Prologue
March 2012
In a City of
8.4 Million People
Hey there, Mr. Big.
I’ll bet you think this book is about you,
now that it’s all said and done, right? Wrong. It’s not. It’s about
me. Money Watts. And how the world of politics, escorts, and
blackmail came to a head, all in one day in 2011. It’s about my
side of the escort coin. The side of making a business out of sex
for money.
This is my own version of Sex and the
City. Sex in the Big Apple. Sex with big names. Sex for big
money. Sex that made big news. You were my Mr. Big. But now…well,
like I said, this story is not about you.
I had the baddest high-end call girls and
call guy in New York City. My agency, called Lip Service, was
comprised of just the four of us. We kept it small, we kept it
exclusive, and we kept it high-class. And I kept all the juicy
names in my little pink e-book.
I was the provider, or organizer. And
they, the clients, were called hobbyists. We did it all over the
Internet on an adult website, or sometimes over the phone.
Sometimes the hobbyists would even rate each of us and give
reviews. They’d rate us on price, cleanliness, honesty, and
attractiveness. And we always received ten out of ten. This was no
street corner operation. These were not escorts of ill repute. This
was not a brothel. This was about meeting a classy man or woman to
“escort” you to dinner, and then going somewhere after for an
intimate evening together. That’s it. No different than a first
date with someone who doesn’t call the next day. Only there’s a
booker who gets ten percent. I split the rest fifty-fifty with my
escorts. And at two thousand dollars per hour, sometimes even
thirty thousand per weekend, we did very, very well. We were
providing a very necessary service. And we were very, very good at
it.
The Politics
In
private, he patronizes escorts. In public, Democrat Darrell
Ellington is a New York senator for the 21st District in
Brooklyn, married to Ursula Leah Ellington, a former Republican who
came from a long line of politicians. They met while working
together at Paine Webber years ago, and married in 1995. Darrell
worked in government affairs and Ursula was a senior consultant. He
was elected to his senate seat in 2002, and if Ursula had it her
way, she would one day be the next African American First Lady to
the second African American U.S. President in history. And her son
from a previous marriage, Micah Daye, knew that all too well. His
mother had dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s,
willing to do whatever it took to keep their noses clean so that
she could make it to the White House before her competitive
ex-best-friend, Kendra Graves, married to the New York senator from
the 60th District, made it there first.
Republican Kalin Graves was a New
York senator for the 60th District. His wife, Kendra, was a
marketing executive at Saks Fifth Avenue corporate. Just when
Ursula’s husband, Darrell, made it known he was interested in
politics, Kendra sought out a politician of her own and married
Kalin Graves the next year. The beef between Kendra and Ursula
stemmed from the fact that they were once secret lovers.
The Escorts
Like I said, I’m Money
Watts. My home in Cobble Hill West outside of Manhattan was
where I ran my business. In 2005, I was married to a well-known
sports anchor who brought me to New York after he was hired for a
big announcer job with the NBA, co-anchoring with Ahmad Rashad, but
he left it, and me, all behind when he went back to Los Angeles to
be with a local weathergirl whom he met during a National Black
Journalists Conference the year before. We’d only been married six
months. I’d signed a prenup. I had nothing, so I made a way. I had
sex for money. The money was good. I was good. I still take on
clients if it involves my expertise, which is role-playing and
dominating—my dom name is Brooklyn. I personally service Tyler
Copeland, the NYPD police chief, who is a certified cross-dressing
sissy.
As a runaway teen and aspiring actress,
strolling through the lights and wonder of Times Square at the age
of seventeen, Midori Moody saved a pimp’s business card for
a rainy day. She left home because she said her big sister was the
perfect child, and she was the misfit. Two days after she called
the pimp named Romeo, she became a good girl gone wild who drank
and partied, and screwed for money. She found out that feeling love
through those transgressions was easier than dealing with her own
abandonment. She’d later break away and buy herself a condo on the
Upper East Side of Manhattan, but by the time she met Micah Daye,
her new boyfriend, that’s when she started to get sloppy. Bailey
Brenner, her regular “hobbyist” who was on the city council,
started getting crazy jealous.
Malaka Sutton’s three-story
townhouse is in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Malaka’s own mother was an
escort when Malaka was a child in Denver. Her mother would even
take her along to see clients. Malaka learned firsthand how to make
sexy ends meet. And in New York, they were meeting like a
muthafucka. Malaka was my highest paid escort. She satisfied the
cream of the crop. She was my number one lady.
Tall and fine and in demand, Kemba
Price, Italian and Sudanese, from Staten Island, was my one and
only call guy. He lived in Harlem on 128th Street, and when he
wasn’t on “dates” for Lip Service, he was at the gym, chiseling his
six-foot-five, model-type body. And that’s where he first met
Ursula Leah Ellington, the wife of Darrell Ellington. And he also
met a new friend, Romeo, the pimp.
