Bugsy Malone. Alan Parker

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СКАЧАТЬ let on to this guy, whom she didn’t know from Adam, that she’d not even got past Fat Sam’s office door.

      Bugsy persevered. “Did you get it?”

      “They said come back tomorrow.”

      She tried to lose him by taking a different direction through the crowd but Bugsy caught up with her. He made one more attempt at being friendly. “What’s your name, anyway?”

      “Brown,” Blousey replied.

      “Sounds like a loaf of bread,” Bugsy joked.

      “Blousey Brown.”

      “Sounds like a stale loaf of bread.”

      Blousey’s smile was one of those big phoney types that disappear the moment they are formed. Bugsy laughed at his own joke, and was about to follow it up with something a little more polite, when suddenly the music in the speakeasy was interrupted by a loud scream.

      Suddenly there was pandemonium. People scrambled over themselves in an effort to get under the tables. Chairs and glasses toppled over. At the top of the stairs, four sinister-looking hoods stood in line. In their hands each one carried a splurge gun.

      The hood on the left made a small, almost unnoticeable nod. It was all the signal they needed. Suddenly, with a strange slurping sound, the guns burst into life. Along the mirrored barback splattered a great white line of splurge. The barman ducked down out of sight. Fat Sam, alarmed at the sudden outburst of screaming, crashed out of his office. As he appeared at the top of his stairs, the hoods trained their guns on him. He dived for the floor. Knuckles, always a little slow, caught a splurge salvo on the arm. Then, having made their point, the hoods vanished as quickly as they had appeared, brushing Pop Becker out of the way as they did so.

      Under their table, Bugsy and Blousey struggled to get out her baseball bat. They both clung to it – not really sure what to do with it. Fat Sam regained his posture and started to straighten up the overturned chairs. Nervously, he tried to reassure his customers. He fooled nobody. “OK, everybody, it’s OK. Nothing to worry about now. Back to your tables. The fun’s over. No one can say Fat Sam’s ain’t the liveliest joint in town. Razamataz! Music! I wanna see everybody enjoying themselves.”

      Razamataz hesitantly began playing his piano. The rest of the band joined in. The sound was a little ragged at first, but gradually it got back to normal as everybody once more began to talk, and returned to their places at the tables. Fat Sam moved to the bar. The rest of his gang, more than a little confused, followed him. Knuckles propped himself up at the bar and Sam examined his splurged arm. He touched the gooey mess of splurge and quietly looked at the end of his fingers. He looked very thoughtful, if not a little worried. He spoke softly to himself. He wouldn’t have liked anyone else to know his concern.

      “Dis means trouble,” he said.

      ON EAST 6th Street, by Perito’s Bakery, the broken gutter still turned the rainwater into a nasty brown liquid that dripped on to the sidewalk. The rain had held off for a while and the pool of water had resumed its earlier puddle proportions. The bricks glistened as they caught the light from the neon signs. The ginger alley cat that had made its home in the trash cans spat as he looked upwards to the black metal fire escape. This was his alley and he hated intruders. Up there, hidden away from the flashing neon light, was a dark figure who moved slowly and secretively from shadow to shadow. The ginger cat scurried for cover, his courage deserting him, as the dark feet begin to move down the iron stairs. At the bottom of the fire escape the figure stopped, and remained silent.

      Shoulders had always been a little more secretive than was necessary. He liked being shady, it made him feel important. Around the corner of the alleyway a car approached. Shoulders jumped back against the wall as its lights lit up the wet street. The alley cat dashed for cover once more and took refuge in a pile of garbage. It was obvious to him that he wasn’t going to get any sleep that night. A white sedan pulled to a halt. Shoulders moved out of the shadows and walked up to it. It was driven by a grey-uniformed chauffeur who never looked anywhere but ahead. He was well trained. The windows in the rear of the sedan were covered by blinds. Shoulders moved closer to one of the back windows. The white, fringed blind snapped upwards.

      Inside the car sat a figure that was smart, dapper – in fact, entirely immaculate. He was dressed in an astrakhan-collared coat and carried a black cane with a silver top. His hat would have won prizes at a hatter’s convention. He ran his gloved finger along his moustache which was, not surprisingly, also immaculate. There was no doubt that this man was special. There was no doubt this man had arrived on the scene. There was no doubt that, to Fat Sam, this man spelled trouble. He was Dandy Dan.

      Out of the window he passed a brown leather case with reinforced corners and brass hinges.

      “You know what to do?”

      “Sure, Dandy Dan,” Shoulders confirmed.

      Dan turned away and tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder with his cane. “Step on it, Jackson.”

      This Jackson dutifully did, and the sedan drove off into the night.

      Inside the barber shop, the barber snipped away at the back of his customer’s head. Not a lot of hair was cut off, but a great deal of snipping certainly gave the impression that the client was getting his money’s worth. It was an old barber’s trick. The head of hair belonged to Frank Bloomey, Fat Sam’s lawyer. ‘Flash Frankie’ always called here for a haircut on his way uptown. He had a swanky office overlooking Central Park but most of his clients had premises overlooking the East River. On the wall above his desk was a framed certificate from the New York Justice Department, but everyone knew it was the downtown hoodlums who kept him in business. Flash Frankie’s silver tongue could get a guy out of jail quicker than a truckload of dynamite.

      He relaxed into a reclining position as the barber placed a hot towel over his face. On top of the hot towel cabinet, an old radio buzzed out a tune.

      In the street outside, Shoulders crept towards the barber shop window. Shoulders always crept. He couldn’t walk like ordinary people, it wouldn’t have been secretive enough. Even when he went shopping he would creep from store to store. He stopped, and bent down to open the case that Dandy Dan had given him. He clicked open the brass hinges and lifted the lid. Inside, laid out in neat order, were the shiny metallic components of what looked like a gun. Shoulders clicked the pieces together and the gun took shape. He loaded it up with a number of round white pellets that dropped neatly into the chamber. Then he moved towards the door of the barber’s shop.

      It is fair to say that Bloomey was more than a little surprised as his chair was swivelled around and the steaming hot towel pulled from his face. His eyes, like his mouth, were wide open with astonishment – in the brief moment, that is, before his face was submerged in a curious sticky mess. The splurge gun had struck again.

      The violinist in Mama Lugini’s Italian restaurant scratched away at the violin which was securely tucked under his chin. In fact, even when he wasn’t playing and the violin was locked away in its case, his chin would clamp on an invisible instrument. Such was the effect of playing all night, every night, that his chin was permanently tucked into his shoulder. This made playing the violin very easy but sipping soup very difficult. He had practised hard at his instrument for more years than he could remember, and never forgave himself that he wasn’t playing on a concert hall platform instead of to the СКАЧАТЬ