Vinnie stood up. “That’s where you’re wrong.” Then he sprayed the toxic waste into the Frenchman’s eyes.
The clown shrieked, dropping his invisible machine gun. The toxic chemicals burned through his retinas.
“Poker is a game of skill,” Vinnie said. “Luck has nothing to do with it.”
As his eyes melted down his face, Coco mimed a .50-caliber Gatling gun large enough to be mounted on a helicopter. “Goddamn filthy clown!”
But before Coco could open fire, the wind changed direction.
He never saw it coming. It floated delicately on the breeze, like a leaf drifting through a stream, but when the yellow knife-shaped balloon hit Coco in the back it pierced through his chest and poked out the front of his rib cage as if it were a steel sword. The Frenchmen fell to his knees and coughed blood onto the deck.
“I guess he was right,” Hats said to Blue Nose. “You really are one lucky son of a bitch.”
“It wasn’t me.” Vinnie put his hand on Earl’s shoulder. “It was the vet’s knife that killed him.”
Hats licked frosting from his round nose. “Thanks, Doc. You saved our asses.”
But as blood pooled beneath him, Coco de Merde moved his hands around an invisible box in front of him.
“What’s he miming now, Daddy?” Mandy asked.
The smile fell from Hats’s face when he saw the invisible box. “It’s a bomb!”
They picked up the girls and ran as fast as they could. When the bomb went off, the blast was just as invisible as the device. They could hear the ship breaking apart and feel the force of the explosion as they were thrown off their feet, but they saw nothing. Even the flames were invisible as the ship caught fire.
Chapter 27
“Come on!” Jackie the Grump yelled from the dock.
The girls coughed on the mime smoke as Earl and the clowns staggered down the ramp. Jackie stood there dripping wet, holding a gumball shotgun, the bodies of three dead clowns by his feet. “What took you guys so long?”
Hats handed Mandy off to Jackie the Grump. “We ran into Coco de Merde. The douchebag knew how to mime.”
“I hate mimes,” Jackie said.
Three cars filled with Le Mystère reinforcements came roaring down the road toward them. Vinnie waved the group toward Captain Spotty’s car. “Let’s go. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Captain Spotty pulled up next to them. Vinnie, Hats, Jackie, and the three girls piled into the backseat. Earl rode shotgun.
“Hold on,” Spotty yelled. Then he floored it and sped away from the docks into the streets of Little Bigtop.
Earl couldn’t believe it when he saw the six people in the backseat. It looked strange enough when there were only three people layered together back there. They looked like a 3-D movie without the glasses, his daughters folded inside the clowns sitting between them.
“Can you lose them?” Vinnie asked.
Spotty looked a little worried. “I don’t know. I’m going as fast as I can. They’re gaining on us.”
The clowns on their tail opened fire. Spotty swerved as the bullets pierced his trunk and back window.
“Get down,” Vinnie told the kids, holding their heads as low as they could go in the backseat.
Jackie poked his head out the window and returned fire, but the gumball shotgun had a limited range.
The back of Spotty’s car was shredded into Swiss cheese. “We’re not going to make it without backup. Where’s Jimmy and Bingo?”
“Forget about them,” Vinnie said. “I’m not bringing Jimmy into this.”
“What about Bingo?”
“There’s no time. You’re just going to have to shake them.”
Earl opened the glove box. Steam poured out. “We could use the pie.”
He grabbed the piping-hot pie out of the oven, the tin burning his fingers.
“Not the cherry bomb!” Spotty cried.
But Earl moved too quickly. He leaned out the window and tossed it at the car behind them. The pie splatted against the windshield. The French clowns riding in the car stopped firing their weapons and stared at it.
When Captain Spotty said the cherry bomb could take out half a city block, Earl figured he was just exaggerating. But once the French clown car evaporated in the explosion and the streets were swallowed by flame, Earl realized that Spotty had actually understated the weapon’s potency. The pie was a miniature nuke.
Chapter 28
Earl woke up in the hospital surrounded by clowns. With their sinister smiles and wide piercing eyes, his first thought was that he was having some kind of horrible nightmare. But then the memories flooded in, as did the pain.
Bandages covered half his body. One arm was in a cast, propped up in a sling. One eye was swollen shut. He didn’t remember anything that happened after the explosion, not even being hit with a faceful of shrapnel. Vicky and Mandy were by his side, safe and uninjured, happy to see him wake up. His teenage daughter wasn’t with them.
“Look who’s awake,” said Captain Spotty. “I thought you bought it back there.”
“Where’s Sarah?” Earl raised himself up, trying to get out of the bed.
“Relax, Doc.” Spotty pushed him back down. “She’s in the next room. She’ll be fine. Just a slight concussion.”
“And my wife? Laurie? Where’s she?”
Captain Spotty shook his head. “We still don’t know, Doc. You shouldn’t worry about that now. Just be happy that your kids are alive and well.”
Earl held out his hand to Vicky and Mandy. They each grabbed on to a finger. But when he looked them in the eyes he couldn’t stop thinking that, because of him, they’d gone through the worst ordeal of their life. Because of him, they might never see their mother again.
