I sensed eighteen indrawn breaths being held. Well, maybe seventeen, including mine. I’d glanced aside at Bruce. He didn’t seem quite as mesmerized as the rest of us.
“My associates,” said Johnny, “will give you full details about your time leading up to the competition. There will be,” he added, “no formal rehearsals as such. The director will want to block out times with you, but you won’t deliver your material.” Diane and I exchanged glances. “The idea is to keep your humor as fresh as you can, as topical as you wish. Besides, most of you are already familiar with your fellow comics’ routines.”
Someone laughed appreciatively. There were smiles.
The rest was pretty much pro forma, with the exception of a revelation that stirred some enthusiasm. Robin Williams would make a special appearance at the beginning of the show. Very brief, but very funny, Johnny said. That was great. I couldn’t think of anyone living I would rather have as a comedy role model.
Johnny asked for questions. There weren’t many. Then he excused himself and turned us over to his aides, who passed out laminated photo passes and rehearsal schedules. It turned out the telecast was originating from the Aladdin Theater, the very same place where Tiffany was drowned in flop sweat.
That didn’t make anybody happy. Fast Eddie Teck brought it up. Johnny suggested we all just consider the competition a dedicatory memorial to Tiffany, George Marlin, Boonie, and the others in our little community who had died as the butts of the Joker’s sadistic jokes.
Then the meeting was over. With a smile—I realized that Johnny had never displayed a straight face for the entirety of the evening—our host thanked us for our time and wished us well on Saturday night. People started to shuffle, shrugging on jackets and coats.
“Come on, Pete,” said Bruce. “I need to be down at street level before the crowd.”
I had no reason to stick around, so I beat him to the elevator and punched the button. There was something about Johnny’s smile that weirded me out.
“One to a customer, gents and gentlettes,” I said, “get ’em while they’re cold.” Within five minutes I’d found myself in a situation that reminded me of doing volunteer labor (or not-so-volunteer if a guy were directed by the court to do a community service gig) in a downtown mission bread line.
When Bruce and I had exited the office building and walked to the head of the alley where his car had been parked, I found that the old codger who drove for him had turned that great gleaming barge around and popped the trunk lid. The luggage compartment was full of wrapped packages.
I looked down at them. “Bond market down, Bruce? You selling tailgate bargains now? Watches and Walkmen that fell off a truck, maybe?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Bruce. “But I would appreciate it if you would walk over by the door and steer everyone here to me. Everyone.” The tone in his voice was all business. I wasn’t about to say no.
Getting sixteen comics to congregate in the dark by an alley mouth where one of their colleagues was handing out butcher-paper-wrapped parcels was not the easiest job I’ve ever done.
“Listen,” I said to them. “Humor him. Maybe he’s the Joker. Just take a package.”
“What is this shit, man?” said Fast Eddie, bouncing his packet on his palm a couple times. He tugged at the twine wrapping it, ripped some of the paper loose. “Old clothes?”
He was the last one to accept a package.
“All right,” said Bruce. “Please, just a minute of your time. Then you can go.”
They quieted. They crowded around the rear of the limo. They were still pumped up with the afterglow of having rubbed shoulders with the guy who could make the rest of their lives work like Swiss clockwork.
Bruce looked seriously at us all. “This might well save all our lives.” His tone was convincing as all hell. “And if you think it’s too weird, please, just trust me. It might save you from ending up like poor Tiffany or the rest.”
Any grumbling or snickers ended at that.
“And if it is not something that’s needed,” Bruce continued, “then perhaps we still can provide a finale for the joke-off that no one in the audience will ever forget.”
That was the hook. Having sunk it, Bruce went on. What he suggested to us was a hell of a lot funnier than any of his onstage jokes had been.
I like to think I own a healthy amount of self-confidence, but let me tell you—for three days I woke up soaked in, wore under my sodden clothes, and tried to wash off at night, more anticipatory flop sweat than had devoured poor Tiffany’s whole body. I must have lost twenty percent of my bodyweight from evaporation, and didn’t even have any spare pounds to lose.
