Blood Game (3 page)

Victor sat naked to the waist behind the table. His shaven head was sleek and sweaty in the yellow daylight. From a bucket of beer he poured two glasses. He set one on the table for himself. The other one he shoved toward Guild.

“You'll be all right,” Victor Sovich said.

“Thanks for the diagnosis, doctor.”

“I've hit men a lot harder than I hit you, and they've been fine.” He nodded to an empty chair. “You going to sit down?”

“The woman told you what I said?”

“About killing me?” He grinned.

“I'm glad you find it funny.”

“Look, friend, your pride's been hurt. You'll get over it.”

Guild knew there wasn't anything else to do. He sat down. He drank the beer. It was warm and cheap, with too much grain.

“How'd you get hooked up with John T.?” Victor Sovich said.

“The sheriff told him about me.”

“The sheriff?”

“I'm a bounty hunter.”

“Nice job.”

“So is bashing people's heads in.”

He laughed. “I guess you got me there, friend.”

“You burned the money.”

“Yeah, I burned the money, and I want you to tell John T. I burned the money. He won't believe it. He'll throw one of his goddamn fits. You wait and see.”

“So you're not going to fight Saturday?”

“Sure I am.”

“What?”

“Sure. We go through this in half the towns we're in. I walk off and he sends somebody after me and I beat that somebody up and then he agrees to pay me a certain amount up front before the fight. It's just a game.”

Guild's groin sent pain all the way down into his ankles. “Some game.”

“He's cheated hell out of me over the years. ‘Expenses,' he'd always say. That's why there was always so little to split up at the end. Expenses, my ass. So last year I got smart. I started making him pay me my share up front.” He had some beer. When he took the glass away he had a white foam mustache. It should have been comic. It just made him look meaner. “Tell him I want two thousand or nothing.”

“That seems like a lot.”

“It is a lot, but he's going to make a lot. I saw this colored kid. He's going to be good.”

“You mean he's tough?”

“No, I mean he'll help me put on a good show. Didn't John T. tell you how it works?”

“Apparently not.”

“The colored kids, they don't try to win. They can't win. They get paid by the round. They get paid for every round they stay on their legs. And they get paid more as the fight goes on.” He smiled. “Of course John T. cheats them, too.”

“How long do they usually last?”

“Five, six rounds. If they're lucky. Boy in Ohio went twenty rounds. He was a good one.”

“He must have been a mess.”

“Didn't John T. tell you that, either?”

“Tell me what?”

“About the boys I killed.”

“Killed?”

“Yeah. He uses that in the advertising. How I've killed six boys in the last four years. It really gets the yokels worked up. You know how boxing fans are. A part of them wants to see a good clean fight, but another part of diem wants to see somebody die.” He shrugged meaty shoulders. “Anyway, this boy in Ohio, he went twenty rounds all right, but he was dead before they could get him out of the ring.” He had some more beer. “The goddamn church groups went nuts, let me tell you. We had to leave town within two hours.”

“You think you'll kill this new colored boy?”

He smiled again. “I take it you don't care for boxing.”

“Not much.”

“I won't kill him unless it just happens that way. I don't have much time for niggers, but I don't kill them on purpose, if that's what you mean.” He stared at Guild. “You expected me to be dumb, didn't you?”

“I suppose.”

“You're looking at the only boxer in the United States with a high school diploma.”

“I'm impressed.”

“You should be. Do you have a high school diploma?”

“No.”

“I didn't think so.”

“You want to know why I went into boxing instead of banking or something?”

“Why?”

“I enjoy killing people. Now, that may sound like a contradiction. Just a minute ago I said I don't kill people on purpose, and I don't. But when I
do
kill people, well, I can get away with it legally as long as it's in a ring. It gives me a certain kind of satisfaction. It really does.”

A lot of tough guys like to tell you how tough they are. They like to sit over schooners for hours on end and tell you how tough they've been and how tough they are and how tough they're going to be in the future. With most of them it's bragging, because finally they're not tough at all. They just like to bully people with their words. But sometimes you meet a man who is truly tough, and he likes to tell you about it, too. Those are the ones you can't figure. They don't have to brag because you already believe them, but they brag anyway. Maybe they're just bored.

Victor Sovich was that way. After what he'd done to Guild, Guild had no doubt that the man was a genuine killer, nor any doubt even that he took pleasure in the killing. But this little speech was all sideshow barker horseshit, and Guild was sick of it and sick of Sovich.

Guild stood up. “I'll go tell Stoddard you burned the money.”

“He'll throw a fit. You wait and see. A regular fit.”

Guild snugged down his Stetson and started for the door.

Victor Sovich said, “You know something, Guild?”

“What's that?”

“I really think you would shoot me if I gave you half a chance.”

Then he started laughing. The sound was loud and harsh in the small, sunny kitchen.

On his way out Guild passed the Mexican woman, who had been eavesdropping in the hallway.

Guild took her by the elbow and walked her to the door with him. “You owe it to your kids not to get mixed up with somebody like that. You understand me?”

She nodded. She had tears in her eyes. “I can't help it. I love him.”

Guild shook his head and went on down the stairs.

Stephen Stoddard stood in the open doorway. Guild pushed him out of the way and went straight across the room to the couch where John T. Stoddard sat so baronially.

Stoddard saw what was about to happen. He tried to climb backward up the couch, but it didn't work.

Guild shoved the barrel of the .44 directly into his face. From his shirt pocket he took a receipt and shoved this in Stoddard's face, too.

“What's this?” Stoddard said.

“What the doctor charged to look me over, you son of a bitch.”

“You've got a temper, cowboy.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Guild hit Stoddard hard enough in the mouth to cut his lip pretty badly. Thick red blood flowed from a pink wound on Stoddard's lower lip. He made the sort of mewling sound Guild had made earlier.

