Champion of the World

by Chad Dundas

  When O’Shea spoke again, he went very slowly, willing to play along for the moment but not sure where any of this was leading. “Sure,” he said. “Out west somewhere.”

  Mundt grinned, his face sweaty and glowing. “Exactly what I thought,” he said. “Let me tell you a thing or two about Montana, the state where I was born, the state where I vacation each summer and where I continue to harbor many important contacts.”

  Eddy thought he might suffocate on pure embarrassment. He pushed himself up from the windowsill as if to call things off, but Mundt kept going. “It’s the third-biggest state in the union, did you know that?” he said. “It goes Texas, California, then Montana.”

  “That’s terrific,” Stettler said.

  “Isn’t that something,” O’Shea added, looking at Eddy like Let’s wrap this up.

  “Montana is six hundred thirty miles across, and yet the population is less than half the population of the city of Chicago,” Mundt said. “It’s cold and empty and mountainous as all get-out, and do you know how many Prohibition agents there are in the whole state?”

  “Tell me,” O’Shea said.

  “Twelve,” Mundt said. “A dozen federal officers trying to cover an area of land roughly three times the size of the state of Illinois. Hell, half the towns out there still have saloons up and running in broad daylight.”

  “Sounds like a great place to plan a party,” O’Shea said. “What’s it got to do with us?”

  Mundt held one hand flat and said: “Montana is here.” He lifted his other hand, put it on top. “Canada is here. You starting to get the picture?”

  “Not really,” O’Shea said. “I don’t know anybody in Canada.”

  Now Mundt grinned back at him. “I do.”

  O’Shea inched forward in his seat, still doing his best to sound disinterested. “You’re saying it’d be an easy place to import booze,” he said.

  “Not just to import,” Mundt said. “To stockpile.”

  O’Shea snorted. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. Why would I want to stockpile liquor a thousand miles away?”

  Eddy took a step back and resumed his position against the window as Mundt started talking again. O’Shea had forgotten about him for the moment.

  “Actually, it’s more like fourteen hundred miles,” Mundt said, “and I’ll tell you exactly why.”

  Mundt said that in the time between when the federal government approved the Volstead Act and when it actually went into effect, nearly everybody had tucked some hooch away. The big social clubs in Chicago and New York filled storerooms with it. Saloonkeepers and café owners piled crates in their basements so they could have a bottle under the counter for their favorite customers. Everybody’s grandma had a jug hidden somewhere, Mundt said. In Chicago, guys like O’Shea and John Torrio scrambled to get stills set up, and all over the country men who knew there was money to be made started bringing liquor in from Canada or Cuba or Mexico or wherever was closest.

  “But eventually,” Mundt said, “you’re all going to run dry. Maybe not forever, but there’s going to come a day when the great city of Chicago suffers a booze shortage.”

  “And?” O’Shea said.

  “And that’s our moment,” Mundt said. “All we need is a couple of days’ head start and, boom, just in the nick of time a dozen pallets of O’Shea liquor slide into town on some anonymous train car.”

  The phrase was not lost on Eddy: O’Shea liquor. He snorted and the noise seemed to startle everyone. “That’s ludicrous,” he said. “What are we even talking about here?”

  “Yeah,” said Stettler, dry as winter sun. “I admire your collection of state facts, Fritz, but I’m getting bored. What could be in Montana that would possibly be of any interest to me?”

  The first-name basis and Stettler’s tone were unmistakable. It occurred to Eddy that he and Mundt probably knew each other from the wrestling business. If Mundt had taken over for Abe Blomfeld after the old man died, Stettler probably viewed him as competition.

  “What’s there for you, Billy,” Mundt said, “is the biggest forgotten drawing card in professional wrestling. The opponent who is going to pull your ass out of the fire and save you from losing your shirt trying to sell the sporting public Stan Lesko versus Joe Stecher for the fourth time.”

