Shoulders had always been a little more secretive than was necessary. He liked being shady, it made him feel important. Around the corner of the alleyway a car approached. Shoulders jumped back against the wall as its lights lit up the wet street. The alley cat dashed for cover once more and took refuge in a pile of garbage. It was obvious to him that he wasn’t going to get any sleep that night. A white sedan pulled to a halt. Shoulders moved out of the shadows and walked up to it. It was driven by a grey-uniformed chauffeur who never looked anywhere but ahead. He was well trained. The windows in the rear of the sedan were covered by blinds. Shoulders moved closer to one of the back windows. The white, fringed blind snapped upwards.
Inside the car sat a figure that was smart, dapper – in fact, entirely immaculate. He was dressed in an astrakhan-collared coat and carried a black cane with a silver top. His hat would have won prizes at a hatter’s convention. He ran his gloved finger along his moustache which was, not surprisingly, also immaculate. There was no doubt that this man was special. There was no doubt this man had arrived on the scene. There was no doubt that, to Fat Sam, this man spelled trouble. He was Dandy Dan.
Out of the window he passed a brown leather case with reinforced corners and brass hinges.
“You know what to do?”
“Sure, Dandy Dan,” Shoulders confirmed.
Dan turned away and tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder with his cane. “Step on it, Jackson.”
This Jackson dutifully did, and the sedan drove off into the night.
Inside the barber shop, the barber snipped away at the back of his customer’s head. Not a lot of hair was cut off, but a great deal of snipping certainly gave the impression that the client was getting his money’s worth. It was an old barber’s trick. The head of hair belonged to Frank Bloomey, Fat Sam’s lawyer. ‘Flash Frankie’ always called here for a haircut on his way uptown. He had a swanky office overlooking Central Park but most of his clients had premises overlooking the East River. On the wall above his desk was a framed certificate from the New York Justice Department, but everyone knew it was the downtown hoodlums who 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.
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 received the full blast head on, and immediately dropped into his spaghetti under the weight of the sticky onslaught. His wife, a bedraggled mess of spaghetti strands and loose feathers, started screaming. Her face wobbled up and down. In fact, the scream was some time coming, as her face seemed to tremble for an eternity before a piercing shriek escaped from her larynx. The other diners in the restaurant all ran for cover – so did the violinist. In fairness to him, it is true to say he kept on faithfully playing whilst he made his exit – ducking down behind the cheese counter.
The hoods, their work successfully completed, made their getaway. However, one of their number wasn’t quite up to the slick behaviour of the rest of the gang, as they began to climb back into the sedan outside. It was Doodle.
Doodle had never been the cleverest of hoods and was a little out of place in the immaculate company of the Dandy Dan gang. In fact, he was almost dumb enough for Fat Sam’s gang. He slipped in the doorway and the precious splurge gun he was carrying fell to the floor and slid across the tiles. The terrified diners stared in amazement. Doodle watched their inquisitive eyes move towards the secret gun lying on the floor. The gun he had been told to guard with his life. He was unsure what to do. He floundered in the restaurant while his worried little piggy eyes darted about behind his spectacles. One of the other hoods came back to pull him out.
“Doodle, get out of here.”
“But, Charlie, what about the splurge gun?”
“Ssh.”
“Dandy Dan said take care of the splurge gun.” He bent down to pick up the weapon. The hood grabbed Doodle very roughly and yanked him into the street. “You stupid idiot, Doodle. Watch your mouth, you fool.”
Another hood took Doodle’s free arm and bundled him into the sedan. With a screech, they took off into the night.
The customers in the restaurant crawled out from under the tables, not quite sure what had happened. The violinist returned from the safety of the cheese counter and, as if nothing had happened, went straight into his very best version of ‘O Sole Mio’.
Dobbs, the crooked accountant, was on the same list as Irving, only he didn’t know it. He had been Fat Sam’s accountant for as long as Fat Sam had run the rackets. He wasn’t the fanciest accountant