ClownFellas (39 page)

“What the hell happened to you?” Uncle Jojo asked Jimmy as he picked him up from school.

The kid had a bloody nose and his clothes were muddy and torn. Jimmy was in the sixth grade then. He was a much different clown when he was a kid than he was as an adult. He still had the short temper and foul mood back then, but he was kind of a wimp. He didn't have a lot of friends and got picked on a lot.

Jimmy dodged the question. “Where's my dad?”

“He couldn't pick you up today. He's busy.”

Jimmy crawled into his uncle's car. “He's always busy…”

It was a hard time for the kid. His mother died recently. And for months after his mother's death, his father shut himself off, burying himself in his work. Uncle Jojo had to look after the kid for his brother on far more occasions than he could count. He didn't know much about raising kids back then. His daughter was just a baby at the time and he still had a lot to learn about being a father.

As Jojo pulled out of the school parking lot, he returned to the topic. “So what happened?”

It took Jimmy a few minutes before he could answer. “The other kids jumped me.”

Jojo yelled, “For what?”

By the tone of his uncle's voice, Jimmy thought he was mad at him for it.

“Because I'm a clown,” Jimmy said in a soft voice.

There weren't many clown kids back then. Jimmy was one of the first hundred clowns born in the whole country. Even in Little Bigtop, most of the kids were vanilla. Jojo's nephew was the only clown in his class.

“And you just took it?”

“There were too many of them.”

“So? You're a Bozo. Bozos are supposed to be tough. What would your father say?”

Jimmy shrugged.

Jojo turned the car around and went in the other direction.

“Where are we going?” Jimmy asked.

“To the park,” Jojo said. “I'm teaching you how to fight.”

Uncle Jojo took Jimmy to the park and walked him away from the playground, away from the clowns who were juggling and hula-hooping in the grass, so they could have a bit of privacy.

“I already know how to fight,” Jimmy said.

“We'll see about that.” His uncle put him in position across from him and raised his fists. “Show me what you got.”

Jimmy was too embarrassed to do anything but stand there.

“Come on,” Jojo said. “Hit me.”

“No…,” Jimmy said.

But his uncle wouldn't let him get out of it.

“What, are you a wimp?” Jojo asked, shoving the eleven-year-old clown. “Are you going to let people push you around your whole life?”

Jojo wouldn't quit shoving the kid until Jimmy got flustered.

“Are you going to cry now?” Jojo asked. “Go ahead and cry, you pansy. You call yourself a Bozo?”

Then Jimmy snapped. He ran at his uncle, swinging his fists. Jojo punched him in the stomach and the kid fell to the ground.

“Come on, I barely even touched you,” Jojo told his wheezing nephew.

“You hit me!” Jimmy cried, surprised his own uncle would've thrown a punch at him.

“What? You expected a slap on the wrist? I'm trying to toughen you up here. This is a real fight. Now get on your feet.”

Jimmy got back on his feet and charged his uncle, throwing fists at his stomach. His uncle just blocked every punch. Then he hit him in the face and the kid was on the ground again.

“I'm only using a quarter of my strength here,” Jojo said. “Stop being such a wimp.”

Jimmy tried again with a similar result.

“You know what your problem is?” Jojo asked. “You don't use your brain. You don't block. You don't duck and move. You're all offense with no defense, and your offense is wild and sloppy.”

He helped his nephew to his feet and looked him in the eyes.

“In a fight, you use your head, not your heart. Don't let your emotions control your movements.”

Jojo showed his nephew how to hold up his fists.

“Once you learn how to block, I'll teach you some combo moves,” Jojo said.

He spent the next two hours training his nephew to be a brawler. Then he took him out for ice cream. As they sat at the table in the ice cream shop, Jimmy wouldn't speak to him. He was more upset with his uncle than he was with the kids who beat him up.

“I'm sorry for being rough with you,” Jojo said. “But I did what I had to do. It's a rough city out there and people are going to be a lot rougher with you than I just was. You'll thank me later.”

Jimmy shoved a spoonful of pistachio ice cream between his red lips.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Jojo asked, swirling the strawberry sauce and rocky road ice cream together with his spoon.

Jimmy wouldn't respond for a moment, but Jojo was patient.

“I want to work with my dad,” Jimmy said.

