With Bullet back in town, the quarters were cramped and the Big Man had taken to sleeping with Taunya on a mattress on the floor—and, tonight, Star as well! One on the left, one on the right; within moments he was sound asleep. Not Taunya, though: appalled at the brutality, disgusted by Slugger’s forced attentions on the loudly protesting Teri; frightened by the blank stare of the girl on the opposite side of the mattress, she waited until everyone else in the room was clearly asleep. Then she tilted her head towards the door to let Star know it was safe for her to slip away; at least, if she and her friends couldn’t get away that night, she could help this girl escape—otherwise, Taunya was certain the teenager would lose her life come morning. Star seemed frozen on the other side of the mattress. Finally, she realized Star would not move because she was afraid Taunya was watching her. The young Nova Scotian pretended to fall asleep and listened as the rustling sounds proved her theory. Star quietly left the room when she believed Taunya was sleeping.
In the morning, the Big Man strode around the room, raging like a caged beast and accusing Taunya of letting Star escape; Taunya retorted that she’d simply slept right through the night, “just like you did.” Greer apparently didn’t care for her tone, because he lashed out with a backhand to her head, then glared at her while he got dressed, as if daring her to say anything more. Taunya stayed silent until he left with his three sidekicks; when they were gone, she heaved a sigh of relief and expressed the fervent hope that all four of them would be killed in a car accident or a gun battle. She and Teri then sat down to a game of cards and listened to their portable tape player, while Gizelle brooded in a corner, contemplating the nightmare her life had become. Eddy never hit her hard and only yelled at her occasionally, but after last night’s terrorization of Star, she realized what he was capable of. She had to get away, somehow; and as they dealt each other hand after hand, Taunya and Teri were silently telling themselves the same. Soon enough, Teri articulated what they had all suspected from the scraps of conversation they’d overheard the night before: the four men had been planning to kill Star—Slugger had bragged about it to her while they were having sex; that’s why she had objected so strenuously. Escape was no longer a late-night fantasy, they knew; it was a matter of life and death. Each of the girls realized, too, that they needed each other to flee these monsters who called themselves men.
On the morning after she had spoken to the RCMP’s Brad Sullivan, the one parent of the Scotian girls who had become involved in the nightmare herself was determined to take further action. She’d heard nothing from the police, and her frustration level was mounting. Debbie decided to go to North Preston where Gordon had told her many of the pimps lived.
Once she had reached the small community on the outskirts of Dartmouth, Mrs. Howard parked her car and began going door-to-door, asking anyone and everyone who would talk to her if they knew anything about Stacey. Debbie Howard believed that just about every young man from North Preston was a parasite preying on teenage girls like her Stacey: had she known how small that minority was, she might have been initially relieved, but her worst fears—and more—would have been realized if she learned how very dangerous, and brutal, the Scotian minority was. As it turned out, the visit to North Preston was an eye-opener, not that Mrs. Howard found out anything about Stacey, but because she discovered that the community, like any other, contained more solid families leading average lives than it did gangs of monstrous pimps—that, indeed, the pimps themselves often came from good, hard-working families who had an equally negative view of her and other parents of young prostitutes as she did of them. As one woman bluntly and revealingly told her, “If more of you mothers would come out here and get your daughters, they wouldn’t be getting the boys from here into all this foolishness,” she said.
Debbie Howard was no further ahead in her search for Stacey, however, and she had no option but to go home and wait for word from the police. She couldn’t sit still for long; again and again she tried to get a name—just a name—of one of the people her daughter might be with. Finally she returned to Rachel who told her Stacey was not with Kenny but with Peanut and Smit. With this new information, Debbie Howard formally filed a missing persons report at the Cole Harbour detachment of the RCMP; there, the constable who opened a file on Stacey decided to talk to one of the detachment’s investigators—none other than John Elliott, the officer who had worked with Brad Sullivan on the 1990 fact-finding study of pimping in Halifax.
