Chet Benoliel knew he should have passed up the date, let the girl wait until she got tired and went home, and just forgotten about it. He knew that before he even left the hotel to pick her up, but he pushed it out of his mind. By the time he had checked into his room at the DeSoto Hilton in Savannah that morning he was thoroughly sick, coughing almost constantly, baking under that furious overhead sun and suffocating in the swamplike humidity steaming up from the river. To top it off, the air conditioner in his room wasn’t working and he was just too sick to call the manager and scream about it — which, for Chet Benoliel, was pretty sick. But Chet had made up his mind that he was going to make it with Shari that night, after that stewardess had given him the chill, and when it came to some things, Chet tended to be very stubborn, not to say downright stupid.
He had thought some sleep might help, and collapsed fully clothed on the hotel-room bed, but eight hours’ sleep didn’t seem to be the answer. He woke about 5:00 P.M. pouring sweat, with the afternoon sun beating in his window and the room like an oven. He took a belt from the Scotch bottle in his bag, coughed for three minutes until he got his breath, and then sloshed his face down with cold water in the bathroom. Then he took a long cold shower. His hands were shaking as he sat on the bed and dialed Shari’s number at work to be sure she’d be free for the evening. Not that she wouldn’t — unless she had an awfully short memory.
Shari was free, all right, no question about that. Shari was a waitress at the Seafood Express down on River Street, and though the boss didn’t like it too much, the job gave her plenty of chances to meet well-heeled young businessmen looking for some plain and fancy evening entertainment. Usually she kept it strictly to after-hours, but not with Chet Baby. She may not have been the brightest twenty-two-year-old working girl in Savannah, she thought, but she wasn’t a total idiot. She remembered the last time Chet was in town, three months ago — that great big pool, the palace of a condo, everything clean and neat, and Chet himself. She’d actually enjoyed it, he was one pile-drivin’ man, all night long with hardly a rest. And when she got home, she’d found that what he’d stuck in her purse wasn’t a couple hundred like she thought, but a thousand-dollar bill with that beautiful picture of Clever Groveland or whoever he was on it.
After Chet’s call, Shari talked DeeDee into covering the rest of her shift, and a few minutes later headed the few blocks home to her messy little walk-up flat. She bathed in the washbowl (somebody was using the shower down the hall, naturally — But there’ll be that swimming pool anyway) and made it back to the bar a few doors up from the Seafood Express to wait for Chet.
He was driving a T-Bird, like the last time, but he didn’t look so sharp this time, his eyes all bloodshot, coughing a lot and spitting out the window. He kissed her when she got in the car, and it seemed to her his breath smelled funny, but he explained why he looked so ragged — the long plane flight, hardly any sleep, a little too much to drink. He turned the car north across the bridge and up the highway toward Hilton Head just as the sun was dropping behind the trees, leaving shadows across the road and bringing a little coolness. Shari relaxed a little. She tried to make some friendly conversation, but Chet didn’t seem too responsive. Just didn’t feel top rate, he said, but then a couple of drinks and a little TLC would take care of that. He took a pull from his silver flask and offered it to her. She took a stiff drink, and then another, before handing it back. This could be a tough evening …
They were rounding a curve through a grove of trees when Chet swerved sharp right, almost going off the shoulder into the ditch, to miss a figure walking toward them down the middle of the road. Shari had a brief glimpse of a skinny, raggedy kid, feet bare, hair tangled. Chet fought the car back on the road, then slowed and looked over his shoulder. “Did you see that bastard? Right in the middle. We could have ditched this thing!”
“I saw.”
“Goddamn fool! I oughta go back and whip his ass.”
“Aw, come on, honey. Let’s go on to that nice place and forget him. Let somebody else wipe up the road with him.”
“He’d damn well deserve it, too.”
The place at Hilton Hotel was exactly as she remembered it — high ceilings, beautiful rooms, rich carpeting, a well-stocked bar and an enormous bed. Chet was coughing more than before, but he mixed stiff drinks for both of them, raw whiskey over ice. When he brought Shari hers he put his arms around her, tried to kiss her, and she turned her face away. “Honey, that business on the road kinda scared me, I need to settle down a little.” She sipped the drink. “Why don’t we try the pool first? Freshen up from all this sticky heat. And I brought my sexiest suit, too. Here, I’ll show you what I mean.”
