Bugsy Malone (14 page)

“But you promised me. You promised me.”

“I know, but Hollywood can wait a couple of days, can't it?”

This also seemed reasonable to Bugsy. Ever since Jesse Lasky had put up that shed to make De Mille's
‘Squaw Man'
twenty years ago, Hollywood had grown and sprawled too far for anyone to believe such a tinselled monster could disappear overnight.

Blousey took this second blow on the chin, too.

“You had no intention of taking me to Hollywood.”

“I do. Look, there's just something I've got to do first.”

At this moment, Tallulah came on the scene with Bugsy's drink. It was impeccable timing by the smart blonde lady – but for Bugsy it was as well-timed as an iceberg floating into an ocean liner. Tallulah leaned on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, soft enough to make the hairs on the back of Bugsy's neck stand on end, and loud enough for Blousey to catch.

“You rat! You promised me!”

Bugsy pulled the phone away from his head as the shriek of Blousey's voice vibrated his inner eardrum like rain on a tin roof.

“Look, trust me, will you? I'll call you.” He replaced the earpiece in its holder. Pushing his hat to the back of his head, he took a consolation sip of his drink.

Blousey put down the phone and leaned sadly against the wall. Maybe it was just a dream after all.

S
TONES WOULD DO
it. Leroy's window was on the first storey at the front of the house. Bugsy had leaned on his bell for five minutes but still couldn't wake him up. He scooped up a handful of loose gravel from the gutter and tossed it for all he was worth at Leroy's window. It worked. As soon as the stones made noisy contact with the glass, a light went on. Leroy pulled up the window and poked his sleepy head out.

“Who's there?” he said, as his stubby fingers rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“It's me. Bugsy. Get dressed and come down. We've got a job!” Bugsy tried not to laugh at Leroy's rather peculiar, baggy, striped pyjamas.

“You've got me a crack at the title already?”

“No, this is a different type of job.”

Leroy wasn't interested in work at the best of times, let alone at this hour.

“I'm tired. Come back in the morning.”

“There's two hundred dollars in it for you.”

The change in Leroy was miraculous. His sticky, sleepy eyes clanked open like the tumblers in a fruit machine. Leroy's pappy always used to say, “When you're down on your luck and there's nothing but clouds on the horizon, then a prayer, a song, and a few bucks is like a ray of sunshine.” To Leroy, the possibility of earning two hundred dollars was like an entire heat-wave summer. He retreated inside so fast that he misjudged the height of the window and knocked his head heavily on the wooden frame. He rubbed his granite skull and the pain went. The window frame had no such luck.

 

Leroy and Bugsy crawled through the overgrown bushes at the edge of the lawn outside Dandy Dan's mansion and stared at the truck parked in the drive. They had managed to avoid the guards on the front gate by crawling through a hole in the wire fence. Leroy had torn the hole himself – pulling the wire apart as easily as someone ripping out a detachable lining from a raincoat.

Bugsy held Leroy back with his arm and ducked down. Leroy copied him, although he didn't know why.

“We've got to get closer.”

The two crawled along on their tummies until they were scarcely twenty feet from the truck. Bugsy suddenly saw what Dan's men were guarding so closely.

“Splurge gun!”

His whispered explanation took Leroy by surprise. He quickly looked about him, expecting to be held up.

“Where?”

“In the crates, stupid. Look what it says on the side of the truck.”

“I can't.”

“Can't you read?”

“Sure. It's just that I'm a little short-sighted. What does it say?”

Bugsy read out the words painted on the side of the truck, which were also stencilled on the wooden boxes loaded into it.

“The Splurge Imports Company Inc. Dock 17, East River.”

“That must be where they keep the guns.”

Leroy was no Sherlock Holmes – or Doctor Watson, come to that – but he wasn't stupid. Well, not very stupid.

Suddenly Bugsy saw something else. Two burly guards, dressed in evil-looking baseball catchers' masks and wielding baseball clubs, had just turned the corner towards them.

“Look out, Leroy.”

The two boys crawled back into the bushes as fast as they could. As they emerged on the other side, they saw that their path was blocked by another pair of baseball guards. Leroy turned to Bugsy, who was thinking fast. Leroy was grateful for that.

“What are we gonna do, Bugsy?”

