Earl had no idea what made Vicky so paranoid, but she always thought something horrible was going to happen. Just the other day, Earl woke up to find her staring at him while he slept. She had a look of panic on her face. It was three in the morning and he had no idea what was going on.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Earl asked. “Why are you awake?”
“I thought you were dead,” she told him.
“What?” Earl sat up in bed.
“You stopped breathing. I thought you died in your sleep.”
“That’s just sleep apnea. It’s no big deal. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” Vicky said, but she didn’t go back to sleep. She just went downstairs and sat on the living room couch.
When he heard a crash in the kitchen, Earl put on his robe and went to see what was going on. He found the blender on the floor. Vicky was unplugging all the appliances.
“What are you doing?” Earl asked her.
She didn’t stop what she was doing as she replied, “My teacher said you shouldn’t ever leave toasters plugged in. They can cause a fire.”
“The toaster wasn’t plugged in.”
“Yeah, it was. So was the coffee machine, the blender, the juicer, the popcorn maker, and the microwave. All of it should be unplugged. Mom needs to be more careful.”
“You don’t have to unplug the microwave.”
“I had a dream the house burned down while we were asleep,” she said. “I can’t sleep until I know the house isn’t going to burn down.”
“The house isn’t going to burn down,” Earl said.
“Nine out of ten people who die in house fires die in their sleep, because they weren’t able to catch it in time.”
“Where did you get that figure?”
“We should sleep in shifts. That way, we’d always have somebody prepared to deal with the fire.”
Earl didn’t know what to say to her. She was completely serious about the issue.
They had taken Vicky to a psychologist several times, but she was still having horrible dreams about her friends and family dying in car accidents or plane crashes. Sometimes she dreamed the world was going to end by either a meteor strike or a nuclear holocaust. The psychologist wondered if she had ever been through a traumatic experience in her life, but nothing bad had ever happened to her. It was her dreams. She had been traumatized over and over again in her dreams.
Earl had no idea what would happen to Vicky after a real traumatic experience like the one she was going through at that moment. He worried that her paranoia would be ten times worse. He worried that she would need counseling for years to get over it. Like Earl, she would become terrified of clowns.
Chapter 19
Outside the Berryman house, Earl and the four clowns crept up the driveway behind a row of azalea bushes. They didn’t do a very good job of being discreet, though, since their brightly colored outfits could be seen down the block. And Hats’s size 30 shoes squeaked every time he took a step, and he couldn’t keep his three-foot top hat from poking above the bushes no matter how far down he squatted.
“Keep it down, would ya?” Jackie the Grump said to Hats.
“I’m just walking,” Hats whined. “It’s the shoes that won’t keep quiet.”
“You’re going to give us away,” Jackie said. “This is supposed to be an ambush over here.”
“What do you want me to do, take them off? I’m not going in there barefoot.”
“Walk on your hands or something. You’re going to get us all killed, ya mook.”
“Forget about it. They’ll just think it’s a dog with a squeak toy.”
Spotty turned back. “Quit clownin’ around, the both of yas.”
When they arrived at the top of the driveway, they heard a group of men speaking with French accents. They were right inside the living room.
Vinnie Blue Nose looked at Spotty. “Send in the scouts.”
The grubby clown nodded in compliance. He opened his coat, and five cockroaches crawled up his torso and into the palm of his hand.
“Luigi, Donny, Carmella, Carlito, and Little Alphanso,” Captain Spotty whispered to his pet cockroaches. “I need you to go inside and check the place out. Then report back to me.”
The roaches wiggled their antennae at him and then buzzed their wings, flying across the yard toward the open window. As they waited, Hats Rizzo stepped back and forth, squeaking his shoes.
“Why are you still squeaking over there?” Jackie whispered. “We’re not even walking anymore.”
“I got to take a leak,” Hats whined, squeaking back and forth.
“Then go take a leak.”
Hats didn’t argue. He unzipped his fly and stepped toward the other side of the garage door. As he took his noisy steps, the Frenchmen went to the window.
“Do you hear that?” asked one of the French clowns. Earl couldn’t see his face through the window, but he could hear him. It wasn’t the same man he’d spoken to on the phone.
“Hear what?” asked another Frenchman.
“I don’t know. It sounds like a dog with a squeak toy.”
The clowns kept quiet as they listened to the Frenchmen—all of them except for Hats, who emptied his bladder in loud splashes against the concrete.
“What dog? I see no dog.”
“It’s there. I can hear it taking a leak.”
“Well, don’t let it inside. I’m allergic to the rotten mutts.”
When the cockroaches returned to Spotty, the grubby clown had them crawl into his hand, and then he put them up to his ear.
“Uh-huh,” Spotty said, as if the bugs were actually talking to him. “Yeah. Are you sure? Really? Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Vinnie Blue Nose.
Spotty looked at Earl. The expression on his face wasn’t good.
“What?” Earl asked. “Is my family okay?”
“Sorry, Doc,” Spotty said. “They’re not in there.”
“What do you mean they’re not in there? Where are they?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere else.”
