They let me smoke a cigarette while I gulped it down and waited. The Irish detective and the tall guy came back and said they were going to take me to central booking. They were trying to make sure we got there before the judge retired for the night so that I didn’t have to stay in The Tombs, the city’s notorious holding cells, overnight.
When we got outside, Jeff gave me one more cigarette. I smoked it while he told me to stay calm. I could feel the stress on my face. They told me that I would be okay, and not to talk to anyone in The Tombs and to call my family as soon as I could—they would be the only ones who could help me through all this.
We got to central booking, and there was a long line down the hallway leading to the court. The tall detective went to the officer standing at a podium checking names off a list and spoke in his ear. The officer looked to where Jeff and I were standing, and I heard him say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, they’re waiting for her in the courtroom.”
The tall guy looked confused and came back to us.
“They need you right away,” he said, looking at me suspiciously.
They led me to the front of the line. The tall one said, “Good luck,” and I was led by a court officer into the courtroom. I totally bypassed The Tombs.
It was a big courtroom. There were half a dozen other girls there sitting on a bench next to the judge. A really tall, bald man wearing a very nice suit whispered “Natalia” at me.
I had no idea who he was, but he gestured to a little booth, like a large phone booth with a little table and two stools on either side of it. I looked around. Was I allowed to go in there? The bailiff saw my uncertainty and nodded yes, I could go in. As soon as we were both in with the doors closed, he said, “Hi, I’m Josh Michael Hartshorne5. Ron Sperling sent me to help you out.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Ron had come through.
“Have they treated you okay?’ he asked me.
I nodded.
“Okay,” he continued, “we don’t have much time, but I need to know as much as possible. Where is your family?”
I told him my mother’s full name and gave him her number. We went through about two-dozen other questions. What was my address? How old was I? That kind of thing. Josh went to call my mom, and I went back to the bench. I saw Josh come back into the courtroom and give me the thumbs up. My name was called a few minutes later, and I met Josh at the defense table and stood tall, ready to do or say what I needed to. I entered a plea of not guilty. What happened next was magic. I was having visions of going to Rikers and experiencing terrible things I knew nothing about. Instead the judge listened to Josh say things like, “Natalie is a young actress from Canada. I just spoke with her mother. She’s willing to support Natalie through this process. She has an apartment and will be present and available for all court proceedings.”
The judge announced he was releasing me on ROR, which I later learned means “on my own recognizance.” I was free to go. No bail. I walked out of the courtroom and onto the bustling streets of lower Manhattan.
My next date was set for the end of August, more than a month away. It didn’t even register. I felt like I had literally dodged a bullet. Josh gave a statement to the small gaggle of reporters that were milling around the hallway, and the next thing I knew I was climbing into Josh’s giant yellow Hummer, listening to DMX and being driven back to Ron’s.
When Ron came running down to meet us, he asked Josh to join us for a drink. He declined, but he gave me his card and told me to be at his office the next day at 2:00 p.m.
“How did you know I wasn’t a morning person?” I asked, laughing and giddy from my near-death experience.
“Lucky guess.”
He smiled and pulled away in his giant yellow gas guzzler. Ron hugged me and wouldn’t let me go.
“I think I have a crush on my lawyer,” I said.
Ron laughed and picked me up in his arms and carried me up to his loft. I had a glass of wine, did a line of blow he had waiting for me, and then passed out watching CSI: New York.
* * *
The next couple of weeks, I kept partying like nothing had happened.
One night, as I downed nearly half a bottle of Grey Goose at Pink Elephant, I turned to a friend and said, “Are you sure you want to be seen with me?”
She said, “Why?”
“Don’t you know? I’m a moral terrorist!”
She looked around the club and gave me a “please, look around you” look.
Karma is a bitch. I’d become a New York celebrity, but I wasn’t famous. I was infamous. There’s a big difference. I didn’t have legions of adoring fans wearing “Free Natalia” tee-shirts. I wasn’t invited to red-carpet premieres. I was the mysterious seductress who was luring the rich and powerful away from their wives. I was a threat to society, and I needed to be put away. And so did my boss.
* * *
It had been almost six months since Jason had been arrested, and he still couldn’t make bail. Ironically, Hulbert was able to post his bail and was released right after I was arrested, after spending nearly five months in Rikers. No one had any news on Mona and Clark. Hulbert came to see me at Ron’s place, and, even though we shouldn’t have been in the same room, he didn’t care. He gave me the biggest hug in the world and told me to be careful. I told him I missed him and asked him if he were okay.
“Fuck no, I’m not okay,” he said. “This shit is beyond messed up.”
Here’s the difference between Hulbert and Jason: Hulbert was genuinely happy that I was not in Rikers, that I didn’t have to go through what he did. I got the feeling Jason felt otherwise. So when my lawyer told me to stop talking to him on the phone, I happily obliged.
