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  To my daughter . . .

  whatever you need, whatever it takes.

  I love you.

  contents

  Prologue

  1. Worlds Collide

  2. Why I Went to Work for Manhattan Madam Kristin Davis

  3. My First Client

  4. One of the Girls

  5. Rock Star Daddy

  6. Merry Christmas, Baby

  7. The Worst Happens

  8. Incalls and Outcalls

  9. Two Governors

  10. The Last Great Madam: Anna Gristina

  11. High-Flying Clients

  12. Where Are You Taking Me?

  13. My Life as a Confidential Informant Begins

  14. Recording the “Soccer Mom Madam”

  15. Going Undercover

  16. The Madam’s Moneyman

  17. From Brooklyn Russians to Beekman Place Bankers

  18. Wearing a Wire with the Madam

  19. Gristina Goes Down

  20. Nine Lawyers, Two Hookers, and One Beauty in Cabo San Lucas

  21. One Last Job

  22. The Madam Goes Free

  23. Naming Names

  Epilogue: A Whole New Life

  Acknowledgments

  About Rebecca Kade

  PROLOGUE

  I was the call girl who became an undercover operative for the Manhattan district attorney during his investigation of high-class prostitution rings in New York City.

  I was a Christian girl raised by strict Baptist parents in a small Southern town where I attended church four days a week. But after a series of events involving a rich criminal, a rocker, and a kidnapping, I needed a tremendous amount of money, and fast. I became a hooker.

  I worked as an escort for both “Manhattan Madam” Kristin M. Davis and Anna Gristina, the so-called Soccer Mom Madam. After the DA’s swarm of spies stung Anna in 2012, she spent four months in jail and finally pleaded guilty to just one felony count of promoting prostitution. But make no mistake: Anna Gristina ran the most successful high-class call-girl business in New York City for more than a decade, with clients from London to Brunei, and I saw it all up close.

  I had billionaires, politicians, CEOs, Wall Streeters, Grammy winners, European luxury moguls, Middle Eastern royalty, and famous restaurateurs among my clients. And when the prosecutors pressed me into service as a confidential informant, they wanted me to continue to have paid sexual encounters with these men.

  After Anna was arrested, she maintained a warm-and-fuzzy image for the cameras and joked with reporters and talk-show hosts. But at the height of her game, she hadn’t hesitated to send armed enforcers to intimidate a competing pimp who sought to cross her.

  Anna had only the most beautiful young women in her employ. One had to audition to work for Anna—unclothed. Girls were chosen not for the surgically enhanced bimbo look of typical escort agencies but for their class and natural beauty. Anna sought out women with an understated elegance who you would never suspect were hookers. A woman who could have a conversation at Per Se with a Wall Street master of the universe just as easily as she could accompany him to a polo match in the Hamptons or a party on a yacht in St. Barts.

  Once these men discovered that Anna could provide such introductions, they were hooked, so to speak. They became steady clients who regularly paid thousands for sex and companionship.

  New clients at a first session would always vet me by asking how I had met Anna. I never quite knew how to answer that, and tried out many lines that failed to please. But once I said with a sly wink that we had mutual friends, they would relax. I was the girl Anna had promised to deliver. It wasn’t a business transaction. I was a friend of a friend, a woman who felt comfortable with her own sexuality as well as his, who enjoyed intimacy for a few hours, no questions asked.

  Anna’s regular superwealthy clients were happy to share with me that they had known her for many years. Yet, many had never actually met her, and she remained a mystery figure. She operated her business from afar and under the radar. Because of her clandestine methods, Anna was able to run her multimillion-dollar global business without law enforcement having a clue. I believe that it’s none of anybody’s business what two—or three—consenting adults do. But with my future and my family on the line, I turned my back on Anna and became an undercover operative. It was a decision that would haunt me for years.

  ONE

  worlds collide

  An ominous wind blew through Columbus Circle that bitter March day in 2008, and not even the goose-down coat I’d had custom made in London could keep me warm. A shiver cut right through me. I was on my way to forensic psychology class at college, climbing the rungs back to “normal,” for myself, for my kid. Well, as normal as I could be with $600 blond highlights and wearing a white cashmere dress and Louis Vuitton heels among a sea of jeans and sneakers. I wasn’t trying to show off. I just had to be ready at a text’s notice to make an outcall. You see, I had another life apart from being a student. I was what the media calls a “high-class call girl”—someone who makes thousands of dollars an hour just to have sex. A booker might ping me right in the middle of a professor’s lecture on the criminal mind that a high-paying client wanted to see me, and off I’d go. I usually let the teacher finish the thought before I left the classroom.

  That day, my phone sounded during a lecture on cognition. Dammit, I thought, annoyed to be pulled away from class once again. But I looked at my device and saw it wasn’t my booker. It was one of the girls I knew when I worked for Kristin Davis, the famed “Manhattan Madam,” a true New York character who overindulged herself with plastic surgery and who once ran for governor.

