Champion of the World (13 page)

“I'd be careful around that thing if I were you,” Prichard said. “No telling where it's been.”

“She shook hands with
you
, didn't she?” Pepper said.

The cat snuffled at Moira's fingers and rubbed against her knee, but when it was satisfied she had no food to give, it slunk away, disappearing into the trees on the opposite side of the road. Pepper looked up the hill and saw the policeman in the suit putting something in his jacket as he and Fritz walked back toward the cars.

“We're through here,” the one called the captain yelled to the blond cop, pointing an emperor's finger at the waiting sedan.

After the policemen left them in a bluster of dust and whipping gravel, Fritz unlocked the door to one of the cabins, revealing a single room with a brass bed, a little potbellied stove and a small kitchen setup. He pointed out the window to the outhouse and the pump where they could draw water from the well.

“Through with what?” Moira asked after Pepper carried in their trunk and set it at the foot of the bed.

“Those men? The police?” Fritz said, pointing down the road like she could have meant someone else. “Just indulging their curiosity, I suppose. Small-town stuff. It's not every day an odd bunch like us moves into a place like this.”

Dinner would be at seven, he added, and then he and Prichard left them to get situated. Moira cracked a window, letting the smell of pine trickle in, and sat on the bed. “And now Fredrick Raymond Mundt has bribed a police officer,” she said. “You still think this plan is the bee's knees?”

Pepper watched Fritz and the big mutt Prichard motoring the car up the hill toward the lodge. Nothing stirred up there. No sign of Taft or anything else. Deep in his gut he felt the kind of plummeting feeling that would jolt a man from sleep in the night or make him clutch the sides of his chair when the train he was on flew over a hill or took an unexpected corner.

T
hey were both too tense to rest any longer, and when Pepper got down on the floor and started on a regimen of sit-ups and push-ups, Moira announced she was going for a walk. The sun was folding itself into the mountains in the west as she left the cabin. The growling in her stomach told her they wouldn't have long to wait before dinner. She strolled down the dirt road back to the main gate, watching chipmunks chase each other's little exclamation point tails at the fringe of the woods. When she reached the giant wooden arbor she lit a cigarette and turned to look at all of it, this big, strange place. The lodge loomed at the top of the hill, grand but shabby, as if it had been a long time since anyone had properly cared for it. Its windows were dark, its curtains pulled tight. The only sign the place wasn't abandoned was the thin finger of smoke rising from a rear chimney.

She could tell it was going to get cold overnight. Back in the strange little city where they'd gotten off the train, it was warm enough to convince you that summer was still on. They were at an even higher elevation now, though, and up here fall was already closing its grip. The lodge and little cabins might be a cozy spot, she thought, if everything about them didn't give her the shivers. What was the angle here, she wondered, and what was their part in it?
Were they conspirators or marks? What could they have that Fritz wanted, when nearly everything had been taken from them already?

She tried to work it out as she wandered back to the cabin and was standing on the narrow front porch when the door to the lodge opened and the large shadow of a man appeared in the doorway. Backlit from an overhead light in the foyer, she couldn't make out his features, but she knew him at once. His shoulders were as broad as one of the boulders that sat at the edge of the clearing, and even in silhouette she recognized the long, muscled arms and the dome of his bald head.

A hundred yards apart they eyed each other like gunfighters, and then the figure in the doorway crossed its arms and leaned a shoulder against the jamb in a way that mimicked her own posture. When she tipped her head back to take the final drag on her cigarette, the figure did the same. When she dropped the butt and ground it out with her toe, he copied her, doing an exaggerated shimmy, swiveling his hips and pumping his arms like crazy. She couldn't make out a face or the look in the big dark eyes, but she smiled, and hoped he was smiling back. There was movement in the lodge and the figure retreated, closing the door just as the sleeve of a woman's gown appeared in the light of the foyer. Moira watched the house a bit longer, but when she saw no more signs of life she kicked dirt over her cigarette and went back inside.

No one came for them when the bedside clock said seven. They had no choice but to trust it, since Markham had taken both their watches when he rifled through their things looking for valuables, so they dressed in their new clothes and walked up by themselves. Fritz must've seen them coming, because he came out to greet them wearing the same confident grin he'd been sporting since San Francisco, leading them into a towering entryway paneled in old, dark wood. A crystal chandelier dangled like a giant, glittering spider in the
middle of the room, making her feel as though they'd stepped out of the woods into some upper-crust neighborhood of Chicago or St. Louis. They followed Fritz up the wide staircase and down an equally mammoth hallway to where a pair of double doors stood open, the voices of men spilling out.

