“Nah, hotels won’t work,” said the reverend. “They won’t let us do fish-juggling. We can’t have Friday Night Mass without fish-juggling. Why don’t you have your event at the Marriott?”
Buggy let out a deep breath. He was getting impatient with the holy man. “I can’t do it at the Marriott because I need my event to be a little discreet, if you know what I mean. It’s not exactly legal.”
The reverend’s eyes lit up. “Is it a comedy show? Lord knows I love a good comedy show. When I was a boy I always dreamed about becoming a stand-up comedian, before it became illegal that is.”
“Yeah, it’s a comedy show,” Buggy said. “The biggest show this town’s ever seen. I’m bringing Bobby Goldstein back.”
“Bobby Goldstein? Are you kidding me?”
“I’m serious. That’s why the venue is so important to me. You can do your mass anytime, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Jellybottom rubbed his chin. “Hmmm…Well, the mass is over at nine P.M. Perhaps you can have your show after that.”
“But I’m already selling tickets that say eight P.M. I can’t change it.”
Jellybottom thought about it some more. Then he snapped his fingers. “I got it! How about we combine our events?”
“Combine what?”
“We have both events at the same time. Friday Night Mass and Bobby Goldstein’s stand-up routine. It’ll be one heck of a night.”
“Combine a comedy show with a church service? Are you kidding me?”
“You haven’t been to my Friday Night Mass. It’s a crazy good time. You’ll see. People are going to love it. Maybe even more than Bobby Goldstein.”
Buggy waved his hands. “No. No way. People are paying a thousand bucks a ticket to see this show. There’s no way I can let a church service open a show like that. The crowd would have my head.”
“I’ll make it fun!” said the reverend. “You’ll see. My sermons are a blast.”
“Nobody’s going to want to listen to your boring-ass sermon.”
When Buggy said that, the reverend’s smile dropped from his face. He broke eye contact with the clown and straightened the crucifix on his wall.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Brother Buttons. But if you want to have your show at my venue, you’re going to have to do things my way. I give a sermon before your show or you find someplace else for your comedian to perform.”
Buggy didn’t know what to do. He considered threatening the clown, but if he even tried he knew word would get back to Miss Tina. Then she’d never let him use her space.
“This is going to be a disaster,” Buggy said as he wheeled Mittens out of the church. He didn’t care that the reverend could hear his voice as it echoed through the building.
Chapter 89
“Tell me you got Bobby Goldstein,” Buggy said when he met up with Winky Gagliano later that night.
They were at Snuffy’s club. When Buggy entered, he couldn’t believe the state of the place. The furniture was wobbly and splintered. The lighting was too dim to read a menu. The bar was only stocked with watered-down bottom-shelf liquor. The hardwood floor was sticky and smelled of urine. It was no wonder why nobody ever came to this club.
“Yeah, I got him,” Winky said. “Piece of cake.”
Buggy didn’t believe it. “Are you serious? He agreed?”
Winky popped a gumball in his mouth. “Yeah. It took a bit of persuasion, but he eventually gave in.”
“Are you sure? He said yes? He’ll definitely be there?”
Winky popped another gumball in his mouth. “Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me. He’s in the back.”
Buggy paused for a moment. He looked at Mittens and back at Winky. “What do you mean he’s in the back? He’s here?”
“Yeah,” Winky said.
“Bobby Goldstein?”
“Yeah, through that door.” Winky pointed at the door to the back storeroom.
“You didn’t…”
Buggy threw open the storeroom door and saw Bobby Goldstein in the center of the room. He was beaten, gagged, tied to a chair. His clothes were bloody and he looked like he had at least two broken bones.
“Winky, you stupid piece of shit…” Buggy turned to the clown. “What the hell is this? I told you to coerce him into doing the show, not kidnap him.”
“You said I could use force if I had to.”
“Not this kind of force, you son of a bitch!”
Buggy went to the comedian. “I’m real sorry, Mr. Goldstein. This was all a misunderstanding.”
