Champion of the World

by Chad Dundas

  “As opposed to what?” she said. “Our current sterling reputations?”

  “This could be our chance, Moira,” he said. “I don’t even need Taft to beat Lesko to come out of this thing smelling like a rose as a trainer. I just need him to look good. Decent, passable, anything to have a chance that some other promoter will want to take me on full-time.”

  “You sound like Mrs. Taft,” she said.

  “Isn’t this what you want?” he said. “Isn’t this all you talked about while Boyd Markham was dragging us all over hell and back?”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “We sat around for five years waiting for someone to scoop us off the bottom of the sea. What’s changed now to make them interested in us again?”

  “You heard them,” he said. “They’re desperate. Gate receipts are down across the board. Stettler, Lesko, Fritz—all of them must be in a panic. That’s why they’d even consider Taft as an opponent for Lesko in the first place. But it’s going to come back, Moira, the people will come back. The money will come back. It always does. When it happens, it’d be nice to be along for the ride.”

  She looked at him in a way he didn’t like. “Did I ever tell you about the first thing Abe Blomfeld ever said to me?”

  “No,” he said. “What?”

  “It was right after you won the title,” she said. “That party we had for Roughhouse Rawlins.”

  “Good old Roughhouse,” he said.

  Roughhouse Rawlins was a hardworking heavyweight who retired when he was twenty-nine years old to marry a local girl and take over his father’s plumbing business in Naperville. Pepper and Moira, eager to show off their new house, hosted a combination retirement and engagement party for them. Everybody turned out because everybody liked and respected Roughhouse Rawlins. He was a solid man and a handful on the mat for anyone alive. He was just never going to be champion. He was a step too slow, a shade too predictable. The sort of guy who would always have a little gut on him no matter how hard he tried to lose it.

  In the early evening, the party spilled out onto the back lawn, some of the boys throwing a baseball around while the rest stood sipping drinks and arguing about wrestling. Roughhouse Rawlins floated from conversation to conversation, shaking hands and slapping backs, promising everyone they wouldn’t lose touch. He would come to all their matches. He was still a student of the sport, he said; it was in his blood. He would never quite shake it.

  Moira was in the kitchen, standing at the back window, when Blomfeld came in to use the restroom. Even then he was ancient, a tall beanpole of a man who sometimes wore dark lenses in his glasses to protect his eyes from the sun. He saw her there and came over to see what she was watching. It was Rawlins, of course, hovering around the fringes of the men, never staying in one place too long, moving around like he wasn’t sure where to stand. The others were nervous around him, not knowing how to deal with the idea that he was trading it all in for a set of pipe wrenches and a rubber plunger.

  “They’ve already forgotten him,” Moira had said. “It’s like he’s vanishing bit by bit in front of our very eyes.”

  Blomfeld only smiled and pressed his face close to the glass. “He’s the luckiest one of the bunch,” he said.

  Moira leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he knows it’s time to go,” Blomfeld replied. “Rawlins could never be more than a curtain jerker, wrestling for peanuts in preliminary matches that end while fans are still finding their seats. The lucky ones figure that out early. Some of them never do.”

  “I thought the lucky ones become champions,” she said.

  Blomfeld chuckled. “That’s got nothing to do with luck,” he said. “Even the best of them will be done before they’re forty. This sport isn’t much of a career, Mrs. Van Dean, more like a bridge to the next thing. Get in, make as much money as you can and get the hell out. That’s the only way to win this game.”

  When she finished telling the story, she sat looking at him in a way that made Pepper feel like she could see straight through to the back of his head. “Hell,” he said, “if I thought like that, I don’t know how I’d get out of bed in the morning.”

  “It’s worth considering, though,” she said, “whether we’re running to catch a train that’s already left.”

  Just then the cat jumped down from the window and scurried, mewling, to the front door. It scratched at the wood and they heard the sounds of someone coming up the walk. Pepper stood and peered out in time to see Fritz step onto the porch in a pressed suit, his head scrubbed pink and shining like glass in the porch light. Pepper pulled the door open just before he knocked and Fritz showed him the delighted grin of a lottery winner. “You’d be wise to pack some things,” he said, passing him a thin, cheap piece of yellow paper.

