Champion of the World (35 page)

“I'm not drunk at all,” he said. “But I'm looking forward to it.”

“I just had the strangest encounter with Mr. Taft,” she said. “He acted like he didn't know me at all.”

She recounted it for him and he squinted at her. “He hasn't had a lot to say to me since I told him about the fix,” he said. “He's angry. I guess we better get up there.”

“In a minute,” she said.

For weeks now she'd wanted to tell him about Eddy's letter and the real estate papers, which she'd stashed in one of the high cabinets in the cabin. There was no saying what he'd do with the information, though, once he had it. She worried he would be angry, that he would say something to Fritz or Eddy. She didn't want to add to the confusion or his trouble, so instead she said his name, and when he looked at her, she kissed him on the mouth.

“What's that for?” he said.

“Just so you remember that I'm on your side,” she said.

Suspicion crept over his face. “I hope you're not planning something foolish,” he said.

She sighed. “Unfortunately, my dear, I'm all out of tricks. Now,
we have to get you to that party before Fritz comes down here and skins us both alive.”

T
hey sat around the big table smoking as the hired girl brought out dessert. Somehow dinner had been a success. They had eaten cream of celery soup, asparagus with crumbles of blue cheese, venison with chunky brown gravy and Yorkshire pudding. Fritz and Pepper did well to keep the conversation moving as they ate, and even Taft managed a quick line or two when the reporters asked him questions. When he appeared stuck, Pepper would jump in, making cracks about Strangler Lesko until even the most skeptical writers were smiling and laughing along.

“I suppose there was a time when Lesko was genuinely tough,” Pepper said as Eleanor put a trembling bowl of custard on the table in front of him, “but too many nights on silk sheets and room service breakfasts in the penthouse will make any man soft.”

“You expect Lesko to be soft?” one of the reporters said, putting the question to Taft.

Taft had a spoonful of custard frozen in the air in front of him. He looked surprised by the question, suddenly confused. “Soft as an old piece of fruit,” Pepper said.

“Gar lived in a penthouse for a time,” Carol Jean said. “At the Zachary Hotel in Cincinnati.”

Carol Jean's conversation strategy for the entire evening had been to bring any discussion back to Taft's glory days, using whatever details she had at hand. A few of the reporters were obviously taken with her, or at least with the green sequined dress that hugged her bust and the sapphire necklace that made her eyes sparkle like she had a secret to tell. Now, though, they appeared to be getting tired of her.

“How interesting,” one of the reporters said. “The two of you lived there together?”

Carol Jean reddened. “Of course not,” she said, “but it was an awfully grand place. Remember, honey?”

Taft nodded slightly. Carol Jean reached over and plucked his napkin from where he'd wadded it on the table and used it to dab a smear of custard from the corner of his lips. She did this without caring who saw, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“When you lived in the penthouse at the Zachary,” she said again. “You remember that.”

“Certainly,” Taft said, sounding not all the way sure. “Those were good old times.”

Moira saw the confusion in his face again as he set his spoon down, straightening it a bit to make sure it sat perfectly with everything else. He looked back at the reporters with deep, sorry eyes. A few of them were staring more intently at him now, sensing something was wrong. Carol Jean flashed a melodramatic smile, all teeth and lipstick, and put a hand across Taft's forearm.

“I remember the Zach from my time on the road,” Pepper said. “Can't say I ever saw the penthouse, though. We smaller fellows don't need so much room to stretch our legs.”

Taft looked at him like he'd just come into the room, and then glanced back to the sportswriters as if looking for a friendly face.

“You fellows,” he said. “What brings you to our camp in the dead of winter?”

The reporters didn't know what to say to that.

“They're here to write their stories about you,” Fritz said. “Before we depart.”

Taft blinked at him.
Sure,
his look seemed to say,
of course.
All the sportswriters were sitting very still, like they were afraid the slightest movement, any reaching for a notepad, might prompt someone to shoo them away.

“I'm afraid Mr. Taft may have had quite a lot to drink,” Carol Jean said, getting to her feet and trying to take him by the elbow. “We should bid you men good night.”

