Underbelly

Episode 1

Squizzy Steps Out

42 mins

It's 1915 and young Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor has had enough of grafting a living picking pockets. He might be a shorty but he has big ideas and an even bigger ego - which only swells when he pulls off a daring heist from a city jewellers in broad daylight with his Bourke Street Rats inner circle of "Snowy" Cutmore, Angus Murray, "Tankbuster" McDonald and his best girl, prostitute Dolly Grey. Even if big crim about town and fence Henry Stokes doesn't give Squizzy quite the price he thinks his loot is worth, Squizzy's taken his first step into a bigger, brighter, riskier world. But what's the use of being a criminal genius if no-one, including the police, rates you? While a more circumspect crook might rejoice in anonymity, Squizzy's ego compels him to prove himself and he throws his gang into a much more challenging crime. They're going to rob the bank manager of one of the new branches springing up on the city's semi-rural outskirts. Only trouble is, it's a fair hike and none of them can drive. Squizzy books a taxi under an assumed name, blithely assuming he will be able to "convince" the driver to play along with his plan. But it all goes wrong and the resolute young driver ends up with Snowy's bullet in his head. Squizzy's not too worried - the cops are jokes. But one cop isn't laughing - Detective Piggott is conscientious and committed and finds an eyewitness among the orchardists and dairy farmers who describe a very short man and another with a Panama hat - Squizzy and Snowy are at the races, drinking a toast to Tankbuster who's joined up to fight the Hun, when in swoop coppers - Leslie Taylor, you are under arrest for murder. It seems Squizzy's circuit of Fortune's Wheel is destined to be very rapid indeed.