The Blackmail
March 2010
So tell me what happened.” I sat in the lobby
of the historic Algonquin Hotel on Club Row. Midori made me
frown.
“Bailey’s just jealous. He’s making up
stories.”
“What’s he jealous of?”
“He knows about Micah.”
“And how does he know anything about your
private life, Midori?”
“I guess he
followed me. I guess he’s been watching me.”
“You guess? Midori. Listen to me. This is
a problem. I send you to meet Bailey at the St. Regis, and you take
money from him on the side?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then what happened to that hotel room?
Why was it damaged like that?”
“It wasn’t damaged when I left. I left him
there.”
“So, you didn’t tear up the room and
threaten to accuse him of roughing you up?”
“No. He said that?”
“I said that.”
“I make enough money. I wouldn’t do that
just to get some cash from a client. He’s the problem, not me. What
I didn’t tell you is that Bailey did the escort bonding. He said he
loves me.”
“See, that’s something you should’ve told
me. Then I wouldn’t have assigned you to him. He’s good money, but
he won’t be requesting you again, I guarantee you that. I smell
messy.”
“Okay.”
“So what’s up with you and Micah? You two
are still serious?”
“It’s coming along.”
“And he still doesn’t know what you
do?”
“No. Still thinks I’m a realtor.”
“It’s too close for comfort, Midori. He’s
Senator Ellington’s stepson.”
“Yes. And that’s something I wanted to
talk to you about. See, the other night, Micah was talking about
playing around on the computer. He’s doing this tech job, and with
his IT schooling, he knows how to hack into email. He’s talking,
well joking, like a prank, about hacking into Senator Graves’s
personal email account.”
“Midori, that mama’s boy is looking for
something on Senator Graves that would embarrass him. Cause his
political career damage. That’s called blackmail, not a prank. And
he’d do it just to please his mother. But he could go to jail for
the rest of his life. He really thinks he’d be able to get away
with something like that?”
“He won’t really do it. He was just
talking. Sometimes he acts like he’s young Microsoft or
something.”
She had the nerve to giggle, but it
sounded nervous, which it should have been. I kept a very straight
face. “I see nothing funny. What do you see in a nerd like
that?”
“He’s nice.”
“Still looking for the knight in shining
armor. Still looking for love to take you away, like in the movie
Pretty Woman, huh?”
“No.”
“See, it’s sad that your little boyfriend
has no idea that the dirt he’ll uncover could be his own. If he did
that, he’d not only uncover evidence linking Senator Graves to
prostitution, but that would open a whole ugly can of worms that
would expose his own stepfather’s kinky other life, and expose Lip
Service. Now there are three ways to solve this. One would be for
you to tell him what you do and what his stepfather is into. But
that’s a no-no. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Another would be, you keep an eye on your
little beau, and talk him out of that madness. You’d need to keep
him close. You understand that?”
“Yes.”
“Micah had better watch himself. Kemba
said Micah’s own mother all but propositioned him while he was
coming out of the gym the other day.”
“She did?”
“Yes. She did. Your boyfriend Micah is so
busy trying to blackmail the enemy, he’d end up destroying his own
political family.”
“I’ve got him.”
“Yeah, well, you’d better.”
“How’d you know
about the hotel room being torn up?”
“Back to your boyfriend. The third way
would be that I could have someone handle him. I’ve been at this
for years and I have a lot to lose. My clients have a lot to lose.
I’m not going to let anyone ruin this. If you don’t talk him out of
his little brainstorm, I can fix it myself with one phone
call.”
“You wouldn’t do
anything to Senator Ellington’s son.”
I just looked right through her.
She blinked fast. “Like I said, I’ve got
him.” She swallowed hard. “And actually, I’m ready to quit.”
“Not just yet. I need you near him. Trust
me, this is not a joke. Handle this.”
“Or else what?”
“Midori, even if you are my sister, I
won’t let you fuck this up. We’re in the world of politics and sex
in New York City, and right now, there’s porn and kinky sex on tons
of government computers as we speak. It’s the perfect place to be
to make money for the service I provide. And before I let some
amateur, sorry-ass blackmail scheme happen, I’ll do what I have to
do. I’m not going to jail. I’ll stop anyone.” I gave her a look
serious enough to let her know I’m a madam first, and a sister
second.
Midori angled her stare like a puppy.
I imitated her angle. “You could learn a
thing or two from Malaka. Clean and easy.” I handed her an
envelope. “Now, I’m flying you to the Florida Keys for a late
dinner, and then a full day with a Long Island physician. Meet him
at the Little Palm Island hotel tonight at nine. Your flight is at
noon.”
“Got it.” She took it.
“And tell your little nerdy boyfriend
you’re going to look at property. Keep him in check.” I did not
blink. “And, Midori, this conversation never happened.”
She did blink, fast as usual, and nodded
yes.
That would have all been well and good, if
Midori’s sneaky ass hadn’t been wired the entire time.