The Happy Hooker: My Own Story

7. ARRESTS

In my opinion, no good brothel can operate more than a year in New York without being raided at least once by police.

I have been busted three times in my own house and once in the establishment of another madam, Georgette Harcourte. Each arrest is a serious nuisance, because all we want to do is get on with our work and not bother, or be bothered by, anybody else.

You can try protecting yourself by carefully screening your phone callers, making sure there is no money exchanged until the customer has participated, or by using police locks to keep out police. Today I have an answering service take all my calls. I have special code words with my customers, and I call them back if they leave the correct message.

But no matter how careful you are, or how many precautions you take, if they want to penetrate you, so to speak, they can always find a way. The new no-knock laws make it easier for them to push their way in legally, and they don’t need search warrants to seize your books and telephones.

The methods, reasons, and penalties for arrest are as different as they are sometimes ridiculous.

A neighbor can report you for disturbance, a rival madam can report you to cripple the competition, or an irrational customer with some imagined grievance can yell police, which is, I believe, what happened to me the second time I got busted.

A little lunatic called Nicky, whom I threw out for bugging my girls and upsetting my clients, ran down to the local police precinct and filed a complaint.

“They’re running a whorehouse up there, and they discriminate against Jewish people,” he told them. The truth is that I had thrown him out because of his lunatic behavior. And certainly not because he was a Jewish lunatic.

But the police dug into all my financial business, came up with a Dun and Bradstreet triple-A rating, and told the judge I was the biggest madam operating in New York City today. It looked bad for a while, but my lawyer got the charge reduced to a misdemeanor, and in the end I got off with a $100 fine. Plus a staggering legal fee, naturally.

The arrest before that happened in my own house, too, and I admit it was partly through my own carelessness, because I was too busy that night to check out a client’s credentials. Normally I would ask a caller to prove he is a customer by identifying something in my house or describing to me the girl he saw last time. Or, if he is new, to give me another client’s name as a reference. But this night a guy named Artie called, said he was from Brooklyn and that he was a friend of Mr. Roberts.

Well, that usually would not be sufficient recommendation, because I know about six Mr. Robertses. But he sounded very charming, and also you can say I might have been a little greedy, because he wanted to bring along another three customers.

They arrived about an hour later, and the bedrooms were full, and a couple of guys were ahead of them, but they didn’t mind waiting.

They were a happy bunch of guys – one Jewish, one Irish, and two Italians – they had a drink and sat around and talked and joked.

Meantime, they asked me to send out for three other girls for them, which I was happy to do. The girls arrived, and one of the men flashed a badge and identified himself, after pushing me his fee in advance.

“Hey, Pussycat,” he said, “we’re not exactly what you think we are, we’re not johns.” Which amazed me, because they had pretty authentic hard-ons in their pants. “We’re police officers, and you’re under arrest.”

This time my lawyer got me off with another hundred-dollar fine on reduced charges by proving this was entrapment.

“Entrapment” means that a police officer deliberately causes you to commit a crime, and he cannot then legally arrest you for it, which is fair.

Another method the police use to bust you is to wait downstairs and grab a client as he leaves and intimidate him into fingering you, so to speak.

They ask him has he paid to get laid, and if he says, “No, I was just visiting my mother,” they say, “Okay, we’ll take your name and address and just let your wife know what a dutiful son you are.” The guy gets frightened and tells all. Then they either bring him straight back and confront you with your accuser, or they wait until more customers come in so they can catch you all together in the act.

This is the way I was busted, for the first time, in the house of Georgette Harcourte, and I still remember it as a very ugly and degrading experience.

At this time I was working mostly for Georgette, because Madeleine caught me passing my cards around among her clients and sort of rejected me. I felt bad about it, because Madeleine’s was definitely the best house in town and had the most sophisticated clientele. Georgette’s clients were mostly drunk stockbrokers and freaks, and most of her girls were unattractive. Also, I must point out that Georgette’s 50-50 split was less fair than Madeleine’s 60-40. Financially Georgette was so tough that if you had to take a taxi from here to Timbuctoo she wouldn’t give you a break. In her house the girls were never allowed to fix themselves a cold drink, much less have something to eat, even if they were there over four hours. In my house the girls can eat and drink what they want.

