Champion of the World (42 page)

L
esko made him wait.

It was an old trick, something Pepper liked to do himself when he was champion. Lingering an extra few minutes in the dressing room while his opponent stood alone in the ring, listening to the jeers from the crowd. The sweat from his pre-match warm-up cooling on his skin. The enormity of the moment putting all its weight on him. As calm as he might look on the outside, any man about to wrestle for a world's title was a hurricane of emotion inside. Most could barely keep a lid on it. For some, just the waiting was enough to break them. It didn't always work, but it was worth a shot.

If Lesko thought it would do the trick on Pepper, he was a fool. All it accomplished was to give him time to test out the ring, pacing back and forth across the mat, pretending to be oblivious of the thousands of men watching him. The ropes were nice and tight and covered in sleeves of new white canvas. That was good: Tight ropes would make it more difficult for Lesko to bully him against them or trap him in a corner. For the bigger man, it would have been better to keep the ropes loose. The footing was a different story. The mat was rough enough to discourage prolonged ground grappling, and the padding underneath was deep and soft. This would favor Lesko, mitigating Pepper's speed and allowing the heavyweight champion
to dig in and get his hips into his throws and tackles. On a mat like this it would be best not to let the big guy get ahold of him, he decided as he took a couple of experimental shots across the ring to gauge the surface.

He couldn't feel the heat from the lights but was already sweating. The referee kept his distance, leaning in a far corner with his elbows propped on the top rope. Pepper didn't recognize the man, but while his white shirt and black slacks looked brand-new, his recently polished boots were worn and soft. As Pepper circled around the ring to where he was standing, he saw that one of the man's ears was hard and cauliflowered.

“Hey,” Pepper said, smiling in a way he hoped would make the fans at ringside think he wasn't nervous. “What's the best steak you ever had?”

The referee's head jerked up as if he'd been interrupted from a nap. “What?” he said.

Pepper repeated the question, and the referee gaped at him for a moment. “Fillipelli's,” he said finally, “in Chicago.”

He smirked as he circled back to his corner, knowing Stettler and Lesko had the referee in their pocket. He'd have to watch out for the man.

A blooming spotlight and a sudden rush of fans toward the rail alerted him to the champion's arrival. Lesko moved steadily up the aisle in a simple black cape and matching singlet, his eyes never straying from the ring. Like Pepper, he came alone, pausing in his corner to whip off the cape and send it sailing casually over the top rope. His body looked a bit harder than Pepper might have hoped for, but he still had a small roll of flab around his belly. His shoulders were hairy cannonballs, a bit sloped but powerful, and his thinning hair was plastered down on his skull. His face betrayed nothing as he squatted in his corner and tugged at the ropes to stretch his back.

The public address announcer was all pomade and talcum
powder as he bounded into the ring to introduce the participants. Though no one had ever bothered to have Pepper step on a scale, he was announced at 155 pounds and hailing from Brooklyn, New York. When the fix was still on, Stettler no doubt hoped playing him as a hometown hero would make him even more popular with the fans in the theater. The ring announcer said Lesko hailed from Nekoosa, Wisconsin, and entered the ring at 242 rough-and-ready pounds. He made the part about the “undisputed heavyweight champion of the world” sound like it was about eleven words long. If Pepper had to guess, he'd put Lesko closer to two sixty.

The referee called them to the center so he could check their boots for loads and their hair for chemicals. He rubbed them down to make sure they weren't greased and demanded they turn their hands over to show their fingernails were properly trimmed. Pepper kept his chin tucked into his chest, not looking up from Lesko's knees but feeling the bigger man's eyes burrowing into him as they faced off to receive their final instructions.

“Any questions from the champion?” the referee asked. Lesko gave the smallest possible shake of his head.

The ref turned to Pepper. “From the challenger?”

Now Pepper looked the champion in the eye. “Two trains leave Kansas City,” he said. “If the westbound train proceeds twenty miles per hour slower than the eastbound train—”

Lesko spun on his heel and stalked back to his corner without hearing the rest. Pepper shrugged at the ref and then retreated to his own side.

This moment seemed like the longest of the night as the houselights dimmed and the referee conferred briefly with the timekeeper. Lesko was still staring at him, but Pepper kept his eyes fixed on an empty spot in the middle of the canvas, his arms idly swinging at his waist. He knew that by now Moira had made her way out of the dressing room and had found her seat in the crowd. He didn't waste
time trying to find her face in the darkness, but knowing she was out there made him feel quick and strong.

When the referee came back to center, clapped his hands and shouted, “Wrestle!” it was like someone had pulled a bathtub stopper deep in his chest. The nervousness and anxiety he'd felt backstage drained away, leaving him light and nimble. From somewhere a thousand miles away he sensed the crowd rising to its feet, and Strangler Lesko charged out of his corner with such fury that all he had to do was stand his ground and let him come. When Lesko got within range, Pepper kicked him savagely in the shin and stepped out of the way, allowing the big man's momentum to carry him crashing into the empty corner.

Lesko spun around, a wild look of pain and confusion twisting his features as the referee caught Pepper by the arm. “What the fuck was that?” he said. “No kicking. I'll disqualify you.”

