Call Girl Confidential (15 page)

If I stopped seeing all clients, however, I would have been broke. Anna continued to send clients my way. One of my heavy hitters at the time was Brent. Brent was a complete sicko, but money was tighter than ever and I was compromising myself in ways I never thought possible. But if Brent wanted to see me twice in one week, I was $20,000 richer by Friday.

They weren't all bad. I had one client, an Asian billionaire who preferred to be called Henri, who was incredibly generous and easygoing. Henri was living in New York for about a year to sort out some banking problems, and his wife stayed back in their home country with the children. Henri had to have companionship, so he would have his chauffeur come pick me up in his Bentley. It was a bit awkward because his driver, John, was an off-duty cop, my client revealed with a chuckle. One night, John picked me up, and as we got stuck in a midtown logjam, I decided to break the barrier of silence. I didn't know if he would respond or not, but I asked him about himself and chatted amiably. But surely he knew what was going on.

Having someone who works as a police officer during the day drive me around, knowing full well that I was an escort, was not a comforting feeling. In fact, I was nervous each time I saw him. Henri always laughed at me and said, “If you pay those guys enough, they will do anything.” That wasn't true, and I knew it. John needed the money to help pay for child support and was currently in the middle of a custody battle. Bingo! Right then I felt his pain and understood why he would take the demeaning
commands from Henri and work ridiculous hours, only to wake up and go and be one of New York's Finest. A lot of police think prostitution is a BS crime and a waste of their time. I never told John why I did what I did, of course, and he probably did judge me, but for that night during the drive, we were not driver and escort. We were just John and Ashley.

Later that evening I told Henri that he had a wonderful driver and that I thought he was very kind. “Kind?” he asked. “What do you mean, kind? How would you know that? Did he talk to you?” I froze. A stream of thoughts and scenarios went through my head. Why was he so upset? All of a sudden I was nervous for John and his job, so I quickly said, “No, of course not. He is just a very good driver and always makes sure I know how far away we are from you when you are not with me in the car. You know how much I can't stand to be away from you and wait all by myself in the backseat.” I put on my pouty face and cozied up to him so as to reassure him that there was nothing to worry about. Henri could be the biggest baby. After that, he refused to go out for the evening, so we stayed in, even though he had made special dinner plans with clients. He called his secretary at home and screamed at her to call them all and cancel. This was going to be a long night, and I was going to have my work cut out for me. Tonight wasn't about me. Tonight I had made a mistake, and it was talking to the driver and telling Henri. Now, I had to make him forget about it. It was time to “flip the switch,” go into high gear, and make sure John didn't lose his job.

The next time John picked me up, I said hello to him with a smile you couldn't miss. He didn't respond. We rode in absolute silence all the way from downtown to a riverside skyscraper where Henri had an apartment so high up, you couldn't get cell
phone service. We literally looked down on the clouds that drifted past the Citigroup Center and the Chrysler Building, twinkling like bling. He still had his job, but he never spoke to me again.

What Henri loved to do—besides have sex, of course—was watch college football when Stanford was playing. Perhaps he was an alumnus. He liked to uncork a pricey bottle of wine from his collection at every touchdown, and I remember we savored a bottle of Romanée-Conti and another of Pétrus during one game, which Stanford won. It put him in a particularly energetic mood in bed.

There was one client, François, whom I grew so close to that he tried to get me to leave the business and just be with him. He was the CEO of a European fashion company, and when he had business with the store executives in New York, he would come and stay at the Pierre and see me. I would stay with him for two or three days, and he would take me to Per Se, Le Bernardin, or La Grenouille. We might go to a concert at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center, if he had time.

For François, I dressed in Narciso Rodriguez, Marc Jacobs, and, of course, designers working for him. He expected the best. He was the most solicitous of lovers, always making sure my needs were taken care of. But sometimes we just talked. He was sad, because he had gotten a high-priced call girl in Europe pregnant and his wife found out and took his kids away from him. Unlike the others, when he was sad, he would cry and cry. Most nights he would cry himself to sleep and I would hold him. It truly was hard to tell if he was crying because he had been caught or because he was about to pay hefty sums of money to both his estranged wife and the girl he had gotten pregnant. What I did know for sure was that he was inconsolable about the loss of
time with his children. François was feeling the pain of his actions brutally: not seeing his kids just tore his heart up. It is an unbelievable sight to see such a powerful figure in any industry be brought to his knees, but it reminds me that we are all human and that in the end family is the most important thing.

To be forced apart from one's child was something I understood all too well, and he wanted me with him all the time when he was in town because he felt I took care of him. I empathized, but I never told him of my dear sweet little girl, who had been ripped away from my life. His tears might as well have been mine, and that was our connection, even if he never knew it. Unbelievably, after all the pain he put himself and his family through due to his mistake, it didn't stop François from continuing to see hookers.

M
eanwhile, my custody case slogged on, and my daughter was still languishing at her father's house in the care of various nannies.

Once, I was on the Upper West Side, and I saw Isabella across the street with two complete strangers. I froze. At the first hearing, the judge had ordered that I wasn't allowed to talk to her in between visits. If I violated that, my visits would be rescinded.

She was riding an electric pony outside a novelty store. I learned later that they were the parents of Isabella's stepmother. I couldn't call out to her; I couldn't go hug her; I could only stand there crying on the other side of the street and watch my own daughter from afar. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

I was more determined than ever to get my daughter back.

T
he ADA wanted me to go after Anna's moneyman, Jonas Gayer. Gayer was a Russian émigré by way of Poland and Belgium who had been high up in the IRS before he got into a little trouble with the law. He was arrested in 1989 and accused of engineering a $10 million tax scheme for a Brooklyn trucking company. Andrew Maloney, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District who later prosecuted John Gotti, said Jonas's scheme was “the largest evasion-of-payment scheme of its kind” ever attempted in the United States. Yet Jonas never served any prison time.

