by Alan Parker
Smolsky Senior still hoped, and Smolsky Junior would never douse these hopes. He would say, “Sure, Pappa, only fifty more arrests to go and I could be Commissioner. And after that... who knows.”
The truth was that if Smolsky could make even one arrest they’d run a headline in the Police Gazette proclaiming a miracle. Not that he hadn’t tried. He would read his detective manuals and the Private Eye magazines from cover to cover, watch the movies – anything to get a teeny, weeny inkling of how to track down his man, trap him, arrest him and lock him in a cell. So far, sad to say, it hadn’t worked. His Lieutenant, O’Dreary, wasn’t much better. If one week Headquarters had a rest from Polish jokes, O’Dreary’s antics would guarantee an outbreak of conversations beginning, “Have you heard the one about the Irishman who...” He was the classic Bronx flatfoot who had been promoted for fear of what he might get up to if left alone to patrol the sidewalks. They made a fine team alright.
O’Dreary brushed away at the dusting powder on the floor. He suddenly let out a small but confident exclamation. “Aha!”
Smolsky stopped scratching his head and looked down. “What can you see?”
“A gun, Captain!”
Smolsky couldn’t contain himself. He jumped up and crouched close to the powder on the floor, which revealed the outline of the gun that Doodle had so carelessly dropped. He whispered in excitement, “Yeah, O’Dreary. I know it’s a gun. But what kind of a gun?”
O’Dreary looked once again at his work of art. This time he was a little puzzled. His police examination marks had been even lower than Smolsky’s. [The lowest two in history, it was rumoured, but no one had let on for fear of making O’Malley’s Book of World Records.] He looked hard at the shape of the gun, like a fortune teller looking into a cup of tealeaves.
Smolsky asked him again. “Well, what kind of a gun, O’Dreary?”
The floppy skin of O’Dreary’s furrowed brow unfolded as his face changed from puzzled to pleased. “A big gun, Captain?” he ventured.
“You great dumb knucklehead! You’ve been brushing away at that powder for an hour and a half and all you can tell me is that it’s a big gun – you noodle-brained Irish stewpot!”
Smolsky had suffered from insults enough as a kid and he enjoyed getting his own back on O’Dreary. O’Dreary, on the other hand, couldn’t get his own back on anyone. He was one of those unfortunate people who were at the end of the line. All he could do to get even was to put too many sugars in Smolsky’s coffee, or too much mustard on his hot dog. To most people, that wouldn’t seem much, but O’Dreary was a simple person and his pleasures came easy. Nevertheless, Smolsky whipped off his hat and belted it across O’Dreary’s head. O’Dreary covered himself with his arms, pretending that it hurt, but he was only kidding. Smolsky liked to hit O’Dreary, but what he didn’t know was that O’Dreary didn’t mind. If Smolsky had known that, it would have annoyed him even more.
THE RIDER OF the grey polo pony pulled his mount sharply to one side to avoid an almost certain head-on collision. The white ball, sitting innocently beneath the churning hooves, needn’t have looked so smug – as a wooden polo mallet swung through an arc and hit it full in the face. It jumped into the air, and the grass divot it had been hiding behind was yanked out by its roots and sent flying eight feet away. The ball travelled for some distance, and the opposing player was unable to turn his horse quickly enough to stop it bounce – and finally trickle across the white goal line. A few spectators applauded the goal with some “Well done’s”, and “A chukkha well won, fellows”, and the other various mechanical outbursts that accompany any sporting congratulations.
Off the field of play, a string quartet sat on a neatly manicured lawn, playing as enthusiastically as they would have done on any concert platform. They wore full evening dress and seemed quite unconcerned about the ridiculousness of their setting as they belted out their attempt at Mozart amongst the flowering bushes. Their heads swayed in unison, as they tried to avoid the lawn sprinkler which regularly sprayed an impromptu shower across the cellist. This interruption, however, had little or no effect on their playing.
