Catching the Wolf of Wall Street

^{CHAPTER 17} THE ART OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Three Months Later

We were somewhere over Staten Island near the New Jersey border when it first hit me that I wouldn’t be making it back to Southampton tonight for curfew. I remember reaching down to my left leg and lifting up the hem of my tan gabardine trousers and saying something like, “Uh, I haven’t been totally honest with you, Kiley. This thing on my ankle isn’t really a beeper—” and then suddenly I heard this horrific wailing sound and the pilots up front were pointing nervously at the orange lights on the instrument panel of the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, which was screaming westward at a hundred forty knots with a tail wind to Atlantic City.

Then the wailing stopped. Kiley was sitting to my left, seat-belted to one of the Sikorsky’s sumptuous tan leather seats, and she looked on the verge of tears. “I—I’ve never been in a helicopter before,” mumbled Kiley, wearing a $2,000 red silk minidress that I’d just purchased at a trendy clothing store in Southampton. “Is it supposed to make noises like that?”

“Yeah,” I said casually, “it happens all the time.” I had just met Kiley a few hours ago, so I hardly knew anything about her—other than that she was twenty-two years old, had been raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, and had come to New York to pursue a modeling career, only to have it cut short by an eating disorder, which caused her weight to balloon up and down thirty pounds in either direction. Today she was tipping the scales at a buck-thirty, which was a bit too fleshy for a five-foot-eight-inch model, so Kiley was having trouble finding work. Nevertheless, she was still gorgeous, with perfectly chiseled features, honey-colored skin, full lips, high cheekbones, and liquid brown eyes shaped like almonds.

All at once the helicopter began executing a sharp right turn and going into a steep dive. Kiley’s slanted eyes popped open. “Oh, my God!” she screamed. “What’s wrong now? Why are we going down?”

I grabbed her hand reassuringly. “I’m not sure,” I said calmly, but what I didn’t say was, “Things like this just tend to happen to me. You know, things you usually see only in the movies—like crashed planes, crashed cars, sunken yachts, exploding kitchens, helicopters that need to be pushed into the ocean to make room for air-to-sea rescues—but have no fear, Kiley, because I always seem to make it out alive!”

Just then the copilot turned around in his seat and slid back a thin Plexiglas partition that separated the orange-glowing cockpit from the passenger cabin. With a confident smile, he poked his nose through the slot and said, “We’re having some mechanical problems, so we need to make an emergency landing at Teterboro.” He winked at Kiley. “No worries, young lady. Teterboro is only a few miles away. We’ll be just fine.” Then he slid the partition closed and turned back around in his seat and started saying something to the pilot.

I looked at Kiley—who up until now had been fairly beaming— and every last drop of color had disappeared from her fabulous skin. So I put my hand on her bare shoulder and said, “Relax, Kiley; I’ve been through this before and it always ends up okay.” I squeezed her hand again. “Besides, you’re only twenty-two years old, and that’s no age for a young girl to die!”

She shook her head sadly. “But I lied to you! I’m only seventeen!” And that’s when I knew I was fucked.

I was pretty sure that the age for statutory rape differed by state, so as the Sikorsky made its descent into Teterboro Airport, I found myself wondering which state would have jurisdiction over me if I decided to violate Kiley: New York or New Jersey? In point of fact, we had taken off from Southampton, which was in New York, and the legal age there was seventeen, but we were heading to Atlantic City, which was in New Jersey, where the legal age was… I wasn’t sure. And that was my problem, because it was there, in a glitzy hospitality suite in Trump Castle Casino, where I was planning to do the evil deed. So what was Jersey’s legal age? I wondered.

Obviously this wasn’t the sort of question I could just come out and ask the pilots, especially with Kiley right next to me. Upon closer inspection, Kiley now appeared to be in the latter stages of puberty. In fact, that thin coating of fat that I had previously attributed to an eating disorder was now giving off the troubling whiff of baby fat, belonging to a still-blossoming teenager.

Still, none of this was my fault, because when I first laid eyes on Kiley she was standing naked in one of my downstairs showers, and she had hair in all the right places, as well as a set of perky C-cups that looked old enough to vote. And she wasn’t even alone! Standing right next to her was another naked girl—this one a blue-eyed blonde named Lisa, who, like Kiley, also looked old enough to vote—and the two of them were engaged in a passionate kiss, relishing the final moments of an Ecstasy binge.

Still, the scene wasn’t as strange as it seemed—two young models whom I’d never met before, sneaking into my house to take a shower together—because, by mid-July, it was common knowledge in the Hamptons that there was this fabulous house on Meadow Lane where any young model could show up, flash a concupiscent smile, and stay as long as she desired. And while I would be the first to admit that this sort of model-mongering behavior was utterly detestable, I figured with my life on the verge of implosion, I might as well go out with a bang!

So that was how I had decided to pass my final summer on Meadow Lane: model-mongering while the Duchess and I split the kids on alternating weekends.

Chandler, being a daddy’s girl, loved the action, although what she enjoyed most was torturing the young models that her daddy had hooked up with—assuring them that they meant absolutely nothing to him and that any restaurant he took them to or any clothing store he bought them a dress in was the same restaurant or store that he’d taken a dozen other girls just like them. Chandler’s point being: You’re a worthless slut, and someone younger and more beautiful than you will be replacing you next week.

Carter, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less. He was too busy passing his summer in the outdoor Jacuzzi, which, in Carter-speak, was an outdone Hacuddi. And when he wasn’t there, he was in the TV room, watching Power Rangers videos, as half-naked models sat next to him and rubbed his bare belly and told him they would do whatever he pleased if he would just lend them his eyelashes for a photo shoot. One day, I knew, Carter would be very upset when he found out that he had waved off all these young beauties because they had interrupted the flow of his beloved Power Rangers videos.

On a separate note, it was somewhere in late July when I began hearing about someone named John. Chandler had brought the name up first, describing him as “Mommy’s new friend from California.” John. John. At first I didn’t think much of this, although a little voice inside my head said, “This could be trouble.” Not the Duchess having a boyfriend—I was fine with that. What I wasn’t fine with, though, was that he lived on the other side of the country. After all, if she were to fall in love with him, she might want to move there.

I didn’t know too much about this guy, other than that he was a bit older than me, he was very wealthy (gee, what a surprise), and he owned a large garment-center company in Los Angeles that manufactured children’s clothes. I had resisted the urge to have Bo do his thing—deciding, instead, to leave well enough alone. The way I figured it, the Duchess had been doing her fair share of dating this summer, so the chances of her falling in love with John were slim.

The only thing troubling me as of late—besides the fact that I was burning through cash faster than a Latin American country-was how doggedly OCD was now pursuing the Chef. In fact, I had been to New Jersey two times in the last four weeks, trying to get the Chef to discuss our past dealings on tape. But both times he had refused. Yet OCD was certain that eventually he would. He was a born crook, reasoned OCD, and he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation forever.

Ironically, it was because of those two recent trips to New Jersey that I had been predisposed to Kiley’s idea of going to Atlantic City. It was around eleven this morning, as I was cooking her and Lisa breakfast, when Kiley had her brainstorm: “Would you take me to Atlantic City one day and teach me how to gamble?” Complicating matters was the fact that I found Kiley wildy attractive, and not just her looks but her personality too. She was bubbly and vivacious—oozing a certain childlike innocence that, at the time, I had chalked up to her Canadian upbringing, rather than the fact that she was still a child.

“So you’ve never been to Atlantic City before?” I said to her.

“Nooo,” she replied innocently. “Would you take me there?”

In retrospect, I remember thinking that her tone was that of a young child asking her grandpa if he would be willing to take her to the zoo one day. When I asked Kiley how old she was, and she said, “I’m twenty-two; how ‘bout you?” I was inclined to believe her. And that was when I went about calculating the risks of taking an unapproved helicopter trip to Atlantic City while under house arrest.

In the end, I had it narrowed down to two distinct risks: first, leaving New York State without approval from my pretrial-services officer (my PO), and second, the possibility of getting stuck in Atlantic City and violating my twelve o’clock curfew. As to the actual gambling, I wasn’t so concerned, because gambling wasn’t illegal. I wasn’t too concerned that I would have to bring along $50,000 in cash to convince Donald Trump to dispatch a helicopter either. After all, I had twice that much in my bedroom safe, which, by sheer coincidence, happened to be the very cash that I was supposed to have forked over to the government as part of my forfeiture (they simply hadn’t gotten around to picking it up yet). So what was the harm, I figured, if I just borrowed a few dollars from them?

None, I thought; so I called the casino, ordered the helicopter, took Kiley clothes shopping, and then took a short-term loan from the federal government and headed for the heliport.

Now, however, six hours later, I was stranded at Teterboro, in a dilapidated hangar, with an underage girl, and about to break curfew. Being in Jersey, I figured, was the least of my crimes.

“Does this mean we’re not going?” chirped Kiley.

I looked at my watch and shook my head gravely. “I don’t know, Kiley. It’s nine o’clock already, and I’m supposed to be home by midnight.”

With a pout: “That’s sad.”

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed with a sympathetic nod, and then I thought for a moment, focusing on the fact that my curfew wasn’t really a curfew. Or was it? Well, technically it was, but on a practical level it wasn’t, especially on a Sunday evening where a harmless violation (like this) would likely slip through the cracks. Yes, perhaps the monitoring company would place a call to Patrick Mancini, my PO, but Pat was a pretty decent guy, and he would just assume that the bracelet had malfunctioned. I mean, the thing was always malfunctioning, wasn’t it? Yes, it most certainly was, and, besides, Pat knew I wasn’t a flight risk, didn’t he? Yes, he most certainly did, and he was well aware that I was a cooperating witness with the federal government (on the side of righteousness).

Just then the pilot walked over, smiling. “It’s only a fuel gauge,” he said happily. “The good news is that we should have it fixed within twenty minutes.”

Kiley grabbed my hand and started shaking it up and down, as if to say, “Yippee! Yippee! Now we can go to Atlantic City!”

“And what’s the bad news?” I said, knowingly.

The pilot shrugged. “Well, we got a late start tonight, so the copilot and I are out of duty time. You have to wait for two fresh pilots to come. They’ll be here in about an hour.”

Kiley looked at me, confused. “What does that mean?” she asked sadly.

What I felt like saying was: “It means that this is what happens when you travel with the former Wolf of Wall Street. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong!” But instead I said, “It means that we’re stranded here for a while.”

Another pout: “So we’re not gonna go now?”

I looked at Kiley and shrugged. “Let me think for a second.” I ran the scenario through my mind again. Well, obviously I couldn’t sleep with Kiley; she was just too young. But, on the other hand, I was a very good gambler, so perhaps I could win a few bucks! “Is there a phone around here?” I asked the pilot.

He pointed his finger in the direction of a wall phone.

“Thanks,” I said, and a second later I was leaving a message on Pat Mancini’s voice mail—explaining that I was stuck in “the city,” without saying which city, and that I would be back either late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Then I hung up the phone and stared at it for a second, wondering if I had just made a big mistake. No! I thought. Patrick had his hands full with murderers and rapists, and I had already made the decision not to have sex with Kiley. And, with that thought, I walked back to Kiley and offered her an avuncular smile. “All right, honey, we’re going!”

“Yehhhh!” she screamed, and that was that.

There was no denying that Donald Trump sported the worst hairdo this side of the Iron Curtain, but the bastard sure knew how to make money! In Atlantic City, he owned three casinos: Trump Plaza, the Taj Mahal, and Trump Castle. I preferred the Castle because it had a heliport on the roof, which allowed for quick entrances and exits. And that’s important in a town like Atlantic City, where the sheer decadence of it can throw a down-and-out gambler into an emotional tailspin when he’s already on the verge of jumping out a window.

But something was bothering me now.

I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned forward and slid open the Plexiglas. “Excuse me,” I said to the evening’s second copilot, pointing to the roof of the Castle as it grew smaller in the distance. “Why aren’t we landing on the roof tonight?”

The pilot shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “We were told to land on the pier. That’s all I know.”

“Hmmm,” I muttered. “Maybe the roof is closed for repairs.”

“Not that I know of,” answered the copilot, and a few minutes later Kiley and I were sitting in the back of an electric golf cart, with a driver from Trump Plaza behind the wheel. Sitting next to the driver was a sharply dressed casino host, also from Trump Plaza. He had a terrific shock of gray hair and a slick demeanor. I leaned forward and said to him, “I don’t get it: When I called information this afternoon, I specifically asked for the number for Trump Castle.”

He smiled a toothy smile. “Well, they must’ve made a mistake; it happens all the time. Anyway, we’re all part of the Trump family, right?”

“Is everything okay?” asked Kiley. “You seem upset.”

I grabbed her hand and held it. “No, everything is fine, sweetie. It’s just a slight mix-up. It’s par for the course when you travel with me.”

Kiley giggled like a schoolgirl.

“By the way,” said the sleazy casino host, “I saw your old friend Elliot Lavigne down here. He was knocking ’em dead at the tables!”

“You mean gambling?” I said incredulously.

“Yeah; why are you so surprised? He is a compulsive gambler, no?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah, of course he is. But last I heard he was broke.”

The host shook his head and smiled. “Not anymore!” he said knowingly. “He’s making millions again. He’s got some hip-hop line called uh, Fat Farm, or maybe Fubu.”

Kiley, the budding fashionista: “Oh! I know Phat Farm!”

I looked at Kiley and couldn’t resist: “Why’ve you been to a fat farm?”

She released my hand and smacked me in the shoulder. “It’s not that kind of fat farm, wise guy! The fat is spelled P-H-A-T. And it’s slang, for cool or good-looking. You know, like you’d say, ‘That girl is phat!’ or ‘This casino is phat!“

“I think she’s right,” said the casino host.

“I think so too,” I agreed, and I smiled at Kiley, who was fairly beaming. Then she said, “Who’s Elliot Lavigne?”

The casino host and I exchanged a look. “Oh, he’s just an old friend of mine,” I said casually—who happens to owe me two million fucking dollars, which I can now collect! “He’s kind of a colorful guy.”

“Oh,” said a clueless Kiley. “He sounds very nice.”

With that, the host and I exchanged another look, and five minutes later Kiley and I were walking through the casino arm in arm, like two young lovers. She was looking this way and that, staring at all the gaming tables and slot machines and mirrors and strobe lights, with the sort of awestruck expression that you would normally find on the face of a five-year-old girl from Dubuque, Iowa, who was walking through Times Square for the first time.

With a confident gait, I led her to a craps table.

There were six people surrounding it, all bearing the desperate expression of craps degenerates. “Watch this,” I said to Kiley, and with a devilish smile and a knowing wink I opened my blue Nike gym bag and poured out $50,000 in cash on the craps table. Then I looked up at the towering Box-man, a six-and-a-half-footer with a handlebar mustache that seemed to defy gravity, and I said, “Chips, please!”

There was a moment of silence while the rest of the table looked on, astonished. Oh, yes! The Wolf was back! And wait until they see him gamble! Ohhh… I was good, all right! Like James-fucking-Bond!

The towering Box-man smiled and said, “Give Mr. Belfort twenty thousand dollars to play with while we count him out.” And just like that I was handed twenty thousand in chips.

Kiley seemed impressed. “How do they know you?” she whispered.

Oh, please! I thought. Everyone knows me in these parts! I used to be the Wolf of Wall Street, for Chrissake! “That’s nothing,” I said confidently. “Watch me take these bastards to the cleaner’s!” And I quickly started gambling.

Five minutes later, most of my chips were gone and Kiley was saying, “Why do they keep taking your chips away?”

I shook my head sadly, as I stared at $18,000 of the government’s money now being stacked on the wrong side of the craps table. “I’m having a bad run,” I mumbled. “I’ll have to get even with the other thirty.”

Just then the towering Box-man walked over holding a clipboard. “Sign here, Mr. B.” And he handed me the clipboard and then a pen.

With a sinking heart, I signed a $50,000 chit, which looked like a certified bank check. Then I took a deep breath and handed it back to him. The Box-man nodded a single time. “I just need a copy of your driver’s license,” he added, “and you’re good to go.”

“No problem,” and I reached into my back pocket and… “Eh, shit!” I muttered. “I forgot my damn license.” I looked up at the Box-man and smiled. “I’m sure you guys got a copy on file, right?”

He shook his head. “Actually, we don’t, Mr. B. You never gambled here before.”

“Hmmm,” I mumbled, “you’re right. Let me think… How about calling the Castle and have them fax over my license? That should do the trick, no?” I looked over at Kiley and winked. The Wolf of Wall Street was a master at working through problems!

Alas, the Box-man began shaking his head again. “It doesn’t work that way. Once you show ten thousand in cash, we need to see ID. That’s the law.”

I cocked my head to the side and said, “So let me get this straight: You take fifty thousand of my cash, you count it, you give me chips, you let me gamble away twenty grand, and now you won’t give me a chance to win my money back?”

The Box-man shrugged. “That’s about the size of it, Mr. B.”

Mr. B? Mr. B! What a fucking mockery! If this guy weren’t twice my size, I would sock him one—right in that obnoxious fucking mustache! I took a deep breath and said, “All right, can I speak to your boss, please? There’s gotta be some way to resolve this.”

“Absolutely!” said the Box-man, happy to pass the buck.

Five minutes later, not only was his boss there but he had five other Suits accompanying him, and they all looked like they belonged in the Corleone crime family. The Suits turned out to be very nice, very helpful, and very patient, but after a great deal of chin-scratching, the Suit of all Suits—namely, the shift manager— finally said to me, “I’m sorry, Mr. B, but there’s nothing I can do, other than send a few bottles of champagne up to your suite for you and the pretty young lady to enjoy.” He winked.

“All right. I’ll just take my chips and cash out.” I looked over at Kiley. “Come on, sweetheart, it’s time to go now.”

“Okay,” she said, oblivious. “Where are we going?”

With a demented smile: “First we’re going to cash out, and then we’re flying home.” I looked at the shift manager. “Will you do me a favor and call the chopper for us?”

“It’s too late,” he replied, seeming to fight back the urge to smile. “The chopper is already on its way back to Long Island. But don’t worry: We have a beautiful suite for you, and we’re gonna send you up some Dom Perignon and beluga caviar.”

“Oh, good!” chirped Kiley. “I love beluga caviar!”

I stared at her, speechless.

“Okay, then!” mused the shift boss, feeling my pain. “Let’s head over to the cage, so you can cash out.”

Yeah, I thought, it’s time to put this nightmare to an end.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I nearly screamed at the sixtyish old hag on the other side of the bulletproof glass. “How could you not give me my money back?”

“I’m very sorry,” came the toneless response, through a series of shiny aluminum slits. “I can’t cash you out unless you show ID. It’s the law.”

I was baffled. Shocked. In utter disbelief.

Here I was, standing inside “the cage,” which was the size of a bathroom at Denny’s, accompanied by an underage girl, a shift boss who was probably a shill for the mob, and a stack of $32,000 in multicolored casino chips, which I was now stuck with because this old hag on the other side of the bulletproof glass was a stickler for details. It was mind-boggling.

I turned to the shift boss and said, “You gotta do something here. This—is—not—right.” And then I clenched my teeth and shook my head slowly, as if to say, “Someone’s gonna pay for this when all is said and done!”

The shift boss threw his palms up in the air and shrugged. “What can I do?” he said innocently. “The lawr is the lawr.”

With frustration in my heart, I looked at Kiley and said, “Do you know why this shit happens to nobody but me?”

She shook her head nervously.

“Because I bring it on my-fucking-self. That’s why! I’m a glutton for fucking punishment.” With that I turned back to the bulletproof glass and stared at the old hag suspiciously. Then I rolled my neck, like a man on the brink. “Listen,” I said logically, and I leaned forward and placed my elbows on a black Formica counter-top on my side of the glass. “I’m a sane guy, usually, so let me just give you a recap of the night’s events, then you tell me if I deserve to get my cash back, okay?”

The hag shrugged.

“Fine,” I said, “I’ll take that as a yes,” and then I went about telling her my tale of woe—starting with the malfunctioning helicopter and finishing with the forgotten-license debacle, while carefully omitting all references to my ankle bracelet, my spurious phone call to Patrick Mancini, Kiley’s age deficiency, my interest-free loan from the federal government, and lastly (but not leastly) the fact that I was out on bail and wasn’t authorized to be in Atlantic City in the first place. I said, “I think it’s pretty obvious that I am who I say I am. So why don’t you just cash me out and let me go in peace, okay?” I smiled my most reasonable smile at the hag. “Is that too much to ask?”

The old hag stared at me for a few seconds longer than good manners called for. Then came her toneless response, though the slits: “I’m sorry. I can’t cash you out unless you show ID! It’s the lawr.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I thought that’s what you would say….” And those were the last words I said to the old hag that night. In fact, those were the last words I said to anyone that night, with the exception of Kiley, who turned out to be fine company for an ill-fated trip like this. Of course, I never laid so much as a finger on her, and, in retrospect, it had less to do with the statutory-rape clauses and more to do with my own sense of right and wrong. After all, the way I had chosen to pass my last summer on Meadow Lane was an embarrassment. I knew that better than anyone, but I just couldn’t seem to control myself. It was as if I were determined to self-destruct—no, it was as if I needed to self-destruct.

Perhaps I was thinking that if I literally ran myself into the ground—burning through every possession I had, both physical and emotional—then I could somehow turn back the clock to a time before Stratton, before the tainted tree had sprouted. Maybe. Or maybe I had just completely lost my mind.

Either way, there were certain lines that even I couldn’t cross: One had been Dave Beall, and another had been Kiley. And while the two were entirely unrelated, each in its own way had allowed me to hold on to one of my last vestiges of self-respect.

When I arrived back in Southampton the next morning, I called Kiley a cab, kissed her on the cheek, and then sent her on her way. I knew that one day I would run into Kiley again and that I would probably kick myself in the butt for not taking advantage of her that Sunday evening. After all, you don’t come across girls like Kiley every day, especially in the real world, and especially if you’re a guy like me, with one foot in the slammer and the other in the poorhouse.

At this particular moment, I was sitting on a club chair in my living room, staring out at the Atlantic Ocean and trying to make sense of it all. It was almost noon, and Patrick Mancini hadn’t called yet, which meant that he never would. In short: I had gotten away with it.

Then the phone rang.

Oh, Jesus! I thought. I’m busted! As fast as lightning, I began racking my brain for a cover story. There had to be some explanation… I was kidnapped… I had been visiting my brother in Montclair, New Jersey, and lost my way… I was scoping out locations for my next meeting with the Chef… Yes!

The phone kept ringing.

I picked up the cordless. “Yeah?” I said, in the tone of the resigned and doomed.

“It’s your attorney,” said my attorney. “Are you alone?”

With righteousness: “I swear to God I never touched that girl, Greg! You can call her yourself and ask her!” I suddenly realized that I didn’t even have Kiley’s phone number. In fact, I didn’t even know her last name! She was just Kiley—the child.

“What are you talking about?” asked Magnum. “What girl?”

“Forget it,” I muttered. “I was just fucking around. What’s going on?”

“I got a very disturbing phone call from Joel Cohen this morning.”

My mouth immediately went dry. “About what?”

“He says you may have violated your cooperation agreement. He wants to meet with you first thing tomorrow morning.”

I felt a wave of panic rising up my brain stem, accompanied by despair. If I hadn’t been sitting, I would’ve fallen over. Remain calm, I thought. You’ve done nothing. Nothing! “That’s impossible!” I said confidently. “Did he say how?”

“Not specifically, but I got the impression that he thinks you alerted someone to your cooperation. Any idea what he’s talking about?”

Alerted. That was a strange word to use. What did it mean in this context? To alert, to let someone know that I was cooperating? Yes, my cooperation was supposed to be secret, but there were still some people who’d had to know, like my estranged wife, for one, and my parents… and George… but no one else; not even Bo had been alerted—alerted! Had I told any of my friends? No. The Blow-Job Queen? No. Any of the naughty Natashas? No, not one. I hadn’t told a single soul, in fact. So I was in the clear.

Feeling very confident, I said, “No, I don’t, Greg. I haven’t alerted anybody. I promise you that. Joel is barking up the wrong tree here.”

“That’s fine,” he said calmly. “You have nothing to worry about, then. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll clear it up first thing tomorrow.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said quickly. “Where does he want to meet?”

“Downtown, at FBI headquarters. I won’t be there, though. I have to go out of town on a deposition. But have no fear; Nick will be with you.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Nick is a good man.” And, besides, I thought, when you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Thank God.

^{CHAPTER 18} THE UNTHINKABLE

With my shoulders squared, my chin held high, and the overstarched Yale-man walking beside me, I entered the debriefing room and prepared for the worst. Immediately, three things struck me as odd—starting with the fact that all four of my captors had shown up for the day’s festivities, namely the Bastard, OCD, the Mormon, and, alas, the Wicked Witch of the East, whom I hadn’t seen in close to a year. All four were sitting on one side of the debriefing table, waiting for the Yale-man and me to take seats across from them.

The second oddity was that everyone was dressed formally, including OCD, who seldom was. My male captors still had their suit jackets on, ties knotted to the top. Court attire. The Yale-man and I also wore suits, as did the Witch, who sported a black-on-black polyester power suit, which, like the rest of her wardrobe, was in desperate need of alterations.

And the third oddity—the most disturbing oddity of all—was that as we went about exchanging opening pleasantries, I noticed a conspicuous absence of them. The Bastard shook my hand limply and said nothing. The Mormon shook my hand firmly and said, “How’s it going, guy,” using the sort of glum tone that a college coach would use before he cut a player from his team and revoked his scholarship. OCD shook my hand robustly—a bit too robustly, in fact, as if he were a kind Roman general, sending one of his soldiers into a gladiator pit filled with lions. And the Witch wouldn’t even shake my hand.

Then we took seats.

“Okay,” snapped the Bastard, “let’s get down to cases, then,” he calmly said, “Michele…” and he extended his hand toward her, palm upward. The Witch nodded once and handed him a thick legal file she was holding. Then she placed her tiny hands on the desktop and began twirling her thumbs at warp speed.

I felt my heart skip a beat.

With great care, the Bastard laid the file down in front of him. Then he stared at it. It was closed, held that way by a light-brown thread that was looped around a thin cardboard disc the size of a dime. And the Bastard just kept staring.

I looked over to the Yale-man, confused. He rolled his eyes and shrugged, as if to say, “It’s just theatrics. It means nothing.” I nodded in understanding and looked back at the Bastard, who was still staring at the file—theatrically.

Finally, doing a near-perfect imitation of the spooky, stone-faced government agent from The Matrix named Agent Smith, the Bastard slowly unwound the light-brown thread at a perfectly even rate and in perfectly even circles. When he was finished, he slowly opened the file and stared at a document on top of the stack.

Still looking down, he said in the spooky tone of Agent Smith:

“Mr. Belfort: You’ve pled guilty to just about every type of securities fraud we have a law for.” True, I thought. “Stock manipulation. Sales-practice violations. Free-riding. 10B-5 violations. Currency violations”—he slowly looked up—”and, of course, money laundering.” He slid the document to my side of the conference table. “Are you familiar with this document, Mr. Belfort?”

I stared at it for a moment and heard Agent Smith say, “Why don’t you have Mr. De Feis examine it for you—so there’s no mistake.”

Eager to please, the Yale-man leaned over and studied the document for a moment. “It’s your plea agreement,” he whispered in my ear.

No shit, Sherlock! It says it right here on top!

The Yale-man came to my rescue: “It’s his plea agreement, Joel.”

“I’d like to hear Mr. Belfort say that,” snapped Agent Smith.

“It’s my plea agreement,” I said tonelessly.

Agent Smith nodded once, then looked back down at the file and began staring again. After a good ten seconds, he grabbed a second document from the top of the stack and slid it over to me. Then he looked up. “And do you know what this document is, Mr. Belfort?”

I studied it for a moment. “It’s my cooperation agreement.”

He nodded. “That’s right. And on the bottom of page one, you’ll see a sentence highlighted in yellow. Will you please read that out loud.”

“The defendant agrees to be truthful and honest at all times.”

The Yale-man seemed to be running out of patience: “What’s your point, Joel? Are you saying that he hasn’t been truthful and honest?”

The Bastard leaned back in his seat and smiled thinly. “Maybe, Nick.” Then he looked at me and said, “Why don’t you tell us, Jordan? Have you been truthful and honest?”

“Of course I have!” I replied quickly. “Why wouldn’t I be?” I looked around the room and all four of my captors were staring at me, expressionless.

The Witch: “You’re saying you never tried to deceive us, not even once.”

I shook my head no, confident there was no way they could have already found out about Atlantic City. After all, it had just happened last night. Okay—two nights ago, I thought. But, either way, I had always been truthful besides that… unless—Dave Beall! The note! No! It couldn’t be! Not in a million years! I pushed the thought out of my mind. Don’t jump to conclusions. He would never rat me out. No upside for him. And I had protected him. Saved him. Alerted him. Alert! Alert!

“Is there something you wanna tell us?” said OCD, crossing his arms beneath his chest.

“No!” I replied forcefully. Then, not as forceful: “I mean, of course not. I just wasn’t sure what you wanted me to say about… uh, honesty.” I looked at my captors one by one, my eyes settling on the Bastard. “And then, uh, truthfulness,” I felt compelled to add, although I had no idea why.

He seemed to smell blood. “Let me get more specific,” he said patiently. “Have you ever told anybody that you were cooperating?”

A knife through the heart! Must bluff it out! “Yes,” I said confidently.

“Who?”

“My parents, for one. Or two, you might say.” I smiled at my joke. “Is that a crime?”

The Bastard didn’t smile. “No,” he replied, “that’s not a crime. Who else?”

“Uhhh”—my mouth was going dry—”I told my wife, of course”— my lips seemed to be vibrating—”because I had to tell her. I mean, I had to tell her for a lot of reasons. She had to sign off on the forfeitures, for starters”—suddenly, a brainstorm!—”and maybe she slipped it to one of her friends, by accident.” As in Laurie Beall, if you catch my drift, who then told Dave Beall, which makes all of this one giant misunderstanding. “I mean, I don’t know; I never stressed to her to keep it quiet. Maybe I should’ve. Is that a problem?”

The Bastard shook his head. “No. I think your wife is smart enough to know what’s at stake here. Anyone else you told?”

Remain calm! “George,” I said confidently.

The Bastard looked at OCD, who said, “It’s his sponsor from AA.” Then OCD shook his head back and forth, as if to say, “George is clean.”

Finally, the Yale-man stepped in. “Can we cut to the chase here, Joel? It’s obvious you think Jordan told someone he was cooperating; so why don’t you just tell us who it is? Then we can get to the bottom of it.”

The Bastard shrugged, ignoring the Yale-man’s words with such callous indifference that it seemed he wasn’t even giving him credit for going to Yale. Then he flashed me a hideous smile and said, “Have you ever passed anyone a note, Jordan?”

Good Lord! Worst fears confirmed! Can’t think. Must stall for time. And deny. “You mean, have I ever passed anyone a note—ever? Like, uh, since public school or since, uh, when do you mean? Since college?”

“Since you started cooperating,” said OCD, saving me from my own nonsense.

“No,” I shot back. “Or, well, maybe, actually. I mean, I have to think about that, because it’s, uh, an important question.” I paused for a moment, desperate to flee. How many FBI agents were in the building? Too many. But this might be my only chance! OCD might slap the cuffs on me at any moment, in this debriefing room. The Bastard would snap his fingers and point to my wrists and OCD would whip the cuffs out so fast my head would spin! But could they do that without a judge? Maybe. Probably. Definitely! I needed to speak to the Yale-man. But, no—if I asked for privacy they’d know I was guilty. Bad choice. Must bluff it out. Deny! Deny! Deny!

I blundered on: “Well, there was a time in New Jersey, when I was with Gaito and Brennan, if that’s what you mean. After we played golf I wrote the name of a stock on a scorecard, and I passed it to Dennis. But it’s on the tape. You can check it.”

“This is a waste of time,” sputtered the Witch. “We know you’re lying to us. We could never use you as a witness.”

“Which means no 5K letter,” added the Bastard.

The Witch: “And according to my calculations, you’re facing upward of thirty-five years.”

Now the Bastard: “But if you come clean with us right now, maybe there’s a chance. Maybe.” He looked at me stone-faced. “I’ll ask you one last time, and that’s it. Have you—ever—passed— someone—a—note?”

The Yale-man to the rescue: “I want to speak to my client in private before this goes any further.” He grabbed my arm. “Come on; let’s go outside for a second and have a talk.”

My moronic response: “No, it’s all right, Nick.” I shook his arm off me. “I have nothing to hide. I haven’t done anything wrong here. I swear to God. I haven’t passed anyone a note, and I’m willing to take a lie-detector test.” Yes, I could pass a lie detector. Sharon Stone had done it in Basic Instinct… although she wasn’t lying. But, still… they still might not know! It could be a fishing expedition! Not a shred of proof.… or.… did I take the note or did Dave take it? Not certain. But don’t come clean. Can’t come clean! To come clean is to die. Besides, maybe they don’t even know it’s Dave? If they knew for sure they would just come out and say it. They’re trying to bluff a confession! No two ways about it!

The Bastard’s last words: “Okay, then, so you never passed anyone a note. Fair enough,” and with that, he shrugged his shoulders and closed the file. Then he said to the Yale-man: “I’m sorry, Nick. I can’t use your client as a witness; he’s not credible. If he lies to us here, he’ll lie in front of a jury.”

On cue, the Witch rose from her chair—only to be stopped by the booming voice of OCD, who shouted, “This is all crap!” He glowered at the Witch. “Sit down a second, Michele!” Then he glowered at me. “Listen,” he said in a tone he’d never used with me before. “I know exactly what happened. You went out for dinner with Dave Beall, and you slipped him a note saying, Don’t incriminate yourself! I’m wired! Then you left the restaurant and lied to my face, telling me that you did the best you could.” He paused and shook his head, but it wasn’t in disgust. He was disappointed in me. I was his star cooperator and I had let him down, perhaps even embarrassed him.

There were a few moments of silence, then he said, “I’ve always been straight with you, since day one, and I’m telling you right now—with no bullshit—that if you don’t tell the truth about this, Joel’s going to break your cooperation agreement and you’re gonna spend the next thirty years in jail. And if you do come clean, he still might break it and you’ll still grow old in jail.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “But I’ve never lied to you before, and I’m not lying to you now. You have to come clean or there’s no chance.”

The Yale-man nearly jumped out of his chair. “Okay!” he said, in a voice just below a scream. “I want five minutes with my client—alone! And I want it right now.” Then he softened his tone a bit. “Will everybody please wait out in the hallway while I confer with my client!”

