The phones come to life after midnight. Weeknights can be quiet, but not this one. It's a military payday, and thousands of checks have just hit bank accounts in Hampton Roads.
Inside an anonymous office suite toward the ocean end of Virginia Beach Boulevard, smoke curls from ashtrays as three bookers juggle the calls. Their eyes flicker between their paperwork and a wall-size dry-erase board. Its grid holds the latest working hours of Beauty, Honey, Star, Siren and nearly 50 other women who go by exotic-sounding names. What city are you in? What's your name? Do you want one girl or two? OK, baby. The booker begins to rattle off the offerings: "I have Aries, she's 18, Caucasian, 5 feet 6 inches, pounds, 34C with brown hair and brown eyes β¦ or Jada, she's Hispanic, 36 double D β¦ or Danielle, she's African American β¦".
This is the headquarters of Jack Sabatino's operation. The year-old ex-Navy man owns what he says is the largest escort agency on the East Coast. His ads are sandwiched between dozens of others from similar companies. In Verizon's latest phone book, escort listings run across nine-plus pages β a menu of seductive female images offering "one-on-ones," the promise to "cure your hunger" and the invitation to "let your imagination run wild.
Callers who ask the companies about sex are routinely told it's not allowed, b ut several people in the business say it's often part of the encounter. In the past few months, some escort services have been linked to prostitution. Madam" β who recently killed herself β was convicted of running an escort service that supplied prostitutes to Washington's political elite. Closer to home, a Virginia Beach couple face up to two years behind bars for running a prostitution ring in Richmond under the name of Aphrodite Escort Services.
Ateba Crocker, a marketing professor at Old Dominion University, isn't surprised. Crocker says she was an escort in Hampton Roads 12 years ago. She has written a book aimed at discouraging other women from doing the same. It's difficult to say how many escort companies there are in Hampton Roads. Like Sabatino's outfit, most operate under a host of suggestive names. He estimates that the local industry includes about escorts working for eight or so companies.
