The Badger Game

THEY TOOK HIM down in Chicago.

Five to ten—Joliet—first-degree murder pled down to manslaughter.

He had a record but his last conviction had been under another name. The judge said he hoped prison had changed him, that he seemed like a reasonable young man, that what he’d done was understandable in context.

Stein wanted it over with. He kept quiet.

TWO

Things he’d always remember.

Things he wanted to forget:

The feel of her skin under rough hotel sheets. Scent of her hair.

Sound of skin—slapping, wet, rough—from another room, behind a closed door.

They’d met at a bar. He’d been working for somebody—doing what he used to do, finding people, hurting them. She’d been nursing a cocktail. Her makeup was running like she’d been crying. He asked her what was wrong—surprising himself—he never cared about other people.

She smiled at him and something changed. A space filled he hadn’t known was empty. They sniffed each other out in the still dark of that place like circling dogs. He never found the man he’d been looking for.

A month later on the road to another city, she’d asked him his name. He told her he had a few. She could pick one.

She picked “Stein.” She said it sounded harmless.

He told her he wasn’t harmless.

She said, “Harmless to me.”

THREE

A week into his sentence his cellmate hopped down from the top bunk and asked his name.

Stein looked at his feet for a while. The cellmate whistled a song and walked out.

He came back holding something. He said his name was Portman—he’d used to be a courier—he could get Stein work when their time was up. He had a pack of Luckies.

Stein unwrapped the cigarettes and put one in his mouth. Portman lit it with a match. His hands were shaking slightly and the flame danced. When he got it going, Stein puffed out smoke and stood and Portman was smiling at him, hands on his hips.

Portman asked if he’d been inside before. Stein nodded and walked to the toilet, leaned against the wall, and undid his trousers. Portman followed—close—Stein could smell him now—he’d put on cologne when he’d left the cell.

Portman asked if he knew how much a pack of tailors cost there. Stein shook his head. Portman laughed—“You don’t talk much, huh? I like a quiet boy.”

Stein knew. Reform school fifteen years earlier—twenty boys in a room—wolves and sheep. There’d been a boy there who played this game …

Portman put his hand on Stein’s shoulder. He squeezed. He said, “You feel nice.”

… the boy’s name had been Franklin. He’d been a year older than the rest of them. He had a routine—a new kid would come in and Franklin would greet them with his two cronies and they’d talk quietly…

Portman leaned forward from his hips. He kissed Stein on the shoulder. He leaned up to kiss Stein’s neck. The hall beyond the cell was empty.

… after the talk—in the night—Franklin and his boys would come to the new kid’s bed. They’d gag him with a sock and wrap his head in a pillowcase. They’d take turns on him. You could hear it. You could smell it…

Portman took the cigarette out of Stein’s mouth, drew in a drag, and dropped it in the toilet. “What a waste,” Portman said. “You owe me for that one.” Stein felt him push—he bent over the bowl.

… the new kid wouldn’t get up in the morning. Eventually, they’d take him away to the infirmary and they’d never see him again. When they came for Stein he remembered being scared. They cornered him and Franklin told him the rules…

He felt Portman’s hands. They roamed his back, went to his hips. “You’re so pretty,” he said. Stein stared at the cigarette floating in the toilet basin, waiting.

… when they came for him that night, he was ready. He’d cut a length of hose in the yard and filled it with steel pellets from the workshop. When Franklin came to lie on top of him, he whipped the fortified hose out from under his pillow and across the older boy’s face. The two cronies watched while Stein hit him over and over, his face flat. Silent except for the wet sound of the hose against Franklin’s face, grunts of exertion. The two cronies did nothing. When it was over, Stein dropped the length of hose by Franklin’s body and went back to bed. Nobody spoke…

Portman’s hands left Stein’s body. Stein heard the buttons popping on his overalls and he whipped around and drove an elbow into the bigger man’s throat. Portman’s eyes bugged out but he had that convict ruthlessness and his hands went for Stein—Stein was quicker. He grabbed Portman’s testicles through the jumpsuit and pushed him back against the bunk, squeezing hard enough to provoke a gurgled scream.

… the guards found Franklin in the morning. They took them away—Franklin to the infirmary and Stein to a holding cell. They tried to get him to talk. Stein didn’t say a word. Nobody did. Franklin lost most of his teeth, an eye. They sent him away and they put Stein to work.

They left him alone.

Which was all Stein had ever wanted.

To be left alone.

He went to work on Portman.

When he was done he sat down on the bunk. They found them like that—Portman lying on his back moaning with a ruined face and Stein sitting there, hands covered in blood. He’d gouged out Portman’s eyes and he sucked vitreous fluid off of his thumb. He didn’t want to and the taste made him gag, but the message was important.

