Somebody's Daughter

by Jessome, Phonse;

  As it turned out, Perry hardly even had to emphasize that if Gizelle cooperated, the police could lock up the men who had tried to kill her and her friends. She launched into a statement that provided much more than Perry had expected; not only did she tell him where the pimps were staying—even the room number—and how many girls they were running on the stroll, but Gizelle also named Manning Greer. For the first time, police had evidence they could use to arrest and prosecute the Big Man. When Gizelle had finished describing how she had been taken to Toronto, she unhesitatingly signed her complaint. As for Stacey, Gizelle said she believed she’d seen her on the stroll, but added that Stacey wasn’t staying at the same hotel; nor did she know who the missing teenager’s pimp was. With her statement signed, Gizelle waited as the police began to make arrangements for her return to Montreal.

  “If it was me, I’d be at the police station,” Taunya said with daring aplomb, and she barely looked up from her card game with Teri to answer the Big Man’s question about Gizelle’s whereabouts. Manning Greer must have been more than a bit preoccupied as he and Eddy returned to the hotel, moments after the source of his concern had signed a statement against him. Of course he couldn’t have known the young Montrealer had gone to the cops—and he wouldn’t have believed she’d sign on him anyway, let alone get up on a witness stand—but something was on his mind, and Eddy’s as well. Otherwise, he would probably have lashed out at her for such audacity. As usual, the Jamaican pimps were occupying the Big Man’s attention, and Gizelle’s disappearance simply underscored his usual obsession with the American players. For the past few days, he, Eddy, and Bullet hadn’t traveled anywhere without at least one gun—always kept in plain view on the dashboard of the van, for the benefit of any rival pimps who might be lurking nearby. Any of the other Nova Scotia players who had observed Greer’s terrifyingly aggressive ways with his girls would have found some amusement in his fear-driven single-mindedness about what was, frankly, an imaginary threat; and they would have advised him, if they thought Manning Greer could ever take advice from anyone, to heed the warning of Taunya Terriault and get his mind off the Jamaicans. That was not to be.

  The Big Man could well imagine those chumps trying to take revenge on his family by stealing Gizelle in retaliation for his move on their girl, Star. Still, he thought, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious and switch hotels; Greer told the girls to pack—they’d be moving somewhere closer to the stroll that night—and he and Eddy also threw their things into their kit bags. “Take that gun with you now, man,” he told Eddy, who retrieved his weapon from Taunya’s suitcase. The Big man wasn’t taking any chances on anyone; not with all the running around these girls were doing—Taunya and Teri, and that woman of young Smit’s, Stacey. Now Gizelle. Nor had Greer yet managed to locate his former main girl, Lynn Buchanan. Greer and Eddy left for a favorite pool hall, where they were meeting Slugger—and, later on, Smit and Peanut. Before Stacey’s pimp left the apartment he wanted her to make that second call to her aunt. No way was he letting her keep the cell phone to talk to a relative when he wasn’t there to monitor every word.

  The call was brief but, as it turned out, crucial. Debbie Howard, on the advice of her doctor, had taken a sedative and was asleep when her daughter called, but Stacey got the insurance number from her aunt, who asked—expecting her niece to say no—if there was a number where her mother could reach her later. To Shirley Townsend’s surprise, Stacey gave her a number—the one to Smit’s cellular phone—evidently unconcerned whether or not her pimp overheard her. He did not; Smit had been talking to Peanut during Stacey’s conversation, believing his presence alone was enough to keep her in line. After she’d said good bye, her tormentor of the night before solicitously offered to take the wounded girl to the hospital later in the day; maybe she’d like to come along to the pool hall, since Annie Mae was going with Peanut. Stacey declined, saying she would rather lie down for the afternoon; the burning pain in her legs had become so intense that she could barely walk without crying out. Smit shrugged, and headed out the door after Peanut. Stacey fell into a stupor that was only half-sleep, and her dreams were full of fever images of shooting flames.

