Blood Game by Ed Gorman Page A

on a show today, Rooney. That’s all I care about. The past is the past.”
    Rooney noticed how interested Guild seemed since the conversation had come round to the fighter Rooney was accused of poisoning.
    â€œI won’t look good if you don’t look good,” Stoddard said. “You just try and remember that, all right?”
    â€œAll right.”
    Stoddard came up. He looked as if he were going to pat Rooney on the back. But you could see in his eyes the distaste he felt for the boxer’s sweating body. He brought his hand back to his suit coat and put it in a pocket.
    Rooney said, “You tell Sovich not to kill me.”
    â€œI’ll tell him, Rooney.”
    â€œYou promise?”
    â€œI promise.”
    â€œI ain’t got nothing against him. He shouldn’t have nothin’ against me.”
    â€œI’ll talk to him, Rooney. You can bet I will.”
    Rooney sighed. “Maybe I’ll retire after this one.”
    Stoddard said, “That’s something to think about, Rooney. That sure is something to think about.”
    He and Guild left soon after.
    Rooney sat in the chair. There was a fly in the room. Every few minutes Rooney tried to slap it down. He had no luck.
    He thought about the fighter he’d poisoned that time. The kid wasn’t supposed to die. All Rooney had wanted was to slow him down enough to beat him good. Then the kid up and died.
    Rooney got up and paced. The sweat was now chill on his back, even with the heat. He was thinking of picket fences and small thatched cottages. He was thinking of a good woman with wide hips and a real way with children.
    But he knew better, Rooney did. He knew it wasn’t going to happen for him. Ever.
    He stared out the window at the first hundred or so fans who surrounded the large ring.
    There was only one thing they’d come here to see today, and Rooney knew only too well what that was.

Chapter Sixteen
    Twenty minutes later, inside the office where the gate receipts would be kept, John T. Stoddard handed Guild a Sharps and said, “I want you to shoot anybody who comes through that door during the fight.”
    â€œSomehow I don’t think your permission is enough. To kill somebody, I mean.”
    â€œAnybody who tries to get through there is doing so for only one reason. To take the gate money.”
    The office was snug, with two oak rolltop desks on the east and west walls, a bookcase filled with leather-bound legal volumes, a map of Dakota Territory, and one wall lined with advertisements for various brands of pipes and smoking tobacco. Sunlight fell hot on the floor. In the comer Stephen Stoddard sat at a noisy typewriter filling up a white sheet of paper with black-lettered information. He wore a white straw boater. Inside his coat was a lump that had to be a gun.
    â€œI’ll keep the Sharps, but I’ll be using it only as a last resort.”
    â€œI wouldn’t put anything past Victor.”
    â€œHe probably wouldn’t put anything past you.”
    Stoddard surprised Guild by taking his gibe seriously. “That supposed to mean something?”
    Stephen Stoddard turned away from the typewriter. He was curious about his father’s reaction to Guild’s harmless remark.
    â€œI said, is that supposed to mean something?”
    â€œNo, it isn’t.”
    â€œThen why’d you say it?”
    â€œI was making a joke.”
    â€œI don’t find it one damn bit funny.”
    â€œYou could always get somebody else for this job.”
    â€œA little late, isn’t it, Mr. Guild? Two goddamn hours before the first preliminary fight starts?”
    â€œDad, I really don’t think he meant anything by that,” Stephen Stoddard said. He wore a white shirt with a high, starched collar, red arm garters, and a white straw boater. His trousers were dark blue and his shoes white.
    â€œDid I ask you, Stephen?”
    â€œNo, I suppose not