by Alan Parker
From the other side of the laundry, Dandy Dan watched the proceedings with delight. He was on top now. Without a gang to aid him, Fat Sam was as helpless as a tortoise without its shell. He took a large bite out of the green apple he was holding and smiled at the sight before him. Up to now he had been ahead on points. Now he knew it wouldn’t be long before Fat Sam threw in the towel. The apple tasted good.
The phone in Sam’s drawer let out its muffled ring. Sam’s podgy hand snatched it up.
“Hello. Yeah. Start gabbin’.”
Sam’s bottom jaw dropped six inches as the voice on the telephone told him the bad news. His mouth was still open as he put the phone down. Knuckles knew something was wrong and slid off the side of the pool table where he had been perching. He said nothing – just stared at Sam’s white face. It was an eerie sight to see Fat Sam’s mouth open so wide and not have your eardrums popping with the noise of his giant vibrating tonsils. Knuckles plucked up enough courage to break the silence.
“Boss?”
“The whole gang’s gone, Knuckles. Splurged. That leaves just you and me.”
Knuckles, without thinking, took off his hat to show his respect. He felt a little embarrassment and a lot of loneliness. He looked around at the empty chairs that had once been filled by the gang. As Shakespeare once said, “When the chips are down, even dumb bums have got a heart.” Knuckles lived up to his name once again and squeezed his fat fingers, letting off a machine gun burst of bone-clicking. Fat Sam threw his note pad at him in disgust.
“Don’t do that, Knuckles. How many times do I have to tell you? It irritates me. We do nothing. We act like nothing’s happened. Carry on as normal. Tutto casa sono buono.”
The Italian tripped off Sam’s tongue. It always did when he was upset. Knuckles looked puzzled.
“What does that mean, Boss?”
Sam stopped biting his nails for a moment to look up at his henchman. “You don’t speak Italian?”
“No, Boss, I’m Jewish.”
Sam translated for him. “We act like...like everything’s hunky dory.”
Knuckles nodded and mumbled his own Yiddish translation to himself. “Oh, al is is git.”
But everything wasn’t so git. And they both knew it.
FIZZY POUNDED THE piano keys with great gusto. The music didn’t make sense but he obviously enjoyed it. To outside ears it sounded like a jumble of discords, but in Fizzy’s head it sounded beautiful. Whenever he was alone in the speakeasy he would tinkle away at the ivories. Not that he was entirely alone. Jelly, the fat boy who looked after the speakeasy door, was generally his audience. He was tone deaf as well, and would lean over the top of the stairs, his head on his hands, and watch Fizzy with glazed eyes. Unbelievably, considering all that note-thumping, Jelly seemed to be nodding off to sleep. Then Fizzy’s tune was interrupted, as Jelly woke up to slide open the speakeasy door and let Bugsy in.
“Hey, Bugsy,” welcomed Fizzy.
“Hey, Fizzy. How you doing?”
“Fine, Bugsy. Just fine.”
“Still practising?”
“Sure thing, Bugsy. Still practising.”
At that moment, Tallulah glided through the door of the girls’ room. She leaned over the banister rail and smiled down at Fizzy and Bugsy.
“Suddenly everybody wants to be in show business.”
“Oh, hi, Tallulah. I’ve come to see Fat Sam. Is he in?”
Tallulah was joined by Tillie, Loretta and Dotty, who slouched over the rail and threw nods and red-lipped smiles in Bugsy’s direction. Tallulah didn’t like that much. That was her department.
“He’s busy, Bugsy. Why don’t you have a drink while you’re waiting?”
“Why not? I’ll have a special on the rocks.”
Tallulah tiptoed down the steep stairs with as much elegance as her high-heeled shoes would allow. Tillie, Loretta and Dotty followed suit. But not for long, Tallulah turned at the bottom and coolly put them into reverse.
“OK, girls. Go feed the ducks.”