When Buggy removed the gag, the comedian cried, “Take me to a hospital. Please…I think I’m bleeding internally.”
Buggy returned the gag to his mouth.
“What the hell did you do to him, Winky?”
Winky shrugged. “Well, I only roughed him up a little once he refused to do the show, but then he tried to escape.”
Winky paused. His winking eye started to twitch.
Buggy raised his voice. “And?”
Winky spit out his chewed gumballs. “Well, he was too fast to chase on foot so I had to use my car.”
Buggy raised his voice even louder. “And?”
“I couldn’t think of any other way to stop him so…”
“So you ran him over?”
“Just a little,” Winky said.
Buggy was about to strangle the kid. “What do you mean just a little?”
“Well, I wasn’t going that fast…and only part of him went under the tire.”
“You goddamn moron! How is he going to perform like this?”
Winky just shrugged.
“Do you know how bad you messed this up? People are going to be looking for him. The police are going to be looking for him. And where the hell are we going to take him if he actually needs a doctor? Not a hospital. We’d be arrested in minutes.”
“He’ll probably be fine to do one show…”
“You ran over his freakin’ leg! He won’t even be able to stand up on his own!” Buggy turned from Winky. He had to figure out how to fix this mess. He contemplated putting bullets in all three of their heads, dumping their bodies in the river, and getting the heck out of town before he got himself whacked. “You really messed this one up…”
Buggy looked over at the comedian and saw that he was trying to speak. When he removed the gag, Goldstein took a few deep breaths. He looked like he was in so much pain he could hardly talk.
“I’ll do your show,” Goldstein cried. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just get me a doctor. At least get me something for the pain.”
Buggy looked over at Snuffy. “You got any strong painkillers in this place?”
Snuffy’s voice was muffled beneath his handkerchief as he said, “I’ve got vodka.”
“Anything stronger?”
“I’ve got three kegs of laughy-gas,” Snuffy said, pointing to a few canisters in the back of the room.
“Will that work?” Buggy asked.
“Yeah. I think it’s morphine-based.”
Buggy nodded. “Give it to him, then.”
Snuffy and Winky moved a canister to Bobby Goldstein, slipped the mask over his face, and turned on the gas. Within minutes, Bobby relaxed. Then he began chuckling.
As they watched the comedian laugh at nothing in particular, Buggy realized how unusual it was for Snuffy to have so many laughy-gas canisters in his club. If he was dealing the stuff off the record, Don Bozo would be pissed. Their treaty with the Carnies explicitly stated that the Bozo Family was not allowed to deal laughy-gas in Little Bigtop. The Carnies had a monopoly on that market. If anyone else but Buggy saw this, it would’ve been enough to get Snuffy whacked.
Buggy turned to Snuffy and asked, “What the heck are you doing with this much laughy-gas anyway? I thought the only drug you did was glitter.”
“It’s not for me. It’s for my customers.”
“So you’re dealing? Behind the boss’s back? Are you nuts?”
Snuf
fy shook his head. “I’m not dealing it to customers. I use it for ambience.”
“What the heck do you mean by that?”
“Since the only comedians I can get to perform here are terrible, I usually have to flood the room with laughy-gas so that the customers enjoy themselves. It’s the only way to get them to laugh at all the bad jokes.”
Buggy shook his head. “You’re such an idiot, Snuffy. Do you know the street value of this stuff? No wonder your club’s hemorrhaging money. You spend ten times more on laughy-gas than you make from customers.”
Snuffy’s hands shook as he spoke, getting defensive. “But it’s an investment. If people enjoy themselves, then they’ll come back for more. Eventually, I’ll be able to pack this place every night. Then I can raise the cost of admission. Then I can afford good comedians. Then I wouldn’t need the laughy-gas.”
“Yeah, and how is your plan going for you so far?”
Snuffy responded with silence. He didn’t want to admit the number of years he’d been attempting his scheme with no results.
“That’s what I thought,” Buggy said. “You forget that this place is a complete dump. Nobody respectable would ever come in here. You’re spending a fortune for nothing.”