“Wait a minute,” one of the reporters said, though he seemed to have no idea how to follow it up. He looked at the others for help, but they were all just as confused. Fritz and Pepper got up and Moira pushed her chair back. Only Taft remained seated. He'd started eating his custard again, and Fritz came around the table to whisper a few words into his ear.

“You're right,” Taft said. “I will feel better in the morning.”

He stood, nodding to the sportswriters and to Pepper and to Moira. “Gentlemen and lady,” he said. “I look forward to picking this up again tomorrow.”

As they began to make their way out of the room, one of the sportswriters said, “What's going on here?” Nobody answered him.

Carol Jean and Taft huddled together, both of them tall and beautiful despite their feebleness. They could have been a young couple out for an evening stroll if not for Taft's cautious, delicate steps. Carol Jean had one hand in the small of his back and they got about halfway to the door before Taft stumbled and fell. The slow-moving, face-first fall of the unconscious. The kind that looks nothing like the movies. His shoulder toppled a tray of half-empty drinks from the side table. It flipped into the air and broken glass exploded across the floor a second before the weight of his body shook the whole room as it hit.

T
he spasms stopped by the time Pepper and Fritz got Taft to his room, but a white froth had crusted on his lips and he was mumbling things they couldn't make out. His eyes were open as they wrestled him out of his clothes and into the bed, but he didn't seem to understand what was happening to him. Carol Jean went to the dresser and leaned against it, hugging her arms to her chest as they got him situated. Fritz straightened him out in bed the best he could and Pepper was trying to use a towel to clean his face when Taft suddenly grabbed him by the wrist.

“I know you,” he said. “What's your name?” There was a spooky insistence in his voice that made Pepper step back.

“I know you, too, sweetheart,” he said, trying for a half grin. “I'm Pepper. You're Taft. Rest now; you'll feel better in the morning.”

“He'll be fine,” Fritz told Carol Jean. “The world always looks brighter after a good night's sleep.”

Pepper thought she might slap him, but instead she buried her face in his shoulder and began to cry. Fritz gave Pepper a scared, helpless look before he wrapped one arm around her and patted her on the back. Pepper left them and went back down to the dining room, where he had to stay up for another hour drinking with the reporters just to make sure they all calmed down. After a few minutes
Fritz rejoined them, explaining that Taft had been running a fever the last few days and that he and Pepper hadn't said anything about it because they didn't want word to get back to Lesko's camp. He implored the sportswriters not to write anything about it in their stories, and in the end peeled off crisp fifty-dollar bills for each of them to keep them quiet. After they'd seen the last reporter safely off to bed, Pepper poured himself another drink and sat across from Fritz in the sunken lounge area of his upstairs office. “Tell me you didn't know about this,” he said in what felt like his worst stage whisper.

“One more week,” Fritz said. “That's all we need.”

“Tell me you didn't know.”

“Know what?” he said
.
“That Taft is sick? How could I have known? I'm a promoter, not a doctor. You want me to go around checking everyone's pulse, making them turn their head and cough before I agree to work with them?”

“That man's losing his mind,” Pepper said. “I have a hard time believing you could be around him for so long without seeing it. So, what? You kept it from me? Did you keep it from O'Shea and Stettler just the same way? Because I imagine they won't be too pleased when they find out.”

Fritz straightened his tie. “We did well to sell it to the reporters,” he said. “If you don't think you're up for the same when we get to New York, you can back out now and we'll see how far you get without your cut.”

“All that business about Taft's wife,” Pepper said. “Needing to get them out of Chicago. That was all bullshit, wasn't it? You needed to hide him away, all right, but it was because you didn't want anyone knowing how bad off he really was. You couldn't take the chance your little partners would discover that this whole training camp was just a street corner shell game.”

Massive muscles flexed in Fritz's jaw. His eyes went black and for
a moment he was his old self again, Abe Blomfeld's enforcer, the leg breaker. In a blink, it passed. “Fine,” he said. “Think whatever you like. Just get him to the ring.”

