Catching the Wolf of Wall Street

^{CHAPTER 1} THE AFTERMATH

September 4, 1998

Joel Cohen, the disheveled assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was a world-class bastard with a degenerate slouch. When I was arraigned the following day, he tried to convince the female magistrate to deny me bail on the grounds that I was a born liar, a compulsive cheater, a habitual whoremonger, a hopeless drug addict, a serial witness-tamperer, and, above all things, the greatest flight risk since Amelia Earhart.

It was a helluva mouthful, although the only things that bothered me were that he had called me a drug addict and a whoremonger. After all, I had been sober for almost eighteen months now, and I had sworn off hookers accordingly. Whatever the case, the magistrate set my bail at $10 million, and within twenty-four hours my wife and my attorney had made all the necessary arrangements for my release.

At this particular moment, I was walking down the courthouse steps into the loving arms of my wife. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and she was waiting for me on the sidewalk, wearing a tiny yellow sundress and matching high-heeled sandals that made her look as fresh as a daisy. At this time of summer, in this part of Brooklyn, by four o’clock the sun was at just the right angle to bring every last drop of her into view: her shimmering blond hair, those brilliant blue eyes, her perfect cover-girl features, those surgically enhanced breasts, her glorious shanks and flanks, so succulent above the knee and so slender at the ankle. She was thirty years old now and absolutely gorgeous. The moment I reached her, I literally fell into her arms.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” I said, embracing her on the sidewalk. “I missed you so much, honey.”

“Get the fuck away from me!” she sputtered. “I want a divorce.”

I felt a second-wife alarm go off in my central nervous system. “What are you talking about, honey? You’re being ridiculous!”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about!” And she recoiled from my embrace and started marching toward a blue Lincoln limousine parked at the edge of the curb of 225 Cadman Plaza, the main thoroughfare in the courthouse section of Brooklyn Heights. Waiting by the limo’s rear door was Monsoir, our babbling Pakistani driver. He opened it on cue, and I watched her disappear into a sea of sumptuous black leather and burled walnut, taking her tiny yellow sundress and shimmering blond hair with her.

I wanted to follow, but I was too stunned. My feet seemed to be rooted into the earth, as if I were a tree. Beyond the limousine, on the other side of the street, I could see a dreary little park adorned with green-slat benches, undernourished trees, and a small field covered by a thin layer of dirt and crabgrass. The park looked as sumptuous as a graveyard. My misery made my eye hang on it for a moment.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Christ, I needed to grab hold of myself! I looked at my watch… didn’t have one… I had taken it off before they slapped the cuffs on me. Suddenly I felt terribly conscious of my appearance. I looked down at my abdomen. I was one giant wrinkle, from my tan golf pants to my white silk polo shirt to my leather boating moccasins. I hadn’t slept in how many days? Three? Four? Hard to say—I never slept much anyway. My blue eyes burned like hot coals. My mouth was dry as a bone. My breath was—wait a minute! Was it my breath? Maybe I scared her off! After three days of eating grade-D bratwurst I had the worst case of dragon breath since—didn’t know when. But, still, how could she leave me now? What kind of woman was she? That bitch! Gold-digger—

These thoughts roaring through my head were completely crazy. My wife wasn’t going anywhere. She was just shell-shocked. Besides, it was common knowledge that second wives didn’t bail on their husbands the moment they got indicted; they waited a bit so it wasn’t so obvious! It couldn’t be possible—

—just then I saw Monsoir smiling at me and nodding his head.

Fucking terrorist! I thought.

Monsoir had been working for us for almost six months now, and the jury was still out on him. He was one of those unnerving foreigners who wore a perpetual grin on his face. In Monsoir’s case, I figured it was because his next stop was to a local bomb factory, to mix explosives. Either way, he was thin, balding, caramel-colored, medium height, and had a narrow skull shaped like a shoe box. When he spoke, he sounded like the Road Runner, his words coming out in tiny beeps and bops. And unlike my old driver, George, Monsoir couldn’t shut up.

I walked to the limousine in a zombielike state, making a mental note to thrash him if he tried to make small talk. And my wife, well, I would just have to humor her. And if that didn’t work, then I would start a fight with her. After all, ours was the sort of wildly rocky, dysfunctional romance where knock-down, drag-out brawls brought us closer together.

“How are you, boss?” asked Monsoir. “It is berry, berry good to have you back. What was it like inside the—”

I cut him off with a raised palm: “Don’t—fucking—speak, Monsoir. Not now. Not ever,” and I climbed into the back of the limousine and took a seat across from Nadine. She was sitting with her long, bare legs crossed, staring out the window into the rancid gullet of Brooklyn.

I smiled and said, “Taking in your old stomping ground, Duchess?”

No response. She just stared out the window, a gorgeous ice sculpture.

Christ—this was absurd! How could the Duchess of Bay Ridge turn her back on me in my hour of need? The Duchess of Bay Ridge was my wife’s nickname, and depending on her mood it could cause her to either flash you a smile or tell you to go fuck yourself. The nickname had to do with her blond hair, British citizenship, over-the-top beauty, and Brooklyn upbringing. Her British citizenship, which she was very quick to remind you of, created a rather royal and refined mystique about her; the Brooklyn upbringing, in the gloomy groin of Bay Ridge, caused words like shit, prick, cocksucker, and motherfucker to roll off her tongue like the finest poetry; and the extreme beauty allowed her to get away with it all. At five-seven, the Duchess and I were pretty much the same size, although she had the temper of Mount Vesuvius and the strength of a grizzly bear. Back in my younger and wilder days, she was pretty quick to take a swing at me or pour boiling water over my head, when the need arose. And, as odd as it seemed, I loved it.

I took a deep breath and said in a joking tone, “Come on, Duchess! I’m very upset right now and I need a bit of compassion. Please?”

Now she looked at me. Her blue eyes blazed away above her high cheekbones. “Don’t fucking call me that,” she snarled, and then she looked back out the window, resuming her ice-sculpture pose.

“Jesus Christ!” I muttered. “What the hell has gotten into you?”

Still looking out the window, she said, “I can’t be with you anymore. I’m not in love with you.” Then, twisting the knife in deeper: “I haven’t been for a long time.”

Such despicable words! The audacity! Yet for some reason her words made me want her even more. “You’re being ridiculous, Nae. Everything will be fine.” My throat was so dry I could barely get the words out. “We’ve got more than enough money, so you can relax. Please don’t do this now.”

Still staring out the window: “It’s too late.”

As the limousine headed toward the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a combination of fear, love, desperation, and betrayal overtook me all at once. There was a sense of loss that I had never experienced before. I felt completely empty, utterly hollow. I couldn’t just sit across from her like this—it was absolute torture! I needed to either kiss her or hug her or make love to her or strangle her to death. It was time for strategy number two: the knock-down, drag-out brawl.

With a healthy dose of venom, I said, “So let me get this fucking straight, Nadine: Now you want a divorce? Now that I’m under fucking indictment? Now that I’m under house arrest?” I pulled up the left leg of my pants, exposing an electronic monitoring bracelet on my ankle. It looked like a beeper. “What kind of fucking person are you? Tell me! Are you trying to set a world record for lack of compassion?”

She looked at me with dead eyes. “I’m a good woman, Jordan; everyone knows that. But you mistreated me for years. I’ve been done with this marriage for a long time now—ever since you kicked me down the stairs. This has nothing to do with you going to jail.”

What a bunch of horseshit! Yes, I had raised a hand to her once— that terrible struggle on the stairs, eighteen months ago, that despicable moment, the day before I got sober—and if she had left me then, she would have been justified. But she didn’t leave; she stayed; and I did get sober. It was only now—with financial ruin lingering in the air—that she wanted out. Unbelievable!

By now we were on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, approaching the Brooklyn-Queens border. Off to my left was the glittering island of Manhattan, where seven million people would dance and sing their weekend away, unconcerned with my plight. I found that wholly depressing. Off to my immediate left was the armpit of Williamsburg, a flat swath of land loaded with dilapidated warehouses, ramshackle apartments, and people who spoke Polish. Just why all those Poles had settled there, I hadn’t the slightest idea.

Ahhh, a brainstorm! I would change the subject to the kids. This, after all, was the common bond we shared. “Are the kids okay?” I asked softly.

“They’re fine,” she answered, in a rather cheery tone. Then: “They’ll be fine no matter what.” She stared out the window again. The unspoken message was: “Even if you go to jail for a hundred years, Chandler and Carter will still be okay, because Mommy will find a new husband faster than you can say Sugar Daddy!”

I took a deep breath and decided to say no more; there was no winning with her right now. If only I had stuck with my first wife! Would Denise be saying now that she didn’t love me anymore? Fucking second wives; they were a mixed bag, especially those of the trophy variety. For better or worse? Yeah, right! They only said that for the sake of the wedding video. In reality, they were only there for the better.

This was payback for leaving my kind first wife, Denise, for the blond-headed scoundrel seated across from me. The Duchess had been my mistress once, an innocent fling that spiraled way out of control. Before I knew it, we were madly in love and couldn’t live without each other, couldn’t breathe without each other. Of course, I had rationalized my actions at the time—telling myself that Wall Street was a very tough place for first wives, so it wasn’t really my fault. After all, when a man became a true power broker, these things were expected to happen.

These things, however, cut both ways—because if the Master of the Universe took a financial nosedive, then the second wife would quickly move on to more-fertile pastures. In essence, the gold digger, aware that the gold mine had ceased to yield the precious ore, would move on to a more productive mine, where she could continue to extract ore, undisturbed. Indeed, it was one of life’s most ruthless equations, and right now I was on the ass end of it.

With a sinking heart, I shifted my gaze back to the Duchess. She was still staring out the window—a beautiful, malevolent ice sculpture. At that moment I felt many things for her, but mostly I felt sad—sad for both of us, and even sadder for our children. Up until now they had lived a charmed life in Old Brookville, secure in the fact that things were just as they should be and that they would always stay that way. How very sad, I thought, how very fucking sad.

We spent the remainder of the limo ride in silence.

^{CHAPTER 2} THE INNOCENT VICTIMS

The village of Old Brookville stands on the sparkling “Gold Coast” of Long Island, an area so magnificent that up until a short time ago it had been strictly off-limits to Jews. Not literally, of course, but for all practical purposes we were still considered second-class citizens, a clique of slippery peddlers who’d risen above their station and needed to be observed and controlled lest they overrun the area’s first-class citizens—namely, the WASPs.

Actually, these weren’t just any old WASPs but a small subspecies of WASP known as “the blue blood.” Numbering only in the thousands, the blue bloods, with their tall, thin frames and fancy clothes, had natural habitats that included world-class golf courses, stately mansions, hunting and fishing lodges, and secret societies. Most of them were of British stock, and they took great pride in tracing their genealogies back to the time of the Mayflower. Yet, in evolutionary terms, they were no different from the massive dinosaurs that had ruled the Gold Coast 65 million years before them: They were on the verge of extinction—victims of increased death taxes, property taxes, and a steady dilution of the intellectual gene pool, as generations of inbreeding yielded idiot sons and daughters who wreaked financial havoc on the great fortunes their blue-blooded ancestors had taken generations to build. (The magic of Charles Darwin working overtime.)

In any event, this was where the Duchess and I now lived and where I had assumed we would grow old together. Now, however, as the limousine pulled through the limestone pillars at the edge of our six-acre estate, I wondered.

A long circular driveway, bordered by immaculately trimmed box hedges, led to our ten-thousand-square-foot stone mansion finished in French chateau style, with gleaming copper turrets and casement windows. At the end of the driveway, a long cobblestone walkway led to the mansion’s twelve-foot-high mahogany front door. As the limo pulled up to it, I decided to take one last shot with the Duchess before we went inside. I got down on my knees and placed my hands on either side of her thighs, which were crossed. As always, her skin felt silky smooth, although I resisted the urge to run my hands down the full length of her bare legs. Instead, I looked up at her with puppy-dog eyes and said:

“Listen, Nae, I know this has been tough on you”—tough on you?—“and I’m really sorry for that, but we’ve been together for eight years, sweetie. And we have two amazing kids! We’ll get through this.” I paused for a moment and nodded my head for effect. “And even if I do go to jail, you and the kids will always be taken care of. I promise you.”

“Don’t worry about us,” she said coldly. “Just worry about yourself.”

I narrowed my eyes and said, “I don’t get it, Nadine. You make it seem like you’re totally shocked about all this. When we first met it wasn’t like I was being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. I was being smeared and vilified by every newspaper in the free world!” I cocked my head to the side, at an angle that implied logic, and continued: “I mean, I guess it would be one thing if you married a doctor and then found out, after the fact, that he’d been defrauding Medicaid for the last twenty years. I guess then you would be justified! But, now, given the circumstances—”

She cut me right off. “I had no idea what you were doing”—oh, I guess the two million in cash in my sock drawer never made you suspicious!—”none at all. And after they took you away, that Agent Coleman interrogated me for five hours—five fucking hours!” The last three words she screamed, and then she pushed my hands off her thighs. “He told me that I would go to jail too, unless I told him everything! You put me at risk; you put me in danger. I’ll never forgive you for that.” She looked away, shaking her head in disgust.

Oh, shit! Agent Coleman had traumatized her. Of course, he had been totally full of shit, but, still, she was holding me responsible. Yet perhaps that boded well for our future together. After all, once the Duchess realized that she wasn’t at risk, she might have a change of heart. I was about to explain that to her, when she turned back to me and said, “I need to get away for a while. The last few days have been stressful on me, and I need to be alone. I’m going to the beach house for the weekend. I’ll be back on Monday.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out, just a tiny gasp of air. Finally I said, “You’re leaving me alone with the kids under house arrest?”

“Yes!” she said proudly, and she opened the rear door and popped out of her seat in a huff. And just like that she was gone-marching toward the mansion’s massive front door, with the hem of her tiny yellow sundress rising and falling with each determined step. I stared at the Duchess’s fabulous behind for a moment. Then I jumped out of the limousine and followed her into the house.

On the mansion’s second floor, three large bedrooms were on the east end of a very long hallway, and a fourth bedroom, the master bedroom, was on the west end. Of the three east bedrooms, our children occupied two, and the third was used as a guest room. A four-foot-wide mahogany staircase swept up in a sumptuous curve from a grand marble entryway below. When I reached the top of the stairs, rather than following the Duchess into the master bedroom, I turned east and headed for the kids’ rooms. I found them both in Chandler’s room, sitting on her glorious pink carpet. They were dressed in their pajamas, playing happily. The room was a little pink wonderland, with dozens of stuffed animals arranged just so. The drapes, the window treatments, and the goose-down comforter on Chandler’s queen-size bed were all done in “Laura Ashley style,” a palette of mellow pastels and floral prints. It was the perfect little girl’s room, for my perfect little girl.

Chandler had just turned five, and she was the spitting image of her mother, a tiny blond model. At this particular moment, she was engaged in her favorite pastime—arranging a hundred fifty Barbie dolls into a perfect circle around her, so she could sit in the center and hold court. Carter, who had just turned three, was lying on his stomach just outside the circle. He was thumbing through a picture book with his right hand, his left elbow resting on the carpet and his tiny chin resting in his palm. His enormous blue eyes blazed away behind eyelashes as lush as butterfly wings. His platinum-blond hair was as fine as corn silk and had tiny curls on the back that shimmered like polished glass.

The moment they saw me they jumped up and ran toward me. “Daddy’s home!” screamed Chandler. Then Carter chimed in: “Daddy! Daddy!”

I crouched down and they ran into my arms.

“I missed you guys so much!” I said, showering them with kisses. “I think you got even bigger in the last three days! Let me look at you.” I held them out in front of me, and I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously, as if I were inspecting them.

They both stood tall and proud, shoulder to shoulder, their chins slightly elevated. Chandler was big for her age, Carter small, so she was a good head and a half taller than him. I compressed my lips and nodded my head gravely, as if to say, “My suspicions were confirmed!” Then I said accusingly: “I was right! You did get bigger! Why, you little sneaks!”

They both giggled deliciously. Then Chandler said, “Why are you crying, Daddy? Do you have a boo-boo?”

Without me even knowing it, a trickle of tears had made their way down my cheeks. I dried them with the back of my hand and then offered my daughter a harmless white lie: “No, I don’t have a boo-boo, silly! I’m just so happy to see you guys, it made me cry tears of joy.”

Carter nodded in agreement, although he was quickly losing interest. He was a boy, after all, so his attention span was limited. In fact, Carter lived for only five things: sleeping, eating, watching his Lion King video, climbing on the furniture, and the sight of the Duchess’s long blond hair, which soothed him like a ten-milligram Valium. Carter was a man of few words, yet he was remarkably intelligent. By his first birthday he could work the TV, VHS, and remote control. By eighteen months he was a master locksmith, picking Tot Loks with the precision of a safecracker. And by two years old he had memorized two dozen picture books. He was calm, cool, and collected, entirely comfortable in his own skin.

Chandler, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. She was complex, curious, intuitive, introspective, and never at a loss for words. Her nickname was the CIA, because she was constantly eavesdropping on conversations, trying to gather intelligence. She had spoken her first word at seven months, and at the age of one, she was speaking full sentences. At two, she was having full-blown arguments with the Duchess, and she hadn’t stopped since. She was difficult to cajole, impossible to manipulate, and had an unusually keen sense for seeing through bullshit.

And that created problems for me. My ankle bracelet could be explained away as some sort of advanced medical device, something that the doctor had given me to make sure my back pain never returned. I would tell Chandler that it was a six-month therapy regimen, and I was to keep the bracelet on at all times. She would probably buy that for a while. However, being under house arrest was going to be much more difficult to conceal.

As a family, we were constantly on the move—running and doing and going and seeing—so what would Chandler think about my sudden compulsion to not leave the house? I ran it through my mind and came to the quick conclusion that, in spite of everything, the Duchess could still be counted on to cover for me.

Then Chandler said, “Are you crying because you had to pay people back money?”

“Whuh?” I muttered. That dirty little Duchess! I thought. How could she! Why would she? To try to poison Chandler against me! She was waging a psychological war, and this was her first salvo. Step one: Let the children know Daddy’s a big fat crook; step two: Let the children know there are other, better men, who aren’t big fat crooks, who will take care of Mommy; step three: The moment Daddy goes to jail, tell the children Daddy abandoned them because he doesn’t love them; and, finally, step four: Tell the children that it would be appropriate to call Mommy’s new husband Daddy, until his gold mine dries up, at which point Mommy will find an even newer daddy for them.

I took a deep breath and conjured up another white lie. I said to Chandler, “I think you misunderstood, sweetie. I was busy working.”

“No,” argued Chandler, frustrated at my denseness. “Mommy said you took money from people and now you have to pay it back.”

I shook my head in disbelief and then took a moment to regard Carter. He seemed to be eyeing me suspiciously. Christ—did he know too? He was only three, and all he cared about was the fucking Lion King!

I had a lot of explaining to do, and not just today but also in the days and years to come. Chandler would be reading soon, and that would open up a whole new can of worms. What would I say to her? What would her friends say to her? I felt a fresh wave of despair wash over me. In a way, the Duchess was right. I had to pay for my crimes, although on Wall Street everyone was a criminal, wasn’t that true? It was only a question of degree, wasn’t it? So what made me worse than anybody else—the fact that I’d gotten caught?

I chose not to follow that train of thought. Changing the subject, I said, “Well, it’s really not important, Channy. Let’s play with your Barbie dolls.” And after you go to sleep, I thought, Daddy is going to head downstairs to his study and spend a few hours figuring out a way to kill Mommy without getting caught.

^{CHAPTER 3} EVAPORATING OPTIONS

We were somewhere on the Grand Central Parkway near the Queens-Manhattan border when I finally lost patience with Monsoir.

It was Tuesday morning, the day after Labor Day, and I was on my way to my criminal attorney’s office in Midtown Manhattan with my electronic monitoring bracelet on my left ankle and this babbling Pakistani behind the wheel. Yet, despite those hindrances, I was still dressed for success, in a gray pinstripe suit, crisp white dress shirt, red shepherd’s check necktie, black cotton dress socks—which, on my left ankle, concealed the electronic monitoring bracelet—and a pair of black Gucci loafers with tassels on them.

Dressing for success; that had seemed important this morning, although I was certain that even if I wore a diaper and a bow tie, my trusted criminal attorney, Gregory J. O’Connell, would still tell me that I looked like a million bucks. After all, this morning’s first order of business would be to hand him a check in that very amount: one million bucks. That was a priority, he’d explained, because there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be making a motion to freeze my assets this week. And lawyers, of course, need to get paid.

It was a little after ten a.m., and the morning rush hour had just ended. Off to my right I could see the low-slung hangars and terminals of LaGuardia Airport, looking as grimy as usual. Off to my left I could see the burgeoning Greek paradise of Astoria, Queens, which had a higher concentration of Greeks per square foot than anyplace on earth, including Athens. I had grown up not far from here, in the Jew paradise of Bayside, Queens, a neighborhood of safe streets that was now in the process of being overrun by well-heeled Koreans.

We had left Old Brookville thirty minutes ago, and, since then, the closet terrorist hadn’t kept his mouth shut. He’d been going on and on about the criminal justice system in his beloved Pakistan. On most days I would have simply told him to shut the fuck up. But on this particular morning I was too worn out to throttle him. And that was the Duchess’s fault.

True to her word, the blond-headed scoundrel had flown the coop on me that weekend, spending three days and nights in the Hamptons. I was pretty sure she had crashed at our beach house at nighttime, but I hadn’t the slightest idea what she had done during the day and, for that matter, whom she had done it with. She didn’t call once, painting a clear picture that she was busy! busy! busy! prospecting for a new gold mine.

When she finally walked in the door, Monday afternoon, she said only a few words to me—something about the traffic being brutal on her way back from the Hamptons. Then she went upstairs to the kids’ rooms, smiling and laughing, and took them outside to the swings. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world—making it a point, in fact, to amplify her cheeriness, ad nauseam.

She pushed them at an overly merry clip and then took her shoes off and went skipping around the backyard with them. It was as if our two lives no longer intertwined in any way whatsoever. Her very callousness had sent my spirits plunging to even lower depths. I felt as if I were in a dark hole, suffocating, with no escape.

I hadn’t eaten, slept, laughed, or smiled in almost four days now, and, at this particular moment, with Monsoir’s inane ramblings, I was contemplating slitting my own wrists.

Now he started speaking again. “I was only trying to cheer you up, boss. You are actually a berry lucky man. In my country they cut your hand off if they catch you stealing a loaf of bread.”

I cut him off. “Yeah, well, that’s real fucking fascinating, Monsoir. Thanks for sharing.” And I took a moment to consider the pros and cons of Islamic justice. I came to the quick conclusion that, given my current circumstances, it would be a mixed bag for me. On the plus side, the Duchess wouldn’t be acting so tough if I could force her to wear one of those head-to-toe burkas around town; it would stop that blond head of hers from sticking out like a fucking peacock. Yet, on the minus side, the Islamic penalty for white-collar crime and serial whoremongering had to be pretty severe. My kids and I had recently watched Aladdin, and they were ready to cut the poor kid’s hand off for stealing a ten-cent grapefruit. Or was it a loaf of bread? Either way, I had stolen over a hundred million bucks, and I could only imagine what the Islamic penalty was for that.

Although, had I really stolen anything? I mean, this word stolen was somewhat of a mischaracterization, wasn’t it? On Wall Street we weren’t actually thieves, were we? We simply talked people out of their money; we didn’t actually steal it from them! There was a difference. The crimes we committed were soft crimes—like churning and burning, and trading on inside information, and garden-variety tax evasion. They were technical violations more than anything; it wasn’t blatant thievery.

Or was it? Well, maybe it was… maybe it was. Perhaps I had taken things to a new level. Or at least the newspapers thought so.

By now the limousine was making its way over the great arc of the Triborough Bridge, and I could see the gleaming skyline of Manhattan off to my left. On clear days, like today, the buildings seemed to rise up to heaven. You could literally feel the weight of them. There was no doubt that Manhattan was the center of the financial universe, a place where movers and shakers could move and shake, where Masters of the Universe could congregate like Greek gods. And every last one of them was as crooked as me!

Yes, I thought, I was no different than any other man who owned a brokerage firm—from the blue-blooded WASP bastard who ran JPMorgan to the hapless white-bread schnook who ran Butt-Fuck Securities (in Butt-Fuck, Minnesota), we all cut a few corners. We had to, after all, if nothing more than to stay even with the competition. Such was the nature of contemporary perfection on Wall Street if you wanted to be a true power broker.

So, in reality, none of this was my fault. It was Joe Kennedy’s fault! Yes, he had started this terrible wave of stock manipulation and corporate chicanery. Back in the thirties, Old Joe had been the original Wolf of Wall Street, slashing and burning anyone in his path. In fact, he’d been one of the chief instigators of the Great Crash of ‘29, which plunged the United States into the Great Depression. He and a small handful of fabulously Wealthy Wolves had taken advantage of an unsuspecting public—making tens of millions of dollars short-selling stocks that were already on the verge of collapse, causing them to plummet that much lower.

And what had his punishment been? Well, unless I was a bit off on my history, he became the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The audacity! Yes, the stock market’s chief crook had become its chief watchdog. And all the while, even as he served as chairman, he continued to slash and burn from behind the scenes, making millions more.

I was no different from anybody else—no damn different!

“You’re different than everybody else,” said Gregory J. O’Connell, my nearly seven-foot-tall criminal lawyer. “That’s your problem.” He was sitting behind his fabulous mahogany desk, leaning back in his fabulous high-backed leather chair, and holding a copy of my not-so-fabulous indictment. He was a good-looking man, in his late thirties or early forties, with dark-brown hair and a very square jaw. He bore a striking resemblance to Tom Selleck from Magnum, P.I., although he seemed much taller to me. In fact, leaning back the way he was, his head and torso seemed a mile long. (Actually, he was only six-four, although anyone over six-three seemed seven feet tall to me.)

Magnum plowed on: “Or at least that’s how the government views you, as well as your friends in the press, who can’t seem to get enough of you.” His voice was a deep tenor, his advice offered in the same theatrical way Enrico Caruso might offer it, if he were so inclined. “I hate to say it,” continued the towering tenor, “but you’ve become the poster child for small-stock fraud, Jordan. That’s why the judge set your bail at ten million, to make an example of you.”

With a hiss: “Oh, really? Well it’s all fucking bullshit, Greg! Every last drop of it!” I popped out of my black leather armchair, elevating myself to his eye level. “Everyone on Wall Street’s a crook, you know that!” I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “I mean, what kind of lawyer are you, anyway? I’m fucking innocent, for Chrissake! Completely fucking innocent!”

“I know you are,” said my friend and lawyer of four years. “And I’m Mother Teresa, on my way to Rome for a pilgrimage. And Nick over there”—he raised his chin toward the room’s third occupant, his partner Nick De Feis, who was sitting in the black leather armchair next to mine—”is Mahatma Gandhi. Isn’t that right, Nick?”

“It’s Mohandas,” replied Nick, who had graduated at the top his class at Yale. He was about the same age as Greg and had an IQ^ around seven thousand. He had short dark hair, intense eyes, a calm demeanor, and a slender build. About my height, he was a greater wearer of blue pinstripe suits, heavily starched collars, and WASPy wingtip shoes, the sum of which made him look very intelligent. “Mahatma’s not actually a name,” continued the Yale-man. “It’s Sanskrit for great soul, in case you were wondering. Mohandas was—”

I cut him off with: “Who gives a fuck, Nick? I mean, sweet Jesus! I’m facing life in prison and you two bastards are jabbering away in Sanskrit!” I walked over to a floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window that shoved an awesome view of the concrete jungle of Manhattan down your throat. I stared out the window blankly, wondering how the fuck I ended up here—and knowing exactly how.

We were on the twenty-sixth floor of an art-deco-style office building that rose up sixty stories above Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. It was an area of Manhattan known as Bryant Park, although it used to be known as Needle Park, when two hundred heroin-addicted hookers, back in the seventies, had proudly called it home. But the park had long since been reclaimed and was now considered a fine place for working-class Manhattanites to enjoy a serene lunch, a place where they could sit on green-slat benches and breathe in the noxious fumes of a hundred thousand passing automobiles and listen to the blaring horns of twenty thousand immigrant cabbies. I looked down at the park, but all I could see was a swath of green grass and some ant-size people, none of whom, I figured, were wearing ankle bracelets. I found that very depressing.

Anyway, this particular building—namely, 500 Fifth Avenue-was an especially fine place to keep a law office. In fact, that was something that had instilled great confidence in me when I’d first met Nick and Greg four years ago, confirming a gut feeling I’d had that these two young lawyers were quickly on the rise.

You see, at the time, the law firm of De Feis O’Connell & Rose wasn’t one of New York’s marquis names. Rather, they were up-and-comers, two sharp young lawyers who’d made a name for themselves at the U.S. Attorney’s Office (prosecuting crooks like me) and who’d only recently made the leap into private practice, where they could earn some real bucks (defending crooks like me).

The firm’s third partner, Charlie Rose, had died tragically of a malignant brain tumor. But the gold-plated sign on the office’s walnut front door still bore his name, and there were numerous pictures of him on the walls of the reception area, the conference room, and the walls of both Nick’s and Greg’s offices. It was a sentimental touch not lost on me. In my mind, the message was clear: Nick and Greg were extremely loyal guys, the very sort of guys to whom I could entrust my freedom.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” said a soothing Magnum, extending his mile-long arm toward my armchair. “You need to calm down a bit, buddy.”

“I am calm,” I muttered. “I’m real fucking calm. What the hell do I have to be nervous about, anyway? The fact that I’m facing three hundred years?” I shrugged and took my seat. “That’s not so bad in the general scheme of things, is it?”

“You’re not facing three hundred years,” replied Magnum, in the tone a psychiatrist would normally use to coax a suicidal jumper off the edge of a bridge. “At worst, you’re facing thirty years… or maybe thirty-five.” Then he paused, pursing his lips like an undertaker. “Although there’s an excellent chance the government’s gonna try to supersede you.”

I recoiled in my seat. “Supersede me? What are you talking about?” Of course, I knew exactly what the fuck he was talking about. After all, I had been under criminal investigation for the better part of my adult life, so I was an expert in these matters. Still, I thought that somehow, if I made supersede me sound like an entirely outlandish concept, it would make it that much less likely to happen.

“Let me clarify things,” said the Yale-man. “Right now you’re being charged with securities fraud and money laundering, but only on four stocks. Chances are they’ll try to add on other charges—or supersede you, as the term goes. Don’t be surprised if they try to indict you on the rest of the companies you took public. There were thirty-five in all, right?”

“More or less,” I said casually, entirely numb at this point to the sort of bad news that would make the average man pee in his pants. Besides, what was the difference between thirty years and thirty-five? They were both life sentences, weren’t they? The Duchess would be long gone, and my children would be completely grown up—married, most likely, with children of their own.

And what would be my fate? Well, I would end up one of those toothless old men, the sort of worthless wino who embarrasses his children and grandchildren when he shows up at their doorstep on holidays. I would be like that old jailbird Mr. Gower, the druggist from It’s a Wonderful Life. He had once been a well-respected man in his community, until he poisoned an innocent child after receiving a telegram that his son had died in World War I. Last time I’d watched the movie, Mr. Gower had just been sprayed in the face with a bottle of seltzer and then kicked out of a bar on his ass.

I took a deep breath. Christ—I had to rein in all these stray thoughts! Even in good times my mind had a habit of running away from me. I said, “So tell me what my options are here. I mean, the thought of doing thirty years in jail doesn’t exactly thrill me.”

“Wellllllll,” said Magnum, “the way I see it—and feel free to chime in here, Nick—you have three options. The first is to fight this thing to the end, to go all the way to trial and win an acquittal.” He nodded his head once, letting the word acquittal hang in the air. “And if we do win, then that’ll be that. This will all be behind you, once and for all.”

“No double jeopardy,” I added, feeling both proud and disturbed at my expertise in criminal law.

“Exactly,” offered the Yale-man. “You can’t be tried twice for the same crime. It’ll be a case people talk about for years. Something that’ll make Greg and I big wheels around town.” Then he paused and smiled sadly. “But I strongly advise you against that course. I think it would be a big mistake to take this thing to trial. And I say this as your friend, Jordan, not as your attorney.”

Now Magnum took over: “Understand, buddy, as a law firm we make much more money advising you to go to trial—probably ten times as much in a case like this. A trial as complicated as this would drag on forever—more than a year, probably—and the cost would be astronomical: ten million plus.”

Now the Yale-man chimed in: “But if we do go to trial and you end up losing, it’s going to be a total disaster. A disaster of biblical proportions. You’ll get thirty years plus, Jordan, and—”

Magnum, overlapping: “—and you won’t do your time in a federal prison camp, playing golf and tennis. You’ll be in a federal penitentiary, with murderers and rapists.” He shook his head gravely. “It’ll be hell on earth.”

I nodded in understanding, keenly aware how the feds housed their criminals. It was according to time: the more time you faced, the higher your security risk. Anything under ten years, with no violence in your background, and you qualified for a minimum-security prison. (Club Fed, so to speak.) But if your sentence was greater than ten years, they locked you in a place where a jar of Vaseline was more valuable than a truckload of weapons-grade plutonium.

Greg plowed on: “Now, as your friend, I would be very upset knowing you were locked in a place like that, especially when there were other options open to you—better options, I would say.”

And Magnum kept right on talking, but I tuned out. I was already aware that going to trial wasn’t an option. I knew that contrary to what most people thought, the sentences meted out for financial crimes were far worse than those for violent crimes. It was all in the amount: If investor losses exceeded a million dollars, the sentences were severe. And if investor losses topped a hundred million—as in my case—sentences were off the charts.

