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.