Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  “Sorry it didn’t work out,” Carmen said. “But you might want to call Gary. His wife, Selma, is one of those whatchacallems, always tracking down ancestors and relatives. If there is another Frank on the planet, or a cousin Paul, Selma would know where. I’ve got her number.” She looked it up and gave it to Joe. “When do you want to look at some of these other properties?” she asked.

  “I’m beat today,” Joe said. “We’re going to do some sightseeing, go to the mining museum, that sort of thing. I’ll give you a call in the next few days.”

  There was no Paul Oberavich listed in the phone book. After a few moments of thought, he dialed the number Carmen had given him for Gary and Selma. A woman’s recorded voice on an answering machine said that Gary and Selma were unable to come to the phone, but if this was Publishers Clearing House calling to tell them they’d won a million dollars, leave a message. Or anyone else, the voice added.

  Ah well, it was good to be patient, Joe thought, hanging up. He’d give it a try later. But now he felt the old urge to dig. He considered making contact with someone from the mob. If Frank was dealing marijuana, no doubt the local mob could at least give him an angle on him. They might even know Paulie. It might be worthwhile to make some tentative inquiries.

  An answering machine in Chicago told him to leave a message. He gave the number of the phone booth and said he’d return in fifteen minutes. That would allow his contact on the other end to make some contacts of his own, and it would also relieve him of the necessity of waiting around the phone booth, which was located on a street corner near a bank.

  He took a little stroll around town, just to get some fresh air. To his horror he almost encountered the one person in Butte he didn’t want to see: Cathleen Yoder, better known as Cateyo. She was a nurse at St. James Hospital. She was walking down the street toward him, some two hundred feet away. He looked for a handy store entry, but nothing was available. He had just about decided to brave it out and was preparing an eager grin, when she turned into the entrance of the power company, a look of concentration on her pretty face. He exhaled in relief. She hadn’t noticed him. He turned about and walked back to the phone booth, where he huddled with his back to the door, pretending to look up a number in the book until the phone rang.

  “Joe,” his contact said. “Whattaya doin’ in Montana? Last I heard, you was in jail, or the hospital. You all right?”

  “I’m fine, Deke,” Joe said. “Just hangin’ out, coolin’ it. I’d appreciate it, though, if you didn’t spread the news.”

  “Hey, you know me, Joe. What can I do you for?”

  Joe asked for the names of some contacts in the area. Deke told him that the only guy he knew about who was connected out that way was a Smokey Stover, who ran a bar. Deke could find the number if he wanted it. Joe said that was all right—he wasn’t planning to be in town more than an hour or two, so maybe it wasn’t worth calling the guy.

  Deke was a good friend. Joe knew he wouldn’t broadcast the news about his whereabouts, unless somebody important asked him. That was about the best Joe could hope for. He also learned that there wasn’t any particular interest in him, as far as Deke knew. That was good. Deke didn’t mention DiEbola, or Mitch, or any of the other people with whom Joe normally did business. Good.

  Joe hung up and took off, keeping an eye peeled for a blond who might be out and about, relieved that the mob had little concern with him, despite his problems with them. Presumably, DiEbola had squared him with the mob, reinstated him, so to speak. He felt considerably easier, even more confident and somehow more … what? Connected. He realized that for some time, without thinking about it, his world had become more constricted, less connected.

  He strolled down to a bar on Park Street and had a beer, asking the barkeep if he knew this Smokey Stover. “Ask Smokey who told Father Nick he stole the wine,” the guy said. He gave directions. Joe left and walked another four blocks down the hill to a place called Smokey’s Corner. It was an old-fashioned neighborhood joint—smoky, reeking of beer, not very well lit, with pool tables, a pressed-tin ceiling, a long oak bar with a brass footrail, and a high, ornate, beveled-mirror back bar. An older man with a bit of a paunch and smoking a corncob pipe stood at the end of the bar, talking to the bartender, a young, muscular fellow. The older one looked at Joe with baby blue eyes under a polished bald dome. He smiled at Joe and made a rueful grimace that was evidently an attempt at an ingratiating smile.