The second time Lesko came at him he was more wary. The kick—while a silly, childish gesture—had been enough to make him think twice about rushing Pepper full bore. At the center of the ring, they locked up, and for the first time Pepper felt Lesko's power. It was like trying to budge a hunk of granite, sinewy muscles flexing beneath the downy hair of his chest and shoulders. Lesko had the expert strength of the lifelong athlete, and was solid through his legs and midsection in a way you couldn't get from sit-ups and free weights. It was force built from years of moving other men—of lifting and throwing them, tying them up on the mat so they couldn't move or breathe.

Luckily, Lesko's hands were a beat slow, and before he could get a good grip Pepper wrenched free and threw a hard, slapping punch into one of his floating ribs. It landed flush and the champion grunted, eyes clouding again with anger.

“What's your problem?” the ref yelled, but before anyone could
do anything, Pepper stepped behind Lesko and stomped down hard on his Achilles tendon.

The blow sent him down on one knee, a sound escaping his lips like all the air was rushing out of his body. The boos were thick as the referee pushed Pepper into a corner on the other side of the ring. “This is your last warning,” he said, his face red, spittle collecting on his lips as he shouted to be heard above the crowd. “I'll give this match to Lesko.”

“You won't do shit,” Pepper said, “unless you want a riot on your hands.”

It took Lesko a minute to compose himself, standing in a neutral corner, rolling his shoulders and shaking out his arms as he glared across the ring. When they locked up once again in a collar-and-elbow, the champion was just as Pepper wanted him, furious and thoughtless. Spitting a curse into his ear, he sucked Pepper forward into a vise-grip bear hug. It was the setup for his signature hip throw, the one he had used to defeat most of his opponents, the one Pepper had scouted and spent countless hours drilling with Taft in Montana.

Pepper knew it was coming: he'd been waiting for it. He knew if Lesko's mind was clouded with rage, he'd go back to his bread-and-butter attacks. It would be instinct for him to retreat to what he knew best, the animal memory of his muscles reverting to the move he'd spent years perfecting. But Pepper and Taft had worked out a counter. When the champion caught him in his favorite move, Taft would drop his weight and step between Lesko's legs for an inside trip tackle. He would kick one of Lesko's feet out from under him and send the champion sprawling to the mat on his ass. It was a risky move, but once they pulled it off, Lesko would be demoralized—hurting from the kick to the shin and the punch to the ribs and now knowing his best move was useless in the match.

Except when Lesko locked him up, Pepper felt powerless to drop his weight. The man was too strong, his grip too tight. He inched his way forward and went for the trip, but when he attempted to kick Lesko's foot off the mat, the impact sent a shiver of pain shooting through his own leg. The bone he'd broken years earlier glowed like a white-hot wire and he cried out in pain.

His stomach flip-flopped as Lesko lifted him off the canvas and tossed him head over heels. For a moment he was weightless, plucked from the earth and heaved through the air like a small dog ousted from its owner's lap. He landed flat on his back, the air crushed from his lungs. It felt as though he were drowning, and he opened his mouth for air just as Lesko's weight collapsed on top of him. The champion cradled his head and legs and the referee slapped the mat hard with an open palm.

His chest was screaming and his head throbbed with each beat of his heart as he limped back to his corner for the second fall, his leg feeling numb and dead. As the crowd trumpeted Lesko's victory in the first Pepper squatted on the mat and pretended to retie his boots. Really, he untied them and then set about tying them again as slowly as he could, making a mental check of every part of his body. Gripping his leg with both hands, he slid his palms from knee to ankle, finally deciding the leg was not broken.

He steadied his breathing. This was fine, he told himself, it would pass. He would work through it. He could stall Lesko until the feeling returned and then he'd be as good as new. Jesus, though, that man was strong. And big. Lesko's arms were longer than he'd anticipated, his movement around the ring catlike for such a hulk. Pepper would have to be careful. He couldn't afford to make another mistake. That was okay. That was what he'd been trained to do since he was a boy in the orphanage—to wrestle match after match without making an error. He reminded himself that he was the technically superior athlete. There was more science to his game. He just
needed time to let his leg recover, and once Lesko's wind failed him, Pepper would make his move.

When he looked up, the referee was waiting for him.

E
xactly as he expected, Lesko started the second fall with more urgency, and for the first few minutes Pepper would not let the champion lay a hand on him. With Lesko controlling the center, he bounced just in and out of his reach, periodically stomping his foot on the mat to try to knock some feeling back into it. As Lesko lurched forward, Pepper slapped his hands away and backed off. A couple of times when it looked like Lesko had finally trapped him in one of the corners, Pepper slipped to the side to avoid him. This drew some catcalls from the crowd, but still he refused all of Lesko's efforts to tie up.

The champion's face remained impassive, but Pepper knew his patience would wear thin. After a few minutes he saw sweat beading on Lesko's brow, frustrated by Pepper's agility and his refusal to wrestle with him. “Come on,” Lesko said a couple of times after failing to corral him with ponderous lunges. “Come on.”

Soon the big man started to slow down. The adrenaline had drained off during the first fall and his wind was beginning to falter. After spending his training preparing for just a single fall in a rigged match against Taft, he was in no condition to keep up. Seeing that, Pepper increased his tempo, dodging to the right when Lesko advanced left, going left when the champion went right. A couple of times his leg seized up on him, pain piercing up his side, but he managed to stay out of Lesko's long reach. When the champion got irritated and shot straight in for a tackle, Pepper sprawled out of it easily, hopping away as Lesko came up from the mat with clenched teeth.