Jojo laughed. “You what? Do you even know what your dad does for a living?”

“Yeah, he's a clownfella,” Jimmy said.

Jojo laughed even harder. “Do you even know what that means?”

“It means nobody messes with him.”

Jojo nodded. “Yeah, that's true. Nobody messes with your old man.” He took a bite of ice cream. “But why would you want to work with your dad?”

Jimmy shrugged. He wouldn't make eye contact with him, just staring into his ice cream.

“You can do anything with your life,” Jojo said. “You can be a football player. Wouldn't you want to be a football player? I remember you used to always love watching football with your dad and me.”

“Clowns aren't allowed to play football.”

“Who says?” Jojo pointed his spoon at the kid. “Just because there hasn't been one yet doesn't mean there won't be in the future. You could be the first.”

Jimmy shrugged. “I don't know…”

Jojo lifted Jimmy's face out of his ice cream. “What don't you know?”

Jimmy didn't answer.

“Look, kid. You're a Bozo and Bozos don't make excuses. If you think being a clown holds you back, you're wrong. Being a clown makes you strong. You do whatever you want to do with your life and don't ever let anything hold you back.”

Then he let go of the kid's face and let him get back to his ice cream.

“Sorry for being callous,” Jojo said. “You're my nephew, Jimmy. I just want what's best for you.”

The doughnut shop was getting crowded by the time Jimmy Bozo showed up at Pepper's apartment. Not all of them were tourists, either. Jojo hoped nobody recognized him. The last thing he needed was someone witnessing him so close to the scene of his nephew's murder.

A call came in on Jojo's phone.

Before he could say hello, Jean Dupont said, “Where is he? It's been half an hour and there's no sign of him. Are you messing with us?”

“He's on his way up now, ya French moron. Get off the phone!”

Jojo realized he was speaking too loud. All the other people in the doughnut shop looked at him.

When he hung up, Jojo watched his nephew enter the building. He went to bite into a jelly doughnut and bit his own finger instead.

“Damn it,” he yelled, as blood oozed out of the bite wound.

His phone rang again.

“Yeah, what the fuck do you want?” Jojo asked.

“That's how you answer your phone?”

It was Don Bozo, his brother.

“Tommy?”

Jojo couldn't believe his brother called. At that minute, no less. Now, Jojo wasn't the kind of clown to shake in his boots, but there wasn't a customer in that doughnut shop who couldn't see him visibly shaking.

“What's wrong with you?” his brother asked. “You sound like somebody's got a piece pointed at your head.”

Jojo's eyes focused on Jimmy down below as he listened to his brother. Something snapped inside him. He couldn't even talk.

“No, no…,” Jojo choked out.

The guilt of hearing his brother's voice as he sent his nephew to certain death hit him hard. He'd never felt such a thing in his life. He had to rip open his shirt and wind up his heart, right in front of everyone in that doughnut shop.

“Look, I wanted to talk to you,” Don Bozo said. “It's about the gumball factory.”

Jojo could see Jimmy through the stairwell windows, rushing up the stairs, clearly worried about the condition of his old friend.

“Yeah?” Jojo asked.

Through Pepper's window, he could see six armed guys break through her front door, the two Juggler Brothers riding their unicycles inside, juggling shotguns. They threw Pepper to the floor and aimed their weapons at the front door.

“I've been thinking about what you said,” Don Bozo said. “I feel bad about shutting down your operation without talking to you first. I know it's a lot of money you're losing out on.”

The Juggler Brothers rode circles around Pepper, waiting for the Bozo to step through the door.

“Yeah…,” Jojo said, unable to blink as his nephew arrived on Pepper's floor. “It's a lot of money.”

“So I've decided to make it your call,” Don Bozo said. “If you want to reopen the gumball factory, I'll be okay with it. You're the one who'd take the fall for it if Manny Malone raids the place, anyway. I want to caution you against it, but if you think it's worth the risk who am I to stand in your way?”

Jimmy approached Pepper's front door.

“Uh-huh…”

“So what do you say? Do you want me to put the green light on it?”

“Yeah…” Jojo couldn't take his eyes off Jimmy through the hall window. Tears wet his cheek. “Sure…”

“I know you don't always agree with my decisions, Joe. But I want you to know I'm always just trying to do what's in your best interest. You're my brother. I care about you.”

