Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  Frank thought about that and nodded. He seemed a little calmer. “Me and Paulie will have to go in, the sooner the better, I guess. I could always tell them I fell, digging a trench, or something, and banged up my head.”

  “That’s right,” Joe encouraged him, “and Paulie helped you fix it up. You could even tell them you wanted to run over to the doctor’s office, or the hospital, to get it properly looked at.”

  “Yeah, that’s good,” Frank said. Paulie agreed. It would probably relieve Frank of any serious grilling, if any such thing were contemplated by the cops.

  Not likely, Joe thought, but didn’t say so.

  “You ought to clean up, look your best,” Helen suggested. “I could trim your hair and your beard.” That offer was gratefully received.

  While they were gone, Joe counseled Paulie. “Remember, you and Frank don’t know anything about Boz. There was no mention of a suspect on the radio, or from your uncle. Just tell them what you know, which is nothing. Frank had an accident. You’re his witness, and he’s yours. You were both out here, all night—hell, you’ve both been holed up here for weeks. It’s nothing. Don’t panic. In the meantime, Helen and I will get after Boz.”

  “But what if the cops find him?” Paulie said. He seemed calm. “What if they find the truck? Frank’s truck?”

  “If Boz was involved in that killing,” Joe said, “he had to be driving the rental car. If they’re on to that, they’re not on to a man driving a pickup truck. If, somehow, they’re looking for Boz and they find him and connect that truck to him, well you didn’t even know it was missing. You’ll know if they ask about the truck. Tell them that, as far as you know, it’s still parked down by the gate, where Frank was doing some work. But that’s all just speculation.”

  Joe could see that Paul was looking a little worried now; he was imagining complications. He hastened to cut them off.

  “The cops don’t know anything about Boz, even if they have him in the tank. He’s not the kind to cooperate with them. He won’t be talking. I know his kind. He’s seen the inside of jails before. He’ll have a lawyer in no time. But why speculate? I’d be very surprised if they have any idea who killed those people. It’s much too early. All you and Frank have to remember—and be sure to discuss this with him on your way into town—is that, in truth, you don’t know anything about the murder of your aunt and uncle. You can’t really help them. You’re bereaved. Frank needs some medical care. This other thing, your missing truck, that’s your private business. Right now, your main concern is with your family.”

  Helen had done a job on Frank. He didn’t look so bad, after all. His hair and beard trimmed and combed, an insignificant patch on his forehead, a little makeup to disguise some bruises and the hint of a black eye, clean clothes and regular shoes—the medical story might not even be necessary. His nose was sore but not broken, after all. And he seemed in much better spirits, which Joe attributed to the tender care and attention of Helen.

  When they had gone, Joe talked it over with Helen. “We’ve got a few hours,” he said. “After that … who knows? It depends on the cops, and Boz. But we’ve got to find him. It could get complicated for Frank and Paulie,” he conceded, “but they’re in no danger from the police. They don’t know anything about what happened with their aunt and uncle. If they keep their mouths shut about Boz, they’ll probably be all right.”

  “What do you think happened?” Helen said. She was not so sanguine.

  “Boz killed them,” Joe said. “But they’re dead. So are a bunch of other people. Time to find Boz.”

  The first thing they did, after they left Frank’s, was to cruise the parking lots of both motels in Basin, just in case. The truck wasn’t there. They checked other motels as they drove into Butte, with no success. Joe hadn’t expected to find Boz that way, but it was worth doing.

  “The smartest thing for Boz,” Joe said, “would be to simply drive off on one of these back roads and take a snooze. But we don’t know how bad that gunshot wound was. It may have been nothing, just a graze, but he could be in a bad way, in pain, in shock from loss of blood. He could have panicked and gone to a hospital, more likely in Helena than Butte. But I doubt it.”

  “If he was really smart,” Helen said, “he’d be driving somewhere out in Idaho, or Washington, by now.”

  “Do you think?” Joe said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m thinking he probably didn’t have much money on him, and he was unarmed. He’s going to want a gun and some money. He probably left both with his gear in a motel, in Butte. He’ll want to recover that, even though he probably doesn’t want to go near Butte. I’m assuming, like you, that he killed those people. Even if there’s no gun or money there, there’s always something incriminating.”

