Champion of the World (36 page)

Moira was there, sleeping in the narrow bed. He tried to wake her to see how Taft was faring, but she shook him off without really
coming back to reality. Instead he sat up late by himself, their schedules opposite now, and eventually he wandered back to the observation car to eat again. He slept very little and in the morning was quickly annoyed that the other men greeted his return to Fritz's stateroom with mock astonishment.

“We thought we'd lost you,” one of the sportswriters said.

“We feared the worst,” said another. “If you didn't turn up today, we were going to send out a search party.”

The travel seemed to have given them their own language. There were inside jokes and meaningful glances that he didn't understand. Being cast as the outsider didn't bother him, but he wished the rest of them could shut up about it. Even Fritz had been allowed into their club, slapping his knees after what he thought was a particularly clever remark or cracking up midway through one of the sportswriters' jokes as if he already knew the punch line. Pepper had nearly had enough and was about to retreat back to the silence of the observation deck, when there was a quiet knock at the door and he opened it to find Moira and Carol Jean standing in the hallway.

Carol Jean was wearing a bathrobe, and if she'd slept at all during the last few days, she didn't look it. Her skin had turned ashen and he could see thin purple veins zigzagging through the dark circles under her eyes. Her whole body was quivering and he thought he felt some jittery, electric throb coming from her as the two women stepped inside, looking hesitant to come farther than a step or two. Moira was still wearing the clothes she'd slept in, and she squeezed his hand in a way that sent a shiver of alarm through his body.

In one hand, along with the key to her stateroom, Carol Jean was still clutching the handkerchief he remembered seeing the day they boarded the train. “Someone needs to come wake up Mr. Taft,” she said.

The men all glanced at each other, but this time there was no
secret, shared joke. Fritz stood up, looking for somewhere to set the mug of coffee he was holding.

“Someone needs to help me wake up Mr. Taft,” Carol Jean repeated, her voice as thin as a reed, a catch in her throat making the words waver.

Pepper, Fritz and Moira walked as fast as they dared to the Tafts' compartment, with men eyeing them over the tops of newspapers and women glancing up from breakfast trays. As Fritz fit the key into the lock and pushed open the door, a strange and sour odor hit them. The stateroom was dark and messy, clothes and luggage strewn across the floor, and Pepper nearly tripped over a chair as he made the two steps to the bed.

He knew Taft was dead before Fritz pulled the chain on the bedside lamp. He was still exactly as they'd left him, the corners of the thin railroad blanket tucked under the mattress. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted. After a second to get his courage up, Pepper laid his fingers on Taft's forehead and found him cold to the touch. Fritz knelt and examined the label on a glass bottle lying on its side at the base of the bedside lamp.

“Dr. Paulson's All-Purpose Pain Remedy,” he read aloud. He gave the lip of the bottle a sniff and recoiled: “Smells like laudanum. You think she's been sitting in here drinking laudanum?”

“I know
he
hasn't been drinking it,” Pepper said. “Not for a few days. But Moira's been with her, on and off.”

“You think Moira—” Fritz held out the bottle and Pepper shook his head.

“Jesus, no,” he said.

He leaned back against the wall, suddenly exhausted. When he looked at Fritz squatting next to the bed, holding the empty bottle in one hand, Pepper imagined he felt the same.

“Go see if they have a doctor on the train,” he said.

Fritz bit his lip. “Wait, now,” he said, “let's think. Let's be smart about this.”

“Freddy,” Pepper said sharply, the sound of his real name bringing Fritz's eyes up from the floor. “Go see if they have a goddamn doctor on the train.”

T
he doctor was a little guy who really looked after his beard. He came from the rear of the train, following Fritz, flanked by a team of railroad employees all talking at once. Pepper watched them from his spot outside the locked door to Taft's stateroom. He'd let himself out not long after sending Fritz to find the doctor. He needed some air, unable to take it any longer in the stuffy compartment with the smell of death, Taft's body lying there left behind like something for the trash. Moira had taken Carol Jean back to their room. Anything to keep her away from the reporters while they figured this out, Fritz had said. As if there was something they could do.

“If you think he might be contagious,” one of the railroad guys was saying as they approached, “then we really must ask you to keep him away from the other passengers. I'm sure you understand.”

“We've got a sick man here, that's all,” Fritz said, barely looking back. “Nothing to write the president over, though I assure you we will keep him under lock and key.” He turned sideways to present the doctor to Pepper as if the man was about to crack some important secret code. “A doctor,” he said, and then, with special emphasis: “For our sick friend.”

“You work for the railroad?” Pepper asked.