“Of course,” said the Bastard. “Take as long as you’d like, Nick.” On the way out, OCD locked eyes with me, and he nodded slowly. Do the right thing, said his eyes. And then he was gone.

“So I assume you did this,” stated my attorney.

I looked around the debriefing room, at the bare windowless walls, at the cheap government-issue desk, at the cheap black armchairs, and at the empty pitcher of water off to the side, and I found myself wondering if the room was bugged.

I looked at the Yale-man and mouthed the words: “Is it safe to talk?”

The Yale-man stared at me, incredulous. After a few seconds, he said, “Yes, Jordan, it’s safe to talk. Everything we say is privileged.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Well, I guess you’ve never been to the movies before. It’s the oldest trick in the book: The cops leave the room and wait for a confession. Then they run back inside and say, ‘Gotcha!’”

The Yale-man cocked his head to one side, the way you do when you’re looking at someone who’s just lost their mind. Then he said, “This room is not bugged. I worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for many years, doing just what Joel does, so you can trust me on this. Now, did you pass Dave Beall a note?”

Deny! Deny! Deny! “What if I did?” I asked aggressively. “I mean, I’m not saying I did, but since they think I did, what if I did?”

“Then we have a serious problem,” he replied. “Joel could break your cooperation agreement—which means you’d be sentenced without a 5K letter.”

Remain calm! It’s your word against his! “That’s bullshit, Nick! How can they prove I passed Dave Beall a note? I mean, I’m saying I didn’t do it, and they’re saying I did. And even if Dave is cooperating, who’s to say he’s not the one who’s lying?” I shook my head righteously. “I mean, really! They can’t hold back my 5K letter without having proof, right?”

The Yale-man shrugged. “It’s not so cut-and-dry. If they think you’re lying they can still withhold it, although I doubt that’s what’s going on here.”

“What do you mean?”

“My guess is that they do have proof, or at least they think they have proof; they wouldn’t be coming on so strong otherwise.” He paused for a moment, as if lost in thought. After a few seconds, he said, “Okay, let’s just assume for a second that you did pass him the note. Where would you have been when you passed it to him?”

Unbelievable! I thought. Even now, at the very moment of my doom, I couldn’t help but marvel at the twisted nature of the U.S. legal system. The simple fact was that if I came clean with my attorney—telling him that I did pass Dave Beall the note—then he could no longer represent me if I continued to lie. So, instead, we had to speak in “hypothetical terms,” so my attorney could try to find out where I was most vulnerable. Then he would help me mold the best bullshit story possible that was consistent with the known facts.

“I would have probably been in a restaurant,” I replied.

“And why would you say that?”

“Because that’s where the meeting in question took place.”

He nodded. “Okay, and what was the name of the restaurant?”

“Caracalla. It’s on Long Island, in Syosset.”

“And was the restaurant crowded?”

I knew what he was getting at. “No, there were only a handful of people there, and none of them was an FBI agent. I’m certain of it.”

The Yale-man nodded in agreement. “You’re probably right about that. You’ve been cooperating for a while now, so I’m sure Coleman trusts you.” He paused for a moment, while his last few words hung in the air like mustard gas. Yes, I had betrayed OCD’s trust. He had always been straight with me and I had fucked him over royally! But, still, I had acted like a man. I had maintained my self-respect. And this is what happens!

The Yale-man continued: “Okay, so for argument’s sake, let’s just assume that you did pass him the note but that no one saw you. Would anything have been said on tape that would sound incriminating—meaning, would Dave Beall have reacted to the note? You understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I do”—and what do you think, I’m stupid? I didn’t just pass him the note without warning!-“but I’m sure that that’s not it. I mean, if I was gonna take a risk like that, I would have been very careful about it. I would have looked around the restaurant to make sure no one was watching, and then I would have sent him a signal—like maybe putting my finger to my lips or something like that. Anyway, there’s nothing on that tape out of the ordinary, except that Dave didn’t incriminate himself. But that’s not so unusual, is it? I mean, I’ve had four or five meetings with Gaito and he hasn’t incriminated himself. So it’s really my word against Dave’s, no?”

“I hear what you’re saying,” reasoned the Yale-man, “but there’s something not adding up here.” He paused for a moment. Then: “Let me ask you this: If you had passed him a note, would you have taken it back afterward or would he have kept it as a souvenir?”

I let out a great sigh. “I’m not sure, Nick. I mean, I probably would have assumed that he would just throw the note out, but I’m not really sure.” I paused and shook my head ironically. It was unbelievable! I had protected my friend, and as a way of saying thank you he ratted me out! Magnum had been right all along, and so had OCD. I was a fool, and now I was about to lose my life over it. I said, “Let me ask you a question, Nick: What’s gonna happen here if I don’t get a 5K letter? I mean, will I really end up doing thirty years?”

“Yes,” he said quickly. “Maybe even more. Joel will hit you with other charges on top of what you’ve already pled guilty to: You’ve got obstruction of justice, lying to a federal officer, and a few others too. But we cannot let that happen. We need to do everything possible to stop this from going beyond this room.” He put his hand on my shoulder, the way a friend would. “I need to know right now—as your lawyer: Did you pass Dave Beall a note?”

I nodded sadly. “Yeah, Nick, I did. I passed him the note, and it said exactly what Coleman said it did.” I chuckled softly. “You know, it’s hard to believe that I went out on a limb for a friend and this is what I get in return.”

The Yale-man nodded. “Can I ask you why you did it?”

I shrugged. “Why, does it matter?”

With surprise: “Of course it matters! If you were trying to protect Dave Beall because he was holding money for you or you were in the process of breaking the law with him, then this is not going to end well. But if it was simply a crisis of conscience, and you had nothing to gain other than holding on to some mistaken notion of self-respect, then there might be a way out of this. So which is it? Are you hiding something else or was it just because he’s your friend?”

“The latter,” I said confidently, feeling like the boy who cried Wolf. “I swear to God about that, Nick”—shit! I had already done that today, and then lied! “I mean, this time I really swear to God! I had nothing to gain here other than to help a friend. That’s it. I went to that meeting with every intention of getting Dave to talk, but then something happened when I sat at the table. I don’t know—I just kinda looked at him and saw everything that Stratton could’ve been. I felt like it was my fault for corrupting him in the first place. I ignited his greed with those stupid meetings I used to give and all that sort of shit. And, unlike the other people I cooperated against, Dave was a friend, or at least I thought he was. Now I know that there are no friends—and that there is no loyalty—and that it’s every man for himself!” I shook my head angrily. “Now I’m probably going to jail for the rest of my fucking life because of it!” I paused for a moment, trying to rein in my anger. “And what about my kids?” I shook my head in disbelief. “Chandler and Carter. Oh, God—what did I do?”

The Yale-man put his hand on my shoulder again and patted it a few times. “Okay,” he said. “Now we gotta pick up the pieces. We gotta clean this mess up.”

“And how do we do that?”

“Well, for starters, you gotta come clean with them immediately. We can’t let this drag on past today.”

“Yeah? Well, Joel hates my guts, Nick. The second I admit to this, he’s going to break my cooperation agreement. I know it.” I paused for a moment, thinking of the short-term ramifications. “I have to see my kids again. I need to one more time before this goes down. Just to kiss them good-bye and tell them that I love them.”

“I understand,” he said sympathetically. “And I’m sure that if I go outside and tell Joel that you have something to say to him, he’ll agree not to take any immediate action; he’ll at least think about it overnight.”

“And then what happens? What would you have done in this situation?”

He chuckled at that. “What would I have done?”

I looked at him dead serious. “Yeah—what would you have done? Would you break my cooperation agreement right on the spot, or would you give me a slap on the wrist?”

“There’s no way I would break your agreement,” he answered quickly. “The consequences are too severe; and I would say that ninety percent of the AUSAs would agree with me.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, Joel doesn’t fall into that ninety percent, but that doesn’t mean he’ll break your agreement. It’s just that most of the AUSAs aren’t as hard-nosed as Joel.

“But to answer your question, what I’d probably do is give you a stern warning—or, at worst, make you plead guilty to another charge, something like lying to a federal officer or maybe obstruction of justice. My goal would be to teach you a lesson and also to send a message to the jury that you’ve been punished for what you did.”

“What jury? I’ve already pleaded guilty.”

He shook his head. “I’m not talking about your jury; I’m talking about the jury you’ll end up testifying against. Understand: This is all going to come out under cross-examination. That’s why everyone is so pissed right now! I’m sure they know that your motives weren’t evil. You were just trying to help a friend.

“Anyway, give me permission and I’ll go out there right now and tell them that you’re ready to come clean. Then Greg and I will roll up our sleeves and go to work for you, and we’re going to pull out all the stops on this one. Once Greg finds out what happened, I’m sure he’ll be back here tonight; then first thing tomorrow we’ll be down at the U.S. Attorney’s Office pleading your case. And we’ll go right to the top if we have to. We have an excellent relationship with the chief of the criminal division, and, ultimately, that’s who Joel has to go to to sign off on this. In the meantime, I would suggest you speak to Coleman and ask him to put in a good word for you. I know you guys have a good relationship; I’ve heard from more than one source that he genuinely likes you and that he respects you.”

“Yeah,” I said gravely, “maybe that used to be true, but it’s not true anymore. I totally betrayed the guy.” I shook my head in embarrassment. “I mean, I don’t even know how I’m going to face him again.” I bit my lower lip at the thought. “He must be really hating my guts right now.”

“Nehhh,” said the Yale-man, with a hint of a smile. “He doesn’t hate you. In fact, I’m sure he understands exactly what happened here. You know, you’re not the first cooperator to do this sort of thing; it happens more often than you think. But at least your heart was in the right place. I mean, Coleman would never admit it, but he probably respects you even more now.” He winked at me. “And so do I. So, that leaves us with Joel: We need to do everything we can to make sure he doesn’t shut down your cooperation. Then we can move forward with our lives.”

I nodded, feeling very lucky that I had chosen De Feis O’Connell & Rose as my law firm. Not only were they first-rate lawyers but they were also friends, which was a commodity that I was quickly running out of. Of course, there was still a better than fifty-fifty chance that the Bastard would break my cooperation agreement or at least try to, but with Nick and Greg in my corner— and, if I was lucky, OCD—I still had a fighting chance.

Five minutes later, my captors were back inside the debriefing room, and I was spilling my very guts; thirty minutes later I was done. I had told them everything.

The Bastard took it well, or at least he seemed to. He showed little emotion—telling Nick afterward that he would be in touch with him in a few days. The Witch, to my surprise, stayed out of it, as did the Mormon.

And then there was OCD, who had been unusually quiet.

At first that troubled me—no, it devastated me, because I assumed that any goodwill I had built up with him had been permanently destroyed. After all, I had completely betrayed his trust. I had looked him in the eye and lied to him, and not just when I first handed him the tape but also right here in the debriefing room when he confronted me. So, yes, he had every right to lose my phone number and to chalk the whole thing up to experience.

But I had been wrong; he was just saving his thoughts for when the two of us were alone. That happened about ten minutes later, after he had escorted the Yale-man and me up the service elevator, through the lobby with its endless sea of dark-faced grim-faced semi-illegal aliens, and then out onto the street. It was then that the Yale-man turned left and headed for the subway, and OCD and I turned right and headed for the parking lot.

We were somewhere around Broadway, with 26 Federal Plaza rising up behind us and Broadway in front of us, when OCD stopped dead in his tracks and slapped me on the biceps and said, “What the fuck is wrong with you, huh? Did you lose your mind or something?”

I stopped dead in my tracks too. “Yeah,” I replied sheepishly. “I did.”

OCD attacked: “Yeah—well, you’re in some deep shit right now! Do you have any idea of the uphill battle you’re facing with Joel? Christ! You don’t get it! You’re playing with your life here!” He compressed his lips and shook his head. “I can’t believe it! And after what you’ve done, now I gotta go to bat for you and plead your fucking case to Joel, and to my boss, and to Joel’s boss, and to everyone else around here!

“And do you have any idea how much fucking paperwork I gotta do because of this shit?” He shook his head angrily. “Unbelievable!” he muttered. “What did I tell you that night when you were all upset about wiring up against Beall? Come on, you’re the one with the photographic memory! So, tell me, genius: What did I say to you?”

With my tail between my legs: “You said that if the shoe were on the other foot he would do the same thing to me. And you were right. I don’t know what to say.” I paused, trying to find the right words. “Would you like to know why I did it?”

“No,” he answered flatly. “Don’t waste your breath. I already know why you did it. That’s why I’m out here talking to you and you’re not sitting in jail already.” He shook his head some more. “Anyway, it’s your mess, and now I gotta try to clean it up. I want to thank you for that.”

I didn’t quite know what to say, so I said, “Well, what are friends for?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, “you—my friend. Christ! Who needs enemies when I have cooperators like you?” More head-shaking now. “Anyway, listen to me very closely: I can’t promise you how this is gonna turn out, but I’ll do everything in my power to try to salvage your life. In return, I want you to step up your cooperation to new levels. You’ve done a good job so far, but only good. You could do better—much, much better. I know what you’re capable of and so does Joel, and that’s the biggest thing you got in your corner. Now—you know who the targets are, my friend. So I want you to go home tonight and rack your brain on how to reach out to them. This way, while I’m busy pleading with Joel to spare your life, I can tell him that you’re prepared to take your cooperation to a whole new level. You understand?”

“Yeah. Clearly,” I said. “You were right all along: There’s no loyalty in this world. And everyone rats.” And with that we shook hands and parted ways.

How odd it was that when I sat down with George that very evening, and I asked him to place a phone call to Elliot Lavigne to see if he would send me a bit of the money he owed me in my hour of need, George hung up the phone a minute later, astonished.

“According to your friend Elliot,” George said tonelessly, “you don’t need money in jail. Then he told me to wish you well and to go fuck myself. Then he hung up on me.”

Fair enough, I thought. There were a few people in this world I’d committed crimes with who thought they had gotten away with it. Well, they were in for a rude awakening.

^{CHAPTER 19} SUPER RAT

It was one of those sweltering early-August days, a Tuesday, and the island of Manhattan was being smothered by a soupy air mass of such stillness and oppressiveness that by ten a.m. you could literally feel the atmosphere on your skin. But inside the law offices of De Feis O’Connell & Rose, perfection! The building’s air conditioner was working overtime as the three of us went about discussing the events of the last seven days.

Unlike my lawyers, I was dressed for the weather, in a white polo shirt, tan golf shorts, and leather boating moccasins. And, of course, I also wore socks, which concealed my ankle bracelet from the casual glance of a nosy voyeur. Right now Magnum had center stage and was in the middle of explaining the outcome of his negotiations with my good friend the Bastard.

“Obstruction of justice,” he declared proudly, as he leaned back in his high-back leather chair. “You plead guilty to one count and do an extra thirty months in jail. But”—and he held up his right index finger—”you still get your 5K letter, which means we avoid Armageddon.” He nodded a single time. “It’s a terrific result, Jordan, especially when you consider the nature of who we’re dealing with.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and especially when you consider the magnitude of my idiocy.” I shook my head in amazement. “I’ll tell you, this has to go down as the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.” I shook my head some more. “And there’s no close seconds.” I turned to the Yale-man and offered him a warm smile.

I said to him, “If it weren’t for you, Nick, I don’t think I would’ve made it through that day. You were amazing—from start to finish.”

The Yale-man raised his eyebrows. “That’s very nice of you to say, but are you prepared to swear to God about that?” He started chuckling. “Or are you willing to take a lie-detector test?”

“Fuck off, Nick! That’s what all guilty people say when you put their backs to the wall. It’s a biological reflex, no different than a jelly fish stinging a passing swimmer.” I shrugged. “It can’t be blamed.”

“Who?” Magnum asked. “The jellyfish?”

“Yes, the jellyfish, and me neither, in this case. I did what any intelligent man in my position would do: I lied through my teeth until I had no choice but to confess. Then I begged forgiveness.” I shrugged again. “There’s no other way.”

“Maybe so,” said the Yale-man, “but Joel knows that too.”

“Knows what?”

“That all guilty people swear to God.”

“Ahhh… but do all guilty people offer to take a lie-detector test?” I gave the Yale-man a knowing wink. “You see? I’m different, Nick!”

Nothing but silence.

“Anyway, what can I say? You guys are the best! And you, Nick.… well, I’m so indebted to you that I’m willing to overlook that last insult and move forward with this relationship.” Now I looked at Magnum. “So, tell me, Greg: When must I plead guilty to this latest crime of mine?”

“Sometime in the fall,” he answered, “although we’re gonna drag it out as long as possible. Remember, the obstruction charge won’t be covered by your 5K letter, so Gleeson will have to throw the book at you.”

But I had acted like a man! “Well, two and a half years isn’t that high a price to pay for my self-respect. In fact, one day maybe I can explain all this to Carter and he’ll be proud of me”—strange looks from my lawyers—”or maybe not. Anyway, I’d rather get the whole thing over with than delay it. You know what I’m saying?”

Magnum stared at me with his lips pursed. I looked over at the Yale-man, and he was staring at me the same way. “Okay,” I said, “what am I missing here?”

“Welllll….” declared the towering tenor, “let me start by explaining how things went down at the U.S. Attorney’s Office yesterday. There were five of us in the meeting. Nick and me, and Joel, of course, and then Coleman, as well as someone named Ron White, who just became head of the criminal division.”

I perked up: “Yeah, I know Ron White! He debriefed me once in another case. He’s a really nice guy. Too bad he’s not my AUSA, instead of Joel.”

Magnum nodded in agreement. “Yes, that would be nice, but, unfortunately, he’s not. So it’s Joel we have to deal with, and, likewise, it’s Joel who has to deal with you. So as nice a guy as Ron White is, he’ll still defer to Joel.”

“I thought Joel was leaving the office soon?”

“He is,” said Magnum, “and that’s why we’re not rushing your guilty plea. See, if we can delay it until after he leaves, then we can try renegotiating with the next AUSA, who, hopefully”—Magnum winked—”will be more sympathetic to our cause.”

“That’s brilliant!” I exclaimed—and what a two-tiered justice system, I thought. In fact, it was absolutely mind-boggling. If I had been poor or even middle class, for that matter, I would be sitting in jail right now, freezing my ass off and facing the better part of thirty years.

The Yale-man said, “Our first goal will be to try to get the obstruction charge reduced to lying to a federal officer, which is far less serious.”

“It carries no mandatory jail time,” Magnum added, with a tiny wink.

“Correct,” said the Yale-man, with a starchy shrug. “Of course, it would be even nicer if we could convince them to drop the whole thing, although I don’t think that’s realistic. Joel already let the genie out of the bottle, so it would look indecisive if the U.S. Attorney’s Office did a complete one-eighty.”

Playing devil’s advocate, I said, “What you’re saying sounds logical, but what if the next AUSA is even worse than Joel? Can they go back on the current deal?”

“Two good questions,” answered Magnum. “Under no circumstances can your position get worse. Obstruction of justice is too harsh as it is, and I’m sure Ron White would agree with me on that. And, almost anyone would be better than Joel Cohen, save Michele Adelman. But she won’t be the one taking over this case, because she’s already got her hands tied up terrorizing Victor Wang. Most AUSAs would have let you off with a stern warning, but, for whatever reason, Joel has it out for you.”

The Yale-man said, “I think Joel is just too emotionally involved in your case.”

That, and he’s a fucking asshole! I thought.

“In other words,” continued the Yale-man, “he’s chased you for such a long time that he can’t help but look at you as ‘the crook you used to be,’ for lack of a better term, rather than the ‘upstanding citizen that you are now,’ which is an accurate term.”

Now Magnum chimed in: “Nick is right on the money with this, and that’s why it’s so important to wait things out. The next AUSA will have no history with you; the only person they’ll know is the Jordan Belfort who’s part of Team USA.”

“And what about Coleman?” I asked. “He chased me longer than everyone else combined.”

Nick said, “It’s different for an FBI agent, especially in a case like yours, where there’s no violence involved. You had a reputation for being a brilliant guy, so Coleman respects you. You weren’t just some schnook who broke the law.”

“And FYI,” added Magnum, “it’s because of Coleman, mostly, that Joel didn’t break your agreement. He stood up for you in a very big way yesterday. He made the case that, with the exception of the Dave Beall note, you’d been a first-class cooperator. And he also said that you guys are working on a very big case right now. You know what he’s talking about?”

I nodded. “Yeah; Gaito and Brennan. We haven’t had much luck so far, but that’s about to change. I’m actually meeting with Coleman right after this, and I have a little gift for him.”

“What’s that?” asked Magnum.

I nodded and clenched my teeth, angry at the recent string of betrayals by men who had had the audacity to once call themselves my friends. “A little recipe on how to cook the Chef,” I said coldly, because if the shoe were on the other foot he would do the same fucking thing to me.

It seemed only appropriate that we would be in Brooklyn Heights when I finally told OCD the story of how the Duchess and I first met and how she ultimately stole my heart away from Denise. After all, it was here, in this very gentrified neighborhood, with the U.S. Attorney’s Office a few blocks this way and the federal courthouse a few blocks that way, where I had picked the Duchess up on our first date.

At the time she was renting a one-bedroom apartment in a town house on Joralemon Street, which was just down the block from where OCD and I were now having lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Obviously, the main topic of today’s lunch was not the sordidness of my personal life, but I felt that, after all OCD had done for me, I owed it to him. After all, no red-blooded American—even a dedicated FBI agent—can resist a story like this, where the primary ingredients are sex, drugs, greed, lust, divorce, betrayal, and blondes. I was now in the middle of explaining how our paths had crossed for the first time.

“…throw these wild parties at my beach house, and there was a total open-door policy. All you had to do was show up, smile, and you were in. It was the greatest recruiting method ever.” With that I paused and took a bite of a mu shu pork pancake that I had just rolled as if it were a joint, while OCD sampled a heaping forkful of his favorite chicken chow mein.

After a few seconds I said, “You were right; the food is really good here.”

OCD nodded. “The prices are dirt cheap too. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how this place stays in business. It’s not like the rents are cheap around here.”

I shrugged and stated the obvious: “They’re probably paying the waiters six cents an hour and threatening to kill their relatives in China if they complain.”

“Probably,” said the FBI agent. “But if that’s what it takes to get chicken chow mein at $5.95 a plate, then what can you do, right?” He scooped his fork back into the food and held it in the air suspensefully. “So you were saying?”

I nodded and put down my pancake. I said, “In the beginning, the parties were relatively small, maybe a few hundred people at most, but over time they grew into the thousands. And like everything else with Stratton, each party had to be more decadent than the last.”

OCD put down his fork. “Why is that?”

I shrugged. “Desensitization, mostly; you know, what seemed wild in 1989 didn’t seem so wild in 1991. It was that, and also the fact that Stratton was a self-contained society. We were like ancient Rome, in that way—held together by a bloodlust to witness acts of depravity. In Rome they used to feed their slaves to the lions; at Stratton we used to toss midgets at a Velcro target.” I paused and picked up my pancake and took another bite.

“Anyway, the first parties were relatively harmless: There were DJs spinning records, there were people dancing, we had an open bar, some hors d’oeuvres, maybe a little bit of drugs, but that was about it.

“But flash-forward a few years later, and it’s complete and utter insanity: Thousands of people are at my house, and they’re literally pouring out onto the street and onto the beach, and on my rear deck are so many people that it’s on the verge of collapse. Dune Road is completely impassable, because it’s filled with drunk and drugged-out Strattonites, and it’s all being supervised by the Westhampton cops—so the party goes on, despite complaints from my neighbors.

“Meanwhile, there’s a live band playing and jugglers are juggling and dancers are dancing and hookers are hooking and strippers are stripping and acrobats are doing somersaults and a midget is walking around dressed in overalls, simply for the sake of amusement. On the beach itself there are giant hog snappers and even more giant lobsters, spinning on a rotisserie, next to a suckling pig with an apple stuffed in its mouth. And to make sure no one gets thirsty, two dozen half-naked waitresses are walking around, carrying sterling-silver trays with glasses of Dom Perignon on them.”

“Jesus,” muttered OCD, and he took another forkful of chow mein.

“Anyway, when I first met Nadine it was July Fourth weekend, 1990, which was still relatively early in the game, so she wasn’t totally freaked out when she walked in the door. I was in my living room at the time, playing pool with Elliot Lavigne”—a wonderful thought!-“who, by the way, happens to be making a fortune again.”

“Really?” said OCD, putting down his fork. “I thought he was broke.”

I shook my head. “Not anymore! I heard he’s flying high again.” Just how and where I heard, I chose to keep to myself. “He’s got something going on in the garment center; I don’t know all the details, but rumor has it he’s making millions.”

“It’s amazing,” said OCD, “considering the guy is a complete degenerate.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and if I know Elliot, he’s probably still smuggling cash over from Hong Kong.” I shrugged my shoulders. “You know, I’m surprised you and Joel never went after him. I mean, he kicked me back more cash than everyone else combined.”

OCD shrugged. “It’s a difficult case. We subpoenaed his bank records a while ago, and there was just too much cash going in and out to find a pattern. In that sense, he was a good choice for a rathole.”

“Yeah?” I countered. “Well, I remember a time when his secretary loaded up a gym bag with seven hundred thousand dollars in cash and then gave it to my old driver, George, to deliver to me. And I know for a fact that all the money was withdrawn from the Bank of New York on the same day, and it went straight from the bank to his secretary, then to George, and then to me.”

OCD twisted his lips. “And how do you know that?”

“Because his secretary called and told me she’d just taken the money out of the bank and to have George come pick it up before Elliot gambled it away. And when George dropped the money off, he was sweating bullets and giving me this sort of strange look. He never said anything to me directly, but he did say something to Janet, and then she said something to me. Apparently George got curious and opened the gym bag and almost keeled over.” I shrugged. “Anyway, all you have to do is subpoena Elliot’s secretary, George, Janet, and the bank records, and the rest is history.”

OCD stared at me for a second. Then he took another forkful of chow mein and started chewing. The unspoken message: “I’ll check it out. Get back to your story.”

I took a deep breath and said, “So, anyway, Elliot and I were in the middle of playing pool when the Blockhead came running over all out of breath, and he said, ‘You gotta see the girl getting out of this Ferrari. She’s off the charts,’ and, of course, since it was the Blockhead I took it with a grain of salt. But then he literally dragged me to the front door.

“And that’s when I saw Nadine for the first time.” I smiled at the memory.

“I felt like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, when he sees Apollonia for the first time; she was walking through the olive fields in Sicily, and when Michael sees her he gets hit by the thunderbolt. Well, that’s how I felt: I was totally blown away by her.” I paused and looked down at my pancake, considering whether or not to take a bite. I looked back up, realizing that I’d lost my appetite. “It was her legs I remember most. I always loved the Duchess’s legs, and her ass too. It’s rounder than a Puerto Rican’s, in case you’ve noticed.” I winked.

OCD started laughing.

“Anyway, we said only a few words to each other, because she showed up with a date, and then the Strattonites immediately started torturing her.”

“How so?” asked OCD.

I shrugged. “Mostly they just ignored the fact that she showed up with someone else, and they started coming on to her, as if the guy didn’t even exist. It finally came to a head when the two of us were being introduced. We were standing by the pool table and she said something like, ‘This is a really nice house,’ and I said, ‘Thanks,’ and then suddenly I saw her face drop, so I turned around and saw Mark Hanna, who was one of my brokers at the time. He was standing a few feet behind me, staring at her and jerking off.

OCD recoiled in his seat. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “He had literally dropped his pants to his knees and he was pulling on his own pud. And then his wife, Fran, came running over, and she was screaming, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you, Mark! Pull your pants up!’ So Mark pulled his pants up, and Fran started smacking him. Then, when I turned back to Nadine, I expected to see a look of astonishment on her face or maybe even fear, but, instead, I saw stone-cold anger. She had her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched in rage, and she was leaning forward as if she was getting ready to take a swing at him.

“Of course, I didn’t know she was a Brooklyn girl back then; she looked like she was from Australia or Scandinavia or somewhere like that. Anyway, suddenly Denise was on the scene and sensing danger in a way that only a woman can, and then I heard Nadine’s boyfriend say, ‘Okay, it’s time to go now.’ Nadine and I were both saying, ‘No, no, not yet,’ and Denise started bum-rushing them out the front door. As all this was happening, the party was raging around us, with the music blasting and the champagne flowing. And just as Nadine was about to leave, she turned around and flashed me this mischievous little smile, and then a second later her boyfriend yanked her out the door like a rag doll. I saw a long trail of flowing blond hair behind her, then she was gone. It was just like you see in the movies.”

I paused and took a moment to study OCD. He seemed to be enjoying my story immensely. He was still shoveling in his food, but he had this wildly expectant look on his face. Yes, I thought, despite the badge and the gun he was a man like any other man. He said, “Sooooo…” and he waved his fork in tiny circles.

I nodded. “So, to make a long story short, the second she left I began asking everyone under the sun who she was and then spent the rest of the summer trying to run into her, which I occasionally did but always when I was with Denise. Denise would always say something like, “Oh, look! There’s that pretty blond girl from the party, remember her?’ And I would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I think that’s her…’ but my tone was like, ‘Who gives a shit.’ But, to my own credit”—I rolled my eyes—”I made it all the way to Thanksgiving before I finally broke down and paid someone to arrange a date.”

OCD’s eyes popped open. “You did?”

I shrugged sheepishly. “Yeah, I know it sounds kind of lame, but that’s the way it is. We didn’t really have any friends in common, except for this one girl named Ginger, who was a complete mercenary. So she was pulling this shit on me, saying, ‘Come on, you’re married, Jordan; I can’t get involved in this,’ so I said, ‘Fine, Ginger, how about if I give you ten grand in cash? Will that ease your conscience?’ Of course, the next day I had Nadine’s phone number and Ginger had already put in a good word for me.”

“Jesus,” said OCD, “what a player this Ginger is!” He shook his head, amazed. “And what did Nadine say about you being married?”

I shrugged innocently. “Well, that was the first thing she asked me when I called, so I did the only thing a married man could do: I said, ‘I’m in the process of getting divorced.’”

OCD’s eyes popped open again. “You didn’t think you’d get caught lying to her?”

I shook my head quickly. “Nah, it wasn’t really like that. I mean, I didn’t say it so bluntly—like ‘I’m getting divorced tomorrow.’ I just kind of painted the picture that things weren’t going so well in my marriage. You know, that we were considering whether or not to consider getting a divorce.”

OCD started chuckling.

“No, I’m serious! That’s exactly what I said to her. That’s what every married guy says when he starts an affair.” I shrugged my eyebrows. “It’s what you call standard operating procedure. Anyway, there happened to be a bit of truth to my words; not that I was contemplating getting a divorce, but my marriage to Denise was feeling the effects of Stratton. The two of us were never alone— we always had an entourage of Strattonites around us—and we’d already met Elliot and Ellen; and if you think Elliot’s off his rocker, you oughtta get a load of his wife, Ellen! Anyway, I don’t want to place the blame on Elliot and Ellen, but any bit of magic Denise and I had left was squashed when the four of us became running partners. Before that, we hardly did any drugs, and Denise was like this young beautiful girl, but then Ellen sunk her claws into her. Before I knew it, Denise was wearing Chanel outfits and buying Bulgari jewelry and taking Quaaludes during the day.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t upset about Denise spending money on things. My money was her money, and I was making it so fast that she couldn’t put a dent in things if she tried. It was just that that wasn’t Denise. You see, what made her beautiful was how pure she was, how she could go out to dinner dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and still look gorgeous. That was Denise—not the chichi clothes and the overpriced jewelry. She was much too good for that.

“Anyway, by the time I met Nadine, Denise and I were spending more time apart than together, and I was sleeping with Blue Chip hookers a dime a dozen.” I shrugged and shook my head sadly. Then I said, “And when Nadine and I went out on our first date, I got a lot more than I bargained for. I was expecting a dumb blonde, who I could spoil rotten in exchange for mooring rights.”

OCD cocked his head to the side. “Mooring rights?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “mooring rights: like my dick is the boat and her pussy is the mooring.” I shrugged innocently. “Anyway, Nadine, as it turned out, was not a dumb blonde, and by the end of the night I was totally captivated. When we pulled up to the front of her apartment, I was trying to figure out a way to seduce her, but I never got the chance, because she came right out and said, ‘You want to come upstairs for a cup of coffee?’ Next thing I knew I was inside her tiny apartment, saying, ‘Jesus, Nae, this is a really cute place,’ but what I was really thinking was: How the hell am I going to get this girl into bed?

“And then she said, ‘Why don’t you start a fire? I need to go to the bathroom for a second.’ So I said, ‘Sure…” although, in retrospect, I remember being a bit shocked that a girl as pretty as she was even went to the bathroom! I mean, she seemed way too perfect-looking to ever have to take a dump! You know what I’m saying?”

OCD started chuckling. “You’re demented. You know that?”

“Of course,” I said proudly, “but that’s besides the point. So, anyway, there I am, crouched in front of her fireplace, searching my demented skull for the perfect line to get her into bed, and then I hear, ‘Okay! I’m back!’ And I turn around and there she is, stark naked, in her birthday suit!”

OCD’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me!”

“Nope!” I said. “I ended up sleeping over there that night—I told Denise I was stuck in Atlantic City—and, from there, things quickly spiraled out of control. At first we were going to see each other only once a week, on Tuesday nights. We wouldn’t even speak in between. And that lasted for about a day and a half, at which point we started speaking every day on the phone—just for a few minutes, though, and just to check in to see how our days were going. But that quickly turned into a few hours a day, although I’m not sure how. So I figured that I needed to just spend a few days with her alone—you know, to get her out of my system. So I told Denise that I needed to go to California on business. And that was the end: Nadine and I fell madly in love and started speaking on the phone nonstop and meeting in the afternoons to let our rogue hormones out for a romp! It was sometime in late January when I finally told Denise that I needed space, and that’s when I moved into the city, to Olympic Towers.

“Ironically, Denise still had no idea that I was even having an affair. I’d been pretty careful about things—at least in the beginning— but once I moved into the city that changed too. By mid-February Nadine and I were out dancing in nightclubs and holding hands across a table at Canastel’s, which was one of the hottest restaurants in Manhattan back then. Everyone knew me there, and someone, I guess, called Denise one night to give her a heads-up that I was out for dinner with Nadine. A few hours later, when my limo pulled up in front of Olympic Towers, the door swung open, but instead of the doorman standing there, it was Denise. And, to make matters worse, I happened to be right on top of Nadine at the moment, engaged in a passionate kiss and telling her how much I loved her.