Still, Georgette’s was where I was working, and she loved to have me because I was hard-working, reliable, and resourceful. I was also the only girl who could get into the Plaza or Waldorf after midnight without difficulty. I would put on a conservative sweater and skirt, white socks and shoes, and fix my hair into pigtails. I hardly ever wear makeup, even to this day, now that I am a big madam, so I already had a fresh, natural look. I’d put a pair of glasses on my nose, and then I would hold a book under my arm and breeze in past the security men like a college girl. Before I knocked on the client’s door I would undo my hair, remove my socks, take off my glasses, and throw the book in the trash can.

Another thing Georgette liked about me was that I could take care of the big cocks, any length, any width, because I love it.

So I was an asset for her house, and she knew she could call me any time of the day or night and I’d run over for her.

This night in February, 1970, Georgette called me to come over and help her with a stag party for a group of five investment bankers. I recall there was a blizzard going outside and I was nearly frozen when I arrived at the Pavilion, where she had her penthouse. I was busy thawing my hands as I stepped from the elevator, but I noticed a little Chinese-looking guy wearing dark glasses, who must have been her previous customer, leaving.

I went inside and was assigned to Carter Miles, a banker who is famous for his big penis that none of the other girls’ pussycats could take. They call him “the long mile,” for obvious reasons.

I remember Carter pounding away at me. He took forever to climax, as he was very drunk. His friends were all finished and getting dressed.

Meantime, I heard Georgette accept a phone booking for another two guys who were coming by, and she asked me to stay on for them. So everybody was dressed now except me, because I am an exhibitionist, and even in my own house I love to walk around in the nude or with a very short nightie.

I was just sitting, relaxing, one customer’s head in my lap, when the doorbell buzzed. “Let me greet them in the nude,” I jokingly said to Georgette. “What a wonderful reception that will be;” one of the bankers mumbled.

I stood beside her as she undid a hundred locks. She opened the door, and two guys were there. Both very large men, one was bald and kind of vicious-looking, but I suppose they can’t help being born ugly and their money is as good as everybody else’s. So I jumped forward and greeted them. “Hello, darling,” I said to the big, bald one. “Come on in, let me take your jacket; make yourself at home.” But whom did I notice behind them but the little Asian-looking guy in the dark glasses, whom they’d obviously grabbed on the way out, and the weasel was wetting his pants, he was so frightened.

The men flashed their badges and said, “Vice Squad, you’re all under arrest.” Then everything happened at once, eight uniformed cops burst through the door, and chaos broke loose.

The girls were screaming, the customers were having several fits, and only Marianna, Georgette’s maid, kept her cool and hid the books. Even Georgette, the madam herself, was yelling stupid threats at the cops. This for me was a very scary moment, and I didn’t know what was going to happen next.

Meanwhile, my little black book with my clients all listed was in the next room with my clothes, and I was standing there naked. The first thing I instinctively did was run into the bedroom, rip out the pages with the addresses on them, and hide them underneath Georgette’s laundry while the uniformed cops were turning the place over for drugs.

One came to the bathroom just as I finished hiding the pages and ordered me to get dressed to go with everyone to the station. But in all the disturbance I couldn’t find my bikini underpants, my panty hose, or my bra (which people were wearing in those days), so I had to go out into the freezing night with nothing under my coat but a light minidress.

The neighbors were lined up in the halls watching as they herded us out like geese into the squad cars, and off to the precinct.

It’ seemed we were bumping and circling around the city for hours, and meanwhile the Irish cop beside me grabbed my hand and put it on his huge hard-on. The wagon is dark, my laugh is cynical.

“What is this nonsense?” I said at the top of my voice. “You arrest us for selling it, and now you want a freebie blow-job in the car!” This seemed such an inappropriate thing to do that I cracked up. “What the hell, we’re going to prison, we might as well give it away,” I said jokingly.

The other girls were mortified. “Take it easy, Xaviera,” they said; “this is a serious matter.”

But to me this was the breaking point. We were being pushed around like common whores, we were upset, and my ass was literally freezing off without my underpants, and this cop wanted to get a freebie. Embarrassed, he shifted uneasily away from me, his ardor considerably cooled.

It, was around one A.M. when we arrived at the precinct house, and we were again herded up a flight of filthy stairs and into a dirty office, where Lieutenant Greenleaf, the big, bald ape who arrested me, took off his coat and sat down to his desk.

We could make a couple of phone calls if we were quick about it, they told us, but the trouble was that I didn’t have anyone to call except Paul Lindfeld, a straight man I met in Miami whom I’d been going out with steadily since Christmas.

Even though it was late, I hoped he wouldn’t mind helping me out, because he was my guy.

“Paul,” I said, “I’m awfully sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I am in some serious trouble. I’ve been arrested, I’m worried, I don’t know what to do.”

