A WALK DOWN DRUGGIE LANE

Cayley Lane is not much of a street, really.

Just a sliver running one block south from Stephanie St. near Grange Park.

It has a street sign, but Cayley Lane is so small you will not find it in
your Perly's or on any map.

That's just fine with the druggies. They've taken Cayley Lane.

The neighbourhood wants it back.

This is a mixed crowd. Yuppies and new immigrants share a tumble of
townhouses and heritage homes. CITY-TV is just to the south, the art
gallery just to the north.

Helen Hatton, 61, takes me on a tour of Cayley Lane. It is a tiny twilight
zone in the late afternoon haze.

Graffiti is everywhere. "Crips." As in the gang. "Too drunk." "Where will I
be when I'm wondering why?" Gems like that.

The centrepiece is a nook halfway down. It is drug central.

There is even a brown couch. Nice and comfy for enjoying your crack cocaine
or making a deal.

"Looks like a waiting room," Helen says. "The couch is even angled
stylishly. All you need is a table and magazines."

The nook's floor is carpeted with litter. Gingerly, I look closer.
Surprise, surprise. Syringes.

We hear footsteps in the main lane. Guy in a lumberjack shirt. Skinny girl
with empty eyes. Guy in a leather hat. They see us and retreat. Down the
lane, Lumberjack and Leather Hat turn their backs and exchange something. I
do not think it is hockey cards. Skinny Girl slouches against a wall.

Another deal goes down on Cayley Lane.

"I'm mad as hell," says Helen, who lived in New York City for 18 years.

"Clean this up, close 'em out. Make 'em move somewhere else."

Leather Hat and Lumberjack pass us going north. Lumberjack flashes a V
sign. Peace?

Victory? Not if Helen Hatton and other locals have a say.

"We've become a feeding ground," she says of the shady characters who fan
out from points like Cayley Lane and nearby St. Patrick's Square.

Last month, someone skulked into Helen's house via the back deck and made
off with wallets and cameras.

At Gardenview Grocery on Queen St., where most locals shop, owner Franco
Recchia, 38, has called police dozens of times to move riff-raff from
outside his store.

Sometimes he finds needles in his flower pots.

The area around CITY-TV is a magnet for kids, he says. The kids are a
magnet for drug dealers. The kids panhandle to buy a bit of crack. Around
it goes.

I wander through the city housing complex that backs onto Cayley Lane.

The tenants are scared. They see what goes on in the lane. They know the
dealers whose turf it is. The dealers know them. No one will go on the record.

Some have fought back, best they can. They cut back trees that shelter the
nook. They toss buckets of water on the couch to make it less comfy.

Other locals have called and written the Toronto Community Housing
Corporation. They want the nook cleaned up and fenced off. No response.
Same for my calls to the TCHC's area manager.

Murray Sibulash, 82, owns the next-door office building. He put up an iron
fence to shield his tenants from Cayley Lane. Some mornings he has found
needles back there. "It would take a brave cop to go through there at
night," he says.

"Not brave, just smart," Const. Brian Stacey, 38, of 52 Division, says. "We
usually go in twos or fours."

But the creatures of Cayley Lane -- and other hot spots -- are tough to
catch. "A drug deal takes five seconds and we can't be there 24 hours a
day," Stacey says.

CODE FOR COPS

When they do cycle through, it's often to the sound of spotters calling
"5-Oh," druggie code for "cops!"

"They're like mercury," says Const. Tony Mohr, at the division's crime
prevention unit. Mohr is the neighbourhood's regular police contact.

"No one thing is going to solve the problem," he says. "It'll take a lot of
little things -- lighting, higher visibility, the tenants and neighbours
getting involved."

Dusk descends on Cayley Lane. It was named for a 19th-century barrister,
William Cayley.

Kathy Post, 39, is a tenant of the office building. She has just shooed
away four ruffians from the nook below.

"All the times we've sat up here and seen them, I've never said anything,"
she tells me. "But today, I thought, I'm tired of this and I told them to
get out."

They did. But they'll be back.

They still have their hooks on Cayley Lane.