Call Girl Confidential

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 Annaâunclothed. 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 twoâor threeâconsenting 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

A
n 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”âsomeone 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.”

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