Bugsy Malone (9 page)

R
AZAMATAZ POUNDED INTO
the black and white ivory keys with the confidence you'd expect from someone who had been playing a piano since he was three years old. In those days, you could have picked up a secondhand mahogany upright for less than twenty dollars, and even in the poorest home it was almost the first purchase after a stove and a kitchen table. There were fourteen children in Razamataz's family, and he had got lucky by being number five. Lucky, that is, because it was the odd numbers that Razamataz's father had decided could learn the piano. The lady who lived upstairs was the local church organist, and for an all-in economy fee of a dollar fifty she would sit patiently with children one, three, five, seven, and so on, and teach them the secrets of the magical sounds that came from those felt hammers pounding the taut metal strings.

The lady who played the organ didn't quite have Fat Sam's speakeasy in mind when she struggled with Razamataz, her favourite pupil. He nodded to the saxophone player to stand up and take his solo, and the spotlight moved off Razamataz to seek out the spotty sax player with ears like taxi-cab doors. Down amongst the appreciative audience, Knuckles struggled with a long tray of six drinks. The green liquid slopped on the round metal tray as he tried to sidestep the customers in the busy speakeasy. He nodded a few hellos to the regulars and smiled with a fixed smile that could have been tied on behind his ears.

In the corridor outside Fat Sam's office, Fizzy jumped up from reading his movie magazine (or more correctly looking at the pictures) when Knuckles backed through the swing doors with his tray of drinks. Through the glass panels that formed one side of Sam's office could be seen the ominous black shapes of his gang. Knuckles opened the door with his free left hand while balancing the tray expertly with his right. Fat Sam sat slouched in his leather chair, nervously clicking two pool balls together in an almost maniac way. He lifted his top lip from his discoloured front teeth in an up and down motion that resembled a shop window blind, revealing the yellow contents of his mouth. Knuckles eyed the wooden cut-out figures that lined the wall, throwing the shadows of the gang on to the patterned glass. It was Fat Sam's way of pretending that his gang were still around. Act as normal, he'd said. And that meant letting the world know he was still surrounded by his burly, if incompetent, henchmen. Knuckles interrupted Sam's ball-clicking.

“Show's going swell, Boss.”

He put the tray of drinks down on the veneered drinks cupboard. Sam made him take enormous pains to ask for six green specials at the bar. “Ask in your loudest voice,” he'd said, and Knuckles had struggled across the floor in a showy balancing display. Life flickered into Sam's staring eyes for the first time.

“Good. We mustn't let 'em know we're beat. We've got to give the impression that we're still on top. That way we can have time to think. Time to breathe. Right, Knuckles. Come over here.”

Fat Sam stood up and moved to the boxing picture that sat neatly on the wall behind his head. He clicked a hidden button at the side and the picture sprang forward on secret hinges, revealing a wall safe. Sam stood on a box to reach the dial at the safe's centre. He clicked away confidently. He knew the safe's combination of eight digits off by heart.

“I've sent for someone to help us out of our little predicament. No ten cent dummy. A specialist.”

Knuckles wrinkled his nose up near his eye. He wasn't following Fat Sam's drift.

“A doctor, Boss?”

Sam clicked open the safe and reached deep into the interior. He took out a single photograph about six inches by four in size.

“Not a doctor, you bilberry,” he snapped. “A hoodlum.”

Knuckles was still puzzled. “I thought
we
was hoodlums, Boss?”

“Not a dumb bum, Knuckles. This guy's the real McCoy.”

Sam thrust the photograph into Knuckles' hand, and the obedient henchman carefully turned it over to see who it was. As the information reached his brain, his mouth dropped open.

“Not Looney Bergonzi?
The
Looney Bergonzi?”

Fat Sam tapped the photograph with a smug gesture. “The very same, Looney ‘Off His Trolley', ‘mad as a Hatter', Bergonzi. The best man in Chicago. Right. Here's what we do.”

He snatched the photograph from Knuckles and threw it back into the safe, spinning the dial in one fluid movement. “We arrange ourselves a meeting with Dandy Dan. Bergonzi will be in the back of the car, next to me. Knuckles, you'll drive.”

“Right,” Knuckles replied quickly, and was half way to the door before he remembered one vital factor. “But I don't drive, Boss.”

Fat Sam closed his eyes in dismay. “You don't drive? You great dumb salami. Right. We'll get ourselves a driver.”