  Joe agreed. Beyond that, he reckoned that Boz would feel that he had to accomplish what had brought him here in the first place. He would not go too far from Frank’s, or not for long.

  “If you think that,” Helen said, “why are we going to town? Why don’t we just lie up and wait for him to come to us?”

  “We’ve got some time,” Joe said. “He won’t be back before night. The wound is the unknown factor. But we’ve got a chance to find him first.”

  “How do we do that? Check every motel in a fifty-mile radius?”

  “No, I’ve got some contacts in town,” Joe said. “And you can attend to some other business.”

  “Like what?”

  “Find this Fedima,” Joe said.

  Helen was taken aback. “How do I do that? Through the colonel?”

  Oh no, Joe cautioned her. They had to keep the colonel in the dark, for now at least. But it was true, they had to report in. He might have some information that would be helpful. As for Fedima, he thought it might be time for Helen to call her late father’s faithful lieutenant, Roman Yakovich. He was now retired and living in Miami. He’d been helpful to Joe in the past, and he was devoted to Helen.

  Helen couldn’t see what use Roman would be.

  “Roman’s a very resourceful guy,” Joe said. “Once he gets on to something, he carries through until he’s satisfied. He’ll know something about Balkan refugees, or know someone who knows.”

  Boz fought sleep. He fought waking. His mind wanted neither. But another program decided that sleep was no longer an option. So Boz woke up. He opened his eyes, tried to focus. It was dark. He could hardly make any sense of where he was. His first impression was jail. A dungeon, in fact.

  He sat up, too fast. He groaned. His head hurt. He swore, a long, rambling curse that took in gods, alcoholic beverages, his mother, and, finally, fate. He held his head for a moment and then looked about him.

  He was in a dungeon, he thought. Walls of stone, a low ceiling, rough support timbers. “Where the fuck am I?” he said aloud, but not to anyone but himself.

  Nonetheless, a voice answered: “Seven Dials, pardner. Remember?”

  Boz looked around. He was lying on a pallet of sorts on the ground, a kind of rough mattress stuffed with something not very soft, corn shucks maybe. Nearby was a table, on which there was an indescribable jumble of pans, plates, newspaper, books, a radio, and a table lamp made out of an old Jim Beam bottle, the liter size, with a scorched shade. There were a couple of wooden kitchen chairs arranged about the table, and on one of them sat an old man.

  “Who are you?” Boz said. He was rapidly regaining his native wariness. He felt weak, anxious, a little sick to his stomach, and he had a fierce headache. Worse, he realized now, he had a terrific pain in his right side. He felt it pull and stab at him, and then he remembered. His hand went to the wound. It was bandaged—not hospital neat, but pretty well done.

  “Who?” he said again. He wasn’t sure if the old man had responded the first time. He might have, but Boz’s head was so abuzz that he could have missed it.

  “Kibosh,” the old man said, pronouncing it kye-bosh. “My maw called me Lester, but I been Kibosh forever, it seems like.” A large, gray-brown
-black cat came prowling by, disdainfully avoiding Boz, and rubbed up against the old man’s high laced-up boots. He nudged her away. “That there’s Mary,” he said to Boz.

  “Mary,” Boz said. He understood none of this.

  “Gotta have a cat, ye live in a mine,” the old man said. His voice was raspy, as if he didn’t use it much. “Rats,” he said, nodding his head authoritatively. “But no rats when Mary’s about.”

  A little bit of last night was creeping back into Boz’s conscious mind. A mine. He’d driven up here in a truck. Where did he get a truck?

  “Man, I need a drink,” he said.

  “Yes, ye do,” the old man said. “Not a whole lot, but ye need about a shot or two.” With that he reached behind him without looking, felt about on the shelf of some crude cabinetry he had cobbled together, and came away with a fifth of County Fair bourbon, about half full. He splashed some in a small, dirty jelly glass that was covered with pictures of children playing at ancient games like hoops. He got up from his chair and carried the glass to Boz.