And there was more, starting with the fact was that I was guilty as sin. It was something Nick knew, Greg knew, and I knew too. For their part, Nick and Greg had represented me since the beginning— since the summer of 1994, when I’d made the fatal mistake of smuggling millions of dollars to Switzerland.

I had been under intense regulatory pressure at the time, starting with the SEC, which had become obsessed with my brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont. I had started the place back in the fall of 1988, quickly discovering a wildly lucrative niche in the securities markets selling five-dollar stocks to the richest one percent of Americans. And just like that, Stratton became one of the largest brokerage firms in America.

In retrospect, things could have turned out much differently. Just as easily, I could have gone down the path of the straight and narrow—building a brokerage firm to rival Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch. As fate would have it, one of my first mentors, a true genius named Al Abrams, had a rather aggressive take on what constituted a violation of the federal securities laws. And Al was a careful man, the sort of man who kept ten-year-old pens in his drawer so when he backdated documents the ink would hold up to an FBI gas chromatograph. Al spent the better part of his day anticipating the moves of nosy securities regulators and covering his tracks accordingly.

And he was the one who’d taught me.

So, like Al, I had been careful too, covering my tracks with the zest and zeal of a sniper deep behind enemy lines. From the earliest days of Stratton, I was well aware that every trade I made, and every deal I consummated, and every word I spoke on the telephone would one day come under the microscope of a securities regulator. So, whether my actions were legitimate or not, they had damn well better appear to be that way.

In consequence, I had driven the SEC up the wall after they sued me in the fall of 1991, expecting an easy victory. They even went as far as setting up shop in my own conference room to try to intimidate me. Alas, things did not go as they planned: I ended up bugging my own conference room and setting the thermostat at alternating extremes—freezing them out in winter and burning them out in summer. Then I hired their ex-boss, a man named Ike Sorkin, to protect me, defend me, and undermine their investigation at every juncture. Meanwhile, between 1991 and 1994, I was making $50 million a year, as each of these young investigators (all of whom were making $30,000 a year) resigned in frustration and disgrace, and with terrible cases of frostbite or dehydration, depending on the season.

Eventually, I settled my case with the SEC. “Peace with honor,” my lawyer had called it, although, to me, it was a total victory. I agreed to pay a $3 million fine and then walk off quietly into the sunset. The only problem was that I just couldn’t bring myself to leave. I had become intoxicated with wealth and power, hooked on an entire generation of young Long Islanders calling me king and the Wolf. The buzzword of the day was instant gratification, and the ends justifying the means was the instrument of its assurance. And just like that, Stratton spiraled out of control. And I along with it.

By the early nineties, the Wolf of Wall Street was bearing his fangs. He was my devilish alter ego, a persona far removed from the child my parents had sent out into the world. My sense of right and wrong had all but vanished, my line of morality having moved toward the dark side in a series of tiny, almost imperceptible steps, which together landed me firmly on the wrong side of the law.

The Wolf was a despicable character; he cheated on his wife, slept with hookers, spent obscene amounts of money, and viewed securities laws as nothing more than shallow obstacles to be hurdled in a single bound. He justified his actions using absurd rationalizations, as he buried Jordan Belfort’s guilt and remorse beneath obscene quantities of dangerous recreational drugs.

And all the while the government kept coming. Next it was NASDAQ, refusing to list any company in which the Wolf was the largest shareholder. The Wolf’s solution—as insane as it now seems—was to smuggle millions of dollars to Switzerland, using their legendary bank-secrecy laws to try to turn himself into the invisible man. Through a series of shell corporations, numbered accounts, and expertly forged documents, the plan seemed perfect.

But from the very start it also seemed to be jinxed. The problems began when my chief money courier was arrested in the United States with half a million in cash, and the problems ended (in disaster) when my Swiss banker was arrested a few years later, also in the United States, at which point he began cooperating against my money courier.

Meanwhile, a young FBI agent named Gregory Coleman had become obsessed with the Wolf, vowing to take him down. In what would turn into a game of cat and mouse that became legendary within the FBI, Coleman followed my paper trail halfway around the world and then back again. And, finally, after five years of dogged legwork, he had connected enough dots to secure an indictment.

So here I was, six days post-arraignment, a victim of my own recklessness and Coleman’s persistence. And there was Magnum, moving onto option two, which was a plea bargain. “…And while I can’t promise you an exact sentence, I don’t think it’ll be more than seven years, or maybe eight at the most.” He shrugged. “Let’s use eight to be conservative.”

“No fucking way!” I snapped. “Let’s use seven and be optimistic, for Chrissake! They’re my years—not your fucking years—so if I want to use seven of them, that’s my fucking prerogative!”

The Yale-man said, “Okay, seven years is a fair number to work with. It’s eighty-four months, before deductions, and—”

I cut off the Yale-man: “Ah, good, let’s talk about my deductions! And feel free to exaggerate if you like. I promise I won’t sue for malpractice.”

They both smiled dutifully, and then the Yale-man continued: “The first deduction is for good time. You get fifteen percent for each year served. So, that’s fifteen percent off eighty-four months—” He looked up at Magnum. “You got a calculator?”

“Forget the calculator,” sputtered I, the math whiz. “It’s seventy-one and a half months. But let’s call it seventy-one, just to be fair. What’s next?”

The Yale-man went on: “Well, you get six months in a halfway house, which is almost like being home. That brings you down to sixty-five months.”

Now Magnum chimed in: “And then there’s the drug-treatment program, which”—he let out a chuckle—”given your past history you’d definitely qualify for.” He looked over at Nick. “He could probably teach the course, Nick, right?”

“One would think,” replied the Yale-man, with a starchy shrug. “You’d make an excellent teacher, Jordan. I’m sure you’d make the class very interesting. Anyway, you get twelve months off for the drug program; so now you’re down to fifty-three months.”

Magnum said, “You see what I’m saying here, Jordan? It’s not nearly as bad as you thought, right?”

“Yeah, one would think,” and I took a moment to consider my fate. Four and a half years—well, it was certainly better than going to trial and risking becoming Mr. Gower. I would serve my time in Club Fed, playing tennis and golf, and be released around my fortieth birthday. I would have to pay a hefty fine, of course, but I still had enough money squirreled away to emerge from jail a wealthy man.

And then all at once it hit me: I might even be able to sell this package to the Duchess! Perhaps she would stay if she knew I was facing only four and a half years… although I could reduce that a bit, tell her that I was facing only four years. How would she know I was lying? Maybe I should say forty-eight months. Which sounded shorter? Probably forty-eight months, or maybe I would say forty-seven months and then follow it up with “That’s less than four short years, baby!”

Wow, what a pleasant ring that had to it! Less than four short years, baby! It would be no more than a hiccup, something that could happen to any man of power. Yes, I would explain that to the Duchess, and she would understand. After all, I had been a terrific provider over the years. So why should she waste her time searching for a new gold mine when the gold mine she already had would be back in operation in less than four short years, baby!

“…could always cooperate,” said Magnum, raising his eyebrows two times in rapid succession. “Now if you go down that road, you might not even spend a day in jail; you could get straight probation. Although you’d probably have to do a year or so.”

I had been too busy fantasizing about the backstabbing Duchess, so I’d missed the first half of what Magnum said. Apparently he had now moved on to option three: cooperating, also known as ratting. Call it what you will, I chose to ignore the latter part of Magnum’s sentence prediction, and I said, with a trace of hope in my voice: “I won’t have to do even a day in jail?”

Magnum shrugged. “I said it’s a possibility. Not a guarantee. Once you become a cooperating witness, the sentencing guidelines are thrown out the window. The judge could do whatever he wants. He could give you probation, he could give you a year, or, theoretically, he could throw the book at you. Now, in your case, you have Judge Gleeson, who’s the perfect judge for this sort of thing. He understands the importance of cooperation, so he’ll be fair with you.”

I nodded slowly, sensing daylight. “So he’s pro-defense?”

“No,” replied Magnum, bursting my bubble. “He’s not pro-defense, and he’s not pro-government. He’s straight down the middle. He pretty much dances to his own tune. He’s one of the smartest judges in the Eastern District, so no one’s gonna pull the wool over his eyes, not you or the U.S. attorney. But that’s a positive, because if you do the right thing, John will be fair with you. That much I can promise.

“By the way, don’t call him John in the courtroom, unless you want to be held in contempt.” He smiled and winked. “Just call him Your Honor, and you’ll be fine.”

Now the Yale-man chimed in: “Greg knows John as well as anybody. They used to work together at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They’re friends.”

Wait a second. Did he just say friends? My lawyer is friends with the judge! It was music to my ears.

It all made sense now. I had always known that Magnum was the perfect lawyer for me. I’d even looked past the fact that standing next to him made me feel like a shrimp. And in the end, look how well things had worked out! By sheer coincidence, my lawyer was friends with the judge, which meant he would wink at the judge ever so subtly just as the judge was about to announce my sentence, at which point the judge would nod back at Magnum just as subtly and then say, “Jordan Belfort, in spite of the fact that you stole a hundred million bucks and corrupted an entire generation of young Americans, I’m sentencing you to twelve months’ probation and a one-hundred-dollar fine.”

Meanwhile, the Duchess would be sitting in the courtroom-dressed to the nines and counting her lucky stars that she had decided to abandon her search for a new gold mine. After all, the Wolf’s gold mine was about to reopen for ore extraction, simply because his lawyer was friends with the judge!

I smiled warmly at Magnum and said, “Well, this is some pretty good news, Greg.” I shook my head slowly, breathing a sigh of relief. “Why didn’t you say you were friends with the judge in the first place? It’s a terrific development. Really terrific, if you catch my drift!” I winked at Magnum conspiratorially and rubbed my thumb and first two fingers together, as if to say, “Just tell me how much cash you need to pay off the judge!” Then I winked again.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” exclaimed Magnum, in a tone deep enough to wake the dead. “John is not like that! He’s completely legitimate. He’s the kind of judge who might end up on the Supreme Court one day. Or at least the Court of Appeals. Either way, he won’t do anything improper.”

Fucking killjoy! I thought. My own lawyer won’t go to bat for me. Instead, he’s trying to take the wind out of my sails. I resisted the urge to tell him to go fuck himself, and I said, “Well, I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize anyone’s career aspirations. Anyway, I don’t think I’d make a very good cooperating witness, so it’s a moot point.”

Magnum seemed taken aback. “Why do you say that?”

“Yeah!” added a stunned Yale-man. “I couldn’t disagree with you more. You’d make an excellent cooperating witness. Why would you think otherwise?”

I let out a deep sigh. “For a lot of reasons, Nick, not the least of which is that I’m at the very top of the food chain. Anybody I cooperate against will be a lesser figure than me. Not to mention the fact that most of the people the government would be interested in are my best friends. So, tell me, how the fuck am I supposed to rat out my best friends and maintain even one ounce of self-respect? I wouldn’t be able to walk around Long Island with my head up. I’d be a leper.” I paused, shaking my head in despair. “And if I decide to cooperate, I have to come clean about all my crimes, tell them everything, right?”

They both nodded.

I said, “That’s what I thought. So, basically, I’ll be pleading guilty to the whole ball of wax, which means my fine is gonna be enormous. I’ll be totally wiped out”—which would mean bye-bye, Duchess—”starting from scratch again. I don’t think I could handle that right now. I’ve got a wife and kids to think about. I mean, what’s better: spending four years in jail, while my family lives in the lap of luxury, or spending a year in jail, while my family wonders where their next meal’s coming from?”

“It’s not so cut-and-dry,” replied Magnum. “I mean, yes, you’d definitely be pleading guilty to everything. That’s the way it works when you cooperate. But, no, you won’t be wiped out. The government would leave you with something to live on—maybe a million bucks or so. But everything else would go: the houses, the cars, the bank accounts, the stock portfolios—everything.”

There were a few moments of silence. Then Nick said with great warmth: “You’re a young guy, Jordan. And you’re also one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met.” He smiled sadly. “You’ll rebuild. Mark my words: You will rebuild your fortune. One day you’ll be back on top again, and nobody in their right mind would bet against you.”

“He’s right,” added Greg. “If you think this is the end for you, you’re seriously mistaken. This is the beginning. It’s time to start your life anew. You’re a winner. Don’t ever forget that.” He paused for a brief instant. “Yeah, you’ve made some mistakes along the way, some big mistakes. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that you’re a winner. Next time you’ll do things right. You’ll be older and wiser, and you’ll build your foundation on stone instead of sand. And then no one will be able to take it away from you. Nobody.”

He nodded his head slowly, sagely. “And as far as ratting out your friends goes, I wouldn’t be so concerned with it. If the shoe were on the other foot, every last one of them would turn on you. Right now you gotta do what’s right for you and your family. That’s all that matters. Forget the rest of the world, because they would certainly forget about you.” Now he changed his tone to one of nostalgia. “You know, we used to have a saying in the U.S. Attorney’s Office: The Italians sing on Mulberry Street, and the Jews sing on Court Street. In other words, people in the Mafia don’t cooperate, they don’t ‘sing’ on other mobsters. But it’s all a load of crap now. With RICO, the sentences start at twenty years and they go up from there. So the mobsters sing too. The Jews sing, the Italians sing, the Irish sing. Everyone sings.”

He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Anyway, the bigger problem I see with cooperating is Joel Cohen, the assistant U.S. attorney—the AUSA—on your case.” Magnum let out a great sigh. Then, in staccato-like beats, he said, “Joel—Cohen—can—not—be—trusted. I repeat: He—can—not—be—trusted. He—is—a—bad—egg.”

Then Nick chimed in: “Greg’s right about that. We’ve had some bad experiences with Joel in the past. See, the way it works when you cooperate is, the AUSA is supposed to write a letter to the judge, saying how helpful you’ve been and what a great witness you’ve been, and so on. Now, Joel, by law, will have to write the letter, but here’s where it gets tricky. You see, what he actually writes is up to him. If he wants to stick it to you, he can color the letter in a negative way. Then you’re up shit’s creek.”

“Well, fuck that!” I muttered. “That’s a disaster in the making, Nick.” I shook my head in amazement. “And, no offense, but I don’t need the two of you to tell me that Joel Cohen is an asshole. I could tell that just by looking at him. I mean, did you hear that scumbag at my bail hearing? If it were up to him they would nail me to a crucifix.”

“But it’s not up to him,” argued Magnum. “In fact, it probably won’t even be Joel who writes your letter when the time comes. See, if you cooperate, it’ll drag on for four or five years, and you won’t get sentenced until after your cooperation is through. There’s an excellent possibility Joel will have already left the office by then—joining the ranks of us humble defense attorneys.”

We spent the next few minutes debating the pros and cons of cooperating, and the more I learned about it, the less it appealed to me. No one would be off-limits; I would be forced to cooperate against all my old friends. The only exceptions would be my father, who’d been Stratton’s Chief Financial Officer (he hadn’t done anything illegal, anyway), and my longtime assistant Janet† (who’d done illegal things but was so low on the totem pole that no one would care). Greg assured me that I could get both of them “passes.”

What bothered me most, though, was the thought of cooperating against my ex-partner, Danny Porush, who had been indicted along with me and was still sitting in jail, trying to make bail. And then there was my oldest friend, Alan Lipsky. He was also under indictment, although his case was only partially related to mine. I couldn’t imagine cooperating against Alan. We had been best friends since diapers. He was more a brother to me than my own brother.

Just then came an insolent burble from Greg’s telephone. His secretary said rather casually, “Joel Cohen is on line one. Would you like to take it or should I tell him you’ll call back?”

At that very moment, inside the twenty-sixth-floor corner office of De Feis O’Connell & Rose, you could have heard a pin drop. The three of us just sat there, staring at one another, mouths agape. I said it first: “That rat bastard! He’s superseding me already! Holy shit! Ho-lee fuc-king shit!”

Magnum and the Yale-man nodded their heads in agreement. Then Magnum put a forefinger to his lips and said, “Shhhh,” and he picked up the phone. “Hey, Joel, howaya?… Uhn-huhn… Uhn-huhn. Right, well, it just so happens I have your favorite person sitting right in front of me…. Yeah, that’s right. We were just talking about what a blatant miscarriage of justice this whole thing is.” Greg winked at me confidently and then leaned back in his seat and began rocking. He was a mighty warrior, ready to take on the insolent Joel Cohen. Magnum could crush him with a single gust. “ Uhn-huhn,” continued Magnum, rocking back and forth. “Uhn-huhn… Uhn-huhn—” And then all at once his face dropped, and he stopped rocking in his fabulous black leather throne, as if the finger of God had descended upon him. My heart skipped a beat right before Magnum said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Joel. Settle down. Don’t be doing anything rash here. You can’t be serious about that. She’s not the sort of— Uhn-huhn… Uhn-huhn… Well, I’ll talk to him about it. Don’t do anything until I get back to you.”

She? I thought. What the fuck was Magnum talking about! She who? She Janet? Were they after Janet? That made no sense. Janet was merely an assistant. Why would they want her? A visibly shaken Magnum hung up the phone and uttered the five most poisonous words I’d ever heard in my life. He said, without a trace of tone, “They’re indicting your wife tomorrow.”

There were a few moments of eerie silence, and then all at once I popped out of my armchair and screamed, “ What! No fucking way! How can they do that? She hasn’t done anything! How can they indict the Duchess?”

The Yale-man threw his palms up in the air and shrugged. Then he opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out. I turned back to Magnum and said in a tone of ultimate despair, “Oh, shit… Oh, my God… Oh—my—fuc—king—God!”

“Calm down,” said Magnum. “You gotta calm down. Joel’s not going to do anything yet. He promised he’d wait until I spoke to you.”

“Spoke to me about what? I—I don’t get it. How could they indict my wife? She didn’t do anything.”

“According to Joel, they have a witness who says she was in the room with you when you were counting money. But listen to me: The facts aren’t really important. Joel doesn’t have an interest in indicting Nadine. He made that clear to me. He just wants you to cooperate; that’s the beginning and the end of it. If you cooperate, your wife gets a pass. Otherwise, they’re going to arrest her tomorrow. It’s your call.” With that, Magnum looked at his wristwatch. It was one of those purposely understated, superexpensive jobs, with a chocolate-brown leather band and a pearl-white face. Had to set him back $20,000, I figured, but it was the sort of watch that was supposed to say, “I’m so successful and confident that I don’t need to wear a gleaming gold wristwatch to project an image of success and confidence.” Magnum added, “He gave me until four o’clock to get back to him; that’s four hours from now. Tell me what you want to do.”

Well, it was plainly obvious that I had no choice. I would have to cooperate now, regardless of the consequences. After all, I couldn’t let Joel indict my wife. Not in a million years.

Wait a second! All at once a series of delicious thoughts came bubbling up into my brain, starting with: How could the Duchess leave if she were under indictment too? She would be stuck with me then, wouldn’t she? We would be like two peas in a pod. I mean, what man in his right mind would take on the burden of an indicted woman with two children?

Yes, the Duchess might be a world-class piece of ass, but two young children and a federal indictment hanging over her head would make her much less enticing to the average gold mine.

In fact, I would have to say that virtually all gold mines—or at least the more productive ones—would quickly close their shafts to a woman burdened with such dire circumstances. She would become a cautionary tale in her own right, a young woman with more baggage than the lost-luggage warehouse at Kennedy Airport.

So, yes, that was the answer then; there was no other way: I would let the Duchess go down in flames with me. I would let her get indicted too. She would have no choice then but to stay married to me. It was my only logical move. It was my only rational move. I looked Magnum in the eye and twisted my lips subversively, and I said, “You call that rat bastard right now and tell him to go fuck himself.” I paused for a moment and watched every last ounce of color drain from his long, handsome face. Then I added, “And then after that, you can tell him that I’ll cooperate.” With that, Magnum expelled a giant gust of air, as did the Yale-man. I said, “I mean, I really don’t care anymore, even if I end up going to jail for twenty years. I just really don’t give a shit.”

It was pure, unadulterated irony. My wife had dumped me in my darkest and most desperate hour, yet I was still willing to fall on my sword to protect her. Talk about the world being upside down.

Magnum nodded slowly. “You’re doing the right thing, Jordan.”

“You are,” added Nick. “It’ll work out in the end.”

I looked at the Yale-man and shrugged. “Maybe it will, Nick, or maybe it won’t. Only time will tell. Either way, I am doing the right thing. That much I know for sure. Nadine’s the mother of my children, and I won’t let her do a day in jail, not if I can help it.”

CHAPTER 4 A LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP

Later that evening, a few minutes before midnight, I was lying beneath my white silk comforter, alone with my thoughts. I felt completely lost, like a man without a country, a man without purpose. And I also felt like a man who had been set adrift into a vast ocean of white Chinese silk. Oh, yes, the Duchess had decorated this room to the nines—in fact, the whole house had been decorated to the nines, but especially this room, which was now fit for a king, and as such a mockery of the fallen Wolf.

What was I now? How far had I fallen? I was under house arrest and being dumped by a gold-digging Duchess: a British Brooklynite who had the face of an angel, the temper of Mount Vesuvius, and the loyalty of a starving hyena.

I took a deep breath and tried to grab hold of myself. Christ, I was a wreck! I sat up and looked around the room. I was stark naked, totally exposed. I crossed my arms, as if embarrassed. I squinted. Jesus, it was dark in here. The only light was coming from that flat-panel TV screen suspended on the wall, above the limestone fireplace. The volume was on mute, so the room was eerily silent. I could hear the sound of my own shallow breathing, as well as the thump thump thump of my own broken heart.

And just where was my dear heartbreaking wife? Well, that was still somewhat of a mystery to me. Supposedly she was in Manhattan, out with the girls. At least that’s what the note said-some nonsense about having to attend her friend Gigi’s thirtieth birthday party, which I distinctly remembered celebrating three months ago, in June. Or maybe I was just paranoid and the back-stabbing Duchess could still be trusted.

I had found the note lying on the kitchen counter, beneath a $1,400 Winnie the Pooh ceramic cookie jar (a collector’s item of some sort, bought at auction), with the words Dear and Love conspicuously absent from the salutation and the closing. It was like a note between two strangers—one named Jordan, the other Nadine—neither of whom loved or respected the other. Just reading it had sent my spirits plunging even lower.

On a more positive note, however, since leaving Magnum’s office I had pretty much come to terms with my cooperation, or at least I’d rationalized it to the point of palatability. Yes, I would provide the government with whatever info they wanted, but I would be clever about it—providing it in such a way as to protect my friends. When necessary, I would feign ignorance; when plausible, I would feign memory lapses; and, most importantly, when I reached a crossroads or found myself at a fork in the road, I would steer the government down the trail that led away from my friends. Hopefully, with a little bit of luck, the people I cared about most would cooperate too, and I would be spared having to betray them.

Meanwhile, the Duchess would be thrilled I was cooperating. One of her chief gripes was that I had put her at risk, and now I could tell her that risk was no longer a possibility. Of course, I would omit the fact that I actually had put her at risk. I was no fool, after all, so what was the point of giving her fresh ammo against me? It would be much more productive to focus on the positive aspects of my cooperation: namely, that I wouldn’t have to do even a day in jail and that even after I paid my fine we—we!—would still have enough money left over for the rest of our lives. And while those were small exaggerations—actually, the last one was a fucking whopper—it would be many years before the Duchess found out. So I would worry about it then.

Just then I heard the sound of gravel kicking up in the driveway. The backstabbing Duchess was finally home, ready to inflict more emotional pain on me. A few moments later I heard the front door slam and then some very angry-sounding footsteps ascending the sumptuous spiral stairs. The footsteps didn’t seem to belong to a hundred-twelve-pound blond-headed Duchess; they seemed to belong to an agitated water buffalo. I laid flat on my back and braced myself for the torture.

The door swung open and in walked the Duchess, wearing a light-blue wrangler’s ensemble. Jesus! Despite the fact that the Duchess had taken a limousine home, she looked like she’d just arrived by stagecoach from the Western frontier. All she was missing was a cowboy hat and a pair of six-shooters. As she moseyed her way over to her side of the bed, I took a moment to regard her. She was wearing a long, stonewashed denim skirt with tiny white cowgirl ruffles on the bottom and a fabulous slit that ran up the front. I wasn’t much of an expert on women’s skirts, but I had a sneaky suspicion that few women on the Ponderosa could have afforded this one. She wore a short-sleeve light-blue cotton blouse, very low cut in the front and very tight in the waist, accentuating the natural V of her body as well as her surgically enhanced C-cups.

Without saying a word, the Western Duchess reached beneath a burnt-apricot-colored lamp shade on the end table and flicked on the light. I rolled onto my right side and stared at her. She really knew how to put herself together. I couldn’t begrudge her that even now.

I looked down… ahhh, the cowboy boots! Those were familiar. They were tan and white, with cherry-red toe caps and sterling-silver tips. I had bought them for her last year, in a fit of euphoria, while I was on a golf trip in Texas. They had set me back $13,000. At the time they’d seemed liked a bargain. Now I wondered.

Just then she cocked her blond head to the right and removed a sterling-silver earring and placed it on the end table with great care. Then she cocked her head to the left and removed the left earring and placed it beside the other. I forced a smile and resisted the urge to say, “Eh, baby, how was prospecting tonight? Find any precious ore?” With great love and tenderness in my voice, I said, “Hey, sweetie. How was Gigi’s party?”

“Okay,” she said, with a surprising pleasantness. “Nothing special,” and she turned to face me and nearly lost her balance, at which point I realized that the wrangling Duchess had more to drink this evening than just sarsaparilla. In fact, she was stone-cold drunk.

“Are you okay?” I asked, holding back a smile and getting ready to catch her if she fell. “You need any help, sweetie?”

She shook her head no. With a bit of a wobble, she sat down on the edge of the mattress. Then, all at once, faster than you would know it, she swung her cowboy boots onto the bed, rolled onto her side, and plopped her left elbow down beside me. She rested her left cheek in the palm of her hand and looked into my eyes and smiled. She said, “How’d it go with your lawyer today?”

Very interesting, I thought, making a mental note to thank the Mexican genius who’d invented tequila, as well as the bartender who had been gracious enough to serve the Duchess one too many this evening. This was the closest the Duchess had come to me in almost a week. And she looked rather beautiful right now, in the burnt-apricot glow of the lamp shade. Those big blue eyes of hers, which were now glassier than a mirror, were gorgeous. I took a deep breath to relish her scent, which was an interesting mixture of Angel perfume and premium-grade tequila. I felt a pleasant tingling sensation—a rush of fire in the loins! Perhaps, I thought, perhaps tonight. I felt an uncontrollable urge to jump her bones right now, before she sobered up and started to torture me again. But I resisted the urge and said, “Really good, sweetie. Actually, I have some terrific news for you.”

“Oh, yeah? Whuz that?” she asked, and she began rubbing my cheek with the palm of her hand. Then she ran her fingers through my hair with great tenderness.

I couldn’t believe it! The Duchess had finally come to her senses! She was going to make love to me this very fucking instant and then everything would be okay again. It had always been that way with us. Things could be bad for a while, but not much longer than that. In the end, we would always make love and then all would be forgotten.

Should I jump her right now? I wondered. How would she react? Would she be angry with me or would she respect me? I was a man, after all, and the Duchess understood such things. She was wise to the ways of the world, especially when it came to men, and even more especially when it came to their manipulation…

… although to jump her now would not be the prudent thing to do. First I needed to put a good spin—no, a great spin—on my legal problems. I needed her to feel entirely confident that my gold mine was about to open once more for unfettered ore extraction.

I took a deep breath, coagulating all the loose ends of my bullshit story, and I went for broke. “First of all,” I said, with great confidence, “I know you were worried about all that crap Coleman spewed at you, and I just wanted you to know that none of that— not even one drop of it—was ever a possibility.” And that would be lie number one. “You and I both know that you never did anything wrong”—and that would be lie number two, considering she actually had witnessed me counting money, as Joel Cohen had alleged—”and, of course, the government knows that too. Coleman just said that to scare you and to make things difficult for me. That’s it.”

She nodded slowly. “I know that,” she replied. “I mean, it bothered me when he first said it, but I never actually believed it.”

You didn’t? Hmmm, okay, then! Ignorance is definitely bliss. I nodded in agreement and soldiered on: “Yeah, of course I know. It was all bullshit, Nae”—and here comes lie number three—”the whole damn lot of it. But, either way, it’s all a moot point now. You see, Joel Cohen called Greg today; in fact, he called him right while I was sitting in the room, and he told him that what he really wanted—what he was really looking for—was for me to cooperate. That’s it.” I shrugged. “Apparently, I know so much about what’s going on in the stock market that I could save the government years of heartache, not to mention countless dollars.” Hmmm, I really liked the way that sounded. It made me sound smart, vital, important, altruistic, a necessary participant in the fight against greed and corruption on Wall Street; not like the cooperating rat I was about to become! I decided to milk that line of thinking for all it was worth. “Anyway, Joel said that if I did cooperate, if I was willing to help the government make sense of everything, I probably wouldn’t have to spend even a day in jail. That’s how valuable the knowledge I have is.” I nodded a single time, wondering if I had shot myself in the foot by using the word probably, so I added, “I mean, I already spent three days in jail, which is long enough, don’t you think?” I smiled innocently.

She nodded slowly but remained silent. I noticed a tear running down her cheek. I wiped it away with the back of my hand. A good sign, I thought. Wiping away a woman’s tears brought you one step closer to her heart and, for that matter, her loins. It was a biological phenomenon. When a strong man wiped away a woman’s tears, she could refuse him nothing.

Emboldened by the Duchess’s tears, I continued with relish: “But it gets even better, Nae. You see, if I cooperate, I won’t get sentenced for four or five years, and any fine I might”—might— “have to pay wouldn’t be due until then. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s gonna be a pretty hefty fine, but it’s not something that’s gonna wipe us”—us—“out. We’ll still be very rich when it’s all over.” And there goes the biggest lie of all, the whopper, which was lie number four.

In fact, if the government were to leave me with a million dollars, as Magnum had indicated, the Duchess and I would be broke in three months. But I had rationalized that too, which was why I now added, “But however much money they leave us”—us—“with, it’s not like I’m gonna retire or anything. I mean, in a few months from now, once all this commotion dies down, I’m gonna start trading stocks again.” I paused, not quite liking the way that sounded. “I mean honestly, of course. I’m talking big stocks, not small stocks. I’m not going back to all the craziness and everything.” I found myself desperately searching for an exit ramp. “Anyway, I could probably make five or ten million a year just trading for my own account, totally legitimately, without any risk.”

I studied her face for a moment. She seemed to be sobering up a bit. Hmmm, I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but I sensed a window of opportunity slamming shut. It was time to stop selling the future and to go for the close. I said confidently, “That’s it, Nae. That’s the whole ball of wax. I know it sounds too good to be true, but that’s the way it is. I guess I should just count my lucky stars that the government is so desperate for the information I have.” Now I paused, and I shook my head gravely. “Anyway, the only thing I was really upset about was that I might have to give them information about my friends.” I smiled and shrugged, as if to say, “There’s a silver lining here!” Then I said, “But, according to Mag—I mean, Greg, all my friends are going to cooperate too.” I shrugged again. “So in the end that won’t really be a factor.” I edged myself closer to her and began running my fingers through her hair.

She smiled and said, “Well, that’s really good news, honey. I’m really happy for you.”

You? Did she just say you?. Shit—that was bad! She should be happy for us, not just me! I was about to correct her when she added, “And I wouldn’t be too worried about your friends. Other than Alan Lipsky, every last one of them would sell you down the river in two seconds flat. There’s no loyalty on Wall Street. You always told me that, right?”

I nodded but didn’t say a word. In fact, I had heard enough and spoken enough. Once more, the Duchess and I were back on the same page, which is to say, it was time to attack. I reached over and grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close to me. Then I grabbed her by her cute Western tie and yanked her head toward me.

And then I kissed her.

It was a slow wet kiss, an altogether loving kiss, which ended quicker than I’d hoped, when she pulled away and said, “Stop it! I’m still mad at you.”

It was time to take charge. “I need you,” I groaned, reaching my hand up the slit of her dress, heading for the Promised Land. By the time I reached the top of her thigh, the heat was so terrific I was ready to come on the sheets.

So I pounced, throwing my full weight on top of her. I began kissing her ferociously. She tried to wriggle free, but she was no match for me. “Stop!” she whined, with a hint of a giggle. “Stop it!”

I hung on the giggle and pulled up her denim skirt, revealing her pretty pink vulva with its tiny Mohawk of blond peach fuzz. Ahh, I had always marveled at what a terrific vagina the Duchess had! It was the most delectable vagina I’d ever seen, and considering I’d slept with almost a thousand hookers, my opinion counted for something. But all that hooker business was in the past now. All I wanted was the Duchess—now and forever!

I slowed my tempo a bit, and I looked her in the eyes and said, “I love you, Nae. I love you so much.” My eyes began welling up with tears. “I’ve always loved you, from the first moment I laid eyes on you.” I smiled at her warmly. “I missed you so much this week. I can’t even begin to tell you how empty I’ve felt.” I pushed her hair back with my hand and went for the close: “Make love to me, baby. Make love to me right now, nice and slow.”

“Fuck you!” she sputtered. “I fucking hate you! You wanna fuck me? Fine—then go ahead and fuck me! Fuck me hard, because I fucking hate you. I hate your guts, you selfish little prick! You don’t give a shit how I feel. All you care about is yourself.” She started grinding into me with contempt, purposely keeping out of tempo with me. It was as if she was trying to let me know that, in spite of me being inside her, she still wasn’t mine.

I was shocked. And I was devastated. But, most of all, I was upset that she had called me little—a little prick, to be exact. The Duchess knew I was self-conscious about my height!

