Champion of the World (40 page)

O'Shea's eyes darted to the man behind her, as quick as a wrestler's hand feint. He was on his guard now, though you couldn't tell it from the friendly way he said: “Information?”

“While we were still in Montana,” she said, “I discovered something that could mean your other venture there is in danger.”

“Danger?” he said. “Other venture?”

Jesus, she hoped he wasn't going to keep talking like that. “Yes,” she said. “I have reason to think the man you left behind there to guard your interests actually intends to do you harm.”

O'Shea fiddled with his ear. “What is this about?” he said. “It's
too late at night to listen to nonsense. If you mean Jimmy Eddy, you should know you're talking about a man I've known my whole life.”

“Be that as it may,” she said, “I believe Mr. Eddy intends to rob you and sell off the liquor you have stockpiled there for his own profit.”

O'Shea laughed, a strange slapping laugh that ended with him wheezing and coughing into his fist. The man behind her laughed, too, and when O'Shea had recovered there was a small, hard light in his eyes that hadn't been there before. “That's a very serious thing to say,” he said. “You shouldn't say things like that to a man like me unless you are very, very sure you're right.”

“I'm sure,” she said, hearing her own voice clear and self-assured, watching him as it sank in. O'Shea's eyes fell on the documents and suddenly she could feel the texture of the paper under her fingertips.

“What have you got there?” he said.

“I'm not going to show you,” she said. “Not without your assurance that it's worth something to you.”

She flinched when he moved, thinking he was going to snatch the papers from her grasp. Instead, he just crossed his legs. “I see,” he said, like somebody had explained a joke to him. “Mrs. Van Dean is here to shake us down, Francis.”

The leather groaned as the third man shifted in his seat, though all he said was, “Yeah?”

Another little bubble of panic inside her. “No,” she said, too fast. “It's not that at all. It's just that in light of recent events, the reemergence of Mr. Markham, I've realized a few things about my situation.”

“Realized what?” O'Shea said. “That your husband isn't the world's greatest future planner?”

She closed her eyes, reset herself and opened them. “All that booze sitting in that barn,” she said, “what do you suppose that's worth? A hundred thousand dollars? More? If I can show you that it's in jeopardy, I'll want two things from you.”

O'Shea sighed. “It's not in any jeopardy,” he said. “In fact, I just assigned another man out there to help keep watch on it.”

She remembered Fritz mentioning the same thing the day they left Montana. Quickly, her mind spun back through the night she'd encountered the Canadian bootleggers in the road. What could she say that would throw O'Shea off his game? She decided to play a bluff. “Ah,” she said, “you must mean our young Mr. Templeton. Do you think he's up to the challenge, if Mr. Eddy is really planning to betray you?”

At the mention of Templeton's name, O'Shea dropped his shoulders, tugging on his ear again. It was twice he'd done that, and now he didn't seem so sure of himself. He was trying to figure out how she'd known that. “Show me,” he said, nodding at the papers.

“Not yet,” she said. “Not until you agree to my terms. I came here as a person with needs. I think the information I have to trade is of considerable value. If it turns out you agree with me, I want twenty thousand dollars.”

He repeated the sum back to her as if he couldn't believe it. “Why don't I just take those papers and give you nothing?”

“You could absolutely do that,” she said. “But you said yourself you're a man of sport, and that wouldn't be very sporting.”

He didn't find any humor in that. “Fine,” he said. “If what you've got there is enough to make me believe one of my closest associates has turned on me, I'll pay you. If not, then I'm going to have Francis break one of your legs. How does that sound?”

Her mouth was very dry, the backs of her teeth rough against the tip of her tongue. She flipped over the first half of the papers and slid the pile across the small table. It was the receipt showing that Eddy had put down a deposit on a property outside of Los Angeles. O'Shea reached for them quickly, their fingers briefly touching, and then his face darkened as he scanned through the documents.

“Now,” she said. “What would James Eddy want with a house in California? Does that make sense to you?”

“What?” he said, distracted. “This is nothing. This doesn't prove anything.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Moira said, “I spent the last few months living in Montana like some kind of lumberjack, while you've been getting your information at some remove. Mostly, I assume, from James Eddy. I know Eddy was angry you sent him there, I know he hates the Canadian men who bring the liquor across the border, and I know you have a shipment being brought in tomorrow. You tell me who knows more about what's going on there.”

