Free Bugsy Malone by Alan Parker Page A

down the street as if they owned it. Now and again they would push the passers-by to one side, but more often than not this would result in disturbing the padding in their suits rather than inconveniencing their victims. Ritzy and Snake-Eyes helped themselves to an orange from a fruit seller’s stall. She was busy serving someone else and didn’t catch sight of the theft. However, Louis followed suit and, being Louis, was naturally spotted by the fruit seller as his great banana hands wrapped themselves round an orange. She screamed at him in Italian, and hurled cabbages along with her Sicilian abuse.
    At that moment, Fat Sam emerged from the back door of his office and climbed up the stone stairs to street level. At the sight of his gang retreating in cowardly disorder from the enraged fruit seller, a torrent of words left his mouth like buckshot. Fat Sam’s mouth, when really stretched, would spread from ear to ear, and on a good day with the wind in the right direction his voice would carry for as many as twenty blocks. He was furious.
    â€œYou dummies, can I believe my eyes? You bunch of peanut brains, you hear me? Get out of there, we got business to do. Come on, snap it up in here. In, in, in! Don’t hang around. Get your legs movin’ in this direction.”
    He snapped his fingers to punctuate his words, and turned into the doorway. The gang followed, their heads bowed in a combination of fear and shame. And the way Fat Sam pulled open the door to his office, nearly taking it off its hinges, it was mostly fear.
    Sam opened a walnut closet and replaced his grey pinstriped jacket with a gold silk dressing gown. Ritzy attempted to help him on with it but Fat Sam scowled and shrugged him off. The rest of the gang sat down rather timidly. Fat Sam tied the belt of his dressing gown tightly round his fat midriff.
    â€œRight. Let’s get down to it.”
    Snake-Eyes had nervously started to throw his dice on to the baize of Sam’s pool table. He swept them up and threw them down monotonously.
    â€œDon’t do that, Snake-Eyes. This is thinking time.”
    â€œSorry, Boss.”
    Sam eased his bulky figure into his chair. Knuckles filled the silence with a crack of his knuckles.
    â€œAnd don’t do that, Knuckles. I’m surrounded by a bunch of nervous wrecks.” Sam absent-mindedly toyed with his letter-opener as he spoke, and dug it into the veneer of his desk top. “Right. Let’s get down to it. I’ll start at the beginning. We’re being outsmarted by that lounge lizard. Right?”
    The gang nodded in agreement.
    â€œAnd we’re gonna get back on top. Right?”
    â€œRight back on top, Boss.”
    â€œWe’re gonna kick that drugstore cowboy into line. Right?”
    â€œYou bet, Boss.”
    The gang were certainly not going to disagree with Sam in this mood. They threw nervous glances at one another to make sure they never missed their cues. Fat Sam continued, this time, remarkably, his voice held a trace of humility.
    â€œSure we’ve been a little slow off the mark, but dumb bums we ain’t.”
    â€œNo. Dumb bums we ain’t.” The hoods looked at one another as they confidently echoed Sam’s words.
    They could have fooled no one. A bigger bunch of dumb bums had probably never graced a hoodlum’s office than the knuckle-headed crew that sat before Sam. He took them all by surprise as he suddenly changed the subject.
    â€œOK, Louis. Stand against the wall.”
    â€œWho? Me, Boss?”
    â€œSure. You, Louis. How many other guys called Louis in this room?”
    Louis stood up from the wicker-backed twin-seat that he usually sat in. The wickerwork had sagged a little over the years and Louis’s plump bottom fitted very comfortably into the dip. He edged up against the creamy brown wall and jostled the boxing pictures with his elbow. The rest of the gang looked at one another. They were as mystified as