Below The Beltway

Thanks to Elliot Spitzer and “Kristen”, we get a peak inside the world of high-priced call girl rings.

First, we need an answer to the question — just why is a hooker worth $ 4,500 ?

What do you get when you pay a prostitute $4,300?

Okay. Yes. Other than that.

The answer, according to vice squad detectives and people familiar with the sex trade, is a pledge of ironclad silence, and the promise of an unusually attractive, intelligent companion — albeit one who measures companionship by the hour. They said this price, allegedly paid by New York Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer for a purported few hours with a New York call girl at the Mayflower Hotel, exceeds the rates of even the priciest of Washington’s hometown escorts.

But, these experts said, the economic logic of high-end prostitution is the same everywhere. Often, they say, it’s not what happens in the bedroom that costs.

It’s a question of who comes in, and what does — or doesn’t — come out.

“You have your streetwalkers. You have your local escorts who do the Yellow Pages or the paper, and you have your escorts who do the Internet, and then you have, like, your courtesans, who are like the top of the top,” said one woman involved in the local industry who asked that her name not be used so that her business would not face scrutiny. “It’s not that they do anything particularly special. . . . It’s the image.”

Still, even for the top of the top, and even considering part of the fee in question may have been a deposit on the next excursion, she said the price Spitzer reportedly paid was shockingly high.

“People are like, ‘ How much money? Oh my gosh,’ ” she said. “I know some girls are like, ‘We need to move’ ” to New York.

Especially now that Client No. 9 is going to have so much free time on his hands.

But that pales in comparison to the harrowing tale of the day-to-day trouble of running a high-class hooker business:

Temeka Rachelle Lewis dialed her boss in late January, fed up with the headaches of small-time business. She had spent more than three years coordinating prostitution appointments across the globe for the Emperors Club, and the job often kept her on the phone solving problems until after 11 p.m. There were rookie hookers who expected $5,000 an hour, mothers who left clients early to fetch their children, high-priced call girls who were clueless about how to imprint a credit card.

Now, Lewis called her Emperors Club boss Mark Brener with the latest tale of employee incompetence. On Jan. 29, she explained, one of the club’s regular prostitutes had missed an appointment and sent “crazy text” messages. Lewis surmised that the prostitute was probably using drugs.

Little did show know at the time that, in part thanks to the financial tricks of Client # 9, their whole operation was about to fall apart.

And it had been such a good business plan at the start:

When the four defendants launched the Emperors Club in December 2004, they carefully dressed their company with the accouterments of legitimate business. They opened a bank account in the name of QAT Consulting Group Inc. and, later, QAT International Inc. They created three phone numbers, with a pleasant female voice on the answering machine. They built a fancy Web site with a home page featuring a naked woman throwing back her brown, curly hair and a slogan, “Every client is an emperor.”

In bold letters, the club listed a disclaimer:

“Money exchanged is only for our providers time, total relaxation message [sic], entertainment purposes, modeling or private dancing. Under no condition will our escorts ever accept money for services which are considered indecent.”

In meetings, Brener, Lewis, Suwal and Hollander assigned each prostitute a rating between one and seven diamonds and priced them accordingly. Bargain prostitutes started at $1,000 an hour. Seven-diamond women cost $3,100 an hour. In recruiting employees, the Emperors Club also offered the possibility that women could become an “Icon” — an elite prostitute available to the most loyal clients for a minimum of $5,500 an hour.

And, sometimes, it all just did come together:

Every once in a while, though, there were those perfect moments when business ran smoothly, when management’s hard work paid off. On Jan. 26, Lewis received a call from Client 4, who was staying at a hotel in Los Angeles. He wanted a prostitute on short notice, for that night. Lewis scrambled during the 90-minute window to contact prostitutes and found out that “Chrissy” was available.

Chrissy was a new worker, with four stars and a rate of $1,200 an hour. Lewis contacted her through text messages and directed her to Room 467 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was scheduled for a one-hour appointment, with the possibility of extension.

Client 4 looked up Chrissy on the Club Web site and noticed that she was actually a five-diamond prostitute, so he called Lewis offering to pay a higher rate. A few hours later, after Chrissy’s visit, Client 4 called Lewis again.

“Two A-plusses in a row,” he said. “I don’t know where you get these young ladies.”

Apparently, on Myspace.