After that, there was not a lot to say. When Pepper got back to the cabin, it was dark inside and Moira was in bed with the blankets pulled up to her neck. He hung his shirt on the back of a chair and started unbuckling his pants. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“Not a bit,” she said in the dark. “Just don't think of trying anything fresh.”

He slipped into bed wearing his underclothes, and when she pressed against him he discovered she was nude. She kissed him, sliding her hand up the inside of his thigh, and he breathed in the smoky smell of her hair. They made love in a tangle with the cold of the cabin all around them. He felt wrapped up in the warmth of her body, the wetness of her mouth, and when it was over they smoked cigarettes side by side and he told her how much he'd missed her. He told her about Taft's condition when he'd left the lodge and his conversation with Fritz. She was right, he said, it had been a bad idea coming here, but it was almost over. Soon they would be back on their feet. When he was done she ground out her cigarette on the windowsill and rolled over to kiss him behind the ear. She lay there clinging to him and he went to sleep feeling as happy as he had in weeks.

T
he morning came too soon. He felt dizzy and light-headed from lack of sleep as the hunting camp came alive for its last few hours of operation. The reporters emerged as one from the lodge, bleary-eyed in their overcoats, a few of them using their typewriter cases as chairs as they waited by the car. Fritz seemed to have shaken off their argument from the night before and greeted Pepper with a
grin and a rough clap on the shoulder. He even nodded congenially to Moira when they came up from the cabin, Pepper carrying their trunk. He wanted to ask Fritz how Taft was feeling, but didn't dare do it while the reporters were within earshot.

He got his answer soon enough. After Fritz sent the reporters ahead to the station in a car with James Eddy, they had to haul Taft out of bed and down the stairs. He was still in much the same state as the night before, mumbling and talking to himself, not acknowledging any of them. Carol Jean was wan and quiet. As little sleep as Pepper had gotten, she had obviously gotten less. He rode up front with Fritz, while Moira and Carol Jean squeezed into the back on either side of Taft. A couple of times, as they drove down the hill through the blinding snow, he glanced back to see Moira holding Carol Jean's hand atop Taft's knee.

Eddy was waiting for them at the curb in front of the station, his fingers squeezing the steering wheel like he wanted to snap it in half.

“What about this one?” Moira said, cutting her head in Eddy's direction as Pepper helped Fritz unload the bags from the trunk.

“I'm told he's to stay on at the camp,” Fritz said. “One of their Canadian men will be joining him in order to help chaperone Mr. O'Shea's other interests there.”

“Chaperone,”
Pepper said. “That's one word for it.”

Fritz didn't smile at the joke, just walked over to the other car and rested his hand on top to have some final words with Eddy. As Eddy's car roared away, Pepper realized he'd never see the hunting camp again. The idea didn't bother him, though he couldn't help but notice how it fit the pattern of the rest of his life: the same place for a few nights, a few months, a few years, then gone, never to be back.

He'd packed hurriedly, stuffing his things into their trunk before it was time to go. Now he left it with a porter while he and Fritz helped get Taft to his private stateroom, hurrying him down the aisle as people stopped to stare. At least it would keep him away from the
reporters until he came out of his spell, Pepper thought. They laid him out in the bed and tucked in the corners of the sheet so he wouldn't fall out. Carol Jean stood in the doorway with a handkerchief pressed to her lips, Moira still with her and still holding her hand. As they squeezed past her on their way out, she laid a hand on Pepper's shoulder as if to say thank you. It was an odd gesture, but he smiled at her in the most encouraging way he could.

“You don't look nearly worried enough about this,” Pepper said as he and Fritz made their way back toward where the rest of the men were staying. Moira had remained behind to help Carol Jean get situated and, Pepper hoped, to keep an eye on Taft.

“It's all going to work out,” Fritz said. “Trust me.”

