“Jimmy’s the best,” Tickles said.
“What would you say if I asked you to stop working for him?” Vinnie leaned over to Spanky and lit his cigarette for him.
“You mean you want us to work with you instead of Jimmy?” Spanky asked.
Tickles smiled and nodded. They both clearly loved that idea.
“No,” Vinnie said. “I don’t have any use for either of you at the moment.”
“Then what do you mean?” Tickles asked.
“I mean if I asked you to quit working for Jimmy and just walk away, would you do it?”
A look of panic crossed their faces.
“But we like working for the Bozo Family,” Spanky said.
“Yeah, it’s all I’ve ever wanted since I was a kid,” Tickles said.
Vinnie paused to take a long drag off his cotton candy smoke. “I can’t tell Jimmy to get rid of either of you. I can only ask him. And I’m sure his answer would be no. But I can ask the two of you. Will you stop working for Jimmy?”
“What did we do wrong?” Spanky asked.
“We’ve been doing a good job.” Tickles was on the edge of his seat. “Just ask Jimmy. We’ve been doing great.”
“I know,” Vinnie said. “You’ve been doing fine. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then why?” Tickles asked. “Why do you want us to quit?”
“It’s none of your business why,” Hats said, smacking Tickles in the back of his head. “Now answer the capo’s question before I get physical with yas.”
Vinnie gave Hats the look to quiet down back there.
“You said it’s not up to you, right?” Spanky asked. “You said that if Jimmy doesn’t want to get rid of us he doesn’t have to.”
“Yeah,” Tickles said. “You can’t do nothing to stop Jimmy if he wants us on his crew.”
“So that’s your answer?” Vinnie asked.
“Look, we mean no disrespect,” Spanky said. “It’s just that working with the Bozos means everything to us. We wouldn’t walk away from this. We couldn’t. It’s in our blood.”
Vinnie nodded. “I understand. I’d feel the same way if I were in your shoes. When I was a turk like you guys, nobody could get me to walk away from the Bozo Family no matter what the consequence.”
“You see?” Spanky said, breathing a sigh of relief. “That’s exactly as we feel. Nothing could make me turn my back on Jimmy Bozo. He’s like a brother to me.”
“I can tell,” Vinnie said, ashing his cigarette out the window.
“So you’re okay with us working with Jimmy?” Tickles asked.
“If you won’t leave voluntarily what else can I do?” Vinnie said.
“We’ll make you proud,” Spanky said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. We’re just as loyal to you as we are to Jimmy. We promise.”
“Thanks,” Vinnie said, turning to Spanky and placing a hand on his shoulder. “It’s good to know I can count on you.”
Then Hats put a gun to Spanky’s ear and pulled the trigger. It was a novelty gun that shot out a sign that read BANG. The sign went in one of Spanky’s ears and out the other. As Tickles saw the BANG sign sticking out his friend’s ear, covered in the clown’s brains, he opened his mouth to scream. But before any sound came out, Hats pulled the trigger again. A second sign shot through Tickles’s mouth and out the back of his head. The new sign read DOUBLE BANG.
“What the heck was that?” Spotty cried, wiping blood from his suit. “I thought we were just going to scare them, not whack them.”
Hats lowered the bodies out of view and cleaned the brains off the side of the window.
“Now, that was satisfying,” he said. “If only Jimmy’s stupid head was right between them my day would be complete.”
Vinnie turned to Spotty. “We needed them gone one way or another.”
“And you really think Little Bozo will fall in line with these guys out of the picture?”
“He’ll have no choice,” Vinnie said. “Without these guys to support him, Jimmy will be all alone. The only people he’ll have to back him up are my people. He’ll have to learn to be a team player.”
“Still though,” Spotty said. “They were just kids. Killing them seems kind of…harsh.”
Vinnie shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. They were Jimmy’s boys. They were going to get killed sooner or later.”
Spotty couldn’t argue with him there. But with Tickles and Spanky dead, the danger was now on Blue Nose and his crew.