But I refused to get angry. Instead, I grabbed her cheeks and nailed her with a kiss, holding my lips to hers as I desperately tried to get some rhythm going. But it was difficult. She was moving her blond head from side to side, like an infant refusing a spoonful of applesauce, and she was swerving her hips in an exaggerated circular motion.

With a bit of anger slipping out around the edges, I snapped, “Hold still, Nadine! What’s wrong with you!”

Her poisonous response: “Fuck you! I hate you—I fucking hate you!” She grabbed my cheeks and said, with venom: “Look in my eyes, Jordan. Look in my eyes right now.”

I looked. She continued: “Don’t ever forget what went down with this marriage; don’t you ever fucking forget.” Her blue eyes were like glassy death rays. “This is the last time I’m ever gonna fuck you. This is it; you can mark my words. You’re never gonna have me again, so you better enjoy it while it lasts.” And she started grinding into me with deep, rhythmic thrusts, as if she were trying to make me come, right on the spot.

Jesus Christ! I thought. She’d turned the corner on her tequila high! She couldn’t possibly mean what she was saying, could she? How could such a beautiful face spew out such venom? It made no sense. I knew the right thing to do would be to climb off her, to not give her the satisfaction of making me come while she was telling me how much she hated me… but she looked absolutely gorgeous in the burnt-apricot glow of the lamp shade. So fuck it! I thought. It was impossible to figure women out, and if she was genuinely serious about this being my last time, I better make it count or at least make myself come quickly, before she changed her mind and said that the last time was the last time… and with a single deep thrust I tried my best to hit the base of her cervix and… bang!… just like that I came inside her. I screamed, “I love you, Nae!” to which she screamed, “I fucking hate you, you asshole!” and then I collapsed on top of her.

And there we lay for what seemed like a very long time, which turned out to be around five seconds, at which point she pushed me off and started crying hysterically. Her body was shaking volcanically, as she said through terrible, gut-wrenching sobs, “Oh, my God! What did I do? What did I do?” She kept repeating those same four words, as I lay next to her, frozen in horror.

I tried to put my arm around her, but she pushed it away.

Then came more sobs, and then she said something that I would never forget for the rest of my life. “It was blood money!” she sobbed. “It was all blood money!” She could barely get the words out through her sobs. “I knew it all along, and I did nothing. People lost money and I spent it. Oh, God—what did I do?”

All at once I found myself growing intensely angry. It was her reference to blood money, the thought that everything we shared-including my own success—was somehow tainted. It was as if our entire marriage had been a farce, as if nothing around me was real and genuine. I was a man of parts, the sum of which didn’t equal a whole. I was surrounded by wealth and beauty and ostentation, yet I felt poor and ugly and hopelessly embarrassed. I longed for simpler days. I longed for a simpler life. I longed for a simpler wife.

Making no effort to hide my displeasure, I went right back at her. “Blood money,” I sputtered. “Give me a fucking break, Nadine! I work on Wall Street; I’m not a fucking mobster.” I shook my head in disgust. “Yeah—I cut a few corners, just like everybody else, so get a fucking grip!”

Through terrible sobs, from deep in the breadbasket: “Oh, God, you corrupted everyone—even my own mother! And I… I… just stood there and… and watched… and… and… spent… the… the… blood… mon… ney!” She was sobbing so uncontrollably that her words were coming out one at a time.

“Your mother?” I screamed. “You know how good I’ve been to your mother? When I met her she was getting thrown out of her fucking apartment for not paying her fucking rent! And I took care of your idiot brother and your idiot fucking father, and your sister and you and everybody else, God damn it! And this is what I get in return?” I paused, trying to collect myself. I was crying too now, although I was so angry my own tears were lost on me. “I can’t fucking believe this,” I screamed. “I can’t fucking believe this! How the fuck could you do this now? You’re my wife, Nadine. How could you do this now?”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She was shaking like a leaf. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t mean to,” and she rolled off the bed, onto the $120,000 Edward Fields carpet, and she curled up in the fetal position and continued to cry uncontrollably.

And that was that.

I knew right then and there that I had lost my wife forever. Whatever bond the Duchess and I had once shared had now been severed. Whether or not I would ever get to make love to her again was still a matter of question, and, in truth, I couldn’t have cared less. After all, I was facing much bigger problems than where to get my rocks off.

In fact, just down the hall were our two young children, the innocent victims in all this, who were about to wake up to one of the cruelest realities of life:

Nothing lasts forever.

^{CHAPTER 5} OCD AND THE MORMON

The next morning, I was back in the limousine again.

This time, however, the closet terrorist wasn’t driving me through the gloomy groin of western Queens; rather, he was driving me through the rancid gullet of western Brooklyn. In fact, we were making our way through a demographic nightmare known as Sunset Park, a neighborhood so ethnically diverse-loaded with Chinese and Koreans and Malaysians and Vietnamese and Thais and Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and Dominicans and Salvadorans and Guatemalans, along with a handful of remarkably dim-witted Finns, who were too slow on the uptake to realize that the rest of their Finnish brethren had fled for their lives thirty years ago, when the ethnic hordes invaded—that, staring out the side window, I felt like we were driving through the parking lot of the United Nations after a missile strike.

Yes, this part of Sunset Park was, indeed, a shithole. It was a flat swath of dirt and asphalt punctuated by dilapidated warehouses, deserted storefronts, rotting piers, and bird poop. Downtown Manhattan—where I would ultimately be heading this morning— was just a few miles to the west, on the other side of the polluted East River. From my current vantage point, in the limo’s right backseat, I could see the swirling waters of the river, the towering skyline of Lower Manhattan, and the glorious arc of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, stretching to the not-so-glorious borough of Staten Island.

According to plan, at precisely nine a.m., Monsoir pulled in front of a grimy underground parking garage on the south side of a grimy two-way street. As I climbed out of the limousine, I said, “Stay put until I beep you, Monsoir,” and while I’m gone don’t be blowing up any bridges, I thought. Then I slammed the door in his face and walked down a short flight of steps to the lower level of the parking garage.

I heard a familiar voice: “Jordan! Over here!”

I turned to my right, and there was Special Agent Gregory Coleman. He was standing in front of a typical government-issue car, which is to say: four doors, no dents, perhaps two years old, and made in America. In fact, it was a 1997 maroon Ford Taurus with lightly tinted windows and no siren. He was leaning against the rear passenger-side door with his arms crossed, the pose of the victorious warrior.

Standing beside him, with a kind smile on his face, was his partner-in-training, Special Agent Bill McCrogan. I had met McCrogan only once, on the night of my arrest, and for some inexplicable reason I had liked him. He seemed too kind to be an FBI agent, although I was certain that once Coleman got through with him he wouldn’t be so kind anymore. McCrogan was a few inches taller than Coleman, the better part of five-ten, and he looked about thirty. He had a thick thatch of curly brown hair, broad features, and an entirely average build. Over his pale-blue eyes he wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that made him look God-fearing. A Mormon, I figured, probably from Salt Lake City or Provo, or maybe even the hills of Idaho… although who really gave a shit.

Coleman, on the other hand, looked Italian or Greek, although I had him figured as a German, because of his last name. Yes, he was probably from the hills of Bavaria. He was about the same height as me, a little over five-seven, and he weighed no more than one-sixty. He was broad in the chest, but not overly so. His features were fine and even, although they were a bit on the pointy side and seemed to ooze suspicion, especially at me. He had short brown hair, parted to the side, and there were a few strands of gray by his ears. But those must have been the result of him chasing after me for the last five years, which would be enough to make any man gray. He had smooth olive skin, an aquiline nose, a high forehead, and the most piercing brown eyes imaginable. They looked sharper than a hawk’s. He was about my age, which meant that the bastard had been on my tail since he was in his late twenties! Christ—what kind of man could become so obsessed with bringing someone else to justice? I mean, really, how bad a case of OCD did this guy have? And why had he become OCD-ed with me? What a fucking shame that was.

“Welcome to Team USA!” said Agent OCD, smiling broadly and extending his right hand, the wrist of which sported a black plastic watch with a circular face and a suggested retail price somewhere below $59.99.

I shook his hand warily and searched his face for irony. But all I found was what appeared to be a genuine smile. “Thanks,” I muttered, “but I figured you’d be gloating a bit.” I shrugged. “I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

The Mormon chimed in: “Gloating? He’s been miserable since the day he caught you! It was the chase he loved”—he looked at Agent OCD—”right, Greg?”

OCD rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Yeah, whatever,” and he smiled at me once more, except this smile was peppered with sadness. “Anyway, I’m glad you finally decided to join the good guys. You’re doing the right thing here. You really are.”

I shrugged again. “Yeah, well I feel like a bit of a louse.”

“You’re not a louse,” he shot back.

“Definitely not,” added the Mormon, with a toothy Mormon smile. “You’re much worse than a louse!” And he laughed a warm Mormon laugh and then extended his God-fearing hand for a Mormon handshake.

I smiled at the kindhearted guy and shook his hand dutifully. Then I took a moment to regard my two new friends. They both wore dark blue suits, crisp white dress shirts, conservative blue neckties, and black lace-up shoes. (Typical G-man’s ensemble.) They looked pretty good, actually; everything fit together nicely, and their suits had been pressed to near perfection.

Either way, my ensemble was terribly smarter than theirs. I had felt it was important to look good on my first day of ratting, so I’d chosen my outfit carefully. I was wearing a $2,200 single-breasted navy serge suit, a white oxford dress shirt with a conservative button-down collar, a solid navy crepe de chine necktie, and black lace-up shoes. But unlike their shoes, which were clodhoppers, mine were made of buttery-soft napa leather. In fact, they had been custom-made in England for $1,800. Good for me! I thought. I had them beaten hands down in the shoe department.

And in the watch department too.

Indeed. For today’s festivities I was sporting my $26,000 Swiss Tabbah, with its chocolate-brown leather band and oversize white rectangular face. It was the sort of ultrafine Swiss watch that reeked of wealth to those in the know yet would come off as nothing special to people in Coleman and McCrogan’s income bracket. It had been a clever move on my part, to leave the Bulgari home in its cage this morning. After all, why make my new friends jealous, or did they now have the right to grab my watch right off my fucking wrist and put it on theirs? (The spoils of war, so to speak.) Hmmm… I would have to ask Magnum about that.

The Mormon and I were still shaking hands, when he added, “In all seriousness, though, you are doing the right thing here, Jordan. Welcome to Team USA!”

“Yeah,” I replied, in a tone laced with irony. “I’m doing the only thing I can do, right?”

They both pursed their lips and nodded slowly, as if to say, “Yes, threatening to indict a man’s wife leaves him few options, now, doesn’t it!” Then Coleman said, “Anyway, I’m sorry about all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we think some of your old friends might try to have you followed. So we’re gonna drive you around the streets of Brooklyn for a while to shake off any tails.”

Wonderful! I thought. Agent OCD must have information he’s not sharing with me—like somebody wants me dead! It had never occurred to me that I might get assassinated over this cooperation business, but now that I thought about it, it would make perfect sense to a lot of people, wouldn’t it? In fact, maybe I should just assassinate myself right now and save everyone else the trouble. Of course the Duchess would be thrilled about that, wouldn’t she? She would dance on my grave, chanting, “It was blood money! It was blood money!” and then she would light a ceremonial fire and set our marriage certificate ablaze.

Christ, I had to get a grip here! I needed to focus. I needed to keep that blond-headed scoundrel out of my thoughts. It was these two rat bastards I needed to focus on. I took a deep breath and said, “Who do you think might be after me?”

OCD shrugged. “I don’t know. Who do you think might be after you?”

I returned his shrug. “I don’t know. I guess everybody, right?” I paused for an instant, then added, “Or everybody except my wife. I mean, she couldn’t give a shit where I am, or where I’m going, for that matter, as long as I’m not going near her.”

“Really?” said OCD. “Why do you say that?”

“Because she fucking hates me! That’s why I say that!” And because last night she told me she would never let me stick it inside her again, I said to myself.

“Huh,” he muttered. “That surprises me.”

“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”

OCD shrugged once more. “I don’t know. The night you were arrested it seemed like she really loved you. In fact, I asked her if she loved you and she told me that she did.”

“It’s true,” added the Mormon.

I narrowed my eyes, as if confused. “Why would you guys ask my wife that? I mean, isn’t that a little off the beaten trail?”

“Welllll,” chirped OCD, “you’d be surprised what we get out of a wife if she’s disgruntled. In fact, sometimes the wife will be screaming, ‘My husband has cash hidden in the basement! He cheats on his taxes!’ right as I’m escorting the husband away in handcuffs.” OCD chuckled at that. “But not your wife. She didn’t say anything.”

“Not a thing,” added the Mormon. “I mean, I could be mistaken, but I think your wife still loves you.”

“I hate to break up the party,” mused Coleman, “but we need to get the show on the road. Anyway, this place smells like, uh…”

“Dog shit?” I offered.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he replied, opening the rear passenger door and motioning for me to climb in. “Just lay across the backseat and try to keep your head down, okay?”

I stared at OCD for a good few seconds, wondering if he was alluding to the possibility of a sniper being outside, waiting to blow my head off. But I dismissed the thought as being ridiculous; after all, if someone wanted to assassinate me, there would be more convenient times than when I was under the protection of two FBI agents.

So I climbed in with a confident shrug, and just like that we were on our way—driving through the rancid gullet of Sunset Park. We made a series of rights and lefts, along with an occasional U-turn, as they went about shaking off imaginary tails. Meanwhile, we engaged in only idle conversation, with all three of us aware that it would be inappropriate to discuss anything meaningful without my lawyer present.

To my surprise, they both seemed genuinely concerned over the breakup of my marriage, especially the impact it might have on my children. I found my spirits rising as they repeated the story of how the Duchess had professed her love for me on the night of my arrest. Furthermore, they were both convinced that once the initial shock had passed, she would want to stay married. But I knew they were wrong; they didn’t know the Duchess like I did. She had decided to move on, and that was that.

By the time we hit the Brooklyn Bridge, my spirits had plunged lower than ever. I was running out of time now, quickly approaching the point of no return. FBI headquarters was less than five minutes away.

Yes, I thought, there were some pretty dark days up ahead; of that much I was certain. The only question was how deep did the rabbit hole go? I took a deep breath and tried to steel myself, but it was no use.

Soon enough I would be singing on Court Street.

^{CHAPTER 6} THE BASTARD AND THE WITCH

The New York field office of the FBI occupied the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second floors of a glass-and-concrete tower that rose up forty-two stories above Lower Manhattan. The area, which was known as Tribeca, for “triangle below Canal Street,” was the part of town that included Wall Street, the federal courthouses, the World Trade Center, and the least respected of all government institutions: the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

I walked down a long narrow hallway in the building’s subbasement, with Coleman and McCrogan on either side of me. Coleman had just finished explaining how we were in the part of the building that was used for debriefings.

I nodded dutifully and kept on walking, resisting the urge to ask him if the FBI considered the word debriefing to be synonymous with interrogation. Either way, I had no doubt that many things had gone on down here that hadn’t exactly jived with the Bill of Rights. (Probably some light torture, some sleep deprivation, and garden-variety habeas corpus violations.) But I decided to keep those stray thoughts to myself, and I just kept nodding and walking—maintaining a neutral expression—as they escorted me into a small debriefing room at the end of the hall.

Inside the room, three people were sitting in cheap black armchairs around a cheap wooden conference table. There were no windows in this room, just fluorescent lights emitting a blue tubercular glow. The walls were completely bare, painted a disturbing shade of hospital white. On one side of the table sat my trusted lawyer, Gregory J. O’Connell, aka Magnum, smiling broadly, looking as towering and dapper as ever. He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit, a white dress shirt, and a red striped tie. He looked right at home down here, a former prosecutor himself, who now had the pleasure of defending the guilty.

Across from Magnum sat a man and a woman, the former of whom I knew from the day of my arraignment, when he’d said all those kind things at my bail hearing. His name was Joel Cohen, and a little over two years ago he had teamed up with OCD to bring me to justice, succeeding where a half-dozen AUSAs before him had failed.

In essence, as sharp and as dedicated as OCD was, he had needed an equally sharp counterpart within the U.S. Attorney’s Office to handle the legal end of things. OCD on his own could only investigate; he needed a bastard like Joel Cohen to prosecute me.

At this particular moment, the Bastard was leaning forward in his armchair with his bony elbows resting on the desktop. He was staring at me with narrowed eyes, licking his chops inwardly, no doubt. He wore a cheap gray suit, a cheap white dress shirt, a cheap red tie, and a sinister expression. He had a short mop of curly brown hair, a high forehead, a fleshy nose, and a pasty-faced complexion. He wasn’t bad-looking, though; he just looked unkempt, as if he rolled out of bed and came straight to the office. But that was by design, I figured. Oh, yes, the Bastard was trying to make a statement—that now that we were in his world, the price of your suit, the reputation of your dry cleaner, and the fashion sense of your barber didn’t matter a lick. It was the Bastard who had the power, and I was his prisoner—regardless of appearance. The Bastard was of average height and weight, although he had that aforementioned degenerate slouch, which made him appear shorter. I had no doubt that he held me in as much contempt as I held him. Right now, in fact, he had a look on his face that so much as said, “Welcome to my underground lair, prisoner! Let the torture begin!”

The room’s third occupant was a mousy little creature named Michele Adelman. She was sitting to the Bastard’s left. I had never met her before, but her reputation preceded her. Her nickname was the Wicked Witch of the East, something she’d earned due to her uncanny likeness—both physically and personality-wise—to that conniving old hag from The Wizard of Oz. And since Michele (and Joel) worked as assistant U.S. attorneys for the Eastern District of New York, the nickname made that much more sense.

The Witch was a squat five foot two, with a great mane of dark frizzy hair, dark beady eyes, thin maroon lips, and an abbreviated chin. I could only imagine how mousy she’d look if she picked up a block of Swiss cheese between her paws and started nibbling on it. And I could only imagine how witchlike she’d look if she straddled a broomstick and took a cruise around the debriefing room. She wore a dark blue pantsuit and a stern expression.

“Good morning!” said Magnum. “I’d like to introduce you to two people whom you’re going to be spending quite a bit of time with over the next few months.” He motioned to the Witch and the Bastard, who both nodded dutifully. Then he said, “Jordan, this is Joel Cohen, whom I believe you’ve had the pleasure of meeting before”—I reached over and shook the Bastard’s hand, wondering if he might try to slap a handcuff on me—”and this is Michele Adelman, whom I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure of meeting before,” and now I shook the Witch’s hand, wondering if she might try to turn me into a newt.

“Anyway, I want everyone to know that Jordan is fully committed to his cooperation.” Magnum nodded a single time. “He plans on being both honest and forthright at all times, and I can assure that the information he has is invaluable in your fight against crime and injustice on Wall Street.” And Magnum nodded once more.

What a load of crap! I thought. I mean, really!

“That’s good,” replied the Bastard, motioning for me to take a seat next to Magnum. “We all look forward to your cooperation, Jordan, and I speak for all those present when I say that we hold no ill feelings toward you”—out of the corner of my eye I could see OCD rolling his eyes, as he and the Mormon took seats on either side of the Witch and the Bastard—”and that if you do the right thing here you’ll be treated fairly.”

I nodded gratefully, not believing a word he said. OCD would treat me fairly; he was a man of honor. But not the Bastard; he had it out for me. The Witch, however, I wasn’t sure about it. According to Magnum, she hated all men—including OCD and the Bastard—so I would be of no special interest to her. My problem was the Bastard. Hopefully he would leave the office before I got sentenced. Then everything would be okay.

With great humility, I said, “I believe you, Joel, and like Greg said, I’m totally committed to my cooperation. Ask whatever you want, and I’ll answer as best I can.”

“So did you sink your yacht for the insurance money?” snapped the Witch. “Let’s hear the truth.”

I looked at the Witch and offered her a dead smile. On the table was a tall pitcher of water with six glasses next to it, one of which was half full. What would happen if I threw the glass of water on the Witch? She’d probably scream, “Help me! I’m melting! I’m melting!” But I decided to keep that thought to myself, and all I said was, “No, Michele. If I wanted to sink it for the insurance money, I wouldn’t have done it with myself and my wife on it.”

“Why?” countered the Witch. “That would be the perfect alibi.”

“And it would also be a perfect way to get himself killed,” snapped OCD. “He got caught in a storm, Michele. Go read Yachting magazine. It’s in there.”

With great confidence, Magnum said, “I can assure all those present that Jordan did not sink his yacht for the insurance money. Right, Jordan?”

“Absolutely,” I replied. “But I won’t deny that I hated the thing. It was a hundred and seventy feet of floating heartache. It was constantly breaking down, and it burned through money faster than Haiti.” I shrugged innocently. “Anyway, I was glad it sank.” Would they really make me tell them the story of the yacht sinking? It really had been an accident. The only thing I’d been guilty of was poor judgment, which at the time had been slightly impaired. I was under the influence of enough drugs to sedate Guatemala, so I pressured the captain to take out the boat into the middle of a Force 8 gale, to quell my drug-induced boredom.

“Anyway,” said Magnum, “you have your answer, Michele. It was an accident.” I nodded in agreement, feeling confident in our first exchange. It had been entirely innocuous, and Magnum and I had handled ourselves beautifully, neutralizing the Witch’s spell. Or so I’d thought, until the Bastard said, “And when the boat was sinking, isn’t it true that you called Danny Porush and told him that you had ten million dollars in cash buried in your backyard, and that if you and your wife died he should dig it up and make sure it went to your children?”

I looked around the debriefing room and all eyes were on me, including Magnum’s. OCD had a wry smile on his face that so much as said, “You see, Jordan, I know things about you that you had no idea I knew!” The Mormon, however, had a rather mischievous smile on his face that so much as said, “I’d be willing to split the ten million with you if you hand me a treasure map and keep the others out of it!” But the Witch and the Bastard both bore grim expressions that so much as said, “Just go ahead and lie to us and see what happens!”

Ironically, I had no idea what they were talking about. In fact, I was now astonished for three reasons: first, because I hadn’t buried even ten dollars in my backyard, much less ten million; second, because there was no way of proving it, short of taking OCD into my backyard with a pick and a shovel and digging up six acres of some very expensive Bermuda grass; and, third, because the way the Bastard had phrased his question, he’d insinuated that the information had come from Danny Porush himself, which meant he was cooperating too.

And that was both good and bad. On the bright side, it meant that I wouldn’t have to cooperate against him, which was something Magnum had predicted. But on the not-so-bright side, Danny had been my right-hand man, which meant everything I said would be cross-checked for accuracy. I would have to be extremely careful with that; outright lies would have to be avoided. It would simply be too easy to get caught. Omissions of fact were my only hope. After all, withholding information could just as easily be a lapse of memory.

With a hint of disdain, I replied, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, Joel.” I shook my head and let out a cynical chuckle. “You know, I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, but I promise you that it’s completely bogus.” I looked at OCD. His expression was neutral, his hawk eyes slightly narrowed, as if he was sizing me up. I looked him right in the eyes and said, “Trust me, Greg; whoever told you that is yanking your chain. Think about it for a second: Who in their right mind would bury ten million dollars in their backyard? I would’ve had to dig the hole in the middle of the night and then resod my lawn before sunup. And I’m not exactly the manual-labor type. In fact, the last time one of my lamps blew a bulb, I threw out the lamp.” I stared right into the bastard’s eyes.

“You have a very competent lawyer,” Joel sputtered, “so I’m sure he’s explained to you that if you get caught lying, or try to deceive us in any way whatsoever, we have the right to rip up your cooperation agreement and throw it in the garbage can.” He flashed me a dead smile. “That means you’d be sentenced without the benefit of a 5K letter, which translates into about thirty years in a—”

Magnum cut the Bastard off with, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Joel! Settle down! Jordan is fully aware of his obligations, and he has every intention of living up to them.”

The Bastard shrugged. “And I’m not saying he won’t,” he shot back. “But it’s my legal obligation to inform him of the terrible fate that would befall him”—and how happy it would make me, his tone implied—”if he were sentenced without the benefit of a 5K letter.” The Bastard looked me right in the eye and added, “And remember that all the information you provide us with can be used against you if you should change your mind and decide to go to trial.”

“I’m fully aware of that,” I said calmly. “Greg explained all this to me yesterday. But you don’t have to worry: I won’t put you in a position where you’d have to ruin my life, Joel.” Try as I might, the last few words slipped out with a healthy dose of irony.

“You know, I think this might be a good time to confer with my client,” said Magnum. “Would you give us a few moments?”

“No problem,” said the Bastard, rising from his armchair. He smiled at the Wicked Witch of the East, who rose from her seat too, followed by OCD and the Mormon. Then, in single file, they exited the room and closed the door behind them. The moment they were gone, I popped out of my chair and snarled, “This is total horseshit, Greg, total fucking horseshit! You were right about him; he’s a real fuckhead! And the other one, Michele Adelman— Jesus! What a cunt she is! Someone oughtta give her a fucking broomstick and tell her to fly herself back to Oz!”

Magnum nodded in agreement, slowly rising from his chair until he was a good two heads above me. With a friendly smile, he said, “First of all, I want you to calm down. Take a deep breath and count to ten; then, when you’re done, we can talk about the ten million buried in your backyard.”

I looked up at Magnum, whose head now seemed to be scraping the fluorescent bulbs. “Will you please sit down!” I demanded. “You’re too fucking tall. I lose my perspective when we’re both standing.” I motioned for him to take a seat.

“You’re not that short,” he replied, staring down at the top of my head, as if I were a midget. “I think you have a complex.” He reached down and placed his large hand on my shoulder. “In fact, when all this is over, I think you should seek help.”

I expelled a gust of air. “Yeah, well, I’ll take it up with the prison shrink when I’m not busy getting butt-fucked by Bubba the Bull-queer.” I shook my head in frustration. “Anyway, I didn’t bury any money in my backyard, Greg, or anywhere else, for that matter.”

“That’s fine,” said Magnum, taking his seat. “You have nothing to worry about, then. Joel has to write you the 5K letter, even if he doesn’t believe you. He can only withhold the letter if he catches you in an outright lie. But you are going to have to give him a financial statement.” He paused for a brief instant. “And it’s going to have to include any cash you might have. If something should surface down the road”—he rolled his eyes—”it would be very bad for you; very, very bad. How much cash are you sitting on right now?”

“Not much,” I replied. “Maybe a million, slightly less.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Maybe you’re forgetting about all the cash I smuggled overseas. Why the fuck do you think I’m sitting here, for a traffic violation?”

“I understand you smuggled money overseas, but that doesn’t account for all of it.” He paused and rolled his long, rangy neck, eliciting half a dozen dull vertebral cracks. Then he said, “Listen, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, trying to anticipate what Joel might think, and I think he might be skeptical.”

I shook my head in consternation. “Let me explain something, Greg: For the last four years I didn’t actually own a brokerage firm. I was just controlling them from behind the scenes, right?”

He nodded.

“Right, so follow me for a second: Since I didn’t actually own the brokerage firms, it was me who was getting shares in hot new issues, and it was me who was kicking back cash to the owners.” I paused, searching for a simple way to explain to Magnum (who wasn’t a crook) how things went down in a crooked world. “In other words, in the early nineties, back when I owned Stratton, I was the one who was getting the cash kickbacks. But after I was thrown out of the brokerage business and was operating from behind the scenes, the whole process reversed itself, and I was the one who was paying the kickbacks—paying off the owners of the brokerage firms. You understand?”

He nodded again. “Yes, I do,” he said confidently. “That makes perfect sense to me.”

I nodded back. “Good, because it happens to be the truth.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t even have the million dollars. My mother-in-law is holding it for me.”

“Why is that?” asked Magnum, taken aback.

How naive! I thought. Magnum was a fine lawyer, but he didn’t think like a true criminal. I would just have to educate him. “Because the night I was arrested, I thought Coleman would come back with a search warrant. So I told Nadine to give the cash to her mother for safekeeping. But I can get it back anytime I want. You think I should?”

“Yes, you should. And if the subject of cash comes up again, you should offer that information proactively. Remember, as long as you’re honest, you can’t get into trouble.” He reached into his suit-jacket pocket and pulled out a single sheet of yellow legal paper that had been folded lengthwise, into thirds. Then he smiled and raised his eyebrows three times in rapid succession and placed the sheet of paper on the conference table. He slipped on a pair of reading glasses and unfolded the precious document and said, “This is the list of people you said you have information on. There are ninety-seven names on it, and some of them are pretty damn juicy.” He shook his head. “Did you really commit crimes with all these people?” he asked incredulously. “It seems almost impossible.”

I pursed my lips and nodded slowly. Then I sat down beside him and took a moment to study this esteemed list, which read like a who’s who of Wall Street villains. And accompanying the villainous Wall Streeters were some corrupt politicians, some crooked police officers, a corrupt judge or two, a handful of mobsters, and some accountants and lawyers and CEOs and CFOs, and then a dozen or so civilians—people who weren’t actually in the brokerage business but had acted as my nominee, which was Wall Street lingo for front man.

With a sinking heart, I said, “What a fucking shame this is.” I scanned the list, shaking my head in despair. “This is really ugly, Greg, really fucking ugly. I thought you were gonna leave some of these names off, some of my friends like Lipsky… and Elliot Lavigne… and… uh, Andy Greene?”

He shook his head slowly. “I couldn’t do it,” he said gravely. “It would make matters worse. If I left one of your friends off the list, it would pique the government’s interest that much more.”

I nodded in resignation, knowing that Magnum was right. Only yesterday, when we’d made the list, it’d seemed like no big deal. We’d even had a few laughs over it, finding humor in how people from all walks of life could be corrupted by the allure of fast money on Wall Street. It seemed that greed, in the shape of instantaneous profits, knew no strangers. It crossed over all ethnic lines, infecting all age groups. On the list were blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Indians (dots, not feathers), Indians (feathers, not dots), the young, the old, the healthy, the infirm, males, females, homosexuals, bisexuals, you name it. It seemed that no one could resist the temptation of making hundreds of thousands of dollars with no risk. What a sad commentary, I thought, on the state of twentieth-century capitalism.

Five minutes later, the list was still lying on the conference table, although it had a much larger audience now. The Bastard, the Witch, OCD, and the Mormon were back in the room, all of them hunched over in their armchairs, staring down at the list as if it were the Holy Grail.

“This is a pretty inclusive list,” marveled the Bastard. Then he looked up and smiled a reasonably friendly smile at me and said, “If this is a sign of things to come, Jordan, then everything should work out very well for you.” He looked down at the list again and kept muttering, “Very well, indeed… this is excellent…”

I smiled dutifully and tuned out. And as the Bastard kept fawning over my list, I found myself wondering what he would be thinking right now if I’d left all the hookers on the list. There must have been a thousand of those, or at least five hundred. What would the Witch think of that? Would she try to cast an impotence spell on me? She had heard the stories, no doubt, of how we Strattonites classified our hookers like stocks—with the best hookers being Blue Chips and the skankiest hookers being Pink Sheeters (the Pink Sheets was where stocks of little or no value were listed). And somewhere, occupying some murky middle ground, were the NASDAQs, who were either fallen Blue Chips or had never been hot enough to qualify for true Blue Chip status.

“…best place to start is from the beginning,” said the Bastard, who’d finally stopped his muttering. He picked up a cheap Bic pen and said, in a dead-serious tone: “Where did you attend grade school?”

“P.S. One Sixty-nine,” I replied.

He nodded a single time, then scribbled down my answer on a yellow legal pad. “And that was in Bayside?”

“Yes. Bayside, Queens.”

He scribbled that down too and then stared at me, as if he were expecting me to say more. But I didn’t. I remained silent, waiting for him to ask the next question.

“Feel free to expand on your answers,” the Bastard said. “Less is not more in this situation.” He smiled thinly.

I nodded in understanding. “Sure,” I said, and I said no more.

I wasn’t even trying to give the Bastard a hard time; it was just that, over the years, I’d been trained to give brief answers during legal inquisitions. In point of fact, I had been deposed no less than fifty times—mostly by the NASD (in customer arbitrations), but also by the SEC and the Senate Ethics Committee, the latter of which had been conducting a bribery investigation into one of their less esteemed senators.

Whatever. I’d been conditioned to give only yes or no answers— to offer no extraneous information based on what I thought my interrogator wanted to hear. And while I was aware that the ground rules were different now, old habits died hard.

A few more moments of silence passed, then the Bastard finally said, “You were an A student in grade school?”

“Yes,” I said proudly. “Straight A’s all the way.”

“Any disciplinary problems?”

“None to speak of, although I did get in trouble once for pulling a girl’s hat off her head on the way home from school.” I shrugged. “It was in the third grade, though, so it didn’t end up on my permanent record.” I thought back for a moment. “You know, it’s funny, but I can trace pretty much every problem I’ve ever had in my life back to a female.” Or, more accurately, I thought, to the pursuit of pussy.

There was silence, and then more silence. Finally I took a deep breath and said, “Do you want me to tell you the story of my life? Is that what you’re looking for?”

“Yes,” the Bastard answered, nodding his head slowly, “that’s exactly what we’re looking for.” He put his pen down, leaned back in his seat, and said, “I’m sure some of the last few questions seemed a bit ridiculous to you, but I assure you they’re not. When you’re on the witness stand, the defense is going to try to paint you as a career criminal, a born liar who’ll say anything to get himself off the hook. And wherever they think there’s dirt—even if it’s in your childhood—that’s where they’ll dig. They’ll use whatever they find to try to discredit you.”

