David got there early and was seated but soon found out that upon her arrival Ramona Sanchez was treated like royalty at Versailles,  always seated at the same table, readily in view of people coming and going. It seemed that half the men in the place knew her and most of the women avoided her. As someone known for her liberal donations to local charities, she would even have an occasional priest come by to say hello and whisper a thank-you.
       One of the managers said there was a man waiting for her, and she told him to bring him to her table near the windows under a crystal chandelier. 
      David had met brothel madams in New York—white, Black, Hispanic, Asian—who each had their own distinctive look.  Ramona, who appeared to be in her fifties, looked very much like a woman of some stature, even if had been earned through prostitution. She was of medium height even in spiked heels, but aside from opalescent blue-green eye shadow, heavy mascara on false eyelashes and long nails painted the same color as her eye shadow, she was dressed rather demurely,  in a beige linen blouse, wide brown belt and chocolate brown slacks,  all topped off with a narrow-brimmed straw hat with a striped band and large sunglasses curved around the crown. 
       Her skin was the color of café con leche, her eyes gray-green, her neck long. Clearly she had once been a great beauty and, though once a prostitute herself, she got out before it affected her looks.
       Ramona did not smile upon taking—not shaking—David’s hand, and asking, in a smoky voice and Cuban accent, “You’re an Italian boy from the Bronx, right? I have family live up there on the Grand Concourse. Where’d you grow up?”
       “Castle Hill, pretty close to the Concourse.”
       “I don’t know it. And you used to be NYPD.”
      “Terry must have told you all about me.”\
    “So, you want to speak to me about Jeffrey Epstein? He’s a very nasty man, which can be good in my business, but he goes too far and I keep away from him, especially now with the police  after him.
    “So, you want to speak to me about Jeffrey Epstein? He’s a very nasty man, which can be good in my business, but he goes too far and I keep away from him, especially now with the police  after him. If he were smart, he’d go to some island in the Caribbean not owned by the U.S. and stay there with his millions and that perra of his.”
       “You mean Ghislaine Maxwell?”
       “You meet her?”
       “No, but my colleague who is a reporter has.”
       “Don’t believe a word the bitch says. Ever since she lost her papa’s money, she’s been tied to Jeffrey with, what do you call them? Esposas dorados?”
    “Golden handcuffs.”
    “Let’s order. I have only an hour .”
       Ramona nodded to a waiter standing six feet away and told him, “Tendré mu habitual.” David asked the waiter for a menu, but she waved him away.
       “Have what I’m having,,” said Ramona. “The Cuban pork. Best thing on the menú. You want beer?”
       David said, “If you’re having one?”
       “No, I only drink caipiriñhas. Not Cuban, but it’s been my drink forever. One for lunch, two for dinner.”
       “So,” David began, “our mutual friend Terry Rush said you’d know what goes on in Epstein’s hacienda.”
       Ramona arched her eyebrows. “Una hacienda? That’s not a hacienda! It’s uno agujero del infierno. A hell hole.   Jeffry is not stupid but he has never been able to buy a penny of class.”
       David found this ironic coming from a retired madam.
       “Jeffrey is basically like me,” she said. “He provides people with special pleasures. But he doesn’t do it for the money. I only did it for the money. He gets his money from that Victoria’s Secret guy.”
       “Wexner.”    
       “Si.  Jeffrey’s only interested in having power over all the grande honchos he invites.  So he hooks up the politicians and powerbrokers with young girls who look like models, and the men are very grateful. Is like going to a Playboy Club without paying. And when they meet other guys like themselves who have strong connections to Washington and world capitals, like Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, they become like a secret society, you know?”
       “What do you mean?” asked David.
       “Once they spot each other at Jeffrey’s parties and know what’s going on, it’s in their interest to keep their mouths shut but also to make them into amigos they can work with because they know those guys don’t want anybody to know what goes on there.  Todos mantienen las bocas cerrada. They keep their mouths shut.”
       “And what was your role in these parties?”
       “I provided a lot of the girls, who are the best looking and the best at what they do. Most of the guests don’t even know they’re call girls. They think, or convince themselves to think, these are just beautiful girls up from Miami. Jeffrey and Giselle learn all their names, which are always fake, and personally introduce them to the men. Of course, Jeffrey also flies in some girls,  but I wanted nothing to do with that.”
       “Why not?”
       The drinks and Cuban pork arrived at the same moment, and Ramona toasted, “To capital enterprise!”                 David clinked and asked again, “So, why didn’t you want anything to do with the girls Epstein flies in?”
       Ramona took another sip  of her ice-cold caipriñha, patted her lips and narrowed her eyes.
       “Because these girls are so young. Not legal age.”
       “And you didn’t want to risk being arrested for that kind of trade?”
       Ramona laughed and shrugged. “Me? I never had any trouble with cops, here, Palm Beach, anywhere. They know my girls they are clean, there’s no drugs and I spread a little money around. They don’t go around busting into powerful men’s mansions to round up their friends, who are probably going to include some of their own police captains.”
       “Sounds a lot like New York.”
       Ramona finished her drink in one gulp and said, “Let me tell you something, Bronx boy. I started out as a puta when I was sixteen with a local pimp who treated the youngest ones very badly. Paid the least, even though men paid the most for the underage girls. When I got out and opened my own house I swore it would be all legit and strictly high class. No street walkers. My girls  could push those skinny Victoria’s Secret models  from Brazil and Europe right off the runway. As a matter of fact, some have become New York models, on every fashion cover.
       “I’m not going to tell you all pimps and madams have any sense of honor or morality. Crée me, whores don’t have hearts of gold, they have bank accounts.  But after what I went through as a teenager, I would never put girls through that. Jeffrey, he  ask me all the time to get some of those girls. ‛Ramona,’ he  say, ‛what I want are some of those Catholic high school girls who look like they’ve never been kissed.’ I refused. I always refused, no matter how much money he’d pay.”
       “I’ve been told that Jeffrey himself likes very young girls,” said David.
       Ramona almost spat. “That’s all Jeffrey wants. Younger and younger. Pervadito. It’s the only way he can get it up. Ghislaine, he lost interest in her sex years ago. Now she acts as his personal pimp. She promises these girls a glamorous weekend, all first class, then flies them down here and pretends to be their friend. And Jeffrey can charm them with all the luxury, the big room and the gifts, and Ghislaine asks them to just give him a little massage. Those girls go home in tears, but they say nothing to their parents. Ghislaine, is going to get caught someday, too.”
       Ramona had only finished a few bites of her food, but she glanced at her Rolex watch—David knew it from busting drug dealers in New York and also knew it cost in excess of ten thousand dollars—and said, “I have to go. You need to reach me, call Terry.”
       She shuffled from the table, gave a tip to the manager, nodded in David’s direction and was gone. The waiter brought the check to David, who saw no reason to waste the rest of his Cuban pork, ordered another beer and kept eating.

'Would You Wait 8 Hours for This Waffle? I Flew West to Get On Line."––Matthew Schneier, New York (Feb 2026).