Out in the corridor, the girls chatted and giggled as they made their way back and forth between the girls' room and the stage. Bugsy wove his way through them, smiling as he want – probably to hide the embarrassment of the large bunch of flowers he was holding. He rapped on the door of the girls' room and plump Bangles answered it almost immediately.

“Hi, Bangles. Is Blousey there?”

Bangles blew a bubble with her gum as she answered. “She won't see you, Bugsy.”

He changed hands with the flowers and leaned heavily on the door post. He wasn't being fobbed off that easily.

“Look. Tell her I'm sick, will yuh?”

“You're sick?”

“Yeah. Sick of waiting.”

Bangles blew him a bubble in response to that, and padded off in her Japanese slippers to pass on the message. Bugsy looked at the fifty cent blooms in his hand, and already they seemed to be wilting in the smoky atmosphere. At last Blousey came to the door. She wasn't slow in getting off the mark.

“Beat it, wisie.”

“Give a guy a break, will you, Blousey? I brought you some flowers.”

Blousey took them. “I'll see that Tallulah gets them.”

“Quit being so smart, will you? They're for you.”

At that moment, Fizzy put his arms around Bugsy for balance as he poked his head round the door.

“Five minutes to go.”

Blousey turned away. “I'll have to go. I'm on stage in five minutes.”

“I'll see you afterwards.”

“Maybe.”

“I was thinking of getting a job.”

Blousey let out a bored sigh as she replied sarcastically, “You don't get paid for standing in breadlines, buster.”

Bugsy wasn't giving up. “A legit job, I tell you. We'll save some money – enough for tickets to the coast and Hollywood. Who knows, they're always looking for new movie stars, we could...”

But Blousey had had enough. She paused long enough to hand him back the flowers. “Sure, sure. I'll believe it when I see it. 'Bye.”

The door slammed in Bugsy's face and he kicked his heel against the wall angrily. He looked down at the flowers, which were wilting even more pathetically than before. Fat Sam's interruption caught him off guard.

“Hey, Bugsy. You drive?”

Bugsy looked up in surprise at the fat gangster, who was standing in the doorway to his office. Knuckles peered from behind.

“Sure. Why?”

“How'd you like to earn yourself some green stuff ?”

“As long as you're not talking about cabbages, sure.”

Fat Sam beamed all over his face. “Step inside. I've got a little proposition to make to you.”

Bugsy walked into Fat Sam's office and Sam noticed the flowers. He beamed even wider. “For me? How nice.” He snatched at the flowers and slapped them into Knuckles' face. “Knuckles, put these in water. What a nice thought. Bugsy, yous and me are gonna get on just fine.”

Knuckles closed the door behind them, spitting the flower petals out of his mouth.

S
MOLSKY AND
O'D
REARY
burst through the double swing doors into the Hung Fu Shin Chinese laundry. The steam from the hot water troughs had subsided and there was washing strewn all over the floor. The two cops stayed long enough to take in the empty scene. The place was deserted. Smolsky deduced that wherever the Chinese laundry workers and Dandy Dan's gang were, it wasn't here. The two City Hall bloodhounds turned on their heels and scampered out as quickly as they had come in.

 

The phone rang in Dandy Dan's living room – rather spoiling the efforts of the smartly-dressed string quartet which bravely struggled through the piece that Dan had insisted they play. In fact, to give him his due, he had been a little more general. “Play it classical, and play it loud”, had been his instructions. He really didn't know how bad they were.

A hairdresser clipped away at Dandy Dan's already immaculate head, and teeny slithers of hair floated down like butterfly wings on to the white cloth covering his shoulders. Louella, Dan's blonde, polo-playing companion – as immaculate as he was – sat in a soft, pink satin dressing gown with mink cuffs. She struggled with an enormous jigsaw that she had seen someone do in a movie. She wasn't having a great deal of success, as she had only managed to join a few pieces of sky together to form a rather ragged top line. It wasn't much, but it was a start. She had never claimed to be a genius. When you look as beautiful as she did, nature has a way of making you dumb to redress the balance with the rest of us mortals.

Dan's ears might not have told him that his lead violinist was off key – but they did tell him that the phone call his butler had just answered was important.

“You're wanted on the telephone, sir,” murmured Johnson. “A Mr Fat Sam Stacetto.”

Dan got up immediately and walked over to his chromium-plated personal phone. He threw off the white barber's cloth and revealed a snazzy, neatly-pressed, silver brocade dressing gown. He smoothed down the white silk lapels as he picked up the receiver.

“Hello. This is Dandy Dan speaking.”