  It was a telegram. Pepper read the few words printed there. “That’s about as vague as it gets,” he said.

  “If they’re sending for us, it means we’re in,” Fritz said. “If we weren’t, they’d just let us twist.”

  Pepper glanced at Moira, then back out the window toward the lodge. “You seeing much of Taft these days?”

  Fritz snatched the telegram back and stuck it in his pocket. “You’re not jumping for joy the way I thought you might,” he said.

  “He needs time,” Pepper said. “That’s why you brought me here, right? To train him? Too soon and he won’t be ready.”

  A scowl broke across Fritz’s face. “Once we bring him the match, he’ll make the effort just like he told us,” he said. “Besides, that’s sort of your area, isn’t it?”

  Moira pushed her chair back from the table and followed the cat out into the night. She left the front door open, so they could see her out there lighting a cigarette as she shrugged into the men’s hunting jacket she’d taken to wearing around the grounds. Pepper watched her and thought about what she’d said. If Fritz was right, then maybe that changed things.

  “So Stettler and Lesko want to meet,” Pepper said. “You really think this is it?”

  “I’ve already bought our tickets,” Fritz said, as if that was all the explanation he needed. “We leave tomorrow after lunch.”

  Eddy dropped Mundt and Van Dean at the train station and then stopped at a café on Park Street to buy a copy of the local paper. That morning he’d had another run-in with the camp’s hired girl—the woman always needed to be told what to do two or three times before she got it right—and wanted a coffee and some time by himself to settle his mind. The owner of the café was a fastidious Irishman straight off the boat from County Cork, and he protested at first when Eddy tried to buy the paper, saying they had complementary copies for customers. Eddy smiled and said he knew that but that he’d rather have a copy of his own, in case he wanted to take it with him. They had this conversation every time he came to the café. It had become something of a friendly game between them.

  He took his customary table in the back, facing the door, and in a few minutes the owner brought out his coffee, shaking his head at the idea of Eddy wasting his two pennies buying a paper. Eddy liked the man—so much like the old guys who hung around the cafés and bakeries back home—and he liked the sumptuous, inky coffee he served in sturdy white mugs. Today, though, Eddy was in a poor mood, and though he tried to smile and play along with the café owner’s gags, he felt like a fog was following him.

  He was jealous of Mundt and Van Dean for shipping off to Chicago. He didn’t like to admit that to himself, but it was true. Mundt had spent the entire drive into town bubbling about this and that while Van Dean sat in the rear seat not saying a word, burning a hole in the back of Eddy’s head with his gaze. The little guy still hated his guts and Eddy didn’t blame him for it. Now, though, he couldn’t shake the idea of Mundt and Van Dean sleeping in soft hotel beds, eating at all his favorite places.

  He’d come to believe there was somethi
ng about the city, with its mighty steel buildings and twisting narrow avenues, that kept his mind moored. Out here in the wide-open country his thoughts just wandered in circles until he could no longer keep them straight. If there was anything he could take solace in, it was the idea that Mundt intended to return with a match signed for Taft and—hopefully—a definite expiration date for their time in Montana.

  Eddy was trying to focus on that, burying his thoughts in the paper. It was just a couple of pages, paltry compared to the Tribune or Daily News, but he had begun to relish his time reading it. Aside from the gossip the hired girl brought with her from town, his telephone talks with O’Shea and the occasional underwhelming conversation with Mundt and the Tafts, it was his only contact with the outside world.

