ClownFellas (32 page)

“Do you ever put that thing down?” Isabella asked Bingo, waiting patiently for him to come to bed.

The lights were off. Bingo was naked and playing his violin in the moonlight coming through Isabella's bedroom window. The cool night air tickled his scarred flesh and sent chills up his spine, into his fingers, and through the instrument he played.

“I can't put Melinda away without saying good night to her first,” Bingo said.

Isabella cupped her hand on her round nose. Like most clowns, her nose must've been too sensitive to the cold.

“Sometimes I think you love that thing more than me,” she said.

Despite her complaints, Bingo didn't stop playing.

“I can't neglect Melinda,” Bingo said. “She's a demanding woman. And awfully jealous.”

“And what about me?” The clown girl sat up on the bed and wrapped her arms around Bingo's waist. “You don't think I get jealous?”

Their words were almost lyrics to the music he played.

“Of a violin? That's awfully petty, isn't it?”

“I'll show you how petty I can be.”

Isabella removed the violin from his fingers, cutting the music short. Then she placed the instrument gently on the dresser.

“Melinda's not going to like that,” Bingo said. “Interrupting us mid-song? She's going to give me hell for that later.”

Isabella kissed his neck. She had to stand on the bed to reach it. Then she pulled him back into the mattress.

“Would you sell your violin if I asked you to?” Isabella asked, digging her forehead into his chest. Her long curly yellow hair covering his face.

He blew her curls that tickled his nose. “Would you sell your cello?”

“I might. If you wanted me to.”

“I could never sell my violin,” Bingo said. “It's worth more than I am.”

“But why don't you sell it and get another violin? The thing's an antique. You can get a better instrument for a small fraction of what you'd get for it. Then you'd have enough money left over to retire on.”

“Even if it was worth that much, you don't retire in my business,” Bingo said. “Besides, I don't want another violin. This one is mine. It called out to me. I had to work hard for it. Ten years old and I competed against some of the best musicians in the world and I won. It was destined to be in my hands, I tell you. And it'll remain in my hands till my dying day.”

Isabella snickered at him. The clown was stubborn, even more stubborn than she was.

“If the people you work for find out how valuable it is they'll have it taken from you in an instant.”

“I'd like to see them try. The Bozos are my family and my life, giving me work when the symphony wouldn't give me the time of day, but if they tried something like that, I'd end the lot of them.”

“Is that even possible? Just you versus a whole mafia family?”

“I don't know, but if they took my violin I'd sure as hell try.”

Now that Bingo discovered it was the Carnies who were behind all this, he knew exactly where to go next. He had to go to Carnival Island.

Carnival Island was a popular Little Bigtop tourist attraction, or at least it had been back in the day. On the surface, the place was a crappy carnival attraction that hardly anybody ever visited, especially not anyone with small children. But behind the scenes the place was used to manufacture the highly addictive narcotic known as laughy-gas that plagued the streets of Little Bigtop.

The Carnies had been running the laughy-gas drug ring for years and had a complete monopoly over its distribution in Little Bigtop. Nobody dealt laughy-gas unless they worked for the Carnies. Not even the Bozo Family. And anyone who tried was swiftly dealt with in traditional Carnie fashion—their gumballs were cut off and shoved down their throats. Not even Don Bozo with his army of clowns three times the size of the Carnie gang had the nerve to go up against them. He knew the Carnies would fight to the last man, and that kind of war just wasn't good for business. He had a long-standing order among his men to not set foot on Carnival Island. But there Bingo was, all by himself, on his way to Carnie territory to start a little war all on his own.

“We got to be careful,” Bingo told the cleaners. “The Carnies are a dangerous lot.”

They pulled over in a parking spot overlooking Carnival Island. Through the fog rising from the river they could see the tips of the old carnival rides, a run-down Ferris wheel, and a rickety paint-stripped roller coaster. The rides still looked operational, but not exactly safe for human passengers. Anyone paying to ride them would be putting their lives at serious risk. All the machines seemed good for was collecting birdshit.

“They can't be that dangerous,” Clyde said. “You just killed a dozen of them like it was nothing.”

“Those were just grunts,” Bingo said. “I could bulldoze through those wimps all day. But the higher-ranked Carnies are of a completely different class. They're animals.”

The cleaners were getting nervous. They'd never heard of the Carnies before and didn't know what the heck they were doing following the mad clown into a place that even he was afraid to venture.

