The Happy Hooker: My Own Story

17. ABE THE BUGGER

Abe the Bugger is the cause of my present less-active days as a New York madam.

Abe’s real identity will be apparent to anyone who has read the papers or watched the television reports on police corruption in New York and my own part in the controversial hearings of the Knapp Commission appointed by Mayor John Lindsay to study corruption in New York City’s government and police department.

Abe is one of those electronic geniuses who can bug anything: apartments, phones, offices, or cars. He was introduced to me by my co-author, Robin Moore, who wanted to have Abe install a tape-recorder system in my bedroom in order to get authenticity for this book.

Abe the Bugger is not an easy person to describe in words. He must be seen to be believed. Think of 190 pounds of fat held in a five-foot-six body. Cover this with a baby-pink wrapping; add two thick – ever moist – lips, and dot with powder-blue eyes – each forever magnified by a couple of Coca-Cola bottle bottoms for glasses – all sitting under three strands of hair assigned the impossible task of covering something that only a loving mother could call a head. Then you might have a feeling for Abe the Bugger.

Perhaps because he thinks his eighteen-month jail sentence a few years ago was unjustified, Abe’s seeming ambition in life is to turn up evidence against crooked political figures and judges. He was constantly assuring me that today he leads a perfectly straight life, saving his pennies and living on what he makes as an investigator. Indeed, he reminded me of nothing more than a sneak of a bad penny, always turning up at the wrong moment.

But of course once Abe was in, he really was in. First, he wired most of my telephones and connected them to a huge tape recorder hidden in my closet. At this moment I had second thoughts. “But I thought that we were going to have one of those small tape recorders that I simply turn on and off!” I told him.

“No, no, no, Robin wants all the sound,” Abe insisted.

Abe the Bugger was Robin’s man. How could I, madam though I may be, ever confuse artistry with art.

“How about the switch?” I pursued. “Listen, I want to be able to turn this thing off.”

“Okay,” he said. “Here is the switch. Press it here and it goes on, and press it there and off it goes. So you see, now you can record any conversation you want, and if you don’t want to record it, you don’t even have to put it on,” he replied with a cherubic smile.

Like Pandora’s box, Abe, once turned on, was evil energy unleashed. “Your phones…”

“What about my phones?” I asked.

“They could be bugged.”

“Oh?”

“I will check them out.” And check them out he did. I have never seen such activity. Electronic gadgets with all sorts of flicking lights and purring noises.

“Aha, it is bugged. You got a bug here.”

“Where?”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I know.”

“How? How do you know””

“The… [a spew forth of words I knew to be English but that sounded more like Einstein going mad]…and when it registers on this meter, I know there is a bug.”

“Okay. There is a bug.” I mean, who the hell could argue anyway?

“Aha [click, click, push, pull, click click]…and this one has a penregister.”

“How the hell, never mind… what the hell is a penregister?”

He told me it records all the numbers dialed. I wanted to know what I should do. He quickly explained; there is that smile again. I was to do nothing, he would do it all. He opened up another black box with meters and lights, and after half an hour’s work he sighed in satisfaction. “No more bug. I have just burned it off. It will take them ten days to get a court order to put a new one on. As for the penregister phone, just use it for incoming calls or to call out for shopping or food deliveries or general chitchat talk with friends.”

The tape recorder was fun. I spent the next few days taping some of the phone calls, especially the sickies, and interviewing some friends and johns. Of course, I would ask them for their permission first, and keep their identity unknown.

Once again, Abe came to visit. Not satisfied with having a bug in the bedrooms, he wanted to bug the sounds of the living room as well.

“No good,” I said. I thought that this was carrying reality too far, since I would certainly lose control in a big group of people. It was not till very much later I learned that Abe had put a tiny but powerful radio transmitter in the back of the night table next to my bed, and every sound in my bedroom could be picked up and broadcast to another tape recorder in an office a block from my apartment building, whether I pressed the switch or not.

Abe, it seems, had a sideline – selling information to law-enforcement agencies and others. I found out about the hidden bug and Abe’s sideline only when Knapp Commission investigators called me as a witness many months later. They had in their possession tapes, made in my apartment without my knowledge or consent. So our Abe the Bugger was a busy bug indeed. Carried away with his hidden electronic gadgets, he went even further.