  On this day there was not much to report, but at the bottom of one of the back pages he found a small display advertisement that caught his interest. The sketch showed a Craftsman house, neat and new, with a car in its own drive and a couple of small fruit trees growing in the front yard. The owner sat on a wide porch, his legs folded contentedly and a squiggle of smoke trailing from his pipe. Across the top, written in bubbling script, were the words Beautiful Inglewood. Underneath in block letters it said SUBURBAN ESTATE LIVING WITH EVERY MODERN CONVENIENCE. He noted the price—$7,500—and twice read through the paragraph of small print advertising “a rare investment opportunity and orchard views, 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles,” before turning back to the front page.

  The words rare investment opportunity made him think of the night the previous winter when he’d run into Mundt at a speakeasy on Grand Avenue. As Eddy thought through the series of conversations that eventually led to his exile in Montana, that one always stood out as the most important to him. Maybe because it was the only one during which he felt like he had any say.

  When he first saw the big man blunder through the speakeasy’s rear door, shaking snow off his hat like a moose clearing its antlers, he thought it was just coincidence. Now he knew better. He knew Mundt must have contrived to meet him there, must have followed him and watched him until he’d learned his routine, planning the perfect place to get to him, just as Eddy himself had done to countless other men. He kicked himself for not picking up on it at the time.

  Mundt had made a good show of it, looking surprised and even a little bit scared to find Eddy sitting at the bar. After a moment, though, he made his way over and bought him a drink, even though Eddy told him he was already at his limit. Mundt obviously wasn’t doing well, his suit tatty and tight across his wide back, his hands shaking as he produced his wallet from an inside pocket. Why had Eddy accepted that drink? Why hadn’t he slipped off his stool and wandered back out into the night? Maybe he felt sorry for Mundt, or maybe—sitting there hunkered over his drink like it was a potbellied stove—he needed the company.

  Things had changed in Eddy’s life since he returned from the war. O’Shea was boss now and he was just an underling. On the south side, Big Jim Colosimo was out and Dion was running neck and neck with John Torrio. Without warning, O’Shea had moved out of their little apartment and set up an office above a tailor’s shop he owned in River North. He was no longer consulting Eddy on big decisions, instead sending him on outings fit for an errand boy, small-time stuff, barely saying two words to him when they had to be in the same room together.

  So maybe Eddy thought he and Mundt could spend a few minutes swapping stories. They remembered each other from that old business with Van Dean, and Mundt was known in the city as the chief enforcer for the promoter Abe Blomfeld. Perhaps he wanted to share a drink with him so they could complain about their bosses. Or perhaps he just thought having one drink with the guy and hearing his sob story would be the easiest way to get rid of him. Either way, he’d been wrong.

  Mundt told him Blomfeld was dead and the wrestling operation the old fellow spent his life building had followed him to the grave. Mundt said the culture of sport was changing. Nobody wanted to spend his Saturday night sitting in a smoky theater, watching two men wrestle a two-hour match. They hungered for the blood of the prizefight or to spend long, relaxing afternoons basking in the sun of a ball game. Some of the young people were even going in for football. Eddy had never been much of a sports fanatic—that was O’Shea—and while Mundt talked, he stared at his whiskey, watching the ice floating in the amber, imagining he could see it getting smaller, layer by layer.

  It was a sad story, Eddy said when Mundt was finished, but what could you do? “It’s hard times all over,” he said, which was his way of telling the big man to put a cork in it.

  Instead of taking the hint, Mundt peeked over both shoulders and then slid along the bar until they were conspiratorially close. Alarm bells went off in Eddy’s head. He could smell Mundt’s cheap cologne, the booze on his breath.

  “Say,” Mundt said, his voice a comical stage whisper. Being so obvious about it that the bartender set down the rack of glasses he was preparing to wash and walked all the way to the other end of the room. “Do you think you could broker me a meeting with Billy Stettler and Dion O’Shea?”

  Investment opportunity was exactly the phrase Mundt had used that night, and now it made Eddy flip the paper back to the advertisement. He studied the picture again: the detail of the roof, the line of windows that ran across the front of the house, the satisfied twist on the mouth of the man with the pipe. It was a very realistic rendering. At the bottom of the display was the name of a real estate company, Frank & Livermore, Los Angeles, California, but to one side of that was a note instructing interested parties to inquire at a local address.