Dandy Dan’s mansion was situated a good hour’s drive from the city. It was a typical product of the newer American fortunes that sprinkled their great brick and iron monstrosities around the perimeter of New York in the early nineteen twenties. It was a copy of a famous seat of European aristocracy. Dandy Dan was never quite sure if it was English or French – he’d been shown a magazine and had pointed at one of the pictures that caught his eye. His architects and builders had simply gone ahead and built it for him.
On the other side of Dandy Dan’s estate, a bike sedan pulled to a halt on the loose gravel with a crunching sound. Bronx Charlie was the first to get out. He always sat up front with the driver, and when Dandy Dan wasn’t around, Bronx Charlie was number one man in the gang. Out of the back of the vehicle climbed Shoulders, Yonkers, Benny Lee, Doodle and Laughing Boy. Straightening their baggy jackets and shooting their cuffs as they walked, they made their way around a lily pond and across a small ornamental stone bridge. Doodle stopped for a while and absentmindedly threw a stone into the pond. It disturbed the neat, floating lilies and a sleeping duck, which scampered out of the reeds, more surprised than annoyed. The other hoods stopped and looked back. For some reason, Doodle never seemed to fit in Dan’s gang. He was one of those people who always look like they don’t belong. Doodle was the black sheep of Dandy Dan’s gang. His suit wasn’t quite up to the tailored excellence of the other hoods. He was a little crumpled around the places where the others boasted a knife-edge crease. It is true to say that he resembled a potato sack more than a tailor’s dummy. He wore very thick glasses that perched, like the bottoms of milk bottles, on the end of his nose. The wire that held them together had pinched his nose for so many years that it had resulted in a permanent red mark across the bridge, and a rather squeaky nasal voice. He quickened his step to catch up with the others. He was quite happy to be one of the Dandy Dan gang and felt more at home than he ought to have.
Outside the house, the hoods were met by an immaculate butler, who waited for them to gather before showing them in. They followed him along a mahogany-panelled corridor and turned the corner into a large conservatory. The atmosphere was damp and hot, and they all felt a little uncomfortable amongst the ferns and Russian vines. The butler threw them all a disapproving look as he left, clearing his throat and pointing to their hats. Bronx Charlie whipped his from his head and the rest followed suit. They twirled the brims nervously between their fingers, afraid to talk and a little overawed by the grandeur of the surroundings.
Out on the polo field, a groom grappled with Dandy Dan’s pony as he prepared to lead it away. The pony’s head bobbed up and down, and it took the featherweight groom with it, raising him off the ground by a good six inches. Dandy Dan dismounted. He was a little clumsy and his hand-made riding boot got caught in the stirrup. But Dan kept his head, as befitted a gentleman who had devoted a lifetime to extravagant exhibitions of showy cool. His polo clothes were, of course, immaculate. After all, there were no errors in Dandy Dan’s wardrobe. He chose his clothes with as much care as he used in choosing his tactics for outwitting Fat Sam. As he jumped on to the grass, the butler came up and stood there silently. Dan caught sight of him out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes, Johnson?”
“There’s a Mr Bronx Charlie and company to see you, sir. They’re waiting in the conservatory.”
Johnson spoke with a neat and precise English accent that sounded as if it would have been more at home on the playing fields of Eton than on the polo field of this Long Island mansion. Dan pushed his cap off his forehead and dabbed his moist brow with a monogrammed silk handkerchief.
“I’ll be right in.” His reply was sharp but courteous. Johnson had served the crowned heads of Europe and he had the unfortunate habit of frequently reminding people of the fact. Naturally, he wasn’t overfond of the visitors to Dan’s hous
e. Not his sort of people at all. But he’d taken the post for a while until he was summoned to higher places.
At that moment, a very attractive blonde girl with a pale, colourless face and a bright colourful jacket rode in on another pony. She balanced her polo stick on her finger and pulled her face into a bored expression that her extremely pretty features really didn’t deserve. “Ain’t you gonna play no more, honey?” she drawled.
Dan looked up at her and furrowed his dark eyebrows into a tight knot.
“Later, my rose, later.” He sounded like a farmer talking to a loved and trusty dog.
