Blood Game Read Free Page B

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.
    â€œYou’ll be all right,” Victor Sovich said.
    â€œThanks for the diagnosis, doctor.”
    â€œI’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?”
    â€œThe woman told you what I said?”
    â€œAbout killing me?” He grinned.
    â€œI’m glad you find it funny.”
    â€œLook, 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.
    â€œHow’d you get hooked up with John T.?” Victor Sovich said.
    â€œThe sheriff told him about me.”
    â€œThe sheriff?”
    â€œI’m a bounty hunter.”
    â€œNice job.”
    â€œSo is bashing people’s heads in.”
    He laughed. “I guess you got me there, friend.”
    â€œYou burned the money.”
    â€œYeah, 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.”
    â€œSo you’re not going to fight Saturday?”
    â€œSure I am.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSure. 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.”
    â€œHe’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.”
    â€œThat seems like a lot.”
    â€œIt is a lot, but he’s going to make a lot. I saw this colored kid. He’s going to be good.”
    â€œYou mean he’s tough?”
    â€œNo, I mean he’ll help me put on a good show. Didn’t John T. tell you how it works?”
    â€œApparently not.”
    â€œThe 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.”
    â€œHow long do they usually last?”
    â€œFive, six rounds. If they’re lucky. Boy in Ohio went twenty rounds. He was a good one.”
    â€œHe must have been a mess.”
    â€œDidn’t John T. tell you that, either?”
    â€œTell me what?”
    â€œAbout the boys I killed.”
    â€œKilled?”
    â€œYeah. 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