“It’s too late,” Jellybottom said. “I already told them they’d be seeing Bobby Goldstein. I can’t deny them that now.”
“Well, you’re going to have to. This isn’t a free show.”
The reverend just laughed and shook his head. “I reserved this venue for the whole night. I said you can use the stage after my sermon, but I didn’t say that my parishioners had to leave.”
Buggy wondered what kind of Hell he’d go to for strangling a priest with his own robe. “Fine, but they’re standing in the back. Paying customers get the seats.”
“I’m sure that will be fine,” said the reverend, taking a fresh drink from a pink-haired waitress in a mini skirt. He didn’t attempt to hide the fact that he was admiring the clown girl’s behind as she walked away. A big smile crossed his face as he held up his glass in a toast. “Here’s to a great show.”
Then he slammed it down.
“You seem to drink a lot for a holy man,” Buggy said.
“Just loosening up,” said the reverend, slapping the behind of the clown waitress as she passed him again. “It’s going to be my biggest sermon ever.”
Chapter 96
Winky Gagliano and his crew were setting up the venue space. When Buggy entered, wheeling Mittens through the double doors, he was pleasantly surprised by how nice the setup was. The stage looked professional. The seats were surprisingly comfortable, more like movie theater seats than the usual high school cafeteria style of seating that most venues had. There was even a velvet curtain around the stage, giving it an almost luxurious look—the kind of atmosphere you’d expect for paying a thousand dollars a ticket.
Buggy was very impressed. That is, until he saw the merchandise table.
“What the heck is this?” Buggy asked, pointing at the row of T-shirts hanging on the wall.
“It’s a shirt with Bobby Goldstein’s face on it, just like you wanted,” Winky said.
“Yeah, I see that,” Buggy yelled. “But what the hell kind of picture is this?”
Buggy held up the shirt. The picture Winky used for the shirts, mugs, and posters had been taken recently, soon after Goldstein had been hit by Winky’s car. His mouth was bleeding. His eye was swollen shut. You couldn’t even tell who was in the picture. It just looked like an image of a violently battered face.
“You said you wanted a picture of Goldstein’s face so I took a picture of Goldstein’s face.”
“But you should’ve used an old picture from back when he was in his prime, not incriminating proof that he was beaten, kidnapped, and forced to do a comedy show against his will.”
Winky took a bite of a hot dog. “I think they look pretty cool.”
“Oh, you think they’re cool, do you? Would you pay two hundred bucks for one of these?”
Winky just laughed at the idea. “No.”
“Then why would anyone else?”
Winky shrugged and took another bite of his hot dog.
As Mittens sniffed at the food Winky was eating, Buggy looked around the room, wondering why all of Winky’s men had hot dogs in their hands.
“What’s with the hot dogs?” Buggy asked.
“You said you wanted a concession stand.” Winky pointed at the hot dog stand in the corner of the room. There didn’t appear to be any other food besides hot dogs.
“A hot dog stand? All you got was a hot dog stand?”
“Yeah,” Winky said. “I got a good deal.”
“I wanted upscale gourmet food. Crab fondue. Meat and cheese platters. Lobster pizza. You know, something we can charge fifty bucks a pop for. Nobody in their right mind would pay fifty bucks for a hot dog.”
Winky took another bite.
“They’re good hot dogs,” he said with his mouth full.
Buggy didn’t have time for this. He said, “Just charge twenty bucks a hot dog. And tell your crew to stop eating them all. They’re for paying customers.”
Chapter 97
Buggy went backstage to see how Bobby Goldstein was doing. Snuffy was back there setting up his canisters of laughy-gas.
“Make sure the gas blows away from the stage,” Buggy said to Snuffy. “We don’t want it to get Goldstein and cause him to laugh hysterically at his own terrible jokes…at least not until the audience is laughing first.”
Snuffy nodded.