“‘You stay the fuck in the car!’ Denise screamed at Nadine. ‘And you get the fuck out of the car!’ she screamed at me. Then she did a double take at Nadine and her face dropped. ‘You’re the girl from the party,’ she said softly. Suddenly both of them were in tears at the same time.” I paused and shook my head sadly. “So I turned to Nadine, who was white as a ghost now, and I squeezed her hand reassuringly. ‘I need to take care of this,’ I said gently. ‘Why don’t you go home and I’ll call you in a little while, okay?’

“‘I’m so sorry,’ she said through tears. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen, I feel terrible.’ And that was true, of course. Neither of us meant for it to happen, and we both felt terrible about it. But it did happen, and the fact that we felt bad about it didn’t make it any easier on Denise.” I shook my head slowly, trying to make sense of it all. “In a way, you don’t choose who you fall in love with, you know? It just sort of happens. And when you do fall in love—that all-consuming love, that lusty love, where two people live and breathe each other twenty-four hours a day—what do you do then?” I shrugged and answered my own question: “There’s nothing you can do. You can’t be without the other person for more than a few hours without going crazy. And that was the sort of love Nadine and I had. We were spending every waking moment together. Even when I went to work, which was seldom, she would drive out to Long Island with me and then keep herself busy until lunch. And when she had modeling appointments, I would drop her off and wait outside until she was done. We were obsessed with each other.

“Anyway, the limousine pulled away and it was just Denise and me. The doorman had run inside the building when he heard Denise screaming at me. She was screaming at the top of her lungs: ‘How could you do this to me? I married you when you had nothing! I stuck with you through thick and thin! When you were bankrupt I cooked for you! And made love to you! I was a good wife! And this is how you repay me? How could you do this?’

“At first I tried to put up an argument, mostly out of instinct, but there was nothing to say, really. She was a hundred percent right, and we both knew it. So I just stood there apologizing to her over and over again, telling her I didn’t mean for it to happen. Finally she said, ‘Just tell me you don’t love her; that’s all I ask.’ She grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye, and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. She said, ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not in love with her, Jordan. Please. As long as you’re not in love with her, we can work it out.’

“But after a few seconds, I shook my head and said, ‘I’m so sorry, but I am in love with her. I didn’t mean for this to happen.’ And I started crying myself. ‘I’ll always take care of you,’ I said. ‘You’ll never want for anything.’ It was no use. She broke down and started shaking in my arms.

“I can tell you that I felt like the biggest louse on earth at that moment.” I shook my head sadly. “And Denise just kept sobbing uncontrollably, right there in the street. But then, out of nowhere, her friend Lisa emerged from the shadows, and she grabbed Denise and hugged her. Lisa said to me, ‘It’s okay, Jordan. I’ll take care of her now. She’ll be all right,’ and then she winked at me and led Denise away.

“I was bowled over by that. I mean, I would’ve expected Lisa to be shooting daggers at me with her eyes, and she wasn’t. But what I didn’t know back then was that Lisa was in the middle of her own affair; that would come out a few months later, when she got caught cheating with some local playboy type on Long Island. Then she got divorced too.” I looked at OCD and shrugged. “And that’s it, Greg. That’s Lifestyles of the Dysfunctional on the North Shore of Long Island. And it’s not a pretty picture.”

From there we spent a few minutes talking about what happened after—my marriage to Nadine, the birth of my children, my escalating drug habit, and, finally, we turned to the subject of the Chef.

“The problem,” I said, “is that people like Dennis and me get so caught up in the cover story that when we talk about the past we stick to the cover story and don’t tell the truth. It has nothing to do with him thinking I’m wired. If he did, he wouldn’t even be returning my call.

“It has more to do with protocol than anything—that when you discuss the past you hedge by mentioning the cover story. That’s why when you listen to tapes of us, he always starts by saying things like, ‘You know, there are two versions of things: our version and their version,’ and then he goes on talking about juries and reasonable doubts.”

OCD nodded. “It’s a valid point, and, of course, I’m aware of it. But over time people tend to get sloppy. So we wait for a break.”

I shook my head no. “It won’t happen with the Chef. The cover story, to him, is more truthful than the truth. That’s why we have to take a different tack.”

“What’s that?”

“Well,” I said confidently, “I think it’s time to leave the past behind and look to the future.” And, with that, I told OCD my plan.

^{CHAPTER 20} ALL MEN BETRAY

This time was different.

The Nagra was my shield, the microphone was my sword, and the words rolled off my tongue with such ease and fluidity that I could have gotten John Gotti to share every last detail of how he and his crew whacked Paul Castellano in front of Sparks Steak House.

Yes, I thought, having a clear conscience is a wonderful thing for a cooperator.

A rat? No, no. I was no such thing. After all, a rat gives up his friends, and I didn’t have any. I had been betrayed by everyone: Dave Beall, Elliot Lavigne, my own wife, for Chrissake, and, if given the chance, by the Jersey Chef too.

So now it was my turn.

It was Friday afternoon, a little past two, and the Chef and I had just arrived at a small, well-appointed office I kept in Plainview, Long Island, which was halfway between Manhattan and the Hamptons. Plainview was a boring town—so boring, in fact, that in the entire history of Long Island no conversation had ever begun with: “You’ll never believe what happened in Plainview the other day…”

Well, that was about to change!

I was determined to make, before the afternoon was out, the most incriminating consensually recorded conversation in the history of not only Plainview but also of Manhattan, New Jersey, the eastern seaboard of the United States, and, for that matter, the entire world.

But, first, opening pleasantries. We exchanged hugs and hellos as I led the Chef to a small seating area. An oxblood-colored leather couch and two matching club chairs surrounded a brass-and-glass coffee table. As we took seats on the couch, the Chef said, “I didn’t even know you still had this place!”

“Yeah,” I said casually. “I didn’t have the heart to get rid of it. I’m sentimental, I guess.” I smiled warmly at the Chef, who, as usual, looked as cool as a cucumber in his light-gray business suit and red shepherd’s check necktie. I was dressed more casually, in a pair of cutoff jean shorts and a white polo shirt, both of which were doing a fine job of concealing my sword and shield.

The Chef smiled back. “Well, it’s a nice place. I always liked it.”

I watched with an icy detachment as the Chef looked around the room. In the past, I had always found the Chef’s presence soothing—that proud way he carried his baldness, the very squareness of his jaw, his aquiline nose, that infectious smile—yet I had also found the Duchess to be soothing, hadn’t I? And where was she now? And where was Dave Beall now? And where was that bastard Elliot Lavigne now? All men betray, I reminded myself, and all women too. So why feel guilty? No reason to; no reason at all.

“It is,” I said, smiling. “Anyway, what’s the latest and greatest? How’s the wife, the kids, your golf swing…” and, with that, we spent the next few minutes engaged in meaningless small talk.

Actually, it wasn’t so meaningless, because ever so subtly I was making two very important points: first, that I was in fine spirits and feeling better every day, and second, that once my legal problems were resolved I was looking forward to a bright future, which included the Chef as my friend, confidant, and adviser. My demeanor said that I was calm and confident, a man who deals with his problems with strength and honor.

After a few minutes, I casually steered the conversation to the status of my court case. “It’s obvious that my best option is to cop a plea, because if I go to trial and lose, I’m gonna get slammed so hard, it’ll be fucking ridiculous!” I shrugged. “Each money-laundering count carries ten years, and I’m facing five of them. But, on the flipside, if I plea-bargain it’ll only be to securities fraud, which carries a lot less time.”

The Chef nodded. “How much time would you have to do?”

I shrugged. “Six years, according to Greg, but that’s before my deductions; after good time, the drug program, and six months in a halfway house, I’m looking at closer to three, which—believe me—I can do standing on my head.”

“I like it,” said the Chef. “I like it a lot. And what about Danny?”

“The same as me, I’m sure. Our lawyers are still working together on a joint defense, but it’s only for cosmetic reasons. If the U.S. Attorney’s Office thinks we’re going to trial, it’ll make it easier to cut a deal when the time comes.”

“Clearly,” said the Chef. “That’s always been my philosophy: You fight tooth and nail, and then—badaboom!—you cut a deal on the courthouse steps.” He paused briefly and started nodding again. “Well, this is good, this is real good. How big a fine you think you’ll have to pay?”

“I’m not really sure,” I said, seeming unconcerned. Then I stopped, looked around the room suspiciously, and I lowered my voice to just above a whisper (no problem for the Nagra, of course) and added, “And, personally, I couldn’t give a shit. I got so much money socked away, I’m set forever. And I got it here and there”— I swung my head toward the door—”on both sides of the Atlantic.”

The Chef nodded in understanding. “Good,” he whispered, although his tone was not quite as hushed as mine. “That’s your safety net.”

I nodded and whispered back, “You always told me that, Dennis. Maybe if I would’ve used your people in the first place, I wouldn’t be dealing with all this shit now.”

The Chef pursed his lips and nodded. “This is true,” he said. “But it’s not worth crying over. It’s spilt milk.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know all about it. And a man must learn from his mistakes, right?” I winked. “Well, this man has learned, the hard way. The only problem is”—I started lowering my voice again— “that I still got a ton of cash overseas. More than ten million, and I’m not too comfortable with who I got it with. It’s only two steps away from Saurel, and he’s the bastard who ratted me out in the first place!”

The Chef threw his palms up in the air. “Sooo, let’s move it! What’s the big deal?”

“No, uh, it’s no big deal!”—and Jesus Christ! I thought. The Chef had just buried himself right on tape! “It’s just that you’re the only one I trust. I mean, my days of being reckless are over—seriously!”

“They better be,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “What country is the money in?”

“Actually, it’s in two countries: Switzerland and Liechtenstein,” I answered, and my mind began double-tracking wildly. On track one, the words were coming automatically, as if on tape. “I have it spread over seven different accounts, five in Switzerland and two in Liechtenstein….” As I kept on speaking, track two began organizing all the topics I needed to discuss to make sure that my tape would secure a money-laundering indictment against the Chef—he had to know that my money was the proceeds of illegal activity; he had to know that I had no intention of reporting the transaction to the government; the amount had to be in excess of one million dollars (to receive the maximum penalty); and, peculiar to this case, I had to figure out a way to tie in my money-laundering activities with those of the Blue-eyed Devil’s. “…which is no problem,” track one was saying to the Chef. “It’s the cash Lavigne kicked me back from all the new issues, and most of it came from Hong Kong. So I know it’s untraceable.”

“What we need to do,” said the Chef, “is set up new accounts over there, and we need to do it immediately. I got some good people for that; they’re the same people I used with Bob.” Bingo! I thought. “What I’m thinking, though, is that we should stay away from Switzerland for a while, at least until the dust settles.”

“I completely agree,” I said quickly. “I would hate to see my money get snatched by the feds. I had to rathole a lot of new issues to generate ten million in cash.”

“Don’t worry,” the Chef said confidently. “They’ll never find the money, not with my people. They’re experts.”

I nodded quickly, as my mind raced ahead. Clearly, the Chef had already incriminated himself in money laundering, but only in conspiracy. Could I push the envelope even further? I would try. “Let me ask you this,” I said, lowering my voice, as if I were still paranoid. “What if I wanted to move more cash overseas? I still got five million that Lavigne kicked back to me. I would love to get that money out of the country.”

“Not a problem,” said the Chef. “I know just the guy for it.”

You do? I thought. Holy Christ! “Oh, really? Who?” I asked, not expecting him to answer.

“His name is James Loo,” answered the Chef, as if I had just asked him for the name of his carpenter. “I think you might even know the guy. Bob took him public a while back. He’s as straight a shooter as they come.”

I nodded eagerly, wondering what the fuck had come over the Chef. He was one of the shrewdest men I’d ever met, yet for some inexplicable reason he had let his guard down. I said, “So James Loo has connections in Switzerland?”

The Chef shrugged. “Fuhgedabouddit! This guy has connections everywhere! Half his family still lives over in Asia, for Chrissake! He’ll get your money over to Hong Kong faster than you can get to your local Citibank. And he’s got people in Singapore, Malaysia… you name it.”

I nodded in understanding, almost too shocked to ask the next question. But I asked it anyway: “So you’re saying I could actually give James Loo the cash I got from Lavigne and he’ll smuggle it overseas for me without anyone finding out?”

The Chef nodded slowly, deliberately, and with the hint of a smile on his face. “Yes,” he finally said. “This is not a problem for James Loo.”

I decided to throw the Hail Mary pass: “And he already did this for Bob?”

The Chef nodded again. “Yes, he did, and with no problems. Bob gave him the money, and schhhwiitttt!” The Chef clapped his hands, with his patented sliding motion, sending his right arm flying out toward what he probably thought was Asia.

I threw an even longer Hail Mary pass: “Can I meet him?”

This time the Chef recoiled in his seat, as if I were crazy for even asking such a thing. I had expected that; after all, my question was highly inappropriate, wasn’t it? Apparently not, because the Chef then said, “Of course you can! How’s next week for you?”

“Next week is perfect,” I replied.

Without further prompting, the Chef immediately plunged into the various ways I could filter my cash back to the United States once we had it safely tucked away in numbered accounts in Switzerland and the Orient. In fact, he seemed to relish the opportunity to explain this to me, as if the whole thing were a giant game of cat and mouse, with no serious consequences if the cat won.

Afterward, when I met OCD in yet another random parking lot, I handed him the tape and said, “You have to listen to it yourself, Greg, to believe it.” I shook my head slowly, still in disbelief over the Chef’s recklessness. “It’s totally off the charts.”

“Why—what’s on it?”

“Everything,” I replied, “including Brennan’s head on a platter.” I shrugged, not feeling so pleased with myself suddenly. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. All men betray! Dave Beall! Elliot Lavigne! My own wife! “Anyway, I gotta roll. It’s my weekend with the kids and I wanna beat the traffic out to the Hamptons.”

“All right, I’ll call you Monday and we’ll see what’s what.”

“Sounds good,” I said, although I had a sneaking suspicion we’d be speaking before that. In point of fact, he called me later that night, while I was lying awake in bed with the kids sleeping next to me.

His first three words were: “Jesus fucking Christ!” Then he said, “Has Gaito lost his mind?”

“I told you,” I said softly. “It’s like he has a death wish or something. I don’t know, it’s fucking mind-boggling. Anyway, what comes next? Do I set a meeting with James Loo?”

“Of course you do! In fact, we need to memorialize it on videotape! But we’ll talk on Monday. I know you have your kids, so I don’t want to keep you. Have a good weekend; you’ve earned it.”

Yeah, I thought, another worthless weekend of model-mongering and one-night stands. I’ve earned it. It was all so sad and so very lonely. What I really needed was to find a nice girl and fall in love again.

Alas, only half my wish was about to come true.

^{CHAPTER 21} BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

“It’s fucking ridiculous!” I muttered to Gwynne, as she walked one step behind me through the living room. “How could she just disappear?”

“Did ya check out by the tennis court?”

“Yeah,” I replied quickly. “I checked everywhere, and she’s nowhere to be found.”

It was Sunday afternoon, and the party was in full swing. Outside, on the other side of the plate-glass wall, a merry band of fifty or sixty people—few of whom I knew and none of whom I cared about—were scattered on my rear deck, partying like rock stars and devouring the last vestiges of my crumbling empire. Most of them were young females—tall, lean, and gorgeous—and not one of them seemed to have a care in the world.

Just then something caught my eye: breasts—two pair, very young, perfect in every way. One pair belonged to a lithe blonde with a dazzling head of curls; the other belonged to a curvy brunette with a luxurious mane of waves that went down to the crack of her ass. They were dancing away their afternoon—shaking their little booties, with their palms up to the sky, raising the roof, so to speak.

I shook my head gravely. “You see that, Gwynne?” I pointed to the two young girls with their gravity-defying boobs. “They shouldn’t have their tops off while my kids are around. It’s not fucking right.”

Gwynne nodded sadly. “I think thair druhnk.”

“They’re not drunk, Gwynne; they’re stoned, probably on Ecstasy. See how they’re rubbing against each other? It’s the first sign.”

Gwynne nodded without speaking.

I kept scanning my deck, astonished. Christ-who were all these people? They were eating my food and drinking my wine and swimming in my pool and lounging in Carter’s Hacuddi and—another wave of panic! Carter!

I ran into the TV room, and there he was, safe and sound. He was lying on the couch watching a video. He was dressed like me, in blue nylon swimming trunks and no shirt. He looked rather content right now, with his head resting on a young girl’s lap. She was a blonde, no older than twenty. And she was gorgeous. She had on a sky-blue bikini the size of kite string. Her cleavage was terrific. Someone had dimmed the lights, probably the girl, and she was tickling Carter’s back, as he relished a Power Rangers episode from a side angle.

“Carter James!” I said urgently. “Have you seen your sister?”

He ignored me and kept watching. The girl, however, looked up, and she flashed me a thousand-watt model smile. “Ohhhh,” she said, twirling her finger through Carter’s loose blond curls, “he’s soooo cute, your son! I could eat him up alive!”

I smiled warmly at the young blonde. “I know. He’s really beautiful,” I agreed, “but right now I can’t find my daughter. You haven’t seen her around by any chance, have you?”

The blonde shook her head nervously. “No, I’m sorry.” Then she suddenly perked up. “But I could help you look if you want!” She pursed her lips like a goldfish.

I stared at her for a moment, thinking dark thoughts. “No, it’s fine,” I said. “But could you keep an eye on my son, please? I’d hate to lose them both at once.”

Another thousand-watt smile: “Oh, I’d love to! But he better be verrrry careful or I might try to steal his eyelashes!” She looked down at Carter. “Right, Carter? You gonna let me steal your eyelashes?”

He ignored her.

“Carter!” I snapped. “Have you seen your sister anywhere?”

He ignored me too.

Carter’s new babysitter began rubbing his cheek softly. “Carrrrrrrter,” she nearly sung. “You have to answer your daddy when he asks you a question!”

Without averting his gaze even one millimeter from the TV screen, Carter whined: “ IIIIIIIIIIIIII’m watching!”

Carter’s babysitter looked at me and shrugged. “He said he’s watching.”

I shook my head in disbelief and walked back into the living room. I looked around—nothing but unfamiliar faces, those thousand-watt model grins. I found them wholly depressing. It was like the Roman Empire before the fall. All this would be gone soon, save the mansion, which would be the ruins and…

There! Just before the plate-glass wall, one of the towering floor-to-ceiling curtains had a suspiciously large bump at the bottom. I stared at the bump for a moment, watching, with relief, as it resolved into the shape of a mischievous six-year-old girl. I walked over and peeked behind the curtain, and there she was: my daughter. She was down on both knees, in a white bikini, staring out at the deck. I followed her line of sight… right to the topless girls!

“Chandler!” I snapped. “What are you doing down there?”

She looked up, her face a mask of bewilderment and embarrassment. Those fabulous blue eyes she’d inherited from her mother were as wide as saucers. She opened her mouth for a moment—as if getting ready to say something—but then she compressed her lips and looked back outside at the topless girls.

“What are you doing down there, silly? Gwynne and I were looking all over for you!” I reached down and picked her up gently and gave her a warm kiss on the cheek.

“I lost my dolly,” she said innocently. “I thought it fell behind the curtain.” She looked down at the curtain, searching her mind for a way to support her white lie. “But it wasn’t there.”

I nodded suspiciously. “You lost your dolly, huh?”

She nodded sadly.

“And which dolly was that?”

A surprisingly quick response: “A Barbie. One of my favorites.”

“And you weren’t by any chance doing a little bit of spying while you were down there, were you?”

At first she didn’t answer; she darted her eyes around the room, to see if anyone was in earshot. Then, in the tone of the tattletale, she said, “Those girls are showing their boobies, Daddy! Look…” She lifted her arm to point to the half-naked girls.

I gently pushed it back down. “Okay, sweetie; it’s not nice to point.”

I was ransacking my mind for something to say, when she said, “Why do they have their boobies out in public?”

I was appalled, aghast. How could these girls expose my six-year-old daughter to such a thing? (Their fault, not mine.) There was a certain decorum, wasn’t there? “Those girls are French,” I said casually. “And in France, girls take their tops off when they go to the beach.” It was sort of true, at least.

Wondrously: “They do?”

I nodded eagerly. “Yeah, they do, sweetie. That’s their custom.”

Chandler looked at the girls again, her lips twisted in thought. Then she looked back at me and said, “But we’re not in France, Daddy; we’re in America.”

I was bowled over. My daughter was brilliant! Even at the tender age of six she knew inappropriate behavior when she saw it. With a little bit of luck, I thought, she wouldn’t report it to her mother. “Well, you’re right,” I said, “we are in America, but I think the French girls might’ve forgotten.” I kissed her on the cheek again. “Come on, let’s go take a walk on the beach together. We can remind them on the way.”

“Okay!” she said happily. “I’ll remind them.”

Outside on the deck, I beat Chandler to the punch. “Okay!” I yelled to the bare-breasted duo, as Chandler and I hurried past. “You gotta keep your tops on while you’re visiting our country! Save that for St. Tropez!”

They smiled and flashed us the thumbs-up sign, seeming to understand.

Chandler said, “They got big boobies—like Mommy’s!“

“That’s true,” I said, and it’s because they all use the same doctor, “but I think you should just pretend you never saw them.” Better to discuss this with your therapist down the road, when you’re a troubled teen trying to make sense of the insanity your soon-to-be-jailed father exposed you to during his final days of freedom.

With that thought, I reached down to my innocent daughter and said, “Come on, I’ll carry you to the beach, silly goose!” She jumped into my arms, and off we went, father and daughter, enjoying our last days together on Meadow Lane.

As sweltering as it was on the streets of Manhattan, it was perfectly comfortable at the edge of the ocean. It was as if every last drop of humidity had been sucked out of the atmosphere, replaced by an air mass so pleasant and inspiring that it felt like a gift from God Himself. As Chandler and I walked along the water’s edge, her tiny hand in mine, the insanity of my life seemed to be held in harness. Every so often a middle-aged couple or a stray jogger would pass by and smile approvingly, to which I would smile back.

There was so much I wanted to tell Chandler, and so much I knew I couldn’t. One day, of course, I would tell her everything— about all the mistakes I’d made and how the greed and drugs had all but destroyed me—but not until many years from now, when she was old enough to understand. So we spoke only of simple things today—of the seashells on the beach, of the dozens of sand castles we’d built over the years, and of all the holes we’d dug to China, only to give up after hitting water a few feet down. Then she nearly knocked the wind out of me when she said, “Guess what, Daddy? My sisters are coming into town tomorrow,” and she kept right on walking.

For a split second I didn’t know what she was talking about, or at least that’s what I told myself. Deep down, though, I knew: She had been referring to John’s daughters, Nicky and Allie. Nicky was a few years older than Chandler, but Allie was exactly the same age. The perfect playmate, I thought.

John Macaluso: I was hearing more and more about him lately, and not just from the kids but also from the handful of friends the Duchess and I still shared. Thankfully, I was hearing only good things—that he was a very decent guy, that he’d been divorced twice himself, and that he didn’t do drugs. Most important, however, was that my kids liked him. So I liked him too. As long as he treated them well, he would be aces with me—always.

With that thought, I said, “Do you mean John’s daughters, sweetie?”

“Yes!” she said eagerly. “They’re flying in from California tomorrow, and they’re coming out to the beach!”

A lovely thought: the Duchess gallivanting around the Hamptons with another man. Then a darker thought: If, after only a few months of knowing them, Chandler was already referring to John’s daughters as her “sisters,” might she one day refer to John as her father? For a moment I felt very concerned—but only for a moment.

I would always be my children’s daddy, and there could be no other. Besides, the ability to love was not mutually exclusive. So let them be loved by anyone and everyone, and let them return that love in spades. There was enough to go around for everyone.

“Well, that’s great,” I said warmly. “That’s really great. I’m sure you’ll have a ball with them this week. Maybe one day I’ll get to meet them.”

She nodded happily, and we spent a few more minutes walking and talking. Then we headed back to the mansion. A long mahogany walkway, bounded by thick dock ropes on either side, led you over the dunes to the rear deck. As I carried Chandler along the walkway, my spirits sank lower with each step.

The Romans were waiting.

Why did I subject myself to this? I wondered. Was all this self-torture in the simple name of getting laid? It couldn’t be, could it? I mean, I wasn’t really that shallow, was I? In fact, that was just what I was thinking when I first laid eyes on her.

She was tall and blond, and she stood out among the Romans like a diamond among rhinestones. She seemed to sway to the music, in perfect time and rhythm. She seemed aloof to the Scene, as if she was a casual observer and not a member.

At first glance she struck me as the sort of girl I would never dare approach in a nightclub and ask to dance. She was the better part of five-nine, and her blond hair gleamed like polished gold. She was wearing a white cotton skirt, very short, a good six inches above the knee, revealing her long bare legs, which were flawless. She wore a light-pink baby-T that hugged her luscious breasts like a second skin and exposed her perfectly toned tummy and belly button. Her feet were shod in the merest of white sandals, although it was obvious, even at a glance, that they had cost a fortune.

Then—a terrible shock!

From behind the blond vision emerged a horrendous-looking creature. It was short and squat and had the face of a bulldog. Its body seemed to be comprised of thick cylindrical stubs, glued together in haste by nothing but God’s good humor. The Creature had burnt-orange hair, pale skin, thick fleshy features, the nose of a prizefighter, and a very wide jaw. It wore a short purple sundress, which hung on its stout frame like a printer’s smock. The smock was very low-cut, exposing all but the tips of its sagging D-cups. The Creature grabbed the blond vision by the hand and came waddling. I felt Chandler recoil in my arms.

“Come, Yulichka,” the Creature snapped to the blond vision, in a gravelly voice that reeked of Brooklyn, Russia, the gutter, whiskey, the Teamsters’ Union, and late-stage throat cancer. “This is the owner of the house. I want you to meet him.”

I was shocked—and awed. Beauty and the Beast, I thought.

“You must be Jordan,” growled the Creature, who then looked at Chandler and said, “Oh, cute-cute, very cute.”

I felt Chandler shudder in my arms, as the Creature grabbed her hand and muttered, “Hi, munchkin! I am Inna, and this here is Yulia.” With that she nearly swung Yulia into the forefront, as if she were a blond peace offering.

It seemed clear the two came as a package.

Yulia smiled, and her teeth were as white as porcelain. Her features were fine and even and chiseled to near perfection. She had pale blue eyes shaped like a cat’s, which revealed something that the rest of Yulia’s appearance otherwise camouflaged: that somewhere along the way, perhaps five hundred years ago, an invading Tartar had raped one of her ancestors.

Daintily, Yulia reached forward to shake Chandler’s hand. “Alloa,” she said with a surprisingly thick accent. “I am Yulia. What is your name, beautiful?”

“Chandler,” my daughter said in a shy voice, and then I waited for her to attack—to say something like, “Oh, another stupid blonde, eh?” or, more likely, “My daddy already has a girlfriend and he cheats on her all the time!” But, instead, all she said was, “You have very nice hair, Yulia,” to which we all started laughing.

Yulia said, “Well, you are very sweet, Chandler,” and then she turned to Inna and started saying something in rapid-fire Russian. Her voice was soft and sweet, almost melodic, in fact, but the only word I could recognize was krasavitza, which meant beautiful.

We spent another minute or so making small talk, but Chandler was growing restless. In fact, just what little gem of poison she might choose to sputter in Yulia’s direction was anyone’s guess, so I excused myself with a wink and a smile.

As I was leaving, I said to them, “Make yourself at home. My house is your house,” to which Yulia smiled warmly and said thank you. Inna, however, didn’t smile at all and didn’t say a word. She simply nodded her head once, as if to say, “Of course I will!” After all, in her own mind, she had done her job well. She had come to Meadow Lane bearing gifts, so she was entitled now to devour anything and everything in sight.

While there was no denying that Inna was a world-class eyesore, I would have never guessed how adept she was at earning her keep. Later that evening, after the Duchess had picked up the kids and the party was winding down, Inna suggested that the few remaining Romans, eight of us in all, take a ride to East Hampton to catch a movie. It struck me as a reasonable idea at first, which quickly became a fabulous idea before we even made it out of the driveway.

“Come on,” Inna growled to Yulia. “Let’s drive with Jordan. We’ll pick up the car later.”

“That’s a great idea!” I agreed quickly, and indeed it was.

Amid all the madness, Yulia and I had hardly had a chance to speak. Complicating matters, her English was borderline horrific, so any meaningful conversation would have to take place in silence, without distractions. The only problem was that Inna would now be sitting in my rear passenger seat with us.

But, once again, she was one step ahead.

The moment Yulia had climbed into the front passenger seat of my Mercedes the Creature growled, “I gotta go pischka. You two go on ahead; I’ll catch up with you at the theater.” And, just like that, Inna turned on her thick, calloused heel and waddled back up the stairs.

Fifteen minutes later, Yulia and I were alone in my Mercedes, driving down a wide country road on our way to East Hampton. At eight p.m. on a Sunday night, the traffic was going the other way, so we were moving along at a pretty good clip. We had the windows open, and the sweet scent of Yulia’s perfume was mixing with the earthy scents of hay and pine in a most delicious way.

Keeping one eye on the road, I was sneaking peeks at her out of the corner of my other eye, searching for even a hint of a bad angle. There was none. She was absolutely perfect looking, especially those long, bare legs of hers, which she had crossed at the thighs. She was doing something very sexy with her foot—letting her right sandal dangle from the tips of her toes and slowly swinging her foot up and down. I tried my best to keep my eyes on the road.

Through the sound of rushing air, I raised my voice and said, “So what was it like winning that contest? Did it change your life forever?”

“Yes,” replied Yulia, “it is beautiful outside.”

Whuh? I had been referring to the rather astonishing fact that Yulia Sukhanova was the first, last, and certain to be the only Miss Soviet Union. After all, the Evil Empire was now residing in the failed-nation-state crapper—next to Rome, the Third Reich, the Ottoman Empire, and King Tut’s Egypt—so there would only be Miss Russias going forward.

Still, Miss USSR or not, Miss Yulia was even weaker in the English department than I had originally expected. I needed to cut her some slack and keep things simple. “Yeah,” I said, “it’s a beautiful night for a drive.”

“Yes,” she replied, “it will start at nine o’clock this night.”

What the…? “You mean the movie?”

She nodded eagerly. “Yes, I like to go to movies.”

The movies, I thought. How come these female Russkies couldn’t say the word the? What was so fucking difficult about it? Well, whatever. The beauty queen was gorgeous, so her deficiency could easily be overlooked. Changing the subject, I asked, “So do you think Inna will show up tonight?”

That one she caught. “No ways,” she said. “This is Inna for you. Always playing… uh… how do you say this in English, uh… svacha.”

“Matchmaker?” I offered.

“Da, da!” exclaimed the linguistically challenged beauty queen.

I smiled and nodded, feeling like I’d just reached the pinnacle of Mount Everest. So emboldened, I reached across the center console and grabbed Miss Soviet Union’s hand. “Is it okay if I hold your hand?” I asked bashfully.

Just as bashfully, she replied, “Three months now.”

I stared at her for a moment. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “This is last time hand held.”

“Really? That long?”

She nodded. “Da; this is when I break up with boyfriend.”

“Ohhhh,” I said, smiling. “You mean Cyrus, right?”

Her blue eyes popped open. “You know Cyrus?”

I smiled and winked. “I have my sources,” I said slyly.

The “Cyrus” I had referred to was none other than Cyrus Pahlavi, the shah of Iran’s grandson. I had done quite a bit of checking on Yulia that afternoon. I had found out that she’d just ended a three-year relationship with Cyrus, who, two years prior, had replaced the prince of Italy as her main squeeze. A royalty-monger, I’d thought.

In essence, Yulia had come to America as an ambassador of goodwill, arriving in 1990 under the watchful eyes of Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the then-head of the Komsomol, the Young Communist League, and now the richest man in Russia. More than anything, Yulia was a propaganda tool: bright, educated, cultured, classy, graceful, charming, and, above all else, drop-dead beautiful. She was meant to represent the very best of what the Soviet Union had to offer and, for that matter, Communism as a whole.

It was a wild tale—one of political intrigue and financial skullduggery—but everything was starting to make sense to me. There was a reason why Yulia stood out so regally among the Romans: She was supposed to. A hundred million women had vied for the job of “first Miss Soviet Union,” and Yulia Sukhanova had won. She had been groomed and trained to carry a single message: that the Soviet Union was best.

Upon her arrival in America, Yulia met with Nancy Reagan, George Bush, Miss USA, newscasters, socialites, rock stars, dignitaries, and diplomats. Ultimately, she traveled around the country, doing ribbon-cuttings and hosting game shows, while she served as a proud representative of the Motherland.

And then the Soviet Union fell.

Suddenly Yulia became the reigning beauty queen of a nonexistent superpower. The once-proud Soviet Union was now a bankrupt nation-state that would go down in the history books as nothing more than a failed experiment in bogus economics and corrupt ideology. So Yulia decided to stay in the United States and become a model. Inna, at the time, was one of the only Russian-speaking bookers in the modeling industry, so she took Yulia under her wing.

There were only two things that now troubled me about Yulia. The first were some references to a man named Igor, who was vaguely connected to Yulia and followed her around, in the shadows; and the second was the fact that Yulia was a KGB agent and Igor was her master. And as far-fetched as it seemed, they had originally come here under the auspices of the Soviet government, hadn’t they?

So here I was, five hours later, heading to East Hampton, with a female KGB agent sitting next to me, and the dreaded Igor lurking in the shadows. Igor, I figured, was the least of my worries.

“Anyway,” I said to the beauty queen/KGB agent. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. We all have our sources, you know? I’m sure you have yours too, right, right?” I winked playfully at KGB. “I guess mine are just a little better than most.”

KGB smiled back, seeming to understand. “Yes, you are very good cook.”

“Whuh? What are you talking about? What cook?”

“You say sauces,” said KGB, who apparently had slept through her English classes at the secret KGB training school. “Like this night: You make tomato sauces, on penne.”

I started laughing. “No—not sauces! Sources, with an r.“ I looked KGB in the eye and dragged out sources for all it was worth, so it came out like Sourrrrrrrrrrces. Then I said, “You get it?”

She let go of my hand and began shaking her head in disgust, saying something like: “Bleaha muha, stupido English! Ehhh! It make no sense!” Then she started waving her perfectly toned arms around the car, as if she were swatting imaginary flies. “Souwwwwsses… Sourrrrrrces… Seeeeeeesses… Sowwwwwsses!” she was muttering. “Crazy! Crazy! Crazy…”

After a few seconds, she started giggling and said, “This English make me crazy! I swear—it make no sense. Russian make sense!” With that, she hit the power-window button and pointed to the side of the road and motioned for me to pull over.