  It read, simply: “Go to the nearest newsstand and find the article about Kristin.”

  That was it. Nothing else. I had not worked for Kristin for some time. I had moved on to a network so sophisticated, it made Kristin’s escort service look like child’s play. Kristin was sloppy: she accepted gentlemen’s credit cards, she ran ads in the adult classifieds, she put everything into her computer. She sprinkled clues like Hansel and Gretel.

  Had Kristin been arrested? My friend hadn’t texted me any details for a reason, and I was guessing that was because the article had something to do with an arrest. We all knew better than to text anything about criminal issues. Sex Business 101: Don’t leave a trail.

  My heart was fluttering like a butterfly. I didn’t work for her anymore, so why should I be nervous? But my rationale was ridiculous: of course I should be worried. If Kristin kept her old records on her hard drive, I had everything to lose: my daughter.

  I took a deep breath, excused myself from class, and took only my phone and purse with me, totally forgetting about the cold. I ran down to the deli and found it in the New York Times, of all places: $2 MILLION BAIL SET FOR WOMAN IN BROTHEL CASE. There was a photo of Kristin. She was on her way to solitary on Rikers Island after being charged with promoting prostitution and money laundering. Cops had found $476,000 in cash in her apartment. They also found her black books, which contained the names of 10,000 men, including celebrities, athletes, and elected officials. As the New York Post emblazoned across its front page days later with the headline BUSTED and a photo of Kristin with her ample implants spilling out, New York governor Eliot Spitzer had been one of her clients. (To be more specific, Spitzer had been one of my clients. He had just resigned three
weeks earlier after getting caught with another prostitution ring.) The black books contained all the details of the clients’ sexual proclivities and what girls they liked. There was no way my name wasn’t on Spitzer’s “page.” I ran out of the deli and could go no farther. Despite my white dress, I leaned against the storefront and sank right down to the sidewalk. I felt as if something was crushing my body and not letting go. I couldn’t breathe. The day I had dreaded for years had finally come.

  I called my big sister. She had kept the secret of my liaisons with politicians, despite being a high-level Republican aide herself. She had protected me, and now she answered my call in her office on Capitol Hill.

  “Bridget,” I said through tears. “It happened.”

  She knew exactly what I meant. I told her the details of Kristin’s arrest, and that cops might come after me. Ever since our parents left us to fend for ourselves as teens, she had been my only true confidante. Bridget didn’t condone what I did for a living. In fact, she hated everything about it. She could have freaked out, thinking somehow her ties to me would be revealed. Instead, she tried to console me.

  “Rebecca, it’s going to be all right,” Bridget said. “No matter what happens from this moment forward, tell the truth. If anyone from law enforcement comes after you, we will deal with it, but you cannot lie. Never.”

  I wasn’t even telling her the truth. Not completely. Yes, I had told her I had left Kristin’s high-priced call-girl agency long ago. What I left out was that I had moved on to an even more wired and therefore more lucrative madam: Anna Gristina. My sister assumed I had left the business.

  “Now pull yourself together,” Bridget ordered. “Go back to class and act as if nothing has happened.”

  On my way back to class, I noticed a few gentlemen in suits with badges around their necks standing outside the doorway, talking among themselves, and I got spooked. Don’t be paranoid, Rebecca, I said to myself. You’re studying at a school for criminal justice. There are always cops and agents all over the place, coming in to talk to classes. Some are even professors.

  Still, I had never seen them before. My footsteps echoed loud and leaden in the corridor, and when I pushed the heavy classroom door, it opened with a loud squeak. As I rushed to my seat I heard my grandfather’s voice in my head say, That door sure needs some WD-40, and then he would get up and fix it. I wished he was there at that moment to save me and keep that door from making that sound when I opened it. Everything seemed heavier and louder, and I felt as if the whole class were staring at me with judgmental eyes, thinking, We know who you are and what you are, you whore. Now everybody else will know it too. You will be exposed for being the dirty hooker that you are. Suddenly, my gorgeous clothing and shoes felt cheap. Everything about me felt cheap and worthless, scared and fearful.

  When the buzzer over the intercom system went off, announcing the end of class, I jumped. A new fear took hold of me. I did not want to go home. Where would I go? Would the police be there waiting? Would I be arrested? Would I go to jail, and if I did, for how long? Oh, God, Kristin, why were you so sloppy? I thought. I would never see my daughter again. The reason I was in this mess was my need to make a lot of money to fight to keep her in the first place. How had everything gone so wrong?

  I gathered my things and began to make my way out of the room. Just then a tall, clean-cut man in a perfectly tailored suit approached. Pretty spiffy for a professor or a student, I thought. Maybe he was an administrator.

  “Miss Kade?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, a little confused as to how he knew who I was.

  “Could I speak with you for a moment?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I mean privately,” he said. “It’s not about school.”

  I balked and frowned a bit.

  “I’m a little busy here,” I said.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a wallet. He flipped it open, and a gold badge glinted in the fluorescent lights overhead.

