Ripper (13 page)

September 27th, three days before the "double event," a letter penned in red ink was mailed to the Central News Agency:

Dear Boss,

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper
red
stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope
ha. ha.
The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldnt you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.

Yours truly 

Jack the Ripper

Dont mind me giving the trade name wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now
ha ha

October 1st, the day after the "double event," a postcard was mailed:

I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, youll hear about saucy Jacky s work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldnt finish straight off. had not time to get ears for police thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.

Jack the Ripper

October 16th, a package was sent to George Lusk, president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. The parcel contained a rotting human kidney with a letter. The letter read:

From hell

Mr Lusk 

  Sor

I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer 

signed

Catch me when

you can

Mishter Lusk

The fifth and final victim, "Black Mary" Jane Kelly died November 9, 1888. Unlike the other women, she was killed indoors. "Indian Harry" Bowyer, who came to collect the rent, peeked through a broken window and found her body in Room 13 of Miller's Court.

The blood-soaked room was sparsely furnished with a bed, table, and two chairs. Wearing the tattered remains of a slip, Kelly lay faceup on the bed with her head turned toward the door. Her legs were spread wide in an obtuse angle, her abdomen ripped open and emptied of viscera. Intestines coiled from the cavity. Her uterus, kidneys, and one breast were found under her head. Her liver and the other breast were dumped by her feet. Flesh stripped from her pelvis and thighs was piled on the table. A pool of blood several feet wide had soaked through the bed. Her throat was cut to the bone, spattering the wall behind in line with her neck. Her face was slashed in all directions, severing her cheeks, eyebrows, nose, and ears. Her heart was missing.

Clothes were piled on the chair at the foot of the bed. Other clothing, a skirt and bonnet, lay charred in the fireplace. A half-burned candle was on the table beside the bed. The slashing, stabbing, skinning, and gutting seemed ritualistic.

With Kelly, the Ripper disappeared into the fog of myth.

Who was the Whitechapel murderer, and why did he kill? The list of suspects grows each year. Jack was a future king of England . . . a back-street abortionist . . . a Jewish slaughterman . . . a royal surgeon . . . a mad coachman . .. actually Jill. Jack's real name was Clarence, Druitt, Kosminski, Ostrog, Stanley, Klosowski, Sickert, Pizer, Westcott, Pedachenko, or Gull. Neill Cream, the poisoner, is said to have cried, "I am Jack the . . ." as the gallows sprung. Jack masked a conspiracy hatched by Freemasons . . . royalty . . . Catholics . . . the police . . . or the Establishment. Jack was a black magician seeking occult powers.

A black magician.

Crowley's suspect.

Tautriadelta.

Cross-three-triangles.

Symbols,
thought DeClercq.

Sex Babe

Vancouver 

1:45
P.M.

Sex is money.

Because sex sells.

Fantasy Escort Service was still going strong, despite Ray Hengler's ignoble death in a prison shower tunnel during the Ghoul case. In 1985 there were no escort agencies in Vancouver, because the hookers were all trolling bars or out on the streets. Back then, the center of the flesh trade was the West End, starting at Bute and continuing through Jervis and Broughton, before giving way to the chickenhawk boys hanging around Nicola. Hundreds of women slinked in after dark to flaunt their sexual charms, every corner street lamp a spotlight on men's dreams.

Then came Bill C-49:

(1) Every person who in a public place or in any place open to public view

(a) stops or attempts to stop any motor vehicle,

(b) impedes the free flow of pedestrian or vehicular traffic or ingress to or egress from premises adjacent to that place, or

(c) stops or attempts to stop any person or in any manner communicates or attempts to communicate with any person for the purpose of engaging in prostitution or of obtaining the sexual services of a prostitute is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

(2) In this section, "public place" includes any place to which the public have access as of right or by invitation,express or implied, and any motor vehicle located in a public place or in any place open to public view.

That's when the hookers moved out.