  In Halifax, Stacey’s mother and aunt tried to figure out what to do next. They had what they thought was the phone number of the apartment where Stacey was staying, so Debbie Howard sensibly decided the call the Cole Harbour RCMP and share the information with that nice constable. Then the whole family got into the act as Stacey’s mother tried to decide if there was anything more she could do to help her daughter—her sister, brother and other relatives who had gathered at the Townsend home, all had a view to express, and after two hours of talk, a consensus emerged: Debbie Howard should call the number, and if one of the pimps answered, she should tell him she knew his identity, as did the police. If any of them had told one of the officers about this plan, there might have been a differing opinion, but the family was simply doing what they thought best.

  Smit was sitting at a table in the pool hall in the early afternoon with Annie Mae when his cellular phone rang. He had just heard, with considerable satisfaction, his partner Peanut’s animated narration of the session with Stacey, described in intimate detail for the benefit of Eddy and Slugger as they stood at a nearby pool table. He had seen the pleased expression of the Big Man’s face as he leaned against a wall beside the table, taking it all in. Manning Greer knew Smit was a real man, a player to be reckoned with. His smile vanished within moments of answering the call. Annie Mae could hear Smit telling someone they were crazy, that he didn’t know anyone named Stacey. Annie Mae looked away, pretending she wasn’t listening. At the other end of the line, Debbie Howard was pretending too—she was pretending not to be terrified, and she was pretending to sound aggressive: “Goddamn you, listen to me!” she shouted. “I know who you are, I know where you are, and I know you have my daughter—and you’d better make sure there’s nothing wrong with her, because the police are coming to get her.”

  By then the conversation was drawing attention, and Smit’s buddies quickly figured out that Stacey’s family had somehow managed to get the cell number. There was silence on the line for a moment, and then Mrs. Howard heard a new voice: “Look, lady, you better not call the cops. If you do, your daughter is dead.” The anger in her voice vanished as her heart filled with a mother’s worst fear. “Please don’t hurt her,” she begged. “We just want Stacey home; we don’t want any trouble.”

  “You’ll get your fuckin’ daughter home all right, lady,” the man replied. “We’ll mail her to you one piece at a time.”

  The line went dead and Mrs. Howard’s knees shook as she realized they had made a dreadful mistake; the pimps on the phone didn’t care about the police. They were going to kill her little girl! She frantically called Brad Sullivan and begged him to put her in touch with a Toronto police officer; he gave her Dave Perry’s cell-phone number.

  The call to the pool hall marked the second time in only a few hours that Manning Greer had heard the police mentioned as a possible threat to his family business. Still, he wasn’t overly concerned, although a few precautions would have to be taken—he would move Taunya and Teri to another hotel before they started to work. Smit said he would get rid of Stacey.

  Annie Mae’s heart sank as she heard the men talk. This was her terrifying theory about the Scotians’ secret club—you had to kill a girl to become a member—and it seemed to be coming true. These men were going to waste her friend and bury her body so it would never be found. Annie Mae walked out into the bright afternoon sunshine and found a pay phone about a block from the pool hall, then dialed the apartment. “Get out of there right away, Stace!” she pleaded for the third time; yet again her friend offered an almost inaudible “Okay.” What more could she say? “Stacey, honey, listen to what I’m telling you! Don’t take anything—just go. I think they want to kill you—do you hear what I’m saying?” There was still a strange distance in Stacey’s voice as she answered yes, bu
t Annie Mae couldn’t stay away any longer, or someone might notice her absence. She could only hope her warning was enough to save Stacey. Annie Mae ducked into a convenience store and picked up a chocolate bar and a bag of chips to help explain her absence from the pool hall. That those things were available there as well did not occur to her.