  Adrenaline surged through my body. My worlds had just collided.

  The detective spoke with me briefly. He wanted me to come with him, but when I told him that I had my scheduled time with my daughter, Isabella, he decided to let me go home and be with her. But he told me to report to Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office first thing in the morning. Morgenthau, whose father had been FDR’s Treasury secretary and the architect of the New Deal, had ruled Manhattan law enforcement for thirty-four years. He was eighty-nine years old but still sharp and straight as an X-Acto knife.

  I couldn’t sleep all night. I had been leading a double life for years. I was a single mom, a PTA board member, and an escort. Keeping that a secret is a lot harder than you may think. Switching mentally from “work” mode to Mommy mode made me feel I could physically split into two pieces at any time. I couldn’t take any chances that anyone knew. I knew this because there had been people in my life I had trusted who had turned on me with lies and painful actions that could never be taken back. Their actions would continue to hurt my family.

  My daughter’s father was one of those people. And as a mother, I had learned that when it comes to your children, when you are backed into a corner with no way out, you will do things you never dreamed you were capable of doing to fight for your loved ones. Isabella’s father and I were in court over ridiculous accusations that I was an unfit mother and she should not be in my home. He wanted to take her away from me, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. No matter what.

  TWO

  why i went to work for manhattan madam kristin davis

  Isabella’s father is a rock star—let’s call him Mike—who never lived with us, yet he paid child support and saw her regularly. One day he simply didn’t bring her home. He had kidnapped her, and I soon learned he had moved in court to gain full custody. Mike hired one of the most powerful family law attorneys in New York City—and one of the most expensive. I guess he did the math and thought it was a better deal than paying child support for ten more years. He claimed that a young man I had staying with us temporarily was a danger to our daughter.

  Mike had gotten married one month before he went for custody. Ultimately, the marriage lasted less than a year, but his new wife was very close to Isabella—so close that it made me uncomfortable. I cannot deny that his wife loved my daughter. She loved her tremendously. But when the court proceedings began, I truly felt that they wanted to take me out of my daughter’s life entirely so Mike’s wife could be her new mother.

  I fought back hard. They took that as a sign of mental instability; they called me crazy and whatever else fit the agenda at the time. Any mother would have felt the same as I did. When Mike’s wife left him, I figured out that he was feeding the lies to everyone. I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t the monster he was making me out to be. (His wife realized this, and I saw how my daughter had relied on her during my absence; Isabella still needed her love, and it would hurt her to lose it. To this day I still encourage the relationship between them, and they are extremely close.) I refused to allow a divorce from Mike and his judgment to hurt my daughter. He blew the situation way out of proportion. Anyone who truly knew me, knew that. But a judge bought his story, and I lost custody of the daughter I had raised alone since birth. She was six years old at the time.

  I had seen mega-lawyer Eleanor Alter on television during the Woody Allen case. She had represented Mia Farrow after the filmmaker had an affair with Mia’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, and Alter went after Woody with a vengeance. She won full custody for Mia of their son, Ronan, the only biological child Woody ever had.

  I went to see Alter in her office and told her of my plight. She was willing to help—for a price. A very high price.

  “My fee is $750 an hour,” she told me. I guess she could easily get that from all the rich moguls in New York dumping their first wives for trophies, and then dumping the trophies for even younger trophy wives. That included time spent on phon
e calls and paperwork, and for work done by junior attorneys at the firm. I was soon getting legal bills for several thousand dollars at a time, bills that I could not support with my executive assistant’s job. These bills were simply to try to hammer out an agreement about holidays and the normal weekday and weekend schedule. I was furious. I was more than furious, because no one knew better than I did that he was just messing with me. He was trying to control me. He didn’t really want all those hours with Isabella. He would never and could never honor any agreement we ever put together because of his “traveling” and “touring” schedule. I couldn’t hold it against him if his business required him to be away so much, but my point was that it was impossible for him to honor any parental agreement because of this. Isabella was with me all the time, and I was fighting him all the way. He wanted to take special moments away from Isabella and me and start his own. We had traditions that clearly meant nothing to him.

  His girlfriends came and went, and so did my money. One court appearance could cost $8,000 or $9,000. The custody hearings could go on for days. I realized that what I was making at my day job wasn’t enough. Not even close. I couldn’t even cover a single day in court.

  I asked my mother for a loan, and told her I’d pay her back. She wouldn’t give me any of her money, even for her granddaughter’s sake. She claimed she didn’t have it. I believed her.

  I cashed out my 401(k), my pension, and Isabella’s college fund. That was my future and hers, but this was a fight for my daughter’s life, and that was what mattered. That money ran out fast too.

  I then started selling everything of value in my home on Craigslist and eBay. When the legal bills came, that money, too, evaporated.

  I realized I had better do something. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but while I was on Craigslist, I started looking at ads for a second job. Personal assistants, part-time, anything that would supplement the full-time position I had. What they were paying for these jobs that mostly women took was depressing. I felt defeated.