Don Bozo pointed his stubby finger at the old clown. “You need to fix this and you need to fix this soon. It’s going to make us look weak if we can’t bounce back after taking a hit from the feds like this.”
Buggy lowered his eyes. He’d never been in a bind this tight before. He didn’t know how to handle it.
The boss continued, “I don’t care how you get it done. Just get it done. And if you can’t do it I’ll find a clown who can.”
And with that the meeting was over. The boss stood up and left a balloon animal tiger in his wake.
“You have two weeks,” the boss said as he exited the doorway.
The other capos exited behind their boss, leaving Buggy alone with the balloon tiger. It growled and hopped toward him across the conference table. Although he could have popped it, Buggy decided to flee with his bulldog before it had the chance to attack. He knew what the boss meant by telling him he’d find a clown who could. When a clown lost the family the kind of money Buggy lost…By saying he had only two weeks, what the boss meant was that Buggy had that amount of time to set things right or he would find his head on the chopping block.
Chapter 82
Outside The Show, Buggy ran into Vinnie Blue Nose, who was smoking a cotton candy cigarette by the side of the road.
“Hey Bugs, can I have a word?” Vinnie asked, calling him over and offering one of his cigarettes.
“No, thanks,” Buggy said. “I don’t smoke. It doesn’t agree with Mittens. I think he’s allergic.”
The bulldog in Buggy’s arms squinted at the pink smoke rising from Vinnie’s cigarette and said, “Erfff…” Vinnie didn’t put it out.
“The boss asked me to advise you on your current situation,” Blue Nose said. “He didn’t want to appear as if he were playing favorites with you in front of the other clowns, you and him being old childhood friends and all. So let’s keep this little powwow between you and me.”
A large chunk of stress melted off Buggy’s face right there. Vinnie was half his age, but the clown had more business sense than the boss’s other capos put together. If anyone could give him an idea to get him out of this jam, it would be Vinnie Blue Nose.
“Sure, Vinnie. I’m all ears for any ideas you got. To be honest, I have no idea how I’m going to get out of this mess.”
Vinnie shook his head. “I’m not here to bail you out, Bugs. You’re going to have to make it work yourself. I’m just going to give you a suggestion that might put you in the right direction.”
Buggy didn’t care. Any help from Vinnie at all would be welcomed. “What do you have in mind?”
“I only had half a cigarette to brainstorm a solution for you, so this is the best I got. I was thinking about what I’d do if I were in your situation.” Vinnie took another drag of pink smoke.
“Yeah?” Buggy asked, too impatient to wait for him to finish puffing on his death stick.
“You only have two weeks, so I’d forget about trying to get a bunch of clubs up and running for now. You just need to earn and earn big. So I’d put everything into a single show.”
Buggy nearly knocked over Mittens’s life support machine when he heard the street boss’s recommendation.
“Are you kidding me?” Buggy asked. “How the heck could I earn enough to make up for what I lost the family in just one show?”
“Make it a big show,” Vinnie said.
“But even if I had any good venues left, I’d need to sell five thousand tickets at least. There’s no place big enough for that kind of show in all of Little Bigtop.”
“Then don’t focus on selling a lot of tickets. Focus on selling tickets for a lot. Charge ten or twenty times the amount you normally charge.”
“How am I going to charge ten times the normal amount? Who the heck would pay that?”
“Just about anyone will, if you make it worth their time. Forget about your normal comedians. You need to do something new. You need to create a sensation. It needs to be a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
“And what would that be?”
“That’s what you have to figure out. Think about what kind of show you’d pay a thousand bucks to go see. If it’s not worth your money it’s not going to be worth anyone else’s. Once you’ve got a performance you’re excited about, then spread the word around. It has to be the talk of the town, the kind of show that makes people feel stupid if they don’t attend.”
“That’s easier said than done, Vinnie. And I still don’t have a venue.”
“Rent one. If it’s just for one night it should be easy. Miss Tina has a venue space over at the Rainbow Gardens that might be suitable. Ask her.”
Buggy looked away from the street boss and shook his head. He didn’t know how to respond. What he was suggesting seemed impossible.
“In any case, you should start brainstorming as soon as you can,” Vinnie said, tossing his cigarette in a garbage can. “The only way to earn big is to think big.”
“Yeah, thanks…” Buggy’s voice went soft.
Then Vinnie patted the old guy on the back. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Comedy is in your blood. You’re a clown.”
Buggy watched Vinnie as he walked away in his nicely pressed turquoise suit and neatly cut dark-blue hair. Buggy had no idea where the heck the world grew clowns like Vinnie Blue Nose. The man seemed perfect in every way. Only a guy like Vinnie would dare to propose such an ambitious idea. And only a guy like him would be capable of pulling it off.
Buggy knew that if he was going to survive in the business he’d have to become more like that young blue-nosed clown. He was going to have to step up his game.