My first court date was a non-event. I went in, and the D.A. asked the judge for a continuance. My next court date was set for the following month. The D.A. was using that time, Josh explained, to gather evidence and build a case against me. This cycle continued for the next few months. At some point, Josh explained, the charges are either dropped or there is an indictment. The indictment is the D.A.’s declaration that they feel confident enough to go to trial, and a trial date is set. Josh seemed confident. He said that since they hadn’t busted me in a sting, it would be difficult to convict me on the prostitution charges, and if I didn’t have anything to do with the money transfers, the money laundering charges would be tough as well. The tricky thing was, he explained, I had mouthed off so much about my involvement with the agency to the press, they’d sort of had no choice but to come after me.
Jason’s greatest dream, to be all over the papers, was now becoming my nightmare. The tabloids must have written us up more than twenty times over that six-month period, including a full-page story with my picture splashed across half of it. Every time something ran, I got called into the D.A.’s office. They were pissed. I could tell with each article the pressure was ratcheting up on them to land convictions.
The D.A. and lead vice detective, a.k.a. the Irishman, would call me into a meeting with my lawyer and start ranting that I was interfering with a criminal investigation by leaking those stories to the press. I would spend the next hour swearing over and over again that I had no idea how the press was getting its information, and then they would move on and start asking me about clients again. My lawyer would step in and say, “We have told you over and over again that she will not answer questions about clients. I would hope you would respect her integrity and her decision.”
They would get right in my face and try to scare me into admitting that I was still escorting and was still seeing clients. It was straight out of every cop movie or TV show you’ve ever seen.
Finally, one day, I exploded, “I’m broke! I have no money! If I’m seeing clients, why don’t I have any money? Remember how much I allegedly used to make? I can’t pay my rent, my phone bill…you know I have a drug problem, and you’re doing nothing to help me! You’ve taken my I.D. I can’t work here because I don’t have a working visa, and there’s no way I can get one becau
se I’ve been arrested. It’s like you want me to start escorting again! Well, I’m not! I quit escorting before I was arrested, before the New York magazine article was even written.”
And that was that. I could tell they were still skeptical, but they never asked me again.
In contrast, my monthly court dates were uneventful. I would go before the judge with my attorney beside me, an Assistant District Attorney would request a continuance, and we’d all go home. The police had confiscated my I.D., laptop, phone, and passport and had no plans to return anything until the investigation was over. They made Ron’s life hell for a few months. When the drug angle didn’t pan out, the cops contrived their own second-shooter theory—that there was a huge pornography ring behind New York Confidential and that Ron was running it.
The lawyers had been finalizing the details of a $250,000 paycheck for Ron, Jason and me from Court TV for our footage, but all copies of the footage were confiscated the day I was arrested. After a few weeks, it was clear we weren’t going to become reality TV superstars anytime soon.
I could have fought everything with a kick-ass lawyer, pled not guilty and argued that I was acting for the camera. I would have had to admit that I’d gone on some bookings and have sworn that I hadn’t had sex. However, after Jason and I broke up, the staff decided to save their own skins. They knew who held the key to their future, and it wasn’t Jason.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CAGED
Cocaine makes it really hard to cry. When Jason and I would scream and yell at each other, I wouldn’t cry. When I’d talk to my girlfriends about him, I would just talk, or even rant. But when I was alone, really alone, like when we broke up, and I moved out of the loft and into my own apartment in Gramercy, I would sob. I would cry so hard it hurt everywhere. I had so much bottled up inside of me that I never got that post-cry feeling of relief of the weight being lifted. I would cry for four hours nonstop and I never got there. Either my phone would ring and I’d book an appointment with a client (I had to keep working since I had saved no money and the temp agencies weren’t exactly breaking down the door to have New York’s most famous hooker on their rolls), or I would just do a huge line and go out partying, which helped me forget what was happening.
When I was in the loft, I was doing drugs to keep me going, but also to heighten the highs. Now drugs had become my escape. The winter was coming, and it got darker and darker.
The five or six clients I was still seeing had become my friends, my family, my everything. We had spent so much time together that they became the only ones I trusted. I had become as dependent on them as I was on the drugs. But I drifted away from them as well and went back to being alone.
I began having cocaine seizures and overdosing. Having been successful at pretty much everything I had put my mind to, I couldn’t accept the lows I was now hitting. I’d had so much fun partying and living this crazy life that the only option I thought I had was to try to recapture it. I couldn’t relate to anyone. I also didn’t want to burden anyone. What I needed was a good rehab facility, a great therapist and then ten days on a beach. What I got were more court dates, more drugs and more guilt.
The legal nightmare was literally driving me crazy. I was getting high all day. I couldn’t process what was happening. I couldn’t tell when I was asleep or awake. I couldn’t go to bed because when I wasn’t having night terrors, I was sleepwalking and leaving my gas stove on. Weeks went by, and I camped out at my three-story Gramercy Park apartment alone.
Ron told me a story one night about how in the 80s everyone lost their septum. I gave him a strange look.
“Is that the membrane in your nose?”
“Yeah, it separates your two nostrils. When you do too much blow, it wears down and eventually disappears.”
“That’s why people start smoking freebase.”
“Exactly,” said Ron, “That’s why everyone eventually smokes freebase.”
