Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  Joe started to put the dogs into Jammie’s car, but she protested. “We’ve got groceries in the Durango,” he explained.

  “No way,” Jammie said. “Those dogs look like they’d eat a Volkswagen.” They were standing next to her door, their tongues hanging out, watching. Jammie clung to the steering wheel, not looking at them.

  Joe sighed. Some people were not dog people, he thought, recalling Frank’s remark. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll take them in the Durango.” Joe got the dogs into the front seat, and although they looked longingly at the groceries, they didn’t try anything.

  The two women hiked up to the ridge, well off the road, creeping the last few feet. They squatted in the tall brown grass, then sat, feeling the heat of the sun, which had the sky to itself now, the high overcast having blown away. The wind whispered through the grass, and there was a fine, clean smell of earth and grass. A raven croaked, distantly.

  “Pleasant enough for government work,” Jammie said. “Did Joe tell you what I’m doing here? No?” She explained.

  “How did you get into this?” Helen asked.

  “Dinah Schwind,” Jammie said. “You know her?”

  “I’ve met her,” Helen said.

  “She’s an old acquaintance,” Jammie said. “Not exactly a soul sister, but we get along.”

  “Soul sister!” Helen laughed. “Ice queen, don’t you mean?”

  Jammie laughed. “Don’t be fooled. Butter don’t melt in her mouth, but Dinah’s got some moves. She’s got the colonel sniffing around her tail, but I think she’s got eyes for younger dogs.”

  Jammie rolled onto her back, her arms under her head, and gazed up at the sky. Helen stayed on watch. “Joe’s very nice,” Jammie said.

  “I wouldn’t say ‘nice,’” Helen said.

  “Maybe ‘nice’ isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Jammie said. “Say … charming.”

  “I wouldn’t … oh, forget it.”

  Jammie started to say something, but didn’t. They lay there, almost drowsing in the sun. “Waiting,” Jammie said, finally. “It’s what you mostly end up doing, isn’t it? Wait for some guy.”

  Helen didn’t respond.

  Soon enough, they saw Joe come out and wave twice. They walked back to Jammie’s car and drove on.

  The boys, as Helen thought of them, were back. Jammie was introduced as a “colleague.” Paulie and Frank accepted that without comment.

  The visit to the Butte–Silver Bow sheriff’s office had been anticlimactic, Paulie said. The detective in charge, Jacky Lee, was a long-standing acquaintance of both men. He’d asked them if they’d been in contact with their uncle lately, knew of any reason he might have been killed, if he’d voiced any concerns, any anxieties. They couldn’t help him, they’d said, and they’d left. They’d gone to the family doctor’s office and he’d glanced at Frank’s gash, said it looked okay to him, suggested a tetanus shot, which Frank had declined, and they’d come on home. They hadn’t noticed any signs of Boz or anyone coming around. They had let the dogs out, as Joe had suggested.

  Joe was pleased that everything had gone smoothly. Obviously, it had relieved much of the tension. But he warned them not to become complacent, to assume that the police had no interest in them. This Lee, he told them, was probably concerned with other, more pressing details. Later, if nothing further developed on the case, he would start thinking about Frank again. As for Paulie, Joe thought that police interest would be limited to his connection with Frank. But for now, things looked brighter.

  “Unless they find the truck,” Helen observed.

  “I have some ideas about that,” Joe said. He turned to Frank. “That realtor in Forkee said something about radium mines, up in the hills. Are there a lot of them?”

  Frank said there were just a few still operating, and as far as he knew they weren’t open on a regular basis, more on appointment. He saw where Joe was heading. The mines would be practically ideal lairs for a wounded beast, like Boz, to lie up.

  He dashed up the ladder to his tower and came back shortly with a couple of U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps of the area. He spread them out on the kitchen table and pointed out the locations. There were three or four within ten miles. “That’s half a day hiking, probably,” Frank said. “But you can drive up to most of the mines in less than ten minutes from the highway. This one”—he pointed to the map—“is just over that ridge, beyond the Forkee. It’s occupied.”

  “Occupied?” Joe said. “You mean someone lives there?”