About two months after Abe made his first appearance at my place, he showed up on a periodic visit to check my phones for “taps.” On this visit he burned off “a new one” for a quick $250, and unbeknownst to me left behind another gadget.

Approximately two weeks later Larry was pouring liquor from half-gallon bottles into smaller bottles and straightening up my place when he suddenly called me into the bedroom. He told me to stand on a chair and look at the back of the round golden mirror hanging above my bed. There in the middle of the back of the mirror was a little black metal box.

“Abe, you son of a bitch, what the hell does this mean?” I thought to myself. Larry gave a whistle and pulled the box off the mirror. We then put it away in my closet. Abe would have some explaining to do.

“It’s nothing,” he said the following day. That same smile again. “Just a booster for the tape recorder.” It was not until months later that Robin told me I had been on television.

It turned out that the little box was a television camera which worked something like radar. A laser beam directed at the camera in my apartment from a nearby office activated the black box and relayed pictures to the sophisticated receiving equipment in Abe’s office. Good old businesslike Abe had not only been listening to what went on in my apartment, he was watching as well. What he did was play with the dials of the big TV instrument in his office until he brought in the picture from my bedroom, and then sat down to watch, that liver-lips little voyeur.

But Abe wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. After all his work, he watched me in action for a total of only forty-five minutes. The picture actually got picked up and appeared on one of New York’s commercial UHF channels, a Spanish-language station, I believe. And these viewers, I gather, got to watch quite an orgy for forty-five minutes.

When the FBI was called in to investigate, the agents immediately assumed that only one person was capable of so sophisticated an electronic stunt. They called Abe in and threatened him with everything in the book if he did such a thing again, and I guess they scared him pretty badly.

To say the least, Abe is well known to the FBI and the various crime commissions operating in New York, and has sold information to them. Soon after he met me he suggested that I make payoffs to stay in business. Truthfully, it was difficult for me to go for more than four or five months without getting busted under normal circumstances, and he claimed that payoffs would ease this situation.

Abe admitted to me that he was doing work for two crime commissions investigating corruption. He also told me that anything I did to help this work was strictly a favor, and I could expect help in return.

Abe did indeed introduce me to Senator John H. Hughes and his legal counsel, Edward McLaughlin. Senator Hughes heads a committee in Albany – the weighty full title of which is the New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Crime, Its Causes, Control amp; Effect on Society – and he and his counsel offered me help with my immigration case in return for my future cooperation. I am always worried about being deported – with good reason, I’m afraid – and I believed that Abe really could speak on Senator Hughes’ behalf.

However, I never completely trusted the bugger. Even though he pretended to be such a good friend of the house, why then the “friendly” fees of $200 or $300? For burning off the supposedly existing wiretaps on my phones? Where was the prix d’amis?

One day I went to meet a friend at a lawyer’s office before lunchtime. I knew the lawyer from years before – Ed Jarmen. I’d never really cared for Jarmen – he was too slick and dealt with too many creepy individuals, and I would definitely regard him as a “shyster” lawyer. I chatted with Jarmen a few minutes before my friend took me out for lunch, and I happened to mention my problem of having been arrested several times in the past months. Jarmen immediately said he would introduce me that night to someone who might be of help to me.

Sure enough, late that afternoon a visitor was announced by my doorman as a friend of Mr. Jarmen’s. When I opened the door I found a tall, thin, black-haired man who perhaps was in his early forties. Smiling, he identified himself, and since he was both pleasant and well dressed, I let him in. Nick, as he had introduced himself, then further identified himself as a plainclothes detective who felt he should help me, since I was a friend of Ed Jarmen. He showed me his badge and I.D. card, and I wrote down the numbers.

We then discussed the fact that the “heat” was on. Mayor Lindsay’s “crackdown on prostitution” had not only curtailed street prostitution, but also private call girls and the houses run by various madams. The busts had been frequent, and in March, 1971, I was thrown into jail together with one of my German girls and an innocent roommate. The case was still pending, and it looked rather gloomy, since my biggest fear was a conviction, even if it was only for loitering for “the purpose of prostitution.” Anything regarded as moral turpitude could prevent my getting the all-important U.S. resident’s green card that I had been awaiting for so long. Of course, I mentioned this to Nick, and he asked me who the arresting officer had been in my case. I told him, and we left it at that. Nick then took me for a drink at P. J. Clarke’s, my favorite hangout, just around the corner from where I was then living. At P. J.’s Nick seemed to know everyone, and people kept coming over to our table, kidding around and buying us drinks. Mine were soft drinks, as usual, but Nick had several free belts. Nick and I finally made a date to meet with my boyfriend the next day at my house to discuss where to go next to solve my problem.

