Peggy Holloway - Judith McCain 01 - Blood on White Wicker (8 page)

“I am happy here Dave. I really am. I just thought… I’m sorry” I said as I began to cry.

Dave sat down beside me and pulled me to him. I cried on his shoulder.

“That’s okay, Vicky,” he said, sensing my discomfort, “I’m not trying to put the moves on you. I just wanted to comfort you.”

He held me and let me cry for awhile, then took his handkerchief and dried my tears.

“There’s one more thing I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “We’re having a party tonight and there are not enough girls to go around.”

I just sat there and stared at him in horror. Surely he wasn’t asking what I thought.

He looked at me and said, “What? You thought you could just go on with the deliveries and not do what the other girls are doing? Wake up, Vicky, The others don’t think it’s fair that you only do deliveries and they’re pissed off about it, especially Marty. And frankly Vicky, you’ve had it pretty easy. So here’s what’s going to happen.

“Tonight at about ten o’clock, our guest will be arriving. Wear something simple but mature looking. You’ve been buying some nice things lately and you have good taste, so I’ll trust you on that. His name is Bill. He’s not very tall but built like a weight lifter. I think you’ll like him. Actually, it was Mike, Marty’s date for Mardi gras who referred him. He should be safe, because you know I only take people referred by people I know. Make sure he wears a rubber and ask for the money up front. I’ll give you a price list later.”

This conversation was embarrassing me and I could feel my face turn red. Dave laughed and called it endearing. But I didn’t care about being cute or endearing, so I jumped up and ran upstairs.

At nine o’clock, I took a shower and sat down at my vanity to put on my makeup. I was shaking. I jumped up ran down the hall to Jesse’s room. When I told her what was going on, she went to her dresser and opened a cookie tin and got out a baggie full of pot. She rolled a joint for me and told me to go back to my room and smoke the whole thing by myself to “mellow out.”

I tried to keep the smoke in my lungs a long time like I had seen Jesse do, but I kept coughing. I was finally able to get enough because, when I went downstairs, I was laughing so hard, I was crying.

Dave was standing at the bottom of the stairs and he did not look happy. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out on the front porch.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing Vicky? You’re stoned aren’t you?”

I couldn’t seem to control myself. The angrier he got the funnier it was and, as he stood screaming at me, I stood bend over laughing so hard, tears were streaming down my face.

“I’m so sorry Dave,” I said as soon as I could get my breath.

“Are you calm enough to listen to me? You have to get the money up front, you hear me? Just charge the flat two hundred dollar rate. Don’t worry about extras right now. Ok? You hear me Vicky?”

“I hear you Dave, you don’t have to scream.”

But as soon as he had mentioned the money I sobered up fast. I started crying. This made Dave so mad I thought he was going to hit me. He walked to the edge of the porch, pulled out a cigarette, lit it and blew the smoke out like an angry bull. Then he walked to where I was standing.

“I don’t get you, Vicky. You’ve done this before. The only difference is that this time, you have to ask for the money first. Oh, and don’t forget, if he wants to spend the night, it’s five hundred.”

“I’m so sorry, Dave. I’ll do it, don’t worry.”

He grinned from ear to ear, “That’s my good girl,” Then winked and walked off.

I took a tissue out of my pocket and licked it and wiped under my eyes to clean up the smeared mascara that I knew was there and went inside. There was laughter coming from the living room when I walked in,

“Here she is, Bill, your date,” Dave said.

A small but solid built man stood. He was wearing a pair of tan pants and black polo shirt. I felt over-dressed in my short black cocktail dress and black high heeled sandals. I was going to sit down but saw Dave jerk his head toward the stairs. I took Bill’s hand and lead him upstairs.

As I left the room, I heard Marty say, “It’s about time,” and Dave telling her to shut up.

When we got to my room, I realized that Bill wasn’t going to make this easy for me. He just stood and looked at me.

“I’m supposed to get the money up front,” I said, “so you need to give me two hundred, or five hundred, if you plan to spend the night.”

“And what might I be giving you that amount of money for?” he said.

I couldn’t understand why he was making this so hard for me. I knew I was blushing and I dropped my head.

“To have sex with me,” I mumbled.

He didn’t say anything but I heard him move close to me. All of a sudden he put what felt like a bracelet on my wrist. I thought at first he was giving me a present, but when I looked down, I got the scare of my life. I was wearing handcuffs.

Bill was said, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

When he lead me downstairs, several of the other men left and I didn’t understand why they weren’t under arrest too.

Dave was in the middle of a sentence. He broke off when he saw us.

“What the hell is this?” He said.

The men who hadn’t left also pulled out handcuffs and started handcuffing Dave and the girls.

The whole thing was very confusing. When we got to the police station, they separated us.

Bill and a female officer came into the interview room with me. They told me they were going to be taping the interview. Bill turned it on and announced who was present the time and date etc. The first thing they asked me was my age. I hesitated.

Bill said, “About sixteen?”

I hesitated a few minutes then decided it was better to be truthful with the police, so I told them that I was sixteen.

