by Sara Gran
Then McFall got the clever idea to rip off his dope connection. The connection could have been just about anyone in the five boroughs of New York. Dope came into town through the mob, but by the time it got down to the level of Jerry McFall, probably ten men had bought it, stepped on it, and passed it along. McFall’s connection was probably someone who never sold on the street, probably someone who didn’t use. A businessman, so to speak. But certainly not a real player, and not a mob man himself. The junkies who actually sold it to other users were the bottom of the barrel and they made the smallest profit, because no one higher up in the barrel would deal with them. All I knew about the man was that it was someone Jerry didn’t like. That didn’t help me at all. From what I knew, Jerry didn’t like anyone too much.
But the job went wrong, and now Jerry and Nadine were hiding out somewhere. Probably somewhere in New York City, but maybe not. Maybe they were shacked up at Jerry’s aunt’s barn in Idaho.
I was ready to give up on the whole damn thing. There wasn’t really any reason for me to find her. The first thousand was already mine and the second—well, even if I did find Nadine, who knew if the Nelsons would pony up? I didn’t have any reason to think they would, especially once they saw her. If they thought they were getting the old Nadine back, they were in for a shock. They were looking for a college girl whose biggest problem had been that she didn’t fit in at the country club in Westchester. From what I’d heard so far, if I brought them anything at all it would be an addict who’d been with more men than the rest of the country club combined. They probably wouldn’t even want her in the house. And I couldn’t exactly take them to court if they decided to renege.
I’d be better off going back to my regular work, going back to lifting wallets and hitting the department stores. Maybe even use the thousand bucks to get a bigger con going. Buy some new clothes, set something up for myself. Or I could use the money to take a vacation. I had a girlfriend in Florida I could stay with for a week. There was an old boyfriend in New Orleans I could visit. I’d never been to New Orleans.
I had plenty of problems of my own, and the more I started looking at it, the more it looked like this wasn’t going to be so easy after all. The girl wasn’t just missing as far as her parents were concerned, like I had thought. She was missing, period. Even Nadine’s friends, or the closest she had to them, didn’t know where she was. The trail ended at the Royale, just where it would be hardest to pick it up. There were only about ten thousand girls selling it at any given moment in New York. It would be like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack. The cops might know something but it wasn’t likely, and even if they did, there was no way any cop was helping me.
I was at a dead end. And if she was in trouble now, it was her own fault. Her whole life, when you looked at it, was one lucky break after another. The girl had had everything handed to her on a silver platter. Never had any worries over money, more than good-looking enough, and from what everyone said she had a real talent, too, with the whole art thing. Her parents cared about her more than most parents cared about their kids. My own mother had been pleased as punch when I left home, and I was a lot younger than Nadine. I was always spoiling her fun, worrying about food and clothes and boring stuff like that, and she sure didn’t hire some private dick to track me down. When she died we hadn’t spoken in ten years.
This girl was going to college, for Christ’s sake. I’d never known anyone who’d been to college. I wasn’t even sure what they did there. I left school in the ninth grade. I knew why my life had turned out the way it did—I’d never had much to lose to begin with. And I’d never been good at anything that was legal. But this girl, she’d thrown away what ninety percent of the world would kill for. I didn’t care if her parents did spank her or her mother did tip the bottle a little. She’d had no reason to do it. She’d had no right to do it.
Besides, I figured that soon enough she’d go home on her own anyway. The first time a trick got rough with her or another girl pulled her hair, she’d go back home crying to Westchester and her parents would send her to get a cure somewhere. She’d get all the best doctors and all the best drugs and she’d pick up her life just where she’d left off. She’d marry one of the boys from the country club in a white dress, and everyone would forget all about her little episode in the city.
So there was no reason for me to go any further with it. There was no reason for me to keep looking for the girl at all. I didn’t owe her a damn thing.
To hell with it. I was through.
Before I left the Royale I went to the ladies’ room. There was a lounge inside, with pink wallpaper peeling off the walls. The Royale used to be a nice theater once, about a thousand years before. There was one wall of private stalls, one of sinks, and a third done up with vanity tables and chairs and a long mirror. Two girls were sitting at the mirror, laughing and putting on makeup. They were in their late twenties, with figures that looked younger and eyes that looked older, wearing tight dresses and too much makeup. One had a henna rinse in her hair, the other bleach.
I took a seat next to them and took out a compact. One of them, the blonde, smiled at me. On impulse I took out the photo and handed it to her.
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “do either of you know them?”
She took the photo and looked. Her girlfriend did the same. Then they looked at each other. They weren’t smiling anymore.
“I’m Joey,” I said.
“Miriam,” said the redhead. The blonde said, “Hazel.”
Their eyes met in the mirror. Miriam nudged Hazel with her knee.
“You might as well tell her,” Miriam said. “Imagine how you’d feel if the same thing happened to her.”
“What’s that?” I asked quickly, before Hazel had a chance to change her mind.
