Blood Game

by Ed Gorman

  In addition to watching the woman, Guild just enjoyed the ride. He liked the way the streetcar ran down the center of the sprawling town with its three- and four-story buildings and all its buggies and rigs and wagons. He enjoyed watching all the men in straw boaters and high-buttoned suits and the women in flowered hats and twirling red and blue and yellow parasols, and he liked seeing all the big shiny store windows filled variously with high-button shoes and fresh bakeiy goods and pharmaceuticals and barbers in dark suit coats and handlebar mustaches stropping their razors and patting shaving cream on sagging faces. There was a music to the city that he sometimes longed for, the announcing clang of streetcars, the hoarse whistle of the factory changing shifts, the traffic policeman’s street corner instructions to keep moving, keep moving, the sweet passing laughter of women he could at least dream about.

  The woman he’d been playing eye games with got off about three blocks before he did, and as usual he felt a vast and personal disappointment, as if she’d been the woman he’d been meant to marry only she hadn’t understood this and had gone shopping for rutabagas instead, and with not so much as a glance back at him. Not a glance.

  The city changed abruptly. Where the stone and brick and wooden business buildings had given way to wide streets lined with forbidding iron gates and what passed for mansions in a midwestern town this size, so then did the mansions give way. Now the streets narrowed and the houses grew smaller and uglier in appearance, immigrant houses already sixty years old, older than the town’s incorporation itself. Wild, filthy children ran the streets, and a cornucopia of garbage—the red of tomato rinds, the yellow of gutted squash, the tainted brown of sun-rotting fly-infested beef—filled curbstones and gutters alike.

  Mothers bellowed harshly for their children, threatening enormous violence if the kids did not show their faces soon. Drunks wound and wove amid it all, one poor bastard puking into a garbage can, puking blood. There were cats and dogs and a few horses, all rib-gaunt and glassy-eyed from malnutrition, and here and there you saw a man smack a woman hard in the face or belly, and you saw a woman bash a man with a broom. White faces, black faces, brown faces, red faces, all showed the toil taken by living here. The sadness so easily became rage, and the rage so easily became despair. This was the part of city life Guild hated, the eternal poor and their eternal doom.

  When he stepped off the platform of the streetcar, he took from the pocket of his coat the piece of paper John T. Stoddard had given him containing Victor Sovich’s address.

  The house stood two stories tall. It looked as though it had once been green. Now there was so much grime it was hard to tell what color it was. Not a single window remained intact. Cans, newspapers, pages of magazines, and plump brown dog turds covered the thin grass of the front yard. A small mulatto child, perhaps a year and a half, lay naked on the front step, fondling himself and crying.

  A woman with a leaf-shaped paper fan bearing the name of a funeral home on its front side leaned in the doorway, watching Guild approach. Next to her squatted a dog with dirty white fur. From what he could see of the woman, she looked Mexican.

  “Hello.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for a man named Victor Sovich.”

  “I don’t know a man named like that.”

  Beneath the thin white cotton of her dusty dress, a beautiful, breathtaking set of breasts rose and fell with her breathing.

  Guild sensed eyes watching him from all the windows of this tightly packed neighborhood. A word from her and two or three young men would no doubt appear, and Guild, if he wasn’t quick and ruthless enough with his .44, would most likely be sorry.

  “I have some money for him. Five hundred dollars.”

  He felt sorry for the quick, cheap light in her brown eyes. She had so little money, the child at her feet obviously malnourished, that mention of it made her almost ugly with desire. “Money you say?”

  “Money. Five hundred dollars.”

  “For this Victor?”

  “For Victor. Yes.”

  Guild would never be sure what happened next. No matter how many times he tried to reconstruct it, he just couldn’t get the sequence straight.

  Apparently Victor Sovich had been hiding in the vestibule right behind the woman. No other position would have allowed him to catapult out of the house. Or maybe he didn’t catapult out of the house. Maybe Sovich came from behind him. Or from the side.