“Are they dead?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Vinnie said. “We need to take one of them alive for questioning.” He turned at Spotty. “How many of them are there?”
“Six.” Spotty ordered his roaches to form a map of Earl’s house on the garage door. He pointed at the area of the living room by the front entrance. “Two here.” Then he pointed at the back of the living room with the couches and television. “Two here.” Then he pointed at the kitchen. “And two here.”
Earl was surprised at how detailed the cockroaches were with their map of his house. They even had baby cockroaches positioned where the Frenchmen were standing.
“Why so many?” Jackie asked. “They need six guys just to take out one vanilla vet?”
“Maybe they know we’re coming,” Vinnie said. “Let’s not take any chances.” He pointed at Spotty and the Grump. “You two wait here. I’m taking Hats and the doc around back. Once you see the smoke, come in blasting.”
“You got it,” Spotty said.
When Hats Rizzo was finally finished taking his piss, Vinnie waved him over and said, “Take those damn shoes off and follow me.”
“I’m not going barefoot,” Hats argued.
“You don’t want to take them off, fine.” Vinnie pulled out a switchblade and stabbed it into the sides of the noisy shoes. A frown grew on Hats’s face as the air oozed out.
“You ruined them.” Hats stepped back and forth, but they no longer squeaked. They only made a soft whooshing sound. “You owe me a new pair of shoes.”
“Shut up and get moving,” Vinnie said.
Since it was his house, Earl led the way to the backyard. He unlocked the gate, waved them through, and tried not to rustle the leaves on the ground as they hiked along the side of the house.
“I’m serious. These things don’t come cheap. I had to get them custom-made and everything.” Hats wouldn’t stop
complaining. Earl wished Vinnie hadn’t used the switchblade to solve the problem. Squeaky shoes were much quieter than a whining Hats Rizzo.
Chapter 20
The back door opened and a French clown stepped out, lighting up a curvy purple pipe that looked more like a bassoon than something you’d want to smoke. As they peeked out from behind the toolshed, Earl realized what Spotty was saying about the French clowns having a different style from the Bozos. This clown had puffy clothing that made him look more like a thirteenth-century court jester than a circus clown. His green sideburns curled like tentacles off the sides of his face. He wore a monocle over one eye and a pink patch over the other. A miniature umbrella poked out the top of his leopard-print hat.
As the clown blew smoke rings into the air, Vinnie Blue Nose screwed a silencer onto the top of his handgun, and loaded it with a clip of laughing bullets. Then he aimed it at the clown and fired.
The bullet hit the jester in the chest. He looked down at the blood leaking from his wound and immediately started to laugh. It was just a light giggling at first, then a deep chuckle. When he noticed Vinnie coming out from behind the toolshed, he was cackling at the top of his lungs. He dropped his bassoon-shaped pipe and tried to go for his gun, but was laughing so hard he couldn’t get ahold of it before Vinnie Blue Nose put another bullet right between his eyes.
As Vinnie dragged the French clown’s body into the bushes, Earl asked, “What the heck was that?”
“Laughing bullets,” Hats said. “Just as deadly as regular bullets but they also paralyze you with laughter. That is, until they kill ya.”
They waited a minute to see if any of the clowns inside heard the laughter, and when nobody came running they gathered by the back door.
“I want you to wait here,” Vinnie told Earl. “Grab anyone that gets past us.”
Earl agreed, though he had no clue how he would stop a clown thug if one came at him.
“Hats,” Vinnie said. “Smoke them out.”
“My pleasure,” Hats said.
The clown removed the massive yellow-checkered hat from his head to reveal a slightly smaller hat beneath, this one patterned with orange polka dots. Standing on top of the hat was what looked to be a coconut cream pie.
“Stand aside, gentlemen,” Hats said.
He opened the back door and tossed the pie into the living room. When it hit the floor cream-first, the pie exploded into a cloud of smoke.
“Let’s go,” Vinnie said.
The Frenchies didn’t know what hit them.
They charged through the door and fired into the smoke. French clowns laughed at the tops of their lungs as they were filled with bullets. Captain Spotty kicked down the front door and blasted the clowns with his gumball shotgun.
As Earl watched the chaos from the back door, he noticed the man escaping from his daughter’s bedroom window. The clown’s skin was striped blue and white, with sunflowers sticking out the top of his head like horns.
“Hey, one of them’s escaping,” Earl yelled into his house, but the clowns couldn’t hear him over the gunfire.
Earl didn’t know what to do. He looked at the clown and said, “Hey, stop!”
The clown’s eyes met Earl’s. He recognized the vet. This was the man they’d been sent to kill. A sinister grin widened across the clown’s face as he pulled out a machete.
“Wait, get back…,” Earl said, holding out his hands.
The clown was no longer trying to escape. He was coming for the veterinarian’s head.
“I’m armed,” Earl said, pretending he had a handgun in his pocket, even though all he had in there was a balloon.
The clown charged the vet, raising the machete.
Earl pulled out his gun-shaped balloon and pointed it at the man. He had no idea what he was going to do with it, hoping his attacker wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a real gun and a balloon gun in the dim lighting.