“Well,” she began, with a shaking voice. She looked down at her makeup and back up at the mirror. She tried a smile. “I mean . . . let’s just say . . .”
She gave up and looked back down at her makeup again. She wanted to tell me. She just couldn’t.
I turned around to face her. “What did he do?”
Hazel didn’t say anything, just looked at her makeup like it was the most important thing in the world. But Miriam answered. “I’ll tell you what he did. First, he took her out a couple of times. Dinner, dancing, you know—”
“Oh, Miriam,” Hazel said, trying to stop her as if she were making a big deal out of nothing.
But it didn’t work. “And then he goes to pick her up at her house—”
“Miriam, really.”
“—and the bastard tries to get fresh, you know?”
“Sure,” I said.
Miriam snorted. “And listen, she’s no virgin, neither am I, and I bet you ain’t either—”
“That’s for sure.”
“But you know, she hardly knew the guy, and she didn’t even like him that much, and he wasn’t paying for it. So when she says no, let’s just go out, he starts slapping her around, like he owns her or something. She had a black eye for days, couldn’t even leave the house! And then—”
Hazel powdered her face. “Miriam, really. Come on.”
“And then he made her anyway?” I guessed.
“Yeah, that’s what he did,” Miriam spat out. “He made her do it anyway. With a black eye, and her lip was bleeding and everything. I mean, we’ve all had rough dates before. But this was different, this guy, he was supposed to be . . .” She looked for the right phrase. “One of us.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
“A couple of months, maybe?” Miriam guessed.
Hazel looked up. Tears were running down her cheeks, leaving sharp tracks of real skin through her makeup. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe two months.” She turned back to the mirror and began putting on lipstick. Me and Miriam did the same. The show was over, and we were back to strangers again.
“So you watch yourself,” said Miriam. “You be careful with that one.”
I knew Nadine was only getting what she’d asked for. She wanted her walk on the wild side and now she was getting it. So let her see what The Life was like. Let her lose her looks from getting hit in the face too many times. Let her lose a few teeth and all of her pride and all her charm school manners. Her college education wouldn’t do her any good out here. And if she thought that drawing some pretty pictures would keep away a cop looking for a freebie, let her try. That pretty face would only make the girls hate her more and the men want to hurt her worse.
She was no better than me or anyone else. So why shouldn’t she? Why the hell shouldn’t she?
There was no reason at all for me to keep looking for Nadine Nelson. But I did.
Chapter Ten
When I got home Lavinia had a message for me from Jim: if I wanted to see him, he’d be at Mr. Chan’s in Chinatown around nine. I got there at quarter after. Jim was sitting at a booth with Mr. Chan, giving him stock tips. Chan’s restaurant had been there since before I could remember, probably since before I was born, and he knew just about everyone in New York. He must have been older than the hills, but didn’t look much older than Jim. Mr. Chan was a good guy; if you were sick he’d make a bowl of soup that tasted horrible and made you feel like a million bucks; if you were low on cash he’d let you run a tab until you were flush again.
“Listen,” Jim was telling Chan. “If you don’t have any money in Pittsburgh Industrial, now is the time to buy. Trust me on this, Chan, I don’t want to see you take a bath.”
“Yeah, right,” Chan said. “The last time I listened to you, I lost my shirt in the market.”
I sat down with them. “Hi, Jim. Hiya, Mr. Chan.”
They both half stood and then sat back down. “Josephine,” Chan said. “Would you take advice from this son of a bitch?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know if he was conning Mr. Chan or giving him the genuine article. Selling fake stocks had taught Jim something about real stocks, and he had some money in the market himself. “I do,” I said. “But I don’t know if I should.”
Chan laughed and went to get our dinner. Jim asked how I was coming along looking for the girl. I told him what I’d been doing so far, which was basically running into dead ends. One of Chan’s sons, Albert, brought us a tureen of soup and two bowls. Like at Lenny’s, we wouldn’t order anything here. Jim had been going to Chan’s for twenty years, and he’d get the best of everything.
When Albert was gone Jim ladled out the soup and said, “Well, if you want to find a drug addict, why don’t you go where the drugs are?”
I looked at him. Drugs were everywhere.
He blew on his soup, cooling it down. “When you were using,” he said, “where did you spend most of your time?”
“Huh,” I said. I’d already been to Paul’s. But that was nothing. There was a whole world of dope out there. It wasn’t one neighborhood. It was like a string of islands, all over the city, where addicts and dealers got together. One island was on 103rd Street. The next one down was Seventy-seventh and Broadway, then Forty-second Street, then Fourteenth. Seventy-seventh Street was mostly Puerto Ricans, and 103rd Street was mostly old-timers. The West Side of Forty-second was a rougher crowd; I couldn’t see Nadine there, but the East Side was a little more mixed, all types went there. . . .
I was surprised how easily it all came back to me. I’d tried hard to forget, but I still knew the other city, the dope-city, like the back of my hand.