In Sam's office, the red Coca Cola sign in the street outside bled its coloured light across the wall and on to Sam's face.

“I want to meet you, Dan, to do a little talking.”

“Where?”

“East Chester Park. Fiveways, by the crossroads at Lexburg and Denver. You hearing me?”

“Yeah, I'm hearing you, Sam. No hoods, mind.”

“No hoods. You have my word. Monday, eleven a.m.”

“Just you and a driver.”

“Agreed.”

Dan put down the chromium phone and smoothed his moustache with his forefinger.

“Got him. The knucklehead.”

Sam swivelled in his chair and his huge head blotted out the red Coke sign that breathed in and out behind him. He was pleased.

“Got him, the salami. OK, Knuckles, let's go and enjoy the show.”

 

*    *    *

 

On stage, Tallulah edged out from amongst the rest of the girls, who moved as smoothly as if they were made of marshmallow. Tallulah walked down the stairs and the spotlight picked her out as she wove in and out of the customers, teasing and tantalising them with her slinky singing. She knew how to hold an audience, and the chorus girls, moving in contorted, rhythmic circles on the stage, seemed to give a faint glow that evaporated in the air compared with the lasting, lingering magic that flowed from Tallulah, and engulfed everyone.

T
HE BIRDS WERE
whistling at eleven a.m. on Monday morning at the junction of Fiveways at Lexburg and Denver. They obviously didn't know what Fat Sam had on the agenda.

Bugsy shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he scoured the five roads that led to the Fiveways intersection. So far, there was no sign of anyone. Bugsy checked his wristwatch, which said three minutes after eleven. Dan was late.

Bugsy leaned on the side of Fat Sam's black sedan and drummed on the roof with his fingers. Inside, sitting in the back seat, were Sam and Looney Bergonzi, who was holding two pies in his hands. Not ordinary pies, but light green fluffy specials that would see off the toughest gangster. Looney had a face that was well named. His glassy staring eyes, wide open, were fixed, unblinking, in their sockets. Sam gave him a pat on the cheek with the back of his hand but Looney offered no response. Sam shrugged his Italian shoulders – there seemed no flickering of human life at all in Looney's mad gaze.

Suddenly, Bugsy banged on the roof of the sedan and Sam jumped in alarm.

“They're coming!”

Jackson, Dandy Dan's chauffeur, was stylishly peddling Dan's immaculate bike sedan down the avenue of tall pines.

Fat Sam pushed Looney under the back seat. “OK, Looney. Get out of sight. Keep your head down. You know what to do. Wait until I give you the OK. Right?”

Looney said nothing. He held the fluffy green pies in the palms of his hands, ready for the act that had made him famous.

Jackson pulled on the hand brake at the side of his sedan and came to a squeaky halt in the soft mud. Dan opened his door and climbed out at the same time as Sam. The two hoods didn't take their eyes off one another as they straightened their coats. Sam's jacket, always too small for him, had crumpled up into a concertina during the journey to Fiveways. Dan, of course, looked like he'd walked straight out of his tailor's fitting room. He coughed elegantly into his cupped hand and was the first to speak.

“What can I do for you, Sam?”

“How about a small dose of straight talk, Dan?”

Dan smoothed his moustache with his forefinger. “Suits me.”

“You've been taking liberties, Dan.”

“I've been taking what's mine.”

“Trouble is, it belongs to me.”

“Too bad.”

Neither of them was going to give an inch. It was obvious to Sam he wasn't getting anywhere by being tough, so he tried a different tack – being humble. It didn't come easy.

“Now, I'm sure we can talk things over sensibly, Dan. We've been in this game a long time, yous and me. After all, I'm a businessman!”

“You're a dime-a-dozen gangster, Sam.”

This remark hit Fat Sam deep in the gut. He responded in the only way he knew how, and started shouting at the dapper figure.

“Now, you button your lip, mister. Don't talk dirt to me. I don't like your mouth. I have to have some respect.”

“You'd slit your own throat for two bits plus tax.”

The blood ran up into Sam's head and his bulbous cheeks puffed out like big red apples. “You keep your wisecracks behind your teeth, mister.”

“Keep talking,” smirked Dan.

Sam regained his cool with an effort and tugged at the bottom of his jacket. The creases pulled out for a moment but soon bounced back when he let go.

“I have my position to think of,” he said in a pompous tone.

Dan knew he had Sam by the throat and, like a well-trained bulldog, he wouldn't let go. “Right now, it's not worth a plug nickel.”