Chapter 39
The fireball of a clown car roared down the street with the Juggler Brothers tailing close behind. No matter what he did, Vinnie just couldn’t shake them. The jugglers rode their unicycles across the telephone wires as quickly as if they were on motorcycles, launching bottle after bottle of liquid fire into their path.
“How the hell did they find us?” Jimmy yelled, hanging out the window and whipping at the flames with his coat.
“Somebody must’ve seen the direction we were headed after we left the brothel.”
“Shit.” Jimmy’s coat caught on fire and he tossed it away. “You think Miss Tina told them?”
Vinnie shook his head. “It had to be another customer. Did you see him with anyone before you got into the fight?”
Jimmy shrugged. “He might have been hanging out with other vanillas.”
“Were they French?”
“I don’t know. All vanillas look alike.”
Another bottle exploded in the road ahead of them. Vinnie swerved to avoid the pool of flames, nearly rolling the little car in the process.
“They’re sloppy,” Vinnie said. “But they’re not bad.”
“How the heck are they keeping up with us on those unicycles?”
“They say these guys have been riding unicycles nonstop since they were old enough to walk,” Vinnie said. “And they’ve built up their leg muscles into super-powered pedaling machines.”
“They’re faster than hell.”
But they quickly learned that the jugglers weren’t even going as fast as they could go. Once they dropped down from the telephone wires onto the street, they were able to pedal at full speed. The jugglers came up alongside the car, one on Vinnie’s side and the other on Jimmy’s. They were no longer juggling Molotovs. They juggled chain saws, tossing them back and forth over the roof of the car.
“Where did they get chain saws?” Jimmy asked.
The saws sliced through the car’s exterior as the French clowns juggled. Sparks flew from the hood as the chain-saw blades grazed the metal.
“Take them out,” Blue Nose said, handing Jimmy his air horn.
Up close, Vinnie was able to get a good look at one of the jugglers—a clown so skinny that his limbs were like twigs of muscle. His clown face was patterned with black and white circles around his blood-red eyes, wide black grins stretching across his round cheeks. He looked like a spring-action doll from a jack-in-the-box, complete with the pointy little hat on top of his bald white head and a frilly collar around his neck. His brother was identical but he wasn’t as thin and he was missing his nose, as if it had been bitten off in a bar fight long ago.
“This is for Pierre, you filthy Bozo,” said the noseless juggler in a thick French accent.
Then he tossed the chain saw into the car with them. It cut a gash across Jimmy’s chest, then sliced the top of Vinnie’s wrist, and the skinny juggler caught it as it passed through the driver’s-side window.
“Motherfucker!” Jimmy cried as blood gushed from his torn shirt.
Jimmy aimed his air horn at the noseless clown and fired, but the juggler was too quick. He leaned back on his unicycle, his back nearly touching the street as he pedaled at seventy miles an hour. The sound wave went right over him and shattered the windows of a hardware shop.
Vinnie let the blood drip from his wrist. It was bleeding fast, but it wasn’t that deep. He jerked the wheel and made a hard left, trying to knock over the juggler riding alongside him. The skinny c
lown moved with him, turning just as quickly, as though he anticipated Vinnie’s every move.
“We don’t want you, Blue Nose,” the skinny clown said. “Turn over the Bozo boy and we’ll let you go.”
“Yes, blue man, don’t you want to go back to your pretty human wife? Are you sure you want to make poor Samantha a widow so young?”
Vinnie had no idea how they knew so much about him. All the Bozo Family knew about the members of Le Mystère were rumors they heard from friends of theirs around Little Bigtop. But the French clowns must’ve done their research on every high-ranking Bozo in the family. Vinnie couldn’t help but respect that, despite the vulnerable position they put him in.
“It would be a shame to let the mademoiselle’s bed go cold without you,” said the noseless one, juggling the chain saws by himself.
“We’ll make sure to keep her warm when you’re six feet underground,” said the other, who was now juggling grenades that were attached to his suspenders.
