Bugsy Malone Read Online Free Page B

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.
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    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 unappreciative ears of the diners at Mama Lugini’s.
    A very slim gentleman sat sucking enormous quantities of spaghetti through his rather comic toothbrush moustache. His wife picked at her dinner. She never seemed to eat any – she just toyed a twirled her fork in the pasta. Her face was long and bored, which would normally have been the first thing you’d have noticed about her but for the ridiculous feathered hat she was wearing. The couple rarely spoke to one another except for the occasional, “Irving, would you please pass the salt,” or sometimes, “Irving, would you please pass the pepper.” This was the sum of their conversation. Irving would often make loud slurping sounds with his spaghetti, but very rarely did he speak. The violinist had little effect on either of them. He could scratch away at his Italian love songs until the strings of his violin wore through and snapped – it still wouldn’t have helped the conversation between Irving and his wife.
    But tonight the violinist was interrupted. Not by a clumsy waiter bumping into him or by a persistent customer asking for ‘O Sole Mio’ for the twenty-third time. He was interrupted by something far more important. In fact, the entire front window, on which was neatly painted ‘Mama Lugini’s Italian Restaurant’ , shattered into a million pieces.
    The customers looked up from their dinners and the violinist almost, but not quite, stopped playing. He looked up from his violin and saw, standing in line on the sidewalk, Dandy Dan’s gang – their splurge guns gleaming in the lamplight. Irving stopped slurping.
    A passing waiter was the first to move. He panicked – and dropped an enormous plate of tacky spaghetti into the coloured feathers of Irving’s wife’s hat. Irving himself was less fortunate, because it was he whom Dan’s gang had come for. His puzzled stare demanded an answer. He got it. The splurge guns burst into action. Each one belched out its foamy white contents. Irving