There was no son of a bitch in all Little Bigtop who deserved to be whacked more than Joey “Uncle Jojo” Bozo. The clown was a pig, a womanizer, a backstabber, and a cheat. But the fat conniving weasel reached a whole new level of scumbag the day he sold out his own nephew to the French clown gang, Le Mystère.
“Jimmy Bozo has to die.”
That was all those French bastards kept saying throughout the meeting. Jojo was getting sick of hearing it.
Two days ago, he got word that Le Mystère was planning to hit the Bozos on the day of his daughter’s wedding. This he could not stand for. There were few things Jojo loved in this world more than money and power, but one of those things was his daughter, Taffy. She meant the world to him. She was his pride and joy and there was absolutely nothing he wouldn’t do for her. So Jojo set up a sit-down between himself and the heads of Le Mystère, hoping he could come to some kind of arrangement to ensure that his beloved clown princess of a daughter didn’t have the best day of her life turned into a bloodbath.
“There’s got to be something else we can do for you,” Jojo said, getting annoyed at their inflexibility. “Money, territory, you name it. But I can’t hand over my own nephew.”
Mortimer LaCroix leaned back in his seat and put his tiny purple legs on the table. For being the boss of the French clown mafia, LaCroix wasn’t a very big man. In fact, the clown barely broke four feet tall and was technically considered a little person. Jojo was careful not to call the French boss a midget on account of his reputation for skinning alive anyone who used that word in his presence, no matter who it was.
“Why not?” Mortimer asked. “André here lost his nephew, so you should lose yours.” He gestured to the Frenchman at his side. “It’s a fair trade.”
Jojo eyeballed André Dupont, the notorious chef capitaine of Le Mystère. André was physically the complete opposite of his boss. The clown was so tall that his knees were higher than his shoulders as he sat. He went by the nickname Daddy Longlegs, because he’d had stilts surgically attached in order to stretch his legs twice their natural height. Sitting next to him were his two sons, Jean and François, better known as the Juggler Brothers. None of the three was prepared to rest until they avenged their cousin and nephew, Pierre Beaumont.
“Not exactly,” Jojo said. “Jimmy’s a capo, not to mention the boss’s son. And Pierre, with all due respect, wasn’t even connected with you guys. He was blood, sure, but just a regular guy. If this were a game of chess, Jimmy would be a rook or a bishop and Pierre wouldn’t even be a pawn. He’d just be some speck of dust that somehow blew onto the board. It’s not a fair trade at all.”
Judging by the looks in the eyes of all the French clowns at the table, Uncle Jojo had just said the wrong thing.
Daddy Longlegs leaned his head between his ear-high knees and raised a finger at the underboss. “I don’t care if Jimmy’s a rook, a bishop, or the goddamn king. He killed my sister’s kid. The little shit has to pay for that.”
The French clown’s voice was deep and his breath was foul. Jojo couldn’t even make contact with his beaming eyes—one red and one green—as he spoke.
“And he will, trust me,” Jojo said. “But he doesn’t have to die for it. There’s got to be another way we can make good on this.”
The group went silent as a clown waitress wearing a plastic pink apron entered and served them each strawberry sundaes. They were in the back room of an ice cream shop, the usual place the clown families met when settling disputes. There wasn’t a clown in Little Bigtop who didn’t like ice cream.
When the waitress left, Daddy Longlegs shook his polka-dot-patterned head. “There’s no other way to make this fair. Pierre was my family. I held him in my arms when he was just a baby. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. He was good kid, a straight-A student who was studying to be a lawyer. He was worth twenty of Jimmy. And not only that, because of him I also almost lost both of my sons in The Sideshow.”
Jojo waved his spoon in disagreement. “You can’t blame what happened to your sons on Jimmy. He almost died there, too.” Then he scooped the cherry off his sundae and tossed it aside.
“It’s too bad he didn’t,” said Longlegs. “Had he not made it out of The Sideshow, we wouldn’t be needing to have this conversation in the first place.”
Jojo realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere with them. It was clear that blood was the only thing that would satisfy them.
“Look, I’m going to level with you,” Jojo said. “Jimmy’s a worthless piece of shit who’s been a pain in the ass since day one. In all honesty, you’d be doing everyone in the Bozo Family, even his own father, a huge favor by wiping him off the face of the planet. But could you at least do it on another day besides my daughter’s wedding? It’s unnecessary. Hit him on the way out of a strip club or something.”
LaCroix shook his head. “It’s not good enough. If you want to save your daughter’s wedding you’re going to have to bring us Jimmy Bozo yourself.”
“What’s with you French bastards?” Jojo asked with a spoonful of rocky road in his mouth—he was just the kind of asshole who ate rocky road in his strawberry sundae. “This isn’t the way things used to be done. Back in the day, you just didn’t hit weddings, no matter what the grievance. We used to be more civilized than that. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Jojo wasn’t the type to keep his mouth shut, even when he was at a table of rivals who were strong enough to take him out in seconds. The only clown he had to back him up was Beano Moretti, one of the few capos who was loyal to Jojo over his brother, but the big-eared bastard just sat there with his mouth shut, shaking in his baggy checkered pants. A lot of good he did him.
“I’m growing tired of this,” LaCroix said. “Are you going to give us Jimmy Bozo or not?”
Jojo looked at Beano, but just one glance at the big-eared clown’s face and it was obvious he had no advice to give him. If Jojo ever made boss the last thing he was going to do was make Beano consigliere. He’d make a terrible adviser.
Jojo sighed. “I can’t bring him to you. The blue-nosed prick who follows him around everywhere is too smart for that. He’d know something was up. But what I can do is help you set up the hit.”
“How?” LaCroix asked.
“Not sure yet. I need time to figure out the details.”
The French clowns pushed their untouched sundaes away.
“You’ve got one week.” LaCroix dropped down from his chair as Daddy Longlegs stood, grazing the ceiling.
When the Frenchmen were gone, it was just Beano and Jojo left in the room. Jojo pulled his sundae closer and took another bite. Then he let out a sigh.
“That could’ve gone better,” Jojo said, swirling his spoon in the ice cream.
“What are you going to do?” Beano asked, his Frisbee-sized ears wiggling with worry. “You’re not really going to set up Jimmy for a hit, are ya?”
Jojo took a few more bites of ice cream before answering. “Yeah, what choice do I have?”
“But what if your brother finds out?”
“He’s not going to find out.” Jojo took a bunch of large bites until his sundae was finished. “You know what your problem is, Beano? You worry too much. If you didn’t worry so much you wouldn’t make so many stupid mistakes.” Jojo scraped the bottom of his bowl for the remaining strawberry syrup. “That’s why you almost got my future son-in-law whacked last May. Don’t think I didn’t forget about that, either.”
“I told you, I thought he was a rat. Both you and the boss approved it.”
“Yeah, well you were wrong.” Jojo stood up. “And in this business, being wrong can get you killed.”
Then Jojo bent over and cried out in agony, grabbing his balding white forehead as an ice cream headache sent stabbing pains through his brain.