Vinnie didn’t like to let his emotions lead his actions, but he couldn’t help himself when they were talking about his wife. He pulled out his gun and shot at the skinny clown. All three of the laughing bullets missed their target when the juggler fell back into Vinnie’s blind spot. The clown chuckled, delighted to have gotten a rise out of the stone-cold capo.
“So that’s your answer then?” the noseless clown said through the passenger window. “You care so little for your wife’s well-being?”
Jimmy fired his air horn at the clown peeking through his window, but again the juggler dodged as fast as wind. When he pulled himself upright, the noseless clown tossed one of the grenades into the backseat of Jimmy’s car.
“Look out!” Jimmy cried as the glittery pink-and-blue-speckled ball landed in the seat behind them.
The Juggler Brothers fell back, waiting for the vehicle to blow.
“Get it!” Vinnie said.
Jimmy didn’t have time to crawl back there and throw it out the window. He aimed his 12-gauge air horn at it and fired. The blast had enough force to blow the back door out, sending the explosive out the new hole in the side of the car.
Vinnie looked in the rearview mirror, watching the grenade as it bounced down the street like a colorful rubber ball. As it bopped between the two unicycles, the smiles dropped from the Juggler Brothers’s faces as the French clowns disappeared into a cloud of blue fire.
“Did we get them?” Jimmy asked, sitting on the edge of his seat. He stared back at the blue flames behind them, so excited that he forgot about the blood dribbling down his chest.
“I don’t see them,” Vinnie said, watching the flames through the mirror.
“We got them. I know we got them.”
But only a moment later, the Juggler Brothers emerged from the blue flames, pedaling their unicycles like apocalyptic horsemen. Their clothes were scorched. Their pointy hats had been blown from their heads. But they weren’t wounded. They were pissed.
“No…,” Vinnie said. “They don’t go down that easily.”
“Those sons of bitches.” Jimmy leaned out of the window and fired three more blasts from his air horn, but at that range the sound waves dissipated in the wind before reaching their targets.
The juggler brothers threw everything they had at the Bozos. Vinnie swerved the car in a zigzag pattern as grenades exploded into blue fires that tore apart the exterior of the car. When they were out of grenades, the jugglers came at them with the chain saws. Jimmy pointed his air horn out the window and the noseless clown sawed it in half as he pedaled by. Then the skinny brother juggled a saw into the front of the car, cutting into the engine. Smoke poured from the hood.
The engine made a shrieking sound as Vinnie hit the gas, trying to go even faster.
“Hold on,” Vinnie said. “I’ve got an idea.”
He took a hard right and floored it.
“What’s that?” Jimmy yelled, looking at the jagged remains of his air horn.
“We’re going into The Sideshow.”
“What!” Jimmy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Are you freaking nuts?”
“The Juggler Brothers won’t follow us in there.”
“Yeah, because they’re not stupid.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah, we can put a couple bullets in our heads right now and make it easy on ourselves.”
Vinnie shook his head. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s the only choice we got.”
Chapter 40
The jugglers didn’t turn back when Vinnie led them into The Sideshow. No matter how dangerous that area of town was, nothing was going to stop them from getting their revenge.
“Those crazy motherfuckers,” Jimmy said. “Well, at least if we die they’ll go out with us.”
“They don’t plan to be in here for long,” Vinnie said. “They’re going to try to take us out before we get too deep into Sideshow territory.”
Jimmy looked back at the clowns on the unicycles. They were pulling machetes from sheaths on their backs, preparing for their final attack.
“Be ready for them,” Vinnie said.
Jimmy glanced down at the spliced air horn in his hand. He didn’t know how he was supposed to protect himself. Vinnie had one hope. If the French clowns hesitated long enough, they could realize that there wasn’t enough time to both attack and return to safety. It was possible they would choose to play it safe.
As they headed deeper into The Sideshow, Vinnie became a little more than worried. He’d only seen this area from a distance, never daring to step foot inside. The place was a wasteland. It had once been an industrial area, now long abandoned. The buildings were left to crumble and rot. Weeds grew through the cement and cracked apart the road. The air was so thick with toxic smog that he couldn’t see ten feet in front of him.