That evening both Larry and Abe were at the apartment, and I mentioned the meeting with Nick. Abe immediately became very interested and said that since he was in a position to check out cops better than Larry and I, we should let him pose as my boyfriend, meet Nick, and act as my intermediary in whatever proposal Nick might make. He meanwhile jotted down the numbers I had copied from Nick’s badge and identification card and left to check those out.

So, two days later when Nick came up to the apartment, Abe was there. Ugh! I hated even to introduce Abe as my boyfriend, since the thought of having him as a boyfriend almost made me puke. However, Abe and Nick seemed to get along well, and before I even could open my mouth, they’d made a deal for monthly payoffs of $1,100 to the police for protection.

When I complained about the high monthly figure, Abe told me I’d better cooperate, since I needed the protection, or else I would get deported. So I kept quiet and, to cement the deal, I treated Nick to one of my girls.

The next day Nick introduced three police officers from the precinct to Abe at P. J.’s, which had now become our regular meeting place. Nick was one of the smartest and biggest bagmen in New York, Abe told me later. Most of the big payoffs went through him. Abe added that Nick probably put half the money he collected in his own pocket. Moreover, according to Abe, Nick owned three airplanes and an expensive house.

Larry and I tried to convince ourselves we had confidence in this new arrangement. Actually we had no alternative but to cooperate, and Abe did seem reliable as long as I handed over the $1,100 each month. Things went along well for about three months with Abe and Nick being thick as thieves – which of course they indeed were.

Meanwhile, another “deal” was made. This had to do with my previous arrest. After discussions back and forth with Abe and the arresting police officer, Nick fixed a price of $3,500 to get me off the hook completely. Originally the arresting officer had suggested wryly that the “golden goose” ought to pay $10,000 to get her case dismissed, but as that figure was rather outrageous, they settled for $3,500. Again, there was really nothing I could do about it other than get up the money. Later on I found out that only $1,500 was being paid to the arresting officer. What happened to the rest of the money, only Abe and Nick know!

After all this was taken care of, my case still had not been thrown out completely, since my lawyer, properly straightlaced, refused to cooperate in a bribe case and pleaded me guilty of a misdemeanor: loitering. I got off with a $100 fine, but it wasn’t the money that hurt. And on top of everything, the arresting officer insisted on getting a freebie with my German girl friend which remains to this day an unfulfilled demand.

One day Abe came to Larry and asked for a large favor. The favor – and the word is used loosely – involved a situation in which Larry had gotten himself involved in connection with an allegedly stolen insurance check involving a considerable sum. Abe said he’d looked into the case and had spoken to the assistant district attorney handling the case. And Larry would have a great opportunity to do a tremendous amount of good for the crime committee, Abe told him, if he cooperated in the following manner. Larry’s case was to be handled by a very prominent New York judge whom the committee was then investigating. This judge was very close to a certain lawyer, who was none other than Ed Jarmen. Abe wanted Larry to please go along with the farce of employing Ed Jarmen as his attorney and having him try to fix the case via a payoff.

Although Larry had his own attorney and was quite prepared to go to court, he decided to go along with the game. Among other things, he was promised by Abe that he’d get the “payoff” money back, since it was being used to gain an indictment of the judge.

The next few days, Nick and Abe put their heads together with the lawyer, Jarmen, to discuss the “fixing” of Larry’s case. Abe came back and told me that he would need $10,000 to “take care” of my boyfriend’s case. I told him that I did not have that kind of money, since I had just been arrested and had a steep lawyer’s bill myself. Also I’d just laid out a lot of money in my own case.

Besides all this, my business was rather slow at that time, what with my publicized arrest and the summer months coming up, when most people leave town. And why should I let Abe and Nick bleed me to death anyway? To cooperate with a crime committee – well, fine! But to what extent? How could I trust this crazy situation?