“Joel’s correct,” added Magnum. “They’ll dredge up anything and everything. And the way the prosecution counters that is by disclosing your misdeeds to the jury before the defense even gets a chance. In other words, we air your dirty laundry proactively, as if it’s no great secret, entirely irrelevant to the proceedings.”

“Exactly,” chirped the Bastard. “We leave the defense nowhere to go.”

Now OCD chimed in: “What we can’t afford are surprises. That serves none of our purposes. We need to know the most intimate details about your life—anything and everything you’ve done for as long as you can remember.”

And now the Witch said, “And that includes not only your drug use but also your fondness for prostitutes, both of which have been duly noted in the press,” to which the Bastard added, “And both of which are certain to be exploited by a good defense attorney.”

After a few moments of awkward silence, I said, “That’s all fine and good, but I was under the impression”—I resisted the urge to stare directly into Magnum’s eyes and shoot death rays at him— “that people rarely go to trial in these cases, that they usually plea-bargain. Or, if not that, cooperate.”

The Bastard shrugged. “For the most part, that’s true, but I wouldn’t count on it. In the end, there’s always one holdout, someone who takes it all the way to trial.”

Everyone nodded in unison, including Magnum, who was now in the process of revising history. Well, fuck it! I thought. It was time for the chips to fall where they may. “You know,” I said casually, “I might be only thirty-six years old, but I’ve had a very full life. This could take a very long time.”

OCD smiled wryly. “I’ve been trying to make sense of your life for the last five years,” he said. “I, personally, have as much time as it takes.”

“Yeah, let’s hear it,” added the Bastard.

“It’s your only hope of getting a reduced sentence,” snapped the Witch.

I ignored the Witch and looked at the Bastard and said, “Fine; since you’ve already brought up the subject of Bayside, let’s start there. It’s as good a place to start as any, considering that’s where most of the early Strattonites came from.” I paused, thinking back for a moment. “And even the ones who didn’t actually come from Bayside ended up moving there after the firm got started.”

“Everyone moved to Bayside?” the Bastard asked skeptically.

“Not everyone,” I replied, “but most everyone. You see, moving to Bayside was a way of proving your loyalty to the firm, a way of showing that you were truly a Strattonite. I know it sounds slightly absurd—that moving to a certain neighborhood could make that much of a statement—but that was how it was back then. We were like the Mafia, always looking to keep outsiders out.” I shrugged my shoulders. “When you worked at Stratton, you socialized only with other Strattonites, and that’s what living in Bayside was all about. You were blocking out outsiders, proving that you were part of the cult.”

“You’re saying Stratton was a cult?” sputtered the Witch.

“Yes,” I said calmly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Michele. Why do you think it was so hard to penetrate?” Now I looked at OCD. “How many doors you think you knocked on over the years—just a ballpark?”

“At least fifty,” he replied. “Probably more.”

“And every last one of them was slammed in your face, right?”

“Pretty much,” he said wearily. “No one would talk to me.”

“A big part of that was that everyone was making so much money, no one wanted to upset the applecart.” I paused, letting my words sink in. “But it was more than that: What was at the very core of it was protecting the Stratton way of life. That’s what everyone was doing: protecting the Life.”

“Define ‘the Life,’” said the Bastard, with a hint of sarcasm.

I shrugged. “Well, among other things, it meant driving the fanciest car, eating at the hottest restaurants, giving the biggest tips, wearing the finest clothes.” I shook my head in amazement. “I mean, we did everything together. We spent every waking moment together. And not just at work, but at home too.” I looked at the Witch, staring into her black-as-night eyes. “That’s why Stratton was a cult, Michele. It was all for one and one for all, and lots for oneself, of course. And there were no outsiders around—ever.” I looked around the room. “Understand?”

Everyone, including the Witch, nodded.

The Bastard said, “What you’re saying makes sense, but I thought most of your early recruits came from Long Island, from Jericho and Syosset.”

“About half of them did,” I replied quickly. “And there’s a reason for that, but we’re jumping ahead here. It would be best to take things in order.”

“Please,” said the Bastard. “This is very productive.”

I nodded, gathering my thoughts. “So back to Bayside, then. It’s rather ironic, considering that when I was a teenager I swore I’d leave Bayside as soon as I struck it rich. I was about fifteen when I first realized there was a different kind of life out there—a better life, I thought at that time—meaning, a life of wealth and affluence. Remember, I didn’t grow up with money, so extravagances like mansions, yachts, private jets—things that people now associate me with—were all completely foreign to me then. Bayside was strictly middle class, especially the part I was raised in.” I smiled nostalgically. “It happened to be a wonderful place to grow up. There wasn’t an ounce of crime there, and everyone knew everyone. Everyone had moved there from the Bronx or from other parts of Queens, from neighborhoods that had… you know… turned. My parents moved there from the South Bronx, from a place that’s a real shithole now—and you’re not writing any of this down, Joel.”

“Anything I write down, I have to turn over to the defense, whoever that ultimately might be.” The Bastard smiled conspiratorially. “So, in my particular case, less is more. Anyway, just keep talking; I have an excellent memory.”

I nodded. “All right. Well, my parents moved to Bayside to spare me the heartache of growing up in the Bronx. We lived in a six-story apartment building in one of those planned communities that were springing up like hotcakes back then. And it was beautiful; there were grassy fields to play ball on, playgrounds, concrete walking paths, trees for tree houses, bushes for hide-and-seek. But, most importantly, there were hundreds of kids, which meant there were lots of future Strattonites to recruit from. And they were all getting good educations”—I paused, reconsidering my words— “although the education part was sort of a double-edged sword.”

“Why is that?” asked OCD, who seemed to be getting a kick out of me.

“Well,” I said, “by the time we hit our teens we were educated enough to know how little we actually had. In other words, we knew that, yeah, maybe we weren’t starving like the kids in Africa, but there was definitely more out there.” I paused for effect. “That’s how everyone in my neighborhood thought. There was a sense of unlimited hope—or a sense of entitlement, you might call it—that one day we would all strike it rich and move out to Long Island, where the real money was, where people lived in houses and drove Cadillacs and Mercedes.”

“Alan Lipsky grew up in the same apartment building as you, didn’t he?” asked OCD.

“Yes,” I said, “on the same floor. And Andy Greene, who you probably know as Wigwam, lived only a few blocks away. Although no one called him Wigwam back then; he didn’t actually go bald until the eleventh grade.” I shrugged. “He didn’t get his first toupee until he was in his junior year of college. That’s when he became Wigwam.” I shrugged again, wondering if Andy Greene would be sitting in this very room in the not-too-distant future. After all, he had been the head of Stratton’s Corporate Finance Department, responsible for finding deals to take public and getting them cleared at the SEC. He was a good man, although he would be devastated if he had to go to jail and was forced to take his toupee off—despite the fact that he had the worst toupee this side of the former Iron Curtain.

“Anyway,” I said, “Alan lived in apartment Five-K and I lived in Five-F, and we’ve been best friends since diapers. I’m sure you’re all aware of the fact that I provided Alan with training and financing and that I showed him how the game works.” Everyone nodded. “And, in return, he and Brian paid me upward of five million a year in royalties, in sort of a quid pro quo. But I’m jumping ahead again; that happened many years later.”

The Bastard nodded. “You said before that you never had any disciplinary problems growing up: You had no arrests? No history of juvenile delinquency?”

I shook my head no, wanting to smack the Bastard for insinuating that I’d been a bad seed from the start. But all I said was, “I was a good kid, a straight-A student, just like I said.” I thought for a moment. “And so was the rest of my family. My oldest two first cousins both went to Harvard and graduated at the top of their classes. They’re both doctors now. And my older brother—I think you know, Joel—he’s one of the most well-respected health-care lawyers in the country. He used to play poker with some of your friends in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, although he left the game once my investigation started heating up. I guess it was too uncomfortable for him.”

The Bastard nodded deferentially. “I never met your brother, but I’ve heard only the best things about him. It’s amazing you two are even related.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “it’s a total fucking miracle. But we are related, and I was just like him when we were younger. Maybe our personalities were different—I mean, I was the outgoing one and he was the introvert—but I was just as good a student as him. Probably even better. School came ridiculously easy to me. Even after I started smoking pot—back in the sixth grade—I was still getting straight A’s. It wasn’t until tenth grade that the drugs started catching up with me.”

OCD recoiled visibly. “You started smoking pot in sixth grade?” he asked.

I nodded with a twisted sense of pride. “Yeah, Greg, when I was eleven. My friend’s older brother was a pot dealer, and one night Alan and I slept over our friend’s house and his brother turned us on.” I paused, smiling at the utter insanity of having smoked pot at the age of eleven. “Anyway, pot wasn’t as strong back then, so I only caught a minor buzz. I didn’t end up bouncing off the walls, like I did as an adult.” I let out a tiny chuckle. “Anyway, I continued dabbling with pot for a couple more years, but it never caused me a problem. My parents still thought everything was okay.”

I paused and took a moment to study everyone’s expressions, which were at various stages of incredulity. I continued my story: “I think the first time they noticed something was wrong was when I was in eighth grade, when I got a ninety-two on a math test. My mother was devastated. Before that, I’d never gotten anything below a ninety-eight, and even that would cause a raised eyebrow from her. I remember her saying something like, ‘Is everything okay, honey? Were you sick? Was something bothering you?’” I shook my head at the memory. “Of course, I didn’t tell her that I’d smoked two fat joints of Colombian Gold before the test and that I was finding it difficult to add two plus two that afternoon.” I shrugged innocently. “But I do remember her being very concerned about that test, as if, somehow, getting a ninety-two would reduce my chances of getting into Harvard Medical School.” I shrugged again. “But that was how my mother was; she was an overachiever who held us to a very high standard.” I lit up. “In fact, just a few years ago, she became the oldest woman in New York State to pass the bar. She practices law on Long Island now, doing everything pro bono.” Ah, a way to redeem myself with the Witch! I thought. “She defends battered women, ones who can’t afford a lawyer,” and I looked into the Witch’s beady eyes, hoping to win her over with my mother’s fabulous deeds.

Alas, the Witch remained impassive, entirely unmoved. She was a tough son of a bitch. I decided to kick it up a notch. “You know, back in the day, Michele, my mother was a successful CPA, when there were very few professional women in the workplace.” I raised my eyebrows and nodded my head quickly, as if to say, “Pretty impressive, eh?” Then I stared at her, waiting for her expression to soften. Still nothing. She just kept staring back at me, shooting daggers. After a few moments, I looked away. She was so poisonous that I now found myself looking to the Bastard for salvation, hoping he would approve of my mother, in spite of the Witch’s insolence. I said to the Bastard, “She’s a genius, my mother. A truly wonderful lady.”

The Bastard nodded, apparently buying into the righteousness of my mother, although there was also a hint of “Who gives a fuck?” in his body language. But then, with great sincerity, he said, “Well, it sounds like she’s a really great lady,” and he nodded his head some more.

“Yeah, she really is great,” I said. “And then there’s my father, who I’m sure you’re all familiar with.” I smiled ruefully. “He’s also a CPA, and a genius in his own right, althoughhhh…” I paused, trying to find the right words to classify my father, Max, whose Stratton nickname was Mad Max, due to his wildly ferocious temper.

Mad Max was a serial chain-smoker, a great advocate of premium Russian vodka, a human ticking time bomb, and a surprisingly dapper dresser. Mad Max played no favorites; he hated everyone equally. “Well,” I said with a mischievous smile, “let’s just say that he’s not as benevolent a creature as my mother.”

With a hint of a smile, OCD asked, “Is it true he used to smash brokers’ car windows if they parked in his spot?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah,” I said, “and if he was in a bad mood he would go to work on your body and fenders too. Then he’d have your car towed.” I shrugged. “But the brokers still parked in his spot anyway. It became just one more way of proving your loyalty to the firm: Suck up a beating from Mad Max and then you’re truly a Strattonite.”

There were a few moments of silence, then the Bastard said, “So when did you first start breaking the law? How old were you?”

I shrugged. “That depends on how you define breaking the law. If you consider the consumption of dangerous recreational drugs breaking the law, then I was a criminal at age eleven. Or if it’s cutting school, then I was an archcriminal at age sixteen, because I cut most of the tenth grade.

“But if you want to know the first time I did something that I considered illegal—something that I was doing day in and day out—I would say that it was when I started selling ices on Jones Beach.”

“How old were you?” asked the Bastard.

“Almost seventeen.” I thought for a moment, back to my beach days. “What I would do was walk around the beach with a Styrofoam cooler, selling ices, blanket to blanket. I’d walk around screaming, ‘Italian ices, Chipwiches, Fudgsicles, frozen fruit bars-Milky Ways and Snickers,’ and I’d go on and on, all day. It was the greatest job ever, the absolute greatest! In the morning—like at six a.m.—I would go down to this Greek distributor where all the Good Humor trucks went, in Howard Beach, Queens, and I’d load up on ices and ice cream. Then I’d pack the coolers in dry ice and head to the beach.” I paused, relishing the memory. “And I made a bloody fortune doing it. On a good day, I’d clear more than five hundred dollars. Even on a slow day I’d still clear two-fifty, which was ten times what my friends were making.

“That’s where I first met Elliot Loewenstern; we hustled ices together on the beach.” I motioned to my villains, thieves, and scoundrels list. “I’m sure you’re all familiar with Elliot. He’s on there somewhere, pretty close to the top.” I shrugged, not the least bit concerned about implicating Elliot Loewenstern. After all, I knew that Elliot, whose nickname was the Penguin—due to his long, thin nose, his compact potbelly, and his slightly bowed legs, which caused him to waddle around like a migrating penguin-would cooperate if he were facing anything more than a few hours in jail. In fact, I’d seen him crack under police questioning when the stakes were considerably lower. It was during our ice-hustling days, and he was facing only a fifty-dollar fine for vending without a license. But rather than paying the fine and keeping his mouth shut, he ratted out every other vendor on the beach, including me. So, yes: If OCD and the Bastard secured an indictment against the Penguin, he would be singing on Court Street with the relish of Celine Dion.

I was about to continue with my tale, when the Bastard said, “I find it a bit odd that after everything you’ve done you still consider selling ices breaking the law.” He shrugged his bastardly shoulders. “Most people would consider it an honest way for a kid to make a buck.”

Interesting, I thought. The Bastard had raised a very profound issue—namely, what constitutes breaking the law? Back in the day, virtually everyone I knew (both peers and adults alike) had considered my ices-hustling to be completely righteous. In fact, I’d received accolades from one and all. Yet, the simple fact was that it was illegal, because I was vending without a license.

But was it really illegal? Weren’t some laws not really meant to be enforced? After all, we were just trying to make an honest buck, weren’t we? In fact, we were enhancing the beachgoing experience for thousands of New Yorkers, who otherwise would have had to walk all the way up to the boardwalk (which was full of splinters) and wait in line at the concession stand, which was manned by a grim-faced adolescent who probably spit on their food the moment they turned their backs. So one could definitely make the case that Elliot and I had been doing “good,” despite the fact that, technically speaking, we were breaking the law.

“Well, the short answer,” I said to the Bastard, “is that we were breaking the law. We were vending without a license, which, for better or worse, is a Class B misdemeanor in New York State. And to take it one step further, we were also guilty of income-tax evasion, because we were making twenty grand a summer and not declaring a dime of it. And to take it even further, when I turned eighteen, I started selling puka-shell necklaces as a side item. I figured, hey, as long as I’m walking around the beach selling ices, why not take advantage of the underserved costume-jewelry market?” I shrugged a capitalist’s shrug. “So I went down to the jewelry exchange in Manhattan’s Chelsea district and bought a couple of thousand puka necklaces and then hired junior high school kids to walk around the beach with them. I had three kids working for me, and they charged four dollars a necklace. Meanwhile, my cost was only fifty cents apiece, so even after I paid the kids fifty bucks a day, I was still netting two hundred for myself. And that was on top of my ices money!

“But, of course, I hadn’t taken out workman’s comp, nor was I taking out taxes for them. Not to mention the fact that I had them vending without a license. So now it wasn’t only me who was breaking the law, but I was corrupting a bunch of innocent fourteen-year-olds as well.

“I even got my mother into the act. I had her waking up at five a.m. to butter bagels, which I sold between the hours of nine and eleven, before the sun was high enough to stimulate ices demand. And then there were all the sanitary laws we were violating by preparing food in an uninspected plant, although my mother did keep a very clean household, and she was kosher. So I don’t think anyone ever got sick.

“But, hey, it was all in the name of good old-fashioned capitalism, so I wasn’t really breaking the law, was I? It was all very harmless, all very commendable.” I looked at the Bastard and smiled. “Like you said, Joel, it was a very honest way for a kid to make a buck.” I paused, letting my words sink in. “Anyway, I could go on and on here, but I think you get the point: Everyone, including my own law-abiding parents, thought selling ices was the greatest thing on earth. The act of a budding entrepreneur!

“But is there really any such a thing as a righteous crime? When did I cross the line with the ices? In the very beginning, when I chose to vend without a license? Or was it when I recruited the junior high school kids? Or was it with my mother? Or choosing not to pay taxes…”

I took a deep breath and said, “Understand: You don’t start out on the dark side of the force, unless, of course, you’re a sociopath, which I hope you all know I’m not.” Everyone nodded. In a dead-serious tone, I said, “The problem is that you become desensitized to things; you cross over the line a tiny bit and nothing bad happens, so you figure it’s okay to step over again, except this time you step a bit further. It’s human nature to do that; whether you’re an action junkie or adrenaline junkie, or even if you’re not a junkie at all, and you’re simply dipping your foot into a piping hot bathtub. At first you can’t keep your toe in, because the water’s too hot. And then, a minute later, your whole body is submerged, and the water feels just fine.

“When I went off to American University, all these things were reinforced. I started dating a girl from a very wealthy family, whose father was in the bookbinding business. His name was David Russell, and he was worth millions. Not surprisingly, he thought what I was doing on the beach was the greatest thing ever. In fact, one day he had this big party at his house, and he paraded me around, saying, ‘This is the kid I was telling you about!’ Then he made me tell everyone the story of how I would go down to the Greek distributor at six o’clock in the morning and load up coolers full of Italian ices and then walk around the beach hawking my ices from blanket to blanket, running from the cops when they chased after me for vending without a license. And, of course, every last one of his guests thought it was the best thing they ever heard. They even made a toast to me. ‘Here’s to the millionaire of tomorrow!’ they all said.”

I smiled at the memory. “I was only a junior in college back then, but I knew they were right. I knew that I’d be rich one day, and so did all my friends. Even when I worked at the beach, I always made twice as much as any other vendor. And I’m not even talking about the buttered bagels or the puka-shell necklaces. I just worked longer and harder than anyone else—even Elliot, who was a hard worker in his own right. But at the end of the day, when Elliot and I would sit down, I’d always outgrossed him by fifty percent.”

I paused to catch my breath, and I took a moment to gauge the temperature of my captors. What were they thinking? I wondered. Could they possibly relate to someone like me? I was a breed apart from them. In the Witch’s case, I was a species apart. Either way, they all looked dumbfounded. They were just staring at me, as if I had a screw loose or something.

I plunged forward into my first years of adulthood. “Anyway, after I graduated from college, I decided to go to dental school, because I wanted to make lots of money. It’s funny how ridiculous that seems now—that I thought dentistry would be a path to wealth—but I guess all that malarkey my mother had whispered in my ear when I was growing up had had an impact on me.” I shrugged. “In fact, I thought my only other option was to go to medical school, but becoming a doctor seemed like an insanely long haul. Between internship, residency, fellowship, it just seemed too far out of reach. And then I overslept for the MCATs, which pretty much sealed the deal. I mean, how was I supposed to tell my mother that I’d overslept for a test that she’d been waiting for the results from since I’d emerged from her womb? She would’ve been heartbroken!

“So I figured, as a good son, it was my obligation to lie to her, and I told her that I’d decided not to take the MCATs because being a doctor wasn’t for me. I told her that dentistry was my calling.” I shook my head slowly, amazed at how I sealed my fate all those years back. “Anyway, we’re now at the part of the story where the true insanity begins: my first day of dental school.” I smiled cynically. “You ever hear that old expression about all roads leading to Rome?”

Everyone nodded.

“Right—well, in my case, all roads led to Stratton, and I stepped onto the road on day one, which was orientation. We were sitting in the school’s auditorium, a hundred and ten dental students, waiting to hear the first words of wisdom from the dean of the school. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was looking around the auditorium, trying to size up my competition, trying to figure out if everyone was as money-hungry as I was or if some of them were just there for the true love of dentistry, like to serve their fellow man or something.” I shook my head, as if my last few words defied logic.

“The room was packed—about half men, half women. The dean was standing up front, behind a cheap wooden podium. He looked like a decent-enough guy, in his mid-fifties and reasonably well dressed. He had a full head of gray hair that made him look successful, respectable, and very dental, at least to my way of thinking. But he did have this sort of grim expression on his face, like he could’ve been moonlighting as a warden in a state penitentiary.” Like you, Joel, you mangy bastard! “But, in spite of that, he still looked like a basically okay guy. So when he grabbed the mike off the podium, I leaned forward in my seat to listen.

“In a surprisingly deep voice, he said, ‘I want to welcome everyone to the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. You all deserve to be very proud of yourselves today. You’ve been accepted into one of the finest dental programs in the country.’ And he paused, letting his words hang in the air. So far, so good, I thought. Then he said, ‘What you’re going to learn over the next four years will assure you an esteemed place in society, as well as a life of reasonable comfort. So, please, give yourselves a warm round of applause, everyone. You sure as hell deserve it. Welcome, everyone! Welcome!’ and he lifted his mike in the air and everyone started clapping, right on cue.

“Everyone except me, that is. I was devastated. In fact, I knew it right then that I’d made a huge mistake.” I rolled my neck, trying not to let the memory upset me. “It was the way he’d used the word reasonable. It was a fucking hedge word, for Chrissake! That bastard knew—he fucking knew—that the golden age of dentistry was over, so he couldn’t bring himself to say that we’d have absolute comfort. Instead, he’d hedged and said reasonable comfort, which is an entirely different thing.

“Yet, to my utter shock, when I looked around the room, no one else seemed worried. Everyone else was fine and dandy; they were all clapping their hands merrily—la-de-fuck-in-da!—and they all had these expectant looks on their faces. The Dentists of Tomorrow! I’ll never forget it, or at least I’ll never forget the irony of it, because while they were busy clapping, I was on the verge of slitting my wrists.” I paused and let out a deep sigh. With a hint of sadness in my tone, I said, “The truth is that I knew I’d made a mistake long before that. I knew it even as a kid.

“I mean, who was I kidding? I didn’t have the patience to go through that much schooling!” I shook my head in resignation. “I was born with only half the equation: I was smart as a whip and had the gift of gab, but I lacked patience. I wanted to get rich quick; I wanted everything now. That was my downfall. And after making so much money on the beach all those summers, I had the taste of blood on my lips. I was like an accident waiting to happen. Like a high-performance race car zooming down the highway at two hundred miles an hour: Either I’d win the race or I’d crash and burn like the space shuttle. It could’ve gone either way.”

I compressed my lips and shook my head gravely. “Well, unfortunately, my instincts had been right on target. As soon as the applause died down, the dean put the mike to his lips and said, ‘I want to let you all in on a little secret: The golden age of dentistry is over.’ He nodded his head a single time. ‘If you’re here simply because you’re looking to make a lot of money, you’re in the wrong place. So take my advice and leave right now, and never come back. There are better ways in the world to get rich; save yourself the heartache.’ Then he said a few more things, which blew right past me, because I was too busy looking for a fire exit. Then he twisted the knife in deeper. ‘Remember, your goal is to practice preventive dentistry. So if you practice your profession well, you’ll be seeing less and less of your patients.’ And he started nodding his head, as if he’d just let out a major pearl of wisdom. Then he started talking again, although I was done listening. In fact, I was doing a bit of talking myself at that point, saying, ‘Excuse me, pardon me, excuse me…’ as I walked out of the auditorium right in the middle of his speech. I remember getting some funny looks from everyone, and I also remember not giving a shit about them.” I paused for effect. “That’s how I became a dental-school dropout my first day. It was all the dean’s fault. The only question was how to break the news to my mother.”

“That’s terrible!” exclaimed the Witch. “She must’ve been devastated!” The Witch compressed her thin lips and stared at me menacingly.

Well, well, well! I thought. The Witch had a soft spot for my mother, after all! Apparently, my mother’s goodness was irresistible. I said, “Yes, Michele, my mother would have been very upset if I had told her, which, of course, I didn’t.” I shrugged my good son’s shrug. “I mean, I loved her way too much to be honest with her. Besides, she was my mother, and I’d been lying to her since I was five.” I flashed the Witch an impish smile. “So why tell her the truth now, right, Michele?”

The Witch responded with no words, just two twitches of her nose.

Christ! I shook my head quickly, trying to rid myself of her spell. “Anyway,” I said, with a bit of a quiver in my tone, “I told my mother that dental school was going great, and then I hid down in Maryland for four months and worked out all day and laid in the sun. Baltimore’s pretty nice that time of year, so the time passed quickly. I still had beach money left over from the summer, so I was living pretty well. In the end, I auctioned off my dental equipment to supplement things. All the drills and drill bits, the scalers, the gauze pads—they made us buy all this shit before we got started, so now I was stuck with it.”

Scratching his head, OCD said, “You really auctioned off your dental equipment? Seriously?”

I nodded. “You bet I did! In fact, I posted signs all over campus so I’d draw a good crowd.” I smiled proudly. “You see, Greg? I was aware of the importance of supply and demand even then. I knew that if I wanted to have a successful auction I’d need to have lots of bidders. So I advertised.” I shrugged another capitalist’s shrug. “Anyway, you should’ve seen the auction; it was a real hoot. I held it in the dental lab, surrounded by beakers and Bunsen burners. Fifty or sixty kids showed up, most of them in their white dental smocks. I wore one of those blue plastic visors, like a bookie.

“In the beginning, they were all a bit gun-shy, so I played up the theatrics a bit. I started speaking really fast, like a true auctioneer would, and then things started to roll. ‘Okay, okay,’ I said quickly, ‘I got a beautiful high-speed hand piece, manufactured by our good friends over at Star Dental Labs. She’s stainless steel, self-cooling, and spins at twenty thousand rpms a minute. She comes straight from the box, with a lifetime warranty. Just look at her— she’s a real beaut!’ And I held up the drill for public inspection. ‘She’s an absolute must,’ I said. ‘A must for any dentist who’s serious about providing his patients with first-class dental care. Brand-new, she’ll set you back nine hundred fifty dollars. Do I have an opening bid of two hundred dollars… Do I have two hundred… I’m looking for two hundred

“And some kid with a ferocious mop of red hair and horn-rimmed glasses raised his hand and said, ‘I’ll take it for two hundred!’ to which I said, ‘Excellent! We have an opening bid of two hundred dollars from the very smart man in the white smock and horn-rimmed glasses. Do I have a bid of two-fifty now… I’m looking for two-fifty… Does anybody have two-fifty? Sweet Jesus! Come on, everyone! She’s a steal down here! Remember, this drill is self-cooling and sprays out a jet of water to prevent heat buildup. It’s state of the art all the way…’ And then some Asian girl with flawless skin and the body of a fire hydrant raised her hand and said in an eager voice, ‘I’ll pay two-fifty!’ to which I said, Ahhh, we have a two-hundred-fifty-dollar bid from the lovely lady in white, who knows a bargain when she sees one. Good for you, young lady!’ And I went on and on until I had the whole room in a frenzy.”

I paused, catching my breath. Then, with great pride, I said, “I netted over three thousand dollars that day. And it was the first time in my life I felt like a true salesman. And I was good at it. My auctioneer’s rap came pouring out of my mouth as if there was no tomorrow.” I smiled at the memory. “Toward the end of the auction, the dean came walking into the room, and he just stood there, staring at me. After a minute, he shook his head and walked away, too dumbfounded to comment. I’m sure it was the first auction at the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, and I’m also sure it was the last. And it was a grand success, I might add.”

By now everyone in the room was chuckling, even the Witch and the Bastard. It was a good sign, I thought, so I decided to jump right into the insanity of the meat-and-seafood business: “What I failed to mention, though, was what inspired me to hold the auction that day.”

“You said you were running low on funds,” said OCD.

I shrugged noncommittally. “That had something to do with it, but it wasn’t what was really driving me. What happened was that, a few days before, I received a phone call from Elliot, the Penguin. I was home at the time, lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, wondering what the fuck I was gonna do with the rest of my life. I was living in a tiny studio apartment, just outside Baltimore, and it had two pieces of furniture in it: the bed and a rotting tweed couch. The Penguin was living in Queens, and when he called me, he was in a very agitated state, almost out of breath. He said, ‘I found a way to make beach money all year ‘round. I’m working as a salesman for a meat-and-seafood company, and I’m clearing two-fifty a day in cash. They even gave me a company vehicle.’ I think it was the last part that shocked me most. ‘Really?’ I said. ‘They gave you a car? Jesus, that’s amazing.’

“‘Yeah, it is,’ he answered. ‘And I can get you a job there if you want.’”

I thought back on the Penguin’s words. “In retrospect, I should’ve realized that something wasn’t on the up-and-up. Remember, Elliot didn’t actually say they’d given him a company car. He said, ‘company vehicle,’ which is kind of an odd way to put it, you know? I mean, if you went to work at IBM and they gave you a car, you wouldn’t refer to it as a company vehicle: You would say, ‘IBM gave me a company car!’ Still, the thought of making beach money all year ‘round was so enticing that I chose not to read too much into things. Before I hung up, I asked, ‘Are you sure they’re gonna hire me, Elliot? I don’t have any real sales experience.’”

I began chuckling. “You have no idea how ironic that question was.” I started shaking my head.

“What’s so ironic?” the Bastard asked tonelessly. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, companies like Great American Meat and Seafood— which was the name of Elliot’s company—are always looking for salesmen. The same goes for companies like Stratton Oakmont or Monroe Parker or Kirby vacuum cleaners or any other company that employs fast-talking commission-based salesmen.” I paused and took a moment to think back. Then I said, “At Stratton, we used to give our job applicants the mirror test—meaning, we would stick a mirror under their noses and wait for it to fog up. If it did, we hired them; if it didn’t, it meant they were dead, which was the only reason we wouldn’t hire them—unless, of course, they were already licensed stockbrokers. Then we definitely wouldn’t hire them, because they knew too much. We wanted our brokers young and naive, hungry and stupid.” I shrugged. “Give me someone like that, and I’ll make them rich, with no problem. But give me someone with brains and imagination—well, that’s a bit more difficult.

“But, to get back to the story, I spent a few more minutes on the phone with the Penguin, listening to him chirp about how wonderful the meat-and-seafood business was. ‘It’s all restaurant-quality food,’ he assured me. ‘Nothing but the best.’

“I mean, the whole thing sounded too good to be true, but I’d never known Elliot to be a liar. He was a bit gullible, maybe, but he definitely wasn’t a liar. So I put aside my skepticism, packed up my 1973 Mercury Cougar, and drove up to New York to drop the bomb on my parents. It was February 1985. I was twenty-two at the time. I had my whole life in front of me.”

^{CHAPTER 7} THE BIRTH OF A SALESMAN

“So you just picked up and left,” said the Witch, shaking her head back and forth.

“Yeah,” I said casually, “that’s just what I did. And I had all my worldly possessions with me, which amounted to a suitcase full of dirty clothes and the shirt on my back. And, of course, I had the three thousand dollars I’d cleared from my auction.

“In retrospect, it still amazes me how easy it was to pick up and leave Baltimore. My studio was on a month-to-month lease, I had no furniture to speak of, and my financial obligations were basically zero. The only bummer was that I’d be living at home with my parents again, which I can assure you is no picnic. They were still living in the same two-bedroom apartment I grew up in, which was the same apartment I swore I’d leave after I struck it rich.”

I paused and scratched my chin thoughtfully. “In fact, they’re still living in the same apartment today, in spite of all the money my father made at Stratton.” I shook my head in amazement. “Can you imagine? I mean, I even offered to buy them a house when things were rolling, but they didn’t want to move. I guess you could say they’re the ultimate creatures of habit.”

“So how’d you break the news to them?” the Bastard asked impatiently.

“Well, I figured it would be easier if they digested things in small chunks, so, before I left Baltimore, all I told them was that I’d dropped out of dental school; I didn’t say that I landed a job as a meat-and-seafood salesman.

“I dropped that bomb on them in the living room, which was where all important conversations took place. My father was sitting in his favorite chair, and my mother was sitting on the couch, reading a book. For some reason, I still remember what book it was— On Death and Dying.” I shrugged. “I don’t know; my mother always liked those morbid books. My father, meanwhile, was busy watching his latest cop show and chain-smoking his lungs into complete oblivion.

“I took a seat across from my father and said, ‘I need to talk to you guys for a few minutes.’

“My father looked at my mom, and he said in a slightly annoyed tone, ‘Lee, will you turn down T.J. Hooker for a minute?’ At that, my mother dropped her book and nearly ran over to the wall unit and turned down the Trinitron. That was the relationship between my parents, Mad Max and Saint Leah. The latter spent the better part of her day trying to keep the former from blowing an emotional gasket.

“I said to them, ‘Dentistry is not for me, guys. I gave it a full semester, and I know for sure now that I could never be happy as a dentist.’ That was a lie, of course, although I figured that if I told them that I’d dropped out the first day then they’d really be pissed. Either way, my mother was having none of it.

“‘I didn’t think you’d be a dentist forever,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d open up a chain of dental clinics one day, or discover a new type of dental procedure. It’s still not too late.’

