Yeah, Yeamon replied. Then he put Chenault’s raincoat and her small suitcase on the desk. Give this to her when she turns up, he said. I don’t feel like lugging it around.
The cop nodded and put her clothes on a shelf in the hack of the room. Then he wrote down my address in San Juan so he could send a message if they found her. We said goodbye and walked down the street to the Grand Hotel for breakfast.
We ordered rum and ice with hamburgers and ate them in silence while we read the newspapers. Finally, Yeamon looked up and said casually, She’s just a whore. I don’t know why this should bother me.
Don’t worry about it, I said. She went crazy — totally crazy.
You’re right, he said. She’s a whore. I knew it the first time I saw her. He leaned back in the booth. I met her at a party on Staten Island about a week before I came down here; the minute I saw her I said to myself, now this girl is a rattling fine whore — not the money type, but the type that just wants to hump. He nodded. She came back to my place with me and I fell on her like a bull. She stayed there all week, didn’t even go to work. At the time I was staying with a friend of my brother’s and I made him sleep on a cot in the kitchen — pretty much ran him out of his own place. He smiled sadly. Then when I left for San Juan she wanted to come with me — it was all I could do to make her wait a few weeks.
I had several Chenaults on my mind right then: a chic little girl in New York with a secret lust and a Lord Taylor wardrobe; a tan little girl with long blonde hair, walking on the beach in a white bikini; a yelling, drunken hellion in a loud St. Thomas bar; and then the girl I had seen last night — dancing in those flimsy panties and bouncing those pink-nippled breasts, weaving her hips while a crazy thug pulled the panties down her legs. . . and then that last glimpse, standing in the middle of the room, alone for just an instant, that little muff of brown hair standing out like a beacon against the white flesh of her belly and thighs. . . that sacred little muff, carefully nurtured by parents who knew all too well its power and its value, sent off to Smith College for cultivation and slight exposure to the wind and weather of life, tended for twenty years by a legion of parents and teachers and friends and advisers, then farmed out to New York on a wing and a prayer.
We finished breakfast and took a bus to the airport. The lobby was jammed with pitiful drunkards: men dragging each other into bathrooms, women sick on the floor in front of benches, tourists babbling with fear. I took one look at the scene and knew that we might wait all day and all night before we got a seat on a plane. Without tickets, we might be here for three days. It looked hopeless. Then we had a wild piece of luck. We had gone to the coffee shop and were looking around for a seat when I saw the pilot who had flown me over to Vieques on Thursday. He seemed to recognize me as I approached. Ho, I said. Remember me? Kemp — New York Times.
He smiled and held out his hand. That’s right, he said. You were with Zimburger.
Pure coincidence, I said with a grin. Say, can I hire you to take us back to San Juan? We’re desperate.
Sure, he said. I’m going back at four. I have two passengers and two empty seats. He nodded. You’re lucky you found me this early — I wouldn’t have had them long.
Christ, I said. You’ve saved our lives. Charge me anything you want — I’ll bill it to Zimburger.
He grinned broadly. Well, glad to hear that. I can’t think of anybody I’d rather ram it to. He finished his coffee and put the cup on the counter. Got to run now, he said. Be on the runway at four — it’s the same red Apache.