Dope (8 page)

I looked at it for a while. Then I quietly got up, took a twenty-dollar bill from my purse, and put it in the little pouch. I lay Yonah down on the bed and left, shutting the door behind me.

T
he Royale was on Forty-seventh Street off of Ninth Avenue. It used to be a real theater, and the outside still had the old plaster decoration, mermaids and Egyptians and waves, a whole hodgepodge that maybe somehow made sense together back in the twenties, when the place was built. But instead of the name of a show, the marquis said:
Girls! Girls! Girls! Live Revue Inside!
You walked into the lobby and the first thing you saw, just like the sign said, was girls. The dancers stood around the lobby in between their acts to lure the fellows inside. They stood up straight and flashed big smiles and wore shiny lipstick, but they weren't pretty. It was a hard life, and it aged you fast. They still wore their stage dresses, spangly evening gowns rigged up to come off easy, and in the light you could see that they were stained, and half the sequins had fallen off. They smoked cigarettes and tried to look cheerful, enforced by a guy in a cheap tux about two inches shorter than me. Two of the girls whispered to each other about a third.

“She's such a bitch.”

“I know. Over a goddamned hairpin, can you believe it?”

“She's always been like that. She's a whore. You can't let it get to you. . . .”

When I tried to walk through the door into the theater the cheap tux stopped me. “Sorry,” he said, with a good long leer. “No single ladies allowed.”

That was standard in these joints, to keep out the streetwalkers. They didn't want the competition.

“I'm here on business,” I told him. “Business with the management.”

He looked me up and down. “They ain't hiring.”

“Gee, now you've hurt my feelings,” I said, “but it ain't that kind of business.”

“Well then, what kind of business?”

“The kind that's none of your business at all.”

He tried another angle. “You know there's a two-drink minimum. That's one for you and one for a girl.”

“Two whole drinks?” I asked. “I think I can handle it.”

“I don't know,” he said. “The drinks in there ain't cheap. And I got word from the boss—no single ladies inside. Not unless . . .”

I took a dollar out of my purse and handed it to him. He took the dollar and looked at it real close before he crumpled it up and put it in his pocket.

“You know,” I told him, “a gypsy once told me that it was bad luck, to crumple your money up like that.”

“Yeah, like I need advice from you,” he said, stepping aside to let me in. But he did take the bill back out of his pocket and smooth it out between his fingers before he put it away again.

Inside the lights were dim and had a red tint. The big stage had been left in place and a woman stood up there now doing something like a shimmy in a white dress. You wouldn't exactly call it dancing. Behind her, a band that looked barely alive finished up their daily dose of “Blue Moon” and began “Stardust.” On the floor, the rows of seats had been torn out and replaced by tables and chairs. A few men sat near the stage and watched, as if there was really a show going on. But at most of the tables there were girls, sitting alone or with men or with each other. That was the real attraction. They'd spend a few minutes each day on stage and the rest hustling guys for drinks and whatever else they could get out of them.

Nadine had been going pretty quickly downhill. From Rose's to here. Next was just good old-fashioned turning tricks on the streets.

A woman stepped out from behind the bar and headed my way. She was a tall brunette around my age with a hard face, wearing a tight black suit. Before she had a chance to give me the same routine as the doorman I showed her the photo of Nadine and McFall. She looked at me for a long time before she looked at the photo, and then she only glanced at it.

“I don't know,” she said. “That could be anyone.” I asked if it was all right if I spoke to some of the girls. She looked at me and shrugged. “You wanna buy a girl a drink, you can do whatever you want with her.”

I figured the Nelsons had given me enough dough to shell out a little. I went over to a table full of girls without men by the stage.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Josephine. And I'd like to buy you all a drink.”

They looked at each other and giggled, and then they all made space for me at the table. A waitress came by and took their orders: one Tom Collins, one sloe gin fizz, a pink lady, a mimosa, a whiskey sour, a ginger ale for the lady picking up the tab, and a bourbon, on the rocks. The bourbon was a dark-haired girl in a black dress who looked like she'd already had a few today, and plenty the day before.