  Stettler obviously didn’t care for his tone. “Who?” he asked.

  Mundt was taking a sip of his coffee, and it took him a moment to answer. After he’d set his cup on his saucer, he said, “Garfield Taft.”

  At the mention of the name, Eddy felt the whole room deflate. Maybe Mundt had gotten them all going for a moment, but now he’d lost the momentum. With an exaggerated swing, Stettler uncrossed his legs and stood up. “I’m leaving,” he said.

  O’Shea held up his hand. “Sit down,” he said.

  Stettler didn’t like that, but he sat. Eddy was surprised but then recalled that O’Shea had been fascinated with the Garfield Taft case when it was in the news a few years before. Each morning during the trial he insisted they nab a paper from the corner so he could sit at a little outdoor café and read it. As hard a man as he was, O’Shea could be like that, taken with show business and sporting stars, captivated by the stories and the big personalities. As he read aloud from the accounts of Taft’s capture and subsequent trial, he would glance up at Eddy and say something like “How do you figure that, Jimmy? A Negro and all those white women. Sakes alive.” Eddy, who usually had his nose buried in his own paper, would have to shrug and say he had no idea.

  Now O’Shea regarded Mundt with a new curiosity. “If I recall correctly, Taft hailed from Ohio,” he said. “What would he be doing way out in Montana?”

  “He’ll be there because that’s where I’ll put him,” Mundt said, “to prepare for our shot at the world’s heavyweight championship.”

  Stettler threw his hands up, flabbergasted, looking like a guy showing the size of the fish that got away. Mundt went on, launching into much of the same sob story he’d told Eddy when they’d run into each other at the speakeasy. Abe Blomfeld was dead, his wrestling outfit was failing and Mundt had exhausted his credit with what he called “all the normal channels.” One day, out of the blue, Taft had come into the gym. He needed a place to stay and a promoter willing to give him a shot at a comeback. He was newly free from prison, eager to get back in the business and, in Mundt’s professional opinion, still looked quite physically capable of doing it. Mundt reminded them that Taft had been undefeated when he’d been arrested, that there had been rumors that Joe Stecher was on the verge of granting him a championship opportunity.

  “This is ridiculous,” Stettler said. “They did right to lock him up the first time. You think we want another Jack Johnson on our hands?”

  O’Shea ignored him. “It seems like a lot of trouble for one guy on a long-shot comeback,” he said. “A long way to travel, even if it is your home state.”

  Mundt had worked a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and now he grimaced around it. “Taft’s wife is white,” he said, and everybody around the table momentarily lost control of their eyebrows. “I’m not sure his stint in prison taught him any manners. He struts around like he’s still above the rules. At the moment I’ve got him in a rooming house in the second ward, but even there he’s made trouble.”

  “I see,” O’Shea said. “And you think he’ll do better somewhere more isolated, is that it?” Eddy wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Was he sympathizing with Mundt, who was now nodding in such extravagant agreement that Eddy was worried his head might topple off his shoulders?

  “I need to get him out of the city,” Mundt said. “Someplace out of the way where we can work on getting him ready to return to the ring without distractions.”

  Stettler shook his head, one strand of black hair falling out of place across his forehead. He smoothed it back with his palm and said
, “Lesko will never wrestle a Negro. Even if I wanted him to—which of course I do not—I couldn’t convince him. He knows as well as any of us the public would never accept the idea of a black champion.”

  “You underestimate yourself, Billy,” O’Shea said. Then, to Mundt: “You’ve piqued my curiosity, Mr. Mundt. Let’s say such a place exists. What’s in it for you?”

  Mundt set his shoulders back. He needed an initial investment, he said. He needed a cash loan sizable enough to buy a good place and to keep a wrestling camp up and running for a few months. After that, he’d take care of the rest. His contacts in Canada would have no trouble supplying them, but they’d need to be paid, of course. Mundt would want his fair share of the profits from any resulting wrestling match, the mention of which still made Stettler frown. When it came time to sell off the liquor, Mundt would want a forty percent stake. That seemed reasonable, he said, a hopeful tone in his voice, like he was still trying to convince himself.

