The Other Side of Midnight (16 page)
The police always make themselves look good, but they'll come around looking for help. I remember they came around looking for a brand new Caprice which was stolen right off the RNC parking lot. I saw the guy driving around because it was a lousy paint job, and the big silver Constabulary crest was showing right through the paint. And they couldn't find that car? Buddy was driving it around like it was his own, day and night. I ran into him a dozen times.
They came up to the stand looking for it. “Anyone see that?”
“I saw the guy driving around,” I said. “It's a bad paint job, though. The crest is showing right through the paint. I'm after running into him a dozen times.”
They found it in the ghetto down on Little Street up on blocks. Everything was gone out of it; she was stripped down to the bone.
Who Flushed All the Ecstasy Down the Toilet?
Walter, driving for twenty-three years
This guy I drove somewhere once, a drunk, phoned back and said, “I left my medication in the car.” The driver picked it up, and it was Oxycontin. He just flushed it down the toilet. I would do the same thing.
I picked up this young girl. She might've been sixteen, and she was out of her mind. When she got up and left the car, I looked back and there was this tiny little pointer light. I picked it up, but it didn't work. I flicked the switch and figured the batteries were dead. I opened it up, and here it was full of ecstasy. I went in and flushed the stuff down the toilet. One of the guysâhe ended up punching the dispatcher in the face one night and got thrown out of the standâwas in the bathroom and said, “Who flushed all the ecstasy down the toilet?”
“Me,” I said.
“What did you do that for? I could've sold that for loot.”
“I'm not adding to someone else's misery,” I said. “It's my ecstasy, and I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it.”
Bazil, driving and dispatching for twelve years
We drive a lot of the methadone people. The government pays a fortune to get them back and forth to the drugstores. This is big business for some of the stands.
Some of these people are eighteen years old and you got to bring them down to line up to get their methadone. I guess it's a testament to the amount of drugs that's on the go when you see all of these young people on this program. You go to a drugstore that's dispensing the methadone and all you see are taxis dropping them off to go in and get their methadone. It's sad.
It doesn't seem like many people get off the program, either. I thought that with methadone they weaned you down off of it. They decrease your dose to try to get you off of it. At least, that's the way they do it up in British Columbia. There's one guy I've been driving for four years, and his dose hasn't come down at all. He's been taking the same dose for the last four years. They're just giving them this drug so they're not craving Oxycontin and out committing armed robberies to pay for it.
What Happens Between You and the Driver
Frank, driving for twenty-nine years
You can go to your doctor and say, “I've been smoking pot all my life, and I can't get off it.” They'll put you on methadone. It's as simple as that. Poofâyou're on it! “I got a cocaine habit.” Poofâ you're on it! You got a lot of people out there who wake up in the morning and say, “Where am I going to get my next buzz to?” That means they're too far gone into their coke, or they're too far gone into their Oxycontin. Methadone is a version of heroinâthat's all. It takes away the edge. They're giving the addicts the buzz for nothing.
For instance, take buddy on Queen's Road. He'll call us at ten to eight every morning. He goes up to Shoppers Drug Mart, and he's the first one in line. If he can't make it, he'll call. The boys even know his authorization number, it's gotten that bad. Everybody gets an authorization number. If you're on welfare and you have a doctor's appointment, you call your social worker, and then they'll call us to approve a taxi. The Department of Social Services will authorize us to pick you up at your house, bring you to your doctor and, when you're ready, drop you back home again. Then we'll bill Social Services based on the information provided.
There's a good example, a crackhead who wants to sell his charge slip. [
He points out the window to a young couple sitting on
the sidewalk.
] He's got an $80 slip to go up to Paradise Medical Clinic. This guy gets his methadone at Downtown Pharmacy, but every week he gets authorization to go to Paradise Medical Clinic. He'll turn around and sell that $80 charge to a driver for thirty bucks to buy dope. But what happens between you and the driver happens between you and the driver. When a driver normally comes home with fifty bucks, and now he got a chance to come home with seventy or eighty bucks, I'm not going to say anything.
There Are No Prostitutes in St. John's
Theodore, driving for thirty-eight years
Melissa Ditmore, chair of the New York-based Sex Workers' Project,
has pointed out that 85 per cent of New York sex workers operate
indoors. In a study which focused on fifty sex trade workers,
Behind Closed Doors: An Analysis of Indoor Sex Workers in New York City
,
she determined that while only 15 per cent of prostitutes work the
streets, they account for an overwhelming number of arrests. Her findings
share many similarities with other North American cities, including
St. John's, where prostitutes work in places like brothels, massage
parlors, private homes and bars. Often it is only when communities
complain about sex workers lingering in their neighbourhoods and
police focus on sweeps and arrests that the public are made aware of
them. The corner of Church Hill and Duckworth Street has long been
known to be frequented by street prostitutes. CBC reported that over
a two
-
month span six prostitutes and nine Johns were arrested in the
area. Reinforced with images of discarded condoms, the reporter
stated, “Everyone knows they're working the street to feed their drug
addiction.” But most sex workers enter the profession in times of financial
vulnerability, and only a minority get involved because of drug
abuse.