Buggy went to Bobby Goldstein, who was still tied to the same chair from Snuffy’s club. Knowing Winky and Snuffy, Buggy assumed the two clowns just tossed him in the back of their truck and moved him over like a piece of furniture.
“You okay?” Buggy asked the comedian.
“Do I look okay?” Goldstein asked. “My broken leg is swollen bigger than before and I think the wound on my back is getting infected.”
“Will you be able to perform?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No, but I need to know whether or not we need to bring you out there in a wheelchair.”
“You’re not bringing me out there in a wheelchair,” Goldstein said. “I’ll walk. It’ll hurt like hell, but I’ll walk. If this is my last show I want to go out on my own two legs.”
“Good to hear,” Buggy said. “Now, after the show, you’re going to keep your mouth shut about everything that happened here, you got that?”
Goldstein shook his head. “You don’t have anything to worry about. I just want this to be over and done with. Just take care of my medical bills after this and we’re good.”
Buggy went around behind the comedian. “I’m going to untie you now, but I’ve got guys guarding all the exits so don’t try to run.”
“I couldn’t run if I tried,” Goldstein said, then laughed as if that were a joke. Buggy didn’t laugh with him.
As the capo removed the comedian’s bonds, he pulled out a syringe filled with Happy Juice and stuck it into his wrist.
“Ow…,” Goldstein complained.
Buggy finished injecting the fluid into the comedian’s vein and then hid the syringe back in his pocket. “Sorry, these ropes chafe pretty bad.”
“Just hurry up and get them off.”
When the bonds were free, Goldstein stood up and rubbed his wrists. He could stand up fine, even on the broken leg, but could hardly walk on his own. He needed to lean on Buggy just to get from one chair to another.
“Knock ’em dead,” Buggy said.
The comedian laughed. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”
Chapter 98
At showtime, or what would’ve been showtime if there wasn’t a church sermon going first, the doors were opened and the audience poured inside. Winky and his crew took tickets, making sure that those who’d actually paid the thousand-dollar price got the good seats.
Winky was chewing on hot dogs as he took the tickets.
“Hey, I told you not to eat any more food from the concession stand,” Buggy said to Winky.
“I thought you meant my crew wasn’t allowed to,” Winky said, still eating his hot dog as he ripped ticket stubs. “You didn’t say anything about me personally.”
“That meant you as well. The hot dogs are for the customers.”
“But they’re really good hot dogs.”
“Then eat the leftovers after the show.”
The next in line was Uncle Jojo and a large group of clowns who were friends of the family. Jojo made eye contact with Buggy and didn’t break it for a second as he went through the line.
“How’s it going, Bugs?” asked Uncle Jojo as Winky ripped his ticket. “You’ve got quite the turnout tonight.”
Buggy nodded, feigning a smile. “Yes, it’s going to be quite a show.”
“Good, I’m happy it’s working out for you,” Jojo said. “But what’s this I hear about a money-back guarantee?”
Buggy looked around. He hoped none of the other people in line heard him. “That’s what Snuffy told people out of desperation to sell tickets.”
“So are you going to actually honor that if the show stinks?”
Buggy d
idn’t know how to respond to that. “I guess…”
“Good, because my boys and I will most likely be expecting a refund by the time it’s over,” Jojo said. “Just on the way over we were talking about how Goldstein couldn’t possibly still be any good after thirty years. He’s old and washed up. This show’s going to be a bore.”
“So you want your money back?”
“Cash would be preferable.”
“But I’m the one who gave you the tickets. You didn’t pay for them.”
“Haven’t you ever returned a Christmas present you didn’t like so you could have the cash instead? Same thing.”
Uncle Jojo just smiled as he moved on, stepping toward his seat with his men in tow.
“That miserable prick…,” Buggy said beneath his breath.
The underboss wasn’t only going to watch the show for free, but he was also planning to have Buggy pay him the twenty thousand that he didn’t even spend on the tickets. How somebody hadn’t already blown Jojo’s head off by then was beyond Buggy.
