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.
He called up Winky Gagliano.
“I got another job for you to do,” Buggy said, before Winky even had a chance to say hello.
“What’s that?”
“We need stuff to sell at the event. Posters. Coffee mugs. T-shirts. All with Bobby Goldstein’s face on them. Maybe also get some bootleg DVDs of his old act. We’ll charge out the ass for them and make a bundle. You think you can handle getting that stuff made?”
“Yeah, I know some guys,” Winky said. “How many shirts do you want?”
“Fifty in each size.”
“Sure thing.”
“Hey, did you find a doctor yet?”
“Yeah, I sent Slicey over there.”
“Slicey? What happened to Earl Berryman?”
“The vet was busy so I had to improvise.”
“But isn’t Slicey the clown who runs the local organ black market?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy. He’s not a licensed surgeon, but he gives organ transplants all the time so he’s got to know what he’s doing. Plus, he said he’d do it for free. All he asked for was one of the comedian’s kidneys.”
“What!” Buggy strangled his phone, pretending it was Winky’s neck. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”
“It’s only a kidney,” Winky said. “He doesn’t need both of them to do the show.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you? Get your ass over there and stop the operation or I’ll cut your gumballs off.”
“But Slicey wants a kidney. What am I supposed to say to him?”
“Give him one of your own kidneys, you prick. This is all your fault, anyway.”
“I’m not giving him any kidneys…”
“Then we’ll find another doctor. Just get over there and stop him.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
After Winky hung up, Buggy looked at Mittens and said, “I’m surrounded by morons.”
The bulldog looked up at him, his head resting inside the half-chewed bowl of roast beef, and said, “Erfff…”