  “Yeah, an old coot named Kibosh,” Frank said. “I did some work for him, putting in his solar and hydro. Pretty funny old guy. It’s not really a radium mine. It’s an old gold mine, called the Seven Dials. Kibosh says he still gets a little gold out of there, from time to time.”

  Joe looked out the window. It was early afternoon. They had time to check out these sites. Now that they had five hands, they could form two search groups. “You up for this, Jammie?”

  She was leaning against the post to which Joe had been bound the night before. She looked rather chic for this work. But she said, “As soon as I can change into something more appropriate for hiking, I’m game.”

  “All right,” Joe said. “So who’ll stay here and mind the store? I think Paulie and Frank should both go, so it’s up to you or Helen who stays.”

  The two women looked at each other; then Helen gave a little sigh and said, “I’ll stay. I know the alarm system.” Joe could see she wasn’t keen, but there was nothing else for it.

  On the way out to the vehicles, Jammie drew Joe aside and said, “I need to talk to you before this goes too far. Maybe you and I should team up.”

  “That wouldn’t make sense,” Joe said. He was conscious that Helen was undoubtedly looking on from inside the house. “Paulie and Frank know this country. They’ll know how to approach these mines. If Boz is holed up in one of them, we don’t want to alarm him. One of us should go with one of them.”

  “Okay,” Jammie conceded, “but let’s be clear. The colonel will really, really want to talk to Boz. It’s about Ostropaki. He needs to know what happened. If you find Boz, or if I do, we’ll come straight back here.”

  “I wouldn’t want to leave him,” Joe said. “He could escape. We’ll call back to Helen. That do it?”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “No moves until we consult.”

  With that they set out.

  Miami Jake /Mine Jinks/

  Roman Yakovich could make little sense of what Helen was telling him on the telephone. He was prepared to do anything she asked, of course. Early in life he had decided that he lacked sufficient intellect. He had attached himself, therefore, to a man who he believed had what he lacked—Helen’s father, Sid. This had worked out well for Roman. In time, he had transferred his loyalty to Sid’s daughter.

  The “Liddle Angel” he called her, and his adoration was no less than he would have had for an angel if he believed in such things. But it was in no way a blasphemous appellation. The little angel that he had in mind was not a religious figure at all but a cartoon ghost in a comic book that he had enjoyed, many years ago—he had never picked up the distinction between this imp and a cherub, such as one saw in great paintings. In his eyes Helen was more of a sprite, or a fairy, lovely and so light that she seemed to fly on wings invisible to any but him, and she was very dear. But he didn’t know what to make of this request.

  She wanted him to look for and find a missing and possibly dead Kosovar named Fedima Daliljaj. This was a young woman who might have fled from Kosovo nearly a year ago, in the company of an American who traveled under the name of Bozi Bazok. Or she might have been murdered by him. Obviously, she was a Muslim. Roman had no notion of Muslims.

  Roman was, nominally, a Jew—although he practiced no religion. In America, his name had become Yakovich, but it was really Jakovic, which is to say, Jacobs or Jacobson or, anyway, something to do with the tribe of Jacob. One of his parents had hedged a bet, or had been confli
cted enough about Judaism, to name him Roman. But if the Liddle Angel wanted him to find this Muslim girl, Fedima, he would look.

  He had been cooling his heels, as it is said, in Florida these days. One was supposed to take the sun in that country, but that was not in Roman’s nature. A burly man in his sixties, he had always tended to wear black suits with a sweater vest and an expensive necktie—annual Christmas presents from the Liddle Angel. The sweater vest he had given up in Miami, but he still wore the suit, tie, and thick-soled brogans, and he normally went armed with a small cannon of the .357 or .44-magnum variety—which one could hardly conceal in a bathing suit. The beach was not a congenial place for such a man. He knew quite a few retired mobsters in the Miami Beach area, and he visited with them, playing at boccie or cards. They sat in patios under the shade of lemon trees, drinking wine and smoking cigars. He was known as Jake, though some who had known him in Detroit still called him the Yak. Either name suited him. He went to them with his problem.

