Catching the Wolf of Wall Street: More Incredible True Stories of Fortunes, Schemes, Parties, and Prison

CHAPTER 17

THE ART OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Three Months Later

e 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.