The New York Spectator / No More Secrets
Conlon, Edward
No More Secrets by Edward Conlon T he Mayor's Office for Midtown Enforcement is not opposed to fun, in general or in principle, though not everyone sees it this way. Opponents are apt to call it a...
...On a cabinet for towels, baby oil, and isopropyl alcohol were a pair of steel vases with a spray of forsythia and a squat pineapple...
...The Incredible Shrinking AIDS Epidemic report...
...The book where you keep track of all the customers...
...They're ideal for distribution to your friends, colleagues, teachers, and political representatives...
...For one, Secrets was located on the ninth floor, an unusual and inconvenient arrangement for the lunch-time and after-work drop-in crowd...
...The office was created in 1976, when the fiscal crisis forced police layoffs and Times Square was at its sleazy apogee, the glistening and grim noir backdrop of Taxi Driver...
...RP9407 several leisurely minutes before the elevator returned to take him away...
...Send for your copies today...
...Ba-di-ga...
...Amid the familiar dross of the routine—Dion and ajama knew each other, in each of their professional capacities, from a previous raid—we were diverted by the arrival of a large, bearded man in his mid-forties, in a green nylon baseball jacket and knit cap...
...When ajama comes back, ask her where your coat is...
...Ajama, tell her, I don't let her come out with the house...
...I'm not saying this again...
...After each woman was identified, she was sent into another room to dress to go home...
...Quiet, you listen to me—that stuff stays here...
...names were to be collected, doors padlocked, and sheaves of legal documents to be served for violations of the building and zoning codes, administrative law, penal law, public health law, and, of course, education law—the practice of massage without a license...
...Surrounding businesses complain, and so do other neighbors...
...for fedora and champagne bottle en route to the alley window...
...Probably not today, though...
...He turned around to face the elevator and stood, silent, like the class dunce sent to the corner...
...My hero...
...From other cases, it was estimated that revenues might be "a couple of million a year...
...There was a "Joker Poker" video game in the back, though Daly said that its earnings often came largely from the women themselves...
...I had giddy expectations of scenes of kicked-in doors, wise-cracking madams, the flurried hiking of trousers and skirts, and stockbrokers grabbing Edward Conlon is a writer living in the Bronx...
...There was a final round of hectic negotiations with a policeman "I need coat...
...The decor was spartan and slightly shabby, with touches of the Asian, the racy, and thebizarre...
...You don't come back here, okay...
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...The OME began with a $500,000 federal grant and the use of attorneys, inspectors, and other personnel from a variety of city agencies, and set about closing brothels, gambling dens, and the haunts of drug dealers under the Nuisance Abatement Law...
...The longer this takes, the longer you're gonna be here...
...A massage begins at $40, and other favors can increase the price fivefold...
...said Tina Turner, hammering home the resemblance by bursting into song, "We don't need another hero...
...City: L 60 State: Zip Code...
...And although most of the massage parlors are run by women, they were also given pamphlets from a center for battered Asian women...
...moaned Tina Turner, touching her cheek like Little Nell...
...In spite of the throng of police, he stepped out into the hall as the elevator door closed behind him...
...Where do you keep the book, ajama...
...Dion decided that it was also time for the women to depart...
...Oh, no...
...One of them was the ajama, or madam...
...People just don't want these places around," said Daly...
...Nobody's getting arrested...
...Dion The American Spectator July 1994 59 Boy Clinton's Big Mama American Spectator Reprints Available David Brock's hot new exposé of Travelgate is available to TAS readers as a special report...
...A five-dollar bill and two singles were taped to the wall, upside down, and there were beeper numbers and notes in Korean scribbled beside...
...An officer asked, "Excuse me, sir, can I help you...
...Out of earshot of the police, ajama's English appeared to improve, and her speech was decidedly less affable: "This is permission for robbery...
...Opponents are apt to call it a collection of spoilsports, killjoys, and busybodies, the butt-end of a baleful puritan tradition...
...Baby...
...Oh, coat, why didn't you say so...
...The abatement of nuisance which was chiefly sought was that caused the police and fire departments...
...Recently, I met with Bill Daly, Karen Marks, and Norman Dion of the OME, as well as a squad of police from the Midtown South precinct, to visit an establishment called "Secrets of the Orient" on Twenty-third Street...
...D ion agreed, at least, that the day had been an expensive one for ajama...
...We're not going around in circles...
...Johns come by late at night, drunk, they pee on the sidewalk and ring the wrong bells...
...He looked baffled, evidently the intellectual worse for the physical tensions that he presumed would presently find release...
...The OME might rejoin that the law is on its side, and those who aren't tend to be pimps, johns, card sharks, and drug dealers...
...For another, there were no johns there at the time...