Bingo continued, “In the Bozo Family, you move up in rank based on your loyalty, your ability to get things done, and how much money you're able to earn for the family. Carnies aren't like that. They move up in rank based on one thing and one thing only—viciousness. The higher the rank, the more brutal the Carnie. The toughest in the gang are their four generals. Each one of those bastards is worth a hundred of the guys we faced back at Isabella's apartment. Going in there's a death sentence. Even the cops stay away from the place.”

“So what's your plan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't you have a plan?”

Bingo shrugged. “Nah, I'm not much of the planning type.”

“You just said going in there's a death sentence. So you're just going to waltz in there without a plan?”

Bingo shrugged again. “I'm more of a doer. My capo, Vinnie Blue Nose,
he's
the planner. I figure I'll just head over there and introduce myself and see what happens.”

“Doesn't that seem kind of…stupid?” Clyde said.

“Probably, but it'll be the fastest way to get their attention.”

Caesar and Clyde realized it was their last chance to break ties with the big clown if they hoped to survive that day. Following him on a suicide mission was where they had to draw the line.

Clyde said, “I'm guessing you don't need us for any of this, so we'll be heading on our way now.”

“But you didn't drive here,” Bingo said. “How you going to get home?”

“We'll walk,” Caesar said.

“Through Little Bigtop?” Bingo asked. “In clown makeup? You'll get yourself killed. You better just come with me until this is all over.”

“Seriously, we'd rather take our chances walking,” Clyde said.

“I insist,” Bingo said, stepping out of the car and opening the back door for Clyde. “It'll be over before you know it.”

“Can't we just wait by the car? You know, where we're less likely to get killed?”

“You guys worry too much.”

Bingo wasn't going to let it go. The two cleaners had no choice but to step out of the car and follow the mad clown onto the island of the Carnies.

They crossed the pedestrian bridge to Carnival Island and arrived at the security gate. They had to buy a ticket to get through.

“It doesn't look like this place is going to be easy to escape once we get in,” Caesar said, hiding behind his partner.

“Yeah, it's a good thing, too,” Bingo said. “I don't want any of those scumbags getting out of here alive, at least not until I get my violin back.”

They went to the ticket booth and saw a Carnie with a thin mustache sleeping on the job. Bingo knocked on the glass. The Carnie nearly fell out of his seat when he woke.

“Three tickets,” Bingo said.

“We're closed,” the Carnie said, annoyed that his sleep was interrupted. “Get lost.”

Bingo just repeated himself. “I said three tickets.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” the Carnie said. “We're closed. We don't let clowns in here anyway.”

“I'm asking you nicely.”

Bingo gave him a look. Then the man with the mustache recognized him.

“Hey, aren't you the goddamn Bozo who—”

Bingo reached through the ticket slot, grabbed him by the neck, and slammed his face into the glass.

“Just let us in before I lose my patience,” Bingo said.

The Carnie choked out the words, “Sure, whatever you say, big guy.”

Then he opened the gate for them.

As the three men entered, they heard the Carnie calling up his superiors to alert them of the intruders.

“I think they know we're here now,” Clyde said.

Bingo smiled. “You see? Things are working out already.”

“How's that?”

“They're saving us the trouble of having to go look for them ourselves.”

The carnival looked even worse on the inside than it did from the outside. The place was practically in ruins. Garbage blew across their path, half the buildings were boarded up, all the paint was chipped and faded, the tents were torn up and half burned, graffiti covered even the rides, and two-foot weeds grew from cracks in the sidewalk. Anyone who paid to get into the place probably would've turned back the second they saw the condition of the grounds. For the most part, the place seemed deserted, apart from the laughing and moaning of people having sex in one of the nearby game booths.

“Yep, the place definitely ain't what it used to be,” Bingo said.

“You ever been?” Clyde asked.

“Only once. The first week I moved to Little Bigtop.” Bingo smiled as he remembered its former state. “The place was packed then. You could tell it was already beginning to go downhill, but it was still a pretty nice way to spend a Saturday night when you got nothing better to do.”

Bingo was only nineteen and wasn't yet accustomed to life in the city. The suburban clown from Connecticut didn't know what he was getting himself into. Even being the size that he was, Carnival Island just wasn't the place anyone went to on their own. The old lady living in the apartment next door warned him of the frequent muggings and reports of stabbings, but Bingo wasn't worried. He figured nobody would see the point in mugging him. Clowns weren't known for having much money.

The lines were long, the food was terrible, and families kept asking to take pictures of him holding their kids because they thought he worked there, but other than that Bingo thought it was a marvelous place. He liked the energy in the air and the crowds of excited people running from the house of mirrors to the dunk-a-clown to the bumper cars to the knife-throwing booth.