Vinnie Blue Nose stood in the doorway and said, “Everyone out. The boss wants to speak to the vet.” When he saw the look on the girls’ faces, he could tell they didn’t want to leave their father. He nodded at Hats. “Take them to their sister.”
Hats scratched his bald scalp. He didn’t feel comfortable without any hats on his head. “Are you kidding me? Leaving me with the brats…” As he mumbled to himself, Mandy hopped onto his back.
“Give me a piggyback ride, Hats!” the kid cried in his ear.
“Get the heck off me, twerp.” Hats tried to shake her off. “I don’t like kids. I’m not that kind of clown.”
“Piggyback ride!”
“I’m gonna strangle this brat,” Hats said, but despite his words he still carried her into the next room. Vicky followed. Then all the other clowns dispersed.
When Don Bozo entered the room, Vinnie said, “I’ll be outside.” He closed the door behind him, leaving the two of them alone.
The boss clown waddled across the room and pulled up a chair next to Earl’s bed. He let out a sigh. Then he blew a balloon animal and twisted it into the shape of a flower.
“Here,” Bozo said, handing him the balloon flower. “A get-well-soon present.”
When Earl held the flower in his hand, it swayed back and forth, almost dancing.
“I’m real sorry about your wife,” said the boss. “We’re doing everything we can to get her back. I can’t promise anything, but there’s a good chance you’ll see her again.”
Earl just listened. He wanted to believe everything the boss was telling him.
“It looks like Coco de Merde was acting on his own when he kidnapped your family and blackmailed you into whacking me. Le Mystère isn’t too happy about it. I had a sit-down with their administration and they assured me they’d get your wife back as a peace offering, which is good for all parties involved. Neither of our families can afford to go to war right now.”
Bozo made another balloon animal. This one was a little monkey. He set it down on the bed next to Earl and it danced alongside the flower.
“Even though you tried to kill me, I feel kind of responsible for all this. None of it would’ve ever happened if it weren’t for me.”
“So I’ve decided to pardon you on the condition that you come work for me as my new chief caretaker. I’d pay you twice as much as you were getting at the Bronx Zoo. But you wouldn’t be able to quit until I say you can quit. And you and your family would have to move to Little Bigtop. I know you’re scared of clowns and all, but I’m sure you’ll get over it eventually.”
Earl looked down at the balloon animals on his bed. The balloon lion jumped on the balloon monkey and popped it. The balloon flower hopped away in terror.
“So what do you say, Doc?”
Earl shrugged. “You’re going to kill me otherwise. Do I really have a choice?”
“Not really, but I want you to want this. I don’t need you if you only take the job out of obligation. Think about it. Your family will be taken care of, your wife will be returned to you, you’ll get more money than you ever did before. You should be happy.”
“Yeah, I guess I should…” Earl put away his phobia and thought about it for a moment. His actions had torn his family apart and working for Don Bozo seemed like the only way he could bring them together again. Although working with clowns sounded like a fate worse than death, he had to give it a try. For his family. “Okay, I’ll work for you, but I have conditions of my own.”
The boss chuckled. “Oh yeah?”
“I want better living conditions for those animals of yours,” Earl said. “If I’m going to be your chief caretaker, then things are going to have to be brought up to my standards. It might not be cheap. It might not be easy. But when it comes to the health and well-being of those animals, you’re going to have to answer to me. And if you don’t like it then you might as well kill me right now, because I won’t do a half-assed job.”
The boss stared at him for a moment. Earl thought he was about to be strangled to death for speaking to the big man like that. He shrank into his hospital bed, but he didn’t break eye contact.
“Very well, Doc. You got yourself a deal.”
Then Don Bozo laughed so loud his belly shook the hospital bed and sent waves of pain through Earl’s shattered arm.
Chapter 29
It was two weeks of living and working in Little Bigtop and Earl still hadn’t gotten used to being surrounded by clowns. His job was fine. He loved working with animals. He always did. It filled him with pride knowing that he was able to do good by them, give them better habitats to live in than cages in an old warehouse.
His home life, on the other hand, was a mess. Vicky hadn’t said more than three words since the incident. Sarah wasn’t adjusting well to her new school—it wasn’t easy being the only non-clown girl at Little Bigtop High School. And Mandy, though happy and excited as ever, had already given up hope of ever seeing her mother again. It was depressing. Earl felt like he’d destroyed his family, destroyed his daughters’ happiness. The only thing that would make things right is if their mother were to come back to them. But even then, Earl was worried she would come back changed. He knew it was possible she could come back psychologically damaged or addicted to laughy-gas. The road to recovery would be long and arduous, and that was if she didn’t leave him and take the kids away.
At the end of a long day, Don Bozo came up to Earl with a disturbed look on his face. At that moment, Earl knew it. His fears had come true. His wife was dead.
“I’m sorry, Doc,” the boss said, putting his hand on the vet’s shoulder.
Tears pooled in Earl’s eyes. “You found her?”
The boss nodded and looked down. “Yeah, we found her.”
Earl didn’t want to believe it. He thought for sure she would have been alive. Even if they never found her, he thought she still would’ve been alive somewhere, even if she was living in misery.