I kept thinking about what I was going to spring on Johnny and Robin and sixty million viewers Saturday night. None of my usual material seemed funny anymore. Maybe it was time for fast-food jokes. Probably not.
Damn.
Maybe I could find a way to use the package Bruce had handed me out of the cavernous trunk of his limo as a prop. Maybe not. I wondered whether I was going to get ulcers out of this. Herpes lesions. Colitis. Pellagra. Pellagra?
I kept on sweating.
Saturday came and with it, the sort of feeling I hadn’t had since I was five years old. I can remember wondering whether my folks would remember my fifth birthday. I wondered whether my dad would come back from a business trip down south. His trips on the road had been getting longer and longer. The feeling was anticipatory and scary, and a little sick with apprehension. When Dad showed and the cake started to smoke in the kitchen and the party started, it was almost an anticlimax.
I woke up at six, then dozed and rocked and tossed until about noon, when I finally rolled out of bed. My dad called ten minutes later to wish me luck and to inform me that the whole family would be home watching the show on TV. I’d gotten eight comp tickets for good seats at the Aladdin, but there were just too many in the family who wanted to go. So no one was. Dad had given the tickets to our church pastor and he was going to find worthy recipients. Shoot. I didn’t say anything, but I was willing to bet I could have scalped those suckers for enough to keep me at least a month if I didn’t win the joke-off.
Then Mom came on, and then Cousin Sook, and everybody else who was over at the house, and they all said they loved me and hoped I’d do ’em proud. I promised I would.
Then I went into the bathroom and threw up.
The Aladdin seemed a lot different than it had the evening of the fatal Tuesday Night Laugh Riot. The few handfuls of human beings, both performers and audience, who had been in attendance then had been dwarfed by this old Arabian nights deco barn. Tonight the two thousand seats were full. It was obvious that there had been a quick sprucing up. The sheets of paint, which had threatened to peel all the way off the ceiling and skate down into the crowd, had all been scraped and replaced. The gigantic stage curtains had been dusted—the maintenance crew must have beat them with telephone poles. But the place still smelled of mildew and outright rot.
The plan was simple. All us contestants were to be seated right at the front in the orchestra section. No hiding back in the green room. We would be in plain sight so the cameras could zoom in and catch our sick expressions as other performers outclassed us. Johnny was slated for the opening monologue; then he’d introduce Robin Williams, and Robin would hand the show back to Johnny. Then it would be our turn. Five minutes max. Not even the fifteen Warhol had promised us all.
I amused myself for a while looking back for friendly faces in the rapidly filling auditorium. I didn’t see any, at least no one who was familiar.
“Hello, Pete,” I stopped craning my neck. Bruce settled himself in the theater seat beside mine. No mutant zoot tonight. He wore a perfectly cut tux. Very formal-looking. Class act. I started to rethink my policy of wearing exactly the sort of bright street clothes I had worn to the comedy clubs. At least my shirt was clean. I’d remembered to select one off a hanger in the clean end of the closet just as I was ready to go out and treat
myself to a cab over to the theater.
“Hey, Bruce.” I wished I felt as light as my voice. “How’s it going?”
“I’m hoping for the best—and wishing you well.” Those dark eyes stabbed toward mine. “You remembered to bring the package?”
I nodded. Yeah, I’d remembered after almost spacing it out. I’d been out the door with the key in the deadbolt before I remembered the parcel. Almost didn’t go back. Then said the hell with it and unlocked the door again.
“Actually,” said Bruce, surveying out colleagues, our friends, our competition, “I wish us all a great amount of good fortune tonight.”
There was an undertone I couldn’t quite interpret. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He smiled slightly—“Nothing important.”—and hesitated even more slightly, but I still caught it. “Perhaps I’m a bit concerned about flop-sweat.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve cornered the market right here in my armpits.”
He touched my wrist reassuringly and sat back in his seat. The floor director signaled that it was one minute until airtime. The lights were already uncomfortably warm. Then the manic theme music—sort of a strange mixture of “March of the Marionettes” and the main theme from Bubo the Clown’s Afterschool Fun Club—swelled up from the house PA system, and we were off.