  The furthest O’Shea was willing to go at that first meeting was to say he’d think about it. They all shook hands, with Stettler still furious, and he stormed out of the office after a short, hushed exchange with O’Shea. Mundt thanked Eddy for the legwork, and he spent the next five minutes working himself over with a dry handkerchief before he felt halfway clean again. The wrestler left aglow, having accomplished more than even he could realistically have anticipated.

  When the two of them were finally alone, Eddy approached O’Shea at the sideboard and poured them both stiff drinks. “You can’t be serious,” Eddy said. “Even if you believe Mundt is on the level, it’s totally impractical. A complete fantasy.”

  “Probably I’m not,” O’Shea said in a lighthearted way that made Eddy think he was considering it. “But it’s an interesting flight of fancy.”

  “What about Stettler?” Eddy asked. “Isn’t the point of a wrestling camp to—”

  “Jimmy,” O’Shea cut him off. “Let me deal with Billy Stettler. You just keep your head down and keep plugging along. You’re doing great work out there.”

  As he left the office, Eddy’s last image of O’Shea was his friend leaning back against the sideboard, his nose hovering above the rim of his glass, one hand tugging on an ear.

  Now, as he put his boots back on and crept between the shards of the broken glass paperweight, Eddy knew his fate had been sealed after that first meeting. Maybe even before that. Maybe O’Shea had always been looking for a way to get rid of him, and Fritz Mundt had merely given him an excuse. Picking up the pieces of glass with the tips of his fingers, he set them carefully in the bottom of the wastepaper basket. Mundt, he thought. O’Shea. This place. It felt like he had been through a lot for it to end here, in the middle of nowhere, chaperoning the idiot Canadians and trying to keep a man like Garfield Taft from killing himself.

  Pulling open the bottom drawer of his desk, he stood for a long time looking down at the kitchen pot containing the papers he’d taken from Howard Livermore. There was another life in there, he thought. A different man living in a different place. He wanted to take the forms out and hold them. He wanted to burn the figures into his memory, parsing through the small pamphlet Livermore had given him with measurements and schematics, but he didn’t dare open the lid. He didn’t dare touch.

  Instead, he got out his stationery and his pen and started writing a letter to John Torrio.

  Part III

  ONE FALL TO A FINISH

  She slept in fits and when she woke he was still there, sitting in a chair with his forearms resting on the tiny table. Seeing him in the purple light of morning, the sheer bulk of him making the cabin seem full to bursting, Moira knew neither of them had been thinking quite straight the night before. Her ears had still been ringing from the gunfire, her mind buzzing from the encounter in the road when Taft followed her into the cabin and locked the door behind them. She hadn’t expected him to do that, but she also couldn’t very well send him back out into the night with those men. Instead, she had just gone to the table and lit a cigarette while Taft stood in the doorway looking at the meager clutter of their quarters. She could tell it amused him they were living this way while he and Carol Jean had their own room in the lodge.

  “I hope you haven’t gotten the wrong idea about me,” she had said.

  “I’m sorry?” he said, taking two steps inside to stand with his hands on the back of a chair. “You think I came inside hoping to look after more than just your safety, is that it?”

  When he smiled she could see the scar tissue shining in his brows and a little triangular dent in the middle of his nose. They had not known each other long—maybe they still didn’t know each other at all—but something seemed familiar about him. He was confident and easy in his manners, the kind of man who was used to getting what he wanted from women.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m sure I didn’t mean to imply anything untoward.”

  “What did you mean to imply?”

  “Fine,” she said, “maybe I was being unpleasant. Maybe I think you resent it that my husband was hired to be your coach. Maybe I think you might like the idea of getting over on him by having it off with his wife.”

