ClownFellas (40 page)

Uncle Jojo knew his days were numbered. With both the French clown and the Bozo Family going to come after his head, Jojo didn't know what choice he had. In a moment of weakness, he did something he never thought he'd ever do. He went to the feds.

“I want to cut a deal,” Jojo said to a tired-eyed agent with a blond buzz cut.

The only thing Jojo could think to do was rat on his brother and get into the witness protection program. It was the worst possible thing he could imagine himself doing, but it was better than getting himself killed.

“What kind of deal?” the agent asked, leaning back in his chair. He knew exactly who Jojo was, and exactly how valuable he could be in taking down the Bozo Family.

“I'm willing to testify against my brother, my nephew, and whoever else you want to put away in my family. As long as you can protect me from them.”

Agent Buzzcut nodded. “I think that can be arranged.”

Then the agent stood up from his desk and yelled around a corner, “Manny. I got someone for you.”

When Manny Malone came over to the agent's desk, Jojo's heart sank in his chest. He knew Malone was on the French clown payroll. There was no way the feds would be able to protect him with Malone on their team. He really didn't think things through before coming here.

“This guy wants to cut a deal,” said Agent Buzzcut.

Manny nodded. When his eyes caught Jojo's, he couldn't help but laugh. “Sure, I'll take care of it. Come with me, Mr. Bozo.”

Jojo followed Manny Malone. The fed snapped his fingers at three other guys and they came with him. Jojo thought they'd be going in to a private room somewhere, but Manny took him out of the building into the back alley. Then he grabbed the clown by the neck and threw him to the ground.

“You rotten lying scumbag,” Manny said. Then he kicked him in the stomach.

Jojo hadn't gotten a beating in a long time. It was usually him telling others to do the beatings for him. When Manny's foot connected with his soft clown belly, Jojo nearly puked all over the asphalt.

“You set my men up, you son of a bitch,” Manny said.

His men took turns kicking him and stomping his chest.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jojo asked, coughing up bloody spit.

They picked him up off the ground and held him in place as Manny used him as a punching bag.

“Those guys who accompanied the Juggler Brothers to do the hit on Jimmy Bozo worked for me.” Manny punched him in the mouth. “They were good friends of mine. You set them up to get killed by Jimmy Bozo.”

Jojo shook his head. “I didn't have anything to do with that. I set up the hit, but Jimmy was the one who managed to kill them all.”

Manny punched him again. “You expect me to care about whether you were behind it or not, clown? You killed them out of either malice or incompetence. Either way, it's your fault.”

“It's not my fault your guys couldn't take out one measly clown who didn't even know they were coming.”

Manny went for the gumballs next, kicking the underboss right between his baggy legs. Jojo crumpled to the ground.

“Jimmy killed one of their friends,” Manny said. “I promised them payback for that. And you know what they got? Nothing but early graves.” He kicked him in the face. “They were good men. They had families. They didn't deserve what happened to 'em.”

Jojo drooled blood down his cheek. “I didn't know…”

Manny said, “We should just kill you ourselves, but now that you got both of the major Little Bigtop families after you we think it'll be more fun to see who kills you first.”

Jojo gurgled his own blood.

“We got a pool going to see who kills you first. My money's on Daddy Longlegs.”

Another fed said, “I put my money on Don Bozo.”

“Nah, they're going to send Mr. Pogo after him,” said another. “He won't stand a chance.”

Then the feds continued beating him in silence, taking out their aggression for losing their close friends. Jojo had made a huge mistake. He wasn't going to get help from the feds. Not only that but he was going to look terrible at his daughter's wedding. She was going to kill him if he ruined her wedding photos.

The day of the wedding, Uncle Jojo was still swollen and bruised. He had to add quite a bit of makeup to cover the wounds on his face. His body still hurt like hell, but his daughter didn't notice anything wrong with him. That was all that really mattered.

Jojo didn't know how he was going to face his brother and nephew that day. He was in a panic, terrified of what was going to happen. He also didn't know if Pepper was going to show up and tell his wife about the affair. He didn't know how his wife would react when learning what he'd been doing behind her back. Yet the thing he was most worried about, the thing he knew was going to happen without fail, was that Le Mystère would hit the wedding. But whether they would be targeting him or his nephew, he had no idea. At that moment, they were probably far more pissed at Jojo than they were at Jimmy. As far as they knew, Jojo was the brains behind getting the Juggler Brothers killed. He'd made himself a much higher-priority target. Their father, Daddy Longlegs, was surely on a warpath.

Jojo thought about coming clean to his brother in order to get his help protecting the wedding. He knew his brother would do it for Taffy's sake. But he couldn't bring himself to contact him. He was never good at facing the music. So, instead, he went to Beano for help—the only clown he knew he could trust. Together, they rounded up about a dozen burly mugs who could work security for the wedding, and let them know exactly what to expect. He just hoped they would be enough.