  “I’ll be goddamn,” he said. “You don’t know me, but I’m Bernie Stover.” He held out a big, calloused hand. “And you’re Joe Service. I knew your boss. Sorry to hear about his passing. I guess you guys made up, eh? Let me buy you a drink.”

  He signaled the bartender and had a couple of shots of Jack Daniel’s poured, with beer chasers. He tossed his back, saying, “Here’s to Humphrey—may he be safe in heaven while the devil’s busy in Butte.”

  Joe said, “Here,” and took a sip of the whiskey. He wasn’t fond of whiskey.

  “What can I do for you?” Stover asked.

  “Just stopping by, Bernie,” Joe said. “So you knew the Fat Man? He was … well, he was all right. Things went a little sour for him, finally. That’s all. But you’re looking all right. I met a guy, said ask you who told Father Nick you stole the wine.”

  “Jim Tracy, that rotten bastard.” Stover laughed.

  They chatted like this for several minutes, establishing carefully who they were and making it clear that there was no animosity, no issues between them. But at long last, Joe asked about Frank Oberavich.

  “Weirdo” was Stover’s opinion, and it was plain that he didn’t have much use for him. “He grows a little weed, I hear. I don’t mess with that shit, you know? It’s a pain in the ass. The cops are too freaky when it comes to even a little of that.”

  “Weed?” Joe didn’t know much about the trade. “What’s all the beef about weed?”

  “It’s the entry drug, the cops say, where the kids start. Anything with kids is poison. Anymore, the cops get so much of their funding from the drug program that it’s all they think about. What do you want to know about him? Christ, don’t tell me you’re thinking of getting into that shit.” He puffed his pipe, emitting little clouds of not very aromatic smoke.

  No, no, Joe assured him. He’d never had those kinds of interests. He was just looking for some property to build on.

  Stover hastened to assure him that he’d had nothing to do with Joe’s place getting trashed, down in the Ruby. This was surely a lie, but Joe had never gotten the full story from DiEbola. It had to have been Stover or his men who’d done the job. Some of them, of course, had perished in the process. It was a topic worth avoiding. But Joe was glad to plant the notion that he was looking for property.

  Stover knew the Oberaviches, all of them. A couple of different families, he said they were. Frank was wacko, but the others were okay. Gary, for instance, he was a straight hand. Worked for the railroad. He didn’t know what his relationship with Frank might be, but he thought they were uncle and nephew. Paulie? Never heard of any Paul Oberavich. The only Paulie he could think of was Paulie Martinelli. Nice guy, a professor or something. He might be a friend of Frank’s, although Paulie was a bit older. Stover didn’t know him well. If he had to guess, he’d say Paulie was at Montana State, over in Bozeman.

  Joe listened to all this with an air of casual interest. Finally, he said, “You know, Bernie, I’m glad I came in here. I want you to know, as far as I’m concerned, all that stuff with Humphrey and those other guys—I don’t even know who they were!—to me, it’s all history. You know what I’m saying? That was Humphrey. He’s gone. I got no beef with you. Okay?”

  Bernie shrugged and drew on his pipe. “Okay with me, Joe,” he said. They shook hands again.

  “I’m retired, Bernie,” Joe said. “I’m not doing any business around here. All I’m interested in is my own peace and quiet.” He looked Bernie in the eye.

  The old man didn’t try to evade hi
s gaze. He held Joe’s gaze for a significant moment, then nodded as he scoured out his pipe. He stuck it in the pocket of his baggy old suit coat and fished out a fresh one, also a corncob. “Peace and quiet is all we got around here,” he said, as he reloaded and lit up. “If a guy keeps his own peace. It wasn’t so quiet when you were around before. I’m not saying that was your fault, I’m just saying it.”

  Joe started to retort, but swallowed his irritation. “That was Humphrey,” he said. “He’s dead, God rest him. I’m just asking if there’s any reason I shouldn’t relax. Nobody been around, asking about me?”

  Bernie shook his head.

