Brothel (20 page)

I was now late for another interview. O’Donnell stood to follow me out, determined to have the last word in his final campaign to offer me salvation. “Your intellect will keep you from knowing the truth,” he yelled from the curbside as I got in my rental car. As I pulled out, through the glass I saw O’Donnell mouth the words, “The truth is, it’s Wrong.”

Other brothel critics packaged their condemnation in more pragmatic terms. There was the magnate Steve Wynn, owner of the Golden Nugget, Treasure Island, Mirage, and Bellagio casinos and arguably the most influential businessman in Nevada, who asserted that legalized prostitution tarnished the state’s image and deterred new enterprise.
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“We have outgrown legalized prostitution,” wrote Wynn in a letter he sent to all Nevada state senators and assembly members in 1988. “The existence of brothels in Nevada is just one more item
that out-of-state media people use to denigrate the quality of life in Nevada.… It is not good for Nevada’s image to have wide-open legalized ‘cat houses’ and the sooner we put that image behind us, the better we will be.” At risk, he threatened, were tourism and gaming revenues; the latter produced monthly taxable revenues of $632 million in 1997.

How ironic that a casino czar should accuse the brothels of soiling Nevada’s image. Since the days of Bugsy Siegel (the notorious mobster who built Las Vegas’s first casino, the Flamingo Hotel), sex had been promoted as an essential accompaniment to gambling, from the lavish showgirl revues and provocatively dressed cocktail waitresses to the bell captains and pit bosses brokering sex between customers and house girls. Despite Wynn’s contention that his industry had been cleaned up and the casinos transformed into ideal family vacation spots, Las Vegas’s freelance sex market flourished, with
140 pages
of the Las Vegas Yellow Pages devoted to “Entertainers”—much to the chagrin of the brothel industry, which was prohibited from advertising. But whereas the brothels drew men out of the casinos, the freelancers worked inside and kept gamblers on the premises. I suspected that what Wynn really disliked was the idea of losing customers to the legal brothels.

Economic arguments like Wynn’s met resistance primarily from rural legislators, who had their own fiscal reasons for endorsing legalized prostitution. In 1998, Nevada’s local governments received over $500,000 from brothel business licenses, liquor licenses, and work cards. This was over and above revenue from property taxes, initial investigation fees upon
application for brothel licenses, and room and boarding licenses in certain counties. Storey County received $182,500 in revenue from its brothels, Mustang Ranch and Old Bridge Ranch, a sum amounting to almost 4 percent of the county’s total general fund.

Brothels also provided jobs. Mustang Ranch was Storey County’s third largest employer, after the Kal Kan dog food factory and the school district, and had an annual payroll of $1.3 million, employing seventy-five people in positions ranging from floor maids to maintenance helpers. Local suppliers who provided goods and services directly to the brothels all benefited financially, as did taxicab drivers. And the need for police expenditure on vice squads was largely eliminated, because illegal prostitution was virtually nonexistent in counties that permitted brothels.

More disputable, however, were claims by brothel members that legalized prostitution reduced the incidence of local sex crimes by offering potential perpetrators safe environments to act out aberrant sexual fantasies that might otherwise endanger the public. Women had told me about the men with pedophile fantasies who paid them to dress up and pretend to be little girls. My running partner Heather had a regular who asked her to pretend to be his daughter and say things like, “Fuck me, Daddy. I won’t tell Mommy.” She hoped that because he came to see her, he wouldn’t go out and molest a real child.

But others were more skeptical that the brothels could reduce child abuse and rape. According to
Nevada Crime Statistics
,
the state experienced significantly higher rates of sex crimes than the rest of the nation throughout the 1990s.
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Brothel opponents like Wynn, O’Donnell, and Reese have accused the “influential and monied” Nevada Brothel Association (NBA) of propagating “self-serving” misinformation about the industry, making untrue claims that sex crimes had diminished and exaggerating the brothels’ economic impact. George Flint said he took offense at such allegations. The NBA never lobbied for legalized prostitution per se, he asserted. Instead, it took the libertarian position that brothels were age-old state institutions whose regulation was traditionally left to local governmental bodies. “All the bills that have been introduced tried to make prostitution illegal across the board,” George explained to me one afternoon in Mustang #1’s bar. “Nuts and bolts, bottom line, we say, That’s an impractical way for you to legislate, because even though there may be reasons to outlaw brothel prostitution in Washoe County, there may be reasons to keep it legal in another county.”