“Everything's ruined!” Taffy cried, running through the house in her pajamas. “The wedding's off!”

Jojo was kind of relieved to hear that canceling the wedding was actually a possibility. “What's wrong, princess?”

“My hair!” she cried, pointing at her head. “Look what they did to it!”

Taffy's hair was tied up in an elegant hairdo—a traditional clown wedding hairstyle that made it appear as if she had three scoops of bubblegum ice cream on her head—that exposed a cluster of pink polka dots on the back of her neck. It was common for clowns to have colorful polka-dot birthmarks, but most clowns were embarrassed to show them off. Taffy, on the other hand, thought they were one of her cutest features.

“What's wrong with your hair?” Jojo asked. “It looks beautiful.”

“No, it's terrible!” she said, nearly in tears. “It's supposed to be cotton candy pink but it turned out salmon pink!”

Gianna stepped out of the kitchen, already breaking open a bottle of rosé wine.

“Don't cry, you'll make your eyes all puffy,” her mother said.

She seemed to be at her limits with her daughter and couldn't take anymore.

“It looks great,” Jojo said. “No one's even going to notice.”

“But it won't match Pinky's suit. The whole point was for my hair to match his suit!”

Gianna laughed and shook her head.

“I told you the hairdresser was mixing the dye wrong,” Gianna said. “Didn't I tell you? And did you listen?”

“But she was supposed to be the best in town,” Taffy cried.

Jojo put his hands on his daughter's shoulders. “It's not the end of the world. The wedding will be great. You're going to look great. You just need to relax. It's okay if everything's not a hundred percent perfect.”

“But it
has
to be perfect in every way or else I don't want to get married!”

“Okay, then it
will
be perfect,” Jojo said. “Your hair
does
look perfect. I'm sure it's just the lighting in here. It's too dark. The church lighting will be much brighter. I'm sure your hair will look cotton candy pink when you walk down the aisle.”

Taffy sniffled and wiped her little pink nose. “Are you sure?”

She was beginning to calm down.

“I'm positive. Don't worry. Everything will be perfect.”

Taffy nodded and took a few deep breaths.

After she seemed almost relaxed, her face went angry. “It better be perfect!”

Then she stormed out of the room.

His wife just laughed again and lit a cigarette. “She's been like that all day. I'm about ready to shoot myself.”

She took a large swig of wine.

“Are you sure you should be drinking that on your medication?” Jojo asked.

She shrugged. “There's no way I'm getting through this thing sober.”

“But you sure you should start so early? You're going to be trashed by the time the wedding starts.”

“I sure hope I am,” she said. “It's the only way I'm going to be able to get along with the mother of the groom.”

“Tina? What's wrong with Tina? She's a good lady.”

“She's a damn whore is what she is. I can't believe we're letting our daughter marry a son of a whore.”

“I thought you liked Pinky.”

“I
do
like Pinky. I absolutely adore the kid. Once he becomes my son-in-law, he'll be the only member of this family I can actually stand. But his mother? I don't want a prostitute coming to our Thanksgiving or Christmas. And babysitting our grandchildren? I won't stand for it.”

“Who said anything about inviting her to Christmas? We don't even invite my brother to Christmas.”

“We'll still have to interact with the piece of trash on occasion. It's going to be embarrassing.”

“Miss Tina's a great lady once you get to know her. And she isn't a whore, she's the manager of a brothel. She's actually an intelligent, respectable businesswoman. She's got class.”

“How would you know? Are you fucking her?”

Jojo just groaned and left the room in the middle of the argument. He had bigger things to worry about than their future family gatherings. Jojo would be happy just to live long enough to make it to one.

Taffy was picked up by her bridesmaids—three giggling clown girls who spoke in such high-pitched voices that Jojo had to deal with a piercing headache for an hour after they left. Jojo and his wife took a separate car. They didn't speak for most of the way there. It was almost like she knew there was something she should be mad at him for, she just didn't know what it was yet.

Once the silence got to Jojo, he asked, “So where they going on the honeymoon?”

“The Bahamas.”

“What? Why?”

“That's where Taffy wanted to go,” Gianna replied, while trying to get a wine stain out of her fluffy polka-dot dress.

“With all that sun? You know what that'll do to her clown complexion? She'll come back looking like a jack-o'-lantern.”

Gianna shrugged. “That's what I said, but does she ever listen to me?”

“She should've gone to Vegas like a normal clown. My cousin Dinko could've set them up with a nice penthouse suite.” He snickered and shook his head. “The Bahamas? What an idiot…”

Gianna rolled her eyes at her husband. “Your daughter's getting married today. Quit criticizing her decisions and just try to be happy for her for a change.”

