Ed Gorman: Blood Game

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.”