  Although the injured girl’s reactions were much slower than usual, she did understand what her friend had told her. As soon as she hung up the phone, Stacey walked out of the apartment and stood in front of the building, looking up and down the street. She couldn’t get far on foot, it hurt too much to walk. Stacey headed to the small convenience store, just down the block. As she hobbled along the sidewalk, a distant memory flashed vividly before her eyes. A sense of déjà vu could have set in but Stacey’s pain was too great and she was not thinking of her childhood. Just as it had been when she was three years old, and her mom had rushed her out of the house and away from her abusive father Stacey was headed to a corner store for refuge. In the store she asked to use the telephone and fumbled in her purse and came up with a cell-phone number for Joystick. The clerk allowed the obviously stricken teenager to use the store’s phone—“Local call, right?” she nodded—and she reached the pimp in his car. “I’ll be right there,” he said, and Stacey felt tears of relief spring to her eyes. Joystick arrived moments after Smit and Peanut pulled up at their apartment to find Stacey gone; by the time they came back downstairs to Peanut’s car and had a quick look up and down the block, she had been whisked away to safety. A questionable safety, perhaps—Joystick was no philanthropist, and planned to make some money from this girl—but at least she would have a little time to relax. The hashish and vodka he offered her provided relief from the persistent pain in her bruised and battered limbs, and Stacey almost didn’t care what happened next.

  Stacey settled in at Joystick’s apartment, the thwarted Smit and Peanut drove back to the pool hall to tell Greer and the others what had happened; once again, the Big Man decided to move ahead with his plan to get Teri and Taunya out of the hotel—this time, he would send them straight to work, along with Annie Mae, while he and Eddy checked into a new hotel. Smit and Peanut thought about looking for a new place, too—maybe Stacey’s mother hadn’t been bluffing about the police coming to get her daughter.

  They were all still pondering their next move but taking no action when Dave Perry and seven members of the Juvenile Task Force made their way to the hotel. The JTF raid was in the planning stages when Debbie Howard called Dave Perry’s cellular phone and as he raced to the hotel in search of the Nova Scotia pimps he hoped he would capture before they carried out their threat to send Stacey home in pieces. Gizelle had told Perry about the 9-mm handgun Eddy had been waving around, so the team members were taking no chances: all the officers wore bullet-proof vests, and just before two o’clock, they took up position against the wall on either side of the door to Greer’s suite. Their guns were drawn as Perry knocked, then stepped to the side.

  Teri turned down the stereo and Taunya went to see who was knocking; she had barely opened the door a crack when what looked like an army came bursting inside. The first guy pushed Taunya to the floor, rolling her over on her stomach and ordering her to stay still; meanwhile, another officer was doing the same to Teri. The two girls were confused and frightened, but they managed to remember the Big Man’s warning never to answer a police officer’s questions, and both refused to speak to Perry when he asked where Manning Greer was. No one else was in the suite, but there were all kinds of kit bags and other items lying around; clearly the pimps were coming back. While the other officers set up a stakeout inside and outside the hotel, Perry returned to the station with Taunya and Teri, who continued to ignore his questions. Well, they could just cool their heels until he had time to find their families and send them home. First he had to take care of a few other priorities.

  At about four o’clock, the mother of the missing British Columbia teenager spoke with the large group of reporters at the station; after her news conference, several journalists lingered, asking pointed questions not about the girl’s possible abduction but about an even bigger story they had heard rumors about all day. After the third or fourth demand for information on a pending arrest of several dangerous Nova Scotia pimps supposedly operating on the streets of Toronto, Perry decided to cut a deal with the reporters: he would tell them where the arrest was going down, and they would keep far enough away from the scene not to alert the suspects returning to the hotel; after police had the pimps in custody, the cameras could move in for some good shots.

  Dave Perry wasn’t just being a nice guy for the benefit of the media; he and his superiors at the metro police department knew the value of the publicity these arrests could create. Perry had spent nearly a decade wrestling with the thorny problem of juvenile prostitution—and, most recently, the dangerous Scotians’ role. This was an opportunity to let tens of thousand of people know about a major national pimping ring—and one that hopefully would be broken, here in Toronto, within hours. The publicity could also convince officials in Nova Scotia that they should take on the issue with a full-scale task force, as Perry knew his Halifax colleague Brad Sullivan had been urging for two years.

  Just as Dave Perry was preparing to return to the hotel at about four thirty, his cellular phone rang—it was Debbie Howard, calling from Halifax. Here was his chance to attract even more public attention to the issue: after assuring the anxious mother that police were tracking Stacey even as they spoke, and could have news for her within a few hours, he asked whether she had spoken to the media. “Not yet,” Mrs. Howard said, “but my sister’s husband works for ATV here—” the widely watched Atlantic Television System. “I think you should talk to them—it could help Stacey and many other young girls like her,” Perry advised. “You can tell them that your daughter has been abducted by a ring of pimps from Nova Scotia and that she’s been forced to work—and by the time you go on the air, we’ll be that much closer to making sure she gets home to you safe and sound. Oh, and don’t forget to let them have a photo of Stacey.”

