Somebody's Daughter (20 page)

The decision to become a full-time prostitute and leave her foster parents behind was the first major mistake Amber made in her life; the second was on that first night back in Toronto. Amber was chatting with Annie Mae when a large white car slowed at the curb. She walked over and leaned into the window to see what the driver was shopping for. At first her street sense told her to back away, there were two men, not one, in the big car. She relaxed when the man on the passenger side announced, “We're looking for a couple of girls who know how to party.” Two guys, two girls, that wasn't unusual, so Amber motioned for Sheri to join her at the curb. The two men sized them up and appeared to be pleased with the contrast offered by the heavy set Amber and her delicately thin companion. “Jump in.” Before opening the rear door of the car Amber wanted to make sure the men knew what they were buying. “Two of us means two hundred dollars an hour.” She looked at the passenger who smiled, “No problem, get in.”

Headed for work in Toronto. [Print from ATV video tape]

The two men drove to a strip mall just north of the city and on the way announced they were real estate agents who had just closed a major deal. It took almost thirty minutes to get to the mall and Amber smiled in the back seat as she calculated the drive to and from this party would cost these men two hundred dollars and so far nothing had happened. The “party” the men talked about was no party at all, at least there was no crowd celebrating the “big deal” the men bragged about. Inside the office the realtors let the girls know what they wanted and it wasn't sex. They opened a brown paper bag and spilled its contents on a desk. It was a cluster of tiny white rocks of crack cocaine. The girls watched as one of the men took the ink refill from a pen and placed the hollowed out tip over the flame of a disposable lighter. He inserted the heated pen into the side of a small plastic shampoo bottle and placed some tin foil over the top. The foil had small holes in it and the gerry rigged crack pipe was ready. Amber looked at Sheri and shrugged, why not? The girls would never have smoked crack if another girl was present but they trusted each other and had even developed the habit of skimming a little money from the Big man when they were on the road. A party tax they called it. The four spent a night smoking crack and drinking tequila, the drug giving them a high like neither had ever experienced. In the morning the men paid them for the time spent partying and gave them cab fare to return to their hotel.

Back at the hotel they began to worry about becoming addicted. They knew girls who had become dependent on crack after trying it only once. “We better get out of town for a while,” Amber told her partner. “Yeah, should be easy pickings in Niagara Falls,” Sheri said. The Big Man was more than pleased with the money they'd earned in that one night in Toronto and agreed they could move on. If he had known about the party, they would have been in big trouble; Clara Ferguson's episode with her enforcer, Bullet, was just a sample.

For Taunya, Stacey, and the other Scotian girls who stayed behind in Toronto, the atmosphere surrounding their pimps was more than a little stressful, as the Scotians continued to indulge in their paranoia about their Jamaican rivals' supposed intention of scooping their girls right off the stroll, turning them out in New York, then returning to Canada to parade them on territory that was once Manning Greer's domain. There was nothing to indicate that the Jamaicans had any plan to raid the Scotians, but the more Manning Greer thought about it the more he was convinced the trouble with that New York crew was just beginning. One night, while all the Nova Scotia girls except for Taunya and Teri were with clients, Eddy and Slugger pulled up to the curb on Church Street; as the girls watched in shock, Eddy jumped out of the van with a gun in his hand. He looked up and down the sidewalk, gestured for the girls to get in, then told Slugger to “drive, man!” Twice, as they careened around downtown streets for a half-hour or so, he had his brother stop the vehicle, then stepped out and stood by the side of the road, brandishing his gun. Finally the girls were taken back to the stroll. It was almost as if the pimps were warning their rivals that the Scotians had not forgotten the Halifax turf war of 1989 and were perfectly willing to heat things up again, if they had to.

Indeed, many Scotian players, minor and major, nostalgically recalled the rout of the Jamaicans and looked forward either to having another crack at them—or getting in on the act, if they'd been unlucky enough to miss out on the première. Comers like Stacey's man Smit and bigger players such as Eddy all wanted to prove their loyalty and usefulness to Greer; as well, they were feeling the pressure of the Big Man's anxiety—and that made them as jumpy as he. As usual, it was the girls who bore the brunt of their nerves. The maltreatment began that first week in Toronto, and none of the teenagers under Scotian dominance would be neglected by the pimps' paranoia-driven violence. The only question: would any of them survive?

Stacey's pimp, eager to increase his profit margin and his level of respect, decided to add a new girl to his stable of one. Glenna Lombardy had chosen Smit and he took her to the apartment. It was an indication of a startling change in Stacey's attitude towards prostitution that she rejected Smit's request for her to show Glenna the ropes that night—she wasn't about to share her man with some newcomer. From tearful recruit who only wanted to go home to a square life, to hard-eyed hooker with a baleful glance at new talent: the transformation startled even Annie Mae, who tried to explain that it was a compliment for Stacey to be asked to look after Glenna. As for Smit, he was singularly unimpressed by his main girl's attitude; when Stacey retorted that it wasn't her job to baby-sit Glenna, he struck her across the face so hard she almost toppled, then backed her into a corner: “You are disrespecting me in front of these girls,” he said. “Do you want me to beat you? Is that what you want, Stacey? I don't want to beat you, girl, but I told you before, you can't dis' me. I won't let you. Now you know I love you, girl, but I gotta be a man—do you understand that? Now, you are leaving and you are leaving now. Isn't that right, Stacey?” Nodding stiffly, the girl walked out of the apartment and stood in the hall to wait for Smit and Glenna. Her whole body was trembling, but if the reaction might once have signalled terror, it was now an expression of anger and frustration. Smit must have realized this, and evidently valued his main girl's income potential (and its implication for his status in The Game) enough to figure out a way to keep Glenna while placating Stacey. Hearing of Amber and Sheri's sojourn in Niagara Falls, he sent the newcomer to join those experienced girls and get her training with them. Stacey had Smit all to herself again—but she was already starting to wonder whether she should choose another pimp, since all Smit seemed to do was lash out at her every time she spoke a word of protest.

