The Story of Suicide
Sal
by Bonnie Parker
We each of us have a good alibi
For being down here in the joint
But few of them really are justified
If you get right down to the point.
You've heard of a woman's glory
Being spent on a downright cur
Still you can't always judge the story
As true, being told by her.
As long as I've stayed on this island
And heard confidence tales" from
each gal
Only one seemed interesting and truthful-
The story of "Suicide Sal".
Now Sal was a gal of rare beauty,
Though her features were coarse and
tough;
She never once faltered from duty
To play on the up and up.
Sal told me this tale on the evening
Before she was turned out free
And I'll do my best to relate it
Just as she told it to me:
I was born on a ranch in Wyoming;
Not treated like Helen of Troy,
I was taught that rods were rulers
And ranked as a greasy cowboy.
Then I left my old home for the city
To play in its mad dizzy whirl,
Not knowing how little of pity
It holds for a country girl.
There I fell for the line of a henchman
A professional killer from Chi
I couldn't help loving him madly,
For him even I would die.
One year we were desperately happy
Our ill gotten gains we spent free,
I was taught the ways of the underworld
Jack was just like a god to me.
I got on the F.B.A. payroll
To get the inside lay of the job
The bank was turning big money!
It looked like a cinch for the mob.
Eighty grand without even a rumble-
Jack was last with the loot in the door,
When the teller dead-aimed a revolver
From where they forced him to lie on
the floor.
I knew I had only a moment-
He would surely get Jack as he ran,
So I staged a big fade out beside him
And knocked the forty-five out of his
hand.
They rapped me down big at the station,
And informed me that I'd get the blame
For the dramatic stunt pulled on the
teller
Looked to them, too much like a game.
The police called it a frame-up
Said it was an inside job
But I steadily denied any knowledge
Or dealings with underworld mobs.
The gang hired a couple of lawyers,
The best fixers in any mans town,
But it takes more than lawyers and money
When Uncle Sam starts shaking you down.
I was charged as a scion of gangland
And tried for my wages of sin,
The dirty dozen found me guilty-
From five to fifty years in the pen.
I took the rap like good people,
And never one squawk did I make
Jack dropped himself on the promise
That we make a sensational break.
Well, to shorten a sad lengthy story,
Five years have gone over my head
Without even so much as a letter-
At first I thought he was dead.
But not long ago I discovered;
From a gal in the joint named Lyle,
That Jack and his moll had got over
And were living in true gangster style.
If he had returned to me sometime,
Though he hadn't a cent to give
I'd forget all the hell that he's caused
me,
And love him as long as I lived.
But there's no chance of his ever coming,
For he and his moll have no fears
But that I will die in this prison,
Or flatten this fifty years.
Tomorrow I'll be on the outside
And I'll drop myself on it today,
I'll bump 'em if they give me the hotsquat
On this island out here in the bay...
The iron doors swung wide next morning
For a gruesome woman of waste,
Who at last had a chance to fix it
Murder showed in her cynical face.
Not long ago I read in the paper
That a gal on the East Side got hot
And when the smoke finally retreated,
Two of gangdom were found on the spot.
It related the colorful story
Of a jilted gangster gal
Two days later, a sub-gun ended
The story of "Suicide Sal".