LAS VEGAS – After quietly retiring five years ago, Doug “Quick-Fingers” Malone, a once-renowned thief known for being a part of numerous infamous robberies and heists, is beginning to worry that his window of opportunity to be called in for one last job is quickly closing.
“Every other retired getaway driver, thief, and mastermind I know has always been brought back for what people in my industry call ‘The Big One,’” he complained, one eye on the phone on his kitchen table as if expecting it to ring at any moment. “You know, the job to end all jobs: a diamond heist, a casino robbery, a Swiss Vault snatch-and-grab. But my old teams aren’t calling, and I’m starting to feel my age, if you know what I mean.”
“How am I supposed to lower myself from museum roofs if sneezing makes me throw my back out?” he went on. “Hell, I’m pretty sure the noises my knees make every time I stand up would be enough to alert every security guard in the Louvre.”
Malone’s wife Cynthia was sympathetic to her husband’s plight, but expressed relief that his time might truly be up.
“I can tell that poor Dougie misses his old life,” she said sadly, watching him polishing his lockpicking tools in the garage for the fifth time that week. “But I worry if his old gang asked him to break into a billionaire’s guarded mansion in Costa Rica again, the heat might trigger his arthritis. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for him to split a few extra million with a charmingly rag-tag group of reasonably diverse criminals, but I’d just hate for all the excitement to aggravate his heart murmur.”
Frank Deringer, a demolitions expert and old associate of Malone, said that the retired thief had contacted him last week to ask if there were any little heists he could do, “a dognapping or convenience store robbery, literally anything vaguely illegal.”
“I lied and told him that I hadn’t heard of anything,” Deringer said, examining a complicated blueprint of a bank vault. “But our old gang is actually heading out to New York next week to rob the Federal Reserve. Doug just wasn’t invited because the last time we asked him to join us, he complained about being tired the whole job and was constantly on the lookout… for the nearest bathroom.”
At press time, Robert Spall, a cop who has spent his entire life chasing Malone, stated that he was also rooting for the thief to pick up one last job so he could catch him before getting “too old for this shit.”