The volume of Bobby Goldstein’s laughter increased from a low chuckle to a mad roar.
“Turn that off. You’re giving him too much.” Buggy pointed at the canister until Winky shut off the gas. “We don’t want him to overdose on the stuff.”
“I once saw a guy OD on this,” Winky said, giggling at the thought. “He laughed so hard his head exploded.”
“That’s just an urban legend,” Snuffy said. “It didn’t actually happen.”
“It did!” Winky cried. “I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Cut the crap,” Buggy said, trying to speak over Goldstein’s insane laughter. “Winky, I want you to find a doctor for the comedian.”
“Where am I going to find a doctor?” Winky asked.
“I don’t care. Ask around. Get the boss’s vet if you have to. You know, what’s his name…that Jewish guy.”
“You mean Berryman?” Winky asked.
“He’s Jewish?” Snuffy asked.
“Whatever, just find somebody. Goldstein needs to be able to perform next Friday.”
Winky said, “You got it, boss,” and left the club.
Buggy and Snuffy left the back room and locked Goldstein inside. The comedian’s cackles could still be heard through the door.
“So how did you do today?” Buggy asked Snuffy. “Did you generate any interest for the show?”
Snuffy smiled and nodded. “Yeah, it went great. Everyone on that list you gave me seemed really interested to see Bobby Goldstein perform.”
“Even for a thousand bucks?”
Snuffy’s face grew confused. “You’re charging a thousand bucks a ticket?”
“Yeah, didn’t you tell anyone that?”
Snuffy shrugged. “I assumed it was the same price as always.”
Buggy was about to collapse at Snuffy’s words. “Tell me you didn’t sell any tickets…”
Snuffy inched away. He didn’t want to be within fist range when he answered. “Not many. Just a hundred or so.”
“A hundred or so! How many exactly?”
“A hundred and eighty-five.”
Buggy lunged at Snuffy, but the droopy-faced clown backed away before he could get him.
“You son of a bitch,” Buggy yelled. “I oughta chop you up and feed you to Mittens.”
Snuffy looked over at the bulldog in the corner and Mittens said, “Erff…”
“Look, I can make it right,” Snuffy said. “I’ll tell them it was a mistake.”
Buggy stepped toward Snuffy, ready to break his face if he got close enough, but Snuffy stayed out of arm’s reach. “You better make this right.”
“I will. I promise!”
When Buggy calmed down, he took a few deep breaths and thought of a plan. He knew Snuffy wouldn’t be able to figure out a solution on his own.
“I want you to refund the money of each and every person you sold a ticket to,” Buggy said. “You apologize to them and tell them that the tickets are actually two thousand dollars. But, because of the mistake, you’ll give them a half-off discount for only a thousand dollars a ticket. That way you might be able to actually sell a few.”
Before Buggy left, he said one last thing to the sniveling clown. “Whatever you do, make sure you get the tickets back from everyone you sold one to. I don’t want a single seat filled for less than a thousand bucks.”
Snuffy didn’t say anything. He just nodded. It was obvious that he’d sold at least a few tickets on the street that would be impossible to get back.
Chapter 90
When Buggy got back to his apartment that night, he walked into Uncle Jojo sitting on his couch, drinking scotch from a glued-together bulldog mug.
“Jojo?” Buggy asked, pushing Mittens’s life support machine into the room and closing the door behind him.
Uncle Jojo took didn’t look at him, flipping through a copy of Playjoy magazine. He took a sip of scotch.
“How ya doin’ there, Bugs?” Jojo finally said.
Buggy took a Tupperware container of roast beef out of the refrigerator and filled Mittens’s bowl with meat before he responded.
“I’m doing good, Jojo. What brings you here at this hour?”
Jojo took another sip of scotch.
“Can’t an old friend stop by for a visit from time to time?”
Buggy sat down in the recliner across from the underboss. “No disrespect, but you haven’t paid me a social visit in twenty years. I didn’t think you liked me very much.”