The girl pouted her pretty lips even more, and, pulling at her pony’s reins, briskly rode back to continue the game.
Dandy Dan took a clothesbrush from the silver tray Johnson was carrying and stiffly brushed a few specks of dust from his shoulders. He threw the brush at the butler and it landed in the tray with a loud clang. Johnson didn’t even blink. His eyelids drooped a little and his eyeballs stared impassively at Dandy Dan as he bounded up the white stone steps into the house. A few more months, he thought to himself, and another post was bound to crop up. Bound to.
The hoods clicked their heels to attention as Dandy Dan entered the tall glass conservatory. They looked even more apprehensive than when they’d first arrived. The humidity, mixed with their nerves, was bringing out little beads of sweat on their foreheads. The sun was glinting through the thousands of small panes of glass and made the plants and flowers look quite beautiful. Dan paced up and down.
“Hi, boys. OK, relax. Well, guys, I’d like to take this opportunity of thanking you for your work so far. Everything’s gone swell, just swell.”
The faces of the hoods changed immediately, and in their relief they smiled at one another rather more broadly than was necessary. Bronx Charlie, the spokesman for the group, offered a reply.
“Gee, thanks, Boss.”
Dandy Dan picked up a large pair of metal rose pruning shears and waved them rather menacingly in the air. The gang watched in silence as he began to snip at the prickly stems of the rose bush climbing up the great iron centre column that supported the domed glass roof. The hoods blinked as the metal tool cut off the roses’ life lines. Dan was silent. The beads of sweat started to dribble down the hoods’ foreheads again. Dan turned with the cut flowers in his hands, and proceeded to hand them to the gang members almost like a general decorating his troops after a victory. One by one they took their flowers, and received a hearty handshake.
“Bronx Charlie... Laughing Boy... Shoulders... Yonkers... Benny Lee,” Dan smiled, but strangely he made a point of missing Doodle, who stood sandwiched between Shoulders and Yonkers. Doodle stood there a little surprised. He stared down at his empty hand and was not quite sure why he’d been left out. He gulped heavily, and the sweat beads on his forehead multiplied tenfold as he summoned the necessary courage that would allow him to cough up a few words.
Dan continued his speech of praise for the rest of the gang.
“Any moment now, Fat Sam will be crawling on his knees to me.”
They all nodded in agreement, except for Doodle who was still a little behind the others. He spoke. “What about my flower, Boss?”
Dan made a point of ignoring Doodle’s squeaky plea. But the rest of the gang were well aware of what was happening, and already they were eyeing Doodle with more than a little pity. Dan said, “Yes, soon all Fat Sam will have is the suit he stands up in and a suitcase full of memories.”
Doodle cleared his throat and tried again. “Er... I don’t have a flower, Boss.”
This time his voice was louder.
Dan said nothing. Instead, he put down the nasty-looking shears and picked up a silver hand-bell. He shook it without taking his stare away from Doodle. The other hoods took their cue from the ringing bell and moved away from Doodle, who was left standing alone. Unsure of what to do, he looked at his leader, and then at the faces of his fellow hoods.
“Boss? What’s going on here? I don’t understand ...”
He didn’t understand, but he was the only person standing in that glass conservatory who didn’t. It was so evident what was going to happen that even the Russian vines could have told him – if they spoke English. The English butler, who, incidentally, was certain he was the only person who could speak English, came in with a tray of immaculate custard pies. He put them down on a bamboo cane table and made a somewhat showy exit backwards through the doors. Dandy Dan took a pie from the tray and turned to Doodle.
“You goofed, Doodle. You dropped the gun. I don’t allow mistakes in this outfit. ’Cause mistakes put us all in the caboose – and Sing Sing ain’t my style.”
Doodle finally got the message. He was dumb, but the coin had dropped and he was aware of his predicament for the first time. He sweated so much that his spectacles steamed up.
Taking their cue from Dandy Dan, the other hoods each took a custard pie from the tray. They hadn’t taken any orders to do so, it was an unsaid thing between then. Dandy Dan had told them everything by his disapproving, darting eyes that stared at Doodle, dissecting him limb by limb. They all advanced towards Doodle, who started to back away. He let out a last, desperate squeak.
