Free Dope by Sara Gran Page B

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.
    â€œGood,” 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.
    â€œHe’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?”
    â€œSure,” 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.
    â€œSo where is she?” I asked.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œTell 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.
    â€œSo what happened?” I asked.
    â€œWell, according to Nadine, Jerry tells Nadine they’re going out on a date, right? So he takes her to this apartment—”
    â€œWhere?” I asked.
    â€œShe 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.