The history of George’s involvement with the brothel industry is instructive, because it also charts the ebb and flow
of its opponents’ fortunes. A handful of brothel owners approached George in 1985 looking for a leader. Since relocating to Nevada from Oregon twenty years earlier and opening his wedding chapel, George had become a respected and effective lobbyist, first for the wedding chapel industry and later for other interest groups, including physicians and employment agencies. George had been well aware that the brothel industry had no “presence” in the legislature, except for Joe Conforte, who regularly made political campaign contributions to candidates statewide. When Rock Hudson’s death raised public awareness of AIDS, George predicted that the brothels would have to work in concert to protect their interests or risk losing the industry altogether.

Not all of George’s friends and colleagues in the legislature agreed that a brothel association would be a good thing. An association and lobbyist meant heightened visibility for a state institution that may have been tolerated but still carried with it considerable baggage. Sure, almost all professional and business groups had associations, politicians told George, from bankers and gamers to embalmers and funeral directors, but the brothels were different—they were
whorehouses
. But legislators were soothed by the notion of having George at the helm, a lobbyist they considered reasonable. “Lawmakers knew I wasn’t a flash in a pan,” said George. “They knew I wouldn’t go half-crazy and start marching hookers through the halls of the legislature.”

Aware of how controversial his new clients were, George approached lawmakers with caution. Thus his decision never
to suggest to legislators that prostitution was good or that whorehouses should be more widely distributed. Instead, he took the position that lawmakers should continue respecting the state’s age-old belief in decentralized government, its emphasis on local control and personal liberties. This gave lawmakers a way to support his clients without appearing to be in favor of legalized prostitution. “Rather than come out openly as soft on prostitution or pro-brothel, legislators could say that local authorities are in a better position to make that decision,” George explained to me. “My goal as lobbyist is never to see a bill make it to the point where individual members, our friends, are embarrassed by having to take a public stand on the rise or fall of legalized prostitution.”

George was just as careful in doling out political contributions. Although most politicians were more than willing to accept money from the brothels, they preferred not to do so publicly. Because Nevada permits candidates to receive contributions of up to $500 without naming the donor publicly, George made all his political action contributions in checks of $500 or less. If the NBA wanted to give a senator a $2,000 contribution, George sent four checks, each for $500 from four different brothels. In the NBA’s first year, half a dozen checks were returned to George. In recent years, the number has dwindled to one or two.

When I told him that O’Donnell and Reese accused the NBA of “bribing” politicians, George raised his voice a decibel and told me that the brothels were no different from any other interest group that made political contributions, except that
the NBA spent far less money than other industries, especially gaming. In 1996, the NBA contributed approximately $50,000 to legislators’ campaigns (nearly 60 percent coming from Mustang Ranch), while the gaming industry dispensed $800,000 to statewide legislative races. “It’s crude to say,” George added, “but at all levels of politics, money’s the name of the game. One hand washes the other. It’s that simple. The brothel business survives on politics, friendship, and political action contributions.”

I appreciated George’s shrewdness, but the fact that the executive director of the NBA felt it necessary to beat around the bush with legislators about a lawful profession bothered me. It seemed to me that the merits of legalized prostitution spoke for themselves, and that sidestepping the issue—making it one of political jurisdiction—undermined their validity.

But for the time being, Nevadans seemed to favor the status quo, or so said multiple public opinion polls. In a 1986 telephone survey of registered voters in northern Nevada, 66 percent said they believed the state should leave the right to legalize brothels with each county, letting voters have a direct say on the issue. As of the year 2002, only southeast Nevada’s Lincoln County had voted (by public referendum) to repeal its existing law legalizing brothels. General opinion held that the brothels were tolerable, as long as they kept a low profile. What seemed to worry citizens were the brothels that became too well known, which usually happened when owners refused to remain discreet. The most notorious, of course, was Joe Conforte.