“No, Boss, not that. I didn’t mean to drop the gun, honest I didn’t. It just kind of slipped out of my hands... any guy can make a mistake.”
He kicked over a potted plant as he made his clumsy retreated. Dan was in no mood to trade words with Doodle. He spat out the final judgement with great contempt.
“Button your lip, Doodle. You’re all washed up.”
Doodle was flabbergasted.
“But, Boss – give a guy a break, won’t you?”
He needn’t have bothered. Dandy Dan had never given anybody a break in his life. A sagging green creeper almost strangled Doodle as he stepped backwards in his desperation to escape. He tugged at the leafy noose, but it was unnecessary because at that moment the gang let fly with their custard missiles. They threw with enormous gusto and great accuracy. Doodle didn’t stand a chance. He looked a neat, bespectacled sight as he lay there, splurged from head to foot, among the Russian vines and climbing hydrangeas.
A VIKING HELMET is never very comfortable and this one weighed heavily on the head of the Brooklyn soprano whose voice echoed to the empty gallery of the Bijoux Theatre. She clasped herself in a strange self-embrace as she screeched out her song. The brass breastplate she was squeezed into might have had something to do with her agonised tone, as her lips trembled and her tongue wobbled for all it was worth at the back of her throat.
“Velia! Oh, Velia, the witch of the wood...”
She had the kind of voice that breaks wineglasses and eardrums. It wasn’t a dreadful voice, but it would be fair to say that it was in the no man’s land somewhere between pretty terrible and awful. But she had guts. With a voice that bad, you need guts. She was what music teachers call a tryer. She ploughed into the second verse of her song unaware of the special kind of torture she was inflicting on her audience.
The occasion was the audition session for Lena Marrelli’s Show. Lena had stormed out, as she had done a thousand times, and her producer, Oscar De Velt, had said it was the last time she would walk out on him. He had said that before, of course – almost as many times as Lena had abandoned the show.
“Let her go,” he’d said. “I don’t need her.” Oscar De Velt had been putting on Broadway shows when Lena Marrelli was in pig-tails. She still was in pig-tails, but he always omitted this fact from his thoughts. Her floppy red ringlets and precocious talent had paid for his silk shirts and velveteen jackets and his apartment overlooking Central Park for too long for him to see things clearly. Every time she quit, he set up a new casting session. Amongst the pros it was regarded as a bore and not to be taken seriously. But to the hopefuls, the first timers in New York, the dreamers, the ones that didn’t know the ropes, it was their big chance.
Oscar De Velt, dressed like every Broadway producer, went through the char
ade of pretending to look for new talent. Slumped in the third row of the stalls, his arm dangling over the back of the seat and his hand-stitched boots propped up on the row in front, he shouted at the acts to be auditioned. He had a rather nasty, smart but spotty secretary who had even more disregard for personal feelings than he did. She would rebuke the cracked sopranos and squeaky tenors with a mouthful of abuse that sent many a hopeful packing back to their home town.
“Next!”
That evil word that says so much to the plucky, but talentless, auditioner. It may only be a little word, but it can be interpreted a million different ways. “Next” could mean, “Thank you very much, you are extremely talented and will surely go far, only you’re just a teeny bit tall for us.” On the other hand, it could mean, “Get off the stage quickly – your ears stick out, your voice sounds like a cat who’s caught his tail in the door, your knees are as bandy as a viola player’s and you’d do a great service to showbusiness by taking a job in a laundry.”
“Next!” Oscar De Velt yelled once more. This time, a conjurer came out and brushed down his dress suit rather too many times and took immense pains to put up the stand for his tricks. The metal legs were a little wobbly to begin with, but he tried to hide his nerves by persevering with the troublesome brass joints. The long line of auditioners waited impatiently for their brief chance for Broadway immortality. The conjurer cleared his throat most politely and walked to the footlights to deliver his hopeful showbusiness broadside.