by Paul Gallico
A big pipe some nine inches in diameter gave further shelter by sprouting valve handles like giant mushrooms at intervals.
A bald old fellow in dungarees, half-seas over, carrying a square bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label, from which he simply had knocked the neck to open it, paused by where Manny and Belle Rosen had wedged themselves. He proffered the bottle.
'No, thank you,' Manny replied, 'I don't drink,' and then so as not to hurt his feelings added, 'Doctor's orders.'
The bald-headed one did not understand a word, but he smiled, tilted his head back and took a long slug. Then he went tottering off, stumbled and fell flat on his face, smashing the bottle, keeping intact only the one side with the label of the ridiculous trademark, the man in the high top hat, cutaway coat and monocle. He glanced at his broken bottle, lay there on his stomach and began to cry.
'Oh, the poor fellow!' said Belle Rosen, 'the things that can happen to you when everything turns upside-down like, the things you find out about people that you wouldn't never know.' She was quiet for a moment and then added, 'You know something else I'd like to find out now? Just on account of my curiosity?'
'No, what?'
'What's Rogo doing on this boat? Who's he after? Did you ever find out?'
'He says no one. He says he just come on vacation like us and everybody else.'
Belle said, 'You believe this? A cop can take a month off for a cruise like this?'
'Shhhh, Mamma!' Manny whispered, 'Not so loud, he could hear you. Anyway he has his wife with him, don't he?'
'Manny, don't be so foolish. That's only so nobody should think anything. Any time you got a cop around, there's a reason.'
He reflected, 'I thought the same, but who could it be? Nobody's even suggested a game higher than a quarter of a cent a point. So card-sharpers we ain't got. Anyway, that ain't Rogo's racket.'
Belle lowered her voice conspiratorily, 'Listen, Manny, could he maybe be after the Minister?'
'Mamma, don't be foolish. Everybody knows who he is.'
Belle said, 'You know something? Every time Mr Scott went on the shore when we went sightseeing, the Rogos went wherever he went.'
Her husband chuckled, 'And so did a couple of hundred others, and sometimes us, too. You got to do better than that, Belle.'
Belle snorted, 'Okay, Mr Smarty. So maybe you know something else about him?'
'No, what?'
'He got fired from his job.'
'So? How do you know?'
'I read it in The News . I remember it because I was looking for something in the ads and its was right next to it: "The Reverend F. C. Scott has severed his connections with the Tenth Avenue Church and Boys' Club," and then something about how over the past years he coached the Boys' Club to three titles in basketball, baseball and running.'
Manny said, 'Severed his connections? He quit.'
'Manny, you got something to learn yet. In newspapers, severed means fired. Maybe he done something with a girl in the choir, like you're always reading in the paper with ministers. You know, rape maybe, or getting 'em into trouble.'
Manny laughed. 'Mamma, you got an imagination. It's for people like you we got tabloids. The Tenth Avenue Church is in a bad neighbourhood. If he was coaching them kids, he wouldn't have had time to fool around with girls. Maybe be got too good and somebody got jealous.'
'Well, one thing for sure, Rogo don't like him.'
Manny shrugged. 'Rogo's like all those tough kids brought up on the East Side, they don't like nobody that had any education. He don't like Mr Muller. Maybe he's got his eye on him.'
Belle said, 'Mr Muller's a gentleman. Rogo's wife don't like the Minister either.'
'You think so? If you ask me, Linda's got a hots for the big boy and he ain't giving. For this he should want to arrest Mr Scott?'
'Ask Rogo,' said Belle aloud, 'maybe now he'd tell you.'
'Ask me what?' said Rogo. He and Linda were wedged, resting a little farther on from the Rosens.
'Now,' whispered Belle.
Rosen crawled up a little closer and said, 'Who were you after on this ship?'
Rogo replied, 'No one.