Elliott quickly contacted some of his informants on the Hollis Street stroll and began gathering some data on the two Scotian players; and he called his friend Sullivan, who had asked Debbie Howard on the night before to find out, if she could, who Stacey was with. Sullivan called Dave Perry again, passing on the valuable new information. The net was beginning to close around the Scotians: Perry did not know who Peanut and Smit were but he passed the information on to other members of his task force. For his part, Dave Perry was busy working with another worried mother of a teen who had disappeared in Halifax. Meanwhile, officers at the Cole Harbour RCMP promised Debbie Howard they would call when they had any news for her, and urged her to phone them if she heard from her daughter.
If Debbie Howard had seen her daughter through the afternoon of September 16, she would have had to agree that Stacey seemed as taken with the life as she was trapped in it—or perhaps it was that the excitement and occasional pleasures kept her trapped in it. That afternoon, Peanut and Smit decided to give their girls the carrot instead of the stick: two hundred dollars each for “some nice new ’ho clothes and maybe something to eat.” As they browsed in clothing and record shops on Yonge Street south of College, Stacey and Annie Mae, in jeans and T-shirts with just a touch of make-up, looked more like kids from the suburbs than street-hardened prostitutes, but the image vanished when they headed for the seedier sex shops just off Yonge. There, they expertly picked through flashy fishnet stockings, body-hugging bustiers, and thigh-high vinyl boots; and if Stacey laughed a little too loudly or flaunted her tawdry finery a little too obviously while checking it out in the mirror, she certainly looked the part. “Can’t wait to show these off for Smit,” she confided to Annie Mae, who smiled knowingly in agreement. “Yeah, Stace, they really like the look of this kind of outfit—and a man that’s turned on is a happy man, so flaunt it, girl!”
Flaunt it Stacey did when she and Annie Mae got back to the apartment; she teased and taunted Smit, trying on all her new finery and asking him suggestively which outfit he’d rather see her strip off. Smit usually enjoyed her flirtation, but tonight he was preoccupied with his new girl, Glenna, who’d just phoned from Niagara Falls in a rather befuddled state—Amber and Sheri kept disappearing, she said, and they’d be gone sometimes overnight without telling her what she should do.
Smit hung up shaking his head and remarking that he wasn’t looking forward to a drive to the Fall just now, but that “stupid ’ho” would have to learn from someone reliable. He told Stacey she was the only person he could trust to do the job. Even this direct flattery wasn’t enough for the still-defiant teenager, who immediately started to complain. Smit, true to form, seized Stacey and pushed her violently against the living room wall, then slapped her across the face and told her to shut up and get ready for work. Stacey obeyed, but inside she was fuming.
Across town in their hotel room, Taunya, Teri, and Gizelle were also dressing for work. It was Slugger who returned with the van to drive them to the stroll, and no sooner had he dropped them off than the usually quiet Gizelle brought up the idea of getting away; she confessed her fear of Eddy and her certainty, shared for some time by Teri and Taunya, that their pimps could well kill them. They settled on Taunya’s plan to travel to Buffalo and try to contact Sweet Lou from there; they would ask him to take them to New York and never bring them back to Canada.
“But when can we go?” the nervous Gizelle asked; she didn’t want to spend one more night with Eddy.
“Just as soon as we get some
bucks together,” Taunya answered. “So let’s do it, girls.”
The three young prostitutes hustled as never before, and within ninety minutes they had more than five hundred dollars—plenty to get them to Buffalo, where they could work the streets to collect enough for the rest of the trip. Taunya phoned a taxi company and asked for a driver to take them to Buffalo, or at least to the U.S. border if drivers weren’t allowed to cross. Buffalo would not be a problem according to the dispatcher. Taunya ordered the cab, which arrived shortly; their bid for freedom was under way.
