by Rebecca Kade
Some clients needed therapy as much as they needed sex. They needed someone to talk to who was totally out of their world.
One such client was a young Middle Eastern prince. He was in his thirties. He had unlimited funds, but he was still depressed, because he was out of the power loop in his extended family. Older brothers and cousins were ahead of him in line for the throne. I learned a lot about Middle Eastern politics from him. Unfortunately for him, he developed a real nose-candy problem. He would stay at the Plaza Hotel, and they would hang the flag of his country out front. I wonder if New York coke dealers watched for it and made a beeline for the golden front doors. He did tremendous amounts of cocaine when we were together. The more he talked about his family, the more blow he snorted. He used to be able to go all night, and the last time I saw him he was so dissipated he couldn’t even perform. Unlimited money doesn’t always bring happiness.
When you’re a high-end call girl, you can never let on that you have multiple clients.
No man wants to feel like he is one of many. They want to be the only one. The only way to do that is to make them feel special, and that is to offer the true GFE: the Girl Friend Experience. You French-kiss them, cuddle, go out on a date, hang out, talk, have passionate sex—whatever they want to do. You are their girlfriend for the night. Period. And you do anything to make them believe that. You have to remember how each and every man wants you to be. Often, their wives or girlfriends don’t understand them, or appreciate them, and you do. You remember that they had this big deal coming up. You recall that they were going to Dubai on business. You notice the little things, like their Mercury-dime cuff links. You care. That’s where the money is. Every single memory is a dollar sign.
The clients specified to Anna what sort of dress they desired. Some might want casual—jeans and heels with a sexy top; if I was going on a yacht, resort wear. My Europeans had higher expectations when going out to dinner. Same with the Wall Streeters. Out of necessity, I had to build an extensive wardrobe, and it became very costly.
Certain clients would give me carte blanche to buy whatever I wanted. Once the new Louis Vuitton ostrich boots came out, I told one of my dear clients how much I loved them. He replied, “Then get a pair.” I just had to go to the Louis Vuitton store and charge him. He didn’t blink at the $4,500 price tag. As long as I wore them on our next date.
I had three personal shoppers at Saks: one for clothing, one for shoes, and one for bags. And the ladies at the Chanel makeup counter know me well. The shoppers put together matching outfits for me. One of my clients would foot the bills.
My personal shoe shopper really knew what I liked. I’d buy $5,000 worth of shoes at a time. Sexiest shoes ever. She’d ship them to my house and bill my client, or I’d pay for them and he’d reimburse me in cash.
I’d always follow my shopping sprees with a spa treatment or a highlights appointment at Elizabeth Arden—the “Red Door” farther up Fifth Avenue. The aestheticians would see me coming and then surround me and dig through my shopping bags at the trove of goodies and squeal. Afterward I’d just call my client’s chauffeur, and he’d pick me up in one of his Bentleys—he had four of them—to take me home. I needed it, because walking down Fifth Avenue in five-inch heels with all those bags was not happening.
Some view the materialism of call girls who have become infamous in recent years as amoral. But my clients required such things in order for me to keep them interested in me. If I did not meet their standards, I could easily be replaced by one of the hundreds of girls waiting in line to take my place, and I still had to make as much money as possible. Within a couple years, despite all the money I had made, I still had huge amounts of debt that seemed impossible to pay. I was losing my apartment and still fighting for custody of my daughter in court. There was a never-ending demand for money. Yet I was climbing the ladder so high in the business, and I realized there was a formula to making it to the very top.
Eventually, I had a client who set me up in an apartment. He is a major capitalist on a global scale, and sits on several corporate boards. He only had time to visit me two or three times a month, but the apartment’s cost was lunch money to him. I refused to live there. It was merely a meeting place.
Once, we flew to Europe on his private Gulfstream to look over a castle. “What do you think?” he asked. “Should I buy it?”
Some of my clients said they’d fallen in love with me. They wanted me to stop seeing other clients and be their real (free) girlfriend. I didn’t want anyone to fall in love with me. I wanted the money to keep coming in. There was one guy, William, whom I had begun to see in the Kristin days. He was in the middle of a divorce. He was in finance. You could see lines around his eyes, due to stress. He had lots and lots of money. We’d get together at the Four Seasons. Our first night together was a lot of fun. I ended up staying most of the night. I could tell he had a good time. He kept coming back. He’d find me wherever I was working—New York, Boston, Philadelphia, D.C. Once, in New York, he called and said, “I really want you to come to this concert tonight. I don’t want sex. I just came to town to ask you to go to the concert with me.” He felt I was in the wrong industry. This may sound harsh, but he is what we girls in the business call a Save-A-Ho guy. Like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. They want to make “honest women” out of us. But I didn’t want to be saved. I didn’t need to be saved. I needed to save my little girl.
