’t care usually whether he had a girl or not, he was just as happy to pick some dame in a bar or on the street for the night, and they were, seeing that our boy was very good looking, happy to take the ride (although many complained he was a poor lover, or worse, just threw them out after he had been depleted) and let it go at that. He was not homo, nothing like that, if that is what people thought as he made it clear when he talked to guys about women and their wanting habits. He was just not that into them. Nor was he unhappy about the cold war red scare world pulling everybody around. That was too big for him, outside his percentages, and besides other guys had that racket wrapped up. No, what had our boy in a knot was how to make dough fast and get out, go to some island somewhere and just, just exist, that’s it, that’s it exactly.

And being a smart guy, a guy who had graduated from high school and all, Vince figured it out, figured out that the best way, well maybe not the best way since there was some element of risk involved, to bring his dreams home was to hire himself out as a contract killer, a “hit man.” Although he had no experience he felt, felt strongly that he had the ability to do this work impersonally and therefore successfully. No police record, no mob connections, nothing kinky in his past , See he figured that in this wicked old world some guys needed killing, or some guys, some guys with dough, figured some other guys needed killing and he was at their service. And the beauty of it was (he had checked it out of course) that with most gangland killings or jobs that had been done by hit men (carrying that impersonal sense not found in say household killings) you either got away with it or you got blown away. Simple.

Vince, being smart, being street smart had a pretty good run, made good money and guys, guys with big dough and big wants, started calling him for big jobs, jobs that took brains as well as firepower. So he worked his way up the food chain without too much effort. See what he knew was that he had it all over the old-time sluggers, the old mobster hit men from about some ancient Al Capone time, who shot everything in sight to get one guy. Made too much noise, way too much noise. So the dons or capos or just harried businessmen who needed quiet jobs done put out the word. And he knocked off a bunch of those guys who needed to be knocked off and became, well, famous in the select hit man community.

But like all percentage things after a while Vince hit a snag, a situation where he couldn’t make the thing go right. And wouldn’t you know it involved a woman, a woman to be hit for god sakes. A woman in Los Angeles of all places, an irate ex-mistress or something he never did get all the exact details, who was ready to sing, sing loud and some Mister Big wanted no part of that song It should have been a piece of cake but as it turned out as much as Vince didn’t care about women (and maybe, as he got caught in the web of this hit, hated them, and had hated them all along since mother time if you looked to Freud to learn about such things) he couldn’t kill the woman target. Just couldn’t make it go right from the minute he learned the target was a she. And for his reticence he took the tumble, took it hard, and took it very face down in a ditch like some rag doll in the end. Yes, Vince finally cashed his check, finally lost his percentage advantage …