Somebody's Daughter (16 page)

Taunya needed her clothes first, so she called Eddy's apartment and asked him to bring them to her. That was how she found out that the Coach had not paid Eddy his leaving fee. Nor, she deduced from her former man's barely controlled anger, did he apparently have any intention of ever paying it. “Please, Eddy, I just want my things,” she implored. “I just want to go home.” Maybe they could talk about it, he said; Taunya agreed, and about a half-hour later a van pulled up outside the apartment. She walked up to the driver's window—and suddenly her heart was in her mouth: Manning Greer was sitting behind the wheel.

“Get in,” he said, and she obeyed promptly; exactly why he was there she didn't know, but she was fairly sure it didn't have anything to do with her clothes. She was right: Greer said it was time for her to get back to work and stop fooling around with that old man. He wasn't as angry as Taunya thought he would be, but even his mild tone conveyed that he was not there to discuss her options. She was with
his
family now, and she
would
take it back on the street. Greer drove Taunya to the stroll and informed her that Eddy would be picking her up at the end of the night.

Taunya had other ideas. Less than an hour had passed when she approached one of the Jamaicans' girls and said she wanted to join their family. Great, the girl said; Taunya could work with her and her “sisters” for the rest of the night, and then they'd take it from there.
Sisters
, Taunya repeated to herself; that sounded comforting. Although Greer's players were forever referring to “family” and “blood,” the girls working for them rarely felt that sort of bond. Close friendships did form: Stacey and Annie Mae had become inseparable; Taunya herself was very fond of Teri and Lori. Teri had finally relented and began working the street for Slugger a few days after Taunya made her decision, and the street work helped intensify their strong friendship.

But Scotian girls often ratted on each other to the pimps about those who broke the rules, not out of meanness but because of their stress-induced fear: a prostitute who told her pimp about the “bad behavior” of another man's girl might get a little slack; that her colleague would almost certainly face a punishment was, unfortunately, something she should have considered before stepping out of line. That was just the way The Game was played, Nova Scotia style—and few girls knew that better than Lynn Buchanan. She didn't wait to speak to the Big Man: when she saw Taunya join the enemy, she walked over and ordered the teen to return to the Scotian section of the stroll. Three of the Jamaicans' girls, who were standing near the new recruit, retorted that Taunya was now with
their
man, Sweet Lou; unless Lynn was looking to join them, she should go back to her own beat. Ignoring their laughter, she fixed Taunya with a cool stare: “You just made one very big mistake, child”—and with that, she rejoined Lori and the others on the other side of the street. One of Taunya's newly acquired “sisters” headed to a phone booth to call Sweet Lou and moments later a sports car pulled up to the stroll to pick up the newest Jamaican property.

Indeed, Taunya's “betrayal” infuriated the Big Man and his family, still smarting from the incident with High T. outside Greer's club. They considered scooping Taunya off the stroll that night and giving her a lesson she'd never forget, but that could wait. The Jamaicans needed to get the message first. Contrary to High T.'s contemptible parting shot to the injured Greer; Montreal belonged to the Big Man and his Scotian family, not these New Yorkers. While Sweet Lou, a player who favored the seventies image of Hawaiian shirts, suede jackets, and snakeskin shoes, talked to Taunya in his car near the stroll, Greer his cousins, and the redoubtable Bullet waited and watched from their vantage point a few blocks away. As they had hoped, Lou returned to the stroll periodically to check on Taunya and the other girls—he knew the Scotians would be real pissed—but he didn't get a chance to pay a second visit. As Lou pulled out into traffic, Eddy eased the van over to follow: Bullet was beside him, and Slugger sat with the Big Man in back. Lou was out of the downtown area before he noticed the van following him: “We got a problem,” he told his cousin and a friend traveling with them. In New York, Lou always carried a gun, but he never risked taking it across the border; his flashy tricked out Acura Legend sedan and loud clothes drew enough notice from Customs officials as it was and he had been searched more than once. His companions had no weapons, either. Well, there was no choice in the matter, as far as Lou was concerned. “I'm just gonna pull over and pay the fool,” he said. Forking over a leaving fee was a lot easier than getting mixed up in a turf war. Sweet Lou had the same attitude Manning Greer had adopted when he was out numbered by High T. and his friends, and as in the earlier incident the issue was not so much money as it was turf. Unlike Greer, Sweet Lou had the advantage of better advice. His cousin, a Canadian at whose instigation Lou had expanded his thriving New York sex trade into Montreal, had a much clearer picture of the situation. “This ain't about no leaving fee, Lou,” he said urgently. “These guys wanna bitch-whip you and take your stable, man. They're crazy, man! You pull over when we ain't packin', and it's gonna be pain city, man.… Keep drivin', okay?”

