By SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM
ATLANTIC CITY – The bitter wind kicked up swirls of dirt near the tip of her 4-inch, ivory-colored heels. An evening thunderstorm had drenched the sidewalk and mud drops dotted her smooth, bare thighs.
The miserable weather didn’t hurt business for Heaven, the pretty teenage hooker in the short denim skirt.
Her night turned golden when one job became two. A young man and his friend asked if they could share her company for a few hours.
Heaven accepted. The next morning, Heaven returned to her cramped, dingy rooming house $1,500 richer.
Heaven and scores of other prostitutes who linger in this seaside town of glittery casinos and seedy motels know they’re playing a game far more risky than anything inside the casinos.
Death has stared them in the face since four decayed bodies were found in a drainage ditch three weeks ago. All the victims were women.
Three were known to Atlantic City police as prostitutes. A task force of local cops, state police and the FBI has descended on the slimiest sections of the city to trace the steps of a possible serial killer.
‘Sometimes I think to myself, ‘I am going to die tonight,’ ‘ Heaven, alone on her rooming-house bed, said in a recent interview. ‘Sometimes I am scared. Sometimes I don’t give a f—. It is just a risk that I take.’
In this city of extremes, the class system is apparent even in vice. Some expensive, upper-class prostitutes work the casinos.
On the next rung down are women like Heaven. She’s a street hustler, but she sticks close to the casinos and charges $250 to $500 a trick. She is careful about whom she takes as a client.
At the bottom are the ‘crack hos,’ drug-addicted women who sell themselves on the street for $10 or $20 a trick, just enough for their next high. Pure survival.
The crack hos work the northern end of what the locals call the ‘track’ – a 2 1 2-mile stretch of Pacific Avenue lined with casinos. These women say that three of the four murder victims used to work the streets with them.
For weeks, investigators have hovered around this end of the track, the high-traffic, crack-laden intersection of Pacific and New York avenues, where scruffy men in baggy coats call out to gaunt, glassy-eyed women.
The hookers who prowl these parts don’t dream of stuffed wallets or satin sheets.
But nearly a mile south of the $35-a-night motels with burned-out lights, well-dressed prostitutes work the gaudy casinos 24-7. This is the top rung of the profession.
They may never meet the drug-addicted hookers up the track and don’t take the same clients, but they share three things: an anonymous life, often far from home; a love of fast cash, and a fear that each night could be their last.
Heaven – a 19-year-old Puerto Rican stunner with long hair dyed honey-blond, deep-set brown eyes, and a wide, white smile – left her mother’s house in central Connecticut last winter solely to make money here. She says she makes about $3,000 in a good week.
The teen pampers herself with Air Jordans and Gucci clothes, but pays a price. Racing thoughts often keep her awake, stealing any chance of sleep or peace.
She is smart enough to stay sober on the job, she says. That way, she believes, she can avoid the violent, drug-crazed hustlers.
‘I’m a ho. I’m not that different. But I’m not a crackhead ho,’ Heaven said. ‘So I’m not that bad.’
The top rung
Down the Boardwalk, next door to Trump Plaza, two lean fighters pounded on each other for the welterweight boxing title on a recent Saturday night.
For Alison Connell, 36, it was just another weekend fight that might earn her an extra high-roller for the evening.
On Pacific Avenue, Connell was the center of attention as she leaned on a jitney-bus pole. Her natural good looks are rare on the track. At 5 feet 10 with a slim frame, blue eyes, blond hair and cheeks dusted with sparkly blush, Connell seemed to belong in a wholesome television ad rather than on a strip populated with pimps and drug dealers.
Yet her clothes screamed ‘Hollywood hooker,’ and that is exactly how she likes it. Despite the chilly 40-degree air, Connell was dressed in skimpy all-black attire – knee-high boots, leather jacket, pantyhose, and a skirt that stopped an inch or two below her buttocks.
Connell says she charges up to $800 for sex and tries hard not to stray from her handful of repeat customers – mainly drug-free businessmen.
‘I don’t fall into those cliques,’ Connell said of her cheaper counterparts. ‘My clothes say that I don’t.’
Like many of the 45,000 casino-industry workers in Atlantic City, Connell commutes to work from another town in South Jersey.
She makes an easy $5,000 a week and rents her suburban home with a woman who is not a prostitute. Most of her ‘dates’ are set up in advance. She says she doesn’t like surprises.
When business is slow, Connell often wanders into a casino lounge, locks eyes with a dapper man and whispers her catchphrase: ‘Do you wanna get together?’
Read more at the Philadelphia Daily News
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