  The guy to talk to, everyone agreed, was Cris Tantiello. Cri-stan, as he liked to be called, was a man of middle age who contrived to look thirty. He sported two-hundred-dollar designer shades and was always impeccably dressed in handmade silk shirts and very fine, beautifully tailored silk or linen jackets and slacks. No open collars and gold medallions for Cristan; his watch didn’t even seem to be gold, until you looked closely. (The maker, Vanio of Parma, made a dozen watches a year; this one looked like a bracelet until Cristan touched it with his forefinger, whereupon a glaucous face materialized briefly.) He was a more sociable man than Roman. He claimed, with a flash of perfect white teeth beneath his pencil-thin mustache, to know more or less everybody in the world, by his or her first name. Cristan listened to Roman’s problem with great interest.

  Cristan knew of an agency, in Miami, that provided aid for refugees, like this Fedima, presumably. This was merely a phone call; he would do it for free. Alas, it turned out they knew nothing about her. But they suggested a group in Atlanta that did some placement work. Another phone call—again, pro bono. No Fedima, however.

  Cristan was not daunted. “I know a man in Brooklyn,” he said. “He’s Armenian. He knows everybody I don’t know. But it will cost you.”

  They were sitting in a little bar off the beach. Cristan was sipping ginger ale through a straw from a frosted glass. A tall blond woman wearing a bikini that concealed nothing of her twenty-year-old body but nipples and pubic hair, was waiting for him impatiently on the terrace, under an umbrella, paging through a fashion magazine.

  “Two C’s?” Roman asked, indifferently.

  “Four,” Cristan said. “Come by and see me tomorrow, about this time.”

  “Today,” Roman asked. “Three C’s.”

  “Five,” Cristan said. “Okay, mi amigo. But first, I must break the sad news to Claudia.” He went out and leaned down to the tall girl. Her shoulders drooped; then she stood up and shook her mass of blond hair angrily. When she shook her head every man’s head within visual range swiveled, because Claudia’s head shake created a sympathetic vibration in the rest of her, particularly her upper torso: it was like a submarine disturbance, hidden at first and slow to build, but as it reached the surface the inertial violence threatened to rip her flimsy costume to pieces. Cristan calmed her with his hands upheld like a traffic cop’s. He promised her. She folded her arms and waited while he returned to Roman.

  “Ladies,” he said to Roman, “they’re so … volatile. I have to go for a drive. You wait here.” He went off with the girl, jumping into a white Cadillac convertible.

  Roman sat and stared at the open door of the bar. It framed an oblong of tan sand, some colorful umbrellas, the deep blue of the sea, and the paler blue of the sky. He sat there, hardly moving, patiently waiting, for almost an hour. He tried to imagine what the Liddle Angel wanted with a girl named Fedima, but he had no clue. He quit wondering. And then Cristan returned, alone but looking simultaneously refreshed and depleted.

  “My friend Ari has said he will inquire of some Arab friends. We must wait. I’m sorry, Jake. He may not call back this evening.”

  “Who are the Arabs?” Roman asked. “I’ll go ask them myself.”

  “Ha, ha!” Cristan laughed gaily. “You can’t do that, mi amigo. They are in New York!”

  “There are airplanes,” Roman said. He took out a packet of bills from his breast pocket and counted off five hundred-dollar bills. He stopped, looked at Cristan, who was watching him expectantly, and counted off five more. Cristan picked up the bills and disappeared out the door, walking directly to his car. He drove off and was back in ten minutes. He handed a piece of paper to Roman.

  “Radium mines?” Boz didn’t get it. If the mines were radioactive, wasn’t that dangerous? Who would sit in a radioactive mine?

  Kibosh assured him it was so. “It’s a real low-grade radiation, they tell me,” he said. “Might be somethin’ to it. I was talking to Frankie about it, and that kid knows just about ever’thin’ about science. He brung over a whatchamacallit, one a them little gewgaws, and checked out the Seven Dials for me.”

  “Geiger counter,” Boz said. They had moved into the mine, but sat near the open door so Kibosh’s pipe smoke could escape. The cat wandered back and forth. They were on their second bottle of County Fair, and it was getting pretty low.

  “Naw, it wan’t a Geiger counter,” Kibosh said. “This thing counts all kinds a radiation. Frankie said what I had here was a little bit a ray-don. It ain’t the same. An’ I didn’t have anough to bother ’bout. Ray-don daughters, he said. He ’splained it all, but I didn’ git the whole gist.”