But Rosen was not to be put off. He said, 'Oh, come on now, Mike! It's like Belle says, since when does a big Broadway detective go cruising around Africa and South America? What's the difference? You could tell me now. Whoever he was, if it's true everybody drowned, he's dead now -- unless it's one of us.'
Rogo turned his fishiest stare upon him. 'What the hell would I want with one of you?'
Rosen said, 'I don't know. You know me and I know you. But who's anybody else? Mr Muller? Mr Martin? The Shelbys are a nice family, but Belle says even maybe it could be . . .' and here he lowered his voice but kept the inflexion of question, '. . . the Minister?'
Rogo's fishy stare did not change a flicker. 'What's Belle been reading?' he asked.
'That's what I said to her,' agreed Rosen, 'but she's got an imagination. You know how women are, and she says he was fired from his job in the Tenth Avenue Church.' Rosen was watching the detective shrewdly as he dropped the information, but Rogo's blank face remained wholly expressionless.
'Was he?' he said.
'Yeah,' Rosen continued, 'she read it in The News , but it didn't say why.'
'I wouldn't know.'
'So maybe that's why he's taking a vacation now.'
'Maybe it is.'
'Just like you.'
'Yeah, that's right,' said Rogo. 'Just like me.' And then he added, 'Why don't you forget it, Manny?'
Rosen subsided and when he rejoined Belle and she queried, 'Did you ask him? What did he say?' He replied, 'Nothing. When a cop like Rogo don't want to talk, he can be like a sphinx.'
'Did you say about the Minister?'
'Yeah. He wanted to know what you'd been reading, like me.'
Belle said, 'So somebody can be wrong, but I ain't never seen a Minister like him before. He could have been a big gangster, maybe.'
'Belle!' her husband reproached her. 'How foolish can you talk? Everybody's heard of Buzz Scott, the great athlete.'
Belle would not let go. She said, 'A big athlete couldn't get into trouble?'
'Rogo said to forget it.'
'That's an answer?' said Belle.
Farther along, tucked as far as possible out of harm's way and the zombie-like packs roaming through the murk of the fading light, something of the same topic was under discussion. Shelby said to Martin, 'What do you think of our Minister friend?' It seemed to be the first time he could remember having addressed a direct question to him. Although they were table neighbours, their orbits had been quite different during the voyage and he knew little or nothing about him. The truth was that he was so quiet, taciturn and almost invisible that practically no one asked his opinions. Martin proved voluble enough now.
'Well, come to tell,' he replied, 'I'd say he was quite a boy. Yessir, quite a boy! He's got something, ain't he? You wouldn't expect it of a minister, now, to take hold like that, would you? You take back home. We got a Baptist Minister who wouldn't be worth a hoot in a spot like this. Soft as a marshmallow. He can give you a tongue-lashing like Jeremiah, but he can't hardly lift the big Bible off the pulpit. The Sexton carries it up and down for him. Come to think of it, I ain't so sure he's worth much of a hoot back home, either. He's agin sin and can scare the pants off you preaching hellfire. Hellfire Hosey, we call him, but he's got a mean streak in him a yard wide.'
Susan Shelby said, 'Oh, Mr Martin, you aren't serious, are you? A minister really couldn't be mean, could he?'
He regarded her quizzically but not unkindly and said, 'Miss Susan, when you've growed a bit more into the beautiful woman you're going to be, you'll find that meanness ain't confined or unconfined to any one kind of people. It's just sort of universal. Why you know what he done the other day? Well, not exactly the other day, but a couple of weeks before I left. We were having a baptism at the Sunday night meeting at our Baptist Centre Auditorium in Evanston. Ed Bai
ley who has the Ford agency was up for baptism, and Hosey dunked him and held him under 'til he damn near drowned. He claimed that Ed sold him a lemon on his last Ford and wanted him to take it back. Ed said that Hosey drove it like a lunatic and near burned out the engine the first five hundred miles, so he wouldn't. When Ed came up, practically blue in the face and half choked to death, Sister Stoll, who was waiting her turn, heard Carl whisper, "You gonna take that car back? Or do I baptize you again real good this time?" Then Sister Stoll heard Ed say, "Okay, you . . ." and he called him a name which I'll not repeat in front of Miss Susan here, but it was what you might say a reflection upon Hosey's mother, if you know what I mean. Can you beat that? And afterwards his sermon was, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." And he was laying it on thick, and half the time he had his eye on Ed Bailey. Now, this fella here, is something more like it. He gave us all into the hands of the Almighty and after that he's putting the rest up to us.'