  “Good. Now what about this Oberavich? He in any kind of trouble? What I mean is, if I did any business with him—I mean legit business, buying property, maybe—it’s not going to attract someone’s attention? I just ask, ’cause if he’s some kind of high-profile outlaw or something, the feds will be keeping an eye on him. Right? And they’ll notice me. And Bernie”—he laid his hand quietly on the older man’s arm—“I’m not just making noise here. I don’t want any notice.”

  Bernie nodded. “I hear you, son. The only thing I can tell you is the guy is known to the local cops. That means he’s also known to the feds. But as far as I know he’s a pretty clean operator. I said something earlier about not wanting to have anything to do with him. That’s true, as far as it goes. But the fact is, he never approached me. I don’t know how he operates, where he sells his stuff. Maybe he’s smart and sells it out of state. But if it was me, I wouldn’t go near him. If you don’t want to be noticed.”

  That was a fair enough warning, Joe thought. “Nobody else interested in him? Other than cops?”

  Bernie puffed his pipe. This one smelled a little better; perhaps it was newer, cleaner. “There was a guy, maybe a week ago. I wouldn’ve give it a thought, but you put me in mind of it. I didn’t talk to him. But I was here. Nobody I knew. He didn’t push it, just asked the bartender if he knew him. The answer was no. He left.”

  “You think he was connected?”

  Bernie puffed. “He was connected to somebody, I’d say. He didn’t drop any names and my man didn’t ask any questions. Like I say, I don’t want no part of that business. If I gave it any thought at all, I think I took it as some outside operation, maybe just checking the competition out.”

  Joe asked what the guy looked like. Bernie described him as big, young, a wise guy.

  That was good enough for Joe. He thanked Bernie for the drink and left. He knew that word would now be relayed to the rest of the mob that Joe Service was back in town. Joe didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t think there were any consequences to be feared, especially since he didn’t plan to hang around town. But it wasn’t ideal, he knew. He thought he’d probably made a mistake in initiating contact. Still, he’d made his point with Bernie; they understood each other.

  On his way back to the hotel, thinking about whether he ought to call the colonel and ask if he had another man on this beat, he almost walked directly in front of a car sitting at a light and being driven by Cateyo. Horrified, he saw her first and turned away, down another block. She hadn’t seen him, he was sure, but this was twice in a matter of an hour. This town was too small, he realized. He hurried back to the hotel.

  He didn’t mention Cateyo to Helen, but he told her about the guy who was looking for Frank. “We ought to blow,” he said. “Helena would be safer. It’s only thirty or forty minutes from French Forque.” Helen agreed.

  Joe hauled their bags to the parking lot while she handled the bill. He was confronted with two large chunks of carved wood, all but filling the back of the Durango. Helen came out to find him tying the statues, or totems, onto the top of the vehicle.

  “Oh no,” she said. “Those are my chain-saw sculptures. They go inside.” Joe insisted there wasn’t room for bags and sculptures, but Helen won. There was room for both.

  “What are they supposed to be?” Joe said.

  “What do you mean? It’s an owl and a bear. I think they’re really neat. Don’t you like them?”

  Joe leaned over the seat for another long look. He sat back with a sigh. To him a statue was carved out of marble or cast in bronze. It wasn’t hacked out of a bull pine with a Stihl chain saw. “If that’s art,” he started to say, then shut his mouth. Instead he asked Helen what her thoughts were on the unknown snooper.

  Helen suggested that it could well be a federal investigator, from an agency unknown to the colonel. “If your friend Smokey says Frank is growing grass,” she pointed out, “he’s bound to attract federal attention. The colonel can’t know about all the investigations going on, can he? Maybe we should ask him.”

  Joe wasn’t so sure. “Bernie’s description didn’t sound like a professional snoop,” he said. “It could be just an old friend of Frank’s. Bernie seemed to think the guy was connected, but he didn’t recognize him.”

  Helen didn’t understand. Joe explained that the man’s manner must have led Bernie to think that he was not a cop but another bent guy. It could be a subtle thing, he said, but people in the life usually recognize their fellows.

  “The life?” Helen said.

  “The Street, the Biz, bent,” Joe said, impatiently.