I pulled beneath a large maple tree a few feet off the road, put the car in park, and turned off the lights. The radio was barely audible, but KGB reached over and flicked it off anyway. Then she turned to me and said very slowly: “I… do… speak… English. It is just hard to understand with wind”—the wind—“blowing. I thought you say you make sauces, like tomato sauces, because you make that tonight: tomato sauces.”

“It’s okay,” I said, smiling. “You speak English a lot better than I speak Russian.”

“Da,” she said softly, and she turned to face me, leaning her back against the passenger door and crossing her arms beneath her breasts. Over her pink baby-T-shirt she had thrown on a white cotton sweater, a very soft cable-knit, with a very low V-neck, bordered with two thick stripes, one maroon and the other forest green. It was the sort of old-fashioned preppy sweater that you see in old photographs of people playing tennis. She had pushed up the sleeves, revealing wonderfully supple wrists and a very classy watch, the latter of which was thin and understated. It had a pink-leather band and a pearl-white face. Her blond hair looked shiny as corn silk. It rested on either side of the front of her sweater, framing the face of an angel.

She didn’t look like a KGB agent, did she? I took a deep breath and looked into KGB’s liquid blue eyes and smiled warmly. Try as I might, I couldn’t help but compare her to the Duchess. In many ways, they looked very much the same: blond and blue-eyed, broad-shouldered yet thin-boned, perfectly proportioned above and below the waist. And they both stood with that same imperious posture—the eager young cheerleader, with the shoulders pulled back and theirs knees locked out and their perfectly round butts stuck out—that used to drive me so wild.

“You’re beautiful,” I said softly to KGB, ignoring my last thought.

“Da,” she said wearily, “krasavitza, krasavitza…. I know this,” and she shook her head with equal weariness, as if to say, “I’ve been called that a thousand times, so you’re going to have to do better than that.” Then she smiled and said, “And you are cutie too, and you like real Russian man! You know this?”

I shook my head and smiled. “No, what do you mean?”

She raised her chin toward my ankle bracelet. “You steal money”—she winked—”like real Russian man!” She giggled. “And I hear you steal a lot!”

Jesus Christ! I thought. Leave it to the damn Russkies! Of course, this was not the moment to alert KGB to the fact that I hadn’t stolen quite enough—and that because of that I would not be living on Meadow Lane next summer. Better to cross that bridge when I came to it, I figured.

“Yeah,” I said, forcing a smile, “but I’m not exactly proud of it.”

“When is jail for you?” she asked.

“Not for a while,” I said softly. “Another four years or so. I’m not really sure.”

“And your wife?”

I shook my head back and forth. “Getting divorced.”

She nodded sadly. “She is pretty.”

“Yeah, she is,” I said softly. “And she gave me two great kids. I guess I’ll always love her for that, you know?”

“You still love her?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t.” I shrugged. “I mean, for a while I thought I did, but I think I was just…” I paused for a moment, trying to find words that KGB would understand. In truth, I wasn’t really sure how I felt about the Duchess. I loved her and hated her, and I suspected that I always would. But one thing I was certain of was that the only way to get over someone was to fall in love with someone else. “…I think I was just in love with the thought of being in love. I wasn’t actually in love with her anymore. Too many bad things had happened. Too much hurt.” I looked into KGB’s eyes. “Do you understand what I mean?”

“Da,” she replied quickly, “I do; this is common.” She looked away for a moment, as if lost in thought. “You know, I am here nine years now.” She shook her head in amazement. “Can you imagine? I should speak better, I think, but I never have American friends. My friends are all Russians.”

I nodded in understanding—understanding far more than KGB probably gave me credit for. There were only two types of Russians I had met so far: those who embraced America, and those who held it in contempt. The former did everything they could to assimilate themselves into the American way of life: they learned the language, they dated American men, they ate American food, and, eventually, they became American citizens.

The latter group, however, did just the opposite: They refused to assimilate. They held on to their Soviet heritage like a dog with a bone. They lived amid Russians, they worked amid Russians, they socialized with Russians, and they refused to master the English language. And at the very heart of this, I knew, was the fact that they still longed for the glory days of the Soviet Empire, when the world marveled at the ingenuity of Sputnik and the courage of Yury Gagarin and the iron will of Khrushchev. It was a heady time to be a Soviet, with the world trembling at the Warsaw Pact and the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Yulia Sukhanova had been a product of all that—no, she epitomized that. She still longed for the days of the Great Soviet Empire and, in consequence, had refused to assimilate. Ironically, this didn’t make me respect her any less—in fact, quite the contrary: I felt her pain. I, too, had risen once, to the dizziest heights of Wall Street, becoming a celebrity of sorts, albeit in a twisted sense of the word. Nonetheless, just like Yulia Sukhanova, it had all come crashing down on me. The only difference was that her crash was through no fault of her own.

Still, both of us, it seemed, needed to figure out a way to reconcile a completely insane past with any possible future. Perhaps, I thought, we could do it together; perhaps, once we got past the language barrier, she could help me make sense of what had happened in my life, and I could help her make sense of hers. With that thought, I took a deep breath and went for broke:

“Can I kiss you?” I said softly.

To that, Miss Yulia Sukhanova, the first, last, and only Miss Soviet Union, smiled bashfully. Then she nodded.

^{CHAPTER 22} STAYING THE COURSE

And we made love.

Not that night, but the very next day.

And it was beautiful; in fact, not only was it beautiful but, thanks to some very savvy biochemists at the Pfizer drug company, I performed like a world-class stud.

Indeed, just before I picked up KGB at the Creature’s Sag Harbor cottage, I swallowed fifty milligrams of Viagra on an empty stomach. In consequence, by the time we pulled into my driveway that afternoon, I had an erection that the DEA could have used to break down a crack-house door.

It’s not like I was impotent or anything (I swear!), but, nonetheless, it had seemed like a prudent move. After all, to consume a blue bomber, as a Viagra was affectionately known (due to its purplish color and bombastic effect), was the equivalent of taking out a biochemical insurance policy against the most dreaded of all male complexes: performance anxiety.

I had been a biochemical stud, not just that afternoon but into that evening as well. What Pfizer doesn’t advertise on the label (and what every man who’s taken one knows) is that blue bombers have a way of lingering in your system for a while. So, eight hours later, while your erection might no longer be suitable as a battering ram, it’s still stiff enough to hang a few pieces of dry-cleaning on.

Somewhere around the fourteenth hour, the last blue-bomber molecules have been metabolized to the point of worthlessness, turning you back into a mortal man again. It was for that very reason that, precisely fourteen hours later, I took another blue bomber, and then fourteen hours after that I took yet another.

KGB, I figured, could handle it. Yet, sometime late Wednesday afternoon, even she began to complain. She was limping toward my master bathroom, dressed in her Soviet birthday suit, which consisted of a commie-red ribbon in her hair and nothing else, and she was muttering, “Bleaha muha! Your thing don’t go down! There is something wrong here! It crazy! It crazy,” and she slammed the bathroom door behind her, muttering a few more Russian expletives.

Meanwhile, I was lying in bed, faceup, dressed in my American birthday suit, which consisted of a federally issued electronic monitoring bracelet and a Viagra-induced erection that was stiffer than steel, and I was fairly beaming. After all, it’s not every day that a five-foot-seven-inch Jew-boy from Queens gets to send the first, last, and only Miss Soviet Union limping to the bathroom with her loins on fire! And while there was no denying that the boys at Pfizer had a hand in that, it was very much besides the point.

The point was that I was falling in love again.

In fact, later that afternoon, when KGB told me that she had to head back to her apartment in Manhattan, I felt my heart sink. And when she called me a few hours later, saying that she missed me, my spirits soared. And then when she called again, two hours after that, just to say hello, I immediately called Monsoir and told him to pick her up at her apartment and bring her back to the Hamptons.

So it was that she arrived later that night, carrying a very large suitcase, which I gladly helped her unpack. And just like that we became inseparable. Over the next few days we did everything together: ate, drank, slept, shopped, played tennis, worked out, rode bikes, Rollerbladed, went Jet-Skiing—we even showered together!

And, of course, at every opportunity, we made love.

Each night we built a fire on the beach and made love on a white cotton blanket, beneath the stars. And, of course, with each upward thrust, I would sneak a peak toward the dunes, checking for the dreaded Igor, who, according to her, was merely her brother-in-law who had come to the States to keep an eye on her. And while her explanation had seemed a bit thin, I decided not to press the issue.

When the weekend arrived, no partyers appeared. The Creature had seen to that—spreading the word that 1496 Meadow Lane was closed for business. The following Monday morning, I dropped KGB off at her Midtown apartment to pack up more of her belongings, and then I headed down to 26 Federal Plaza to meet with the Bastard and OCD. Not surprisingly, I was back in the Bastard’s good graces again, so the meeting went quickly.

The topic was the upcoming Gaito sting, and we came to a quick decision that I would try to set one last meeting with the Chef before James Loo came into town. The goal was simple: to get James Loo to accept cash. I would tell the Chef that I wanted James Loo to know that I was serious—and to know that James Loo was serious too. I would provide Loo with a small cash deposit, as a token of good faith: $50,000, I would suggest, which he could use to get things going.

At first I was skeptical of the plan, thinking that the Chef would smell a rat. But, on second thought, I knew he wouldn’t. For some inexplicable reason, something had clicked off in his mind, something related to the irrational joy he got from getting around the law.

He was a complicated man, an otherwise law-abiding citizen who would never dream of breaking “the law” as he considered it— which is to say, all laws not having to do with securities trading, the movement of money, and its subsequent reporting to the IRS. If you were to ask the Chef for advice on how to rob a bank or how to kite checks, he would either report you to the authorities himself or, more likely, lose your number forever.

This, however, was different. We were talking about money that, in his mind, we had stolen fair and square—no violence had been committed, no guns were placed to people’s heads, the victims were nameless and faceless, and, most important, if we hadn’t done it ourselves, someone else would have done it just the same. In consequence, we were justified to hide our dirty money from those who meant to find it.

So, in retrospect, it didn’t come as much of a shock to me when the Chef and I met two days later in my office, and he thought my idea of bringing “a token of good faith” to our meeting was a fabulous one.

He went about explaining his money-laundering scheme in the most intimate detail—even mentioning the names of James Loo’s overseas relatives who would be assisting us in Asia. Then he named the banks and the shell corporations we would be using— finishing with the airtight cover story we would stick to if Coleman and his boys were to ever catch wind of this.

It was an inspired plan, which involved the purchase of real estate in half a dozen Far East countries and the maintenance of a full-time staff overseas, to operate a series of legitimate businesses-clothing manufacturers in Vietnam and Cambodia, and electronics manufacturers in Thailand and Indonesia, where labor was cheap and workmanship was prideful.

Yes, the plan was brilliant, all right, but it was also wildly complicated. In fact, it was so complicated that I found myself wondering if a jury would ever be able to understand it. So I grabbed a legal pad off the brass-and-glass coffee table, ripped off a sheet of paper, picked up a pen, and began drawing a diagram.

With my voice lowered conspiratorially, I said, “So let me get this straight: I’m gonna give James Loo fifty thousand dollars”—I drew a little box with James Loo’s name inside it, as well as the amount: $50,000—“and then James will have one of his people smuggle the money overseas to his sister-in-law, Sheila Wong,† in Singapore”—I drew another box on the other side of the pad, with Sheila’s name inside it, and then drew a long straight line connecting the two boxes—”and then Sheila is gonna use that money to fund accounts in Hong Kong and the Chanel Islands and Gurnsey…” and before I was even finished talking about Sheila’s role in our scheme, the Chef had grabbed the pen from me and begun drawing a diagram that fairly resembled the blueprints to a nuclear submarine. And as he narrated his plan, with a mixture of pride and relish, the Nagra rolled on, recording each of his words.

When the Chef was done, he said, “Now this is a fucking Picasso—although you better throw it in the garbage!”

I crumpled the note into a tiny ball and did just that. “Better safe than sorry,” I said casually. We exchanged a Mafia-style hug, a firm handshake, and then confirmed our plans to meet James Loo on Monday. I suggested the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Manhattan, where, by sheer coincidence, I explained, I would be staying for a few days with my new girlfriend. But it was no coincidence, of course. Long before Loo and the Chef arrived there, OCD and his tech team would have the room wired for sight and sound.

When I met OCD afterward, I joked that I was up to my old tricks again—passing notes and such—although I had saved this particular note for posterity.

With that I handed him a sealed envelope with the tape and the crumpled note inside. “You better go stop at Macy’s and pick up a steam iron,” I said jokingly. “You’re gonna need it.” Then I climbed into my Mercedes and headed back out to the Hamptons.

But, alas, over the next days I began feeling guilty again.

In fact, by that Sunday evening, the thought of ratting out the Chef had become wholly depressing. Apparently, falling in love with KGB had softened the sting of recent events—those terrible betrayals that had ignited flames of revenge in the glare of which I had come to view friends as enemies and enemies as friends. Now, however, I wasn’t so sure again.

It was a little before nine, and KGB and I were enjoying our nightly ritual—sitting on a white cotton blanket, near the water’s edge, with a small fire blazing away, struggling against the first chills of autumn. Just over the horizon, an orange full moon hung heavy in the night sky, with the dark waters of the Atlantic just beneath it.

“It looks close enough to touch, doesn’t it, sweetie?”

“Da,” she replied cutely. “It look like Swiss cheese.”

“Looks,” I said, correcting her. “It looks like Swiss cheese.”

“What you mean?” she asked.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed it lovingly. “I mean, you have a habit of leaving the s off words, especially verbs. Like you just said, ‘It look like Swiss cheese,’ when you should have said, ‘It looks like Swiss cheese.’ It’s no big deal, really; it’s just a matter of singular or plural. You see, when you say it, it relates to one thing, so you would say looks, but if you were talking about they, which is plural, you would say, ‘They look like Swiss cheese.’ Again, it’s really no big deal, but it just kind of sounds funny. It’s sort of hard on the ears.” I shrugged my shoulders, trying to make light of it.

She let go of my hand. “What do you mean: hard on ears?”

“The ears,” I said calmly, although a bit of frustration had slipped out around the edges, “and that’s a perfect example of what I mean.” I took a deep breath and said, “You never say the word the, Yulia—ever! And it’s probably the most commonly used word in the English language! It gives a certain rhythm to things, a certain flow, and when you don’t say it—like when you just said ‘hard on ears’ or when you say, ‘I want to go to store,’ it just sounds funny. I mean, it sounds like you’re uneducated or something, which I know you’re not.” I shrugged again, not wanting to make a big deal of it, although I couldn’t help myself. We were spending all our time together, and her bastardization of the English language was starting to get to me. Besides, I was in love with her, so I felt it was my obligation to teach her—or to train her, so to speak—and lead her gently down the road to a little village called Assimilation.

“Anyway,” I continued, “if you really want to improve your English, I would start with those two things: using the word the and knowing when to add an s to the end of a verb.” I smiled and grabbed her hand. “From there, all good things will follow.” I winked at her. “And if you want, I could even be your teacher! Every time you make a mistake I can correct—ow! What are you—owww! Stop—that hurts! Owww! Owww! Owwwwwwwwwwwwww!” I screamed. “Let go of my fingers! You’re gonna break them! Stop!”

“You little puta!” she muttered, as she bent my fingers backward in a KGB finger lock. “You and your stupid English language—ha! America think they own world! Bleaha muha! Capitalist pigs!”

Thinks it owns the world, I thought, as I screamed, “Let! Go! Of! My! Fingers! Please! You’re gonna break them!”

She let go, then turned her back to me and began muttering, “Stupido Americano… This ridiculous!”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I began shaking my fingers in the air, trying to stop the pain. “You could have broken my fingers with that fucking KGB death grip!” I shook my head angrily. “And who the hell are you to call me a little puta? Do you think I’m a little whore now? Five minutes ago you were saying how much you loved me, and now you’re calling me names!” I shook my head sadly, as if I were very disappointed in her. Then I prepared for makeup sex.

After a few seconds she turned to me, ready to make friends again. “Praste minya,” she said softly, which I could only assume meant thank you, and then she started babbling something in rapid-fire Russian. Her tone was rather sweet, actually, so I could only assume she was saying that she had tried to break my fingers out of love. Then she said, “Come here, musek-pusek; let my kiss your palcheke,” and she grabbed my fingers and began kissing them very softly, which led me to believe that palcheke were fingers.

Feeling vindicated, I leaned back on the blanket and prepared for my reward (meaning, she would kiss my erect penis), and just like that she was lying next to me and we were kissing. It was a soft, mellow kiss, a slow kiss, a Russkie kiss, which seemed to last for a very long time. Then she rested her head upon my shoulder, and the two of us, lovers once more, stared up to the heavens, beholding the awesome expanse of the universe—the orange moon, the glittering stars, the fuzzy white band of the Milky Way.

“I’m sorry about before,” I said, lying through my teeth. “I won’t correct you anymore if you don’t want me to. I mean, I don’t care if the moon looks like Swiss cheese or look like Swiss cheese, as long as I’m looking at it with you.” With that, I kissed her on the crown of her pretty blond head and drew her close to me.

She responded by putting her long, bare leg over mine and cuddling even closer to me, as if we were trying to become one person.

“Ya lublu tibea,” she said softly.

“I love you too,” I said just as softly. I took a deep breath and stared up at the moon, wondering if I’d ever been happier than I was right now. This girl was truly something special—Miss Soviet Union, for Chrissake!—the very catch of the century, and, most importantly, she was the perfect antidote to the backstabbing Duchess.

With a fair dose of nostalgia in my voice, I said, “You know, I remember looking up at the moon as a kid and being totally blown away by it. I mean, knowing that people had actually been up there and walked on it. In 1969 you were only a year old, so you were too young to remember that day, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

“My parents had this little black-and-white TV set in the kitchen, and we were all crowding around it, watching Neil Armstrong go down the ladder. And when he took his first steps on the moon and started bouncing around…” I shook my head in awe. “I wanted to be an astronaut that day.” I let out a few embarrassed chuckles. “Boyhood dreams,” I said, smiling. “Which somehow led me to Wall Street. I would have never imagined it that day.”

KGB chuckled back, although her chuckles had an edge to them. “This is big American joke,” she said confidently. “You knows this, right?”

“What—that every kid wants to be an astronaut?”

“Nyet,” she replied quickly. “I talk about moon”—the moon, for Chrissake! What’s so fucking difficult about it? “There is English word for this moon thing you do. It is, uh, how do you say… falcefekaceja… ah! Hoax! You make hoax!”

“We make a hoax. Are you trying to say the moon landing was a hoax?”

“Da!” she exclaimed happily, and she popped upright and stared down at me. “This is hoax against Soviet people! Everybody know this.”

“Knows,” I replied through clenched teeth. “Everybody knows this, Yulia, and you’re not actually gonna look at me with a straight face and say that you think the United States faked the moon landings to embarrass Mother Russia! Please don’t tell me this!” I stared at her, incredulous.

She compressed her lips and shook her head slowly. “This landing you speak of is filmed in movie studio. Everyone in rest of world know this. Only here people believe. How do you think America fly to moon when Soviet Union can’t? We had female in space while you were flying monkey! And suddenly you beat us to moon? Oh, please—this is hoax! Look at pictures. You see flag wave on moon, but there is no atmosphere. So how can flag wave? And day is night, when night must be day; and earth rise, when it must fall. And there is belt of radiation…” and on and on KGB went, explaining how the moon landing was nothing more than a giant hoax filmed in a Hollywood movie studio, with the sole purpose of embarrassing her beloved Soviet Union. “We will talk about this with Igor when you meet,” continued KGB, “and then you will see truth. Igor is famous scientist. He tame fire.”

I shook my head in disbelief, not knowing quite how to respond to that. “Well,” I said, fighting back the urge to tell her that her former Soviet Union, including its defunct space program, had become nothing more than a joke, “every human being is entitled to their opinion, although I will tell you that to pull off a conspiracy like that you’d need a thousand people, with every last one of them keeping the same monumental secret, and in this country, I can assure you, if more than two people know something, it doesn’t stay secret very long. And I don’t want to even mention the fact that there were actually three moon landings, not just one. So let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that the government actually had faked the first moon landing and had been lucky enough to get away with it—why would they press their luck again? It would be like: ‘Hey, gotcha once, Mr. Brezhnev! Now I want you to watch very closely as I do it again, and see if you can catch me this time!’ But, hey, what do I know? I mean, maybe aliens did land in Roswell, and maybe you were right yesterday when you said America never actually fought in World War Two”—that was KGB’s other pearl of wisdom, shared with me by the tennis court after I beat her six-love, six-love in eleven and a half minutes, at which point we play-wrestled on the grass, an activity that ended with me screaming, “Let me go! Stop! You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me!”—”and that America stole the plans to the first atomic bomb from Russia and not the other way around.” This had tumbled from her commie-red lips as we watched a History Channel documentary discussing weapons of war. KGB had informed me that Russian people—which is to say, Soviet people—were responsible for virtually every meaningful invention, from the atomic bomb to the X-ray machine to fine literature to Bazooka chewing gum. “The truth is, Yulia—and I say this out of love, as in ya lublu tibea—what I’m really interested in is Igor’s cure for fire. Now, tell me what that’s all about, because that’s what I find most fascinating!”

She looked at me for a moment, shaking her head wryly. “Wouldn’t you like to knows!”

“Yeah,” I shot back, “I would like to knows! So why don’t you tells me!”

She stared at me with narrowed eyes. Then she motioned with her heart-shaped chin over to our perfect little beach fire, at the base of which rested a Duraflame. “You see flame?”

I nodded. “Yeah, what about the flames?”

KBG snapped her long, slender fingers, and the air went pop! “Just like this,” she said proudly, “Igor can make flame go away.”

“And how does he do that?” I asked skeptically.

“He control atmosphere,” she answered nonchalantly, as if controlling the atmosphere were no more difficult than adjusting a thermostat.

I looked at her for a moment, astonished, and also trying to calculate how much money I could have made with some wacky Russian scientist willing to claim he controlled the atmosphere. It was just the sort of thing the Strattonites would have eaten up. I could have stood Igor before the boardroom dressed in a wizard’s costume, like Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter, and I would have said into the microphone: “Behold Professor Igor and his cure for fire….” The Strattonites would have gone wild-clapping and cheering and then lighting Lake Success on fire, so Igor could show his stuff.

I said to KGB: “Ohhh, I get it now! I think I’ve actually seen this in the movies. It was in Austin Powers: Dr. Evil had figured out a way to control the weather, and he was looking to hold the world hostage. On second thought, maybe that was James Bond. Or was it Superman?” I shrugged. “I’m not really sure.”

She shrugged back. “Laughs all you want, big shot, but I not joking. Igor can cure fire, and I am shareholder in company. One day he will…” and as KGB kept talking, I stopped listening. I think she actually believed what she was saying, and not just all this nonsense about Professor Igor but everything. She had grown up with a different set of history books, listening to Soviet TV, where we were the Evil Empire determined to rule the world. I snuck a peek at my watch: It was nine-thirty. I had to be at the Plaza Athénée by nine a.m. tomorrow morning, which meant I had to leave the Hamptons at six-thirty.

It was time to end this night, which I couldn’t do until I had made love to KGB in front of the fire. It was our ritual, after all, something that both of us looked forward to each day. So now I would have to agree with her. Yes, I would say: In spite of my earlier skepticism, I am now convinced that Igor’s cure for fire shall change the world. Now, be a good girlfriend, KGB, and make love to me. I don’t care that you’re a closet communist. I love you anyway!

And that was exactly what happened.

The next morning, at precisely eleven a.m., the Chef and James Loo walked into Room 1104 at the Hotel Plaza Athénée. It was a one-bedroom, two-bathroom suite, and the Chef and James Loo were likes two lambs walking into a slaughterhouse.

I greeted them at the front door, first hugging the Chef and then exchanging a hearty handshake with James Loo, who was short, thin, slightly balding, and wearing an expensive sharkskin suit with no necktie.

I led him and the Chef into the main salon, directly off the entry gallery. The bedroom was on the opposite side of the suite, and the door was closed nice and tight—and for good reason. Inside that bedroom, wearing headphones, revolvers, and some very serious expressions, were four FBI agents—namely, OCD, the Mormon, and two tech guys, both of whom were in their mid-thirties and looked liked they should be working at Circuit City, fixing computers.

We had spent the last two hours analyzing the living room-checking various camera angles and such and places to hide the bugs. It was a small space, perhaps fourteen by twenty feet. Three tall windows that looked out over 64th Street admitted a great deal of light—too much light, actually, according to the tech guys, so we closed the bordello-red curtains to reduce the glare.

I offered my guests seats on the couch, and then I took a seat in one of the armchairs. That was just fine with the boys in the bedroom. At this very moment, they were watching us on a twelve-inch closed-circuit TV screen that received images from a pinhole camera concealed inside a digital clock. The clock was resting on one of the side tables, placed there by the tech guys. Ironically, I wasn’t wired today; only the room was, pursuant to a court order. The only thing I was concealing was a very fat envelope with $50,000 inside. It was in the left-inside breast pocket of my navy sport jacket, and I was to hand it to Loo at the appropriate moment.

After a few minutes of small talk, I said, “I want you to know, James, that Dennis has vouched for you a hundred percent. And that means more than anything to me.”

James nodded dutifully. “Likewise,” he said. “Dennis vouched for you too, so I am very comfortable.”

“And that’s very good,” said the Chef, who had little capacity for ass-kissing. “And now that we got dat ouddada way, let’s move on to the good stuff!”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “The sooner I get my cash overseas the better. And by the way, James, I want you to know that the fact that you’ve done a lot of business with Bob makes me that much more comfortable.” I nodded respectfully. “It’s like getting an endorsement from the Pope, you know?” Actually, more like Darth Vader, I thought.

James nodded. “Yes, we have very good history together. And it is also a very funny story how we met.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “I’d like to hear it.”

“Well,” he said proudly, “I was what you call ‘emergency CEO’ in one of Bob’s underwritings.”

“Yeah—get a load of this,” snapped the Chef. “Bob does a deal, makes ten million, but then the CEO kicks the bucket the day the thing goes public. So now we needed someone—or, should I say, anyone—to step in.” The Chef looked at his Chinese friend. “No offense, James.”

“None taken,” he replied.

“Anyway,” continued the Chef, “James was on the board of the company at the time, so he agreed to step in as CEO. Then, of course, he did the right thing afterward, which is why we’re all sitting here today.”

I nodded slowly, searching for a way to delve deeper into how James had “done the right thing afterward,” which in Chef terms (and in Wolf terms) meant that James had continued to issue cheap shares of stock to the Blue-eyed Devil after he went public. “So how did the company end up doing?” I asked casually. “Did it go anywhere?”

“It struggled for a while,” said James, “but we all did okay.”

The Chef said, “The most important thing is that James can be trusted. The company had its ups and downs, but James was always solid as a rock. And that’s how he’ll be with you on this: solid as a rock.”

Sensing an opening, I asked, “So you’ve helped Bob the same way you’re gonna help me? You know, like”—I winked—”over there, in the Orient?”

James shrugged. “I do many things for Bob, but I do not like to discuss them. It will be the same way with you. What we do is only between us, and, of course, Dennis.”

I needed to get off this topic quickly, so I smiled at James, as if I’d only been testing him to see if he were a blabbermouth. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, James. Exactly! See, the most important thing to me is that no one outside this room ever finds out about this. That’s crucial.”

“They won’t,” James said confidently. “Remember, it will be just as bad for me if that happens.”

“And that is indeed true,” added the Chef, with a single nod. “So all that’s gotta happen now is you and James gotta come to your agreement; then I’ll do what I gotta do, and you’ll do what you gotta do, and then James will do whatever he’s gotta do, and badabeep, badabop, badaboop—schwiiiitttt!—the money’ll be over there, and we’ll still be over here, and we can all sleep at night like babies.”

“We’re all on the same page here,” I said confidently, “and if it’s okay with you, James, I’d like to move very quickly. I have two million in cash that I want to get out of the States ASAP, because I, uh”—I looked around the room suspiciously, then lowered my voice—”got the money from new-issue kickbacks. You know, from clients I gave units to, who then did the right thing afterward and gave me back cash.” I slowly raised my voice to normal. “Anyway, then I got another ten million dollars already in Switzerland, which I’d like to wire to your sister as soon as we get all the accounts set up.”

“It is no problem,” said James. “She is very organized and very reliable.”

The Chef said, “I can take care of all the paperwork over there or anything else you need to get done. And when it comes to making investments, I’ll work as an adviser to keep you one step removed until your problems blow over.”

I nodded in understanding, wondering if there was any point to sitting in this room one second longer. Both the Chef and James Loo had already buried themselves a thousand times over, plus I had the Chef on audiotape from the other day, with his diagram of the nuclear submarine.

Still, according to OCD, there was nothing more powerful with a jury than videotape, so, if possible, I should try to get the Chef to explain the entire money-laundering scheme yet again. Obviously, with the way things were going, I knew he would; it was just that I was so bored with the whole thing by this point that I couldn’t bear to hear it myself again. I had already been an expert on money laundering before all this started, and I was sick and tired of playing dumb.

Nevertheless, I had a job to do; so I took a deep breath and said, “Everything sounds great, but I’m still a little bit confused. Just so there’s no crossed wires in the future, can we go through the whole thing one more time?”

The Chef shook his head quickly, as if I were a bit on the dense side. Then he said, “Yeah, of course. Grab that pen and paper over there, will you…” and that was it. Ten minutes later I had another nuclear submarine, this one even more detailed. After all, the first one had only been a prototype; this one was the second generation. All I had to do now was to pass James the envelope. Then I was done.

I patted the outside of my sport jacket, just over the left breast pocket. “I assume Dennis mentioned that I was gonna give you a little cash today to get things going.”

James nodded. “Yes; that would be excellent.”

“Okay,” said the Chef, “well, I don’t think you guys need me around for this, so I’m gonna get going.” And just like that he rose from the couch. “Is that okay with you, James?”

James shrugged. “Yes, no problem.”

The Chef looked at me. “Is it okay with you?”

No, I thought, I gotta check with the guys in the bedroom first. “Sure,” I said quickly, “it’s fine.”

With that the Chef shook James Loo’s hand and headed for the door.

And that was when it hit me: I would never see the Chef again. I had no doubt that once the Bastard saw this videotape, he would indict the Chef quickly and then announce my cooperation shortly thereafter. The end was fast approaching, and it was time to say my last good-byes to a man whom I had once trusted with my dirtiest secrets, a man whom I had once called my friend.

The Chef was a man’s man, and there was no one else like him. He was the sort of Chef who could stand the heat in the kitchen, the sort of man I would want to go into battle with. How many times had I said that to myself over the years? How many times had I looked to the Chef for strength, and for answers, wisdom, and courage? And this was how it ended up.

As the Chef opened the hotel-room door, I said, “Hey, Chef!”

“Yo!” he said, smiling. “What’s up?”

I smiled back sadly. “I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. It’s a fucked-up business we’re in, and you’ve always been a friend to me. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

“Yeah,” he said, “well, it’s times like these when you find out who your true friends are. And now you know.” Those were his last words to me before he flashed me a wink and a smile and walked out the door.

James Loo would never make it out the door.

Per OCD’s instructions, I would pass him the envelope and then tell him that I needed to go downstairs for a minute to get something from the doorman. Then they would arrest him. Of course, the Chef would never find out, because James Loo would also join Team USA, as would the Chef, I prayed, when his time came. After all, it wasn’t him that they were really after; it was the Blue-eyed Devil.

The Chef was just a stepping-stone.

On my way back out to Southampton, I held on to that thought for all it was worth: that the Chef would roll over on the Devil, and I would be spared the guilt of having ratted out my old friend. And when I wasn’t thinking that, I kept reminding myself over and over again that all men betray… all men betray… all men betray.

I would be wrong about that.

Some don’t.

^{CHAPTER 23} TWISTS OF FATE

The only newspaper KGB ever read was Pravda, which was the former Soviet Union’s most well-respected newspaper. In Russian, the word pravda meant truth, which was somewhat ironic, I thought, considering that when the Soviet Union was around, Pravda never published anything even remotely truthful. And while today’s Pravda was substantially more accurate than the Pravda of old, all I cared about on September 21, the day my cooperation was announced, was that Pravda hadn’t dedicated so much as one Cyrillic letter to the day’s hot topic in America, which was: The Wolf of Wall Street had secretly pleaded guilty months ago and had been cooperating with the feds for over a year.

So, while ninety-nine percent of Americans were reading their morning papers and saying, “This is great! They finally brought that bastard to heel!” and the other one percent were reading their morning papers and saying, “This is bad! That bastard is going to rat us out now!” KGB was reading Pravda and cursing out the Chechen rebels, who, in her mind, were worthless Muslim dogs that deserved to be nuked.

And that was what I loved most about KGB: not her burning desire to turn the Chechens into radioactive dust (I was opposed to that) but the fact that she was completely oblivious to what was going on in my life. Better she focused on those Chechen dogs, I figured, than on the fact that she was living with a rat.

At this particular moment, she was sitting with Carter on the TV room’s couch, staring at a forty-inch high-definition TV screen. Every last drop of her mental energy was focused on an ultrabrave, genetically enhanced marsupial named Crash Bandicoot, who was in the process of doing what he was always doing: running for his fucking life.

“What are you guys doing?” I asked the two videoholics.

KGB ignored me; she was too busy at the PlayStation controls, her thumbs moving up and down at a frenetic pace. Carter, however, was just observing, although he was so entranced that he ignored me too. His eyes were as wide as an owl’s, his elbows resting on his thighs with his tiny chin cupped in his palms.

I walked over to Carter and said, “Whaddaya doing, buddy?”

He looked up and shook his head in awe. “Yuya’s anazin ‘, Daddy. She… she… she”—he couldn’t seem to get the words out—”she’s on the top level. She’s fighting brand-new monsters I never see before. No one has.”

“Look here,” KGB muttered to Carter, as she assisted Crash in his escape. “If I capture golden mask I become invincible!”

Carter looked back at the TV screen, awestruck. After a few seconds he whispered, “Invincible!”

I sat down beside my son and put my arm around him. “She’s pretty good, buddy, huh?”

“Use a jump attack!” he screamed to KGB.

“No!” she shot back. “To defeat this monster I must use spin attack!”