“Oh, Tallulah!” the girls offered as a feeble response, but Tallulah would have none of it.
The girls turned around and clomped noisily back up the stairs. Tallulah smoothed down her skirt and snapped her fingers at the barman, who knew better than to ignore her. He threw ice into two glasses and poured in the bright green ‘special’ drink that was a favourite among the speakeasy’s regulars. Bugsy took an upturned chair from on top of a table and sat himself down. Tallulah pulled a chair across from another table and edged up close to him. She meant business.
Bugsy was not sure he knew how to cope. Up on stage, Fizzy continued his strange ‘music’ – though it was scarcely romantic. Upstairs, Jelly had finally nodded off to sleep and was snoring quietly. Tallulah put her hand on Bugsy’s shoulder and began her attack.
“Long time no see, Bugsy.”
“Well, you know how it is.”
“You used to come and see me every night.”
Bugsy fiddled with his hat brim. “I’ve been busy,” he squeaked.
“Busy doing what?”
Tallulah was returning his service with great ease.
“Oh, this and that.”
Bugsy’s answers weren’t getting any better. Tallulah edged even closer towards him. Fizzy’s piano playing had reached a crescendo and Tallulah snapped at him.
“Fizzy, will you quit the ivories and hit the shoe leather.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Fizzy finished his ‘piece’ in defiance and then sheepishly closed the lid of the piano. He skulked off, a little moody and upset at being so unceremoniously evicted. The ‘specials’ arrived and were set down in front of Bugsy and Tallulah. She crisply gave the barman his marching orders.
“OK. Beat it. Go check the storeroom.”
“Sure thing, ma’am.”
Fat Sam’s girl knew who she was and wasn’t about to let people forget it. She turned back to Bugsy. This time she was pulling all the stops out.
“You’re aces. You know that, Bugsy? I’ve always found you kind of special.”
“Careful, Tallulah, you’re racing my motor.”
He meant what he said. And so did she.
“Come on, Bugsy. Give a girl a break, won’t you?”
“You sure you got the right fella?”
Tallulah sighed. “You’re not like those other saps.”
“No?”
“You’ve got lovely brown eyes. You know that?”
She was inches from him, and she ran a finger along his dark brown eyebrows as she spoke. Bugsy offered a lame joke.
“They’ll be lovely black eyes if Fat Sam catches us.”
“How about smearin’ my lipstick?”
Tallulah tilted her head on one side and narrowed her eyes at him. She pouted her lips and let out another sigh. Bugsy gulped.
“If you come any closer, I’ll call my lawyer.”
Tallulah was not put off. She’d also caught sight of Blousey coming in at the speakeasy door.
“So call him.”
Tallulah leaned across and kissed Bugsy on the forehead. The bright red lipstick made an indelible shape on his swarthy skin. Blousey was dumbstruck. She stormed down the stairs with a loud clatter and Bugsy immediately pulled away from Tallulah.
“Oh, hi, Blousey,” he stammered.
Tallulah sat back in her chair and breathed coolly on her shiny red fingernails. Blousey stormed up the stairs towards Fat Sam’s office, ignoring Bugsy’s calls after her. She burst through the double doors that led to Fat Sam’s inner office. Her knuckles rapped violently on the dappled glass marked ‘S. Stacetto Private’. She bit her lip while she waited, more in frustration than in anger. Knuckles answered the door and sighed a bored sigh at seeing her standing there. He didn’t bother to ask her what she wanted.
“It’s the broad about the audition, Boss.”
Without waiting for a reply from Sam, he took it upon himself to send her away. “He’s busy, lady. Come back to
morrow.”
Blousey’s face dropped. She could handle Bugsy and Tallulah, but not getting an audition poleaxed her, and the last drop of courage drained from her face and tears welled up in her eyes. Suddenly Sam appeared at the door, and surprised them both.
“OK, lady, I’m all ears. Go right in and get ready. We’ll be right with you. Just a couple of things to tie up here, and we’ll be in there a-listening.”
