The Education of a Very Young Madam (11 page)

"It's like a ladder, and each guy at each level has to make a profit, so the price just keeps getting jacked up more and more," Tito went on. "Ultimately, the guy on the street who wants to party has to pay not just for the product but for the work that has been done to get it to him and for the risk that has been taken by a whole lot of people."

That much made sense to me, but since I considered myself a businessman too, I wondered why he wouldn't just eliminate the middlemen. Not all of them, of course, because I knew he'd never stand on a street corner to sell anything, but some of the distributors maybe, so he could make a bigger profit.

The answer was obvious when he said it. It's all about risk. One big sale means one moment of risk: when the transaction takes place and the product is exchanged for money. If you're distributing to several or even hundreds ofpeople, then you risk getting caught each and every time an exchange takes place.

I realized eventually that things aren't so different in my business. The girls who work for me and even my clients are at a much greater risk of getting caught than I am, because I'm nowhere near when money changes hands and the actual sex takes place. I'm safely tucked away in my apartment or hotel room or wherever I happen to be at the time, far from the scene of the crime. When I ran the brothel in New York, I was often there looking after my business while transactions were taking place, and every minute I spent there, I was putting myself at risk of getting arrested. But no more. Of course I have to collect money from my girls eventually, but I don't do it until the pot has grown big enough to merit the risk. Even then, I usually send a go-between to do it for me, and that happens long after all the clients have gone. The police would have to be very patient and dedicated to track any crimes back to me, and frankly, I'm not really worth the trouble. At least, I try not to be.

I admired Tito and the way he thought about things, but he scared me too. He obviously thought of dealing as a long-term business, so he wasn't looking to take too many chances. He had a steady income and made plenty of cash. He knew the price he could pay for getting greedy. But he also never thought about other things he could do to make money that were safer and less stressful for him and for Maya. He was a lifer. There was nothing else for him.

Allen, on the other hand, was more like Andre in that he was interested in other entrepreneurial ventures. And he became even more interested in them as our relationship got more and more serious. He refused to live in the city itself, which he considered far too ghetto, choosing to live in an upscale Maryland suburb instead. I soon found an apartment down the street from him, and Maya and Tito lived across the street from me. Except for the four of us, the neighborhood was entirely white folks. Maya and I reconciled ourselves to living in such an area because at least we had each other, and Maya had kids, so she had her own reasons for wanting to be there. I think Tito and Allen liked it there because it was far enough away from the gang and drug warfare going on all over Baltimore that they felt almost safe and relaxed.

About the time I moved near him, Allen started looking for a way out of the drug business. He had his mind set on buying an upscale "gentlemen's club," one that you could see from the highway when you were leaving the city. He and Tito and some of their friends used to hang out there. It was our retirement plan. He figured he could quit his business and I could quit mine and together we could run the club, which brought in tons of cash, and lead a legit life from then on. We were gradually building up a stash of cash, which he kept in his apartment, to use as a down payment. We were getting close to having enough when everything turned to shit.

I should have guessed that things were going too well for all of us and that they couldn't last like that forever. I'm a big believer in karma, both in business and in life, and I think that maybe people like me and Allen and Tito and Maya aren't meant to get off that easy. Tito, in particular, had made a lot of enemies, and what goes around, comes around. I don't know how else to explain it.

The tide turned one night without any warning. Allen and I had a fight about the same thing we always fought about: the fact that he was jealous all the time and was holding on to the reins way too tightly. I got so mad that I threw his keys at him (we didn't live together, but we had keys to each other's apartments, which were just a couple minutes' walk apart, so it was almost like we did) and stalked out of his apartment without picking up my purse. When I realized that I didn't have my own keys so I couldn't get back into my apartment, I headed for Maya's place instead. I didn't want to have to face Allen, and I knew Maya would talk me down. She always did.

I was walking through the parking garage of Maya and Tito's apartment complex when I saw them: four black boys in a beat-up old Cadillac speeding toward the exit. Like I said before, this was an exclusive, white neighborhood. You just didn't see people, or cars, like that around there.

I knew right away that something was wrong. As the car passed me, I looked straight at the guys and they looked back at me. I could see them more closely then and by the way they were dressed and the looks on their faces, I knew they were gangsters. I took the elevator up three stories to where Maya had her apartment. It was what they called a "garden-style building," which meant that the hallways leading to the apartments were outside. Each apartment had these sort of frosted glass panels next to the door, which let light into the apartment while still maintaining some privacy from passersby. When I reached Tito and Maya's place, I tried to peek in through their glass, but I could see only the shadowy outlines of things. Then I noticed something on the floor just inside the door. I couldn't see exactly what it was, but it looked big, like it could be a body.

I was on the phone to Maya almost immediately. She was at the local IHOP with her kids and didn't want to bring them home unless she knew it was safe. "You have to call the police," she told me. "You have to."

The cops came right away, along with the some guys from the fire department, who broke down the door. Just as I feared, the shadowy thing I had seen just inside the doorway turned out to be Tito's dead body. The place had been robbed ofpractically everything of value.

The cops quickly sized up what was going on and called the DEA, who took me to the police station for I don't know how many hours of questions, as if I were the one who had done something wrong. I didn't want to bring trouble to Allen or Maya, so I told them that Tito was a friend of mine who I was just visiting. They could tell I wasn't giving them the full story, but I'd had enough experience with the police by then to know what to say and what not to. When they finally sent me home, alone, they also told me not to leave town. I can't even tell you how fed up I was with government employees by the end of that night.