“Ohhhh…” he said softly.

A spin attack, I thought. Just say the word a, for Chrissake! Still, there was no denying that KGB was the most proficient videogamestress on the entire fucking planet—Ms. Pac-Man, Super Mario, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Hercules, and, of course, her latest obsession, Crash Bandicoot, the genetically enhanced marsupial from Wumpa Island off western Australia. She’d beaten them all, rising to levels that mere mortals, like Carter, never dared dream about.

As KGB jerked her glorious body this way and Carter jerked his thirty-one-pound body that way, I found myself wondering what the hell made Yulia Sukhanova tick. She played videogames no less than eight hours a day, spending the rest of her time either reading Russian books, babbling on the phone in Russian, or whispering sweet Russian nothings in my ear as we made love. She resided in America, yes, but only in the physical sense. Her heart and soul were still in Russia, stuck in a geopolitical time warp in the year 1989, the very year she’d been crowned Miss Soviet Union.

Intellectually, she was brilliant. She excelled at chess, checkers, backgammon, gin rummy, and, for that matter, all games of chance, which she played with a hustler’s edge, and she hated to lose more than anything. Her parents were both dead, her father succumbing to a heart attack when she was only nine. They had been close, she said, and his death traumatized her. He had been an important man in the Soviet Union, a rocket scientist with the highest security clearance, so even after his death the family had always been taken care of. She had never wanted for anything. Bread lines, empty store shelves, drab clothing—things like these were as far removed from Yulia’s childhood as they were from mine. Her life had been a charmed one and, by Soviet standards, one of affluence.

Her grace and beauty had come from her mother. I had seen the pictures; she was breathtaking—blond, blue-eyed, and possessing the warmest of smiles. In her day, according to Yulia, her mother was even prettier than she and held a very important position in the arts. In consequence, Yulia had grown up in a chic Moscow apartment, where a never-ending parade of famous Soviet artists-actors, actresses, painters, sculptors, singers, and ballet dancers— partied into the wee hours of the night, drinking Stolichnaya vodka and singing Russian songs.

Her mother hadn’t died of natural causes: She was murdered, stabbed to death in her apartment, and that was where the story became murky. Her death had come shortly after Yulia was crowned Miss Soviet Union—and literally coincided with a dispute over who had “rights” to the gravy train that Yulia Sukhanova had become. Many were suspected in the murder, but no one was ever charged. So who murdered her? Was it the KGB? The Russian mob? A disgruntled businessman trying to extort Yulia for her modeling earnings? Or was it simply a random act of violence?

Whichever it was, this was the girl I had fallen in love with, a girl who loved her country but was reluctant to return there even as a visitor. In fact, she hadn’t even flown back for her mother’s funeral, and while she didn’t say it, I knew it was out of fear. Igor— who she still maintained was her brother-in-law, married to her older sister, Larissa—hadn’t flown back either, although in his case, she admitted, he couldn’t have gone even if he wanted to. He was a wanted man in his country, but not by the law. There were “others,” she said, whose toes Igor had stepped on, and it had something to do with her. And that was it. Try as I might, she refused to go any further with the story.

Insofar as my circumstances were concerned, I was certain that she knew more than she led on. On the day my cooperation was announced, I offered her a brief explanation of what was going on—stressing the Dave Beall incident and how, in spite of it coming back to haunt me, I still felt like I had done the right thing. I had maintained my self-respect, I told her, to which she grabbed my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. And when the Chef was indicted two weeks later, I told her about that too—how he had been my accountant, a loyal friend who seemed to get an irrational joy out of “scheming,” which, ultimately, had led to his undoing—to which she said that there are no friends in business and that, if I hadn’t learned my lesson with Dave Beall, then I never would.

She spent a great deal of time telling me about the great Russian soul—the velikaya russkaya dusha, she called it—and how no American could truly understand it. Honesty, integrity, sensitivity, imagination, compassion, guilt, the need to suffer in silence. Those were just a few of the words she used to describe it, thumbing through her Russian-English dictionary.

Yet, from my perspective, it wasn’t her great Russian soul that was impressive, but her loyalty. We had known each other for less than two months, and it had to be plainly obvious to her that I wasn’t the man she had thought I was. I was burdened with problems, my future uncertain. I was a man whose financial star was on the fall, not on the rise. Still, none of this seemed to bother her.

When I told her that I had to get rid of the beach house, she shrugged her shoulders and said that she couldn’t care less about Meadow Lane. Better we should live in Manhattan, she added, and who needed such a big house anyway? And when I told her that money might get tight for a while, she assured me that any man who could make as much as I had so young could figure out a way to do it again.

Emboldened by her words, I nodded in agreement and then made a decision to start trading stocks again, albeit legitimately. The NASDAQ was flying—dot-com mania, they called it—and with the money the government had left me, I could make a few million a year in my sleep. Just why I hadn’t thought of this before I wasn’t so sure, although I knew it had something to do with KGB believing in me.

In that sense, she was everything the Duchess wasn’t. She was willing to bet on me, not on what I had come to surround myself with. Yet, in the Duchess’s defense, Yulia didn’t have two children to worry about, nor did she have “history” with me.

Whatever the case, the Duchess was my past and KGB was my future, and here she was, about to reach the twenty-fifth level of Crash Bandicoot. All she needed to do was defeat Dr. Neo Cortex, Crash’s nemesis, and then Crash would be reunited with his girlfriend, Tawna, another genetically enhanced bandicoot, who, in the world of bandicoots, was as sexy as Jessica Rabbit.

Suddenly, KGB started screaming: “Blyad! Blyad! Nyet! Nyet!”

“Back up!” screamed Carter. “He’s throwing fireballs!”

“I can’t!” screamed KGB. “I have lost power!”

“No!” screamed Carter. “Use a power crystal…” and I watched the screen with total fascination as a muscle-bound ape named Koala Kong picked up a fireball and winged it at Crash’s head, causing him to burst into flames. At this point Crash screamed in agony, jumped into the air, did a three-sixty, and then landed on his tiny bandicoot butt and burned to death. Then the TV made a sound like: “Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa… boom!” And that was it: The screen went black.

At first, KGB and Carter just looked at each other, frozen. Then KGB shook her head and said, “Chto ty nashu stranu obsirayesh!”

Carter compressed his lips and nodded his little head in agreement, having no idea that KGB had said, “I just shit all over this stupid game!” Then Carter said, “Again, Yuya,” to which KGB nodded in resignation, took a deep breath, and hit a button on the controller, bringing Crash back to life, albeit at the bottom of Neo Cortex’s castle.

And as they lost themselves in the game, I found myself wondering what kind of mother KGB would be to my children if disaster struck. Unlikely as it seemed, it was still something I had to consider—that the Duchess could die and the kids would become solely my responsibility.

KGB and Carter had a close connection based on their love of video games, but, outside that, I wasn’t so sure. There was a certain disconnect between them, inasmuch as when they weren’t sitting in front of the TV screen they said very little to each other. Of course, she was never anything but nice to him, no two ways about that, but there was a lack of warmth, I thought, a certain apathy that one wouldn’t expect to find given the storied nature of the great Russian soul.

Chandler, however, didn’t play video games; she played with Barbie dolls and she played house and dress-up and she liked to watch TV—of the American variety—so she and KGB had very little in common. And that bothered me; it bothered me that I never saw KGB reaching out to her. Indeed, as with Carter, she was always nice and always quick to offer a warm smile, but there was still that same disconnect.

In my mind it was simple: KGB was the adult and Chandler and Carter were the children, so the ball was in her court, not theirs. Or was I expecting too much? She wasn’t the mother of my children, so perhaps it was unreasonable to expect her to be a second mother to them. Maybe a degree of casual indifference was healthy, maybe it was normal, and maybe I should just thank my lucky stars that KGB was kind. No, I thought, kindness wasn’t enough. Apathy is its own form of cruelty, and children can spot it a mile away.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum was John Macaluso, the Duchess’s boyfriend. Just last week he’d called me out of the blue and suggested that we meet for a cup of coffee. He was spending a lot of time with my kids, he said warmly, and he wanted to assure me that he would always try his best to be a positive influence in their lives. It was a classy move, to say the least, and when we met a few days later at the Old Brookville Diner, we hit it off instantly.

He was about my height and was thin and wiry and bursting at the seams with energy. He was handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and prominent Italian features, but he was charismatic more than anything. We spent an hour exchanging war stories—carefully avoiding the subject of my failed marriage to the Duchess or his current relationship with her—while I resisted the urge to ask him if she moaned, “Come for me, my little prince!” while they were having sex. Yet, with all the laughing and smiling, there was one issue that hung over the meeting like a dark cloud.

Finally he brought it up.

“You know, it really sucks that I live in California and Nadine lives in New York,” he said wearily. “It figures I’d fall in love with a woman who lives three thousand miles away!”

And that was it: The cat was out of the bag.

There was a major problem—he knew it and I knew it—and it wasn’t about to go away on its own. Either he would have to move here or she would want to move there. And knowing the Duchess’s attorney—that fat bastard Dominic Barbara, with his notoriously fat mouth and penchant for bathing his even fatter ass in the limelight—he would use my legal predicament as leverage.

John was no fool; upon seeing my reaction, he quickly added that Nadine would never do anything behind my back. She knew how close I was with the kids and was always saying what a good father I was. And, with that, we dropped it, although I think we both knew that at some point this issue would rear its ugly head again.

And the lovely KGB—where did she stand in all this?

Just watching her with Carter right now, united by their love of the genetically enhanced bandicoot, gave me hope for everything she might be. Perhaps she could learn to love my children, and perhaps I could learn to love her the same way I had once loved the Duchess and the way I had once loved Denise—for, in truth, I felt the same disconnect in my own relationship with her that I sensed between her and my children.

Perhaps, over time, the gulf between our cultures could become our greatest strength. Americans, after all, had a great soul of their own, didn’t they? According to Dostoyevsky, the essence of the great Russian soul was the ever-present and unquenchable need to suffer, and, according to yours truly, the essence of the great American soul was: Why should we suffer at all when our parents and grandparents suffered for us? So, together, couldn’t KGB and I unite into a perfect soul? It would be my American optimism mixed with her Russian fatalism, the sum of which would be perfection.

Either way, we had a few years to bridge the gulf. The new millennium was just around the corner—only eighty days away—and it would be three or four years after that until I got sentenced.

Then the phone rang.

“Blyad!” sputtered KGB. “Please pick up phone! It disturb my play.”

Carter turned to me and nodded. “It disturb her play.”

“Disturbs,” I said to Carter, fearing KGB’s influence over his language skills, and I reached over to the phone on the side table and picked it up. “Hello?”

“It’s your lawyer,” said Magnum, in an octave of C-minor. “How are you?”

“I’m doing good,” I replied automatically, and then realized after the fact that I actually was doing good. Yes, I thought, for the first time in a long time I was approaching something close to happiness. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“There’s been a flurry of activity at the U.S. Attorney’s today.”

I felt my heart skip a beat. “Oh, really? In reference to what?”

“Are you familiar with an AUSA named Dan Alonso?”

“No,” I replied quickly. “What about him?”

“Well, he’s your new AUSA,” answered Magnum. “He called Nick and me this morning to give us a heads-up. Joel is leaving the office next week and Alonso has been assigned to your case.”

I crossed my fingers: “So what’s he like? Is he a nice guy or is he a douche bag?”

“Welllllll…” said Magnum, “on a scale of one to ten, with a douche bag being a one and a nice guy being a ten, I would say Alonso falls somewhere between a ten and an eleven.”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaimed.

“Shhhh!” snapped KGB. “I cannot concentrate!”

Carter looked up and put his forefinger to his lips. Then he looked back at the screen. I chuckled and said into the phone, “Is he really that good?”

“Yes,” answered Magnum, “he really is. He’s tough, fair, very smart, an excellent litigator, and, above all, he’s got a big heart. I’ve already broached the subject of reducing your obstruction charge, and he said he’s willing to sit down and talk about it. He wants to meet you first, and then he’ll let us plead our case. I think we’re in very good shape there.”

I felt a wave of relief come over me. “Well, this is great news, Greg, really great.”

“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “On a separate note, though, I got a very strange call from Joel Cohen this morning. He was saying something about you being in Atlantic City a few months ago and that you refused to identify yourself. He hinted that you were trying to launder money or something. I know that’s not true, right?”

My mouth immediately went dry, my gut drawing conclusions faster than my mind could come to them. “Of course not!” I sputtered. “That’s total bullshit! I wasn’t trying to launder money! It was a misunderstanding!”

“So you were there?” asked Magnum, seeming extremely surprised.

I already knew where this was going.

In the end, I could prove that I hadn’t tried to launder money, but I couldn’t prove that I hadn’t violated my bail restrictions. I had left New York without permission. “Yeah, I was there,” I said softly. “Hold on a second; let me switch rooms.”

On my way out of the TV room, I took a moment to regard the innocent face of my son. He had had a rocky start, Carter, yet he had grown strong. A terrible wave of sadness came over me. I felt like I had let him down.

Inside the master bedroom, I picked up the phone of the future and sat down on the edge of the bed, then went about telling my lawyer the story, all the sordid details—starting with the luscious yet underage Kiley and finishing with the stone-faced woman in the cashier’s cage who refused to give me my money back. Then I said, “They’re not going to break my cooperation over this, right?”

“No,” he replied quickly, “not if what you’re telling me is true.”

Trying to maintain control, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I started spitting nails at my attorney, swearing up and down that I was telling the truth this time. First I swore on my eyes, then I swore on my children’s eyes, then I swore on my unborn children’s eyes, and then I swore on Magnum’s children’s eyes too.

Finally, he said, “All right! I believe you! I believe you! You can stop selling me now. Jesus! You know, either way, we still have some serious damage control to do. What kind of relationship do you have with your pretrial-services officer?”

“Pat Mancini?” I replied, sensing a thin ray of hope. “He’s great!” I chose not to bring up my misleading phone call to Pat, with its vague reference of being stuck in the city, without saying which city. “Why do you ask?”

“I ask because he’s the one who can ultimately turn your lights out here. If he writes a letter to the judge about your little helicopter excursion—destination, Atlantic City; companion, underage girl; seed money for gambling, a bag full of the government’s cash—it could be a problem, Jordan. It doesn’t look like the behavior of a contrite man. You understand?”

And that was when it hit me: the sheer audacity of my actions! It wasn’t so much that I had violated my release conditions (that was bad enough on its own) but how I had done it.

If I had driven to Atlantic City in a beat-up station wagon with my seventy-year-old mother and a bunch of rolled-up quarters, then Judge Gleeson would probably say, “Oh, it’s just the case of a good son trying to spend some quality time with his mom,” and then he would let me off with a warning. But I had stolen $100 million and was being given a second chance, and how did I show my appreciation? I took a secret helicopter ride to the Sodom and Gomorrah of New Jersey with an underage model. And to finance my trip I took an interest-free loan from the federal government!

With a sinking heart, I said, “So what happens next?”

There were a few moments of silence, then Magnum said, “Nothing, hopefully. I’ll call Joel back and offer your side of the story, and then I’ll tell him that I’ll work it out with Alonso, although this is not exactly the best way to start a relationship with him.” He paused for a moment. Then: “But what are you gonna do, right?”

“Yeah, right,” I said tonelessly. “What are you gonna do.”

We spent a few more minutes strategizing, but there wasn’t really much we could do. The most important thing, we agreed, was to make sure this never made it before Judge Gleeson. He was a conservative man, said Magnum, an altogether rational man, who lived his life by the rules. This was just the sort of thing to raise his ire.

After we hung up the phone, I sat there on the edge of the bed for a moment, dumbfounded. I must have said a thousand times, in jest, that I was my own worst enemy, but this time it wasn’t funny. Once more I had put my freedom in jeopardy, and for what? In retrospect, my decision seemed utterly mind-boggling. Was I really that self-destructive? I didn’t think so, yet from the outside looking in, that’s exactly what I appeared to be. What malfunction did I possess that caused me to do these things, that caused me to take these wild risks, even when there was no upside?

I took a deep breath and fought down the urge to beat myself up any further. What was done was done. If Judge Gleeson found out about this, he would throw me in the slammer on the spot—at which point I would lose Yulia, the children would be heartbroken, the Duchess would move to California, Meadow Lane would be forfeited in my absence, my furniture and clothing would be auctioned off for pennies on the dollar, and my plan to trade stocks would be thwarted. Yet my expenses with the Duchess and the children would continue—so when I finally got sentenced, three years from now, and I emerged from jail a few years after that, I would be naked, alone, penniless, homeless, and my kids would live three thousand miles away, calling John Macaluso Daddy!

^{CHAPTER 24} THE FATE GOD STRIKES BACK

The next seven days were gut-wrenching.

Upon hanging up with Magnum, I called Pat Mancini, who, not surprisingly, had just received a phone call from the Bastard, asking if he’d given me authorization to travel to Atlantic City. Pat, of course, told him that he hadn’t, to which the Bastard suggested that he inform Judge Gleeson of my bail violation.

Pat told him that he would think about it.

Thankfully he told me that he wouldn’t; in fact, he actually felt bad for me, he said. Yes, I was definitely a schmuck for taking a helicopter to Atlantic City, but in a way I had been set up for the fall. “There’s only so long a man can stay under house arrest before he fucks up,” Pat explained. “It’s like the old saying: You leave a man just enough rope to hang himself.”

Before he hung up the phone, he said something that I knew I would be hearing a lot for a few weeks, namely: “For a smart guy, Jordan, you do some pretty stupid things!” Then he hung up on me.

I passed the rest of the weekend in a state of relative calm. Then, on Monday morning, all hell broke loose.

It started when Mancini called Magnum to say that he had received a scathing letter from the Bastard, demanding that Pat write a letter to Gleeson, informing him of my trip to Atlantic City. And, just for good measure, the Bastard wrote that all the high points of my trip—the young girl, the bag of cash, the chopper-must be included in the letter to Gleeson, lest Pat be accused of painting a misleading picture for the judge.

Magnum placed an emergency phone call to Joel—to beg him to rescind the letter to Mancini—only to get a recorded message that went something like: “Hi, this is Joel Cohen, and I’m no longer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I will be on vacation for the next two weeks…”

Yes, the Bastard had vanished, and this was his revenge.

He had wanted to revoke my bail over the Dave Beall incident but had been overruled. So this was payback, and it was a bitch!

Magnum, however, was not ready to go down without a fight, so he hopped on the subway and went down to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to meet with Alonso, who agreed to call Mancini and tell him that he could handle this “in house.” My restrictions would be tightened for a few months, and then ultimately Alonso would make a motion before Gleeson to have my ankle bracelet removed—getting me out of Mancini’s hair once and for all.

Sure, Mancini said, that would be wonderful. The only problem was that he had just hit the send button on the e-mail, and right now, at this very moment, Judge Gleeson was probably reading the letter, which did indeed include all the dirty details. When Magnum informed me of this, I dropped the phone, ran to the toilet, and vomited. Then I ran back to the phone and asked Magnum what this meant—which is to say, was my goose cooked for sure now?

He told me that it wasn’t; there was still a fifty-fifty shot that Gleeson would read the letter and take no action. After all, the letter had not been accompanied by a request for a hearing. With a little bit of luck, Gleeson would just shake his head in disbelief, lose a bit of respect for me, and then move on with his day.

No such luck.

On Thursday morning, at 8:30 a.m. sharp, I heard a very disturbing sound: the phone ringing.

Oh, Jesus! I thought. I looked to my left, and there was KGB. As always, she was sleeping soundly, her blond Soviet head poking out from beneath the white silk comforter.

It was Magnum. His first few words were lost on me, but his next few words weren’t: “Unfortunately, I just received a fax from Gleeson, and he’s ordered a hearing.”

“When?” I asked, in a state far beyond panic.

“Tomorrow morning, ten a.m.”

I stole a glance at KGB. Well, it was nice knowing you! I thought.

“I guess I’m dead fucking meat,” I said rather calmly.

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “I think there’s still a way out of this. The key is that we need to approach Gleeson as a united front. I already spoke to both Mancini and Alonso. Mancini will be there too, tomorrow, and he promised he’d stand up for you. He’s gonna say that it was a misunderstanding and that, in his mind, you can still be trusted to live up to your bail restrictions.”

“And what about Alonso? What’s he gonna say?”

“Like I told you, when it comes to AUSAs, Dan Alonso is about as good as they get. So, in spite of him never meeting you before, he’s willing to stand up for you too. I’m meeting with him later today, and we’re going to work out a package that we can sell to Gleeson. There’ll be some severe restrictions for a while—no travel, in your house by six p.m., no more late nights in the city—but it’s much better than going to jail right now, right?”

“Yeah, it is,” I replied. “And what are the chances of Gleeson going along with this?”

“Close to a hundred percent,” Magnum said confidently. “It’s very rare that a judge goes against the recommendation of the U.S. attorney. And the fact that Mancini’s on board pretty much seals the deal.”

Excellent, I thought. There was no reason to worry.

The United States Courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza was enveloped by an irreducible despair. No one, it seemed, really wanted to be there—from the lawyers, to the defendants, to the clerks, to the marshals, to the court reporters, to the people who swept the building’s six sprawling floors, to the judges themselves. Everyone looked either bored, desperate, or on the verge of tears. And while you might find an occasional smile from someone who had just been acquitted of a criminal charge, for every broad smile there was a frown. After all, for every winner there was a loser.

Except in my case.

It was Friday morning, a few minutes before ten, and my lawyers and I were standing in a long, broad hallway outside Judge Gleeson’s courtroom. Save a few wooden benches against the walls, the hallway was completely bare. The benches looked about as comfortable as the linoleum floor. Between the benches were four soundproof doors, two on each side, and each leading into a separate courtroom.

Just then Magnum looked down at the top of my head and said, “Look, here comes Alonso now,” and he pointed to a tall, slender figure walking toward us. At first glance he looked more like a movie star than an assistant United States attorney. Tall, lean, good-looking, immaculately groomed, and possessing a surprisingly warm smile, he was everything the Bastard wasn’t—namely, a picture of grace and gentility. He looked like the actor George Hamilton, without the tan.

“So you’re Jordan Belfort,” said Dan Alonso, extending his hand for a shake. “You don’t look capable of causing so much commotion!”

I smiled and shook his hand warmly, wondering if he was making some vague reference to my height. After all, he was every bit of six foot two, and Magnum’s head was nearly scraping the twelve-foot-high cement ceiling. I took a step toward the Yale-man, for height-protection, and I said, “Well, looks can be deceiving, right?”

Alonso nodded and shook my hand firmly.

Magnum said, “I promise you, Alonso, this is the end of the commotion. Jordan has lost his desire to fly around in helicopters with bags of money. Right, Jordan?”

And don’t forget about the underage girl, I thought. “Forever,” I said confidently. “I will never step foot in Atlantic City again. In fact, I have no desire to ever step foot in New Jersey again!”

“Who does?” reasoned the Yale-man.

Magnum said to Alonso, “I think this would be a good time to go through the particulars. I’ve already spoken to Jordan about his new restrictions, and he’s totally fine with them. Right, Jordan?”

“Yeah,” I said unenthusiastically. “I’m actually looking forward to them.”

Alonso said, “Just behave yourself for a few months and we can go back in front of Gleeson and make a motion to have you taken off house arrest. I think that’s the safest bet for all of us.”

I compressed my lips and nodded humbly, but silently I was thinking: Alonso is the fucking best, and may the Bastard burn in fucking hell, with a pitchfork up his ass! “Thank you,” I said meekly.

“No problem,” said Alonso. Then he looked at Magnum and said, “I’d just as soon not bring up the Dave Beall issue today. We’ll set up another hearing for that.”

Magnum nodded, and then looked down at me and said, “Dan has been nice enough to reduce the obstruction-of-justice charge to lying to a federal officer.”

Alonso, sarcastically: “You can thank your lawyers for that one. They’ve been pounding me so hard over the last few days— especially you, Nick—that I just didn’t want to hear their voices anymore.”

“Just doing my job,” said the Yale-man.

I smiled at Magnum and the Yale-man. I said to Alonso, “I appreciate it, but, above all, I know my kids will appreciate it one day.”

Alonso nodded in understanding. “All right, well, let’s go inside and get it over with.” He took one step, then stopped dead in his tracks. He turned to us and said, “I sincerely hope Gleeson doesn’t ask too many questions today, ‘cause, for the life of me, I haven’t the slightest idea what really happened here. This whole thing got dumped on my lap at the last second, and I really hate to go to court not knowing all the details. I mean, why the fuck would you go to Atlantic City in the first place? You were under house arrest, for Chrissake!”

I nodded sheepishly. “Well, I think I was just—”

Alonso cut me off with a raised hand. “No, don’t tell me. I’d rather not know. There’s no upside in it.” He shook his head. “Anyway, for a smart guy you do some pretty stupid things, you know?”

I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not surprised. Come on, let’s go.”

“Hear ye! Hear ye!” bellowed a kind-looking middle-aged woman wearing a nondescript maroon pantsuit. “The United States Court for the Eastern District of New York is now in session,” she continued, in a surprisingly deep voice. “All rise for the presiding judge, the Honorable John Gleeson.”

Like a magician, Judge Gleeson, in black robes, emerged from behind a wood-paneled door that led from his chambers into the courtroom. Without saying a word, he calmly walked up a short flight of stairs and took a seat behind a vast wooden desk that sat upon a wooden stage fit for the Phantom of the Opera himself.

To the judge’s left, a court reporter took her seat in anticipation of memorializing the day’s proceedings. Behind her stood a very stocky man, who was wearing a loose-fitting blue sport jacket with a giant bulge under his left armpit. He was just standing there, his arms crossed beneath his massive chest, waiting for someone to fuck with the judge. Then he would strike with the speed of a cobra.

The rest of us—including my pretrial services officer, Patrick Mancini, who at six-three, two-thirty could have played tight end for the Rams—were all standing behind the defense table. That was a good sign, I figured, because there was no one standing behind the prosecutor’s table. (We’re all on the same side here!) In fact, even the audience’s sole spectator, a young black woman in her early twenties, whom I’d pegged as an aspiring lawyer or a reporter, looked to be on my side. She was sitting in the spectator section, holding a spiral notebook and a pen.

Magnum put his hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me into my seat. Now the kind woman who’d announced the judge’s presence began muttering something to the court reporter, something about the entire United States of America being against me, Jordan Belfort. I had never really looked at it that way before, even at my sentencing, which had occurred in secret, inside Judge Gleeson’s chambers.

Judge Gleeson looked rather nice, actually. Even in those flowing black robes, I could still tell that he had a kind heart. He struck me as the sort of guy who would carve a Thanksgiving turkey for his family. He was very young for a federal judge, no older than forty-five, and he had a reputation for brilliance. Hopefully he was in a good mood.

Suddenly Magnum motioned for me to stand, so I did.

“Okay,” Judge Gleeson said softly. “Now, what’s going on here?”

Alonso said, “If it pleases the court, Your Honor, I’d like to speak.”

Judge Gleeson nodded.

“Thank you,” said Alonso. “Okay, Your Honor, well, we’ve come to an agreement with the defendant’s counsel on this matter, as well as with Mr. Mancini. The agreement consists of tightening the defendant’s house-arrest restrictions to very onerous terms. The defendant will only be able to travel to work and back, and he must be home by six p.m., without exception. And on weekends, he will be on twenty-four-hour lockdown.” With that Alonso nodded once, pleased with my new conditions.

“Oh, really?” snapped Judge Gleeson. “Well, I have questions.”

And that was it; it was over before it started.

Gleeson had questions and Alonso didn’t have answers, because he had just taken over the case. And even if he did have answers, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because, as Magnum had said, this was just the sort of thing to raise Gleeson’s ire—the very brazenness of it!

Suddenly I realized that Alonso was babbling something about a helicopter… a bag of cash… then an unidentified female (and, obviously, every last soul in the courtroom, especially Gleeson, knew exactly what kind of female this was), and then he started saying, “…but I really don’t know all the facts here, Your Honor, because I just—”

Gleeson cut him off in a menacing voice: “Are you telling me that you’ve come into my courtroom unprepared, that you don’t know the first thing about this case?”

I snuck a peek at Alonso, who looked like he’d just taken a bullet. The way I figured it, he had two options: The first was to blame it all on the Bastard, and the second was just to say that he was sorry and that it wouldn’t happen again. Alonso said, “I’m very sorry, Your Honor, it won’t happen again.”

Now it was Mancini’s turn. “Mr. Mancini?” said the angry judge.

Pat fumbled through some notes and began spewing out random facts, then a few contradictions, and he ended by saying, “…uh, but in spite of all that, I still think Mr. Belfort can be trusted to live up to his new release conditions.” He shrugged, as if to say, “But that’s just one man’s opinion. Don’t hold me to it.”

Gleeson didn’t berate him. In fact, he didn’t say a single word to him; he just stared at Mancini for a few seconds too long, his eyes emitting what appeared to be an incredible shrinking ray, and I watched in fascination as Mancini, the tight end, seemed to grow smaller and smaller, until he was a midget.

Satisfied with that, Gleeson turned off his shrinking ray and then looked at his old buddy Magnum. “Does the defense counsel have anything to add here?”

Magnum stood up to his full height and said, in a very confident tone, “Yes, Your Honor…” and then he went about giving a highly accurate account of what happened. His words came out smoothly, confidently, and altogether logically—which was a total fucking disaster for me, because this was not one of those situations where the truth shall set you free, especially when Magnum got to the part about the helicopter malfunction being the primary cause of me not getting back before curfew. That was when Gleeson pounced.

“So, what you’re saying, Counselor, is that your client’s excuse is that he thought he’d get away with it?”

“Uh, not exactly,” said Magnum—and Jesus Christ! I thought. How the fuck could a judge who’d never broken a single law in his entire life sift through all the bullshit so quickly? What were the chances?

Now Magnum began trying to defend me again, spewing out more half-truths and some rather bold predictions (considering my track record) about my future conduct under house arrest. But I couldn’t listen anymore. I knew where this was going, and I knew where /was going. And it wasn’t home.

Finally there were a few moments of silence. I fought the urge to turn around and sneak a peek at my favorite spectator. She thought she would be sitting through a boring hearing, and now she was about to see a guy who had put up $10 million in bail have it revoked!

Gleeson started talking, and I knew that he was speaking English words, but for some reason I couldn’t understand them. He sounded like the muffled teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoons. I felt dizzy, ready to puke. The room seemed to be slowly revolving, like a merry-go-round.

Then I heard Gleeson say, “No… no… I don’t like this… get to the bottom of this… blatant disregard… helicopter… where… did he get cash…” Then suddenly more Charlie Brown: “Weep, womp… Womp, weep… Weep, womp…” and then: “I hereby remand the defendant to custody.” Next thing I knew, Magnum was saying, “Give me your watch and your money, and your belt too.”

I had only a few seconds of freedom left, and my mind immediately jumped to the kids. I was supposed to pick them up this afternoon. Such sadness. I had let them down again. As I removed my watch, I said to Magnum in an urgent tone, “You gotta call Nadine right now and tell her what happened. Tell her that I don’t know when I’ll be able to call, but to kiss the kids for me and tell them that I love them. And that I’ll always love them.”

“I’ll take care of it right away,” he said. “I’m sorry this happened.”

“Not as sorry as me,” I said softly. “Is there any way out of this?”

He shook his head. “Not now; we need to let Gleeson calm down for a while. A long while.”

“How long is a long while?” I asked.

“At least a few months, probably longer.”

In no time flat, the man with the bulge under his jacket was standing next to me. Rather kindly, he said, “Would you mind coming with me, sir?”

“Do I have a choice?” I asked, with a nervous smile.

“I’m afraid not,” he replied, and he put his beefy hand on my shoulder and gently guided me in the direction of a secret door at the front of the courtroom.

I took a few steps, then turned to Magnum and said, “Oh, shit! You gotta call Yulia! She’s at the Four Seasons Hotel. I told her I’d be back in an hour.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said calmly. “As soon as I’m done with Nadine.”

“The room’s under my name,” I screamed over my shoulder.

And then I was gone—walking through a door and finding myself in a little-known area of 225 Cadman Plaza, consisting of holding cells, fluorescent lights, and desperate people. The area didn’t have a name, but I had been here once before and nearly frozen to death. Now I was back.

As usual, I had no one to blame but myself.

^{CHAPTER 25} THE INEVITABLE

The Metropolitan Detention Center rose up nine stories from out of the gloomy groin of Brooklyn, a foreboding place that passing motorists pointed to and cringed at. Some two miles south of the federal courthouse, the building, with its towering razor-wire fence and sweeping searchlights, occupied an entire square city block, sucking out the very life force from the air surrounding it.

The marshals had taken their sweet-ass time shuttling me over here; from holding cell to holding cell, from cement hallway to cement hallway, from prison van to prisoner loading dock, I was herded, handcuffed, and shackled, like a cow, and all the while, whether by design or by accident, the average room temperature never exceeded the surface temperature of Pluto.

But now the worst was over.

Stripped of my clothing and my dignity, and then ordered to lift up my schlong and nut-sack and bend over and cough, I had arrived in style—that is to say, I was now in a windowless, partitionless, hopeless room known as “Pod 7N,” which was on the seventh floor on the north side of the building. I was now sitting on the edge of my razor-thin mattress, engaged in a conversation with my new “bunkie,” Ming, who was sitting beside me. Alas for Ming: Despite being a thirty-year-old Chinaman, he looked like a sixty-year-old ghost.

“So let me get this straight,” I said skeptically. “You haven’t seen the sun in six years? I find that a little bit hard to believe, Ming.”

Ming shrugged his narrow shoulders, which were connected to a series of equally narrow body parts. He said, in heavily accented English, “Not six year, six and one-half year. Judge say I flight risk, so he no give bail.”

“That sucks!” I muttered. “So we never get to go outside?”

Ming shook his head no. “Just this room. Do all here.”

Christ, it seemed only logical that, since a plant needs sunlight to survive, a human being would too, didn’t it? Apparently not. With a sinking heart, I took a moment to regard the room. It was a vast space, perhaps forty by eighty feet, packed to capacity with 106 inmates—or detainees, as the phrase went—all living barracks-style, doing everything from eating to sleeping to pissing to shitting to showering to brushing their teeth for months or sometimes years on end beneath a sea of buzzing fluorescent lights. Without a partition in sight, I could see from one end of the pod clear to the other.

