Rose gave me a quick glance. “What's a ring cop?”
“This was before the war, before TV, and there were small fight clubs in every big city. They had a kind of syndicate running most of them. I had a sharpshooter for a manager, a guy trying to climb himself. As he explained it, I had to wait my turn and play ball. So I'd fight every month or so, getting about twenty bucks a fight for myself. Sometimes I'd win, sometimes I'd go into the tank—which ever way I was told. If one of the other pugs got out of line, they'd match me with him and I'd flatten him. That was being a cop.”
“Oh.”
“I was twenty when the war came and had about that many bouts. I was twenty-four when they gave me my ruptured duck and I knew I couldn't wait much longer. All the time in service, I kept in shape. So I came back to find my manager is hanging around the top and I thought I was set. He had me take three dives in a row against stumblebums who'd been making it while I was overseas. He kept telling me my break was coming. It never did.
“Anyway, when I finally realized I was just another two-bit fighter, I became a wrestling clown. I grew my hair long and they dyed it bright red and had me sporting a devil's costume in the ring. But there wasn't any money in it, I was wrestling five times a week for ten bucks a night. It wasn't any snap. You had to be an acrobat, have perfect timing, and I was clumsy. Those falls hurt if you landed wrong, and I got my features scrambled. Also I felt like a freak walking around with the long red hair. My old man had died while I was overseas and the boat was mine, so I began going in for charter fishing... and taking it easy.”
Rose rolled over and fondled my tin ear. “We are alike.”
“Aha. You ever been married?”
My hand was resting on her stomach and I felt it stiffen. 'Twice. It never worked.” She jumped to her feet. “I'm going in for a dip. The fish left me greasy.”
“Let me finish my cigar, first,” I said. “Then I could use a swim.”
I watched her walk to the water and dive in—feeling very proud this big and beautiful woman was mine. So she'd been married twice. She must be on the run from one of her husbands. Still, she had a lot of dough and a lot of fear. Running away wouldn't make her that scared. Had she killed him?
That might explain the fear, and the money—if she had knocked off a big racket guy. Sure, that could be it.
Her husband was a racket biggie and she killed him, lifted his loot and the rest of the goons were looking for her.
It made sense—maybe. I killed my rope in the sand and walked leisurely toward Rose and the sea.
III
I anchored in a small cove not far from Port Antonio shortly before dusk. I'd been here once before with Rose in the old Sea Princess. I suppose at one time or another we'd dropped anchor off most of the Caribbean ports— which isn't covering too much territory.
I took a sounding by throwing a large conch shell I'd been keeping for no reason overboard and watching the number of circles it made as I turned the boat into the slight wind. I figured I was in about sixteen feet so I lowered the Danforth and let out thirty feet of chain, waited for the anchor to set. The wind increased and the Sea Princess began to buck and bounce a little. I stripped and dived over to make sure the anchor was really holding. Although I wasn't wearing a face mask, I could see pretty good. Underwater swimming always bugs me, gives me a sort of religious feeling.
What I enjoyed about it was the constantly changing picture, the various new shades of color. Rose was that way: there were so many sides to her mind. Sometimes she'd be so moody and low I figured she was fed up with me, ready to take off. Then for days on end she'd be a ball of fire, full of her own pep as we ran along the beach, rowed, or took long swims. She could be as simple and gentle as a young girl, and most times hardened and tough. I liked the hardboiled times best, for that was the real Rose. And in this very cove I'd learned how tough she could be.
A tiny girl on skinny legs, and a belly swollen from a steady fruit diet, had stopped to squat on the sand and solemnly watch us digging canals in the sand like mad. We were “busy” letting water out of a deep tide pool high up on the beach. A dark-skinned child of about six dressed in a ragged, white flour sack, she watched without a single smile, refused to join us. Rose got very motherly, took the kid out to the boat for a decent feed and a tin of candy. She played with the child all afternoon and at night the kid simply disappeared, only to be waiting on the beach again next morning at the first crack of sun.
For the few days we anchored here, Rose was a busy mama. She and the girl played house in the dink or cooked supper with a beach fire. Rose seemed to enjoy it more than the kid. One hot night as we were trying to sleep on deck I asked, “You ever think about having a kid?”
Her short, harsh laughter chilled the humid night. “Me? That motherhood bit is for the birds. This isn't the best of worlds to ask any kid into.”
“I've never had any desire to make a kid, either. You know, fish and crabs—most sea animals—they spawn thousands of eggs and perhaps five per cent of them survive. Sometimes I think it's getting to be like that with us humans. All this sickness in the air, kids cutting each other up, increase in accidents—”
“Cut the damn lecture! My kid will be sixteen years old this August 25th.”
I turned to stare at her in the moonlight. “Your kid?”
“What's the matter, don't you think I can have a baby? Well, I had one and I gave it away!”
“Boy or girl?” I asked like a cluck, as though it mattered to me.
“I had a boy and he was a beautiful big baby. I was a real dumb broad then, didn't know how to take care of myself. I was three months gone before I knew it. I was dancing in a flea-bag club and started growing big as a house, so they bounced me. I managed to work as a sales girl for a few months, then it got rough. You never saw anybody as big as I was—a regular sideshow character. But no jobs. I was going to a clinic for medical care and a sweet doc there got talking to me, arranged everything. Some couple I never saw paid my room and board, then the hospital bills, and gave me five hundred dollars. I took a bus to Hollywood, did some movie work.”
I counted stars and didn't say anything.
Rose suddenly sat up and cursed me. “Don't be so goddamn smug about it! I did the right thing!”
“What? Look, honey, it was your business so whatever you did was the right thing.”
“I agreed with the doc, what could I offer the child? I'd seen too many dumb babes who in the name of 'mother-hood,' or 'love,' or some other phony tag, dragged their kids around with them. It doesn't do a child any good to be alone, live out of a damn suitcase. This couple that took him, they had everything to offer, money, a regular home. If I dragged the kid around with me, he'd only grow up knowing his mother is a tramp. I did the right things by.... Oh, Mickey, why am I lying to you? The true reason was I thought the boy would interfere with my lousy 'career.'”