Lou had heard the stories about how the Scotians took over a stroll, whether in Toronto or anywhere else, and didn't want to get involved in that kind of scene; he did stay on the road, while Eddy and his family bided their time. As a long stretch of open road extended in front of them, Eddy floored the accelerator and pulled out to pass; the two vehicles raced down the road, almost in tandem. Bullet pulled out his piece and rolled down the window. “C'mon man, ice that fucker,” Eddy shouted. “I'm runnin' out of road!” Just as they neared the sweeping curve, Bullet took aim, then pulled the trigger. “I nailed him, man!” Bullet pointed towards Lou's car as it veered to the left, almost forcing the van off the road. Eddy hit the brakes, and as the men watched, Lou straightened out his car and shot ahead again. Enough was enough; Greer figured they had at least managed to scare Lou, and they didn't need a running gun battle—even the Big Man accepted that the police, stupid as they were, would find their way to the scene. Eddy turned off the roadway, while Lou, unconvinced the crazy Canucks had actually left, kept speeding ahead while trying to calm his cousin, who had taken one of Bullet's slugs in the arm.

He also pulled out his cellular phone to get word of the chase back to his people. For the next half-hour, just about every Jamaican and Scotian player had been on the phone at least once. It was only an hour or so later that one of the New Yorkers arrived on the stroll to drive Taunya over to Lou's Montreal pad.

Sweet Lou knew she was the reason for the attack and decided he would get her out of the picture until things cooled off a little. The Jamaican car took Taunya away from the downtown stroll before Eddy returned in the van looking for her.

The apartment was buzzing with activity. One of the girls tended to the wounded pimp (whose arm, it turned out, had only been grazed), while another started tossing clothes into suitcases. Meanwhile, Lou paced from room to room, barking orders into his cellular phone. He was leaving town and he wanted his business looked after while he was gone and he wanted his girls in New York to get ready for his return there. As for the Halifax teenager who'd generated all this furor, she was helping the girl who was packing—and she was as excited as she'd ever been in all her fourteen years. Taunya Terriault was going to the Big Apple, for at least a week! There would be time later to think about getting out The Game and returning home; all Taunya could do was dream about New York. By midnight on July eighteenth, they were en route to the U.S. border, Lou traveling alone while the two teenage girls rode with his cousin, who had Canadian identification. The precautions proved unnecessary; officials at Plattsburgh, New York, couldn't have been less interested in either car. In town the tiny convoy stopped briefly to make an exchange—Taunya and the other girl joined Lou, and his cousin turned back towards Montreal; he'd be looking after business until Lou got back—despite the Big Man's efforts, he was going to return, and this time he'd be well armed. With weaponry, at any rate: this child knew nothing about Manning Greer and his family, but that was all right. She was truly
fine
, and she'd make him some good money, more than enough to cover the expense of the trip—“ain't that right, girl?” She might have known it wasn't going to be a vacation; but by now Taunya didn't even bother protesting; she was learning quickly that a prostitute never travels with her pimp for free. She works to defray the cost for both of them.