“I don’t care how bad the show is or how much people complain,” Buggy said to Winky. “Don’t give anybody their money back.”
“Even Jojo?”
“Especially not Jojo.”
Chapter 99
The church event went first and most of the crowd had no idea what was going on during most of the show. The majority of the audience were vanilla tourists from outside Little Bigtop, so they had very little knowledge of what went on in a clown church. The fish-juggling contest was especially confusing to them. They weren’t sure if it was meant to be a comedy sketch or a real juggling competition. Buggy just hid in the back of the room for the duration, covering his face in embarrassment.
“Brothers and sisters,” Reverend Jellybottom said, stepping across the stage with yet another drink in his hand. “I hope you’re enjoying tonight’s festivities.”
The members of his church roared and applauded, but those who’d paid top dollar to be there stayed silent.
“Ahh-ha!” Jellybottom cried, applauding himself.
“Raarrfff!” Mittens barked at the reverend, as if booing.
“Mittens, be quiet,” Buggy said.
“Raarrfff!” Mittens yelled, tugging on the cords to his life support machine.
Buggy had to pick up his bulldog to stop him from barking at the reverend.
Jellybottom continued, “Right now, I want to take a moment for some serious reflection. In a short while, we’re going to have the one and only Bobby Goldstein out here to tickle your funny bone. But before that, I want to tell you a poem that will tickle your soul. Some of you may have already heard it before. It’s called ‘Footprints in the Sand.’ ”
Buggy knew the poem well. Pretty much everyone already knew the poem. It was a classic. He also knew it was the wrong audience to tell it to. He wondered if he could just run away.
“One day, a man was walking along a beach with the Lord,” Reverend Jellybottom said. He paced across the stage but never broke eye contact with the audience. “He looked behind him and noticed two sets of footprints. One set of footprints was made by him and the other was made by the Lord.”
“Please let this end…,” Buggy said.
Winky nodded in agreement, picking up another hot dog from the concession stand. Buggy snatched it away before he could take a bite and put it back behind the counter.
“The man turned to the Lord and asked, ‘What’s with all these footprints, Lord?’ And the Lord responded, ‘They represent your path through life. And as you can see, I have always been by your side.’ Then visions of the man’s life appeared in the sky above the footprints, each of his days corresponding to a step in the sand.”
Buggy rolled his head back and groaned. The preacher was too drunk to even remember how the poem went. He was messing it all up.
“Then the man noticed that during the hardest, most trying times of his life there was only one set of footprints. This upset him. He asked the Lord, ‘How come when my life was in its darkest days you abandoned me to walk alone?’ ”
Buggy noticed that Uncle Jojo and his whole row of associates were staring right at him. They were each giving him a look of confusion and disgust, as if to say, What the hell is this shit? Buggy just broke eye contact and ignored them. He knew he was never going to hear the end of this one.
“Then the Lord said, ‘When you see only one set of footprints in the sand, it’s not because you were abandoned. Those are the times that I carried you.’ ”
Buggy couldn’t take it anymore. He wondered if it was too late to have the reverend whacked.
The reverend continued, “Then the man noticed that in one area of the beach, near a single set of footprints, there were large dips in the sand. He asked the Lord, ‘But what are those large dips in the sand?’ ”
Buggy didn’t remember this part of the poem. He wondered if the reverend had gotten it mixed up again.
“And the Lord responded, ‘That was when you gained all that weight. You were too heavy to carry so I kept dropping your fat ass.’ ”
Then the reverend burst into laughter.
“Wait…What?” Buggy said.
“Ahh-ha!” the reverend said, as his parishioners laughed and cheered. “That’s how we do it in Little Bigtop!”
“What the heck is he doing?” Winky asked.
Buggy’s mouth dropped open. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Ahh-ha!” Jellybottom said again, as if it were some kind of catchphrase.
“Oh my God. He’s trying to steal the show.” Buggy watched in horror as Jellybottom shook his round butt at his applauding parishioners. “He’s going to do a stand-up routine.”
