Chapter 26: Failure

I spent all fall and winter trying to work out a strategy with Les for improving conditions in the Washburn Neighborhood.

“Rapes and prostitution decrease in winter,” Les told me as we looked out his office window on the park. “Even power-mad men don’t want to go through the extra work of unwrapping a woman bundled up against the cold. And a prostitute in snow pants and a parka doesn’t attract much attention.” Ten degrees outside and I could see that the park was pretty much deserted.

“Where do they go?” I asked. If they weren’t turning tricks, how were the women of the street living? Where were addicts getting their fixes if the pusher wasn’t available?

“A few use bad weather to make a break. They come to the clinic and ask for help shaking their addictions and we send them out to the shelter. The shelter is a pretty unhappy place in the winter. There’s a lot of crying. A lot of screaming,” he said. “Some either try to make it south to warmer climes or try to get a hotel job on Hennepin Avenue. If you know where to look, there are at least a dozen escort agencies that fill orders around the convention center and sports arena. A few go to strip clubs, but the clubs are pretty picky about whether a dancer is turning tricks.”

Les pointed at a white Lincoln Continental cruising the west side of the park.

“That’s Ernie. He’s smooth. None of his girls ever show a mark from being mistreated. I’d even say he fancies himself a hero. Certainly some of his girls think of him that way. Prostitutes are actually safer from assault and rape than the college girls. They are protected. He has a big house on the south shore of Lake Harriet and keeps a dozen girls there for the winter.”

“Wait! That’s my neighborhood!”

“He’s probably one of your neighbors. He brings two girls at a time and cruises all the popular market spots between here and Hennepin and between Lake and Franklin. The johns all know his car and know they’ll get a quality woman. Quality meaning beautiful and willing. Ernie makes sure they understand that if they mark one of his women, he will mark them. Permanently. No one ever mistreats one of Ernie’s women. Except Ernie. There are stories about his personal playroom that you don’t want to hear.”

“I don’t want to hear any of this. Why don’t the police do something?”

“What? None of his girls would ever testify against him. The police can arrest the girls if they catch them with a john or if an undercover cop gets solicited. But his girls don’t solicit. That’s one of the protections they have against police. Cops can’t solicit. It’s called entrapment. And Ernie never carries drugs. He’s been stopped, but he drives his own car and is always clean. There have been several occasions when the girls in the car weren’t even working girls. He makes a practice of ‘helping damsels in distress.’ He watches for women who have missed the bus, are crying, have fallen on the ice. He’s a regular white knight. He helps them. Gives them a lift home. Never makes a pass or an inappropriate suggestion. They learn to think of him as safe. Then when they really need something, they call on good old Ernie. When they ask for help, he charges. When he just offers help on the street, it is strictly benign.”

“That’s so insidious,” I said. It made my flesh crawl.

“Over there. That’s worse,” Les said pointing to the east side of the park. A black Cadillac was just coming into view. “That’s The Dragon. Pretty presumptuous for a slimy pimp and drug dealer. He operates from here to Chicago Avenue, a lower class clientele than west. He pushes his boundaries as far as he can, except where he might overlap Ernie. He steers clear of Ernie’s territory. He operates through domination and intimidation. There is nothing kind about The Dragon. I’ve seen his girls in miniskirts on a corner in sub-zero temperatures. We’ve treated a few for cuts, burns, and frostbite.”

“So how does he get away with it?”

“He’s fourteen.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Running a minor in would never make a cop’s reputation. If he succeeded in getting a conviction for something, the record would be expunged on the kid’s sixteenth birthday. As long as he avoided murder, the police wouldn’t waste their time.

“He has his girls drive the car. If one gets caught soliciting, he simply shrugs it off and says he just gave the bitch a ride. His girls live five or six to a room in apartments here in the neighborhood, almost like college girls. Some of them were,” Les said.

“Les, what can we do? You have me sold on the need. What’s the answer?”

“We help people one at a time. That’s all I can promise.”

I considered going undercover. For about thirty seconds. It would take a woman made of sterner stuff than me to agree to being raped, addicted, prostituted, possibly tortured, and ultimately killed. So I decided to become a social activist and I started at our annual holiday party. We held it at the Normandy Hotel this year. My Loring Neighborhood sales office was being slowly dismantled. My staff was being absorbed by Jim or by The Mill. Personally, I wanted to keep Renata by my side, but she had recently fallen in love and was just hanging on until the office closed so she could stop commuting from her new home in Eden Prairie.

Carla was as sparkling as ever at the party. She had been rising steadily in the city/county government and had kept herself clean. She was a supporter of women’s business and of ‘cleaning up the city.’ Apparently Gordon’s work in real estate had not been a bad influence on her campaigns. I maneuvered her aside to present my case for the cleanup of Washburn Park.

“We can’t supply drug paraphernalia,” Carla said. “Can you imagine what an outcry it would cause if we sponsored a needle exchange. Even the condom program had to be privately funded.” There were still people who objected to the availability of condoms in high schools. Others wanted the program extended down into the elementary grades. It made me shudder to think of Emily in first grade in the fall.

“What about the disposal?” I asked.

“Well, we do have hazardous materials disposal and they sweep that park about once a month when the snow is gone. They never find them all, of course. Do you think having collection points for needles would solve the problem?”

“It’s like trash cans,” I said. “They don’t eliminate litter, but they make it easier not to throw trash on the ground. Of course, if the can is full and things are falling out, then people just join in tossing crap. Nothing is going to be a 100% solution, but I think we can implement several 80% solutions.”

“I like the idea of the removable bin,” Carla said.

“We want to protect the waste workers as well as the users,” I answered. “This unit was designed so that it is never opened at the site to remove the used needles. When the bin is full, it is removed and a new one installed. The workers are never exposed to the hazardous waste. The old method of having plastic liners that were removed was stupid. Needles were always poking out.”