Elena always said: you need to stop them cold.

FOUR

Stein and Elena started off grifting. She played the damsel in distress—fake an accident or food poisoning—Stein the heavy who wanted a payout. They moved—a new city every two weeks, a new car every two months.

She wanted to go after syndicate money—had this idea that she’d sit in on card games or work an underground casino, get the lay of it so Stein could heist the place. He nixed it, told her about those people, their brutality.

It made her look at him with new eyes—his history. She asked him once if he’d been a shooter—he said no. Always his hands. A few jobs a year and debt collection—that was his speed.

Elena’s speed was survival—they worked out the details quick one night, up late.

The badger game.

She’d lure a john to a hotel. Stein would take the connecting room—or stay close by. After working out the run, Elena and the john would go to it and Stein would come in—the jilted husband, the angry brother. They’d take pictures if they needed to. Most of the johns paid up.

Some didn’t, and Stein would make them.

Elena would always watch, biting her lip.

When they made love after, if she’d seen him hurt somebody, it was always better—for her.

They cut across the country—making it through ten states in as many weeks. One night in Iowa City a john pulled a straight razor—Stein was in the connecting room, didn’t hear a thing because the john had put a gag on Elena. By the time Stein noticed things next door were too quiet and came in to check, she’d been cut all over her arms, tied face down to the bed. The guy was there holding his razor. Naked, hard. Stein put him down quick and untied Elena, took her away. Her dress had stuck to her skin from the blood and she insisted on taking the man’s suitcase.

They got another room and he took care of her. Her instructions—he wasn’t much for thinking—he swabbed the wounds and wrapped them and spent a long time rubbing her back while she cried on the toilet.

She asked what happened to the man. Stein told her—I caved in his throat and he choked to death.

They made love that night—it was different than before, slow and sweet.

Later on, in his arms, she said she wanted to kill them all. An uncle in Florida, her father before that. Stein didn’t understand and she said that it was okay.

He told her about the orphanage he’d grown up in—nuns with rulers, a priest who would take you into a room above the rectory, other boys with dirty faces always crying in the dark at night when they thought no one could hear.

She said, “I think you’re a good man.” She said, “It’s not fair, what they did to us.”

She cried for a long time. He held her. She said, “I’m going to kill them all, baby.”

FIVE

He spent six months in solitary. Portman wasn’t popular—they put it down to self defense. He thought about Elena through it—made up stories in his head.

When they let him out of the hole they put him in a different cell by himself. A guy came eventually and knocked on the cell door. Stein just looked at him and when he came in he gave Stein a carton of Luckies and a bag of potato chips and walked out again.

After that they left him alone.

He did six years out of the ten.

When they let him out he broke parole the first day and went to Florida.

SIX

The game changed after she’d gotten cut. She started antagonizing the marks—making Stein come in and hurt them while she watched.

In bed she changed, too—she wanted pain. He went with it—whatever she wanted.

She asked if he was happy one night—the two of them in evening wear, sitting at a table on a riverboat casino in Indiana, looking at the moonlight on the black water. He’d been uncomfortable in the suit—she’d insisted, wanted to see him dressed up.

No one had ever asked him that before. He had to think about it and must’ve taken too long because she laughed and said, “Never mind,” took his hand.

“I just wanted to be out somewhere with you,” she said. “Somewhere that isn’t a dive. To ask you something.”

She had a book in her handbag. It was bound with black leather and there was a red circle on the front of it, cut at the eight o’clock mark with a curled slash.

“The man that hurt me in Iowa,” she said. “He had this with his things.” She opened the book. It was cluttered with writing—from left margin to right with no spaces, the words piled up right on the edge. Stein tried to read some of it but he’d never been good with words and he couldn’t keep track of what it was saying. Holding it gave him a funny feeling—like something was watching him, like the priest from the orphanage, cold eyes and no passion and dead, wet hands.

He closed the book hard and pushed it back to her. He said, “What is it?”

“It’s special,” she told him. “It’s okay if you can’t read it—I can’t either. There’s a man who can. In Chicago.” She let out a breath. He lit a cigarette, watching her hands shake.

“Will you go with me?”

“I’ll go anywhere with you.”

SEVEN

She’d said once: If they take one of us, we’ll find each other in Florida.

No city or town. Florida.

He got off the greyhound in Tallahassee and walked around until he found the bars and the nightclubs, then went farther until he hit the strip of SRO hotels and rooming houses. Elena had never told him her last name—her true name. She’d gone by Marquez but he knew it was nothing, a dead end—she’d never use the same name after they took him down.