Jojo couldn't believe what he'd just done. He wished he could take it back. He wished he could jump in that room right there and save his nephew, but it was too late to go back. Jojo couldn't take his eyes off the window as Jimmy entered Pepper's apartment.

“Thanks, Tommy,” Jojo said, as the sound of machine-gun fire echoed through the streets. “I care about you, too.”

“See you at the wedding tomorrow,” his brother said.

Jojo's voice went soft and hardly audible. “You too…”

When his brother hung up, he dropped his phone into his plate of jelly doughnuts. He still couldn't take his eyes off Pepper's apartment. The windows were shattered from the gunfire, so he couldn't see inside. He was happy for that. He couldn't bear to see Jimmy's body. The image of what he'd done to his nephew would've haunted him for the rest of his life.

Before he got up to pay the bill, Uncle Jojo saw two people rushing out of the apartment below. But it wasn't the guys who'd done the shooting. It was Pepper and Jimmy Bozo. They were both alive, didn't have a scratch on them. Jimmy pulled Pepper by the wrist to his car and sped away.

Jojo stood up from his seat and yelled at the top of his lungs, “How the hell did you get out of that one, you little shit?”

Everyone in the doughnut shop went quiet.

Then the shattered windows of Pepper's apartment crumbled, revealing six dead bodies lying in the room. Somehow Jimmy had managed to kill them all single-handedly, including the two Juggler Brothers. Uncle Jojo had no idea how the hell that little bastard pulled it off.

As Jojo drove away from the scene, his reflection in the rearview mirror was just laughing his ass off at him.

“Don't you fucking start, now,” Jojo said to the mirror. “I don't want to hear it.”

“You really messed things up now, didn't you?” his reflection said, chuckling wildly.

Jojo slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “How the hell did that happen? He was one guy and caught by surprise…”

A jaywalker crossed in front of Jojo's car and he slammed on the brakes, holding his hand on the horn until the lady got out of his way.

“You forget who Jimmy's friends with,” his reflection said. “Vinnie Blue Nose is one resourceful clown. He probably knew the Juggler Brothers were going to come after Jimmy eventually, and he knew he wouldn't always be around to help, so he surely took the necessary steps to ensure his safety.”

“Like what?”

“Like arming him with something that would instantly take out six guys.”

“Oh shit…”

Jojo just remembered. A few months back, Vinnie ordered a custom weapon from the gumball factory. He wanted a vest made that could be worn under a suit. With just a pull of a string, like pulling a parachute cord, the vest would burst open and eight small machine guns would spring out. It would instantly fire fifty rounds in every direction, tearing through everyone within the vicinity, as long as they weren't lying on the ground. Vinnie must have given the vest to Jimmy for just such an occasion.

“That blue-nosed bastard…”

He couldn't believe he hadn't realized at the time that the vest was being made for Jimmy. Had he known, he could've mentioned it to the Juggler Brothers so they'd know how to deal with it. Those guys were supposed to be able to dodge bullets.

“Shouldn't you be happy your nephew's still alive?” his reflection asked him. “Just a few minutes ago you were praying you could save him.”

“Yeah, but I didn't want him to kill the Dupont boys. Do you know how pissed those French bastards are going to be when they find out about this? They're going to think I'm responsible, like I was the one who set them up.”

His reflection laughed again. “Yeah. They'll want you dead far more than they wanted Jimmy Bozo after that.”

“They'll hit the wedding for sure now,” Jojo said. “I can't even tell my brother about this to get his help. He'll find out I set up Jimmy.”

“If he doesn't find out anyway. You think Jimmy isn't going to tell him about what happened?”

“What do you mean? Jimmy doesn't know I set him up.”

His reflection laughed again. “You don't think he'll wonder why you asked him to check up on Pepper when she didn't really try to kill herself? You didn't even break up with her. Of course he knows you set him up.”

Jojo nearly crashed into the car in front of him as he came to a red light.

“Oh shit…”

His reflection shook his head. “The French clowns are the least of your worries now. Your big problem is what your brother's going to do to you once he finds out you tried to get his son killed.”

Jojo had to roll down his window to get air. He pulled open his shirt and wound up his heart, then just left the key in the hole. He figured he was going to have to wind up his heart a lot during the next couple of hours.