Bugsy Malone by Alan Parker

smiled to himself as he clasped his hands tight across his ample stomach. His fat lips slid into a satisfied smile. But it was a smile that wouldn’t be there for long.

T HE C HINESE WORKERS mumbled away to one another as they scrubbed at the laundry. Their hands were red and steaming as they yanked the clothes to and fro in the boiling water. A little girl sorted the laundry sacks into piles whilst another was nearly swallowed up by the contents of an enormous laundry basket. There were dozens of these baskets, and neatly painted on the sides of each was ‘The Hung Fu Shin Laundry Company’ .
    The little girl sorting the bags stiffened as she saw Ritzy come through the door. The rest of Fat Sam’s gang followed. They pushed their way past the Chinese workers, who scuttled for cover. Angelo tossed a scrubbing brush into one of the zinc laundry troughs and the hot sudsy water splashed up the front of one Chinaman who hadn’t run away. He promptly did so. Snake-Eyes and Ritzy pulled down clothes from the line that was strung across the laundry. Louis, who monotonously shot out his cuffs in his normal impersonation of the legendary Shakedown Louis, trampled on the clothes with his sizeable two-tone boots.
    The gang made for the door at the far end of the laundry. It was a solid panelled door, and Ritzy hurt his knuckles as he rapped on it. (Naturally, he was too cool to let on that it hurt.) The rest of the gang sat around in a rather sloppy fashion, not really paying a lot of attention. A bunch of frightened Chinese laundrymen weren’t going to give them any trouble. The errand that Fat Sam had sent them on was a piece of cake, they thought. As usual, they thought wrong.
    As they waited for the door to open, the lids of four of the huge laundry baskets were suddenly thrown open, and out jumped Bronx Charlie, Yonkers, Shoulders and Benny Lee. Fat Sam’s gang spun round in total surprise. One minute they had been nonchalantly chewing at their toothpicks and the next they were staring down the barrels of four nasty-looking splurge guns. They didn’t look for long.
    Shoulders was the first to pump his trigger, and as he let go a salvo of splurge splattered the shiny green tiles above Angelo’s head. Suddenly it was raining splurge. The four guns spat out their white, foamy contents around the ears of Fat Sam’s four trapped gangsters, who vainly tried to cower behind the piles of washing they had trampled on. The splurge guns never let up, and Benny Lee’s face grimaced in time with his trigger finger.
    The gang turned white as their various pathetic figures were swamped by the deluge of splurge. One by one they got it. Louis was first. Full in the face, it took his hat off. Snake-Eyes’ black face changed colour as the white splurge hit, and moulded itself to the shape of his nose and cheeks. Angelo got his so hard it nearly knocked him into the middle of next week. Ritzy blinked when his come-uppance came – it was just as well. The splurge splattered across his eyes and forced its way up his nostrils. He looked like a cream doughnut in spats.
    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.
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    The phone in Sam’s drawer let out its muffled ring. Sam’s podgy hand snatched it up.
    â€œHello. 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