Inside, he'd set up an office in a parlor room that might once have been used for billiards or cards. The carpet was deep and green, and to one side was a small sitting area with two couches and a coffee table. On the other, a big, sturdy desk stood guarded by a pair of occasional chairs. Prichard was there, along with another of Taft's training partners—a jowly fellow with a red nose that looked like it had been broken a hundred times. A third man, slim in a blue suit, sat on a corner of the desk holding a handkerchief over his mouth.

Fritz spun a dramatic, sweeping turn as they came in, like a shopgirl showing off a sales display. “What do you think?” he said.

“I think it's just about the weirdest goddamned place I've ever been,” Pepper said. “What is it?”

“A hunting camp built by copper speculators,” Fritz said, like that was the most natural thing in the world. “Men who thought they were going to get richer than they did, I suppose. Turns out they didn't have as much time for hunting as they planned.”

“Isn't that always the way?” said the man in blue. He'd come away from the desk to meet them in the middle of the room.

Fritz cleared his throat. “Of course, you remember James Eddy from Chicago,” he said.

“How could I forget?” Pepper said as the two shook hands, a flaring muscle in his jaw telling Moira they didn't like this man.

“Mrs. Van Dean and I have never had the pleasure,” said Eddy, stepping forward to plant a dry kiss on the back of her wrist. As he straightened up he dabbed his lips with his handkerchief, as if he'd just had a drink from a particularly dodgy public fountain.

Moira had seen the inside of enough smoky gambling halls and rancid wrestling gyms to know every kind of man on the make, and as soon as she laid eyes on James Eddy, she knew he was one of them. Up close his suit looked pricey and new, but he was uncomfortable in it. The jacket seemed to swallow him and the trousers hung awkwardly on his narrow hips. His wolfish smile revealed the sort of pockmarked skin a man couldn't hide no matter how much he paid for his coat and tie. As they all moved across to the sitting area he watched her with the wide, vacant eyes of an infant, detached from the smile on his face, like the only reason he was grinning and nodding was that he saw everyone else doing it.

“It's been my experience that once a person gets a little money in his pocket, he starts to believe it will always be that way,” Eddy said. “When the cash flow finally gets shut off, so to speak, it can come as quite a shock.”

Pepper nudged her. “When he says ‘experience,'” he said, “he means as the guy who turns the wrench.”

She smiled and nodded, though she didn't really know what that meant. They sat on one of the small couches while Fritz lowered himself into an armchair and Eddy perched, birdlike, on the armrest of the other. He was still looking at her with those unsettling eyes as if he hadn't heard Pepper's jab at him. Fritz asked the wrestlers to fix some drinks, reintroducing Prichard and saying the other man was Dave Fitch of Waterloo, Iowa, as if that was supposed to mean something to them.

“What are we?” Prichard said. “The help?”

“Fix yourselves one, too,” Fritz said without looking at them.

Moira said she'd like a vodka and soda, but Prichard and Fitch brought them all whiskeys in matching tumblers. She smelled the sweet and peaty scent of it as she lifted her glass to her lips and took a small sip. She wanted to ask Fritz more about this place, this Peter Pan camp with only one kind of drink and all these odd men lurking
around, but he was already scooting forward and hoisting his glass in a toast.

“To a successful camp,” he said, “and a chance at redemption for all involved.”

“What do we need redeeming for?” Pepper asked, a small smile playing on his face as he touched the side of his glass to Fritz's tumbler.

“This is a good opportunity for you, too,” Prichard said. “A chance to change the sporting public's lasting memory of you as the guy who lost his title to Whip Windham.”

Pepper looked at Fritz. “Is this guy lecturing me?” he said. “
This
guy?”

“Will Mr. and Mrs. Taft be joining us for dinner?” Moira asked.

Fritz checked his watch. “I have no idea,” he said. “Mr. Taft doesn't concern himself with the schedules of others.”

“That's about to change,” Pepper said.

“I saw him a bit ago,” Moira said. “From afar. I was smoking near the cabins and he came onto the porch to watch me.”

“The glowering Negro,” Prichard said, pronouncing the words like a phrase from a story he'd read.

“It wasn't like that,” Moira said. “He was, I don't know, funny.”

Fritz laughed. “‘Funny' is not the word I'd use to describe Taft,” he said.

