Fallen Angels

[first lines]

The Continental Op:
[narrating] It was a wandering daughter job. The Hambletons were a wealthy and decently prominent New York family. Nothing in their history accounted for Sue - she had a kink that made her dislike the parlor side of life and liked the rough.

[Prologue]

Prologue Narrator:
[narrating] A wandering daughter, a pair of low-life, chistling con artists, a ham-fisted gangster with a gat bigger than his brain, the Continental Op - they all get caught in 'Fly Paper'. Trom hard-boiled master Dashiell Hammett tonight on "Fallen Angels"

The Continental Op:
[narrating] Instead of the honorable Cecil Windom who asked her to marry him, she wanted Babe McCloor, a graduate of Leavenworth who kept himself in drinking money by playing with pedestrians in dark streets. The family had given up on her but they wanted to at least know what she was doing with her life, so they put the Continental Detective Agency on retainer just to keep an eye on her. I was working out of the East Coast office on that year - 1927.

[last lines]

The Old Man:
Oh, the police are going to be disappointed that they can't get Babe for murdering Sue and Holy Joe.

The Continental Op:
They can only hang you once.

[discussing Eve's taste in music]

Tony Reseck:
Maybe you like Mozart.

Eve Cressy:
[chuckles] A house cop who plays Mozart.

Tony Reseck:
I think Mozart was the greatest man who ever lived and Toscanini is his prophet.

Eve Cressy:
Next you'll be tellin' me you read books.

[first lines]

Annie Ainsley:
Six weeks ago, I met my last love. By last, I don't mean latest, I mean my first and final one.

Prologue Narrator:
A hotel is just a room for rent - whether for a day or a lifetime. Some come there to sleep, some come there to love... a few come there to die. A change of sheets, a new set of towels and another lonely lifetime fades away tonight in Cornell Woolrich's macabre tale, "The Black Bargain".

Prologue Narrator:
Ace elevator operator Johnny Lamb is the ultimate pro. He approaches every aspect of his job as if it were a matter of life or death. But there's another side to Johnny, a side few people know about, a side where life comes hard and death comes all too easily.

[first lines]

Prologue narrator:
Rich Thurber is just another guy who stops into a bar for a cool beer on a hot day... or is he? When gangsters fleeing a bank robbery take the patrons hostage, Thurber's true nature is revealed in Mickey Spillane's "Tomorrow I Die"

Rich Thurber:
[narrating] By the time we stopped in Clarksdale for water the radiator was steaming like all hell and the regular passengers were moody with the heat. I'd been dead to the world since we left Vegas and maybe for a few weeks before that. I figured my last six bits would be just enough to make me numb again which explains why I was the only passenger fool enough to get off the damned bus.

Bartender:
Say, you ever been in here before? You look familiar.

Rich Thurber:
I just got one of those faces.

Carol Whalen:
You used to give me the kind of itch a small town girl doesn't know how to scratch.

Rich Thurber:
Damned right. And now?

Carol Whalen:
It's still a small town and you're still poison ivy.

Auger:
We just robbed the bank and all you fine upstanding citizens are going to be our hostages. With the mayor and the sheriff out of the picture, it's going to take that much longer to form a posse, giving us more time to get across the border.

Rich Thurber:
Then what.

Auger:
Then what? Yeah, Trigger's going to kill you. It's simple as that.

Rich Thurber:
That doesn't exactly inspire cooperation.

Auger:
It doesn't?

Rich Thurber:
No.

Auger:
Resist and you die now. Cooperate and you live an hour longer. You would be amazed at what a person would do for the possibility for one more hour on Earth.

Rich Thurber:
Did the fellow who told you that also give your weight?

[after discussing ways of thwarting the bank robbers]

Rich Thurber:
You're forgetting about the other angle. I could bump you and take the cabbage and let the boys kill all the others. Eventually the law would get the boys and they'd fry for the deal and I'd be sitting pretty in a world far from this one.

Carol Whalen:
Would you?

Rich Thurber:
It crossed my mind.

Carol Whalen:
But will you?

Rich Thurber:
...No. I'll go back with you.

Carol Whalen:
Do you know what you are?

Rich Thurber:
[narrating] Yeah, I know, but I was pretty sure she didn't.

Carol Whalen:
You're a hero.

Carol Whalen:
Rich, have you ever read stories about people in a falling airplane?

Rich Thurber:
Hey, don't worry about it, sugar. We're going to be all right.

Carol Whalen:
People who know their time's up, so... they do things - reckless things - that they always wanted to do. Well, I've wanted to do this since I was a tomboy in pigtails.

Rich Thurber:
[narrating] She kissed me so hard I saw stars and I wondered how many other Hollywood types had blown into her overheated life looking for a beer... but the next half hour, it was only me. A hero, she said, but what I did to her wouldn't earn me any medals.

Rich Thurber:
[narrating] I didn't really have a plan. I just figured if you deal enough cards, sooner or later you'd have a poker game - and the odds change real fast in poker.

Rich Thurber:
[narrating] In the distance, I saw the cabin in the woods. I'd have to show my hand - whatever I had.

Auger:
You're a brave man, Mr. Mayor. There aren't many of you left. do you know why?

Rich Thurber:
They're all dead.

Auger:
Calm down! Think of the loot!

Rich Thurber:
That's right, boys, think of the loot. It's - what? - three-quarters of a million by my count, which you won't be gettin' without a lot of trouble. Now *I've* got a hostage. Bump me off, buddy, and the cabbage is lizard food.

Old Man:
Aren't you going to warn him?

Trigger:
I just warned him.

Old Man:
I wasn't talking to you.

[last lines]

Carol Whalen:
Rich!

[a shot rings out in the shack]