He smiled a big Italian smile that seemed to be reflected in his shiny, greased-down hair. Blousey, delighted, grabbed her bag and hurtled in the direction of the stage. Sam closed the door and tugged at Knuckles’ lapels to bring him down to his own level. Knuckles listened intently. Things were going a little too quickly for him.
Sam whispered as softly as his giant larynx would allow. “We act as if nothing’s happened. Right? We carry on as normal. Right? Like everything’s hunky dory. That way they won’t know we’re scared.” Fat Sam quickly corrected himself. “I mean concerned.” He couldn’t even let Knuckles know how wobbly his knees were getting, as the situation worsened. He patted himself on the lapel. “OK, Knuckles. Let’s go and give this broad a listen.”
Blousey picked up a bentwood chair and moved it to the centre of the stage. Razamataz had sorted out her music and started the piano introduction. He played it like all natural piano players, as if he’d been fingering out that tune every night, six nights a week. In fact, he’d never heard it before.
Sam, Knuckles, and a few of the girls made themselves comfortable, draped over the handrail at the top of the stairs. Bugsy sat down next to Tallulah and sipped his drink nervously, hoping that the previous incident had been forgotten. Fizzy stopped mopping the floor and leaned heavily on his broom. “At least someone gets an interview around here,” might have been the thought going through his head. But it wasn’t. He was enjoying Razamataz’s piano-playing too much.
Blousey began to sing, and to the audience’s surprise she was rather good. Bangles and Loretta were more difficult to impress. Whenever Tallulah got sick they would stand in for her, and if Blousey got a job they wouldn’t get a look in from now on. Blousey looked rather pointedly towards Bugsy during her song. He scratched his forehead in embarrassment and saw the tell-tale lipstick on his fingers. Grabbing his handkerchief, he rubbed away at the evidence. Tallulah threw a worldly glance at the proceedings and smiled to herself. She couldn’t understand the fuss.
Sam brought the audition to an abrupt end by clapping his podgy hands together. Blousey was only half way through her song and she feared the worst.
“OK, honey, that’s enough. Very nice. A little contemporary for my tastes, but all the same, very nice. You’re hired.” He snapped his fingers for his entourage to follow him back into his office.
Blousey finished the last note of her song, but she’d already lost half her audience. Bugsy applauded nervously as she collected her things together for a speedy exit.
“Great, Blousey. That was really swell. I told you you’d make it. That was terrific, really terrific.”
He might as well have saved his breath. Blousey completely ignored him and stormed up the stairs towards the speakeasy exit. Bugsy called after her.
“Blousey! Blousey!”
The only answer he got was the door crunching closed as she yanked at the lever that operated the mechanism in the bookshop front. Bugsy stood up and put his hat on. Moving away from the table, he corrected himself long enough to hurry back and plant a kiss with his finger on Tallulah’s powdered nose.
“So long, Tallulah. Maybe another time.”
Tallulah twirled the glass in her hand until the cherry on top of the green liquid got dizzy and drowned. She scooped it out with her red-nailed fingers and popped it into her rosebud mouth.
“Sure, sap. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
She crunched at the cherry with great venom – and then spat it out in rather an unladylike fashion. She’d forgotten that she hated cherries.
Out in the street, Blousey hurried along the sidewalk and hid behind some barrels that had been dumped outside the Ponti Olive Oil Import Company. Bugsy made the door of the bookshop just late enough to miss her and early enough to think he hadn’t. He looked hurriedly right and left through the people that hustled along the busy sidewalk. He ran straight past the Olive Oil barrels that Blousey was hiding behind and was soon lost in the crowd. Blousey watched him go, and then made off in the opposite direction. Bugsy reached the end of the street and threw down his hat in frustration. He picked it up and angrily brushed the dust from the brim. He’d lost her. He hoped it was only for the time being.
RAZAMATAZ 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 drif
t.
“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.