He took post on street corners and stoops and watched and waited. Saw the girls coming and going—streetwalkers in short cut dresses, high heels, jeans and halter tops, smoking and standing around. The johns would come and they were always different.

Two days in he saw a pimp make a handoff—a police cruiser parked down an alley, a brown envelope passed through the window. He followed the pimp back to a boarding house, stood on the street when the pimp went inside until a light came on in one of the rooms. He counted the floors.

Pimps worked at night—the next morning Stein went in through a window on the first floor and up the stairs. He loided the door with his driver’s license. The room was immaculate—the pimp had likely done time—some ex-cons can’t stop themselves from keeping house.

He was sleeping. No girl. Stein woke him up and asked him questions, used his hands to quiet him down when he took offense. Described Elena—her scars. The pimp didn’t know anything—his traffic was all black and white. “The spic girls,” the pimp said, “they’re all on the coast.”

He had some money. Stein took it and left and bought a car from a yard on the outskirts of town—a ’54 Studebaker Champion. It barely ran.

He drove all day and night to Jacksonville.

EIGHT

The man in Chicago was a preppy type—blue blazer with brass buttons, pressed slacks. They met, the three of them, in a library at the university.

The man was an assistant professor. He led them through the stacks, showed Elena all these books. They were bound in leather—brown, red—they were thick.

They took the books he gave them. They got a rented room—blew most of their stake on it, six months down. Elena told him: “I need time. Leave me alone.” She locked herself in the bedroom—Stein took the couch. He spent a week flipping through channels on the TV, watching the door. He listened to the little noises she made.

She did not come out. He knocked a few times to see if she wanted anything. Once inside, she never spoke.

On the fifth day he heard noise—a thrum, electric. On the sixth day she laughed for an hour—low and sad at first, then louder, hysterical. Stein stayed on the couch. He never broke the door down. He didn’t know what to do.

At night the shadows grew long. The streetlights would dim—they’d never go out. Stein chain-smoked and watched cars go by and thought about his life before her, with her, after her.

On the eighth day she came out. A smell came with her—sulphurous. She was different—a white streak in her black hair, darker eyes, new lines in her face. She collapsed on the floor.

He took her to the bath. He washed her—her clothes were soiled—he threw them away. Her body was different—thinner. He could see her ribs—odd nodules on her stomach, her thighs.

He set her up on the couch and she slept for a day while he cleaned her mess from the bedroom.

When she woke up she wanted to go back to work. Her voice seemed deeper than before.

Stein was scared.

NINE

He spoke to pimps in Jacksonville. He cruised go-go bars and cabarets.

He stayed away from the cops—they’d have paper on him. He knew how to be a ghost.

Pimps in Jacksonville sent him south.

The Studebaker died in Port Orange.

He found a pill dealer and beat him until he gave up his stash. Bought another car—a ’58 Buick—and drove it to Fort Pierce.

At a bar there he met a woman, a working girl—she’d seen Elena. Going to Miami. Said Elena was intense—scary. “What do you want with a girl like that?”

Stein told her they had history. The woman wanted more—he took her to bed just to see. Nothing like Elena: not worth the time. She left while he faked sleep and when he did fall into it he had dreams—he never dreamed—of blood and white things twisting in the dark like unfurled ribbon.

He drove to Miami, no stops, passed out in a cheap hotel, woke and hit the strip. Girls in bikinis, men in straw hats. He knew he looked out of place in his cheap suit—Elena would’ve laughed.

He asked his questions, made his play. At a cabaret tucked away from the strip a guy took offense to him nosing around—they tried for him in the alley. Two heavies, a chain, a bat—Stein took them down but they made him feel it. He recuperated in the hotel bathroom—thought of Elena, all the times she’d bandaged him, his hands.

The string was running out—he had nothing else.

TEN

The setup was all wrong.

She wanted to be a streetwalker, not a bar girl—Stein didn’t know why.

The guy who took her was old—gray hair, paunch, white socks in a cheap black suit. He got her into his Cadillac and drove through an alley. Stein had to follow on foot—their car was back at the rented apartment—not how they worked.

He found the car blocks away in another alley. The Caddy was idling—empty—doors open.

He heard it from the alley.

A sucking noise—like a kid sloppy-eating a lollipop.

That sulphur smell.

They were down a flight of stairs, some basement.

Soft yellow light in the crack under the door.

It was unlocked and inside, there was a single bulb illuminating a small room.

The john was naked, on a table. He was hard—it stuck up straight as a ruler.

Elena stood beyond the light. Something writhing in the air around her—twisting, undulating—too dark to make out.

She said, “Do you want to see, baby?”