The girls tittered excitedly and whispered to each other until their drinks came. Anything unusual in a place like this, like a lady buying drinks, was cause for excitement. It could get pretty dull on an ordinary day. When they were settled in with their cocktails I passed around the photo of Nadine and McFall.

“Oh sure, she used to work here,” one girl said, a blonde in a pink dress with lipstick to match. “And him, he's around here all the time. What's her name, Trixie?”

“No,” the next girl said, a chubby redhead in green. “Trixie was that other girl, the one who went to Alaska. This is Belle. You remember.” She handed the photo to a girl across the table who looked about sixteen. The jailbait looked at the photo and shrugged. “Belle? Maybe. But I thought her name was Candy.”

“Nah,” the bourbon said, with a low, raspy alcoholic's voice. She was looking at the photo over the jailbait's shoulder. “She was one of McFall's girls. The guy in the picture. One of those goddamned junkies. Ask what's-her-name.” She nodded toward a little brunette who looked twenty years old, sitting alone at a table in the corner. I hadn't noticed her before. She was thin and wore a black dress with long sleeves to cover her track marks. Her face was hollow where there should have been flesh, and even though she was still pretty she also looked like she was dying. “She works for that rat bastard, too. She knows her, I'm sure of it.”

“Why's he a rat bastard?” I asked.

She scowled. “Junkies, all of them. He gets those girls hooked on dope and then gets 'em working here. Some of 'em are just kids, you know. Anyway, ask any girl here, they'll have a story about Jerry McFall. All of us who are independent, like me, who work for ourselves, he's always trying to recruit us. Like I want to give half my money to some rat bastard so he can hook kids on dope. Junkies,” she said. “They're the worst.”

Right, I thought. Except for alcoholics.

I thanked the girls and left money on the table for another round of drinks before I went over to the little brunette. She smiled at me.

“Hi,” I said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Sure,” she said, with a sweet young voice. I sat down next to her.

“What's your name?” she asked.

“Josephine,” I said. She kept her eyes on me like it was the most fascinating word anyone had ever spoken. I realized what was going on—she thought I was a customer.

“Actually,” I said, “I'm hoping you can help me with something. I'm looking for a girl, and you might know her.”

Her smile faded somewhat. No lesbian meal ticket for her tonight. But I'd paid for a drink and she could only get it down so fast, and until it was done she was stuck with me. She nodded when I showed her Nadine's picture. “Sure,” she said. “Nanette. I know her.”

I couldn't believe it. Here was someone who actually knew Nadine. Not just remembered maybe seeing her once, but really knew her. I felt like a fifty-pound weight had come off my shoulders.

“Good,” I said. “Do you know where she is?”

The girl looked around, trying to find a better prospect for the evening. “Listen,” I said seriously, trying to get her attention. “This girl has a family, and they care about her. They want to take her home, and they don't care if she's on drugs. I've met them myself, and they're good people. She'd be a lot better off than she is here, don't you think?”

Something caught the girl's eye across the room. I turned and looked. A middle-aged man was sitting alone near the stage, smiling at her. He waved at her. She waved back with a big smile. I could see that my little speech had had a profound effect on her.

“He's a regular,” she said. “I really should—”

I reached into my purse and pulled out a five-dollar bill and gave it to her. She reached out for it but I held it back. “Listen,” I said. “For five dollars, I want answers. Are you gonna give them to me?”

“Sure,” she said, offended. “I'm just trying to make a living here.”

I held out the bill and she snatched it up and stuffed it in her shoe before I could blink.

“So where is she?” I asked.

“I don't know where she is,” the girl said. “The last time I talked to her was, I don't know, four or five days ago.” She looked over her shoulder and held up her hand to her trick, telling him she'd just be a minute.

“Tell me the whole story, from the beginning,” I said. I could already feel the fifty pounds settle back on my shoulders. “From when you first met Nanette.”