God, the Gotham City Laughs of the Future competition started. The joke-off was on the air. I was simultaneously terrified and ecstatic.
And then, thirty seconds later, I was only terrified.
It happened almost as soon as the offstage announcer introduced Johnny and he virtually skipped onto the stage. The follow-spot found him and he waited patiently for the wild applause to die down.
“Good evening, ladies and germs,” he said, grinning with all those sparkling teeth. “Or maybe just good evening, germs.”
At that, I don’t know what we all expected. Asian flu jokes, maybe.
That’s not what we got. From the contestants’ section, I had an especially good view of what happened next. Johnny cupped his hands into claws and reached up toward his own face. He sank his nails into his rosy cheeks and started moving his fingers as though kneading dough.
Then he ripped off his own face. He pulled away what seemed to be strips of pink flesh as the audience stared. As my little sister would say, it was totally gross. Another set of features emerged. I admit it—I was expecting Freddy Kruger.
It wasn’t. It was Robin Williams.
Ripples of applause started with us in the front, then spread back into the loge and the balconies. On the stage, Robin Williams grinned and it seemed like he was looking straight down at me. He held up his palms, acknowledging the delighted cheers.
I hadn’t realized he was so tall.
Then Robin Williams ripped off his face, too. Just like Johnny. What the hell was this going to be, an endless series of Chinese boxes in the form of latex full-face masks?
I stared at the new persona of the man on stage. He yanked off his toupee and fluffed out his scraggly hair. Green hair.
Oh shit, I thought, along with, I’m sure, most of the rest of the audience all at the same time. It’s the Joker.
The guy on the stage grinned from ear to ear, but he didn’t look like a happy camper. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “a funny thing happened on the way to the theater.” There was a great deal of consternation behind me in the audience. The Joker held up his hands for silence. There was a rapid-fire crackle of automatic weapons’ fire and a few screams. The audience quieted down.
“That’s better,” said our lanky host. He slipped off his tux jacket and slipped the sleeves inside out. When he donned the garment again, I saw it was a tasteful metallic purple. This guy was for real, I thought. This wasn’t another gag. I suddenly flashed on George Marlin and Tiffany and Boonie, all their faces, twisted and pained and dying.
I’ll cop to panicking. I started to bolt out of my seat, but I felt a hand firm as wrought iron holding me down. “Hang in there,” said Bruce. “You’ll never get past his men.”
That brought me back. I looked around. All the rent-a-cop security types were clustered around the auditorium doors. Funny, I’d never seen rent-a-cops carrying assault scatterguns and automatic weapons before.
The Joker cleared his throat with a sound like scraping snot off sandpaper with a putty knife. “As I was saying, a funny thing occurred. I happened by a nearby warehouse where your favorites, Mr. Carson and Mr. Williams, are presently safe but confined.” He paused. “They said to say they were sorry they couldn’t make it here in person tonight, but that they were tied up.” The Joker laughed. He was the only one.
He stalked across the stage to the right, then back to the left. The spot followed. I noticed that the lighting tech had slipped in a purple gel. I had a feeling the Joker had covered every detail.
“If you’re thinking that the outside world will see all this on television and collectively alert the National Guard and the Marines, be advised I’ve addressed that possibility. Even as I speak, some sixty million of your fellows are watching an advisory crawl across their screens apologizing for technical difficulties. By way of substitution, a rerun of Wild Kingdom is playing.” The Joker giggled.
“Now.” The Joker stopped centerstage and leered down at us in the first few rows. “Let us cut right to the heart of the matter, figuratively now, later perhaps literally. I have reason to believe that among you is my old nemesis, the Batman.” I could hear murmurs in the audience. “Do I speak plainly enough?”
I think the question was rhetorical. I leaned closer to Bruce. “The comics he killed . . .”
“Bait.” Bruce’s voice was quiet. I looked sidewise at him. He stared at the Joker like a tomcat stares at another tom who’s invaded his territory. That fixedness frightened me.
