Read Online Blood Game by Ed Gorman - Free Book Online Page A

the bartender asked.
    â€œIsn’t everybody?” Reynolds tried to make a joke of it. “Dam near, from what I hear. You have tickets?”
    â€œI bought one today, matter of fact.”
    â€œYou’re lucky. I have to work.”
    â€œIt’ll be some fight.”
    â€œThe colored guy’s going to get killed. You’ve heard about Sovich, haven’t you?”
    â€œHe’s killed several colored boys, from what I gather.”
    â€œYou gather right.”
    Reynolds eyed him. “You like prizefighting?”
    â€œSure. Don’t you, Mr. Reynolds?” The bartender had sort of a high voice for somebody who was so chunky and had such massive hands.
    â€œI don’t know. I always think I’m going to like it, and then the blood starts flowing—” He shook his head. “I just don’t know if I do or not.”
    â€œWell, tomorrow’s going to be special.”
    It sure is, Reynolds thought. I’m going to have to shoot somebody. And with the way things have been going, I ’m going to kill him by accident.
    â€œSpecial? You mean Sovich?”
    The bartender nodded, wiped out the inside of a schooner with his white towel. “Sure, Mr. Reynolds. It isn’t likely a town this size is going to see him again.”
    Six customers came in through the front door. They were laughing and slapping each other on the back. One, very drunk, was singing. He sounded Swedish. He was off-key.
    The bartender moved down the bar to serve them.
    This was what Reynolds had wanted, anyway. Solitude. He liked to stand at a bar and think through his problems and plan his robberies.
    Tonight he’d gone to an alley with the Navy Colt his old man had owned. He needed to practice firing. His ineptitude with firearms was obvious. People assumed because you were a good thief you were also good with a gun. In fact, most of the robbers Reynolds knew were peaceful men. They would rather give themselves up than be shot or shoot at somebody.
    He agreed with Stoddard that the robbery would look more believable if somebody was shot. Victor Sovich was less likely to be suspicious.
    But he wondered how it would feel, shooting a man like that. Just shooting him.
    He had a few more drinks—thankfully, the bartender got to talking with the group that had just come in and left Reynolds alone—and then of course he started thinking about Helen again.
    Things had been very, very good with Helen. They’d made a lot of plans, including a family and a cabin by a lake they could share with her cousin in Wisconsin. They were even talking about what parish they were going to belong to (Helen was partial to St. Michael’s; he to All Saints), and then it just had all gone to hell. He wished he were better at crying. Being a small man, though, he’d carefully taught himself not to cry. He needed every vestige of manliness he could summon. But sometimes crying would feel good, and he knew it. To just goddamn sit down and bawl like a baby. He’d seen his old man do it in the last failing months of the old man’s life, when the black lung had gotten especially bad and when he coughed up blood more and more. He could never have imagined the old man crying. But there he was in bed, with his wife holding him as if he were her child and not her husband, and he was bawling away without shame. The old man didn’t have her faith in the afterlife. He thought we were just like road dogs, nothing but ribs and a skull left of you, and then not even that after a time.
    â€œWhy don’t you have a drink on me, Mr. Reynolds?”
    â€œSure. What’s the occasion?”
    â€œThe fight tomorrow. Those men down there rode all the way over from Chicago to see it. They say it’s going to be one hell of a fight, and the colored guy’s going to be lucky he doesn’t get killed.”
    The bartender poured him a drink.
    â€œYou be sure and go now, Mr.