She showed him. While he lay back on the bed, she slowly stripped down to the buff, poured herself more drink and then twisted and tugged into the sheer black bikini. Chet disappeared into the bathroom to put on his trunks, and they headed for the pool elevator together.
The pool turned out to be a bad idea, for Chet. Shari went in like a nymph, laughing and urging him to catch her, but the minute he hit the water he was in trouble. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe; the slightest movement was an impossible effort, and a strangling spasm of coughing came and wouldn’t go away. He floundered to the edge somehow and hung on, waiting for the coughing to stop, waiting for strength enough to get out of there. Finally he found a ladder, lunged out and collapsed on the poolside. She was up on the diving board now, large breasts and slim body and tight buttocks on full display, but he couldn’t even look at her. His breath wouldn’t come, and then suddenly, still dripping from the pool, he was chilling, shaking so violently he could barely make it to the poolside chair and sit staring stupidly at the water.
Sometime later he stopped chilling and she was there beside him, bending over him. “Honey, are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You aren’t sick?”
“No, no, no,” he gasped. “I’ll be all right. Just gotta get warm.”
“Let’s go on up. You look sick.”
She half supported him to the elevator, opened the door with his key when he couldn’t hold his hand still enough and somehow got him over to the bed. He collapsed on his back, panting. “You need to see a doctor, honey,” Shari said.
“Nah, screw the doctor. It’s just that damned swimming that got me.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at him, for once in her life completely at a loss. His hand came up to her breast. “Chet, honey, maybe you need to rest a little while …”
“Don’t wanna rest,” he gasped. He pulled her down, started to kiss her, and then began chilling again more violently than before.
“Maybe if we get those wet old trunks off,” Shari said. She untied the string, tugged them down and off him and barely stifled a scream. He had a huge purple welt on the side of his penis, as if somebody had kicked him. Higher up, in the groin, she saw an angry purple lump the size of a plum, with a gray spot on top for all the world like a huge boil about to burst.
Quite suddenly Chet sat upright with his hand over his mouth and bolted past her into the john, stark naked. She heard him vomiting again and again; then the second evolved into ragged coughing and gasping. It went on for a long time. Then, finally it stopped.
She sat dead still on the edge of the bed, looking at the half-open bathroom door, and listening, listening. There was no further sound. “Chet, honey?” Still no sound. She walked to the bathroom and looked in.
He was kneeling over the toilet bowl, blood splattered all over his face and chest and the tile floor. The bowl itself was full of bright crimson clotted stuff. His head and shoulders were ash-gray. She took one shoulder, tried to raise him up, but he just slid sideways onto the floor, banging his face on the toilet bowl as he went.
He wasn’t breathing, and it didn’t look like he was going to start again, either. An intensely practical girl, Shari dismissed the hulk on the floor. No help for him. But Jesus! What if somebody walks in here? What if somebody phones, expecting him to answer? She walked back into the bedroom, licking her lips. Nobody saw us come in, and there was nobody else in the pool. Moving fast, she went through his pants, tossed the car keys and his wallet on the bed. Good, I can park the T-Bird on a downtown street with the keys in it, and when the bulls find it they’ll call Hertz. She stripped off her bikini, stuffed it in her purse and put on the blouse and slacks she’d come in. She needed to go to the john, but she decided that could wait. Finally, she stripped all the cash from his wallet, $2,420, and stuffed the wad into her bra. With a final look around, she peeked out into the corridor, closed the door and headed for the elevator and the parking lot.
An hour later she left the car parked at the corner of Oglethorpe and Broad in downtown Savannah after wiping away prints, and hurried to her flat a few blocks away. It was only 10:30 P.M., and she was afraid she’d meet somebody who knew her coming in, but all she did was startle a huge rat on the stair. It disappeared into a hole in the wall. Once inside her room, she took a long drink raw from the gin bottle and collapsed on her bed. Home again, she thought. Thank Christ for that. Home and safe, she thought.