When the jugglers came in, they came in hard and fast. They went straight for the tires, cutting through the two in the back as they juggled their machetes back and forth. Vinnie just heard the thunderous pops, then lost control of the vehicle. He glanced away from the road for a moment. Just a moment. He didn’t see it coming out of the fog. All he saw was a distorted, maniacal grin as the clown car plowed through its misshapen form.
The tiny clownmobile spun out, hit a pile of debris, and flipped into the air. Red metal crumpled around them as the car crashed roof-first into the street.
For a moment, everything was silent. Blood dripped from Vinnie’s round blue nose as he hung upside down inside the mangled vehicle. He blinked. His vision blurred in and out. All he could see of the Juggler Brothers were their unicycle wheels squeaking past his broken window as they circled like sharks.
“Motherfuckers…” Jimmy moaned.
He was more banged up than Vinnie, but he was able to move. He crawled out of the car and staggered to his feet.
“Don’t go out there,” Vinnie said.
But Jimmy didn’t listen. Jimmy never listened.
“You wanna fight me?” he yelled at the jugglers. “Fine, come and fight me.”
Vinnie tried to pull himself out of the car to back Jimmy up, but his seat belt was jammed, pinning him to the spot. He tugged and thrashed but couldn’t get free.
“I’ll do the same to you as I did your pussy cousin,” Jimmy yelled.
The French clowns circled him, one on each side, hurling their machetes back and forth across Jimmy’s front and back, trapping him within their juggling loop. Jimmy just stared at them, laughing death in the eyes.
“You’re like a dumb animal, Jimmy Bozo,” said the skinny brother.
The noseless brother finished his statement, “Somebody should have put you down a long time ago.”
Jimmy wasn’t brave. He was impulsive. He’d fight fire with gasoline if the mood struck him, and somehow he thought he’d always be lucky enough to get away with whatever crazy action he took.
“You think you’re the only clowns who can juggle?” Jimmy asked. He grabbed one of th
e machetes from midair as it twirled past him. “I can juggle, too.”
Then Jimmy snatched up another machete. He juggled both of them, giggling at the two brothers. The Frenchmen did not respond, staring at their target with blood in their eyes.
“You think you’re better than me?” Jimmy asked, juggling far sloppier than the brothers. “You’re not better than me. I’m going to slaughter the both of yas.”
Jimmy threw a machete, aiming it right at the skinny brother’s head. But the juggler just snatched it in the air, flipped it around, and threw it right back at Jimmy. The Bozo tried to catch it, but it was too fast. The machete impaled his right hand.
“Son of a bitch!” Jimmy fell to his knees.
The sixteen-inch blade split the center of his palm open. He couldn’t move any of his fingers. Four of the tendons had been severed. Blood sprayed down his white arm.
“I’ll cut off your damn gumballs,” Jimmy yelled, grabbing the other machete with his left hand.
The noseless brother threw a machete into Jimmy’s left shoulder. The noise was like a loud clap as the blade tore through the muscles and scraped against bone. Jimmy’s arm fell limp and he cried out. His only weapon slid out of his fingers and fell to the ground. All he could do was curse the jugglers as they circled him on their unicycles.
From his upside-down position, Vinnie shot at the brothers, aiming carefully with both hands. But the jugglers dodged every bullet. It was like they knew when he was going to pull the trigger even before he did.
“It’s time to finally put you out of your misery, Jimmy Bozo,” said the skinny brother, closing in on the bleeding clown.
Jimmy growled at him like a wounded animal.
“You’re not getting away with this,” Jimmy said.
The brothers looked at each other, then back at Jimmy. They rolled up to him and stopped, taking their feet from their unicycle pedals. They finished juggling, catching the machetes and holding two or three in each hand. Bloodthirsty looks in their eyes as they stared down on their wounded prey.
“If your father wants to retaliate that’s fine,” said the noseless brother. “We’ll be ready for him.”
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