Ed Lacy - Blonde Bait

I said I was sorry but I didn't. I waved and headed back for the Sea Princess. The dink was full of water and even though I was soaking wet, I was still drunk. I hadn't been this high in a long time.

I tied the dink securely, put the outboard in its rack, and checked the anchors. I went below. Usually liquor is a sleeping pill for me—not that I need anything to make me sleep. But now I was feeling wide awake and I dried myself, stretched out in the bunk and went back to reading the paper. Not the news, but the ads. The show and Broadway ads, the pictures. I'd never been to New York and I wanted to see it. Right now I wanted to very much.

It didn't make sense, night life never meant a thing to me. But with Rose's money and her looks, I had this desire to taste big time spending. The feeling had come up several times in the past months.

Of course that was out—at least until I knew what kind of trouble Rose was in. It wasn't anything that worried me. I had no lack: a woman like Rose, the Sea Princess, money. Only I'd get to thinking we weren't putting the money to its fullest use. If I only knew what she'd done, we might be able to see New York, Canada, maybe even take a crack at Paris.

I studied the few pictures of Broadway in the paper, read the gossip column. I turned to the sports section again, then the news. There was a piece about some slob who had knifed his girl friend because she hadn't given him money. The paper said he didn't deny he was a “kept man.” As I folded the paper and put it away carefully—Rose loved to read the papers but flew into a temper if they were torn or wrinkled—I turned off the light and wondered if I was a “kept man.” I didn't give a damn if I was. But I told myself I was really working hard for whatever I spent. For one thing I would be an accomplice to whatever she was jammed over. Yeah, I was earning my keep... and it certainly was damn nice work.

The boat was bouncing when I awoke. It was dark out and I had a big head. My wrist watch said it was a few minutes after five. It was raining hard. I listened to the rain awhile, then sat up. I felt creepy. Then I noticed the hatch door was pulled shut. I went up on deck and even the cove was full of white caps rolling before a strong wind. The rain felt good on my face and chest. As I turned to relieve myself over the side, I saw the old man's boat tied to the dink. I looked around and he was crouched up near the bow, wrapped in part of the jib sail, watching the anchor ropes.

I went forward and he turned and waved a dark hand at me. He said something that was lost in the wind. I put my face next to his and he said he had never seen a man sleep so hard, that he had been trying to awaken me all afternoon.

“Afternoon?” I repeated stupidly, glancing up at the dark sky.

I couldn't believe I'd slept the day away but the old guy insisted he had come out with fruit before noon, then took up an anchor watch when he couldn't shake me awake. He thought the storm would blow over during the night. I hated losing a day away from Rose and it wasn't a big storm. If my head felt better I probably would have started the engines. But you can't play catch-up with time and there wasn't much point in going now— if it was this dark in the afternoon the night would be pitch black.

The anchors seemed okay and I told the old man to come with me. He sat and marveled at the cabin, felt of the bunks and the galley metal, while I dressed and cooked a good meal of eggs and bacon, toast and plenty of coffee. I had some of his bananas and when we finished he said he had work to do ashore. I wanted to give him a pair of pants but I couldn't after telling him last night I didn't have any. He asked if I wanted him back later but I said it was too rough. I thanked him and held out a ten dollar bill. He shook his head and stuck his hands in his pockets. There was a kind of angry dignity about him as he said he'd sat anchor watch both as a friend and as a man who admired a good boat.

I finally gave him a new sweat shirt and a large box of tinned meats, making sure to explain it was merely in exchange for the fruit.

I helped him load it into his bouncing boat. We both knew I couldn't leave the Sea Princess to ferry him ashore with the outboard. I watched him row, kneeling in the boat to get all the leverage of his body behind each stroke. Once ashore I could dimly see him pull the boat up, wave to me, and disappear among the Woman's Tongue trees, carrying the stuff I'd given him. The seed pods on the trees must have been really chattering in this wind.

For want of something to do I took a rain shower on deck, soaping myself good, and when I dressed again and put on oilskins, I felt sober and okay. I spent the rest of the night listening to the radio, checking the anchors every half hour. I still thought about Rose and myself dolled up, living it big on Broadway.

By early morning the storm died and the stars were visible. At dawn I started the motors, noticed the oil temperature shot up too high. I had a little trouble raising the anchors, but once out of the cove I ran up sail and keeping a good mile out to sea, followed the Jamaica coastline. I considered putting in at Green Island, which is a town and not an island at the tip end of Jamaica, for a few hours sleep. I had a good twenty-hour run to Grand Cayman. But I kept sailing because now that I was a day late, I missed Rose more than ever. The fact is, at the moment I even looked forward to seeing my landlord, Ansel Smith, and his sharp puss. I had a big box of the Havana blunts he prized so much.

Old Ansel could—and generally did—talk your head off but he had been a break for us.

After hauling anchor from port to port like sea-going gypsies whenever Rose got her wind up because she thought a man might have looked at her suspiciously, we had lucked up on Ansel's island. If it wasn't much of an island, most of the land actually was his and free of tourists. I'd vaguely heard of him years ago—a small time operator interested in smuggled bolts of cloth or anything else he could sell at his rundown general store. Ansel lived in a fine wooden bungalow within sight of our hut and the whole island was about a half a mile of land many hundred yards off one of the “bigger” Cayman islands, on which his store stood. While I've never been to the South Pacific, I suppose we had the closest thing to a South Sea isle. It has white sandy beaches, colorful and heavy-smelling flowers, coconut palms, and we live in a large thatched hut facing a small reef. This same reef wrecked the first Sea Princess, but actually our cove is a protected and safe mooring, with plenty of water to cross the reef at high tide.

Although I'd heard of Ansel, we had sailed into his cove by pure chance and when we found the hut had running water—it had been his house before he built the bungalow to celebrate his newest and last child—we decided this was for us. I explained we were on a prolonged honeymoon—but under wraps because Rose had a husband who didn't think much of our honeymoon idea. Ansel took the lie and assured us he was a man of the world and understood perfectly. The only time I've actually seen him amazed was when we installed a bathroom in the large hut at our expense.

Ansel's a little man in his late fifties with a dark skin, sharp features, and very proud of his thin, silky-white hair. His wife is a large tan woman who rarely speaks and probably can pick him up with one hand without straining. They have a son who runs the store, and two married daughters living in the islands. The baby boy was a change of life child and as Ansel says over and over, “We knew she have de child in her and we squeeze him out just in time.”

The first time he told me this I made the mistake of asking what he meant. “When Cecil, de first born, come, de old lady have four knots in navel cord. All islanders know each knot signifies de number child woman have inside. Then we knock out two gals a year apart, and den nothing. As years go by, Mrs. Smith say to me, 'Come on, mon, come on, de last baby awaiting.' Mickey, I wear meself out trying for that baby. But we bring him in right under de wire. You bet!”