Marlene Baldwin wasn't one to overlook the mundane tasks in her old line of work.

Keep the girls upbeat and healthy. Check references for new clients. Keep up a constant rotation of bedsheets, and bring in fresh flowers to keep things classy.

And as for police raids... Well, we'll get to that later.

Just know that Baldwin's former business, the one that garnered scores of newspaper articles and inspired a movie, educated her on everything a working girl should know.

"The whole city knew I was made," Baldwin said in her Rathdrum home last week, wearing her usual wry half smile. "I had total protection."

The secret's probably been built up enough. Baldwin, better known as Brandy in her commercial prime, made herself into a prominent brothel madam in San Francisco during the '70s.

Now living again in her home state, the 71-year-old can point to how her former glory has shaped her life. She still hops on the Bowflex to ease the injuries from the raid where she fell out a four-story window. Also, she was primed with business acumen for her current coupon business.

"I'm working with small businesses instead of wealthy men, and graphic artists instead of prostitutes," she said as she shuffled through a handful of coupons in her home office. "Same thing."

Her old career also gave her great material for the memoirs she wrote decades ago, and has only now just self-published, after all the mentioned clients have passed.

It's been a long time coming, she said.

"How could I not write a book about my life?" she said.

An unlikely start

Baldwin generally fits the stereotype of a retired madam.

Her still-red hair flows long and untamed. She's full of spit and gumption and sass, has ash trays strategically placed around her home, and will whack a person on the arm to emphasize a point.

And when she describes her story, she leans forward with wide eyes and an even wider smile, declaring unapologetically that she was once "the most successful madam the west has ever seen."

Her arc into that status, as might be expected, wasn't heaped with class.

Raised in Boise, she ran off to Northern California at 18, she said, and worked odd jobs through the late '50s.

Most of the next decade was consumed by two crummy marriages and fast divorces. The second husband played a small part in her future career, she said, by forcing her to work as a prostitute to pay their bills after she had their child.

The twist of fate occurred when she befriended a madam at the Baldwin Hotel in San Francisco, she said.

Suddenly Baldwin, still in her 20s and something of a stunner, was being introduced to "the big boys," her title for high rollers and affluent playboys with some serious influence.

She is eager to pull out a framed black-and-white photo, showing her with bountiful hair and a glittering smile, seated at a table packed with men in suits with cigars in a lavish dining hall.

"I was pretty irresistible in those days," she said with a giggle.

They prompted her with a business venture.

"They said, 'You don't have to be here,'" Baldwin said.

In 1969, her elite new circle helped her purchase a Victorian home on Sacramento Street and gave her specifications on running a brothel, the kind such gallivanting gentry were hungry for.

She said they chose her as the proprietor of the establishment, which she would call the Sacramento Street Cabaret, because she had distant blood ties to prominent regional figures from the 19th century.

"They wanted to keep it in the family," Baldwin said.

Making it big

Also, they wanted a discreet place to hook up with women.

Baldwin didn't have to do much to get things started, she said. Her business associates brought the women to her, and she had the final say on accepting.

"They had to be beautiful," she said. "They had to be as beautiful as me or more beautiful to work for me."

At first, Baldwin acknowledged, she felt forced into her new line of work.

"I never wanted to. It was the gentlemen who talked me into it," she said. "And the money they would throw at me. They'd walk in the door and hand me $100 bills."

But she began to settle into things. And business grew.

The establishment was successful, she said, because it offered everything. Card games downstairs. A fully stocked bar. As many as 35 readily available women.

Baldwin kept the place clean and orderly, she said. Customers included a prestigious list of governors, congressmen, legislators, judges. The clientele remained restricted, with new gentlemen only allowed in with a reference from someone Baldwin knew.

"No strangers allowed," she said.

Never forgoing details, she eventually added a boardroom for clients to hold business meetings, which secured the brothel's popularity.

"We were covering all the bases," she said. "The gentlemen would have their board meetings, and one would slip out, see a lady, come back. Then another would slip out, see a lady."

At every meeting Baldwin was there, seated at the table.

"I watched and listened," she said. "You wouldn't believe how much I learned. It was better than any college."

Catch and release

Police raids were an occasional nuisance of the trade, Baldwin said.

"I think there were five altogether," she estimated.

Everyone knew the routine. After the arrests, Baldwin and the girls would wait for one of her gentleman pals to drop by the station with an envelope full of cash to see to their release.

"I'd make sure all the girls were out first before me," Baldwin said.

Only once did things go wrong. During a raid in 1973, Baldwin struggled to close a window in the midst of the ruckus. She toppled out and fell four stories, suffering back injuries that kept her in the hospital for several months.

Afterward, it was back to work.

"Like nothing ever happened," she said.

Serving time/God

She knew when she had reached her limit.

Early in 1980, Baldwin was facing a likely prison sentence in a Northern California court for her business operation.

Her friends were lobbying for her to serve time in a nunnery, instead. She wrote a 10-page letter to the judge pleading that he was meant to save her, that she would change her life if he showed mercy.

The judge conceded, giving a 79-day sentence at the Convent of the Good Shepherd Convent.

"He said in the courtroom, he totally believed that Brandy Baldwin was over, and I would go back to being Marlene Baldwin," she said. "It was totally over. I'd made a commitment to a very devout Catholic judge. I couldn't go back on it."

Then 41, Baldwin spent her sentence writing, she said, purging all her dark history by pouring it onto the page.

She stayed true to her word to the judge, she added.

Baldwin left the brothel world behind, though she still has a stack of newspaper clippings about her former notoriety. She also still speaks about the 1983 film she inspired, "Dixie: Changing Habits," about a brothel owner sentenced to redeem herself in a nunnery.

It's all in Baldwin's memoirs, "The Bay Lady," she said. A book signing is scheduled today from 4-7 p.m. at Hastings. More information on her book is available at www.wix.com/brandybaldwinbooks/the-bay-lady.

Writing it in the nunnery both let her relive the memories and let them go, Baldwin said.

A literary kiss farewell to the field of prostitution.

"All those negative things in my life were leaving, going away on paper. I was shedding all this," she said. "It was like cleaning house. I walked out a brand new person."