Mentioning the next shipment of booze tore his attention away from the papers. One of the dates she'd noticed marked on the desk calendar in Eddy's room was the next night. Some color was starting to show in O'Shea's face.

“How do you know all this?” he said.

“I'd rather not say,” she said. “Just know my information is valid.”

“What else have you got there?”

She shook her head, just one little nod. “Do you agree to my terms?”

“Jesus,” he said, aggravated now. “Will it mean something to you if I say I do? I could easily be lying.”

“You won't be.”

“How could you know that?”

“A man in your position understands the value of his word,” she said. “If you didn't, you wouldn't be here right now. You'd probably already be dead.”

She could see her words had an effect on him. “Fine,” he said. “I accept. But if what you have there isn't very, very convincing I can guarantee with equal certainty you won't walk out of this room.”

She slid the letter she'd gotten from Eleanor across the table
facedown. Her last hole card. O'Shea turned it over and read it. Then he picked it up off the table and read it again. A small, almost imperceptible tremor in his hands. When he spoke it was to his man. “Francis,” he said. “Telephone Canada. Tell them I need to speak with them right away.”

Moira turned in her seat so she could see Francis. He was looking at his watch. “Is there time?” he said. “I know we have a couple hours on them, but—”

“Go!” said O'Shea, slapping his free hand on the table.

As Francis hurried from the room, O'Shea settled back into his seat, the documents lying askew on the table in front of him. “I hope you're not wasting my time,” he said to her. “Jimmy is my oldest friend.”

“I know,” she said. “That's probably why he thinks he'll get away with it.”

He sighed. “You're making me angry,” he said. “I think you should go.”

“What about the money?” she said.

“Mrs. Van Dean,” he said carefully. “I'm not an unreasonable man, but it's late, I'm tired, and now I'm not going to sleep. When I say you should go, you must know that's really the best course of action for you.”

She'd brought along her handbag and picked it off the floor as she stood up. “Wait,” he said, his voice not quite as icy. “You said you wanted two things. What else is there?”

She turned to face him. “Five years ago my husband lost the world's lightweight title to a man named Whip Windham,” she said. “He wrestled the match with a broken leg and then never wrestled professionally again. I'd like you to tell me what you know about it.”

O'Shea looked exhausted, but he had enough left in him to offer a sad little lift of the eyebrows. “What do
you
know about it?” he said.

It gave her a sick and slippery feeling, but she sat down again and told him the story as she knew it. That a promoter or someone had paid Fritz Mundt to injure Pepper during training before the match against Windham. That Pepper had wrestled with a spiral fracture in his leg and still put up a good fight before he was finally pinned and beaten. After that Pepper's leg had never quite been right again and no promoter would give him a shot at a comeback.

When she was finished, O'Shea sat eyeing her in a way she didn't like.

“And you know this how?” he asked.

“Everyone knows it,” she said. “No one would come out and say it, but there were whispers.”

“Whispers?” O'Shea said.

“That's right,” she said. “Whispers that Fritz Mundt got paid five thousand dollars to break his leg with a toehold during a workout.”

O'Shea held up a finger. “Aha,” he said. “See what you said there? He got paid five thousand dollars. Nobody said who paid him.”

She felt like a pit was opening on the path in front of her, but that she was powerless to do anything but press forward. “It was Blomfeld,” she said, “or it was you. Who else could it be?”

O'Shea sat forward, folding his hands on the table. “Would it surprise you to learn,” he said, “that once upon a time a certain former lightweight wrestling champion of the world found himself unable to pay some substantial debts he'd accrued to some very serious people? And that as a way to be forgiven for those debts, he was offered the simple solution of losing his title to a heavy underdog, in a time and place chosen by his creditors?”

“That's a lie,” she said, feeling the pit growing in size and herself now stumbling toward it. “We had no debts when Pepper was champion. We had everything we could ever want.”

He pressed on: “Would it further surprise you to learn that this former lightweight wrestling champion of the world, a hardheaded
little fool if there ever was one, categorically refused to take part in such a solution, as easy as it would have been?”

“Of course not,” she said. “Pepper would never lose a wrestling match on purpose, no matter what the stakes.”

