What better way to rev up your week than with a nice, wholesome discussion of Vampire Prositution. in spppppppaaaaace!
My bordello is set in Washington DC in modern-current day times.
It is a a very trendy restaurant on the main floor. Below ground, is where all the rooms are and the sexy times happen. There are sekrit passageways out of the building to protect identities. ( The building is a focal point in the story, but the prostitution is a back story.)
How does the madam collect the money from the gents without getting them busted ? Ring it up as a bigass dinner on the AMEX card ?
Where does the money get deposited?
Have the other ladies rent the rooms directly from the madam?
Some kind of off-shore debiting system ( I have no idea what that means, I just made it up.)
Have a hook up with Amazon of some sort. ( " Oh, honey/Boss, I just bought a new thingie off of Amazon for the office." ?)
I dunno.
Accountants, tax peeps and creative minds, Madams are all encouraged to help out.
One free “dinner” at this place for the winning suggestions.
Thanks!
I’d say cash. Anonymity is very important in this case and any electronic transfers could end up in court as evidence, especially inexplicable 2k overcharges on dinner (“so who were you eating with that night? and that night?”). You also might want to emphasize a high dupes to Johns ratio, otherwise the police might catch on and just stake the place out until they’ve got names and faces on your customers.
If it’s a trendy restaurant hiding the bordello, then surely running the charge through as if it were an expensive restaurant bill would be a reasonable disguise for the transaction.
“Dear, what were you doing running up a $1,000 bill at this restaurant?”
“I just had to entertain a couple of very important clients that evening.”
Cash in small amounts is just fine, and I suspect most customers would like to keep their names out of any paper trails, especially in this post-Eliot Spitzer world. But if the restaurant is connected to the bordello, then there’s no reason customers who wanted to pay with a credit card couldn’t use one; the charge would show up as a pricey restaurant visit.
On the bordello side, it would be great if everyone paid by credit card. They wouldn’t survive an intense IRS audit, but for routine matters they’d be fine; on paper they’d just be running a very profitable restaurant business. Even the cash could, to some degree, be laundered as restaurant income, although one flag for IRS attention would be too much cash. In other words, your average fine dinery takes in, let’s say, $50,000 per week. And on average, $45,000 is credit card payment and $5,000 cash. If Le Sangre deposits $50,000 per week and $45,000 is cash, that would be so far outside the usual ratio that it would likely attract an auditor’s attention.
So for the bordello owners, the problem becomes the same one that faces successful crooks everywhere: large amounts of cash with no clear ancestry. How do they solve it?
Same way countless other have done… find a money laundry operation, which will take ten to fifteen percent of your dirty cash and return the remainder as clean money, income from a phony business or fictitious investments. Or become a laundry operation yourself: invest in business that do mostly cash work: bars, pay parking lots, a compliant (or phony) church with a collection plate; and then funnel your dirty money through them as income. Of course, then you’re paying taxes on it… which you have to do at some point if you wish to spend it without IRS attention.
That requires a whole new layer of criminal infrastructure, of course. And I don’t know how the vamps in your mythos work, but many of these operations will need to happen in daylight.
You haven’t been inside my mind yet to see just how none-corpsy these ho’s look. Bricker I like all the thought you’ve put into this. You must be avoiding Real Life, sir, and I salute you!
Since it’s a vampire enterprise, it must have been around for a least a couple thousand years, right? Now picture this: the British royalty are insanely rich because of investments their ancestors made way back when. The vampires can have created this “trust” fund that has a AAA rating because it’s been around for so long. Thus, the johns’ bills for services are contributions to this well-established fund, so no one has any reason to believe it’s not legit. Of course, their payoffs are non-tangibles.
Actually, to expand on Bricker’s notion of money laundering a little, it occurs to me that the restaurant could feature a bar or nightclub of some form which has a high-cash volume.
The Bank they use is Vampire owned and it is the start for all laundrying practices.
Amazing what starting off at the ceiling for three hours can accomplish.
In law school I had a gig interning with the small claims court arbitrators in Manhattan. These were volunteer lawyers whose main job was to hear and decide cases where the parties agreed to let the arbitrators to hear the case instead of the judge. (Either side had the absolute right to request a hearing before the judge, but if either did so, the parties would have to come back session after session until they were high enough on the docket that the judge would actually have time for the case. If they chose the arbitrators, they would get heard that night.)
The arbitrators also had a second responsibility as “referees” for cases where the defendant did not appear. Where the plaintiff showed up and the defendant didn’t, the plaintiff would have to appear before one of the volunteer lawyers, who would hear the plaintiff’s claim, decide whether it had any legal merit as the plaintiff laid it out, and if so how much to award in damages. They would then give the plaintiff a default judgment for the amount they found appropriate, and the plaintiff would have the fun job of trying to collect it.
Anyway, one evening we got a card for a “referee” case of something like “A No. 1 Escort Agency v. Smith” for “bad checks”. When the case was called, a rather nice but fairly ordinary looking woman came up and said that she had been given checks by the defendant, Mr. Smith, which had bounced, and showed us several returned checks for a few hundred dollars each. Keeping pretty totally straight faces, we looked over the evidence, and the arbitrator determined that having a check returned met the legal requirements to get a default judgment, and awarded her a judgment in the amount of the bounced checks.