That's when Ray Hengler moved in.

It all began in a basement suite in Vancouver's East End. A seventeen-year-old student unable to make ends meet answered an ad in the paper:
Escorts. Now Hiring.
She arrived for the interview dressed in her Sunday best, descending cracked backdoor steps to a scummy underground home. Left of the door was a tiny office with a telephone, and a ripped couch baring some of its springs. Ahead was a pigsty bedroom with a dog that reeked of dog, and to the right a kitchen with dirty dishes everywhere. Two men sat at the table shooting Scotch chased with beer. One of them ogled, whistled, and said, "Toots, have you got jugs."

The breast man was Hengler, a fat oily slob with a skinhead's haircut and the nose of a hawk. He held a copy of
Hustler
out at arm's length, comparing the woman at the door to the centerfold. "Strip to your panties. Let's see what you got."

The student hesitated.

"Is there a problem?" asked the other man, Hans Stryker. "The job ain't typing. The job requires fucking. How you gonna fuck if you're afraid to show your ass?"

The woman stripped to her panties and did a little pirouette.

"Good," said the ass man. "Now let's see your muff."

Within a year, Hengler and Stryker were rich. Fantasy Escort Service was running fifty women and eight bisexual men. The agency sold time, not sex, so it was within the law, paying the city a license fee for each of its "companions." The problem arose when Hengler got into drugs and the nightclub scene: coke, smack, and strippers, wrapped in rock 'n' roll. Stryker wanted to stay legit. Hengler wanted it all.

The dispute was settled by Hengler buying his partner out. The money was still owing when Chandler tossed the promoter in jail, the deal dying when Hengler was gang-raped and stabbed in the shower tunnel. To recoup his investment, Stryker took over the stable.

There are currently sixty escort agencies in Vancouver, serving 5 percent of the male population. In 1991 they spent $610,000 advertising in
The Yellow Pages, The Province,
and
The Sun.
Stryker, who was top of the heap, ran his empire from an office on East Hastings Street, controlled from his mansion crowning the heights of Point Grey.

Six-foot-three with a heavy paunch and gelled-back hair, Stryker was a boxer gone to seed from too many good meals. His scarred face was boxed between cauliflower ears, his chipped teeth capped beneath a twice-broken nose. The sleeves of his billowy D'Artagnan shirt were rolled at the cuffs to flash his Rolex watch set in a band of marbled gold. The pinky ring on his jabbing hand was the size of a Loonie coin, distracting eyes from the "666" tattooed on the web between his thumb and index finger. Rain spattered the windows as he talked on the phone, graying his panoramic view of the harbor and the peaks.

"Rudy, you gotta see it as beef on a hook," he said. "A Go calls in, describes what he wants, and we fill the order. Steaks or cunt, the marketing's the same."

"What's my take, Hans? Run down those figures again."

"The basic unit of time sold is 300 bucks for an hour. Domination, doubles, or kinky is twice the price. The agency gets sixty-five percent of what each escort earns. You keep twenty-five and send the forty remaining to us. Here, we do an average of 1,131 Go's a month. At 300 minimum a pop, that's a gross of $339,300, which multiplied by twelve is 4,071,600 smackeroos. At sixty-five percent, we skim $2,646,540. Build a similar clientel, and you'll pocket 1,017,900 skins."

"Yeah, sure," Rudy scoffed. "Victoria isn't Vancouver."

"And then there are incidentals."

"Incidentals like what?"

"You gotta run a tight ship or the holes get greedy. I treat my girls fair—until they steal from me. Sooner or later they all steal. No one's honest these days.

"When a hole signs on, she pays a $300 security deposit. The money's forfeited if she breaks the agency's rules. A second offense dings her $600. Refusing to take a call is worth $300, too. She has to work four days a month without pay manning phones, which means you only hire skeleton staff. If she balks, clip her 240. If she gets charged with soliciting, the contract says she's fired, and you get to keep all she's earned."

