Heidi Fleiss slides into the red leather banquette and orders a fruit smoothie, aware that most heads in the restaurant turned when she walked in. A waiter, looking slightly star-struck, hovers nearby, repeatedly asking if she needs anything else. More than a decade after Fleiss was at the apex of her notoriety, with a high-profile criminal case and a little black book the very existence of which made the wealthy and powerful shudder, Hollywood's most influential madam still draws stares wherever she goes.
'You'll see. I still get a lot of respect,' Fleiss had said on the phone as we arranged to meet for a late lunch at Jerry's Famous Deli in Woodland Hills, just outside Los Angeles. She arrives 40 minutes late, dressed in an oversized sleeveless blue T-shirt and jeans, wire braces on her teeth, skin translucent even though she looks exhausted, her hair flat and straight. Although dressed down, her fingers sparkle with gold and diamond rings, and an expensive-looking necklace hangs around her neck - about the only indicators that Fleiss once earned US$5 million a year.
After a meteoric career as a supplier of high-priced hookers to the world's wealthiest men, life started to go horribly wrong for Fleiss in 1993. Tabloids the world over had a field day as the notorious madam endured a three-year jail sentence, stints in drug rehabilitation, bankruptcy and a celebrity relationship that kept her name in the headlines. Of all the upheavals, the arrest stands out in Fleiss' mind as the most traumatic. She was charged on numerous counts - including money laundering and tax evasion - and the privacy crucial to her trade was shattered. Overnight, Fleiss went from a behind-the-scenes purveyor of first-class hookers to the potential destroyer of her well-heeled clients, who quaked in their crocodile-skin shoes worrying their names would be divulged to the press.
But Fleiss, 39, who describes herself as a survivor, says she is reclaiming her life. She is building a brothel in Nevada - the only place in the United States where prostitution is legal - with which she intends to regain her position in the prostitution business. She has bought 24 hectares of land ('I don't want anybody else near me,' she says) in Pahrump, 100km outside Las Vegas, where she plans to construct a sprawling set of villas, each with its own theme.
In preparation, Fleiss has been trawling other Nevada brothels, making a list of what not to do. 'While I've been doing my research, I've been banned from some of these places,'
she says. 'The other pimps and madams are scared of me.