“What word would you use?” Moira said. “‘Glowering'?”

“‘Gifted,'” Fritz said. “Mr. Taft is perhaps the most gifted athlete I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. There's no doubt in my mind that, with the proper instruction and training, he could be champion one day.”

“‘Pain in the ass' is how I'd describe him,” Eddy said.

“‘Willful,'” said Fitch, nodding.

They all had another round of drinks and were about to move down to dinner when the door to the parlor room opened and
Garfield Taft strode in, followed by his wife. Their sudden appearance caused everyone to turn and look, and Moira knew it was the kind of entrance they were used to making.

Mrs. Taft was tall and beautiful, wide through the hips and shoulders, with a shock of hair the color of pumpkin pie pinned up in an elaborate manner Moira couldn't duplicate if she had all day to work on it. Carol Jean Waverly Taft—as Fritz said her name was—shook Moira's hand without really seeming to touch her. Her eyes matched the dark bottle green of her cocktail dress and they held her in their clutches for a moment before moving on to the rest. There was something clipped in the way she moved, a tightness that might have been nerves but reminded Moira of the way a noontime drunk straightened up when he saw a beat cop round the corner.

Mr. Taft was resplendent in midnight blue, his maroon kerchief crisply tied and white shirt freshly starched. He towered over all of them, one of his eyes still pinched almost shut from where Jack Sherry had thumbed him. He smiled and doted on each person with an expression both bold and precious, as if he were some minor duke coming down to visit the servants' quarters. When Pepper had first told her that Taft had a white wife, she remembered wondering how that was possible. Now, in a glance, she understood.

“I believe you could loan me a cigarette,” Taft said to her as they were introduced.

She dug through her purse to find one, and Pepper stepped up to offer his hand. They shook, and Taft made a show of admiring the way the smaller man's neck strained against the collar of his shirt.

“Heavens,” he said. “At least we know that head isn't going anywhere.”

All the men laughed and Pepper tried to grin along with them as he stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks and rocked back on his heels. Taft turned and explained to his wife who Pepper was, and her face lit up as if remembering some old private joke.

“Of course—the carnival wrestler!” she said, clapping her hands lightly. “You must tell us some tales from your dusty circus days. I do love a bawdy story.”

“I doubt I could tell you any you don't already know,” Pepper said.

The remark floated up like a balloon waiting for someone to pop it. Taft opened his mouth to make an issue of it, but Fritz put one hand on each of their shoulders and stood between them.

“Who's hungry?” he said. “The hired girl slaved all day to make us a feast.”

The dining room took up one half of the lodge's ground floor, a long and airy space with copper wall sconces and built-in bookcases standing empty around a long banquet table. Fritz's hired girl was a sallow, frail-looking creature who served lamb stew with broiled mushrooms and celery doused in cream without a second glance for any of them. As the girl set a bowl in front of Moira, the smell of the meat and thick broth made her squeeze her spoon a little tighter. She took her first bites greedily, still starving despite their lavish meals in Bellingham and the snacks they'd had on the train. The stew filled her belly, and she liked to think it fortified her for whatever lay ahead.

Eddy had excused himself to wash up before eating, and when he returned he took a seat next to Fritz at the far end of the table. Prichard and Fitch sat in the middle, with Pepper and Moira across from the Tafts at the opposite end. The table was built to seat a larger crowd, so even though they were now eight, they spoke loudly to fill the space. For most of the meal, the men all sat telling stories about the best wrestling matches they'd ever seen. Garfield Taft ate quietly, now and then exchanging glances with his wife, but otherwise not contributing much to the conversation unless someone spoke to him directly. When the entrées were finished and their bowls cleared, Pepper turned and pointed his spoon across the table at him.

“We were in Bellingham to see you take on Alaskan Jack Sherry,” he said. “I'm keen to get to work. I feel I've got a lot to show you.”

Taft looked amused again, his one good eye crinkling. “I'm afraid I don't need anyone to show me how to wrestle, Mr. Van Dean,” he said. “If you made it out to Washington, you already saw I'm the genuine article.”

“I saw a guy who nearly got whipped by a walking corpse like Jack Sherry,” Pepper said. “You're big and quick, and maybe you're talented like everyone says, but Strangler Lesko is all that and something a lot more dangerous: he's mean. You go out to wrestle him in the same shape I saw in Bellingham and all we'll get back is a box of your bones.”