He got to meet Petunia the Bearded Lady, who was strangely beautiful even with the massive amounts of fur growing from her face. He witnessed Gustav the Knife Thrower toss six-inch blades at a young screaming woman, missing only by inches, all with a blindfold covering his eyes. And he even got to go muscle-to-muscle against Orlando the Strong Man, who was somehow able to lift twice the weight that Bingo could. The clown wondered if it was some kind of trick or if the guy really was that much stronger than him. He'd never met anyone who could outlift him before, even as a child. The strong man patted Bingo on the back and shook his hand, wiggling his handlebar mustache at the large crowd that gathered to witness the match. The crowd couldn't tell, but Orlando was obviously annoyed at the clown for challenging him. Bingo could see it in his eyes. Had the strong man lost to a clown it would've been a great insult to him. Bingo thought he had to have cheated.

Bingo's favorite part of the carnival was the rides. He'd never been on carnival rides before. His parents never took him to any amusement parks as a kid, probably because they didn't want him to be influenced by the clowns who worked at them. They were a proper suburban family, after all, and had a hard enough time dealing with his aggressive personality as it was; the last thing they needed was for him to start telling jokes, juggling bowling pins, and riding a unicycle around the neighborhood like some kind of hoodlum. But it wasn't until that day that Bingo realized exactly what he'd been missing out on. The rides were an adrenaline rush. He went on the roller coaster twelve times and puked after every single time. But no matter how much he threw up, he still had to go back for more.

After one particularly dizzy ride—one that was so rickety Bingo thought it was going to collapse halfway through, not to mention the rumbling belly full of carnival chili he just gobbled down to make up for all the food he'd lost after the previous rides—Bingo ran around the side of a building to hack up the chunkiest, spiciest stew he'd ever coughed up. The pile was still hot and steaming on the sidewalk as he wiped the slime from his blue-and-red mouth. That's when he heard the muffled screams coming from around the corner.

If Bingo were any other local he would've let it go, but he just didn't know any better. He could tell somebody was in trouble. When he stepped around the corner, he saw three men dragging a woman behind a dumpster. She was some vanilla tourist who must've gotten separated from her boyfriend. Either that or the boyfriend was knocked out cold in a bathroom somewhere.

The men were carnival security. Bingo realized right then why so many crimes were committed on Carnival Island. The muggings, stabbings, rapes, and beatings were not done by some street punks who wandered into the carnival to prey on the tourists. The security guards and the men committing the crimes were one and the same.

“What's the big idea?” Bingo said to them.

When they saw the clown standing there, the security guards laughed out loud. They weren't intimidated by the clown in the slightest, not even by his size. When they stood up, the woman ran away, holding her torn clothes together.

“Just having a little fun,” said one of the men. He had big black muttonchops, three gold teeth, and tiny round glasses held up by a crooked nose. “But we can have fun with you instead if you insist, big boy.”

Bingo didn't move, clenching his fists.

“I don't like guys who disrespect women,” Bingo said.

The security guards laughed.

“You think we were disrespecting her?” asked Mutton Chops. “Nah, we were just showing her a good time. Carnie-style.”

The three men closed in on Bingo, but the clown didn't move.

“You ought to know that clowns aren't allowed on Carnival Island.” Mutton Chops pulled an empty whiskey bottle from the dumpster. “Not unless you work for us.”

Bingo had gone up against far more than three guys in the past, but those were all suburban frat boys who didn't like clowns. These guys were bloodthirsty thugs. He'd never had to fight anyone like these guys before.

“Maybe I'm looking for a job,” Bingo said.

Mutton Chops giggled. “Yeah, well we aren't hiring.” He raised the whiskey bottle. “I hear they've got some openings in the morgue. Why don't you try there?”

Then the head security guard smashed the whiskey bottle over Bingo's head. The glass shattered across his face and sprinkled to the ground, but the clown just stood there, completely unfazed.

“You're going to have to do a lot better than that,” Bingo said.

“I intend to.”

Before Bingo could take his first swing, somebody grabbed the clown from behind and wrapped a wire around his throat. The guy was strong, stronger than Bingo. He didn't realize it was Orlando the Strong Man until his face was driven into the asphalt and the other Carnies kicked him in the chest and stomach. The big guy with the wiggling handlebar mustache really was stronger than Bingo. It was no trick. The guy kept him pinned down as Mutton Chops and his friends beat him to a bloody, swollen mess of a clown.