Lifers 13

August 10th 2007
Richmond Virginia.

Ellie Vincent was a dancer, an exotic dancer. Well they were her words for it. Some of her neighbours on the other hand called her a stripper. Among other things. Ellie danced at a strip club on West Broad Street in the heart of Richmond, just off I-95. The club was called “The Cat’s Whiskers”. But all those who frequented the place called it for obvious reasons, “The Pussy Club”.

Ellie was twenty-eight years old and had long black wavy hair, but not when she danced. When she danced she wore a shoulder length blonde wig. She said it went nice with her dark skin tone, and it also helped to create her persona. She was almost six feet tall and had a perfectly toned body. Her face was smooth with high cheekbones, and she had tear-drop shaped dark brown eyes.

Ellie worked each weekday afternoon at the club from 3pm until 6pm, doing two “shows” as she referred to them. The first one at 4, another at 5, and by 6pm she was walking out the door. What surprised Ellie was the amount of men, and for that matter women who had nothing better to do in the afternoons than to watch girls take off their clothes. But like Ellie says… “It pays the bills, so why should I care?”

Ellie’s fourteen-year-old daughter Alicia doesn’t enjoy her friends and classmates knowing what her Mother does for a living, but there was little she could do about it. The classroom bitch Grace Spellman made sure everyone knew.

Her father who works as an electrician did some cheap repair work at the club one afternoon, and when he’d finished the work he decided to stay to watch the strippers. He recognised Ellie from the parents evening she’d attended just a week before.

Alicia goes to the Walkerton Park School in Glen Allen and finishes her last class at 3pm; she then makes her own way home by bus which she boards just outside the school gates. After a twenty minute journey the bus drops her off half a mile from their apartment on Patterson Avenue near Cheswick Park. An upmarket name, but unfortunately the name is no reflection on the area.

Alicia stepped off the bus and decided that as her Mother would not be home until after 6pm, she would visit the library by the park. There she could return a book she’d borrowed and at the same time take out another. If she arrived home around 5pm she could still start the evening meal for her Mother to finish off when she got home.

Alicia liked to read love stories; one of her favourite authors was Michelle Moran who pens historical love stories. Her latest novel “Nefertiti”, was the one she’d decided to borrow today.

‘There she is, the one in the uniform,’ drawled a pale looking man pointing through his windshield. His front seat passenger ignored him tinkering with a cell-phone. ‘Will you quit it with that thing?’

They were sitting in a blue Ford that due to a non-matching replacement had a red lid on the trunk. The passenger was also pale skinned like his driver, and thin to the point of looking skeletal.

They both looked on as the young black girl walked towards them, and were ready to pounce when she passed the car. The driver reached down to pop the trunk whilst his passenger poured chloroform onto a rag.

‘Okay,’ said the driver scanning the immediate area. ‘When she reaches your door get out and ask for directions.’

Chloroform-man frowned. ‘Directions… where to?

‘It don’t matter where to ya dumb fucker. Just do it!’

*

Alicia paused after noticing a car further down the road, a light blue one. She’s sure she'd seen it before. Yesterday in fact. And the day before that too. It was also parked in the same place, but this time she saw two men inside.

The driver was the one she recognised; he seemed to be looking all around outside the car. But the other man… the new face, he was staring straight at her. She decided not to walk past the car to get to the library; instead she turned back and headed in the other direction.

‘What the fuck is she doing now?’ said chloroform-man.

‘She’s made us,’ the driver eased off the hand-brake.

Alicia looked over her left shoulder to see the car moving, it wasn’t gaining on her, but it was definitely moving. She quickened her pace. The driver did the same. Alicia began to run allowing her school books fall to the ground.

The car was right behind her as she started to sprint for her life. She could hear the open trunk banging when the it hit bumps in the road. She ducked into the gate of the park and ran for the other side to exit at the rear of the library.

As she ran she glanced over her shoulder once more and caught site of a tall thin man running about thirty yards behind. The driver must have dropped him off and carried on around the park in order to cut her off at the rear gate.

She ran around a small pond close to the rear exit and again she looked, the man now was only ten yards behind her, and the gate stood only ten yards in front. Alicia didn’t think she would reach it before he reached her.