'Well,' said Shelby, 'that didn't seem to be exactly the way he put it. We had an assistant football coach at Michigan once, who used to talk like that -- "You fellas ought to thank the Almighty God that you're allowed to go out on to that field and carry the ball for this school."'
Martin grinned, his lips were so thin and drawn so tightly over his teeth that when he smiled it looked more as though he were gagging. He said, 'What's the difference, if it works?'
Shelby asked, 'Do you know anything at all about him? What do you suppose made a boy like that who had everything going for him -- his people are Middle Atlantic Food Processing -- millions -- turn to the Church?'
'How can you tell?' Martin replied. 'What made a fella like Carl Hosey turn preacher? He hates everybody and everything. His wife don't dare open her mouth around the house and he treats his kids like they was living in a reform school. What's more, he's a runty little guy with a face like a baboon and yet all the biddies in the congregation go for him and think he's Jesus Christ's Uncle. Scott's got some funny idea about himself and God.'
'I'm not sure I like him,' Susan put in suddenly.
'Why, Susan!' said her father. 'That surprises me. I admire him greatly. He's always seemed most pleasant and polite to you. Robin thinks he's immense.'
Susan said, 'Oh, kids!' and then added, 'Maybe it's because he's too good-looking.'
Martin gave a dry chuckle. 'I didn't know a fella could be too good-looking for a girl. Now what kind of looks do you like, Miss Susan?'
Susan reflected. 'Well, not the All-American boy, if you know what I mean. And then he has that funny stare sometimes. You know, he looks you right straight in the eye.'
Shelby said, 'That's how an honest man looks, isn't it?'
Martin laughed again. He said, 'Brother Hosey never raises his eyes above your third shirt button. We're lucky it wasn't him along with us. We'd still all be down in the dining-room with Hosey pointing that bony finger and shouting, "Repent ye sinners, for the day of judgement is at hand."'
The smile faded and the trap mouth closed. He said no more. 'Repent ye sinners' had brought it all back to him again: sick wife; pneumatic mistress; warm, soft, exciting body; adultery; floating corpse. The secret nobody need ever know. However could he expiate his guilty conscience? Through his mind passed a picture of ancient biblical characters in torment, beating their breasts and rending their clothes and for the first time he understood them. He wished he could have got at his own entrails with his fingernails. How and before whom could he shrive himself? Surely not the baboon he had just described who would only lick his lips and ask to hear every detail. Hell fire and damnation!
Scott and the Turk had not yet returned from their exploration. The Rogos began to quarrel again.
It struck neither of them as extraordinary that they should continue their running domestic battle under circumstances where it might be violently terminated by the death of them both. To abuse and quarrel was Linda Rogo's nature; to love and placate her was his.
Actually neither had any real understanding of the precariousness of their position. The sea and the inner topography of the Poseidon was as unfamiliar to them as the moon. To Linda it was nothing more than another hotel. She had hated it from the moment she had come on board.
She and Mike lived in a hotel, too, but it was one of those tatty ones, called The Westside Palace, on 8th Avenue betwen 48th and 49th Streets, where the lift was one of those rickety cages that rattled from side to side, the Negro elevator boy's collar was never buttoned, his uniform soiled and where the switchboard was rarely answered. There they had two rooms and a bath, the latter a centre for roving bands of cockroaches.