There was one client who tried to monopolize me. He was the man who set me up in an apartment. He also paid me a large sum of money at the beginning of every month. Yes, he was extremely generous. But I didn’t feel that that entitled him to be my only client. He tried to own me. He felt he should be able to pick up the phone and that I should be ready in ten minutes. Twenty-four hours a day. He’d send his car and driver on a whim, and I was supposed to jump in and get over to him to have sex. There actually weren’t many times when I felt like a prostitute. But one day he made me feel like one. He said, “I don’t pay you to piss me off.” He made me feel just horrible. I just hung up on him. That was the end of our “relationship.” It was early in the month, but I kept that money. Screw him. Or not.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I had a client who had inherited his own luxury company. I’ll call him Jeffrey. He was married with children. He was a no-intercourse client. He viewed intercourse as cheating. But he wanted oral sex. Very much. His wife would never do it.
He always wanted to finish by ejaculating on my face. I found that somewhat degrading, but I acted like I loved it. He still would want me to spend the night, though, so he would get a room in the city for us. He commuted in, so I’m not sure what he told his family, but I loved falling asleep next to him. He liked holding me, and I liked it too. I think I was just feeling really lonely, and he was kind. He also liked to e-mail before and after sessions to either get him excited or give him something to keep going until the next time we would meet. He always dreamt that we were married and that we had a family, so I would type out little fantasies for him and he would reciprocate.
He was a generous guy. He paid my tuition to school. He sent the check directly to the school. He also gave me money for books and expenses. He liked that I was a student, doing something with my life. I was a little more open with him for some reason. He also wanted to make sure I had rest time. Whenever he saw that I was getting stressed out, he’d ask me where I wanted to go on vacation and how much it would cost for me and a friend to go. He would messenger over the cash to cover my entire vacation. He sent me to Jamaica and St. Lucia many times. I’ve met his family. They think I’m wonderful. They don’t know who I am to him.
One client had a friend, a very famous mogul, who was very, very rich. But he was lonely. Still active in business, but elderly. An ideal combination for an enterprising girl. Out of chivalry, my client introduced another call girl he was seeing to his friend. He actually gave the girl tips and primed her before the introduction. The call girl and the mogul hit it off a
nd got married, and now she’s set for life.
My client offered to do the same thing for me. I knew that what he was offering would solve all of my problems financially for life. But even though I mentally “flip the switch” to do this job as “Ashley,” when Rebecca is back, I believe in true love and that one day, I will get married, and it will be because I am in love with a man who is in love with me. I still believe that, even after all that I have done and seen. There are actually several famous socialites often pictured in Town & Country and the society pages of the New York Times who started out working for madams in Paris, London, and New York. I didn’t want to be a hooker for life either.
I had another client who was so dependent on me that he flew me to Tokyo for just one session. I met Edward all over the world, in cities where he would fly on business. He was a major financier and probably bore partial responsibility for the crash of 2008. He paid me big money, more and more over time. But I discovered later that he was a very sick man.
He always preferred it if I came up with a sexual scenario. He liked to be surprised. He gave me an unlimited budget for outfits—leather, rubber, and the like. Toys. I had a closet full of gear just for him.
Once, Edward was on his way to Japan from London for a meeting and had his assistant book me at the Conrad in Tokyo for two nights. He said he’d be very busy during the day and that I could do whatever I wanted.
The only expectation was that I’d be available for a certain period of time in the evening for an hour or two, maximum. We set up an approved time.
I had a suite. The view of Tokyo was spectacular. The bathroom floor was heated. I waited there, and he finally called in the wee hours. I said, “Too bad, you missed your window.” I was in charge in this particular relationship, and that’s what he paid for. He had to obey. Don’t be surprised. I’ve found that guys who have a lot of power they feel they don’t deserve often want to be dominated. Sometimes he’d get scared about what he asked for. He was a very tormented guy. He apologized profusely and said he’d see me the next night.
I woke up early in the morning and took one of those silly bus tours. I hooked up with a group from Wisconsin. But I jumped off at Takeshita-dori, the home of teenage Harajuku fashion, to pick up some things for Isabella. Edward always said that anytime I went somewhere as his guest I could go shopping and get anything I wanted and just give him the receipts. So I headed to Omotesando, Tokyo’s Fifth Avenue, and bought myself a peacock-colored pearl necklace scattered with diamonds. Why not?
I went back to the hotel, and he did come over that evening. I had packed certain sex toys that he had asked me to purchase. I followed his instructions for our Tokyo encounter. One of the first things I did was tie his wrists to the headboard. Then I put tiny clothespins around the rim of his penis. The more aroused he got, the more I punished him. That’s what he liked. That’s what he paid me $25,000 for.
But then, after two years of sessions like this, during which I never balked at his stranger and stranger requests, he asked me something that turned my stomach. “Ashley,” he said, “would you be able to get me a young boy?”
“What?” I cried. “Absolutely not! You disgust me!” I grabbed my things to leave. “And you can forget about seeing me ever again!”
“Ashley, wait!” he said, and started to cry like a baby.
“Get the hell away from me and get yourself some help,” I said as I ran out, checked out, and headed to the airport. It took me the whole flight back to recover. I worried: Would Anna acquiesce to his request?
TWELVE
where are you taking me?