“Certainly not,” the doctor said. He looked sleepy, like they had gotten him out of bed. “I'm on my honeymoon.”

“No kidding?” Fritz said, grinning at everyone and no one. “You didn't mention that.”

“Not that you gave me the opportunity,” the doctor said, “while you were pulling me from the arms of my new bride.”

Pepper said, “Poor you.”

“Please accept our apologies,” Fritz said. “We've encountered a bit of a situation here.”

Farther down, a stateroom door opened and a scruffy man in a nightshirt poked his head out. “What's all this?” he asked.

Fritz switched on the grin again. “Nothing at all, sir,” he said.

“It's too early for this racket,” the man said.

Pepper turned around. “Go back inside.”

The man's head disappeared and the door clicked softly shut. The doctor was rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Shall we have a look?”

Fritz used his key and the three of them slipped inside, shutting the door behind them before the railroad employees could crowd in for a look. The room was still dark and the doctor had already set his bag down on the bedside table before he noticed that Taft wasn't breathing. It alarmed him. “This man is deceased,” he said.

“Must've just passed,” Fritz said. He already had a roll of bills in his hand and he passed them to the doctor, who, after a long moment to think about it, tucked the money into his pocket and bent to begin the examination.

He whipped the blanket back and took Taft's chin in his hand, rotating the head slowly from side to side, and then used two fingers to open the jaw a bit to peer inside his mouth. He unbuttoned Taft's shirt and inspected his chest and then motioned for Pepper and Fritz to help roll him onto his side to get a look at his back. The doctor made a few small grunting sounds as he worked. Pepper stepped back, looking at the floor as the doctor roughly jerked down Taft's
pants. Pepper had seen his share of dead bodies, and it surprised him how unsettling it was to see Taft now regarded as just a thing. Here was a man who just a couple weeks ago could've folded the doctor up and put him in his pocket, a man about to wrestle for the world's heavyweight championship, reduced to a frog on a grammar school kid's examination tray. The doctor took a few more minutes to check Taft's body and then yanked his pants back up to his waist without fastening them.

“We want to know what happened to him,” Pepper said.

The doctor stood straight and regarded them as fools. “This man is an obvious late-stage syphilitic,” he said. “He should have sought medical care years ago. Left untreated . . .” He shrugged, the answer obvious.

Fritz was incredulous. “What are you talking about?”

“The scarring on the back is the giveaway,” the doctor said. “There is some additional scarring on the legs and scrotum, likely from old pustules.”

“Pustules,” Fritz said.

“Sores,” the doctor said.

“I think I'm going to be ill,” Fritz said.

The doctor cocked an eyebrow. “This man was your friend?”

“He is,” Pepper said. “Was.”

“
Business acquaintance
would be more accurate,” Fritz said.

“The three of you were staying in this room together?”

“Certainly not,” Fritz said. “We have our own rooms a few cars down.”

The doctor looked them both up and down. “Yes,” he said. “Well, if either or both of you has had any contact with the deceased that you feel could put you at risk, I'd advise you to get yourselves checked immediately. The tests are quite accurate these days.”

Pepper thought of the hours he'd spent on the wrestling mat with Taft. Close quarters, coming away drenched in sweat, tasting it,
sleeping next to him in the garage at night. Then he realized what the doctor meant.

“I think it's time for you to go,” he said.

The doctor paid him no mind, just turned and began patting down Taft's pockets.

“Stop that,” Pepper said.

When the doctor withdrew his hands, all he'd found was a small scrap of thin, waxy paper. He held it under the lamp. “Who is Zdravko Milenkovic?” he said, slaughtering the pronunciation.

“I beg your pardon?” Fritz said. The doctor passed him the piece of paper and Fritz squinted at it in the low light. He turned it over, shrugged his big shoulders and passed it to Pepper, who didn't have to look at it.

“I don't know who that is,” Pepper said. “Put it back in his pocket.”

“I hardly see how it matters,” the doctor said.

“Put it back,” Pepper said, handing him the slip of paper.

The doctor hesitated, then slid the scrap back into Taft's left pocket. He cleared his throat. “So,” he said.

Fritz peeled a few more bills off his roll and passed them over. “We appreciate your discretion,” he said.

“I'm sure you do,” the doctor said, collecting his things. “When we arrive in New York, you'll want Public Health to dispose of the remains.”

With that, he let himself out and they were left alone with Taft's body again. Fritz sank onto the room's bench seat and rested his hands on his knees. He was pale, his face slack with the expression of a man who was tired of getting kicked while he was down. “What are we going to do?” he said to the floor. Then, to Pepper: “What are we going to do?”