“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Earl cried.
Then he pulled the balloon trigger. The vet shrieked when it actually fired. A bullet came out of the top of the balloon and hit the clown in the lower abdomen. He dropped his machete and fell to the ground.
“How the hell…”
It wasn’t possible. It didn’t make any sense. Earl shook the balloon in his hand. There was nothing inside it. The thing was as light as a feather, filled with nothing but air. There was no way it was capable of firing a bullet.
“You got him,” said Captain Spotty as he stepped through the back door. “Good job, Doc. We accidentally killed all the ones inside.”
Earl didn’t respond. He was still staring at the balloon gun.
Chapter 21
“Where’s the family?” Vinnie Blue Nose asked the wounded Frenchman.
The clown spit in Vinnie’s face. Then Spotty kicked him between his legs.
As Vinnie calmly cleaned the spittle from his face with a handkerchief, he said, “You’re going to tell me where your people took this man’s wife and three daughters or your death will be slow and painful.”
“It’s too late,” the Frenchman wheezed. “You’ll never see them again.”
Spotty kicked him in the bullet wound.
“That’s not the question I asked,” said Blue Nose. “But if you want to play this the hard way, we’ll play it the hard way.”
Vinnie pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. Then he took a small pouch out of his coat pocket.
“If I were you I’d start talking,” Jackie the Grump told the Frenchman.
The wounded clown watched Vinnie open the pouch. “What is that?”
Vinnie turned over the pouch and poured a tiny amount of its contents on the Frenchman.
“Weapons-grade itching powder,” Vinnie said. “This much will make you feel like you’re being eaten alive by fleas.”
At first, nothing happened. The French clown just spit at him again. But then the itching crept into the folds of his paper-white skin. He scratched his neck, then his chest.
Vinnie poured a few more shakes of the powder onto the wounded man. “This much will make you feel as if you have the worst case of chicken pox anyone has ever experienced in the history of the disease.”
The Frenchman cried out and scratched furiously, his fingernails thrashing against his body, trying to itch every part of his body all at the same time.
“The next dose will itch so badly that you’ll literally tear your own skin off trying to get it to stop. And the dose after that, you will be begging for me to kill you.”
Before Vinnie could tip the pouch of powder, the French clown held out his hands and begged him to stop.
“I can’t take it anymore!” cried the wounded clown. “Get the stuff away from me!”
“You have three seconds,” Vinnie said.
“It was Coco’s idea,” the clown said.
“You mean Coco de Merde?” Vinnie asked.
“Who’s Coco de Merde?” Hats asked.
Vinnie shook his head. “An up-and-comer in the French mob who’s recently made a name for himself. He’s been rising through the ranks pretty quickly as of late. Very ambitious.”
“Ambitious enough to go after Don Bozo?” Spotty asked.
“Stupid enough to go after Don Bozo.”
The wounded clown scratched at his crotch as the itching powder went down his pants and got into his bullet wound. “He’s the one who came up with the idea to use the zoo doctor to kill your boss. It wasn’t me. I was just following orders.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Vinnie said, holding the pouch closer to the man’s wound. “Where’s his wife and daughters?”
“They’re still alive,” said the Frenchman. “Coco’s got them down at the docks.”
“What are they doing at the docks?” Earl asked.
“They’re being sold,” he said.
“What do you mean being sold?” Earl cried.
“That’s how Coco earns for the family. He sells women into the sex trad
e, usually runaways. They’ll be shipped overseas. Nobody will ever hear from them again.”
“You monster!” Earl screamed.
The vet kicked the clown in the ribs, but the clown was scratching so furiously that he didn’t seem to feel it.
“We have to get them before the boat leaves,” Vinnie said. “Let’s go.”
“It’s too late. There’s no way you’ll get to them in time.” The Frenchman laughed. “By tomorrow, they’ll be hooked on laughy-gas and doing anything for anybody to get their next fix. You’ll never see them again.”
“Son of a bitch…” Earl grabbed Vinnie’s pouch of itching powder and dumped its entire contents on top of the Frenchmen.
They left him thrashing, screaming, and tearing at his own flesh as they walked out of the yard.
“Here, use this,” Hats Rizzo said, tossing the clown back his machete. “It’ll help with those deep-down itches.”
Hats giggled like a madman as the French clown hacked into his own body with the machete, slicing off layers of skin and scooping his insides out.
Chapter 22
When they got to the docks, they saw a group of French clowns loading crates onto a ship.
“How many of them are there?” the capo asked Spotty.
“A couple dozen,” Spotty said, with his ear against his pet cockroaches.
“Any sign of my wife?” Earl asked.
“The ship is too big for my scouts,” Spotty said, allowing the roaches to crawl back into his coat. “We’ll have to search it ourselves.”
A clown in a brown trench coat was ordering around the men loading the ship. He had black-and-white swirly patterns on his skin and long yellow hair.
“There he is,” Vinnie said. “Coco de Merde.”
ClownFellas Page 5