“So, she’s dead…,” Earl said.
The boss shook his head. “No, I didn’t say that. She’s here.”
“What?”
“She’s just not the same…”
“What do you mean not the same?”
Earl wondered what they’d done to her. His worst fears went through his head: She could be a crazed addict, she could be beaten or scarred, she could be diseased or left in a horribly malnourished state.
The boss led him out of the animal shelter toward the offices where she was being held.
“You see, the men who purchased your wife had specific tastes,” said Don Bozo. “They had no need for any human women.”
“What does that mean?”
When Don Bozo opened the door to one of his accountants’ offices, Earl saw a clown sitting in the chair behind the desk.
“Who’s this?” Earl asked.
“They shot her up with Happy Juice. It changed her genetic makeup.”
Earl stepped into the office and got a closer look at the clown sitting there. She had frizzy red hair and neon-green horn-rimmed glasses.
Earl’s heart stopped. “Laurie?”
He hardly recognized her with that big round nose and paper-white skin. Her dark-blue eyes seemed to twirl at him.
“Hi, baby,” she said in a high-pitched, bloodcurdling clown voice. “Want to go home and blow some bubbles?”
She pulled out a bubble kit and blew bubbles at him. Then her bright-red lips curled into a deranged smile. She wasn’t just a clown; she was the most frightening clown Earl had ever seen, even more horrifying than Captain Spotty. And he was married to her.
“I think it’s a pretty nice improvement if you ask me,” Don Bozo said. “Of course, I can imagine how it might upset you, you being afraid of clowns and all.”
That clown wasn’t his wife anymore. She was something else. Something grotesque. The thought of bringing that crazed clown woman into his home, into his bed, into his life…
“Are you all right, Baby?” the clown woman said as Earl fell to the floor.
She came out from behind the desk and lifted him up off the ground. When she looked him in the eyes, Earl saw a spark of her former self. Deep down inside, it was still her. She still had the same memories, the same feelings she always had. She just wasn’t human anymore. Earl truly loved her. He should be able to live with that.
Rainbow-colored tears fell down the clown’s cheeks, as if she heard the thoughts in his head. He wasn’t able to speak, but he smiled back at her.
“I missed you so much,” she cried. Then she hugged him against her marshmallowy breasts and honked her nose against his shoulder.
As Earl kissed the new version of his wife, he realized that one day he would be cured of his clown phobia. But before it got better it was going to get a hell of a lot worse.
Part Two
The Juggler Brothers
Chapter 30
The phone rang at two in the morning. If he knew what was going down at that very moment, Vinnie Blue Nose would have answered. Instead, he let it go to voice mail. This was not very characteristic of the top capo of the Bozo crime family. The guy was usually the most responsible clown Don Bozo had on staff, always on call, always business-first. But he was having a very serious discussion with his wife, Samantha. She no longer wanted to be a regular human being anymore. She wanted to become a clown like her husband.
“I’m sick of being vanilla.” Samantha stood in the bedroom doorway in her black nightie, drinking cognac on the rocks. “I finally saved up enough money to buy a dose of Happy Juice. Just let me take it. I want to be a clown like you and your friends.”
Vinnie was building a house of cards so large it took up half the living room. It would be more aptly titled an airport of cards or a city of cards. He focused on the construction one card at a time, taking it so seriously that you’d think he was building a bomb.
“It’s not worth the risk,” Vinnie said, carefully placing his next card on the stack.
“It’s worth the risk to me. You don’t see how
the other wives look at me. I feel like an outcast.” Samantha stirred the ice cubes in her glass with her long fingernails.
“Who cares what they think. I don’t want to lose you.”
“But the odds of it going wrong are so low.”
“One in ten isn’t low in my book. You don’t know how many friends of mine took that gamble and lost. I don’t want that happening to you.”
“What about when we start having kids? They’ll be half clowns.”
“What’s wrong with half clowns?”
“You know what it’s like for half clowns in Little Bigtop. They’ll be treated like garbage. Just look at your friend Pinky Smiles.”
“Pinky’s a good kid. I’d be proud if our children turned out anything like him.”
Water puddled in the corners of her eyes. “But everything would be so much easier if I were a clown…” She put her hand over her mouth.
Vinnie got up from the couch and went to her. “Sam, what’s gotten into you?” He tucked his hands into the crooks of her waist and looked her in the eyes. “I like you just the way you are. If I wanted to marry a clown I would have married a clown.”
“I just want our life to be perfect together.”
“Come here,” Vinnie said, opening his arms around her. She fell into his embrace and pressed her face against his neck. “Our life is perfect just the way it is.” His white fingers weaved through her long black hair and he kissed her on the scalp.
When they let go of each other, Sam went to the kitchen to refresh her drink and Vinnie went back to his cards. Sam was a very sensitive girl, yet she was always embarrassed when she got emotional. It was no easy task for Vinnie to figure out when he needed to be attentive to her feelings and when to ignore them.
“That’s a big one,” Sam said, pointing her drink at the mountain-sized card towers. “You’re really getting good at that hobby of yours.”
“It’s not a hobby. It’s exercise.”
“How is stacking cards exercise?”
ClownFellas Page 7