“You know you’re pretty clever, sometimes,” I said to Jim. I tasted the soup and burned my tongue. I hadn’t blown on it first.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” he said. We spent the rest of the dinner talking about a letter Jim had just gotten from Gary. He was coming to New York next month to work a stock angle with some big lawyers—he had met one of them on a ship to England and the first sucker had brought the rest of the marks in. Gary already had a few shills lined up, men who would play the part of satisfied investors, and he wanted Jim to be another one. So he had to go out and buy new suits, gray flannel. One of the other fellows had already rented an office, and Jim would help him furnish it to look like a brokerage house.
I half listened as we finished eating. Jim paid the check and we walked out, going toward Broadway.
When we were halfway down the block I thought of something. I stopped, turned around, and went back into Chan’s. Chan was up at the cash register, yelling at another one of his sons in Chinese. I waited until he was done. Then I showed him the photo of Nadine and McFall and asked if he knew them.
He looked at the photo and scowled.
“Him, I know,” Chan said. “Not her. He’s not allowed in here, never again.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“He brought a girl in here, looked like her, but not the same. The girl got sick in the bathroom. Drugs. Had to call an ambulance. And him, he just left her here. Just left her all alone to die. My wife, she stayed with her until the ambulance came. You know him?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m trying to find him.”
“You ask me,” Chan said, “stop looking. That’s someone you don’t want to find.”
Chapter Eleven
Bryant Park was probably a nice park, once. Two square blocks with benches and grass where housewives could walk their kids and their dogs and on weekends, their husbands. There had probably been thick grass on the ground and clean benches and big lovely trees to give shade and maybe some bright flowers in the spring. It was behind the big old public library, the famous one with the lions on Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. The library was probably nice, too, once. I guess it was still all right if you were a man. Jim went there a few times a week and he said it was one of his favorite places in the city.
But I’d been to the library once, and I’d seen as much male anatomy in one day as I had in my whole life before. I thought I’d take up reading as a new hobby after I got off dope and had time on my hands. After my trip to the library I figured I’d stick to stealing. The perverts had settled into the library just like the junkies had settled into Bryant Park. The park was where they came to enjoy the sunshine and make deals and catch up on gossip. And now no one bothered to keep up the grass or trim the trees or plant any flowers. The whole place smelled like piss and the benches were crumbling away and no square in their right mind would dream of walking through it.
I used to spend a lot of time in Bryant Park, but I hadn’t been around for a few years. When I showed up all the junkies looked at me, trying to get a read on who I was and what I was up to. The sun was bright and every one of them squinted at me through it like they had never seen daylight before.
I walked around until I saw someone I knew. Monte. He was sitting on a bench in the shade of a big tree, smoking a cigarette. He wore a tan summer suit with a few spots on it and a wide-brimmed hat that looked like it had passed through a dozen men before it had come to him. It had been a good three years since I’d seen him in person, but he’d aged about thirty, and in all the wrong ways. He couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. His hair had thinned out, he had misplaced one of his front teeth, and there was a new scar just by his ear on the left side from a knife fight.
He was my husband.
I watched him for a while before he saw me, and a funny thing happened. I didn’t see an old junkie in a worn-out suit anymore. Instead I saw a man ten years younger and forty pounds heavier, and the forty extra pounds were all muscle. His suit was spotless, like it always was, pressed just that morning, with a fresh white handkerchief in his breast pocket. Thick blond hair fell into his eyes no matter how much he combed it back because he couldn’t sit still, he was always up and doing something, even if it was just straightening out a stack of papers or tapping his fingers on the table, working out his new plan.
And there was always a plan, a new one every few weeks. At first the plans were always how we would make some money and get out of
Hell’s Kitchen. Monte was going to get a job in a factory somewhere, or a job in sales; sales was a good deal because the harder you worked, the more money you could make. He knew a fellow who worked in a Cadillac dealership in New Jersey, and Monte was sure that if the fellow got him a job he could be taking home a hundred dollars a week.
Then the plans were about getting money for dope. One big score, because he couldn’t hold down a regular job anymore. There was a house on Eighty-second and Park that was just ripe for the picking. Old couple, rich as sin, and they always left the window open at night. The only problem was figuring out how to make it up to the third floor without anyone noticing. Or he was going to pull off a job with some boys from the neighborhood. These boys, they knew when the bagman made his pick-ups every week. It would be easy, all they had to do was get the bagman alone and the money was as good as theirs. A thousand dollars each, at least.
Soon the plans were all about kicking. The big plan was always for tomorrow, or next week. The plan was never for today. You mixed the dope with half water, shot it that way, and slowly increased the water until you were shooting plain water every day, and you’d never feel any pain at all. Or the plan was that Monte would go to Lexington, Kentucky, where there was a hospital that would give you a cure that’d make you never want to touch dope again. Next week, maybe. Or the week after.
And then the plan was just to get up in the morning. The plan was: today, I’ll get out of bed. This afternoon, I’ll take a bath. I’ll comb my hair. By then the idea of putting on a clean suit was as far away as working at the Cadillac showroom had been.