ClownFellas (30 page)

“I was robbed…Who would want to rob me?” Then something came back to him. “Wait a minute. The robbery…”

Bingo remembered that he'd pulled off a flawless jewelry heist the day before. He did the job with five guys he didn't really trust. Beano Moretti's guys. He didn't think Beano trusted them, either, or he wouldn't have had Bingo tag along for the job.

“Those sons of bitches,” Bingo said.

His cut of the money was missing. It would've been in a briefcase nearby, but it was nowhere to be seen. He was sure it was those guys who'd taken the money and tried to whack him. It even made sense that they'd hire cleaners from outside the family, since they couldn't get the Bozos to help them bury one of their own and were probably too scared to do it themselves.

“Wait…” Bingo realized something else was missing. “Where's Melinda?”

The two men in clown paint looked around the room, wondering what the heck he was talking about.

“Who's Melinda?” Red Wig asked.

Bingo didn't acknowledge the question. “They better not have taken Melinda.”

The clown went into his bedroom, then into his closet, then his bathroom. He tore the place apart. The longer he searched, the angrier he got. By the time he gave up, he was so enraged that he felt the urge to rip somebody limb from limb.

“What did you do with my Melinda?” Bingo charged out of his room and attacked the men before they could get out the front door.

He grabbed Blue Wig by the throat and lifted him off the ground.

“Where'd you put her? I
need
her.”

“Who the hell are you talking about?” Red Wig said. “Nobody was here when we arrived. Just you. Honest.”

“She's everything to me,” Bingo said, foaming in the corners of his blue-and-red lips.

“Is she your girlfriend? Your daughter?”

“My violin.”

“You play the violin?”

“It's an Ilario Sperrazza. One of the most valuable instruments in the world.”

Bingo squeezed tighter. Blue Wig's legs thrashed in the air.

“Put him down. You're going to kill him!”

Bingo dropped the scrawny fake-clown. “Whoever took my violin is dead. I don't care how long it takes me. He's dead.”

Red Wig helped his partner to his feet. “So you let it slide when somebody tries to kill you but you go apeshit when they steal your violin?”

Bingo punched a hole in the wall two inches away from Red Wig's head.

“I can deal with somebody shooting me or taking my cash, but nobody even looks at Melinda funny if they want to live.”

Bingo opened his coat closet and pulled out a fresh pair of pants and T-shirt. The two men had never seen anyone change their clothes with such fury. He nearly ripped the pants in half trying to get them on.

“When are you going to meet your client next?” Bingo asked.

Red Wig shrugged. “We're not going to. We never met them in the first place.”

“Don't they still have to pay you?”

“We got paid in advance. That's how we work. As long as we get the job done, we never hear from our customers.”

Bingo cracked his knuckles.

“Okay, we'll go see Squirrels then,” Bingo said. “I'm sure it was Squirrels who double-crossed me.”

Of the five clowns he did the heist with, Squirrels was the one he trusted the least. He was too twitchy. Too…squirrelly. Bingo never liked squirrels, not the rodents and not the clown.

“We?” Red Wig asked, wondering why they had to go with him. But Bingo didn't respond as he put his boots on.

“Let's go,” Bingo said. “We've got some pain we need to be allocating.”

The two men were too intimidated by the large clown to do anything but follow his orders. The next thing they knew they were getting in the back of his car.

“Is he for real?” Blue Wig whispered to his partner as the clown pulled into traffic.

“No clue,” Red Wig replied. “I think that bullet screwed with his brain.”

They couldn't tell if the clown could hear them from the front seat, but they continued speaking anyway.

“Do you think he really plays the violin?”

“Who the hell knows? The guy's nuts. There might not even be a violin.”

Bingo had been playing classical violin ever since he was a little kid, but nobody ever believed it. He was the toughest, ugliest thug in all Little Bigtop—not the kind of person you'd expect to be a violin enthusiast. But he did play regularly, and he was unusually talented, even for a clown. He might have been big, bald, and ugly, but when Bingo played he was beautiful. The music he created was smooth, buttery heaven. Anyone who'd ever heard him play his sweet, haunting melodies would be brought to tears every single time. It was like he had an angel trapped inside him just aching to get out.

He got his first violin from his adoptive parents. They knew clown children were more likely to get in trouble than vanilla kids, so they got him violin lessons to give him something to occupy his time. Otherwise, they figured, he'd be out on the streets getting into fights with anyone who dared pick on him for being the only clown kid in the neighborhood. Still, despite their efforts, he often came home with blood on his knuckles.

Mr. Hengan, his violin tutor, would reprimand him anytime he came home after a fight.