“‘No, Mom; it is too late. I’m not going back,’ and then I looked at my father for support. He was actually better in these situations. He loved a good crisis; they seem to calm him down somehow, even to this day. It was the small stuff that drove him crazy. I said to him, ‘Listen, Dad: I don’t want to be a dentist. I want to be a salesman. That’s what I’m cut out for, to sell things—’ And my mother popped off the couch and screamed, ‘Oh, my God, Max! Not a salesman! Anything but that!’ Then she turned to me and said, ‘Look what you’ve done to me already,’ and she lowered her head and pointed to a small patch of gray hair. ‘This is from when you cut tenth grade and smoked marijuana all day with that awful Richard Kushner.’ Then she pointed to a wrinkle on her forehead and added, ‘And this is from when you grew marijuana in the closet and said it was a science project! And now you’re dropping out of dental school to become a salesman!’

“I was slowly losing patience with her. With a bit of edge in my tone, I said, ‘I’m not going to dental school, Mom, and that’s final!’

“‘No, it’s not final!’

“‘Yes, it is final!’

“And back and forth we went, until, finally, Mad Max stepped in. ‘Will you two stop it!’ he screamed. ‘I mean, Jesus!’ And he shook his head in disbelief. Then he looked at my mother and said, ‘He’s not going to dental school, Leah. What’s the use?’ And then he looked at me and smiled warmly. With a hint of a British accent, he asked, ‘What type of salesman would you like to be, son? What do you see yourself selling?’”

“Your father’s British?” asked OCD. “I didn’t know that.” OCD’s tone dripped with surprise, as if someone had given him some very bad information.

“No, he’s not actually British,” I replied. “He just speaks with a British accent when he’s trying to act reasonable. That’s my father’s other persona: Sir Max. It’s his lovable alter ego. See, when Mad Max becomes Sir Max, he puckers up his lips and speaks with a hint of British aristocracy. It’s pretty remarkable, actually, considering he’s never even visited England.” I turned the corners of my mouth down and shrugged, as if to say, “Some things simply defy logic and aren’t worth pondering.” Then I said, “But Sir Max is the best. He never loses his temper. He’s totally reasonable in all situations.”

“So what did you tell Sir Max?” asked the Bastard.

“Well, at first I hemmed and hawed a bit—talking about the possibility of selling medical supplies or dental supplies, something that would fit in with my degree. Then, as if it were an afterthought, I brought up the subject of Elliot Loewenstern and meat and seafood. My mother, of course, immediately began torturing me, using her own brand of Jewish guilt, which is your run-of-the-mill Jewish guilt mixed with passive-aggressiveness and sarcasm.

“‘My son, the meat salesman!’ she started muttering. ‘That’s just wonderful! He drops out of dental school to peddle meat. A mother should only be so lucky.’ She added a few more choice words, and then the phone started ringing and Sir Max morphed back into Mad Max, and started cursing, ‘That motherfucking goddamn piece-a-shit phone! Who the hell has the gall to call this house on a goddamn Tuesday afternoon? Inconsiderate bastard! The fucking gall!’ And my mother jumped off the couch and ran to the phone like Jesse Owens, as she pled with my father: ‘Calm down, Max! Calm down! I’m getting it—I’m getting it!’ But Mad Max was still mumbling curses under his breath: ‘That rat bastard! Who calls the house on a goddamn Tuesday afternoon?’”

With mock seriousness, I said, “My father really hated it when that phone rang! I’m telling you: Nothing drove him crazier.”

“Why?” asked OCD.

I shrugged. “For the most part, it had to do with my father being resistant to change. He hates it in any shape or form. In fact, for the last thirty-six years he’s had the same address, the same phone number, the same dry cleaner, the same auto mechanic—he even has the same Chinese laundry service! And he knows all the owners on a first-name basis, so he’ll say things like, ‘Pepe† over at the dry cleaner said this, or Wing† at the Chinese laundry said that, or Jimmy† over at the Sunoco station said something else.’ It’s totally unbelievable.” I shook my head back and forth, emphasizing the point. “When the phone rings, it brings an unwanted stimulus into his environment, creating the potential for change. Whether the call brings good news or bad news doesn’t matter to him; he flips out either way.” I shrugged again, as if this was just another expected happening at Chez Belfort. Then I said, “Now, under normal circumstances, the worst thing my mother can say after she picks up the phone is, ‘Max! It’s for you!’ But once Mad Max picks up the phone, he’ll become Sir Max again, using his British accent. ‘Oh, how may I help you? Righty-o, then! Cheerio, my friend!’ And he’ll stay Sir Max until he hangs up the phone, at which point he’ll turn right back into Mad Max again and curse his way back to his chair, then fire up another Merit.

“Anyway, when my mother answered the phone that day, it wasn’t for my father. It was for me, and, of all people, it was the Penguin. So my father started muttering, ‘That cocksucking phone! It’s always the same with it. And this fucking Penguin character! What rock did he crawl out from underneath? That stupid Penguin, waddling fool

By now we were all in hysterics. The Bastard recovered first. “So did Mad Max go ballistic about the meat business?”

“Not at all,” I replied. “The moment I hung up, I told them I’d landed a job as a meat-and-seafood salesman, which caused Saint Leah to start flipping out, which then caused Sir Max to reemerge.” I paused for a moment, then said, “No, my problems didn’t start until the next morning, when the Penguin pulled up in front of my building in his company vehicle, which turned out to be a Toyota pickup truck. ‘What the fuck is that?’ I snapped. ‘Don’t tell me this is the company vehicle you were talking about!’

“‘Yeah, ain’t she a beaut?’ he replied, and then he popped out of the truck, dressed in jeans and sneakers, and he waddled over and put his arm on my shoulder. Then he stared at the truck and said, ‘Whaddaya think?’

“‘It’s a real piece-a-shit!’ I snarled, and then I noticed a big white freezer box on the back on the truck. ‘What the fuck is that, Penguin? It looks like a coffin!’ I saw a trail of gray dry-ice smoke rising up from out of one of the corners of the box. ‘And what the fuck is that?’ I said, pointing to the smoke.

“Elliot flashed me a knowing smile, then he held up an index finger and said, ‘Here! I’ll show you,’ and he went waddling over to the passenger side and opened the lid of the freezer box. ‘Check out the food,’ he chirped proudly, and he started pulling out boxes, one by one, and showing me the food. Each box was the size of an attaché case, and it had a different cut of meat in it or a different type of fish. And there was everything—filet mignon, shrimp, lobster tails, lamb chops, pork chops, veal chops, fillet of sole, salmon steaks, crab legs. He even had prepared foods, like chicken Kiev and chicken cordon bleu. I’d never seen anything like it.

“By the time he was done, we were literally surrounded by more than two dozen boxes, and I was more confused than ever. There was something bothering me, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. ‘How do we get the restaurants to buy from us?’ I asked. ‘Are our prices cheaper? Do we have better food?’

“The Penguin looked at me deadpan and said, ‘Who said anything about selling to restaurants?’”

I looked at the Bastard and shook my head. With a hint of a chuckle, I said, “I think I knew everything right then and there, and all that came afterward was merely incidental. When I didn’t run back upstairs and reapply to dental school, I sealed my fate.” I shrugged. “The next decade of my life—meaning, the very insanity of Stratton Oakmont—was now a foregone conclusion.”

The Bastard leaned forward in his seat, obviously intrigued. “What makes you say that?” he asked.

I thought for a moment. “Well, let’s just say that, right then and there, I knew what I was getting myself involved in. I knew it was a”—I avoided using the word scam, not only because the meat-and-seafood business wasn’t an outright scam but also because I didn’t want my captors thinking of me as a career scam artist. Better they should view Stratton as a blip in an otherwise semi-law-abiding life—”bit of a hustle,” I said carefully. “Or maybe even more than a bit. But I figured, since the food was so good, how much harm could I cause?”

I shrugged at my own rationalization. “Anyway, it was about a twenty-minute ride to the warehouse, and on the way Elliot explained the ins and outs to me. Everything was being sold door to door, either to homes or to businesses but never to restaurants. The food wasn’t priced that way. ‘We sell at retail, not wholesale,’ the Penguin informed me. And while he didn’t come right out and say it, he inferred that our prices weren’t cheap. ‘It’s all about convenience,’ he kept chirping. ‘We deliver restaurant-quality food right to their door. And we’ll even pack their freezers for them!’ He kept repeating the last part, even called himself a professional freezer packer, as if that made up for the fact that he was overcharging everyone.

“Whether it did or didn’t, by the time we reached the warehouse I had a pretty good idea of what was going on at Great American Meat and Seafood: There were no territories, no brochures, no existing customers to service, no salary of any kind; it was straight commission. ‘We’re cold-calling machines,’ he chirped, as we pulled into the warehouse. ‘That’s why we make so much money.’

“My job interview took place inside a ramshackle office at the front of the warehouse. It lasted eight and a half seconds, at which point I was hired. I hadn’t heard of the mirror test back then, so I just assumed that I’d gotten the job because I was a friend of Elliot’s. I didn’t know they’d hire anyone with a pulse.” I shrugged innocently. “And then came the training program, which consisted of two days in a truck with Elliot. I sat in the passenger seat, observing, as he drove around aimlessly, knocking on people’s doors, trying to sell the food. The rap he used was that he was a truck driver who had an overorder on his truck, and he couldn’t get back to the freezer; so he was willing to sell everything at cost, lest the food thaw out and he lose everything.

“And, to support his claim, each box had an inflated price marked on it. As he was selling, he would point to the prices and say, ‘I’ll take fifteen dollars off this box, and fifteen dollars off that box…’ and then he’d smile at his customer and add, ‘Hey, I’d rather sell everything at cost than let the food thaw out, right?’”

“He was outright lying to his customers!” snapped the Witch.

I smiled inwardly. “Yes, Michele, he was outright lying to his customers. And I’ll tell you that it definitely shocked me at first. It seemed totally sleazy, what he was doing. Totally slimy. But, of course, the Penguin had a rationalization for it. In fact, he had rationalizations for everything.

“We were somewhere on the South Shore of Long Island when I broached the subject with him. Elliot was behind the wheel, searching for ‘virgin territory,’ which was Penguinspeak for a neighborhood where no one had heard the pitch before. It was early afternoon, and I’d seen him do his spiel about half a dozen times so far, although he hadn’t sold a box yet. I said to him, ‘I can’t believe what a scam this is, Elliot. Are you sure this is even legal?’

“Elliot looked at me as if I’d just fallen off a turnip truck and said, ‘Look who’s talking, you fucking hypocrite! Aren’t you the guy who used to pinch the bottom of the ices cup to get extra scoops out of the barrel?’ And he expelled a gust of air. ‘This is no different, pal. Besides, people can’t even get this food in the supermarket.’

“I shook my head and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I understand that the food is great and everything, and I’m really happy about that, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a lying sack of shit!’ I paused for a moment, then added, ‘And as far as my pinching the bottom of the ices cup, I only did it because the cups were stacked upside down. So when I picked one up, it got pinched automatically.’

“‘Yeah, sure,’ chirped the Penguin. ‘It was all an accident. You could’ve stacked the cups right side up. No?’ He rolled his eyes at me. ‘Anyway, what I’m doing with the prices goes on everywhere. Seriously. Just walk into any jewelry store or electronics store and check it out yourself. Everyone does this shit.’”

I paused, letting Elliot’s words hang in the air. Then I said, “There’s no denying that he had a point. You see it in jewelry stores all the time: They inflate their price tags and then mark things down right in front of you so you think you’re getting a good deal.” I paused again, then: “And all this business about an overorder isn’t much different than all those stores you see advertising ‘ going-out-of-business sales.’ Most of them have been advertising the same going-out-of-business sale for the last ten years, and in ten more years they’ll still be going out of business!”

I took a deep breath and continued: “Anyway, we spent most of the first day working middle-class neighborhoods, knocking on people’s doors and ringing their bells. And the rejection was absolutely staggering. Doors were being slammed in our faces left and right, with people telling us to basically drop dead. By two o’clock, Elliot was getting negative. He started whining to me, ‘Nobody wants the food today.’” I shook my head and let out a few chuckles. “It was sad to see. I mean, the poor bastard was on the verge of tears! At the beach, everyone loved us; we were almost like celebrities there. But here we were being treated like lepers.

“Still, the Penguin somehow managed to unload twelve boxes that day, and the next day he unloaded sixteen.” I nodded slowly, still impressed at his persistence. “One thing I can tell you about the Penguin is that he’s a relentless bastard. He kept waddling from door to door, knocking and knocking until his knuckles were bleeding, even as he snuffled back the tears. But he was averaging three hundred dollars a day in commission, so it was worth a few tears. I mean, that was a lot of money back then, especially to a kid who’d just dropped out of dental school. So, fuck it, I thought. In spite of knowing it was a little bit of a hustle, I figured I’d give it a whirl.”

I paused and looked at OCD. “You wanna guess what happened next?”

OCD smiled and shook his head a few times. “I could only imagine.”

“Actually,” I said, “you probably couldn’t, because no one at the Great American could. You see, since price seemed to be everyone’s biggest objection, I figured, why not try selling to rich people? Or, better yet, to rich people I knew. The problem was that I didn’t really know any rich people—except for the father of my girlfriend from college, David Russell. But that was a sticky situation, because he and his wife had just gotten separated and I didn’t know where he was living. She, I knew, was still living in the mansion up in Westchester, but I couldn’t just go knocking on her door. She never really liked me, although I can’t imagine why.” I looked at the Witch and said, “What’s not to like, Michele, right?”

The Witch didn’t speak or smile; she simply raised her thin left eyebrow high on her forehead, as if to say, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I shrugged and said, “Well, I guess she had her reasons. But, that aside, I did the next best thing and went to her next-door neighbor.” I nodded a single time, implying the righteousness of my decision. “Yes,” I said proudly, “I pulled my Toyota pickup truck right up to her neighbor’s enormous front door and hopped out and started knocking. I remember it like it was yesterday. The house was an enormous white colonial with forest-green shutters; and the front door was bigger than the one that led into the Emerald City. It was painted barn red and had a thousand coats of lacquer on it. And I kept rapping on it until, finally, after a minute, a kind-looking sixtyish woman, with gray hair and granny glasses, came to the door and said, ‘Can I help you, young man?’

“I offered her a sad smile and said, ‘Maybe you can, ma’am. My name is Jordan, and I deliver meat and seafood to some of your neighbors in the area. I have an overorder on my truck today, and I can’t get back to the freezer. I’m willing to sell you everything at cost.’ I flashed her my big blue puppy-dog eyes and added, ‘Is there any way you can help me out, ma’am?’

“She stared at me for a few seconds, and then, in a tone ripe with skepticism, she said, ‘Which neighbors do you deliver to?’ Without missing a beat I answered, ‘To the Russells next door.’ Suddenly it occurred to me that she might actually call over there, so I quickly added, ‘Actually, it was to Mr. Russell—to David, as he liked to be called,’ and then I compressed my lips and nodded sadly. ‘But, you know, with all that’s going on over there with the divorce, they haven’t been buying much meat lately.’

“The woman was very sympathetic to that, so her tone immediately softened. ‘I can only imagine,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s a terrible thing, divorce.’ Then, suddenly, she perked up and asked, ‘Well, what do you have on the truck today?’ I lifted an index finger and said, ‘Hold on, I’ll be right back,’ and I ran out to the truck, grabbed one of everything, and came lumbering back with a dozen boxes. I had them stacked twelve high, towering a foot over my head.

“When I reached the front door, the woman said, ‘It’s freezing outside; why don’t you bring those into the foyer?’ She motioned toward a gray marble foyer that was big enough to land a plane in. ‘Uh, um, thank you,’ I said, letting out a couple of obvious grunts and groans. ‘These boxes are really heavy.’ Then, as I walked past her, I added, ‘You’re right about it being freezing outside; it’s absolutely brutal!’ And I dropped down to my knees and let the boxes hit the gray marble floor with an exaggerated thud.” I paused and took a moment to regard my captors.

They seemed shocked more than disgusted over the wonderful string of fibs I had told this kind old woman. What they had no idea of, though, was that the greatest fibs were yet to come. Of course, I knew I shouldn’t plunge into the gory details of how I had convinced this kind old woman to buy all forty boxes of meat on the truck. This wasn’t the sort of thing that my captors would respect, but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. I was getting an irrational joy by flashing back to the days when I was still a budding salesman. Besides, while I was busy talking about the past, I had no time to focus on the present, which is to say, the grim reality that had become my life. So I soldiered on, with relish.

“Well, I gotta tell you,” I said with a bit of cockiness slipping out around the edges, “there are only a handful of defining moments in a young man’s life, moments where something so extraordinary happens that he knows things will never be the same again.” I paused for effect. “And this was one of them. I’d hustled ices on the beach before, but that wasn’t really selling; it was more about working hard and having the desire to succeed. And even my little auction at dental school wasn’t really salesmanship, although it was definitely one step closer.

“But when I looked up at this kind woman’s smiling face, well”—I added a hint of the supernatural to my tone—”a strange feeling washed over me, almost magical, in fact. It was as if I knew exactly what this woman needed to hear—or, better yet, exactly what I needed to say to her to convince her to buy everything.

“I opened the first box and raised my palm toward twelve beautiful filet mignons, each individually wrapped in clear plastic. ‘Black Angus filet mignons,’ I said proudly, ‘inch and a half thick. They’ve been flash-frozen and Cryovac-ed to near perfection; they’ll last up to twelve months in your freezer, ma’am.’ I nodded proudly, shocked at how easily the bullshit was rolling off my tongue. ‘Restaurants broil these for seven minutes on each side and then serve them with béarnaise sauce.’ Then I looked her right in the eye and said with the utmost conviction, ‘They’re so tender you can cut them with a plastic fork.’ Then I moved the box to the side and went on to the next one. ‘South African lobster tails,’ I declared. ‘Split them down the back, brush them with butter and garlic, and twenty minutes later you got yourself a surf and turf

“And I went on and on, spitting out a little rap about each product and then saying I had three of these on the truck or four of those on the truck. Finally, when all the boxes were open and we were literally surrounded by meat and fish, I pointed to the prices and said, ‘I’ll take fifteen dollars off each box, which is my absolute cost. Believe me, you can’t even get this food in the supermarket! That’s how good it is.’

“After a few moments she said, ‘Well, I’d love to help you. I mean, you seem like such a nice young boy. But it’s only my husband and me. I wouldn’t have use for so much food.’ She thought for a second then said, ‘Besides, I hardly have any room in my freezer.’ She shrugged sadly. ‘I’m very sorry.’

“I looked up at her and nodded slowly. ‘I totally understand that, but let me say this: I happen to be a professional freezer packer, and I’m willing to bet I can shuffle things around a bit, maybe even clean things up in the process. And not only will I pack your freezer for you, but I’m also willing to walk your dog and mop your floor and mow your front lawn and paint your house’—I raised both my palms toward her—‘not that it needs it or anything, but what I’m trying to say is that I’ll do whatever it takes to sell the food today.’ I compressed my lips for effect. ‘See, if my food ends up thawing out, I might lose my job, and I can’t afford for that to happen. I’m trying to put myself through college.’ Suddenly a wonderful thought came bubbling up into my brain. I bit my lower lip and said, ‘Do you have grandchildren, by any chance?’

“Well, the woman fairly beamed at the question. I think I made her day, in fact. ‘Oh, yes,’ she answered with a smile. ‘I have five of them; they’re very wonderful.’ I smiled and said, ‘I’m sure they’re very precious. So why not throw a great big barbecue for them? It would be a terrific excuse to get the whole family together. And then you can tell everyone about this nice young boy who came by and sold you all this wonderful food! You can even give them doggie bags to bring home.’ I raised my eyebrows and nodded eagerly. ‘In fact, I’ll even deliver the food to them! Just call me back, and I’ll come by with my truck.’

“She mulled it over for a few seconds, then said, ‘Okay; I have an extra freezer in the garage. You can put it in there.’

“‘Oh, my God,’ I declared. ‘Thank you so much, ma’am. You saved my life! What would you like? I have all sorts of prepared foods too. I have chicken Kiev, chicken cordon bleu, crab thermidor, which happens to be especially delicious,’ and it also happens to be my highest markup item, I thought.

“The woman smiled at me and said, ‘I guess I’ll take everything. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to lose your job, right?’”

I paused and leaned back in my seat and stared at the Bastard. “And that’s how simple it was. She bought the whole fucking truck from me right on the spot!” I shrugged my shoulders. “Of course, I felt a bit guilty about having lied to the woman, but the food, well, it was top-notch, not to mention the fact that I’d single-handedly inspired her to throw a family reunion. So it was all good, right?”

“Yeah, it was all good,” snarled the Bastard.

I ignored his sarcasm. “Right, it was all good. In fact, it was so good that my first week on the job I sold two hundred and forty boxes—which was more than twice the company record. And that was how it started. From there, a bizarre chain of events led me into the stock market and then to Stratton. Let me take them in order.”

The Bastard nodded a single time. “Please do.”

I nodded back. “It started with the Great American office. It was as if the entire sales force suddenly caught fire. Everyone’s production doubled, some even tripled. It was as if I’d raised the bar or opened a new realm of possibility as to how much money could be made if you worked hard and sold the right way. Within a week, the manager came to me and asked if I’d help train the new salesmen. The manager was P. J. Cammarata. He kept saying, ‘You pumped up the office, Jordan. It’s pumped beyond belief now…’ and blah, blah, blah. He kept going on about how the pump was everything.” I paused, shocked at how clear my memory of this was. “In retrospect, it was the only intelligent thing he ever said. See, the pump is crucial; without it, a sales force withers away and dies quicker than you can imagine.”

“So you agreed to train the salesmen?” asked the Bastard.

“Yes, but for selfish reasons. I was already planning on starting my own company; it was only a question of when. I figured I’d buy my own truck, go down to the meat market, and make the wholesale markup too. It’s what I had done at the beach all those years, and it’d worked like a charm.” I shrugged. “So I began to train the salesmen and quickly realized that I had a knack for it. In fact, I was so good at it that I could take virtually any kid off the street and turn him into a meat salesman.

“A few weeks after that, P.J. asked me if I would give a sales meeting to the office, to take the pump to the next level.” I paused, thinking back for a moment. “It’s rather ironic that it would be a dimwit like P.J., with his dirty jeans and tan Members Only jacket, who would instigate one of the defining moments of my life. See, above all, it’s my ability to speak before the crowd-giving sales meetings to the Strattonites—that was at the heart of my success. It’s what kept the pump going all those years, despite all the regulatory problems we were having.”

“The meetings?” the Bastard asked open-endedly.

“Yes, the meetings. It’s what separates—or, should I say, separated—Stratton from every other brokerage firm in America. Twice a day I would stand before the boardroom and preach to the brokers. No one on Wall Street had done that before. Occasionally a brokerage firm would bring in a guest speaker—someone like an Anthony Robbins type—but it was always a one-shot deal, not as part of a program. And that’s a complete waste of time, to do it once. If you want results, you have to do it every day; and if you really want results, you have to do it twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Then miracles can happen.

“But, of course, I wasn’t aware of that back in my Great American days… although I will tell you that the first meeting I gave was a real eye-opener. It took place inside the warehouse, in Forest Hills, Queens. There were twenty salesmen there, most of them in their early thirties. They were all dressed in jeans and sneakers, trying to look like truck drivers. They were gathered around in a circle, and I was standing at the center. At first I started speaking slowly, talking about the quality of the food, how amazing it was, how there was nothing else like it, and how lucky our customers were to have access to it. In hindsight, I was laying the foundation for a cult, although back then I was doing it without even knowing it. And the fact that—”

OCD held up his hand. “What do you mean, ‘laying the foundation for a cult’?”

I looked at OCD and said, “Let me put it this way: At the heart of any cult—whether it’s Stratton Oakmont or Great American or those crazy Branch Davidians from Waco, Texas—is the fundamental belief that, in spite of what the rest of the world might be saying about them, everyone else is crazy and they’re sane. And, without exception, it always starts with a belief in the justness of their cause. With Muslim extremists it’s a warped interpretation of the Koran; with the Branch Davidians it’s a warped interpretation of the Bible; and at Stratton it was the boardroom itself, the great equalizer in an otherwise unfair world. In other words, it didn’t matter what family you were born into or how limited your education was or how low your IQ was; once you stepped into the Stratton boardroom, all that was behind you. You became equalized; you could make as much money as the most powerful CEO in America.” I shrugged my shoulders, as if this were basic stuff.

“All cults draw their power by advancing a concept like that— that they have some sort of one-up on the world. With Great American it was having food you couldn’t get in the supermarket, and with Stratton it was the promise of becoming rich, in spite of the fact that you were a high school dropout who deserved to be working the checkout line at Seven-Eleven.” I chuckled ironically. “That’s why I said before, ‘Give them to me young and stupid, young and naive.’ Because they make much better cult members.

“Anyway—back to my first meeting—after a few minutes of selling the salesmen on how great the food was, the words began gushing out in torrents. Perfect strings of thoughts came pouring out of my mouth. Before I knew it, I was literally preaching, going on and on in intimate detail about things that had never even occurred to me before. Yet I still sounded like I was the world’s foremost expert on them: things like the difference between winners and losers, and the power of positive thinking, and being the master of your own destiny.

“Then I started getting technical, and I plunged into the art of selling—explaining how to open and close a sale; how to modulate the speed and tone of your voice to keep people interested; and the importance of being relentless, of not taking no for an answer and knocking on doors until their knuckles bled. ‘You owe it to yourselves!’ I said to them. ‘You owe it to yourselves, you owe it to your families, and, most importantly, you owe it to the people whose doors you’re knocking on, because the food is so amazing that every last person who buys from you will be eternally grateful!’

“I can’t overstimate how baffled I was at my own ability to speak like this. It was completely effortless; and the gratification was instant. I could see it in the eyes of every salesman there. They loved it, and they loved me. And the longer I spoke, the more they loved me.

“Over time, I found that giving meetings filled a hole inside me. It was simply the most amazing feeling ever; you can’t even begin to imagine.” I smiled sadly at the memory. “But, of course, like everything else, I became desensitized to it. Eventually, even at the height of Stratton, when I was giving meetings to a football field full of brokers, I no longer got the same rush from it. So the hole grew larger.” I paused, letting the implications of that sink in. Then I said, “So I turned to other things, like drugs and sex and living life on the edge. By the early nineties the word on Wall Street was that I had a death wish. But I never looked at it that way: I thought I was living life as it unfolded; putting one foot in front of the other and walking down a preordained path. But the path turned out to be the path to my own destruction, and it was being laid down by my own actions.”

No responses. The debriefing room was dead silent now. In fact, you could have heard a pin drop. I continued with my tale: “I still remember the looks on the salesmen’s faces as if it were yesterday. But the face that sticks out most is Elliot’s. He was totally mesmerized. He looked like he was getting ready to run out of the warehouse right that second and start knocking on doors. That’s how much the meeting affected him, and that’s how much it affected our relationship. You see, before that, we considered each other equals, but after the meeting we had a silent understanding that I would be the one calling the shots now.

“It was maybe two weeks later when I approached him with the idea of opening up our own meat-and-seafood company. ‘Why pay Great American twenty dollars a box,’ I said, ‘when we can go down to the meat market ourselves?’

“But the Penguin was so brainwashed, he actually said, ‘But what about the food? Where are we gonna get food as good as Great American’s?’”

I chuckled at the memory. “Can you imagine? I mean, this guy was so brainwashed that he’d actually convinced himself that Great American’s food was so good that he couldn’t go door to door without it. It was almost laughable. I mean, yeah, their food was good, but it was only good; it wasn’t great! The steaks were choice, not prime, and the fish was frozen, not fresh. So I had to deprogram the Penguin from the Great American cult.

“I let him down easy—sort of. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you, Penguin? The food is just average, for Chrissake! So get a fucking grip.’ Then I smiled at him warmly and said, ‘Listen, we’ll find even better steaks than Great American, and we’ll find fresher fish too. Then we’ll hire salesmen of our own—to go door to door for us—and then we’ll get rich!’

“That’s how Elliot and I got into the meat-and-seafood business. And we had the perfect plan: It was almost summertime, so we would sell ices during the day and tie up all the loose ends of our business venture at night. And with the money from the beach, we’d finance our meat-and-seafood company. We even brought in another beach vendor to partner up with us, our friend Paul Burton.” I motioned to my list again. “He’s on there too,” I said casually. “Paul was living with his mother at the time, in a big white house in Douglaston, Queens, and, by coincidence, the house had a big backyard, just perfect for a meat-and-seafood company. Or so we thought.

“See, despite Douglaston being a very upscale neighborhood, Paul’s house was a shithole. His mother had gotten it in a divorce, about twenty years earlier, and she hadn’t put a dime into it since. It was almost like a haunted house now, and the backyard was no better. It had a freestanding garage surrounded by nothing but dirt, about a half acre of it.” I smiled nostalgically. “Still, it was absolutely perfect for us. We were budding entrepreneurs, and starting out of a garage seemed very romantic. I mean, that’s how Steve Jobs and Michael Dell started. Or maybe it was from out of their dorm rooms. Either way, that was how the Penguin and I financed ourselves: Billionaires of Tomorrow!

“In fact, we even went to see an accountant to make sure we hadn’t missed anything!” I shrugged innocently. “And that’s where the problems started. He was a referral from Elliot’s father, who’s a Hasidic Jew. The accountant was also a Hasidic Jew, and apparently he had as much experience with the meat-and-seafood industry as he did with eating pork chops. And after we explained our business plan to him, he smiled and said, ‘Well, it sounds like you two are going to make a fortune together. Mazel tov!’ And then, for good measure, he added, ‘You’re going to be very rich young men soon; very, very rich.’

“Well, what was there to say to that? Elliot and I took his words to mean that we were in desperate need of tax write-offs. In fact, we went straight from the accountant’s office right to the Palm restaurant, where we spent four hundred fifty dollars on champagne and lobster. Then we leased ourselves two sports cars: I leased a Porsche and the Penguin leased a Lincoln Continental.” I rolled my eyes at the Penguin’s choice of automobile. “Then we got ourselves cell phones, despite the fact that, back then, cellular service was so ridiculously expensive that only a CEO of a Fortune Five Hundred company would dare own one.

“Still, it all made perfect sense to us: We were enterpreneurs, after all, which to our way of thinking entitled us to a few things. And with all the money we were saving by starting out in Paul’s backyard, we’d earned the right to lavish ourselves with a few basic luxuries. Then came opening day, September twenty-sixth, 1985. It seemed like as good a day as any to open up a meat-and-seafood company—although Mother Nature begged to differ. Or at least that’s what I surmised when Hurricane Gloria came smashing into Long Island and the eye passed right over Paul’s backyard. In fact, she dumped what amounted to thirty-two inches of rain on the backyard, because it happened to be at the bottom of four converging hills. And just like that, our little meat-and-seafood company became a gigantic fucking mud pit.” I shook my head in amazement. “We were out of business before we even started.”

“You never opened?” the Bastard said skeptically. “But in the Forbes article—”

The Witch cut off the Bastard. “According to Forbes you were in business for quite some time.” She cocked her head to the side and stared at me accusingly.

OCD shook his head. “I don’t think he meant literally, Michele.”

“Greg’s right,” I said, trying not to make enemies with the Witch. “Although, on a separate note, I will tell you that agreeing to the Forbes interview was one the biggest mistakes of my adult life. I was only twenty-eight, though, so I was a bit naive back then.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I thought I’d get a chance to tell my side of the story, to set the record straight. Stratton had been in business for only two years, so no one had even heard of us. But the woman who interviewed me stuck a tomahawk in my back, coining me a twisted version of Robin Hood, who robs from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers.“ I grimaced at the memory. “It was a nightmare, that article. A total fucking nightmare.”

“You lose brokers over it?” asked the Bastard.

“No,” I answered quickly, “the brokers loved bad press, especially that article. In fact, the day after it hit they came to work dressed in medieval garb, and they were running around screaming, ‘We’re your merry band! We’re your band!’” I chuckled at the memory. “What bothered me about the article, though, was the picture of me they used. It was horrendous.”

OCD smiled devilishly. “You mean the one with you standing next to the rusty drainpipe?” He let out an ironic chuckle. The Mormon added, “Yeah, the one where you have an evil smile!”

I shook my head in disgust. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “The rusty drainpipe, as if Stratton were going down the drain. I know all about it. The Forbes photographer fucked me over with that one; first he tricked me into going up to the roof, and then he casually asked me to stand next to the drainpipe.” I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t notice it at the time, because I was too busy worrying about my hair as he snapped a thousand and one pictures, waiting until he caught me at just the right moment, when I had this shit-eating grin on my face. And that was the picture they used.” I shook my head at my own naïveté. “And, of course, the article poked fun at my meat-and-seafood days—point being that I had no business being in the world of high finance, that I was a lowly meat salesman and nothing more. In fact, the title of the article was ‘Steaks, Stocks, What’s the Difference?’”

I looked at the Witch and said, “But you happen to be right, Michele. As the article pointed out, we did stay in business for a while, although I wouldn’t actually categorize it as being in business; it was more like playing catch-up ball or chasing your own tail.” I thought back for a moment. “After the hurricane was gone, Paul’s backyard was submerged under three feet of water. We spent the next two weeks digging ourselves out of the mud; then, out of nowhere, the backyard turned into a sinkhole and everything began to collapse—starting with the garage, then the patio, and then, eventually, the house itself. We called in a geologist to see if the house was on a previously unknown fault line, but it wasn’t.