“You're a dirty rat, Dan.”

“You've been watching too many movies, Sam.”

Sam wasn't going to listen to any more. He'd had enough of straight talk and now he was going to bend it a little.

“OK, Looney. Let him have it.”

As Looney jumped up from his secret position in the back of the car, Dan yelled, “Yonkers! Charlie! It's a double cross!”

Dandy Dan wasn't playing it straight either – and out of the woods jumped Yonkers, Bronx Charlie, Shoulders and Benny Lee. Sam's eyes nearly popped out of his head – and his jaw dropped when he saw that they were all carrying shiny new splurge guns. Looney seemed as over-awed by the presence of the guns as Sam, who croaked, “Come on, Looney. Let 'em go.”

“OK, yous guys – freeze.”

Looney's deep monotone dribbled into nothingness. It was like shouting “Halt!” to a runaway locomotive bearing down on you at fifty miles an hour. The hoods' splurge guns burst into action and gave Looney his answer. It couldn't have been more than fifteen seconds before Looney Bergonzi was on the receiving end of a gallon or two of splurge that splattered on and about him until he resembled a winter snowman.

Bugsy's reflexes had been a little quicker than Looney's. He'd ducked down behind the large chrome headlamps for safety, as Sam clawed his way back into the bike sedan. The splurge pellets splattered around the fat gangster, and as he pulled the door closed, his hat was knocked off by a white missile and plastered against the back of the sedan. Bugsy called to Looney, but his shouts fell on deaf ears. Looney ‘Off His Trolley, Mad as a Hatter' Bergonzi was well out of the game. Whatever game that was.

Bugsy thought quickly. The hoods were too busy peppering the side of Sam's car to notice his lighting sprint into the woods at the side of the intersection. And Dan was too busy gloating at Sam's frantic retreat to spot Bugsy creeping through the bushes. Suddenly Bugsy reappeared – and waved his arms. “Over here, you guys. Over here.”

The hoods, ready for any challenge, ploughed through the greenery after him. Dan couldn't believe his eyes as he saw them vanish down the alleyway of overhanging ferns, for Bugsy had already sidestepped them and was on his way back to the intersection. Dandy Dan bellowed desperately, “Come back here, you dummies. He's given you the slip!”

Bugsy ran straight at Jackson, and butted him with his head. The chauffeur's shiny leather boots waved in the air as he was upended. Dan took refuge inside his car. Physical contact just wasn't his game, and there was no way he would risk ruining his hundred dollar suit. He pulled down the roller blind – presumably with the logic that to shut your enemies out of sight makes them go away.

He needn't have worried. Bugsy made straight for Fat Sam, who had regained his composure in the back of his bike sedan. He clapped his hands as Bugsy jumped into the driver's seat and pumped hard at the pedals. The solid rubber wheels skidded through the soft gravel and the sedan hit the track at speed. Dan poked his head out of the window of his car and yelled at his gang – who were wandering about in puzzled disarray, looking for Bugsy amongst the overgrown ferns. “You stupid bunch of salamis! Get back here straight away. They're getting away.”

The gang charged back towards the intersection. By now they were breathing heavily and they panted hard, their wobbly legs bending under the weight of the heavy splurge guns. Shoulders and Bronx Charlie jumped on to the tailboard of Dan's car, and Benny Lee, his round Chinese face grimacing with concentration, jammed himself into the passenger seat. Yonkers leaned heavily against the back of the cat and, with a combination of his muscle and Jackson's flashing feet on the pedals, the bike sedan lurched off in pursuit of Sam and Bugsy. The two sedans wove dangerously in and out of the tall pine trees, jumping high in the air as the solid tyres cracked over uncovered roots. Shoulders and Bronx Charlie tried to fire at the escaping vehicle, but there was no way they could take accurate aim with the car bobbing up and down like a roller-coaster.

Bugsy bit his bottom lip in determination as he steered the bike sedan through the narrow roads that crisscrossed the forest. He turned the steering wheel hard right, and Sam's sedan responded with a two-wheeled skid that nearly upended them. In the back seat, Sam rolled around like a pea in a whistle. From time to time, he would regain his balance long enough to look out of the side window and shake a clenched fist at the following car.

Dandy Dan urged Jackson onwards. The sweat was pouring down the chauffeur's ebony face and he wished he wasn't wearing the tight-collared, thick wool chauffeur's suit that Dan insisted upon. His boots were a blur as they did their best work on the pounding pedals. Bugsy took a brief look round to see that Dandy Dan's snazzy tan sedan was gaining on him. Suddenly Fat Sam let out a yell.