After that I was on their radar, which meant I had to be really careful about everything. I didn't want them to start looking into my business or Allen's. Still, I was so freaked out by everything that I had to do something to let off steam. So did Maya. A few days after the murder we got a babysitter for her kids, took what money we had, and ran off to Atlantic City in spite of the police's warning.

Maya didn't gamble, but she was such a beauty, she had every high roller throwing money at her for luck. They just wanted her to stand near them while they played, which made her feel a little bit better about everything. I, on the other hand, loved to gamble. I took around $6,000 or $7,000 with me and flipped it into $46,000. It was a great distraction from all the ugly things that were happening for both of us.

When we returned a few days later, Allen was pissed off and the cops had been looking for me. I decided the best thing to do was get a job so I at least looked legit enough to get them off my back. The only problem was that I wasn't qualified to do anything in the real world.

First I worked as a receptionist at a big corporation. It was the most boring thing I've ever done in my life. I cannot overstate how mind-numbingly dull it was. Hour after hour, day after day, I answered phones with fake cheer: "How can I help you?" It was like those were the only words I knew. Then I would transfer the calls to people in the company who were trusted to speak more than that one sentence, although practically everyone else answered the phone using the same stupid line. I don't know how people do shit like that their whole lives. They must want to kill themselves.

When I couldn't take that any longer, I got a job as a waitress. At least that kept me busy and there was a bit of variety to my workdays. When I was a dancer and when I worked other odd jobs over the years, I'd been paid crap wages, but this was the worst. It seemed so unfair that I had to do this when I had been my own boss and had made more money in a couple of weeks than most of the people I was working with would make in a year. There are so many people in this country who work their asses off for shit. In fact, I really believe that the lower your position in life, the more you work and the less you get paid. This country is really fucked up that way.

The restaurant I waitressed at was part of a large chain that marketed themselves as a family establishment offering reasonable prices, which basically translated into demanding customers who left lousy tips. One of their popular promotions was free refills on all nonalcoholic drinks. I was constantly on my feet as it was, but those free refills were what killed me. One day this fat woman asked for so many refills of her and her kids' sodas that I finally got fed up and brought her two big pitchers of the stuff. She got offended and called my manager, who fired me on the spot. Not that I cared. Frankly, I was impressed he did anything at all. He usually sat back and watched football in his office all night, emerging only after we closed to tally up our slips. As for the owner, he was never there, not even once. I pictured him sitting in some grand house somewhere just collecting paychecks for doing nothing. He was probably a guy like my dad.

I managed to live like a relatively legitimate citizen for a while, but overall things were not going well. I was still trying to quietly run my business, but it had really gone to shit. Maya, who had always been my rock and my partner in crime, went a little crazy. She had to get away for a while, so she left town to stay with some relatives. And Allen was too worried about what all the attention from the cops might do to his business to be worried about me. We barely talked to each other anymore.

Then the cops caught Tito's murderers, and things got even worse. It was bearable when those guys thought they'd gotten away with it, but as soon as they were behind bars and I found out the whole story, I couldn't step out my door without looking over my shoulder.

The police caught the idiots because they had kept a bunch of Tito's stuff. They used his cell phone, and one ofthem had some of Tito's belongings in his car when he got pulled over. Morons. But the guys who did it were just the instruments, not the masterminds. It turned out that it was a gang hit and that Tito's own friend—a guy I'd heard him talk about but had never met—had set him up. For money, nothing more. A big shipment of drugs had recently been busted by the police, so a lot of dealers had run out of product. Tito's friend knew that Tito had a sizable stash of drugs and he wanted it; he had his own friend killed just to get it.

Being the one to discover Tito's body has always made me feel a connection to him for some reason, and thinking back on that time in my life still sends chills down my spine. It's also because sometimes, late at night, when I'm all alone, I even think I can hear him talking to me. No, I'm not crazy, but I do hear voices from time to time. Sometimes Tito's, sometimes my mother's (my birth mother, not the woman who adopted me), and every once in a while, even Natasha's.

Maybe it's my conscience talking to me, or maybe people can speak to you from beyond the grave. I don't know. What I do know is that I often feel like what I hear comes from people who care about me, people who are looking out for me and have my best interests at heart. But not Tito. Some people, after they're gone, if they cared about you, would wish for you to move on with your life and be happy. But Tito, his messages sound more like threats or warnings than anything else.

When I hear him talking to me, it's like he's saying: "Don't you forget about me. Don't you fucking dare." And I haven't. I don't think I ever will.

After his killers were caught, I just couldn't stand it any longer. I was afraid all the time that the guys who had murdered him were coming back for me. I knew they had seen me, I just knew it. And even though the guys who did it were convicted and got the death penalty, Tito's friend, the one who planned it all, never was caught. Besides, they were gang members, and gang members stick together, which means there's always someone who can come after you. I couldn't sleep. I could barely eat. Maya was gone, and Allen and I were practically strangers. I had no reason to stay. In fact, I had every reason to go.

I didn't know what I was going to do or where to go; I just knew I needed to get away. Maya and I had had such a good time in Atlantic City and I loved gambling so much that that was the first place I thought of. There's something calming about betting, because I can focus completely on the game and everything else leaves my head. That was exactly what I needed right then. Once I had decided to go, I just took off without looking back. I didn't care about Allen or about the cops, who still wanted me to stay in town. I didn't care about my things or about the money Allen and I had put away. I didn't care about much of anything except getting somewhere where I didn't have to be scared all the time. I took all the money I could easily get my hands on, including my winnings from my last trip, and I just played.