They didn’t make it as far as Buffalo. In Niagara Falls, the girls discovered they had left their identification at the hotel, and they were pretty sure that in their provocative clothing, without I.D., they would never be able to get by the immigration officers. Instead of trying, they headed downtown to the busy prostitution stroll; first they’d recoup the cost of the cab ride, and then they’d figure out a way to get into the States next morning. What they didn’t count on was running into someone they knew; as the girls stepped out of the cab, there were Amber and Sheri, waving at them with delight. Taunya’s quick mind started concocting an explanation almost instantly, and as they approached the two other girls, she whispered to Teri and Gizelle, “just go along with whatever I say.” She was already spinning her yarn before Amber and Sheri were within earshot, talking about the white guy in the van who picked them up on the stroll, saying he wanted their services for a party. “So we get inside, right? And that’s when we see the two black guys in the back, and, like, we’re goin’ faster and faster, and Teri’s, like, ‘Where are you taking us?’” Teri just nodded, astonished by her friend’s inventiveness and understanding perfectly that Taunya’s tale would perfectly dovetail with Greer’s belief that Jamaican pimps were continually trying to steal Scotian girls. “So these guys are trying to take us to Buffalo, right? But we haven’t got any I.D. so they kick us out of the van, and I go, ‘Well, what are we suppose to do now?’ And they’re, like, ‘That’s your problem, bitch.’ Can you imagine those assholes?”
Taunya was wasting her breath; Amber and Sheri were too high to care about the compelling story. The two girls had been smoking crack every night since arriving in Niagara Falls—they’d been avoiding Glenna in the hopes that word of their habit wouldn’t get back to the Big Man through Smit. If Taunya, Teri, and Gizelle had stuck to their plan—hustled for a few hours, then found a way either across the border or to another southwestern Ontario town—they would have been safe. The two older prostitutes probably wouldn’t have remembered seeing them, and wouldn’t have said anything about it anyway, since they were trying to stay clear of Greer. Now Amber felt compelled to help; doing nothing might get her and Sheri in even more trouble, in this situation. The five girls went to Amber and Sheri’s hotel where Amber called Greer’s cell-phone number and told him the girls were with her. “Let me speak to Taunya,” he said flatly, and Taunya repeated her tall tale. The Big Man had no comment on the story, just said she and the others should wait for one of the Scotians in the Niagara Falls area to pick them up and drive them back to Toronto that night. “Well, let’s hope he believes us,” Teri said as they waited in the lobby. “He’s go to,” Taunya said. “We’ve got to have another chance to get the fuck away from him.”
Back in Toronto, Stacey was taking her chance with Joystick, who had just driven onto the stroll with his partner to check out the action. As every other girl on the street watched her bold move, the teenager calmly stepped out to the curb, motioned him over, and smiling alluringly, asked if she could get in the car. “You know what you’re doing, girl?” Joystick looked as if he couldn’t believe his luck. “Yeah, can I get in?” Stacey just didn’t care what Smit thought; she just couldn’t take his unpredictable behavior any longer. “Sure, get in—” They pulled away from the curb and negotiations began immediately—Stacey offered youth and beauty—but she only had $175 as a down payment towards the leaving fee. Joystick and his partner would have to provide the rest to Smit. Joystick would have accepted the money, but his colleague wanted more; they agreed that the eight hundred Stacey was confident of earning by the end of the night would be more than adequate—she would be coming home with him, Joystick assured her. Stacey returned to the stroll and, as Taunya, Teri, and Gizelle had done earlier, she began to hustle hard to buy her freedom from Smit. Annie Mae warned her friend that she was taking a big risk openly approaching the man that way, but Stacey wasn’t worried. Smit had gone to Niagara Falls to find Glenna, and by the time he returned, she would be safely at Joystick’s apartment; once he’d paid the leaving fee, Stacey would belong to him, and Smit would never dare to make a move on another man’s property, no matter how angry he was. Besides, Joystick would protect her if Smit did try anything.
She was wrong on all counts. Neither she nor Annie Mae had noticed the older Nova Scotia prostitute watching with keen interest as Stacey got into Joystick’s car. The twenty-three-year-old woman had been trying to persuade Smit to take her on, but he was balking; she didn’t have many good years left, he figured, and as the young star of the Scotians, he wasn’t about to make a move that detracted from his image as an up-and-comer. Well, here was her chance to earn some points with the elusive Smit; she reached his cell-phone number while he and Peanut were en route to Niagara Falls. “We gotta go back, man,” Smit said, slamming his fist into the window so hard it rattled. “Stacey’s giving play to another man.” His partner immediately wheeled the car around and, tires squealing, they raced towards the city. It was a long enough drive for Smit to build up a real good head of steam over the betrayal—not only choosing another pimp, but that chump Joystick! The Big Man dis’d Joystick big time; he’d said so—only used him as an errand boy once in a while. How would it look for this video junkie to grab his main girl. It just wasn’t going to happen. He’d get Stacey back, and teach her a lesson she would never forget.
