by Sara Gran
I looked at her. She felt pretty bad. “Did you know about the drugs?”
“Oh, no,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Before I came here, I had never even had a drink! Honestly, I never thought . . . I mean, I didn’t even know that kind of stuff existed. What happened was, one night she didn’t come home. I got worried, so I talked to Miss Duncan. Well, she comes in and starts poking around, and right in the top drawer of Nadine’s desk there was all this stuff. A needle and drugs and all that. I didn’t even know what it was until Miss Duncan explained it to me. I thought Nadine was sick or something, that it was some kind of medicine. So of course they had a big talk with her and called her parents and everything like that. But it didn’t seem to help. It just got worse until she was hardly ever here at all and when she was, well, she wasn’t much fun to be around. Then they expelled her, and after that I never saw her again. She left the night before her parents were supposed to come get her.”
“You didn’t see her leave?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t even wake up.”
Neither of us said anything for a minute. I hadn’t learned much.
“I guess how she was so moody and all,” Claudia said. “I guess that was the drugs, huh?” She looked at me. I nodded.
“I guess once you start,” she said slowly, as if she was just figuring everything out, “it’s pretty hard to quit, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I’ve heard that it is.”
Chapter Four
That evening I met Jim Cohen for dinner at Lenny’s, a seafood house in Little Italy. It was Jim’s favorite restaurant and we ate there three or four times a month. I liked Lenny’s, but my favorite was Lorenzo’s. Jim wouldn’t step foot in the place—he said the waiters were too slow and the hard rolls were too hard.
Jim was particular like that about everything. His suits were made by a Jewish guy on Orchard Street and he wouldn’t get a suit anywhere else, and his hats could only come from Belton’s on Delancey Street. His whiskey had to be Bushmills, his handkerchiefs had to be ironed so that they’d fold perfectly into his pocket, his shoes had to be new, from Florsheim’s, and polished at least once a day. But Jim could afford to be particular. Before the war he used to sell dope by the pound, but when he came back there was no dope to sell. He did a little of this and a little of that for a while and then he got a regular thing going working with Chicago Gary. Gary sold stock tips and racetrack tips and land in Florida and shares in oil wells, a con man of the old school. He lived in Chicago, so he did a lot of work in New York—the con men had an arrangement with the police not to work where they lived. If he was in town and he needed a shill or a banker or an extra inside man, he called Jim. It was good work but it wasn’t steady. Jim always made enough when he worked with Gary to last him until the next time, if he was smart, but he wasn’t, not with money, so in between Gary’s trips to New York he’d do a little of this and a little of that again.
Lenny was at the door when I came in. He was a nice enough guy but he always had his knickers in a knot about something. Worked too hard. He had six kids and he wanted them all to go to college. So far they’d all dropped out of high school. He had three left to try his luck on.
“Jim here yet?” I asked him.
“In the kitchen,” he said, pointing at a door in the back with a sour face. “Please, get him out of there before the guys kill him.”
I said I would give it a try. Sure enough, there was Jim, arguing with the cook over a big pot on the stove. The guys who worked in the kitchen stood around and watched silently.
“Oregano!” Jim shouted. “There ain’t any oregano in here!” Everyone watched as he tasted whatever was in the pot. Then he scowled like he might spit it out. “How come a goddamned Jew,” he said, “a damn Jew from the Lower East Side has gotta come in here and tell you guys from Italy how to cook?”
First Vincent, the head cook, started to lose it. Next the other boys cracked up and soon they were all in hysterics.
“I mean where the hell are you guys really from, eh?” Jim yelled. “Vincent, how about you—you’re a Polack, you gotta be, making crap like this in the kitchen.” Vincent doubled over with laughter. “And you,” he said to one of the line cooks, “you’ve gotta be Irish, you—”
He would have gone on all night but he saw me standing by the door. “Hey,” he said, putting down his spoon. “Gentlemen, watch your language already. There’s a lady in the room.”
