Doll’s Story-With The Film Adaptation Of W.R. Burnett’s “The Asphalt Jungle” In Mind

By Si Landon

“I never had a man who drew an even break, never had a man who drew an honest breathe, never had a man who could go all the way, could take me out of the B-girl tinsel town racket. Dix tried, Dix from back about twenty years ago now tried, tried like hell but he was just a hooligan and how could a girl pin her hopes on such a guy,” pined Doll Savoy, but any surname would do she sure had used enough of them, as a tear formed under her mascara eyes thinking about that big lug who went down in a blaze of nothingness twenty years to the day.

No matter where she was, what guy was paying her bills, who she was fucking or taking around the world she would always shed a tear thinking about Dix, Dix Dixon if you needed a last name and how he came to that terrible end in some horseshit meadow in blue mountain Kentucky where he hailed from, where they were supposed to get a fresh start. Fresh start she said with a shrug and a wicked-edged laugh at the irony of Dix pushing up daisies and leaving her alone to fend for herself back at Tilly’s the biggest “clip joint” west of the Mississippi. Left alone to let some guy pick up her bills for a few months before he blew town, went back to his wife or something. Or she got tired of him, tired of the cheap cons, tired of the tired sex, tired of looney guys and their blow-job desires.

Tonight thought Doll would have no truck with guys paying her bills, guys looking to go around the world, guys looking for a quick blow-job behind the alley to Tilly’s (and the bitch of it was if she wanted to keep her job, wanted to be a Tilly’s B-girl, wanted “the life” at her age then she had better be ready to suck cock as Eddie G., Tilly’s night manager made very clear one night when some jerk complained that she didn’t want to go under the table on him. Yeah, where was a real man like Dix when a girl needed a safe harbor and maybe no loving, a guy like Dix had had all loving bled out of him by the time he was about thirteen, but also no bullshit either. The straightest shooter she had ever known. Hell she had enough love to carry the two of them. Didn’t she prove it riding with him through cop roadblocks and blood so he could get back to that fucking hayseed farm he kept dreaming about going back to, going back to get washed clean like in some old time Bible story. And she didn’t say word one when the coppers came to that bloody horseshit meadow about who he was and where he had been so his kin, that was Dix’s word for his folks could cash in some jewels he had in his pocket and reclaim the old farm lost in some Depression wildness. (She had never taken diamond one from his pocket when he went down to that blaze of nothingness. Yeah she had her own straight-shooter code too.)

Dix’s anniversary always made Doll think about how close they had come to happiness, happiness for her anyway since Dix probably was clear out of happiness as much as he was out of loving. She would have created enough happiness for the two of them. Then as the night got darker and she sat in a push-broom hotel room thinking about her own  place, a flop really with that fucking roll-up bed and that never working stove, drinking her Thompson’s blended. Dix’s drink that was how they got started the night he had come into Benny’s, the clip joint she was working at then, and he noticed that she was drinking the same low blend drink that he was looking to buy.  (When she had her Dix “wanting habits” on she wanted no truck with her place over on Kendall Street that Sal was paying the bills on who knows for how long, probably not long as he kept talking about his wife and how maybe if she would just give him a blow-job now and again they might work things out-never a good sign when a man was talking about some other dame, wife or not, giving him head). So this night she was sitting in this cheap Paradise Hotel broom closet, some name for the hour tricks that kept the place going, drinking her Thompson’s blended and working her way back to those final few days when if things had gone according to plan, according to Doc’s big ass fucking fool-proof plan, she and Dix might have gotten off cheap street. Who knows she might have grown to like that horseshit meadow although she had not lived away from the city for more than three days, the one time when she was a kid and a kindly aunt took her to the mountains outside of Denver where she had grown up.             