“That he relented only when these people, these very serious people, threatened to do some very serious things to his equally hardheaded and infuriating little wife?”

She swallowed, searching for a retort.

“That even then,” O'Shea said, “the champion refused on principle to take part in a fixed match, but offered to take on this man Windham under tremendously disadvantageous circumstances? That the champion's creditors agreed to go along only because the circumstances made any other outcome impossible and the champion agreed to foot the bill for services rendered?”

“You're saying it was Pepper's idea to have Fritz break his leg?”

O'Shea nodded. “And your husband paid him out after collecting on a substantial wager he'd made against himself beforehand. How do you think the people in charge felt about that? The creditors, I mean. The serious people.”

“Well, it's nonsense to begin with,” she said. “But if it did happen, I suppose they would be happy they got what they wanted.”

“Happy?” O'Shea said. “My dear, it scared the shit out of us. A man who would
pay
to have that done, to
himself?
We couldn't believe it. A man like that is capable of anything. A man like that is totally impossible to control.”

“It's ridiculous,” she said. “Why would he need to take out a loan from a bunch of gangsters when we had more money than we could spend?”

“That sounds like a topic you'll have to take up with the former lightweight wrestling champion of the world,” he said. “All I can tell you is, there were
whispers
that his wife liked to gamble.”

The door opened and the man called Francis stuck his head in. “I've got them for you,” he said.

O'Shea nodded and made a solemn little stack out of the papers Moira had brought with her. She thought he might say something else to her, but suddenly he didn't seem to want to look at her anymore. He looked only at the papers. “I'll be right there,” he said as he stood up.

M
ore than once as he sat cross-legged in the failing light of the day, his back pressed against the sticky trunk of a wide pine, Eddy asked himself what he was doing. The place he'd found to hide was seventy-five yards uphill from the hunting camp, at the fringe of a thick grove of ponderosa between the lodge and the horse barn. He sat half obscured by a tangle of fallen logs, invisible to anyone coming or going on the road. It was a good spot, and ever since he'd found it while hiking the hills around the camp weeks earlier, he hadn't been able to get it out of his mind.

Snow was coming down, and it might have been beautiful if it weren't so cold. From this position everything looked just as he'd mapped it out. He'd brought along two blankets: one of them folded under his ass, the other laid out on the ground as if for a picnic. Still, the chill crept through the folds of wool, into his legs and up his spine.

He had almost decided to call the whole thing off when he'd finally heard back from John Torrio. The Italian's note arrived a couple of weeks earlier, scrawled in a child's hand on a piece of cheap card stock. The tone of the short, crude message didn't exactly convey an outpouring of enthusiasm, but Torrio said if what Eddy was proposing was on the level, he would send some men to Montana to check
it out. Eddy had driven into town to meet with them the night before and found them to be nearly as awful as the Canadians. Just a bunch of amateurs hiding their fear inside cheap suits and loud talking. They didn't want any part of the shooting, naturally, but said if Eddy had liquor to sell, they were buying. The sight of them almost convinced him to change his mind once and for all. Then they'd opened a big, double-locking attaché case and showed him the money.

That morning he'd slipped out of his room before dawn and strangled Wes Templeton in his bed. There was no going back now.

Eddy's original plan had been much cleaner, with more maneuvering and less cowboys-and-Indians stuff. He would simply wait for the Canadians to deliver the booze, suffer through a few final hours with them before they headed back across the border and then carry out the rest of the plan at his leisure. O'Shea had fouled it all up with his bright idea to send Templeton to Montana. Templeton, who packed as many trunks and bags as a woman, one of his satchels full of nothing but books. Templeton, who liked to sit by the window in the parlor reading and making inane comments about passages he found amusing. Sometimes reading them aloud and then looking at Eddy over the tops of his glasses like Eddy was supposed to have something smart to say back. The man's very presence there had been an insult, to his intelligence and to his pride.

Now Templeton was dead and he was on to plan B.