Of course that got another round of laughs because no one except Jim had said a word. Jim shook hands with the men and then followed me out of the kitchen and over to a table by the window in the dining room, where a platter of food was already laid out for us. Everyone at Lenny’s loved Jim. He was their favorite customer.
Jim served us each baked clams and eggplant from the platter and then asked how my meeting with the Nelsons went. I told him all about it.
“Sounds good,” he said, nodding his head. “How’d they find you?”
“They said Nick the Greek set it up.”
He asked which Nick. I told him I didn’t know, and we went over the possibilities of all the different Nicks for a while.
“Anyway,” I said, “you know either of them?” I showed him the photo of McFall and Nadine.
Jim looked at the photo for a minute and then made a face. “Not the girl. But the man, yeah, I know him. Jerry Mc-Something, right?”
I nodded.
“I haven’t seen him in five years, maybe,” Jim said. Since Jim had left the business he hadn’t had anything to do with junk or the people who sold it. Most of the fellows who used to know him thought Jim had gotten too big for his britches. He didn’t care. Even though he’d never sold on the street, only by the pound, it still turned his stomach a little. He’d always hated the junkies and their dealers and had been happy to wash his hands of the whole business. “Sold some dope to him once, tried to rip me off for the payment. Never had anything to do with him again. How about you, you know him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I bought from him once. Real lowlife. He didn’t just want money, if you know what I mean.” Jim nodded. “Just once. I don’t know why I even remember it.” But I did know. Because he did what he wanted and afterward I felt kind of sick and I told myself, This is the last time. It wasn’t, of course. But it was the beginning. Out of all the things I did for dope, that was the one I remembered the most, even though it only took a few minutes. Maybe it was the one that kept me from going back. “Anyway,” I said, “I’m sure he doesn’t remember me. And I don’t know where he is now.”
“So are you gonna find the girl,” Jim asked, “or just take the thousand and forget about it?”
I thought about the one time I had met Jerry McFall. The girl was with him now. “Another thousand if I do. I might as well try.”
Jim nodded. “Where are you gonna start?”
I told him what I had done so far, which was waste my time up at Barnard.
“You know who you ought to talk to,” Jim said after a minute. “Old Paul. The guy who lives on the Bowery. If the girl’s been using dope for a while, she’d be likely to meet him at some point, right?”
I nodded. It wasn’t a bad idea.
“Oh, hey,” Jim said. “Before I forget. There was a nice picture of Shelley in the Daily News today. An ad for a jewelry store on Fifth Avenue.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Was the ad for a bracelet, by the way?”
Jim nodded. “Yeah, you saw it?”
The waiter brought over plates of linguine with calamari and hard rolls.
“Hey, that reminds me,” I said, changing the topic. “You seen Mick lately? Mick from the Bronx? I heard he got outta Rikers.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “He’s been out for months now.” He smiled. “In fact, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I bought a dress for you off him just yesterday. Straight from Bergdorf’s. It’s a real knockout. You’re gonna love it.”
We talked some m
ore and finished dinner and then had glasses of sweet wine before we left. After dinner I usually went back to Jim’s place with him, but I was tired that evening and wanted to go home. We said goodnight outside the restaurant and I walked through Little Italy for a while before I got a taxi. There were a few tourists walking around, leaving restaurants or looking for one. Groups of teenagers went from block to block, seeing what the news was on the various street corners. Kids were playing stickball in the street. A woman yelled from a tenement window: “Ant’ny! Ant’ny, you come home RIGHT NOW!”
At Houston Street I stopped at a newsstand and bought the Daily News. Then I got a taxi to take me the rest of the way home. I lived in the Sweedmore, a hotel for women on Twenty-second and Second. My room was around the size of a shoebox, but it was safe and clean. Lavinia, the old lady who ran the place, spent most of her life at the front desk scowling at the girls who lived there and finding reasons to throw us out. She was okay. That was her job. She scowled at me when I came in. I scowled back and went up to my room and took off the god-awful suit I had put on for the dean of students and put on a pair of men’s pajamas.