Then Reverend Jellybottom told a series of jokes. He’d mentioned to Buggy that he always dreamed of one day being a stand-up comic before the Comedy Prohibition Act was passed, but Buggy had no idea the reverend would’ve chosen that night to make his dream come true.
“So…,” Jellybottom said. “Any of you vanillas out there ever been with a clown girl before?”
It wouldn’t have been that big of a deal—a comedy routine was still better than a boring sermon—but the reverend chose to tell some raunchy, distasteful jokes that just didn’t feel right coming from the mouth of a holy man.
“I like me the rainbow-headed clown girls best. Mmm-mmm. Those are the yummiest. They taste like a bag full of Skittles.”
He even made his own parishioners feel uncomfortable.
“You know that with clown girls the carpet always matches the drapes…if you know what I mean.” The reverend paused to point at his crotch. “So doing it with a rainbow-headed girl makes you feel like a leprechaun. You have to follow the rainbow to get to the pot of gold.”
The audience just stared in horror as the reverend stuck out his tongue and made licking motions.
“Ahh-haa!” Jellybottom said, bursting into laughter and slapping his knee. Other than his own laughter, the room was completely silent.
This went on for an hour, and each joke was more perverted and disturbing than the last. If it were a normal comedian the jokes wouldn’t have been so bad, but because it was a preacher telling them they came across as extra creepy. He only got a small pity-applause when he was finished.
“See you at church on Sunday” was how the reverend decided to end his performance before he walked off the stage. It was clear that many of his parishioners were debating on whether they should sleep in that day or not.
Chapter 100
When Bobby Goldstein finally took the stage, the audience appeared shell-shocked. They weren’t ready for another comedian. They all wanted to go home. But Goldstein went out there anyway, staggering on his broken leg, stinking up the front row with his blood- and urine-soaked clothes that hadn’t been changed in a week.
“How you all doing out there tonight?” Goldstein said into the microphone. “I’m Bobby Goldstein…They said they were going to do some big introduction for
me, but I guess they forgot.”
There was no response.
“It’s a good crowd,” he said with a nervous chuckle.
They were still quiet. Buggy rolled his hand in the air, indicating to the comedian that he should get on with it. Goldstein went right to his first joke. His voice, however, was shaky and quiet.
“Have you ever noticed how painful it is to urinate after you’ve had your kidney illegally removed by a black-market surgeon?” Goldstein said. He had no energy in his voice at all, as though he was just saying whatever popped in his mind so that he could get it all done with and go home as soon as possible. His lack of enthusiasm matched that of his audience.
Buggy went to Snuffy and told him, “Turn on the laughy-gas. Quick.”
Goldstein continued, “Have you ever noticed how humiliating it is when someone runs you over with their car in the middle of the day? It’s painful, sure, but nobody ever tells you how embarrassing it is. You’re just lying there, crumpled up, and everyone’s staring at you not sure what to do. Especially once the driver who ran you over gets out of the car, picks you up off the ground, and tosses you in the trunk.”
Buggy was so focused on the lack of a reaction from the crowd that he didn’t realize Goldstein’s routine was a thinly veiled cry for help.
“It’s not working,” Buggy whispered to Snuffy. “Turn the gas up higher.”
“But it’s already flooding the seating area,” Snuffy said. “They should be laughing by now.”
“Do you see anyone laughing out there? Crank it up.”
Goldstein looked around the room, waiting for a response. But there was none.
“Have you ever noticed how comedians don’t normally perform with broken legs, ripped-up clothes, or bruised-up faces?” Goldstein didn’t know how to get through to the audience without spelling it out more than that.
Buggy didn’t know why the Happy Juice wasn’t kicking in yet. The comedian should have transformed into a clown by then, giving the crowd a more lively show. Buggy also didn’t know why the laughy-gas wasn’t changing the mood of the audience.
ClownFellas Page 26
