Jailbait; The Story of Juvenile Delinquency (c1949)

WHILE THE COPS WERE PULLING HER OUT OF THE PROWL car, kicking and screaming like a hurt animal, 14-year-old Nanette tore her stockings. Her only nylons. Gossamer badges, in her own eyes, of freedom and adulthood. It didn't matter that her legs were too skinny to fill the things, that they curled and rolled limply around her adolescent thighs. She had worked for them, hard. With them to indicate professional status, to hint of cultivated technique and experience at collecting for same, she could now demand a dollar, even two. In fact, she had been busily embarked on her first venture at the new rates when members of the vice squad had so rudely broken into the hotel room.

"You can put her down now, officer," the desk sergeant said. "I've sent for a policewoman."

"Watch out for this kid!" The officer's wrist streamed blood where Nanette's nails had gashed deeply.

"You could have stopped to dress her."

"She threw everything but those stockings out the window. She was fixin' to jump after 'em, but I— :

"No guy?"

"Two. Both over fifty. Found one hiding in the shower bath. The other was . . . say, you'd be surprised! Had to let 'em go."

The desk sergeant wearily made notations and shooed the cops out of the station room. Nanette's child-blue eyes sought his.

"Put this on, kid." A heavy black police shirt supplanted the ripped bedsheet wrapped around her. "How did you get into the hotel?"

"Just walked upstairs. They told me their room number. You don't think I'm dumb enough to use the elevator!" Nanette's eyes returned to the torn stockings drooping over her calves. A dollar and thirty-nine cents! She started to cry.

Jailbait; The Story of Juvenile Delinquency (c1949)