“And we had other problems too. We’d bought a used freezer trailer—as old as the hills—figuring we could save a few bucks. But it was wildly inefficient and sucked enough power to electrify New Jersey. And, of course, the wiring in Paul’s house couldn’t handle the amperage”—I searched my memory for a moment—”and I think it was in early December when we nearly burned Paul’s house down.” I shrugged innocently. “That’s when his mother came marching into the backyard, with a rope tied around her waist so she wouldn’t sink into the center of the earth, and she screamed, ‘Get the fuck out! And take those stupid pickup trucks with you!’”

I smiled at the memory. “But Paul’s mother was a kind woman, and she gave us a full month to find a new warehouse. That seemed pretty reasonable at the time, although it turned out to be easier said than done. We had no credit history, and our balance sheet was a disaster, so all the better landlords rejected us.

“There were six of us at that point: Elliot, Paul, and me, and our three employees, starting with big Frank Bua, who at six foot five was the spitting image of the Gerber baby with a beard; then tiny George Barbella, who stood two inches above midget status and looked like the devil himself; and then we had an intractable steriod-head named Chucky Jones,† who looked like the Norse god Thor. He was only five foot four, though, so he looked like Thor after he’d been squashed.

“Not surprisingly, each of our employees had a serious dysfunction, although, in Frank’s case, it had more to do with his wife. She had a rare disease called alopecia totalis, which had caused all of her hair to fall out, even her eyebrows and eyelashes. She looked like a female Yul Brenner. George Barbella’s dysfunction was that he was completely obsessed with the food, even more so than Elliot. He used to walk around complaining how our shrimps had been glazed with water, to add weight to them. ‘When my customers cook them,’ he’d moan, ‘they turn from jumbos into micros.’” I shrugged innocently. “But glazing was standard industry procedure, so it wasn’t my fault. Anyway, what he really should’ve been concerned about was the food smelling like kerosene.”

The Bastard recoiled in his seat. “The food smelled like kerosene?”

“Sometimes,” I replied. “Paul’s garage didn’t have any heat, and by the time December rolled around we were nearly freezing to death. So we bought this giant kerosene heater, which looked like a torpedo on wheels. It did a fine job heating the place, although the thing burned hotter than the sun and was noisier than an F-15 on afterburners. And every so often it would misfire—belching out a thick cloud of smoke, which got on the food. Still, it was better than freezing to death.” I paused, taking a sip of water. “And then there was Chucky’s dysfunction, which was, among other things, pulling his pants down in the garage and injecting himself in the ass with testosterone. But on the bright side, he had a terrific sense of humor and gave each of us nicknames: Frank Bua was the Gerber Baby; George Barbella was Tattoo, named after the midget from Fantasy Island; and Paul Burton was Cinema Head, because he had an enormous forehead, which, according to Chucky, was large enough to project a movie on.”

They already knew Elliot’s nickname. I was about to offer up mine when OCD smiled and said, “Elliot was the Penguin. What was your nickname?” He narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “Let me guess: You were Napoleon, right?”

Fucking asshole! I thought. The Duchess used to call me Napoleon when she was trying to annoy me! She even made me dress up as that little bastard for Halloween once. Had OCD heard about that? I mean, was it really that obvious to everyone that I had a Napoleon complex? Or had he just guessed? Well, it didn’t really matter.

I was about to tell OCD to fuck off when the Mormon saved me the trouble. “Look who’s talking!” snapped the Mormon, and he started chuckling, as did the Witch and the Bastard. The unspoken message was: OCD and the Wolf of Wall Street both have Napoleon complexes! Magnum, however, hadn’t laughed, refusing to mock another man’s stature; after all, he was the size of two full-grown men, and to make fun of a pint-size one would have been inappropriate.

Before OCD had a chance to pull his gun on the Mormon, I said to him, “You’re partially right, Greg, at least about Elliot. But his nickname wasn’t just the Penguin; it was the Suicidal Penguin. See, we were already on the verge of bankruptcy by then, and Elliot was on the verge of suicide. So Chucky used to waddle around the office with his index finger to his temple and his thumb sticking up, as if he were getting ready to blow his own brains out. ‘Hi, I’m the Suicidal Penguin,’ he’d chirp, ‘and I deliver meat and seafood to local restaurants. I have an overorder on my truck and can’t get back to the freezer,’ and he’d keep saying it over and over again, as he waddled around the garage, flapping his arms like a migrating penguin. ‘Help me! Help me!’ he’d chirp. ‘Hurricane Gloria pissed all over me and the kerosene heater is suffocating me and the Gerber Baby’s wife looks like a space alien and Cinema Head’s mother is closing down our movie theater and…’” I started chuckling. “He was really something else, Chucky, and then, one day-poof!—he was gone. Vanished like a fart in the wind. It turned out he was robbing liquor stores at night. Last I heard of him was when two NYPD detectives came by the garage, trying to ascertain his last-known whereabouts. He’s probably dead by now, either that or he’s doing stand-up comedy somewhere.”

“So what was your nickname?” asked the Witch, compressing her thin lips until they all but disappeared. I smiled and said, “I got off easy, Michele. Chucky called me J.P., which was short for J. P. Morgan. See, Chucky never made fun of me. He believed in me, and he loved the meetings. After each meeting he would pull me aside and say, ‘What the fuck are you doing with this business? It’s beneath you. You’re the sharpest guy I know, J.P….’ And he’d tell me to cut Cinema Head and the Penguin loose. ‘They’re holding you back,’ he’d say. ‘You’re J. P. Morgan, and they’re smalltime bunko artists.’” I paused, thinking back on his advice. “He happened to be right on target with Paul; he was much too lazy to sell door to door. And he was also right about our company; going door to door with a pickup truck was a fool’s errand, totally fucking ludicrous.

“But he was wrong about Elliot. The Penguin was a winner, in the truest sense of the word. No one worked harder than him, and he was completely loyal to me. We would go on to make a fortune together, although not in the meat-and-seafood business. It would be on Wall Street. First we needed to be taught a few more lessons in humility.”

I took a deep breath and said, “It was sometime in late December when we finally hit bottom. We were literally out of money, and Paul’s mother was threatening to call the sheriff. All seemed lost; all options had been exhausted. And then something incredible happened, something entirely unexpected. I’d just gotten back to the garage from another torturous day in the field, when the Penguin said to me: ‘I got a strange call today from one of our meat suppliers. They asked me what terms we wanted.’ He shrugged, as if confused. ‘I didn’t know what they were talking about, so I told them I’d think about it and get back to them.’

“‘What does terms mean?’ I asked. ‘Terms for our surrender?’ to which the Suicidal Penguin shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I’m not really sure, but what’s the difference? The freezer’s empty, and we don’t have money to buy food. We’re out of business.’”

I paused, smirking at how unsophisticated we’d once been. We hadn’t the slightest idea that our suppliers would be willing to ship us food on credit. It seemed like an outlandish concept that they’d be willing to go out on a limb like that, but, as I was about to learn, it was standard operating procedure: Everyone gave credit. The business lingo was terms, which was short for terms for payment.

With a hint of mischief in my tone, I said, “Once I found out that our suppliers would be dumb enough to ship us food on credit, I quickly saw a way out. It was simple: Grow like wildfire. Take on as much credit as possible and push the payment terms as far out into the future as I could. Then buy as many pickup trucks as possible, all of them with no money down—which you could do if you were willing to pay twenty-four percent interest. But I wasn’t concerned about the monthly payments, because the more trucks I had on the road, the more food I would sell and the better my cash flow would be.

“In other words, since my suppliers were giving me thirty days to pay for the food while my customers were paying me every day, as long as I kept selling more and more, my cash flow would continue to improve. Even if I weren’t making a dime on a sale, I would still be generating cash, using the thirty days of float.”

The Bastard said quickly, “It’s Business 101.”

Yeah, right! I thought cynically. The Bastard couldn’t possibly appreciate the dark art of juggling cash flow! (He was far too honest.) Perhaps he understood the simple math of it, but there were so many devilish strategies to employ, especially in the endgame, when your creditors were circling and your balance sheet was bleeding red ink faster than a hemophiliac with a gunshot wound. It would take a month to explain all the scummy nuances to someone like the Bastard.

On the other hand, Elliot and I quickly became Jedi Masters at the art and then just as quickly we crossed over to the dark side-finding every way possible to juggle cash flow. My favorite was reverse financial extortion, during which you’d turn the tables on an angry supplier by explaining to him that the only shot he had of getting paid back was to accept a small payment on an old invoice in return for extending you more credit; that one worked like a charm. And then there was the old one-signature-check trick, where I’d give a supplier a check with either my or Elliot’s signature missing, which would cause the bank to return it for improper endorsement, as opposed to insufficient funds. Of course, we were always careful to alert the bank manager about this check, lest he mistakenly try to clear it and it bounced like a kangaroo.

And there were other tricks too, but none of them was the Bastard’s business. So all I said was, “Exactly; it’s Business 101, Joel. Before I knew it, I had twenty-six trucks on the road, a legitimate warehouse, and a whole lot of money in the bank. Of course, my balance sheet was a total wreck, although I refused to focus on that. Instead, I relished giving sales meetings to twenty-six nitwits, most of whom were addicted to either crack or smack or were certified alcoholics.

“Still, at least I was the proud owner of a seemingly successful meat-and-seafood company. And all my friends were really impressed with me; they all thought I was a first-rate entrepreneur.” I shrugged innocently. “That’s when I met Kenny Greene; he came to work for me in the meat business.”

“Really?” said OCD. “I didn’t know that.”

I nodded slowly, wondering why Kenny Greene hadn’t been indicted along with Danny and me. He was the third partner at Stratton, although he hadn’t been associated with the firm since we’d settled our SEC case four years ago. Still, he’d been a twenty-percent partner up to that point, as had Danny (I owned the other sixty percent). He’d made tens of millions of dollars and had broken as many laws as we had. It seemed highly illogical (and also a tad unfair) that he’d escaped OCD’s wrath—unless he’d been cooperating all along!

I chose to keep those thoughts to myself, and I said, “He was a referral from one of my friends from college, a guy named Jeff Honigman. He and Kenny were first cousins.” I motioned to my villains, thieves, and scoundrels list. “Jeff’s on there too, although most of his dirty deeds took place after he left Stratton, when he was working for Victor Wang, at Duke Securities.” Once more, I motioned to the list. “Victor’s on there too, somewhere close to the top, just above Kenny’s name.” I wondered if they were aware of what a truly depraved maniac Victor Wang was. “In fact, Victor worked for me in the meat-and-seafood business too, although only for about an hour. He was too proud and too lazy to actually take a truck out and go door to door; he just showed up to listen to one of my sales meetings. And, of course, I still remember the first time I laid eyes on Victor.” I started chuckling at the memory.

The Mormon chimed in: “How could you forget, right?”

I nodded in agreement. “Right, how could anyone forget? He’s basically the biggest Chinaman to ever walk the planet. He’s got a chest the size of the Great Wall, slits for eyes, a brow ridge like a rock ledge, and a head that’s larger than a giant panda’s.” I paused, catching my breath. “You know, I don’t know if all of you have seen Victor, but he’s the spitting image of Oddjob, from the James Bond movie Goldfinger. Remember Oddjob? He’s the one who killed people by throwing his hat at them—”

“What’s your point?” said the Bastard, shaking his head.

I shrugged. “No point, really, other than that Kenny and Victor were childhood friends who dealt drugs together back in high school—both of them, I might add, being backed by Kenny’s mother, Gladys. But I refuse to give you any information about Gladys; she might try to kick my ass.” I smiled ruefully. “In fact, the last time someone got under Glady’s skin was at a bowling alley. I think she ended up tossing the guy for a strike. Or maybe it was in a supermarket, where she knocked out a woman in the express line. Either way, if you’d ever actually seen Gladys it wouldn’t really surprise you.” I nodded my head three times, for emphasis. “There’s not an ounce of fat on her, and her gut could stop an English musket ball fired at more than twenty paces. Know the type?” I raised my eyebrows.

Nothing but blank expressions, punctuated by silence. I soldiered on: “Anyway, Gladys belongs on that list too, although I assume you’re not interested in her, right?” I crossed my fingers.

“Right,” the Bastard said tonelessly. “We’re not interested in her. Why don’t you get back to the meat business.”

I nodded, relieved. “Fair enough; but just so you know, this whole Kenny-Gladys-Victor triangle leads right back to your earlier question about where the first wave of Strattonites came from. Kenny and Victor both grew up in Jericho. Kenny was a pot dealer and Victor was a coke dealer, and Gladys was their backer.” I paused, then added, “But her motives were pure, of course. I mean, you know, she was just trying to keep the family afloat after Kenny’s father died of cancer. It was all very sad.” I shrugged, hoping Gladys could somehow hear my words and would choose not to beat me up if we crossed paths. “Anyway, out of the first wave of Strattonites, about half came from Jericho and Syosset—which are sister towns—and virtually all of them had been clients of Kenny and Victor. That’s how Stratton was able to grow so quick; even before we gained a reputation as a place for kids to get rich, I had dozens of them lining up at my door. And then they’d move to Bayside to join the cult.

“But let me take things in order: Kenny worked at the meat company for only one day, at which point he crashed up one of my trucks and then never called me again, or at least not until I was out of the meat business. And Victor, as I said, never worked there at all; he just showed up once to listen to one of my sales meetings and he never came back.

“In the meantime, my business was on the verge of imploding.” I shook my head slowly, preparing myself to relive the dreaded memory. “You can only play the cash-flow game for so long before it reverses itself on you. In our case, the reversal started in January of 1987. It was a ferocious winter, and sales had plunged through the floor. Cash flow, of course, had plunged with it. I gave meeting upon meeting, desperately trying to motivate the salesmen to go out and sell, but it was no use. It was too cold, and sales came to a grinding halt.

“And by the very nature of the cash-flow game, that’s when the boomerang came flying back the hardest. Remember, it’s Business 101, Joel. When you’re growing on credit, today’s bills are for things you sold thirty days ago or, in our case, sixty days ago, because we were already thirty days behind on our bills.” I paused, then corrected myself. “Actually, we were ninety days behind on most of our bills, but we were no longer doing business with those companies; they’d already cut us off, so we’d been forced to move on to more-fertile pastures—meaning, new suppliers who hadn’t caught wind of the fact that we didn’t pay our bills.

“But that part of the game was over now too. Word was out that we were a bad credit risk and shouldn’t be shipped to unless we paid cash up front. Meanwhile, Elliot and I were still trying to keep things afloat. We’d exhausted our personal credit cards, and every day we were falling deeper and deeper into debt. We hadn’t paid our truck leases, our cell-phone bills, our car leases. And our new landlord, a Syrian bastard, had an eviction order against us and was making us pay double rent until we were current.”

I shook my head slowly, still amazed at how deep a financial hole we’d dug for ourselves. Then I said, “It was right around that time, in the winter of ‘87, when I started hearing rumors about a kid from my neighborhood named Michael Falk. He’d landed a job on Wall Street straight out of college—right around the same time I was starting dental school—and he was supposedly making over a million dollars a year.” I paused for effect. “At first I didn’t believe it. I mean, growing up, Michael Falk was not a sharp kid. In fact, he was more like the neighborhood loser, someone everyone else made fun of for not taking a shower. He wasn’t quick or bright or well spoken or anything else, for that matter. He was just average, nothing more. So I figured it was bullshit, that there was no way he could be making that sort of money.

“Then, one day, by sheer coincidence, he came pulling up to my apartment building, driving a convertible Ferrari. Thankfully he was kind enough to condescend to me, and he explained that all the rumors were true—yes, he said matter-of-factly, he was on pace to make over $1.5 million this year, and last year he’d made almost a million. We spoke for a few more minutes, during which time I lied incessantly—explaining how well I was doing in the meat-and-seafood business, pointing to my little red Porsche as proof of that fact. He shrugged his shoulders and mentioned something about chartering a hundred-foot yacht off the Bahamas with a bunch of blond models—ironically, one of whom would become my second wife one day. And then he was off, smoothly, immaculately, and with a puff of expensive Italian exhaust fumes in my face, which at that very moment was a mixture of awe and astonishment.”

I let out a few chuckles. “Anyway, I can tell you that I had never been so affected by a single encounter in my entire life. I remember watching his Ferrari pull away and saying to myself: ‘If that guy can make a million bucks a year, then I can make fifty million a year!’” I paused, letting those words sink in. “It turned out to be an uncanny prediction, don’t you think?” Then I quickly added, “Although I guess I failed to predict the other half of the equation: that I’d be facing a couple of hundred years in jail”—I locked eyes with the Witch—”as well as the eternal damnation of my soul.

“Anyway, I was living with my first wife, Denise, back then, although she wasn’t actually my wife yet. We were sharing a tiny apartment in a yuppie-infested apartment building in Bayside called the Bay Club. That’s where I first met Danny Porush. He was living upstairs from me, although at the time I hadn’t met him yet. I’d seen him around from time to time, but we’d never really spoken.” I shrugged. “It’s funny, but I remember always thinking how normal he looked, as if he were the perfect yuppie. In fact, he and his wife, Nancy, were the pictures of success and happiness. They even looked alike! But, of course, I didn’t know at the time that the two of them were first cousins. And I also had no idea that Nancy’s sole mission in life was to torture Danny—to make his life as miserable and as difficult as possible—and that Danny, despite his normal appearance, was completely off his rocker, spending the bulk of his day holed up in a Harlem crack den, smoking his latest business venture into cocaine-induced bankruptcy.

“But I’m jumping ahead here. I still wouldn’t meet Danny for another year. Getting back to Michael Falk: It was that same afternoon when I told Denise about my little run-in with this erstwhile loser. When I was done, no words were necessary. Denise just looked at me with her big brown eyes and nodded slowly, and that was that. We both knew right then and there that my destiny was Wall Street. I was the most talented salesman in the world; she knew it and I knew it. My mistake was that I’d picked the wrong product to sell.”

“How were you able to get a job as a stockbroker?” asked the Bastard. “Your degree’s in biology and you were just coming off a bankruptcy. Why would someone hire you?”

“I was able to get my foot in the door through a friend of my parents, a man named Bob Cohen. He was a mid-level manager at LF Rothschild, and he had enough clout to get me an interview. And from there I sold myself. I went out and bought myself a cheap blue suit, and then two days after that I found myself sitting on the express bus on my way to Manhattan for a job interview. Meanwhile, Denise was sitting at home waiting for a tow truck to come and repossess our Porsche—which it did—right about the same time I was getting myself hired as a stockbroker trainee at LF Rothschild.”

Then I smiled sadly and said, “And after that, my next stop was to my meat company, where I dropped the bomb on Elliot.” I paused for a moment, thinking back. “I still remember this day like it was yesterday, the bittersweetness of it, the mixed emotions I felt. As happy as I was about my future, I was sad about parting ways with Elliot. He was like a brother to me. We’d been partners since our mid-teens. We’d been through a wall of fire together-digging trucks out of the mud and knocking on doors until our knuckles bled. And now we were going our separate ways.

“The warehouse, of course, was a complete wreck. We were surrounded by broken-down trucks and empty boxes, and the freezer was a total disgrace. The door was wide open, and there wasn’t a stitch of food inside. Thick layers of frost were growing out of the freezer, like fungus. It served as a grim reminder of how badly we’d mismanaged things. I remember my self-confidence being shattered.

“With a heavy heart, I said to Elliot: ‘I’m sorry I’m leaving, but this is something I gotta do. I gotta give Wall Street a shot. The money that people are making down there is staggering, Elliot. Truly staggering.’

“‘I know that,’ he answered quickly, ‘but I couldn’t imagine sitting behind a desk all day. Everything is done over the phone. You’ll be cold-calling people you never met before, trying to get them to send money. It doesn’t make sense to me….’ “

I shook my head slowly. “You know, it might sound funny now, but I remember thinking the exact same thing—that it was inconceivable that someone I’d never met before would send in hundreds of thousands of dollars, based on a phone call. Not to mention the fact that I’d be calling people from all over the country. I mean, what were the chances that a complete stranger from Texas would be insane enough to send me half a million dollars of his hard-earned money without ever laying eyes on me? Yet I still had the image of Michael Falk burning on my brain. The simple fact was that kids were making fortunes on Wall Street. Wall Street was where I belonged.”

The Witch chimed in: “So Elliot didn’t want to come with you?”

I shook my head. “Believe it or not, he didn’t. He wanted to stay in the meat-and-seafood business and give it another shot. He figured he could make money as a one-man show, staying lean and mean.” I thought for a moment. “Don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t like I actually offered him a job or anything; it wasn’t in my power to. But I did ask him if he’d be interested in coming down for a job interview if I could arrange it. But, again, he said no.” I shrugged sadly.

“I arrived home that evening carless, penniless, and personally bankrupt. And you know what? I couldn’t have given a shit. I was a Wall Streeter now, and that was all that mattered. And the fact that my pay was only one hundred dollars a week didn’t bother me a bit. I had hope—hope for the future, which is the greatest hope of all.”

I paused and spent a few moments studying the faces of my captors, wondering what they were thinking about, what they thought of me. And while it was impossible to say, I had a sneaky suspicion that they were more confused than ever. Not about my story but about what made a guy like me tick.

In any event, this morning was just a warm-up. The juicy stuff— the hookers, the drugs, the wanton lawlessness—was still a day or two away. With that thought, I looked at OCD and said, “You think we could take lunch now? It’s almost one, and I’m getting kind of hungry.”

“Absolutely,” OCD said warmly. “There’re some pretty good places on Reade Street. It’s less than a two-minute walk.”

The Bastard nodded in agreement. “It’s been a very productive morning. You’ve earned yourself a good lunch.”

“Indeed,” snapped the Witch. “You’ve afforded us a rare glimpse into the criminal’s mind.”

I offered her a dead smile in return. “Well, I’m glad you feel that way, Michele, because I’m eager to please.”

^{CHAPTER 8} STINKOSLOVAKIA

After chirping like a canary for more than seven hours, day one of singing on Court Street had finally come to a close. I had gotten as far as my first day as a licensed stockbroker, which, by sheer coincidence, was October 19, 1987, the day of the Great Stock Market Crash. My four captors, as well as my own attorney, had found great irony in that. After all, between my first day of dental school, my first day in the meat business, and my first day on Wall Street, I seemed to have the Midas touch, in reverse: Everything I touched turned to shit.

Yet, on the flipside of that, there was no denying that I had a certain resilience to me. The way Magnum had put it, if someone were to flush me down a toilet bowl I would come out the other side holding a plumber’s license. And while Magnum’s words had been greatly appreciated, I was completely certain that there was no plumber’s license waiting for me on the other side of this toilet bowl.

Right now I was in the limousine again, on my way to Old Brookville, where I would place myself back under house arrest, reduced once more to a prisoner within my own home as well as an emotional piñata for the Duchess to swat around. As always, the babbling Pakistani was behind the wheel, but he hadn’t uttered a word since we’d left Sunset Park thirty minutes ago, when I’d threatened to cut his tongue off if he didn’t stop talking.

At this moment we were on the Long Island Expressway, somewhere near the Queens-Long Island border. It was the tail end of rush hour, at that hour of dusk where the streetlights come on but make little difference. As we crawled along at a snail’s pace, I stared out the window, lost in thought.

The Great Crash of 1987 was the pivotal point of my life, an exceptional happening from which all other happenings would unfold. The Dow had dropped 508 points that Black Monday in a single trading session, sending the longest bull market in modern history to a screeching halt.

In truth, I had been nothing more than a casual observer, not just of the crash but also of the fabulous run-up that preceded it. In the summer of 1982, in the wake of slashed income-tax rates and plummeting interest rates, runaway inflation had finally been tamed, and Reagonomics was the rage of the day. Money had become cheap, causing the stock market to catch fire. Michael Milken had just invented junk bonds, turning Corporate America upside down on its ear. Hostile raiders like Ronald Perelman and Henry Kravis, a new breed of financial celebrity armed with war chests of cash raised by Milken’s junk bonds, were becoming household names. One by one, they were bringing America’s largest corporations to their knees through hostile takeovers. TWA, Revlon, RJR Nabisco… who would be next?

By October of ‘87 the euphoria had reached its peak, as the Dow crossed the 2,400 mark. The era of the yuppie was in full swing, and there was no end in sight. And as the Michael Falks of the world raked in the dough, people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were changing the world. It was the dawn of the Information Age, and it hit with the force of an atomic bomb. Lightning-fast computers were appearing on every desktop; they were powerful, intuitive, and they had shrunk the world to a global village.

For Wall Street, this opened vast possibilities: Faster computers yielded massive increases in trading volume, as well as cutting-edge financial products and novel trading strategies. The financial products, called derivatives, allowed large institutions to hedge their investment portfolios like never before, and the trading strategies, the most exciting of which was called portfolio insurance, began fueling the buying frenzy itself.

In a financial farce of Kafkaesque proportions, portfolio insurance caused advances in the Dow to stimulate computers to spit out massive buy orders for derivatives, which then caused the Dow to advance even further, which stimulated those very same computers to spit out even more buy orders for derivatives… and on and on it went. Theoretically, it could have gone on forever.

Actually, it couldn’t have, because the two numnuts who’d invented portfolio insurance had programmed a fail-safe mechanism into the software. In other words, after a certain level of price increases the computers said, “Wait a second—there’s something rotten in Denmark! We’d better sell all the stock in our portfolios as fast as our silicone wafers will allow!”

That’s when the problems started. In a real-life version of The Terminator, computers turned on their masters and began spewing out endless waves of sell orders at the speed of light. At first, the market declined sharply; that was bad. But, alas, the computers kept right on selling, and by midday, the volume was so enormous that the computers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange couldn’t keep up. And that was tragic, because just like that everything came to a grinding halt.

Meanwhile, stockbrokers, being stockbrokers, stopped answering their phones, thinking: What’s the fucking point of listening to my irate clients scream, “Sell, God damn it! Sell!” when there’re no buyers around to sell to? So instead of holding their clients’ hands and telling them everything would be okay, they leaned back in their seats and put their crocodile shoes up on their desktops and let their telephones ring off the hook. By four p.m., the Dow had plunged twenty-two percent, half a trillion dollars had vanished into thin air, investor confidence had been shattered, and the era of the yuppie had officially come to a close.

Now, more than a decade later, as I’d recounted those events to my captors, I felt strangely detached from them, as if the young man who’d lived through all that—some poor schnook named Jordan Belfort—was a complete stranger to me, someone whose life story I had been narrating in the first person for the sake of simplicity. And odder still was how I had conveniently omitted the personal impact those events had had on me, especially when it came to my marriage to my first wife, Denise, who I’d wed three months prior to the crash. We were both broker than broke. Yet we knew that success was right around the corner. So we had hope and we had faith—until the crash.

And that was where I’d left off: Jordan Belfort had just left the boardroom of LF Rothschild with despair in his heart and his tail between his legs. He was a broken twenty-five-year-old with one personal bankruptcy under his belt and a license to sell stocks that had suddenly become worthless.

Ironically, inside the debriefing room I had grown disturbingly comfortable as the day wore on. Losing myself in the past had allowed me to block out the pain of the present, especially my sense of loss regarding the Duchess. And despite the fact that I knew I was ratting, the information I’d provided was strictly historic-sketching only broad strokes about things marginally illegal. The ninety-seven people on my villains, thieves, and scoundrels list still seemed reasonably safe.

Then the Bastard burst my bubble.

It was a few minutes before five when Joel had said, “We need to put the history lesson on hold for a while. We’re fighting a time clock with your cooperation…” and then he went on to explain that there was only so long my esteemed status as a rat could be kept secret. There were telltale signs when someone was cooperating, starting with the court record, which in my case would be conspicuously dull. In other words, there were certain motions filed when a defendant was taking a case to trial, motions that wouldn’t be filed if he was singing on Court Street.

In practical terms, explained the Bastard, there would be two distinct aspects to my cooperation: historical ratting and proactive ratting. Up until now I had been engaged only in the former. Now, however, the Bastard had asked me to make a recorded phone call to one of the soon-to-be-sorry souls on my villains, thieves, and scoundrels list. And, the Bastard had chosen of all people, my loyal and trusted accountant, Dennis Gaito, aka the Chef.

Dennis Gaito was, indeed, a chef, although not in the traditional sense of the word. It was a nickname born out of love and affection and one that had been earned as a result of his natural propensity to cook the books. He was a man’s man, calm, cool, collected. He lived for world-class golf courses, Cuban cigars, fine wines, first-class travel, and enlightened conversation, especially when it had to do with figuring out ways to fuck over the IRS and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which seemed to be his life’s foremost mission.

In his mid-fifties now, the Chef had been cooking the books since the early seventies, while I was still in grade school, cutting his teeth under the watchful eye of Bob Brennan, one of the greatest stock jockeys of all time. Bob’s nickname was the Blue-eyed Devil—a testament to his steel-blue eyes, devilish trading strategies, and the icy-cool blood that ran through his veins, which was rumored to be two degrees cooler than liquid nitrogen.

The Blue-eyed Devil was the founder of First Jersey Securities, which in the late seventies and early eighties had been a penny-stock operation of unprecedented scope and scale. The Chef had been the Devil’s accountant, as well as his chief confidant. As a team, they were legendary, leaving a swarthy trail of unadulterated stock fraud in their wake. And unlike most penny-stock guys, the Blue-eyed Devil had walked away with all the marbles, nearly a quarter billion of them.

Therein lay the rub: The Blue-eyed Devil had gotten away with it. He’d outwitted the regulators every step of the way, and there was nothing that the Bastard wanted more than the head of the Blue-eyed Devil on a platter.

Just then the voice of Monsoir snapped me back to the present. “This traffic is brutal!” he declared. “It is a wonder we will ever make it back to Brookville. Don’t you think, boss?”

“Monsoir,” I said gently, “you happen to be a damn good driver. You never call in sick, you never get lost, and, being a Muslim and all, I don’t think you can even drink!” I nodded in admiration. “That’s why I have two kind words for you.”

“Oh, yeah, boss, what’s that?”

“Fuck—off!” I snarled, and I pushed a button on the overhead console and watched the babbling Pakistani’s head disappear behind a felt-covered divider. I stared at the rich blue felt for a good few seconds, and my eyes lit on three gold-colored letters—an N, a J, and a B—which stood for Jordan and Nadine Belfort. The letters had been embroidered onto the felt, in 18-karat-gold thread, written in Gothic-style script. What a fucking mockery! I thought. Such reckless spending! Such wanton excess! And all so meaningless now….

My mind went roaring back to the Blue-eyed Devil and the Chef. In truth, I hadn’t really danced with the Devil, so I couldn’t implicate him in any wrongdoing, at least not directly. The Chef, however, was a different story. We had cooked up a thousand nefarious schemes together, too many to even count. Ironically, I had decided to exclude him from my Swiss activities, fearful at the time that his relationship with the Blue-eyed Devil would bring heat to me.

Alas, four years later—which is to say, a few hours ago—the Bastard and OCD had found this exclusion difficult to swallow. It made no sense, the Bastard argued. “Why would you keep the Chef out of this?” he’d asked skeptically. “You include him in everything else and leave him out of this? It doesn’t jive—unless, of course, you did include him and you’re just trying to protect him!” With that, the Bastard had pulled out a stack of old travel records relating to a trip I’d taken to Switzerland back in the summer of 1995, and, by no coincidence, it was a trip the Chef had accompanied me on. Even more incriminating was that after we’d departed Switzerland, rather than flying back to the United States, we made a brief pit stop behind the former Iron Curtain, in Czechoslovakia. According to the Bastard’s records, we’d stayed there for less than eighteen hours, literally flying in and out. Something about that didn’t sit right with the Bastard; after all, for what possible reason would we do that, other than to drop off cash or open a secret account or cook up a scheme? Whatever we’d done, the Bastard knew I was hiding something, and he wanted to know what it was.

Meanwhile, I could only scratch my head. The Bastard was so far off the mark it was literally mind-boggling. Having no other choice, though, I recounted that excursion in intimate detail, starting with Switzerland, explaining that my sole purpose for being there was to do damage control. I had been trying to wind down the latest in a series of horrific debacles, the sum of which had landed me in the room in which I was now sitting. This particular debacle had to do with the untimely death of the Duchess’s lovely aunt Patricia, who, unbeknownst to the Duchess, I’d recruited into the heart of my money-laundering scheme.

I had convinced my wife’s favorite aunt—a sixty-five-year-old retired British schoolteacher who’d never broken a single law in her entire life—to break more than a thousand of them in one swift swoop, by acting as my Swiss nominee. And the moment she agreed, I began stashing millions of dollars in numbered accounts tied to her name. Then, without warning, she died of a stroke, throwing those millions into limbo.

At first I’d thought her death would cause me great problems, the most obvious of which was that my money would be tied up in the seedy underbelly of the Swiss banking system for all eternity. But I had been wrong, because the Swiss were adept at such matters. To them, the death of a nominee was a huge positive, something to which one cracks open a bottle of champagne. After all, the best nominee is a dead nominee, or so I was told by my blubbery Swiss trustee, Roland Franks,† an affable three-hundred pounder with a voracious appetite for sweets and an unworldly gift for creating forged documents that supported a notion of plausible deniability. And when I had asked my Master Forger why that was so, he shrugged his fat shoulders and said, “Because dead men tell no tales, my young friend, nor do dead aunts!”

Meanwhile, as I had recounted all this sordidness to my captors, I had focused in on the fact that the Chef and I weren’t alone on the trip; we’d brought company with us, in the form of Danny Porush, my erstwhile partner-in-crime, and Andy Greene, my loyal and trusted attorney, who was better known as Wigwam.

I had freely admitted that Danny had been my partner in all this. “He’s as guilty as I am,” I’d declared to the Bastard, and then I swore to him that Wigwam and the Chef had had no part in it. They were merely coming along for the ride to Czechoslovakia, I said, which was our next stop on the trip. Neither of them knew that Danny and I had already smuggled money to Switzerland; they just thought we were there to scope things out for future reference.