Abe then became very “moral” and insinuated that my money was ill-gotten anyway. “Easy come, easy go.” So why shouldn’t I lend Larry, who had been my steady boyfriend for the past year, the $10,000 to make the payoff to the bagman? “You don’t want your boyfriend to get in trouble, do you?” he asked sarcastically. In other words, Abe put the knife to my throat, threatening me again with deportation and arrest. Still $10,000 to me was not exactly peanuts, although my monthly $1,100 was not petty cash either.

Being very persuasive, Abe swore that I would get all the money back later, although the crime commission did not have sufficient funds available just then. Finally it was agreed that Larry and I would split the $10,000 and each put $5,000 up. Larry spent a lot of time on taking down the serial numbers from the $100 bills that we gave Abe, who assured us that he would be able to trace our money both by the serial numbers and additional unseen markings that he would put on himself.

Larry went with Abe to Jarmen’s office, where discussions took place as to how to pay off the judge.

Two weeks later Nick came dashing up to my apartment. He was yelling-screaming mad about “that bastard Abe.” He ranted: “I always did wonder about him and his neat suits and ties, carrying his attaché case in the middle of this hot summer weather.”

What happened was that after every payment Abe made for me at P. J. Clarke’s, he would lead Nick into talking about who the payoffs were going to and who on the police force was taking bribes. When Abe went to meet Jarmen with Nick, he was as usual immaculately dressed, with his suit buttoned and carrying, as ever, his briefcase.

Nick had noticed how Abe nonchalantly waved his briefcase around when he was talking in the lawyer’s office. He became suspicious when Abe made Ed Jarmen repeat the name of the prominent judge several times. Nick had suddenly grabbed Abe from behind, pulled his coat off, and found the man was completely wired. Everything that was said had gone into the little microphone Abe wore. I now recalled that Abe had confessed to me once that his little black attaché case was equipped with cameras, and the lens shutter worked by moving the handle up and down. Without opening the case he could shoot as many pictures as he wanted.

According to Nick’s story, Ed Jarmen was so outraged that he pulled a gun from his drawer and threatened Abe with it. Just then two men came bursting into the office. They identified themselves as agents from the Knapp Commission. Obviously the two agents came just in time to prevent harm to anyone, and now came the moment of revelation. All this time Abe had not been representing Senator Hughes’ Committee on Crime in Albany, but rather the Knapp Commission. Even though I lost several thousand dollars, I couldn’t help laughing at myself for having been actually financing Mayor Lindsay’s crime commission in one of their biggest investigations.

Meanwhile, Nick accused me of knowing all about Abe’s working with the Knapp Commission, and I had to keep denying it in the worst way, since I really had not been aware of it. So, willingly or unwillingly, I suppose I have been of quite some help to the Knapp Commission.

Great was our surprise when several months later the newspaper headlines broke, painting Larry and me as the bribers of the corrupt policemen while Abe was the one that had forced us to do so. People started calling me and accusing Larry of being my pimp, because that was definitely what it looked like in the papers. The reality is that Larry has never taken money from me other than the payoffs. The contrary is true. Whenever we go somewhere, whether it is Miami, Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, or anyplace else, it is always my friendly forty-three-year-old silver fox, Larry, who picks up the tabs and even gives me gambling money in the casinos. He is the one who ends up paying the high bills for clothing and dinners, so herewith I would like to correct the statements in the papers.

As far as I myself am concerned, I was highly surprised to read the other day that Abe had accused me of having blackmailed, bribed, and extorted money from my customers, and even of being involved with drugs. This is all untrue, and there is a possibility that Abe himself will be indicted for his activities. In the meantime, heavy investigations are continuing, and I am called in daily to the New York district attorney’s office for what information I can provide.

Meanwhile, Abe, whose house has been raided by the New York district attorney, is left helpless without his gadgets and tape recordings, his decoder and descrambler, his burning-off device, and the other tools of his nefarious trade. At the same time, my girls are being harassed with obscene telephone calls, and I know Abe photostated my address books. It may be their imagination, but some of my girls say they recognized his voice from hearing him on a television interview recently.

It is now December, 1971, as this book has come to an end, and so may my career as one of New York’s most celebrated madams. In any case, I will be happy if I can continue to work in my business and as long as wealthy, prominent, influential, and famous men want to see me and have me arrange their dates, I will continue to stay in the profession, and serve them, and teach others what I have learned.