Somebody's Daughter (9 page)

While he was working at the Cultural Centre, Smit took a unique baby-sitting job—for a group of prostitutes. The girls considered him a charmer and marvelled at how he enjoyed playing with their children, and his association with Manning Greer, at whose behest he had started the job—their parents were good friends—immediately raised his stock with some of the young men he was spending time with. Smit could see for himself how successful Greer was: only in his early twenties, the Big Man made more money than anyone else he had ever known. The money was only a small part of what attracted Smit to The Game. The young man really liked how his friends treated him after they saw him driving Manning Greer's car. Smit wanted people to look up to him the way they admired Greer. That was three years before; Smit helped to recruit some high-school friends into The Game, continued baby-sitting for the players, and waited for his chance to strike out on his own. Stacey looked like just that chance.

Peanut Cleary was another story. Peanut had already achieved a high level of respect in the street and was a man born to The Game. The only child of a single mother, Peanut had been raised by his grandparents, or so they thought. The truth is Peanut very quickly fell under the charismatic spell of his uncle and he decided at age eleven that he would be just like him. Peanut's uncle was a pimp, one of the first to enter The Game from North Preston. Peanut's only real memories of his childhood home were of the regular visits made by his uncle. The older pimp would stay with his parents—Peanut's grandparents—whenever he was in the Halifax area. For weeks at a time Peanut would cruise the streets in the pimp's fancy car and listen to the stories of the wild city life. Peanut left home and moved to Montreal with his uncle when he was only thirteen; he'd been playing The Game now for fifteen years. When pimping became a career choice for so many young men from Nova Scotia there were those who thought Peanut would be their leader. Peanut had no desire to set himself up as anyone's leader; he was only in The Game for the money—a lesson his uncle had taught him. Peanut had been a pimp longer than Manning Greer and had probably made more money; but Greer's size and his fierce temper had made him a leader by default. Peanut was one of many Nova Scotia pimp's who had been in The Game long enough to know how it really worked. He was close to Manning Greer and the two often watched out for one another but they also shared a degree of mutual respect. Peanut was an associate—not a follower—and Manning Greer was okay with that.

The drive back to Halifax took almost two days, and it seemed to Stacey that she spent every moment of it trying to fend off the charming but aggressive Smit. Finally, just west of Nova Scotia, Smit relented and told Stacey he accepted her position—but if she changed her mind, he'd be waiting. He made it clear she would have to work for him; he was owed
that
much for giving her the ride home; that was his reason, anyway. Stacey wasn't paying attention. She was strictly square now.

It was almost midnight when Peanut and Smit dropped the two girls off at Annie Mae's apartment in Halifax, and just after they waved good-bye in the parking lot, they heard someone call to them. Annie Mae peered into the darkness and suddenly saw a tall figure approach. “Shit, it's Terrance's brother Toddy,” she whispered. “He musta been waiting for us.… How the hell did he know when we would be here? Shit, Stacey, this is gonna be trouble. You just be quiet and let me talk.”

Toddy Anderson was only seventeen, but he was very strong, very nasty, and very angry. He walked straight up to Annie Mae, grabbed her by the hair, threw her to the ground, then started kicking her, telling her between the kicks and curses that she was working for him until T-bar got back from Toronto. Stacey screamed, and Toddy turned on her, too, slapping her across the face: “You're workin' for me now too, bitch!” Stacey defiantly insisted she was square now, and would straighten things up with Kenny when he got home. Just as Toddy was readying a response to this arrogance, a car pulled into the lot, forcing him to back away. Stacey lifted Annie Mae to her feet and helped her inside, locking the door behind them. Annie Mae was more angry than hurt; how could she have allowed some seventeen-year-old bubble-gummer to do it to her—and, worse, leave convinced he had some claim to her. Well, Toddy would back down soon enough, when he found out she was working for Peanut again. Not that her new man would punish Toddy; the two of them would call it a misunderstanding, caused by that “Choosy Suzy” routine of hers. So what? At least she wouldn't have to work for that big, mean baby; and if he was stupid enough to try forcing the issue—demanding she hustle for him despite Peanut's new claim to her—then Toddy Anderson would be the one with sore ribs and a bruised pride. Come to think of it, that wouldn't be a bad idea.

Stacey wasn't spending much time on thoughts of revenge. She decided not to return to her apartment or pick up her baby from Roger's parents; not just yet. She needed some time to clear her head and figure out how to deal with this tangled web of players trying to say they owned her. After spending the night at Annie Mae's, she borrowed clothes from her friend and headed out on the bus to the Annapolis Valley. Maybe a few days with her Aunt Jean would help her. The visit seemed to be just what Stacey needed—some rest, good food, some heart-to-heart talks about her hopes to go to college. Stacey had only said there'd been some bad arguments with her mother (whose sister had had a few of those herself), so there was no cross-examination when Stacey, who looked very drawn and tired, said she just needed a bit of space. Her aunt even agreed to keep their visit a secret, after Stacey promised to call her mom when she got back to her apartment in Dartmouth. By the time the bus was on the outskirts of town, Stacey was ready to reclaim her life: she'd get a job, and she'd avoid these pimps, refusing even to talk to them if they called.