It gave him a quivering feeling to change things at the last minute, but now that Templeton was gone, most of Eddy's original planning was spoiled. He couldn't very well let the Canadians drive all the way to the hunting camp and unload the booze as normal—especially if they ran late, like they were doing now, and had to spend the night again. They would expect to see Templeton there, and every question they asked about his absence would compound the likelihood that Eddy would slip up and tip them off somehow. Luckily he had this location as a fallback. Proper preparation, he liked to
call it. If there had to be violence, it was going to be violence on his terms, in a situation that he controlled.

Before his meeting with the Italians he'd made a couple of calls to verify the legitimacy of the Frank & Livermore real estate company. A week earlier, he'd bought himself a ticket on an overnight train to the coast. In Portland, Oregon, he planned to buy a car to drive south to Los Angeles and had spent a couple of evenings memorizing a road map he bought at a local filling station.

He could feel the promise of California glowing in his chest like a hot lump of coal. He had no idea what he would do when he got there—and the prospect of having no plan made him feel frayed around the edges—but he kept reminding himself that he didn't have to stay if it turned out Los Angeles wasn't right for him. There were plenty of out-of-the-way places a man like him could find work. O'Shea fancied himself a king of sorts, but the truth was he didn't have much reach outside of the midwest and a few friends in New York. Since the day he had returned from Howard Livermore's rooming house, he had not disturbed the papers from their hiding place in the bottom drawer of his desk. He thought of them often but was still too worried about the possibility of germs to take them out and hold them in his hands. When this was over, he would have to risk it, heading back to the lodge to retrieve them along with the last of his things.

One of Eddy's main worries had been the hired girl. He thought she might make a stink when he let her go the same day the rest of them left for the wrestling match. Closing up shop, he'd told her, and when he gave her a cash bonus to thank her for her service, the only question she asked was whether she could take some of the housewares to sell in town. Eddy told her that was fine.

He'd brought along a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, but it had taken him longer than he'd planned to bury Templeton, so he was saving it for after. Templeton was a big man and it had been a job just
getting him down the stairs and out the back door. The ground was frozen so solid that he had to spend an hour going after it with an old, dull axe before he could make any headway with his shovel. The grave he dug was slim and shallow but far enough into the trees that it probably wouldn't be discovered. Even if someone happened across it, he'd have to know what he was looking for to notice it. It was hard work and Eddy had thought of quitting, but he wanted to leave no trace of Templeton. Anything to muddy the waters for the men O'Shea would send looking for him. He liked to think Dion would come himself. His old friend hadn't given him much attention these past few years, but by the end of the day Eddy expected to have his full, undivided.

This was what he was thinking about, tucked away in his nest, when he heard the low rumble of engines coming up the road. Crawling forward on his stomach, he pressed the butt of the rifle to his shoulder and closed his eyes, taking a slow, deep breath to steady his hands. When he opened them and sat staring over his sights at the empty road, two things occurred to him. First, no matter how this day turned out, it would be a relief to finally be done with it all—done with Montana, the isolation of the hunting camp and all the ridiculous men he was supposed to watch over there. He was looking forward to putting it behind him.

Second, he was starving.

Knowing there was no one out there to catch them, the Canadians came over the hill with headlights blazing. There would be six of them: two riding in the covered flatbed truck full of crates, and four behind in a touring sedan. The magazine in his rifle held six shells, and he had an extra lying on the ground at his side, but their numbers meant he couldn't afford to miss. If he had to stop to reload while any of the Canadians were still alive and possessing working limbs, there was a high probability he could lose them in the woods.

The convoy slowed to a stop just after the truck and sedan
lumbered across the small wooden bridge that stood over a low, iced-over stream. This was a surprise. The truck was still about fifty yards from where Eddy planned for it to be. He'd thought the Canadians would pull all the way up to the horse barn to unload their cargo as normal. Instead they just sat there, headlamps blaring, both machines idling. What were they doing? Did they sense something was different about the camp, the lodge standing dark and still? Had they been spooked when they saw no one had come out to meet them?

Eddy could feel something ticking in his mind like a stopwatch. From this angle, he could see the driver of the truck but not the man riding in the passenger seat. He didn't have a shot.
Drive on,
he whispered to himself.
Drive on like you always do.
Finally, after a minute of no movement at all, the driver of the truck leaned out the window and yelled something to the men in the car, his words garbled on the breeze. The four of them got out and scrambled forward, holding long guns at their waists, their heads scanning side to side as if looking for enemies.