By this point in the story, the Bastard and OCD seemed to be buying into it, so I plunged into the next leg of our excursion, to Czechoslovakia, explaining how our venture there was part of a failed attempt to corner the market in Czech vouchers, which the new government had recently issued to its citizens as a means of privatizing the economy. Yet, beyond that, I found myself unable to come completely clean with my captors. After all, what had transpired in Czechoslovakia was so utterly decadent that they would never have understood. So, instead, I gave them a calmer, more watered-down version of things, lest they view me as a complete social deviant, who was not worthy of a 5K letter. It was only now, two hours later, that I could fully relish the insanity that had defined that leg of the journey.

It had all started inside the private jet, which was a Gulfstream III. Like all Gulfstreams, this one had a plush, roomy cabin finished in mellow beige tones. The seats were as big as thrones, and the twin Rolls-Royce engines had been fitted with the latest Hushkits, making the ride so quiet that all you could hear was the gentle hum of turbofans as air swept past the fuselage at 550 knots.

It was early evening, and we were high above southern Poland, although I was a good deal higher than that. But I wasn’t nearly as high as Danny, who was sitting across from me and had completely lost the power of speech. He was in the latter half of the drool phase, which is to say, he was at that point of his high where he could no longer get the words out without a river of saliva dripping down his chin.

“Iz iz guz zehnzamea!” he exclaimed, with a thick gush of saliva. Over the last two hours he’d consumed four Quaaludes, nearly a pint of Macallan’s single-malt scotch, twenty milligrams of Valium, and a two-gram rock of Bolivian marching powder, which he’d Hoovered up his nostrils through a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill. Then, about ten seconds ago, he’d taken a hit from a thick joint of Northern California sinsemilla, which led me to believe that what he had been trying to say was: “This is good sinsemilla!”

As always, I found it literally mind-boggling how normal Danny looked. What with his short blond hair, average build, and boiling white teeth, he gave off a wonderfully WASPy whiff, the sort of whiff you would expect from a man who could trace his genealogy back to the Mayflower. He was dressed casually this evening, in a pair of tan cotton golf pants and matching short-sleeve polo shirt. Over his pale-blue eyes he wore a pair of conservative horn-rimmed glasses that made him look that much more refined, that much WASPier.

Yet, with all this WASPiness, Danny Porush was a purebred Jew who could trace his roots back to a tiny kibbutz near Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, like many a Jew before him, he tried to be mistaken for a blue-blooded WASP—hence, those wonderfully WASPy glasses, which had clear lenses in them.

Meanwhile, the interior of the cabin looked like a flying DEA seizure locker. Between Danny and me, on a mahogany foldout table, a brown leather Louis Vuitton shower bag was overflowing with a fabulous medley of dangerous recreational drugs—a half ounce of sinsemilla, sixty pharmaceutical Quaaludes, some bootleg uppers, some bootleg downers, a sandwich bag full of cocaine, a dozen hits of Ecstasy, and then the safe stuff, from the doctors: a vial of Xanax, a vial of morphine, some Valiums and Restorils and Somas and Vicodins, and some Ambiens and Ativans and Klonopins, as well as a half-consumed pack of Heineken and a mostly consumed bottle of Macallan’s to wash things down. Pretty soon, though, all the nonprescription stuff would be gone, shoved up our collective assholes or buried deep beneath our scrotal sacs, as we negotiated our way through Czech Customs.

My trusted attorney, Wigwam, was sitting to Danny’s right. He was also dressed casually, although, in his case, he also wore his perpetually glum expression and horrendous-looking toupee. It was mud brown in color, a poor match to his pale complexion, and had the consistency of desiccated straw. In fact, despite the Iron Curtain coming down four years earlier, it was still a safe bet that his horrific hairpiece would draw some second looks from the Czechs.

In any event, Wigwam was buzzed too, although, as our attorney, he was held to a higher standard. He understood that he was not to get sloppy until after we’d finished dealing with the Czechs. So he’d gone heavy on the coke and light on the Ludes. It was an inspired strategy that made perfect psychotropic sense; after all, taking a Quaalude was like drinking three bottles of grain alcohol on an empty stomach, while snorting cocaine was like consuming eight thousand cups of coffee intravenously. The former made you sleepy and sloppy, while the latter made you pumped up and paranoid. Insofar as business was concerned, it was more effective to be pumped up and paranoid than sleepy and sloppy. But, alas, Wigwam had accidentally snorted himself into a coke-induced paranoia.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Wigwam muttered. “This cabin reeks of skunk weed! Can’t you put that shit out, Danny? I mean… we’re… we’re… we’re”—spit it out, Wigwam-“we’re gonna end up in Czech jail, for Chrissake!” He paused, wiping the beads of sweat that had formed on his pale, paranoid brow. He was actually good-looking, in a boyish sort of way. He was average height, with fine, even features, although he had a bit of a paunch going. “I’m gonna get disbarred,” he moaned. “I know it. Ughhhhhhh….” It was a paranoid drug groan, and as soon as he’d finished groaning he put his toupee in his hands and shook his egg-shaped skull in despair.

The Chef was sitting to my left, and he was straight as an arrow. In fact, he’d never done a drug in his entire life—being that rare breed of man who could surround himself with world-class drug addicts and be entirely okay with it. The Chef was handsome, in a striking sort of way, like a trimmed-down version of Mr. Clean. He was completely bald on top, with a prominent forehead, a very square jaw, piercing brown eyes, an aquiline nose, and an infectious smile.

The Chef was a born-and-bred New Jerseyite, who could lay his Jersey accent on real thick, especially when the occasion called for it, as it did now. “Whaddaya, whaddaya?” the Chef said to Wigwam. “You godda gedda grip dare, Andy! If you’re worried about the smell, then turn on them overhead air vents. The pressure is so low ow dare”—out there—“it’ll clear the stench out in two seconds flat.”

Indeed. The Chef was absolutely right. “You should listen to the Chef,” I said to Wigwam. “He has uncanny reasoning skills in these situations.” I reached over and placed my left hand on Wigwam’s shoulder and offered him a concerned smile. “On a separate note, I strongly advise you to take a couple of Xanax. You need to even yourself out a bit.”

He stared at me.

“You look like a train wreck,” I said. “Trust me, a couple a Xanax is just what the doctor ordered.” I turned to the Chef. “Isn’t that right, Chef?”

“Indeed,” the Chef agreed.

Wigwam nodded nervously. “I guess I will,” he said, “but I need to do some housekeeping first.” He rose from his chair and began walking around the cabin and opening air vents. I looked at Danny, who was still smoking a joint. “In spite of our attorney being a cokehead,” I said, “he’s got a valid point. Why don’t you get rid of that joint just to be safe.”

Danny held up the half-inch-long joint and cocked his head to the side, as if inspecting it. He turned the corners of his mouth down and shrugged, then threw the joint into his mouth and swallowed it. “Eating poss gets you fucked up!” he slurred proudly.

Just then Wigwam sat back down, his jaw still doing a coke addict’s version of the Latin hustle. “Here,” I said, grabbing the appropriate vial from the LV bag. I unscrewed the cap and poured out a few pills. “The correct dosage is two blues…” I paused, thinking for a moment, “although at this altitude there’s no way to be sure. The body might be more susceptible up here.” I shrugged.

Wigwam nodded nervously, still trapped in the deep trough of the worry phase. If I plunged into the story of how he’d lost his hair while still in high school and then got caught cheating on his SATs, there was a better than fifty-fifty chance he would make a mad dash for the emergency exit and jump. But I took pity on him and said nothing.

I turned to the Chef and smiled respectfully. “Getting back to business,” I said, in hushed tones, “I wasn’t all that impressed with the people I met in Switzerland, so I’m not going forward with them. They didn’t seem trustworthy enough.” I shrugged again. That was a lie, of course, and as much as I hated lying to the Chef, I had my reasons.

Back in the United States, an obsessed FBI agent named Gregory Coleman was hot on my trail, and I needed to set up false trails for him to follow, to divert his attention away from my real Swiss accounts. I would have the Chef assist me to that end—opening a Swiss account for me that I would never actually fund but whose existence I would leak to Agent Coleman. And when Coleman petitioned the Swiss government to open my account, I would fight him tooth and nail on it, as if I actually had something to hide. It would keep him occupied for a good two years, I figured, maybe even more. And when he finally did get his way and the account was opened, he would find out that I had never actually funded it.

In essence, the joke would be on Coleman, and my real business would go on undisturbed. With that in mind, I said to the Chef, “So let’s do the stuff you talked about before. What do I gotta do to get things started?”

“You don’t gotta do nothing,” replied the Jersey Chef, using a double negative to reinforce how little I had to do. “I got the whole thing set up for you—trustees, nominees, and I can be an adviser to the trust. That’ll put another buffer between you and the money. And God forbid the boys downtown start snooping around, then I resign as adviser and the money disappears into Liechtenstein and, you know… Schhhwiitttt!”—and he clapped his hands and slung his right arm out toward southern Romania— “we’d be good to go then.”

I smiled at the Chef and nodded warmly. He was a man of many talents, the Chef, although his most remarkable was his ability to use an intricate combination of hand gestures and blowing sounds to get his point across. And my favorite was Schhhwiitttt, which he elicited by curling his tongue into a reverse C and then forcing out a gust of air. And as he made the Schhhwiitttt sound he would clap his hands, sending his right arm flying out into the distance. The Chef used this sound when he was tying up loose ends of a cover story, as if to imply, “Yeah, and with that last phony document we’ve created, you know… Schhhwiitttt!… there’s no way the feds will ever be able to figure things out!”

In retrospect, as I now sat on the Gulfstream, I knew I’d made a colossal blunder in not using one of the Chef’s many fabulous recipes to satiate my Swiss banking appetite. But his relationship with the Blue-eyed Devil had spooked me. It was common knowledge that they were doing business in Switzerland, and, as hot as I was, the Blue-eyed Devil was that much hotter, and they still hadn’t been able to catch him! So how did that bode for my plight? Rather well, I figured. Like the Devil, I was a careful man, always going to great lengths to cover my tracks.

I held on to that happy thought as I reached into my medicine bag and broke out the Valium, downing three blues. It was a lion’s dose, I knew, but given the amount of coke I’d snorted, it was just what I needed to get me safely to Czechoslovakia.

Rather than going through the main terminal at Prague’s Ruzyně Airport, the Gulfstream was directed to a small private terminal that, up until a short time ago, had been reserved for communist dignitaries. That suited me just fine, given my current state of intoxication, but as they led us to a room that looked like the inner sanctum of the Kremlin, there was something bothering me, something I couldn’t quite place my finger on. Danny was standing beside me, looking disturbed. “You smell something?” I asked, scrunching up my nose.

Danny scrunched up his own nose and took two deep snorts. “Yeah,” he replied. “What the fuck is that? It smells like… I don’t know, but I don’t like it.” He took two more snorts.

I turned to Wigwam. “You smell something?” I whispered.

Wigwam darted his eyes around the room like a wild animal. “It’s poison gas,” he said nervously. “I… I gotta get my passport back. I… please… I’m gonna lose it.” He put his index finger to his mouth and began biting his nail.

The worries, I thought. I leaned over to the Chef. “You smell something, Chef?”

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s fucking body odor!” he declared. “These commie bastards don’t use deodorant!” He scratched his chin, taking a moment to consider. “Or maybe they can’t find it in stores. You’d be surprised how commies forgo the normal pleasantries.”

Just then a smelly middle-aged Czech, dressed in blue-gray police garb, walked over. He eyed us suspiciously for a moment, then motioned to a series of high-backed leather armchairs that had been arranged around an enormous mahogany conference table. Not too shabby, I thought. We sat down, and a uniformed waiter appeared from out of nowhere, carrying a tray of dessert aperitifs, which he placed before us without saying a word.

I looked up at the waiter, who was sweating bullets. “Excuse me,” I said humbly. “Why is it so hot in here?”

He flashed me the look of the disinterested and the lobotomized and then walked away without saying a word. As I reached for my glass, Wigwam warned, “Don’t drink the wine!” He began looking around nervously. “That’s what they want.” He looked back at me, with wild eyes. “You understand?”

Now the Chef leaned over. “I don’t think that guy speaks English,” he whispered, “but when I was getting off the plane the captain told me they’re having their worst heat wave in a hundred years. I think today was the hottest day in the country’s history.”

Inside the taxi I breathed through my mouth.

“You ever smell anything so vile?” I asked Danny.

Danny shook his head gravely. “Never. The guy needs to be dipped in sulfuric acid.” The Chef nodded in agreement, then added more words of wisdom. “Don’t worry,” he said confidently. “We’re staying in the nicest hotel in the country. I’m sure there’ll be air-conditioning there. You can count on it.”

I shrugged, not entirely believing him. “Is Prague the largest city in Czechoslovakia?” I asked the smelly driver.

Without warning, the driver expelled a giant gob of spit onto his own dashboard. “Slavs are dogs,” he snarled. “They are no longer part of country. We are Czech Republic: Jewel of East.” He rolled his neck, as if trying to regain his composure.

I nodded nervously and looked out the window, trying to take in the beauty of the Jewel of the East, but there were no streetlights and I couldn’t see anything. Nevertheless, I was still hopeful; after all, our destination was the fabulous Hotel Ambassador, the only four-star hotel in Prague. And thank God for that! I thought. This leg of our journey seemed to be cursed. A bit of pampering would be just what the doctor ordered!

Alas, what the Chef hadn’t been aware of was that the Hotel Ambassador had just been rated one of the worst four-star hotels in Europe. Just why I found out the moment we stepped into the lobby and it was two hundred degrees and a thousand percent humidity. In fact, it was so stifling I almost passed out.

The space was vast and grim-looking, like a Cold War-era bomb shelter. There were only three couches in sight, which were a disturbing shade of dog-shit brown.

At the front desk, I smiled at the Czech check-in girl, a pale young blonde with wide shoulders, enormous Czech boobs, a white blouse, and a nametag reading Lara† “Why is there no air-conditioning?” I asked the lovely Lara.

Lara smiled sadly, exposing some crooked Czech choppers. “We have problem with air conditioner,” Lara replied, in heavily accented English. “It is not at work now.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Danny sag, but then the Chef offered more words of wisdom. “We’ll be fine here,” he said, nodding a single time. “I’ve seen much, much worse.”

I recoiled in disbelief. “Really, Chef? Where?”

He smiled knowingly. “You forget I’m from New Jersey.”

Such logic! I thought. The Chef was a true warrior!

Emboldened by his words, I threw down my Am Ex card, smiled at Lara, and said to myself, “How bad could it possibly be? When you’re as tired and post-Luded as I am, the tendency is just to pass out from sheer exhaustion.”

Two hours later I was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, stark naked and contemplating suicide. My hotel room was hotter than the boiler room on the SS Titanic. The windows had been bolted shut and the radiator was on. Just why, no one in the hotel could seem to figure out. Nevertheless, there was heat coming from the radiator, nothing was coming from the air conditioner, and I would’ve paid a million bucks for someone to unleash a swarm of bumblebees to hover over me and flap their tiny wings.

It was a little after two a.m., about eight p.m. New York time. I desperately needed to speak to the Duchess. I needed to hear some kind words from her, for her to tell me that she loved me and that everything would be okay. She could always make me feel better, even in my darkest hour. But I’d tried her a half dozen times and kept getting the same fucking recording, saying the overseas lines were busy.

Just then the phone rang. Ahhh, the luscious Duchess! She always knows! I reached for the phone and picked it up. Alas, it was Danny. “I can’t sleep,” he snarled. “We need to drop Ludes and go get hookers; there’s no other way.”

I sat upright. “You’re kidding!” I said. “We’re getting picked up in a few hours, Dan! That’s insane.” I took a moment to think it through, coming to the quick conclusion that his plan was, indeed, insane. “Anyway, where we gonna find hookers this time of night? It’s too complicated.”

“I already got it worked out with Lara,” he said proudly. “There’s a place less than ten minutes from here, on the outskirts of Prague. Lara assured me we can find some smelly Czech hookers there, which are the best kind, she said.” He paused briefly. “Anyway, we must do this, JB. It would be bad karma to let things proceed along their current course. We need to take drastic action. I fear for you if you can’t see that.”

“No way,” I replied. “I gotta take a pass. You’re on your own.”

Somehow—and I’m still not sure how—one hour later I was three Ludes deep, with an enormous Czech hooker with bleached-blond hair and the face of a sheepdog riding me like Seattle Slew. Hardly a word was exchanged, only two hundred U.S. dollars and something that sounded like “Ta-hank yew!” right after I came inside her enormous Czech pussy. Whatever. Pussy was pussy, I thought, and despite this one being wide enough to parallel park a Czech taxi-cab in, I had still felt it my patriotic duty to deposit a red, white, and blue load inside her, if for nothing more than to remind her who won the Cold War.

An hour later I was back in my hotel room, sweating again, plotting my own death, and missing the Duchess terribly. But, above all things, I was wondering why I’d just done that. I loved the Duchess more than anything, yet I couldn’t seem to control myself. I was weak, and I was decadent. The Wild Wolf was lurking inside me—just beneath the surface—ready to rise up at the slightest provocation and bare his drug-addicted fangs. Just where all this would end up I hadn’t the slightest idea, but the word on Wall Street was that I’d be dead within a few years. Whatever. In more ways than one, I was dead already.

At four in the morning, I broke down and raided the Louis Vuitton bag again. Finally, thirty minutes later, I was fast asleep, with enough Xanax bubbling through my central nervous system to knock out half of Prague.

At 7:30 a.m.—only three hours later—came my wake-up call.

I blinked, then vomited, and then rose out of bed and took an ice-cold shower. Then I snorted a half gram of coke, swallowed a Xanax to quell any future paranoia, and headed downstairs to the lobby. I felt a twinge of guilt about being coked out for my first business meeting in this fine country, but after last night’s escapade into the seedy cesspool of Prague’s red-light district, there was no other way I could possibly start my day.

Downstairs in the lobby, thirty-year-old Marty Sumichrest, Jr., greeted us warmly. He was tall, thin, pasty-faced, and wore steel-rimmed glasses with very thick lenses. He was living somewhere near Washington, D.C., but was in Prague today because he wanted us to raise $10 million for his company, Czech Industries. At this point, the company was nothing more than a worthless shell, but he assured us that he could use his father’s status as a Czech War Hero to insinuate himself into the highest echelons of the Czech power structure.

We exchanged morning pleasantries and then crammed ourselves into a horrendous limousine called a Skoda. It was black, boxy, beaten up, and, of course, it had no air-conditioning. The foul stench of body odor was so powerful that it could have incapacitated a platoon full of marines. I looked at my watch: It was 8:15 a.m. Only five minutes had passed, but it felt like an hour. I looked around the limo and all ties were at half-mast; Danny was white as a ghost; the Chef’s lips were twisted subversively; and Wigwam’s toupee looked like a dead animal.

Sitting in the front seat, Marty turned around to face us. “Prague is one of the only cities in Europe that wasn’t destroyed by the Nazis,” he said proudly. “Most of the original architecture still remains.” He raised his palm toward the window and swept it from left to right in a gentle arc, as if to say, “Behold the wonder and beauty!” Then he said, “Many consider it the most beautiful city in all of Europe, the Paris of the East, so to speak. It’s been home to many an artist, and many a poet too. They come here to get inspired, they come here to…”

Holy Christ! I was being bored to death, sweated to death, and smelled to death all at the same time! How could it be? I felt desperately homesick all of a sudden, like a little boy whose parents had sent him off to sleepaway camp and was dying to come home.

“…and the Czechs have always been entrepreneurs. It’s the Slavs who gave this country a bad reputation.” He shook his head in disgust. “They’re morons, lazy drunks with IQs just above the level of an idiot. They were thrust upon us by the Soviet Union, but now they’re back where they belong: in Slovakia. And just watch—in ten years from now they’ll have the lowest GNP in Eastern Europe and we’ll have the highest.” He nodded proudly. “You just watch!”

“That’s interesting,” I said casually, “but if the Czechs are so smart, how come they haven’t discovered deodorant yet?”

“What do you mean?” asked Marty, narrowing his eyes.

“Never mind,” I answered. “I was just making a joke, Marty. It smells like fucking lilacs in here.”

He nodded, seeming to understand. “By the way,” he added, “the first company we’re seeing this morning is Motokov. They have sole distribution rights to the Skoda”—he slapped his hand on the top of his headrest two times—”so they can flood the world with these bad boys!”

“Hmmm,” muttered the Chef. “I bet people all across Western Europe are gonna line up for the Skoda. In fact, the boys at Mercedes better watch their asses or they’re gonna find themselves knee-deep in red ink!”

The War Hero’s son nodded in agreement. “Like I said, the Czech Republic is brimming with opportunity. Motokov is just one example.”

The corporate headquarters of Motokov was a gray concrete office building that rose up twenty-three stories above the streets of Prague. Alas, the company needed only two floors for its operations. But the commies had been strong believers in “bigger is better,” viewing concepts like profits and losses as minor trivialities—or at least secondary to the creation of meaningless, low-paying jobs to placate a drunken Czechoslovakian workforce.

We took a linoleum-paneled elevator up to the twentieth floor and walked down a long, silent hallway that seemed low on oxygen. I was about to pass out when we reached a large conference room, where we were offered seats around a cheap wooden conference table large enough for thirty people. But only three representatives of Motokov were in the room, so after we’d taken seats, we were so far apart that you had to raise your voice if you wanted to make yourself heard. Leave it to the commies, I thought.

I was sitting at one head of the table, facing a plate-glass wall that looked out over the city of Prague. At this hour of the morning at this time of June, the sun was shining directly through the plate glass, heating the room to the temperature of the planet Mercury. On the floor were three geraniums in white plastic planters. They were dead.

After a few moments of opening pleasantries, Motokov’s president took center stage and began speaking in heavily accented English. The company had suffered greatly due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, he explained. Antimonopoly laws had been passed, basically legislating them out of business. He seemed like an intelligent fellow—an altogether affable fellow, in fact—but pretty soon I began to notice something very odd about him. At first I couldn’t place it, but then it hit me: He was a blinker. Yes-he was a world-class blinker! For every word escaping his lips, he blinked his eyes, sometimes more than once.

“So you see,” explained the Blinker, with three rapid-fire blinks, “under the new law, monopolies are no longer permitted, which puts”—blink, blink—“Motokov in a very difficult”—blink, blink, blink—“position.” Blink. “In a way, we have been legislated into near bankruptcy.” Blink, blink.

Sounds like a hell of an opportunity, I thought, especially if your goal is to flush your money down a Czech toilet bowl!

Still, I played the role of the interested guest, and I nodded in sympathy, to which the Blinker blinked on. “Yes, we are on the edge of bankruptcy,” continued the Blinker. “We have the overhead structure”—blink, blink—”of a multibillion-dollar company, but we no longer have the sales mandate.” The Blinker let out a deep sigh. He looked about forty and had very white skin. He wore the sort of checkered short-sleeve dress shirt and blue cloth necktie that reeked of a mid-level bookkeeper at an Omaha meat-slaughtering house.

Now the Blinker reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. Apparently his two underlings took this as a signal to light up too, and next thing I knew, the room was enveloped in an ominous cloud of cheap Czech tobacco smoke. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Danny, whose right elbow was on the conference table, with his chin cradled in his hand. And he was sleeping. Sleeping? Sleeping!

Through exhaled smoke, the Blinker went on: “That’s why we are now focusing our attention on Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises”— What the fuck? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Why that?—”which we plan to roll out”—blink, blink-“very aggressively over the next five years.” The Blinker nodded in agreement with his own thoughts and blinks. “Yes,” continued the Blinker, with a rapid-fire double blink, “we will focus our efforts on fried chicken and mashed potatoes; the Kentucky Fried brand, of course, which is quite delicious if—”

SMASH went Danny’s head onto the conference table!

There was absolute silence now, as everyone, including the Blinker, stared at Danny, astonished. His right cheek was pressed against the conference table, and a tiny river of drool was slowly making its way down his chin. Then he started snoring one of those deep guttural drug snores from way down in the bread basket.

“Don’t mind him,” I said to the Blinker. “He’s just jet-lagged from the trip. Please continue. I’m intrigued at Motokov’s plans to capitalize on your underserved fried-chicken market.” I shrugged. “I wasn’t aware that the Czechs were such lovers of fried chicken.”

“Oh, yes,” blinked the Blinker, “it’s one of our staples,” and then he started blinking again, and Danny kept snoring some more, and the Chef kept rolling his eyes, and Wigwam’s toupee was slowly turning into glue, and every last one of us, including the Blinker himself, was sweating to death.

The rest of the day was no better—lots of smelly Czechs, boiling offices, smoke-filled rooms, and Danny drooling. The War Hero’s son shuffled us from company to company, each one in a similar situation to Motokov. Without fail, they had bloated overhead structures, inexperienced management teams, and a limited understanding of the basic tenets of capitalism. What amazed me, though, was the tremendous hope shared by every person we met. They all kept reminding me that Prague was the “Paris of the East,” and that the Czech Republic was really part of Western Europe. Slovakia had nothing to do with them, they assured me. In fact, it was populated by a bunch of retarded monkeys.

It was now six p.m., and the four of us were sitting in the hotel lobby on the dog-shit brown couches, in desperate need of salt pills. I said to the group, “I don’t know how much more I can take of this: there’s no amount of money worth this abuse.”

Danny seemed to agree with me. “Please!” he begged, rubbing a golf-ball-size welt that had formed on his right temple. “Let’s get the fuck out of here and go to Scotland!” He bit his lower lip, as if on the verge of a breakdown. “I’m telling you, Scotland is beautiful! It’s the land of milk and honey!” He nodded his head eagerly. “It’s probably in the low seventies there, without a drop of humidity. We can play golf all day… smoke cigars… drink brandy… I bet we can even find young Scottish hookers who smell like Irish Spring soap!” He threw his palms up in the air. “I’m begging you, JB—throw in the towel on this one. Just throw it in.”

“As your attorney,” added Wigwam, “I strongly advise you to follow Danny’s advice. I think you should call Janet right now and get the plane fueled up. I’ve never been so miserable in my life.”

I looked at the Chef. Apparently he wasn’t ready to throw the towel in yet; he still had questions. “Can you believe how that bastard from Motokov kept going on and on about Kentucky Fried Chicken? What’s so good about Kentucky Fried Chicken?” He shook his head, as if still confused. “I thought they eat mostly pork in this part of the world.”

I shrugged. “I’m not really sure,” I said, “but did you count how many times that fucker blinked? It was incredible!” I shook my head in awe. “He was like a human adding machine. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah, well, I lost count at a thousand,” said the Chef. “He must have some kind of disease, probably peculiar to the Czechs.” He shrugged too. “Anyway, as your accountant I have to agree with Wigwam: I strongly advise you to hold off making any investments in this country until they start using deodorant.” He shrugged again. “But that’s only one man’s opinion.”

Thirty minutes later we were on our way to the airport. The fact that twenty Czechs were waiting for us for a five-hour traditional Czech dinner was merely incidental. At six o’clock tomorrow morning we would be in the land of milk and honey, and I would never see these smelly Czechs again.

Scotland was gorgeous, but its beauty was lost on me.

I had been away from the Duchess far too long. I needed to see her—to literally feel her in my arms, and I needed to make love to her. Chandler, of course, was also waiting for me. She was almost a year old then, and who could guess what startling intellectual feats she’d accomplished the week I was gone? Not to mention the fact that the Ludes were running out, which meant that we’d be going to work on the narcotics. Then the nausea and vomiting would set in, as well as the intense constipation. And there’s nothing worse than being stuck in a foreign country with your head perched over a toilet bowl, while your descending colon is frozen like a glacier.

It was for all those reasons that I nearly collapsed in the Duchess’s arms when I walked through the door of our Westhampton Beach house on that Friday morning. It was a little after ten, and all I wanted was to go upstairs, hold Chandler for a moment, and then adjourn to the bedroom and make love to the Duchess. Then I would sleep for a month.

But I never got the chance. I was home for less than thirty seconds when the phone rang. It was Gary Deluca, one of my employees, who happened to bear an odd resemblance to Grover Cleveland, the dead president with the bushy beard and perpetually grim expression. “Sorry to bother you,” Grover said grimly, “but I thought you’d want to know that Gary Kaminsky got indicted yesterday. He’s sitting in jail, being held without bail.”

“Really,” I said matter-of-factly. I was in that state of extreme weariness where you can’t immediately fathom the consequences of what you’re hearing. So the fact that Gary Kaminsky had intimate knowledge of my Swiss dealings wasn’t troubling me—at least not yet. “What did he get indicted for?” I asked.

“Money laundering. Does the name Jean Jacques Saurel† ring a bell?”

That one got me! Woke me right the fuck up! Saurel was my Swiss banker, the one man who could sink me with Agent Coleman. “Not really,” I said tentatively, clenching my ass cheeks. “Maybe I met him once, but… I’m not sure—why?”

“Because he got indicted too,” said Grover. “He’s sitting in jail with Kaminsky as we speak.”

To my own surprise, it still took OCD more than three years to secure an indictment against me, despite the fact that Saurel began to cooperate almost immediately. And while some of the delay had to do with the loyalty of my Strattonites, more of it had to do with my recruitment of the Chef to help me devise a cover story. In fact, as my house of cards was collapsing around me, the Chef was busy cooking up one of his legendary recipes. And this particular recipe was so tasty and so mouthwatering that it kept OCD scratching his head for more than three full years.

And now the Chef was a wanted man. He had a federal bull’s-eye on his back, and not just because he’d aided and abetted me, by helping cover up my money-laundering debacle, but also because of his relationship with the Blue-eyed Devil. Jam up Gaito, reasoned the Bastard, and he’ll roll over on Brennan, who was the true target.

In truth, I wasn’t so sure of that. The Chef was fiercely loyal to the Devil—selling his soul to him, so to speak—and he was the sort of battle-hardened cook who could stand the heat in the kitchen, preferring, in fact, to conjure up his recipes right beside the flames. The Chef loved the action—no, he lived for the action—and after all those years of working with the Devil he’d become completely desensitized. Things like fear, self-doubt, and self-preservation were foreign concepts to the Chef. If you were his friend he stood up for you; if you were in trouble he went to war for you; and if your back was truly to the wall—and it was either you or him—he would fall on his sword for you.

Perhaps that was why today, this very afternoon, the Chef had defied the conventional wisdom and taken my phone call. After all, the first rule of thumb in my world—meaning, the villains’, thieves’, and scoundrels’ world—was that when someone gets indicted, you lose their phone number forever. It was like becoming a leper, and whether a leper actually touches you or not, it doesn’t really matter. If you even get close, he infects you just the same.

So tomorrow would be D-Day, the FBI plan simple and devilish: The Chef would come to my house, and I would be wired. After a few minutes of small talk, I would casually bring up the past and get the Chef to incriminate himself. And as sad and de spic able as that was, what choice did I have? If I didn’t cooperate they would indict the Duchess; and if I didn’t cooperate my children would grow up without a father; and if I didn’t cooperate I would risk becoming Mr. Gower! All I could hope for was that the Chef would be smart enough not to incriminate himself, that he would dance close to the line but wouldn’t actually cross over it.

That was my only hope.

^{CHAPTER 9} WIRED FOR SOUND

Good Lord—they’re defiling my daughter’s bedroom!

It was early afternoon, and I was sitting on my gray slate patio, in a $1,200 Smith & Hawken teak armchair, when that horrific thought came bubbling up into my brain. And while I couldn’t see them, I knew they were there—Frick and Frack! Tweedledee and Tweedledum! OCD and the Mormon were camped out in my daughter’s perfect pink bedroom, sneaking peeks at me through the tiny gaps in the perfect pink slats of her Venetian blinds.

What kind of father would allow such a thing to happen? I was supposed to be Chandler’s protector! Her guardian! Her savior! It was a daddy’s job to keep intruders out; yet now there were two armed intruders defiling her bedroom, as a hundred fifty immaculately dressed Barbie dolls and an equal number of wildly overpriced stuffed animals looked on in utter helplessness, bearing silent witness to Daddy’s failure as a protector.

Meanwhile, the Chef was due to arrive any minute, so I needed to grab hold of myself. I needed to rein in all these stray thoughts roaring through my brain—the guilt, the remorse, the panic, the sheer fucking terror! In truth, it wasn’t really my fault that the FBI had declared eminent domain over my daughter’s perfect pink bedroom; the problem was one of geometry, since Chandler’s window happened to be at the perfect angle for OCD and the Mormon to take clandestine snapshots of the Chef as we sat outside on the gray slate patio and I went about destroying his life.

Such shame I felt! Such terrible dishonor! Me—the ignoble rat!

Still, it happened to be beautiful outside. It was one of those glorious, uplifting days, where a young man of worth and substance can relish Mother Nature and all she has to offer. And what better place to do it than from the fabulous gray slate patio at Chez Belfort? The scenery, after all, was beautiful; behind me, my ten-thousand-square-foot gray stone mansion rose above the grounds with the grandeur and magnificence of the Palace of Versailles; before me, the crystal-blue waters of my Olympic-size swimming pool sparkled like diamonds; and, beyond that, my breathtaking pond and waterfall system was pumping out thousands of gallons of water per minute, as a jet-powered fountain shot up a thick stream of it twenty feet into the air, in a dazzling display of wealth and excess. Such beauty I’d surrounded myself with! Such opulence!

Then my spirits sank. That lousy pond and waterfall had set me back a million fucking bucks, a million fucking bucks I could really use right now! Just this morning I had had a debilitating attack of money anxiety. I was alone in bed when the cruel reality of having to disgorge most of my assets to the federal government hit me like an iron wrecking ball. Next thing I knew, my heart was beating out of my chest, and I was sweating profusely. I started panicking.