Not that there was much to see—simply a vast sea of metal bunk beds and low-backed plastic chairs bounded at the rear by six gruesome toilets and three germ-laden showers. At the center of the room were two dozen stainless-steel picnic tables, a falling-apart Ping-Pong table, a sometimes-working microwave oven, an ancient toaster oven, and three color TVs suspended from the ceiling. Other than at mealtimes, the picnic tables were used for either watching TV (with headphones on) or for playing chess, checkers, cards, or, if you were a Dominican, a jailhouse version of dominoes, which required you to smash the dominoes onto the table while muttering strings of broken-Spanish curses.

And that was all Pod 7N had to offer—unless you included, as one must, the three pay phones affixed to a cement wall up by the guard station, where a single corrections officer now sat behind a cheap wooden desk with his finger on a panic button. The pay phones were the pod’s highlight, a place where detainees, most of them blacks or Hispanics (less than ten percent were white or Asian), would try to stay vaguely connected to the outside world. From morning ‘til night, lined up six deep, they waited to speak to their loved ones, who, for the most part, were loving them less and less with each passing day. My particular bunk was located by the pay phones.

So here I was, sitting with Ming, trying to make sense of it all.

He was blessed with a generous smile, an altogether kind smile. It was hard to imagine that he was a heroin dealer for the Chinese mob, a pint-size enforcer who had once lit a competitor on fire and then used his burning carcass to roast spareribs.

“What’s the story with the phones?” I asked Ming the Merciless.

“Collect calls only,” he answered.

Just then, three detainees came scurrying by, single file. They were rotating their hips awkwardly and swinging their arms in an exaggerated fashion. Speed-walkers, I reasoned. Like everyone else, they wore gray sweatpants, white T-shirts, white canvas sneakers, and headphones. Ming and I leaned forward and watched them grow smaller in the distance. I motioned toward the speed-walkers. “What are they doing?”

Ming shrugged. “They exercise. Walk circles all day. Pass time.”

Interesting, I thought.

In fact, despite arriving in Pod 7N only five minutes ago, I had already come to the conclusion that my chief enemy was not the other detainees but the intense boredom of being detained. After all, unlike a federal prison, where activities are abundant and violence is rampant, a federal detention center is devoid of both activity and violence. They simply bore you to death.

“So there are never any fights here?” I asked Ming.

He shook his narrow head. “Everyone too scared. You face ten year, have fight, now you face twenty. Understand?”

I nodded. Ninety percent of the detainees were awaiting sentencing, so if they got into a fight or otherwise fucked up, the Bureau of Prisons could alert the sentencing judge, who could then sentence them at the high end of the guidelines. “I need to use the phone,” I said tonelessly, rising from the edge of the mattress.

Ming put his hand on my arm. “Hey, you rich guy, right?”

I looked down at him and shrugged. “Why?”

He smiled. “Cause Ming do everything for you: cook, clean, wash clothes, make bed, cut hair. I be like slave.”

I stared at him for a moment in disbelief. “How much?”

“Twenty dollars a week. You pay in stamps from commissary. Give me extra ten dollars, I steal food from kitchen. We eat like kings. I make best orange chicken this side of Chinatown!”

I chuckled. “Sure,” I muttered, “why not?” And I headed for the back of the line.

My first call was to Magnum’s home, which, sadly enough, was a number I knew by heart. The news was not good. Alonso was on the warpath: not so much because he was mad at me but because he was mad at the situation and, most of all, he was mad at himself. He had walked into a courtroom unprepared and had paid the price for it. As a consequence, it would be many months before he would go back on my behalf. On top of that, the burden would now be on us to do the investigation—to get affidavits from the pit bosses and casino hosts and the helicopter pilots, as well as Kiley, if I could find her—to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that my trip to Atlantic City had nothing to do with money laundering.

Magnum had already enlisted Bo, who was reaching out to his contacts in Atlantic City. Coleman agreed to help too, although Magnum thought it would be best if we did our own investigation, then presented the facts to Gleeson in the form of an affidavit; this way the judge would know we were serious.

Before I hung up the phone, I found myself doing what all detainees did: I begged my lawyer not to give up on me. “No matter what happens,” I said to Magnum, with my hand cupped over the mouthpiece, “don’t stop trying to get me out of here. I don’t care how long it takes or how much it costs.”

“I wouldn’t stop for any client,” he said warmly, “especially not you. Just hang in there a few months. I’ll get you out, buddy.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Were you able to get in touch with Nadine?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Maybe too fine, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” I said gravely. “She’s been praying for something like this to happen. It’s all the excuse she needs to bolt to California. Did she ask you how long I’d be in for?”

“No, and I didn’t bring it up, for that very reason. But I told her to accept collect calls from you, and she promised that she would.”

Well, that’s the least she could fucking do! “And what about Yulia?” I asked with a smirk. “She’s probably back with her ex-boyfriend by now.”

“I highly doubt that,” said Magnum.

“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”

“Well, if she’s anywhere, she’s probably in her psychiatrist’s office.”

“What are you talking about? What happened to her?”

“What happened to her is that she totally flipped out on me! I called her at the hotel, like you said, and when I told her you got remanded—or, should I say, got taken to jail, because she didn’t know what remanded meant—she completely lost it. She started crying hysterically on the phone, and she kept saying, ‘OhmyGods! OhmyGods!’ which, I admit, I found a bit humorous, because she kept using the plural form of God.”

“Yeah,” I said proudly, “she has a tendency to do that.” Suddenly I found KGB’s language deficiencies rather heartwarming. “What else did she say?”

“I’m not really sure, because she started speaking in Russian, a mile a minute. Anyway, she’s a very beautiful girl. I can see why they made her Miss Soviet Union.”

“Wait a second: You saw her?”

“Yeah, she showed up at my office unannounced; I guess she must have called information. Anyway, she was shaking uncontrollably. It was pretty scary, actually. Nick was about to call a doctor, but then some guy named Igor showed up and took her away. Do you know who Igor is?”

A shock! “You met Igor?” I felt a twinge of jealousy. Why did Magnum get to meet Igor before I did? Whatever. Curiosity overpowered jealousy, and I said, “What does he look like?”

“Pretty average,” replied Magnum. “Tall, thin, silver hair; about fifty or so. He’s very suspicious-looking, like a fox. He has excellent posture.”

“What do you mean, he has excellent posture?”

“I mean, he has excellent posture! The guy stands as stiff as a ramrod. He was probably in the military once.” A brief pause, then: “He probably still is, if you catch my drift.”

There were a few moments of silence as the very obviousness of Magnum’s words hung in the air. Then he said, “Anyway, he left a very cryptic message for you—something about you being under his protection now. I have no idea what he meant by that. Do you?”

Under Igor’s protection? What was that crazy Russian bastard talking about? “No,” I replied, “I have no idea. I never even met the guy!”

“Interesting,” said Magnum. “Well, Yulia left you a message too, although it was a bit less cryptic.”

I perked up: “Oh, really? What did she say?”

With a chuckle: “She say she love you and she wait as long as it take, even if it take forever.” More chuckles at KGB’s grammar. “I think she was very sincere.”

We exchanged a warm good-bye, then I hung up the phone and headed to the back of the line. There were four people ahead of me, so I had a few minutes to think. Above all, I was astonished at KGB’s loyalty. I would have never guessed it, especially after my experience with the Duchess. I had just assumed that KGB would fly the coop, because that’s what the Duchess had done. But, now that I thought about it, KGB’s attitude wasn’t so astonishing.

Few women would abandon their husbands on the courthouse steps. What the Duchess had done was unconscionable. I knew that I would think that forever. I no longer cared, though, because I was in love with someone else. Where once I had felt betrayed and heartbroken, I now felt angry and apathetic. And, in truth, I wasn’t even that angry. I just wanted my kids to remain east of the Mississippi.

The line moved quickly, and my conversation with the Duchess moved even quicker. Magnum had already given her the low-down, and I filled in the missing blanks. Interestingly enough, Magnum had played down the helicopter aspect of the debacle, focusing instead on what had happened with Dave Beall and how it set the stage for the Bastard’s revenge. I made a mental note to thank Magnum for that.

In any event, I assured the Duchess that I would be home soon-two months at the most—and, while I didn’t say it, my tone of voice so much as said, “So don’t be thinking of moving to California anytime soon, lady!”

For her part, both her words and her voice betrayed nothing. She said she was “really sorry” that I had gotten thrown in jail, yet she seemed no more or less sorry than if I had told her that I’d just lost my house keys and was forced to call a locksmith.

That aside, we decided that there was no point in saying anything to the kids. At the ages of six and four, they would be easy to fool—fool being synonymous with protect. Besides, what was the point in worrying them when I would be home so soon? Hopefully, I prayed, I would.

The Duchess promised to accept all my collect calls and not to trash-talk me to the kids. I believed her on both counts, not because I thought she felt a grain of compassion toward me but because I knew she felt it for the children. And that was fine; when you’re in a position like mine, you accept your victories without questioning motives. Then you say thank you.

When I spoke to the kids, I kept it short and sweet. I told them I was traveling on business, which they both found very exciting. Neither of them asked when I would be coming home, simply because they assumed it would be soon. At Carter’s age, the concept of time didn’t mean much. He measured things in half hours, which was the average length of a cartoon; anything beyond that was considered “long.”

Chandler, however, was another story. She was in first grade and knew how to read (not too well, thank God!), so she couldn’t be fooled for long. Eventually—within a month, perhaps—she would begin to smell a rat; then her well-deserved nickname of CIA would complicate things. She would start to investigate— eavesdropping, asking pointed questions, checking for lies, omissions, and contradictions. In essence, she would become the quintessential nosy six-year-old girl, a concerned daughter who missed her Daddy and wouldn’t stop digging until she got to the bottom of things.

With that in mind, before I hung up I told her that my travels might take me to some very faraway places—fantastic places, I said-just like those two silly Frenchmen, Phileas Fogg and Passepartout, from the movie Around the World in 80 Days. We had watched it together many times, and she had always found it fascinating, especially the different ways they’d traveled.

“It’ll be great!” I said to her. “You can watch the video with Gwynnie and see all the great places while Daddy’s visiting them. In fact, it’ll be just like we’re visiting them together!”

“You’re going to all the same places as Passepartout?” she asked wondrously.

“Absolutely, thumbkin! And I think it might take me the same amount of time it took them.”

“Eighty days?” she sputtered. “Why would it take you eighty days? They rode on an elephant, Daddy! Can’t you take an airplane?”

That little devil! She was too clever! I had to cut this conversation short. “Well, I guess I could, but that might take the fun out of it. Anyway, just watch the video with Gwynnie, and we’ll talk about it then, okay?”

“Okay,” she said happily. “I love you, Daddy.” Then she blew me a big kiss into the phone.

“I love you too,” I said warmly, and I blew her a kiss back. Then I hung up the phone, fought back the tears, and went to the end of the line and waited my turn again. Ten minutes later I was dialing Southampton.

First I heard KGB’s voice: “Alloa?” Then the recorded voice of the operator: “This is a collect call from a federal prison. If you wish to accept, please press five now; if you do not wish to accept, press nine or hang up the phone; if you wish to block calls from this number permanently, please press seven-seven now.” And then there was silence.

Oh, Jesus Christ! I thought. KGB couldn’t understand the instructions! I screamed into the phone: “Yulia! Don’t press seven-seven! I won’t be able to call you back! Don’t press seven-seven!” I turned around and looked for a friendly face. A towering black man was next in line. He was staring at me, amused. I shook my head and said, “My girlfriend’s a foreigner. She doesn’t understand the message.”

He smiled warmly, exposing a conspicuous absence of central incisors. “Happens all the time, big-man. You better hang up before she presses seven-seven. If she does you’re”—beep, beep, went the phone—”fucked.”

Just then I heard a loud click. With a sinking heart, I held up the phone and stared at it quizzically. Then I turned to the towering black man and said, “I think she pressed seven-seven.”

He shook his head and shrugged. “Then you’re fucked.”

I was about to hang up when he said, “You got another number at the house?”

I nodded. “Yeah, why?”

He motioned to the touch pad. “Call back, then; it don’t block the whole house, just that line.”

“Is it okay?” I asked nervously. “I thought it’s one call at a time.”

He shrugged. “Go call your girl. I got nothin’ but time.”

“Thanks,” I said. What a terrific guy! First Ming the Merciless and now the Towering Black Man! These people weren’t so bad, were they? Especially this guy! He was a true gentleman. I later found out he was facing twenty years for extortion.

I turned around and dialed the phone again, and this time she got it right. Her first words were: “OhmyGods! Maya lubimaya! Ya lublu tibea!”

“I love you too,” I said softly. “Are you hanging in there, honey?”

“Hanging where?” she asked, with a confused snuffle.

Jesus! I thought. In spite of everything, it was enough to make you crazy. “I mean, are you doing okay?”

“Da…” she said sadly, “I, I okay.” Then: “Oh, oh… ohmyGods… I… ohmyGods…” and she started sobbing uncontrollably. Try as I might, I couldn’t help but find comfort in her sobbing. It was as if with each sob, with each tear, and with each gooselike snort she was reaffirming her love for me. I made a mental note to count her “I love yous” each day. When they started to diminish, I would know the end was near.

Today, however, the end was definitely nowhere in sight. The moment she stopped sobbing, she said, “I don’t care how long it take, I wait for you forever. I will not go out of house until you are home.”

And, true to her word, that was exactly what she did.

As my first week behind bars came to a close, she was there every time I called Southampton. According to pod rules, you could speak as long as you wanted on each call, and sometimes we would speak for hours at a time. It was rather ironic, I thought, considering we never spoke that much when I was on the outside. Our relationship had been mostly about sex; when we weren’t having sex, we were eating or sleeping or arguing over whose history books were more accurate.

Now, however, we didn’t have such arguments. We seemed to agree on everything—mostly because we avoided all subjects even vaguely related to history, politics, economics, religion, grammar, and, of course, the moon. Instead, we spoke of simple things, like all the wonderful dinners we’d shared together… all those fires on the beach… and how we had made love to each other all day long. But, most of all, we spoke about the future—meaning, our future— and how once all this was over we would get married and live happily ever after.

And when I wasn’t speaking to KGB, I was reading book after book, playing catch-up after years of entertaining myself with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. For as long as I could remember, I had despised reading, associating it with boredom and tediousness rather than wonder and pleasure. I viewed myself as the product of a misguided education system that stressed reading “the classics,” which, for the most part, were boring and outdated. Perhaps if I had been forced to read Jaws and The Godfather instead of Moby-Dick and Ulysses, things would have turned out differently. (Always looking to place blame somewhere else.)

So I was making up for lost time now, averaging nearly a book a day, and writing three letters as well—one to KGB and one to each of the kids. Of course, I would call the kids each day to tell them that I loved them and that I would be home soon. And while I hated lying to them, I knew it was the right thing to do.

As expected, Carter was easy to deceive. We talked about whatever Disney movie he was currently obsessed with and then exchanged “I love yous.” Our conversations lasted no more than a minute, at which point he returned to the blissful ignorance of childhood.

Chandler, however, was a different story. Our average conversation would be more than fifteen minutes, and if she was especially talkative it would last for close to an hour. Just what we could talk about for so long I’m still not sure, although as the weeks dragged on I noticed her becoming more and more obsessed with Passepartout. In essence, she was using the movie to keep track of my progress, the way an adult crosses off days on a calendar.

She kept saying things like, “Passepartout did this, Daddy, and Passepartout did that, Daddy,” as if I could somehow learn from Passepartout’s mistakes and accelerate my voyage around the world. With the help of Gwynne, she had pegged January 10 as my arrival date back in the United States from Yokohama—just like Passepartout. However, if she could help me figure out a way to travel faster or simply avoid having an accident, then perhaps I could be home for Christmas.

So when I told her I was in Paris, she said, “Be careful when you take off in your hot-air balloon, Daddy! Passepartout had to climb on top of his balloon, and he almost fell off!” I promised that I would.

And when I told her I was heading to India, she said, “Be careful when you’re riding on your elephant, Daddy, because Passepartout got captured by headhunters! He had to be rescued.” And from there the subject would turn to something completely innocuous—her new friends in school, something she’d watched on TV, the toys she wanted for Christmas. Never once did she bring up John Macaluso or, for that matter, her mother. Whether this was by accident or design I wasn’t quite sure, but I could sense that she was trying to protect my feelings.

By mid-November, Alonso had finally agreed to take another shot in front of Gleeson. The only problem was that he needed to get clearance from the new chief of the criminal division, a man named Ken Breen (Ron White had switched sides too, becoming a defense lawyer). Breen was currently in trial and couldn’t be disturbed.

That made no sense to me; after all, it couldn’t take Magnum more than fifteen minutes to make a presentation to Ken Breen. Bo had secured all the necessary affidavits, and it was crystal clear that the only thing I had been guilty of was stupidity. I said to Magnum, “I don’t care how busy someone is—they always have fifteen minutes to spare for something important.” Magnum explained that it was a matter of protocol. When an AUSA goes to trial, it’s like a prizefighter stepping into the ring, and between rounds he doesn’t talk to his best friend. All he cares about is knocking out the other prizefighter.

And just like that, the possibility of being home for Thanksgiving vanished like a fart in the wind. Fortunately, I hadn’t really expected it, so I wasn’t overly disappointed. Yes, it would have been nice, of course, but it had been such a long shot that I hadn’t been foolish enough to get my hopes up.

As I quickly found out, expectations could be either your best friend or worst nightmare when you’re behind bars. A man facing twenty years hangs on to the hope of winning an appeal; when he loses his appeal he hangs on to the hope of parole; and when he gives up on that—and his life seems totally worthless and no longer worth living—he finds Jesus.

I fell into a unique category of ultrashort-timers, a detainee whose downside was measured by a matter of months. Worse came to worst, Magnum assured me, Gleeson would let me out by spring, simply out of mercy. However, if we were to file our motion just before Christmas, he couldn’t imagine John denying it. He was a sympathetic man, Magnum promised, and he would be willing to give me a second chance.

Fair enough, I thought. I would have to spend Thanksgiving in jail. I dialed Old Brookville on Tuesday morning of Thanksgiving week. The date was November 23. As always, I dialed with a smile on my face, anxious beyond words to hear the voices of my children. Alas, on the second ring, I heard: “I’m sorry, the number you have called has been disconnected. If you have reached this recording in error, please hang up and try your call again. No further information is available.”

At first I didn’t hang up the phone. I kept it pressed to my ear. I was simply too astonished to move. And while my brain desperately searched for answers, my gut didn’t have to: My children had moved to California.

Two days later, it came as no surprise when the Duchess called my parents and left her new contact information on their answering machine, and both the area code and the zip code belonged to Beverly Hills.

Without losing my temper, I wrote them down. Then I hung up the phone and headed for the back of the line. There were seven people ahead of me, so I had a few minutes to think, to figure out the precise string of curses to utter, the appropriate threats to make, and anything else a man in my position—meaning a man who had no power whatsoever over anyone or anything, including himself—could say.

I would call her a bitch and a gold digger and a… who was I kidding? If I called her any of those things, she would press seven-seven and cut off all phone communication! Not to mention the fact that she could pluck my letters out of the mailbox and cut off all written communication as well. My complete lack of power was utterly enraging! Yet what enraged me most was that, deep down, I knew she was right.

I mean, what was she to do? I was in jail and the money was running out. She had bills to pay, kids to support, and the roof over her head was on the cusp of forfeiture. And then there was John Macaluso waiting in the wings, like a knight in shining armor. He had money, a mansion, and, by sheer coincidence, he happened to be a nice guy to boot. He would support her and take care of her, and he would love her.

And he would take care of the kids.

And what about the kids? What was best for them? Should they grow up on Long Island in the dark shadow of my legacy? Or would it be better for them to make a fresh start in California? Of course, my kids belonged with me, or at least near me. Of that much I was certain. But where did I belong? What was best for me?

Having little choice, I did what I had no doubt many men who’d been unfortunate enough to be a prisoner in Pod 7N had done before me: I went back to my bunk and pulled the covers over my head.

Then I cried.

^{CHAPTER 26} A NEW MISSION

March 2000

Finally—freedom!

Fresh air! Free air! The blue dome of the sky! The orange ball of the sun! The glorious phases of the moon! The sweet smell of fresh flowers! The even sweeter smell of fresh Soviet pussy! And to think I had taken all these things for granted! How foolish of me! Life’s simple pleasures were all that mattered, weren’t they? I had been to hell and back and had survived.

So it was that I emerged from the Metropolitan Detention Center on a chilly Monday morning, with a smile on my face and a bounce in my step—and with every aspect of my life in a complete fucking shambles.

Much could change in four months, and, in my case, much had: My kids were living in California; Meadow Lane was in the hands of the government; my furniture was in storage, my money was running out, and, to add insult to injury, I was wearing an ankle bracelet with restrictions so Draconian that I couldn’t even leave my house, except to see the doctor.

I had rented a sprawling duplex apartment on the fifty-second and fifty-third floors of the Galleria Building, an ultraluxury glass-and-concrete tower that rose up fifty-seven stories above Manhattan’s Park Avenue and 57th Street. (Why not be locked up in style? I figured.)

The building was an upscale haven for Eurotrash—of both the Eastern and the Western variety. From the West they came from places like Roma and Geneva and Gay Paree, and from the East they came from countries of the former Soviet bloc—mobsters, most of them, who also kept homes in Moscow or St. Petersburg, when they weren’t on the run. Not surprisingly, KGB fit in perfectly here, and one of her many Russkie friends had been kind enough to rent us this fabulous spread.

It was back in early December when Magnum asked me what address I wanted to be released to upon Gleeson approving the bail application. Meadow Lane wouldn’t work, he explained, because it was due to be forfeited by year’s end.

Given my circumstances, my options were few: To buy a home would be ridiculous, and to stay in Southampton would be even more ridiculous. What with the kids living in Beverly Hills and KGB’s heart belonging to Manhattan, there was no point to living in the middle of nowhere. Moreover, I needed to stay close to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, because, much to my chagrin, the Chef had refused to cooperate and was threatening to take his case to trial; if he actually did, I would be spending many nights burning the midnight oil at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in preparation.

Yet, as troublesome as I found the Chef’s decision, it played a distant second fiddle to my troubles with Chandler, who since mid-February had been beside herself with emotion. Eighty days had come and gone, and I hadn’t made my way around the world yet. She knew something was wrong, and my excuses had run out weeks ago.

“Where are you?” she kept whining. “Why won’t you come home? I don’t understand! You promised! You don’t love me anymore….”

And that was when the Duchess and I made peace with each other. We had exchanged hardly ten words since that horrific Wednesday morning, but we had no choice now. Our daughter’s suffering eclipsed our mutual disdain for each other.

The Duchess told me that Chandler had been upset for months, keeping a stiff upper lip on the phone only for my benefit. She had cried on Thanksgiving Day and hadn’t stopped crying since. Something had to be done, said the Duchess. Our strategy of protection had backfired on us. I suggested that she call Magnum to tell him what was happening, which she did—and Magnum headed down to the U.S. Attorney’s Office yet again, this time begging for action. Enough delays! he pleaded. This was no longer about Jordan Belfort; it was about a child, a child who was suffering.

And just like that it happened: Motions were made, hearings were held, details worked out, and on the last Friday in February, Judge Gleeson signed the order for my release. From there, Magnum immediately called the Duchess, who immediately called Gwynne, who immediately jumped on a plane to California. She landed on a Saturday, spent two nights at the Duchess’s new Beverly Hills mansion, and then boarded an early-morning flight back to New York, with the kids in tow. She was due to land at five p.m., in exactly three and a half hours from now.

With that thought, I took a deep, anxious breath and knocked on the gleaming walnut front door to Apartment 52C. I had been here once, and it was absolutely gorgeous inside. A grand black marble entryway led you to a mahogany-paneled living room with paintings affixed to the walls. The ceiling was twenty feet above a black Italian marble floor. Yet, as beautiful as the place was, it was also one of the saddest apartments in all of Manhattan—for it was here, in this very apartment, where Eric Clapton’s four-year-old son had accidentally fallen out a bedroom window. I had been reluctant to rent it because of that, but KGB had assured me that the apartment had been blessed by a priest and a rabbi.

Just then the door opened, but only a foot. A moment later I saw a familiar blond Soviet head pop through the gap. I smiled warmly at my favorite communist and said, in a Russkie accent, “Open door now!”

She pushed the door all the way open, but instead of throwing her arms around me and showering me with kisses, she just stood there with her arms folded beneath her breasts. She was wearing a pair of very tight jeans. The denim was fiercely prefaded, the knees and thighs having the appropriate number of rips and holes in them. I wasn’t an expert on women’s jeans, but I knew that these had to cost a fortune. She wore a simple white midriff T-shirt that looked soft as mink. Her feet were bare, and she was tapping her right foot on the marble floor, as if she were debating whether or not she still loved me.

Feigning insult, I said, “Well, aren’t you going to give me a kiss? I have been locked up for four months!”

She shrugged. “Come get if you want.”

“Fine—I’ll get, you little minx!” And all at once I charged her, like a hormone-raged bull. She gave up her pose and started running.

“Help!” she screamed. “I being chased by capitalist! Help— Polizia!“

A curved mahogany staircase at the center of the living room rose up to the floor above, and she took the first three steps like a world-class hurdler. I was trailing a good five yards behind her, distracted by the sheer opulence of the place. The entire rear wall was plate glass, shoving the most awesome view of Manhattan in your face. Horny as I was, I couldn’t help but admire it.

By the time I hit the stairs, she was already sitting on the top step, her long legs hanging open with complete insouciance. She was leaning back casually, with her palms resting on the hardwood floor behind her. She wasn’t even a bit out of breath. When I reached the step beneath her I dropped to my knees, huffing and puffing. Having been locked up for so long, I was in a weakened condition. I ran my fingers through her hair, taking a moment to catch my wind. “Thanks for waiting,” I finally said. “Four months is a long time.”

She shrugged. “I am Russian girl. When our man sits in jail we wait.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips—softly, tenderly—and I pounced!

“I gotta make love to you right now,” I groaned. “Right here on the floor,” and before she knew what hit her, she was flat on her back and I was on top of her, grinding my jeans into her jeans, pelvis to pelvis. I kissed her deeply-passionately!

Suddenly she turned her head to the side and I was kissing her chiseled cheekbone. “Nyet!” she whined. “Not here! I have surprise for you!”

A surprise, I thought. Why couldn’t she just master definite and indefinite articles? She was so close to perfect! Perhaps there was a course she could take, a book she could read. “What kind of surprise?” I asked, still out of breath.

She started wriggling out from beneath me. “Come,” she said. “I will show you. It is in bedroom.” She grabbed my hand and started pulling me up.

The master bedroom was less than ten feet from the stairs. When I saw it, I was speechless. Dozens of lit candles were scattered throughout the room. They were everywhere, on the dark-gray carpet… on all four sides of the black lacquer platform bed… on the matching lacquer headboard, with its gently curved top and gold-leaf trim… and then lined up end to end on the twenty-foot-long windowsill at the far wall. Plush red velvet curtains blocked every last drop of sunlight from entering. The lights were off, and the flames flickered brilliantly.

On the king-size bed was a royal-blue Italian-silk comforter stuffed with so much goose down that it looked as soft as a cloud. We hit it with a giggle, and I quickly maneuvered myself on top of her. In less than five seconds we were out of our jeans and moaning passionately.

An hour later we were still moaning.

At precisely five p.m. the doorman called and said that I had three visitors downstairs. The adult was waiting patiently, he said with a chuckle, but the children weren’t. The boy had run past him and hit the elevator button, and he was still hitting it at this very moment. The girl, however, hadn’t passed him; she was standing in front of him right now, and she was eyeing him suspiciously. From the sound of his voice, she seemed to make him nervous.

“Send them up,” I said happily, and I hung up the phone, grabbed KGB, and walked downstairs to the fifty-second floor and opened the front door. A few moments later I heard the elevator doors slide open. Then the familiar voice of a little girl: “Daddy! Where are you, Daddy?”

“I’m here! Follow my voice!” I said loudly, and a moment later they turned the corner and were running toward me.

“Daddy’s home!” screamed Carter. “Daddy’s home!”

I crouched down, and they ran full speed into my arms.

For what seemed like an eternity, none of us said a word. We just kissed and hugged and squeezed one another for all we were worth, while KGB and Gwynne looked on silently. “I missed you guys so much!” I finally said. “I can’t believe how long it’s been!” I started nuzzling my nose into their necks and taking tiny sniffs of them. “I need to smell you guys to make sure it’s you. The nose never lies, you know.”

“It’s us!” insisted Chandler.

“Yeah,” added Carter. “It’s us!”

I held them at arms’ length. “Well, then, let me take a close look at you. You don’t have anything to hide, right?”

I pretended to study them. Chandler was as beautiful as ever. Her hair had grown out quite a bit since the summer and went down past her shoulder blades now. She was wearing a fire-engine-red corduroy dress held up by two thin shoulder straps with tiny red bows on them. Beneath it she wore a white cotton turtleneck and white ballet tights. She was a perfect little lady. I shrugged and said, “Okay—I’m convinced. It’s you!”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I told you!”

“What about me?” snapped Carter. “Is it still me too?” With that he rolled his head from side to side, offering me both sides of his profile.

As always, he was all eyelashes. His hair was a luxuriance of platinum-blond waves. He was dressed in jeans and sneakers and a red flannel shirt. It was hard to imagine that we had almost lost him as an infant. He was the picture of health now, a son to be proud of.

“Is it him?” Chandler asked nervously. “Or is he a robot?”

“No, it’s him, all right.” They ran back into my arms and started kissing me again. After a few seconds, I said, “Aren’t you guys gonna give Yulia a kiss? She missed you guys too.”

“No!” they shot back in unison. “Just you!”

Well, that wasn’t good! I knew KGB was sensitive to such things. It had something to do with the great Russian soul, although just how, I hadn’t the slightest idea. “Oh, come on,” I said, in a leading tone. “She deserves a kiss too, no?”

“Nooooooo!” they sputtered. “Only Daddy!”

Now Gwynne chimed in: “They just miss you so much they can’t ged enough a you! Ain’t that sweet?”

I looked up at KGB. She seemed insulted. I wanted to mouth the words: It’s only because they miss me! But I knew she couldn’t lip-read English. (She barely spoke the fucking language, for Chrissake!)

“This is okay,” she said, with a bit of a chill. “I will take suitcases upstairs.”

Upstairs, we walked down a long narrow hallway, at the end of which were two small bedrooms. One had been converted into a library; the other had two twin beds in it. As Gwynne and KGB went about unpacking the kids’ suitcases, the three of us sat on the maroon carpet, making up for lost time. There were many hints of Meadow Lane in this room—dozens of Chandler’s favorite dollies lined up along the windowsill, Carter’s sprawling wooden train set snaking its way around the carpet, his blue Thomas the Tank Engine comforter on one bed, Chandler’s $2,200 pink-and-white Laura Ashley comforter with its white lace trimming on the other. Chandler was already busy arranging her dollies into a perfect circle around us, while Carter inspected his trains for possible damage from the move. Every so often, KGB would look down at us and smile coldly.

“Okay,” I said, trying to break the ice, “here’s what Yulia and I have in store for you this week. Since we missed a whole bunch of holidays together. I figured—I mean, we figured—we should make up for lost time by celebrating them now!” I paused and cocked my head to the side in an attitude that implied logic. “Better late than never, right, guys?”

Carter said, “Does that mean we get more Christmas presents?”

I nodded. “It most certainly does,” I said quickly. “And since we also missed Halloween, we’re gonna get dressed up tomorrow night and go trick-or-treating!” With the exception of me, I thought. I would be faking a backache tomorrow night, lest I step foot out of the apartment and find myself back in Pod 7N the next day.

Chandler said, “Will people still give us candy now?”

“Of course!” I said, and no way! I thought. In this building you would have a better chance of seeing God. The Galleria was the sort of ultrapretentious snobitorium in which you could travel up and down in the elevator a thousand times and never see a child. In fact, in the entire history of the building, two young mothers had never bumped into each other and said, “Oh, my God! It’s so good to see you! Let’s arrange a play date for our kids!” Changing the subject, I said, “Anyway, we also missed Thanksgiving and Hanukkah and—”

Chandler cut me off. “We get more presents for Hanukkah, right?”

I shook my head and smiled. “Yes, wisenheimer, we get more presents for Hanukkah. And we also missed Christmas”—Carter shot me a suspicious look—”which, as Carter previously said, you will definitely get presents for”—Carter nodded once and then went back to his trains—”and then, last but not least, there’s New Year’s Eve. We’re going to celebrate them all.”

On Tuesday night we all wore costumes—including KGB, who, to my complete shock, broke out her Miss USSR sash and rhinestone tiara, while Carter and Chandler looked on, astonished. My costume, a garden-variety Western cowboy with a hat, a holster, and a semirealistic pair of toy six-shooters, was far less inspiring and not nearly as sexy. The children did the usual: Carter dressed up as a blue Power Ranger, and Chandler dressed as Snow White. Thankfully, our downstairs neighbor was nice enough to play along and give the kids candy.

On Wednesday night I made turkey and stuffing; the former I proudly baked into shoe leather, and the latter was of the Stove Top variety. The rest of the spread—the cranberry sauce, the gravy, the sweet-potato pie, the pumpkin pie, as well as a Russkie touch in the form of two ounces of premium beluga caviar (at $150 an ounce, from my rapidly depleting checkbook)—came from a nearby gourmet supermarket that gave new meaning to the term price-gouging.

On Thursday night my parents came over. We lit a menorah for the benefit of my mother, and Chandler and Carter got their Hanukkah presents (more money out of the checkbook). On Friday we went—or, should I say, they went—to Macy’s and bought an artificial Christmas tree, and then we spent the rest of the day listening to Christmas carols and decorating the tree. And, of course, they got more presents.

On Saturday night, which was our last night together, we celebrated New Year’s Eve—which turned out to be a real hoot, because I got to meet Igor for the first time. Magnum had been dead-on-balls accurate with his description, starting with his silver-colored hair, which looked like a thin layer of sizzling gunpowder, and even more so when it came to Igor’s posture, which, to my way of thinking, could only be the result of one of two things—either he’d spent countless years standing at attention in a secret KGB training camp or someone had once shoved an electrical cattle prod up his ass.

Whatever the case, Igor could drink, although, according to him, he was simply cleansing his liver in the Russian way—using vodka.

Yes, there was no denying that Igor was smart as well as very ambitious, although, more than anything, I got the distinct impression that what he really wanted was to possess the ultimate doomsday weapon to hold the world hostage. And why? Not for money or power or, for that matter, even sex! All Igor wanted was for everyone to shut up and agree with him.