A thing like a slick white rope twisted out of the dim.

It was coming from her—seemed to float to the man.

His eyes were wide open, staring.

It wrapped itself around his erection until it was fully enveloped.

The man on the table was gone somewhere, in his head. As Stein watched, the rope tightened around the john’s penis—blood ran from the gaps in its coiled form, and semen, and when it unwrapped itself the man’s genitals were mauled beyond recognition, a lumpy mass of meat.

Elena stepped into the light.

Those bumps in her—they’d opened—like slits. White ropes spilled from them—like worms from a dog. Her entire body save her neck and head vibrated—that electric thrum, like a convulsion in slow motion.

Her eyes were so dark.

She said, “This is how we work now,” and Stein closed his eyes.

She said, “This is what they made me.”

ELEVEN

He accidently killed the last pimp he spoke to. Before he went he gave Stein a name—a brothel—The Peony.

Some old plantation house, far out of town.

Stein ditched the car on a side road, walked through marsh to get there. Came out of the trees and the swamp on the back edge of the place—a wide rolling lawn—goons in jackets and ties standing around. Stairs on each end up to a tall balcony.

Stein cleaned his shoes with his suit coat—left the jacket in the mud. He moved low—fast—came up the stairs on the left. Two thugs there—he hit one in the throat and the other tried to get his gun but didn’t yell. Stein took him down quick, took the piece—some kind of revolver—he didn’t know how to work it beyond cocking the hammer.

Inside the place was grand—candelabras, no electric lights—oriental carpets and paintings. If he’d known anything about art he would’ve thought of Bosch. He went down halls, checked doors. People in all forms of congress—men, women. One room with red light and a man in leather and a woman hurting him. One room with two women, one vomiting into a bucket while the other scooped it out with her hands and washed her face with it. They took no notice of him.

Another thug caught up to him on the stairs—Stein butted him with the gun, hit him until he stopped moaning. He kept moving up.

The office was on the top floor. Converted attic—they’d taken the ladder out, put in a staircase.

The woman was behind a desk the width of a double bed. Rich wood—candlelight. She wore a dress from the 1800s—black bobbed hair. She smiled like she was expecting him, didn’t change when he showed her the gun.

“Please—have a seat,” she said.

He sat. She’d been writing in a book with a quill pen. She closed it and set the pen down in an inkwell and looked at him.

She said, “I’ve been hearing about you—all the way from Jacksonville. Busy boy. You’re very determined, aren’t you?”

“You know what I’m looking for.”

“Who you’re looking for, yes. I’m afraid you’re out of luck. She isn’t here.” She sighed softly, put a hand to her face, as if she were bored. “She isn’t your property. You know that. Don’t you?”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“You aren’t very bright, are you? I assume she called the shots—when the two of you were together. Do you think she loved you?”

He didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve owned this place for a very long time. Seen a lot—nothing like her. She was so very special. But what made her so special—I suppose time just ran out. I sincerely hope she made you happy. She spoke of you very highly, when I knew her.”

“Is she dead?”

“Not yet. There’s a hospice—Key Largo—Saint Vincent’s. You’ll find her there. It won’t be what you expect, but I don’t think—that isn’t really something you do, is it? Expect things.”

Stein stood. No noise from the stairs—he uncocked the pistol, set it down on the chair.

The madam said, “Go on, tough boy. You’ll be safe.”

He went out the door, heard her laughing softly behind him. The rooms had been emptied—girls and boys and their clients watched him go into the halls. They had empty eyes. They had vacant smiles. They all had that smell. They all had that electric thrum.

TWELVE

She killed five more like that.

She told him they were all freaks—they were like the men who hurt her. Hurt him.

Stein didn’t feel one way or the other about it—he wanted her to be happy.

At night he could feel her things on him—those fleshy wires—he couldn’t bring himself to make love to her but she didn’t care.

They stayed in Chicago—he asked why they didn’t move—like they used to. She told him: “There’s somebody here. I can feel them, waiting for me. I have a job to do.”

The last one she did went wrong.

A guy in a military trench coat—Brylcreem hair—blonde, cold eyes. Stein listened to them talk. They sat on a bed in a hotel room—he was in the connecting room, like the old way. The guy told her he’d been in Japan, Singapore, Oriental Theatre, a sniper, recon—things he’d seen.

When the lights went out Stein cracked the door. Watched.

Elena took her clothes off. The man took out a knife.

When the ropes came out of her the john wasn’t phased—his face never changed expression. He hacked at them, got her in his arms. The ones he chopped off stank—the smell filled the room. New ropes grew—they wrapped around him and Stein came in when he had the knife to her throat.