“Fighting damages your hands,” Mr. Hengan always said. “You can't play the violin if you always abuse your hands.”

“But I don't damage my hands when I fight,” little Bingo would say. “I damage the other kid's face, not my hands.”

Mr. Hengan examined his knuckles. They weren't swollen or bruised, but the skin was peeled back. “See. Your hands are damaged.”

“Then I'll just build stronger hands,” Bingo said.

Although Bingo was an undisciplined little monster compared with the other children Hengan tutored, not to mention twice the size despite being the youngest, he was never late for an appointment. He always gave it 110 percent. And he showed more promise than any pupil he'd had in twenty years.

“He's a prodigy,” Mr. Hengan told his parents. “I've never met any child like him.”

As they spoke, they watched the clown kid outside, smashing bricks over his head just for the fun of it. Even back then Bingo had a thick skull and was completely bald outside small green tufts of hair sticking out of the sides of his face like moss-covered butterfly wings.

“Bingo? Are you serious?” said his vanilla mother. “I never would have thought.”

“He's going to be a great violinist someday,” said the tutor. “Perhaps one of the greatest.”

She looked at her husband then shook her head. “I'm sorry. It's just a little shocking. When we decided to give him lessons, we never thought he'd actually be any good at it. We just wanted to give him something to do that wasn't…” She looked outside to see her clown son smash his head through a whole wall of bricks. “Destructive…”

“Well, I'm very glad you did. Working with him has been the highlight of my career.”

“Our Bingo…,” the father said. “Who'd have thought?”

“But how can he be a prodigy?” said the mother. “He's such a violent, angry boy.”

“That's the thing,” said Hengan. “Somehow he's naturally able to channel his violent energy into the music he plays and transform it into something magnificent. Believe it or not, his destructive behavior actually enhances his musical ability.”

The mother didn't know how to respond other than to laugh out loud.

“There's a violin competition coming up that I wanted to sign Bingo up for. It's the most prestigious contest for musicians his age.”

“That would be great,” the father said. “I'd like to see how the scamp does against other prodigies. When will he compete?”

“I'm afraid he
won't
be competing,” Hengan said. “He refused.”

“What do you mean he refused?” the mother asked.

“He didn't want to,” Hengan said. “Instead, he wanted to sign up for another competition.”

The tutor pulled out a newspaper article and handed it to the parents.

“What's this?” the mother asked.

“It's a contest for adults. The best violinists from all over the world will be competing. It's not something that's easy to even register for, let alone place in. But Bingo's insistent. He wants to compete and he wants to win. Personally, I don't think he's ready. Maybe in ten or fifteen years, but not now.”

“Why does he want to win
this
competition so bad?”

“Well, first prize is an Ilario Sperrazza violin. One of the finest instruments to ever be crafted. And for some reason Bingo wants it. I have no idea why. A kid his age wouldn't even know what to do with such a valuable item.”

“So are you going to let him compete?” asked the mother.

“That's up to you. The entry fee won't be cheap and he probably doesn't have a chance of even passing the tryouts.”

The parents looked out the window at their clown child as he tossed stones up in the air and tried to catch them with his teeth. Then they looked at each other.

“We'll do it,” they said in unison.

The violin tutor folded up the newspaper article and nodded. “Very well. I guess we'll soon see what the boy is really capable of.”

Bingo Ballbreaker parked the car outside Squirrels's apartment building. His two passengers stepped out of the vehicle, keeping their distance from the angry clown.

“Come on,” Bingo said. “Melinda's nearby. I can smell her.”

A couple of passing old women gave Bingo appalled looks when they overheard his words.

As they rode the elevator up, Bingo looked at the two men. Their clown outfits were terrible. He could see the string holding on their rubber noses, and their makeup was smeared in multiple places, especially near the sides of their mouths.

“You know dressing like that can get you killed in this neighborhood,” Bingo said, staring at them.

Red Wig broke eye contact. “Yeah, but we wanted to blend in.”

“You call that blending in?”

“It's better than coming in without the makeup,” Red Wig said. “Vanillas, as you call us, stick out in this neighborhood and it's not good to stick out when you're moving bodies.”

“Well, most clowns find it offensive,” Bingo said. “You're lucky I'm the merciful type.”

Red Wig straightened the nose on his face as they reached the top floor. When they got to Squirrels's place, the door was unlocked.

Bingo called out as he opened the door, “You here, Squirrels?”

There was no response. The place was a mess. It had been ransacked. When they found Squirrels's body, the scrawny clown was lying with his pants down on his bathroom floor. Somebody had shot him in the head while he was taking a leak. But unlike Bingo, his head wasn't hard enough to stop the bullet. His brains were sprayed across the shower curtains. Bingo turned him over to make sure he was the guy he was looking for. When the identity was verified, he stuffed the clown's tongue back in his mouth and closed his eyes.