  There wasn’t much time—the ATV evening news airs at 6 P.M.—but the emotionally charged story of Stacey Jackson’s disappearance did make it onto that broadcast. Henry Peterson, Stacey’s uncle, was the family’s representative in front of the camera—her mother felt too emotionally exhausted to make a statement—and his comments were brief but moving: they just wanted Stacey home, and were reaching out to the community to call police if they had even a scrap of information that could help.

  While Maritimers listened in shock to the account of a dangerous group of pimps operating from Halifax, police and reporters in Toronto waited patiently for Manning Greer and his family to show up. Unbelievably, they were still hanging out at the pool hall, still obviously unconvinced they had anything serious to worry about. At about seven, Peanut told Annie Mae to get back to the apartment and pack; she’d be joining Taunya and Teri on the stroll later. Then, the five pimps had a bite of dinner.

  It was close to nine o’clock when they finally arrived at the hotel. Officers watched from their concealed positions as the gray van with the garbage-bag-covered windows pulled into the parking lot. They became concerned as they watched not one but five men step out. Annie Mae was back at the apartment where Stacey had been beaten. Peanut had told her to pack her things and get ready to go to work.

  The information was radioed to the officers upstairs in the hotel room and the others in rooms on that same floor. Inside the hotel room the officers had their guns drawn as they sat in silence listening for the sound of footsteps in the hall. They heard the voices first as the pimps walked toward the door where they expected to find Taunya and Teri waiting to go to work. Only four of the pimps made it to the hotel room door as Eddy reached for his key to open it. Manning Greer had been walking with his colleagues when his cellular phone rang. Amber was calling from Niagara Falls and Greer slowed his pace as he talked with her.


  When Eddy opened the hotel room door all hell broke loose. Two men pointed what Eddy saw as a couple of very big guns at his face. They ordered him to drop to the floor and at the same moment doors from the surrounding rooms opened. Other police officers jumped into the hallway and began to scream orders at the three remaining pimps. Officers grabbed Slugger, Peanut, and Smit and threw them to the floor outside the room. The pimps squirmed, cursed and struggled as men knelt on their backs and pulled their outstretched arms back behind them to be cuffed.

  Manning Greer swore as he saw what was happening only a few metres in front of him, in the initial confusion the officers did not see Greer as he turned and raced for the stairs. By the time the task force members realized Greer was not there he was already bursting through the hotel doors and running for his van. The police officers outside saw the Big Man running and screamed for him to stop. No one had yet moved to the van and Greer had a clear line of flight.

  Officers raced back to their patrol cars to give chase as Greer floored the accelerator in the gray van cursing its slow response and wishing he had his ’Vette. He raced over the sidewalk and onto the road. The chase began and the sirens blared and the reporters waiting a block or so away joined in. Manning Greer raced dangerously through the streets of downtown Toronto with several police cars and news vehicles not far behind. The police knew they had a dangerous man in front of them as Greer pulled his van off the busy road way and raced down the sidewalk forcing pedestrians to jump out of the way or be killed. Greer turned onto a side street and raced toward the next block. He looked ahead and saw a chain link fence and gate blocking the way. He had made the mistake of turning into a delivery lane and not a side street. Greer pressed the accelerator and held onto the wheel as the big van crashed through the gate and entered the loading area parking lot. The police were not far behind and Greer soon realized he had led them into a box canyon. The only way out of the parking lot was the same way Greer had just come in. As he looked back at the police cars spilling in through the only available exit, Greer raced the van to the outer edge of the parking lot and slammed on the breaks. The van had not finished sliding to a stop as the driver’s side door flew open and the Big Man leapt to the pavement. Police officers had no time to get out of their own vehicles and train their guns on Greer. They watched him bound over a small fence and into a bush-filled lot behind a row of houses.