When the john was off of her, on the floor, clutching his throat, Stein looked at Elena—her throat had been cut, deep, but no blood. Those white ropes were filling in the wound—strands of them pumping out from her meat, her veins.

Glassy look on her face—like she was dead—but she woke up while Stein watched her body fix itself.

Stein let her use the knife on the man—when she was done she kissed Stein, hard.

He told her to get out while he cleaned up the room. She gave him this long look. Said, “This was the one.”

Stein asked if it was over, then. This new game.

She said, “I don’t think I can stop now.”

She kissed him again before she left.

The cops kicked in the door five minutes later.

They’d been watching the freak—he’d cut up five other women. Stein said he’d found him like this—clammed up and got the court lawyer to speak for him.

They pled him down to manslaughter—the cops weren’t stupid—they figured it was badger gone wrong. The brutality of it didn’t make the papers—the psycho john had been decorated.

Stein took the deal they offered him.

Five to ten at Joliet—then Portman—everything else.

It was after Portman that he knew what he had to do. Felt it like that first time meeting Elena—something unspoken, a feeling he couldn’t put into words.

THIRTEEN

The car was where he’d left it.

He drove through the night. Watched the sun rise over the ocean—far off, colors like he’d never seen.

When he got to Key Largo he got a room and slept without dreams. In the morning he bought cigarettes—Elena’s brand.

He killed time. He didn’t want to go there.

The hospice was outside town. Colonial house—the yard was overgrown, two wings, peeling paint, sagging porch. The receptionist wore a nurse’s outfit. The lobby was empty—rusted wheelchairs stood in a row by the coat rack.

She seemed confused when he didn’t have a name for her. He said the woman he wanted to see changed her name—he didn’t know the new one. Black hair, black eyes, slim. Scars. The nurse knew who he was talking about, sent him upstairs.

The room was at the end of the hall. There was a window in a nook beside the door—he stood there looking out at the yard for a long time. Birds making noise somewhere, an old woman gardening. Bright soft sunlight.

He opened the door.

The bed. An IV. A wheelchair in the corner.

A bedside table—ashtray, that book with the cut circle on its cover.

Elena in the bed.

She’d gotten worse.

Her skin was pale with a yellow hue. Thin—her ribcage indented the sheets from within. Arms like rails, every bone visible, like the skin had been painted on. Her eyes were hollow and her cheeks caved in and she looked at him and she smiled.

She said, “Come here. It’s okay, sweetheart.”

There was a chair beside the bed. He sat down and unwrapped the cigarettes—Camels, her favorite—and lit one for her. She took a drag with her skeleton hand and coughed.

“Was it those things?” he asked.

She pulled down the plastic sheet. Below her breasts her body was a coiled mass of them—they twisted and rolled, lazy, like dogs in the sun. Wet. The smell would’ve made him gag if not for the cigarette. He lit one of his own.

“They gave me cancer,” she said, without emotion. “All over. I can put them away when they come to look at me, the doctors. It’s like they just don’t see it. Maybe you can—because you were there when I grew them.”

He looked at the book. She nodded. “Old magic,” she said. “I grew up here. I never told you.” She laughed. It was shaky. A croak. “This old magic—lives in places like this. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“I’m sorry, Elena.”

“For what? You did the best you could. Once I got a taste for it, baby, I just couldn’t stop. They all looked like my uncle—my father.”

“I would’ve killed them for you.”

She shook her head. “They’ve been dead for years,” she said. “Old age, cancer, who knows. I read about it. It’s all over.” She pulled the sheet back up, tucked it in around her.

“Are you here to kill me?” she asked.

He looked at her. He said, “I thought I was.”

“Because you took the fall in Chicago?”

“Because you needed—you had to…” He didn’t know how to say it. She waited for him to think. “You wanted to be done. I saw it in your face after that guy. The Army guy. You didn’t know how to stop, but you wanted to.”

She nodded. “Turns out it all stopped anyway,” she said. “I don’t know how long it’ll take but these things …” She trailed off.

Stein put his cigarette out.

He said, “I’ll stay with you.”

She took his hand.

FOURTEEN

Early morning. He woke to her coughing—got her a glass of water from the bathroom down the hall. There was blood on her chin and chest when she was finished. He cleaned her up.

Lying there with her head back on the pillow, gasping through it, she said, “Can you still work with your hands?”

He nodded.

He knew.

She said, “Please.”

She said, “I know what you want.”

She said, “I love you,” and he broke her neck quick and clean.

FIFTEEN

In the car he lit a cigarette. He had the book. He flipped through the pages—the writing looked new, fresh.

He started the car and drove—heading for the highway—North.

To return the book.