Eddy relaxed his finger on the trigger. As quickly as he could, he reviewed his options. He could abort his plan and slip away through the woods, but he could not go back to the hunting camp for his train ticket or his proof of deposit on the property in California. At least, not while the Canadians were there, and with him and Templeton both suddenly gone without explanation, there was no telling how long they would stay. He didn't like the idea of hiking through the cold all the way to town, especially with no money and no prospects. Plus, the Italians were there now, waiting at their rooming house for him to drive in and give them the all clear.

No, he could still make this work. He just needed to take good shots. His finger touched the cold metal of the trigger again. The Canadians were moving up the road carefully, but they were clearly
men with no formal training. They were grouped too tightly together and walked standing at full height, like a family of prairie dogs on alert. When they got to the front of the truck they paused in the ghostly glow of the headlamps, and Eddy dropped them where they stood.

Shot. Lever, lever, shot. Lever, lever, shot. Lever, lever, shot.

In the war he'd met British riflemen who could crank out thirty shots from their Enfields in under a minute. Eddy was not quite that fast, but killing the first four men took less than twelve seconds, and before the last body hit the ground he was sighting in on the men inside the truck. He could see only the driver, who was in a panic, terrified by the sudden booming reports of the rifle and the sight of his escorts falling dead. Eddy knew the man couldn't see him, not in the dark with the hill and trees behind him. The way the reports had deflected off the flat rear side of the lodge, he probably didn't even know which direction the shots had come from. The truck lurched as the driver cranked it into reverse, but he only managed to crash into the sedan, pushing it back against one side of the narrow bridge, boxing him in.

Just as Eddy loosed his fifth shot, the truck jumped forward and stalled. Sparks flew from the roof as his bullet ricocheted high of its target. He cursed under his breath, and as the driver opened the door to clamber out he shot again. The driver was moving, so this shot was also not quite as true as the first four. The bullet caught him in the throat and rocked his head back against the metal of the truck cab before he fell, one hand clawing at the black blood flooding from the wound. The other hand struggling to pull a pistol from his belt. Eddy left him that way and ejected the rifle's magazine, fitting the extra in its place as he tried to sight in on the last man, the passenger, who would still be in the cab of the truck. The man must've crawled across the seat and pulled the driver's door shut and was now out of
sight. Eddy cursed. He'd expected that in his terror he would also try to run, but now the man was hunkered down on the floorboards of the truck, maybe with a gun in his hands, maybe not.

After another minute of watching, Eddy started down the hill in a crouch. He didn't like leaving his nest but saw no other way to finish the job. Keeping his eyes on the truck and holding the rifle at chest level, he quickly but carefully covered the distance to the wash at the side of the road. The truck driver was still trying to die with his revolver in his hand, his elbow propped against the ground and the barrel pointing straight into the sky. When Eddy got close enough, he threw the rifle over his back, pulled out his own pistol and shot the man in the head.

He was stiff from sitting so long in the cold, but the climb down the hill had at least got the blood moving in his legs. Crouching behind the front wheel of the sedan, he called for the man in the cab of the truck to throw down his weapon. His ears rang from the boom of the shots, making his voice sound strange and hollow. He was irritated with himself for not bringing cotton to plug them. He got no reply from the man in the truck, and as he sat there in the buzzing silence he started to feel a tickle at the back of his neck. What had he forgotten? What had he missed? What did the Canadians know tonight as they approached the camp? Nothing, he told himself, it was all going perfectly. It was all going exactly as he'd drawn it up.

Odds were the man still in the truck only had a handgun. Anyway, if he had a rifle or a shotgun, it would be clumsy and awkward at such close range. That might give Eddy the advantage. His biggest worry at the moment was time. Eddy didn't want to hang around out in the open any longer than he had to after all that shooting, all that racket. Chances were that no one was around for miles, but chance was something Eddy liked to avoid. Just in case some farmer
or hunting party had heard the noise and decided to come investigate, he planned to be long gone before they arrived.

Quickly he made a checklist in his mind of the things he still needed to do: He'd have to move fast to hike back up to his nest to collect his blankets, then back to the road to pick up the dead men's guns. Earlier he'd planned to load the bodies into the sedan and run it off the road, but now decided against it.