  When Eddy finished his coffee, he set the cup at the far edge of the table where it wouldn’t leave a ring on his paper as he read. The café owner swooped back around the counter to refill it from his carafe, looking crestfallen when Eddy put his palm over the mouth of the mug. The café owner offered to fix him a plate of steak and eggs, but Eddy declined and counted out a decent tip. He said he really ought to get back to work. This wasn’t true. He knew he still had a couple of hours to kill before he was needed back at the hunting camp.

  As he came out into the evening air, Eddy felt like walking. He decided to stroll a few blocks up the street and have a look at the address listed in the real estate advertisement. Why not? He imagined he might peek in the storefront windows, see if the office had any handbills with more information about houses in California. When he got there, though, it turned out it wasn’t an office at all, but a rooming house three blocks up the hill from the center of town, too nice for transient workers but a step below a hotel suite or steady apartment. A man was sitting on the rooming house’s front porch, the heels of his western boots propped up on the rail.

  “I thought you might be the cabdriver,” he said when he saw Eddy approaching. “I was about to congratulate you on being early.”

  The man introduced himself as Howard Livermore and he was shaking Eddy’s hand and ushering him inside when he doubled over in a coughing fit. The door had shut behind them with a loud click-clack, and Eddy turned to give it a long look. His palm had come back from their handshake feeling clammy and soiled, and while Livermore collected himself, he dried it with his handkerchief, wondering what exactly he was doing there. His plan had been merely to look, but somehow he’d followed this strange, sickly man all the way inside without so much as a second thought. If he caught his death in there, he decided, he deserved it.

  “My God, man,” Livermore said when he was recovered, his voice all casual manners and the droll good humor of the west. “You look petrified. I assure you, the doctors say I’m no longer contagious.”

  He said it as if it was supposed to be reassuring, but Eddy found it hard to get around words like doctors and contagious. All the while, Livermore stood there grinning at him. He had a wide, fleshy face and a great mane of blond, pomaded hair. His skin looked stretched, so tanned it was nearly orange. He wore a clay-colored vest with
a string tie and stood a little bowlegged in his cowboy boots as if at any moment he might be asked to milk a cow.

  “I hope I haven’t disturbed you,” Eddy said. “Is it something dreadful?”

  Livermore laughed. “Just the common cold. You’re not scared of a little bit of sniffles, are you? These frigid climes don’t agree with me, is all.”

  Eddy waved around at the luggage scattered across the floor. “If I’ve caught you at a bad time—”

  “Not at all,” Livermore said. “I was just waiting for my ride to the station. Afraid it’s my last day here. Better now than never, though, I suppose. I’ve got some time. What can I do you for?”

  Livermore escorted him through an open doorway into a large sitting area and sat him in a leather armchair. The rooms were nicer than Eddy first thought and it made him reconsider his opinion of the man, whose clothes were clean and new and whose easy bearing told him he was used to chatting with people he’d just met.

  “I saw your advertisement,” Eddy said. Then: “Last day?”

  “Happily, yes, I’m off to”—Livermore consulted a train ticket before stuffing it back in his hip pocket—“Billings. Then on to Fargo, then Minneapolis, then God only knows where. Someplace warmer, I hope.”

  “So you’re not based here.”

  “God, no.” Livermore hadn’t sat down. He was moving effortlessly around the room, hauling a couple of collapsible easels out of his bags. “Came in a few weeks back to give an investment presentation to a few of the local craft unions. I’m a California man, myself. Well, Colorado originally, but I’ve been out on the coast for, my word, almost ten years now.”

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a traveling real estate salesman before,” Eddy said.

  Livermore shrugged. “You got to go where the buyer is,” he said. “Did you know that, aside from Florida, California is the fastest-growing region in the United States? I have projections showing that one hundred thousand people a year will be moving into the Los Angeles area by 1925. My job is simply to make sure as many of them as possible do it in a Frank & Livermore.”