Shortly before midnight, Peanut’s car pulled up to the curb in front of a stunned and terrified Stacey, who looked around wildly for Joystick. He was nowhere to be seen, and she thought of running—but Smit was too fast for her. The enraged young pimp threw Stacey into the back seat of the car, and Peanut ordered Annie Mae into the front. She stared straight ahead as Smit demanded: “Who were you talking to?” This was Stacey’s chance to confess, but she was too frightened. “no one,” she replied. “I wasn’t talking to anyone.” Smit flew into a rage, swiveling in the seat and grasping her entire face in his huge, muscular hand. She could barely breathe as he pressed against her nose and mouth, lifting her up, then slamming her head into the window as if trying to break the glass. “You think I’m a chump!” he bellowed. “You think you gonna dis’ me in front of everyone! You want the players to think Smit is some pussy they can whip and steal from! Not this man—no, woman—not this man!” On and on it went—the pounding, the ranting—until Smit suddenly stopped, and shoved the unresisting teenager towards the other side of the car; then he looked away from her and stared out the window, brooding. Everyone was silent; Stacey didn’t even dare raise her hand to her head and find out if she was bleeding. She felt numb, and nauseated, and thought she would vomit, but as they neared the apartment building, a faint sense of hope began to set in: at least she had survived, and now she could go to sleep, maybe figure out what to do in the morning. If Stacey thought the beating was over, she was very wrong. It hadn’t even started. Not for Stacey, and not for Taunya and her friends. As Peanut wheeled his car through the quiet streets of Toronto, the three thwarted young fugitives were being whisked eastward from Niagara Falls, back to face the wrath of the Big Man.
No sooner had Smit and Stacey walked into the apartment when the enraged pimp let loose with a vicious blow to the teenager’s face. In a low angry voice, he ordered her to get into the bedroom; then, without another word, he strode to a closet, took out a wire coat-hanger, and began unwinding it, working slowly and with great determination until all the kinks had been straightened out. He bent
the length of wire in the middle, pulling the ends together to fashion a loop about a half-metre long. Annie Mae sat silently on the sofa and watched, digging her nails into her palm. She’d seen other pimps use the wire whip on girls before—and she couldn’t believe this was going to happen to Stacey, at the hands of the guy who used to enjoy looking after the prostitutes’ babies. There was nothing she could do to help, if she said anything, Peanut would go after her, too.
The angry pimp walked into the bedroom and ordered Stacey to stand; she did not notice the weapon until Smit raised it above his head.
The first blow struck Stacey across the front of her legs just above the knee. The seventeen year old screamed in agony and fell to the floor. Smit raised the whip and struck Stacey a second time on the side of her now folded legs. She screamed again and told him to stop it.
Smit began to preach and lecture as he raised and lowered the coat hanger turned whip. He kept repeating he was not a chump that Stacey could not disrespect him that she owed him an apology. Smit swung the wire whip so hard it whistled in the air as it moved toward Stacey. In an effort to stop the pain in her legs Stacey raised her arms but the whip struck them with the same violent force until she no longer had the strength to keep them raised. Stacey began to separate from what was happening. Smit had struck her more than twenty times. He was still swinging the whip but Stacey could no longer feel the blows. A dangerous numbness had set in all over her body. She could see that the wire was hitting but it felt as though her body was falling to sleep and the impact just moved her. It didn’t hurt any more. Stacey could see Annie Mae on the couch and wondered if she had phoned to warn Smit. Stacey could still hear Smit preaching but she stopped listening to his words. Her mind was filled with a wild laughter and she couldn’t understand where it was coming from. Stacey struggled to focus her thoughts on the laughter and to ignore the torturous abuse. Suddenly she realized she was not losing her mind; there was real laughter in the room. Stacey could see Peanut lying on the bedroom floor laughing, she could hear his laughs above everything in her mind and she could not understand why he was laughing. Stacey did not understand that Peanut was laughing at what was happening to her, the possibility of that kind of cruel sickness did not even enter her mind.
Somebody's Daughter Page 16