"They go along with that?"

"Sure. Why not? The alternative is they fall into the hands of pimps. Besides, some of 'em earn 120,000 a year."

"The girls you supply? Where do you get 'em?"

"Remember the Gorby Girls ruckus last year? Brought to Canada as models and ended up stripping? Well, I got a scout in East Europe. A beauty wants into capitalism, he ships her out. We offer a six-month contract, so she gets a work visa. I charge her half a K for makeup and clothes, and no one sucks bone like a woman who that's her only ticket out. When the visa's up, I rent her to Japan, then dump her home and bring a fresh one out."

Rudy hemmed and hawed, making up his mind.

"What's to lose? It's like McDonald's," Hans said. "We franchise the restaurants. We supply the meat."

The floor beneath Stryker housed his harem and water works. It wasn't the Playboy Mansion, but Hans had aspirations. There was an indoor swimming pool, sauna, and Jacuzzi. Off the marble slab designed for shiatsu massage were cribs numerous enough to sleep a dozen "girls." At the moment only two were in residence, bubbling naked in the steamy whirlpool. The Amazon black was Peaches: "Sweet as the Georgia fruit." The hourglass white was Lyric, named for the London theater where her parents met. Lyric and Peaches teamed up for salt-and-pepper dates, but not last night, so this afternoon they discussed tricks of the trade.

"What I expected," Peaches said, "was the usual businessman's blues. John just in from England, with no friends in town. He wants some talk, and some head, while he adjusts to a new time zone."

"Lots of lonely people out there," Lyric agreed.

"So I go up to his hotel room and knock on the door. John who answers is sixty years old with a wife and five kids. He's dressed up like a woman, padded bra and all. High-level exec, he makes decisions for thousands of people each day. What he wants is to give up control for a while. Can't let anyone else know, so he shares it with me. Tears in his eyes, he pays me triple to make up his face. Just two girls, talking in front of the mirror."

"Lucky you," Lyric said. "Mine was the other end." chilling pool. Side by side, they dove into the turquoise water. When they surfaced, gooseflesh bumped their shoulders and breasts, puckering their nipples as they backstroked to the edge.

"First I meet the woman in a bar," Lyric said. "Picture her. Thirtysomething. Backcombed hair. Looks like your typical rock star slut. Unslung tits bulging the front of black silk pajamas, the clinging skin tucked into black knee-high boots. I'm the pro and the guys in the bar are humping
her
in their minds."

"Pussy-nibbler?" Peaches asked, waggling her tongue.

"Not that simple," Lyric said. "She takes me to the West End, up to this penthouse suite. Guy who lets us in calls her the Erotic Witch. He's the type who's always got a hard-on in his pants." She flicked her eyes toward the ceiling, above which Stryker worked. "Chunky, hairy, and likes to grope his balls. The Witch calls him Lou."

"You did him?" Peaches said.

"Not that simple. Lou's some sort of authority freak. A cop groupie with police stuff everywhere. Guy's a writer, judging from the book covers on the wall. A bird-watcher, too."

"Birds? You mean women?"

"No, the deadly kind. Eagles, owls, and hawks. Hooked beaks and claws. Had this chart by the roof deck, with binoculars."

"Don't tell me you did one of the
birds?"

"Not that simple. The Go that called requested blue underwear. Blue bra, blue stockings, blue garter belt. The moment we're in the apartment, Lou tells me to "show the blue," and while I strip he
rips
the clothes off the Witch. Black silk outfit falls to the floor. Then he starts fingering her in front of me. She's primed by the time we enter the bedroom."

Arms along the edge of the pool, they scissors-kicked the water.

"First thing I notice is the walls and ceiling are mirrored, then I see cords looped around the posts of the bed. Lou asks the Witch if she wants to be tied this time. The Witch says no. Lou gives me a cop's hat, tunic, and shades to put on. I'm to keep the jacket open so he can see beneath."