Chapter 83
Buggy had no idea what he was going to do. There was no show that he would ever pay a thousand dollars to go see, even if he had all the resources in the world to put it together. He wondered if he should put on a sketch comedy show. They had always proven to be popular in the past. But there hadn’t been a good sketch troupe in ages or else he would’ve already had them booked multiple times a week. He wondered if he could get a few of his best comedians out of jail. If he bribed the right people it was somewhat possible to get them out on work leave, or maybe to attend an arranged funeral, but that was a long shot and even with his best possible lineup it still probably wouldn’t be worth a thousand dollars to anyone.
He was so lost in thought that he didn’t hear the knock at the door when Cheeky Helga came for the weekly appointment. She had her own key so she let herself in and saw Buggy lying shirtless on his couch with Mittens the bulldog sleeping on top of his belly.
“Helga?” Buggy asked when she arrived. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She put a bottle of cheap wine on the coffee table and pulled out the cork. “What do you mean what am I doing here? It’s Friday.”
Buggy tried to remove the bulldog from his belly, but Mittens growled in his sleep. The clown decided to leave the dog where he was.
“Already?” Buggy asked, scratching his head. “It seemed like you were here just a couple days ago.”
Helga was an old clown prostitute who’d visited Buggy on a weekly basis for the past thirty years. She was once the most beautiful clown in all of Little Bigtop and Buggy would have been willing to pay triple for her services, but those days were long gone. Her looks faded. Her weight got out of control. Outside Buggy, she didn’t have any real customers left. And the only reason Buggy still paid her was because he felt sorry for the old gal. He’d known her for so long she was practically family.
“What’s wrong, Bugs?” Cheeky asked. “You look down in the dumps.”
They called her Cheeky due to the enormous rump she had stuffed into her obscenely miniature clown skirt. Her cheeks were two giant white globes with bright-red targets tattooed on each one.
“That’s ’cause I am, like you wouldn’t believe,” Buggy responded. “I’ve got to put on a million-dollar show and I have no idea what I’m going to do for it.”
<
br /> “Poor baby.” Helga forced her butt into the couch next to him and rubbed his shoulder. “You sound stressed out. Maybe I can help you relieve that tension.”
Buggy shook his head and pushed her back. “Sorry, Helga. Not tonight.”
Although Buggy had been paying her for sexual services for years, he rarely ever actually wanted to sleep with the aged woman. As if they’d been married for thirty years, he just didn’t have much sexual interest in her anymore. Most of the time she just came to keep him company. She spent more time cleaning his apartment, washing his bulldog, and acting as his therapist than actually sleeping with him.
“Are you sure, baby?” she asked, continuing to rub his shoulder. “I’m here for you.”
“I’m just not in the mood right now. What I need is some ideas for a good show.”
“Then maybe I can help you with that,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Buggy said. “It’s got to be something really special. What show would you spend a thousand bucks on?”
Helga smirked her fat red lips. “A thousand bucks? I don’t got that kind of money to throw away on a single show.”
“But what if you had the money?” Buggy asked.
Helga shrugged. “Even if I had the money to blow, I wouldn’t pay it. You know me. I don’t like those underground comedy shows you put on. None of it’s funny.” She poured herself a glass of wine. “Comedy was far better before the act, back when it was legal. People like Bobby Goldstein. That guy was funny.”
When she said that, Buggy’s eyes lit up.
“What was that?” he asked.
“What?”
“Bobby Goldstein…,” Buggy said, rolling Mittens off him so that he could sit up straight.
Goldstein was the most popular comic there was before prohibition. Not only that, but he was also the person who told the joke so scathing that it caused the banning of comedy in the first place.
“That’s it…,” Buggy said. “That’s who I need.”
“Who? Goldstein?”
“Yeah,” Buggy said. “He’s perfect.”
“Are you serious? Is he even still alive?”
“Yeah, I believe so.” Buggy stood up, imagining what a massive show it would be. “Just think about it. A Bobby Goldstein comeback show. One night only. Who wouldn’t want to go to that? He was the king of comedy.”
“Yeah, but that was thirty years ago. Most of your audience wasn’t even alive back when he was popular. They don’t know his jokes.”
“But that’s even better,” Buggy said. “It’s not his humor that will bring a crowd. It’s the controversy. He’s the most notorious comedian of all time. He’s the one who got comedy outlawed. The young people who never heard his jokes will be even more interested than those who were fans, since they only heard his name through history class.”
“But would they really pay a thousand dollars a ticket?”
“Hell yeah, they will. If he’s performing one night only for just a single return show. It would be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Who wouldn’t want to go see that?”
Helga dunked her red nose into her glass of wine and took a long sip. “If you say so.”
A big smile crossed his face. He couldn’t believe he’d come up with an idea that could actually work. “It’s going to be perfect.”
Then he looked down at his bulldog, who was staring up at him with his tongue dangling out the side of his jowls.
He said, “Mittens, it’s pure genius.”
Then he hugged his bulldog and kissed him on the top of his head.
“Erfff…,” Mittens said.
As Buggy gave all of his affection to his bulldog, Cheeky Helga frowned into her glass of wine.
“Glad to be of help,” she said.
Then she took another sip.
Chapter 84
Buggy knew he shouldn’t have put all his hopes into a single idea for a show, but he couldn’t help it. It was the only idea he could come up with that had even a slight chance of success. He had no choice but to make it happen. But after three days, there was no progress. Bobby Goldstein was alive and still living in New York City, but he wasn’t returning Buggy’s phone calls. By the fourth day, Buggy got a sneaking suspicion that the old comedian was purposely avoiding his calls.