The reporters had gathered in Fritz's stateroom, wanting to know how Mr. Taft was feeling. The way the seats were set up in there, they all had to sit facing each other and Pepper watched Fritz squirm in his chair as he told them Taft was feeling much better. As the train lurched to a start, a couple of the reporters started in on an ambitious series of backgammon while Fritz and the others got a card game going. Despite their protestations, Pepper let himself out and walked to the room he would share with Moira at the other end of the car.

By the time she joined him, he'd eaten his way through the complimentary peanuts. The train had reached its cruising speed, clattering up over the continental divide and into the wide, flat belly of America. After she washed up using a damp towel from the room's small vanity setup, Moira sat with him on the bench seat. She said Carol Jean was trying to put a brave face on, but Moira could tell she was shaken. They would need to get Taft a doctor when they got to New York, she said. Probably one for Carol Jean, too.

“He'll snap out of it,” Pepper said. “He's got to.”

Eventually he dozed, and when he woke up, Moira was gone. Back to the Tafts' room, he guessed, to help keep an eye on the big
fellow. After a while he got bored sitting by himself, staring out the window, and he drifted back to see Fritz and the reporters. He joined them at cards and discovered they were easy pickings. The few tricks he'd picked up from Moira were enough to unravel them in short order. One of the men even had a habit of biting his lower lip when he thought he had a hand.

There was an observation car on the train, and when Pepper got sick of deflecting the reporters' questions about how he thought they'd defeat Lesko and where Taft was hiding, he walked up there and ate dinner by himself. When he'd finished, he got a plate for Moira and carried it back to their room. At some point he slept again and woke in the bright light of morning to find the train stopped and the brick buildings of some midwestern city all around him. Moira had not returned, her plate of food untouched on the small table. He walked down to the Tafts' room and tapped lightly on the door but got no response.

He had never been good at this part: the downtime, the traveling. Being on the train, constantly moving, constantly vibrating and shifting into its turns, made him feel trapped, pent-up. He wanted to be back in the hills with Taft, running through the trees. The last thing he wanted to do was go back to Fritz's room and deal with the reporters, so he went out to stretch his legs.

Walking up and down the platform, he tried to determine which of the cars might belong to the Tafts, but couldn't tell for sure from the outside. Several had their blinds pulled down tight. He checked the station clock and was surprised how early it was. He put a plug of tobacco in his lip, and as he stood there listening to the train cough and chug, he felt the sudden urge to wander off. The idea of going back into the train to sit alone in their stateroom or to stare at the fat faces of the reporters for another forty-eight hours seemed like the last step before hell. If he could just find Moira, they could get lost in town for a few hours—whichever town this was—and
once they were sure the train had left without them, they could figure something out.

It would probably be hours, maybe even a day, before anybody realized they were gone. By then they could be on to some new adventure, some new place where no one knew them at all. It was a crazy thought, just a passing fancy, but he reveled in it for a moment. He was looking for a bench to sit on when he caught sight of Fritz at the other end of the platform, standing in the middle of the flock of reporters, a fireplug of a cigar screwed into the corner of his mouth and swirls of blue smoke curling around him.

Their presence was turning a few heads among the other travelers. Even if they didn't know who Fritz was, they knew he was somebody and were stopping to have a look. Fritz was enjoying it, finally having his moment. He shook out the match he had in his hand and laughed at something one of the sportswriters was saying. Seeing Pepper, he tried to wave him over.

“There he is,” Fritz called. “The invisible man!”

Pepper smiled back, waved and got back on the train.

From the observation deck, he watched the Great Lakes appear and recede into the gaping sprawl of the east. He and Moira had spent the last few years living in their apartment in the Hotel St. Agnes in Brooklyn while working for Markham & Markham, but he'd never really gotten used to it. The close quarters, the sheer crush of people always made him uneasy and it seemed only more pronounced after spending the last few months in the wide-open space of Montana. As the city sprawl took over the landscape, it washed away the initial feeling of calm he'd gotten from sitting in the observation deck and replaced it with heart-ticking apprehension. Late that night, when he was sure everyone would be asleep, he went back downstairs and let himself into their stateroom.