“Here’s what’s going on, Vicky, The others are all adults, and will probably go to prison. We’ve been trying to get Dave’s operation shut down for some time, and now, thanks to Marty, we got him. What I need from you is for you to tell me what was in those bags you delivered. You see, we have been watching you also.”

I was shaking really hard and my mouth was suddenly so dry, I could hardly talk.

Bill looked at the police woman and said, “Sandy, get a coke for her, will you?’

She pushed away from the wall where she had been leaning and left.

After drinking a few swallows of Coke, I said, “I never looked in those bags. Dave told me not to. But Marty delivered some of them. She might know.”

They didn’t keep me in the interview room but took me to an office. When we came out of the interview room, all the others were in the lobby yelling at each other.

When Dave saw me, he yelled, “What did you tell them, girl, and where you going, Marty? Hey why is she free to go? What’s going on here?”

I was glad when they led me into an office where a caseworker named Beth was. She was very kind to me and explained that I would be put into a home for runaway girls. It was a nice place, she explained.

CHAPTER 8

The home was a large house in Metairie. I had never met so many hateful girls in my life. Out of all the places I had lived, this was the worst. I had gotten used to having my own room with my own bathroom. Here, I had to share a room with five other girls.

I was assigned the top bunk of a bunk bed, and I had to share a bathroom with everyone. It was a bathroom with toilets along one wall and showers along another. There was absolutely no privacy at all.

They woke us up at 6:30 a.m. I think that was one of the hardest parts. We had to jump out of bed and hit the showers. Then go down to breakfast of milk and cereal. I needed coffee. I really needed coffee. Then we had to do the dishes, clean up the kitchen and be in the classrooms by 8:00 a.m.

My caseworker, Beth, had gone over to Dave’s house and packed up all my belongings. I realized that my clothes were much too sophisticated for this place, but I had gotten rid of most of the clothes I had in Bishop.

I went to class wearing designer jeans and sequined tops, or black leather pants with satin form fitting pullovers etc. I think that’s why the other girls despised me. There was one girl in particular, who was their ring leader. Her name was Joann but everyone called her Jo Jo. She wore tons of makeup and cheap looking rings on every finger and cheap looking chains around her neck.

She wore tight faded jeans and tight pullover sweaters even though it was June. Her hair was stringy dirty blond that looked like it had never been cut. It didn’t take long before I realized that she was a compulsive liar. She broke every rule there was, and there were plenty, and managed to always put the blame on one of the other girls.

The others were intimidated by her and I had seen her take someone’s little finger and bend it back until I thought surely it would break. When I saw what she was capable of, I knew I needed to stay away from her.

I had been a good student when I lived in Bishop, but I had fallen behind. I didn’t worry about it because I knew I was going to run away at the first chance I got. The days were long, the food horrible and I was bored with living with these little girls who thought they were grownups. I missed Dave and the girls so much and worried about them. I especially missed Jesse and her sense of humor, and Delilah and her good cooking.

 
One day I was sitting on the bed trying to make sense out of algebraic equations, when one of the nicer girls, Cindy came and sat on my bed.

“Do you want to know what the other girls are saying about you?” she asked. Without waiting for my reply, she went on, “They’re saying you came here from a whore house.”

“Who started such a rumor?” I asked.

“I think it was Ms. Casey.” She snickered, “I think she’s jealous of you. If I looked like her, I’d be jealous too.”

Ms. Casey looked a lot like the wicked witch of the North from The Wizard of Oz. I thought she was probably jealous of everyone.

But the girl in front of me was absolutely adorable. She had soft curly short blond hair with eyes the color of the sky on a clear day. She was the same age as me but she looked about twelve. I began to feel very protective of her and I didn’t like the feeling because I had felt that way about Carrie, my foster sister in Bishop, and felt guilty when I had to leave her.

I tried to shut off these feelings for Cindy. I didn’t want any more attachments. It seemed like every time I got close to someone I had to separate from them and it hurt too much. So I didn’t comment and she soon left my room.

 
It was announced in class one day that we were going on a field trip to Audubon Park. I almost laughed out loud. I knew that area so well I knew I would be able to escape. I had been in the home for about a month and it was now July. In fact, that was why we were going, for Fourth of July picnic.

That night, I lay in bed planning my escape. I knew it would be relatively easy to lose myself from the others and jump on the street car. The problem was trying to take all my clothes. I had money hidden in the lining of some of my clothes and it was quite a bit, almost $7,000 dollars.

Jesse had taught me how to sew it under the lining so that if we were ever caught, the police just might miss it. I started ripping out all of the lining. When I was finished, it was almost 4:00 a.m. I could see that the bundle of money was going to be too big. I had an oversized purse and I managed to stuff all the larger bills in there. But I still had such a big bundle left. Then just like that, I came up with a plan. It was risky, but I had no choice.

I stuffed the rest of the money and my purse under everything in my footlocker. One of the biggest punishments was for going into someone else’s footlocker, so I thought it would be fairly safe. Jo Jo was known to take things out of everyone else’s locker. But since she was the one I was going to see, I thought it would be okay. Jo Jo wasn’t one of my roommates, thank God, so I quietly sneaked out of my room and down the hall. I was going to use Jo Jo and I didn’t feel bad about it at all. She was on the bottom bunk, three doors down from mine.