I suspect the case may have gotten more interesting when the proprietor of A No. 1 attempted to collect the judgment at Mr. Smith’s residence or business.
Got nothing to add to your story but it reminds of a song by Rasputina called “Transylvanian Concubine”. Great song, could be used for the opening of the movie.
The restaurant is supposed to be very expensive, so can I safely assume that the prostitution is as well?
If we are talking about Elliott Spitzer-Emperor’s Club kind of prices, cash probably wouldn’t work well, as the amounts would be so large that even a really popular and overpriced bar scene would be unable to cover it. Credit card only (or mostly), then. Then it’s a simple matter of marking up fake receipts that say the customer ordered very expensive things, while actually charging them for the sex. There could be an exceedingly expensive, and very voluminous, wine cellar. Unless the cops are checking the trash to verify that Mr. Spitzer’s table in fact drank $6,000 worth of Chateau GettingItOnWithTheUndead 1981. And/or have some dishes that incorporate gold leaf, precious stones, or pearls. All of these have been used in lux restaurants from time to time, even today. An additional benefit is that due to the high price of the ingredients, and the relatively rarity of orders, the owners would not be expected to have much on hand if the cops decide to audit the pantry. They could work out a clever ruse where a pearl(s) is supposed to be crushed and dissolved in a glass of wine. Big and showy, right in front of everybody. In actuality, the staff is crushing a worthless piece of chalk. Keep a few really nice pearls in a safe behind the bar to show nosy cops.
Regulars could have any number of pre-arranged ways of signaling to the staff when they will be in, and whether they are there for a meal or otherwise. For instance, “Table for 2, at 8:30.” could mean the john is taking his wife or business partner out to dinner and actually needs a table, whereas “8:30, my usual table.” might mean cue the Barry White. Or, maybe if they are already eating, perhaps with a group of colleagues, they could discreetly indicate that they are looking for a bit more than just dinner by ordering a certain item, in a certain way, ie. “I’ll have the steak au poivre, bloody.” . Heck, you’re the writer, you can probably come up with better lines than me.
One fairly simple dodge your vampire prostitutes could employ would be to refrain from charging by the evening - rather, they could establish long-term relationships with at least some of their johns, with no particular payment corresponding to any particular session of sex. At least for tax purposes, these vampire prostitutes would then legally become “mistresses”, not prostitutes. The advantage would be that the money they’d be receiving would be regarded as gifts, not income - which means they don’t have any tax liability, and can withstand an IRS audit better. (It also, I would assume, reduces the chances of a bust by vice cops). Of course, the johns would technically have to pay gift tax if they were paying more than $12,000 per year (I think that’s the figure), but compliance rates on that are low, so they might get away without paying. And if the johns were killed by their vampire “mistresses”, this wouldn’t be an issue. See United States v. Harris for a more detailed discussion of how this arrangement can work, albeit without vampires: United States v. Harris (1991) - Wikipedia .
(I am not a lawyer, and I am most especially not your lawyer. I will never be a tax attorney. This is not legal advice. You may wish to speak with an attorney admitted in your jurisdiction before opening or operating a vampire bordello. However, remember that your attorney will not be compelled by the Model Code of Professional Responsibility to remain silent if your vampire bordello is actually harming people.)
By the way, Shirley Ujest - forgive me if you’re already familiar with the Greatest City in the Union, but please keep the following in mind:
1.) DC does not have skyscrapers. None. Nada.
2.) Nor do we have newsstands on the street, or any particularly interesting food carts (we’re limited to hot dogs and the occasional burrito cart).
3.) Our subway system is called Metro. Not “the Metro” - Metro. Your characters would say “Do you take Metro to work?”, not “Do you take the Metro to work?”
And that’s all I can think of off the top of my head - feel free to PM if you want more DC advice.
Am I the only one realizing that an IRS audit won’t be a problem. Shirley, do your vampires have the ‘mesmerize’ ability?
Vamp: “Hello IRS Agent Gomer, what can I do for you?”
Gomer: “It seems you’ve been flagged for an audit, Mr. Wampire. There are several things that seem suspicious…”
Vamp: “Really? That’s funny. We’re perfectly legit, I assure you.”
Waves Hand, stares closely…
Vamp: “These are not the receipts you’re looking for.”
Gomer: “These are not the receipts I’m looking for. Thanks for your time. It’s always good when these things end up finding nothing.”
Vamp: “No problem. Have a complimentary lunch while you’re here.”
And, over time, they get penetration into the local and national tax authorities and end up controlling a good deal of that angle. This would protect them from raids and such, too.
Actually, they do have this power and I was having an ethical dilemma. ( Damn my Midwestern Sensibilities. I was considering just offering any Visiting Tax Agent a freebie and then a mesmerizing trick. So, my ethics just went the way of a Republican at a Gay Bar.)
I understand it’s because no building is allowed to be higher than the dome of the Capitol.
Incidentally, there’s one exception: the tallest building in DC, which between 1884 and 1889 was the tallest structure in the world. (It was overtaken in 1889 by the Eiffel Tower). It’s the Washington Monument
