Badger Games (8 page)

“Ah yes, I forgot that about you, Joe. You like to be paid. I think I mentioned that you were free to help yourself to Mr. DiEbola's ill-gotten gains.”

“And I rejected that,” Joe said. He was smiling, but he still had his hand in his coat pocket. “Anyway, we didn't have time to look around, and then Pollak kind of made it necessary to leave in a hurry. So I'll settle for the fee.”

“Well, I don't have it on me,” the colonel said. He held his hands out, open, as if asking Joe to search him.

“Put your hands down,” Joe said, sharply. He moved more deeply into the shadows. “Come, sit down, like you were.”

The colonel complied. He perched on the high seat, his hands in his lap.

“That's one of the things I hate about this work,” Joe said. “You always have to ask for your money. Well,” he admitted, “not with Fats—DiEbola. He always brought the money to the table. But his old boss, Carmine, didn't. That's what started all this … this stupid shit. He always made you ask. I don't want to get in the same situation with you. Where's the money?”

“I can get it,” the colonel said. “It's back at the hotel. You needn't get excited, Joe. I thought, in the way of these things, that I'd debrief you and then, if everything seemed okay—which it doesn't, quite, but we'll let that go—then we'd meet later at the hotel and you would be paid. Okay?”

“You've left it for quite a while already,” Joe said. “So let's go get it.”

“Now?”

“Why not? Have you got a date?”

“Well, it's a little late,” the colonel said. “And we're both tired…. But if you want to…. Why, sure, why not?”

They walked down the wooden catwalk, Joe staying close but slightly to the rear. When they reached the parking lot, Joe let the colonel lead the way, but still stayed close. He walked in the direction of Joe's car, an ordinary Ford rental. Joe let him walk. When the colonel stopped a few cars away from the rental, as if to wait for Joe to get into the car, Joe said, “Where's your car?”

“Mine? I thought you'd prefer to drive.”

“No, you drive,” Joe said. He'd had experience with these guys. His car was probably wired.

“But then,” the colonel protested, “I'd have to drive you all the way back. The hotel is all the way over on the northwest side of town, out in Southfield. Handy to the airport,” he explained.

“That's okay,” Joe said. “I'll be rich. I can afford a cab. Hell, maybe I'll buy a new car. In this town, there's probably a place that's open all night for car shoppers.”

The colonel's car was rented too. But it was a Lincoln. Joe liked that. Among other things, he reasoned that if the colonel was on official business, he'd have an official car. So maybe this was Lucani business. Besides, the car was comfortable.

On the way, once they'd reached the expressway, the colonel said, “Actually, now that I think of it, Miss Sedlacek could be a useful ally. That's assuming that she is, as you say, not interested in the rackets.”

“How's that?” Joe said, surprised. “You mean, join the group?”

“Not exactly, but maybe as a sort of adjunct member. She's a Serb, isn't she?”

“I'm not sure,” Joe said. “I think her mother is, anyway. So what?”

“I'm sorry if I seem obsessed about this business of recovering missing agents,” the colonel said. “But we've got another, similar problem. Unrelated to this present business. We had a man in Kosovo. That's in Serbia.”

“I've heard of it,” Joe said. “They've had a lot of trouble. A war.”

“Yes. Well, this fellow—let's say his name is Franko—was working on a drug case. There was a pretty brisk trade in hard drugs moving up through Bulgaria, into Kosovo, then out along the coast, and so on. The drugs were not destined for Serbia or Kosovo—they were processed and moved on. I dare say some got siphoned off en route for local sales, but we weren't concerned with that. It was an official DEA operation, infiltrating, tracking. It wasn't a Lucani operation, per se, though there were some connections. But then along came the war, and the DEA bailed out. Only Franko was still there. Now it appears he's not.”

“What happened to him?”

“We're not sure,” the colonel said. “He was a bit of an odd duck. He may have been arrested in one of the early sweeps by the
Serbs, when they were ‘ethnically cleansing' Kosovo. He may have been posing as an ethnic Albanian; we're not sure. He could have been executed. They did a lot of that, you know, the Serbs. Especially young able-bodied men. Though, come to that, they weren't too picky. They shot everybody sometimes.”