The last thing in the world I expected was his answer. “I don’t want to know about it,” he said. “Don’t tell them you are calling me, don’t mention my name, and scratch it out of your book in case they confiscate it.”

It shows you how much you can sometimes depend on a man – when you need a helping hand and there’s nothing in it for him, he lets you down.

Time passed by very slowly at the police station, and nothing was happening for ages except that we were hungry and cold. Finally they decided to interrogate us one by one.

Georgette whispered in my ear, “Deny you were paid,” which turned out to be true, because we lost our pay for that night. “And don’t tell them who you are or where you live.” When my turn came a young Irish cop sat me down and asked my name. Despite Georgette’s advice, I gave it to him. There was no alternative. “Address, age, and occupation?” he pursued. Occupation? This struck me as a redundant kind of question, so I answered, “Nymphomaniac.” This big idiot said how do you spell that. “N-y-m-p-h,” I began and the girls started to crack up, and even two detectives dozing in chairs started laughing.

Despite the humor, I was depressed about this whole thing, and it was cold in there. I was very tired, so I climbed on a desk and tried to get some sleep. Behind me as I lay down I heard the cop interrogating Georgette, and they didn’t have to ask her name, because she was already one of the most notorious madams in New York at that time.

“Hey, you’re typing all kinds of errors on that sheet,” I heard her say to him. So the cop replied, “Yeah, how can I concentrate?” He pointed at me. “Look at that broad there with her bare ass sticking out in my face.”

Around five A.M. we were once again pushed into the squad cars, and this time we went downtown to the Tombs – my first visit – where we went through the whole rigamatick, filling in forms and making statements all over again. Only this was an even more horrible place than the station house – full of robbers, hoodlums, drunks, addicts, guys in fights, and streetwalkers.

We had to get mug shots taken and submit to the most humiliating kind of physical examination by a big dykish matron.

We had to bend backward, forward, and spread our legs so that if we carried anything in our vaginas it would most probably fall out. We were ordered to the bathroom whether we wanted to go or not, and then we were shoved into separate cells. People talking and coughing and vomiting, and altogether a very grim atmosphere.

In the cell next to me, a black girl fifteen years old kept telling me in a whiny southern accent that she had been pushing drugs since she was twelve, and she was dying for a cigarette, and she wouldn’t leave me alone. One of our girls had some, so we passed them from hand to hand to shut up her dragging voice.

It was terribly cold on the benches, and that night passed slowly, fitfully, without any possibility of sleep. Around eight A.M. we were taken to an even worse cell, full of vicious-looking black street hookers with long boots, colored wigs, and leather miniskirts. Their horrible body odor made me gasp and try not to breathe.

They started asking us all kinds of questions, as though we made a habit of spending our nights in these stinking jails. One black girl with bruises all over her face took an interest in me and wouldn’t stop demanding information. She was one of those kind of people who thump your arm when they want to know something.

“Hey,” she said, “you with the blond hair,” thump, “you must be high-priced jet-set call girls, the twenty-five-dollar-an-hour kind.”

“No, I beg your pardon,” I said, “we’re one hundred dollars an hour.” I was bragging, of course, but we felt like society ladies against those human dregs.

She didn’t want to appear jealous, so she said, “Hey, buddy,” nudge again, “hope you got your old man waiting outside to get you out.” “What’s an old man?” I asked, because I wasn’t familiar with street-hooker terminology in those days. “A pimp, don’t you have a pimp?” shove, push.

She was really knocked out when I didn’t know what a pimp was, much less have one waiting outside. I wished she would shut up, because this talk was bugging me, and I kept wondering what had become of my life. A year ago I was expecting to be married and settled down, and today I was in a dirty cell with twenty sleazy streetwalkers.

“Leave her alone,” Georgette said; “she’s new to this.” And about that time they called us into the courtroom.

There in the audience was Carter, my banker date – sober now – who had been considerate enough to come down and learn what was happening.

Then the lawyer Georgette had engaged for us, who was a relative of the judge, stood up and said his piece. I didn’t understand the proceedings too well, but he must have been very competent, because I heard the judge say, “Case dismissed.”

We all went downstairs for a milkshake and a sandwich and met the lawyer and Carter. I thanked them both, and I engaged Carter as my banker, which he is to this day.

Then I went uptown to collect my torn addresses from Georgette’s laundry, and on to my house, where I drew the curtains and slept for fifteen hours to forget what had been one of the worst nights of my life.