The indoor sex trade has not been widely investigated. In fact,
most studies focus on street prostitution. Because the sex trade industry
is largely invisible, existing behind closed doors, the perception remains
popular that there are no prostitutes in St. John's. But the
common themes in the following monologues suggest that data collected
by the Sex Workers Project reflect systematic phenomena and
is not merely anecdotal.
I picked up this young girl working security on the east end of downtown. “What are you doing down here tonight?” I asked her.
“Why? What's wrong with this end of town?” she said.
“This is where the hookers come to get picked up.”
“What are you talking about?” she said. “There are no prostitutes in St. John's.”
“There are no prostitutes in St. John's? I'll show you something on the way there now, just to prove my point.”
I went up Duckworth Street right to the corner of Church Hill and Duckworth Street and there was this young one stood up. She was about seventeen years old. “Do you see her right there? If I stop this car she's getting aboard, and we're going off and having sex. That's what she's waiting there for.” I went to the corner of Gower Street and Church Hill and there was another one. “See that one? She's pimping herself out for a few bucks.”
“You're not serious?” she said.
“That's why I asked you what you were doing in this end of town.”
“I'm not going down there no more,” she said.
Bazil, driving and dispatching for twelve years
If you come in from out of town and you're looking for companionship for the night, a cab driver usually knows somebody. The girl might say, “If you know anyone looking for a date, here's my number.” That's a common practice between prostitutes and cab drivers. They'll use a certain taxi on a consistent basis to solicit their business for them.
Mark, driving for twenty-one years
I used to drive around a prostitute, Tatiana. When she went out on a call, she never used any other taxi driver but me, unless I wasn't on the road. One night in particular, we started six or seven o'clock and by eight-thirty the next morning her phone was still going. I did my bit and slept in the car with the seat back waiting by the phone. Every time she would come out from doing a John she'd throw the money in my lap: “Hold onto that for me.” I mean, I had a couple thousand dollars in front of me. She got out of the car that morning and gave me three or four hundred bucks. That's a nice big pay. If she needed a loan of money during the week, or if she needed a dozen beer or a pack of smokes, I had no problem giving it to her. I knew I'd get it back, plus some.
Tatiana wasn't her real name. As a matter of fact, I don't even know her real name.
One time, she offered me money to do her. I said, “No. I'll do you when you win a million.” That was our little joke.
She used to say, “One of these days, I'm going to win that million, and you're doing me.”
It's like anything else, I suppose. You want what you can't have.
The short and long of it is you got to be honest. This is not a racket to be at if you're going to keep secrets from your wife. The phone can't ring at one or two o'clock at night and you got to hide around the corner with the phone. If you can't keep your dick in your pants this is not a job to be at. Your marriage will suffer, trust me on that. If you're married, you can't have girlfriends or flings while you're taxiing. Somebody will see you with her, and that somebody will phone your wife. I was at home one night, and the phone rang. My wife answered. “Do you know where your husband is to tonight? He's out fucking around on you.” Missus went on and on and on and on.
Eventually, my wife said, “Listen, honey, I don't know who you're supposed to be talking to, but you're obviously talking to the wrong person. My husband is sat right here along side of me. Would you like to talk to him?”
My wife's friends had a problem with it more than my wife did: “I can't believe you're letting him drive these women around.”
“What do you mean, âI'm letting him drive these women around?'” she said. “That's his fucking job. What's he going to do? I don't let him do nothing. He still got to pay the bills at the end of the month.”
What Happened to the Business?
Ronald, driving for twenty-five years
Some social scientists say it is environmental influencesâwhere
the taxicab drivers were brought up, their “cultural determinism”â
which has kept some tied to the underclass. Others point to economic
systems and their institutions, in this case, the stand owners and the
municipal regulators, a theory known as “structuralism.” Most, however,
like famed sociologist Denis Gilbert, would agree that the culture
of taxicab drivers, which includes bootlegging, is a “response to social
constraints and opportunities of the structural conditions that generated
it.”
It was a good stand with twenty-seven cars and lots of work. And then they started bootlegging. It got so bad that the dispatcher used to have bottles of rum down at the office in the east end. If you phoned for a taxi, they used to say, “That'll be twenty minutes, or half an hour.” But if you phoned for a bottle of rum, you'd have it right away.
It all boils down to caring. The dispatcher didn't care about the customer getting a taxi. He wasn't making anything off that. But the guy who wanted a bottle of rum would get that bottle of rum right away because the dispatcher was pocketing $20. You'd get your rum right away, but you wouldn't get your taxi right away.
What happened to the business? It slowly disintegrated to nothing. Customer service was always good until the dispatcher realized he could make money selling booze. The owner didn't care. He was half-cracked. They never had a psychiatric assessment done on him, but he wasn't all there. If there were fifteen complaints against the stand in one night, he owned eleven of them.
The Constabulary knew it was going on. Yes, Jesus, I'd say the cops bought booze off them. It's like anything else. The cops know everything. They know who is selling drugs, to who and where and how and when. But do you bother with it? Do you gather up a task force to do it? I don't think so.