“Don’t worry,” said the Joker. “You’ll still get to see the show you bought expensive tickets for, but you’ll get a real bonus in addition. The comics who competed for the Laughs of Tomorrow finals are hoping for a new life. Now they can expect an additional treat—the possibility of death as well.”
“He’s gonna kill us all?” I said.
Bruce answered, “I don’t think so. His plan will be mad, but it will still be a plan.”
“Anyone who pays close attention to that caped clod who hounds me,” said the Joker, “knows he possesses all the granite-jawed wit of Mount Rushmore. We are about to discover just how minuscule a sense of humor the man owns.” He gestured toward us in the orchestra. “All of you up here. All eighteen. Now!”
I guess none of us saw any room for argument. Not with the Joker. Not with the two guys with Uzis who escorted us onto the stage.
When we were assembled like a herd—a gaggle—a flock—I don’t know what they say out in the sticks—of sheep guarded by gun-toting goons, the Joker surveyed us cheerily. “You’re all going to do your routines,” he said. “I’m the judge for this. But guess what? I’m not looking for the funniest one anymore. I am searching for the worst, dumbest, least-funny among you. That one, I’m guessing, will be the Batman.” He chortled. “Then we’ll see just how a bad comedian dies on stage.”
We all looked at each other. At least Diana Mulhollen and a woman named Winnie Morales had nothing to worry about. The thought must have occurred simultaneously to Winnie. She held up her hand like a schoolgirl.
“A question?” said the Joker, “or do you have to go to the little girls’ room?”
“Do I gotta go through my routine, too?” said Winnie.
“Everyone does,” came the answer. “My dark foe is a devilishly clever master of disguise, even as I am. Each one of you is suspect.”
“But—” said Winnie. I halfway expected her to drop her trousers and give the Joker some physiological proof of her not being Batman.
“No exceptions, unless you’d like to forfeit your participation in the competition . . .” The Joker’s tone was ominous. Winnie seemed to pick that up. She said nothi
ng and lowered her gaze to the stage at her feet.
“All right, then,” said the Joker, his tone lightening. “Let’s get to it. Time for our first contestant. Remember, friends, you get points for delivery and timing. For being funny, you get your life.”
This was absolutely crazy, I thought. Batman working incognito as an aspiring stand-up comic? Bat guano. I remembered the man I’d met in the police interrogation after George Marlin’s death. That aura of brooding power wasn’t anywhere among my colleagues.
I glanced over at Bruce as we both got up from our seats. That poor sucker might as well have a signed death warrant. He was as funny as—I tried to stop the thought. Too late.—a grave.
“Don’t worry, Pete,” he said. “We’ll all do our best. We’ll all pull through this together.”
Sure, I thought. Together—in a mass grave. One big pine box. Piano crate. God, was I getting hysterical? I took a deep breath. I figured I’d better start thinking about how to buff up my material to a higher sheen.
But as the Joker consulted his list, picking the first contestant, in my head I kept seeing a field of bleached skulls. Eighteen of them.
“. . . so the chief says, ‘Fine, then. I decree death by mongo . . .’ ” And that wrapped up five minutes of pretty decent material by Goombah Dozois, the Cajun comic. The audience exploded into deafening applause. Goombah wasn’t that good, but I’d gotten the feeling as we’d gone down the list of contestants that the crowd both needed a catharsis and wanted to do whatever they could to help us all survive. So they cheered everyone, good, bad, or indifferent. And even under the circumstances of being forced to be funny at gunpoint, or maybe because of it, some of us weren’t even as hilarious as we would have been at, say, the Carob Club Comedy Countdown.
Goombah staggered out of the spotlight and rejoined us. The Joker scanned the list and said, “All right, my friends, we only have a few contestants to go.” That included me. “So keep your pants on.” Everytime he used one of those damned catch-phrases, we all cringed, not knowing if he was about to tie it to some crude wordplay-made-flesh. This time, he didn’t.
The Further Adventures of The Joker Page 19