Even after getting brothel prostitution legalized in 1971, Conforte didn’t stop thumbing his nose at the establishment. A national folk hero of sorts, Conforte wallowed in the ensuing media attention, much to the chagrin of conservative Nevadans. In 1972,
Rolling Stone
magazine ran a cover story entitled “Joe Conforte, Crusading Pimp: A Concerned Citizen’s Fight to Keep Prostitutes Off the Streets of Nevada.” Long critical of flashy brothel publicity, the
Reno Gazette-Journal
published editorial after editorial condemning Conforte. (The newspaper, then named the
Reno Evening Gazette
, actually won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1977 for a series of editorials on Joe Conforte, his Mustang Ranch brothel, and his alleged influence on Washoe County public officials.)

One editorial published in 1976 read, “If Conforte wishes to run a whorehouse, he can do it as everyone else does it: quietly. Conforte needs to get the message that Reno does not want him to ride in its parades, finance its bus lines, influence its politicians, or be front row center as the gamblers celebrate him with the best showroom tables.” (To curry favor, brothel owners have traditionally made donations ranging from uniforms for local Little League teams to bulletproof vests for county sheriff departments.)

A classic example of Conforte’s grandstanding was the time he showed off his patriotism by offering single servicemen stationed in the Persian Gulf free twenty-four-hour dates with Mustang prostitutes upon their return. Such a party normally cost about $1,000. “I’m going to give them the ultimate morale booster,” Conforte told the press. In the end, between 100
and 150 servicemen took advantage of Conforte’s offer. “He was such an animal for publicity,” George told me. “It didn’t make a difference whether he made a good impression or not, because Joe worked under the theory that any publicity was good publicity.”

But some kinds of publicity could be damaging, even to Conforte. In 1976, the Argentine heavyweight boxer Oscar Bonavena, once the world’s fifth-ranked contender (58 and 9, with 43 knockouts), was shot and killed in the parking lot of Mustang Ranch allegedly by Conforte’s bodyguard, Willard Ross Brymer. At the time, Mustang’s arsenal included two AR-15s, three 12-gauge shotguns, a Mace gun, and sidearms for all security guards. Rumor had it that Conforte had emerged from the brothel after the shooting and shouted, “Move this fucking bloody body from the door to my brothel!”
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Although Conforte was not implicated in the killing, he was assumed to have some connection to it, especially after the media unearthed evidence of an affair between Bonavena and Conforte’s wife. (Among other suspicious events, the body had been moved by the time the medical examiner arrived, so no firm conclusions could be drawn as to where the killer had stood.) Conforte took further heat when the ensuing criminal investigation was deemed insufficient because of his interference. Two grand jury investigations concluded that Conforte held “unusual influence and power” over county officials, naming the district attorney, Virgil Bucchianeri, and the sheriff,
Bob Del Carlo, both of whom handled the Bonavena investigation. Conforte’s lavish entertaining, free brothel passes, and campaign contributions had corrupted county government, critics contended.

Conforte’s influence over county politics was due, in part, to his ability to tip elections. Allegedly, he had engineered a bloc of votes, the “river vote,” comprised of Mustang Ranch staff and prostitutes (whose legal residence may or may not have been in-county) and tenants in his Lockwood Mobile Home Park, a community of ninety-four low-rent trailers and single-family houses that he had developed. Storey County had only 2,500 residents, and fewer than 1,500 registered voters, so Conforte controlled nearly 20 percent of the votes.

Conforte made it his business to volunteer his two cents about candidates when he accompanied prostitutes to the polling place and visited Lockwood residents before elections with a bottle of whiskey under one arm and a turkey under the other: early “Christmas presents.” Conforte fooled no one, said George. “But they [the tenants] were also paying him a mere thirty-five dollars a month in rent. And having Joe in your living room was such an honor, the people loved it.” Besides, Conforte didn’t try to hide his agenda. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he once told a reporter. “I go around the trailer park and tell the people, ‘Look you’ve got two candidates. Now I think this one is pro-prostitution, this one is not, and I would like you to vote for this one.’ But where is the law against that?”