Her thoughts always went back to the night when Louie Lomax came into Benny’s looking for Dix. It was early and Dix was sitting at the bar drinking his maybe third shot of Thompson’s and she was getting ready down the other end of the bar for her B-girl chores for the night. She had hoped that she would not have to go out into some guy’s car or to some motel since earlier in the afternoon she and Dix had had a great bout of sex, he seemed to relax for once and seemed to enjoy the sex, liked when she took his cock in her mouth and did him until he cried   “uncle” when after he cummed she kept her mouth on that big thing until he really did cry uncle. That was the first time he said she was alright, was a fit woman for him and she blushed with joy when he uttered those few words. She would omit that afternoon tryst with Dix part when she retailed the story of her lost love to her girlfriends like Dottie although Dottie could probably figure out what kept Dix on her leash even if only for a few days.     

Louie went straight to where Dix was sitting and asked him if he wanted a drink something Louie would not spring for if he wasn’t looking for something. Dix, after Louie left, had told her when she wasn’t hustling some guy for a drink (so-called drink-it was nothing but Lipton’s tea for her at ten bucks a pop-a “clip” no question) that he was going out, going to a meeting with some guy named Doc who was looking for a guy who could throw his weight around (a “hooligan” is what they called them but she didn’t know the term until the coppers ran down his felony sheet and one cop said he was nothing but a hooligan and she asked him what was that-and that was exactly what her big man, six two, two hundred pounds was built for-pushing his weight around).The next morning when Dix woke up he told he in vague terms whether she liked the idea of heading to easy street. She had thought nothing of it, had heard that from a million guys before-usually looking for some quick sex in the meantime, except she privately thrilled that Dix had said “we” would be on easy street. Told her too that Doc had a plan so that the whole crew (Doc, a box man, a wheel, a hooligan-and then a fence) would be on easy street from here on in. (She did not find out who the others were until after the caper had been completed-and Dix was on the run.)      

After that morning she had not seen Dix for several days until one late night she heard a rapping on her door and there was Dix with a small, wiry foreign looking guy bleeding, Doc. The plan had been to rob Kaye’s Jewelry Store, the high-end jewelers, from the inside out. Doc had had it all figured. Had it figured right, they had grabbed half a million, maybe more in precious stones-except he, Doc, had forgotten about the accidental which can monkey up any perfect plan. First “forgot” was that the box man, the guy who blew the safe got shot accidently when he had tumbled to guys inside the building after the safe explosion had set off every alarm system in the area-bringing in every copper. Dix had tried to stop the copper and his gun dropped to the ground shooting both the box man in the stomach and grazing Dix. He had shrugged off the wound as nothing at the time-just like Dix. Then the coppers having sensed that the job, the plan for the job, could only have been hatched by Doc who had just been released from prison started their full-court press. Got to Louie first. Cheapjack stoolie no heart feet of clay Louie turned over Jimmy the wheelman.      

That wasn’t all that went wrong on the caper once the script went awry. A big job like this jewelry caper needed plenty of front money to get the crew gathered and so Doc had turned to Allan Ladd, the big well-known crooked lawyer who fronted for half the mob in town, was their mouthpiece when they got to court (and he got them off a lot-the fix was usually in). Ladd was going to front the dough but it turned out he was keeping half the whores in town under his wings and was broke. He was looking to “steal” the stones by a sleigh of hand and get himself out of hock. What were Doc and his boys going to do-go to the cops and complain. What a laugh. He was working with his own guy who was going to be the stick-up man for Ladd. No go-Dix might have been behind the eight-ball but he was a good hooligan-took his job seriously and he wasted Ladd’s confederate. Another guy gone when Ladd put him in the river face down and with as much remorse as he would have a killing a flea.

Then the coppers came for Ladd, knowing that such a caper could not have been greased without a guy who get the stuff fenced on the quiet-and fast. He bought his own life, bought it cheap when all things were considered, wasn’t built for tough guy prisons anyway. Everybody was out of the paly except Dix and Doc. Some cop had ruffled Doc and that was how Dix and Doc had gotten to Doll’s place. Doc decided to head out of town and try to sell the stuff. Dix, bleeding still from that wound at the jewelry store decided he would blow for home. Without me. I talked him out of that with a quick roll in the hay. Then we were off to hayseed Kentucky. You know the rest as Dix bled away in that horseshit Kentucky meadow. Yeah, Dix never drew an even break. And neither did Doll Savoy.