Page 20 of The Presidents Shadow

Maddy has actually managed to squeeze some helpful information out of Belinda. She’s learned that Belinda and the other girls get their marching orders from higher up, sometimes delivering privately to their clients, sometimes taking on the lower deals on the street. Some of the buyers who demand private delivery have favorite girls, and—to no one’s surprise—there’s occasionally a girl who sells more than what she’s carrying, although Belinda assures Maddy that she’s never traded on her body.

“Stay away from this shit, babe,” Belinda tells Maddy. “You could end up in real trouble.”

But Maddy insists. And finally Belinda gives her enough information that Maddy can create a sort of rough road map in her head.

“Third Avenue and 53rd Street is always cooking,” Belinda says. “That area has been so busy for so long I bet you can get a contact high if you walk around barefoot.”

Maddy finds out that Park Avenue is always busy when the stoplights turn red. Belinda clarifies: “There’s a specific pickup stop at 73rd and Park.

“There’s action in Spanish Harlem sometimes,” Belinda adds. “You know, pick up some lemon chicken at Rao’s and then grab your heroin a few blocks away.”

“I never thought of pairing those,” Maddy says.

And to her surprise, Belinda actually laughs.

Maddy smiles back, feeling the warmth of the connection growing between them.

Maddy can’t figure it out.

The city blocks around Third Avenue and 53rd Street seem safer and prettier than Disney World. The usual cluster of Irish bars, singles bars, and bars for young folks who are missing their home state of Texas. There’s a store that frames pictures, a store that sells ridiculously expensive window shades, a store that sells antique silver knives and forks.

As for the street scene: a young dad type with two little kids, twin boys, in a stroller. A teenage couple kissing so passionately, Maddy thinks they might smother each other.

Maddy wears a dark-blue polo shirt and a pair of old army-green cargo shorts. Her wardrobe goal was to look like a college student. Which she was until two weeks ago.

As she looks around, her observations become a bit more critical—“discerning” is what Lamont would say. Maybe the two very young women in jeans and down vests are not just teenage girls trying to figure out which bar won’t check IDs. Maybe the unbelievably skinny young Black girl laughing as she gets into a taxi with a guy in sweatpants isn’t out on a date.

Maddy crosses from one side of the street to the other, then back again. She glances through the window of a bar called the Naked Dog.

Men and women, boys and girls, come and go. Maddy watches the two pretty young girls in down vests who fit the profile of the girls in Belinda’s circle. Clean-cut, conservatively dressed, nothing that would make a police officer look at them sideways.

Maddy is confused. The pickings in this neighborhood seem to be quite slim. In fact, she thinks, the pickings seem to be nonexistent. She phones Belinda, but the call goes to voice mail.

On the corner, a few doors down from the Naked Dog, is a CVS Pharmacy. Maddy goes inside the store and selects a ChapStick and a Special Dark Hershey’s bar. As she waits in the checkout line, the young girl behind her—wearing a white T-shirt, black silk vest, and black jeans—smiles and cheerfully says, “I could eat a hundred of those dark chocolate bars.”

Maddy grins back. “You must be an amateur. I could eat two hundred.”

Maddy pays the cashier and returns to her spot outside the Naked Dog. She unwraps her chocolate bar and breaks off a piece, and as she’s about to pop it into her mouth, she hears a voice.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

The voice belongs to a bland-looking forty-something man in a cheap gray suit. He’s eating a greasy slice of pizza, which he’s conveniently folded in half.

Oh, my God,Maddy thinks.This guy thinks I’m working.

“I’m just waiting for my friend,” Maddy says.

“I’m sure,” the cheap suit says. Then he nods in the direction of the two young women who’ve been talking together.

“You with Lisa and Randi?”

“No. Like I said, I’m waiting for a friend,” Maddy says.

“Right,” he says.

Maddy calls up her inner strength. As Dache has taught her,You have depths within you that only you yourself can muster.

“Listen,” she tells the guy. “I don’t know what your deal is. But I’m pretty sure I’m not what you think I am.”

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