ClownFellas (21 page)

Hats didn't object when Pinky said he didn't want to go after Nick for Taffy's sake. Deep down, the son of a bitch cared for Taffy and didn't want anything bad to happen to her.

Without any other course of action, they spent the night drinking in Nicky's apartment. He had a carousel-shaped wine case on his coffee table that he used to store bottles of single-malt scotch. As they lounged on the charred couch, still smoking from when Hats took the flamethrower to it, they took turns swigging from the bottle and spinning the carousel around with their feet. When morning came, they wondered if they shouldn't just go to bed and let Mr. Pogo take them in their sleep.

“Hey, Hats?” Pinky said.

“Yeah?” Hats blinked his eyes open, realizing that he was dozing off.

“How come you volunteer at a church on weekends?”

“Huh?” Hats was still partially asleep.

“I went to your church yesterday and found out that you not only volunteer there, you also donate a lot of your earnings. I'm just curious. Why do you do it? You don't strike me as the type to be generous or even religious.”

“Oh, that…” Hats sat up straight and shook himself awake. “Nah, I'm not religious.”

“Then why do you go to church? Why do you volunteer your time?”

“For my mother,” Hats said. “She was the religious one. The faith was a big part of her life, especially toward the end of her life.”

“She died?”

Hats let out a sigh. “Yeah, quite a while ago. But I made a promise to her and I never made a promise to my mother that I couldn't keep. The lady was a saint.”

“You promised her you'd attend church?”

“No, I promised I'd donate a percentage of my earnings to the church. You know, to kind of make up for working in the business I'm in.”

“Then why do you attend?”

Hats shrugged. “I don't know.” He seemed like he was getting too lazy to answer Pinky's questions. “I guess it's because it feels like I'm with my mother when I'm there. If I close my eyes or zone out on the sermon, sometimes it feels like my mother's there right next to me. Sometimes I'd even feel her elbow me for snoring like she used to do when I was young…”

Hats snickered and then trailed off, thinking about how he might be seeing his mother again soon. Before Pinky could continue to pry into his personal life, Hats changed the subject.

“So you sure there's no way to get the tracking device out of our bloodstream?”

“Not that I can think of,” Pinky said. “We can try to find a doctor, but I doubt he'd be able to. The feds told me that only they could remove them. They said they'd take it out if I flipped.”

“Don't trust the cops. They'll say anything to get you to flip.”

Pinky nodded and handed Hats the bottle of scotch. “Maybe if we donated blood we might get lucky and bleed out the device.”

Hats snickered and took a swig. “I'm not lucky enough for anything like that. My plan is to put as much alcohol into my bloodstream as possible. Maybe that will interfere with it somehow. Make me untraceable.”

Then he poured back the rest of the bottle down his throat.

“If only I knew where he was…,” Pinky said. “I'd rescue Taffy and choke him to death with his own bow tie.”

“Yeah, but there's no time left for that.” Hats looked at his watch. “Pogo will be coming for us in an hour or so.”

Hats spun the carousel on the table and pulled out another bottle of scotch.

“I've got to hand it to Nicky,” Hats said, checking out the hand-carved bottle holder. “For a low-level grunt, he's sure got a lot of nice stuff. Where'd he get his hands on a liquor holder like this anyway? If I wasn't about to die I'd definitely have to get myself one.”

“That? He probably got it from his parents' restaurant.”

As he watched the carousel spinning on the table, Pinky remembered something. He sat up.

“That's where he is…”

“What?” Hats asked, gasping at the scotch fumes.

“The Carousel.”

“What the heck are you talking about?”

“His family's restaurant. It closed down after his dad died last year, but I think Nicky still owns the building. He always talked about turning it into a nightclub someday.”

“You really think that's where he is?”

“I'm sure of it. It's not in Bozo territory, so it's the only place he'd feel safe holding Taffy captive.”

“We only have an hour left. You really think we still have time to go after him?”

Pinky nodded. “Yeah.”

“What about Taffy? He said he'd kill her.”

“Who says he won't kill her anyway? If he let her go and Taffy told her father all about what happened, Nick would be a dead man.”

Hats stood up. “Then let's go after that sorry sack.”

But then Hats got dizzy and had to sit back down again. With all the liquor in him, he didn't know how he was going to be able to drive.

They hit the road just in time to get caught up in morning traffic. It took them the whole hour just to get to The Carousel on the other side of Little Bigtop. Hats's blood-alcohol level didn't help pick up the pace.