While Stacey was considering her options in The Game her mother was fighting to get her back home and out of it for good. Stacey had been gone for a week but had only called once to check on her son, and Debbie Howard was certain her daughter had been drawn into the world of prostitution. Debbie assumed Kenny had her daughter in Toronto and she set out to find a way to reach him. Rachel, who was still living in Stacey's Highfield park apartment reluctantly gave her the phone number of Kenny's parents. She called but the man who answered would not help; he didn't know where Kenny was, or with whom, or when he would be home. The anxiety-filled mother could not, would not, sit at home and worry; she needed to do something. She jumped to her feet, grabbed her purse and car keys, and headed downtown to Hollis Street. The girls on the stroll were polite—one of the teenagers wistfully admitted wishing her own mother would come and get her. Some of them knew who Stacey was with, but they feared telling her anything that might get them in trouble with Smit or the other players in Toronto. As they spoke, a fiftyish businessman drove up to the curb and gestured to the girls; the frustrated mother saw a target for her anger and fear, and went after it with all her might: “You're nothing but a child molester!” she screamed at the would-be client. “Look at you with your briefcase and your nice suit—you've probably got a daughter at home yourself! How would you feel if you knew some pervert like you was dragging her onto the street? Go on, get out of here, you creep!” As his car pulled away briskly, Debbie Howard burst into tears and ran back to her own vehicle. She sat crying in the dark for a few minutes, then looked up to see a shiny sports car with tinted windows pull over in front of her. One of the girls came over and passed something to the driver; Mrs. Howard, convinced the man was a pimp, decided to follow him. At a fast-food restaurant on Kempt Road, across town in Halifax's industrial north end, she saw her chance to confront him; terrified but determined, she pulled in front of him and walked over to the car. The bored-looking young man rolled down his window and, looking straight ahead, told her in a monotone to move her car.

“Please, just give me a minute,” Mrs. Howard said, introducing herself and explaining that she only wanted to get in touch with her daughter, to make sure she was all right. “I think she's with a pimp—er, I mean, a man named Kenny Sims, and I just thought you might—”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” The voice was flat, implacable. “So just get that car our of the way now, lady. I gotta go.” There was no point in arguing; Mrs. Howard moved her car and tried to figure out what to do next. After sitting in the restaurant parking lot for more than an hour, she drove home, phoned the Halifax police department, and asked to speak with an officer who specialized in prostitution. Redirected to the local RCMP detachment, she was told that the officer she should contact would be available next morning, and after a sleepless night—her husband was away at sea, so there wasn't even anyone to talk to—Mrs. Howard finally reached Constable Brad Sullivan. Reassured by his concern, and his promise to send Stacey's photo to the Toronto policeman he knew, she returned home feeling better than she had in days.

Dave Perry did take prompt action when Stacey's photograph landed on his desk at the Juvenile Task Force office in Toronto, circulating the image to his contacts on the downtown strolls. None of the girls recognized Stacey—or weren't saying if they did—but promised to keep an eye out for the pretty blonde teenager.

Unfortunately, Debbie Howard's actions to help her daughter would have met with a wall of resistance from an utterly transformed Stacey Jackson. If Dave Perry or Brad Sullivan had approached Stacey and offered to take her home, she would have refused. Everybody she knew, from her best friend, Annie Mae, to newer acquaintances like Amber, to the players and clients of The Game, was certain that police officers abused and robbed working girls and deliberately targeted black men as the likeliest suspect in any crime. The more deeply Stacey became involved in The Game, the more readily she believed even the vaguest stories of police brutality—no dates, names or places, but if her friends were telling it, well, it had to be true. The capper came when Annie Mae told her she'd been forced to give a cop a blow job in a police cruiser—again, no specifics, but that was enough to convince Stacey that all cops were scum.

She might have been better to question the increasingly nasty behavior of the pimps. Stacey and Annie Mae heard from several girls on the stroll that they had received severe beatings for minor infractions, and they were beginning to get nervous. Maybe a bit of a break would help, Annie Mae suggested to Stacey; here it was September fifteenth; they had been working every night for two weeks; and they deserved to have some fun. Each of them had made more than five hundred dollars that night, and there wouldn't be a problem if they went for a quick drink before returning home. The girls walked north on Yonge Street until they found an alternative music club—their clothes wouldn't raise too many eyebrows in a place that catered to the body-piercing crowd. Two drinks each and an hour of wild music; it was only one in the morning when Stacey and Annie Mae grabbed a taxi back to the apartment. Their men were in front of the TV, and barely looked up when the girls walked in—until Annie Mae tried joking with Peanut when he asked why she hadn't called him for a ride home instead of spending money on a cab. Annoyed at her light remark about his aggressive driving, he got up and walked over to her, his expression showing he was not amused. When he smelled liquor on her breath, Peanut grabbed her in a fury and threw her into the bedroom by the hair. Tears sprang to Stacey's eyes as she heard the enraged pimp slapping and kicking her friend, bellowing at her for wasting
his
money drinking.

“I think you get the point, Stacey,” Smit said, calmly looking away from the TV set. “You should never do something like that. We need to know where you are; she knows better than that. I was going to give you a night off and maybe take you out on the town, and now you've ruined it.” Stacey stood up without a word, went into the room she shared with Smit, and crawled into bed; a few moments later, he joined her, and, to Stacey's disgust, forced himself on her while Annie Mae could be clearly heard in the bathroom, crying as she tried to bathe her wounds. The incident strengthened Stacey's resolve to find a new man.