Into music or movies? The pimp’s also got a state-of-the-art, high-tech, art deco, audio/video recording/editing studio. It’s behind a buzzer-locked iron door in a seemingly abandoned tenement motel in the worst part of town. You have to know it’s there to know it’s there. And you have to know the password to get in. Then you get offered beer and quiche by a girl who’s wearing gold mules. Gold mules. That’s all she’s wearing. They’re great looking mules.
Meanwhile, the pimp’s latest deal is recruiting beautiful young girls in Latvia and the other former Soviet republics. He meets them in dance clubs and signs them to “services contracts”, also drawn up by his Westside lawyer. The girls are brought over here, billed as “Swedish”, told to say that they are in college and studying economics and international relations, and then, having learned to say that, they are rented out to men to whom they can say it. The girls are told that their earnings will be split fifty-fifty with the pimp, but then he later mentions that he forgot to mention that the costs he advanced to fly them over and house them have to be deducted. Oh, and he should hold on to the rest of their money since they don’t have bank accounts yet and the green cards he’s promised them have been delayed.
The girls pretty quickly get the picture, but they would still rather be here than there, so they put up with it. Besides, the men are rich and showy, and these girls get shown. Shown and traded around. And they don’t realize that the pimp is so clever he knows that, sooner or later, these poor creatures will spill their guts to their Johns. And then the John will rise up to protect the girl, to defend her and get her out of this mess. The John will fall “in love”, and he’ll go to the pimp to save the day. And the pimp will be waiting. No problem, the girl can be let out of her contract. For a price. Believe it or not, in case after case, the John then buys the girl and marries her.
However, the most amazing aspect is the warranty: If you get tired of a girl you’ve purchased, you can trade her back in and upgrade. Again, at a price.
The returned girls then seem to vanish off to other venues, or maybe they just vanish altogether. Names and IDs come and go and get duplicated between girls. I met and got to know a girl named “Coco”. When she went away, another “Coco” took her place and used exactly the same fake ID. I never slept with “Coco”, but I was told that I could buy her for the special price of $20,000.
I declined.
But nonetheless I felt the tremendous urge to help this girl out. I actually referred her to friends in the entertainment business who could help her get work as an actress—anything so she could buy herself away from the pimp.
She declined.
It never occurred to me to murder and mutilate her. When she spurned my help, I wrote her off. Whatever she gets she deserves, I told myself; she’d made a choice. Right. Like she had a choice. But I had no choice either: Although all us males want to be saviors, we can’t be. It’s a delusion. It’s just that it’s so damn hard to sit back and be loved or rejected for who we are rather than what we can provide.
Bill Suff, wimpy though he is in captivity, is apparently one man who just can’t sit back and let himself be judged by these women. He’s determined to make them love him, determined to make them see the goodness and value in him, even if he has to kill them to open their eyes.
This is another reason I have a problem with Rhonda Jetmore’s testimony. Remember, she’s the one who lived. And she said that Bill was supposed to give her twenty dollars, but then he suddenly refused, telling her she’d only get a dollar, and before she could respond, his hands were around her throat.
That story just fits too well with the profile, but not with the reality. Bill was always willing to pay for sex, love, attention. You pissed him off by telling him that that wasn’t enough, you wanted something more, something he didn’t have to offer, that other things were more important to you than him and his money.
Kelly Whitecloud hopped into Bill’s van one night in August of l991. She quoted him a price of twenty dollars, but then she told him she wanted to stop for some fast-food first. You get the munchies when you’ve just shot up with heroin, and Kelly needed to munch. It’s a sad commentary when you crave McDonald’s as much as you crave drugs.
At the drive-up window, Kelly got Bill to order her a Big Mac and a caramel sundae with the nuts on the bottom. Got that? Nuts on the bottom. Kelly leaned across Bill and hollered at the microphone/speaker to make sure the burger boy inside understood.
But, of course, when Bill and Kelly were pulling out of the parking lot, Kelly looked at her sundae and discovered that the nuts were on top.
I’m not making this up.
Moments later, Bill and Kelly were storming into McDonald’s on foot, the accursed sundae held aloft like it was on fire. Like it was manure on fire. Like this was a HAZMAT matter. Bill demanded to see the store manager, and, without further ado, the sundae was replaced. Nuts on the bottom, you can be sure.
Back in Bill’s van, Kelly powered through the food—they were barely out of the parking lot when she got down to the nuts. Sated by drugs and food, Kelly was no longer in the mood for a date, and she didn’t need the money until she would need her next fix. She realized she could be quite content having scammed this joker for the food and leave it like that. She was in the mood to kick back and feel all the shit oozing through her veins. Drugs, sugar, and cholesterol—nothing like it.
So, Kelly Whitecloud suddenly turned on Bill Suff and told him angrily that the food was in addition to the twenty bucks he had to pay her for the date. She figured he’d balk and that would give her an excuse to back out of the deal. After all, when you work the streets you can’t let yourself get the reputation of being a scam-mer; you had to stage things so it looked like you were honest and forthright at all times.
But Bill didn’t balk. He wasn’t happy about the added expenditure, but he’d just made a very public display of being with this woman, of defending her and getting her nuts right, and now he wanted to get his nuts right. He wanted to get laid. He deserved to get laid. If it cost him more, well, that was all right. Tonight he needed attention. He wanted to be allowed to suckle. He wasn’t planning on killing anybody tonight, and he wasn’t wearing the killing clothes. In fact, he was wearing his big BILL belt buckle. It was okay for people to see him and remember him, because this hooker was going to come back alive, and then no one would think of him as the Riverside Prostitute Killer. Kelly Whitecloud was going to be his alibi.
Unfortunately, she didn’t see it that way. When Bill shrugged okay to the notion of paying the full freight plus the food bill, she’d had enough. She threw a tantrum, pretended he was giving her a hard time, and jumped out of the van just as he was pulling into traffic. Then she yelled at him as he drove away, just to make a show in case any of her peers were watching. Gotta make it look like she wasn’t the one reneging on her deal.
In the van, Bill was devastated, humiliated, rejected. He’d done everything expected of him, everything a man could do, and now he was alone. And, in the rearview mirror, that crazy bitch was waving and hollering at him.
You know, in the seven years I was married to the second ex-Mrs. Lane, she told me continuously that she was unhappy. She never sought a divorce; she just kept beating me up emotionally by telling me how unhappy she was and how it was all my fault. Whenever I’d pin her down on what I could do to make her happy, she’d tell me something that was impossible to deliver. For the first few years, she told me that the only way she could be happy would be if I hadn’t ever been married to my first wife. Yeah, it’s pretty impossible to make your mate happy when happiness is predicated on changing the past.