“Mr. Pogo will be coming for us any minute now,” Hats said. “Even if we get Bowtie, there's no way we'll be able to get the hit called off before Pogo gets us.”

Pinky had a determined look on his face. “I just have to live long enough to save Taffy.”

“I texted Blue Nose a ton of times, but he's not replying. Either he's too worried about Jimmy's condition or he just doesn't care enough to bother.”

“Or he lost his phone,” Pinky said.

When they arrived at The Carousel, Pinky was amazed that it was so big. He'd never seen it in person before. It was big enough to be a department store. As the two clowns stepped out of the station wagon, they looked through the cracks between the boarded-up windows. Every booth in the place was its own mini carousel. Back when the place was open, customers were able to eat in the center of their own carousel as the animals circled their table. They were known for having the best clown cuisine in all of Little Bigtop. It was a big attraction for vanilla tourists. But that was a long time ago.

“It's kind of a dump,” Hats said.

He wasn't exaggerating. The restaurant was closed less than a year ago, but this damage looked a lot older than that. The carousel figures were splintered with faded chipped-off paint. The floor was covered in trash. It looked like homeless clowns had been using it as a bathroom.

“You sure he's in here?” Hats asked. “The place looks deserted.”

“Yeah.” Pinky pointed at the entrance. “Look.”

Planks of wood lay on the sidewalk by the front door. Somebody recently broke in.

“He's here all right.”

As they went through the front door, they scanned the dining room. It was a massive area to search, but they didn't see or hear anyone. Hats took off one of his caps and retrieved a retractable sniper rifle that was stored underneath. After he searched the area with the scope, he said, “I don't see anyone.”

“He's probably on the roof,” Pinky said. “There's supposed to be a miniature theme park up there.”

As they walked through the restaurant, Pinky looked down at the rifle Rizzo was carrying, then up to the hats on the stubby clown's head. “How the heck do you store all that weaponry in all those hats anyway? I've never really understood that.”

Hats knocked on the side of his hat. “I've got a strong head.”

When they got to the roof, Hats realized that Pinky was right. There was a small run-down theme park up there with a massive carousel in the center of it. Tied to one of the horses was Taffy Bozo, and standing next to her, pointing a handgun at her head, was Nicky Bowtie.

“I'm surprised to see you here, Pink,” Nicky yelled across the rooftop. “I thought you actually loved your girlfriend enough to stay away.”

“Let her go, Bowtie,” Pinky said. “If you let her go and confess to the family that you've been working with the feds we'll let you live.”

Nicky scratched his head with his gun. “And how does that work out well for me in the end?”

“You have time,” Pinky said. “You can leave town. Get help from the feds. You'll at least have a chance. If you don't comply then you'll have no chance at all.”

As Pinky spoke, Hats got into position with his sniper rifle, trying to get a clear shot at the clown with the bowtie.

Nicky laughed at Pinky's demand. “I'm calling your bluff, Pink. If we get into a firefight, Taffy will not survive it. I'll make sure of that. And I know you'd rather die than let that happen. Go ahead and make your threats. I'm not backing down.”

Hats adjusted the scope, trying to get Nicky into focus.

“Almost got it,” he whispered to Smiles.

“Yeah, but you forgot one thing,” Pinky said.

Nicky chuckled again. “What's that?”

Pinky pulled out his revolver and pointed it at Nick. “Your gun is loaded with depressing bullets. You can't kill her. You can only make her sad enough to kill herself.”

“So?”

“So how is she going to kill herself when you have her all tied up like that?”

When Nick saw that Pinky was right, his eyes flooded with panic.

“I've got the shot,” Hats said.

Pinky nodded at him. “Take it.”

But once Hats had the rat in his line of fire, he saw something over Nick's shoulder. On the roof of the building across the street was a clown just standing there on the ledge, staring at him with an expressionless face. The clown wore a jester's cap with bells on each side. His skin was bone-white, with deep-blue circles around his eyes and a blue mouth that seemed to be slanted to one side of his face.

Even though he needed a scope to see him, the clown with the slanted mouth required no special equipment to peer deep into Hats's soul.

“Shit…,” Hats said.

He saw something else in his scope coming at them. It looked like a small blue baseball attached to two springs like legs. A slinky bomb.

“Mr. Pogo found us!”

When the slinky bomb bounced off the roof of the Carousel, it exploded in midair between them and knocked all three of the clownfellas off their feet.

Nicky Bowtie was laughing his ass off as he pulled himself up, picking shrapnel out of the side of his face.

“Time's up, Pink!” Nicky said.