Joe was interested in this story, but he said, “I don't know anything about Serbia, Colonel. I wouldn't be much use to you over there.”

“No, I know you wouldn't. But Miss Sedlacek—”

“She doesn't know anything about the old country, either,” Joe said. “I remember her saying something about that.”

“The point is, Joe—let me finish—it looks like Franko could have gotten out. We don't know that for sure, but we've had some information. It's not very reliable. But—”

“If he got out, you'd know, wouldn't you? He'd contact you.”

“Not if he'd been turned,” the colonel said. “Or if there were some other circumstances that we don't know about. If he's still on the case … it might not be prudent for him to contact us.”

“So where would he be? Italy? France? I don't know anything about those places either.”

“You had a place in Montana, didn't you?” the colonel asked. “In Butte, or near there? It burned down, I understand.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“There are a lot of Serbs in Butte.”

J
oe Service was into simplification. The rest of the world, it seemed, was not. His ultimate simplification was this: I am. After that, things got complicated. Lately, even the first premise was modified. The modifier was Helen.

Sometimes he thought it had started with being shot in the head. He'd been a little confused afterward; it was no simple thing to say “I am.” He felt he'd succeeded. But then he began to think that the complications had begun even earlier, when he'd met Helen. He'd been a fairly simple person up until then. Now he wrestled.

They wrestled. It always ended with grappling. It might start with a workout in the gymnasium in the basement of her late father's mansion—the weights, the fancy machines, or just intense aerobic exercises—or it might be a grueling game of racquetball. They were well matched: what Helen gave up in power she gained in mobility. Joe had incredible stamina, however, now that he had regained his physical fitness. He could wear her down. But whatever they played at was only a prelude to wrestling.

Neither of them were particularly skilled at wrestling. They both had some experience with tae kwon do, but that isn't wrestling. What they liked was the physical contact. They tried different holds,
writhing their slick, naked bodies against each other like snakes—it was difficult to tell where one left off and the other began.

They were superficially similar physically, although Joe was an inch or two taller and more heavily muscled. But to others they seemed like brother and sister, fraternal twins, perhaps. Helen was very fit, with almost no bosom and slim, boyish hips. She had a heart-shaped face with a great volume of black hair. Joe's facial features were heavier, but like hers strong and handsome, with a well-defined nose, a firm mouth, and sensual lips. They were both of an age, about thirty.

The wrestling started casually, as if they were panther cubs, tussling. It would get more intense, sometimes becoming quite serious, as with their utmost energies and strengths employed, each gained a position of superiority at least briefly. But it always ended the same way—with sexual penetration.

Without ever discussing it they had arrived at a commonly held conceit: that they shared a phallus. This notion stemmed from Helen's gradually acquired ability to seemingly relax her large muscles, to submit to Joe's driving force, only to contract her vaginal muscles so as to grasp his member so firmly that when she drove her buttocks back into his groin he actually experienced a kind of penetration of himself. It was a sensation that initially surprised, even shocked them, but which they had both come to enjoy.

On this occasion, however, he had wrestled her into a facedown position and had pinned her arms behind her. They were on a thin mat beside the pool in the dim light. She groaned quietly, struggling, expecting him to enter her now, but when she thrust her buttocks upward he did not allow her to gain her knees, but lay along her back, forcing her into the mat. His right arm encircled her neck. He tightened his grip, choking her.

She waited, sensing something a bit different. It was always different, of course. No sexual act could be precisely reenacted. But
this was different yet. He pressed her brutally against the thin mat. She couldn't breathe well. She struggled now, but he only tightened the crook of his arm across her throat and forced her face more firmly into the mat. She tried, in a panic, to free her arms, but his grip was fierce and the pressure of his body further restrained her arms.