Jojo wondered where the queen of criticism got the nerve telling him that.

When they got to the church, they saw that the circus tent was already set up for the reception. Earl Berryman and his crew of animal trainers were tending to the caged elephants and horses. The neighborhood clown children were gathered in the lot, pointing at the elephants and trying to feed them peanuts through the bars. There were hundreds of wedding balloons hovering over the tent, ready to be released at the end of the ceremony.

It was still a couple of hours before the ceremony so only the ushers and wedding party were there. Among the groomsmen was Vinnie Blue Nose, someone Jojo had to avoid. Jimmy had to have already told the clown everything about what went down at Pepper's apartment. The last thing Jojo needed was to be confronted about it by that cocky prick.

Once they got inside the church, Jojo split from his wife and ducked into the men's room. He had a whole minute of solitude until Reverend Jellybottom came in, slapping across the tiles with his floppy dress shoes. The big-bottomed clown went to the urinal next to him and stared him in the eyes as he relieved himself.

“It's going to be a fine wedding, Brother Bozo. A fine wedding.”

Jojo couldn't urinate with the clown staring at him, so he just stood there with his fly open as the reverend started a conversation.

“There's nothing I like more than a clown wedding.”

Jojo didn't know what else to say to the large clown, so he said, “Thanks for getting the choir together for this.”

Jellybottom smiled wide. “My pleasure, Brother Bozo. My pleasure.”

Jojo gave up on trying to urinate, zipped up his fly, and went to wash his hands. Before he could escape, the preacher stopped him.

“Hey, you were at my performance I gave over the summer, weren't you? The one where Bobby Goldstein performed?”

Jojo couldn't forget. The event was a disaster. “Yeah, I was there.”

The reverend zipped up his fly and turned to him, just staring for a minute, as if waiting for compliments.

“Well, what did you think?” the reverend asked. “Of my act, I mean.”

“Umm…” He'd hated every second of it, but didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings before performing the ceremony. “It was fine.”

Jojo tried to turn to leave, but the reverend grabbed him by the shoulder.

“So I was wondering if maybe you can help me out a little. I had this idea for making some comedy recordings called
The Jokes of Jellybottom.
I got the recording studio, the money for producing them, but I need distribution. That's where you come in.”

The reverend just stared at him for a moment, waiting for an impressed look to cross Jojo's face.

When he didn't respond, the reverend asked, “So what do you say? Think we can go into business together?”

Jojo didn't want to be having this discussion right now. He tried to make his expressions obvious to the preacher, but Jellybottom wasn't picking up on it.

“Well, you know that's illegal, don't you, Reverend?” Jojo asked. “You sure you want to go down that path?”

Jellybottom laughed. “Ah, what's the harm in spreading a little of the gift of laughter? Nothing in the Bible says comedy's a sin.”

“Nothing in the Bible says that selling narcotics is a sin, either, but you don't want to get caught doing something like that. Comedy's a serious offense in this country these days.”

Jellybottom laughed. “Yeah, but when you got a gift like mine it's a sin not to use it.”

Jojo couldn't take it anymore. The big-bottomed clown was getting under his skin.

“Look, we'll talk about it another time. It's my daughter's wedding. I'm not interested in doing business on my daughter's wedding day.”

“Of course, of course…”

The reverend winked at him. Jojo had no idea what the wink was all about.

Jojo thought he was finally able to break free of the conversation when the reverend said something that killed Jojo's patience.

“One last thing, do you think it would be okay if I told a few jokes during the ceremony? I got a few goods ones I just came up with.”

Then something snapped in Jojo. He couldn't control himself.

The reverend continued, “I believe a ceremony should have a good balance of entertainment and inspiration. If I told a few of my hilarious humdingers—”

Jojo grabbed the preacher by the neck, shoved him against the wall, and yelled in his face, “If you even think about telling one of your shitty, idiotic jokes at my daughter's wedding, I'll shove your head so far up your fat ass…”

Then he realized what he was doing and let the reverend go.

“No problem.” Jellybottom nearly wet himself. “I don't need to tell any jokes.”

“Reverend, wait…,” Jojo said, trying to apologize for his outburst.

The stress must've gotten to him. He didn't know what he was doing.

The reverend ran for the door in tears. “I'll never tell any jokes ever again!”

“I'm sorry,” Jojo said, but the reverend was already gone.

He washed his face and pressed his head against the mirror.

“You got to get ahold of yourself, jackass…”

He hoped he hadn't upset the reverend too much. The last thing he wanted was to mess up the ceremony.

He looked up and saw his reflection shaking his head at him.

“Don't you even start,” he said to the mirror.