Free The Chelsea Girl Murders by Sparkle Hayter Page B

park? In New York City? At night? Rocky, that’s dangerous,” I said.
    â€œI can look after myself. I’m tough,” he shot back.
    â€œDon’t get me wrong. I’m impressed you’d take that risk for a girl. You really love this girl?” I asked.
    â€œYes.”
    Because he smiled bashfully and looked at the floor when he said that, I decided to cut him some slack. He was surly and dim, but he was just a kid in love. His attitude was probably just macho bluster and youthful suspicion of a member of an older generation, me.
    â€œShe’s the one for you, is she?”
    â€œThe only one,” he said.
    â€œHow can you be sure?” I asked.
    Now it was his turn to sing the praises of his Juliet, as she had sung his praises.
    â€œShe is so beautiful, with such a sunny disposition and a sweet nature,” he told me. “A good girl, but easily led and too trusting.”
    â€œNadia? Sunny and sweet?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAre we talking about the same girl?” The vulnerable waif he described was not the same girl I’d met. “Do you have a photograph of her?”
    He pulled out a billfold and several pictures of him and Nadia. At first, I thought we were speaking of a different girl, because the girl in the first few pictures was a brunette. One photo looked like it was taken in New York, in front of a brownstone, when they were a couple years younger than they were now. Another showed him and the same girl dressed up as a gangster and his moll, surrounded by other teenagers in costumes. But in a more recent photo, a head shot of her, she had blond hair, and I saw that we were indeed speaking of the same Nadia.
    â€œWho are these other kids in the costume picture? Maybe Nadia is with them?”
    â€œI don’t know where they are. I don’t remember their names.”
    â€œDoes she have any other friends in New York? Or New Jersey? Connecticut?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know what else to do. Maybe she’ll come back here. Or she’ll call,” I said.
    â€œI’ll stay here until she does.”
    â€œOh. Good,” I said. “While we’re waiting, you wanna tell me about this country you come from?”
    â€œI do not think I will,” he said. “You might tell the police, or you might tell someone, and they might tell the police. Nadia could get deported. Her family could do something terrible to me or my family.”
    I tried to guess, but it was hard to pin down his ethnicity. He was pale with dark hair, soft features, small eyes a little too close together, and a hint of dark fuzz on his face.
    â€œAw, come on, Rocky,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
    â€œWhat did Nadia tell you?”
    â€œShe calls it Plotzonia,” I said. “I only ask because maybe it will provide some clue to where she is.”
    â€œIt won’t!” He was surly again, and changed the subject, demanding in a princely way, “I need to eat. Do you have anything to eat?”
    â€œYes, but first can you give me a little more information—”
    â€œI need to eat now. I’m hypoglycemic.”
    â€œKeep it in your pants, kid. I’ll feed you,” I said.
    I gave him some cold cuts and potato salad, and he ate like he still had a growth spurt ahead of him. They were so obviously doomed, these two bad-tempered brats, heading down lust-slicked rails to a shattering heartbreak, the kind of disillusionment that scars you for life. There was so much I wanted to tell him. I could have quoted some insightful poetry and homespun wisdom, told him about good hangings and bad marriages. I could have provided a few vivid real-life examples of young love gone wrong, crimes of passion and other homicides that involved people stuffing the dismembered bits of their “true” lovers into trash bags.
    Instead, I said, “You want dessert?”
    â€œDo you