“That son of a bitch,” Buggy yelled, slamming his phone down on the receiver. “How many freaking messages do I have to leave until he calls me back?”
By the next morning, Buggy was done with trying to contact him by phone.
“Come on, Mittens. We’re going to pay Mr. Funnyman a visit whether he wants to see us or not.”
“Erfff…,” Mittens said.
Buggy wheeled his bulldog down to his car and drove across town. He planned to offer Mr. Goldstein a large sum of money to do the show. There was no way he would refuse. All he needed to do was meet with him in person and he was sure he’d be able to book Goldstein. Then he could move on to promotion and selling tickets.
Before he made it out of Little Bigtop, Buggy saw a street clown on the corner, slinging jokes to tourists.
“Are you kidding me?” Buggy yelled when he saw the young clown, slamming on the brakes.
He stepped out of the car, leaving it running with the driver’s door open in the middle of the intersection.
“What the heck do you think you’re doing?” Buggy charged to the corner, pointing at him with his fat greasy finger.
The street clown didn’t make eye contact with Buggy as he tried to finish the joke he was telling to the two young tourists holding a wad of cash. It was a young couple who smiled in anticipation of the punch line.
“Hey punk, I’m talking to you,” Buggy said as he arrived to the clown, getting between him and his audience. “What are doing on my street corner?”
The young couple backed away. They could see the angry clown clenching his fists at the young comedian and didn’t want to get involved.
“I’m just selling jokes,” the street clown said. “You want to buy a joke?”
“No I don’t want to buy your shitty jokes.”
The young clown smirked. “Are you a cop or something?”
“No, I’m not a cop.”
“Then get lost,” the kid said, turning back to the couple.
But Buggy wouldn’t let it go. He grabbed the guy by his coat.
“What I want to know is why you’re selling jokes on my turf, you little prick. You think you can do that in my territory?”
The clown just giggled at Buggy’s angry display. He was obviously high on laughy-gas.
“Your territory?”
“Yeah, my territory. You know what happens to punks like you who sling jokes in my territory?”
A line of cars backed up behind Buggy’s vacant vehicle honked their horns, yelling at the clown to move out of the way. When the young couple noticed the crowd that was gathering, they turned and rushed off.
“You just lost me those customers, asshole,” the street clown said.
“They’re not your customers. They’re my customers.”
Then the street clown head-butted Buggy right in his round nose. Blood painted the sidewalk as the young clown backed away.
“They’re not your customers anymore, asshole,” the kid said before he ran away, leaving Buggy holding his broken nose.
As blood covered his hand and chest, Buggy grumbled and moaned. “You damn prick. You’re dead. Your whole family’s dead. Do you have any idea who I am?”
But the young clown was already gone. Buggy staggered back into his car, flipped off the people honking at him, and sped off. He couldn’t believe the kid would disrespect him like that. A capo in the Bozo Family? That shouldn’t happen. It had been a while since he’d had to muscle out a street clown like that. Normally, he had younger guys to take care of that for him, but too many of them were currently behind bars. And those who weren’t behind bars were complete fuckups. He never thought he’d see the day when a lowly street punk got the best
of him. In the old days, he just would have shot the kid. He wondered what the heck made him so soft.
“Erff…,” Mittens said.
Buggy looked over at the bulldog and stroked him behind the ear with the non-bloody part of his hand.
“It’s okay, Mittens. We’ll show ’em. We’ll show all of ’em.”
The bulldog just burped at him in response, releasing an odor that smelled of Buggy’s new slippers. Then Mittens rolled over and went back to sleep.
Chapter 85
“Can I help you?” Bobby Goldstein asked when he saw the clown standing outside his apartment doorway with two pieces of bloody toilet paper sticking out of his nostrils.
“You Bobby Goldstein?” Buggy asked.
“Yeah…,” the comedian said, leaving his mouth dangling open as he saw the bulldog hooked up to a life support machine behind Buggy.
“My name’s Buttons. Why the hell haven’t you been returning my phone calls? I’ve been calling all week.”
Then Buggy pushed his way through the door and entered the old guy’s living room. “We’ve got to talk.”
Goldstein was probably in his late sixties or early seventies, wearing yellow pajamas with a toothbrush dangling out of his front pocket. It was obvious that he’d just recently woken up and couldn’t tell whether he was fully conscious or still dreaming as the clown and the terminally ill bulldog invaded his living room and made themselves at home.
“Do you have any roast beef?” Buggy asked, stepping over to the refrigerator. “Mittens only likes roast beef.”
“I got some pastrami in there,” Goldstein said, still in a daze.
“That’ll do,” Buggy said.
As he watched the clown raid his refrigerator and feed the bulldog slices of pastrami, Goldstein shook his head to regain his senses.
“Excuse me…,” the comedian said. “Who are you again? What do you want?”
Buggy brought Mittens to the living room couch and rested the mangy dog on a couch cushion.
“Like I said in all the messages I left you, I need you to do a favor for me.”
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