It was a little after eight p.m., and we had decided to celebrate New Year’s Eve at the twelve-foot-long dining-room table, which like the rest of the furniture was grand, solemn, and comprised of black Italian lacquer. The room was just off the living room and shared the same spectacular view of Midtown Manhattan. At this hour of night, the lights of the city rose up behind us in a dazzling display.

In spite of me being the theoretical master-of-the-house, it was Igor who seemed determined to hold court tonight, while Chandler, Carter, and myself—all sporting glittering New Year’s Eve hats shaped like dunce caps—pretended to listen. KGB wore a dunce cap too, although she was hanging on Igor’s every word. It was nauseating.

From across the dining-room table, Igor said to me, “ Understand! I, Igor, with one snap of finger”—and he snapped his finger, as Chandler and Carter looked on, confused—”can make fire impossible!”

Now KGB chimed in. “He can; I have seen this.”

And now Chandler chimed in. “You should call Smokey the Bear, then.”

And now it was my turn: “She’s right, Igor. Smokey the Bear would be all over you if he knew you could make fire impossible.”

Carter said, “Why is your name Igor? It’s a monster’s name.”

KGB, who had somewhat rebonded with Carter via Crash Bandicoot, said, “Igor is like Gary. It is Russian name.”

Carter shrugged, unimpressed.

Igor asked Chandler, “Who is this Smokey Bear you speak of?”

“He’s a bear who fights forest fires,” she replied happily. “He’s on TV.”

Igor nodded in understanding, then lifted a $250 Baccarat brandy snifter filled halfway to the top with 80-proof Stolichnaya vodka and downed it like it was air. Then he put the snifter down with a determined thud. “You must understand!” he declared. “Fire—may—not—exist—without—oxygen. So—he—who—control-oxygen—control—fire.”

After a few moments of silence, Chandler picked up a noise-maker, stuck it in her mouth, stared down Igor, and then blew into it as hard as she could. Igor clenched his jaw and cringed. Then he poured himself another glass of vodka and downed it.

Later that evening, before he left, Igor promised to give me a demonstration of his fire-controlling abilities, but not now. First he needed to know me better; then he would prove his point to me. And with that, New Year’s Eve came to a close.

The next morning, the problems started when it was time to say good-bye. In truth, I had planned on having a private talk with each of my kids before they left, but I just couldn’t seem to find the words. Carter, I figured, would be easier; his age, his gender, his genetic makeup—for whatever reason, things seemed to slide off his shoulders with no ill effects.

Chandler, of course, was the opposite. She was a complicated young girl, wise beyond her years. I knew that saying good-bye to her would be difficult and that tears would be shed. What I hadn’t counted on, though, was how many.

I found her upstairs in her bedroom, alone. She was lying on the bed facedown, her nose pressed deep into the pink comforter. Unlike when she arrived, when she had gotten herself all dressed up for Daddy, she was now dressed more practically, in light-pink sweatpants with a pink hoodie.

With a heavy heart, I sat down on the edge of the bed and reached beneath her sweatshirt and began stroking her back gently. “What’s wrong, thumbkin? Gwynnie told me you’re not feeling well.”

She nodded without speaking, her face still pressed into the comforter.

I kept rubbing her back. “Are you too sick to fly?”

She nodded the same way, although a bit more forcefully.

“Ahh, I see,” I said seriously. “Do you have a temperature?”

She shrugged.

“Can I feel your head?”

She shrugged again.

I stopped rubbing her back and placed the back of my hand against her forehead. She was cool. “Well, you feel normal, thumb -kin. Does something hurt you?”

“My tummy,” she muttered, in the tone of the infirmed.

I smiled inwardly. “Ohhhh, your tummy. I see. Well, why don’t you turn over and let me rub it for you, okay?”

She shook her head no.

I placed my hands on her shoulders, and, with great care, I gently turned her over. “Come here, sweetie; let me take a look at you,” and I brushed back her hair and took a moment to regard her. What I saw I would never forget: the utterly anguished face of my daughter, her eyes red and swollen, her lower lip still quivering. She had been crying into her pillow, because she didn’t want me to see.

Fighting back my own tears, I whispered, “Oh, Channy, it’s okay. Please don’t cry, my love. Daddy loves you; he’ll always love you.”

She compressed her lips into a tight line and shook her head quickly, trying to fight back the tears. But it was no use. Little streams began trickling down her cheeks. And that was when I lost it. “Oh, God,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry, Channy.” I grabbed her forcefully and held her close to me. “I’m so, so sorry. You have no idea, sweetie; it’s all my fault. Please, don’t cry, honey.” I completely broke down, unable to get any more words out.

After a few seconds, I heard her tiny voice:

“Don’t cry, Daddy; I still love you. I’m sorry for making you cry,” and then she broke down too, shaking uncontrollably in my arms.

And just like that we collapsed onto the comforter, father and daughter, crying in each other’s arms. I felt like the world’s greatest failure, the ultimate cautionary tale for a man’s life. I was born with all the gifts, all the advantages. I could have had it all, yet I destroyed everything. My own greed and excess had gotten the best of me.

After a few minutes, I was finally able to collect myself. I said, “Listen to me, Chandler. We need to stay strong for each other. We can get through this—we can! One day we’ll be together again all the time. I promise you that, Channy. From the bottom of my heart.”

Through tiny snuffles, she said, “Come back to California with me, Daddy; please come back. I’ll live with you there.”

I shook my head sadly. “I can’t, honey. As much as I’d like to, I can’t.”

She started snuffling again. “Why not? I want it the way it used to be.”

I hugged her gently, gritting my teeth and shaking my head in anger. I had to make this right somehow. There was no way I would allow my children to grow up without me. I would figure out a way to move to California. That would be my sole mission in life, nothing else.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “Listen to me, Chandler; I want to tell you something.”

She looked up.

I wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of my hand. “Okay, sweetie; now, a lot of what I’m going to say might not make sense to you right now, but one day it will, when you’re much older.” I paused and shook my head, wondering if it would be better if she never realized what a scumbag I’d been. “A long time ago I did some things in my business that were very bad, and people lost money because of it. That’s where I was over the last few months: I was busy paying them back. You understand?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “But how come you can’t move to California now?”

“Because I’m not done paying them back yet. It’s gonna take me some time, honey, because there were a lot of people who lost money.”

“I have twelve dollars in my piggy bank. Will that help?”

I smiled and let out a tiny chuckle. “You keep that twelve dollars, honey. I’ll pay them back out of my own money. But listen to me, Channy, because I’m going to make you a big promise here. Are you ready for it?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“Okay: I promise you that no matter what happens, no matter what I have to do—even if I have to walk there!—I will move to California. You have my word on it.”

Her smile lit up the room. “When are you moving?”

I smiled back. “As soon as I can, thumbkin. But you’re gonna have to have some patience. But I promise I will get there.”

She smiled and nodded eagerly. “Okay, Daddy.”

“And no more crying!” I added with a smile.

“Okay,” she said, throwing her arms around me. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too,” I said quickly, and odd as it seemed, in that very instant, despite the odds being stacked so heavily against me, I knew I would accomplish my goal.

^{CHAPTER 27} THE BUZZWORD IS IRONY

The next morning I was lying in bed watching the Financial News Network, when a blond anchorwoman mentioned something about a severe “down opening” for this morning’s NASDAQ. There was a massive order imbalance, apparently, with an unfortunate bias toward the sell side.

No big deal, I thought. The blonde is probably overreacting, and even if she’s not, it doesn’t matter anyway. After all, markets rise and markets fall, and a savvy trader can make money in any market. My plan was foolproof:

With the quarter million dollars I still had left, I would trade the high-flying NASDAQ with Wolf-like precision and make a small fortune in the process. The NASDAQ had more than doubled over the last twelve months, and who better than the Wolf himself to take advantage of the greatest speculative bubble since 1929? It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Alas, fate had different plans.

By 9:30 a.m., the NASDAQ was down more than four percent, and two days later it was down another five. By April Fools’ Day, it had lost more than twenty percent, and the joke was on me. The dot-com bubble had finally burst, and it would continue to deflate (at an unpredictable rate) for the foreseeable future. And, yes, while it was true that a savvy trader could make money in any market, he couldn’t do it with limited resources, lest he be wiped out with a single bad trade. So I abandoned my foolproof plan before I started it.

Meanwhile, KGB and I had gotten along fine and dandy while I “sit in jail,” as she so phrased it, but now that I was out, things had become tenuous. Of course, the sex was still great, but the conversation was minimal. By the third week in April, I was certain that we had no future together. It was plainly obvious; in fact, it was so plainly obvious that on April 17—which was KGB’s birthday—I got down on one knee and proposed to her. With a sinking heart, I said:

“Will you marry me, maya lubimaya, and be my third lawfully wedded wife?” What I didn’t say (but what I knew would be true) was: “And do you promise to torture me and drive me crazy, and to make sure that I remain the most miserable man on the planet until death do us part?”

Not being able to read my internal thoughts, she quickly answered, “Da, maya lubimaya, I will be wife,” to which I slipped a seven-carat, yellow canary diamond in a platinum setting on her slender Soviet ring finger and took a moment to regard it. Oh, it was gorgeous, all right, and it was also very familiar; in fact, it was the Duchess’s old engagement ring, which I’d managed to maintain possession of during the split.

Was it bad luck? I wondered. I mean, it wasn’t every day a man asked a woman to become his third wife and then slipped the ring from his last failed marriage onto her finger as a sign of his love and affection and commitment to permanence. Still, I had my reasons, not the least of which was that I hadn’t been sure what to get her for her birthday. (Not to mention the fact that a birthday present would have set me back a pretty penny, and I was trying to play things close to the financial vest.)

But when I called George and tried to explain all this to him, he blew up at me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he sputtered. “You could have sold the thing for a hundred grand, you numbskull!”

Blah, blah, blah! I thought. KGB had stuck with me through thick and thin, so I owed it to her to get married, didn’t I? Besides, what about her status as the first, last, and only Miss Soviet Union in that now-defunct nation’s history? That counted for something! Then George said, “Anyway, she doesn’t even get along with your children, so it’ll never work.”

Whatever. Worse came to worst, I would just get divorced again.

Meanwhile, the Duchess was being unusually nice. Within three weeks of the kids leaving New York, she already had them back for another visit. Moreover, she had agreed to let me have them for the entire summer. The only problem was: How could I keep them entertained in a Eurotrash-infested Manhattan apartment building while I was locked up under house arrest with an emotionally disconnected fiancée by my side who couldn’t say the word the? It would be difficult. What with no front lawn to run around on or swimming pool to swim in or beach to build sand castles on, they would be bored to death. Not to mention the fact that on the island of Manhattan it would be a hundred ten degrees and a thousand percent humidity! How could the kids survive in that? They would wilt like tiny sunflowers in the Gobi Desert.

The city was no place for children—especially in the summer! Everyone knew that—especially me. All their friends would be in the Hamptons. How could I disappoint them again? I had put them through enough hell as it was. Yet it would be obscenely expensive to rent a place in the Hamptons, and I was trying to conserve funds. If only the NASDAQ hadn’t crashed!

Once again, however, George had a solution. He called me from his cell phone while standing in a sand trap on the sixth tee of Shinnecock, and he said, “I got the inside scoop on a fifteen-acre estate in Southampton. The owner is some pint-size German prince who’s long on title and short on cash, so he’s looking to rent the place cheap.”

“What’s the place look like?” asked I, the choosy beggar.

“Well, it’s not Meadow Lane,” he replied, “but it’s still nice. It’s got a pool, a tennis court, a huge backyard. It’s perfect for the kids. You’ve even got deer running through your backyard!”

“How much?” I asked cautiously.

“A hundred and twenty grand,” he answered. “It’s a steal, considering. The place looks like a Swiss hunting lodge.”

“I can’t afford it,” I said quickly, to which George even more quickly replied, “Don’t worry; I’ll pay the lease up front for you. You can pay me back when you’re rolling again.” Then he said, “You’re like a son to me, Jordan, and you could use a break right now. So take it, and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

At first, my masculine pride urged me to resist George’s generosity, but only for a second. The place would be perfect for the kids, and George was, indeed, like a father to me. Besides, to a man as rich as he (a man as rich as I used to be), a hundred twenty grand was nothing. At that level of wealth, money was merely a book entry on a balance sheet; you got more joy from helping people with it than watching it collect four percent in the Bridgehampton National Bank. All you wanted in return was love and respect and, of course, gratitude, all of which I already felt for George. Besides, one day I would pay him back, after I became rich again.

So I packed my bags and moved back out to the Hamptons. I felt like a fucking Ping-Pong ball! Then I received an astonishing phone call from Magnum. It was early June now, and I took the call in my new sprawling living room, which, as George had indicated, looked like a hunting lodge. Magnum said, “I thought you’d like to know that Dave Beall got indicted today for securities fraud. He was arraigned this afternoon in front of Judge Gleeson.”

With a sinking heart, I sat down on a distressed leather love seat. Above me hung a giant dead moose’s head. The dead moose looked outraged. “Indicted?” I muttered. “How could he get indicted, Greg? I thought he was cooperating!”

“Apparently not,” Magnum answered, and then he went about explaining how Dave Beall hadn’t actually ratted me out; rather, he had gotten drunk as a skunk and then told one of his buddies about the note. His buddy, as it turned out, was a rat in OCD’s ever-expanding rat stable. And the rest, as they say, was history.

The kids spent the summer in Southampton and had a ball, and then, the day they left, Elliot Lavigne was indicted for securities fraud. He blamed it all on me, of course, which was rather ironic, I thought, considering that I had once saved his life in what I now considered a momentary lapse of judgment. In truth, I was still glad that I had saved his life, because for the entire week afterward everyone was calling me a hero, but now, half a decade later, Elliot was facing five years, and I didn’t give a shit.

The Chef, however, was a different story; I did give a shit about him.

In what would seem like the greatest irony of all, the Chef decided to defy the conventional logic and wisdom and take his case to trial. But why? With the videotapes, the audiotapes, my testimony, Danny’s testimony, James Loo’s testimony, and the airtight paper trail of my Swiss cover-up—which was laden with the Chef’s slippery fingerprints—as well as his two spectacular renderings of his submarine, the SS Money Launderer, he had absolutely no shot of being acquitted. He would be found guilty as charged and be put away for the better part of a decade.

For my part, I would suffer the public humiliation of having to testify in open court against a man whom I had once called a friend. It would be in the newspaper, in magazines, on the Internet, everywhere. And how ironic it was that what I had done with Dave Beall would go down in history as nothing more than a tiny footnote, a minor offset to a dozen acts of betrayal.

At this moment, I was sitting in the debriefing with Alonso and OCD, laughing inwardly after OCD had just said, “You know what, Alonso? You got the worst case of OCD I’ve ever seen!”

“What are you talking about?” snapped Alonso. “I’m not OCD! I just want to make sure the transcripts are accurate.”

“They are accurate,” OCD shot back, shaking his head in disbelief. “I mean, do you really think the jury gives a shit whether Gaito said, ‘Badabeep, badabop, badaboop’ or ‘Badabop, badabeep, badabing’? They’re both the same, for cryin’ out loud! The jury knows that!”

Alonso, who was sitting to my right, turned his head toward me ever so slightly and flashed me a knowing wink, as if to say, “You and I both know this is important, so pay no mind to the sputterings of this FBI thug!” Then he looked at OCD, who was sitting on the other side of the conference table, and said to him, “Well, Greg, when you go to law school and pass the New York State bar exam, then you can be in charge of the tape recorder!” He let out a single, ironic chuckle. “But, until then, I am!” Then he pressed the rewind button again.

It was close to eleven p.m., and the Gaito trial was less than a month away. For six weeks now, since just after Labor Day, we’d been working into the wee hours of the morning, trying to “nail down” the transcripts. It was a painstaking process, during which the three of us would sit in the subbasement of 26 Federal Plaza and listen to the tapes and make corrections to what were rapidly becoming the most accurate transcripts in the history of law.

Alonso was, indeed, a good man, despite being so tightly wound that I was certain one day he would take one too many deep troubled breaths and simply stop breathing. Everyone called him Alonso. For whatever reason, he was one of those people who were never called by their first name. While I had never had the pleasure of meeting Alonso’s parents (wealthy Argentine aristocrats, according to Magnum), I was willing to bet that they’d also called him Alonso since the moment he emerged from his mother’s loins.

Alonso hit the stop button and said, “Okay, now turn to page forty-seven of transcript seven-B and tell me what you think of this.”

OCD and I nodded wearily, and we leaned forward and began thumbing through our four-inch-thick transcripts, while Alonso did the same. Finally, when we were all on page forty-seven, Alonso hit the play button.

All I could hear at first was a low hum, then a crackling sound, and then my own voice, which always sounded strange to me when I heard it on tape. “…the risk is of James Loo smuggling my million dollars overseas,” my voice was saying. “What if he gets stopped at Customs?”

Now came the Chef’s voice: “Eh, whaddaya whaddaya? Don’t worry about it! He’s got his ways, James. All you gotta know is that the money’s gonna get there. You give it him, he gives it to his people, and badabeep badabop badaboop… schhhwiitttt”—a sharp clap of the Chef’s hands!—”it’s all done! There’s no—”

Alonso hit the stop button and shook his head slowly, as if he were deeply troubled. OCD rolled his eyes, preparing for the pain. I braced myself too. Finally Alonso started muttering, “ Schhhwiitttt—he keeps using this word.” He let out one of his trademark deep, troubled breaths. “I don’t get it.”

OCD shook his head and sighed. “We’ve been through this before, Alonso. It just means ‘that’s all she wrote.’ Like, schhhwiitttt! That’s all she wrote.” OCD looked at me with desperation in his eyes. “Right?”

“Pretty much,” I said, nodding.

“Ahh, pretty much,” declared Alonso, raising his finger in vindication, “but not always! Depending on the context it could mean something different.” He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. “Right?”

I nodded slowly, wearily. “Yeah, it could. Sometimes he uses it when he’s looking to tie up the loose ends of a cover story. Like, he’ll say schhhwiitttt to mean: And with that latest phony document we’ve created, the government will never be able to figure things out!’ But most of the time it means just what Greg said.”

Alonso shrugged noncommittally. “And what about the clapping sound? Does that affect the meaning of the schhhwiitttt?”

OCD sagged visibly, like an animal that’d just taken a bullet. “I gotta take a break,” he said, and without another word he left the debriefing room, closing the door gently behind him, muttering something under his breath.

Alonso looked at me and shrugged. “Tough times,” he said.

I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, especially for Gaito. I still can’t believe he’s taking this to trial. It makes no sense.”

“Nor to me,” he agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more airtight case than this. It’s suicide for Gaito. Someone’s giving him some very bad advice.”

“Yeah, like Brennan,” I said. “It’s gotta be.”

Alonso shrugged again. “He has something to do with it, I’m sure, but it’s gotta be more than that. Ron Fischetti is one of the best defense lawyers in the business, and I can’t believe he would let Gaito go through with this just because Brennan told him so. I feel like I’m missing something here. You know what I’m saying?”

I nodded slowly, resisting the urge to tell him what I truly thought—that the Blue-eyed Devil was going to try to bribe one of the jurors. And that was all Gaito needed: one juror to hold out, and then Gleeson would be forced to declare a mistrial.

Of course, I had no proof of this, but stories like this had swirled around the Blue-eyed Devil for years—disappearing files, witnesses recanting testimony, judges making surprise rulings in his favor, prosecutors quitting on the eve of trial. But I kept those thoughts to myself and said, “My guess is that Fischetti is gonna try to focus on me, not the facts. Like, if he can get the jury to truly hate me or, better yet, to literally despise me, then they’ll acquit on general principles.” I shrugged. “So he’s gonna try to paint me as a drug addict, a whoremonger, a compulsive liar, a born cheater— you know, all the good things in life.”

Alonso shook his head. “He won’t get the chance, because I’m gonna do it first. And don’t take it personally when I do; I’m going to be pretty tough on you when you’re up there. I won’t pull any punches, especially when it comes to your personal life.” He cocked his head to one side. “You know what I’m referring to?”

I nodded sadly. “Yeah, what happened on the stairs with Nadine.”

He nodded back. “And what happened afterward too, with your daughter. I’m gonna bring up everything—all the dark stuff. And you can’t try to minimize it or rationalize it. You just say, ‘Yes, I kicked my wife down the stairs,’ and, ‘Yes, I drove my car through a garage door with my daughter in the front passenger seat, unbuckled,’ because, trust me, if you do try to minimize it, Fischetti will rip you a new asshole during cross-examination. He’ll say, ‘Oh, so what you’re saying, Mr. Belfort, is that you didn’t actually kick your wife down a flight of stairs, because she was only on the third step as opposed to the top. And, wait, forgive me, Mr. Belfort, you didn’t actually kick her; you pushed her, which is a whole other story. So, to sum it up, what you’re saying is that it’s all right for a man to push his wife down three individual steps and then risk his daughter’s life by throwing her into the passenger seat of his ninety-thousand-dollar Mercedes and driving through a garage door while high on cocaine and Quaaludes?’” Alonso smiled. “You get the picture?”

“Yeah, I got it, but I don’t want it.”

“None of us wants it,” he agreed, “but those are the facts we’re stuck with.”

I nodded in resignation. Alonso continued: “But, on the bright side, we’ll get to spend some time talking about how you went to rehab and got sober. And then you can also bring up how you go to high schools now and give antidrug lectures to the kids.” He smiled reassuringly. “Believe me, as long as you’re honest, it’ll work out fine. Drug addiction is a disease, so people will forgive you for it.” He shrugged. “Now, if only whoremongering were a disease too, then we would really be in business!” He started laughing. “Funny, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling—fucking hysterical! I would have to admit, under oath, to banging a thousand hookers of all shapes and sizes. The only question was if it would end up in the news paper. It was just the sort of tawdry gossip that the New York Post lived for.

Alonso reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a fresh pack of Marlboros and a cheap Bic lighter. “You know, I don’t make it a habit of breaking the law,” he said, “but in spite of this being a smoke-free building I’m gonna light up anyway.” And he did just that, taking a rather shallow, halfhearted pull that so much as said, “I’m not really a smoker; I just do this when I’m stressed out.”

I remained silent and let him smoke in peace. I understood this was important—to be able to partake in a simple manly pleasure without being interrupted by idle chatter. My father, one of the world’s all-time great smokers, had explained this to me on numerous occasions. “Son,” he’d say, “if I want to kill myself with these fucking cancer sticks, then at least let me kill myself in fucking peace, for Chrissake!”

Alonso smiled at me and said, “Sooo… how are you, Jordan?”

I cocked my head to the side and stared at him for a moment. “How am I?” I asked. “Are you being sarcastic, Alonso?”

He turned the corners of his mouth down and shook his head slowly. “No, not at all. I just want to know how you are.”

I shrugged. “Well, it’s been a long time since someone’s asked me that, so I need to think about it for a second.” I paused for about a tenth of a second, then said, “Uh, I suck! How you doin’, Alonso?”

He ignored my last few words and said, “Things will get better; you just gotta give it some time. After the trial is over, we can make a motion to get your ankle bracelet taken off.” A brief pause, then: “I’m sure Gleeson will approve it once he hears you testify. It definitely comes through how remorseful you are.”

I nodded. “Well, I am remorseful. More than you can imagine.”

He nodded. “I know that; I’ve been doing this long enough to know when someone’s full of shit. But that aside, you still haven’t answered my question.”

“About what: How am I?”

“Yeah. How are you?”

I shrugged. “I got problems, Alonso. I’m facing years in jail, I’m engaged to a woman I’m not in love with, I have no career path, my kids live on the other side of the country, I’m wearing a fucking ankle bracelet, I’ve betrayed my closest friends, they’ve betrayed me, and, to top it all off, I’m on the verge of running out of money and I don’t have a way to make any more right now.”

“You’ll be rich again,” he said knowingly. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind would bet against it.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, well, you’re probably right about that, but I won’t be rich for a long time. I’m in the middle of a bad luck streak, and until it runs its course, there’s nothing I can do. Anyway, my real goal here is to move out to California to be near my kids. That’s it. I swore an oath to my daughter that I would do that, and I’m not going to let her down. I’d like to move out there before I get sentenced. You think that’s realistic?”

“Yeah, I think it is. I’ll do what I can to help you, but you have to be patient for a while. The next year is going to be hectic; there are trials pending, indictments looming; a lot of things are still up in the air. But there should be a window toward the end. From a logistical standpoint, though, I don’t know how much sense it makes to move before you do your time. I mean, what are you going to do: rent a house and then go to jail right after you rent it?”

I smiled and winked. “You bet your ass I am! Before I go to jail, I want my kids to know that I officially moved out to California; this way, they’ll know I’ll be coming back there when I get out. And I want to spend my last night of freedom with them in a house that’s ours, not in a hotel. And we’re all gonna sleep in the same bed that night, one of them under each arm.” I paused for a moment, relishing the thought. “That’s how I want to spend my last night of freedom.”

Just then the door swung open, and in walked OCD. He took a few suspicious sniffs and then looked at the metal wastepaper basket, where Alonso had tossed his cigarette. Then he looked back at Alonso and said, “So how far did you guys get without me? It’s getting kinda late here.”

With great enthusiasm, Alonso said, “No, we’re still in the same spot. We got sidetracked.” Alonso compressed his lips, suppressing a cackle.

I suppressed my own cackle as the last traces of color left OCD’s face.

Unlike Law & Order, where the excitement is heart-palpitating and the tension is so thick you can literally cut it with a knife, the real-life happenings in a federal courtroom are quite the opposite. Judge Gleeson, for example, sits high on his bench, sometimes looking interested, sometimes looking bored, occasionally looking amused—but always in complete control. There are no outbursts or arguments or people questioning the wisdom of his decisions or anything that might cause him to rise out of his chair and lean forward over his vast desk and point his finger and scream, “You’re out of order, Counselor! Now sit back down or I’m holding you in contempt!”

I testified for three days—three unremarkable days—during which I found Fischetti to be fairly competent, but not overly so. Oh, he looked pretty spiffy, in his $2,000 gray silk suit and fancy gray necktie, but that was about it. His lines of questioning seemed boring and long-winded. If I had been sitting in the jury box, I would have fallen asleep.

Alonso, however, had been brilliant: organized, eloquent, persuasive, thorough. He had left Fischetti nowhere to go but in circles, double-talking and triple-talking, and the more he talked, the guiltier his client seemed. Danny testified too, as did a handful of others, although just who and how many I wasn’t sure. The less I knew, the better, explained Alonso. I was not on trial, after all; I was only a witness.

A month later, I was sitting in my Swiss hunting lodge beneath the outraged moose’s head when a call came in from an even more outraged OCD. “It’s a mistrial,” he sputtered. “I can’t fucking believe it! How could that jury not convict? It makes no sense.”

“Did you poll the jury afterward?” I asked.

With disgust: “Yeah, why?”

I said, “Well, let me guess, there was only one holdout, right?”

Dead silence at first, then: “How the fuck did you know that?”

“Just a hunch,” I said. “And you want to hear my second hunch?”

“Yeah,” he replied cautiously.

“The holdout was that bastard in the front row, the one with the handlebar mustache, right?”

“It was, actually,” said OCD. “You’re just guessing, though, right?”

“Not exactly,” I replied, and I told him my thoughts—namely, that while I had no proof of it, this very mistrial had the Blue-eyed Devil’s fingerprints all over it.

“No shit!” he snapped. “You really think so?”

“Yeah, I really do. Again, I have no proof, but, I don’t know—I mean, did you see Gaito just sitting there so calm, cool, and collected? He looked almost smug about the whole thing, and Gaito is not a smug man. If anything, he’s humble. Maybe I’m crazy, but the whole scene just struck me as odd, especially that juror; he seemed disinterested, like he’d already made up his mind beforehand.”

OCD agreed—as did Alonso when I shared my thoughts with him a few minutes later, via conference call. Still, there was no way to prove it, and Alonso refused to investigate, considering it to be the act of a sore loser. Besides, he hadn’t actually lost; a mistrial simply meant that Gaito would have to stand trial again, which he did, precisely six months later.

And during those six months, from December 2000 to May 2001, I burned through most of the cash I had left, as well as what little patience I had with KGB. She, I was certain, held me in as much contempt as I held her. Unfortunately, I’d never been good at getting out of relationships, and, apparently, neither was she. So we remained engaged, passing our days having angry sex and bitter arguments, the latter of which had to do mostly with moon landings and such.

Sadly, Gaito was convicted this time, with the jury reaching a verdict in only a single day. I was home when I got the news, and at that very moment I felt like the lowest scum on earth. I had betrayed a friend, who would now be going to jail for the better part of a decade because he refused to betray one of his friends.

Danny, meanwhile, had already gone to jail; in fact, he never even had a chance to testify at the second trial. He had gotten himself arrested in Florida on an unrelated charge—something about telemarketing fraud with sports memorabilia—and Gleeson remanded him in early April.

When the summer came, I blew what few dollars I still had left on the kids. That was appropriate, I thought, considering they were the only good thing in my life, anyway. And when I kissed them good-bye on Labor Day, I cried inwardly, because I knew I wouldn’t be seeing them again for a long time. In spite of Alonso keeping his word—getting me off house arrest and granting me unrestricted travel to California—I could no longer afford to go there.

That, however, was about to change.

^{CHAPTER 28} FROM OUT OF THE ASHES

It was less than a week after 9/11, as the country readied for war, when my bad luck streak finally ended. I was glued to the TV set when an old friend called from out of the blue and started asking me for advice about something he kept referring to as the refi boom.

Home-mortgage rates had just fallen to record lows, and Americans were refinancing in droves.

“Can you do me a quick favor?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “What is it?”

“I need you to write me a cold-calling script. There’s a fortune to be made telemarketing for refis right now.”

Interesting, I thought, but that was all I thought. I was so down on my luck at this point that his words, in regards to my own plight, blew past me like a gust of wind. “All right,” I said. “Tell me a little bit about your business, and I’ll write you one this afternoon.” And, with that, he went about explaining the ins and outs of refinancing to me.

It was elegantly simple. Virtually all homeowners currently held mortgages with rates between eight and ten percent, while today’s rates were hovering near six percent. So all a mortgage broker had to do was secure a new loan (at the lower interest rate) to pay off the old loan, and a person’s monthly mortgage payment would plummet. And while there were some minor costs involved—the so-called closing costs—you could roll them into the new mortgage by making it slightly larger than the old one, which meant no out-of-pocket fees for the borrower. Better still, the closing costs were a mere pittance compared to the long-term savings, which could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the loan.

“Hmmm,” I muttered, “it sounds pretty basic. You got leads to call?”

“Yeah, I bought a list of homeowners who are paying eight percent or higher. I’m telling you—it’ll be like taking candy from a baby!”

“All right,” I said. “Give me a few hours, and I’ll e-mail you a script.” Then, as an afterthought: “And why don’t you send me over a few leads while you’re at it to test it out with—just to make sure it flows.”

And that was how it started.

He e-mailed me the leads, I wrote a script, and halfway through my first sales pitch, a very animated Haitian woman cut me off in mid-sentence by saying, “This sounds too good to be true! When can you come over to do the paperwork?”

Right this damn second! I thought. Although, not wanting to sound like a desperate salesman, I replied, “Well, it just so happens I’m going to be in your area tomorrow”—I looked at her address and noticed she lived in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, a dangerous place. Why would I be in her area? What plausible explanation?— “refinancing one of your neighbors,” I quickly added. “I can be there around noon. Does that sound okay?”

“Perfect!” she answered. “I’ll make snacks.”

The next day I found myself driving through the war zone of east Brooklyn, marveling at how a lack of money can make a man brave. The woman’s house was a two-story frame affair on a grimy two-way street. From the outside it looked like a crack den. Inside, it smelled like boiled fish and mildew. There were no less than twelve Haitians living there.

She offered me a seat at her turd-green Formica kitchen table, where she immediately began serving me beans and rice and boiled fish—refusing to talk about her mortgage until I cleaned my plate. Meanwhile, I kept hearing an ungodly shriek coming from one of the upstairs bedrooms. It sounded like a small child. “Is everything okay up there?” I asked, forcing a smile.

She nodded slowly, knowingly, as if to say, “Everything is just as it should be.” Then she said, “That is my grandson; he has the fever.”

The fever? What did she mean by that? From her tone of voice she seemed to be implying that foul play, in the form of supernatural forces, was involved. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said sadly. “Did you call a doctor?”

She shook her head no. “I am all the doctor he needs.”

I felt a shiver run down my spine. Obviously this woman had not attended medical school; she was a female witch doctor, or Moomba, as the phrase went. Whatever the case, once the Moomba and I finally got down to business, I grossed $7,000 in commission in less than thirty minutes and saved her $300 a month in the process. Or at least that’s what I tried to do. What ended up happening was slightly different.

The Moomba flashed me a smile, which exposed a gold central incisor, and she said, “I do not give a shit about lowering my mortgage payment, Jordan. I just want to take cash out of my house.” She winked at me. “You know, a little mad money? Didn’t you ever get the urge to spend a few dollars?”

Her name was Thelma. I smiled and held back from saying, “Well, Thelma, there was this one time when I was high on Quaaludes and decided to extend my yacht to make room for my seaplane!” Then I said, “How much cash would you like, Thelma?”

As I would soon find out, Thelma’s answer was typical of many American homeowners, the majority of whom would eventually fall behind on their mortgage payments and end up in foreclosure. She so much as said, “Listen, Jordan, get me as much fucking cash as possible, and I don’t give a shit if the rate’s exactly the same as it is now. I just want to redecorate my home and travel to exotic places and buy a new sewing machine and a flat-screen TV and a twin-engine speedboat, and then I want to pay off the balances on my credit cards so I can run them back up again in six months and refi once more!

“And, by the way, Jordan, if you can figure out a way to get me approved for one of those newfangled adjustable-rate mortgages, where the payment is supercheap for the first few years and then explodes to a level that I won’t possibly be able to afford, then that’s what I want too. I’ll worry about the payment when I’m living in a homeless shelter!”

Ahhhh, the refi boom. It was everything my friend had made it out to be. One day, of course, there would be hell to pay for all these newfangled mortgage products—products that allowed anyone with a pulse and a Social Security number (regardless of credit rating and income) to borrow 110 percent of the value of their home and worry about being able to afford the payment at some murky point down the road. But, still, for today it was wonderful; and all the homeowners and builders and bankers and mortgage brokers and real estate brokers and appraisers and retailers of luxury items and, of course, all the Wall Street hedge-fund managers who were buying these wacky mortgages to lock in perceived profits—which they could then tout to investors to support the notion of their continued mastery of the universe—couldn’t be happier. And, of course, I was happiest of all.