Taunya didn't worry about that or anything else; she was having a great time so far. The chatty teenager fell into an awed silence as Lou drove through the streets of Manhattan, all glass and steel and concrete. She had never seen so many people in her life, or heard so much noise, from the blaring of hundreds of car horns, to the shouts of street vendors or the cacophony of outdoor entertainers, all vying, like Taunya Terriault, for a slice of the Apple. Taunya would soon find out that she might have been handed a slice that was less than appetizing; her first hint was Lou's house, which looked impressive on the outside but opened to reveal what she could only describe as a zoo. Taunya met seven young women who lived with Lou, and she gave up trying to count the children running around everywhere. The women were all in Lou's stable of prostitutes, and he claimed all the children were his. After clearing a pile of toys off the bed in a room upstairs, Taunya managed to sleep fitfully for a few hours before getting ready for work.

As she soaked in the tub, contemplating the scary yet exhilarating prospect of being a prostitute in New York, there was a loud knock at the bathroom door; it was Lou, cursing, and ordering her to open the door immediately. Taunya jumped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around herself, and let her pimp inside. He shouted at her furiously: “Girl, you never, never, put a locked door between you and me. I don't care what the fuck you do in here; you
do not
lock that door. You are my property, and if I want to come in here and watch you, I don't want to wait till you open the door. Do you understand that?” Taunya had never seen Lou angry before—was he going to hit her, the way Eddy did when he got upset? Lou took one look at her terrified expression and quickly softened his tone. “It's okay, girl, you're new. You'll learn. I'm the best man you ever want to work for, as long as you follow my rules. Now get yourself ready for work.” He wasn't quite through; Lou wanted to have a good look at this girl he'd gone through so much to acquire. She complied, and after taking her in for what seemed an eternity, he let her in on another rule: he might decide to have sex with her, but there was only one way she could become one of his “wives.” Lou wanted something Taunya knew she would not be selling on the street; when she was ready, he would have anal intercourse with her, and after that she would be his forever. Taunya knew with absolute certainty she would never be ready for that—being one of Sweet Lou's wives was an honor she would just have to forgo.

The stroll where Taunya spent her first night in New York was a litter-strewn, frightening filthy strip of pavement. It was also incredibly busy: the girls here didn't stand around waiting for customers, as they did in Montreal; a long line of cars stretched back along the curb, and the prostitutes walked from car to car, jumping in when a driver accepted their offer. A few moments later, they'd move along to the next car in line. Taunya couldn't help thinking of it as an assembly line for blow jobs. The price was twenty bucks, one-quarter the Montreal rate. The crowded, dirty stroll and bargain-basement prices sickened Taunya. It was one of the primary reasons the men from New York wanted in on the Canadian sex trade: not only was it a more appealing atmosphere, but is also provided prostitutes with more than double the income of their American counterparts. Not that Taunya was looking forward to retiring to the streets of Montreal; the longer she spent working the New York stroll, the more certain she became that she just had to find a way to get out of The Game altogether.

For Taunya, the week in New York was an accelerated education in life at its seediest. The fourteen-year-old could not even begin to guess how many men she had had sex with on the fist night alone. Nor was Sweet Lou's interference confined to the bathroom incident: he decided to provide Taunya with his “training program” in the prostitution trade, starting with the art of faking oral sex. None of his girls actually
performed
oral sex on the customers; it was done with what he laughingly called “sleight-of-hand”—and what the fashion industry terms “big hair.” “You spray that hair up, and he can't see past it anyway,” Lou explained. “You just make some noise and use your hands, girl.” That part of the program was fine with Taunya—she could feel a little better about herself, and a little smarter than the men she was servicing, most of whom disgusted her. Amazing what men will settle for, she thought; none of them can tell they aren't getting what they paid for! Far less appealing was Lou's training in what he liked to call “'ho loyalty.” It had started with his order that she never lock the bathroom door. Lou liked to watch Taunya and the other girls whenever and where ever he could. He reasoned that they had to consider him a part of themselves if they were to be loyal to him. There could be nothing they wanted to do that he would not be welcome to watch.

Lou also decided that Taunya should wear his mark: a monogram bearing his name, with a flower below it; when he asked a tattoo artist to etch this creation onto Taunya's left breast, she didn't even flinch—not that she wanted the tattoo, but she never argued with Lou. If he was happy with her, Taunya thought he might let her go home once they were back in Montreal.