  He laughed, a clapping sound so loud in all the quiet that they both glanced out the window toward the lodge to see if anyone had heard.

  “In that case, it wasn’t me who had the wrong idea,” he said. He pulled out the chair and sat. “I was out for my walk. It seemed like you were having trouble with those men, so I stopped to see about it. That’s all.”

  She stayed on her feet, leaning on the opposite wall just to put some distance between them. “Who is Dr. Paulson?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Outside,” she said. “Mr. Eddy said you’d better shape up if you want him to continue covering for you with Dr. Paulson.”

  “Oh,” Taft said. “Nobody. Just a doctor who’s helping me with my comeback. It’s not easy for a big fellow like me to try to get back into wrestling shape, you know. These old bones.”

  “There’ll be more hell than a little over it if you stay in here tonight,” she said.

  “I should bid you good evening, then,” he said.

  She should’ve let him go. She should’ve seen him back out into the night, locked the door and been done with it, but she wasn’t ready to be alone. She told him so, but said if he remained there, he wasn’t to move from the chair. “I want that to be perfectly clear,” she said.

  He spread his hands. “Quiet as a church mouse,” he said.

  Eventually she’d gotten into bed and some time long after that must have drifted off, though only sparingly. Each time she woke he was still at the table, his chest and shoulders moving up and down with the slow, deliberate breaths of sleep. Now, though, as her eyes adjusted to the early gloom, she realized that his eyes were open and that he was looking right at her. In a panic she hauled the sagging blanket to her chin, pushing herself away until her back touched the cold cabin wall. He didn’t move. Finally, she said his name.

  “Mr. Taft,” she said again when he didn’t stir, louder this time, and still got no response.

  From outside, somewhere up the hill, she heard the muffled sound of men’s voices.

  “Mr. Taft,” she hissed at him.

  This time his head lolled up and the light returned to his eyes. He looked startled at first to find himself in a strange place, but then the memory of the night before dawned on his face. He went to the window and peered out from behind the flimsy curtain, pressing his lips together in a way that let her know the bootleggers were still out there. When he’d seen enough, he crossed the room and filled the woodstove with kindling, then searched through his pockets for a match. Moira was cold and it was taking him too long, so she secured the blanket tightly around her shoulders and got up to retrieve a matchbox from one of the cabinet drawers. She tossed it to him, collecting her cigarettes from the table as h
e stooped to light the fire.

  “I thought they’d be gone by now,” he said, his voice casual, as if he found himself in these sorts of situations all the time.

  He had his back to her, cupping his hands and blowing into the stove until the flames caught. Shaking the kettle to see if there was water, he set it on the stove to boil.

  “I saw you watching me,” she said. “When I woke up.”

  Now he turned. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Anyway,” she said, feeling color rising in her face. “That’s what it looked like.”

  He set the matches back on the table and went to stand in the same spot by the window. “I haven’t been sleeping soundly,” he said. “This morning it must’ve caught up with me. I dozed off in my chair, that’s all.”

  “With your eyes open?” she said.

  “If you say so,” he said.

  The light tone in his voice made her feel silly. Like this was all sort of a game to him. “Pretty lousy night watchman,” she said.

  When the coffee was done he poured a cup for each of them and she found herself watching his hands. They were blunt and thick, with fingers that bowed around wide, flat knuckles but narrowed to dainty tips. There was a delicacy in the way they moved, darting back and forth as he added scoops of sugar and then held his cup, looking comically tiny compared to the rest of him, between his thumb and forefinger. It was strange to think of the things those hands did to other men.

  “You’re looking at my finger,” he said, splaying one hand in front of him like a woman trying on a wedding ring. “Leo Pardello broke it for me back in”—he thought a moment—“1915? Now it only bends this far.” He crooked it to ninety degrees and showed her, smiling as he did.

  How odd he was, she thought. How big and black and strange.

  “That was in Italy,” he said. “You ever been to Italy?”