Mr. Pogo dropped from the ledge of the other building, bounced off the street and landed on the roof of The Carousel. Pinky rolled over and got up to his knees. As the smoke cleared, he saw the clown hit man standing there, wobbling up and down. Mr. Pogo's legs were springs from the thighs down to his shoes.

The slanted mouth did not say anything. The clown just stared at his target, waiting for him to make his move. Pinky looked at Taffy tied to the carousel horse. Nicky Bowtie stood next to her, laughing. Pinky saw him laugh but couldn't hear any sound. His ears were still ringing from the blast. If he was going to save Taffy he was going to have to go through Mr. Pogo.

“He's the one you want.” Pinky pointed at Nick. “He's the rat. They put a contract on the wrong guy.”

Mr. Pogo just stared at him with his emotionless face. He didn't care why people hired him. When a contract was made, he fulfilled his obligations without prejudice.

“Nice try, Pink,” Nicky shouted.

Pinky knew it wouldn't work, but he figured he'd give it a try. But he couldn't reason with Pogo.

Hats was lying on the ground. He wasn't moving. Pinky didn't know if he was dead or just knocked out.

He had to take out Pogo on his own.

Pogo leapt into the air as Pinky fired his revolver at him. The flower bullet whizzed beneath the hit man and pierced the ground, creating a bouquet of roses that burst from the bullet hole and grew on the spot. As Pogo dropped another slinky bomb on him, Pinky ran across the roof of the restaurant and rolled behind a bumper car to avoid the explosion.

“It's pointless, Pink!” Nicky Bowtie yelled, giggling from his cover behind the carousel. “You don't stand a chance. You might as well just give up now.”

Pinky stood up and aimed his revolver. Mr. Pogo dodged, bouncing on his spring legs across the roof as Pinky fired at him. With each round, the roof became dotted with an assortment of flowers growing out of the bullet holes. There were daisies, sunflowers, tulips, all bursting into life, adding color to the otherwise drab rooftop.

Unable to land a shot, Pinky aimed for the ground as Pogo bounced. When the hit man's feet hit the ground, a rosebush exploded from the bullet hole and coiled into his spring legs. Mr. Pogo bounced back into the air. His spring legs stretched twenty feet up until they went taut, then he was slingshotted back to earth and slammed face-first into the cement floor. His feet were held to the ground by the roses.

Now was Pinky's chance. He'd actually tripped up the notorious hit man, a clown believed to be invincible. But as Pinky fired, his revolver only clicked. He was out of bullets.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Pinky ducked behind cover and reloaded his gun. He only put in a couple more bullets. But he could already hear Pogo ripping the roses from his springs. Pinky missed his only shot.

By the time Pinky stood up and raised his weapon, Pogo was on his feet. The hit man had pulled twin revolvers from holsters on his back and fired them in unison. Pogo was a master at using slinky bullets—spring-action rounds that could pierce flesh, bounce off solid surfaces, then hit the victim a second time. When Pogo's two slinky bullets hit Pinky, they entered through his arms, ricocheted off a bumper car, then pierced through both his legs.

The pain was like nothing Pinky had ever felt before. He crumpled to the ground. Blood erupted from his body and cries gushed from his throat. Mr. Pogo always crippled his victims before killing them.

Pinky looked over at Taffy. She looked so frightened and weak. It wasn't the way he'd ever seen her. She was usually so safe, so protected from both cops and criminals. Pinky couldn't believe he'd done this to her. He couldn't believe he'd put her in so much danger. And he wasn't even able to save her in the end. Nicky Bowtie won.

“There you go, Pink,” Nicky called, cackling like mad. “Just lay there and die.”

Mr. Pogo leapt into the air above Pinky and aimed the barrels of his revolvers at his heart. But before Pogo could finish him off, a giant boxing glove the size of a wrecking ball hit Pogo from the side and knocked him out of the sky.

“What the hell?” Pinky said.

He turned over and dragged himself out from behind the bumper car until he saw where the massive boxing glove came from.

“Take that, ya mook!” Hats yelled, laughing at Mr. Pogo as the hit man was tossed over the side of the building.

Rizzo wasn't dead. He was back on his feet, holding what looked to be a bazooka with a colossal spring-action fist attached to it.

Pinky got to his feet, barely able to stagger on his wounded legs.

“He still has twenty minutes before he can kill me,” Rizzo told Pinky. “I'll hold him back. You go after Bowtie.”

Hats didn't realize how wounded the half clown was, but Pinky agreed anyway. A look of panic crossed Nicky Bowtie's face as Pinky turned toward him.