  Boz accepted it with trembling hands and gulped the warming liquid down. He blinked. “More,” he said, holding out the glass. He loved the way the whiskey burned down his gullet.

  “I don’t think so, not just yet,” the old man said, shaking his head. He sat down in his creaking chair again. “Let that one take hold, first. I’ll give ye another in a minute. I s’pose ye’d like some water. Eh?” He dipped water out of a nearby bucket, filling a large metal cup, and handed that over. Boz drank it down eagerly. It was the best-tasting water he’d ever drunk.

  “More,” he said.

  “Naw, jest wait,” the old man said, sitting down and crossing his legs. He picked up an old cherrywood pipe and began to stuff it with tobacco from a can that said Union Leader. “Ye smoke?” he asked.

  “No,” Boz said. “I never did. Bad for you.”

  “Wal, a smoke in the morning can be right nice,” the old man observed. “Evenin’, too. When yer hungover it’s real good. But there ye go … yer a man without comforts. What do ye expect? Yer head hurts.” He nodded as Boz groaned. “Ye got vices, but no comforts. I tell ye what, I got some asp’rin.”

  This time he got up to peer at his shelves and rummage. He soon found a little bottle and rattled it. “Here we go!” He pried the lid off with some difficulty, cursing safety lids, and shook out three white pills. “Naw, better make it four,” he said, and shook out another. He recapped the bottle, put it away, and brought another dipper of water to fill Boz’s tin cup and put the aspirin in his trembling hand. “Toss them down,” he said.

  Boz did as directed, finished the water, and he felt that he could get up. He did, but he was shaky enough to have to prop himself against the wall, which he now saw was composed of rather dusty and dirt-encrusted cinder blocks.

  “Whew,” he said. He flexed his knees. He dusted off his hands and ran them through his thick hair. He stood up. His head was too near the ceiling. He could stand erect, but he wanted to hunch. “Man! I guess I tied one on last night!”

  The old man laughed, a dry, raspy cackle. “I guess ye did. Ye’re lucky ye got here in one piece.”

  “Where’s the truck?” Boz said. He started toward a door, some twenty feet away, with a pane of dirty glass next to it that let light through.

  The old man came forward and opened the heavy door. It was made of steel, mounted in a heavy wooden frame. The wall was stuffed with fiberglass insulation that hung out in ragged hanks.

  They stepped out into a morning that wasn’t as bright as it seemed at first. There was a thin high overcast of seamless clouds. But there, spread out before them, was a grand panorama of mountains that were well forested, mostly in dark green pine mixed with golden patches of larch. Rolling fields of brown grassland swept down a mile or more to the highway, along which Boz could see a semi laboring up a grade toward the pass, beyond their view.

  Boz breathed in the fresh air gratefully. Down the rough road he could see the black Dodge pickup, its grill bent and one headlight smashed, but otherwise in pretty good shape. It sat square in the middle of the narrow road. A number of other old vehicles were pushed off into the sparse woods around the front of the mine, some of them missing important parts, like a rear axle, or an engine. One of them, an old Studebaker pickup truck, appeared to be operable. It was drawn into a kind of a drive, between two pine trees that had a tin-clad roof rigged from one to the other of them to shelter it.

  Boz looked all around. Behind them the mountain rose up, covered with pines that soughed gently in the wind. A jay or a squirrel called, or it might have been a crow: he didn’t know. There was not a man-made structure to be seen anywhere, just the distant highway.

  “Where’s the ranch?” Boz said. He remembered being so sleepy, battling to keep his eyes open, and then seeing a light way off to his right. He’d gotten off the highway, somehow, and found a road that seemed to lead in that direction, but what happened after that … he didn’t know.

  “Ain’t no ranch,” the old man said, “just the Seven Dials.” He pointed up to a large wooden sign over the entrance to the mine. It was sunbleached so pale that one could barely read the name.

  “I saw a light,” Boz protested.

  The old man pointed to a tall post from which the bark had been roughly stripped. At its top was a light fixture, such as one saw in barnyards, with a large bulb in it. A wire ran down the post, wrapping about it and disappearing into the mine.