Debbie Howard was so delighted to hear her daughter's strong new resolve to stay away from the pimps and prostitutes she'd been calling friends that she immediately forgot her disappointment in Stacey's decision to take off to Toronto without telling her—and spend three days in the Valley before calling.

Stacey thought she had managed to break away from the nightmare that Kenny had introduced her to, at least for a couple of weeks as she began to see her life return to normal. As the Labour Day weekend approached it became clear her plans did not take into account the priorities of the pimps she had become involved with. When Toddy called Toronto to tell his cousin the news about Stacey leaving The Game, Kenny Sims was furious that he'd spent so much time on this girl without seeing any serious return on his investment. True, Stacey had earned enough in one night to cover his financial investment in her; but his time was worth more and he wanted compensation. Bad enough that T-bar had lost Annie Mae—but at least he could console himself that she did that to everyone. This was different. He was going to get his money's worth out of this bitch, and then some; Kenny told Toddy to find Stacey and send her, or a leaving fee back to Toronto immediately. The younger pimp kept an eye on the stroll for a week or two; fully expecting to see Stacey there. When she did not return to work he simply went to her apartment and pounded on the door, ignoring her tears and pleas and calmly informing the terrified teenager that he would knock down the door and beat her severely unless she either came up with her leaving fee—eight hundred dollars—or returned to Toronto. With no job and no education that would bring her anything but minimum wage, Stacey knew she couldn't come up with that kind of cash—and Toddy wasn't interested in arranging a pay-back schedule. Stacey considered asking her father for the money, but that would mean telling him what she was doing. She just
couldn't
talk to her mom, who'd been so thrilled to hear of her new plans. No, she would work for Toddy; and she persuaded him to promise he would give the money to Kenny and then leave her alone. It wouldn't take long and then she'd be free.

Why didn't she call the police?
It's a good question, and one most people in Stacey's position might have been expected to ask themselves at about this point in the sequence of events. Unfortunately, Stacey would never even have contemplated making such a call. She hadn't been in The Game for very long, and she badly wanted out, but Stacey Jackson had spent long enough in the murky world where respect means fear to have absorbed some of the twisted thinking characteristic of the prostitution business. Girls like Rachel and Annie Mae, who had been prostitutes for years, truly hated all police officers; indeed, Annie Mae had even told Stacey she'd been beaten and sexually assaulted by cops. Although she had never been more than vague about time and place when Stacey asked, enough of her anger against the law seeped through her friend's equally vague doubts—policemen didn't do that kind of thing, did they?—to plant the seeds of hatred in the younger girl's mind. Never mind that both of them knew from personal experience how pimps behaved towards their girls. That was different; players were
family
, and both Annie Mae and Stacey knew the words
family
and
violence
often went together. They did in their families, anyway. But the police? They were, quite simply, the enemy. They stopped you from working and they treated you like dirt, besides. Stacey was also afraid she would be charged and sent to prison, she knew what she had done in Toronto and in Halifax was illegal. No, the police were to be avoided, always.

Not an assessment with which either Constable John Elliott or Constable Brad Sullivan, Halifax-area RCMP officers, would entirely disagree. At least, not considering prevailing attitudes to prostitutes at the time they began a fact-finding mission in February 1990 to identify pimps working in Halifax. The assault accusation would make them shake their heads in exasperation, but they would understand its origins. As John Elliott expresses it today, many of the people in positions of power—law-makers as well as law-enforcers—saw prostitutes, even those younger than Stacey, as “sluts who are out there every night doing what they want to do.”

RCMP officers Brad Sullivan and John Elliott.

The two officers' involvement in juvenile prostitution had its origins in the August 1989 disappearance of a Halifax girl, eighteen year-old Kimberly McAndrew, whose fate remains unknown. Kimberly finished her shift at a local Canadian Tire store and left for home; she never got there. Halifax police were considering two theories: either she was a runaway, or she was a victim of murder, possibly at the hands of someone she knew. Kimberly's father, a former RCMP officer, insisted his daughter had not run away—she just wasn't the type to leave without contacting her family or her boyfriend. This was a teenager with plans for her future, and there was nothing in her behavior before the disappearance to suggest a problem so terrible that she had to run away without leaving a trace.

In January 1990, the investigation into McAndrew's disappearance was faltering when a third theory surfaced. An informant who claimed to have information about Kimberly met with Elliott, an investigator with the Cole Harbour RCMP, and told him the girl had been picked up by a pimp not far from the store where she worked. This man had met Kimberly on several occasions when he came to buy auto parts, the informant said; and though it was difficult for Elliott to accept that Kimberly McAndrew might have been abducted and put to work as a prostitute in another part of the country, he decided to at least share the information with another Mountie.

Brad Sullivan and John Elliott were teammates in the Metro Halifax Police curling league—and they had become close friends. Elliott knew that Sullivan, an investigator at RCMP headquarters in Halifax, had a keen interest in the McAndrew case and had been monitoring its progress since the beginning. It was only logical for the two officers to discuss the possibility that Kimberly had been abducted, and Sullivan thought they should try it out on the Halifax police investigators. The reception they received was cool—at the time, police did not believe there was a serious pimping problem in the city and considered the idea of an abduction far-fetched. Brad Sullivan was not to be put off that easily; he asked for time to pursue his theory, and although this was not an RCMP case, he was told to go ahead. Anything relevant could be passed on to the investigators handling the file.