“We're going to have to make a run for it – there's too many of them. Ready?”

“Ready?”

They pounded down the narrow, high-hedged path that led them back to the hole in the fence. But in their hurry they missed a thin trip wire that stretched across the lane. Leroy's boot caught it first. His feet were thrown in the air and he did a belly flop dive on to the gravel. The trip wire yanked another wire that pulled a handle that set the alarms going. In seconds, there was pandemonium. The air was filled with the jarring, ear-splitting sounds of bells, klaxon hooters, and barker dogs. From every direction, guards descended on the two boys. Bugsy was knocked out by the first swing of a baseball bat, but Leroy managed to floor a good half-dozen of them before he, too, had butterflies fluttering in his head from a K.O. slug.

The hoods went through Bugsy's pockets and took out two Greyhound tickets. One of them read them out aloud.

“You've gotta believe it, fellahs. Listen to this. Two tickets to guess where? Hollywood.”

The rest of the guards laughed – and the tickets landed in a screwed-up ball next to Bugsy's head.

“The only stars he'll be seeing are between the eyes.”

It was a fair description, because, apart from the butterflies and the odd goldfish floating above him, stars were all Bugsy was seeing. He hadn't even told Blousey he'd bought the tickets. Now she'd never know.

 

Blousey sat on the end of her bed and clicked open the brass fasteners on the battered leather bag her Uncle Digby had loaned her when she first left for New York. She'd got a little ahead of herself and started to pack for Hollywood, which was a mistake, because it made the situation all the more painful when she unpacked. As she reached into the bag, she saw the nickelodeon viewer that Bugsy had given her. She rubbed the tortoiseshell with her sleeve until it shone like new. The Hollywood stars were still there when she held it up to the light, but somehow they didn't shine so brightly now. They seemed so far away.

She should never have thrown in her job at the speakeasy. It had taken her nearly six months to get a job and only two weeks to give it back.

She dropped her head in embarrassment as she walked along the corridor to Fat Sam's office. The other girls smiled to themselves as she passed them. Loretta, Dotty and Tillie almost bumped into her as she turned the corner.

“Hi, Blousey. Miss your train?”

“Hi, Blousey. What happened?”

“Your guy let you down?”

Their questions had no hope of getting answers. Blousey's attention was clearly somewhere else. She rapped hard on the door marked
‘S. Stacetto. Private'
. Fat Sam opened the door gingerly. With no hoods around him, he was a little careful whom he opened the door to. He was relieved to find it was Blousey.

“Yes, honey. What can I do for you?”

Blousey forced herself to ask, “I was wondering if I could have my job back?”

Fat Sam was in a good mood. He felt strength in numbers and was very pleased to have her around.

“Sure, honey. Go right in. Everyone's welcome. The more the merrier.”

He blew her a kiss with his frankfurter sausage fingers. But she missed it, because her head had dropped down again. As she went into the girls' room, she passed Tallulah and Velma who were buffing up their nails.

“Hi, Blousey. How you been?” they asked in unison. But even the two of them together couldn't get through to Blousey. She ignored them both. Velma let out a sympathetic sigh.

“Did you ever see a broad carry a torch so high?”

“Yeah, the statue of Liberty.”

The words were scarcely out of Tallulah's mouth before the girls' room door slammed in her face. Tallulah shrugged her slinky shoulders and walked away. If anyone had looked close enough they would have seen that she was smiling.

T
HE WHITE BLUR
waved back and forth in the attic at the top of Dandy Dan's mansion. Bugsy blinked to focus his eyes, and the white blur turned into an electric light bulb that swung freely on its flex. He looked around him. Although his head was pounding like a ceremonial kettledrum, he quickly took in the situation.

He was tied to a chair which was also tied to Leroy, who was in a similar position. And they were sitting in their underclothes. Evidently Dandy Dan had taken the precaution of removing their suits to discourage any escape.

Leroy also blinked his way back to reality. He had been going through nightmares where goldfish swallowed goldfish and doors opened to other doors and then to sky, which left him floating in mid-air, where he was finlly gobbled up by another goldfish. Leroy was glad he had come to. He preferred a bruised head to being swallowed by a goldfish any day of the week.

Leroy twisted and heaved, and managed to ease the roped that tied him. Bugsy felt something gnawing into his wrists.