  “I keep that burning all night,” he explained, “to keep the bears and badgers out of my smoker.” He pointed to an old refrigerator that stood next to the door. It had a heavy web strap about it to keep it closed. “Ye hungry? Ye must be.”

  He went to the refrigerator, undid the buckle, and let the strap fall to the ground. He opened the door. A waft of smoke and the odor of meat drifted out. He reached in and came out with two lengths of dark, wrinkled sausage. He handed one to Boz and set the other on the top the refrigerator while he rehitched the strap and tightened it, snapping the buckle closed. The sausage on the top of the refrigerator fell to the ground. He picked it up and brushed it off, then took a huge bite, as Boz had.

  “Pretty damn good, ain’t it?” the old man said.

  “It sure is,” Boz said. It was delicious. Spicy, hard, chewy, but succulent. The grease ran down his chin and he wiped it away with a hand, then looked around for something to wipe his hand on. The old man was wiping his hand on his pants. Boz looked down at his own pants. They were pretty foul, with blood, dirt, and cat hair, but he didn’t feel like wiping the grease on them. They were the only pants he had. He saw that his leather coat was all right, though the sleeve was torn. His shirt was torn, too, a mess, stiff with dried blood.

  “Jesus, I’m a mess,” he said, holding his hand away from him.

  The old man picked up a dirty rag from the ground and tossed it to him. It looked like it had been used to clean oil from a truck part. But after he snapped it a few times in the air, Boz was able to clean his hand with it. He gobbled down the last of the sausage and wiped his fingers again, then flapped the rag at his pants and coat. Every time he flapped the rag he felt a twinge in his side, but it didn’t bother him much now.

  “Thanks for bandaging me up,” he said to the old man.

  “No problem. Looks like ye got into a jaw-t’jaw.”

  Boz shook his head. “I don’t remember too much about it. Couple of guys, I guess they didn’t like the way I was dancing with one of ’em’s old lady.” He laughed. “I don’t even know how I got out of there.”

  “Where was ye?” the old man asked.

  Boz shook his head. “I don’t know the place.”

  “Unh-hunh,” the old man said. “Well, I see yer vee-hicle, it’s got Silver Bow plates, I figger ye must be from Butte.”

  “Naw, it’s just a loaner,” Boz said. “My car had some problems. They lent me that till they get it fixed.”

  “Ah,” the old man said, “then ye ai
n’t from around here?”

  “What is this, a quiz show?” Boz said sharply.

  “Nope, nope. Ain’t no bizniss a mine,” the old man said, finishing off his sausage. “Wal, it looks like a purty day.” He wiped his hands a final time on his blue jeans and stood there, gazing about with his hands on his hips. “I think I’ll fetch my pipe. Ye ’bout ready for another whiskey poultice? I thought ye would be.”

  The old man went back into the mine and reissued a moment later, the pipe in his mouth, carrying the whiskey bottle and two small glasses. The cat slipped out between his legs and disappeared into the brush. The old man set the bottle on a chunk of wood that served as a chopping block and went back to fetch a Mason jar of water. When he came back, Boz was chugging at the bottle.

  “Hey, now! That’s enough a that!” the old man exclaimed. He snatched the bottle from Boz, who docilely permitted it, smiling while Kibosh poured them both a reasonable dollop in the little jelly glasses. “That’s fine stuff. Ye got to sip it. Pull up a stump.”

  He sat down himself on a chunk of firewood and motioned Boz to one like it nearby. The two of them sat, warming in the morning sun that was just beginning to glow through the thin cloud cover. The old man lit up his pipe again. Then he sipped at his whiskey.

  “Now, this is the goddamn life, ain’t it?” he said, gesturing at the mountains.

  Boz sipped at his whiskey, as bidden. He felt much, much better. “Yer damn right,” he said, unconsciously mimicking the old man, who didn’t notice.

  Boz sat and rested himself. His mind was working, now. He saw that he was in a pretty secure position, up here, for the time being. Little by little, the events of the night began to resurface: the hassle with the bartender, the fight with the man, the mad dogs, the crazy hippie, then … by God, Franko! And then that fucking Joe Service. And the girl! Jesus, she was a handful, all by herself.

  “What was in that sausage?” he asked.