Dope Read Free

them across my lap. Mrs. Nelson rested her eyes on something ten feet past me and over my left shoulder. Mr. Nelson looked at me and opened his mouth but I spoke first. I knew his type. If I let him take hold of the conversation, I’d never get it back.
    â€œSo, Mr. Nelson, who was it that gave you my phone number?”
    â€œNick Paganas,” he said. I looked blank so he added: “I think you know him as Nick the Greek.”
    I smiled. I knew at least a dozen guys who went by Nick the Greek, but it wouldn’t do any good to let him know that. “Sure, Nick,” I said. “How do you know him?”
    He looked down at the table and frowned. Then I knew how he knew Nick the Greek. But he told me anyway: “Mr. Paganas—he took me for quite a bit of money, Miss Flannigan.”
    â€œStocks?” I guessed.
    Mr. Nelson shook his head. “Real estate. He sold me fifty acres of land in Florida. Eventually I realized I had bought a nice chunk of the Atlantic Ocean.”
    â€œSure,” I said. I tried not to smile. “He’s a professional, Mr. Nelson. He’s fooled a lot of men of very high stature—you’d be surprised if I told you who.” I didn’t know who, exactly, we were talking about, but it was probably true. “What I mean is, you’re in very good company.”
    Mrs. Nelson kept her eyes straight ahead, on whatever ghost she was staring at.
    â€œThank you, Miss Flannigan. That’s a kind thing to say. Anyway, fortunately I realized this before Mr. Paganas left town, so I was able to recoup my losses. And something else. I told Mr. Paganas that I wouldn’t report him to the police on one condition. If he would help me find my daughter.”
    â€œAnd he recommended me?”
    â€œYes. He recommended you,” Mr. Nelson answered. “He said you no longer used drugs, that you were honest, that we could trust you. He said you knew—well, you knew the type of places where she might be. You see . . .” He paused and looked at his wife. She pulled her eyes out of the void and looked back at him. He turned to me again. “My daughter is on drugs, Miss Flannigan. My daughter is a . . . a dope fiend. ”
    I held back a laugh. I read the papers: every square in America these days thought their kid was a dope fiend. Mostly from what I gathered their kids smoked a little tea and cut school once in a while. And the paperback novels were full of them—kids who started off popping a benny and ended up on heroin, murdering a dozen of their neighbors with their bare hands. Kids from nice families who got lured in by evil pushers. On the book covers, the pushers always had mustaches.
    I had never met an addict who came from a nice home. I’d met addicts who came from families that had money and nice houses. But never from a nice home. And I’d never met a dealer who had a mustache.
    â€œTell me about your daughter,” I said.
    He sighed. “Nadine. About a year ago—”
    â€œHow old is she now?” I asked.
    â€œEighteen.”
    â€œNineteen,” the mother cut in. She said it slowly, like it had only just occurred to her what was going on here.
    â€œYes, nineteen,” Mr. Nelson continued. “About a year ago—”
    â€œIt started before that,” Mrs. Nelson interrupted. She looked directly at me for the first time. “She started going into the city on the weekends with her friends.”
    â€œWhere do you live?” I asked.
    â€œWestchester.”
    â€œAh.”
    She continued: “She started going into the city with her girlfriends every weekend. Didn’t want to go to the club, didn’t want to see her old friends anymore. Nothing so wrong with that. She was in her last year of high school.”
    Mr. Nelson picked up the story. “Except she started coming home—well, we thought she was drunk.”
    â€œNow, of course,” Mrs. Nelson said,