Over a gas ring Linda would make breakfast, but that was all. There was maid service of sorts and she had to do no work whatsoever. The location in the heart of the Tenderloin was good for Rogo. A neglected switchboard was not a problem, since he had a direct police line into his apartment from headquarters. He was not a hankerer for home cooking and they invariably ate out in one or another of the hundreds of Broadway restaurants which were a part of Rogo's beat. The life suited them both. There were free tickets for shows and the best seats at prize fights. Mike Rogo was a personality who was frequently mentioned in columns and from time to time had his picture in the paper.
There were many Lindas on Broadway; failed, refugee actresses from the coast who were not even good enough to be call girls. When Linda had achieved a Broadway musical, one of the major flops of the season, the critics, fed up with the doxies of rich angels being presented as performers, had teed off on her. She had married Mike Rogo to cash in on the burst of fame he had achieved through his break-up of the Westchester Plains prison mutiny that had cost the lives of two warders held as hostages. Mike had walked into the prison singlehanded, killed three armed criminals and subdued the mutineers.
'WESTCHESTER MUTINY HERO WINS HOLLYWOOD BEAUTY', sang the newspaper headlines, ignoring for the sake of romantic content her recent disastrous Broadway appearance. It looked like a satisfactory publicity ploy until to her dismay, Linda found that she was only basking in the fame of the little hundred-and-fifty pound detective who feared nothing on two legs. The casting directors continued to remember that she could neither sing nor dance, speak lines, or walk across a stage without wriggling her behind like a Midway cooch grinder.
She took her bitterness out upon her husband. He was as proud of her as though she had been Doris Day or Julie Andrews. To hear him tell it, he had never got over the miracle that Linda had condescended to marry him. For three years she had been engaged in beating him down. His resilience was unassailable. When the battles were over, with one or the other or both, victims of his low threshold of truculence and violence, he nursed her and loved her with all his heart.
Somehow the cruise aboard the Poseidon had been for Linda the last straw. The itinerary of the ship covered first the black and then the coffee-coloured belt. To her one port had been like another and the inhabitants niggers. The elevator boy with the unbuttoned collar at the Westside Palace was one and so was the bum who was always asleep at the switchboard, or down the street for a drink or a pack of cigarettes. The janitor and the maids were niggers. Why did they have to go on a boat ride to see more of them?
She had been unable to fit into any category even with the highly diverse passenger list, and had made very few friends, like Rogo who, as a police detective, was himself secretive and a loner. Besides which, people tended to fight shy of Rogo. To some cop-haters he was a policeman and they retired behind the aphorism, once a copper, always a copper. To others he was a famous detective and gunfighter. And while it never progressed beyond a shipboard joke, nobody really believed that he was not in pursuit or on the tail of one or more of the passengers.
Linda had even put it to him straight. 'Listen, you bastard, have you dragged me along on a job? What the hell is the idea of this lousy boat ride, anyway?' Only to see that morose, injured expression come over his flat features and the shake of his head as he said, 'Aw, now, hone
ybun, can't a guy take a trip? We ain't never been nowhere. Why don't you go and find somebody nice to talk to and enjoy yourself?' leaving her no wiser. Rogo never spoke about his work. When he made a pinch, roughed up a couple of hoodlums, or left a stick-up man dead on the pavement, she would read about it the next day in the papers.
She was nursing a further grievance. Stepping aboard the Poseidon after their charter flight from New York to Lisbon, even the slightly shabby and gone-to-seed appointments of the one-time luxury liner was a reminder of the awful gap between the two rooms and grubby bath in the Westside Palace and the surroundings to which she felt herself entitled.
She was at Rogo now on the same subject that was occupying the other members of the party -- Scott. She said, 'You're a fool, Rogo. You're supposed to be a smart cop who knows his way around, and you let this big hunk of beef who says he's a minister take the play away from you.