"She's Hooked"
Holding an unlighted cigarette and looking like a beneficent padrone, Champ sat in a booth sipping coffee I later paid for. The word on the street, he said, was that Carrick and Chaos were hiding out in an abandoned theater. He asked me if I knew where that might be because he didn't really know the area. I said no, but it could be the huge abandoned building on the corner of Eighth St. that was covered with signs protesting an impending eviction. He said we'd have to get them out ourselves, and that he needed my word that I would not get the cops involved. I said okay, although I dreaded entering what I envisioned to be a nest of rooms filled with crackheads.
“I gotta tell you something you don't wanna hear,” he said.
I looked at him and nodded. Nothing he could say was worse than what I'd imagined.
“She's using heroin, Tommy,” he said.
“How much and for how long?” I'm sure my voice that sounded much calmer than I felt. “Is she shooting or snorting?”
“It's bad, Tommy,” he said. “She's hooked.”
He didn't know how long she'd been using, though, or whether she was shooting it or not. He told me that getting her back would be complicated by the fact that Chaos, the guy she was with, owed somebody some money for some dope they'd scored that morning. I was suspicious, which must have showed. I asked Champ if he meant that I'd have to pay somebody off, and he said we'd have to wait and see. He suggested we try to get more information from the people in the park. I gave him $60 for his help so far. I wanted him to know that I was prepared to reward him if we found Carrick, and that I'd pay others if I had to. We left the coffee shop.
“Tommy, I want to make sure we're clear on one thing,” Champ said as we crossed Avenue A. “No cops.”
I took a deep breath.
“I've heard a lot of stories and I think I've got a pretty good sense when somebody's conning me,” I replied. “I don't think you are.”
I said that partly because I wanted to hear in my own voice whether I believed it or not; I sounded like someone trying to convince himself that he's doing the right thing. It had reached the point where I was just reacting to circumstances. My only goal was to take Carrick home. And I knew that, in reality, I was easily conned. Carrick herself had proven that to me time and again.