“Look me in the eye right now and tell me you didn't know he was dying,” Pepper said. “Or at least suspect it.”

Fritz sighed. “We need to focus here, if you don't mind.”

“All that stuff about wanting a coach who could teach Taft the catch-as-catch-can style,” Pepper said. “About wanting me because you knew I would work him hard and I was tough enough to stand up to him. You wanted me because you knew I wouldn't ask too many questions. You knew I'd go along with it because I was desperate to get back in the wrestling business. Hell, we'd already fixed one match together; why not another one?”

“You believe whatever you like,” Fritz said. “I'm through arguing with you.”

“Moira was right,” Pepper said. “From the beginning this was all a goddamned scam.”

Fritz threw his hands up. “What,” he said sharply, “do we do now?”

Pepper almost laughed. “Nothing,” he said. “We're fucked.”

Fritz glanced around, his mind reaching out for something it couldn't quite catch. “We have to keep this quiet,” he said. “Maybe we can get Stettler and O'Shea to give us the money up front. Some of it, anyway. We do that, I'll split it with you fifty-fifty. Maybe we can get out of town. Go someplace they won't look for us.”

“Listen to yourself,” Pepper said. “You're bringing a six-foot-four, two-hundred-forty-pound dead man into New York City. You're going to keep that quiet?”

Fritz punched the wall. It was like a pistol shot in the room and his fist left a dent in the faux wallpaper. “Help me think,” he said. “We've got to figure out our play.”

“I know our play,” Pepper said.

He opened the stateroom door. A few of the railroad employees were still loitering around outside. When the door popped open they jumped back, trying to make it appear as though they hadn't been pressing their ears to the wall.

“Gents,” Pepper said. “We've got a dead man in here. No foul
play suspected, but we're going to need you to alert the authorities when we arrive in the city.”

T
he railroad people sealed Taft's stateroom, and Pepper and Fritz went back to Fritz's compartment, where the reporters already had their typewriters out. They gave a version of what had happened, saying that Taft had passed away of a sudden illness. The sportswriters riddled them with questions, and this time they honestly didn't know many of the answers. As soon as the train stopped again, the reporters would all get off to call their stories in to the papers in New York. News of Taft's death would be everywhere by the time they arrived.

Fritz wouldn't speak to him and Pepper didn't care. The truth was, he already knew what Fritz would do next. There was only one move left. Once they got to New York and he had a chance to meet with Stettler and O'Shea, they would all realize it. After that, there would be plenty of talking.

Moira and Carol Jean were sitting together on the bench seat when Pepper got back to their room. The light was eerie with the shades pulled shut. There was a flask lying on its side on the table, and because he didn't know what else to do, he picked it up, found it empty, and set it back down. Moira was saying something very quietly in her ear, and then Carol Jean looked up at him with a sadness so arresting that he had to look away.

“How could I not have known?” she said, her voice too loud, as if accusing him of something. “All those months he wouldn't take me to bed, I thought it was just prison. I thought he would snap out of it.”

Pepper didn't know if he believed her. It was hard to tell sometimes if this woman was just acting out some part she imagined for
herself. Just as he knew there were things Taft had refused to tell him, he wondered if Carol Jean was the same way. Maybe she sensed something was the matter with her husband but would just never admit it. As if saying it out loud would spoil the careful way she'd arranged things in her head. Right then, maybe it didn't matter. He tried to make his voice easy when he spoke again.

“None of us knew,” he said. “He hid it from us all.”

The train shimmied, the floor pulsing under their feet. On other cars, people were repacking their things, laughing, preparing to arrive in New York. In here, though, there was a stillness that made him want to split the seams in his clothes. It felt like ice creeping toward his heart. He wished the walls would fall away and he could be out in the open air again. Back in the mountains, where a sweetness hung in the breeze, tickling his lungs no matter how warm the afternoon got. He was thinking of something else to say when Carol Jean suddenly grew hard, shrinking away, with a disgusted look in her eyes.

“You men,” she said. “It's shameful the way you keep each other's secrets. I was his wife. His
wife
, and no one thought to tell me what was happening to him.”

It made him angry, but he tried not to let it show in his face. He thought of all the cold nights he'd spent with Taft in the garage. The talks they'd shared with the fire flickering and the smoke gusting out the big doors at the end of the building. There had been times when it seemed as if Taft was on the verge of admitting things to him but had stopped short. He supposed by then there was nothing to be done, but he still wished Taft had trusted him enough to say something. He didn't like the idea of him carrying around this secret. It must have been a tremendous burden.