...Some adult drama might have been provided by the large doberman pinscher that padded about, but it was promptly secured in a back room...
...and he grabbed a long woolen overcoat from the closet and tossed it to her...
...In addition, the subsequent tenants would be subject to screening by the city...
...Find it...
...Secrets is, or was, a "classic Korean massage parlor," said Daly...
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...there were five cubicles, and the business was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week...
...I was foolish...
...More helpfully, he added, "Red is considered to be good luck...
...Asked about a wall decoration adorned with dragons and a red ribbon, Dion said, "That's a wall decoration with a bunch of dragons on it...
...The response was a terse negative...
...No, `coat...
...You're all done, ajama...
...The landlord would suffer the loss of rent for the several months it would take to negotiate a settlement on the civil penalties...
...It was The American Spectator July 1994 r The American Spectator, P.O...
...Seven women, who appeared to be in their twenties and thirties, sat against one wall on the covered radiator...
...According to Dion, the number of brothels in the jurisdiction was decreasing, over all, and fewer and fewer could afford the cost of reopening after a raid: "Generally, the operators of these place tend to disappear into the wind...
...If they help us along, that's fine by us...
...Why you no let me take make-up case...
...The lobby was painted pale pink and had a zebra-pattern rug, an oriental screen and a folded futon...
...One still lacked a coat, and protested loudly as the group moved to the elevator...
...Daniel Wattenberg's profiles of the real Hillary Clinton, Love and Hate in Arkansas, or his report on David Koresh...
...Her hair was plentiful and spiky in the manner of Tina Turner, and she wore a stars-and-stripes bikini whose upper section barely contained what she told Karen Marks was $8,000 worth of silicone...
...So are James Ring Adams's two reports on the Whitewater scandal, John Cony's "The MIA Cover-Up," Christopher Caldwell's report on Haiti...
...and Lisa Schiffren's exposé of the Clintons' Tax Returns...
...said the irrepressible Ms...
...Then I guess you don't belong here...
...No, no calls...
...Right now...
...Turner...
...No, you are dressed...
...One: $5 Twenty-five: $75 Five: $20 Fifty: $130 Ten: $35 One hundred: $250 (Quantity discounts apply only to orders Sub-Total VA residents add 4.5% sales tax Total Enclosed $ supervised the affair, taking names and addresses, explaining legal actions, and making sure the women took only their own possessions, not what went with "the house...
...But the prime mover behindthe closing of Secrets of the Orient was, in fact, an anonymous competitor...
...For yet a third, there were to be no arrests...
...My coat...
...Ba-di-ga...
...Hurry up...
...Don't come back unless you get permission from the court...
...You got your bag, that's it...
...Most of the women were legal aliens, having come to America as dependents of soldiers, but they were nonetheless given a number for an immigration hotline...
...What are we gonna do then...
...They seem to be in a frolicky mood today," said Daly...
...Read these or give it to your attorney, okay...
...SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference The American Spectator July 1994 61...
...I hungry...
...A small stack of reading material contained Entrepreneur magazine and a novel called Desire, by Amanda Quick, subtitled, "She summoned a noble knight but got the man they called the hellhound...
...Terry Eastland's dissection of Rush Limbaugh's Revolution...
...Most were dressed fairly casually, in stretch pants and sweaters, and most appeared to be bored by the proceeding...
...What book...
...I catch cold...
...She further remarked that if she was back in Korea, she would tell the Americans to go home, which struck me as more defiant of logic than imperialism...
...One young woman cried, quietly, and another was • I II I tV the Presbyterian of yesteryear would have denounced as a "brazen strumpet": she laughed and winked at the policemen, referred to them as "baby," rolling her eyes and yawning in mock-tedium...
...he barked, in bilingual ultimatum...
...Everybody go...
...D ion was polite but stern, and the women alternated between rapid Korean and a melodic broken English as the instructions and comments flew back and forth: "This is a summons...
...There had been a spate of calls to 911 that prompted emergency visits to the brothel: false reports of fires, women shot, weapons complaints, and other crimes...
...Last year, the OME conducted sixty such raids, of which one-third were directed against houses of prostitution...
...I live in Bronx...
...Michael Fumento's report on Magic Johnson & AIDS...
...The penalty they pay is the loss of theplace...
...Crime was not just in the open, it was aggressively advertised, and the employees of flourishing Mafia-run massage parlors were proficient in pickpocketing and violent robbery as well as illegal forms of relaxation therapy...
...Daly, for one, is not vexed by the irony: "Sooner or later, we'll try to get to all of them...
...The women laughed at his Korean, correcting it gently as they nonetheless obliged him...
Vol. 27 • July 1994 • No. 7