She nodded her head and reached down to scratch her leg. “Okay. Nadine—that's her real name—Nadine started coming around here a month ago, maybe two months. She'd never, well, you know, been in a place like this before. So Jerry—he's a friend of ours.” Working girls never called their pimps
pimps.
It was always just a nice guy out to give them a helping hand. “He asked me to look out for her, and I did. Real nice girl, but kind of dumb. Jerry set us up in the same hotel. She was always drawing pictures when she wasn't working.” She smirked, like drawing pictures proved Nadine was dumb. “Then about a week ago, her and Jerry, they take off for a few days. I talked to the other girls, no one knew where they were. That wasn't so strange—sometimes Jerry takes a girl on a little vacation like that, if she's doing really well or if maybe she needs a talking-to. But anyway, one night I go back to the hotel and Nadine's waiting outside the hotel, crying. No one would let her in 'cause Jerry hadn't paid her bill. He hadn't paid mine, either, but I took care of it myself, from what I made. So I snuck her in through the back door—like I said, she was kind of dumb, 'cause she could have done that herself—and we jimmied the lock to her room, so she could get her stuff.” She smiled at the man across the room again.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Well, according to Nadine, Jerry tells Nadine they're going out on a date, right? So he takes her to this apartment—”

“Where?” I asked.

“She didn't say. So he takes her to this apartment, and no one's there. So of course Nadine, it took her a long time to realize they were robbing someone. Nadine said she was so nervous she almost started to cry!” That made the girl laugh. “So Jerry tells her to watch the door and holler if she sees someone coming.” Right. So Jerry could slip out a back window and Nadine would be left to take the heat.

“But they got caught?” I asked.

The girl nodded. “Jerry had his car downstairs. I guess he found what he was looking for, 'cause after a few minutes they split and they go down to the car. But then another car pulls in behind them, just as they're taking off. When that happens, well, Jerry just about loses his mind—Nadine said he turned white as a ghost!” This also made her laugh. Nothing like the misery of others for a good joke. “So Nadine figures they were busted pretty good. That whoever was in the car behind them, well, that's whose apartment it was. 'Cause the other car, they turned on the lights and made sure they got a real good look at who it was. They didn't try to chase 'em or nothin'—just let Jerry and Nadine know they'd seen 'em.”

“Huh,” I said. “So where's Nadine now?”

“I dunno,” she said.

I sighed. “Well, where'd she go when she left your hotel?”

“I dunno,” the girl said again. “She said she was gonna meet Jerry somewhere, and they'd be laying low for a few days until everything cooled down. But I ain't seen either of them since.”

“So what did they steal?” I asked.

She smiled. “Dope, Nadine figured. 'Cause Jerry had been running dry before and afterwards he was rolling in it. She gave me some, too.”

“Do you have any idea where Jerry usually got his stuff from?” I asked.

The girl shook her head. “Uh-uh. I know he hated the guy, though. I heard Jerry moaning about him a couple of times.” She laughed. “Guess the guy thought he was really someone, thought he was better than Jerry. It really burned him up.”

So Jerry got Nadine involved in ripping off a dope dealer and now they were both in trouble. Great.

That was all the girl knew. She finished her drink and was about to meet the man across the room when I stopped her.

“So you've just been coming here to work every night,” I asked, “even though Jerry hasn't been around in a week?” It wasn't any of my business, but I was curious.

“Oh, I've got a new fellow now,” she said quickly. “Arnie. He started coming around a few days after Jerry split. He takes real good care of me. Of all the girls. We're lucky he came around when he did.” She hugged herself, and her big brown eyes widened. “You wouldn't want to be out here all by yourself.”

T
his was what I knew so far: Nadine had met McFall while she was at Barnard. After she got kicked out she stayed with him. I could imagine how it played out. He said things like
Don't worry, baby, I'll always take care of you. You'll never have to worry about a thing.
He sent her to work at Rose's, or maybe it was her own decision. But the money she made there wasn't enough to feed her habit and leave a slice for McFall, so she moved—or he moved her—to the Royale, where it was easier to pick up dates.
Of course I don't want to see you with other men, baby. It kills me. But how else are we gonna pay the bills?
He sent her to live at the hotel the girl had mentioned. Now that he had her turned out, why keep her around to cramp his style?
It's just temporary. Just until we have enough saved up to get our own place, out in the country somewhere. None of these other girls mean anything—it's just so I can make more money for the two of us. You know that.