I sat down in an old armchair, one of two I had got secondhand to furnish the place. The bed and the dresser had come with the room. I had bought the armchairs and a little table in the corner for a hot plate and a percolator, and there was a coffee table that a girl down the hall gave me when she moved out. On the floor was an old phonograph and some 78 records. The bathroom was down the hall, shared with three other girls.
When I got my room at the Sweedmore I’d just stopped using dope and just got out of jail, and I didn’t have a penny. Early in the evening, after the banks closed, I gave Lavinia a check to hold the place. The check came from a checkbook that I’d lifted from a lady’s handbag on the subway, and I knew she’d cancel it as soon as she noticed it was gone. So I spent the rest of the night back on the subway, relieving the riders of their wallets, until I had enough for the rent and some extra to eat and buy clothes besides. It got easier as the night went on and people started to come home from clubs drunk and come home from working the night shift exhausted. I worked until eight the next morning and then I met Lavinia in the lobby before she went to the bank. She didn’t mind ripping up the check and taking cash instead.
I sat in the armchair and thought about pouring myself a bourbon, but I didn’t. A lot of people got off dope just to get hooked on booze or coke or pills, and I was trying not to let that happen. Instead I went to the closet and took down a wooden cigar box from the top shelf. Inside was a little bit of weed and a packet of cigarette papers. I rolled a stick for myself and lit it up. I didn’t worry about weed. You never got hooked. It just helped you sleep.
I looked through the paper. There on page five was Shelley, a close-up of her head and shoulders, with her hands crossed right under her neck. She was wearing a pair of big earrings and a necklace and bracelet to match, all dripping with jewels. Paste, apparently, but it did look good. No wonder they’d let her take off with the bracelet.
From the top drawer of the dresser I got a big black scrapbook and a pair of scissors and some glue and took it all back to the armchair. I looked through the scrapbook. On the first page was a photo of Shelley in satin shorts and a little checked top tied at the waist. It was from a crime magazine, her first modeling job. She was supposed to be the victim of the Pillowcase Strangler. Her hair was darker then and she was still skinny then, like a kid. That was over ten years ago. I’d been so proud of her when it came out that I’d nicked a solid silver key chain from Alexander’s for her.
Next was a picture from Real Confessions. She was wearing a cotton dress and her mouth was open in a big scream. I didn’t read the story that went along with that one—raped by her neighbor, I think. After that were more pictures from magazines, her first few advertisements, and then some playbills from shows she’d been in. They hadn’t been big parts, just the chorus line or small roles without lines, like The Maid or Girl Number Two. Still, they were Broadway shows.
Toward the end was an ad for a show at a supper club on the East Side. Don Holiday and his Christmas Magic. Shelley was a dancing elf. I’d seen the show and afterward I’d gone backstage. Shelley could only talk for a minute, though, because Don Holiday was waiting to take her out to dinner. That was the last time I’d seen her.
I cut out the new photo and pasted it into the last blank page. Then I smoked a little more weed and went to bed. Tea might not hook you, but sometimes it gave you crazy dreams. That night I dreamed of Mr. and Mrs. Nelson chasing Jerry McFall around and around the big expensive rug in Nelson’s office. I stood off to the side, wondering when I could step in and tag him and claim my thousand bucks.
Chapter Five
Paul had a big place on the Bowery that he’d had ever since the war ended and dope had become easy to get again. While the war was on and for a few years afterward the only way to get it was scripts; find yourself a croaker who’d write you a prescription for morphine or some other junk and then find a druggist stupid enough or poor enough to fill the script. But since then dope had flooded the streets again and the going was good, and getting better every day. I sure had picked a dumb time to give it up. A dumb time to get arrested and serve thirty days in the Women’s House of Detention doing cold turkey, two years ago now. I spent all of the war and the hard times afterward running around from doctor to drugstore and back again, and now you could buy the stuff on practically any street corner in Harlem and through plenty of easy connections downtown.