Now, with his knowledge of how to slide in and out of IRS loopholes, Jonas had a big accounting practice, and Anna was among his clients.

Bearing some resemblance to a weasel, he nevertheless got to have sex with me courtesy of Anna. I was his “Jonas Bonus” after he completed a particularly sticky bit of business for her. Anna paid me for my services, but he never had to pay her. He asked to see me quite regularly. I think he loved me a little bit. He thought his true calling was to be an artist, and he would give me seascapes he painted in acrylics and oils out at his country house on Shelter Island.

The early arrest had apparently not put a crimp in his wealth-building activities, since he also had a posh apartment on Beekman Place. His website boasts that his artwork “has been influenced by the exquisite views of Shelter Island and the busy life he leads in New York City as a tax advisor.” Busy indeed.

The DA's investigators wanted me to visit Jonas at his accounting office and see what I could get out of him about Anna. The first trip would be simple, just a visit to establish contact
independent of Anna and also to say that I needed advice about my own cash that I had stockpiled.

They gave me what was essentially a script of what I was supposed to say. They were lines like “Jonas, I have too much cash—like, $250,000. Should I invest it or launder it or what?”

Good Lord.

“That will never work,” I said. “I can't go in and say these things!”

My escort persona, Ashley, would never even broach the topic. It would be completely out of character. Jonas had never talked to me about business before. And I had never asked him for business advice. They wanted too much too soon, and they were going to blow it. I knew how to get what they wanted, but they would have to do it my way.

“How am I supposed to get Jonas to help me launder my money when Anna knows exactly how much I make?” This conversation had taken place at least a few times, and they needed to understand it was the key element to the whole operation. I asked, “I'm supposed to show up with an extra quarter of a million dollars, when she knows that with my legal bills I couldn't have accumulated that much? She expects me to tell her everything. How do I know he's not going to tell her?” These were the arguments, plans, and ideas we would discuss for days, until they finally gave in and decided to trust me. They had to let me do it my way. In order for me to make sure Jonas would not say a word to Anna, I had to make him feel obligated to me personally and afraid of her. Only a woman who is trying desperately to hide money and work undercover knows how to do that. No ADA with a scripted dialogue was going to make that happen. I knew I could do it, and they were starting to see that I was getting them
what they needed. They wanted to know where Anna's money was. I knew I could get him to tell me.

I
was to wear a wire.

The investigators brought in their tech guy, and he said, “OK, the wire will go around your waist and then up here,” gingerly indicating my chest.

“Are you kidding me?” I nearly screamed. “Do you not understand that this is a client? It's not going to work to wire my body, because the very first thing he's going to do is feel me up. There's no safe place on my body to put a wire. I don't know where he's going to touch me. But when he does, it's over.”

“It won't be a big deal. It's going to be a short meeting,” said the ADA, rolling his eyes. He just didn't get it, and he obviously didn't care. Jonas couldn't keep his hands off of me. He'd discover any device immediately, and God knows what he would do to me when he did.

I looked away in despair, but then suddenly it dawned on me: they needed me. They couldn't do this without me. I had an intimate relationship with Anna Gristina's moneyman, and nobody else had that sort of access. I realized I could take control of the situation.

“You guys had better start thinking about Plan B,” I said, “because I'm not going anywhere with that ridiculous idea.”

I didn't have full confidence in their competence. Or at least I felt they weren't really thinking this through in terms of my safety. Jonas, who was Russian himself, associated with members of the Russian underworld in Brooklyn. What did they think would happen if he discovered I was wearing a wire? Would they
be so cavalier if I was an undercover cop? I wondered. Is it the usual prejudice against escorts? She's a prostitute, a “whore,” and therefore somehow not deserving of care? I didn't think they gave a damn about me.

I had to think for myself, but I had been doing that ever since I was a little girl. I snapped out of my pity party.

“Would it work if the transmitter was in my purse, hidden in the lining?” I asked.

The investigators looked at the techie.

“It could work if we could make an opening in the pocketbook,” he said. “And if you kept it within six feet of him at all times. And you can't carry a cell phone or have any electronics on inside it. They would interfere with the frequency.”

“No cell phone?” I exclaimed.

“Don't worry. If something goes wrong, we'll hear you through the transmitter,” said the techie. “We'll be out on the street.”

“What if Jonas discovers the transmitter and destroys it?” I asked.

“We'll storm in, don't worry,” said the head detective.

I hesitated. Did I really trust these guys? I would have to.

“All right. I'll do it. But you're going to have to spend money on this bag. It can't be some twenty-dollar bag. Jonas knows what kinds of purses I carry.”

So the ADA's office bought me a black Chanel bag. It cost over $1,000, but they had to do it.

I
called Jonas and I asked him if I could come over. In my most helpless-sounding voice, I told him I had a problem and just didn't know what to do. I needed his advice.

“Sure!” he said. Perhaps he was hoping for sex. We set up a time for the very next day.

I had never met him at his office before. I could barely sleep all night, playing it out in my mind. Instead of having a trained female cop go undercover as a hooker, they were getting me to do their surveillance for them. They were having me take a huge risk. Throughout the night I tossed and turned, wondering how
on earth I would get the information out of Jonas in a way that he wouldn't tell Anna. It finally came to me at about five a.m.

How would I do it? By getting him to show me everything about Anna's hidden accounts. He'd never want me telling Anna that he'd shown me her private business. Then I would have something on him. If I could pull it off.

I rose and showered and put on really sexy jeans, a sky-blue silk blouse, Chanel pumps, and pearls. Jonas liked that look.