Peripherally Guild saw Stephen Stoddard move toward him. He had made a fist of his hand. It wasn't much of a hand to begin with and it sure as hell wasn't much of a fist.

“Please, kid,” Guild said. “You're a nice boy. Let this be between your old man and me.”

John T. Stoddard said, “He's right, Stephen. You go on down to the restaurant and have some dinner.”

“But—”

“You go on now.”

Guild had never heard Stoddard speak so softly or courteously to the young man.

Stephen Stoddard sighed and nodded. “You aren't going to hurt him anymore, are you, Mr. Guild?”

“Not unless he forces me to.”

“He isn't so bad. He really isn't.”

Guild's jaw set. “Kid, don't try and sell him to me, all right? You've got your opinions and I've got mine.”

“You go on now, Stephen,” John T. Stoddard said.

Stephen sighed again and left the room.

“You want a drink, Leo?”

“Don't call me Leo.”

“It's all right if you call me John.”

“I don't want to call you John, and I don't want you to call me Leo.”

“You're one pissed-off man.”

“He told me it was a game.”

“Who told you what was a game?”

“Sovich told me that you and he do this sort of thing all the time. You hire somebody to get him back here, and sometimes he beats them up.”

“Let me reassure you, this is no game. There's twenty thousand dollars at stake here on Saturday.”

“Twenty thousand dollars?”

“You figure up all the wagers and that's just what you get.” “And how much do you make?”

“Are you going to put that goddamn gun away or what?”

Guild sighed. “You two deserve each other. You and Sovich. He tells me he killed some colored boys in the ring.”

“Those things happen.”

Guild wanted to hit him again, but he knew how Stoddard's son would get. The kid had plenty of grief already.

Guild waved the receipt at him again. “I want you to reimburse me for this right now, and then I never want you to bother me again. For anything. You understand that?”

“You're a strange man, Guild. No offense.” Stoddard reached in his pocket. He paid in greenbacks.

A minute later Guild walked out. He slammed the door as hard as he could.

Eating wasn't so easy. He ate a piece of steak that he had to cut up into tiny pieces, he ate American fries which he had to mash down, and he ate peas which were just fine. It was his jaw; it was sorer now than it had been six hours ago when he'd been hit.

He sat at a front window table of the Family Steak Restaurant, watching dusk bleed from the sky and the stars come out.

Nearer by, streetlights came on, lending the buildings wan light and deep shadows. People, mostly couples, strolled the business district, pointing out things in windows or simply standing on comers and taking in the air. You could smell rain coming, clear and clean and fine. The temperature had dropped fifteen degrees. After the heat today, the chill was a pure blessing.

Guild ate his custard and sipped his coffee. Because of cuts inside his mouth, he had to let the coffee cool, so he read the local paper, most especially “The City in Brief,” which included such items as:

Ten businessmen were caught in a crap-shooting game last
night.

Two young people eloped on bicycles front Oquawka, Illinois,
and were married at Ottumwa.

Our compositors made Reverend Dr. Iilden's subject for yesterday morning read “Infidelity and Her Crown,” when it should
have read “Fidelity and Her Crown.
” (This struck Guild as very funny.)

Mr. Frank Redmond, a new baritone in our city, will sing at the
Elks Minstrels tomorrow night.

Geo. Williams carries a full line o f Blatz and Schlitz bottled
beer for family use. Telephone No. 133.

Try a Turkish Bath at Ford's. You will like it.

Guild smoked a cigar with his second cup of coffee. Then he noticed the woman. She was one of those women it would be difficult not to notice.

She sat alone four tables away, gazing out the window. The first thing he noticed about her was how prim and pretty she was in her frilly, high-necked dress and sweet, angled little hat. He supposed she was forty or so. The second thing he noticed was the high, beautiful color of her skin. She was most likely a mulatto. In midwestem cities women who could “pass” were allowed to eat in white restaurants.

If she was aware of Guild's presence, she kept it a secret to herself.

Given the lingering pain in his jaw, he needed a distraction. She provided it. Like most lonely people, he speculated on the lives of strangers. What they did. What they wanted. Where they'd come from and where they were going. The trouble was, this woman being a mulatto, his usual line of speculation didn't work. Mulattos were especially despised. The only thing he could think she would want was to be left alone by men who wanted her carnally and by good citizens who wanted to express their contempt.

The hell of it was, that this woman with her dark eyes and full, exotic mouth did not look at all as if she needed Guild's understanding or pity. Indeed, there was even a certain haughtiness in the way she sat there, dismissing everyone who passed by with a disinterested glance, returning her gaze inevitably to the street and the clip-clop of fancy buggies and the first silver drops of rain sliding down the window.

Several times he started to go to her table and introduce himself, but he always stopped. He wasn't good at this sort of thing. His heart would get to hammering and his throat would twist into a snake of silence and his palms would get sweaty. He would stand there and everyone would stare at him and he would stand there some more and they would stare at him some more and finally he'd just sort of nod and leave, his face burning with embarrassment and his mind already flaying himself for his terrible performance.

When it came time for sex, he stuck to brothels. He didn't get crushes on whores; whores never broke his heart.

By this time, still sitting at his window table in the Family Steak Restaurant, Guild was reduced to little eye games. He'd pretend to be vastly interested in whatever was going on in the street. Then he'd kind of ease his gaze back to her, convinced that this time she'd be noticing him.

Only she never did notice him, of course.

And at 9:03, when he very slyly brought his gaze back around again to see if she was watching him, she was gone. He glimpsed her long, graceful back at the cash register, her sweet little hat floating just above the heads of the crowd at the front door, and then—

Gone.

He supposed he was being asinine, but loneliness was a burden sometimes and seemed especially a burden tonight.