  “Do I seem to be ‘in the life’?” Helen asked.

  “No, of course not,” Joe said. “That’s one of the things I like about you. I try to avoid that, too. It’s a dead giveaway. It’s like I walk into Smokey’s and even if I didn’t already know, I can see right away that Smokey’s into it. The squares, the straights, they don’t know. What do they know? They’re out buying chain-saw statues. Of course,” he hastened on, “it’s not always obvious. You can make mistakes. And it’s hard to know about yourself, how you come across to others, I mean. Do I seem different to you?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said with a smile. “I like the outlaw in you, Joe.”

  He wasn’t sure if she meant it. But as they were approaching the exit to French Forque, he said, “Maybe we ought to drop in on Frank.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  A half hour later they pulled up at the gate. Joe got out and looked around. It was a fine fall afternoon. Warm enough in the sun, but there was a briskness in the air. The windmills were spinning busily over the ridge. A posse of long-tailed magpies swooped across the field, lighting in a scraggly cluster of crab apples. Joe looked at the pile of rocks. No sign of the dogs. Helen got out and stood next to him. After some thirty seconds, a voice called out, “Joe! Helen! Come on back.”

  Frank was clearly delighted to see them. They apologized for dropping in on him, saying they were headed for Helena and couldn’t resist another quick visit. They’d only stop for a few minutes. But Frank would have none of that.

  “Oh, heck, no,” he insisted, “stay over. I was hoping you’d be back. I got to thinking about it—we should have gone down to the hot springs last night.”

  Helen was certainly agreeable. It took them an hour to prepare a picnic, pack it into a couple of backpacks, and set off for the Forkee. It was not an arduous trek but it was much farther than the half mile Frank had promised, though Joe reckoned later that if they’d walked directly there it would have saved at least a quarter of an hour. Instead, they wandered across the meadow and down into a small hidden hollow, with the dogs racing ahead, chasing magpies. Frank pointed out an old site where a miner or an early settler had built a log cabin, now long gone except for a jumble of rotted logs, some of which were still marked by the white clay chinking.

  Eventually they came to a small creek, easily jumpable, and walked down a path through a twisted gulch, descending to the Forkee. At last they were there, by the sand and gravel banks of the stream, perhaps twenty yards wide here. In places, the river undercut towering cliffs on the other side, which soared straight up at least three hundred feet.

  “There’s usually lots of swallows,” Frank said, “but they’ve gone for the season.”

  “Where
’s the springs?” Helen asked, looking around, disappointed. There were wisps of steam here and there, obviously some thermal springs, but no sign of a pool, such as they’d enjoyed up on Garland Butte.

  “They’re all around you,” Frank declared. He was watching her expectantly. “See? These little tubs?” He pointed out where the creek they’d been following flowed in a shallow sheet across the wet sand to the river. Here and there were small depressions in the sand that looked natural, at first, but when examined proved to have been scooped out by human hands and lined with smooth rocks.

  He shucked off his clothes unabashedly and stepped into one. Joe and Helen looked on while he scooped his “tub” out with his hands and settled down into the clear water. “See?” he cried. “Try it! You can let in more cold water, if you want”—he pried out a rock to let in some of the cold stream water—“or you can let it fill up with the hot.” He replaced the rock. The tub soon filled.

  In a moment, Helen had slipped out of her clothing and was digging out her own tub. Joe noticed that Frank’s eyes were fixed on her lithe form. He got undressed himself and found his own tub nearby.

  “Oh, fabulous!” Helen cried. She set about fashioning her tub to suit her, deepening it, setting the rocks just so. Soon enough she was submerged but for her head.

  Frank had gotten out and distributed cold beer from the backpacks and rolled spliffs of his marijuana. They all lay back, inhaling deeply and staring into the pure blue sky above the awesome cliffs.

  There were a lot of these little hot springs about, Frank told them, but these were the most convenient to the river; plus it was such a great place to just lie and soak and stare at the sky, especially when the stars came out. In fact, although the sun was below the cliffs it was still pretty light out, but already they could see a few of the brighter stars.