It wasn’t the first time I’d quit. I’d gotten off dope plenty of times before, sometimes for weeks or months, once for almost a year. Bur this time, I was doing things differently. Like not using drugs, for example. That seemed to help with the quitting. And not being around dope and people who used it so much. That helped, too. Which was why I hadn’t seen Paul in two years.
The Bowery was empty except for a handful of drunks scattered around, arguing about where their next drink was coming from. A man and a woman huddled in the doorway of Paul’s building, counting out change for a bottle of wine. They looked at me hopefully. I shook my head before they had a chance to ask. Across the street was a man in a neat pin-striped suit and a gray fedora, watching Paul’s building. Probably a husband or a boyfriend looking for his girl, waiting for her to come out so he could take her home. He wouldn’t go inside, if he was smart. Paul had a good friend in the DA’s office from their old college days and they had a deal: anything that went on in the place on the Bowery was home free. Once Paul was outside, though, he was fair game. So he didn’t go out much.
The couple slowly moved out of the doorway, shaking and muttering, and I went in. The hallway was wide and dark and smelled like piss. I walked up to the third floor. Paul’s door was open so I let myself in. It was a big railroad apartment with no doors between the rooms. The place was quiet and smelled stale. You entered into the kitchen, which was empty except for the built-in fixtures. If someone had figured out how to take out the sink and sell it for dope, it wouldn’t be there, either. As it was, the Frigidaire, the table, the chairs, the china, and everything else were gone.
I’d spent a few days at Paul’s myself, or maybe it was weeks. Or months. After I’d split from my husband I’d planned to clean up but it didn’t work out that way, not at first. Paul didn’t ask for much, just that you kept yourself looking decent and made yourself available and didn’t complain. Any girlfriends you had were always welcome, although I didn’t have any left by then. Paul got on my nerves after a while and so I left with a fellow I met there, a friend of his named Steve. I should have stuck with Paul.
I went through to the next room. Two girls sat on the floor in the corner, nodding out. Their eyes were closed and they were slouched over, leaning against each other like rag dolls. Otherwise the room was empty. I went over to the girls and crouched down. One of them, a blonde, heard me come over and used all her strength to pull her eyes open and bring her head
upright. She was pretty and young and thin, wearing a nice brown dress and brown alligator shoes. When she saw me she nudged her friend, trying to get her up. Her friend was a little trashier looking, and not as pretty. She wore a tight black skirt, pulled up over her knees, and a tight pink sweater, with black hair done up high on her head.
“Where’s Paul?” I said to the blonde. She tried to smile, but it came out crooked. “Paul,” I said. “Where’s Paul?” She made a move that was kind of like a shrug, with the broken crooked smile still on her face.
I stood up and walked into the next room. This room was smaller than the one before and it was also empty. The door to the bathroom was here. It was open, and through the doorway I saw a man around my age, in a tattered brown suit, cleaning out a set of works at the sink. When he saw me looking he got angry and slammed the door.
I went through to the last room. Paul was sitting on the floor with another young girl, another blonde. He was just pulling a needle out of her arm when he heard me come in, and he finished what he was doing before he turned around to face me. The girl looked around for a minute, not saying anything, and then she turned away from me, toward the window. Maybe she thought that if she couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see her.
Paul smiled at me. “Joey. Welcome back.” His voice was hoarse like an old man’s.
“Thanks,” I said. “How you doing, Paul?”
“Can’t complain.”
He stood up, a tall thin skeleton in a Brooks Brothers shirt and custom-made slacks. Paul had money from a family in Kansas or Missouri or someplace like that, which paid for this apartment and his fancy clothes and dope for him and an endless stream of girls.