Within a week I had grossed $50,000 in commission, and the week after that I doubled it. And just like that my money problems were over. The dark cloud that had followed me around since that horrific day on the courthouse steps had finally evaporated.

At first KGB didn’t notice anything. That was no shock; after all, she spent the bulk of her day playing Crash Bandicoot III (Crash Super Smash, she called it), and what few words we did exchange were in the form of grunts and groans, during sex.

Nevertheless, she was my fiancée, so I figured it was only right to tell her the good news—which was that, in thirty days, when the loans began to close, I would be rolling in dough again. Then we could resume the semblance of a normal life.

“Good!” was all she said. “Then you can take me to store again.”

In the eighteen months we’d lived together, the girl had uttered the word the only once, and it had been at the wrong time. That momentous event had occurred while we were still living in the city, while I was under house arrest. Such happy times, those were! She had said to me: “It is nice day outside. I will go to the Central Park now to take walk.”

KGB and I were living together on borrowed time, and we both knew it. In fact, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when, after my first loan closed and I booked a flight to California, she wasn’t offended when I didn’t invite her to come along. In fact, she seemed relieved.

And what a trip it was! I couldn’t remember ever being happier.

For $79 per night I rented a tiny room at the Manhattan Beach Hilton, and for an additional $29 per day I rented the cheapest car Hertz had to offer. And how had I flown? Coach! I had also flown through Boston, to save a few extra dollars. The new me!

And the kids? Well, apparently the Duchess had told them that I was having money problems, because when we went toy shopping they refused to buy anything other than candy. At first I was devastated—no, worse; I was embarrassed. I had always tried to be a larger-than-life character to my kids, a daddy who could buy them anything and take them anywhere. After all, it was a daddy’s job to show his children only the best in life, wasn’t it?

Apparently not, because as the week progressed, I began to realize something very important, something that my prior life of wealth and affluence had entirely camouflaged: My children couldn’t care less about all the pomp and circumstance. All they wanted was their father. And all they wanted to know was that he loved them unconditionally and that he always would. Those were simple truths, yet they had also been the most difficult for me to grasp.

And as I went about meeting their new friends, eating in their favorite restaurants, and playing in their favorite parks, I found a new peace in my life. I began thinking that this might have been God’s plan all along: a rise and fall of biblical proportions, only to be resurrected once more with a newfound ability to appreciate things.

Before I flew home, I promised the kids I would come back in two weeks and that I would do that every other week until I finally moved there. And then we said good-bye, with laughs and smiles instead of tears. Without saying it, we all knew that Daddy was back.

When I landed in New York, I went straight to work—finding the refi boom accelerating at an exponential rate. In 2000, Americans had dot-commed themselves to death; in 2001, they were mortgaging themselves to death. A real estate bubble was forming right before my eyes. When would it burst? It was as if every person I spoke to either wanted to refinance or had just done so. I brought in thirty loans in two weeks and hopped back on a plane to California.

Obviously, with all the loans, it only made sense to take a slightly larger room in the Hilton (a suite, actually) and rent a slightly better car from Hertz (a Lincoln, actually). By my third trip, the loans were closing so fast that I decided to fly first class out of JFK. I mean, what was the harm? I was making my money legitimately now, and at the rate I was going I would be a millionaire in no time flat!

When I landed in L.A., my limo driver (yes, to save time I had a limo waiting for me) said he was surprised that a man of my means would choose to stay at the Hilton. “Why not stay in the Beach House?” he asked nonchalantly. “It’s only a few steps from the sand, and every room has a view of the Pacific. I mean, the place ain’t cheap, but it’s definitely the best!”

“Well, what the hell are you waiting for?” I said to the driver. “Take me to the Beach House, for Chrissake!” And just like that I found my new home away from home: the Beach House. It was quaint and gorgeous and less than two miles from my kids. By our third stay, Chandler and Carter were like little celebrities there. Everyone knew us, and we knew everyone.

Life seemed wonderful.

There were only two things eating away at me now.

The first was my beloved fiancée, KGB.

We hated each other.

Just why we were still living together I don’t think either of us could figure out, although it had something to do with inertia. Her clothes were in my closets, her panties were in my drawers, her sheets were on my bed, and no one, including Mary Poppins, likes to pack. But, alas, as 2001 came to a close, the sex began to fade away—which meant there was no reason to be living in the same zip code anymore.

It was Valentine’s Day, 2002—which was as good a day as any to break off the most ill-conceived engagement since Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder. In fact, why not end it right here at dinner? We were sitting at a table for two at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. It was a classy establishment, and, most important, it was the sort of establishment where someone as refined as KGB would think twice before she poured that glass of 1992 Louis Jadot Montrachet over my head. The sommelier, dressed in an immaculate black tuxedo and black patent-leather shoes, had just uncorked it for the bargain-basement price of $350.

KGB’s fabulous blue eyes were staring at me with contempt from just a tiny table’s width away. She was hanging on my every word, disgusted by each of them—already!—just fifteen minutes after we’d sat down. But I was only getting started; I mustn’t rush it. This had to be more than one of our typical fights to instigate a Soviet bag-packing. From her communist-red lips, luscious as always, came the words:

“On polny mudak!” You little fucking testicle! “You think you win Cold War? Oh—please! It is all money with America! Money, money, money!” Contempt dripped off the word. “You spend my country into bankruptcy! Your Ronald Reagan call us Evil Empire and make Star Wars! And who save you in World War Two? We do! We lose twenty million people to defeat Nazis. How much you lose—ten people? Unbelievable! Fucking America… Pizda mudak!” Fucking pussies!

I shrugged, unimpressed with her latest anti-American tirade. “Well, if you hate this country so much, Yulia, then why don’t you”—I started raising my voice—”get the fuck out and go back to your own fucking country, or whatever’s left of it!” Other couples began to stare. “But before you leave us”—I reached down to the bread plate and lifted up a French baguette and offered it to her— “here, take a piece of bread with you so you don’t have to wait in line when you get home.” I shook my head contemptuously. “Fucking Russia! What a mockery! Once a superpower, and look at you now! You can’t even defeat Chechnya, and they’re throwing fucking rocks at you!”

“Blyad!” she sputtered. “Who you think you are? You’ll never get girl like me again! Look at you and look at me. You will be sorry.”

Alas, she had a point there. She definitely had me beat in the looks department. It was time to humor her. I looked her straight in her face and blew her a tender kiss.

She scrunched up her little model nose and muttered, “Mudilo!” You shrunken testicle! “Idi na khui!” Go suck your own penis!

“Yeah, well, looks aren’t everything, Yulia.” I offered her a sarcastic smile. “And I want to thank you for teaching me that. See, my problem was that I got lucky with my first two wives, so I just assumed that beauty and personality came together as a package.” I shrugged innocently. “Now I know better.”

“Ha!” she snarled. “Go back to ex-wife who leave you on courthouse steps. Some woman this one is.”

In spite of everything, I still felt the need to defend the Duchess. I said, “My marriage to Nadine ended long before I got indicted; but that’s neither here nor there. All that matters is what’s going on with us—with our relationship. And it’s not working.”

“Blyad! You do not have to tell me this. You are nightmare to live with. All you talk of is kids and mortgages; that is it. You big bore.” With that she looked away, muttering more Russkie curses under her breath.

I took a deep breath and said, “Listen, Yulia, I really don’t want to fight anymore. You were very good to me at a time when I really needed someone to be good to me.” I shrugged sadly. “But we’re different people, you and I. And we’re from different worlds, with different history books. It’s not our fault that we don’t see eye to eye on things. We couldn’t even if we wanted to!” I shrugged again. “Besides, my heart’s in California; that’s where I need to be now, near my kids. There’s no other way for me.” I shook my head and let out a few chuckles. “Trust me, you’ll be better off without me. I still have to go to jail one day, and I have no idea for how long. I think you should move out this week. I’m leaving for California tomorrow, and I won’t be back until Sunday.”

With great pride: “I already make plan to. Igor will come tomorrow and pack my things. You will never see me again.”

I nodded sadly. What she said was true: I would never see her again. Ours, after all, was not the sort of relationship where you remain friends afterward. (We hadn’t been friends while we were together.) She would immerse herself back into the “scene,” and I would move out to California just as soon as possible and build a new life there. I would rent a house on the beach—just like I’d sworn to Alonso—and I would see my kids every day and make up for lost time.

I caught a glimpse of KGB’s engagement ring—the Duchess’s engagement ring. I stared at it for a moment, a flood of memories washing over me. That ring was one of my final possessions left over from the old days. Everything else was gone. Most of my furniture had been stolen from storage, and I’d hocked my gold watches just before I’d stumbled upon the refi boom. In fact, other than a few Gilberto suits, the only thing I still had left was my black four-door Mercedes. Everything else had been purchased with mortgage money, which is to say, with money I’d earned honestly.

Apparently KGB saw me staring at the ring, because she said, “Ohhh, so you want ring back now?”

I turned the corners of my mouth down and shook my head slowly. “No. You can keep it; sell it, hold it, wear it—I don’t give a shit what you do with it. That ring’s cursed, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe it’ll bring you better luck than it brought me.”

We cut dinner short, and ten minutes later we were back in the Mercedes, on our way home. We were cruising down Noyack Road, a long, dark, winding country road that led from Sag Harbor to the village of Southampton. It was cold and damp outside; the roads were slick. I would keep it under forty.

KGB was staring out the front windshield. She wore a full-length Russian sable coat and a matching sable cap, the latter of which had an oversize brim and a long, fluffy tail dangling from the back. It was the sort of over-the-top fur ensemble that only a wealthy Russkie woman who had once been voted Miss Soviet Union could get away with without looking completely ridiculous. Her engagement ring was turned inward, the stone resting in the palm of her own balled-up fist, which was clenched as tight as a drum.

Apparently she wouldn’t have given it up without a fight anyway.

I leaned forward and turned on the radio and hit the search button. A love song. Fucking Cupid! Why doesn’t someone just shoot that little bastard right in his diapered ass with one of his own arrows? I hit the search button again—another love song.

“Watch out!” screamed KGB. “There is animals on road!”

I looked up—fuck! Deer—three of them—twenty yards away and closing fast. A surge of adrenaline….I smashed on the antilock brakes and screamed: “Hold on!” I jerked the wheel to the right, trying to steer the car into the woods, but the Mercedes began to fishtail….No!… Come on, you German bastards!… I smashed the horn—beeepppp!—but the deer just looked at the car, confused. I flashed the brights in desperation. The deer were less than ten yards away. I honked again. No effect, so I cut the wheel hard left… more fishtailing…. I smashed the brakes even harder…. I felt the antilock mechanism kick in….The Krauts!… Come on, you Krauts!… My heart was beating a mile a minute….I was holding my breath… no… it’s too late… gonna hit… Such helpless faces on the deer… a terrible waste….I locked my arms and braced for impact. “Hold on!” I screamed. “We’re gonna hit…”

Suddenly, as if by magic, the car came to a complete stop, five inches from the deer. KGB and I sat there speechless, mouths agape, staring at the deer, which were still frozen in the headlights. In the background, Cupid was still torturing me with a duet by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross:

“And I’ll give it all to you, my love, my love, my love, my endless love.”

“Jesus Christ,” I finally muttered, still staring at the deer. I shook my head slowly, as the deer stared back. They seemed annoyed. I flicked off the radio and looked over at KGB. Nice fucking hat! I thought. “God, that was close! I can’t believe it!”

SMASH!

The impact from the fourth deer was so profound that the two-thousand-pound German Mercedes seemed to fly up a foot in the air and then fall back to earth in slow motion. Without even having to look, I knew the entire rear passenger side was completely totaled. And the deer, of course, was dead. I turned back to KGB and her hat.

“You all right?” I asked.

She nodded slowly, dreamily. She was too astonished to speak. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the three deer scatter into the woods. At that very moment, it hit me that they were a small family, probably out looking for food. I was certain I’d killed the mother. How sad. I told KGB to wait in the car.

Outside, it was sheer carnage. A large deer with a very gentle face was lying on its right side, motionless. I felt a shiver run down my spine. I turned up the collar of my sport coat against the cold and took a moment to regard the deer. How very odd; it still looked beautiful. There was no external damage. Its eyes were open and lifeless. Its body was completely still. Must’ve broken its neck.

I looked over at the Mercedes. It was completely totaled. From the rear door to the wheel well, the entire right side had buckled. It looked barely drivable. Fair enough, I thought. It was my last tainted possession. Tomorrow I would have it junked, along with KGB.

I turned back to the deer, to take a closer look. Was it dead? It didn’t look dead. All at once a terrible fear came rising up my brain stem. A dead animal was the bringer of bad tidings, a sign from below. With a sinking heart, I crouched down and placed my hand on the deer’s throat. I checked for a pulse, and suddenly the deer’s eyes blinked! I jumped back, astonished.

Slowly, very slowly, the deer rose up onto all fours and began shaking its head back and forth, as if it were trying to get out the cobwebs. Then it began limping away. After a few steps it started trotting—right back into the woods, to reunite with its family. I breathed a great sigh of relief.

Now there was only one last thing eating away at me.

^{CHAPTER 29} JUDGMENT DAY

July 5, 2003

Seventeen Months Later

The proceedings were going just the way I had thought they would. They made me want to bolt out of Judge Gleeson’s courtroom to the bathroom so I could regurgitate my breakfast in private. Still, it was time to get this madness over with, to put it all behind me. I had been out on bail for far too long, and everybody in the courtroom knew it. Everybody—not only Judge Gleeson but also Magnum and the Yale-man, who were standing beside me, and Alonso and OCD, who were standing beside them. Everyone looked rather dapper on the day of my doom.

For good measure, the spectators’ section was packed to capacity, filled with friends and enemies alike. They sat behind a thick wooden balustrade with a curved top, the so-called Bar of Justice, and were as quiet as church mice. Among them were a dozen assistant United States attorneys (the friends, believe it or not), half as many journalists (the enemies, of course), a handful of complete strangers who were there simply to observe a man’s sentencing (sadists, I figured), and my own beloved parents, Mad Max and Saint Leah, who were there for moral support.

We were now ten minutes into the proceedings, and Magnum was making the case to Gleeson that my fine should be much less than Danny’s. Gleeson had hit him with $200 million in restitution, payable in installments of $1,000 per month. On that basis, he would fully be paid off in a little over sixteen thousand years, which would be well into the next Ice Age, when money wouldn’t mean as much. Either way, I still found $200 million in restitution to be entirely outrageous. Not that I didn’t deserve it, but how the hell was I supposed to pay it back? Actually, I wasn’t, according to Magnum; it was symbolic more than anything. Yet he still felt compelled to make the case to Gleeson.

Gleeson cut him off and said, “Sorry to interrupt, Mr. O’Connell. Sometimes restitution is almost a symbolic act, but not in this case. Mr. Belfort is an earner, for a lack of a better way of putting it. He’s going to earn a lot of money after he gets out of jail.”

“I understand that,” said Magnum, “but the amount ordered in the Porush case was far outside…” Oh, shit! Why was Magnum picking a fight with Judge Gleeson? What was the fucking point? Just let him slam me with a symbolic fine and go light on my jail time. “…looking to negotiate,” Magnum continued. “I just don’t want to agree to something that might be off by a hundred million dollars.”

There were a few moments of silence as I waited for Gleeson to explode with something like: “HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY JUDGMENT IN THIS COURTROOM! I’M HOLDING YOU IN CONTEMPT, MAGNUM!” But to my surprise, he reduced my restitution to $110 million, without seeming even a bit perturbed. Then he said, “Would you like to be heard with regard to sentence, Mr. O’Connell?”

Magnum nodded. “Yes, Your Honor”—and keep it brief! Alonso promised to make an impassioned plea on my behalf, so don’t steal his thunder!-“but only some very brief remarks.” Thank God. “This is a case that we fully understand involves a serious offense, and one that is broad both in terms of the time period involved, the number of victims, and the very large amount of losses sustained by them.”

Well, thanks a lot. Magnum. What are you going to do next, bring up my penchant for hookers and drugs and midget-tossing? Move on, God damn it!

“First,” continued Magnum, “Mr. Belfort recognizes that he was motivated by selfishness and greed during this period of activity, and he saddled himself with a serious drug problem, which I think dovetailed with his guilt over the crimes in which he was engaged and his struggle to…” I tuned out; it was just too painful to listen.

Of course, I knew Magnum was doing what he had to do; if he were to try to minimize my crimes, Gleeson wouldn’t consider anything positive he had to say. Yet, in truth, the only person who could really help me in these proceedings was Alonso. Anything said by Magnum would be suspect because he was my paid mouthpiece, and anything said by me would be construed as the words of a desperate man, saying anything necessary to get myself off the hook.

“…and in Mr. Belfort’s case,” concluded my paid mouthpiece, “despite the seriousness of the offenses, I genuinely believe that a lenient sentence would be appropriate.”

“Thank you,” said the judge, who was smart enough to know that Magnum would have felt leniency was appropriate for pretty much anything, short of rape or murder.

Now Gleeson looked at me. “Mr. Belfort?”

I nodded humbly and said, “Your Honor, I’d like to apologize to”-Don’t do it, you ninny! Don’t apologize to the world! It sounds disingenuous!—”all the people who lost money…” and I was off and running, apologizing to everyone, knowing that, despite the fact that I was truly sorry, my words rung so hollow that I was all but wasting my breath. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself; my mind began double-tracking a mile a minute. On one track I was gushing out more apologies—

“…make a list of all the people and apologize to them, but the list is so big that I can’t possibly…”

—and on the second track I was thinking how much better off I’d be just saying something like: You know what, Judge? I fucked up something awful here, and I wish I could say it was because of all the drugs, but the truth is that it wasn’t. I was just a greedy little bastard, and not just greedy for money but also for sex and for power and for the admiration of my peers and for just about anything else you can imagine. And what makes it even worse, Your Honor, is that I was blessed with some wonderful gifts, and instead of using them in an honest, productive way, I used them to corrupt other people, to get them to do my evil bidding—

“…that when I first started Stratton, I didn’t intend it to be this way, but very quickly I knew exactly what I was doing and I just kept doing it until I was stopped. I take full responsibility for my actions. I can only blame my greed—greed for power, greed for money, greed for recognition. I have a lot of explaining to do to my children one day, and hopefully they’ll learn from my mistakes. I would just like to put this all behind me and start paying people back. That’s the best I can do.” I lowered my head in contrition and shook it sadly.

There were a few moments of silence, during which I refused to look up. I felt my speech had been terribly lame.

I heard Gleeson say, “Mr. Alonso?”

Alonso said, “Your Honor, you’ve just heard the defendant talk briefly about how sorry he is and about how he thinks about honesty and ethics and how he tries to do the right thing every day, and if I were sitting where you’re sitting, I would have to be somewhat skeptical of a defendant who has done what this defendant has done. However, I spent many hours discussing honesty and ethics with this man. It’s possible that I’m a pollyanna, but I think that he truly gets it. I believe that he really, really has tried to move on from some point in the last few years and has tried to change his life.

“I don’t know if you’re aware, but the first time I met him was on the day you threw him in jail for the helicopter trip to Atlantic City.” For Chrissake, of all the things to bring up, why that? “And over the next few months, when he finally got released, I think there was a marked change in this man. I think that he really did think to himself what it was that he had done and, more importantly, what he had to do as a cooperator. I think that he got it. Is it possible that we should be skeptical? Sure. But do I think that there is good reason to believe him when he says what he just said? I do.

“And when he testified at the Gaito trial, he spent more than a hundred hours prepping with me, and it was the worst time of his life. It was a very arduous time, but we spent a lot of time talking about what he did and his past deceptions and fraud, and I do want to add my own two cents that I think there is good reason to believe him about his intention to do what he says he is going to do.”

I snuck a peek at Gleeson, who was nodding. Was he nodding in agreement, though? It was difficult to say. This judge was a cool cat. He wouldn’t tip his hand.

“Thank you,” said Gleeson. “I think everyone has demonstrated good judgment in not speaking as long as they might have given the extremes of this case—the extreme criminal contact involving Mr. Belfort, and the extreme cooperation. It is extraordinary co operation, I recognize that.” He looked me dead in the eyes. “It’s knocked many, many, many years off the jail term you otherwise would have gotten, but balanced against that are many years of brazen, arrogant fraud.” Now he turned on his incredible shrink ray, and I found myself growing smaller and smaller, as he said:

“You victimized thousands and thousands of innocent people who trusted you, who trusted the people who worked for you. You thought the regulators were a joke and you took them to the cleaner’s. You lived the high life”—oh, shit!-“the highest of the high life, and not because your talents got you there—I have no doubt that you are a talented man—but because you were willing to lie, cheat, and steal. Your competitors were placed at a disadvantage, certainly not all of them, but most of them did what most people do, and tried to conduct their business honorably and honestly without basically stealing the money from so many people where you can’t possibly apologize to all of them.

“It’s important to the sentence I’m imposing that you have apparently turned your life around. What I’ve read about you in the 5K letter, what Mr. Alonso said about you, has sunken in to me. It does seem to me as though you’ve turned a corner. I guess the most important and hard-to-predict question in this entire process is what that translates into by way of how much punishment you deserve.” He paused and let out a great sigh, the sort of great sigh King Solomon would have produced if he had been faced with sentencing a redeemed Wolf of Wall Street.

I clenched my ass cheeks and said a prayer to the Almighty. He had sentenced Danny to four years, which after deductions, amounted to a bit less than two. The way Magnum and I had figured it, Gleeson would have to sentence me to less.

“It’s a very, very difficult decision. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I have determined that a prison term of four years is appropriate, and that’s what I’m imposing.”

A sudden surge of murmurs from the spectator section.

My stomach began churning before my mind could put it all together. The kids—what would I say? More tears. I dropped my head in defeat. I couldn’t believe it. It was the worst end of the spectrum, exactly what Danny had gotten. My brain began whizzing through the calculations. Forty-eight months was how much after deductions? There was fifteen percent off for good time, which was 7.2 months, plus eighteen months for the drug program, equaled 25.2 months total, deducted from forty-eight—between twenty-two and twenty-three months in jail.

Then Gleeson said, “I’m imposing restitution in the amount of $110 million”—no big deal, I thought—”payable in the amount of fifty percent of his gross income.” Holy shit!

A rigoletto of murmurs from the spectator section! Were they laughing at me? It couldn’t be, but it sounded like it. What were my parents thinking?

Time seemed to slow down; I could hear Magnum asking Judge Gleeson to recommend me for the drug program…. Gleeson agreed…. Now Magnum was asking for a delay in reporting…. Gleeson recommending ninety days. Although Magnum and I had spoken beforehand about delaying it until after the New Year, he now said that it shouldn’t be a problem. He was asking Gleeson to allow me to serve my time in California, to be near the kids. Gleeson, of course, agreed.

Suddenly I noticed Gleeson rising from his chair, and that was it; it was over just like that. There would be no appeals, no Hail Mary passes, nothing. I was going to jail for almost two years. And the fine—fifty percent! A nightmare! Could I ever pay it back? Maybe. I would have to hit a home run. In the meantime, I would be forced to make twice as much as everyone else to live the same life. Fair enough, I thought. I could do that easily.

Outside the courtroom, the whole crew was gathered in the hallway—Alonso, OCD, the Mormon, Magnum, the Yale-man, and my parents. It was still all a blur to me. I hadn’t recovered from the shock yet. There were lots of glum expressions. Apologies from Alonso and OCD and the Mormon, wishing it would have gone better. I thanked them, promising to keep in touch. I knew OCD and I would. As different as we were, we had learned much from each other. In spite of everything, I considered myself better off from the encounter.

Then I turned to Magnum and the Yale-man, and we exchanged hugs. They had done an amazing job, especially when it had mattered most. If someone I loved were in trouble, I would recommend the law offices of De Feis O’Connell & Rose and never look back. We would certainly keep in touch.

Now I hugged my parents, my father first.

Mad Max was cool as a cucumber, the proverbial Rock of Gibraltar. But that was to be expected; after all, nothing calmed him down more than a good catastrophe. Inwardly, I knew he was crying for me, but I think we both knew that that wasn’t what I needed from him now. With the saddest of smiles, he extended his arms toward me and held me by the shoulders. Then he looked me in the eyes and said, “We’ll get through this, son. Your mother and I will always be there for you.”

I nodded in understanding, knowing that they always would. They were good people; perhaps the only good thing to ever come out of Stratton was the financial security it left them with, a result of my father’s salary when he had worked there. They would grow old with grace, with dignity, and with gentility. They would not be burdened with financial worries. I was proud of that.

My mother had tears in her eyes as I hugged her, and I could feel her crying in my arms now. And that was exactly what I needed from her. I needed to know that there was one person in the world who hurt more than everyone else combined. My mother was a brilliant, complicated woman. Leah Belfort was a woman of the highest moral fiber, who had watched her son live the sort of life that stood for everything she detested—hedonism, ostentation, and a lack of regard for others. Yet she still loved me anyway, perhaps now more than ever, simply because I needed her to.

With great care, I held her by the shoulders, the same way my father had held me. Then I forced a smile and said, “It’s all right, Mom. Four years isn’t really four years; after deductions it’s less than two. The time will fly by. It’ll be okay.”

She shook her head, perplexed. “I just don’t understand how you got the same time as Danny. That’s the only thing that doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess it seems a bit unfair. But that’s how life is sometimes, you know?”

She nodded. In fact, at the age of seventy-one she knew this better than I.

“Anyway,” I continued, “Gleeson was right, Mom. You know it.” I shrugged. “I think everyone knows it. I was the mastermind behind the whole thing, not Danny, and after everything that went down, how could I not go to jail for a while? Besides, Gleeson’s a smart guy: He knows all about the drug program and about good time. So he really only sentenced me to two years, which is just enough to send me a message but not enough to ruin my life.” I winked. “It’ll give me a chance to catch up on some reading, so it’s not all bad, right?” I forced another smile.

“When are you and Nadine gonna tell the kids?” asked my father.

“We’re not,” I said tonelessly, “at least not yet. Why worry them now? We’ll wait until before I go; then we’ll tell them together. Anyway, I gotta get going. I got some packing to do.”

“Oh, you’re going to California?” asked my mother.

I smiled proudly. “No, Mom, I’m not going to California; I’m moving there.”

They looked at me, incredulous. “Now?” asked my father. “Do you think that makes sense with this sentence hanging over your head?”

“No,” I answered nonchalantly, “I’m sure it doesn’t, but I’m still doing it. See, I made a promise to my little girl once, and I’m not about to let her down.” I shrugged, as if to say, “Sometimes love outweighs logic, you know?” Then I said, “You understand, right?”

No words were necessary; they were parents too.

So it was that I became a resident of the state of California, whether the state liked it or not. Within a week, I found myself a beautiful home on the water, less than a dozen blocks from the kids, and I went about doing just what I had sworn to Alonso that night: I made up for lost time, quite content to spend my last three months of freedom lost inside ordinary life—cooking for the kids, watching TV with them, driving them to school, soccer practice, volleyball practice, and play dates.

And then, after a three-month extension, time ran out.

It was New Year’s Day of 2004, a sunny Thursday, and I was due to report to jail the next morning. The way I figured it, I had two options: Either I could show up on my own or make the marshals come look for me. And while neither option thrilled me, I had resigned myself to the former. The kids, of course, hadn’t the slightest idea of this, but they were about to find out.

At this very moment, they were walking down the stairs, all smiles, while a nervous-looking Duchess trailed behind them. John and I were sitting in their living room, which, in one last dose of irony, bore an odd resemblance to Meadow Lane’s: the rear plate-glass wall with its awesome view of the ocean, the shabby-chic furniture (a bit more formal here, though), the dozens of throw pillows and doilies and overpriced knickknacks scattered this way and that, and the sandstone fireplace rising up to the ceiling. All revealed what I had suspected about the Duchess all along: She liked her beach houses decorated a certain way.

“Don’t worry,” said John, who was sitting across from me on the couch. “I’ll treat your kids as if they were my own.”

I nodded sadly. “I know you will, John. I trust you more than you can imagine.” And, indeed, I did. I had come to know John well over the last six months, come to know him for the man he was— kind, generous, responsible, charismatic, self-made, and, above all, a man who, true to his words, treated my kids as if they were his own. They would be safe with him, I knew, and they would want for nothing.

“Hey, Dad,” Chandler said happily, as she took a seat next to me on the couch. “What’s up with the family discussion?”

Carter, however, didn’t sit down; when he was twelve feet from the couch he executed a sliding maneuver, whizzing along the terra-cotta floor on a pair of white sweat socks. He grabbed the top of the couch and vaulted over the back, like a high jumper, and landed right next to me without incident. “Hi!” he chirped happily, and then he leaned back and put his feet up on an Australian zebrawood coffee table.

John, ever the disciplinarian, shot him a look, to which Carter rolled his blue eyes and put his feet back down. Meanwhile, the Duchess had taken a seat on the Hepplewhite armchair next to John’s. She still looked beautiful—a bit older, perhaps, but considering what the two of us had gone through, she looked pretty damn good. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a T-shirt, as were John and I. The kids had on shorts, and their skin glowed with youth and health.

I took a deep breath and said to them: “Come here, guys. I have something I need to talk to you about, and I want you to be sitting on my lap when I do.” I extended an arm toward each of them.

Carter, all fifty-five pounds of him, immediately jumped onto my lap and maneuvered himself onto my right thigh, his legs dangling between mine. Then he put his arms around me. Only eight and a half years old, he sensed nothing.

Chandler moved more slowly, more cautiously. “Is somebody sick?” she asked nervously, easing herself onto my other thigh.

“No,” I said softly, “nobody is sick.”

“But it’s bad news, right?”

I nodded sadly. “Yeah, honey, it is. I have to go away for a little while, and while it’s not really that long a time for an adult, it’s still gonna seem like a very long time for you guys.”

“How long?” she asked quickly.

I squeezed her and Carter close. “About two years, honey.”

I saw the first tears welling up in her eyes. “No!” she said urgently. “You can’t go away again. You just moved here! Don’t leave us!”

Fighting back tears, I said, “Listen to me, honey—I want both of you to listen to me closely: A long time ago, back when I was in the stock market, I did some things that were very wrong, things that I’m not very proud of now, and there were a lot of people who lost money because of it. And now, all these years later, I have to make up for what I did, which means I have to go to jail for a while and—”

She collapsed in my arms. “Oh, no, Daddy, no… please…” She began to cry hysterically.

I had tears in my eyes. “It’s okay, Channy. It’s—” and now Carter collapsed in my arms and started to cry hysterically. “Oh, Daddy, don’t go! Please…”

I squeezed him closer, as he sobbed on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” I said, rubbing his back. “It’s gonna be okay, buddy.” Then, to Channy: “It’s all right, sweetie. Trust me, the time is gonna fly by!”

Now the Duchess popped out of her armchair. She ran over and sat on the edge of the couch and hugged the kids too. “It’s okay, guys. It’s… it’s gonna be fine.” I looked at the Duchess and she was crying too, her words coming out through tiny snuffles. So now I started crying, at which point John popped out of his own armchair. He sat on the edge of the coffee table and wrapped his arms around the kids too, trying to console them. He wasn’t crying yet, but he looked on the verge of it.

There was nothing to do now but let the kids cry. I think we all knew that, and I think even the kids knew it. There were a certain number of tears that needed to be shed before they could try to make sense of it all or at least accept it.

Finally, after a few minutes of rubbing their backs and stroking their hair and telling them about visiting days and how we would still be able to talk on the phone and write each other letters, they began to calm down. Then I went about trying to explain to them how all this happened—how I’d started Stratton at a very young age and how it quickly spiraled out of control. Then I said:

“Now, a lot of it had to do with the drugs, which made me do things that I would never normally do. And it’s very important that you learn from that—from Daddy’s mistakes—because, when you’re older, you might find yourself in a situation where people are using drugs and they’re telling you how cool they are and how great they make you feel, and all that sort of stuff. In fact, they might even try to pressure you to use them yourself, which would be the worst thing of all.” I shook my head gravely. “And if that happens, I want you to think of Daddy, and all the problems drugs caused for him, and how they almost killed him once. Then you’ll know not to do them yourself, okay?”

They both nodded and said yes.

“Good, because it’s very important to me that you understand that, and it’s going to make my time away from you much easier knowing that you do.” I paused for a moment, realizing that I owed them more of an explanation than your basic insanity plea centered on drug abuse. I said, “Now, there were other reasons I made mistakes too, guys, and while they might not be as bad as drugs, they were still pretty bad. You see, what happened with Daddy was that I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, like you guys have”—I motioned to the plate-glass window, with its breathtaking view of the Pacific—”and I really wanted to be rich. So I cut a few corners along the way, which made me get rich very quickly. Do you know what that means, to cut a few corners?”

Carter shook his head no. Chandler said, “You stole money?”

I was flabbergasted. I looked at the Duchess; she had her lips compressed, as if trying to fight down a giggle. I looked at John, who shrugged as if to say, “She’s your daughter!” Now I looked at Chandler.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that I actually stole money, Channy, because it wasn’t really like that. Here, let me give you an example: Let’s just suppose your friend called you and told you that there was this really great toy she wanted to buy, and she asked you to chip in with her for it. And then let’s just say you did, because she made the toy sound really fun—like it was the best toy in the world. But then you found out later that the toy didn’t cost as much as she said, and she used the money you gave her to buy candy for herself, which she didn’t even split with you.” I shook my head gravely. “You see what I mean? Wouldn’t that be bad?”

Chandler nodded accusingly. “She stole from me!”

“Yeah,” added Carter. “She stole!”

Unbelievable! I thought. Yeah, maybe I’d stolen, but at least I had done it with a bit of panache! I mean, I hadn’t used a gun or anything! But how was I supposed to explain high-pressure sales tactics and stock manipulation to my children?

Now the Duchess chimed in: “Well, it’s a bit like stealing, but the difference is that when you’re as old as your daddy and me, you’re supposed to know better than to send your money to strangers to buy toys, you know? Like you’re supposed to take responsibility for your own actions. You understand?”

“Yes,” they said in unison, although I wasn’t so sure they did. Either way, I was still glad that the Duchess had made the effort.

There were a few more tears that evening, but the worst of it was over.

Having no other choice, the kids quickly resigned themselves to the fact that they would be seeing me only on visiting days for a while. In the end, my only consolation that night was that I got to fall asleep just the way I had wanted, with Chandler and Carter in my arms. And, of course, I had kept my promise to my little girl and moved to California.