“Mmmf!” She grunted, but it was muffled. She felt an awakening fear. This was going much farther than she liked. Then suddenly he seemed lighter. He didn't release her but he braced himself with his elbows and knees, relieving the weight and easing the pressure on her head and her neck. She turned her head to the left and gasped.

“What are you doing!”

“Killing you,” he whispered hoarsely into her ear, panting from the exertion.

“Why?

“They want me to.”

“Who?”

“The Lucani,” Joe said.

Unable to see Joe's face Helen couldn't tell how serious he was. He sounded serious, and her situation felt very serious. She was afraid that she might lose consciousness.

“If you kill me … that means you're one of them?”

“Something like that,” he rasped, allowing his weight to rest fully on her now. She was finding it extremely difficult to breathe.

“All right,” she grunted. “But let me die happy.”

“What a good idea.”

It was not a frenetic coupling but a long, drawn-out thrust and counterthrust, until finally they seemed to merge into each other and both felt the thrilling pulse of fluids pumping through the conduit that joined them.

They collapsed onto their sides, embracing. When they had regained their breaths they rolled to their feet and dove into the
adjacent pool together, side by side like dolphins. They swam back and forth, pushing and playing with another. Joe was in a swirling underwater swoop, looking up at the underside of the surface, intending to break through it and breathe, when he felt her arms encircle his legs and she drew him down.

He was more buoyant than she, with his greater lung capacity. Still, she drew him down. It occurred to him that she might have taken a breath before her attack, whereas he was now desperately short of breath. She was clearly kicking down, carrying them both toward the tiled bottom. He could not free his legs, and he clawed with his arms. This was a payback, he knew. He forced himself to relax, to yield to her superior force. And graciously, she responded, releasing him so that they both shot to the surface.

They came up gasping. He pushed at her. “You almost drowned me!”

Helen splashed water at him, retorting with nearly as little breath, “You almost choked me!” They chased each other around the pool like otters, racing from one end to the other. At last they clambered out and padded into the sauna.

As they relaxed in the dry heat, sitting on the aromatic cedar slats, Helen lifted her head and spoke. “They really asked you to kill me?”

“It was more a suggestion,” Joe said.

“And you gave it a try?”

“I wondered how far you'd let me go,” he joked. “You knew I couldn't resist one last fling. And once I did that …”

“You were lost,” she said. “But, were you tempted?”

“In that death grip of yours? I'd never have been able to get out of you.”

“That's right,” she said, her dark eyes gleaming. “Never. I'll never let you go.”

He lifted his head, not so much wearily but from utter relaxation in the heat. He smiled slightly.

“Are they crazy?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” Joe said. “Crazy as wasps in honey.”

“What is it?”

“They've had a taste of some kind of weird power trip, juiced up by danger and fear. They're wrestling, too—like a couple of octopi. Too many tangled arms to unravel. They can't break off … they can only go on. That's my guess, anyhow.”

“They are a danger,” Helen said, her hand unconsciously rising to her throat. It was still a little sore. “Not just to each other, but to others—us.”

“That's it,” Joe said. “And now they've had some success, but not enough. They want more. Still, they could be useful to us. They have a scheme. It's not very clear, not focussed. But then … they weren't very clear what they wanted or how to go about getting what they thought they wanted in the Humphrey deal. Now they want us to go back to Butte.”

He told her what he'd heard from the colonel. Helen was interested. She knew that Joe still felt bad about losing his place out west, near Butte. Conceivably, this new scheme would make it possible for him to rebuild, to establish a safe haven—never safe enough, of course, as long as the Lucani had leverage on him. Still … the potential was there. If they were clever, and had luck, they might be able to recover some lost ground.

Colonel Tucker was thinking, Joe Service was a mistake. Maybe an irreparable mistake. Fatal.

He had first met Joe in Salt Lake City, where the colonel was conducting a stakeout of the residence of Helen Sedlacek. She had
been observed converting large amounts of cash into bank certificates—nothing illegal, restricting her purchases to amounts just under the limit that required Internal Revenue notification. But an alert bank official had notified the IRS of her suspicions, who had, in turn, notified the colonel.