Jojo placed a pie on the table. He didn’t look at it or acknowledge it, just slid it on the coffee table so that Buggy knew it was there. The capo couldn’t tell if it was a normal pie or something explosive.
“What makes you say that?” Jojo asked. “We grew up with each other. You, me, and my brother used to run the neighborhood when we were kids.”
“That was a long time ago,” Buggy said.
Jojo shrugged, still absorbed in the magazine. He turned the page to the centerfold model—a green-haired clown girl who was smashing a watermelon with a mallet.
“I came to check up on how things are going with you,” Jojo said. “You’ve got only a week left and it doesn’t appear as though you’ve made any progress. There’s no new clubs open. No money coming in. You’re beginning to worry me, old friend.”
“You don’t have to worry, Jojo. I’ve got things under control.”
Jojo nodded his head. “That’s good to hear, because if you didn’t tell me so I’d swear you didn’t have everything under control at all. In fact, you look so stressed right now that if I didn’t know better I’d say you’re minutes away from going into panic mode. And when a guy panics, he gets desperate. And desperate men do desperate things.”
Uncle Jojo pulled out a large knife, then cut a piece out of the pie on the coffee table. It was chocolate cream. He put the slice on a napkin.
Buggy was relieved it was just a normal pie, but knew that it was all just an intimidation tactic. He knew Jojo too well to think it was anything else.
As the underboss continued to carve up the pie, Buggy said, “I’m having a few setbacks at the moment, but it’s nothing that I can’t iron out. I’ve got something going. Something big.”
Jojo licked whipping cream from his fingers. “And what’s that?”
“Next Friday, I’m putting on the biggest comedy show Little Bigtop’s ever seen.”
Jojo handed Buggy the slice of pie. “Oh yeah, and what show is that?”
“It’s going to be huge.” Buggy took the slice of pie, but didn’t have a fork to eat it with so he just held it awkwardly in his hand. “I’ve booked the one and only Bobby Goldstein for a return show. I’m selling tickets for a thousand bucks a pop.”
“And people are actually buying them?�
��
“Yeah, they just went on sale today and a couple hundred are already sold.” Buggy decided it would be best not to tell him that they hadn’t been sold at the thousand-dollar price. “This one show’s going to bring in more money than all my other clubs combined, even if they were all still up and running.”
Uncle Jojo nodded. “Sounds like a good plan.”
Buggy forced a smile. “Thanks, Jojo. I think it’s pretty good myself. After that night, I’ll be able to pay everyone what they’re owed and still have plenty left over to start up a bunch of new clubs. Everything will be back to normal. You’ll see.”
Jojo licked his fingers again and nodded his head. “Yeah. I’ll see.”
The underboss stood up, took his coat, and waddled toward the door. Before he left, he paused, rubbed his chin, and looked at the ceiling in deep thought.
“Did you say Bobby Goldstein?”
Buggy nodded. “Yeah. The one and only.”
“I used to love Bobby Goldstein,” Jojo said. “Put me down for twenty tickets. I want to take my whole crew out to see him.”
“Yes, of course,” Buggy said, surprised that the underboss would put up twenty grand of his own money to see the show.
Buggy thought that maybe the underboss wasn’t the nasty prick he always made himself out to be. Who would have thought that he’d actually support Buggy in his time of need?
“And it’ll be your treat, right?” Jojo said with a smile.
Buggy broke eye contact. “Yeah…of course.”
“Excellent.” Jojo slapped Buggy on the shoulder. “And you didn’t think we were friends.”
Then the underboss left and Buggy threw the slice of chocolate cream pie across the room.
“That miserable excuse for a clown…,” Buggy grumbled.
Not only would he have the underboss and a crew of his soldiers there supervising the show, but he was going to miss out on twenty grand’s worth of ticket sales. He couldn’t spare twenty seats. He needed to sell each and every one of them if he wanted to meet his quota. There needed to be another way to make some extra money on the side.
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