And why was I alone? Because that dirty Duchess hadn’t even come home last night! Apparently she’d zeroed in on a new gold mine and was now in the process of staking her claim. It was only a matter of time until she became the blond-headed arm candy of another mine owner. Where did that leave me? What woman would want a broke and penniless Wolf who’d ratted out his friends?

I took a deep breath and resisted the urge to sneak a peek up at my daughter’s Venetian blinds. I had been up there myself—less than five minutes ago—and the scene was sheer bedlam. The Mormon had been pacing back and forth (while smiling broadly and kindly) with a Minolta camera dangling from his neck, like some grinning Japanese tourist. Meanwhile, OCD had been hunched over on his knees, affixing an ultrasensitive tape recorder just above my loins, using a roll of masking tape he’d purchased at Staples.

For my part, I had mostly been complaining. “Jesus—this is gonna hurt like a bitch when you take it off!” I’d snapped at OCD. I was alluding to the fact that most of my pubic hair would be ripped off when he removed the recorder.

“I know, I know,” OCD had replied sympathetically, as he carefully avoided my pubic hair with the back of his hand. “But you gotta trust me on this one; there’s no better place to hide a tape recorder.” He shrugged as he secured the last piece of masking tape four inches above my scrotal sac. “Even someone as suspicious as the Chef is gonna think twice before he pats down your balls!”

Fair enough, I’d thought, but what about the wire attached to the recorder? It was rising up out of the belt line of my Levi’s, then continuing up the midline of my abdomen. At the tip of the wire, a tiny microphone, about the size of a number-two-pencil eraser, was taped between the manly depression of my pectoral muscles. According to OCD, this taping apparatus—called a Nagra—was so sensitive that it would pick up our conversation even if we whispered. And those were his final words of wisdom before I left my daughter’s bedroom and headed downstairs to the patio.

So here I was, wired for sound. The Chef, I prayed, would be too smart to incriminate himself.

Just then my longtime maid, Gwynne Latham, emerged from the kitchen’s side entrance. She wore white cotton slacks, a loose-fitting white T-shirt, and white tennis sneakers. In fact, dressed the way she was, you might have mistaken her for the Good Humor Lady, if not for the fact that she was carrying a sterling-silver tray with a pitcher of iced tea and two tall glasses on it. Gwynne was in her mid-fifties, although she looked a good ten years younger. She was an ageless, timeless, chubby, light-skinned black woman, with fine Caucasian features and the purest of hearts. Gwynne was a Southerner who, back in the day, had doted on me like I was the child she never had. In the early days of my addiction, she served me iced coffee and Quaaludes in bed, and in the later days, when I was so drugged out that I’d lost most of my motor skills, she changed my clothes and wiped gobs of drool off my chin.

But now, since I’d become sober, she’d redirected that unconditional love toward Chandler and Carter, spending most of her day doting on them. (God save them.) Anyway, Gwynne was like family, and the mere thought of having to let her go one day made me terribly sad. Just how much she knew about what was going on I wasn’t quite sure. And then, all at once—a terrible thought!

Gwynne was a Southerner, which meant she was genetically predisposed toward idle chatter. And, like everyone, she loved the Chef and would most certainly try to strike up small talk with him. I could only imagine it: “Oh—hi, Chef! Can I fix you something to eat, maybe a turkey sandwich or a bowl of fresh fruit?”… “Well, sure, Gwynne, do you have any strawberries?”… “No, I’m sorry, Chef, the two men in Chandler’s bedroom ate the last of the strawberries.”… “There are two men in Chandler’s bedroom? What do they look like, Gwynne?”…”Well, Chef, one of them smiles a lot; he’s wearing headphones and he has a camera around his neck with a telephoto lens; the other one doesn’t smile at all, but he has a giant revolver on his hip and a pair of handcuffs dangling from his belt loop.”…

Oh, Christ—I needed to say something to Gwynne! I had introduced the occupying forces as old friends, and Gwynne, never one to ask questions, had taken things at face value, smiling warmly at the invaders and then asking them if they wanted something to eat, just like she would with the Chef! I had arranged for the kids to be out this afternoon, and I could probably get by without Gwynne for a few hours, although she might get insulted if I were to just ask her to hightail it off the property without explanation.

“I brought you some iced tea for your business meeting,” Gwynne said lovingly, although it came out like, “I brawwght yuh sum ice tea fuh yuh biznez meet’n.” She placed the sterling-silver tray on the obscenely expensive round teak table with great care. “Ya sure those men upstairs wud’n care for sumthin’?” she added.

“No, Gwynne, I’m sure they’re fine.” With great weariness, I said, “Listen, Gwynne, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention anything about those two men upstairs while Dennis is around”—I paused, searching for a possible explanation as to why— “because it, uh, has to do with, uh, security issues. It’s all about security issues, Gwynne, especially with all that’s been going on around here.” What the fuck was I talking about?

Gwynne nodded sadly, seeming to understand. Then she began staring at my light-blue polo shirt, twisting her lips. “My oh my, you have a li’l stain on yer shirt. Look,” and she began walking toward me with her finger pointed straight at the hidden microphone.

I jumped out of my armchair, as if the teak had suddenly become electrified. Gwynne stopped dead in her tracks, and there she stood, the Good Humor Lady, staring at me with a strange look on her face. Christ—she knew, didn’t she! It was written all over her face—and all over mine too! I practically shrieked it: I’m a rat, Gwynnie! I’m a rat! Don’t talk to me! I’m wired for sound! I’m wired for sound!

In fact, her face betrayed nothing save genuine concern that the man she’d worked for for almost a decade had suddenly lost his marbles. In retrospect, there were many things I could have said to Gwynne to explain my irrational behavior. I could have told her a yellow jacket had spooked me, that I’d gotten a cramp in my leg, that it was a delayed reaction to those three torturous days behind bars.

Instead, all I said was, “Jesus, Gwynne, you’re right! I better go upstairs and change my shirt before Dennis gets here,” and I ran upstairs to my closet and changed into a dark-blue short-sleeve polo shirt. Then I went into the master bathroom—with its $100,000 gray marble floor, oversize Swedish sauna, and glorious whirlpool bathtub that was so large it was better suited for Shamu the Killer Whale than the Wolf of Wall Street—and I flicked on the light and took a good hard look in the mirror.

I didn’t like what I saw.

“Eyyyyyy,” said a smiling Chef, extending his arms for a welcoming embrace. “Come here and give me a hug, you!”

Christ Almighty! The Chef knew too! He had seen it on my face-just like Gwynne had! When he hugged me he was going to pat me down for a wire. I was frozen, panic-stricken. It was precisely 1:05 p.m., and time seemed to be standing still. We were in the mansion’s grand marble entryway, separated by only four gleaming squares of black-and-white Italian marble—arranged checkerboard style—and I was trying to conjure up a lame excuse as to why I shouldn’t embrace the Chef as I always did.

The calculations began roaring through my brain faster than I could keep track of them. If I didn’t hug the Chef he would know something was wrong—yet if I did hug the Chef he might feel that devilish little recorder taped to my loins or that supersensitive microphone taped to my chest. Such dishonesty! Such deception! I was a rat! Yet if I perched my ass out a bit and slumped my shoulders forward, then perhaps I’d be safe.

As I stared at the Chef I became terribly conscious of the devilish wares OCD had affixed to my body—the recorder, the microphone, and the masking tape seemed to be growing larger, heavier, more obvious. The recorder was no bigger than a pack of Marlboros, yet it felt larger than a shoe box, and the pea-size microphone weighed less than an ounce, yet it felt heavier than a bowling bowl. I was sweating profusely, and my heart was going thump thump thump, as if a frightened rabbit had taken up residence there. And there stood the Jersey Chef, in his snazzy single-breasted light-gray suit with light-blue overplaid and a crisp white dress shirt with spread British collar. I had no choice but to hug him, but then—a brainstorm: a contagious pathogen!

With a couple of sniffles, I said, “Jesus, Dennis, you’re a sight for sore eyes… sniff, sniff… Thanks for coming over.” I shot my right hand out and locked my elbow, offering a hearty handshake. “But don’t get too close to me; I think I caught something in that jail cell… sniff sniff… A flu bug, I think.” I smiled sheepishly and jutted my right hand out an extra inch, as if to say, “Put it there, pal!”

Alas, the Chef was a man’s man, and no flu bug on earth was going to scare him away. “Get over here!” he snapped. “Cold or no cold, it’s times like these when you find out who your true friends are.”

Who your true friends are? Christ—such gut-wrenching guilt! It now had the distinct pleasure of meeting the sheer panic that had already taken up residence in my brain. Then came a lightning-fast fight to the death. The guilt was saying, “How could you rat out someone as loyal as the Chef? Have you no shame?” to which the panic replied, “Fuck the Chef! If you don’t rat him out you’ll end up like that drooling old bastard Mr. Gower.” The guilt countered, “It doesn’t matter; the Chef has been loyal and true, and to rat him out would make you lower than pond scum!” and the panic replied, “Who gives a shit! I’d rather be pond scum than sitting in jail the rest of my life! Besides, the Chef will end up ratting out the Blue-eyed Devil to save his own skin, so what’s the fucking difference?” The guilt argued, “That’s not necessarily true. The Chef isn’t a pussy, like you; he’s a stand-up guy.” Then suddenly—a fresh wave of panic!-the Chef had brushed past my hand and was rapidly closing the distance.

Christ! What should I do? Think, you little rat! The high road or the low road? Guilt or self-preservation? Alas, when you’re a rat, self-preservation outweighs all: Just before the Chef and I embraced, my rat brain unleashed a flood of emergency signals to my musculoskeletal system. Faster than I knew it, my ass popped out like a male hooker advertising his trade, my shoulders slumped forward like Quasimodo ringing a church bell, and that was how we embraced—with the Jersey Chef standing tall and proud, and the Wolf of Wall Street standing hunchbacked and hookerlike.

“Are you all right?” asked the Chef, releasing me from his embrace. He grabbed my shoulders and held me at arms’ length. “Did you hurt your back again?”

“No,” I answered quickly. “It’s just a bit sore from sitting in that jail cell. And also from my cold… sniff, sniff” I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand. “You know, it’s amazing, but if I get even the least bit sick it goes straight to my back.” Jesus! What the fuck was I talking about? I shrugged, trying to organize my thoughts. “Come on, let’s sit outside. I could use a little fresh air.”

“You lead, I follow,” said the Chef.

A pair of prodigious French doors led out to the stone patio, and the moment we stepped through them I could feel the click click click of the Mormon’s dreaded Minolta. It seemed to be burning holes through me, like a laser beam. When we reached the teak target zone, I offered the Chef the overpriced armchair facing the bedroom window.

I resisted the urge to look up at the Venetian blinds, pouring each of us a glass of iced tea instead. Then I started in with small talk. “I’ll tell you,” I said wearily. “I can’t believe these cocksuckers”—as cocksuckers escaped my lips, it occurred to me that OCD and the Bastard might not be appreciative of that characterization of them. I made a mental note to be more considerate in the future—”have me under house arrest. Like I’m really a flight risk with a wife and two kids.” I shook my head in disgust. “What a fucking joke.”

The Chef nodded in agreement. “Yeah, well, that’s the game these bastards play,” he said venomously. “They’ll do whatever they can to make your life miserable. How’s the Duchess holding up?”

I shook my head and let out a great sigh. “Not well,” I said. I paused, fighting down the urge to pour my heart out to the Chef. Even rats have pride, after all, and I knew that countless others would be listening to this tape at some point. “She’s acting like all this comes as a great shock to her, as if she thought she was married to a doctor or something. I don’t know… I don’t think we’re gonna make it through this, not as a couple.”

“Don’t say that,” the Chef replied quickly. “You two are gonna make it through this thing, but only if you stay strong. She’s your wife, so she’s gonna follow your lead, one way or the other. Show weakness to her and badabing”—the Chef clapped his hands a single time—”she’ll be out the door in two seconds flat. It’s the nature of the female animal; they gravitate toward strength.”

I took a moment to consider the Chef’s words, and for a brief instant my spirits lifted, but then they sank again. Indeed, the Chef’s words were usually full of wisdom, but, in this case, he was completely off the mark. Whether or not I stayed strong had nothing to do with it; the Duchess was strong enough on her own-strong enough to know that under no circumstances would she allow my problems to diminish her quota on ore extraction one iota. She had grown up dirt-poor on the trash-lined streets of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and there was no way she would be willing to risk history repeating itself.

Nevertheless, this was a perfect opportunity to make an important point to the Chef, namely, that I had no intention of cooperating. In a dead-serious tone, I said, “Yeah, well, maybe I can’t control the Duchess’s actions, but I can control my own. You don’t have to worry about me staying strong, Dennis. I’m gonna fight this thing to the bitter end, with my last dying breath if I have to. I don’t care how much it costs, or how bloody it gets, or how many bodies get buried along the way. I don’t give a flying fuck about any of it! I’m taking this thing to trial, and I’m gonna get fucking acquitted.” I shook my head, liking the way my blustering sounded. It was very Wolflike. Too bad I was such a pussy. “You just fucking wait and see,” I added, twitching my nose menacingly.

“Good for you!” the Chef said emphatically. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Just keep thinking like that and those bastards downtown are gonna be in for a rude awakening.” He shrugged confidently. “They expect you to just roll over and play dead, because that’s what everyone else does. But when it comes down to it—they got their version of things and we got our version of things, and our version of things will make just as much sense to a jury as their version of things.”

“And the burden of proof isn’t on us,” I added confidently, “it’s on them.”

“Exactly,” said the Chef, “and last time I checked, you’re innocent until proven guilty in this fine country of ours.” He flashed me a quick smile and winked. “And even if you are guilty, they still gotta prove that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and that ain’t so easy to do when you got two versions of things, understand?”

I nodded slowly. “I do,” I said halfheartedly, “but… I mean… it’s a pretty good cover story we have, but it’s still not as believable as the truth. You know?”

“Don’t kid yourself,” snapped the Chef. “The truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.” He shrugged. “In fact, I’d take a good cover story over the truth any day of the week. Anyway, I think the biggest problem we’re facing here is that Danny is still in jail. The longer he sits in there, the more likely he is to flip.” The Chef paused, as if searching for the right words. “See, while he’s sitting in there, he has no idea what’s going on on the outside. He doesn’t know that I’m with him and that you’re with him; he might be thinking that he’s alone in all this—maybe even that you’re cooperating. God only knows what the feds are whispering in his ear.” The Chef shook his head in consternation, then suddenly his face lit up. “I’ll tell you what I really need to do: I need to get myself into that cell to speak to Danny, to let him know that everything’s gonna be all right.” The Chef compressed his lips and nodded slowly. “That would be the best thing for us right now. Maybe I can get myself on the visiting list. Whaddaya think?”

Good Lord-the Chef was as tough as nails! He was prepared to go right into the heart of enemy territory! Did he know no fear? Was he really that much of a warrior? It was all starting to make sense now: The feds had never been able to nab the Chef and the Devil because they didn’t think like other men. They were true Scarfaces, white-collar mobsters of a wholly different sort.

Just then Gwynne came walking out of the kitchen.

Oh, Jesus! I thought. Jabber jabber jabber!

Would she spill the beans? There was no telling. Her heart was much too pure to fathom all this wickedness going on here, all this deceit. As she approached, I noticed she was holding the cordless phone. She greeted the Chef first, in warm Southern tones: “Well, hi there, Dennis, how are you?” which came out like, “Wail, hi there, Dainess, how’r yew?”

“I’m fine,” answered the Chef, in warm Jersey tones. “Nevuh bedduh. How you doing, Gwynne?”

“Oh, ahhhm fahyn, ahhhm fahyn,” the Southern belle answered, and there was a very sad smile attached to those two “I’m fines,” a smile that so much as said, “As fine as could be expected, considering my boss has one foot in the slammer, his wife has one foot in a new gold mine, and I’m about to be out of a fucking job!” Then she turned to me and said, “Your lawy’r is on the phone. He said it’s important.”

Magnum? Why would he call now? He knew about this meeting. Why interrupt the flow of things? I held up a finger to the Chef and then rose from my chair and grabbed the cordless from Gwynne. With my back to the Chef, I looked Gwynne in the eye and motioned discreetly toward the kitchen with my chin, as if to say, “All right, why don’t you skedaddle on out of here before you spill the beans, jabber-jaw!” to which Gwynne shrugged and headed back to the safety of the kitchen.

I walked a few feet away, to the wrought-iron railing at the edge of the patio, placed my elbows on the railing, and leaned over. I was still within earshot of the Chef when I said into the phone, “Hey, Greg. What’s going on?”

“Yeah, it’s Greg,” said OCD’s voice, “but not the Greg you were expecting. Just act natural.”

Jesus Christ! Why the fuck was OCD calling? Had he lost his mind? “Yeah,” I said casually, “well, that doesn’t surprise me. Danny’s a stand-up guy; he’ll never cooperate.” I turned to the Chef and winked, then said into the phone, “Anyway, just tell Danny’s lawyer that I’m there for him no matter what. Whatever he needs.”

“Good,” said OCD, “that was quick thinking. You’re doing great so far. But listen to me: Dennis seems very open to talk to you, so I want you to see if you can set up a meeting with Brennan. I think he might go for it.”

“I’ll try calling her,” I said skeptically, knowing full well that the chances of getting a face-to-face with the Blue-eyed Devil were one in a million. Even in the best of times he was one paranoid bastard, but now—in the worst of times—there was no way he’d be reckless enough to take a meeting with me. “But I haven’t spoken to Nancy in almost a year,” I said into the phone. “I think she hates Danny more than the government does.”

I looked at the Chef, who was staring at me quizzically, the way a person does when they’re trying to figure out the other end of a phone conversation. Christ, if he only knew! I flashed him a quick smile and rolled my eyes and shook my head quickly, as if to say, “My lawyer is totally wasting my time here,” then I said into the phone, “Yeah, well, you just tell Danny’s lawyer to make sure Danny knows I’m with him. That’s the”—beep, beep, went the call-waiting—”most important thing. Anyway, I gotta go. I got another call coming in.” I clicked over to the next line. “Hello?”

An unfamiliar female voice, rather sultry, said, “Hi… is this Jordan?”

“Yeah,” I replied, slightly annoyed at the sultry voice. What the fuck did this voice want? “This is Jordan, who’s this?”

“Maria Elena. I’m Michael Burrico’s fiancée.” My heart sank to my stomach before my brain even knew the reasons why. Michael Burrico was the Duchess’s first love—back from her glorious Brooklyn days—when she was still a Duchess in embryo. Last I’d heard, he was living in Manhattan and he’d struck it rich in the construction business. In the Duchess’s mind, I knew, that could translate into only two simple words: precious ore.

In a tone laced with sarcasm, I said to Maria, “Yeah, Maria. Your fiancé was my loving second wife’s first boyfriend. To what do I owe the pleasure of this phone call?”

Maria let out a tiny grunt before she said, “Well, I know you’re going through a bad time right now, but I thought you’d like to know that your wife was knocking on my fiancé’s door last night— around midnight. She was…” and Maria kept on talking, but I stopped listening—or, more accurately, I was unable to listen because my head was now filling with steam. I could literally hear the hissing sound, as hurt, anger, embarrassment, and hopelessness flooded my senses all at the same time.

I didn’t even know who to be more embarrassed for at this point, her or me. Our life together had come to represent a laughingstock, the ultimate cautionary tale of rich men and trophy wives, of cutting corners in business, of cutting corners in life. We had played the Game of Life hard and fast—careening down the highway at a million miles an hour—and we had ended up losers, the ultimate crash-and-burn story. The only difference between the Duchess and me was that she was trying to walk away from the accident without a scratch, while I had no choice but to accept my fate as a quadriplegic burn victim.

“…and I would really appreciate it,” Maria continued, in an edgy tone, “if you would tell your wife to keep her paws away from my fiancé.”

Well said, I thought. In fact, I couldn’t have agreed with Maria more, which was why I answered her with a big fat click in her ear, without saying so much as good-bye. Then I turned to the Chef and froze, bewildered, not knowing what to say. My mind was double-tracking wildly. It had been hard enough to focus before, but now—this was a bit much. Everything was hitting me all at once, from all angles. Every man has his breaking point, and I was now at mine.

As I stared at the Chef, I knew I should be trying to figure out a way to broach the subject of the Blue-eyed Devil, and I knew that OCD and the Mormon were right upstairs, hanging on my every word, making careful notes of my performance—notes that one day would go into my 5K letter and decide how many years I spent in prison.

Yet, with all that was going on, with all that was at stake, with my freedom hanging in the balance, the only question my brain was asking itself was: What time is the Duchess coming home tonight? That was all that mattered to me. I wanted to confront her—no, I needed to confront her. I couldn’t move forward in my life until I had an all-out brawl with her. A rip-roaring fight that could end with only one thing: violence. The Duchess was toast. History. I was not going to let her get away with this, not for one second longer. If this was, indeed, a crash-and-burn story, then it would be one without any survivors, save the children. Let my parents raise them, I figured; they’d certainly do a much better job than the Duchess and me.

“You okay?” the Chef asked warmly. “You look a bit pale.”

No response, then—”No… I mean, yeah.” I began nodding my head. “It was, uh, just something with Nadine’s maternity business. A girl called. She’s pregnant. With a baby.” I smiled vacantly. “I’m okay. I’m… I’m as right as the mail, Dennis,” and the first thing I’m gonna do when the Duchess gets home, I thought, is confront her. But I won’t tell her about the phone call, not in the beginning. I’ll wait until she denies ringing that bastard’s doorbell; then I’ll spring it on her. Then we’ll see…

I sat back down, my heart beating out of my chest, my mind racing out of control. I placed the phone on the table. My mouth was bone-dry. I looked at the Chef, forcing a smile. It was time to end this meeting. I couldn’t sit here anymore. I couldn’t muster a single constructive thought until I confronted the Duchess.

With despair in my heart, I threw a Hail Mary pass. “I’ll tell you the truth,” I muttered, “I don’t know which are worse: my problems with the feds or my problems with the Duchess.” I shook my head in genuine bewilderment. Then, with a smirk, I added, “Maybe I should go see Bob; maybe he can offer me some words of wisdom, because for the life of me I don’t have any.”

There were a few moments of silence, then the Chef nearly knocked me out of my seat when he said, “I think that’s an excellent idea. Bob would love to talk to you. How’s Tuesday at the golf course? You think you could work it out with the ankle-bracelet people?”

Yeah, I thought, I’m sure the ankle-bracelet people would be willing to look the other way for a meeting with the Blue-eyed Devil, although, at this particular moment, I couldn’t give two shits about that. All that mattered was what time the Duchess was coming home.

Everything else was incidental.

^{CHAPTER 10} HOW TO CONFRONT A DUCHESS

Step one: Light a raging fire.

The master bedroom’s French limestone fireplace was four by six feet wide and had been retrofitted with an electric-starter mechanism. As always, four thick logs of premium-grade ponderosa pine, split lengthwise, sat atop a prodigious heap of white-cedar kindling wood. By this time of September, the fireplace hadn’t seen a flame in nearly five months. Fine. Good. At precisely 9:15 p.m. I pushed the stainless button on the wall, igniting the first—but not the last—raging inferno of the evening.

Step two: Burn a piece of overpriced furniture.

Grunting and groaning, I pulled over one of my formerly aspiring decorator’s favorite procurements—a $13,000 white silk ottoman that had taken some thieving bastards in High Point, North Carolina, nearly a year to manufacture—to within three feet of the flames. I sat down and stared into the flames. In less than a minute, the kindling wood was crackling away menacingly and the flames were blazing away ominously. Not satisfied, I rose into a crouch, reached behind me, pulled the ottoman closer, and sat back down. Much better. In ten minutes the ottoman and I would be toast.

Step three: Ignite the flames of righteous indignation.

A simple task. Was there a jury that would convict me if I stabbed the Duchess through her ice-cold heart, using that 18-karat-gold letter opener, which was resting comfortably on her $26,000 white lacquer secretary? I would only need to worry about a jury of her peers, which would consist of twelve blond-headed gold diggers who saw no crime in a married woman—with two children, no less!—knocking on her ex-boyfriend’s door at midnight, while her husband was lying home in bed (under house arrest), contemplating suicide, and dreaming of ways to win her back. I held on to that thought and took some deep, angry breaths. I kept staring into the belly of the flames, letting the fire bake my skin-growing angrier, more righteous, more indignant, with each passing second.

Just then I heard the familiar sounds of the arriving Duchess, the gravel crunching in the driveway, the slamming of the massive mahogany front door, the clickity clack clack of her overpriced high heels ascending the sumptuous stairs. And then, finally, the door opened. I turned from the flames and there she was, dressed in black. That was appropriate, I thought, considering she had just arrived at her own funeral.

When she saw me sitting so close to the flames, she stopped dead in her tracks and struck a pose, with her head cocked to one side and her hands on her hips and her shoulders thrown back and her back slightly arched, pushing her glorious breasts forward. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Then she began chewing on the inside of her cheek.

There were a few moments of silence as we just stared at each other, like two gunfighters waiting to throw down. The Duchess looked good, of course. There was no denying that, even now. The light from the fire set off her entire ensemble: that tiny black dress, those sexy black high heels, those long bare legs, her great mane of shimmering blond hair, those brilliant blue eyes, her high cheekbones, those glistening lips, that perfectly smooth jawline.

Yes, the Duchess was, indeed, a woman of parts, although at this particular moment the only part of her I was interested in was a tiny area just over her left breast implant, right between her second and third ribs. That was where her ice-cold heart was located, and it would be there where I would plunge the golden letter opener. Then I would jerk the letter opener upward and slightly to the left, with a twisting motion—slicing her pulmonary artery, which would cause her to drown in her blood. It would be a ghastly, horrific, painful death, the sort of death a gold-digging Duchess deserved.

“Why the fire?” she asked, giving up her pose and heading toward her white lacquer secretary. “It’s a bit early in the season, don’t you think?” She flashed me a dead smile as she sat on the edge of the secretary, placing her palms on it and locking her elbows. Then she crossed her legs and wriggled her butt, as if to get comfortable.

I stared back into the flames. “I was cold,” I said, because you sucked every last drop of blood and life force out of me, you conniving, gold-digging cunt, “so I figured I’d light a fire,” before I slice you to ribbons and rid the earth of you.

A few moments of silence, then she cocked her head to the side. “Where are the kids?” she asked.

I kept staring into the flames. “At Gwynne’s,” I answered tonelessly. “They’re sleeping there tonight,” so I can murder you without upsetting them.

Now confusion mixed with trepidation: “Why are they, uh, sleeping at Gwynne’s?”

Still staring into the flames: “Because I wanted the house to myself,” without bystanders, witnesses, distractions, or any soul who might try to talk me out of doing what I know I must do to free myself of you, “that’s why.”

She chuckled nervously, trying to make light of what she now realized was going to be a very dark encounter. “Yourself?” she answered. “Well, what about me? I’m here too, right?”

I looked up, and she was holding the golden letter opener in her right hand, tap-tap-tapping the blade on her left palm. How had she known? Was it that obvious that I was planning to stab her? Or was it just coincidence? No matter. I had once seen Arnold Schwarzenegger stab an Islamic terrorist with the terrorist’s own knife, and it had looked rather elementary.

Just then I noticed the Duchess was still wearing her wedding band. What a fucking joke! The philandering Duchess and her wedding band! “You’re still wearing your wedding band, I see. Don’t you think that’s a bit ironic, Nadine?”

She put down the letter opener and extended her left hand in front of her, staring at it quizzically. After a few moments, she looked up and shrugged. “Why?” she said innocently. “We’re still married, no?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah,” I said, “I think we are. So what did you do last night?”

A quick answer: “I went to see Earth, Wind and Fire. With my friends.” The last three words screamed: Alibi!

I compressed my lips and nodded. “Oh, your friends,” I said understandingly. “Which friends are those?”

Another quick answer: “Donna and Ophelia.”

Donna Schlesinger—why, that lousy cunt! She definitely had a hand in this, no doubt about it! She and the Duchess had been friends since high school, and, back in the day, she’d dated one of Michael Burrico’s closest friends.

“How was the concert?” I asked casually.

The Duchess shrugged. “It was okay. Nothing special.” Then a strategic subject change: “I was hoping the kids would be home tonight.”

Why? So you could use them as human shields? Sorry, Duchess, no such luck. It’s only you and me tonight—you, me, and the golden letter opener. Prepare to reap the consequences of your infidelity! I said, “Just out of curiosity, where’d you sleep last night?”

“At Ophelia’s,” she snapped. “Why?”

“You went straight from the concert to Ophelia’s?” I asked skeptically. “You didn’t stop anywhere along the way, not to eat or anything else?”

She shook her head. “No, I went straight to Ophelia’s. No stops.”

There were a few moments of silence, during which I found myself desperately wanting to believe her. Just why, I still couldn’t explain, although it had something to do with the bizarre nature of the male animal—his vanity, his foolish pride, his desire not be spurned by a beautiful woman. Yes, in spite of everything, my masculine pride was still trying to convince me that my wife was faithful and that this was all some giant misunderstanding.

I took a deep breath and stared into the belly of the fire, relighting the flames of anger, hatred, and righteous indignation. “So how’s Michael Burrico?” I asked, and then I looked up from the fire and stared into her eyes.

The Duchess recoiled. “Michael Burrico?” she said incredulously. “How on earth would I know?” She stared at me with a blank expression, and still I wanted to believe her. I really did.

But she was a lying sack of shit; I knew it! “When’s the last time you’ve seen him, Nadine? Tell me! How long ago? Days? Weeks? Hours? Tell me, God damn it!”

The Duchess sagged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She looked away. “Someone’s giving you bad information.”

“You’re a fucking liar!” I sputtered. “A total fucking liar!”

She kept looking down, saying nothing.

“Look at me!” I screamed, rising from the ottoman. She looked. I plowed on: “Look me in the eye and tell me you weren’t at Michael Burrico’s apartment last night. Go ahead and tell me!”

She shook her head quickly. “I… I wasn’t. I wasn’t there.” Her tone was just short of panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you doing this?”

I took an aggressive step toward her. “Swear on the kids’ eyes that you weren’t there last night.” I clenched my fists. “Go ahead and swear to me, Nadine.”

“You’re fucking sick,” she muttered, looking away again. “You’re having me followed.” Then she looked back at me. “I want you out of this house. I want a divorce.” She raised her chin in defiance.

I took another step forward. I was less than three feet from her now. “You… fucking… cunt!” I sputtered. “You no-good, lousy, philandering, gold-digging cunt! I didn’t have you followed! Michael Burrico’s fiancée called here. That’s how I knew where you were, you… lousy—”

She cut me off. “Fuck you!” she screamed. “You’re calling me a cheat! How many women have you fucked, you fucking hypocrite!” With that she popped off the edge of the desk and took a step toward me, closing the distance. We were less than two feet apart now. “I want you out of my life!“ she screamed frantically. “I want you out of my house! I don’t ever wanna speak to you again!”

“Your house?” I sputtered. “Are you fucking kidding me? This is my house! I’m not going fucking anywhere.”

“I’m hiring a lawyer!” she screamed.

“Yeah, the best my money can buy!” I screamed back.

She clenched her fists. “Fuck you! You’re a fucking crook! You stole all your money! I hope you die in jail!” The Duchess took an aggressive step forward, as if she were about to take a swing at me, and then suddenly she did something that I would never forget for the rest of my life. With complete serenity, she dropped her arms to her sides and relaxed her posture and tilted her head back all the way, exposing the most vulnerable part of her long bare neck, and she said, “Go ahead: Kill me.” Her voice was soft and mellow, completely resigned. “I know that’s what you want, so just go ahead and do it.” She tilted her head back even farther. “Kill me right now. I won’t fight back. I promise. Just strangle me and put us both out of our misery. You can kill yourself afterward.”

I took a step toward her, ready to commit murder, when suddenly my eyes lit on a picture frame affixed to the wall. It was just over the Duchess’s left shoulder. The frame was long and narrow, perhaps one by three feet, and inside were three large pictures of our children. Chandler was on top, and she was smiling bashfully. She had on a fancy yellow T-shirt with a buttercup collar and a matching yellow headband. She was three and a half at the time, and she looked like a tiny Duchess. Beneath her was Carter, only eighteen months at the time, and he had on nothing but a snow-white diaper. His eyes were wide open, his expression full of wonder, as he stared at a bubble floating in the air. His blond hair shimmered like polished glass. His regal eyelashes were as lush as butterfly wings. And, again, all I saw was the Duchess. And beneath Carter was a picture of him and his sister. He was sitting in her lap, she had her arms around him, and they were staring into each other’s eyes adoringly.

In that very instant the true irony of my plight hit me, like one of Zeus’s thunderbolts. It wasn’t enough that I couldn’t kill my wife because she was the mother of my children; it was much worse than that. The simple fact was that because she was the mother of my children I would never be rid of her. She would be in my life forever! Haunting me until the day I died! I would be seeing her at every birthday, graduation, wedding, confirmation, and bar mitzvah. Christ, I would even have to dance with her at my children’s weddings!

I would see her in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, and for better or worse, until death did us part. In essence, I would always be married to her, linked together by the intense love we shared for our two children.

And there she was, standing there, waiting to be choked to death.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” I said softly. “With my dying breath, I’ll never forgive you.” I headed for the door, walking slowly.

Just as I reached the door, I heard her say in a soft, gentle tone, “I’ll never forgive you either. Not with my dying breath.”

Then I left the room.