Missing You(30)

Titus never forced it.

If the setup wasn’t ideal—if the girl wasn’t the perfect prey—he let it go. That was the key. Patience. You throw out enough nets—you watch enough buses come in—you would eventually find what you needed.

So Titus waited on that bench and when he saw a girl who looked ripe, he made his move. Most times, it didn’t work out. That was okay. He had a good rap. His mentor, a violent pimp named Louis Castman, had mentored him well. You talked politely. You made requests or suggestions, never commands or demands. You manipulated the girls by making them believe they were in charge.

You wanted them pretty, of course, but that wasn’t a prerequisite.

Most times, Titus used the model rap. He had made up good business cards on heavy stock, not the cheap, flimsy stuff. Spend money to make money. The cards were embossed. They read Elitism Model Agency in fine calligraphy. They had his name on it. They had a business line, a home line, and a mobile phone number (all three numbers forwarded to his mobile). It had a legitimate address on Fifth Avenue and if the girls mistook Elitism for Elite, well, so be it.

He never pressed. He was commuting, he would tell the girls, from his home in Montclair, a wealthy New Jersey suburb, and happened to spot her and thought she might do well in the modeling business “if she didn’t already have representation.” He pretended to be above horning in on a competitor. At the end of the day, the girls wanted to believe. That helped. They had all heard stories about models or actresses being discovered at the local mall or at Dairy Queen or waitressing.

Why not a bus terminal in Manhattan?

He told them they’d need a portfolio. He invited them for a model shoot with a top fashion photographer. This was where some balked. They had heard this line before. They wanted to know how much it would cost. Titus would chuckle. “Here’s a tip,” he would tell them. “You don’t pay a real agency—they pay you.”

If they seemed too suspicious or worried, he would cut them loose and return to his bench. You had to be willing to cut them loose at any point. That was the key. If, for example, they weren’t runaways, if they were just here for a short vacation, if they stayed in constant touch with a family member . . . any of those, and he simply moved on.

Patience.

For those who made the cut, well, it depended.

Louis Castman enjoyed inflicting pain. Titus did not. It wasn’t that violence bothered him—Titus could take it or leave it. He just always sought the most profitable avenue. Still Titus had followed Castman’s methods: You invite the girls to be photographed. You take some pictures—Castman actually had an eye for it—and then you attack them. Simple as that. You put a knife to her throat. You take away her phone and wallet. You cuff her to the bed. Sometimes you rape her.

You always drug her.

This would go on for days. One time, with a particularly beautiful strong-willed girl, they kept her like that for two full weeks.

The drugs were expensive—heroin was Titus’s favorite—but that was yet another business expense. Eventually, the girl would get hooked. It never took much time. Heroin was like that. You let the genie out of the bottle, it never got put back in. For Titus, that was usually enough. Louis, on the other hand, liked to film the rapes, set the girl up so it looked consensual, and then, just to remove any last shred of hope the girl had, he would threaten to send the tapes to their often religious, traditional parents.

In many ways, it was the perfect setup. You find girls who start out already scarred, already on the run, with bad daddy issues or maybe escaping abuse. They are, yes, wounded gazelles. You take those girls and then you strip away whatever else might be left. You hurt them. You make them afraid. You get them addicted to a drug. And then, when all hope is gone, you give them a savior.

You.

By the time he put them out on the street or into a higher-end brothel—Titus worked both—they would do anything to please him. A few ran back home—a business expense—but not too many. Two girls even managed to make their way to the police, but it was their word against his, with no evidence, and by then, they were crack (or heroin) whores and really, who believed them or cared?

That was all behind him now.

Right now, Titus was finishing up his afternoon walk. He enjoyed this time, out alone in the woods behind the barn, surrounded by the lush green of foliage and the deep blue of the sky. This surprised him. He’d been born in the Bronx, ten blocks north of Yankee Stadium. Growing up, his idea of outdoor space had been the fire escape. He knew only the hustle and noise of the city, believed that it was part of him, in his blood, that he had been not only fully acclimated to brick and mortar and concrete but could not live without it. Titus had been one of eight children living in a run-down two-bedroom walk-up on Jerome Avenue. It was impossible for him to remember a time when he was alone or could bask for more than a moment or two in silence. There was little tranquility in his life. It wasn’t a question of craving it or not. It was simply an unknown.

When he had first visited the farm, Titus thought there was no way he could survive the stillness. Now he had come to love the solitude.

He found his way into the smaller clearing, where Reynaldo, an overmuscled but loyal worker, kept guard. Reynaldo, who was playing fetch with his dog, nodded at Titus. Titus nodded back. The original Amish owner had built root cellars out here. A root cellar was merely a hole in the ground with a door as cover—an underground storage unit to help preserve food at cooler temperatures. They were virtually undetectable if you weren’t looking for them.