“Bugsy! Look out!”

Bugsy hadn't noticed the slow-moving truck that had pulled straight out across the track. It was heavily laden with the entire family and possessions of some luckless, evicted farmer. The farm children clung to the side, sitting on mattresses tied on tightly to stop them topping over. Bugsy hauled madly on the wheel. He missed them by a whisker – and ploughed through the narrow ditch at the side of the track. The solid wheels spun in the mud. For a moment, it looked as though they were stuck. Then, suddenly, one wheel bit into the ground and the car took off once more.

Behind them, Dandy Dan's sedan had braked even more heavily, and had spun off the road in a different direction. Jackson was having trouble getting the car out of the soft mud, and Shoulders put his considerable muscle behind the back wheel to lurch the sedan into movement once more. Grinning at his muscular effort, Shoulders jumped nonchalantly on to the running board with a practised cool that had taken years to perfect. He needn't have bothered. He missed the step by a good foot as the sedan surged away, and ended up flat on his face in the mud. Dan waved the incident aside and urged Jackson on without him.

Bugsy had turned down a slight incline and was fairly flying along when he hit the stone that turned him off the road into the chicken shack. There was a terrible sound of crashing and clucking as the car ploughed straight through, to the great consternation of the shack's occupants. Jackson cut the corner after them – but there was no way he could miss the shack, and Dandy Dan was given an equally unwelcome reception by the chickens. As Sam's car careered out of the exit at the far end, the vehicle was hardly recognisable. Covered with straw and infuriated hens, it looked like a mad, mobile haystack. Sam threw a couple of chickens out of his window and they fluttered in the air before coming to rest twenty yards on. They both pecked at the ground, quite unruffled, as if nothing had happened. Dandy Dan's car slowed a little whilst Dan emptied the back compartment of its feathered lodgers and Jackson pulled the hay from his face – and Bugsy's black car shot ahead.

Fat Sam continued to throw abuse at his pursuers, delighted to see that the tan sedan wasn't quite so snazzy after the chickens had been to work on it. But his jeers didn't slow it down, and despite its heavier load it was closing fast.

Bugsy couldn't help but drive straight through the picnic.

The picnic family quietly sipped their homemade lemonade and nibbled at their hard-boiled eggs. They enjoyed the sunshine and lazed quietly on the grass, watching the occasional fluffy cloud scuttle past above them. It was a peaceful place, they thought, until Bugsy and Jackson whipped over the brow of the hill and turned their picnic spot into a racetrack.

The family dived left and right, out of the path of the two sedans that bulldozed across the tablecloth, through flying plates of salad and sweet pickle. Dan offered a slight apology by tipping his hat to them out of the back window, but he was in no mood to be polite right now. He urged Jackson to pump even harder, but the faithful chauffeur was almost spent and the muscles inside those tight leather boots were beginning to turn to jelly. Benny Lee's expression hadn't changed – he still grimaced with great determination. On the other hand, he might have been a little scared.

Bugsy made a last attempt to throw off his pursuers, and risked toppling Sam's sedan over completely by turning on a dime – and taking a right so sharp you could cut your finger on it. Jackson responded to the challenge, but luck wasn't with him. Suddenly there was a painful yelp of tortured metal as the steering wheel snapped off in his hand. Benny Lee's resolute grimace left his Chinese face for the first time. Dandy Dan shouted in vain, “Put it back, you fool! Put it back.”

Jackson struggled with the wheel, but it was all over for the Dandy Dan gang. They ploughed through a fence and plummeted over the top of the hill – to land in a lake. The once snazzy tan sedan hit soft mud with a dull thud – and the hoods were catapulted forwards into the cold muddy water. Dandy Dan stood, waist deep, in the lake. He glimpsed the heavy splurge guns as they sank to the bottom. His soaking gang watched motionless as he threw his crumpled homburg into the water, and combed back his dishevelled hair with his open fingers. He needn't have bothered, because his hair stood on end, leaving a muddy black impression of his hand on his forehead. For a moment – for the first time in his life – he looked a mess. Not so Dandy Dan. And he didn't like it.

 

Bugsy and Fat Sam were jumping around in their car with joy at Dan's watery mishap. Sam hugged Bugsy so hard he almost cracked his ribs. He also threw out the last of the chickens, which had fallen asleep under his seat.