Two weeks later, I was in the first-floor bathroom of my apartment (the apartment I would soon lose because I couldn’t pay the rent anymore) blowing my nose. I’ve never had problems with my nose the way some people who party do, but this day, my nose hurt. I was blowing; it was bleeding…I kept blowing. Finally something happened, and I almost passed out. My hands were shaking. I looked at my tissue and started crying. I picked up the phone and dialed Ron.
I was hysterical.
He was scared.
“Honey, honey, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
I started crying more, “I think I just lost my septum.”
He relaxed on the other end. “I was so worried.”
Why was he calm? This was serious.
“What do I do?”
“Well, Natty-cakes, you stop partying.”
Or I could start freebasing.
Sobriety was not an option at this point. I had enough friends who partied and who liked partying with me in my gorgeous apartment to keep me stocked and happy.
At the end of each run, when I’d been up for a few days, and everyone had left to get some sleep, I’d finally have some alone time. They’d always leave me a few grams, and I would do absolutely nothing all day except a hit of freebase every fifteen minutes.
I had a sex box. It was a gorgeous, black leather cube that looked like a stool, but when you took off the top, inside were all my sex toys: my dozens of vibrators, dildos, every shape and size, the handcuffs that were almost confiscated at airport security once, scarves and restraints. I’d put on some lingerie, play some porn and fix my makeup. I’d stand my beautiful, carved-wood, full-length mirror in front of my bed, put on some music, and feeling so gorgeous, I’d masturbate for hours. Those orgasms were so strong and felt so good, I became addicted to them almost as much as freebase. Then I’d sit on the ledge of my twelve-foot window and stare at the city. Sometimes I’d bring some hits outside on my terrace and breathe the city air and hear the city noise rushing into my ears, my senses heightened by the drugs and lack of sleep.
Getting high alone is dangerous. I tried to regulate myself and not overdose by accident. Physically, I was so run down that I could barely function. I was beginning to wonder if I could recover from this. It seemed impossible that there was any way for my life to go on. I cried for everything I’d lost, everything I’d thrown away and all the things I’d never get to know. It was like I was mourning my life before it had really begun. I stood at the edge of my roof and looked down. I cried really hard. I was standing so close to the edge, I could almost curl my toes around it. The air was cool but still, even six floors up. It took everything I had left in me to keep myself from leaning forward and making it all stop.
* * *
A few nights later, I was in Marquee. It was dark and ominous, and the bass was thumping in my chest where my heart should be. When was the last time I’d slept? My head felt empty, like my brain was rattling around in a cage. My nightlife friends always said to me, “Sleep? You can sleep when you’re dead.” Well, I needed a nap.
I stepped down from the booth where I was partying with a gaggle of music-video directors, models, photographers and wannabe actors. I walked the length of the bar and saw the line for the bathroom was ten-girls deep. I sighed, turned and made the trek downstairs. I paused on the landing to admire the crowd below—so many young girls, so full of energy. Where had they come from? Half looked to be native New Yorkers of the underage variety, the other half were girls like me, well, me four years earlier: fun-loving hotties who had come to the city to chase a dream. They were smiling and celebrating, their arms around each other’s waists or up in the air. It was like they could see their whole lives in front of them, and it was one big shiny ball of happiness. The lights were spinning fast. I broke out of my spell and continued to the bathroom. There was no line; I guessed the cokeheads were all upstairs. I locked myself in a stall, touched my nose and took a deep breath. My loneliness washed over me like a wave. I wished more than anything that I had the will to get clean. I took out my
baggie and dumped a little white mountain on my hand, sniffed and felt it burn somewhere in the middle of my skull. The pain disappeared. I peed and walked back out into the pulsating club.
Someone grabbed me before I could take two steps.
“Natalia!”
She stumbled, and we almost fell in a heap on the floor.
“Ashley!”
She kissed me on the mouth and said how much she missed me. We hadn’t seen each other in… wow, six months, right around the time she’d allegedly got busted, and shortly before my whole world had come crashing down around me. That’s what happens when you’re high on heroin. Time passes. It’s different from coke where life feels like a chaotic, fun blur. With smack, you blink, and months have gone by.
Ashley’s face looked bloated. Had she had her lips done? She could barely keep her eyes open.
She was obviously really high, and drunk. I felt guilty. I was the one who turned her out, as they say, and introduced her to this whole world. I was the little devil with the coke straw on her shoulder. Now she looked terrible, and it freaked me out. She was so young.
“I have to talk to you,” she said.
Uh-oh, what could she want?
As much as Ashley and I hung out and partied, I also knew she was driven. She loved the money and had her dream of being the next Mariah. When everything went down, and I left the loft, being my friend hadn’t helped her achieve either, and so she disappeared from my life, just like the rest of the girls.
Now she seemed desperate to hang out. Either she was being her social-climber self, angling to be next to the tabloid sensation du jour, or she just wanted to get back into the action and work with me again—make some of those serious stacks we used to bring in. She was probably thinking my rates were through the roof now that I was the most famous escort in America, and all. It didn’t even cross my mind that maybe she just missed me and wanted to be my friend again.
The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort Page 21