A little over a year went by and I still had not won custody of Isabella. The case dragged on. I could tell during court appearances that Mike was tiring of the battle—or, more likely, the expense of the battle. We were both paying thousands of dollars a month in legal bills.
Just as I began to get more unsupervised time with Isabella in my custody fight, just as I was carving out an identity as a PTA leader, my world came crashing down. The investigators for then Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau found me as soon as Kristin was busted. They didn’t arrest me, but I was called in for questioning to One Hogan Place, the DA’s headquarters at the state criminal courthouse. Nobody told me to bring a lawyer. I took the subway downtown and had plenty of time on the journey to contemplate my imminent loss of freedom and, worse, my daughter. I was a nervous wreck when I arrived. Would I be arrested now? Prostitution is a class B misdemeanor in New York State: I could get three months in jail! My custody battle for Isabella would be lost.
I went through the metal detectors and up to a dreary floor lined with green and gray metal filing cabinets right out of a forties noir film. It looked as if they hadn’t bought a new desk in decades. I was led into a room with a plain gray metal table, a few raggedy chairs, and a horrific fluorescent light overhead.
Two men came in, and one sat at the table in front of me. “Miss Kade,” said one. “I am Assistant District Attorney Artie McConnell, and this is . . .” My mind went on overbuzz at the words “assistant district attorney” and I didn’t even catch the other man’s name. He looked like he’d graduated law school the week before and appeared to be less important, as he sat on the side of the room and not at the table where Mr. McConnell and I were sitting facing one another.
“Ms. Kade, we have asked you to come in today because we would like to discuss a few things with you regarding your relationship with Kristin Davis. As you are probably aware, she was arrested recently, and we are prosecuting her on several charges and talking to people who knew her. Your name has come up, but we anticipate this to be a relatively short interview. I have a document here for you to sign. It is a debriefing agreement, and it merely states that you are free to leave at any time and that statements you make during this interview could be used in a future prosecution. However, any statement you make today cannot be used to prosecute you in the future.” I signed the document, but to be honest, I didn’t have a clue what he had just said or what that document was supposed to mean to me. I just heard my sister’s voice saying Tell the truth, and that was what I was going to do.
Mr. McConnell and his assistant started interrogating me.
Had I worked as an escort for Kristin Davis?
“Yes.” They obviously knew I had or I wouldn’t be there.
“Have you worked for anyone else, and if so, who?” McConnell asked.
“Ummm, a company called Classic Affairs,” I answered hesitantly.
“God, these names are so clichéd. Who runs it?”
I stalled. “A woman . . . named Anna.” I did not want to answer that question. I thought this was going to be purely about Kristin! Now I would be implicating myself with another madam? He put his pen down, and he and the other man looked at each other and nodded.
“Will you excuse us for a minute?” McConnell said, and they both walked out of the room and shut the door. That was it? They had only asked me a couple of questions, and the tone in the room had completely changed. After a few minutes they came back in. “We’re going to have to transfer you to another location, Ms. Kade,” said McConnell.
“You can’t be here anymore,” he said sternly as he shut the door behind him so no one could see inside the room.
“Why?” I asked.
“We’ll have to explain that to you later,” he said. “We’re going to have some people escort you out of the building to an unmarked car. We will make sure you will be covered so no one can see you leaving the building. We’re taking you to a safer location.”
“What? Why?” I sputtered.
“They’ll explain it when you get there. Come on,” he said, taking my arm.
“No!” I said, pulling back. “I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on and someone in my family knows where I’m going.”
I called my sister and gave her a quick rundown of where I was and that I was going to another location. I told her I had a signed document g
iving me rights that I would mail to her as we were leaving the building. I didn’t trust these guys, and I felt uncomfortable having paperwork like that in my apartment. She instructed me again to tell the truth.
After a few minutes, three big guys with gold detectives’ badges on thin metal chains hanging around their necks came in and said my time was up on the phone.
“OK, Bridget, I have to go,” I said. “You should hear from me tonight. If you don’t, you know something went wrong.” I was thinking, This is ridiculous. What is going on? Why are they being so dramatic? I felt as if I were being pulled into a movie.
“You have to come with us now,” said the biggest of the cops. They slipped a lanyard with an orange ID card on it around my neck. Then they threw my coat over my head and led me past the old green metal filing cabinets down a dingy hallway to an elevator bank, then down and out the side door of the courthouse. They had me surrounded, my coat still over my head. They put me in the back of a car, one cop on either side, and we sped off. I was terrified.
In the unmarked car, they took my coat off my head. I wasn’t handcuffed. I asked right then and there, “Am I being arrested?” They assured me that I was not—in fact, far from it. They said that I wasn’t safe in that building. They said it was very possible that I had important information they had been looking for in an investigation, and that there were concerns that there might be a leak or mole in their own office. They wanted to get me out before anyone knew I was there. I never saw ADA McConnell again.
It’s very possible that someone in the district attorney’s office had been warning Anna as they cracked down on other madams and pimps. Maybe someone there was a client. I don’t know what the explanation was, but somehow Anna had gone unscathed.