“What are you doing, Leroy?”

“Untying the knots with my teeth. I saw it in a movie once.”

“You did?”

“Sure.”

“Mind you don't go hurting my wrists now.”

“What about my
teeth
?”

They both laughed, but, sure enough, Leroy was having some success. His teeth were big enough, after all. He could bite a cap off a Coke bottle as easily as anyone else bit off a piece of Hershey bar.

 

In Dandy Dan's drawing room, the string quartet continued their disregard for Mozart by murdering yet another piece of his music. Dan himself was being fitted for a new suit. The arms were tacked on with loose stitches, and the bespectacled tailor drew meaningful lines on the grey pinstriped material with waxed chalk. Dan stood motionless, staring at his favourite person in the mirror.

There was a knock at the door, and in came Bronx Charlie, his hat held respectfully in his hands. Dan spoke without moving. He was so pinned up by his tailor that he probably couldn't move anyway.

“What is it, Bronx Charlie?”

“Er... I was wondering what you wanted us to do with these two guys we caught, Boss.”

“I haven't decided yet, Bronx Charlie.”

“Shall I come back, Boss?”

Dan would have stroked his moustache with his forefinger – as he always did when he felt superior – if he'd been able to bend his arm. But he merely said, “Give me an hour to think up something. Something particularly nasty.” And he tugged at the pinned-up grey sleeve, which ripped away from its stitching as Bronx Charlie backed out of the room.

The string quartet were oblivious to the conversation and carried on struggling through their musical piece. Up in heaven, Mozart was probably sitting with his fingers in his ears.

 

Leroy had made a very good job of undoing Bugsy's ropes, and Bugsy returned the favour by undoing his. Once free, Bugsy ran to the room's single exit, the door. He pushed on it and twisted the handle, but was not surprised to find that he could not open it.

“Locked.”

Leroy stood in the middle of the room, thoughtful, but not exactly alight with brilliant suggestions. Bugsy looked around the empty attic. An old chest, a packing case, the two chairs they had been tied to, and a few old discarded picture frames were all that was in it. He looked up to where the light was coming from and saw a narrow window in the ceiling.

“The skylight, Leroy. Try the skylight.”

Leroy didn't need any more encouragement. He turned over the packing case and placed a bentwood chair on top of it. With great courage, but not a great deal of agility, he hauled his tubby frame on to the wobbly chair. Bugsy watched as his fat friend reached for the iron bars that stretched across the skylight, and began to pull with all his considerable strength. But the bars had little respect for Leroy's muscles and refused to budge.

“It's no good, Bugsy. It won't move.”

As Leroy gave one last tug, the chair on which he was dangerously balanced tottered off the edge of the box – and he was left hanging in mid-air. Bugsy saw the chair topple, and yelled, “Look out, Leroy! Hang on, hang on.”

Leroy obeyed – but the bars didn't and his ridiculous weight succeeded where his amazing strength had failed. In seconds, not only had the bars been pulled wholly out of the ceiling, but the entire skylight, frame and all, collapsed around Leroy's ears.

Bugsy helped Leroy out of the mangled mess. The falling dust filled the room and was so thick Bugsy could hardly see his pal. When he did, he nearly split his long johns laughing.

“Leroy, look at your face!”

Leroy's face was completely covered in white dust. He put his fingers to his chin to see what Bugsy was laughing at. The white smear on his hand prompted a rare Leroy joke.

“Maybe I'll be able to get a job now.”

Bugsy laughed even more while he helped Leroy to his feet and stood the chair upright. Above them, an enormous hole gaped where the window had been.

“Come on, Leroy. Let's get out of here.”

The skylight led on to a flat roof that had the fortunate advantage of being served by a fire escape. The metal staircase led the two boys conveniently down on to the back lawns of Dandy Dan's mansion. Once on the ground, they ran for all they were worth into the trees.

At a stream that led away from the house they stopped. Two hoods were patrolling a small bridge which Bugsy knew led to the main road out. He grabbed hold of Leroy's arm and pulled his friend into the water. Leroy was dumbfounded – and giggled as the water came up to his waist. Under cover of the bridge, the two escapers silently edged away into the darkness of the woods and safety. Silent, that is, apart from the occasional squeal from Leroy as the cold water seeped into his long johns.