  “Radon daughters. I could go for some daughters,” Boz said. “Jesus, lookit that bottle! Time for another, Kibe.”

  Kibosh picked up the bottle, poured them each the same amount, about a shot apiece, and then hurled the bottle out the open door. It bounced across the gravelly yard and rattled down the hill past the pines and out of sight. He sipped his shot and got up to fetch more. He came back shortly with a bottle that was only half full.

  “Thissisit,” he said. “Thought I had more, but I forgot this’n’uz only half full. Wal, jist have to take ’er easy.”

  “Fuck that,” Boz said. “We’ll drive down an’ get some more. Maybe we should go while it’s still plenty light.” He glanced out the door.

  Kibosh agreed. “We could git some bread, too. I never been any good at makin’ bread. I miss it now an’ then. An’ maybe somethin’ to dress that scratch a yers.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Boz said. He picked up the bottle. “Take this along.”

  Kibosh hurried after him. It was a little touchy turning the big Dodge around on the narrow road. There was a steep dropoff on one side and the embankment on the other. But at last they went bouncing down the hill, out to the highway, and soon were whizzing along toward French Forque and Basin.

  “Pull in t’ Frenchy’s, here,” Kibosh directed Boz as they approached French Forque. “Ye want t’git it, er me?”

  Boz handed him a fifty. “Get three—no, four,” he said. Then he peeled off another bill. “What the hell, get a six-pack. And you might as well get some beer, too. And maybe some of them beef-jerky things.”

  “Aw, I got plenty a elk sausage,” Kibosh reminded him.

  “Oh yeah, well go on then.”

  Kibosh came back with a sack full of booze and beer. “I cleaned him out on the County Fair—he on’y had three bottles—so I got some brandy. All right? The rest of the stuff we gotta git down to the ‘little store.’” He pointed down the road and they drove on. Here Kibosh loaded up with loaves of Wonder Bread and Twinkies, a couple of cans of salted nuts, a dozen eggs, and some first-aid supplies.

  They got back on the highway, drinking and talking, having a fine time. Just as they were approaching their exit, Kibosh looked ahead to his road and saw an old pickup coming out.

  “Shoot, there’s the kid,” Kibosh said. “He musta been up to the place. I missed ’im.”


  Exiting southbound traffic was provided with an off-ramp, which led to a stop sign at Kibosh’s road. Vehicles on that road, headed northbound to Basin, had to pass right under the freeway, then turn onto an entrance ramp on the other side. The pickup had gone into the underpass by the time Boz got to the off-ramp. But he didn’t exit.

  “He prob’ly was jist stoppin’ by, t’see if I was doin’ all right, needed anythin’ from the store,” Kibosh said, craning around to catch a glimpse of the pickup as it entered the northbound lanes. “He’s a good kid. Hey, ye missed the turnoff!”

  “I was just thinking,” Boz said, “that I need my stuff from town. I been wearing the same clothes for two days.”

  “Hell, I been wearing these since … well, I don’t rightly remember,” Kibosh said. “But go ahead on. In this rig, won’t take a half an hour to git to town.”

  He was right. They pulled up to the motel and Boz jumped down, saying he’d be right back. What he found inside made him furious, however. All his stuff dumped on the bed, his Glock and his money gone! He raced to the bathroom and jerked off the lid of the commode tank. To his relief, his Star automatic, a Spanish 9mm, had not been discovered. It sat in its sealed plastic bag with an extra clip and extra cartridges. He took it out, unsealed it, and slipped it into his coat pocket.

  He looked at the shower wistfully. He would have appreciated a cleanup, but now he felt nervous about hanging around here. He stuffed his gear into the suitcase, took it out to the truck, and tossed it into the back.

  “That was quick,” Kibosh observed as they wheeled out of the lot. “Ain’t you gonna check out?”

  “Fuck ’em,” Boz said. “Who needs that joint? We got everything we need, eh, Kibe?”

  Kibosh grinned and cracked open a can of Budweiser and handed it to Boz. “Ye got that right, pardner,” he said, and got out a can for himself.

  A half hour later, with the light dwindling but still present, they bounced on up the trail toward the mine. Boz drove the Dodge right up to the yard and stopped to let Kibosh out.