“Sorry I doubted you, Squirrels,” Bingo said, unzipping his fly to take a leak in the brain-painted toilet on the other side of the corpse. “I guess I wasn't the only one who got double-crossed.”

When Red Wig saw the clown, he said, “Wait a minute. Is that who I think it is?”

He looked at his partner. The partner shrugged.

Red Wig asked Bingo, “Is his real name Arlo Palazzi?”

Bingo's urine stream trickled down onto Squirrels's corpse as he finished relieving himself. “Yeah, why?”

The two cleaners looked at each other again. “He was our next job.”

Bingo zipped up and looked at them. “What do you mean?”

“We were paid to dispose of this clown's body as well,” Blue Wig said.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, we would've come here right after we finished at your place. I wasn't paying attention to the address when we pulled up so I didn't realize it was the same guy until we saw him.”

Bingo was surprised to hear that.

“How many other jobs were you paid to do today?”

“Four others, besides this one and yours.”

“Who were they?”

When the cleaner listed all of the names, Bingo grunted. He didn't like what he was hearing. It complicated things quite a bit.

“You know them?” Red Wig asked.

“Yeah.” Bingo lowered his head “We all did a job together. I guess Squirrels and I weren't the only ones to be targeted.”

“I'm sorry,” Red Wig said.

“Don't be. They were sons of bitches, the lot of them. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch. The only thing that bugs me is who would've done it. If the other five guys are dead, there doesn't leave too many suspects.”

Red Wig didn't know what to say. He just shrugged at the big clown. Blue Wig shrugged, too.

“So you were paid to take care of this body?” Bingo asked.

The cleaners nodded.

“Then I guess I'll let you get to it,” said the clown.

“But we left our tools at your place,” Red Wig said.

“You're professionals,” Bingo said. “I'm sure you'll figure something out. I'll be in the kitchen. Hopefully Squirrels left something edible in this dump.”

After the cleaners finished their job and Bingo finished his ham-and-bubblegum sandwich, they went to check on the corpses of the other four clowns with whom Bingo'd done the job just to make sure it was true they all got iced.

“I figured as much,” Bingo said, once they got to the final residence.

All four were dead. If one was still alive Bingo would at least have a suspect, but with the whole crew wiped out Bingo had nothing. He had to find another answer. But he had no idea who it could possibly be. Whoever shot him had to have something to do with the heist, since their goal was obviously to take the loot all for themselves, but very few people knew anything about the job. The only two people still alive who knew about it, besides himself, were Beano Moretti, who'd set up the job, and Bingo's capo, Vinnie Blue Nose. The thought that Vinnie or Beano would take him out for mere peanuts was ludicrous. Bingo brought in far more money than that on a regular basis. They weren't in the business of killing off their paychecks.

Then Bingo realized there was one other person who knew about the heist: his girlfriend, Isabella Funshine. She was an exotic dancer down at Bonkers, one of the Bozo Family's clown strip clubs. A real looker, but young and naïve, way too innocent for a place like Little Bigtop. If it weren't for Bingo coming into her life just as she moved in six months ago, the city would have eaten her alive.

With Bingo as her boyfriend, nobody touched her. Nobody even got too close to the stage when she was dancing at work. She was protected, but in order for her to be protected Bingo had to make sure everyone in town knew that the girl was his. Yet it was a double-edged sword. Though it made sure nobody abused or took advantage of the innocent girl, it also made her a target. Anyone who wanted to get to Bingo could go through her. That had to have been what happened. Somebody got to Isabella and forced information out of her. She told them about the heist and they made their move.

“Poor girl…,” Bingo said, thinking about all the things her captors could have done to her. Even though he knew she probably sold him out to save her own skin, he still felt bad about it. She didn't have a choice. It was all his fault. He just hoped they let her live after they were through with her.

“Come on,” Bingo said to the cleaners. “We're going to Bonkers.”

“Bonkers?” Red Wig asked.

“A strip club.”

Blue Wig asked, “Why are we going to a strip club?”

“What's wrong with you?” Bingo asked as he went back to his car. “Don't you like strip clubs?”

The cleaners looked at each other as if their time with the clown would never come to an end.

“He wants us to go with him to a strip club now?” Red Wig asked his partner.

“What's he think we are, members of his crew or something?” Blue Wig asked.

“This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” Red Wig said.

But no matter how much they complained about it, they still couldn't figure out a way to escape from their predicament.