  Not that it mattered.

  The man with the fancy tattoos and the gray chest hair and the slick-shaven head and the biceps like coconuts started his attack by hitting Guild in the ribs.

  Not that Sovich gave him a chance to do anything about it.

  Before Guild’s fists came up reflexively, Sovich hit him twice in the face and once more in the stomach.

  Guild knew that he was bleeding, knew that he had peed his pants, and knew that he was making some kind of vague mewling sound.

  Then Sovich slammed a right cross straight into Guild’s crotch.

  If Guild was not precisely unconscious at that point, he certainly was when his head slammed against the ground.

  Chapter Four

  “You keep this one there,” the Mexican woman said twenty minutes later, bending into Guild’s face with her soft breasts and her breath smelling of spicy Mexican food.

  Guild lay on a red daybed in a white room. The hot sunlight shone directly on him through the room’s single window. The room stank of food and tobacco smoke and heat. His head hurt and his jaw hurt, but neither hurt half so much as his groin. In the hallway outside, he could hear kids running up and down the wooden steps, screaming and laughing. One of them kept saying the dirtiest word Guild ever heard anybody say. The kid couldn’t have been more than five.

  “He lost his temper, Victor.”

  Guild tapped his sports coat. “He also took his money.” “You know what he did with the money?”

  “What?”

  “He burned it.”

  “What?”

  He saw tears in her eyes. She shook her head in anger and a curious kind of fascination. “Look.”

  She showed him the white envelope John T. Stoddard had given him. She opened it up like an oyster. He peeked inside. Black curled ashes filled the white envelope.

  “He is crazy sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He was cheated.”

  “Victor?”

  She nodded. “I do not blame him for being mad.”

  “Who cheated him?”

  “Stoddard.”

  “How much did he cheat him out of?”

  “Many, many thousands. They have a—what is the word? Paper you sign?”

  “Contract?”

  “Yes. Contract. They have contract giving Victor half of everything. He gets nothing except five hundred dollars every three or four months. It is not fair.”

  “Where is Victor now?”

  “He’s in the kitchen.”

  Guild raised his head. He could never recall being hit so hard or so often without being able to swing back.

  “What’s he doing in the kitchen?”

  “He’s waiting for you.”

  “He wants to hit me again?”

  “No. He only wants to talk.”

  “To me?”

  “Yes.”

  Guild patted his right hip. His .44 was there. He drew it out and looked it over. “I’m taking this into the kitchen with me.”

  “He will understand. He knows how he can get.”

  “You tell him if he tries to hit me again, I’ll kill him right on the spot.”

  She surprised him by smiling. “He scares you?” There was a certain pride in her voice.

  “Absolutely. Now you go tell him.”

  She went away with her sweet, swaying breasts and long, good legs and bare, slapping feet. Guild sat up. He moaned several times and cursed. He checked his Ingram. He had been out for over half an hour. He focused his eyes. There was no eviden
ce of concussion that he could tell. His groin was so painful, he was afraid to move.

  The Mexican woman came back. “He asked if you would like a glass of beer.”

  “That would be nice, yes.”

  “He asked if you would like a cigarette.”

  “That would be nice, too.” He paused. “Did you tell him what I said about killing him if he tries to hit me?”

  “He is calm now. The only time you have to worry about Victor is when he is not calm.”

  Guild tried to stand up.

  The undignified mewling sound came from his chest again.

  The Mexican woman reached down and helped him stand. She put her arm around his shoulder and walked him across the sunhot floor and down a small hallway past walls the kids had drawn circles and lines and sort of Aztec faces on with pencils.

  The kitchen was a tiny room with a wobbly wooden table and four chairs and a stove and an icebox. It smelled of sour milk and beer and beans. Fat black flies squatted everywhere, the webs of their wings iridescent blue and green in the sunlight.

  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.

  Chapter Five

  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.”